Daphne Merkin, 22 MINUTES OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zive Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:11]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Thanks so much for listening to my podcast.
[0:15]If you like what you hear, please follow me on Instagram at Zive Owens,
[0:19]and also at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Thanks so much for listening. Enjoy it.
[0:23]Today's sponsor is The Helm, which is a lifestyle brand committed to
[0:27]elevating and investing in female entrepreneurs. They sell a curated selection
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[0:36]They sell clothing, clean beauty, motherhood related products, and many categories of items,
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[0:52]just recently featured this very podcast in their list of 22 podcasts by women that are worth
[0:58]listening to or something like that, which was a very, very nice of them. Anyway, I hope you
[1:02]enjoy and thank you to The Helm for sponsoring. I was over the moon excited when Daphne Marken
[1:08]and her team reached out to be on my podcast because I've been a fan of hers for a long time.
[1:13]Anyway, if you don't know her, Daphne Marken is the author of The Novel Enchantment,
[1:17]which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Best Novel on a Jewish theme, as well as two
[1:22]collections of essays, and the memoir This Close to Happy, which I read recently and is
[1:26]by my bed and is just so great. She is a former staff writer for The New Yorker,
[1:31]and her essays frequently appear in The New York Times, Book Forum, The New Republic,
[1:35]Departures, Elle, Travel and Leisure, Tablet, and many other publications. She's taught writing
[1:40]at the 92nd Street Y, Mary Mountain Manhattan College, and Hunter College, and she currently
[1:44]teaches in Columbia University's MFA program. She lives in New York City, and her new novel is called
[1:50]22 Minutes of Unconditional Left. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. I'm good. Thank you. Love those flowers behind you.
[2:00]Oh, thank you. Someone sent them to me for my book. I hope there were 22 of them.
[2:06]I'm so excited to have you on, and I guess talk to you, so I'm excited to be on.
[2:13]And I just loved your book. Oh my gosh. So let's start by talking about 22 Minutes of Unconditional
[2:21]Love, and what made you write a novel for the first time in 30 years? Like, how did that happen?
[2:26]Right. I have been working on this novel back and forth 30 years. I had my first book,
[2:33]I've been a novel called Enchantment, which is actually being reissued next week. And it was
[2:38]an autobiographical novel, very many people cheated in this sort of memoir, which it wasn't.
[2:44]And then I got a thought about this book. I've been thinking about this novel forever,
[2:52]because the whole issue of obsession interests me, whether it's sexual, romantic, or both. And
[3:00]I had always thought to myself when I read books about obsession that the character, usually a woman,
[3:07]I can think of very few books novels in which the man is obsessed, except two. One is called Endless
[3:14]Love by Scott Spencer. And the other is a novel by Alan Holland's Perth, gay writer in England,
[3:24]called The Folding Star. But otherwise, in my large reading in this subject, it's usually the woman
[3:32]who's obsessed. And what I noticed is the story usually ends that the woman gets over the obsession,
[3:40]even like Anna Correttina, by killing herself, or in a book like, I'm just thinking like,
[3:47]nine and a half weeks, you know, which was different in the movie. The book I have to say,
[3:52]he's supposed to think she's carted off to an institution. So I was always wondering,
[3:57]especially since a lot of women, earlier in their life, have an episode of, or two of what I would
[4:04]call bad taste and men with a pick wrongly, sometimes strikingly wrongly. And then it's usually
[4:13]that man that they have difficulty pulling away from because the connection is strong, but a sort
[4:21]of like, instead of connecting to your stronger parts, I think those kind of connections fill
[4:29]in the weaknesses in your own. So I remember going into two editors. This could never have happened
[4:36]today. I'm not saying in book publishing, but I've already written this. No, I went in and I said,
[4:42]I would love to write a book about an obsession. Actually, I said that for my first novel and
[4:48]Chapman, but it ended up being about my mother. And I said, I'd like to try and get a woman
[4:55]into it. And then how do you get out of it? Not everyone drops dead, those under a train,
