The social media editor of Electric Literature is responsible for ensuring the widest possible audience for Electric Literature articles, using both targeted outreach and organic sharing. You’ll be actively engaged with our 225,000-follower Facebook feed and our 260,000-follower Twitter feed: scheduling posts, interacting with followers, and establishing a consistent, informed, and appealing social media voice. But you’ll also be a creative thinker, constantly coming up with new ways to get Electric Lit work in front of the readers who will appreciate it most.
Our mission is to make literature more relevant, exciting, and inclusive. Here’s how you’ll contribute to those goals:
Reading every piece on the site and expressing its content in clear, engaging, motivating ways.
Keeping up with news, conversations, jokes, and the general zeitgeist so you can foreground content that’s on people’s minds.
Generating innovative strategies to reach and appeal to diverse audiences beyond Electric Lit’s existing fans.
Engaging with Electric Lit’s most loyal readers to foster a sense of community.
This is a part-time position, some of which can be done remotely. Candidates should be available to come to Electric Lit’s offices in downtown Brooklyn at least twice a week. Compensation is a monthly stipend based on a commitment of 15–20 hours a week.
Qualifications
You have robust and active personal social media feeds — you don’t need to have a ton of followers, but we do expect to see evidence that you interact regularly and are plugged in to your communities.
You have at least a year of professional social media experience, in some capacity.
You’re an avid reader of contemporary fiction and criticism (being a writer of fiction, essays, or criticism yourself is a plus, but not required).
You thrive in a collaborative environment where you’re trusted to do your own work well, but may also engage in brainstorming or strategizing with your coworkers.
Skills and Expertise
You have a knack for talking to people online and getting them to listen and act.
You’re deeply familiar with the technical side of Facebook and Twitter, including scheduling posts and monitoring stats.
You are proficient in social management platforms such as Tweetdeck.
You have at least a passing familiarity with Tumblr and Instagram.
You follow news about popular social platforms and are able to draw actionable insights from that news.
You’re plugged in to new innovations in social media (bonus points if you can tell us about an up-and-coming network we haven’t heard of).
Responsibilities
Schedule tweets and Facebook posts for each article published on electricliterature.com, as well as sponsored posts and older “evergreen” articles at predetermined minimum intervals.
Regularly monitor notifications on Facebook and Twitter and engage with mentions, retweets, comments, and Facebook messages.
Follow publications, presses, authors, journalists and literary influencers on Twitter and engage with them from the EL account; retweet articles, posts, and information that connects to Electric Literature’s work and broader mission.
Stay informed on major literary conversations happening on social media and share information with staff.
Brainstorm, propose, and if approved, carry out special hashtag and engagement campaigns.
Assist with Instagram posting and help conceive and execute special projects on Instagram.
Post regularly on the Electric Lit Tumblr or manage an intern to do so.
Generate lists of interested parties for specific articles and reach out to ask them to share that content.
Occasionally create press lists for special projects and marquee articles.
Monitor social media analytics and performance; experiment with different posting times, formats, and framing to increase reach and engagement.
Stay informed about best practices for social media, and changes in platforms’ algorithms, tools, and policies.
Track engagement on sponsored posts and provide metrics for sponsorship reporting.
Draft and send the Electric Lit eNewsletter twice per week, with the input of the ED and EIC.
To apply, please send a cover letter, resume, and links to relevant social feeds (Twitter, Facebook if public, Instagram, Tumblr) to editors@electricliterature.com by 11:59 PM on April 22, with the subject: SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR APPLICATION — Your Name.
I n recent years, the variety of books being published by South Asian writers and about South Asian children and teens has exploded — from historical fiction to romance to fantasy to thriller and everything in between. I’ve written extensively about “how publishing success waxes and wanes with shifts in groups’ social and economic capital,” and I believe this boom in books — in so far it is; publishing is still extremely white — is attributable to the arc of 20th-century U.S. immigration history, the establishment of culturally-specific arts networks, and South Asians’ accrued cultural capital.
We chatted about writing race, ethnicity, culture, and identity, and the politics of publishing.
Pooja Makhijani: What does the term “South Asian literature” mean to each of you? What kind of work can and does it encompass?
Sayantani DasGupta: South Asia is a geographic region — comprising India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives and sometimes Afghanistan. When I hear “South Asian literature,” I usually think of writers from those regions, and not necessarily writers from the diaspora. Even though it’s not perfect, lately, people have been using “desi.” I like it better because, to me, it implies people from the region of South Asia, as well as all of us far-flung folks in the South Asian diaspora, all of us from immigrant families who code switch and border-dwell, mixing garam masala in our Thanksgiving turkey as it were.
Sheba Karim (Photo by Christine Rogers)
Sheba Karim: I agree with Sayantani that, for me, “South Asian” literature refers to literature from SAARC countries, while “South Asian diaspora” or desi literature is all encompassing. The field of desi literature is so incredibly expansive, and it always amazes me how there are as many differences as there are commonalities, whether in regard to language or identity politics.
Nisha Sharma: For me, books like Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, which is set in 1950s India, and Tanuja Desai Hidier’s Born Confused about a New Jersey out-of-sorts teen, both occupy space in the South Asian literature arena. The settings are different and the authors are from different continents, but they both share stories rooted in South Asian community and culture.
Sandhya Menon: I agree that the term “desi” can be so accessible. It’s an instantaneous connection with others of similar backgrounds and cultures. It’s a shorthand to friendship, especially in the diaspora.
Pooja: Do you all remember the first South Asian books you ever read? What possibilities and limitations did reading those works offer you as a writer?
Tanaz Bhathena (Photo by Annette Seip)
Tanaz Bhathena: I went to an Indian school in Saudi Arabia and, by virtue, was lucky to have early exposure to South Asian literature at my school library. As a child, I devoured short stories and was really into a comic series called Tinkle Digest. Suppandi, Shikari Shambhu and Kalia the Crow were as popular as Archie, Veronica, and Betty — I remember racing to the library to get my hands on one before anyone else! As a teen, I slowly began writing my own stories; I vividly recall being inspired by Ruskin Bond’s short stories and R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi Days. That said, there were definite limitations to the books I read. As a Zoroastrian, I rarely ever saw depictions of my community in literature. My earliest reference was a Rudyard Kipling story, “How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin,” where the character was simply referred to as “the Parsee.” It wasn’t until I reached my teens and got hold of novels by Bapsi Sidhwa, Rohinton Mistry, and Thrity Umrigar that I began to see the possibilities of being able to write about Parsis. Rohinton Mistry’s Tales from Firozsha Baaginspired me to start my own short story collection — about a group of South Asian teens who went to school in Saudi Arabia. One of those stories became my debut novel.
I remember being both embarrassed and excited to see Indians in ‘Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom’ — depicted as brain-eating savages of course.
Sheba: I grew up in the U.S., and I remember reading The Secret Garden as a little kid and becoming so excited that there was a Hindi/Urdu word (ayah) in the beginning of the book that I ran and showed my mother. Looking back, that’s pretty sad as India only appears in the first few pages as a place of death and pestilence. As a kid, the only book I read with a South Asian protagonist was The Jungle Book. I remember being both embarrassed and excited to see Indians in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom — depicted as brain-eating savages of course. One of my first (electrifying) exposures to South Asian literature was Midnight’s Children, and later, Cracking India by Bapsi Sidwa.
Nisha: I remember kids asking me about India and if it was like Indiana Jones, Sheba. When I first saw the movie, I thought, “What in the hell is this garbage?” But of course, that came with conflicting pride that Amrish Puri was acting in a Hollywood movie. It’s appalling how even bad representation sometimes makes us shrug and say, “Well, we’ve got something.” I’m glad we’re here changing the dialogue.
Sandhya Menon
Sandhya: Even growing up in India, I remember that there was a very clear hierarchy. Books by people like Stephen King and Robin Cook were in far greater supply and much more prized, it seemed to me, than books by Indian writers. When my aunt handed me a copy of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, which had gained international fame, I realized that the world at large did want to read books by Indian women, and that perhaps my voice was more valuable than I’d internalized.
