Helen Schulman, LUCKY DOGS
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[1:03]Ellen Schulman is the author of Lucky Dogs, a novel.
[1:07]Helen is the New York Times best-selling author of six novels, including Come With Me
[1:11]and This Beautiful Life.
[1:13]Helen has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The New York Foundation
[1:17]for the Arts, Sundance, Aspen Words, and Columbia University.
[1:21]She lives in New York City.
[1:22]And by the way, she was my teacher at the fiction writing program I attended at Bennington
[1:27]College when I was a junior in high school.
[1:29]Welcome, Helen.
[1:30]Thank you so much for coming on mom's turn to have time to read books to discuss.
[1:33]Your latest novel, Lucky Dogs.
[1:36]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:38]As we were just discussing, I've been following your career for many years because I took
[1:42]your class for the summer at Bennington College in 1993, which was what is now 20 years
[1:48]ago?
[1:49]I mean, that's crazy.
[1:50]Oh my God.
[1:51]It's 30 years ago.
[1:52]It looks great.
[1:53]Yeah, we look amazing.
[1:57]But that was such a formative summer for me and I really loved your class.
[2:02]While I was there, I had this article come out in 17 magazine and I was like, oh my gosh.
[2:07]This is my whole destiny.
[2:09]It's going to happen in two seconds and here I am, 46.
[2:12]Oh, but it seems like it's really happened to be in a big way in so many ways.
[2:17]I'm not publishing in Maryland and doing so much good.
[2:21]Oh, thank you.
[2:22]Well, it's taken a long time, but how did you even, I want to talk about Lucky Dogs your
[2:28]wreck.
[2:29]But I also, I'm curious, like where did the teaching betting to fit in your life and what
[2:35]happened like before and after that, like when I passed first cost in the now?
[2:40]So I went to grad school at Columbia and Jill Eisenstadt and Michael Drinkard.
[2:45]I don't know if you remember them from the faculty, but they were members of my MFA class
[2:49]and they started teaching at Bennington.
[2:51]Jill had gone to Bennington.
[2:52]She was kind of part of that literary mafia out of Bennington with Brett Easton Ellis.
[2:59]On a tard and, yeah, anyway, they got me a job.
[3:03]So I taught there for six summers and I just loved it.
[3:06]I mean, for us, it was like going back to college.
[3:08]We all lived in this place called Welling Townhouse in North Bennington and we like play
[3:13]guitar and smoke pot and it was great kids and it was gorgeous and we were out.
[3:18]I was like fresh chair fun for like struggling and writers.
[3:21]So it was great.
[3:23]I ended up going back to teach at Columbia where I got in my MFA and I adjuncted there
[3:29]and Bard and NYU for about 10 years before I ended up at the new school where I'm now
[3:36]the fiction chair have been for 20 years.
[3:40]So I ended up teaching as being one of the parts of my life that has sort of held me
[3:45]and my family together.
[3:47]I teach, I write screenplay sometimes, I write books sometimes, I do whatever I can.
[3:52]Wow.
[3:53]Oh my gosh.
[3:54]What a story.
[3:55]It's so funny to think of all the students and all the stuff they had going on and then
[3:59]all the faculty and all that.
[4:00]It sounds like a novel in and of itself, right?
[4:02]Oh, I know.
[4:03]I think I don't know if you were the aerobic testing here, but there was one year I was,
[4:06]there were all the kids were getting high on robot testing and it was a huge scandal and
[4:11]we were all like called in to do stuff about it.
[4:14]No way.
[4:15]No, that was not my year.
[4:16]Yeah.
[4:17]We were like listening to stone temple pilots and like, I don't know.
[4:21]I don't remember really anything else about it except for this soundtrack.
[4:25]So you have written many books at this point and you had already been a prolific writer
[4:29]at that point and that was 30 years ago and now your latest book, Lucky Dogs, which by
[4:33]the way is blurred by Jennifer Egan.
[4:35]So I mean, that's amazing who says, a brash sometimes heartbreaking saga.
[4:40]Your best novel yet.
[4:41]I mean, that's pretty awesome.
[4:44]Tell me about writing this book and how you came up with the voice of the characters,
[4:51]the main character has such a unique point of view and this 24 year old sort of trying
[4:58]to find herself and having this unlikely compatriot and just the way she writes and things
[5:04]and talks.