[5:02]and to be completely honest about it. I wrote exactly 212 pages. It included the scene. I'll just
[5:11]say it. I mean, you read as well, no, but there's a scene toward the end of the novel where her obsession,
[5:20]Howard Rose, a lawyer, asked her to crawl across the floor. I got up to that, stopped dead,
[5:27]thought I can't publish this. I mean, this was well before, well, 100 times before and 50 shades
[5:35]of grey, which I don't consider it particularly for me effective novel. Anyway, I know it's very
[5:41]popular. I come from a modern Orthodox Jewish background emphasis on Orthodox. I'm one of six
[5:50]siblings. And I kept thinking, you know, we were completely observant, like not using lights on
[5:58]Jarvis on Saturday. And I kept thinking of the women in my parents synagogue, which had been
[6:05]founded by my father called Fifth Avenue synagogue. And I kept thinking, what are they going to make
[6:11]of this? The daughter of the founder. Most people anyway, I think, conflate the narrator and the
[6:21]character, especially if the writing is immediate, which mine tends to be. No one's going to think
[6:28]this is in her. This Jewish stone is not Daphne Merkin. That truly stopped me. I just thought I'm not
[6:37]up for the, it was like my inner sensor a hundred times over. You know, I think some writers don't
[6:44]have such an inner sensor. Philip Roth certainly had very little of an inner sensor. But I have a
[6:51]large inner sensor, even though sometimes it doesn't seem that way because I write a lot personally
[6:56]and fairly candidly. But somehow I just stopped dead. My editor loved the book. At that time,
[7:03]it was called the discovery of sex. I paid back the advance. I'm recreating it a little. When I
[7:10]look back, I think, because a lot of it I did keep. I mean, I made many, many changes that I wrote
[7:16]many more scenes. But some of the basic essence of the book was there then. And I always think that
[7:24]it would have made me a best selling. But I wasn't prepared to publish it. I stopped. I put it away
[7:33]went on to write a lot of journalism about everything from mattresses to profiles of Madonna and
[7:41]Kate Blanchett and Tom Stoppard. I never forgot about the novel. I would always go back to it and try
[7:48]it another way. Like, I remember I was writing about a French writer named Annie or No,
[7:54]who wrote a book called Simple Passion. And I thought, okay, I'll try and write this in a more
[7:59]French tone, like cooler, drier. So I tried it a hundred ways. It never left my imagination. Third
[8:09]person, first person. I think one issue I truly had was how to get her out of the relationship
[8:17]because I had my own enormous trouble getting out of those kinds of relationships. One, I thought I
[8:24]I would not get out of. And also, I'll say what interested me was how far was I going to go
[8:34]with the undercurrent, let's say, of fatal masochism. Like how masochistic would I allow the
[8:44]woman to be? Also, in between those years, I wrote about sex to a degree. I wrote essays for the
[8:51]Times. I wrote, I hope you don't know it, but I'll say an infamous piece for the New Yorker on
[8:58]erotic spanking that followed me for the rest of my life. It still does when people, in fact,
[9:07]I got a very good man, I even say rave in the Times about the novel. And I thought they were again
[9:13]in a spanking. So that maybe would have moved me, you would think forward. Instead, I wrote
[9:22]two collections of essays that I wrote a memoir about depression, my own experience called
[9:28]this close to happy. But I had a book contract to do four books. And one of them was this. And I
[9:36]thought I'm not paying this back again. It was one very practical reason. Me too had it started.
[9:44]You would think that would have kept me. But being the contrary, and I am, I wrote a piece for
[9:50]the Times about me too, in which I argued that I thought a lot of me too with the tactics of me
[9:58]too, the thinking of me too.
[10:00]Wasn't nuanced enough. That was a piece of it. I think it was what we say and what we really think about me too
[10:06]And I talked about that it wasn't useful to look at all men is predatory or women is Victorian victims
[10:15]We talk so much about agency where it's the women's agency. You can also say no or
[10:23]Not all of these were instances of complete
[10:27]You know violent harassment. I mean as you remember as we all remember some of these incidents began to seem so subtle and so
[10:40]Unthreatening like
[10:42]Discirt is pretty or why don't you wear that skirt again?
