This is an edited transcript of the book club discussion. Every month The Rumpus Book Club hosts a discussion online with the book club members and the author and we post an edited version online as an interview. To learn how you can become a member of The Rumpus Book Club click here.

This Rumpus Book Club interview was edited by Rebecca Rubenstein.

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Noah S.: Thank you so much for doing this, George.

David B.: Did you say you were on Colbert? How did it go?

George Saunders: My pleasure. Am just so pleased the technology seems to be working—am on satellite. And yes—I did Colbert and Charlie Rose on the same day. If only I’d scheduled a rectal, I could have accomplished the coveted “stress trifecta.”

I think it went okay—was sure fun. He is an amazing, bright, and funny guy. Just fun being around him, honestly.

Noah S.: Charlie Rose has a penetrating gaze.

George Saunders: I meant Colbert in the first response but yes—Charlie Rose, too, was so kind and intelligent.

Brian S: You said something yesterday on Facebook about wearing the same shirt and jacket to both. Do they tape near each other?

George Saunders: They are both in Manhattan but a pretty good distance apart. So I sort of went from one to the next. Plus I was feeling that that shirt/jacket combo were good luck. A pretty strange and anthropologically interesting experience. Seeing how the whole thing works etc. etc.

Julie: I thought it was interesting how “scary” it must be for comedians to actually talk about the work. It almost seemed pathological to me the way Colbert kept reflexively bouncing away from discussing anything actually substantive about your great book.

George Saunders: He’s a great improv comedian, and I think that’s the game—to sort of comically skirt the substance—but then he’ll let you get in a shot or two.

David B.: Is this going to explode your readership?

George Saunders: Gotta hope. (I find myself using that smiley emoticon a lot here. Hmm. Maybe just assume one in the future.)

Kevin T.: Speaking of TV, I loved that panel on Up with Chris Hayes. You never see that many fiction writers at one time. On camera.

George Saunders: Actually that Times Magazine piece sort of shot things out of a cannon. Very generous, and after that, seems like, the crowds right away got bigger at readings and so on.

David B.: Is it stressful to have this large surge of attention?

George Saunders: It’s not that stressful, honestly. It’s more work—bigger crowds and all of that. But it’s less stressful than going somewhere and having eight people or whatever.

Brian S: Yeah, no writer wants to be the person alone at the table in the bookstore.

George Saunders: And I have been that guy. Trying to milk the last remaining person so you don’t leave too early…

Noah S.: Aside from it being a wonderful book, why do you think that this book exploded out of the gate like it did?

Natasha: I’m wondering the same thing, Noah.

George Saunders: Noah, it seemed like sort of the perfect storm deal—that NY Times profile by Joel Lovell and then, right before and after, some nice reviews in major places. And then, too, to be honest, I could feel—in the preceding five years or so—a slow building going on: bigger attendance at events and more interest from colleges.

Noah S.: Awesome.

Brian S: Which is how we wound up with this book: the packed house at Drake University.

George Saunders: Someone said that they thought part of this was just that the people who were, say, in college when CivilWarLand came out are now in positions of authority—editors and reviewers and so on.

Julie: Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that the book is really fucking great.

Brian S: I think there are a lot of really great books that don’t blow up like this.

George Saunders: In any event it’s pretty fun, and I think maybe more fun at fifty-four than at, say, thirty-five. At this age, you’re just kind of like: huh, interesting. It’s sort of like when you’re walking down the street and you smell some amazing cooking going on inside, and you enjoy it while not really feeling that it’s yours, or “real.” On the other hand, I really like Julie’s theory.

Natasha: I love that description of what it’s like to stumble across this kind of success.

Melissa S.: Are these all recently-written stories? By “recent,” I guess I mean, were you writing them for this collection specifically, or have some been around for a while and just fit in?

George Saunders: No, “Sticks” is circa 1994 (!), and ["The Semplica-Girl Diaries"] I started in ’98 and just finished. Otherwise they’re from 2006 forward.

Noah S.: “Sticks” is an absolute favorite of mine. I followed my girlfriend around the house reading it aloud, because I couldn’t help but share it.

George Saunders: Careful with that. If she is running really fast, stop reading. Actually, on a break last night, Colbert—out of character—read “Sticks” to his audience.

Bobby: That sounds intimidating. Super-famous person reading your work aloud to his audience…

George Saunders: Luckily I was in the Green Room, nearly barfing with relief.

Mira: I actually wonder if maybe your work has gotten the Colbert Bump—not from being on his show, but from his success in pop culture. Like, the success of people like Colbert has helped a wider audience embrace the absurd.

George Saunders: Mira, I think you might be right. There’s a feeling—or has been a feeling—that my weirdness is somehow less weird. Something like that—satire or irony is more mainstream? Not sure.

Ann B: Are you partial to any one of the stories?

George Saunders: At the moment I’m still feeling the “Semplica-Girl” story—because I finished it most recently.

Noah S.: What inspired “Semplica-Girl”?

George Saunders: ”Semplica-Girl” came from a dream. I dreamed that I was that guy, looking out our bedroom window, and saw those Semplica Girls—and felt proud, like: finally, I did it! I’ve arrived! 

Noah S.: And in the dream they had the microline running between their heads?

George Saunders: Yes, they did—microline and white smocks and long black hair.

Linda M.: I’m curious about the decision to go with the diary format for “Semplica-Girl.” They go so weirdly well together.

George Saunders: The diary idea came from a great book called I Will Bear Witness by Viktor Klemperer—a Holocaust diary. And he doesn’t know, of course, that it’s “the Holocaust”—his gaze is averted to these mundane, everyday things. Also, [it's] really fun stylistically—all that truncation and so on…

Hannah: I enjoyed the story “Home,” and recently thought there might be a connection with that and the Hemingway short story, “Soldier’s Home”?

George Saunders: Hemingway, yes—although not consciously. Only afterwards I was like: huh. Actually, I was sort of riffing on Euripides, Herakles, but I mangled the plot in my memory…

Hannah: Regarding “Home”: as a military prosecutor I am always shocked by the people that are upset that we court-martial soldiers who have been deployed. It seems like you captured the public’s strange and sometimes misplaced reverence for soldiers…even those who commit crimes.

George Saunders: Yes. Especially with these wars, there’s that sort of auto-patriotic response—maybe a guilt response?

Brian S: But also the rote way in which that service is honored, Hannah.

George Saunders: Right, “rote” is the word.

Brian S: Anyone else get a chill by the end line of “Exhortation”? That riff on Julian of Norwich (or T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding”) just sent shivers down my spine, given what the rest of the story was hinting at. Orwellian in a really awesome way.

Janeen: Brian, I got chills so many times throughout the book. I had to read it slowly, because I found it so dark and frightening.

Natasha: What do you think “Exhortation” was hinting at? Maybe I didn’t think too deeply about it because it was starting to get so creepy.

Brian S: I felt like Room 6 in “Exhortation” was, in effect, a torture chamber of some kind. Bad things were happening in there.

Natasha: I can see that. There was certainly something sinister going on in there.

Julie: Can I ask how you get into the head of your characters? Their mentalese is so idiosyncratic and unusual and real. Do they just “come to you”? Do you do a lot of people-watching and are a natural mimic? How do you get in there? When I write, all my characters sound too much like me.

George Saunders: Julie, that is an exquisite and writerly question. They sort of do just come to me; I think of it as improv—with heavy revision.

Julie: It seems then that you must work on multiple pieces of writing at the same time. If this is accurate, how do you do that as well as teach? Do you work on something for a bit then go on to something else and then come back?

George Saunders: Yes, always. I try to have four or five things going so I can gravitate to whatever seems most interesting on that day—keeps it lively and productive, versus working out of a place of unhappiness or boredom. I work on something until it goes cold. Teaching doesn’t seem to bother me much, I just work in [and] around the cracks, so to speak—actually nice to get away from a piece sometimes, you know? So you can see it fresh.

Mira: A lot of your stories are written with multiple narrators. Do you start out writing a story from one character’s P.O.V. first, and then start to wonder how the other players would experience the situation? Or do you see it from multiple viewpoints from the beginning?

George Saunders: I think the idea is usually to limit it to one character, but then the story will start to tell you otherwise—for the story to unfold naturally, it seems to want someone else to get in there and start thinking. Sometimes, it’s just that the first character’s voice can’t accommodate the action, i.e. can’t make it happen convincingly. All very intutive and iterative in the actual doing.

Mira: Yeah, I guess I was kind of rooting around process with that question… Do you edit relentlessly? When I write, I edit over and over and over, and sometimes I worry I’m editing the life out of things. Do you edit a lot? Or do you leave that to others?

George Saunders: I edit a lot. Yes. Over and over. Hundreds of times. My theory is that it’s like decorating an apartment: say I give you a furnished apartment—it wouldn’t feel “like you.” But if I let you take out one item a day and replace it with something you chose, after a year or so, that place would be more “you” than you ever could have conceptualized at the outset. This is what editing is, for me. Trying to move the thing to be more like me than I could have imagined at the outset.

Jack W.: I re-read most of your other books along with Tenth; one serendipitous moment was reading your essay “Thought Experiment” and then reading “Escape From Spiderhead” afterwards. They went together beautifully. A question: do your own works somehow inspire you, i.e. something you’ve already written sparks a new idea?

George Saunders: Yes, and since we’re in such an intimate setting here, I’ll confess that sometimes a story will “fall out” of another. A riff will occur, but not be right for that piece. So I treat it as a gift from the subconscious, like it was in there trying to get out, but blundered into the wrong story, i.e. “Chivalric Fiasco” fell out of “Spiderhead,” etc. etc.

Brian S: My partner is using the book in her senior writing seminar this semester, and I’ll be subbing for her for a couple of classes, so I get to work with “My Chivalric Fiasco.” I’m very excited about it.

Michael: I also had my wife read the book. It’s funny, but I felt like the book expressed a lot of things I’d hidden from her. Unintentionally. I don’t know how to say it another way.

George Saunders: Like what sort of things? Not to pry…

Michael: Nothing particular, but a kind of continuous dilemma—work situations mostly, which I don’t bring home. I’d have to think it through, how to say it, but a sense of working in the wrong moral direction (“Semplica-Girl”) by way of making things what they are for your family. And the sense that death frees you to be moral: really painful.

George Saunders: I get that, Michael, yes—and have felt it.

Natasha: I’m really interested in the theme of parenting and other forms of control (“Escape From Spiderhead,” for instance). Is parenting something that you’ve always explored in your writing?

