Cynthia Weiner, A GORGEOUS EXCITEMENT: A Novel
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[0:45]Cynthia Weiner is the author of a gorgeous excitement and novel.
[0:48]Cynthia has had a long career writing and teaching fiction.
[0:51]Her short stories have been published in plow shares the sun and epiphany and her story
[0:55]boyfriends was awarded a push card prize.
[0:57]She is also the assistant director of the writer's studio in New York City.
[1:01]A gorgeous excitement.
[1:02]Her first novel was inspired by her upbringing on New York's upper side in the 1980s,
[1:07]and particularly by the notorious preppy murder of 1986.
[1:11]She lives in New York's Hudson Valley.
[1:13]Welcome, Cynthia.
[1:14]Thank you so much for coming on, totally booked with Zibi, to talk about a gorgeous excitement,
[1:18]which I loved.
[1:20]Oh my gosh, so good.
[1:21]Thank you for writing this.
[1:22]I read every word, baited breath, love, love, love.
[1:26]Thank you.
[1:27]Cynthia, it's so such an honor to be here with you.
[1:31]I remember the whole preppy murder so well.
[1:34]I remember where I was, like all of it, like hearing about it.
[1:37]I was actually a Hebrew school and I remember sitting in the chair and being like,
[1:42]what happened?
[1:43]Anyway, let's back up.
[1:44]Sorry.
[1:45]I had to jump in there.
[1:46]But talk about where the story came from, what it's based on all the stuff, backstory and
[1:50]the what it's about.
[1:52]Of course.
[1:53]Yes.
[1:55]As you alluded to, by the 1986 preppy murder in New York City, when an 18 year old
[2:00]Jennifer 11, and we can get into a young Jewish girl, actually, was strangled to death
[2:05]in Central Park during a hookup with preppy, very handsome, boy, Robert Chambers.
[2:13]But the novel is fiction and it follows a bright but very insecure 18 year old girl during
[2:18]the summer of 1986.
[2:20]Her name is Nina Jacobs, and she's living with her father and profoundly depressed and
[2:26]very volatile mother on the very waspie every side of Manhattan.
[2:30]And she's desperate to lose her virginity before she starts college and also desperate
[2:36]to save her mother from kind of less ditch electroshock therapy.
[2:41]And at the start of the summer, she meets this upper side legend who I've called
[2:45]Gardner Reed at a very popular preppy bar one night she falls for him.
[2:50]She also makes a new friend who introduced the sort of cocaine and at the same time her mother
[2:56]starts a new medication.
[2:57]So there's sort of these three interweaving storylines and as the summer goes on, sort
[3:00]of everybody spirals out of control and sort of oblivious to where they're headed, the danger
[3:08]they're headed into.
[3:09]Yeah.
[3:10]I feel like this is so it's written in such a cinematic way, like the scene on the sidewalk
[3:14]with the doorman interfering and, you know, all of the and the mother and her antics
[3:20]and all of the scenes in the park and the bar and all of it, the scene when she finally
[3:28]goes up to his room with the pictures, I'm like, it's just I feel like I watched the whole
[3:33]thing.
[3:34]Okay.
[3:35]Thank you.
[3:36]What was your relationship?
[3:37]What happened?
[3:38]Did you know Jennifer?
[3:39]Like what's your relationship to the story and why did it come back to you and why did
[3:42]you make it a book?
[3:44]Or why did it inspire the book?
[3:45]Right.
[3:46]I didn't know her.
[3:47]I think I knew of her and I was at the bar, it was Dorian's which, you know, was this
[3:52]on 84th and 2nd and so I was at the bar a lot that summer.
[3:55]I was a tiny bit older actually than Nina is.
[3:58]So I was more friendly with Robert Chambers.
[4:01]I was very close with a couple of his very close friends.
[4:04]So I didn't know him, you know, intimately, but you know, I spent a lot of time with
[4:09]all of them as a group, he was at my parents' house once, you know, I would see him
[4:13]in the park.
[4:14]So yeah.
[4:15]So I knew him and, I mean, the story was, it was, it was, it was so shocking that something
[4:21]like this could happen.
[4:22]He was one of those people that everybody knew, everybody liked as far as I know.
[4:27]He had gone to a bunch of school, you know, he was troubled.
[4:30]But in a way that, that didn't seem so different necessarily from other people maybe and
[4:36]he had a lot of drugs and he got into trouble, but it was, he was so good looking.
[4:40]So it was kind of a bad boy appeal.
[4:42]But anyway, just the shock of it, the shock of both that he could do something like that
[4:48]and that a young woman who obviously thought she was safe went to Central Park with someone
[4:53]she felt safe with, could be killed.
