Mentioned in:
The Great Fall 2024 Book Preview
With the arrival of autumn comes a deluge of great books. Here you'll find a sampling of new and forthcoming titles that caught our eye here at The Millions, and that we think might catch yours, too. Some we’ve already perused in galley form; others we’re eager to devour based on their authors, plots, or subject matters. We hope your next fall read is among them.
—Sophia Stewart, editor
October
Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera, tr. Lisa Dillman [F]
What it is: An epic, speculative account of the 18 months that Benito Juárez spent in New Orleans in 1853-54, years before he became the first and only Indigenous president of Mexico.
Who it's for: Fans of speculative history; readers who appreciate the magic that swirls around any novel set in New Orleans. —Claire Kirch
The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson [NF]
What it is: An exploration of Black Americans' pursuit and visions of utopia—both ideological and physical—that spans the Reconstruction era to the present day and combines history, memoir, and reportage.
Who it's for: Fans of Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments and Kristen R. Ghodsee's Everyday Utopia. —Sophia M. Stewart
The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard, tr. Martin Aitken [F]
What it is: The third installment in Knausgaard's Morning Star series, centered on the appearance of a mysterious new star in the skies above Norway.
Who it's for: Real Knausgaard heads only—The Wolves of Eternity and Morning Star are required reading for this one. —SMS
Brown Women Have Everything by Sayantani Dasgupta [NF]
What it is: Essays on the contradictions and complexities of life as an Indian woman in America, probing everything from hair to family to the joys of travel.
Who it's for: Readers of Durga Chew-Bose, Erika L. Sánchez, and Tajja Isen. —SMS
The Plot Against Native America by Bill Vaughn [F]
What it is: The first narrative history of Native American boarding schools— which aimed "civilize" Indigenous children by violently severing them from their culture— and their enduring, horrifying legacy.
Who it's for: Readers of Ned Blackhawk and Kathleen DuVal. —SMS
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich [F]
What it is: Erdrich's latest novel set in North Dakota's Red River Valley is a tale of the intertwined lives of ordinary people striving to survive and even thrive in their rural community, despite environmental upheavals, the 2008 financial crisis, and other obstacles.
Who it's for: Readers of cli-fi; fans of Linda LeGarde Grover and William Faulkner. —CK
The Position of Spoons by Deborah Levy [NF]
What it is: The second book from Levy in as many years, diverging from a recent streak of surrealist fiction with a collection of essays marked by exceptional observance and style.
Who it's for: Close lookers and the perennially curious. —John H. Maher
The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister [F]
What it's about: The Haddesley family has lived on the same West Virginia bog for centuries, making a supernatural bargain with the land—a generational blood sacrifice—in order to do so—until an uncovered secret changes everything.
Who it's for: Readers of Karen Russell and Jeff VanderMeer; anyone who has ever used the phrase "girl moss." —SMS
The Great When by Alan Moore [F]
What it's about: When an 18-year old book reseller comes across a copy of a book that shouldn’t exist, it threatens to upend not just an already post-war-torn London, but reality as we know it.
Who it's for: Anyone looking for a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery dipped in thaumaturgical psychedelia. —Daniella Fishman
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates [NF]
What it's about: One of our sharpest critical thinkers on social justice returns to nonfiction, nearly a decade after Between the World and Me, visiting Dakar, to contemplate enslavement and the Middle Passage; Columbia, S.C., as a backdrop for his thoughts on Jim Crow and book bans; and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where he sees contemporary segregation in the treatment of Palestinians.
Who it’s for: Fans of James Baldwin, George Orwell, and Angela Y. Davis; readers of Nikole Hannah-Jones’s The 1619 Project and Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, to name just a few engagements with national and racial identity. —Nathalie op de Beeck
Abortion by Jessica Valenti [NF]
What it is: Columnist and memoirist Valenti, who tracks pro-choice advocacy and attacks on the right to choose in her Substack, channels feminist rage into a guide for freedom of choice advocacy.
Who it’s for: Readers of Robin Marty’s The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America, #ShoutYourAbortion proponents, and followers of Jennifer Baumgartner’s [I Had an Abortion] project. —NodB
Gifted by Suzuki Suzumi, tr. Allison Markin Powell [F]
What it's about: A young sex worker in Tokyo's red-light district muses on her life and recounts her abusive mother's final days, in what is Suzuki's first novel to be translated into English.
Who it's for: Readers of Susan Boyt and Mieko Kanai; fans of moody, introspective fiction; anyone with a fraught relationship to their mother. —SMS
Childish Literature by Alejandro Zambra, tr. Megan McDowell [F]
What it is: A wide-ranging collection of stories, essays, and poems that explore childhood, fatherhood, and family.