Noah S.: I was curious about that as well, Natasha. It feels like there’s lots of children in the book, and most of them are in either extremely restrictive or lacking situations.

George Saunders: Lots of parenting yes, and honestly it’s just because that was one hundred percent what our minds were on at the time…so it leached into the stories, for sure.

Noah S.: On the cover of the book, Jennifer Egan calls it “Hilarious…” Do you set out to have these stories make people laugh?

Brian S: It’s the twelve-year-old in me, but I found myself laughing every time I saw a new euphemism for penis.

Noah S.: Totally. There was a reference to “boners” in “Semplica-Girl Diaries” that made me laugh out loud.

Brian S: “Pre-bone” made me snort out loud in public.

Natasha: I agree. Lots of wonderful humor in these stories. Definitely laughed a lot.

George Saunders: I love to make my reader laugh. Love it.

Melissa S.: Speaking of images, some of the stories have some pretty eerie ones (drowning the kittens, boy chained to tree, etc). Do you ever think, Whoa, too far? Has anything been edited out of the book?

George Saunders: I would never say too much—unless the “too much” was also just wrong, i.e. was working against the larger artistic goal of the story. If you go too far, then the job is to justify it: make it worth the shock or disgust.

Melissa S.: How long does it take you to write a story? Have you ever stolen a story idea from one of your students?

George Saunders: Have never knowingly stolen a story from a student, no. And they take, honestly, from three weeks (“Home”) to twelve years (“Semplica-Girl Diaries”).

Melissa S.: Wow, twelve years. And you never put it away. That’s amazing.

Natasha: I wish I’d read the book earlier so I’d have had time to process and really understand the themes. I’m still digesting “Semplica-Girl,” which I adored. And even though you’re lucky enough to have these images come to you in a dream, you must have been amazingly dedicated to keep coming back to it for so many years. Thanks, because it’s so worth it! Did “Semplica-Girl” threaten to turn itself into a novel? It does seem to be the perfect length, but I can imagine getting sidetracked and following more of what’s going on with the other characters.

George Saunders: ”Semplica-Girl” tried to be a novel, Natasha, yes, boy did it. I have—embarrassing—but I have at least eight boxes of drafts. Ugh.

Natasha: Wow. Hopefully those boxes won’t string themselves up in your yard.

Hannah: It seemed like you used animals (dogs and a pony, I think) to emphasize poverty. Is this accurate?

Bobby: Has teaching had any positive influence on your writing?

Noah S.: What was your response to Adrian Chen’s “Write A Goddamn Novel Already” piece about you?

George Saunders: This is hard! Sorry I’m not keeping up…

Brian S: You’re doing great! We can be a little overwhelming.

Deborah M: Yes, we are bombarding, and you are doing great.

Janeen: So glad there’s a large and lively bunch tonight.

Ann B: Brian, how many of us are there?

Brian S: Pushing thirty.

George Saunders: Yes! No! Boxers! Briefs! Sometimes, but rarely in that exact manner!

Hannah—not intentionally, but seems like it. I don’t do a lot of symbol placement, but my guess is, my subconscious does.

Teaching is all positive, Bobby—we get 600 apps a year and the students we get are so amazing. Fires me up with love for the youngsters, and gives me hope for the future of literature. No downside, honestly, and it just gets sweeter as I get older—a great gift, to get to interact with talented young people who are not necessarily grossed out by you.

Noah, I actually found that Chen piece sort of sweet. I didn’t mind it a bit and it started a shitstorm, which is always good. The real answer, of course, is (as it so often is) provided by Flannery O’Connor: “A writer can choose what he writes but he can’t choose what he makes live.” Amen.

Noah S.: Do you consider yourself a “dark” writer?

George Saunders: That “darkness” question is interesting. I think what I’m doing is something like that Portuguese Fado music—where every song is ostensibly a dirge, but within each there is overflow that equals joy. So there is like a “negative offset” to each story, but hopefully the reader feels a sort of scale model of the world, where good is there, and bad is, but the whole frame is bent. Something like that.

Brian S: I get that. “Victory Lap” is an undeniable dark story, but it ends with the damage to everyone being mainly scars that they’ll carry with them. But nobody’s dead, so it’s a happy ending in a way.

Deborah M: The “good” definitely flows through the stories, and that’s what remains (rather than the dark details…).

Noah S.: I love that you ended with “Tenth of December”—it felt like the story that best captured that people, amongst all the badness, really do some good things.

Hannah: Why these particular stories in this book?

George Saunders: Those are just basically the stories I wrote during this period. And then the ordering was really the thing…

Linda M.: I am wondering about ordering decisions, as well. I first read “Semplica-Girl” in The New Yorker, on its own. But then, within a collection, the stories bounce off of each other.

George Saunders: The ordering thing…I got a little help from my daughter, who reminded me of how an album is ordered: something to get the person in easily, strong ending, and then pace the middle, so that one story propels the reader to the next. Or, another way to say it, stagger the stronger/weaker stories so the reader can never quite go “meh,” and walk off.

Janeen: Do you feel like the success of this book will help or hinder you when you sit down to write the next one?

George Saunders: As I get the real, physical sense of how many more readers there are now, it’s a little scary. Like if your party got really crowded, and everyone was waiting for the food. But I’ll take it. The more positive way to think about it is to say, Well, they liked that last one, so let me do more of that, be bolder, trust the new readers, and just go for it. I really find that once the shit dies down and I get back in my little writing shed, everything feels pretty okay and normal.

Jack W.: Donald Barthelme is someone you’ve written about (and whose baton I’d declare from rooftops that you’ve been passed) as propelling his readers via a “series of pleasure-bursts,” followed by continual escalation. This seems to apply to your writing, as well. Do you have a method in capturing this feeling in your writing? I, too, find your courage thrilling.

George Saunders: Thanks, Jack. I think the only way is to re-engage with what you’re working on every day as you think a first-time reader might—to read it line by line, monitoring your own pleasure. When the pleasure goes down, something is off. Or—”pleasure” might not be the exact word. But you are sort of scanning the prose to see what it is causing to happen. And adjusting accordingly, in the only way possible, i.e. micro-adjustments of the sentences and phrases…

Ana: I have a rather focused question I wanted to make a point to ask. I was at a book reading recently with Junot Díaz, where people were asking about developing an ability to write about race. He lamented the fact more writers weren’t asked about race in their writing like, for example, George Saunders. So I thought I would ask: people talked about “write about race” as a sort of muscle you have to engage, train, and strengthen. Do you feel like that is a muscle you have developed, or worked on?

George Saunders: I’m not sure. I tend not to think, you know, that a story is “about” race, or gender, but it’s about people struggling against something or other. So those other things sort of get subsumed in that. Or, you know, “race” is part of a larger narrative about trying to be human. Hmm. Great question, but I am sort of going too fast here. Let me think about that one…

Mira: You write a lot about class and capitalism. Can you say something about how you see the role of writer—and, I guess, artist—in our culture? I’m thinking of the book The Gift here, and the idea of art as being beyond commerce. Curious about your thoughts on that.

Ana: Mira, I’m really interested in that question. Going off that, I was thinking back on the two stories, “Victory Lap” and “My Chivalric Fiasco,” and the characters’ interventions at different stages—both to varying degrees of success—driven by some sort of imperative. And I guess I’m wondering if you feel any similar imperative in the role as a writer to intervene in “injustice”? I love how both stories show the complex motivations and complicated success of such an endeavor.

George Saunders: Mira, I think that, when I’m writing, I try not to think about the role of the writer at all—when I do, I fuck things up; everything gets too literal. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. But I just trust that if I am trying to get the story to stand up and walk, and my heart is basically in the right place, then I’ll be fulfilling the correct role, if that makes sense…like a musician might have ideas about social justice and all of that, but the main and first job is to kick ass.

Ana, I think the main struggle, in the actual writing, is to come up with something important and then, once that’s in place, try to complicate it in a way that somehow escalates matters. Like, in that “Fiasco” story, the rape is major. I think the reader feels the horror and injustice of that, even with that comic/minimal prose style. So then you have that to work with: the feeling of wanting justice. And then you go: okay, so how can I now complicate that beat called “the feeling of wanting justice”? Well, she doesn’t want justice. She wants silence. So he complies. Now—how can we make him not comply? Etc. etc. So the thinking, such as it is, is coming from inside the situation, as opposed to being imposed from the outside.

Natasha: Escalating matters—that’s what I’m working on in my writing (I’m a playwright). I’m finding it takes much more planning and thought than I wish it did!

George Saunders: Yes, escalation is the golden ticket, isn’t it? I did an exercise in one of my classes—I played this crazy-ass song called “The Arizona Yodeler” by The Dezurik Sisters (circa 1938), that is nothing but escalation. They yodel, they whistle, they do these crazy mouth-sounds—and it’s a great way to isolate escalation as a very exciting thing, separate from content—the song is completely silly, has no content—but everyone in the room is grinning like crazy by the end. I recommend it highly.

Ann Nash: I appreciate getting into your head with writing with escalating complications. Perfect goal. Thank you.

We read your puppy story in our nonfiction class two years ago. Lots of heated discussion followed. It brings out a lot in those with and without children. Experience with [parenting] tempers judgment towards both mothers. How did you come to write “Puppy”?

Janeen: Ann, that story just slays me.

Natasha: I can see “Puppy” being read as part of the standard curriculum in high school classrooms in twenty years. I’d have loved to have it in mine.

Michael: The puppy story was the first one I read. How being a parent changed my perspective on that one! I don’t think I’d have got it the same way in high school.

George Saunders: ”Puppy” was…we drove by a house in upstate New York, and there was a kid in the yard, on some sort of harness. And he seemed pretty happy. And we (my wife and then-baby daughters) were feeling, at least in my mind, sort of, you know, yuppie. In our new Nissan and all. So I had that in my mind for about five years, that basic setup. And then Zadie Smith asked if I had something for this Other People anthology, and that came out.

My dog is really pissed off that I am typing so late. And I just, twice, typed “my god is really pissed off.”

Melissa S.: “My god is really pissed off.” Best short short since “Baby Shoes, Never Worn.”

Hannah: Glad to see you have a dog. Hopefully bettered cared for than the ones in your stories.

Natasha: George, do you have any advice about writing process and other things that help you write successfully? If you wrote a book for aspiring writers, what would it boil down to?

George Saunders: I think it’s simpler than we’re taught, and I think it has to do with trying—or being willing to—entertain, in your own unique way. Or “compel.” I had a long period where I was trying to write with my head—to be smart or thematic or whatever, and not only was I not smart, I was boring. And my big breakthrough, if you want to call it that, came when I realized that, in life, I liked to be funny and strange and fast—and maybe those were literary virtues, after all. So with my students, I often find it’s a matter of somehow leading them to a place where they feel comfortable with their own real and natural strengths, and thereby free to walk away from approaches that confine them or feel false…

Natasha: Yes! That’s probably why your writing is, as I described to my boyfriend earlier today, “not highbrow,” even though you’re a renowned literary star these days. Willingness to write from your own reality is probably a big part of that.

Melissa S.: What you said about not wanting your students to feel confined—boy, is that ever true. I am friends with one of your former students and his entire (amazing) novel is so out-of-the box and free. So refreshing.

My husband saw you read at BookPeople in Austin the other night (I drew the short straw and had to stay home with the kiddo). He told me you read from “Spiderhead.” What made you decide to read that particular section, and how do you choose what you will read, generally?

Brian S: As an addendum to Melissa’s question: are there times on the book tour that you change up what you’re reading to keep from getting bored with your work?

George Saunders: I used to read whole stories at readings—thirty or thirty-five minutes. But now that the crowds are bigger and the signings take longer, the stores seem to be suggesting ten to fifteen minutes. And really, whoever left a reading going: damn, he read too short? I sort of just experiment and see what might make an entertaining ten-minute reading. Still am. At colleges, I read “Victory Lap” and I love doing that. I try to do all the voices and so on, which keeps it fresh. For me anyway.

Brian S: It was a killer performance in Des Moines. I’ve never seen that many people at a college reading, and that many people just rapt with attention.

Ana: I saw you read from “Home” earlier this month. It was very interesting hearing your voices, which is not how the story sounded in my head! I also loved watching you engage with [Deborah] Eisenberg, whose book I bought that night. Do you have a preference or not when it comes to doing joint readings?

George Saunders: I love joint readings if the person reading with me is as wonderful as Deborah. She is the bomb. Such a sweetheartand a genius, for real.

Ana: I’m really loving her stories, which I hadn’t read before. And thought it was so interesting how she was almost forced to take up writing as a result of quitting smoking.

George Saunders: The other amazing thing about Deborah that night was she was very, very sick. I mean high fever. And still killed it, right?

Brian S: Five minutes, everyone—any lurkers want to get in a last-minute question?

Kevin T.: With the obvious exception of “My Chivalric Fiasco,” it looks like you’re about done with theme parks. Have you mined everything out of them that you can? Has child-rearing replaced them as a preoccupation? Are there more theme parks in the pipeline?

George Saunders: I might be done with theme parks, but you never know. I really just am looking for a few good sentences to start me off, and I honestly don’t care where it’s set or what it’s about—just so it confuses and intrigues me and sort of obscures the trail, i.e. keeps me from repeating myself (too much).

Melissa S.: What are you reading right now?

Natasha: Ooh, I’d love to hear what your reading list is, too. Favorite books? Movies? What makes your short list?

George Saunders: Read Europeana (Ourednik) and Senselessness (Moya), and a really funny galley by Jack Handey called The Stench of Honolulu—he’s the Deep Thoughts guy. I just saw an incredibly sweet documentary called Buck, about a guy who breaks horses in a new and gentler way, because he was abused as a kid. Also read, for the first time, Tolstoy’s Resurrection, which I thought was about as dark a book as I’ve ever read, and totally convincing regarding the savagery of the rich-poor divide. That one killed me. He has this bit about how a human being should never act, at all, unless he/she is “feeling love.” Radical.

Noah S.: Buck is so incredible. The part with the crazy horse still appears in my dreams sometimes.

George Saunders: Yes. That poor crazy horse. Ruined by its owner, mostly.

Janeen: Are you working on new stuff now, or just taking a break (or, well, traveling and appearing everywhere)?

George Saunders: I have a new thing started, but I’m taking a big break with the new book. I think I’ll be able to get back to work in a month—although I have to also read for Syracuse admissions. We got 566 apps for six spots.

Brian S: Okay, that’s the hour, so we’re going to cut off questions.

David B.: Thanks, George, for staying up late.

Ann Nash: Thanks, George, for out-of-the-box writing. Inspirational to us all.

Ana: Thank you! Best of luck with all your work this year.

Julie: Yes, thanks so much for doing this. I sort of feel like there was the world-before-reading-George-Saunders and now the world-after-reading-George-Saunders. Mind-blowing and amazing. Please keep writing for a very long time.

Brian S: Any chance you’ll be in Boston for the AWP convention?

George Saunders: Brian—I will be in Boston. Syracuse is doing a 50th anniversary event.

Bobby: I will come and give you a high-five at AWP then, if that’s cool?

George Saunders: Bobby—definitely. Or just bring me a drink. Thank you all so much for your generosity—really enjoyed this.

Brian S: Thanks again, George. Hope to run into you in Boston.

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Author photo © Basso Cannarsa/Opale

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This is an edited transcript of the book club discussion. Every month The Rumpus Book Club hosts a discussion online with the book club members and the author and we post an edited version online as an interview. To learn how you can become a member of The Rumpus Book Club click here.

This Rumpus Book Club interview was edited by Rebecca Rubenstein.

Brian S: Well, the hour is here. Who has a question for T?

Janeen: I loved this book. I think I especially loved the parts about your relationship with your family.

Kristy: How did you decide on the unique structure/format of the book? I loved that it wasn’t a traditional chronological memoir.

T Cooper: As for the structure, well, I just sort of wrote it how it occurred to me, how it came to me. Never occurred to me to write it with a conventional structure—or to impose anything like that on it. It’s more of a scrapbook, a meditation, so while a narrative emerges and I definitely thought about it in terms of movement, I didn’t really think about a start at A, end at B type of story.

David B.: I have an MTF friend. Your book really helped me understand her more via your experience—thanks for that insight.

T Cooper: David, good to hear.

Lisa R: I really appreciated how you handled the sex chapter, and how you refused to give in to the sort of “titillated observer” kind of reader.

Brian S: Seconded Lisa’s comment.

T Cooper: Yeah, I don’t think that I should be held to any different standard than “normal” people—that is, a white straight dude writing a memoir isn’t expected to tell us what’s in his pants, how he has sex, etc. So why should I—or a little person, or a person of color, and so on? (Though I know it’s on people’s minds, so I felt like I needed to make a nod to that.)

Lisa R: Yeah, it is not dissimilar to why being gay is always about (or used to be before it was more mainstream), “How do you have sex?” Such bad manners!

Lisa K: Lisa K here, wine in hand. I’m interested in your experience parenting your kids: how, as they mature, they understand your experience. How they relate to you. Maybe a universal question for us parents.

T Cooper: It’s not something that we discuss in the household all the time—really much at all. I mean, if stuff comes up, we’ll discuss with the kids, but day to day everything is quite normal, and as they get older and more capable of understanding things on deeper levels, I/we [Cooper and his wife] will share with them what it makes sense for them to know…

Melissa: That chapter about it not being anyone’s business what your history is—the violence chapter—just opened my eyes about so much stuff. It’s so important and I just just wish everyone—EVERYONE—would read that. You said it so well. Also, your wife is a rock star.

T Cooper: Melissa, I agree about my wife. I think that at least once a day.

Kristy: The violence chapter was just terrible to read. I’m so glad you shared that with us, but it is so upsetting that you, or anyone, has to feel that way in his own community.

David B.: I was surprised by that fear, but it’s a sad reality.

T Cooper: People of difference are always held to different standards. Like, You’re in this club, so you better spill everything and tell us why. Not to sound chippy—I mean, I’m not—but that’s the reality. I unfortunately saw some comments of a bad review (on a blog) of the book (a trans friend sent it to me because he was shocked), and it was expressing an expectation that I need to spill all this stuff that I’m not comfortable sharing—and to be honest, I don’t really know what to say to that. It’s not the book I was interested in writing. It’s not Chaz Bono on Oprah.

Lisa R: That review pissed me off.

Kristy: People are just too nosy. It is absolutely none of their business what happens behind closed doors in any relationship.

Brian S: Is it possible that people wanting to ask the question about sex is a good step? I mean as compared to living in a world where any sex outside the hetero-normative would be considered salacious? It’s not where we may want to be as a society, but it’s a step in the right direction. (I’m a little nervous about this question.)

Lisa R: I think curiosity about non-hetero-normative sex is natural, but it is disrespectful to ask people that are different how they have sex unless you know them really well.

Lisa K: Brian S, I do agree with you, though, that wanting to understand all forms of human experience, not in a salacious way, but respectfully, is okay, and people can share as they wish to.

Barbie: I agree with Kristy…about the sex. It’s nobody’s business…that is not why you wrote the book, one would think.

Brian S: It’s absolutely a rude question. I just wonder if it’s one of those crappy things we have to move through in order to get to the point where society-at-large recognizes it as a rude question.

Lisa R: I think as we learn to acknowledge more and more difference, what might be most enlightening is how boring we all are in the same ways. And thats an awesome point, Brian.

T Cooper: I get the question, and I agree about non-normative sex of all kinds. But there are some folks who are happy to share about that (and I mean everything), and there are others who are not—for a million reasons, on both sides. I just happen to be one who feels like there are some things I want to keep for myself—and I personally don’t believe I did a disservice to the story by only touching upon it.

Brian S: You didn’t, T. I thought it was awesome the way you dealt with it. That’s part of the reason I chose this book for a class I’m teaching in the spring.

Janeen: Oh, no disservice to the story at all. I didn’t even think about the sex until that chapter showed up.

Kristy: Yes, handled well. I was surprised it was brought up, given the fact that your story is personal, but not personal, and then had to laugh at what the chapter really told me. It was perfect.

T Cooper: There are films, books, blogs, public speakers who are sort of inclined that way, to share on that level—especially about our bodies, etc. And I think it’s important, because curiosity isn’t bad in itself (as long as it’s not freak show in nature), but that was sort of the intro to trans people in society stage of things—and I think we’re past that and it’s time to do some more stuff with the narrative, break it open and tell some different stories that don’t follow the same trajectory every time (Boys Don’t Cry, TransAmerica, Chaz Bono, the lady who did the film about being a football player then transitioning into female, [who] went on Oprah, etc.). That’s why we didn’t call it a memoir. Because it’s not delivering memoir really, and it would be false advertising to slug it as such.

Brian S: What are you and McSweeney’s calling it? Just nonfiction? It seems to defy genre in a lot of ways.

T Cooper: I guess we’re not calling it anything. But they make you, as you know—bookselling, etc. So we’ll say nonfiction/memoir. But not on the book or in any of our materials. I think it’s a Barnes & Noble thing—where it’ll get shelved. I think of it as a meditation on masculinity, using all those different styles to have the discussion. That’s not quite eloquent, but something like that.

Janeen: Oooh, I like that: a meditation on masculinity.

T Cooper: And the meditation on masculinity—I feel like that’s why I wanted to do the CD with the book and have others join me on tour, because I’m not the end-all be-all authority on that. It’s really a living breathing discussion that goes on pretty much every second of every day in every part of this planet.

Brian S: Ah, we didn’t get a CD. I’ll have to get on McSweeney’s for that.

T Cooper: Regarding the CD: I think we’ll be releasing eight of the songs from the CD on The Rumpus site in December (for free). And if anybody’s at my events coming up, I’ll be giving out some CDs at them.

Brian S: I’ll make sure to announce that on the Google groups and the Facebook page when [the songs are] available. Who came up with that amazing cover?

T Cooper: My editor and I had a convo about the book on the McSweeney’s website, and here’s what I said about the book cover selection: my wife bought me this glossy collection of men’s pulp magazine covers from the ’40s and ’50s, and when we all started talking about the cover concept for this book, I floated the idea of using some way-over-the-top MASCULINE imagery in the style of this era. So I sent Brian [McMullen, McSweeney’s Senior Art Director] a bunch of the covers from the book (men wrestling killer weasels, bloodthirsty polar bears, a giant vulture—and a great white shark). I also have this beware-of-VD-and-loose-women pamphlet hanging on my wall (put out by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1919), with a tough lumberjack guy standing over the words MAN POWER, so we considered using that image for a while (it ended up opening one of the chapters in the book instead). But when everybody saw the shark on the cover of the issue of American Manhood magazine from 1953, I think it was pretty clear that was the direction to go: the blonde beefcake in a skimpy purple man-kini, bravely battling the giant man-eater underwater, with nothing but a tiny knife to protect himself. The by-product of course being that we’ve ended up with one of the gayest book covers of all time—and it’s scarcely a “gay” book at all! I love that.

Janeen: I was struck by the sense of fear evoked in various places throughout the book. Do you feel more vulnerable now that the book has come out?

T Cooper: I definitely feel more vulnerable, yeah. Hell yeah. And the book just started shipping really this week, so I’m sure that will only get worse. I’m hoping it’ll get worse, and then eventually tip into a place where I just can’t care anymore.

Brian S: Is there any anonymity to being a writer in the sense that people don’t necessarily attach faces to names the way they do performing arts people?

T Cooper: I hope so!

David B.: Do you feel better, having written this book, that people may know you better and what you have been through?

T Cooper: I don’t think people “know” me better… And I guess I don’t really worry much about their knowing what I’ve been through. I think I just felt like it was a story I knew I needed to write, but I didn’t know how, and so I took a stab, and this is how it came out. It feels good that it’s out, yeah, because I feel like I did the best I could with the subject, and did it in a different way at least I hadn’t seen before, so that’s something I feel good about, you know, doing something to the best of your ability. I want to do that with every book.

Janeen: Did you approach writing this the way you have approached writing your novels, or was it a completely different process?

T Cooper: I think I approach all of my writing in the same way. I mean, it’s my job, and I’m committed to it. I don’t just float around and wait for some muse to call. I work at it, I set days to it, weeks, months sometimes. It did go way quicker than my novels (mostly because I didn’t have to do any research, really). And of course I wasn’t linking together all this narrative and characters and stuff. I feel like I learned a lot from writing it…

Janeen: Learned a lot about yourself, or the writing process or what, in particular?

T Cooper: Learned about writing. Figured a little more out. Got a little better, which is something I consider with each book. I want to see improvement from project to project, and I think I can say I saw it here.

Ana: Were any of the chapters particularly difficult to write? Or that you spent a significant amount of time editing or deciding to include? On that note, I have to say I loved the short memoir chapters that punctuated the book.

Janeen: Yes, the six-word memoirs were wonderful.

Melissa: The footnotes, too. So good.

T Cooper: Thank you, regarding the six-word memoirs. Those were added in during editing—when it felt like we needed a sort of stitching together of the main sections or movements of the book. Ana, I debated a lot about the letters, just because they felt so personal—even the one that I technically wrote to appear in a men’s magazine as an essay… I think those felt a little overexposing of my folks. Like, bringing their shortcomings into it, when I don’t think I need to bring that in to tell the story of my coming up.

Brian S: I’m glad you decided to keep the letters in. They were an important part of the book for me.

Lisa R: I thought you were very gentle and respectful of your family. I felt like this book had so many seeds of understanding and common ground in it.

Ana: I agree. Also, speaking about others’ “shortcomings,” the part where you revised the triangle on gender pronouns was another favorite.

T Cooper: I was really lucky that I had a publisher/editor who was willing to let me just go and write (and draw), and let the story unfold how my brain was telling me to write it. In some cases that was with imagery, which to me is as important as the text to the book. Again, there are just so many ways to talk about masculinity, it feels like one medium can’t do it alone.

Barbie: T, do you have a particular ritual when you are writing?

T Cooper: No ritual. Nothing more than, you know, making a deadline or schedule, and sticking to it. I’m not ever like, I don’t feel like writing. If something’s due, or I want to see it finished, I finish it. Not that life doesn’t intervene—boy, does it— but just that I treat it like my job.

David B.: I enjoyed your Rumpus letter, by the way.

T Cooper: I enjoyed doing the Rumpus letter. I’ve been getting some really thoughtful letters in return, and it’s heartening.

David B.: Do you ever see a follow up to your book down the road? Maybe an update in a few years?

T Cooper: I don’t know about that. Maybe in another twenty-five years! I’m not sure I need to say any more than I’ve already said.

Janeen: I must say one of my favorite chapters was “Sitzpinkler.” It was funny and enlightening, as well as poignant.

David B.: “Sitzpinkler.” What a word.

Lisa R: That was an awesome chapter.

Brian S: Were you surprised by some of the answers you received to your “Sitzpinkler” questions? Or rather, which responses surprised you the most?

T Cooper: The “Sitzpinkler” chapter was just fun to do—to make some buddies think about something they probably never think about. I guess I was surprised by the amount of sitting overall—but of course I realized I’m only really concerned about public restroom sitting. I care less and less about it as time goes on—but I suppose it took up a lot of my mind space when I was more in a transitioning stage (as opposed to transitioned, so to speak), so I thought it was important to have that chapter, have a little fun with it.

Janeen: I was totally surprised by the amount of sitting.

Brian S: If you’re looking for more data points, I’m a sitter most of the time.

Janeen: Ha! Thanks for the additional data, Brian.

T Cooper: Why stand when you can sit?! It’s America, after all.

Kristy: I have admit, that chapter prompted me to inquire as to my husband’s stand-versus-sit perspective. He was so confused as to why I wanted to know!

David B.: I’m glad so many guys care about having bad aim at the toilet.

T Cooper: Nobody should have to clean up what goes on around the base of most toilets, you know?

Brian S: I end up doing most of that cleaning anyway, so I’m just saving myself work.

Melissa: I told a co-worker about your book, and she brought up Middlesex. I couldn’t help but laugh, because of your note about it. That comparison happens all the time. What is your ideal suggested response for me the next time it happens?

T Cooper: That’s a hard one, because what I really want to say isn’t nice or appropriate or kind to Jeff Eugenides… Alas, I’ll be wise and say you should tell folks to maybe read a different book.

Melissa: Haha, fair enough.

T Cooper: Or you could tell them that intersex folks don’t like being compared to trannies, either!

Brian S: I was just rewatching Eddie Izzard’s Dress to Kill the other night, and he had a long bit in it about executive transvestites versus weird transvestites. Seems apt, given the Eugenides comment.

T Cooper: Yeah, I didn’t see Dress to Kill, but I know a little about it.

Janeen: Is it hard or helpful (or both) to have a wife who is also a writer?

T Cooper: I would say helpful overall, because she understands how work gets done sometimes, how I have to travel, or sometimes stay up, or sometimes I’m totally out of it—because she’s doing the exact same thing, maybe even more traveling. Also, we are collaborating on some projects, which is really good, because it turns out we work well together and of course have similar senses of humor and approaches to our work.

Janeen: Oh, that’s wonderful.

Brian S: How did you wind up in Friday Night Lights country?

T Cooper: We still have a place in New York City and are there all the time, but we came down South for community, cost, and it’s nice not to have six feet of snow outside our door for much of the year (we were upstate in New York for a couple years before).

Melissa: Are you coming to Austin?

T Cooper: Melissa, no, not this time. I love BookPeople, though. I’ve read there a few times.

Ana: I was going to ask actually about geographic location/identity. You talk about New York in the book enough to feel the city’s presence. Do you think living in any certain place had an influence on how your gender identity/expression evolved?

T Cooper: Good question. I think N.Y.C. definitely had something to do with my figuring out my life path. Had I been living in, well, a lot of other places, things might’ve gone differently. Not saying I wouldn’t end up here, but that New York was/is a huge part of my world, and probably key to my growth as a person (including gender, but not exclusively).

David B.: Are you reading anything good right now?

T Cooper: I just read this amazing graphic novel about Jeffrey Dahmer—by a high school friend of his. Just finished it last night—got it when I was at the Miami Book Fair last weekend. I love anything to do with serial killers.

David B.: Derf Barckderf! Great book.

T Cooper: Yeah, I guess I’d never heard of that book before. Glad I found it. I’m also reading the new book by John Brandon, but now I’m spacing on the name [A Million Heavens] and his last one, Citrus County, is in my head.

Kristy: Citrus County was the Rumpus Book Club’s first selection!

David B.: He’s good. Are you catching your breath, or do you have new project in mind?

T Cooper: I have a YA project my wife and I are collaborating on—four-part series. Also, some TV stuff, though you never know what’s up with that and it is not to be counted on. I like working on short stories in between projects, so there’s a list of about five I want to write. I should have one coming out soon in Bomb. I don’t know…mostly catching my breath and going to be touring. I wish I had more hypergraphia like some of my colleagues, but it’s nice to take a breath now and again.

