Jessica Lee Jernigan: Work

Miss Piggy

Sapphists and Shit Jobs: Emma Donoghue on Life Mask

“Passionate friendship”—a friendship that’s both emotionally intimate and physically affectionate—is sort of impossible today. Anyone looking at that sort of relationship now would call it lesbianism, but that hasn’t always been the case.

ED: Yeah, we’re pretty crude today… Actually, there’s a really interesting novel by Lisa Alther, called Bedrock, about two women who are lifelong friends, and they do ultimately become lovers, but that’s not really what the novel is about. The main point is their wondering, “What is this thing we have between us? What form of love is it? What do we call it?”

Lesbian historical fiction—which, ten years ago, you would have said was the most obscure of genres—is doing so much better. People like Sarah Waters have had such success, and I think it’s because people are actually impatient with labels. I think people are very interested in writing that explores sexuality before the labels, writing that gets back to subtleties and, well, oddities…

I mean, I find it fascinating that Horace Walpole [the author of The Castle of Otranto, who appears as a character in Life Mask] was clearly such a big fag, and yet, at the end of his life, he is besotted by Mary Berry… How do we name the romantic yearning of a 70-year-old gay man—as we would call him now—for a young woman? We might ask, “What’s going on there?” But we need to respect that desire as much as any of his other interests.

Of course, we all know and live these ambiguities in our own lives. I know plenty of people who are officially one thing but have a passion or two on the other side. It’s very liberating to write about an era before the labels were introduced. I mean, the labels are useful—there’s a reason for them—but many people find them confining. Read more…

Between Discovery and Invention: Emma Donoghue on Historical Fiction

Earlier, you suggested a dichotomy between writing about our own times and writing about the past, but there were many moments in Life Mask when I felt very much like you were writing about the present.

ED: Absolutely, and I would say this is the first time I've done that. Obviously, in my previous work I had contemporary concerns, and I wasn't shy about having a slant on the events of the past—you have to have some slant. But, in writing Life Mask, I was startled by similarities between the political climate in which the story takes place and the political climate of today.

It just jumped out at me after 9/11. I was halfway through the book already, but I suddenly starting thinking, "Oh my God, the way Bush and Rice and people like that speak now: It's just like the government of Pitt the Younger in the 1790s—it's a classic right-wing backlash in a time of terror."

As I did more research into the politics of the day, I was fascinated and appalled by how many similarities there were, and how, in a 10-year period, so many ideas about freedom and justice were just thrown out the window because people panicked. I found for the first time that I was actually making explicit some of those connections between the past and the present. I tossed in the odd phrase like "weapons of mass destruction" to alert the less attentive reader. Read more…

Slingbacks & Arrows: Chick Lit Comes of Age

So, I have an article in the summer issue of Bitch magazine. It’s about the evolution of chick lit, and, in it, I offer a comparative review of Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes and The Anxiety of Everyday Objects by Aurelie Sheehan.

You’ll find a couple of excerpts from the article over at my other blog, but, if you want to read the whole thing, you have to buy Bitch. Better yet, subscribe.

The Business of Books

Bestsellers are important. Hits like The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code generate the profits that make it possible for Borders stores to carry more eclectic titles that might sit on the shelf awhile before finding a home. But bookstores aren't the only place to buy bestsellers. Books are becoming a hot commodity for a variety of retailers: The latest John Grisham book can generally be found in big stacks at Sam's Club or at the checkout at Meijer.

And then there's the Internet. In 1999, I was working for Borders.com. Back then, the company got hammered by the press and by Wall Street for being late to enter the virtual bookselling game—an enterprise then regarded as a license to print money. Five years later, everyone has learned that turning a profit on the Web is easier said than done. I still work for Borders in an electronic capacity—I manage the company's e-mail newsletters—but Borders.com is no longer an independent entity. It is, instead, a partnership with Amazon.com.

