A conversation with Katharine Weber about writing, art and True Confections, her latest novel

Katharine Weber’s life is a novel in itself. (Note: you’ll want to buy and read her forthcoming memoir.) The author of Objects in the Mirror are Closer than They Appear, The Little Women, The Music Lesson and Triangle, and the granddaughter of famed songwriter Kay Swift, she has no college degree, never took a writing course, and yet has taught at Yale and Columbia. Her latest novel, True Confections is an uproariously funny, provocative and smart novel about belonging and family, racism, Jews and the candy business. The raves began prepublication and continue to be astonishing, from the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and more.

Over the course of a few days, Katharine and I got into a discussion about her work and writing in general, reproduced here. I can’t thank you enough, Katharine.

Let’s talk about the unreliable narrator and the whole question of voice. For me, the pleasure of writing is tunneling so deeply into your character you feel merged. With someone like Alice, who often is not quite telling the truth to us or to herself, how close to her were you able to get? Was there ever a moment when you weren’t sure what truth she was or wasn’t telling?

I think I started off thinking I was close to Alice, and so she seemed perfectly transparent and available to me as I wrote her. But as the novel progressed, and her voice became that much more specific to me, she got much more complex, on the page and in my thoughts about her. Her situation drove her character, and her character drove the situation. Consequently, things she had stated as facts started to feel less certain to me in retrospect than they had when I was writing those pages. She thinks she is telling all the Truth but telling it slant, but is she? There are all sorts of ambiguities in the story that I believed one thing about as I wrote the pages and now I am just not so sure what I think I know. Ultimately all kinds of things about Alice and her story are up for grabs, though as I wrote them I had what seemed like clarity at the time -- but it turns out it was the power of Alice's convictions.

You also deliciously blur the lines between truth and fiction yourself, by pushing the 4^th wall out of the way and introducing, for example, the live Zips Candies website, complete with jingle. Because the jingle has a whiff of racism about it, and it sounds and looks and feels so real, it makes the whole idea of racism even more unsettling. We wonder, is this true, is this the novelist playing with us, what do we believe and why do we believe it? What makes us think something is so? Do you feel that writing about racism is ever racist or is this kind of writing really the way to look at it, understand it, and then do something about it?

I love your astute sense of what goes on in True Confections, Caroline. Writers talk about novels in certain ways that are different from the ways critics or readers discuss novels.

To answer you question on racism, I am sure there are sly ways, and careless ways, to write about racism in a way that is in itself racist. But it is racist to mock racism? Surely that is only offensive to racists. I really wanted to confront racism and the definitions of racism head-on. And I do think satire is the perfect way to do it. For one thing, I think that casual, submerged, endemic racism is much more insidious than overt racism, because it is denied and normalized even as it occurs. So, yes, I do mean to make people squirm a little, and then ask themselves why? What about that feels wrong, or what about that makes me feel a kind of chagrin about myself, and what about that activates the PC police, who are, in their own way, as blinkered and close-minded as bigots. Censoring anything that takes up issues of the complex issues of race does not solve racism.

Also -- I think women writers are expected to be nice, and to be well-behaved and proper, and not cause offense or upset anybody in any way, and I am serious when I say that I think the threshold for disapproval -- by purse-lipped priggish readers, by the Mrs. Grundys -- comes much sooner for women writers than for male writers.

Does the guy singing, "Say, Dat's Tasty!" at the end of the jingle seem racist to you? Why? Does it make any difference that the vocalist who sang the line for the jingle is actually Caucasian? Does the word "dat" have a specific connotation? What? Why? How do we feel about Uncle Ben's Rice, and Aunt Jemima on the box of pancake mix? Are they okay? Are they only not okay when pointed out, but okay when not discussed?

True Confections has a lot of threads winding through it. It’s the story of Alice battling for control of the chocolate company that’s become her life, but also the story of the chocolate business, racism, and a plan of the Third Reich to get all the Jews to Madagascar. How, in the writing, were you able to balance all these threads? And how did you make your ultimate decisions in shaping the story?

You left out the runaway slave from the cacao plantations of Cote D'Ivoire, wartime Budapest, the murder of Kid Dropper Kaplan on the steps of the Essex Market Courthouse in 1923, and a few other things, too! It is indeed a three-ring circus of a novel, but that's the way I write. I am always intrigued by the opportunities in a novel to find meaning and substance in those odd intersections, to take apparently disparate strands and weave them together to make something whole and shaped that signifies in new ways.

I recognize that for some impatient readers who prefer the simplicity of a single narrative line, one straight shot, there is too much going on. And you know, it has dawned on me, after five novels, that I am just not going to go into a spasm of anxiety if somebody doesn't like my novel and thinks it has too many parts and doesn't understand why. Perhaps the issue is simply that I am just not the writer for every reader.

I have been asked why, for example, in Triangle there is all that music? Or in The Music Lesson, why is there all that Walter Benjamin? And I can only say that singling out some of the elements in one of my novels that you think are somehow not necessary to the novel feels like asking me why the odd-numbered pages are in one of my novels because you would be happy reading only the even-numbered pages. For me, all these disparate pieces are essential, I have them in mind usually before I begin to write one word of the novel, and the way they fit together IS the novel.

That’s a really interesting question, that one can not be the right writer for every reader. I remember in an interview Dan Chaon said his wife told him to pay no mind to some of the stranger Amazon reader reviews, because those readers were not HIS readers. Because of this, I think many writers realize they can’t write for one audience, because who is that audience? Do you feel that instead the truest thing to do is write the book you are obsessed with writing and hope that what is deeply personal is also deeply universal and will strike some chords?