Sayantani: I love The God of Small Things, but I was already an older teen when that came out. I grew up in the U.S., and when I was younger, there was always a huge disconnect between my personal identity and the stories I loved — from Little House on the Prairie to Betsy, Tacy and Tib to A Wrinkle in Time — there was never room for me in those books. No brown girls got to be heroes in those worlds. It’s probably one of the reasons I fell in love with science fiction films and television, such as Star Wars and Star Trek. At least in those distant galaxies, there seemed to be the possibility of someone who looked like me. It wasn’t until I started to read writers of color — Alice Walker, Paule Marshall, Julia Alvarez and Isabel Allende — that I learned to see myself in literature. Salman Rushdie was one of the first South Asian writers I read as a teen, and I fell in love; his novels were funny, profound and irreverent, with tons of unexplained Hindu and Urdu words and South Asian cultural references. His books not only opened up possibilities to me as a reader, but gave me an inkling of what I could be as a writer — unapologetic, energetic and funny!
It wasn’t until I started to read writers of color that I learned to see myself in literature.
Nisha: Because I was in training as a kathak dancer, I was fortunate enough to study Hindu mythology as part of my coursework. I read about gods and goddesses, South Asian folklore and love stories featuring kings and queens. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t diving into a story from the “Mahabharata” or the “Ramayana” or a regional folktale. I was in my twenties when I started searching for contemporary romances with positive representation of South Asians. That’s when I realized the industry limitations I faced as a writer. These limitations were partly why I wrote my novel. South Asians make up over 1.7 billion people in this world and, according to my mother, it’s our mission in life to get married young and have babies. I have no idea why there aren’t more love stories out there.
Pooja: Have you ever felt expected to write to a certain narrative of South Asia or the South Asian diaspora?
Sayantani DasGupta
Sayantani: I love the Chimamanda Adichie quote about the danger of the singular story. I think the singular story about desis, particularly desi women, is that one of suffering and oppression. I’m not saying gender oppression isn’t very real in South Asian communities, but I think there’s a deeply problematic reason that I kept being told, back when I was subbing my joyous brown girl heroine adventure story, to think about writing a realistic fiction story about my heroine’s conflicts with her parents. But I didn’t want to write a story about oppressive parents and “cultural conflict”; it wasn’t actually my experience. The singular story that’s told about desis is one about oppression, not one about resistance.
Tanaz: As a first-generation Canadian immigrant, who wrote a book about the South Asian community in Saudi Arabia, my experience with this was very similar when it came to the typecasting that Sayantani describes for South Asian Americans. I’d query agents, who would get excited by the fact that my novel was set in Saudi Arabia — only to reject me when they found out I wasn’t Saudi and/or Muslim. There was an instance when a publisher wanted me to completely change the setting of my book to Mumbai, likely because I was of Indian origin, even though I’d lived for 15 years in Jeddah and Riyadh. I guess this is why it took me five years to find a publisher! But I had faith in my story and so did my agent. We kept pushing. I refused to be boxed into a narrative just because I’m South Asian.
Sheba: When my agent sent out That Thing We Call a Heart, one editor who rejected it wrote, “I was excited to read this because I really want to publish a Muslim book.” The phrasing “Muslim book” stuck with me, as if there is a such thing as one “Muslim” book. The problem remains that the vast majority of gatekeepers in publishing are white and many have a certain vision of “ethnic” literature that doesn’t jive with reality.
The problem remains that the vast majority of gatekeepers in publishing are white and many have a certain vision of “ethnic” literature that doesn’t jive with reality.
Sandhya: It’s pretty ridiculous that we’re in such a global age, and yet people expect us to tell the same old stories about ourselves over and over and over. I want people to see us laughing and loving and and chasing our dreams and falling flat on our faces and succeeding beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. I want vampires and werewolves who are Indian American and I want fictional (and real) presidents who are Indian American and female and gay. I just won’t stop dreaming and creating until all of that becomes true.
Nisha: An editor once told me that South Asian literature can only sell if it’s literary. An agent at a conference said that writing South Asian young adult was a waste of time because she knew South Asian teens and “they don’t read fiction.” My very first agent I signed with appeared to love my story at first, but then she told me that she refused to go to market with it unless I re-wrote the hero to be white, and changed the heroine’s conflict so that she was fighting against her parents so that she could break free from cultural shackles and be with her white savior. I’ve felt the expectations of others to write to a certain narrative. Those expectations stalled my writing for years, too. I had to consciously separate the expectations of others, and expectations that I developed for myself. Once I did that, I was able to get clarity in what I wanted to do and the stories I was meant to tell.
Nisha Sharma
Sayantani: I’m so unsurprised, but also so sad, to hear so many of us got this same feedback about South Asian stories needing to be of a certain literary type and about oppression and cultural conflict. It’s so frustratingly about Orientalism, racism and colonialism — demanding those kinds of stories is justifying the status quo, justifying this idea that critic Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak talks about of “white men saving brown women from brown men.” We don’t need anyone to rescue us; we’re happy rescuing ourselves.
Nisha: In My So-Called Bollywood Life, my heroine even says, “I don’t need saving. I’m my own hero.” Desi women are strong, resilient creatures. We read romance, act as political leaders and fight rape culture. Why would any of us here and across the world want to read and write stories about stories enforcing a status quo that we’re all trying so hard to change?
Desi women are strong, resilient creatures. Why would any of us want to read and write stories about stories enforcing a status quo that we’re all trying so hard to change?
Pooja: Where do you find your stories? Why are these the stories you choose to tell?
Tanaz: Writing, for me, has always been a way of processing my thoughts and emotions, and that is usually reflected in my work in some form. When I started writing my first book, I wasn’t thinking about the market or what stories were already out there or what would get me an agent. In Saudi Arabia, I had to be really careful about the kind of stories I wrote; I never felt I could be completely honest with my work. I wanted to be able to write something uncensored — to tell a story the way it needed to be told — without the safety net I’d always set for myself as a writer. And I think that’s incredibly important to me whenever I’m writing — the ability to challenge myself and take risks.
Sheba: For my first novel, I drew heavily on my own experience growing up desi in the U.S. The idea for That Thing We Call a Heart was inspired by a short story I wrote for an Indian anthology in which the narrator finds solace in Urdu poetry. My goal in Mariam Sharma Hits the Road was to capture the intensity, power and beauty of best friendships
The idea for the next book I’m working on came to me in a dream. Gotta love those dreams!
Sandhya: Tanaz, I love the idea of challenging yourself and taking risks. When I wrote When Dimple Met Rishi, I was terrified. Although I’d loved YA and rom-coms for many, many years, I’d never thought about writing one myself. And I’d never written so honestly about Indian American culture! It was scary on so many different levels: Could I do all of those things justice? Would people connect with what I was saying? Would anyone understand my humor? Thankfully, through reader response, I’ve realized that my fears were all for nothing. It turns out the world was really hungry for just such a story, which makes me feel so much better about all the other stories I have cooking on the backburner.
Sayantani: The Serpent’s Secret is based on the Bengali folktales I heard as a little girl: stories of flesh eating rakkhosh demons and evil serpent kings, brave princes and princesses and wise-cracking birds. The novel is the fun, fast-paced, space-inspired adventure fantasy that I wanted and needed as a girl but never found. It’s has an intergalactic, demon-fighting brown girl heroine that my now-teenage children never got when they were younger readers. The other thing that’s really important about these Bengali folktales and children’s stories that inspire The Serpent’s Secret is that they don’t belong to any one nationality or religious group. Bengalis from India, Bangladesh and the diaspora know and love these tales, as well as Bengalis from many religious backgrounds, including Hindus and Muslims. I wanted to tell this story to honor those connections between South Asians of different backgrounds, while resisting a homogenizing narrative about these being somehow pan-South Asian or pan-Indian stories — they’re not, they’re really regionally specific.