[5:05]Like, tell me a little bit more about the backstory of this book and how you came up with
[5:08]the protagonist.
[5:09]I mean, it was a fun story in a way.
[5:11]I was just so blue to the me too news as it broke.
[5:17]And there was this little piece in it that yeah, jarred me into action, which was
[5:22]that I had read that Harvey Weinstein threw David Boyz at the recommendation from A
[5:30]Hood Barack in the former prime minister of Israel had hired a spy agency of ex-Misad
[5:36]spies to silence one of the women who accused him of sexual assault.
[5:42]And I was just so shocked by it that I mean took all these really important, wealthy,
[5:50]powerful men like beating up on this young woman and that this female spy would do that.
[5:57]I just thought, I don't know.
[5:59]It just seemed what would make one woman so utterly betray another woman in that way.
[6:05]And that that was what animated me.
[6:07]So that's what got me started.
[6:09]I mean, Mary is nuts, she's a young actress, she's cursed by beauty.
[6:14]Yeah, I circled that actually, it was like cursed by beauty, interesting, you know.
[6:19]Well, she's her beauty has gotten her everywhere, which has gotten her nowhere.
[6:23]I mean, she's a man's self emancipated 15, you know, ends up in Hollywood because she's
[6:30]just so incredibly Margot Robbie, perfect, beautiful American beauty.
[6:36]And she, she's taken advantage of because of it and she actually gets, she's raped
[6:42]because of it, not because of it, because a monster decided to rape her, but her beauty
[6:46]put her in the spotlight.
[6:49]And she's just, she's kind of, to me, she's like Jake Lamada, she's raging bullets,
[6:53]like no matter how many times you try to keep her down, she rises up and fights for herself.
[7:01]Her voice came to me really early and easily.
[7:04]It's a very weird voice in a way because it's a huge high-low thing.
[7:09]I think I've always had a high-low thing in my own spoken language, you know, I went to
[7:14]high school in the Bronx in the 70s.
[7:16]I'm so foul mouthed that my daughter was a baby and we were like in a diner somewhere
[7:22]in Brooklyn.
[7:23]She dropped her little French fry on the floor and said, oh shit, and everybody in the
[7:27]center has looked like they were going to call, you know, social services, but yeah,
[7:32]I'm pretty, she's, Mary is foul mouthed and so in mind, so is my little baby, so, but
[7:37]she's a big reader.
[7:39]She's a kid who grew up in her father's pickup truck and didn't finish high school
[7:43]and but she always read.
[7:45]So she's got a large vocabulary and a lot to express.
[7:51]How often does your daughter curse now?
[7:55]She, my daughter is so not cursey.
[7:59]She, though, I mean, she says things like, oh, gosh, she's in politics.
[8:03]So everything she says is correct.
[8:05]So, yes, she's very well-behaved, much better behaved than her mother, I have to say.
[8:10]Do you worry about having a daughter in politics given sort of the climate overall?
[8:15]Now or?
[8:16]I'm proud of her.
[8:18]I mean, you know, I think she was moved to action, what she's doing right now, she started
[8:23]out in a campaign and then what she's doing now is she's a digital strategist for
[8:29]progressive causes and candidates.
[8:31]Oh, wow.
[8:32]So her heart's in the right place.
[8:33]I just don't know if she has a thickened of skin for it, you know, being so far so good,
[8:39]but there were times like during the last election where she just was so overwhelmed with
[8:45]feeling, you know, she's a very sweet person, but I'm for it.
[8:50]I mean, somebody's got a fight back.
[8:53]I'm just proud of her.
[8:54]My students.
[8:55]No, that's amazing.
[8:57]I didn't mean not to be proud, just, I don't know, I think about my kids going into politics
[9:00]now and I don't know, it just seems like, she seems like such a high hurdle to like
[9:07]overcome to get where we want to get.
[9:09]I don't know.
[9:10]Well, you're right.
[9:11]It's very depressing.
[9:12]It's very corrupt.
[9:13]It's very polarized.
[9:15]She's not running for office, at least not yet.
[9:17]She's just trying to wear the good guys.
[9:20]There we go.