I can't worry about the response of individual readers while I am writing. Of course I hope to find a wide audience, and I think I have a fairly diverse following, as it is, one that expands in new directions with each novel. (For example, Triangle was probably read by more men than any of my previous novels, and at two of my Connecticut library readings, firefighters were there, in uniform, in the back row, with their hook and ladder parked out in front of the library!)

So of course I hope for a broad readership. I have said more than once that if you are a carbon-based life form with the price of the book, then you are my reader. I have never subscribed to the Franzenian definitions of my work as too "literary" or too "high art" for certain audiences. However, I know my novels have been deemed "too much" by some readers. But trying to be all things to all readers is just a hopeless and pointless enterprise (for me, anyway) and it really has nothing to do with the deepest reasons why I write. In one sense, the first reader I am writing for is myself. I was a reader before I was a writer, like all of us, and I think my sense of what I wanted to write came from my sense of what I have always responded to most deeply and found most appealing and moving and satisfying in the novels I have read over the course of my lifetime. So I try to write novels that I would want to read.

I usually think of your work as very serious and literary, and while True Confections is certainly that, it’s also hilariously funny. Can you talk a bit about the progression of your novels. What parts were a progression by design and which novels simply happened and surprised you?

First of all, I happen to think that each of my novels has a lot of humor, although they haven't been characterized that way by critics, and although there are very sad pieces to some of them as well. You know that old cliché of a perfect book review? "I laughed, I cried, I couldn't put it down!" Well, that really is, for me, the perfect response from a reader. I want my readers to be moved, I want them to be challenged, but also, I want them to be very entertained along the way.

I am not sure I have ever thought about my novels as a progression other than the way I like to write very different novels each time out, so there is a natural progression in that sense that each novel has a different narrative strategy, a different sort of structure, and a very different sort of narrator.

With True Confections, I had the story and the substance of the novel very thoroughly planned without really having the narrative strategy in place. Alice actually came along after the Ziplinsky family and Zip's Candies were well mapped. In a way, I think what I am describing is that each of my novels has come into being with a left brain-right brain sort of dual energy being harnessed. I make a plan, I have all kinds of intentions and elements in mind, and that is all very governed and detailed. But then I deviate from the plan in intuitive leaps, with a purely associative and playful, imaginative engagement with the material. Out of that I can find myself developing completely new elements in a kind of organic way as I am writing. These pieces of the story feel both surprising and inevitable. I am always willing to be surprised by where the novel goes -- and by that I do not necessarily mean plot -- and I have never failed to be surprised by some imaginative alchemy that occurs during the writing.

Oh yes, I meant categorized by critics as humorous. Which leads to another questions, how do you deal with the way critics categorize your work? What is it like to get a brilliant review but you feel the critic was not reading the book you wrote?

It's frustrating to be praised but not understood. We all like praise, but maybe even more important to most of us is being understood, being really truly understood. But you can't let yourself be too reactive or too defined by reviews. Like most thoughtful writers, I would rather have a strong mixed review of high intelligence than an empty-headed rave. But even that rave feels good because you know it might win you a few more readers, and among those readers there might be someone who really gets it.

A negative review hurts (and I read my reviews) but it would very rarely make me regret the way I have written my novel. It's hard not to be defensive. It can feel as if someone has just said your wonderful child is ugly and stupid. But opinion is only what it is, one person's response to something you have spent much more time thinking about than she has. And it is important to remember that unless the critic has a personal agenda (in which case he or she shouldn't be reviewing your book in the first place) then the review is not personal -- your book is of you, but it is not you.

The biggest issue for me is that I don't want to be pigeon-holed as a writer. Each of my novels is very different, and that's always going to be the case. But critics and booksellers, and maybe some readers, too, like to slot writers into categories. I do think that every serious female novelist is pigeonholed in a certain way just because she is female. I know this is a tired subject, but it doesn't go away. I believe my novels would be read somewhat differently if I were not a woman. If I were a man, I believe that there would be more obvious comparisons to certain male writers in reviews of my novels. And I believe male critics would more often read and consider my work.

I’m fascinated that you are able to be working on so many different projects at once. How do you juggle all of this and what’s up next—and why?

I feel a bit overwhelmed by the various projects I am juggling these days, in fact. I am working on a screenplay revision of my own adaptation of The Music Lesson, which is now on its third option, with a dynamic young director who has made an award-winning short dramatic film of a short story of mine. And I am working with a creative team to revive the hit 1930 Broadway show Fine and Dandy, the score for which was written by my grandmother Kay Swift, whose musical legacy my husband and I manage. And I am on staff at Star in the Arizona desert at least once a year. There are just not enough hours in the day or days in the week or weeks in the month or months in the year.

What's up next is a nonfiction consideration of family stories, memory, and the impulse to create narrative. It is manifestly a memoir, with the title Symptoms of Fiction, but it is also very much about telling stories in a family, how we are shaped by those stories, and how we tell our own story to ourselves and others. I have contributed several essays to collections over the years that touch on key aspects of my story, and finally it felt that the time was ripe to put this kind of writing front and center. But I have three novels in my head that will come after that's done, I hope in the middle of this year, and as much as I am loving writing this memoir, I really look forward to returning to fiction.