Who it's for: Fans of dad lit (see: Lucas Mann's Attachments, Keith Gessen's Raising Raffi, Karl Ove Knausgaard's seasons quartet, et al). —SMS
Books Are Made Out of Books ed. Michael Lynn Crews [NF]
What it is: A mining of the archives of the late Cormac McCarthy with a focus on the famously tight-lipped author's literary influences.
Who it's for: Anyone whose commonplace book contains the words "arquebus," "cordillera," or "vinegaroon." —JHM
Slaveroad by John Edgar Wideman [F]
What it is: A blend of memoir, fiction, and history that charts the "slaveroad" that runs through American history, spanning the Atlantic slave trade to the criminal justice system, from the celebrated author of Brothers and Keepers.
Who it's for: Fans of Clint Smith and Ta-Nehisi Coates. —SMS
Linguaphile by Julie Sedivy [NF]
What it's about: Linguist Sedivy reflects on a life spent loving language—its beauty, its mystery, and the essential role it plays in human existence.
Who it's for: Amateur (or professional) linguists; fans of the podcast A Way with Words (me). —SMS
An Image of My Name Enters America by Lucy Ives [NF]
What it is: A collection of interrelated essays that connect moments from Ives's life to larger questions of history, identity, and national fantasy,
Who it's for: Fans of Ives, one of our weirdest and most wondrous living writers—duh; anyone with a passing interest in My Little Pony, Cold War–era musicals, or The Three Body Problem, all of which are mined here for great effect. —SMS
Women's Hotel by Daniel Lavery [F]
What it is: A novel set in 1960s New York City, about the adventures of the residents of a hotel providing housing for young women that is very much evocative of the real-life legendary Barbizon Hotel.
Who it's for: Readers of Mary McCarthy's The Group and Rona Jaffe's The Best of Everything. —CK
The World in Books by Kenneth C. Davis [NF]
What it is: A guide to 52 of the most influential works of nonfiction ever published, spanning works from Plato to Ida B. Wells, bell hooks to Barbara Ehrenreich, and Sun Tzu to Joan Didion.
Who it's for: Lovers of nonfiction looking to cover their canonical bases. —SMS
Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato [F]
What it's about: Through the emanating blue-glow of their computer screens, a mother and daughter, four-thousand miles apart, find solace and loneliness in their nightly Skype chats in this heartstring-pulling debut.
Who it's for: Someone who needs to be reminded to CALL YOUR MOTHER! —DF
Riding Like the Wind by Iris Jamahl Dunkle [NF]
What it is: The biography of Sanora Babb, a contemporary of John Steinbeck's whose field notes and interviews with Dust Bowl migrants Steinbeck relied upon to write The Grapes of Wrath.
Who it's for: Steinbeck fans and haters alike; readers of Kristin Hannah's The Four Winds and the New York Times Overlooked column; anyone interested in learning more about the Dust Bowl migrants who fled to California hoping for a better life. —CK
Innie Shadows by Olivia M. Coetzee [F]
What it is: a work of crime fiction set on the outskirts of Cape Town, where a community marred by violence seeks justice and connection; also the first novel to be translated from Kaaps, a dialect of Afrikaans that was until recently only a spoken language.
Who it's for: fans of sprawling, socioeconomically-attuned crime dramas a la The Wire. —SMS
Dorothy Parker in Hollywood by Gail Crowther [NF]
What it is: A history of the famous wit—and famous New Yorker—in her L.A. era, post–Algonquin Round Table and mid–Red Scare.
Who it's for: Owners of a stack of hopelessly dog-eared Joan Didion paperbacks. —JHM
The Myth of American Idealism by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson [NF]
What it is: A potent critique of the ideology behind America's foreign interventions and its status as a global power, and an treatise on how the nation's hubristic pursuit of "spreading democracy" threatens not only the delicate balance of global peace, but the already-declining health of our planet.
Who it's for: Chomskyites; policy wonks and casual critics of American recklessness alike. —DF
Mysticism by Simon Critchley [NF]
What it is: A study of mysticism—defined as an experience, rather than religious practice—by the great British philosopher Critchley, who mines music, poetry, and literature along the way.
Who it's for: Readers of John Gray, Jorge Luis Borges, and Simone Weil. —SMS
Q&A by Adrian Tomine [NF]
What it is: The Japanese American creator of the Optic Nerve comic book series for D&Q, and of many a New Yorker cover, shares his personal history and his creative process in this illustrated unburdening.
Who it’s for: Readers of Tomine’s melancholic, sometimes cringey, and occasionally brutal collections of comics short stories including Summer Blonde, Shortcomings, and Killing and Dying. —NodB
Sonny Boy by Al Pacino [NF]
What it is: Al Pacino's memoir—end of description.
Who it's for: Cinephiles; anyone curious how he's gonna spin fumbling Diane Keaton. —SMS
Seeing Baya by Alice Kaplan [NF]
What it is: The first biography of the enigmatic and largely-forgotten Algerian artist Baya Mahieddine, who first enchanted midcentury Paris as a teenager.
