Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.
Okay, here are three (it’s very hard to boil it down): A
middle-aged, midlist novelist named Julia Heimdahl spends a weekend at a
literary festival at Baldwin College, her alma mater, to promote her memoir.
She’s on a panel with a fawning, unctuously charming fellow first-time
memoirist, a literary biographer named Ellis Blackwell. Her alliance with Ellis
threatens her hard-won stability, and excerpts from her memoir interspersed
with the present narrative illuminate exactly why he’s particularly dangerous
for Julia; simultaneously, she’s forced to reckon with the past as it
intersects with the present.
Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And which
character gave you the most trouble, and why?
I had the most fun creating Ellis Blackwell. I seem to have
a troublesome soft spot for men who hate women—in fact, that is exactly what Good
Company is about, my own complicity in misogyny. I enjoy inhabiting the
point of view of horrible men because I understand them so deeply, I’ve studied
them so closely, the dialogue writes itself. My survival, I thought when I was
younger, was predicated on winning their approval. Good Company turns
this idea on its head and explodes it.
The hardest character for me to write was Lexi/Alex Shapiro,
a composite of women I’ve known in my life, women I’ve been deeply attracted to
both sexually and emotionally. I think that Alex was complicated for me primarily
because of my own largely unexpressed queerness, which has been largely latent
all my life. Creating this character meant not only facing the attraction but
acknowledging the reasons it has stayed underground: fear; internalized
misogyny; and an innate conventionality, a kind of homophobia. Writing about
all this made me sad, but it also ultimately felt bracing and clarifying.
Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s
road to publication.
I conceived of this novel in the summer of 2024, when I was
teaching in the summer graduate program at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. I had
written a story based on a passionate, complicated friendship I’d formed when I
was a student there in the 1980s with a woman I call Norah who died when we
were in our early 50s, estranged for many years. I chose that story for my
faculty reading. The audience’s response was unlike any I’d ever had before
after a reading: electric, excited, buzzing. Normally any enthusiasm was muted:
this was a roar. They asked, “When is this book coming out?” And I realized
over the next few days, thinking about it, that this was in fact part of a
book, and that the book was going to play with time and memory and identity.
There haven’t been any lows (yet): my editor at
HarperCollins, Sara Nelson, bought the manuscript and gave me incredibly
helpful edits, and the book’s road to publication has been smooth (so far). But
internally, I’ve undergone a long inward reckoning with what I’ve written. Good
Company contains many hard truths, many levels of exposure, and a lot of
difficult subject matter. It’s a raw, honest book, and it was galvanizing to
write—but now that it’s emerging into the world for people to actually read if
they want to (and I hope they do want to), I’ve had to overcome my terror and
fear. Actually, I haven’t entirely overcome it. But that’s just the price you
pay for telling the truth.
What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?
This is something I tell my writing students over and over:
you can only write like yourself. Your authentic voice is the only one you
have. Banish the anxiety of influence. Don’t try to be someone else, don’t try
to be “great.” It won’t work. It never works. Trust your gut, let yourself tell
the truth, give yourself permission to write “badly” (meaning authentically), and
always remember: no one is watching you.
My favorite writing advice is “write until something
surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?
I was surprised by how inevitable this novel’s form felt
while I was writing it, how necessary, apt, and urgent. Inspired by Heidi
Julavits’s brilliant memoir, “The Folded Clock,” I wanted this book to take a
structural risk with temporal sleight of hand, simultaneously spanning both a
weekend and a lifetime. I wondered if would work and was prepared to fail. But
to my surprise, not only did it strike me as right and organic while I was
writing it, but this strategy also felt inevitable. Every time I finished a
chapter in the novel’s present, the next memoir excerpt presented itself as the
obvious next step.
How did you find the title of your book?
I chose the title “Good Company” because it’s something a
certain kind of man has called me since I was a teenager. I used to see it as a
badge of pride: I was good company! That meant I was fun, easygoing, a good
sport, smart, sexy, and—most importantly—not a killjoy.
But then, when I started getting older and wiser, I saw the
term for what it really is: a misogynistic, backhanded compliment that’s
actually a means of keeping me under control. The book is about my own
complicity for much of my life in trying to please such men, to win them over.
And the title is meant to be loud and clear: no more.
Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any
food/s associated with your book?
All the rest of my books are filled with food. Some
of them are literal food books. But this one… for the first and only time, no
food.
*****
READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.katechristensen.net
ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/p/books/good-company-a-novel-kate-christensen/3995fff9ebeeb831?ean=9780063464315&next=t