Yes, I'm really working when I'm writing

Picture this scene. I’m in my twenties, deep in the middle of my very first novel, working at home, not answering the phone or emails or instant messages, when the doorbell rings. I’m wired, excited and nauseous, all at the same time, because I’ve been working so hard and I feel so completely over my head. I go to answer the door, thinking it might be a FedEx package I’m expecting. Instead, it’s a relative. She’s been out shopping and decided to take a break. “Thought I’d drop by!” she says, and I blink at her. “I’m thrilled to see you, but I’m working, “ I explain. I glance at my watch, not wanting to be rude, doing some quick, desperate math. “Can I meet you for lunch? In about an hour? I’d love to see you then.”

She looks at me askance. She points out my mug of tea and the muffin by my desk, the music that’s on. “Working?” she looks around the house. “You’re at home writing! You’re not working!”

I try to explain that I’m on deadline, that while I’d love to see her, I really have to push on with my work. She shakes her head and then she notices my misery. “Oh honey, I get it,” she says. “It’s like when I’m in the middle of watching my soap operas. I don’t like to be interrupted either.”

Sigh. This year, I would so dearly love for people to understand better what it is that writers really do, what our life really is like. I’ve taught high school where my students all thought writers had beach houses and lots of lovers. I’ve been approached at parties by people who have a great idea for a book and they are going to jot it down on weekends because unlike me, “they have to work for a living.” And of course, I’ve had people tell me, casually, that as soon as they have enough money in the bank, they’re going to write that book they’ve always had in them because what could be more lovely than sitting around making up things? “That’s the easy life,” someone told me. “It’s so glamorous.”

Sigh again.

As a writer, I work every day. If I take a two-hour lunch, I’m still working, because some part of me is still thinking about my novel. It may look like I have the life of Reilly, sitting in my cozy office, music blasting, at my computer. It may look as if I’m asleep because I’m not moving, I haven’t typed in hours, but what is going on might be the exquisite agony of trying to figure out my story, trying to give my characters some breath so they come alive on the page. I may seem placid, but I’m eating myself up with worry, self-doubt and questions. Is the work any good? Will it sell? Even it does sell, will people buy it and read it? And will I ever write another book after this one? And what freelance work do I have to take on so I can help pay our bills and continue to write?

You may think I’m lucky not to have a boss telling me what to do, but I still work with people—my agent and my editor and the other writers who read my work and tear it apart for me so I can put it together in the right way, and the criticism is often brutal, which it has to be, in order for me to get better. In a sense, I work with readers, too. We writers work really, really hard, for endless hours, sometimes for years on a single project without ever knowing if it is going to be a success. And because I don’t have paid health benefits (my husband is also a writer and editor), we have to deal with paying for our own health insurance, which as any freelancer knows, is the cost of a small country.

If you really want to be a writer, I’m delighted! I’m willing to help you with support and encouragement. I’ll show you the ropes and be a willing listening and your biggest champion. I’d absolutely love to have you as company. But please, don’t think of my profession as an easy retirement dream or the way to get rich and famous. We writers don’t go into this for those reasons, and besides, we’re acutely aware of how few do get those perks. We write because we have to.

So, the next time you see a writer at a café or at a party, instead of imagining the beach houses and the fame, imagine how little we often work for, imagine the long hours and the punishing self-doubt, and the toughness of our work. And then imagine how much we love it. How we do it not for any of the reasons you might think, but because we have to. Because it’s who we are.

Ten questions never to ask a writer

From Lauren B. Davis, posted by novelist Mameve Medwed on Shewrites.com. I could not have said this better!

Process

I've spent six hours today writing my new novel, and the story seems stubbornly out of my reach, and the three decent lines I wrote today prove it. Sometimes, I think you need to take a leap of faith, to just desperately hang onto the character's coattails and let them take you deeper into the story, but it isn't always easy to be patient, to wait for the reveals. I teach writing and I edit manuscripts privately, and it's always thrilling for me to see my students' or my clients' work, suddenly make a quantum leap and get richer and fuller and more alive. (Why I seem to know how to help them and not myself some days is another story!) I see their struggle firsthand, and in many ways, being a part of that has helped me be more patient with myself. In many ways, it's like a whisper: if they can do it, so can you.

Read this Book: Alice I Have Been

Who isn't in love with the story of Alice in Wonderland? In Alice I have Been, Melanie Benjamin creates a hypnotic portrait of the real Alice and her tangled relationship with Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), who immortalized her in his books. I'm thrilled to have Melanie here to answer questions about her novel.

Charles Dodgson photographed other little girls, but what was it about Alice in particular that haunted him so? Was it that she knew her power, and if so, what evidence is there that she did (other than the intense photographs you include in the book?

The only conclusion that I could come to, based on the knowing expression in her eyes in that photograph, is that she did understand her power over him. Obviously, as well, she later asked him to write down "her" story that he first told her and her sisters on that summer afternoon; the story of a little girl named Alice who tumbled down a rabbit hole. Dodgson would go on to photograph other little girls and call them his "child friends," but Alice was the only one who inspired both a photograph and a book. That speaks volumes to me.