Who it's for: Admirers of Leonora Carrington, Hilma af Klint, Frida Kahlo, and other belatedly-celebrated women painters. —SMS
Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer [F]
What it is: A surprise return to the Area X, the stretch of unforbidding and uncanny coastline in the hit Southern Reach trilogy.
Who it's for: Anyone who's heard this song and got the reference without Googling it. —JHM
The Four Horsemen by Nick Curtola [NF]
What it is: The much-anticipated cookbook from the team behind Brooklyn's hottest restaurant (which also happens to be co-owned by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem).
Who it's for: Oenophiles; thirty-somethings who live in north Williamsburg (derogatory). —SMS
Seeing Further by Esther Kinsky, tr. Caroline Schmidt [F]
What it's about: An unnamed German woman embarks on the colossal task of reviving a cinema in a small Hungarian village.
Who it's for: Fans of Jenny Erpenbeck; anyone charmed by Cinema Paradiso (not derogatory!). —SMS
Ripcord by Nate Lippens [NF]
What it's about: A novel of class, sex, friendship, and queer intimacy, written in delicious prose and narrated by a gay man adrift in Milwaukee.
Who it's for: Fans of Brontez Purnell, Garth Greenwell, Alexander Chee, and Wayne Koestenbaum. —SMS
The Use of Photography by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie, tr. Alison L. Strayer [NF]
What it's about: Ernaux's love affair with Marie, a journalist, while she was undergoing treatment for cancer, and their joint project to document their romance.
Who it's for: The Ernaux hive, obviously; readers of Sontag's On Photography and Janet Malcolm's Still Pictures. —SMS
Nora Ephron at the Movies by Ilana Kaplan [NF]
What it is: Kaplan revisits Nora Ephron's cinematic watersheds—Silkwood, Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle—in this illustrated book. Have these iconic stories, and Ephron’s humor, weathered more than 40 years?
Who it’s for: Film history buffs who don’t mind a heteronormative HEA; listeners of the Hot and Bothered podcast; your coastal grandma. —NodB
[millions_email]
The Philosophy of Translation by Damion Searls [NF]
What it is: A meditation on the act and art of translation by one of today's most acclaimed practitioners, best known for his translations of Fosse, Proust, et al.
Who it's for: Regular readers of Words Without Borders and Asymptote; professional and amateur literary translators alike. —SMS
Salvage by Dionne Brand
What it is: A penetrating reevaluation of the British literary canon and the tropes once shaped Brand's reading life and sense of self—and Brand’s first major work of nonfiction since her landmark A Map to the Door of No Return.
Who it's for: Readers of Christina Sharpe's Ordinary Notes and Elizabeth Hardwick's Seduction and Betrayal. —SMS
Masquerade by Mike Fu [F]
What it's about: Housesitting for an artist friend in present-day New York, Meadow Liu stumbles on a novel whose author shares his name—the first of many strange, haunting happenings that lead up to the mysterious disappearance of Meadow's friend.
Who it's for: fans of Ed Park and Alexander Chee. —SMS
November
The Beggar Student by Osamu Dazai, tr. Sam Bett [F]
What it is: A novella in the moody vein of Dazai’s acclaimed No Longer Human, following the 30-something “fictional” Dazai into another misadventure spawned from a hubristic spat with a high schooler.
Who it's for: Longtime readers of Dazai, or new fans who discovered the midcentury Japanese novelist via TikTok and the Bungo Stray Dogs anime. —DF
In Thrall by Jane DeLynn [F]
What it is: A landmark lesbian bildungsroman about 16-year-old Lynn's love affair with her English teacher, originally published in 1982.
Who it's for: Fans of Joanna Russ's On Strike Against God and Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story —SMS
Washita Love Child by Douglas Kent Miller [NF]
What it is: The story of Jesse Ed Davis, the Indigenous musician who became on of the most sought after guitarists of the late '60s and '70s, playing alongside B.B. King, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and more.
Who it's for: readers of music history and/or Indigenous history; fans of Joy Harjo, who wrote the foreword. —SMS
Set My Heart on Fire by Izumi Suzuki, tr. Helen O'Horan [F]
What it is: Gritty, sexy, and wholly rock ’n’ roll, Suzuki’s first novel translated into English (following her story collection, Hit Parade of Tears) follows 20-year-old Izumi navigating life, love, and music in the underground scene in '70s Japan.
Who it's for: Fans of Meiko Kawakami, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Marlowe Granados's Happy Hour. —DF
Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik [NF]
What it is: A dual portrait of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, who are so often compared to—and pitted against—each other on the basis of their mutual Los Angeles milieu.