[4:55]So the story stayed with me for years and I tried to write it in various ways as a short
[5:00]story because that's what I was writing for years and it just clearly needed a sort of
[5:06]bigger canvas.
[5:08]Yeah.
[5:09]Wow.
[5:10]So where, and where did you come up with the idea of her relationship with her mother?
[5:15]Well, some of that is based on some, you know, some truth and fictionalized and, you know,
[5:21]I had been exposed to, you know, both, you know, depression and, and, and, uh, mainly
[5:27]and my family.
[5:28]So I knew about that and I think once I realized that the two stories went together that
[5:33]there was a kind of, there's a sort of media or euphoria about falling for a new guy, you
[5:38]know, and when he pays attention back, you know, all of that, that thrill is what happens
[5:43]in the book of a guy who seems completely out of reach and out of your league suddenly
[5:48]is looking at you and flirting with you.
[5:51]That sort of euphoria combined with the mothers sort of growing euphoria, which turns out
[5:56]to be, you know, quite, quite destructive and, and dangerous, but doesn't seem that way
[6:00]in the beginning, the beginning seems wonderful because she's been depressed for so long
[6:05]and, and then, you know, and then the cocaine.
[6:07]So those three together, it was clear that the story was about, was about that kind
[6:12]of exhilaration, you know, and then the darker side of it as, as exhilaration goes higher
[6:17]and higher.
[6:18]You know, interesting.
[6:20]It also, when she becomes friends with the girl she meets in the park who's name, I'm
[6:25]blanking on at this moment, Stephanie.
[6:27]Stephanie.
[6:28]So when they become friends, like it just shows so clearly and now as a mother of teenagers,
[6:33]like I read it as a teenager myself, like in my head, I'm still very young, but I
[6:37]also have a teenager, you too, I told you to do the teenage, yeah, I'm like, I can tap
[6:43]into all that in two seconds, like, people keep asking me, how much research did you do?
[6:49]Or how hard was it to connect to, you know, I was like, I think I'm still 18.
[6:52]It was, anyways, I actually think it would be easier to write, like, I feel more connected
[6:59]to those moments, which feel like they lasted for so long and are so clear than like
[7:04]a night in my 20s, which like went by in a blur, you know what I mean?
[7:07]Right.
[7:08]Yeah, of course.
[7:09]And certainly any night I've had in the last 10 years, which I don't know, nothing.
[7:14]Of course.
[7:16]But the way you show not peer pressure, that sounds too pat, right?
[7:20]But the way one relationship can take you so off course and just how vulnerable really,
[7:28]you are at that age to all kinds of influences, whether it's a cute boy or a girl who
[7:34]has like this crazy boyfriend and this cocaine habit and next thing you know, you're
[7:38]gracious how, you know, doing God knows what with your grandfather and dementia today.
[7:43]Like, but it's almost like a warning because what do you even do as a parent to make sure,
[7:49]and I obviously her parents were not like the helicopter parents of today, right?
[7:55]I don't know, just even reading it from the parent lens, like making sure your kids don't go
[8:00]wobbling off, where all everybody's just on a tight route, if I feel like, and it's so easy to go
[8:04]one side or the other or fall off.
[8:07]You know, I don't know if this is the answer, but I remember my sister, my older brother's wife,
[8:11]it's a wonderful mother and she, she used to tell me that she would just lie down next to her,
[8:17]one of whichever child she's four kids, and it is her in the dark and just lie down and let them
[8:23]talk. And my childhood in the 70s and 80 parents were very busy then, I don't know, but they
[8:27]were always out and they were always traveling and you know, it's just a very different time.
[8:32]We didn't have cell phones. We weren't connected. They didn't follow me on like GPS or whatever
[8:36]people have on their kids phones. So they didn't particularly listen, it would just
[8:40]parents didn't really look older people didn't really listen to kids back then, I think. And I
[8:44]feel like now that does make a really big difference. And I feel like if parents are just even
[8:51]if the kids don't feel like talking just with them feels just to me like much more than
[8:56]um, used to happen and probably would make a big difference. Because I think people just want
[9:00]to be seen and I know in the book, me and I just want somebody to look at her and tell her,
[9:05]you know, you're great. You're pretty. Of course this guy would like you. Of course, of course
[9:10]people like it. You know, and I, I, maybe the parents, I don't know, did that more, did that more,
[9:17]they wouldn't need it from outside other people. I'm not sure. I'm not a parent. So it's hard for
[9:21]me to know. Yeah, no, no, I'm just, you know, that was a great reflection on it. With Nina,
[9:27]you so tapped into that feeling of being other, I'm not fitting in a feeling conspicuous and
[9:33]there's that one scene in the bathroom where they're talking about her and I feel like everybody has
[9:37]some sort of story at some point everyone growing up has been on one side or the other of that
[9:41]situation. But it is so painful to read and just her, just her longing for acceptance in a way
[9:48]and feeling like there are things in her path that will never really allow her to be part of this
[9:55]group or that group. Tell me more about about that because you really nailed that.
