Each year, the Critic’s Choice Program, a season-long book club at Artis-Naples, welcomes one of its favorite authors. This year, Elaine Newton invited Meg Wolitzer, the author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap and more. Elaine engaged Meg in a smart and friendly discussion in front of two packed houses on February 13 and 15, 2014.
I first raved about The Interestings last year, so if you haven’t read it yet or can’t remember the details, you might want to check that post out first. One of the many wonderful things about the Critic’s Choice program at Artis- Naples is the fact that most of the audience has already read the book. It gives the author license to reveal things about their book they otherwise wouldn’t. And the audience reaps the benefits.
Elaine and Meg seemed like dear old friends by the time they took to the podium. Elaine’s love of literature and her passionate praise for The Interestings drew Meg in and created a sense of intimacy that doesn’t always happen in an author interview. It was a remarkable appearance.
Meg revealed her thoughts behind the book. She was inspired to write about friendship, envy and talent, but wanted to tell the story looking back in time, in order to capture the full sense of nostalgia in the tragedy and comedy of life. When she wrote the first line of the book: “On a warm night in early July of that long-evaporated year, the Interestings gathered for the very first time,” she didn’t have the words “long-evaporated.” But with that small addition, she knew she had captured the sense of nostalgia she wanted her novel to project. Because what does time do but evaporate in front of our eyes? And aren’t we powerless against it, just like we are powerless against the simple, invisible powers of nature and science?
Elaine and Meg took the characters one by one and talked about them as if they were real. Because a well-written book makes you feel that way, doesn’t it? And The Interestings even more so.
Meg revealed that she enjoyed writing Ethan’s character the most. He was the natural-born cartoonist with the most raw talent out of the group, and actually came from a piece of Meg’s own childhood. Meg admitted that she had her own version of Ethan’s Figland – she hosted her own talk show in bed alone at night that she called Meg’s Treasure Box.(To which I say, it’s obvious Meg was born to be a creative genius just like Ethan, no?)
And in fact, it seems to me that Meg also has a little cartoonist talent in her as well. Check out the fabulous way she personalized my book:
Meg confessed that in the first draft, her editor complained that Ethan was too good, so Meg invented a character flaw. Ethan would be a bad father to an autistic son. On the other hand, Ethan’s wife Ash would come from a family with a corrupt heart, so Meg made her a good mother and a good friend to Jules. And it is here that you begin to see the artist’s hand at work. This is how to make your characters come alive: no one is one-dimensional. As Meg herself said, “no one survives unscathed.”
And then there was Jonah, who Meg said was “vulnerable, childlike, enjoyable to write about.” Folk singing stood for the innocence of the era, and Jonah’s story was about betrayal, the loss of innocence and the stifling of talent. His mother Susannah, on the other hand, stood for resilience, adaptation and survival.
As Meg explained, the marriage between Jules and Dennis asks the tough questions, “can you love someone without a resumé? What is interesting?” Dennis isn’t one of “The Interestings.” He never went to the same summer camp as the rest of them. He is ordinary, he lacks talent, he suffers from clinical depression. But Meg made a brilliant choice and had Dennis become an ultrasound technician. How perfect. One the one hand, what a mundane, uninspired profession, but yet it’s a miraculous skill: Dennis can show us what we cannot see under the surface of our own skin. He can see what envy can do, and he admonishes Jules to enjoy her own happiness. It is Dennis who earns the right to ask: “And specialness – everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is?”
So bravo, Meg Wolitzer, Artis-Naples and Elaine Newton for putting together such a very (I can’t resist) special and interesting program.
The Interestings: Highly recommended
FloridaReader 