Who it's for: Fans or haters of either writer (the book is fairly pro-Babitz, often at Didion's expense); anyone who has the Lit Hub Didion tote bag. —SMS
The Endless Refrain by David Rowell [NF]
What it's about: How the rise of music streaming, demonitizing of artist revenue, and industry tendency toward nostalgia have laid waste to the musical landscape, and the future of music culture.
Who it's for: Fans of Kyle Chayka, Spence Kornhaber, and Lindsay Zoladz. —SMS
Every Arc Bends Its Radian by Sergio De La Pava [F]
What it is: A mind- and genre-bending detective story set in Cali, Colombia, that blends high-stakes suspense with rigorous philosophy.
Who it's for: Readers of Raymond Chandler, Thomas Pynchon, and Jules Verne. —SMS
Something Close to Nothing by Tom Pyun [F]
What it’s about: At the airport with his white husband Jared, awaiting a flight to Cambodia to meet the surrogate mother carrying their adoptive child-to-be, Korean American Wynn decides parenthood isn't for him, and bad behavior ensues.
Who it’s for: Pyun’s debut is calculated to cut through saccharine depictions of queer parenthood—could pair well with Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby. —NodB
Rosenfeld by Maya Kessler [F]
What it is: Kessler's debut—rated R for Rosenfeld—follows one Noa Simmons through the tumultuous and ultimately profound power play that is courting (and having a lot of sex with) the titular older man who soon becomes her boss.
Who it's for: Fans of Sex and the City, Raven Leilani’s Luster, and Coco Mellor’s Cleopatra and Frankenstein. —DF
Lazarus Man by Richard Price [F]
What it is: The former The Wire writer offers yet another astute chronicle of urban life, this time of an ever-changing Harlem.
Who it's for: Fans of Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto and Paul Murray's The Bee Sting—and, of course, The Wire. —SMS
Stranger Than Fiction by Edwin Frank [NF]
What it is: An astute curveball of a read on the development and many manifestations of the novel throughout the tumultuous 20th century.
Who it's for: Readers who look at a book's colophon before its title. —JHM
Letters to His Neighbor by Marcel Proust, tr. Lydia Davis
What it is: A collection of Proust’s tormented—and frequently hilarious—letters to his noisy neighbor which, in a diligent translation from Davis, stand the test of time.
Who it's for: Proust lovers; people who live below heavy-steppers. —DF
Context Collapse by Ryan Ruby [NF]
What it is: A self-proclaimed "poem containing a history of poetry," from ancient Greece to the Iowa Workshop, from your favorite literary critic's favorite literary critic.
Who it's for: Anyone who read and admired Ruby's titanic 2022 essay on The Waste Land; lovers of poetry looking for a challenge. —SMS
How Sondheim Can Change Your Life by Richard Schoch [NF]
What it's about: Drama professor Schoch's tribute to Stephen Sondheim and the life lessons to be gleaned from his music.
Who it's for: Sondheim heads, former theater kids, end of list. —SMS
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer [NF]
What it is: 2022 MacArthur fellow and botanist Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, (re)introduces audiences to a flowering, fruiting native plant beloved of foragers and gardeners.
Who it’s for: The restoration ecologist in your life, along with anyone who loved Braiding Sweetgrass and needs a nature-themed holiday gift. —NodB
My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor by Homeless [F]
What it is: A pseudonymous, tenderly comic novel of blue whales and Golden Arches, mental illness and recovery.
Who it's for: Anyone who finds Thomas Pynchon a bit too staid. —JHM
Yoke and Feather by Jessie van Eerden [NF]
What it's about: Van Eerden's braided essays explore the "everyday sacred" to tease out connections between ancient myth and contemporary life.
Who it's for: Readers of Courtney Zoffness's Spilt Milk and Jeanna Kadlec's Heretic. —SMS
Camp Jeff by Tova Reich [F]
What it's about: A "reeducation" center for sex pests in the Catskills, founded by one Jeffery Epstein (no, not that one), where the dual phenomena of #MeToo and therapyspeak collide.
Who it's for: Fans of Philip Roth and Nathan Englander; cancel culture skeptics. —SMS
Selected Amazon Reviews by Kevin Killian [NF]
What it is: A collection of 16 years of Killian’s funniest, wittiest, and most poetic Amazon reviews, the sheer number of which helped him earn the rarefied “Top 100” and “Hall of Fame” status on the site.
Who it's for: Fans of Wayne Koestenbaum and Dodie Bellamy, who wrote introduction and afterword, respectively; people who actually leave Amazon reviews. —DF
Cher by Cher [NF]
What it is: The first in a two-volume memoir, telling the story of Cher's early life and ascendent career as only she can tell it.
Who it's for: Anyone looking to fill the My Name Is Barbra–sized hole in their heart, or looking for something to tide them over until the Liza memoir drops. —SMS
The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, tr. Philip Gabriel [F]
What it is: Murakami’s first novel in over six years returns to the high-walled city from his 1985 story "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" with one man's search for his lost love—and, simultaneously, an ode to libraries and literature itself.