I couldn’t help but feel a nod to Roman Polanski, another artist who had a fondness for young girls, the difference, of course, being that Polanski was a predator who drugged and raped a young girl, while Dodgson seemed to just take photos. Recently, though, a letter was found from Dodgson that hinted of his being a pedophile (he admitted liking little girls better than boys.) Is it known if he ever acted on his feelings?|

I can't compare the two at all; there's absolutely no similarity. The letter you speak of wasn't known when I was researching ALICE, but having done a quick check, it seems to me it's quite cryptic, hasn't been authenticated, and doesn't at all add to the discussion of Dodgson's relationship with Alice. You have to remember it was a different time; Victorians dearly loved to discuss romance but acting upon it was often quite another matter; and Dodgson, like all of the dons at Oxford, took vows of celibacy as he was expected to be a member of the clergy, as well. While we will never know for sure, I find it difficult to believe he was very physical. He clearly struggled with conflicting thoughts and emotions - this is obvious in his diaries - but beyond that, we'll never know for sure.

What’s interesting to me, too, is how sympathetic Dodgson is in the book. We understand and feel for him, even though we know something is clearly off. Although his interest in her is peculiar (and John Ruskin’s is truly creepy), instead of taking her innocence, Dodgson actually gave her a great gift, immortalizing her in Wonderland, so in a way, she would not ever grow old. I’m wondering, what do you think would change with the public’s appreciation of Wonderland if it were discovered that Dodgson did indeed molest Alice? Or do you think it is easy to separate a great artist from not-so-great actions?

To me the relationship between Dodgson and Alice is truly complex, as most relationships are. I think they were two very lonely people who found each other at a particular time and what resulted because of this was both beautiful - it gave the world Wonderland, after all - and tragic, in that they were both forever changed and in some ways, denied happiness, because of their early devotion. I was never interested in portraying Dodgson as simply a predator and Alice as simply a victim; the truth is always more complex than that. The truth is we never know everything about those who give us beloved art, literature, music, etc., no matter what we might think. Yet we still enjoy the gifts they have given, all the same.

The great Victorian art critic John Ruskin figures prominently in the book. I remember reading inParallel Lives about his thwarted marriage to Effie (according to that book, seeing her naked so horrified him that he could not consummate his marriage.) What do you think it was about Victorian England that made so many of these literary figures (Jonathan Swift also had an aversion to grown women) appalled by adult females and so interested in little girls?

It's interesting, isn't it? That two men who never seemed to have healthy relationships with adult females would both be captivated by Alice Liddell? I have to think that again, the Victorians so romanticized love and the role of women that for some, the physical reality was just too much to handle. Thus they found it easier to perhaps focus on younger girls who had not yet hit puberty, preferring to extend the fantasy of the pure, ethereal idea of love and romance rather than earthly, physical reality of it.

Your notes about the research were as fascinating as the book itself—primarily about the torn diary page from Dodgson the day the split between him and Alice occurred and a cryptic remark by Alice’s sister Ina, in the beginning of the novel, in a letter, intimating that Dodgson had grown too affectionate? Can you talk about the research process, about what surprised you and what you expected? And what do you think was on that missing diary page?

Since I was most interested in following Alice Liddell beyond Wonderland, through to the end of her long, fascinating life, I enjoyed seeing the world change through her eyes. I have always been interested in the Victorian era and beyond; my interest in history really begins there. Previous eras don't fascinate me as much. So I had a very good working knowledge of all the changes Alice herself faced; gaslights to electric lights; horse and buggy and train to the automobile and even airplane; corsets to bobbed hair. Researching all that was great fun. I also enjoyed learning about Oxford; I knew very little about it, its traditions, history, architecture. Naturally I researched Lewis Carroll's life, but remembered always that my book was Alice's story, so we could only know what Alice herself knew about him. As I said above, as I learned more about Alice Liddell herself, I was very surprised to see the other figures from history that she knew well as the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church; John Ruskin, the Prince of Wales, Prince Leopold. She truly lived in a privileged world.

Others have speculated about what the missing pages of the diary might say; there is one scholar who recently claimed to have found them, although this is disputed. What most interested me was merely the fact that, 150 years later, we still find the relationship between Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson so fascinating. And we will never have all the answers.

In the book, there’s a great scene where the real Alice meets the real Peter Pan, and while he hates the mantle, she is now able to embrace it, which is a monumentally poignant moment. Would you say that Alice’s growing up, becoming an adult, something Dodgson seemed unable to do, was her salvation?

Yes, definitely. That unflappable, wise little girl in the books was already a miniature adult. Or as I say in the book, "A man who fancied himself a child and a child who thought she was a woman turned to each other on a hot summer day, mindful of nothing, no one, but each other" - that, to me, sums up their relationship perfectly.

You mention the other Alice narratives, Dreamchild, a fabulous film and Katie Roiphes’ book Still She Haunts Me. How do you feel those works act as companion pieces to your book? Do you disagree with any of the material?

I've not seen the film. Initially I did not read the Roiphe book, not until long after I turned in Alice I have Been. I can't agree or disagree with it as it's fiction; obviously it's not the story I wanted to tell, the story I saw in the eyes of that little girl in the original photograph, or the story I saw in the eyes of the wonderful, wise old lady in the photograph of Alice taken near the end of her life. That was my Alice, and it was her entire life story I wanted to tell. The story of this remarkable little girl who grew up to be an equally remarkable old lady, and all the things she was denied yet all the ways in which she ultimately survived - and it all begins and ends with Wonderland.

The fine art of photography

For me, the thought of getting my book jacket photo taken was akin to root canal without anesthesia. It's been so difficult that I've had Jeff take shots and this year was planning on having Max take them, but when they did, the shots were grainy. They didn't look quite professional enough, so I bit the bullet and decided to hire someone. In the past, when she lived in NYC, I hired the fabulous Carol Seitz, but I needed someone in the area who was going to be great, sensitive and reasonable, and I wanted to feel comfortable.