[10:00]Thank you. Well, she grows up Jewish, which isn't necessarily a formula for being an outsider, obviously, but for me, in the 80s, I did grow up in that kind of world, and it was more that I didn't, my parents didn't know other people's parents from years back.
[10:17]You had an all gone, you know, to Maine, my parents thought Maine was a fun place to go, you know, or skiing, you know, it was dangerous. And we didn't do, you know, so those sort of the Hamptons, we didn't, we didn't do those things that people had been doing for years and everybody knew each other and, you know, it was a very preppy world. And, you know, I had about Mitzvah and saying, and so I had a different kind of last name. You know, things like that felt made me feel very apart.
[10:47]I had dark hair, I had very, very pale skin that got summer, you know, just little things like that that matter when you're young. I was joking recently that all my friends, their middle names were these very cool, you know, old family names, their mothers made a name. It's like Williams or, you know, more or whatever at miles or Morgan and mine was Renee, which was lovely, but it was not.
[11:08]So, you know, so, so I, I gave myself the middle name of Lifton, which was my mother's maiden name, but it didn't quite have the same cachet, especially since it had been changed from Lifshits, some years back.
[11:20]So, things like that just made me feel kind of separate and, and I think that is self perpetuating so that I became very self conscious and needed us to very anxious and not necessarily based on anything.
[11:35]And as a perfectly likable young, but I was really likable young woman, but I felt so self conscious that I think it, it separated me and I think that that can happen with any difference.
[11:44]And as I've gotten older and spoken with so many people from that you're everybody or so almost everybody felt like an outsider for some reason or another, even if they lived in that world or came from that world, everyone feels separate, but everyone wants to say that I guess.
[12:02]No one knows that everyone else is feeling that same way. That's one of the tragedies I think of being young.
[12:07]So true. And I had the same thing. My grade school, which I went to until eighth grade, I was one of, I think three Jewish girls, never videos going to Fisher, Thailand and all these places.
[12:19]And I was like, I remember asking my parents like, why can't we go to, you know, this place in Maine or whatever. And they're like, what?
[12:26]No, we don't think that's not, we're not going there. I'm like, everybody else does all these things. And I went to Utah recently. And it was not.
[12:35]I won't say anything. I see one of my parents wanted to, not that they would have been allowed there anyway. You know what I mean?
[12:41]But it's funny, those places that I so aspire to once I was there, I was like, Oh, I said, no, I'm too Jewish for that there's fine groups and there's.
[12:52]There's, there's, there's a lot of mold and, and, and damned is I don't like this. I want my ear dark.
[12:59]I don't like that, which is, it's funny that I aspire to that world. And then when I was once part and any part of that world, I thought, Oh, I, this isn't so great.
[13:08]But it, it seemed that way from a distance, it's shimmer, you know, in the preppy handbook and yes, everything's still glamorous.
[13:16]Well, I'm just a little bit younger and I had the same, I felt the same thing. I don't even know if it still is around for younger kids, but who knows?
[13:25]Anyway, it doesn't matter. Tell me more about the writing of the book and like how long it took and how you just the whole process behind it and if anything changed significantly from how you thought it would be originally.
[13:38]Yeah, it took me a long time. It took me about nine years, I think I, I try not to go back and look at the exact starting date because I, I, I hate to think how long it really took, but that's okay.
[13:48]It took what it took and I didn't really know how to write a novel. I never tried to write a novel before I hadn't really planned to and I didn't, I didn't even know what the story.
[13:57]I sort of knew the story line. I sort of knew this. I was going to be a summer. I knew that was the structure.
[14:02]I didn't know who was going to be killed until quite late, the drafting, who was going to be the victim and, you know, just making up scenes and figuring out how the scenes went together and all that just, you know, it took a lot.
[14:17]I mean, you know, so writing a novel is a, it's a long process. Yeah, so the main thing that changed was who the victim was most of the rest of the story.
[14:27]And what was the same, but that was, that was the big change. Yeah.
[14:31]And when you're writing, where do you like to write, like where give me a visual of this whole process and all of that.
[14:38]Well, right at the start of the pandemic, I actually wound up. I lived in New York City, you know, my whole life. I grew up there and had moved back after graduate school and was there for years in a very small apartment.
[14:50]The pandemic happened and I decided to move to the Hudson Valley to a town I, you know, sort of been trying out over the years and going to.
[14:58]And so now I'm in the New York. I have a little tiny office in an old high school. It's really cool. They made it into art studios and offices. So the top of some little stairwell. I have a little office there that I work in.
[15:12]And I just go there every day and sit there and hope that something happens.