Who it's for: Murakami fans who have long awaited his return to fiction. —DF
American Bulk by Emily Mester [NF]
What it's about: Reflecting on what it means to "live life to the fullest," Mester explores the cultural and personal impacts of America’s culture of overconsumption, from Costco hauls to hoarding to diet culture—oh my!
Who it's for: Lovers of sustainability; haters of excess; skeptics of the title essay of Becca Rothfeld's All Things Are Too Small. —DF
The Icon and the Idealist by Stephanie Gorton [NF]
What it is: A compelling look at the rivalry between Margaret Sanger, of Planned Parenthood fame, and Mary Ware Dennett, who each held radically different visions for the future of birth control.
Who it's for: Readers of Amy Sohn's The Man Who Hated Women and Katherine Turk's The Women of NOW; anyone interested in the history of reproductive rights. —SMS
December
Rental House by Weike Wang [F]
What it's about: Married college sweethearts invite their drastically different families on a Cape Code vacation, raising questions about marriage, intimacy, and kinship.
Who it's for: Fans of Wang's trademark wit and sly humor (see: Joan Is Okay and Chemistry); anyone with an in-law problem.
Woo Woo by Ella Baxter [F]
What it's about: A neurotic conceptual artist loses her shit in the months leading up to an exhibition that she hopes will be her big breakout, poking fun at the tropes of the "art monster" and the "woman of the verge" in one fell, stylish swoop.
Who it's for: Readers of Sheena Patel's I'm a Fan and Chris Kraus's I Love Dick; any woman who is grateful to but now also sort of begrudges Jenny Offil for introducing "art monster" into the lexicon (me). —SMS
Berlin Atomized by Julia Kornberg, tr. Jack Rockwell and Julia Kornberg [F]
What it's about: Spanning 2001 to 2034, three Jewish and downwardly mobile siblings come of age in various corners of the world against the backdrop of global crisis.
Who it's for: Fans of Catherine Lacey's Biography of X and Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus. —SMS
Sand-Catcher by Omar Khalifah, tr. Barbara Romaine [F]
What it is: A suspenseful, dark satire of memory and nation, in which four young Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper are assigned to interview an elderly witness to the Nakba, the violent 1948 expulsion of native Palestinians from Israel—but to their surprise, the survivor doesn’t want to rehash his trauma for the media.
Who it’s for: Anyone looking insight—tinged with grim humor—into the years leading up to the present political crisis in the Middle East and the decades-long goal of Palestinian autonomy. —NodB
The Shutouts by Gabrielle Korn [F]
What it's about: In the dystopian future, mysteriously connected women fight to survive on the margins of society amid worsening climate collapse.
Who it's for: Fans of Korn's Yours for the Taking, which takes place in the same universe; readers of Becky Chambers and queer-inflected sci-fi. —SMS
What in Me Is Dark by Orlando Reade [NF]
What it's about: The enduring, evolving influence of Milton's Paradise Lost on political history—and particularly on the work of 12 revolutionary readers, including Malcom X and Hannah Arendt.
Who it's for: English majors and fans of Ryan Ruby and Sarah Bakewell—but I repeat myself. —SMS
The Afterlife Is Letting Go by Brandon Shimoda [NF]
What it's about: Shimoda researches the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, and speaks with descendants of those imprisoned, for this essay collection about the “afterlife” of cruelty and xenophobia in the U.S.
Who it’s for: Anyone to ever visit a monument, museum, or designated site of hallowed ground where traumatic events have taken place. —NodB
No Place to Bury the Dead by Karina Sainz Borgo, tr. Elizabeth Bryer [F]
What it's about: When Angustias Romero loses both her children while fleeing a mysterious disease in her unnamed Latin American country, she finds herself in a surreal, purgatorial borderland where she's soon caught in a power struggle.
Who it's for: Fans of Maríana Enriquez and Mohsin Hamid. —SMS
The Rest Is Silence by Augusto Monterroso, tr. Aaron Kerner [F]
What it is: The author of some of the shortest, and tightest, stories in Latin American literature goes long with a metafictional skewering of literary criticism in his only novel.
Who it's for: Anyone who prefers the term "palm-of-the-hand stories" to "flash fiction." —JHM
Tali Girls by Siamak Herawi, tr. Sara Khalili [F]
What it is: An intimate, harrowing, and vital look at the lives of girls and women in an Afghan mountain village under Taliban rule, based on true stories.
Who it's for: Readers of Nadia Hashimi, Akwaeke Emezi, and Maria Stepanova. —SMS
Sun City by Tove Jansson, tr. Thomas Teal [F]
What it's about: During her travels through the U.S. in the 1970s, Jansson became interested in the retirement home as a peculiarly American institution—here, she imagines the tightly knit community within one of them.