I roamed around on line, looking at portfolios, and talked to a few people, but it wasn't until I saw Thaddeus Rombauer's page that I felt a kind of kinship. (By the way, that's not Thaddeus in the shot above. It's a shot he took.) What I loved was that he put emotion into his shots. You felt as if a story was somehow brewing behind the features. And in talking to him, I liked him even more.

The shoot was really easy, and really fun. And because I'm obsessed with creative process, I wanted to talk more to Thaddeus and ask him how he does it, what it means, all the etcs. So thank you, Thaddeus, for the gorgeous shots and for answering all my questions!

When and why did you decide to be a photographer?

It was the day I went to the Boston Museum with my Father to see the Herb Ritts exhibit - from that moment I knew what I wanted to do. I loved the connection he made with people through the use of his camera.

What I loved about the photos of yours was that you put a real emotional quality into your work, as if every photo really is telling a story. How do you do this? Is this conscious?

Photographing someone can be an extremely intimate process and in order to capture an image that I am proud of there needs to be that trust and honesty between us, to capture a true view of who they are in my eyes. Generally, I like to get to know my subject before shooting with them so their guard is down.

Besides book jackets, portraits and fashion shoots, You also photograph architecture. What kinds of things do you look for in shooting a space that you don't with a person?

I look for angles in everything, like in a person’s face; everything looks different depending on where you are standing. I quietly walk around the space and in my mind mark where the shot should be set up and taken. My photographs come from being in the moment and in a strange way letting the space speak to you.

Why do you think people hate to have their photograph taken and what do you do to make things easier?

I feel in general people hate to be judged and photographing someone can really put them on the spot. I find when you let the person know you are human too and have fault, they start to relax and enjoy the process. I put them at ease by telling them a story of my day or talk about something funny or personal in my life. I think this starts to allow us to build a trust in one another and results in better images.

Do you believe that some people really are not just photogenic? Can anyone be made to look better through retouching?

I don’t believe everyone is photogenic; I do feel every person has an interesting face since people are so different. Each time I photograph someone new it’s like learning a language – you might know its foundation and structure – but having a conversation and getting what you want out of it is entirely different. Frankly, I feel photographing just photogenic people is boring – I like different and unusual faces, ones that tell you everything without even a word.

Thaddeus's work can be see here:
Thaddeus Rombauer Photography
www.thaddeusrombauer.com

Learning to live with discomfort

Ah, here it is again. 2000 words today and I feel as if I've lost control of my novel. I have no idea anymore what it is I want to say and it feels derivative, as if I am rewriting Pictures of You. The plot seems a shambles and there seems way too much work to do and not enough time to do it. What kind of a novel is this? Why doesn't it get easier with each new book?

I've written about this life-saving John Irving quote before (and no matter what you think of Irving, you'll love the quote, I bet). He says if you don't feel you are on the edge of humiliating yourself, if you don't feel you've lost control, then you aren't digging deep enough. You aren't putting enough blood on the page. You aren't risking enough, and if you aren't risking, why write? Somehow this quote is something I cling to. It gives me permission to make a mess, to write pages that I know I will throw out, to risk failure before I find any success.

For me, too, what I cling to is that one obsessive idea that began this novel--this one thing I have felt compelled to write about. I can't yet find the right shape for it, but in writing, I know I will. If I can just burrow down, write more, live with the anxiety, I know I can.

Happy 2010

Happy 2010.

Well, almost.

Instead of making resolutions, I think everyone should watch this remarkable trailer for Dani Shapiro's new memoir, DEVOTION (coming in Feb, along with a Question and Answer here on my blog.) Dani's book, about her search for spiritual meaning, is really everyone's search, and most appropriate right around now. What do we believe and why? How do we live and connect to others and to the universe around us? What really is our truth?

I carried this book around with me for days, unwilling to put it down, and often weeping as I read. Go watch the trailer, and get the book. Then let's talk.

Very merry

The holidays are always sort of strange to me. I'm Jewish, so we never celebrated Xmas, though Hanukkah was a very big deal growing up, complete with eight (count 'em! 8!) gifts. The first Christmas I really adored was my first year in Manhattan. My friend Beth, who lived across the hall, came to my tiny apartment and we made a sea bass with black bean sauce (I wasn't a full-out vegetarian then), which we promptly burned, then we went out all day to movies, crashed a party, and came back home and watched movies all night long. I loved it. My worst was also in New York City, when someone I had loved had died, and I was alone, and the city had emptied out of all my friends. Again, I turned to the movies, going until two in the morning, me and the other disenfranchised in the city! I would have kept going but I chose the wrong movie, a really tragic one, and I ended up crying in the theater, walking home at two, crying, and crying the rest of the night in my apartment.

These days, holidays are with my funny husband and funny son and if you think I don't count my blessings about how lucky I am every second, you'd be wrong. We've been seeing movies, hanging out, going to a movie in about two hours, and hanging out some more. And tomorrow, we go to Boston to see my mother and Jeff's cousin and his family.

I haven't written as much as I have wanted to, but I'm thinking, thinking, thinking, and I'm gearing up for 2010. I have a novel coming out in August, I just finished a script, I'm writing another novel. There's this feeling that anything could happen.

Sort of like when you think you see reindeer in the sky.

Magic, anyone? Maybe the trick is to make your own magic, and then spread it around.

Happy end of 2009 everyone.