[10:45]I thought if we stop here, we'll go nowhere else with any issue
[10:48]So you would think that me too would maybe have
[10:51]Stop me, but if anything, I thought me to lost so much. What about female desire?
[10:58]We all talk about
[10:59]male desire and how male desire can easily get aggressive and
[11:05]Unassed unsolicited, but women have their own desires. They're not you know
[11:11]limit, you know, they're not pure as the driven snow
[11:13]so I went back because this was about that and
[11:17]Maybe do peas by sense that it shouldn't be so immediate
[11:21]But I think it helped the book. I told it in flashback
[11:25]The woman was already out the character married and expecting her second child and looking back on this
[11:33]Obsession she had with I guess you could call a jerk if you want to put all jerks have their moments
[11:41]So she looks back on it. I don't want to say so much unless you think and
[11:48]The scenes in which she's in it are in
[11:52]Confers person in up the present. Yes, and she meets this lawyer who doesn't make such a big impression on her at a party
[12:01]She's 30 and I a just turning 30 which is a big deal to her and she works as a book editor
[12:07]I am myself very autobiographically had worked as a book editor
[12:12]So it was important to me
[12:13]I work in a publishing company for six years hardcore of Racy Bonovich
[12:17]And I remember the publisher saying to me women don't put enough about work in their novels a lot of women work
[12:25]And you don't you don't see it so much
[12:27]So it was important for me to give her work and the work I knew best was publishing
[12:31]So I have a lot of publishing scenes and she's fairly ambitious in her work
[12:37]And yet this man she meets at a party a lawyer 13 years older than she is
[12:43]Manages to reduce her almost to a
[12:46]abject little girl looking for affirmation. I think also what she's looking for is
[12:53]Not really getable in the end. You can't note. You're not going to
[12:58]Unless you go back to infanthood
[13:00]You're not going to be loved in that kind of unconditional way
[13:04]You're either lucky enough that it happened once or it didn't happen
[13:09]I think it her case of Judestone. She didn't get what she needed
[13:13]From her background from her parents looks for it together with sex which is potent and a lot of it is about the relationship and then at the
[13:24]end she
[13:26]Decides as I say she decides by an assertion of will that was an important realization to me that people don't set
[13:35]From one day to the next thing where he's terrible for me
[13:39]I need a nicer man because there's something about that man that's drawing them on so
[13:45]At some point it's a decision. I think what took me too long
[13:50]I don't want to sound like I'm dead now
[13:52]What took me too long was I kept thinking it'll happen
[13:56]That one day I'll see the truth and then I'll be able to move away
[14:01]But you can see the truth about a situation and still not move away
[14:06]Within the first minute of meeting Howard Rose Judestone knows he's not good for
[14:12]He also makes it clear by calling her bitch when he calls her for the first time
[14:17]She sees all of it, but she stuck on him. So at the very end she makes her way back and
[14:24]Then I do a tiny thing which I think was partly I think a testament to
[14:30]What I would call realism also I think these things people have long memories of their love affairs
[14:37]So at the end she's am I giving away too much? No, but don't give away anymore. I don't give away the ending
[14:45]So that's essentially it's always interested me the subject
[14:49]It's fascinating. I mean what you're really talking about. It's like any addiction really you know
[14:54]Bad for you, and it's very clear like nobody thinks like hey
[14:59]I think I'll try smoking cigarettes because it's good for me
[15:01]You know like everybody knows going into all these sort of self-destructive behaviors that they're not
[15:07]Good for them
[15:07]But yet they're drawn to them anyway and the extracation is close to impossible
[15:13]For the same reasons they were drawn in to begin with
[15:15]To begin with yeah, but it's interesting
[15:18]It's a even though there were a lot of people addicted to many different
[15:22]Substances and people I think it's almost incomprehensible to the people outside it, right?
