Jessica Lee Jernigan: Work

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.

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…

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…

Love Story: Toni Morrison on Her Latest Novel

Everybody in this novel has a hard time with love.

Toni Morrison: You know, what we do to be human is have language and love, and if you don't have either, then you're in a fairly hopeless situation. Read more...

War and Remembering: A Conversation with James Carroll

The word "incurable" occurs throughout your novel—not just the word, but also the sense of the word. By the time I finished reading, I felt that, really, the thing that's incurable in this story is the past.

James Carroll: That's true. That puts it very well, and of course, the person who's most sick with the past is Charlotte. She's the one who knows that she'll never be free of it. Paul is entirely naïve about it, and that's the difference between Americans and Europeans. You see it being played out today in this dispute between the U.S. and Europe. Isn't it amazing, France and Germany who, you know, almost destroyed the world with two wars in the 20th century, are now so determined to avoid war at all costs? What do they know that we don't know?

It hardly matters what they know, as long as we dismiss them as "Old Europe."

JC: Yes. And there it is: It's the past that France and Germany are at the mercy of. And we Americans barely know about it. And that's Paul and Charlotte, which is why Charlotte, even as she finds Paul's presence consoling and is drawn to him, she knows she'll never ever be able to be with him at that place where she's caught. She couldn't even be with General Healy, who tried to be there with her. She's a woman who's really at the mercy of her past. And Paul, of course, sees that at the very end, which is what makes him so, so sad, and it's what makes Michael finally understand his father—it's something he never really appreciated. So, by the end Paul too has been, well, made incurable by the past. In the end he has joined Charlotte, and that's what Michael sees. Read more…

The Story of What Is Happening: Janette Turner Hospital on Terror and Resilience

While your novel is, in part, about revelation, there are a few things—like the fates of some characters—that are never revealed to the reader. Do you consciously decide to maintain some mystery, or did the novel leave you with unanswered questions, too?

Janette Turner Hospital: Yes to both questions. Horror, misguided political decisions made under the prick of expediency, temporary allies who have been given arms and funding and deadly weapons for short-term reasons but who subsequently use those weapons against the giver (for example, bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, both armed by the United States when they were seen as useful against Russia and Iran): Such events always leave us with unanswered questions, as does life.

But I always want to insist on hope, as does human nature. I didn't want to close off the slim possibility that maybe, just maybe, Tristan and Genie got out of that bunker before the toxic gases did them in. All my novels do tend to end this way: There are overwhelming odds against the survival of the protagonists but hope is not shut down. The (probable) bad ending is not spelled out, because I do believe in the possibility of the amazing and in the redemptive resilience of the human spirit. Read more…

Boss from Hell: Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada

Despite her demurrals, fashion cognoscenti continue to speculate about the resemblance between Weisberger's former boss and her fictional creation. Like Wintour, Miranda Priestly is a whip-thin and impeccably groomed British expatriate who is close friends with Oscar de la Renta and Donatella Versace, and who makes frequent appearances on Page 6 of the New York Post. Read more…