[9:21]And then the other character, the blonde who comes in tall blonde woman and who next
[9:27]you know has is brandishing, you know, a weapon and and Mary is thinking like, wait,
[9:32]you can really do that.
[9:33]Like, that's okay.
[9:34]That this is possible.
[9:36]How did she come into the picture?
[9:38]Well, she came in actually part of the found story was that the woman who was hired
[9:44]through this sort of strange cabal of men actually was a woman who had grown up
[9:50]during the Siege of Sarajevo and had been airlifted to Israel as part of a righteous
[9:55]Gentile program on the part of the Israelis for grandfather.
[10:00]great grandfather. I can't remember which and which is in my book honestly. It had hit in
[10:05]juice during the war and it cost him his life and it ended up dying in the camps and the family
[10:10]moved to Israel and so when they saw what was happening in Sarajevo they reached out and brought
[10:17]her family to Israel and then she became Israeli. So you know I like a compulsive researcher
[10:25]and I just research all sorts of things. I don't even know why sometimes but I'm just so
[10:31]moved in such a direction and I had been really really interested in civil war
[10:37]because of the politics of our country and I'd actually gone to a lecture of Sasha Hamon,
[10:45]Alexander Hamon gave after Trump was elected and he said you know you think you live in this beautiful
[10:54]country and you think it cannot happen to you but I am living proof that it can happen to you
[11:00]and it will happen to you and it will be he was he's Bosnian and so I've been thinking a lot about
[11:08]Bosnian and Israel and us and so all of a sudden all the pieces came together because there was my
[11:16]fury about the fact that like now I'm 62 at the time I was what 58 when I started this whole thing
[11:25]and I was like I can't believe I'm this old and nothing has happened and it hasn't gotten better
[11:29]and I'm so angry so it's like fueled by this fire within and then there were all these ideas
[11:35]I had been playing with and then here was this little tiny gift of this encapsulized story
[11:41]that landed in my lap and then I could put all that emotion and energy into that so that's how
[11:48]she walked on the stage. So tell me about when you write your books and your process and like
[11:56]so that's how you get inspired you start researching then you go to the writing like how long
[12:02]does writing take how do you when do you like to do it the best how does it work or is there no
[12:07]rhyme or reason to it? Well this one was really nuts because I mean it was so big it was such a
[12:13]capacious story it's you know it takes place in Paris and in Bosnia and in Venice Beach and Florida
[12:21]etc. I got I wrangled a trip out of travel and leisure to go to Bosnia. I had pitched a story on
[12:31]dark travel which was like the dumbest thing you could possibly do to travel in later dark travels
[12:36]when you go experience horrible things and you know like you go to the killing fields and
[12:41]instead they came back and said you want to do luxury adventure travel in Bosnia and I was like sure
[12:47]by the way there is no luxury but adventure travel in Bosnia with Bosnia is an amazing country
[12:53]and really beautiful so I had that piece I was starting on that when COVID hit and I had a
[13:01]boogenheim that year usually I'm just teaching around the clock but I was home and I had COVID
[13:08]and I had long walk of it so I was lying in bed and it was just depressed and scared so I wrote
[13:15]my book I mean there was nothing else to form me to do so there was a very different writing
[13:20]process than anything else I've ever done it really came out of just being entrapped and that
[13:26]was my way out. I'm really lucky because I teach at the new school I every year I get a really
[13:33]wonderful research assistant one of the students works with me so they just feed me all this stuff
[13:40]and in some of it's just nuts I mean you know when I call and ask like how do I get to the
[13:45]villages in Florida and you know how much is an apartment there and they're like okay you know
[13:51]but it feeds me research feeds me and this book was research may not everyone of my books is so
[13:59]researched as this one but there was a lot for me to learn because I was at COVID and I couldn't
[14:05]leave the house I wrote 12 hours a day but usually I'm really busy and what I try to do is right
[14:10]in the morning before I go off to do whatever else I'm doing teaching and all that and use my
[14:17]vacations as wisely as I can. When did you get COVID and what were your symptoms of long
[14:24]long COVID like and how long how long did it last? Like I got COVID I know when I got it I got it
[14:31]out of book party like the last book party in New York it was on our Morse book party
[14:37]March 9th maybe I know because I talked to someone who was an old friend of mine who was elderly