[15:29]Maybe less these days because there's so much about addiction and about opioid and drug
[15:36]Possibly drug addiction is more comprehensible. I think emotional addiction
[15:42]Hard for people to wrap their heads around
[15:45]And it looks so it looks controllable
[15:49]Drug addict doesn't look so controllable. Yeah
[15:52]And you know that with drug addiction, there's a biochemical element of this
[15:57]This is more subjective and emotional so people can write it off
[16:01]You're so right. I mean I think about my life my girlfriends like all of us growing up
[16:07]Have had someone not maybe not to this extent of course, but like someone who we know wasn't good for them
[16:13]And like you know and somehow that makes them more attractive
[16:17]Which is the worst part about it
[16:19]Right, yeah
[16:21]I feel like I feel like in your book you kept alluding to the fact that this had to do with
[16:26]The love that she didn't necessarily get from her parents
[16:30]You had a quote in the beginning where you said he was my mother
[16:32]I suppose with bits of pieces of my father thrown in
[16:35]But to what extent that clarifies matters is anyone's guess how everything conspires to keep us in the dark about ourselves
[16:41]Right
[16:42]No, I'm glad you quoted that I'm like that passage myself. Yes
[16:46]She definitely has had I say to you. I also had to be a little careful
[16:51]I felt careful
[16:53]Here because my first novel a million years ago was about an unhappy affluent big
[17:01]Modern Orthodox family. I wanted to give her without making it extreme
[17:06]You know, she didn't come from direct abuse
[17:09]But she came from neglect
[17:11]Emotional neglect
[17:13]Neither parent was particularly interested in her. She has a sister who she thinks is more of a father's favorite
[17:20]And she feels I think as that she feels unmet
[17:25]By both of them
[17:27]So somewhere she's you know the past
[17:30]Impinges on the present
[17:32]And I would suppose not to sound utterly simplistic
[17:36]Had she had more
[17:38]normatively loving parents. I think she says her father doesn't know the name of any her
[17:44]Class yeah, her teacher little things
[17:48]She probably wouldn't have been vulnerable to that kind of man. Right less vulnerable because
[17:55]I think one of the things that draws her in so much is the attention that he pays
[18:01]First of all very close sexual attention. She's also sexually somewhat naive
[18:07]not someone who's
[18:09]Been hooking up put aside from the age of 14. She's relatively new-ish to sex
[18:15]And I think that plays a part
[18:16]But I think what you read is the most and even that doesn't explain it
[18:21]What you're saying about negative attention. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get you off
[18:24]It's just like strikes me is so similar to raising kids right when they feel when kids feel like they're not getting your attention
[18:31]As a parent they'll act out and do whatever they can to get your attention even if you're yelling at them
[18:37]Because that's what they need
[18:38]So this is just like it's almost like an adult tantrum
[18:42]Right these love these
[18:44]Love relations not even love
[18:47]Will affairs are just a way of getting their needs met
[18:51]And I read your memoir
[18:53]I read it when it first came out and then I you know read it again
[18:56]Before today and I feel like obviously there are some similarities not to make
[19:01]Total jumps, but you'd write a lot about your parents and some of the needs that you feel like you didn't have met
[19:06]Given and how that led to you know xy or z behaviors of your own and you know
[19:11]The more I think about it
[19:12]I mean like the minute you said you were four children. I felt
[19:16]Envious
[19:17]I was no I mean envious is too strong children
[19:21]Ever since I've been young. I mean my daughter has 21 about 21 first cousins
[19:28]because I have you have five ventensists and I am the producer of one child and
[19:36]Growing up
[19:36]I was always seeing as the aunt who played with all the kids at the beach
[19:41]And to this day I find children
[19:45]I mean there are people who are different to children. They don't fascinate them dogs
[19:49]Fasten I'm always struck on the street. How people get so I mean I'm not such a I'm not a pet
[19:55]Type but like people will gather around a dog
[20:00]And then this is a charming little girl goes by, you know, what it stops.
[20:06]So I am very intrigued.
[20:08]If I did life over, I might have become a child psychiatrist because I think the whole process.