[15:18]Yeah. That's cool. It's this schedule.
[15:21]So when people read the book, what do you want them to get out of it? Like when they put it down, how do you, what do you want them to take with them for their lives and all of that?
[15:31]I think kind of what we started out by talking about, just about listening and about paying attention and about, you know, one of the things that happens in the book is that
[15:43]Nina sees things and yet she she justifies everything. You know, she she has all these reasons why, you know, because of her own insecurities and her own deprivation, you know, that that everything is okay.
[15:57]No, it doesn't. It's not what it looks like. It's not what it seems to be. So I mean, that's something that I kind of did a lot when I was young and didn't listen to myself didn't listen to my own counsel.
[16:09]So I guess that would be that would be one thing. And also just that, you know, one of the things that happened after the the murder was a lot of blaming of the young woman and of young women were pushy and they were too aggressive and they were too assertive and just, you know, I feel like that's back again in some ways, you know, my nieces are both just starting college and I hear their stories about the way that boys still talk about girls.
[16:39]And I guess just, you know, just just trying to be more open about that assertiveness and confidence and those are same things to be proud of and do not waste them on people who don't appreciate them.
[16:52]I love that.
[16:53]Yeah.
[16:54]It's great.
[16:55]There's some of the books that you like to read or you're reading now. Like what's your genre. I know you mentioned short stories. Oh, I love to reach short stories and I love, oh gosh.
[17:05]I love Joyce Carolo's. I love Lori Moore. I just started actually. Oh my gosh. What is it called.
[17:13]Play world is that the name of Adam Ross is book. He also grew up in New York and these may be you're younger than me and lived on the upper West side. So that's been really fun to read.
[17:22]I have to write that down.
[17:23]That sounds good.
[17:24]I feel like I'm right at the wrong name. But, um, he's it's about a young man as a child actor. I love books that in New York City. I'm also reading a title meant by room on a mom, which has been super fun to read. I don't know. I love, you know, someone's on the subway. I love, uh,
[17:38]of Tessa Mosh fed. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing her name right. I love Halle Butler. I love young women writers.
[17:45]Uh, who were sort of I love that kind of maybe what I was saying before that kind of very sort of brassy of noxious.
[17:51]But very sympathetic voice that a Tessa Mosh right has. I like my your rest of relaxation. Ravenly.
[17:57]Mommy's both luster. I love. Yeah. So those are some of the.
[18:01]Yeah, that's a lot. No, there's so many more. I have so many more than I'm reading, but those are the ones that come to mind at this moment. Yeah, no, that's that's great. What advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[18:12]Just just just go and and sit there and and and and keep working at it. And one of the things I was thinking of the other day that I'll pass along if this is helpful.
[18:24]Talk to people who like listening to you.
[18:29]And that I was saying this to someone that I remember at some point as I was right. You know, I was so I was so solitary as I was writing and I came up here to begin and I didn't have that many conversations with people. Everyone was wearing a mask and no one was really talking to each other.
[18:44]And I remember at one point talking to a friend who said to me, she's I don't know, you know, my best friend from college and she said anything you say, even if it makes no sense. I love listening to you. It was so sweet and and it was such it made me feel like, oh, so maybe maybe people like to listen to me.
[19:02]Maybe when I'm writing, there'll be someone out there who enjoys my voice and that was really helpful. So I know that's not the greatest.
[19:12]I mean, essentially, you want to write it for that best friend who listen carefully and you don't have to try to please everybody right just just.
[19:21]And sometimes I didn't imagine somebody reading who who, you know, was a huge critic and who thought I was a terrible writer and you know, that can stop you for days or weeks or years, you know, and instead to write, I love what you just said right first if you're writing for your best friend who loves you and wants to hear what you have to say.
[19:40]Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I'm inspired. We've inspired you.
[19:45]That was I love how you put that. That was really beautiful. Thank you.
[19:51]Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, Cynthia, this is amazing. Again, I just I love all your characters. I love.
[20:00]the aging grandfather. I love the sidekick boyfriend and the people at the bar and the friends
[20:06]and the sympathetic bar owner. And I don't know. I feel like this should be a play or a movie
[20:12]or just something because it is so it's just all so visual and so clear and emotional, such
[20:22]emotional depth to it. So thank you so much. That's really, really nice of you to say and especially
[20:28]coming from you, what a fine writer you are and hope. I've been following you. And it's really,
[20:38]it means a lot to me to hear this. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's very nice.
[20:44]All right. Well, I look forward to meeting you in person soon.
[20:49]Thanks, Cynthia. Okay, bye bye. Okay, bye bye. Thank you for listening to totally booked with
[20:55]Zibi, formerly mom's don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[21:00]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much.
[21:07]Oh, and bye the books.