[14:43]and she cried a cough on me a little and in two weeks I was sick as a dog and she was she had died
[14:50]oh my gosh so terrible so I got it around the 15th of March and I couldn't walk to the park for
[14:59]I don't know three months I mean I guess was six weeks that I really was down and then it was like a
[15:05]slow slow to be able to get any stamina but I had symptoms for almost two years so I mean it
[15:15]doesn't it didn't stop me but it was hard it was hard I had a lot of my problems that I was just
[15:22]nauseous all the time so I've been on this drug that they give to chemotherapy patients for two
[15:28]years now and that helps me I mean I'm I get through the day but it really knocked me out
[15:35]and I wasn't that sick with COVID I mean compared to how sick people get you know I'm ever calling
[15:40]my doctor and she said look call me again if you can't breathe but otherwise stay home and don't
[15:46]just see anybody so that's what I did oh oh my gosh anyway I'm sorry oh that's okay I'm okay
[15:56]no I know but just I just the reverberations of that time period for so are going to be felt for
[16:02]so long in so many ways anyway it's just uh staggering when you stuff to think about it sometimes
[16:09]which obviously we don't anymore as much because we're also busy again and yet it was so recent
[16:15]yeah I don't think people understand how traumatized they actually are you know we just move on it's like a war
[16:21]yeah of course then like all the anxiety rates are up and everybody's you know inside but
[16:27]it's like seeping out right inside out when I see it with my students and my students students
[16:33]you know because I run this program where formed with my students when we train MFA students to go
[16:39]teach an area middle schools and high schools and so I see how the younger kids are so traumatized
[16:47]and how traumatized my students are it's kind of beautiful and watch them to work together and they
[16:53]all find solace and literature which it's me sometimes they only solace so I mean that part's nice
[17:01]but you know they've just been ravaged what are some of the things you do is like chair of the
[17:07]entire fiction department at the new school like what are some of your big responsibilities and
[17:12]what's something you want? It's almost 100 students and I'm there you know first person of defense
[17:21]if they have an issue or problem or if they're happy I like them to come see me I have a
[17:26]faculty that I try to help I mean I see myself as a liaison between the faculty and the students
[17:31]and the administration I bring in writers we used to have a really lively reading series and we did
[17:40]all the big events that NBCC awards and the triangle awards and story prize and then with Covid
[17:49]everything went online and shut down and but now we're back I just had on Lance Samantha Chan
[17:55]come in she's the head of Iowa workshop and she has this beautiful new book that's based on the
[18:01]brothers caromats off the family child it's called and so she came and read and spoke to my students
[18:07]so we're we're getting back in business with that there's a lot of social work in it right now
[18:12]because between black lives matter and all the anti-Semitism anti-Asian stuff students are pretty
[18:19]traumatized but we help them find agents and get published we have parties for them we love them
[18:26]they're awesome they really are they're the nicest students yeah that's amazing when you said
[18:33]you write screenplay sometimes have any of your screenplays been made into film one one was made
[18:40]we was a adaptation of one of my books called p.s the director who's a nice guy and I had a really
[18:47]different sensibility so I'm not I don't know the movie but they had a great cast and it was
[18:54]really interesting for me to watch it could film Laura Lenny was in it and Gabriel Byrne and
[19:01]Paul Rudd and Marcia Gayhart and and yeah so it was exciting to do I've written a bunch of them
[19:09]and I've got I can't tell you how close I've gotten I mean I guess that's the screenwriters lament
[19:15]you know I worked with copola we were like weeks away from from shooting and we were just
[19:21]we had casting problems and money problems and it all fell apart I mean everything was like that
[19:27]but I didn't get depressed until I actually had the movie get me and then it was like it's you
[19:34]know because I always had fantasies about them they'd come back you know I could see it in my mind
[19:38]but this was done and again the actors were great to for grace played this young boy he was
[19:44]really cute and sexy and sweet and so yeah it was interesting wow
[19:50]I'm still a fun to get to see it through to completion I mean a lot of people come
[19:54]close and then they don't get that one last thing yeah I know it was fun and I was on set and I
[20:00]across Columbia's steps in the opening, I think, credits or so.
[20:05]Yeah, I got my moment.
[20:07]Oh, that's great. Are you working on anything now?