[20:14]In fact, I wrote up my interest.
[20:16]You I wrote a piece for the times that they asked me to write.
[20:20]It was a show I didn't watch on TV.
[20:22]There's called a morning show that comedian Sarah Silverman was interviewed.
[20:28]And she said in passing, she didn't want children.
[20:31]And she was asked why and she said she didn't want to pass on depression.
[20:34]So for the times I wrote a piece where the depression is inherited about which I know a lot
[20:40]because I've read a lot and the truth is nothing of psychological is completely inherited.
[20:48]It's a 50, 50 game of genetics versus environment.
[20:54]What you could have is the propensity to get to, you know, it could be, we noticed it
[21:00]in children.
[21:01]One child is a little more cheerful and another is oomie or however.
[21:06]So there could be a tendency in a child to be more melon, unhappier.
[21:13]But if that child gets not ideal, but as best as circumstances allow, they may not necessarily
[21:21]end up deeply depressed.
[21:23]So it's genetics plus environment and that whole duality nature, nurture has been the
[21:31]argument of our time and depending what decade sometimes people will stress nature and
[21:38]sometimes they'll stress nurture.
[21:40]We live in a decade I think of strangely a lot of emphasis on nature, meaning it's
[21:48]meditatable and I wonder about it looking on.
[21:52]I think it's going to switch again.
[21:54]I don't know you as a mother would know much more, but I'm always surprised how quickly
[21:59]children I'll put on, you know, attention, maybe the medication for attention strikes me
[22:07]as almost the least questionable, but I do wonder about very young kids being put on antidepressants.
[22:18]I'm sure there are the reasons, but I think you should take that envy of my kids and
[22:24]your need to be your longing to be a child psychiatrist and just come like plop yourself
[22:29]in my living room.
[22:30]And you can hone your skills in two seconds and then you can revisit that argument.
[22:37]Just like spend a week here and see what you think.
[22:39]Okay.
[22:40]Okay.
[22:41]How what's the range of ages of your kids?
[22:44]Five and a half, seven, and then I have twins that are 13.
[22:48]Oh, they get along mostly.
[22:52]Most of them do there's some combinations that, you know, not as well, but yeah, mostly
[22:57]they do.
[22:58]I think it could be worse.
[22:59]They're basically good kids, but, you know, everyone's got their issues, other twins
[23:04]are identical.
[23:05]Boy, girl.
[23:06]No, not identical.
[23:07]And very, very, very different.
[23:10]I once did a lot of twin research for a book that I was going to publish in the end.
[23:15]The writer didn't deliver was an incredible book called The Silent Twins might interest
[23:21]you.
[23:22]But it's very pathological.
[23:23]It's about two girls, black girls, identical growing up in Wales.
[23:29]They have a secret language which twins sometimes have.
[23:32]They don't speak to the other people in the house, to their siblings.
[23:36]The mother leaves food outside their door, eventually, for this will not be the case.
[23:43]They start burning down schools, buildings, and there's obviously fury in there.
[23:49]And they end up in a psychiatric, I'm sorry to be telling you this horrid.
[23:56]They end up in a psychiatric, British hospital prison, psychiatric prison called Broadmore.
[24:03]I don't know.
[24:04]I mean, I didn't think I was so fascinated by twins, but this book is amazing.
[24:09]And mostly it quotes from their diaries, which are remarkable and sophisticated.
[24:15]And they wrote two novels at a very young age.
[24:19]One was called The Pets.
[24:20]I don't know why.
[24:21]I remember all this in 30 years ago.
[24:24]One was called The Pepsi Cola Added.
[24:27]And the other was called Discomania.
[24:29]They loved America.
[24:31]And it was predicted that when they would get out of prison because they were separated,
[24:36]one of them would die.
[24:38]Sorry, I'm telling you.
[24:39]I'm almost over with this horrid story.
[24:41]At the end of their prison sentence, they were being driven home, and one of them had
[24:47]a heart attack.
[24:48]Oh, no.
[24:50]So sorry to tell you this twin story, but it led me to read a lot about twins.