Who it's for: Fans of Jansson's other fiction for adults, much of which explores the lives of elderly folks; anyone who watched that documentary about The Villages in Florida. —SMS
Editor's note: We're always looking to make our seasonal book previews more useful to the readers, writers, and critics they're meant to serve. Got an idea for how we can improve our coverage? Tell me about it at sophia@themillions.com.
[millions_email]
To Tell the Truth and Not Die: The Millions Interviews Elissa Schappell
If there were a contest to name a literary wonder woman, I would without hesitation elect Elissa Schappell, who is never without wit or an incisive quip, who pens the Hot Type column for Vanity Fair, and keeps her hand firmly in the lit scene as co-founder and editor-at-large of Tin House; she is also a lit champion extraordinaire, an active proponent of women’s rights, and a mother. However, none of this should overshadow her literary accomplishments. Her first book, Use Me, was a runner up for the Pen/Hemingway Award, and her most recent, Blueprints for Building Better Girls, was named a best book of the year by multiple media outlets, including The San Francisco Chronicle and The Wall Street Journal. As a series of interlinked stories that depicts women across generations, Blueprints for Building Better Girls encourages a burning of old blueprints in favor of forging new paths. Schappell approaches the chronicling of women's lives as a serious endeavor, but never fails to leverage darkness with humor. Schappell’s wit is one that allows her “to tell the truth and not die,” as she puts it. The conversation here extends in many directions, including approaching Blueprints as an anti-etiquette book, recent forays into cross-genre writing, and Grace Paley as a guiding light.
The Millions: The title Blueprints for Building Better Girls comes from a vintage etiquette book that the character B and her beau read for kicks in the story, “Aren’t You Dead Yet?” B thinks, “It was hilarious how clueless these women, teetering in heels, on the cusp of the sexual revolution were.” You’ve confessed that you share B’s fascination for etiquette books, and yet your stories are far from being proscriptive, cautionary tales. What role does the idea of the etiquette book play within your collection? Do today’s women need new guideposts for contemporary living?
Elissa Schappell: I liked the idea of the book being an anti-etiquette book. Because etiquette books reveal what a culture values most. They clearly delineate the behavior one must exhibit to be considered an acceptable member of society. My book pushes back against that in that it’s not proscriptive -- and there is a book group in Arizona that is really pissed that wasn’t the case — it doesn’t tell you how to behave, but shows you how the reality of women’s lives are at odds with the labels the culture has slapped on us and the narrow roles the culture lays out as acceptable for women. As we know women who don’t conform to the dictates of society pay a much higher price than men. I wanted to show you the price women pay for not choosing to conform or being unable to conform.
Because of that I would argue that yes, women need new guideposts. (Let me crawl up on my soapbox here.) And they should create them for themselves. Because women have to stop letting people tell them who they are, and decide for themselves who they are, who they want to be.
For too long women have let the patriarchy dictate the rules, assumed the daddies would always be in control, always make all the decisions, when things are changing. Women are taking over the work place, becoming more educated than men, assuming more positions of power. (One only hopes we’ll soon be paid equally for our work.) Why shouldn’t women remake the world in their image? Men have had their shot, and they’ve left a hell of a mess. Thankfully, women have been cleaning up the messes men make since man first set fire to the hut by lighting one of his farts.
I don’t know if it’s Stockholm Syndrome or if in some way a lot of women feel inferior to men -- our achievements always measured against the baseline of men, our work literally of less value to society, and to call oneself a feminist is to align oneself with a shrill and hairy and man-hating stereotype, when in reality — when you consider the definition of a feminist, “one who thinks women should be the accorded the same rights as men” -- most women and men are feminists.
Short answer: Yes.
TM: Throughout the collection, the characters’ lives intersect in subtle, often tangential ways. I found great pleasure in connecting the dots. Kate, who had difficulties getting pregnant in “A Dog Story” makes a cameo as Charlotte’s uptight, inconsiderate, and childless boss in “Elephant.” Charlotte makes the most appearances, with each story providing a slightly different perspective on her character. The network of connections within your stories emphasizes not only the many roles that a woman plays over the course of her life but also underscores that she exists within a community of women -- made up of mothers, sisters, friends, and daughters. Your stories begin in the late ‘70s, span over twenty year’s time, and deal with multiple generations. What was it about depicting a community of women that intrigued you? Was Grace Paley an influence?
ES: I wanted the book to depict a broad population of American women. Showing the universal experiences this community of women share but don’t necessarily talk about because we feel ashamed, fear being judged, or simply can’t articulate. How the rules society has laid out about how a woman must behave in order to be accepted by the culture have shaped this group’s identity.