Sandhya: I’m a firm believer that art creates art. When I experience visceral responses to movies, other books, a visit to a museum or a really great song, my responses, along with the mental commentary that comes with it, are the fuel I use to write my novels. Although I’m fortunate enough to understand and appreciate art from two cultures, South Asian and American, I find that love exists across continents. It’s my favorite emotion to evoke in my work because of its universal nature. That’s why I choose to write romance; I want readers to feel like they’re falling in love, just as I feel like I’m falling in love every time I write a story. It’s a cycle of joy that keeps me going as a writer.
While reading Meaghan O’Connell’s And Now We Have Everything, I started to feel dizzy. She describes in excruciatingly pure detail how it felt to get an epidural while giving birth, and then have that epidural not work. I hadn’t known that was even possible, but through O’Connell’s experience, I learned that some pain can’t be quelled. Her epidural — which she hadn’t planned on getting — didn’t stop the baby from slamming into her uterus, “yanking the entire side of [her] body up and down with the contractions.” She described ligaments tearing away from her bones, causing pain so bad she said she wanted to die.
That’s when I started to feel lightheaded. Or maybe it was before that, when I read about the hollow needle that was inserted into her spine and the medicine that flowed through the needle into her body and felt like an electric shock. Or maybe it was reading about the hospital’s supply of what looked like giant knitting needles wrapped in cellophane used to break a woman’s water. (Actually, I’m pretty sure it was the description of the needles.) There are plenty of moments to choose from that may have made me feel woozy — giving birth is not for the faint-hearted.
But still I read further, faster, finishing the book in less than 24 hours. It was harrowing to read about, and likely brutal to experience, but I was grateful to hear about the horror of giving birth, and later, the struggles of parenting.
Though not yet a mother myself, I want to have kids, and like O’Connell, I find it to be a desire so vulnerable I almost can’t face it. When my fiancé and I talk about when we want children, a tiny part of my brain that I don’t entirely trust starts screaming, “Soon! Now!” But to say it out loud feels too precious, as if the world would hear me and punish me for being brazen enough to want something so good.
I have always been interested in reading stories about becoming a mother, as if it’s something I can study for and ace. I’m not worried about the good parts: I know I’ll love my hypothetical children; I know my fiancé will make a great father; I know there will be moments of joy so profound I can’t yet imagine them. I don’t feel like I need to prepare for the good parts. If I’m lucky enough to experience them, I’ll be glad when they happen.
I’m worried about the bad parts — the parts so bad no one wants to admit them. I want to prepare for motherhood by hearing about people surviving their worst days. I’m begging to hear about the nights you didn’t think you’d make it through without screaming, or when you were in so much pain giving birth you weren’t sure if you’d survive. I’m craving stories of being a human woman and making mistakes and coming out the other side. Hearing how women survive the worst parts of being a mother makes me less afraid to become one myself. When women like O’Connell talk about the hard parts, it lets me know that I’m not alone — that it’s not abnormal — if I should face them, too.
I’m craving stories of being a human woman and making mistakes and coming out the other side.
O’Connell balances the darkness in her story with moments of pure joy. I felt dizzy reading her birth story, but I cried tears of joy when she described her partner joining her in the operating room and both of them meeting their son.
I feel bolstered with this information — the bad with the good — and more ready to face whatever challenges may come. I imagine it’s the difference between wandering tunnels in the dark, and wandering in the dark but once having seen a map that leads to the light. It’s knowing there’s a way through because someone has been there before.
So I search the Internet for birth stories with complications and I read up on painful mastitis. When I read a particularly gruesome detail in And Now We Have Everything, I read it out loud to my fiancé, so that he would be prepared, too. (I ended up reading every particularly painful, funny, or insightful sentence out loud, which is to say, most of them.)
O’Connell writes about both the physical pain she felt, and the emotional turmoil of becoming a new mother. She experienced postpartum depression without realizing it, though I expect even mothers who don’t probably still experience some nights of despair and some moments of shock.
I found myself relating to O’Connell as she described the self-doubt she felt when she was pregnant or as a new mother, especially when she cried in the backseat of a car or in the middle of the street. I recognized myself in those moments, and I feel like that’s the kind of pregnant woman and mother I will be: one who cries a lot. When I’m depressed I cry about nothing, when I’m overwhelmed I cry about everything, when I’m happy the tears just fall like rain. Even not pregnant, I have cried in the middle of the street. If I get pregnant, I will definitely cry, but through my tears I will remember O’Connell crying and the insightful charming words she wrote about it, and I will know she stopped crying eventually long enough to write them, and that will give me hope.
There are stories of male pain everywhere in American culture. Jokes about men getting hit in the crotch are played for laughs for audiences of all ages. People are expected to get references to morning wood and blue balls, and there are names for those experiences. Women’s pain — especially physical pain, especially pain about motherhood, which is often construed as women’s One True Purpose — has fewer words to describe it and fewer shared stories in American culture.
Women’s pain has fewer words to describe it and fewer shared stories in American culture.
And Now We Have Everything is part of the growing canon that breaks down female pain and puts it into words. I have a ravenous appetite for this genre, and a deep need to share my own painful stories with those who will listen. I need stories of struggle more than I want stories of heroism, though in my eyes O’Connell’s story includes both. In an interview, O’Connell said she was writing “in the spirit of ‘Can you guys believe this shit?’” By translating her specific experience of motherhood into a language the childless or the uterus-less can understand, as if talking to a friend about some particularly good gossip, it becomes a story to be shared. It feels like reading an adventure story — a quest, but through birthing classes and daycares, like Harry Potter with pacifiers and amniotic fluid. O’Connell is the Woman Who Lived, only her obstacles were nursing, postpartum depression, losing her sex drive, hearing the cries of someone she loves immensely, and birth itself.
O’Connell writes about having dreamy ideas of the perfect birth and feeling like she failed, in part because of a book she read that seems to romanticize the process. After she had given birth she listened to a podcast that interviewed that author, where the podcast host confronted the author about portraying birth as a relaxed process instead of the violent one so many women experience. When she heard the author admit that for some women it is indeed painful and it is indeed difficult, O’Connell felt relief and forgiveness for a feeling of failure she had been holding onto. She writes:
What if, instead of worrying about scaring pregnant women, people told them the truth? What if pregnant women were treated like thinking adults? What if everyone worried less about giving women a bad impression of motherhood?
To this, I add my own addendum: What if having negative feelings about some aspects of motherhood didn’t make you a bad mother? What if, in fact, having negative feelings about aspects of motherhood, and expressing those feelings, and seeking them out as common experience, actually made you better?
Talking about motherhood is already so charged for some women, with pressure to breastfeed, or not; or work, or not; or sleep train, or not. I’m already worried I won’t be able to breastfeed and I’ll have to explain to everyone in my life why I can’t. That I even have this anxiety before I have kids seems toxic, but it’s real. That’s why I search out these stories of women who became mothers before me and struggled with it — to preempt my own feelings of failure and to try to forgive myself before they occur. I don’t view O’Connell as a failure; I see her a success, and I hope that’s how I will see myself, even if I get knocked down in the process. And Now We Have Everything isn’t a book of parenting advice, but a story of the unvarnished reality of what becoming a mother meant to one woman. And for me, that’s a survival guide.
The following flash fictions come from Dictionary Stories: Short Fictions and Other Findings, a collection of very short stories each composed entirely of example sentences from dictionaries.
97-Over Par
The eleventh fairway of a tiny golf course on a hot, airless night. One of the great stars in the American golfing firmament, insensible with drink, was in a bad temper.
“Go to hell!” he spat. It was past midnight.
Socks at half-mast, missing putts that he would normally hole blindfolded, he swore violently under his breath, like an axeman at work in a tangled thicket. He was then at the height of his sporting career. He unscrewed the top of a flask and drank the contents.
He hit his third shot out of bounds at the 17th. Like a red rag to a bull. His face suddenly turned puce with futile rage, the ball bounced away, and he chased it. He fell with a thud that left him winded.
He lay exhausted and inert, his eyes closed, and with little to distinguish him from one already dead. He lit a cigarette to calm his nerves, and watched the smoke wreathe into the night air.