Fighting fear

Writing a new novel is an often hallucinatory process. It always starts out, for me, anyway, with a bang. I have an obsession, an image in my head of something pulling me forward. The first chapter nearly always writes itself, and it's a good thing, too, because the rest of the chapters are always terrifically tough to get out on paper, and in the months and years that follow, that first chapter is the thing I cling to, the reason why I can't just toss everything in the wastebasket and think about going to dental school instead.

By mid first draft, which is where I am now, fear sets in. Is this good enough? Am I good enough? Is there really a story here and has it not been done before? Is it uniquely mine? I spend a lot of time trying to not listen to my fears, but of late, I've been listening, nodding my head the way you might at an uncle who's telling you the same old tiresome story, and then going ahead and keeping at it.

All writers really have, like any of us in life, is the moment. I try to focus on that moment--on creating--rather than fears about whether the book will get published, whether anyone will read it, whether I've failed. In the end, I can't control any of it, but I can dig deeper into the work and tell the story I want and need to tell.

Read This Book: What I Thought I Knew

I admit I'm drawn to books about medical mysteries. Maybe it's because for one terrifying year, I had one of my own (but that's another story altogether). Alice Eve Cohen's What I thought I Knew isn't so much a mystery as it is a journey about everything going wildly wrong. Her memoir is as funny as it is shocking, and I'm thrilled she agreed to answer my questions. (Thank you, Alice.)

The book begins with a shocker. You've been told you have a tumor, given all kinds of tests, only to discover that you are 6 months pregnant. I can't get my mind around the fact that this happened in New York City, home of the best doctors in the world. How could this be?

I think there were several doctors who were equally blinded. When my gynecologist did an internal exam, I told her all my symptoms, and she dismissed them--as did the gastroenterologist. I was examined multiple times over six months and I had a number of sonograms. I think it's like the ancient tale of the six blind men and the elephant. Each man examined one single part of the elephant without being aware of the big picture, and none could identify it as an elephant. Like the blind men, my doctors were examining me through the lens of their particular specialty, and were thus blind to the big picture: my gynecologist saw me as an infertile DES daughter and she never considered pregnancy. The gastroenterologist saw me only as a person with stomach problems, and so on. I sued my gynecologist because she made such huge errors, with such profound consequences. But at the same time, I don't think she or any of these doctors was a total moron.

How do you feel now about doctors?

That's a hard question. When I'm choosing doctors for my daughter, I use my parental intuition. I'm constantly weighing various options and wondering, when a doctor tells me something, is this the whole picture? I'm not a passive patient. I ask a lot of questions. I never wanted to repeat the 1950s experience my mother had when she was given DES to prevent miscarriage: the drug, routinely promoted as "the pregnancy vitamin," proved to be both ineffective and carcinogenic. You have to make sure the doctor is listening to you, taking your concerns seriously, and not looking at you as a bunch of statistics. I thought I'd learned that lesson well. I thought that an educated approach would protect me from this kind of medical malpractice. But everybody in our health care system is vulnerable.

Were you writing this as this was going on? And did the book change as events changed?

I was so not writing this book while the events were taking place! I was trying to survive. I was taking copious notes for a lawsuit and to keep track of medical issues. Part of my great sadness at the time was that I thought, " okay, I have no will to write anymore, no motivation. I'm too depressed, I have no more creativity. I just need to devout all of my attention to making sure my daughter's life has the best possible outcome." I had just completed an MFA program and had almost finished a novel, and then everything came to a grinding halt. I barely wrote anything for seven years.

One day, though, seven years to the day after I was sent for an emergency CAT scan, I walked to the part of Central Park where I walked that day seven years earlier. It was a brilliant sunny September day, just as it had been seven years before. It triggered memories. I went home and started to write. It was as if I had been asleep and just woke up.

What made you decide to structure the memoir the way you did?

For the first 6 months, I wrote with a kind of stream of consciousness. I didn't know at first that it would be a book. I thought it might be a collection of essays. I experimented with ways to capture the "what I know" lists--which were my way of reassuring myself, in my most desperately confused moments, of the things I could count on, good or bad, the things I believed I knew, that I could hang my hat on, while the earth was giving way beneath my feet. I have to give credit to Microsoft word for the numbers formatting. Numbering the "what I know" lists heightened and stylized them; they became a repeated musical motif, with variations. These sections helped structure the storytelling by punctuating turning points.

After going through such an extraordinary experience, do you worry that the other shoe is going to drop or are you hopeful?

I do feel hopeful, though I do look over my shoulder to see if the Evil Eye is hiding in the shadows. There are reasons why there are these folkloric superstitions about the Evil Eye and other manifestations of fear and foreboding in every culture, because that's what life is like. Incredible joy one moment and then someone dies; shit hits the fan, and then things are great again. I don't know if I will ever extricate myself from what seems to be an ingrained fear that something terrible might happen, but I am enjoying this exciting year.

What are you working on now?

I've begun writing a new book. It's too early to talk about, except to say that it is a memoir. I'm also working on a couple of children's books--a picture book and a middle grade novel. And I'm delighted to report that What I Thought I Knew is going to be a movie, penned by screenwriter Katie Ford whose film and TV credits include Miss Congeniality, Desperate Housewives, and Lifetime's Prayers for Bobby.

What's your daily life like?

This fall has been mostly about my daughter's middle school application process. I pick up my daughter three days a week and hang out with her, and the other two days, she has a sitter. I have two places where I write. I wrote this book at a tiny wooden desk by the living room window. Now I divide my writing time between my home office and the Writers Room, a workspace in Greenwich Village. I'm not the most methodical writer so I don't have a set schedule, though mornings are my peak writing time.