[24:54]Wow.
[24:55]Okay.
[24:56]Well.
[24:58]I will.
[25:00]I will.
[25:01]And this just enforces my belief that my kids have to come to the dinner table.
[25:05]And I just wanted to read one quote from your memoir, if you don't mind, this close to
[25:13]happy because I loved how you wrote about the depression that you went through in such
[25:18]a, well, let me just read it and you can come after not to get off your latest book, which
[25:24]was also fantastic.
[25:25]And I wanted to just briefly talk about also how you directly address the reader in the
[25:31]book because it's not so fascinating.
[25:33]But anyway, however, did you fill your days before this torper came and claimed you?
[25:38]It is difficult to recall how you once went naturally from one activity to the next writing
[25:42]and reading and indulging in virtual window shopping on the computer, talking to your daughter,
[25:46]laughing over something with a friend, warming up a cup of coffee or tea in the microwave.
[25:50]It wasn't as though you were ever exactly a dervish of energy, spinning from one
[25:54]hecticly scheduled event to the next.
[25:56]You are a stay at home sort at the best of times, someone who has to assemble the internal
[26:00]wherewithal to go out and meet people no matter how open and receptive you seem.
[26:04]But before you didn't question the whole ongoing shebang of making plans.
[26:08]Now you can no longer figure out what it is that moves other people to bustle about out
[26:12]there in the world, doing errands rushing to appointments, picking up a child from school.
[26:16]You have lost their head that pulled the circumstances of your life together.
[26:20]Everything adds up and all you can think about is the raw nerve of pain that your mind
[26:24]has become and once again how merciful it would be to yourself and others to extinguish
[26:29]this pain.
[26:30]Oh my gosh.
[26:31]That was really beautiful and so such a great encapsulation of what that feels like and
[26:36]also by the way an encapsulation of I feel like what we all sort of feel like now, which
[26:41]is like I never want to go have a plan again for the rest of my life and like how am I
[26:45]ever going to go back to normal society.
[26:47]So anyway it just felt like it was very timely and topical so I just wanted to read it.
[26:52]I think this period has brought out in many of us I think a certain sense of futility.
[27:00]Like how do you plan how do you arrange life if there's this lurking not known of a lurking
[27:10]virus about which in the end not a ton is known yet.
[27:15]It's going to go forever the next is going to return if you hadn't won't have it if you
[27:19]had it you'll have it again.
[27:21]I think it produces not that level of stasis but a certain frozen in place.
[27:27]How do you plan and I imagine with children it is becomes young children it becomes enormously
[27:35]difficult.
[27:36]Aren't they there all the time?
[27:38]Yes.
[27:40]Here all the time I mean I'm divorced actually and remarried so like now for instance
[27:45]they're over their dad's house but aside from that yeah we're here you know the planning
[27:50]is the worst for school starting in like all because that's all I'm sort of obsessing
[27:54]about in my head what are we going to do is it going to open is it not on these rabbit holes
[27:58]of you know at this moment are they a stencil be going to open or they don't know.