I chose to write the stories from a range of point-of-views -- some younger women, some older -- because I wanted to show how what was considered acceptable behavior for each generation influenced the way each of these women defined themselves, and how wittingly or unwittingly these messages are passed along like a gene through further generations. How we can inherit the prejudices, beliefs, politics of previous generations, just as you might inherit blue eyes.
I also wanted the book to get micro. To show the more intimate connections — sometimes tenuous, that join a cast of female characters, in order to show how whether connected by friendship, acquaintance, memory, gossip -- we live in other people’s lives. I wanted the reader to get various perspectives on these women. To have the experience of meeting a character, and -- as in life -- form an opinion of them. Judge them. I wanted to give the reader access to the interior life of a character, as well as show them how she exists in the stories of other characters we know. The varied points of view allow the reader to see the characters as others see them, view their personas, even as we have our own intimate knowledge of their lives.
I didn’t want the connections to be too tight because my desire was to illustrate on a broad scale the connections between the women who occupy this level of society and how despite the ways they might perceive each other they share a lot — sometimes it’s a landscape, sometimes it’s a body issue, other times it’s as slight as digging the same music.
At the end of the day all of these women’s lives are at odds with the scripts the culture presents to define them, and all of them pay a price for not choosing, or being able to conform to that ideal.
I admire Grace Paley enormously. She’s been a role model for me on and off the page. The way she combined the personal with the political in her work, as well as in her life, is inspiring. She was very sane about her career.
I thought a lot about her when I had kids. As you know the prevailing idea has always been that a woman must choose between being a first-rate writer and a mother. Which is of course bullshit. But at the time my kids were born I feared that I might have screwed myself out of a career (as it were) and it killed me. Then I read that Grace Paley wrote with her kids in a playpen by her desk. She has this great quote, “The word career is a divisive word. It’s a word that divides the normal life from business or professional life.” She rewrote the rules. Which is what women need to do.
You can’t imagine the level of focus it takes to write where there is a child next to you doing god knows what — I’d like to see Philip Roth do that -- but she was passionate, the work mattered, and so did being with her children, so she made it work.
And she was a boots-on-the-ground political activist! When she said, “Let’s go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world,” she wasn’t just talking about marching and protesting in the streets, she also meant on the page. That sort of fierce optimism sets me on fire.
TM: In “Elephant,” Paige asks how a woman could not want children -- it’s “creepy” -- and yet she’s ambivalent about whether motherhood is worth the sacrifices she’s made, including the toll on her marriage, the setbacks in her career, the lost sense of self. She gives voice to the verboten, a sentiment that Charlotte understands but also fears to admit. (The story’s title seems no coincidence.) Paige asks, “Is this what you planned on? Is this what you wanted?” She’s not the only female character left wondering. What is it about the contemporary blueprints for women’s lives that set these women up for something different than what they experience?
ES: For one thing there are only a handful of culturally approved blueprints distributed to young women. Not figuring in that each woman is an individual and each woman has different dreams and expectations for herself. “How to be a Good Girl” is the big one. It covers how to be good sport, how to remain chaste (and like it!), and how to be a good victim. There is also, “How to be a Good Friend.” This includes a list of acceptable friends (short) and unacceptable (long) friends, as well as appropriate topics for discussion, how to get rid of undesirable friends. The “Good Wife” includes ways to bolster your husband’s self-esteem, put his career first and 101 things to do with chicken thighs. Top of the “Good Mother” blueprint: Family First. Forget any aspirations you may have had beyond pleasing your husband and children, how to get your family to eat healthy, plus 100 ways to swallow your rage. The other blueprints: “How to be a Troublemaker/Revolutionary/Free Thinker/Artist or more simply, How to Be a Person — can be found in books, art, music.
For my generation, women who grew up in the '70s and '80s, the blueprint had a rainbow on it. You’ve come along way baby, it said. And it said that a woman can, nay, should, have it all. To not have it all is to be a failure. It’s Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire does, but backwards in high heels, with a baby strapped to her chest, a Bluetooth in her ear, and a pot roast balanced on her head.
For a woman to admit that she can’t do it all, or doesn’t want to do it all is to invite criticism from both sides. “You’re the ones who wanted library cards in the first place!” Or, “We fought for your right to have a career so get in there and work!"
This is frustrating. Feminism was about giving women choices, and some women choose not to work outside the home. Not my choice, but it’s a valid choice.
Any woman who doesn’t cop to having had some second thoughts — felt the shadow of ambivalence or resentment pass over them is either brain dead or lying.
One thing all the women in my book have in common is the imperative to put the needs of others before their own. They all want at some point to please someone they love, but to please others requires them to betray themselves in some fundamental way. It’s reality.
TM: Your wit dazzles me. The stories in Blueprints are not “happy” stories. There’s a wealth of sadness dealt out in the form of rape, eating disorders, ambivalence, loneliness, abandonment, and death, and yet the quick wit and levity make the stories so pleasurable to consume sentence to sentence. What role does humor play for you in writing? In life? What comic writers do you channel?