What didn't I ask that I should have?

Does the book have humor? Yes, yes, and yes! Did you win any prizes? Yes! I just won the Elle's Lettres Grand Prix for the Best Nonfiction Book of the Year.

Great new blog

Gina Sorell, a great friend and a truly terrific writer with a novel-in-progress that is one of the best I have read in years, has a new blog I'm going to be running some author interviews on her blog (as well as here), and guess who has the honor to be up there first? (Ah hem...)

Kirkus Reviews closing

It's tragic and I'm stunned.

Kirkus Reviews, which has been one of the most important prepub reviews to get, is closing. Notorious for being snarky (they gave me one review for my third novel that was so terrible, I still remember every syllable of it, and no, don't ask me to repeat it, but yes it did include the phrase, "Leavitt has no one else but herself to blame.."), their praise could jumpstart a book and a star from them was cause for celebration. (Most of my Kirkus reviews were good, and I was thrilled to get two starred reviews from them. I still worship at their feet for the publicity those stars generated for me.)

Kirkus reviewed more books than any newspaper ever could, and the fact that they are closing is terrible. Newspaper review space is dwindling. Who is going to pick up the slack? How can we find out about books that might be under the radar? I'm so used to reading their reviews to keep abreast of the book world, that right now, I feel bereft.

This is a great loss for the book world.

Celebrating a forgotten woman writer

Know the name Margaret Woodward Boyd? I didn't, either. It's actually the pen name of Margaret Woodward Smith Shane, who was discovered by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald took her novel, The Love Legend to his famed editor, Maxwell Perkins, who promptly published it. In 1922, The Love Legend rocketed to the bestseller list and was praised by The New York Times as "a lively colorful tale."

Finding lost literary talents like Boyd is the work of the fabulous David Wilk and Rvive Press, whose mission it is to revive a large list of great books that have been out of print for far too long. When he asked if I'd read Woodward's book and write an intro, how could I resist?

So is The Love Legend as good as Fitzgerald said it was? Yup. The story of four sisters in 1920s Chicago, it presents a fascinating portrait of politics, culture, love, marriage and career. If you'd like a copy of this--or any terrific books that are being revived, please visit the website.

Read This Book: Perfectiion

Perfection by Julie Metz is both shocking, disturbing and thoroughly wonderful. Metz's "perfect" life shattered when her handsome young husband died suddenly and she subsequently discovered his web of infidelity. How she unravelled all the secrets of his life and began to build a new life helped her redefine just what perfection really means.

What sparked the writing of this book?

When my husband died suddenly in January 2003, I was living in a small town north of New York City. My family and most of my longtime friends lived elsewhere and they were all worried about me. After a few days of trying to respond to individual e-mails, I decided to write one long e-mail each day and send that to anyone who wrote to me asking for news. After a few months I had created a diary of my early widowhood. When I found out about my husband’s infidelities in July 2003, several friends suggested that I should write about my experiences. But I wasn’t a writer and had no idea how to take the e-mails I’d written and put them together into a book that anyone would want to read. At this point, a professional writer I knew took me out for lunch and insisted that I give it a try. She pretty much sent me home with instructions on how to get started and kept after me to make sure I was working. After a while I sank into the writing experience and committed myself to the project.

As you were writing the memoir, and when you completed it, what discoveries did you make about yourself and the nature of your relationship with your husband?

The writing process helped me work through so many complex emotions: grief, then anger, shame, despair, and finally, acceptance. Along the way I learned that I was tougher than I had thought, that I could, in fact, take charge of my life, and rebuild it, with help from family and friends. From that point I was able to look back at my marriage and see the good and bad times with more clarity. In the end there are still unanswered questions. Henry’s behavior was so spectacularly self-destructive

You found out that your marriage was an illusion, so I’m wondering, what was the process that allowed you to trust again?

While I was married, I imagined that I couldn’t live without my husband. Then he died and I found that I could, after all, live without him. Slowly I put the basics of life back together. I was a working single mother and my heart was pretty much a disaster area, but I still earned a living and got dinner on the table. When I started to feel more settled, I made a list of what I hoped to find in a new partner: someone who was kind, and honest, who would love my child, and share my world view. When I began dating, I didn’t always stick to the list, so there was plenty of trial and error. When I met my present partner, I wasn’t sure that he was the right man for me, but slowly over time I saw his love for me and my daughter and his genuine interest in making a real family. This is what I’d wanted to have with my husband. It all took time and what I like is that we are still learning about each other.

Do you think a perfect marriage is possible? Why or why not?

Perfection! It doesn’t exist! So what’s left once we give up on that (unrealistic) ideal? We have the variety of real everyday experience, filled with beauty and flaws, excitement and boredom, happiness and sorrow. I look at my present relationship as a series of “everydays,” most of which are terrific, some less terrific, a few disappointing. I think the best relationships are ones where both individuals can change and grow and feel supported. What I enjoy about my situation now is that we genuinely love each other, we have fun together, and we weather difficult times with our spirits intact.

What made you want to know these other women that your husband had been with? Do you think that it ultimately helped, or was it more like rubbing salt into your already deep wounds?