[28:04]Well my four kids go to three different schools and they all two of them one of them
[28:10]is for sure going to open they're saying to our yes but might be virtual but we'll
[28:15]know more next week or the week after it's just never clear and then no matter what
[28:20]they think they know the government could just change it so yes this period of time is
[28:24]required literally every I feel like every tool in my emotional toolbox like I've ever
[28:30]saw there before ever it's like all been required to like come flying at it at the
[28:35]same time strikes me as it must also but you know I am not at this moment in a relationship
[28:42]it must take a toll on couples I mean even good excellent couples this is a lot of couple
[28:49]dumb yeah I actually a friend came over who lives out of town and he was saying that his
[28:55]mother's boy for like fiance essentially had to go to the hospital for COVID but they
[29:00]had been locked in the apartment together for three months so for the first week his mother
[29:06]was like this is great I finally have a break and then after like the weeks went by she
[29:11]was like she felt terrible about it but the beginning was like oh okay I don't know I
[29:17]mean it sounds terrible to say but we comprehensible human humanly yes how have you been
[29:24]surviving this time it's funny I just wrote a piece for online vote they have a
[29:30]where my piece was about what has been helping me I say what helped me like it would be
[29:35]over read what kind of books did I read so I spent the first paragraph saying in fact for the
[29:42]first month I'm a voracious reader that is my favorite I also always read to think oh this
[29:48]sentence is you know to like continue learning even though that sounds odd at this advance
[29:54]point about how I want to write so the first month I could
[30:00]not read. I was anxious, distracted, at best. I kept thinking, this is the moment I should be
[30:08]reading Anna Corinna now or getting through proof store. I'm supposed to be the serious
[30:15]somewhat intellectual reader. Instead, I would get into bed and the best I could do would be a
[30:20]magazine. I flipped through, especially allure, decide I need yet another cosmetic. I also wrote
[30:29]a piece in that period. First, the New York Review of Books has an online. I wrote two pieces
[30:35]about the return of phone calls. Suddenly, I was talking much more on the phone and I wrote
[30:43]an actually quite funny piece about beauty anxieties during COVID, about your hair, your nails,
[30:51]that I met a friend in the park. We would have regular meetings and she's a writer and she's not
[30:58]someone I think I was particularly interested in her presentation. Suddenly, we stood there and she pulled
[31:03]up her mask and put on lip gloss. I sent her, who's the lip gloss for me? I wrote about that. I wrote about,
[31:13]I taught a class of Columbia's MFA program in writing, how half the time I would put on a
[31:21]sweatshirt overnight gown. What would they be going to see a sweatshirt? Never stick on
[31:27]certainly an ounce of makeup. One day, I thought I'm putting on a little makeup for myself.
[31:34]I was hastily doing something for five minutes and my daughter lives at home. I came out of the
[31:42]bathroom and she said, you put on perfume. I said, yes, she said, could you put it on for? I said,
[31:49]myself, obviously, no one was going to. I talked about a lot of things that there was even
[31:57]a so-called black market in getting services. Women who came to people's houses. Someone told me
[32:04]they knew of a plastic surgeon who was doing, I couldn't believe someone would have,
[32:09]not just Botox, but actual plastic surgery in this period. I thought, well, that makes sense. No one
[32:15]sees you anyway. It's this woman who I know who's a mom at one of my kid's schools said that
[32:24]because she wasn't getting Botox. Her iPhone wasn't even recognizing her to unlock it because
[32:29]she looks so different. This morning on Instagram, another author named Myel, John Bob Lang,
[32:39]who wrote a great book called What We Carry. She posted picture, which is so good, by the way.
[32:43]She posted picture of herself wearing this nice outfit and looking herself in the mirror. She said,
[32:47]not for Zoom, not for anyone else, just for me. That's just what you're saying. Anyway, I feel
[32:54]like I could talk to you forever, but I want to get your advice to aspiring authors before you.