ES: You’re very kind.
Oscar Wilde said, “If you want to tell people the truth make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” That’s all I want to do. Tell the truth and not die.
My characters use humor for protection — to deflect pain, diffuse awkwardness, beat back their demons. They use it like a shield and a sword. It’s no different for me as a writer. I use the humor to protect and expose both my characters and the reader. I use it to disarm the reader into letting down their guard. The laughing reader doesn’t feel the knife until it’s in his chest. The reader who is laughing at something they don’t think they should be laughing at, but wants to, needs to laugh about, experiences a catharsis. I’d argue that’s more valuable than providing someone with an orgasm. It’s much harder to provide a catharsis for the reader. The ability to laugh in the face of terrible trauma and pain is empowering, and you know what, it’s human. We all do it. I want readers to feel like they’re not alone in that.
As to channeling, I love Lorrie Moore and Amy Hempel’s work. The way they spin humor and tragedy — and the economy of language. I’m in awe. And I love to read P.G. Wodehouse because he’s so witty, but clearly I’m not channeling him, just enjoying him.
TM: Last winter you wrote about the abundance of recent genre-bending novels in your Vanity Fair Hot Type column, and specifically, Ann Beattie’s Mrs. Nixon. It's such a curious book -- part biography, part fiction, part memoir, part writer’s manual. It seems like the internet may also contribute to the growing plasticity of forms and mash-ups of genres. Do you think the ways that we read and write fiction is changing due to the internet, and/or a cultural obsession with nonfiction? In that sense, what are some of the biggest challenges facing contemporary fiction? And, to counter the inherent pessimism of the previous question, also what are the most enticing developments?
ES: Good questions.
First, to my mind, anything that is pushing the form, reinventing the way we tell stories, use language, process information, is fantastic, and should be encouraged.
As to how it might be influencing the way we write, judging from the stories I see teaching workshops and coming into Tin House, I’d say that the internet is definitely informing the sensibilities of new writers, in relation to subject matter. They seem to find their lives less interesting than what they see on their screens, and that’s unfortunate because the tendency then is to take someone else’s experience and in my experience, in the hands of someone who can’t make the material their own, the result is always flat and phony. You can smell the shit on their shoes. It’s unfortunate too because too often the writer is not as engaged with this story they found on the internet, as they are when they’re tapping into their own life. For as narcissistic as writers are, too many of them aren’t willing, or maybe it’s confident enough, to dive down deep enough in themselves to pull up the truly original and authentic material lurking on the bottom.
I know that the obsession with nonfiction and memoir has certainly had an adverse effect on readers of fiction. Many readers seem unwilling or incapable of imagining a writer is capable of creating a fictional world. It’s really sad because the pleasures of reading fiction and the pleasures of reading non-fiction are very different. In non-fiction the writer creates a world that already existed, there is safety in that. The reader is not the subject of the book, and thus there is a wall between them and the story.
Fiction is dark magic requiring a willing suspension of disbelief. The author casts a spell and vanishes. The reader forgets themselves, they enter this world the writer has conjured and become part of the story, they identify with the characters, experience what the characters experience. There is some risk in that. You don’t know what will happen. You don’t know what your reaction may be. Maybe worst of all, the fact that memoirs make more money than fiction has lead some good writers to publish lousy books.
TM: You, like the women in your stories, juggle many roles. You’re not only a fiction writer, but also the editor-at-large for Tin House, a teacher, a mother, and you pen the monthly Hot Type column for Vanity Fair. How do you juggle it all, and do you ever have time to read merely for pleasure?
ES: Not very skillfully. If I were juggling torches, my hair would be on fire. I find that the only way I can succeed at all is to compartmentalize as much as possible. Meaning, on days when I teach I only teach, on days when I have Vanity Fair work to do, I only do that. And, no, I am not able to read -- at least at much length — for pleasure as much as I’d like. Although I try.
TM: And last, but definitely not least: Tom Wolfe once wrote an essay, “Tom Wolfe’s New Book of Etiquette,” that provides a tongue-in-cheek etiquette “update” for New York society that included instructions on topics of import (circa 1968), such as The Cocktail Party, The Social Kiss, and The Etiquette of Pot. If you were to write your own Elissa Schappell book of etiquette, what would make your list of critical updates, and also, worst contemporary faux-pas?
ES: Off the top of my head:
The Google. Is it appropriate to google a person before you meet them? Are you obliged to tell them you googled them? Is it acceptable to ask someone if they googled you? Should you be offended if someone didn’t google you?
Children’s Birthday Parties. Under what circumstances is it appropriate to drop your child off at a birthday party when other parents are staying. Is it wrong to ask if the host is serving booze and could you please have some. At parties where alcohol is provided for the parents, how drunk can you get?
Related Books:
