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…

"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…

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…

Mark Kurlansky on a Year That Rocked the World

The French movement in 1968 was, to a considerable degree, fueled by satire. De Gaulle was such a caricature of himself. He really made himself an easy target for witty revolutionaries.

MK: You know, I've been thinking about that. My Italian publisher asked me to write an introduction to their edition, and I've been wondering why the world paid so much attention to, and remembered, the French movement, but not the Italian movement? The Italian movement did more over a longer time; they shut down Italy, they lasted longer, but they didn't have de Gaulle as a foil.

I mean, you know, there is no Left in France anymore. There's no anything because they're all bored with their leaders. But de Gaulle, whom you could criticize for many, many things, was not boring. He just could really piss you off. 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...

A Practical Kind of Hero: Caroline Alexander on William Bligh and the True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

Which of the men who took part in this journey and its aftermath intrigued you the most?

Caroline Alexander: I was intrigued by William Purcell, the Bounty's carpenter, because he reminded me so much of Chippy McNish, Shackleton's carpenter on Endurance. Both were bloody-minded sea lawyers, utterly fearless of authority, both gave their commanding officers a hard time—and both at the end of the day proved loyal to them. 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…

Female Trouble: Barbara Seaman Tells the Truth About Estrogen

Marketing has always had a role in hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women. Some of the ads you describe in your book are shockingly misogynistic—aging doesn't just make a woman unwell, they suggest, but actually unwomanly. The tone of this message changed over the years, certainly, but did the content?

Barbara Seaman: By 1947, estrogen products were among the leading advertisers in gynecology journals. At first the ads depicted happy and stylish mid-life women waltzing the night away with their adoring husbands or beaux. The simple message was that patients no longer needed to suffer from hot flashes and sweats at menopause. Now they could enjoy a good quality of life during this transition. As time passed, the manufacturers changed their tune. They came up with profit-boosting slogans such as "Keep her on Premarin." They switched to scare tactics, depicting troubles that presumably called for long-term treatments. Now the models were shriveled and bent. They were losing their tempers, losing their minds, losing their urine, even losing their sex drive and their husbands—all because they had "outlived their ovaries," and were suffering from a "deficiency disease like diabetes." Read more…