[32:59]Well, I've thought a lot about it because I've taught it for a long time at different than
[33:03]90 seconds do you want. The one thing I have found with young writers more than in my ancient day
[33:12]is there's such an obsession. I think partly because of social media, partly because attitudes
[33:18]to fame and celebrity have somewhat changed to like get it out there in two minutes when
[33:25]actually good writing requires a lot of rewriting. In fact, I have on my bulletin board,
[33:32]together with the artist with the photo of Virginia Woolf, a photo of my daughter,
[33:37]which was young, and I don't know why if a photograph called the ecstasy girl, not a photograph,
[33:42]a postcard someone called me. I've no idea what it's doing up there, but I have a line
[33:48]by a writer who is not my fate. I'm not a thriller reader or mystery reader so much,
[33:53]but I put it up. He wrote it's Elmore Leonard famous. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
[34:00]He's talking about, he likes very simple Hemingway-esque phrases. I mean, I myself like,
[34:08]but I always say to my classes, it's sort of mix it up. Have one sentence be short. There's a rhythm
[34:16]no one wants to read. I saw him. He looked good. He bought an apple, then I bought an apple. Make a
[34:22]a long, you know, give it up. Not to sound completely truistic or simplistic. I do not know a good
[34:30]writer, a fiction or non-fiction who doesn't read a ton. I don't think you can write well
[34:37]without reading. It seems like it would be a natural order, but I think there are people who write
[34:43]who don't read so much. I was also in book publishing, as I mentioned, for six years,
[34:48]so I saw what's in the end as we all know and everyone says. There are only so many stories
[34:54]to tell in the world. It could be obsession, it could be loss, it could be heartbreak, it could
[34:59]be illness, it could be losing a child, many things, but in the end, even though it sounds simplistic,
[35:07]it is all in the way you tell it. And for that, I would say you should, that one could,
[35:12]should also kind of, this is what I do. I'm not such a big reader by nature of what's called
[35:19]commercial fiction, which is often not particularly well written. Sometimes they can be commercial,
[35:27]in publishing it's very divided into commercial fiction and literary fiction. Of course,
[35:32]the real division is fiction that sells and fiction that doesn't sell. A commercial fiction sells
[35:39]because it's, I had hoped with my novel, I hope or rightly, sadly, that my novel fell somewhere
[35:46]between, I wanted it to be a real weed, but I also wanted to comment on the text in a more
[35:53]meta sense. I'm not a term I love so much, but I think dialogue is hard to do well,
[36:00]there it helps to read how other people do it. I think if you don't give a certain amount of time
[36:06]to it, I won't say daily because I know writers who include myself who don't write every single
[36:14]day, I should. I write very much to deadline and books, and that's the difficulty of writing
[36:21]also. Not everything is a deadline, unless you have journalism, you're imposing your own deadline.
[36:27]So in that way, it's very self-activating. If you don't feel like writing and you feel like
[36:32]looking what's going on, shuttered down, Madison Avenue, you can leave it at some level,
[36:40]I think the difference between people who become successful writers or writers who write
[36:47]isn't always talent. Talent is, I think part of it, but really a big part of it is discipline,
[36:56]and I think that stops people. I think also one more thing to say, in the end, you'll have to
[37:03]write what you want to and need to. It's not, as we all know, very few books make a lot of money.
[37:11]If I told you how few would be amazed, I once spoke about writing and Jewish audiences,
[37:19]and I said Jews borrow books. They don't buy books. But in that piece, I believe it said, and I
[37:27]think it's true what should have checked it, that 1% is hard to believe this because you're a big
[37:33]leader, and you must know readers, 1% of Americans read one book a year, meaning many,
[37:42]people don't read. So in some ways, the writers I know, which is, I think, sad, but true,
[37:49]feel there. There's sort of doing something that's almost like being a lot, you know, that went
[37:55]out of fashion. I mean, there is social media, but that is it. I think it's coming back.
[38:00]I like to believe it. I'm so glad. I think so too. I think there is, that may be one thing COVID
[38:06]has helped with. Yeah. But people, how much TV, even if it's great, can people watch
[38:14]and reading talks to something else, talks to your interior self. So I also think, yeah,
[38:23]books, books are us. If we thank you so much for this. I'd love to meet you in person or take
[38:30]you to lunch sometime or something. It's really fun if we're ever out in the world again. And thank
[38:36]thank you for having me. I enjoyed it. You too. Bye. Have a great day. Bye. Bye.
[38:43]Thanks again for listening to my podcast. Moms don't have time to read books.
[38:46]If you liked this episode, please follow me on Instagram at zippyowans and at moms don't have
[38:52]time to read books and sign up for my mailing list at zippyowans.com so you can always hear about
[38:58]the latest things I'm up to. Thanks a lot. This episode has been sponsored by the helm,
[39:03]the helm.co, a lifestyle brand committed to elevating, investing, and female entrepreneurs with
[39:09]tens of products by women founders definitely go check them out. Thanks so much to Steve and
[39:14]Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morningmoon Productions for providing
[39:19]this fantastic intro and out trim music. Thanks for listening. You can always email me at zippyowans.com.