Sources: New Oxford American Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary, Macquarie Dictionary
The Greatest Story Never Told
“I’m going to tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Here is a children’s fable about love and honesty. It’s a tale about the friendship between two boys, a drama about two young brothers who are abruptly abandoned by their father. It’s an adventure story, a tragic love story, and an unforgettable tale of joy and heartbreak. You’re going to enjoy this.
“The novel deals with several different topics: the sanctity of human life, the dangers of religious extremism, our obsession with the here and now, the yoke of marriage . . . Lots of people don’t bother to get married these days. I wonder whether you have thought more about it? That’s getting off the subject, but never mind. Nothing is more irritating than people who do not keep to the point. Let’s get down to business! Shady characters, an intriguing story, a touching reconciliation scene . . . it’s the best novel I’ve ever read. Now, let me see, where did I put it? Ah, there you are! The book was filmed as a six-part TV serial, and the play was adapted for the big screen! I didn’t enjoy the film; the acting was dreadful, but if you like steampunk, this is a great book for you. Oh, look! The sun’s coming out! I’m kind of thirsty. Would you like a cup of coffee? Shall we have a drink? Let’s have a cup of coffee. Hold on a minute, I’ll be right back.
“Are you all right? You were screaming. Anyway, um, where was I? Let me see, now; oh, yes, I remember. The book is set in the 1940s — ”
Sources: New Oxford American Dictionary, Collins COBUILD Primary Learner’s Dictionary
Fifty More Ways to Leave Your Lover
A fire escape.
A getaway car
A luxury yacht.
A formal complaint.
An uncomfortable silence.
The 100-meters sprint.
A trick question.
A divine revelation.
A foregone conclusion.
A humiliating defeat.
A tearful farewell.
A leaked government document.
A blunt statement of fact.
A bleak prophecy of war and ruin.
A fabulous two-week vacation.
A lack of common decency and sensitivity.
A deliciously inventive panoply of insults.
A joke in very bad taste, the one about the chicken farmer and the spaceship.
Clutching a large black Bible under your arm.
Stowed away on a ship bound for South Africa.
In the labyrinths beneath central Moscow.
Undercooked meats.
A hallucinatory fantasy.
Struggling under mountainous debts.
Nitpicking over tiny details.
Chasing after something you can’t have.
A dozen bottles of sherry.
A fifth of whiskey on a very hot evening in July.
Alcohol dependence.
Screaming incomprehensible blasphemies at one o’clock in the morning.
Sheer wanton vandalism.
Holding a corrections officer at knifepoint.
A misunderstanding of the facts and the law.
Compulsory military service.
Accusations of bribery.
Incontrovertible proof.
Under the guise of friendship.
A mood of resigned acceptance.
A series of lies and deceits.
A feeling of inferiority.
An aching feeling of nostalgia.
A serendipitous encounter.
A beautiful young woman.
An attractive, charismatic man.
A careless error.
A narrow escape.
A short speech.
A natural death.
A pretentious literary device.
Murder most foul.
About the Author
Jez Burrows is a British designer, illustrator, and writer. He is the author of Dictionary Stories: Short Fictions and Other Findings (Harper Perennial, 2018) and his writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Smith Journal, and It’s Nice That. As an illustrator he has worked with The New York Times, WIRED, WNYC, Cards Against Humanity, and others. He grew up on a farm in Devon, studied graphic design at the University of Brighton, and now lives in San Francisco.
The short story certainly isn’t dead, nor is it making a “comeback.” It’s a concise form that continues to be cherished and dissected — and still has the capacity to go viral. Last year, a variety of short fiction collections gained acclaim, and it looks like 2018 has even more in store for us. It’s also an exciting time for new short fiction from authors of color.
Jamel Brinkley’s debut collection, A Lucky Man (Graywolf Press),is one of those titles to look forward to. It parses out the intersections of masculinity, forgiveness (of self and others), and the lives of Black boys and men coming into their own. I could connect with the characters as an African American, as a New Yorker, but also as a writer who seeks to dig deeper into the questions of what drives (and scares) us as individuals. Brinkley’s stories do this with not only finesse but care, not always providing answers or a straight conclusion but always leaving readers sated. His work has been published widely and has garnered him a Stegner Fellowship, The University of Wisconsin’s Creative Writing Fellowship, and inclusion in the The Best American Short Stories 2018 edited by Roxane Gay.
I had a chance to speak with Jamel about the shared connections and traumas of the Black community in New York and America, and how those experiences make their way into his stories.
Jennifer Baker: I’ve talked with a few writers about this before: the suggestion from readers that your fictional work may be autobiographical. And I wonder if, for writers of color, this gets heightened. Be it in the workshop environment or simply when sharing it with the larger world. When it comes to stories that feature Black men in particular and that looks at so many particulars of coming-of-age have you found that these stories tend to be routed in something personal for you?
Jamel Brinkley: This reminds me of something that happened at a reading I went to a few years ago. Chinelo Okparanta was the reader, and during the Q&A, a white woman asked a question that implied the work was basically pure autobiography, with maybe just a dash of fictional art. Chinelo answered the question in an elegant and diplomatic way, but then another published Black writer who was in the audience asked Chinelo if she often gets questions like the one asked by the white woman. It was a wonderful way to call attention to the presumption of autobiography that is often made of work by writers of color and, often, by women writers of all races. It happens a lot, yes, and even if it isn’t intended to be an insult, I take it as one. As if our imaginations are so lacking and limited that they can’t go beyond bare facts.
That said, I think all writers use refracted experiences. So my stories are rooted in things I’ve lived, be they house parties in Brooklyn, or J’ouvert, or day camp, or what have you. But often the root that get be started on a story becomes very small by the time the story is done, or it becomes transformed in a really significant way.
Jenn: And New York City has a big place in your collection.
Jamel: Yeah. I grew up in Brooklyn and the South Bronx, and I’ve also lived most of my adult life in Brooklyn. Those neighborhoods and people loom large for me. Toni Morrison has that phrase: “From my perspective there are only Black people. When I say ‘people,’ that’s what I mean.”
Well, when I think about characters or people that I want to write about, I think about the people I know from the Bronx and Brooklyn.
When I think about characters or people that I want to write about, I think about the people I know from the Bronx and Brooklyn.
Jenn: That’s kind of a refreshing take. At least to me it is, to not see us have to be “othered” in the way that we usually are in media but in NYC, when from and residing in NYC, I very rarely as a Black woman ever feel like I’m not part of the everyday population of this city.
Jamel: Right. We are at the center of our own lives.
Jenn: Do you find that’s also somewhat freeing to write about? In stories like “J’ouvert 1996” and “Everything the Mouth Eats” and “A Lucky Man” there’s no need to dissect race. Not to say you avoid speaking about race, but it’s not necessarily at the epicenter of an emotional or literary crisis for your characters. Which in itself is refreshing for me as a reader.
Jamel: It’s freeing in the way that just hanging out with my family is freeing, if that makes sense. Or the way that hanging out with my friends in school growing up was freeing. We know who we are, Black and Brown folks just living, and there’s no need to pander to whoever, a white audience or white readers. Of course, white supremacy in all of its manifestations is there, along with other forms of oppression, but in my stories I think they’re there as just one part of all the things my characters have to contend with in the struggle just to live everyday lives.
Jenn: What I also love are those details that I saw in my grandma’s house growing up. I don’t care who you are but if you were Black in America you more than likely had those oversized wooden spoons hanging on the walls.
Jamel: Oh without a doubt! It was fun to dip into my memories of details like that, or to look at old photographs and see those incredible details, which are so specific but communal and shared at the same time.
Jenn: And the fashion. House dresses. Scarves. Culottes all that comes to mind as a child of the ’80s living in NYC. The pyrex and cast irons that got passed down…
Jamel: Yes! And this is part of what I mean by freeing like family time is freeing. What we’re doing right now reminds me of sitting around with the aunties and cousins and talking about so-and-so’s house, or that outfit he used to wear. That kind of sharing is freeing.