Brian S: How did this book come together? I know you repurposed some stuff, but how much of it was, I don’t know, determined? Clumsy question, I know.

T Cooper: This book just came together as my brain spewed it out. I mean, a few chapters appeared in The Believer as an essay, but those came out the same way. I guess I just jotted down in notebooks areas/incidents/stories etc. that felt like they should be in the story, and then tried them out. And if they worked, they stayed in, and if they didn’t, bye.

Melissa: Were you intentional about where you placed the humor in this book (RiDICKulous, for example)? Did you think methodically about where, perhaps, your reader might need a break from the heaviness? I asked because it all just worked together so brilliantly.

T Cooper: I did think about the narrative arc. I think that’s my job if I’m going to write a book like this. Like, say, not to end on a note that doesn’t capture the overall feeling of the project. My editor was really helpful toward that end. Like, once it was all down and in a draft, helping me step back and see what I wanted the reader to get and when. I did think of it in terms of the standard Aristotelian dramatic structure.

Brian S: How has McSweeney’s been to work with? They strike me as one of the few big presses willing to take on a book like this (one without an easy niche to fit it into, I mean).

T Cooper: McSweeney’s is an incredible publisher, and I don’t think I would’ve wanted to do this book with anybody else. They actually care about the author in a way many other publishers (especially the big ones, but even some smaller ones) are afraid to. Like, giving the author too much power… McSweeney’s was/is great, and I’m really lucky it landed with them.

Kristy: McSweeney’s rarely steers me wrong. I intentionally avoid reading anything about this month’s selection before I get the book (I like the surprise), and when I opened this one (after I got past the way rad cover) and saw it was a McSweeney’s-published book, I was sold. Truly an enjoyable read. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

Barbie: You seem so modest…is that really the case? It is ultimately a true gift to write, as you say, “As my brain is spewing out.” Does writing come so very natural to you?

T Cooper: No, writing is hard as shit. When people are all like, “Oh, I just sit and look at the birds and write beautiful sentences as they come to me…,” it makes me crazy. Because while it’s an amazing profession and I’m lucky as hell to get to do it and wouldn’t want to do anything else (okay, except maybe be an ER doc or vet), it’s really fucking hard to do. I had to work at it to get better and better, and that’s why I say I want to improve with every book, because I don’t think I’ll ever be a master of it.

Brian S: I’ve never believed a single person who said writing was easy for them.

Melissa: I’m an editor, and something we look for in children’s books is gender sensitivity in the images (not every female is in the kitchen cooking with her apron, not every doctor is male, etc.). It’s so funny to do that, actually. It can feel contrived controlling these stereotypes, but I do understand the importance. Is this something you noticed as a child, or something you notice when reading to your kids?

T Cooper: Melissa, I don’t know whether I notice that… I mean, I’m probably more inclined to, but you know what, it’s probably not even conscious. Probably more as a feminist and progressive, I notice stuff like that about gender, race, economic status, etc.

David B.: Your book had courage, thanks T!

Lisa R: There was a lot of fun in this book. Hard stuff, and laughter. It was a brilliant mix.

Ana: I have already promised the book to three friends. From me and from those (future) readers—thank you!

Janeen: I am looking forward to reading some of your other work. It’s interesting to me that all of my favorite book club selections have been memoirs (or memoir-like). It was really a pleasure to read. I just finished earlier today, so it’s still resonating with me.

T Cooper: I think for some reason people are drawn to stories of all kinds, for some reason they land harder when they are “true.” And yet in fiction, I think there is a lot of deeper truth, too, if you know what I mean.

Janeen: I also think I am one of those nosy people who just wants to get the scoop on someone’s life in their own words.

T Cooper: Thank you very much everybody, for doing this, but also for spending time with the book.

Melissa: This book was just really effing (can I cuss here?) amazing. So yes, thank you.

Brian S: If you’re going to cuss, then fucking do it, okay?

Melissa: FUCK YES. I LOVE BOOK CLUB.

T Cooper: Nobody dropping a C-bomb before we go?

David B.: Cuntastic!

Brian S: Chlamydia?

Melissa: C-U-Next-Tuesday!

T Cooper: Cool—you coming to a reading?

Janeen: Are you coming to Seattle?

Brian S: Or Des Moines?

Melissa: Nope, Austin, remember? Come back here!

Brian S: I mean, I’m guessing we could look on a website or something, but since we have you here…

David B.: Come to Ohio—we got Obama in.

T Cooper: Unfortch, not this time. Have read at Elliot Bay a lot. That is one of my top bookstores in the country, for sure. No Des Moines, either. Oddly. Or, I’ll come to your classroom. (I love that everybody’s not from New York. I mean, I love New York, but you know.)

Brian S: If you want to Skype in, I’ll do it. Project you on a big screen and turn the computer around so you can see the kids.

T Cooper: Yeah, hit me up. I love Skype unnaturally.

Janeen: You have to invite us to your class that day, Brian!

Brian S: Thanks for dropping in tonight, T. It’s been great talking to you. And thanks to all the members who dropped by tonight as well. You all rock.

T Cooper: Really appreciate it—all you.

***

Related Posts:

• Listening Love
• The Sunday Rumpus Interview: T Cooper
• REAL MAN ADVENTURES #8: “F.E.A.R.”
• REAL MAN ADVENTURES #2: “He Will”
• The Rumpus Book Club Discussion with George Saunders

This is an edited transcript of the book club discussion. Every month The Rumpus Book Club hosts a discussion online with the book club members and the author and we post an edited version online as an interview. To learn how you can become a member of The Rumpus Book Club click here.

This Rumpus Book Club interview was edited by Rebecca Rubenstein.

***

David B: Anything in particular inspire your cast of characters?

Jami Attenberg: Well, it’s set in the community where I grew up. So everyone sort of felt familiar to me, even though they weren’t inspired by anyone in particular. Robin was the first character I wrote and she was a little bit of an alternate universe version of myself, like if I had moved to New York City and left and never came back, although we are very different people. And I would say Kenneth had a direct forbear of sorts. He was inspired by a New Yorker piece I read, by Calvin Trillin. He wrote this food piece about a Chinese chef who moved all around the Eastern seaboard. And people were obsessed with him, and he was very mysterious.

David B: I wondered if there was a character you were especially close to…

Jami Attenberg: I mean, Robin feels the most like me even though we’re not alike. But I get Edie. And I get Emily, too.

Brian S: Unrelated, but Trillin is how I discovered the turducken, even though it was apparently invented less than a hundred miles from where I grew up.

Kevin T: I loved Kenneth. Have you made that cumin-cinnamon-lamb dish? If so, can you share the recipe with us?

Jami Attenberg: I have not made that cumin-lamb dish! But I have eaten it at Xi’an Famous Foods in New York. Minus the cinnamon. Which someone suggested to me. I have had a turducken Thanksgiving before and it is not the same. I do not recommend the turducken.

Roxane: Turducken sounds a bit frightening.

Brian S: I fancy myself an adventurous eater, but I’ve never tried that, either.

Candy: When writing this, did you ever consider having Richard come back to his wife, or did you always plan to end the book as you did?

Jami Attenberg: I always knew Richard was gone and never coming back. It was a question of whether he was going to find love or not.

Candy: Very realistic but so sad.

Roxane: One of the things that we talked about was Edie’s unlikability. Did you worry about how she would be perceived by readers?

Jami Attenberg: I didn’t worry about it that much. Honestly, I didn’t like any of them that much when I started, and then I wrote my way into liking them.

Megan: I was so sympathetic to Middlestein and sad that granddaughter was the only one who came around.

Jami Attenberg: Megan, it’s true, he definitely became more sympathetic by the end. He just wanted love. I think we are perhaps entitled to at least try for it. I don’t believe much in entitlement but that seems like a right.

Brian S: The pursuit of it [love], yes, that’s something we’re entitled to.

Candy: Honestly, I would have preferred he did not find love. He didn’t deserve to.

Jami Attenberg: So Candy, you didn’t like him?

Candy: Sorry, but he was definitely my least favorite character.

Jami Attenberg: It’s okay! Ha. You can not like him. No one is particularly easy in this book.

Megan: I think we all know people with addictions and can relate to the helplessness in trying to help them.

Candy: I was more of an Edie fan.

Jami Attenberg: I love Edie. Edie is a queen.

Brian S: How did not liking your characters affect your ability to write them/mess with them over the course of the book? I’m not a fiction writer so I have no concept of what that feels like.

Jami Attenberg: I mean, in a way, I put all my own bullshit into them. So they’re sort of all me in little bits and pieces, I think. You have to be able to identify in order to write.

Roxane: I was able to empathize with everyone in this book, even when they were frustrating. They all felt very human, though Benny’s wife was a bit much.

Jami Attenberg: Rachelle was my least favorite, definitely.

Candy: You did a great job of transitioning between different time frames—was that hard to do?

Jami Attenberg: The time frame stuff was the most fun. I have this secret desire to write speculative fiction, and I think all the time-shifting really filled that need. Also, it’s sort of like playing chess, if that makes any sense.

Candy: I found it made the book move very fast, which I really enjoyed.

Jami Attenberg: Thanks, Candy! My favorite books are ones that move. I love reading books that you can’t put down, and they just take you over for a night or a weekend.

Candy: Totally agree.

Brian S: Why is it a secret desire?

Jami Attenberg: Brian, do you mean why don’t I just do it?

Brian S: Yeah—I’ve never understood the sneering that speculative fiction receives.

Jami Attenberg: Oh, it’s not sneering. I tried to do it once, an early version of The Melting Season. My last book was speculative. I just don’t quite know what I am doing. But I’ll get there. I have a list of things I would love to write. I’m sure Roxane can attest to the same thing. But it’s not always the right time.

Roxane: Indeed, I do have such a list.

Brian S: Oh, okay. I just mean that there’s a bias (at least in many MFA programs) against anything that smells of genre, and I don’t understand why that is.

Jami Attenberg: I didn’t get an MFA, so there is probably a bias against me in some way. By the way, all this can be yours.

David B.: I’m hungry now…

Brian S: I have that sort of list with poetic stuff, things I want to try, etc.

Jami Attenberg: My list is like: post-apocalyptic, mystery, YA, memoir. Maybe not mystery. I read Zone One and was super into it. I thought Colson [Whitehead] did a great job. Brian, it’s good to try stuff. I wrote a book last year that I threw away, and I think I just wrote it so I could try stuff in it and not be scared.