[20:10]Any books?
[20:11]I have a short story collection that I can have signed on to.
[20:16]I want to move over and connect with my editor.
[20:19]We just moved together this past year.
[20:22]So I, in between things, I tend to write it a short story.
[20:26]So that means maybe every three to five years, I write a short story and they've accumulated.
[20:33]So I, or one or two, and I need to get them into shape.
[20:36]So that's next.
[20:37]And I have an idea for the next novel, which I think will be a big departure.
[20:42]But that's probably all I can say.
[20:45]Maybe it will be historical.
[20:47]Oh, okay.
[20:48]Now that you're now that you've gotten the research bug, you know, yeah, keep digging.
[20:53]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[20:55]I mean, I know you do, but would you share them?
[20:58]In which realm can you, can you be a little more?
[21:01]Okay.
[21:02]Let's try.
[21:03]Someone who is desperate to publish their fiction for the first time.
[21:07]I think one thing would be not to be so desperate because a lot of times I see students try to publish too early.
[21:13]And then they kind of wear out their welcome instead of getting the work to the best shape it could be in.
[21:19]Not that people don't change in publishing and the world doesn't change.
[21:23]But it can also be kind of, it can make you feel bad to go out too early and get rejected.
[21:29]I think it always helps if somebody can sing your praises.
[21:34]If you're looking for an agent or an editor.
[21:37]If you don't know somebody like that yet, then I'd say go to agents and editors night at your local university.
[21:44]Or we have writing spaces in New York that often hold agents and editors nights.
[21:50]We do it at the university at our university.
[21:53]Go to a conference just so you get to meet somebody so you get their name.
[21:57]You can certainly submit cold, but it's easier to get noticed.
[22:03]If there's something warm about your letter and then just keep going.
[22:07]I mean, one thing is to just, the minute something comes back, I'd say send it out right again because it's not going to do any good sitting in your drawer.
[22:16]So first take it as far as you can.
[22:18]And it will happen.
[22:19]It happens.
[22:20]It kind of is like popcorn.
[22:22]Like you try, you try, you try, you live in a land of no or at least that was my experience.
[22:26]And then somebody bought something and somebody bought something and then all of a sudden it starts to pop.
[22:32]So you just have to really be patient.
[22:35]I remember when I was at Columbia to John Irving came.
[22:40]And one of the things we asked him was, oh, how could you tell who was going to be published?
[22:48]Even when you were teaching 10 years later and he said the ones who kept on it.
[22:53]That's how you can tell.
[22:54]There are some that are so talented, but they burn out because it's a tough game.
[22:59]And then there are others who just will not stop.
[23:02]And I think there's a lot to that.
[23:05]You know, really just keeping, just keep going, keep working.
[23:08]It's a tough job, but it's a good job.
[23:10]I love that.
[23:11]I swear he came to the Bennington program.
[23:14]Did I make that up?
[23:15]I felt like he came and spoke to our whole program that summer.
[23:19]It could be.
[23:20]I felt like he did.
[23:21]Bennington, listen.
[23:22]I mean, I know we shouldn't just reminisce and pound our days together in the ninth early 90s, but it was a very special program
[23:30]program because there was an adult writer's conference at the same time as there was this kids program.
[23:35]So you could take advantage of all of that, but it was also so artsy and supportive.
[23:41]Anyway, I love teaching there.
[23:44]That was really great.
[23:46]Helen, thank you.
[23:47]This was so great.
[23:49]Thank you for the great read.
[23:51]Congratulations, especially on your move to Kenoff and all of that.
[23:55]Who is your editor by the way?
[23:56]I was Jennifer Barth, and I love her.
[23:58]Oh, great.
[23:59]It's really tough.
[24:00]It's really smart.
[24:02]It's very good acting.
[24:03]It's what I need.
[24:05]But we all need, I'm sure.
[24:07]Anyway, congratulations, and I'm glad we've reconnected.
[24:10]Yeah, me too.
[24:11]Thanks so much.
[24:12]All right.
[24:13]Thank you.
[24:14]I hope I'll see you again.
[24:15]I hope to see you too.
[24:16]Bye-bye.
[24:17]Bye.
[24:18]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:21]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zebioans and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[24:33]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[24:37]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outroom music.