Jenn: Extremely. I spoke to a (Black male) writer and he said to me that when you write a certain type of literary fiction and they feature Black men and you are a Black man that it’s hard to find your audience. It seems, to me at least, that A Lucky Man has found a lot of resonance based on what you’re saying of not worrying about a white gaze. But do you think as a Black male writer there is an absence of simply stories about young Black men living and not necessarily fighting for their lives in the sense of fighting against power structures/systemic systems?
Jamel: One thing that struck me while my collection was being considered by various publishing houses was how often the editor’s comments would be along the lines of, “These are such sensitive and nuanced portraits of these men!” On the one hand, that maybe does point to an absence of such stories about Black men, but on the other hand, my thought was, “But these are the kinds of Black men I know!” I will say too that I think almost 20 publishing houses looked at this book. Not one major/mainstream/corporate/however-you-want-to-say-it press showed significant interest. Only a few independent houses wanted to publish my collection. I know that short story collections are tough sells, so I’m sure that was a big part of it, but the kinds of stories I’m writing about Black men may have been a factor too. Is it a risk to publish stories like mine? I hope not, but maybe it is.
I know that short story collections are tough sells, so I’m sure that was a big part of it, but the kinds of stories I’m writing about Black men may have been a factor too.
Jenn: “Everything the Mouth Eats” is one of my favorite stories in the collection. What struck me is the dynamics of healing but also the writing of trauma. This story made me think more on how we see trauma exposed, but also as a woman, how often I see it handled and how little I see of it presented in a way that cares for the character. As a writer I felt like what was in your story was, “I want to get this across, but I also don’t want to abuse this person again for your entertainment.” So how do you approach a story like that?
Jamel: This reminds me of the discourse around sharing footage of Black people being murdered by the police, the ethics of that.
Jenn: You know, that was on my mind too actually.
Jamel: That story actually started because I wanted to write something that was in conversation with “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin. And one of the things that strikes me about that story, is not just the incredible language in that final scene — a miracle of a scene, really — but the way the narrator’s voice ushers us toward that ending from the very beginning. Baldwin’s story feels powerfully voiced and radically peopled, and I wanted to see if I could do that in my story. The center of my story isn’t the trauma or abuse the brothers experienced, it’s the relationship between the brothers themselves.
Jenn: Exactly. Because we’re leading up to an idea of what caused this fracture between them. And I feel like all of your stories are an interrogation of deeper feelings that exist yet cannot be verbalized. We’re dealing with this basic understanding and relating of one another on a human level. Is that always the seed of a story for you?
Jamel: The seeds of my stories vary. A seed could be a particular place, or a snippet of memory, or a character, or a voice. But in the process of trying to nurture that seed, I do think I’m always trying to push toward deeper feelings that are difficult to verbalize. I don’t think language as given is very good at capturing the range and complexity of human feeling. Somehow “emotion words” show themselves as lacking. Literary sentences and poetic lines can make language do things that, as commonly used, it isn’t very good at. I never want to expose my characters. There’s something lurid or tabloid about that word, expose. I want to explore my characters, a process which assumes their depth, complexity, and humanity. It also assumes that I won’t get answers to all the questions my stories ask of them, and that there will always be more questions.
Jenn: So, as an instructor of writing how do you push student writers to also pursue that complexity?
Jamel: This is a question I’m constantly asking myself. I’m starting to think that one way of pursuing that complexity is to court a certain amount of “messiness.” The kind of messiness that is tolerated in novels but not usually in stories. Here’s what I mean: Student writers are often told that a great story, as opposed to a great novel, has to be perfect. But what if the pursuit of perfection in story (a perfect arc or narrative shape, a perfect ending, etc.) serves to lessen the complexity of that story’s characters? What if characters end up saying things only for the perfection of the story, or if they show themselves only to the extent that the so-called perfection of a story will allow? One of the things I love about Edward P. Jones’s stories is that they feel untidy in a brilliant way. You get the sense that he loves his characters and they get to take the stage in ways that don’t make conventional sense. Those fugitive paragraphs about “minor” characters are kind of rebelling against the perfection of the story form, and I really admire that. It feels like life. So I think I just have to find ways to get my students to love their characters a little bit more than they love the perfection of the story-object. Wish me luck.
I’m starting to think that one way of pursuing that complexity is to court a certain amount of “messiness.”
Jenn: Godspeed, my friend. In terms of other short stories to learn more about, well anything, are there any in particular you’d recommend?
Jamel: Well, an Ed Jones story I’d recommend in terms of what I was just talking about would be “Old Boys, Old Girls.” I’d recommend “Virgins” by Danielle Evans to learn how to productively make trouble for your characters. “Gold Boy, Emerald Girl” by Yiyun Li is so patient, and it brilliantly handles multiple points of view, and that ending — my god! “The Ascent” by Ron Rash is a great lesson in writing close third, especially from the perspective of a child, and it doesn’t sensationalize the boy’s traumatic circumstances. “A Day” by William Trevor is a wonderful “aftermath” story. And “The Mistress” by Gina Berriault is great in terms of the consequences of a character’s desires. And if you want your socks knocked off in general, reread “Sonny’s Blues” forever.
“The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges,” Thoreau wrote, on reading and reflecting at Walden Pond’s edge. That’s not all it’s mingled with, Henry. According to a new study published by the journal PLOS One and reported by The Guardian, the pure Walden water is also mingled with the sacred water of tourists’ loins.
The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of tourists’ loins.
Every year, half a million would-be Transcendentalists flock to Walden Pond to admire the site that inspired Thoreau’s 1854 meditation Walden, or Life in the Woods. They burn campfires, hang out on the beach, and well, pee in the pond. “More than half of the summer phosphorus budget of the lake may now be attributable to urine released by swimmers,” the study reports. And while there have been some important efforts to restabilize the shorelines and reduce soil erosion in the past 40 years, there are still significantly higher percentages of algae in the darkening sediment in the pond. These are foreboding signs that the pond could soon become “a murky, green stew of algae” Curt Stager, one of the authors of the report, explained to CNET. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Say what you will about Thoreau and his pseudo-solitude out in the wilderness while his mom took care of his laundry at home. But this isn’t the only time we book lovers, in our overzealous passion for the ephemera of our favorite authors, have caused some trouble. Other wonders of nature are also being trampled by book lovers: after the publication of Bill Bryson’s Walk in the Woods and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, both the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail experienced record-levels of hikers who eroded and trashed the trails. This cramped everyone’s solitude style, but more importantly, killed loads of butterflies. Before the surge of Patagonia and Danner boot-clad lost souls, the Katahdin Butterfly flourished at the top of the Appalachian Trail in Maine. Now, the Katahdin Butterfly is endangered.
This isn’t the only time we book lovers, in our overzealous passion for the ephemera of our favorite authors, have caused some trouble.
And how can we forget about the reportedly “‘aggressive’” Hemingway fan who got too close to the six-toed Martha Gelhourn (the cat, not to be confused with the war correspondent and ex-wife she’s named after), one of Hemingway’s approximately fifty polydactyl cats on his estate in Florida Keys? When Martha Gelhourn bit her, the tourist had Gelhourn put into custody at a local vet to check for rabies. After determining Gelhourn was rabies-free, Gelhourn was released back into the estate’s custody.
Then there are the very conscious, on-brand literary acts of vandalism, like the perpetual defacing of Sylvia Plath’s grave in Hepstonhall, England. Her tombstone reads “Sylvia Plath Hughes” but “Hughes” has been repeatedly chiseled off, and the whole tombstone kidnapped by those who believe Plath’s relationship to Hughes was toxic and linked to her suicide.
What does all this say about how we care for our beloved literary landmarks? In one way, it illuminates how books can mobilize passionate readers to gather and makes literary worlds come to life after the book’s been closed. But another, graver suggestion comes from Thoreau himself: “A lake,” he writes, “ is a landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” If ponds are anything like lakes, then our own depths are urine-drenched algae sludges. Looks like we’ve got some cleaning up to do.
This time last year, at World Wrestling Entertainment’s biggest event, WrestleMania, John Cena — perhaps the company’s biggest-known star — pulled out a move rarely seen in the WWE. He proposed to Nikki Bella, his girlfriend of more than five years, in the ring.