Candy: Never throw away. There is always someone out there who would love to read … me, for example. I do not write at all, but will read anything and everything.

Jami Attenberg: Oh, it exists. But. Not fit for human consumption. Sometimes, things are just exercises.

Roxane: I loved the cover of The Middlesteins. Did you have any involvement in the decision about the cover?

Jami Attenberg: I didn’t really. They were really late on that, I can tell you. Because they were trying to get it just right.

Brian S: There was a lot of discussion in the group about the role addiction played in the book. Seemed like there was some strong disagreement among members because of that, especially since you were writing about a fat person. How did you decide on food as the addiction?

Jami Attenberg: Well…so I have a few responses. One, being from the Midwest and of a certain community of people, it is just something that people struggle with, their weight. So it felt very true, and something I knew about.

Brian S: We have that problem in the Deep South, too.

Jami Attenberg: Two, I have my own food issues. Three, it could maybe have been something else—booze or drugs or whatever—but the fascinating thing about food is that if you have issues with it, you have to face it every single day. Like you can quit smoking, and never have to have a cigarette again to survive. But with food, it is a daily challenge. It is just very rich source material.

Megan: I thought it was sad but realistic that Edie’s life’s chapters were delineated by her weight at the time.

Candy: I think choosing food as the addiction allows most readers to connect more. I know some of us may have dealt with other addictions, but almost everyone knows someone who is on the heavier side and can relate to the story.

Brian S: Weight is complicated to deal with because it’s one of those things that people who don’t have weight issues tend to dismiss as a lack of self-control.

Jami Attenberg: And people judge you because of your weight and your food issues. It’s very visual.

Roxane: Did you worry about how you portrayed fat people?

Jami Attenberg: I did worry about it. I had friends—who were heavier than I am and who struggle more with their weight—read it every step of the way. I thought very deeply about how I was portraying her. I was careful not to turn her into something that was grotesque. I had one friend read it and we had one quibble, which I agonized over for a while. Which is the spoon in the ice cream at the end. Because she [my friend] felt that was the only note where I was expressing her as grotesque, but in my mind, that was what I would do when I came home from a party. I would stand there and have one more bite of ice cream.

Shann Palmer: It is so sad, though. I found it profoundly affected me.

Candy: You can take out the fact about Edie being overweight and the story still would have worked. People don’t pay attention to their health in many ways and families have to deal with the stresses of it.

Shann Palmer: Yes, but the weight and the diabetes makes it very now.

Jami Attenberg: That’s right, it’s health issues. How do we help our loved ones? How do we communicate better?

Brian S: And it’s the kind of thing where total strangers feel well within their rights to express their opinions on the way you look.

Roxane: Yes, indeed. I found it very relatable.

Jami Attenberg: To me, Edie is GREAT. I loved her. She changed people’s lives. Even in small ways. Even if she was sometimes a terror.

Candy: I loved her, too. She was very realistic.

Megan: I enjoyed reading the evolution of Edie’s relationship with food starting in childhood.

Jami Attenberg: Thanks, Megan.

Shann Palmer: I know myself, I’ve gone to the drive-thru at Krispy Kreme because I feel judged if I have a flippin’ doughnut.

Jami Attenberg: Haha, Shann…oh my god, me and the drive-thrus.

Shann Palmer: You captured the mindset perfectly.

Jami Attenberg: Whenever I end up at a drive-thru I’m like, Okay, something’s really up, Attenberg.

Brian S: Hell, if I’m at the store by myself and grab a Butterfinger, I throw the wrapper away before I get in the car. It’s not that anyone would give me grief if I threw it away at the house either—I’ve just internalized it over the years.

Shann Palmer: It’s one of the few books where the fat person isn’t vilified.

Candy: We all think we will live forever and so did Edie.

Brian S: I’m counting on cyborg technology to make me immortal.

Jami Attenberg: I don’t even know if Edie quite realized she needed help. Even though she’s a smart lady. I just think out of every character in that book, the one I would most want to hang out with is Edie. And Pierre, the dance instructor.

Candy: I see so many people in my line of work that don’t know when they need help, and are supposedly smart enough to know better.

Jami Attenberg: It’s just hard! I smoked for many years like a total idiot.

Brian S: That’s the issue, though—maybe a person knows they need help or have decided that that aspect of their life isn’t the thing to deal with right now. We all make trade-offs.

Candy: Very true, Brian.

Jami Attenberg: Well, when I quit smoking, I had this moment where I said to myself, Whatever you are punishing yourself for, stop. Like it was just an idea that floated in my head, and then I knew it was over.

Shann Palmer: The dad is particularly poignant, though I don’t like him much.

Jami Attenberg: Candy doesn’t like him either, Shann. I feel like we’re gossiping about Richard…

Megan: I liked Richard. I was so on his side at temple with [the] grandkids.

Shann Palmer: It’s easier to hide online or in activities than face up.

Jami Attenberg: So easy to hide online. Megan, I loved writing that scene. That’s one of my faves. It’s like the story of a life.

Shann Palmer: It’s so true: kids and devices.

Jami Attenberg: Adults and devices, too. My mom has this theory that we’re raising a nation of hunchbacks.

Roxane: My dad feels that way, particularly because my youngest brother has made himself a video game hunchback.

Shann Palmer: Yeah—my son’s ex-girlfriend got her MA at Georgetown and at the ceremony, the whole row of grads had their phones out chatting all through the speaking.

Brian S: My students say they hate it, but they never put their devices down. But then again, neither do I. Well, almost never.

Jami Attenberg: I try to make eye contact.

Candy: Although without all that technology, we would not be able to talk to you, Jami, about your great book.

Jami Attenberg: My laptop broke a week ago, and because of the storm I could not get a new one. And so I’ve been promoting my book via iPhone.

Shann Palmer: It must have been awful!

Brian S: Are you dying?

Jami Attenberg: I want to die. I’ve just been running around borrowing iPads and laptops here and there.

Brian S: Right now, I’m on my laptop attached to a second screen, with my iPad to my left and my phone near my right hand. Edie had a problem?

Shann Palmer: We have six computers for four people!

Brian S: Tell the truth—you’re standing in an Apple Store right now.

Jami Attenberg: No, but I did have to run out and borrow a computer.

Roxane: I am feeling agony just thinking about this, Jami.

Jami Attenberg: Oh Roxane, you have no idea.

Shann Palmer: Maybe a next book! What are you working on?

Jami Attenberg: I sold a book proposal. I have about eighty pages done. It’s based on a real-life person named Mazie Phillips, who ran a movie theater on the Bowery from the 1920s to the 1940s. And she was this boozy, bawdy broad, very flawed.

Shann Palmer: Excellent! Great time period.

Jami Attenberg: And she worked from 9 am to 11 pm every day for decades in the ticket booth on the Bowery, and when she would get off work, she would walk the streets of the Bowery and help all the homeless drunks. So it’s about her life and her relationship with these drunks.

Shann Palmer: I’ll buy it!

Jami Attenberg: Ha, thanks. First I gotta write it.

Candy: Sounds great…anything 1920s has got to be good.

Jami Attenberg: I’m not really an expert on the era. I’m sort of learning. But I’ve been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end. I’m not that much of a researcher. I’m good at channeling characters, and I’m good at structure. Before The Middlesteins, I didn’t think about structure and now it’s a joy. I think someone earlier mentioned how the chapters—

Brian S: Can you expand on that?

Jami Attenberg: —with her weight worked. I just think structure can make a book feel so much bigger. It’s the architecture. You could use flimsy materials if you wanted to, even, but it could still feel big.

Shann Palmer: Your structure was impeccable. The weight was a good foundation and the “meat” of the story.

Jami Attenberg: I wrote about half of the book minus the weight chapters. And then I realized I needed to go back and put those chapters in. And then it became a different book. After my editor bought the book, we went through a period where she thought the book should start with the chapter where Richard and Edie meet. And we would lose the first two Edie chapters. And I went down the path just to see if she was right. But it would have been a different book. It would have hinged on their marriage. But the book was more than that.

Shann Palmer: No, the first chapter grabbed me.

Megan: Edie’s weight chapters made me reflect on my own chapters based on weight and how it affected how I viewed myself because of weight.

Candy: I am glad you did not leave them out. Those two chapters were what set up the idea of her personality.

Jami Attenberg: I know. I got where my editor was going, but it needed to be not so tidy as that. So what happened was, I realized that those chapters weren’t working as hard as they should have, and I went back and rewrote them a little bit. Added some details in.

Shann Palmer: Even in family dynamics, one person often dictates the thrust of a story, I think.

Jami Attenberg: That’s right, Shann. Agreed. Anyway, I made them work harder until they worked well, and I’m so glad we left them in.

Shann Palmer: It was nice to see your book mentioned on the Shelf-Awareness blog. I have recommended it to friends.

Jami Attenberg: Honestly, we’ve gotten such lovely attention for the book, thanks. I am the most surprised by how it has been doing. Because all my other books tanked, ha!

Brian S: Has the storm put a crimp in your ability to promote it? I mean obviously it has, but are you getting past it okay?

Jami Attenberg: Well—I’m in Brooklyn, everyone—I had to cancel a book party. My Manhattan launch. And also a reading at a Barnes & Noble. So that was a bummer. But I had my Brooklyn launch party. Most of my big press happened the week it came out, which was two weeks ago.

Brian S: Will there be any travel out to other parts of the country?

Jami Attenberg: Yes. I go to the Midwest on Tuesday, so three events in the Chicago area. An indie bookstore in the city, a Barnes & Noble in the suburbs, and my hometown library. And also a Milwaukee reading.

Brian S: Anywhere near Des Moines? (Probably not.)

Shann Palmer: Get thee to the hinterlands—that’s where the action is. Richmond, Virginia at Fountain Bookstore would be a nice place!

Jami Attenberg: I’ve read at Fountain before! I think what I will do next summer…

Brian S: Farther west. You must come farther west.

Jami Attenberg: So next summer I will go tour. Like, get in my car and drive all over the country and just hit a bunch of places.

Jana C: Anything in Los Angeles?

David B: Come to Ohio, the Kingmaker state.

Jami Attenberg: I might go to Los Angeles just for fun the first two weeks of January. And I have a friend who owns a tiny bookstore there in Eagle Rock, I think? So I could set up a reading there last-minute if i wanted to. But next summer will be my big journey to go hang out and meet people.

Brian S: Seriously, if you come to Des Moines I will find you a place to read.

Jami Attenberg: I will come to Des Moines. I think for hardcover we were like, Let’s just go where it makes perfect sense.

Brian S: You can do Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Kansas City, just like that. (I sound like an agent.)

Jami Attenberg: I love, love, love touring. And I love doing readings. I was super excited to do this chat. I could really give a crap about reviews. It’s kind of about the readers.

Brian S: We’re down to five minutes. Any lurkers want to get a question in?

Jana C: Maybe I missed this but, what was the seed that started this fictional story for you?

Shann Palmer: I have to split…I loved the book and the chance to meet you here, and look forward to your future visit to Richmond! Thanks, Rumpus, for another great pick!

Jami Attenberg: Thanks, Shann!

Candy: I have to log off for the night but wanted to say…I really enjoyed your way of writing and loved the book, even if I did not like Richard. Keep up the great writing and I look forward to reading your future work.

Jami Attenberg: Thank you so much, Candy! Jana, I did discuss it a bit. Well, I think they asked about food. I sort of heard Robin’s voice first. The second chapter of the book was actually the first. So I was thinking about someone hitting rock bottom, and health issues. And how family members contend with it when they don’t actually feel like dealing at all. I feel like everyone sort of got to say what they needed to say.

Jana C: Ah, I could see that… I was wondering the other day, why we didn’t hear more of Robin’s voice, and that makes sense.

Jami Attenberg: The most important thing for Robin, the best she was going to get, was reconciling with her mother and finding love.

Jana C: Definitely. And it was super bittersweet the way the granddaughter ended up bonding with Richard.

Jami Attenberg: I didn’t even know that was going to happen until I wrote it. But as soon as I did I knew the book was done.

Jana C: Nice. I love to hear of writing like that.

Jami Attenberg: Like, I wrote him walking out the front door and I was like, Bye, Richard, and then there she was waiting for him.

Megan: I was hoping Robin would direct her fire into her work.

Jami Attenberg: Interesting, Megan.

Jana C: Well done. It did read as a very organic process.

Brian S: Thanks so much for joining us tonight Jami, especially with the storm and all. Good luck with the recovery efforts, and with the book going forward.

Jami Attenberg: Oh, thanks Brian.

Jana C: Thanks, Jami! Look forward to seeing more!

Jami Attenberg: Thanks everyone! I really appreciate all your comments and thoughts. Thank you so much for reading.

***

Related Posts:

• Jami Attenberg Roundup
• “What’s Eating Jami Attenberg?”
• Praise for The Middlesteins
• The Rumpus Book Club Discussion with George Saunders
• The Rumpus Interview with Rosie Schaap

In fact, he surrounds himself with them (1,340 lay about his house to be exact). Queenan reads at least four hours a day every day, and although he is admittedly a slow reader, he has still managed to read 6,128 books in the last 55 years. In his essay “My 6,128 Favorite Books,” Queenan says:

­­­­­My reading habits sometimes get a bit loopy. I often read dozens of books simultaneously. I start a book in 1978 and finish it 34 years later, without enjoying a single minute of the enterprise. I absolutely refuse to read books that critics describe as “luminous” or “incandescent.” I never read books in which the hero went to private school or roots for the New York Yankees. I once spent a year reading nothing but short books. I spent another year vowing to read nothing but books I picked off the library shelves with my eyes closed. The results were not pretty.

To put 6,128 books into perspective, if you read one book a week from the day you were born (52 books a year), and lived to 100, that’s still only 5,200 books! If success was measured on the number of books one reads, Queenan would be this generations Bill Gates.

It’s sad to think about all the good books that will go unread during our lifetime. And every day authors release hundreds of new books into the already overflowing pool. With so many books, where does one begin? For starters, you can always check out The Rumpus Book Club and our Book Reviews to help with your next reading decision.

We know we can’t read every book in this life, but that sure doesn’t stop us from trying.

Related Posts:

• The Rumpus Book Club Discussion with George Saunders
• The Rumpus Book Club Interviews T Cooper
• The Rumpus Book Club Interviews Jami Attenberg
• How Books Clubs Went Indie
• Praise For Dispatch From The Future

The Daily Beast reflects on the successful emergence of indie book clubs in recent years, highlighting the movement as a response to a changing publishing industry. Many indie book clubs attempt to put the reading public in contact with new or little known publications, which is also a large part of The Rumpus book club‘s mission: “to get worthy reads into the hands of subscribers before the media has a chance to weigh in on them – or ignore them.”

Related Posts:

• The Rumpus Book Club Discussion with George Saunders
• The Dish Ran Away With the Andrew Sullivan Readers
• The Rumpus Book Club Interviews T Cooper
• The Rumpus Book Club Interviews Jami Attenberg
• A Lifetime of Literature

“Stein’s poems are the very perfect product of a frenetic in-between culture where knowledge is currency but also poverty, and its artistic output is underscored by a perennial ennui—like the girl in high school who wears a black beret and talks about death all the time.”

Also, be sure to watch the trailer for, as well as The Rumpus’ own Brian Spears reading from, Stein’s book here.

Related Posts:

• Leigh Stein at BOMBLOG
• The Rumpus Book Club Discussion with George Saunders
• The Rumpus Book Club Interviews T Cooper
• The Rumpus Book Club Interviews Jami Attenberg
• A Lifetime of Literature

This is an edited transcript of the book club discussion. Every month The Rumpus Book Club hosts a discussion online with the book club members and the author and we post an edited version online as an interview. You can see the unedited discussion here. To learn how you can become a member of The Rumpus Book Club click here.

M. Rebekah Otto: I just read your interview over at three guys one book, and I wondered if you were reading Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind.

Emily St. J. Mandel: I’m not, but it’s been on my TBR list forever. I wasn’t familiar with that macro/micro writer division he was asking about, so ended up googling it and reading that essay online. Have you read Changing My Mind? Would you recommend it?

M. Rebekah Otto: Yeah, I’m almost done with it, and it kind of feels like a book her agent suggested she put together, because the pieces don’t logically fit together

Emily St. J. Mandel: Interesting

M. Rebekah Otto: But individually, they are all great, everything from her literary discussion to her reviews of Herzog movies. They are like nice snacks that don’t add up to a meal.

Emily St. J. Mandel: She seems really smart. I’ve loved all the essays of hers that I’ve come across in various places.

M. Rebekah Otto: Yeah, I’m really excited for her new novel in September.

Emily St. J. Mandel: Me too! I’ve never read her fiction (White Teeth has also been on my TBR list forever), but if it’s half as good as her non-fiction, I want to read it.

M. Rebekah Otto: Both White Teeth and On Beauty are simply amazing books. I haven’t read The Autograph Man, though.

Brian S: I’ve only ever read White Teeth, which was one of the funniest books I’ve ever read for the first hundred pages or so. Didn’t quite hold up in the second half I thought.

But we’re here to talk about Emily’s book, yes?

Emily St. J. Mandel: It must be difficult to sustain humour for an entire book…

Brian S: Did you spend much time in south Florida when you were working on The Lola Quartet?

Emily St. J. Mandel: I actually didn’t spend any time in Florida while I was writing the book, to be honest. I made everything up. I’ve visited South Florida a couple times, though, and always liked the idea of setting something there.

M. Rebekah Otto: What did you like about it?

Brian S: I lived there for the last six years, until last summer, and the parts about the housing crisis you got dead accurate, so good job on that. Also the descriptions of how there’s an ongoing battle between swamp and civilization.

Kristy: Hello! One thing I really liked about the book was the fact that it wasn’t chronological. The flashbacks were very well done! Why did you choose to tell the story this way?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Thanks, Brian. Rebekah — there was something about the extremity of the climate that kind of grabbed me. Also, there was something so diffuse about the landscape. I felt like it would be a good setting for a noir thing.

Brian S: Well, there’s definitely a history of south Florida noir…

Emily St. J. Mandel: Hi Kristy! Thanks. I’ve always really liked writing that way… I feel like it can be interesting to build all of the sections of the book towards the moments of greatest suspense, even if those moments take place ten years apart in the chronology of the book rather than building the whole book toward a given point in the chronology, if that makes sense.

Kristy: Honestly, that’s why i kept reading. I HAD to find out why she was being hunted!

Emily St. J. Mandel: Oh good. I’m glad it worked for you!

Brian S: This is your third novel, right? Where did the idea for this one spring from?

Roxane G: I’m really curious what you learned from writing this book, if anything. Also, I love that it is set in Florida. I’m a little obsessed with Florida.

Emily St. J. Mandel: This is the third one. It came from a few places… I read a couple articles that I found fascinating, one about the world of foreclosed real estate brokers and the other about Florida’s exotic wildlife problem, and I knew I wanted to write about those things. Also, I live near a really great music club, and there was a gypsy jazz guitar duo that i was listening to a lot, and I knew I wanted to write about that kind of music.

Kristy: After reading the articles, did you do a lot of research about the subjects?

Emily St. J. Mandel: And there was a very strange period when I was eighteen and had my own apartment in Toronto, and I started having the plumbing problem that’s described in the first chapter of the book, where it starts raining in Gavin’s bathroom.

Kristy: that must have been terribly annoying!! haha

Emily St. J. Mandel: Roxane – Florida’s fascinating, isn’t it? I learned a lot about the life of Django Reinhardt while I was researching the book.

Kristy – not a LOT of research, unless obsessive late-night Googling counts. (and yes, the plumbing thing was incredibly annoying. It was like living in a rainforest.)

Roxane G: It really is. My parents have a home there and my mom often updates me about the bear in her neighborhood. Also there are panthers.

M. Rebekah Otto: Panthers?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Panthers? That’s insane. I wish I’d included panthers in the book.

Brian S: Not to mention the alligators which will snack on neighborhood dogs.

Roxane G: Yes. On the drive to her house there is a Panther Xing sign. It’s amazing.

Emily St. J. Mandel: Clearly I need to do a book tour in South Florida. That does sound amazing.

Brian S: The south Florida hockey team–I’ll let that sink in as well–is named the Panthers.

Roxane G: Oh you do.

Emily St. J. Mandel: The South Florida hockey team. Huh. It’s like trying to imagine the Yukon Territory beach volleyball association.

Brian S: I have pictures of the alligators I rode around on a bike trail in the Everglades. It’s a little terrifying, in part because if they’d chased me, I don’t know if I could have outrun them.

Kristy: Were there any characters in the book that were autobiographical in nature?

Emily St. J. Mandel: I have a friend who grew up in South Florida, who describes alligators as cold machines of death. They’re pretty scary.

Kristy — No. I think there’s probably some aspects of myself in a few of them, but none of them are consciously autobiographical.

Roxane G: How did you settle on the title? Were there other titles you had in mind?

M. Rebekah Otto: Do you think back on characters who’ve left you own life at any point? Or other odd anecdotes about people re-entering unexpectedly?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Roxane, to be honest, the title was extremely difficult. I must’ve gone through a half-dozen before I ended up going with The Lola Quartet.

Brian S: Would you mind sharing some of the ones that didn’t make the cut?

Roxane G: No doubt. Titles can be a real challenge. My students are always asking me to teach them how to come up with the perfect title as if such a thing is possible.

Brian S: You tell them to always make a pun, right Roxane?

Roxane G: LOL yes! Easy peasy.

Emily St. J. Mandel: Brian – Sure! The working title was Sebastian. I really liked that one, and so did a few booksellers. Then there was The Sebastian Variations (since the book has so much music, and has some theme-and-variation aspects to it)

Roxane G: The Sebastian Variations is damn good.

Emily St. J. Mandel: Thank you! I liked it a lot.

Roxane G: Now I’m intrigued. Why didn’t you go with Sebastian Variations?

M. Rebekah Otto: I had the opposite question: was there any reason you went with The Lola Quartet in particular?

Emily St. J. Mandel: I have an excellent editor. It happens, though, that we have opposite taste in titles, and I think The Lola Quartet was the only title that we could both stand.

Brian S: What came first in the writing for you–the characters or the setting or the plot or something else?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Brian – I think what came first was the random fascinations: the interior-rain problem, the exotic wildlife in the suburbs, the foreclosure crisis, Django Reinhardt and his music. Then slowly it all started to coalesce into a plot.

Kristy: One thing that struck me was Gavin’s reaction to finally finding Anna and Chloe. I guess I was hoping for the happy reunited ending, but that didn’t happen. Any particular reason why?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Kristy – I felt like there wasn’t a way to bring them all together at the end that didn’t feel forced. Which might of course just be lack of imagination on my part. I felt like the most natural way for the story to end was for Gavin to realize that all he could really do for Anna and their daughter was not tell anyone what Anna had done.

Kristy: I see that. His life was a bit of a mess, and Anna seemed to have hers together.

Roxane G: Are you working on something new right now?

Emily St. J. Mandel: I am! I’m about 160 pages into a first draft (and by first draft, I mean trainwreck) of a new novel.

Roxane G: Oh hell yeah. Do you talk about works in progress? If so, what’s the new book about?

Emily St. J. Mandel: I hope this doesn’t sound precious of me, but I don’t like to talk too much about my books till they’re done. They just change so much during the writing, and I don’t really know what the plot is yet…

Roxane G: Of course. I totally understand.

Sometimes I tell people, “I am working on something involving words.”

Emily St. J. Mandel: Roxane – Ha. I’m going to steal that.

Brian S: How long did The Lola Quartet take to write?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Brian – about two and a half years. That seems to be about my average time to write a novel these days. I wish I could do it faster.

Kristy: I’m always interested in the writing process. You’ve told us how you started the book, the inspiration, but where do you go from there?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Kristy – I just sort of flail around in the dark. Lots of false starts. I start writing, mostly longhand, and at the end of a year I have a (wildly incoherent) first draft that I can then start to shape

Kristy: Longhand? Wow!

M. Rebekah Otto: How do you balance your regular work — like writing for the Millions and elsewhere — with a book-length project?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Rebekah – with extreme difficulty. I’m very fortunate in that my day job is only part-time, but it’s still a struggle some weeks to find the time to write, and I’m always sliding in my monthly Millions pieces in the last couple days of the month.

Brian S: Any particular reason for longhand? I’ve just returned to it a little myself for poems.

Emily St. J. Mandel: I find I think differently when I’m writing by hand. I can’t explain it – maybe something to do with being forced to slow down – but i find it somehow more conducive to first drafts.

M. Rebekah Otto: Is it impolite to ask you what your day job is?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Rebekah – not at all! I’m a part-time administrative assistant at a cancer research lab at a university in NYC.

Roxane G: oh wow!

Emily St. J. Mandel: It’s 17.5 hours a week and has health insurance, which makes it pretty much the perfect day job for a writer, and there are a lot of places to write on campus.

M. Rebekah Otto: That sounds great! Will you ever write a novel set in an oncology wing?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Rebekah – Probably not, but I figure that at least now if I ever set a scene in a lab, it’ll be reasonably accurate

Brian S: That is a cool job!

I’ve gotten to where I’m too easily distracted by the web to compose on a computer, so I’m back in a notebook. PLus I don’t get in trouble for scribbling when I’m supposed to be selling booze.

Kristy: I’m not a writer by any means, but I understand about longhand. Computers seem impersonal to me.

Emily St. J. Mandel: Brian, have you tried Freedom? I swear by that program. It turns off the Internet for however many minutes you set it for. I use it all the time. (MacFreedom.com, $10. I’m not a paid spokesperson, but if anyone from MacFreedom.com is reading this, I think maybe I should be.)

Brian S: I’d just cheat. Seriously, I have no self control.

Emily St. J. Mandel: You can’t turn the internet back on without restarting your computer, and that’s such a pain when you’ve got 10 Word documents open.

Roxane G: I would just move to a different computer. Web browsing has become an intense part of my process.

Brian S: How long of a book tour does your publisher have planned for you?

Emily St. J. Mandel: It looks like it’ll be a series of short tours… I’m going to the south and midwest for a few days later this month, and then a couple dates in Boston and NH in July, and I’m trying to set up a Great Lakes/Midwest tour too. I need to update this, but here’s my events page if anyone’s interested: http://www.emilymandel.com/events.html

Kristy: Bummer, not coming to my area!

Roxane G: Oh cool. I’m reading at Word the night before your party. I will try to come if I can to your launch.

Emily St. J. Mandel: Roxane, that would be fantastic! Thanks.

Kristy — too bad! Where do you live?

Kristy: I’m in the Dallas area. Most book tours go through Austin, it seems.

Brian S: You mentioned that you have a great editor earlier–what sort of relationship do you have with your editor? I’ve never actually worked with one on something big, so I’m curious.

Emily St. J. Mandel: Brian – we have a good working relationship. We get along, and he always makes my books better than they would be otherwise.

M. Rebekah Otto: (One other thing about Zadie Smith: her notes on editors being “smart strangers” is amazing.) Have you worked with the same editor for all three of your novels?

Brian S: Is he really hands on? Have you ever had a situation where you really strongly disagreed on where the book should go?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Rebekah – Yes. He’s the one who bought my first book.

Brian – He is hands-on. He sends back my manuscripts with about a million sticky notes attached to them. We’ve disagreed on small details, but fortunately never on large issues like where the book should go.

M. Rebekah Otto: Do you have another other first readers before you send it to him?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Yes. When I feel like I have a good first draft, I give it to three friends who’ve all written novels, and wait for their notes, and then revise accordingly if what they say makes sense. Then I give it to my agent, who always has notes too, and revise again. The “first draft” my editor sees has already been worked over a dozen times.

M. Rebekah Otto: It sounds like a distance writing group

Emily St. J. Mandel: I suppose so! There’s just so much you can miss and overlook in your own work, because you have no distance — I feel like it’s really important to give it to someone who can say, “you know, that part there doesn’t really make sense…”

I kind of feel like after I’ve been working on a project for a couple years, I can’t even really see it anymore. It’s amazing what kinds of errors can slip by.

Kristy: That’s so true. I used to teach high school English and one thing I drilled into my students’ heads was that there are always errors to find. Proofreading/editing/revising is your best friend!!

Roxane G: Yes, you do develop a blindness to your own work.

Brian S: It’s a wearing process, that’s for certain. I wonder if non-writers really believe us when we talk about how hard writing actually is?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Brian – probably not. I think it probably looks pretty easy.

Kristy: I believe it!! I’ve tried writing and just can’t. It’s not my thing. I’m always impressed when others can.

Emily St. J. Mandel: I’m grateful that my first career was in contemporary dance. Compared to the dance world, writing actually kind of IS easy. Relatively speaking.

Brian S: Either they think it looks easy or they think we have some magical talent which allows words to pour from our fingers without effort.

Emily St. J. Mandel: Kristy – I feel the same way about singing and painting. Hopeless at both.

Kristy: Oh, art. Don’t even get me started!!

Brian, I think it looks easy if a piece is well written. They just don’t see all the work behind it. Very few people realize how much it takes to get a book published!

M. Rebekah Otto: Do you find any similarities between dance and writing? in terms of practice, rigor, etc?

Emily St. J. Mandel: The discipline required is similar, I think.

Emily St. J. Mandel: But one of my favourite things about writing is that if you wreck your knee, your career isn’t over. Also, it’s really nice to think that I’ll never have to go to a dance audition ever again as long as I live.

Brian S: And you have to stay in practice. When I go without writing for a while–just like when I go without playing guitar for a while–my fingers don’t know what to do anymore.

Emily St. J. Mandel: Yes, exactly.

Kristy: Really? that’s not something that occurred to me!

M. Rebekah Otto: What drew you to writing after dance?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Writing was something that I’d always done on the side, since I was a kid, and I just gradually became more and more drawn to it in my early twenties. There was a slow process of going from thinking of myself as a dancer who sometimes wrote, to a writer who sometimes danced, to just thinking of myself as a writer.

M. Rebekah Otto: Creative identity is a never ending discussion, though, right?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Yes, definitely.

Brian S: How hard is it to switch modes? Say from novelist to columnist?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Brian – Depends… sometimes if the novel’s going really well, the last thing I want to do is drop it and work on a book review. Other times, it’s really nice to set it aside for a few hours and do something else.

Roxane G: Have you ever written about dance?

Emily St. J. Mandel: Roxane – I never have. I’ve written a little bit about the theatre world, though, which has some similarities. I’ve somehow never been that drawn to writing about dance.

M. Rebekah Otto: I really enjoyed your last essay at The Millions on Wake Up, We’re Here.

Emily St. J. Mandel: Thanks, Rebekah. I was so impressed by that book.

Brian S: I think that’s the hour. Thanks for joining us tonight Emily and good luck with the book tour.

M. Rebekah Otto: Thank you!

Emily St. J. Mandel: Thanks, Brian! And thanks to everyone who joined in. It’s been a pleasure.

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