My husband had died, leaving me with so many unanswered questions. I couldn’t ask him why he’d made his choices, but I didn’t feel like I could move forward with my life until I had some answers. I contacted the other women to try to understand what had happened to my marriage. I am not saying this is what every woman should do, but for me this was ultimately a positive experience. In the short term it was painful, but I did get some answers, and encountering these women helped me resolve my anger and find compassion for him, for them, and for myself. In one case, an unlikely friendship began that continues to this day.

I’m wondering, what are you going to tell your daughter about her father?

I have had many conversations with my daughter about her father. I would never have published the book without talking to her. What I have told her is that her father loved us but made some terrible mistakes. I want her to understand that adult life can be complicated, that we are flawed creatures, and sometimes our flaws can overwhelm us. I also hope to show her by example that it is possible to remake your life and that you can create your own second chances. And when I make mistakes (every day), I apologize and try to do better.

Why do you think you didn’t realize the signs of what was going on with your husband and all the women in his life, especially in the light of your honestly portraying the difficulties in your marriage? Do you think we choose to see what we want to see and protect ourselves from the rest?

When I was married, I had a lot at stake in not looking at the reality of my life. My identity was very wrapped up in being Henry’s wife. We had our child and a house and comfortable life in a beautiful town. I think many women are in this situation. Since my book came out I have received many letters from women who also didn’t see what was going on in their marriages because they were too afraid to look. Not looking too hard is a way of protecting oneself, though it won’t work forever.

I always ask…what are you working on now, what’s your writing life like, and what question didn’t I ask that I should have?

I am working on a novel now. Some of the themes are similar—a woman in midlife confronting her past and her future—but it’s such a different experience writing fiction. There is a new freedom in being able to invent scenarios and imagery, though I often feel now that the characters are directing the action rather than the other way around. I have a pretty clear idea of the basic story but I don’t really know yet how it’s all going to turn out.

My writing life is…probably not ideal. Which is to say, I have is no set writing schedule. I clear away the breakfast dishes and write at the dining table, while I also work with my assistant on book design projects, pay bills, make soup for dinner, and run loads of laundry. In the evening I might work some more on writing, while my daughter does homework, also at the dining table. But this is pretty much how the first book got written, so perhaps this method will work a second time…

People are sometimes curious about the title of the book: Perfection, since the story is about a time in my life that was anything but perfection. I chose the title because I felt that women are really struggling with this idea of perfection: perfect bodies, houses, kids, careers. The feeling that you have fallen short of the standard creates a feeling of shame that leads women to make some poor choices as they try to hide or plaster over the parts of themselves they feel are less than perfect. I wanted to find a way to redefine the word “perfection” so that it could encompass real life with all its beauty and flaws.

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Ah yes, my odd voice

In the beginning, I could sing. No, really, I mean it. Not just carrying a tune, but being good enough to be in my schools "special chorus," standing on a stage in a special navy blazer and little white skirt. I had the same high, sweet soprano my mother and sister did, and then I hit sixteen and rebellion took over. I didn't want to be like either of them, not in sound or looks or desires. I wanted to be something different. Something more dramatic.

I changed my name from Carolyn to Caroline.

I changed the way I looked and threw out the bright yellows for black and deep, muddy colors.

I grew my hair and stopped straightening the curls and wore complicated earrings and short velvet skirts.

And one day, in the midst of all this metamorphosing, at seventeen, my voice changed all on its own.

I couldn't carry a tune anymore, though I still liked to sing. My voice became hoarse and husky--so much so that my doctor insisted I go to a specialist because sudden hoarseness could mean real, physical trouble. The doctor I saw snaked a tube down my throat and made me sing as he did it. Then he drew the tube out and shrugged. "Your vocal chords don't touch," he told me. "You can fix that by taking singing lessons." Then he grinned at me. "But why would you want to?"

Ah yes. That's the way I feel. I've gotten used to people asking, "Do you have a cold?" (No, I always sounds like this, except when I have a cold and then I sound worse.) Or "Are you doing that deliberately?" (Nope. Well, maybe.)

One of the things a novelist has to do is self-promote. I know, I know. It's awkward sometimes, and being self-deprecating, I sometimes shy away from that "Look at me! Look at me!" quality that you have to have. I don't want to be seen as pushy or bragging or obnoxious.

I want people to read my work. I ache for them to, actually, so with that--and my strange voice in mind-- I offer you an opportunity to hear my voice. I am talking about my last novel, Girls inTrouble, and my new novel coming up, Pictures of You, on David Wilk's fantastic writerscast.

Writerama

I usually don't like books on writing but sometimes when I am in the thick of a novel and it feels out of my control, I reach for them, either to reassure myself or to see if there might be something--even a line--in there, that might help me.

A lot of the time, I think the advice is wrong-headed, or maybe it's just that it's too obvious conversing about the things I already know. I want to be surprised. But recently, I picked up From Where You Dream by Pulitzer prize winner Robert Olen Butler and the book is like a revelation. Maybe it's the language he uses, but even the things I do know about writing seem new here. Instead of talking about how important it is that every character want something, he uses the better word: yearning. Instead of the writer talking about the idea he or she has for a story, Butler insists it's far better to think about the emotional nuances, because emotion is where you build your story. You dig into the subconscious and he gives great advice on how to get into the "zone."

I haven't finished the book, but I've already recommended it to my UCLA students, and truly, I haven't been so exhilarated since I read John Truby, the screenwriting guru, whose simple change of the word "backstory" to "ghost" made me look at backstory in a different, richer way.

I think what I really like is the feeling that this voice from this particular book is down in the writing trenches with me. Reassuring me. Pushing me on. And that's pretty wonderful.