It was a long time coming: Bella had been vocal on reality television about her desire to marry Cena. (The two co-star on the show Total Divas and its spin-off, Total Bellas.) Their pre-WrestleMania storyline had leaned hard on Cena’s reluctance to put a ring on it, but this only made the end game more obvious. After Cena and Bella emerged victorious from their match with fellow wrestling/reality TV power couple The Miz and Maryse, Cena explained that when Bella underwent career-threatening neck surgery, he’d had a change of heart. “Right when they were wheeling you into the ER,” he said, “you were glassy and in and out [of consciousness], at the very last second I… leaned in and whispered… ‘Do you know, one day I’m going to marry you?’ And you said yes.
I need you to say yes one more time,” he continued as he pulled an engagement ring out of the pocket of the jean shorts in which he wrestles and got down on one knee to propose.
Since then, Bella has almost disappeared from the ring, wrestling in only two matches in the last year. On Total Divas she ascribed her absence to her neck injury, but for most casual WWE viewers, it would be natural to conclude that Bella stopped wrestling every week because, having landed a husband-to-be, her story is effectively over. This hearkens back to a time when it was the norm for women to leave work upon getting engaged. Nikki Bella has effectively reached the marriage plot.
The marriage plot was a common literary convention amongst authors like Jane Austen, Samuel Richardson, and George Eliot in the 18th and 19th centuries. What distinguishes a “marriage plot” from merely a plot containing a marriage is that it treats the quest for matrimony as the driving force of the story. Once betrothal is achieved, the narrative is over — and more specifically, for most works in this category, the woman’s story is done.
What distinguishes a “marriage plot” from merely a plot containing a marriage is that it treats the quest for matrimony as the driving force of the story.
Marriage plot-based works coincided with the rise of marriage as a declaration of love instead of a business transaction. They focused on middle class heterosexual couples and the hijinks that would ensue on their way to the altar, after which they would presumably live happily ever after. Today the trope can be found in pop culture far and wide, from Disney to perhaps the biggest and most (commercially, if not matrimonially) successful example in current culture, The Bachelor, to much-maligned romance novels and rom coms, to the dreaded amalgamation of the two genres: The Twilight Saga and the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy, which present marriage as the pinnacle of a woman’s life and the end of her story. We may be burdened with slightly more of Bella Swan and Anastasia Steele’s stories after they make it to the altar, but they are crafted as so utterly boring, protagonists so at the mercy of their husbands’ whims that they could turn even the keenest bride-to-be off of wedded bliss.
Anyone who’s watched even a minute of Nikki Bella on WWE or reality television can see that she’s not naturally inclined to limit her life this way. She’s vivacious, career-driven, and passionate. Though she’s never let the word pass her lips (she prefers “women’s empowerment”), it could be deduced that she’s a feminist, concerned about how her actions will further the plight of women in wrestling and the entertainment industry more broadly.
But both Bella and Cena are deeply materialistic members of the self-made middle class for whom marriage — and perhaps more to the point, a lavish wedding — is still seen as the ultimate status symbol. Initially, the rise of the marriage plot coincided with the creation of the predominantly white middle class, and the majority of works grounded in this genre are about white people who are, if not wealthy in their own time, certainly wealthy by today’s standards. (Though families like Austen’s Bennetts considered themselves poor by comparison to their peers, they also own property and have servants.) Wrestling, too, was traditionally a pastime of the poor and working class of the South; it wasn’t until WWE came along on cable television, rendering many independent companies bankrupt, that wrestling became a money-making machine. In the ring, rich characters are often the bad guys whom the audience roots for the underdog to supersede, a fact that seems to escape Cena, who still carries on like the working class “thug” from West Newbury, Massachusetts, despite having a net worth of $55 million. Bella, for her part, wants to be “the female Rock” (Dwayne Johnson), setting up fashion, real estate and wine companies to secure her financial future away from wrestling. By choosing to center their engagement in storylines, WWE is incorporating the aspiration of marriage between two upwardly mobile stars into its brand.
While Bella spends time away from wrestling, Cena is still a common fixture. His current storyline sees him vying for a match at this year’s WrestleMania; it has only occurred to him earlier this week that he might not compete. If any member of this powerhouse couple should be inching towards the marriage plot, it’s Cena — after fifteen years at the top, it might be time to pass the torch onto someone else. But in wrestling, as in most other industries, women have a much shorter shelf life than male competitors. Female WWE employees who are over 35 are often embroiled in regressive storylines about their maturity while men are allowed to wrestle well into middle age. (Bella is 34; Cena will be 41 this month.) And besides, the dictates of the marriage plot say that a wedding is a woman’s only reasonable goal. Having achieved that, Bella does not, by the cultural standards WWE is trading in, need to chase anything more.
If any member of this powerhouse couple should be inching towards the marriage plot, it’s Cena. But in wrestling, as in most other industries, women have a much shorter shelf life than male competitors.
Though it hasn’t been explicitly stated that Bella is retiring to become a wife, implicitly her storyline buys into not only the idea that women wrestlers have a use by date and male wrestlers do not, but the outdated notion that women, especially women of a certain age, cannot be married and pursue work outside the home concurrently.
In a way, it’s Bella’s involvement in Total Divas, the majority of the cast of which are all married or in serious relationships, that subverts the marriage plot; the show banks on its viewers deeming all the participants interesting enough to keep watching them even after their televised weddings. In fact, the reality genre as a whole seems to flip the marriage plot script: how many reality show premises begin after the nuptials? Newlyweds, Basketball/Mob Wives, 19 Kids & Counting, Jon & Kate Plus 8, all of Tori Spelling’s recent ventures, the Kardashian konglomerate and The Real Housewives all contribute to shattering the marriage plot in some way, while simultaneously holding it up. Given the presumed gender breakdowns of reality TV and westling’s audiences, it’s not surprising that WWE would be less likely to balk at portraying marriage as a trophy to collect on the way to success. But women are 40 per cent of WWE’s audience, many of whom found the company through its women wrestlers’ involvement in reality TV. WWE positioning heterosexual relationships in stereotypical ways only does its increasingly diverse audience a disservice.
WWE positioning heterosexual relationships in stereotypical ways only does its increasingly diverse audience a disservice.
Roxane Gay writes in The New York Times about the marriage plot and The Bachelor: “Eventually, inevitably, there is a bold, desperately romantic declaration of love followed by a happily ever after.” Bella got her grand gesture and is well on the way to her happily ever after so, as far as the marriage plot is concerned, she doesn’t have to keep wrestling. If Bella’s neck is what’s preventing her from continuing her wrestling career, then her health and safety is more important than furthering any gender equality agendas. But if not her absence from the wrestling ring in favor of a wedding ring is disappointing and, unfortunately, to be expected.
When I reunite with my friends from college after a long absence, I’m always astounded by how quickly we’re able to revert back to the easy jokes and comforting familiarity of our youth together: we call it the friend shorthand.
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The friend shorthand is a common phenomenon that most people can relate to, but I’ve always wondered: can that bond still exist after an extended period of time, say, 10 years? What if one member of the group isn’t present? Does that change the dynamics of the friend group? What magic chemistry bonds a group of people together in the first place?
These questions and more are answered in Rebecca Kauffman’s novel The Gunners, which flashes back and forth between a group of childhood friends during their formative years and when they reunite as adults for the somber occasion of a comrade’s funeral. As the secrets from the rift that separated the group are revealed and reckoned with, the reader begins to question exactly how our interpersonal morals shape our friendships and our lives.
The author and I spoke about her construction of the novel, the nature of friend reunions, and the age old question: can people change?
Rebecca Schuh: The Gunners got me thinking about how social groups form. How did you go about creating a friend group on the page that felt authentic to real life?
Rebecca Kauffman: Mikey is the heart and soul of the book to me, and I felt strongly that he needed to be a good kind person with a good kind heart, that was the character I wanted to celebrate. I had a disagreement with my agent about that, she pointed out that that didn’t sound like it would make for a very interesting protagonist. I would tend to agree, but I dug my heels in and insisted on writing him that way because I wanted to celebrate a good brave heart even existing in a heavy and sad person. So in creating Mikey as a reserved, full of self doubt but supremely kind and giving person, which he doesn’t even recognize about himself, I wanted to surround him with people who were very different and would pull out different aspects of his personality.
That’s not to say that any of the other characters are bad people with bad hearts, but they might be incredibly bombastic or aggressive. So to differentiate each character from the next was both necessary, narratively speaking, and fairly real, drawn from my own past experiences and memories of my own little neighborhood crew. We were a rather diverse group of kids when it came to personalities.
RS: Did any of your friends inspire the characters or the dynamic of the group?
RK: Definitely the dynamic more than specific characters. I grew up in very rural Northeastern Ohio, all farmland. I grew up in a triplex with my immediate family, my grandma lived in the middle unit, then at the far end my aunt and uncle and their two sons who were very close in age to me. I also had a sister who is two years older than me. So the four of us were very close, totally inseparable companions. We had some sort of rowdy neighbor boys who were equally scary and thrilling to me. They would sometimes sort of join our little band of adventurers. We ran wild through the fields and the streams, we had a pond we would fish in.
We were pretty wild kids, but the setting of The Gunners is of course different and the individuals are quite different. The dynamic of total exuberance, having a little band of every day playmates, that was a direct connection. You don’t second guess yourself and your personality and intellect the way that you start to in adolescence and all that. I think there’s something purely joyful about that dynamic.
To be a good friend is to care for another person, to be vulnerable with them, to accept them for who they are, to help them be the best version of themselves, and ultimately, to be kind.
RS: I was thinking about how with adult friendships, you’re like okay, what do my friends and I have in common? What are we centered around? Is it a job? Mutual friends? So often as a kid, you’re just thrown together into this exuberant play world and then watching how those relationships grow and change. What did the characters have in common versus what was circumstantial about their growing up together?
RK: Despite growing up on the same block, so sharing [similar] socioeconomic status for the most part, each of those households was very different. I picture Alice’s household with her older brothers as being super loud and chaotic and messy and fun, constant arguments, constant fun, whereas Mikey’s home was silent — I picture his home being almost tomblike in just how somber his father was.
I imagine the individual home lives being different and fostering different kinds of energy. In Mikeys case this sort of devolved into questioning himself and this deeper heavier burden of who am I andow do I belong in this world? Versus Alice, for example, I don’t think those questions would have occurred to her at a young age. Maybe not ever.
And then when you re-encounter them as adults, by that point they have all gone down very different paths and the only common ground seems to be the past. I wondered if the past alone was enough to continue to unite them, and I don’t know that I have a clear answer. I would like to think yes, that’s my hunch, but I don’t ever set up to answer everything in my fiction.
RS: I was thinking about the phenomena where you reunite with friends you haven’t seen in a while and there’s this kind of magic that happens, slipping back into these patterns of behavior and speech. How do you think it’s possible that people are so easily able to slip back into old patterns that haven’t been alive in years?
RK: I think it’s instinct to a certain extent, if you’re a somewhat perceptive person you understand how your behavior is going to impact the people around you and what is going to create the best results. Writers in particular tend to be quite sensitive to that as fairly observant people in general. I feel that very acutely, it’s not something I’m super proud of — but I know that I can really quickly sort of transform myself based on past experiences with people and what I know would make them happy, what will make the dynamic the easiest between us. There’s something very natural and very human about that on the one hand, but on the other hand, I don’t know that I like my ability to do that all that much. There’s something that feels like it might be a little bit manipulative.
RS: That’s really interesting, I’d never thought about it that way before but that makes a lot of sense. Do you see one character as having more of the ability to shift the dynamic of a situation?
RK: Alice is definitely in control of pretty much every situation. Every scene where she’s present she’s controlling things. A review came out a day or two ago that pointed out that Alice isn’t just trying to be in control for the sake of being in control, but she tries to control things because she wants to pull things out of those around her. And I think that’s true, I wasn’t consciously writing towards that but I definitely think she has this amazing ability to pull other people out of their shell and force them to become vulnerable which ultimately, especially in Mikey’s case, allows him to at least see the possibility of a happier life and a happier way of fitting into the world than he would have come to on his own. It’s not really his choice. She forces that upon him, forces him to become vulnerable with her, but in my opinion it’s positive.
RS: When Mikey and Alice are alone, they talk about whether or not people can change. Do you believe that people can change?
RK: That is the question that made me write this book, and I don’t know. I probably entered into this book with the opinion that at their essence people don’t change, they can’t change. I don’t know that I feel that way now, but I also don’t know that I could firmly come down on the side that people do change. We alter our behavior to suit the people around us. As you grow up you start to notice things that you do and don’t like about yourself and you try and improve upon yourself, hopefully, but there’s a very base impulse that exists within each of us.
We alter our behavior to suit the people around us.
RS: I don’t know either. It’s a crazy thing to think about. Throughout the novel the characters are coming to peace with death in their own ways. Of course they’re attending a funeral, but there’s also the quote where someone says “sure, death’s a little scary, but life is the real bitch.” What was your process of bringing the characters to their individual realizations of death?
RK: That was Alice, quoting her own grandmother at the end of her life. I think probably all these characters would agree with that to a certain extent.
I would say that partly my decision to create an ensemble cast here is my interest in the fact that I think a lot of people I know, and I’m certainly guilty of this myself, think that their lives are in some way unique or their pain is in some way singularly profound. I just don’t think that’s true. We all experience joy and loss and pain at different stages but I just don’t think there’s that much that differs in human emotional landscapes from one person to the next. So I think having these characters hearing one another’s stories and what has burdened them in the ten years, that they’ve sort of fallen out of touch is one way for them to get out of that narcissistic impulse to think that somehow our individual pain is more profound. So I guess it’s not speaking super directly to questions of life and death but recognizing what is shared between us is an important part of the process of grappling with morality.
RS: Near the end of the book, there’s a line: “Mikey wondered if having a dear friend, and being a dear friend, might be almost as good as being a good man.” Do you have think that being a good friend is almost as good as being a good person?
RK: What does “being a good person” even mean? To be a good friend is to care for another person, to be vulnerable with them, to accept them for who they are, to help them be the best version of themselves, and ultimately, to be kind. Ideally you apply those qualities to everyone in your life whether or not they are a close friend.
I believe being a “good person” is completely meaningless outside the context of how you treat people. So treating everyone as a friend — with kindness, generosity, vulnerability — in my opinion far outweighs any other sort of way we might be tempted to quantify or define “goodness.”
Alma Schindler Mahler, the historical heroine of my new novel Ecstasy, was everything I am not. She was larger than life. An exuberantly extroverted diva. The It-Girl of fin-de-siècle Vienna. When Alma stepped into the salon in her white crepe-de-chine gown, the air crackled with electricity, so mesmerizing was her presence. Artists, architects, and poets vied for her attention.
Gustav Klimt chased her across Italy to give her her first kiss when she was just a teenager. Gustav Mahler fell in love with her at a dinner party and proposed only weeks later.
Her subsequent husbands and lovers included Bauhaus-founder Walter Gropius, artist Oskar Kokoschka, and poet Franz Werfel. But she was her own woman to the last, polyamorous long before it was cool, one of the most controversial women of her time.
I, on the other hand, am a wallflower. At parties, I struggle with small talk and spend more time listening than speaking. What do I have to talk about anyway? I sit in my study and write all day, then rush to the boarding stable to muck out my horse. Hardly the most scintillating cocktail party conversation — but I prefer long hikes to cocktail parties anyway. I would have bored Alma in real life, and she would have overwhelmed me. So why was I so drawn to her as a character, this over-the-top party girl who was more interested in currying male favor than currying horses?
The simple answer would be that I was attracted to Alma because I saw in her something lacking in myself — that I felt compelled to write about my unlived life, my imaginary cinema self who is far more sparkling, witty, beautiful, and courageous than I could ever be. This idea — that authors create the heroines we long to become — is the most obvious explanation. It’s also wrong.
I would have bored Alma in real life, and she would have overwhelmed me. So why was I so drawn to her as a character?