That doesn't mean that Borders has no virtual presence (there are the aforementioned e-mail newsletters, and customers can search the stacks and check out in-store events at www.BordersStores.com). But there's a magic to bookselling that can't be digitized or quantified. The best bookstores don't just deliver products to customers. Instead, they fulfill cultural needs both personal and communal. This is why the hometown of one of the world's biggest bookstore chains continues to boast a vital and varied array of independent booksellers. Read more…

"I Like Being a Foreigner": A Conversation with David Sedaris

As a boy, Sedaris desperately wanted to belong. As an adult, though, he has embraced the role of outsider. Much of his recent work has chronicled his experiences as an American expatriate. He lived in France for several years, and he's in London now. I asked him if he imagined himself living in the U.S. again.

"No. No, I don't," he answered. "I like being a foreigner."

"Why?"

"Because there's so much to wonder about—there's so much you don't understand…." He paused for a moment, considering. "I mean, there should always be so much you don't understand. You could spend your whole life in your hometown and there would still be a lot you don't understand." Read more…

Plum Sykes: Bergdorf Brunette

"You wouldn't believe the dedication it takes to be a gorgeous, flaxen-haired, dermatologically perfect New York girl with a life that's fabulous beyond belief. Honestly, it all requires a level of commitment comparable to, say, learning Hebrew or quitting cigarettes." Meet Moi. She's the delightfully superficial heroine of Bergdorf Blondes. Like her creator, she's actually a brunette, but don't let that tiny detail confuse you: Moi knows her way around, from where to get the best Brazilian bikini wax to where to find the most reliable gossip. She can score free pedicures and invitations to designer sample shows. She has the perfect outfit for every occasion, whether it's a trip to Europe on a private jet or her own (botched, rather hilariously) suicide. Read more…

The Summer of Axl Rose

"November Rain"—in both aural and video form—is musically and emotionally ostentatious, with its pretensions to opera and its Sturm-und-Drang guitars. To the coldly critical eye, it surely falls short of true grandeur, but at least it tries. In the summer of 1992, my life felt circumscribed—not horrendous or unendurable, but small and likely to stay that way. Having been born at the tail end of Generation X, I grew up with a highly developed sense of irony and a nearly paralyzing inability to endure the earnest. "November Rain" not only lifted me above my slightly pathetic circumstances, but its primal, unabashed emotion actually penetrated my sarcastic shell, and my absurd crush on Axl Rose provided me with a much-needed escape. Read more…

Coming of Age at Mid-Life: Aloft by Chang-rae Lee

Aloft is the story of Jerry Battle, a man who has always managed to remain unscathed by life. As his 60th birthday approaches, though, he's finding it increasingly difficult to remain above the mess and tragedy of existence. Chang-rae Lee won awards and acclaim with his first two novels, Native Speaker and A Gesture Life. Now, he builds upon those achievements to offer a magnificently rendered, powerfully affecting portrait of a middle-aged man's coming-of-age. Poetic and plainspoken, uplifting and devastating, Aloft is a quietly amazing novel. Read more…

Chaucer Playing Tetris: A Conversation with Lev Grossman

Your book is, in an oblique way, a parable about the dangers of reading.

LG: I'd never known about the concept of dangerous reading until I took a course on Chaucer, which I was forced to take. I was a modernist. I was interested in Joyce and Hemingway, and I hadn't read the fine print on my acceptance letter to grad school, which said I had to take two courses on literature written before the year 1600. So, I just took the first one that came along, which happened to be Chaucer. We read everything but The Canterbury Tales.

The first thing we read was a poem that almost nobody reads, called "The Book of the Duchess." It opens with this scene—and I'll just tell you about it because nobody ever reads "The Book of the Duchess"—in which this guy is sitting in bed and he's got all these books around him and he's thinking, "I'm really depressed, so I'm going to take down a book and read." The professor pointed out that this was very odd. Nothing could seem more normal to us, but for somebody to sit down by himself and read a secular tale for his own amusement was considered very eccentric at that time. It was sort of frowned upon. It's kind of wonderful to think of reading as taboo, as forbidden. We've forgotten the risks and dangers of that kind of reading.

It wasn't even until, like, the 10th or 11th century that people realized that you could read silently, to yourself. Before that, they would pick up a book and automatically start reading words aloud, because reading was a public event. Read more…