The truth is that I fell in love with Alma because she was like me. In her diaries, Alma revealed a secret self that made my heart leap in recognition. In these private pages, I discovered a cerebral and paradoxically lonely young woman. Most poignantly of all, considering everything that happened later in her life, she burned with the ambition to become a composer. This Alma was so unlike the cliché of the extroverted socialite and femme fatale. This Alma became my soulmate — a thing that on the surface seemed impossible.
In February 1898, having just returned home from the Vienna Court Opera’s performance of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, seventeen-year-old Alma wrote the following passage:
If only I were a somebody — a real person, noted for and capable of great things . . . I want to do something really remarkable. Would like to compose a really good opera — something no woman has ever achieved.
Alma was a highly cultured young woman who spent far more time reading or engaging with art and music than she did flirting at parties. She attended concerts, operas, plays, and art exhibitions several times in any given week. Her late father, Emil Schindler, was an iconic Austrian landscape painter and her stepfather, Carl Moll, was co-founder of the Vienna Secession art movement. Alma devoured philosophy books and avant-garde literature. She was a most accomplished pianist — her teacher thought she was good enough to study at Vienna Conservatory. However, Alma didn’t want a career of public performance. Instead she poured her entire soul into composing. Her lieder, written under the guidance of her mentor and lover, Alexander von Zemlinsky, are arresting, emotional, and highly original and can be compared with the early work of Zemlinsky’s other famous student, Arnold Schoenberg.
A portrait of Alma Mahler at around age 20
But the odds were stacked against her. Women who strived for a livelihood in the arts were mocked as the “third sex” — the fate of Alma’s friend, the sculptor Ilse Conrat. When a towering genius like Mahler asked Alma to give up her composing career as a condition of their marriage, she reluctantly succumbed.
Yet underneath it all she was still that questing young woman who yearned to create symphonies and operas. Shortly before her marriage, 22-year-old Alma wrote in her diary, “I have two souls: I know it.”
The times and circumstances Alma lived in all but forced her to enmesh herself in the lives of famous men in hope of being remembered at all. It’s only thanks to feminism that I have the liberty to hide in my writing cave instead of being decorative and charming in the salon. I could be my own person and follow my creative path because rule-breakers like Alma helped pave the way for me.
In terms of conventional “morality,” I am no better than Alma. For all her reputed promiscuity, I probably dated more people during my undergraduate years in college than Alma did during her entire life. My romantic escapades would have branded me a fallen woman — or worse — had I lived in Alma’s time. Never mind the fact that in turn-of-the-twentieth century Vienna, it was extremely rare for women to attend university at all. Entire faculties, including the School of Medicine, were barred to female students.
Realizing how similar I was to this ultimate party girl made me realize that ideas like introvert and It Girl are artificial and limiting. What Alma taught me is that there are no good women or bad women. She taught me the value of being fully, authentically human, whatever the cost. She drove home the point that pure and impure, faithful and loose, madonna and whore are simply poisonous projections used to deny women their full expression of being. Alma was not any one color, dark or light. She was the whole spectrum. So it is with all of us. Regardless whether we’re cloistered introverts or glamorous socialites, every woman contains the totality, the heights and the depths.
Designer Matthew Revert’s playful, witty mock book covers poke loving fun at the tropes of book design, a Zen activity that he says helps him relax for a few minutes between serious design work. But they also cut uncomfortably close to the bone about the occasionally stultifying predictability of publishing. I’ve paired them with parody book summaries based on the imaginary plots of some popular, but mostly overrated novels. You win the right to feel smug if you guess which books I’m satirizing for each—but most of these covers could go with like a hundred books, which is the whole point.
At the age of 17, Jonathan Xanax woke up in a potato field in Idaho with all his teeth missing. The last thing he remembered was attending a black-tie gala in New York for billionaires three weeks ago. A hardcore substance abuser (weed, cocaine, Tide Pods) from the age of three, he made the hard decision to enter rehab when he was told he must quit using or die before he can legally enter a strip club. A true story of Jonathan’s three days in rehab.
Always and Sometimes, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Kang raves, is “quite a good book for an airplane read that I happened to pick next to the recycling bin.” What more do you need to know?
The novel unfolds on a hallowed New England college campus where beautiful, delicate Lola is a sheltered freshman from the cornfields of South Carolina eager to start her intellectual endeavors. The naive country rose soon discovers, to her increasing trepidation, that for these cool coeds, sex, partying, and alcohol matter more than grades. Sweet Lola is seduced by the intoxicating allure of fitting in, losing her virginity and taking advantage of the exotic appeal her innocence has on the men around her. Dickler, a middle aged male writer, manages to capture the authentic female voice, giving his young blossoming protagonist plenty of character (like her coy gap-toothed smile), power (she’s hot in a farm girl way), and depth (she’s into obscure literature).
Hayden Cauliflower moved to New York City with dreams of finding fame and success as the founder of a start up selling organic pet rocks as an affordable alternative to companionship. But his dreams are shattered after a disastrous appearance on the popular reality show Whale Pond. Hayden takes to wandering Central Park for days, eventually losing his mind and committing himself in an asylum for failed start up founders. An intimate portrait of a profoundly lonely man surrounded by unkind strangers in an urban jungle.
The story begins with a used car salesman, Greg Sams, waking to find himself mutated into a grotesque rat with a radioactive tail. Instead of worrying about his sudden metamorphosis, Greg frets about meeting his company’s quota for the day. A gripping, hard-to-understand novella with obscure symbolism and high-brow metaphor, The Ripe Persimmon is one of the most seminal works of the 20th century. The perfect read for pretentious blue-bloods with refined literary taste who want to impress their equally obnoxious dates.
NOT THAT I BELIEVE IN EXTINCTION, EVOLUTION IS A LIE AND NOT BIBLICAL, SCIENCE IS ANTI-CHRISTIAN PROPAGANDA CREATED BY NASTY-SMELLING FOREIGNERS TO TRICK US INTO SUBMISSION, WE MUST ARMS OURSELVES WITH AK-47S, IT IS OUR DUTY TO DEFEND AMERICA FROM ALIEN INVADERS TRYING TO ROB US OF OUR GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO FLATSCREEN TVS, HOW DARE THESE MEXICANS COME TO THE LAND OF OUR ANCESTORS AND BREATHE OUR INHERITED AIR.
THE BOOK PUBLISHERS WERE TOO SCARED TO LET YOU READ by talented precocious teen, J̌öĥñ Šᵯíŧĥ. The First Dog features a woman assigned (by a quirk of fate) to tell the myth of the lonely first dog of Carabandora, a wasteland in Portugal, she narrates―entirely in a single sentence―this sad endless story, a bark, in a depressing New York diner to a disinterested waitress who just wants to get on with her shift, the story-teller locked in her own existence, traps the reader in the same snare even after the end of the only full-stop period of the book.
A janitor drinking PBRs in the park is violently stabbed with an ice pick. A middle-school teacher waits for her husband who never returns. As the bodies pile up, Detective Wayne Watson is on the hunt to chase down Chicago’s third most dangerous man who’d go to any lengths to satiate his bloodlust. This is a city on the brink. This is The Hunted. Brimming with tension, secrets, and betrayal, The Hunted proves that Carver Tree is a master of crime thrillers.
The Eternal Song of Dying Crickets in a Field by indigo del carmello
Sandra, a woman of quirky habits, lives a solitary life and believes her therapist is the one (he just doesn’t know it yet) and that her neighbor’s chihuahuas are trying to commune with her (they aren’t, she just smells weird). An unwanted visitor shows up on her doorstep and mayhem ensues. Managing to be funny, sad, angry, happy, and surprising all at once, this novel will have you feeling all of the feelings.
In the magical realm of Suburbtopia, Sir Brad the All-Knowing Tax Auditor and his most trusted sidekick Loyal Bob the Builder of Castles embark on a dangerous quest to retrieve the stolen soccer orb before the magical artifact falls into nefarious hands of Evil Soccer Mom and all is lost. Suitable for kids age 5 and up, this fantasy novel is a wholesome read for the entire family.
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