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-Hello. Welcome to "Book Lust."
I'm Nancy Pearl.
My guest today is Marie-Helene Bertino
whose new book, "Beautyland," just delighted me.
Marie, thank you so much for finally we get to meet even
though it's virtually.
I'm so happy about that. -I'm delighted.
Thank you so much for asking me to join you, Nancy.
It's a delight. -Of course.
I kept waiting for you to come to Seattle for one of --
when we were doing these in-person,
but something, I don't know.
It never happened, but here we are and I have all of these,
you know, I'd just like to say how wonderful your writing is.
And, you know, your first novel, "2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas,"
was one of my all-time favorite books,
certainly of that year that it came out.
And then "Parakeet," your second novel, and now "Beautyland,"
which just was, again, I just love your imagination.
When you were talking to your agent about "Beautyland,"
how did you describe the book?
-I described the -- well, first can I say, Nancy,
that it is such a supreme honor to be on "Book Lust."
Our household is a Nancy Pearl household.
We love your bobble-headed doll.
You're America's librarian.
I consider you to be a national treasure,
so this is an honor. -Thank you.
-How I explained "Beautyland" to my agents
was very I would say cryptically.
I told her that it was based on a short story
that I wrote about an unnamed alien faxing notes
on human beings to who she believes are her superiors.
And essentially,
like the sketched-out bullet points of what would become
"Beautyland," but I didn't tell her all that much.
But my agent, the very wise Claudia Ballard,
who's been with me for a long time now,
said there was something in the way
I was talking about the book.
That made her think we should sell it alongside the novel
"Parakeet" without it being written, which I had never done.
-Unh-huh. -But she had a feeling.
She had a hunch just because of --
I think it was some kind of optimism or joy
I exuded when I was speaking about the book
that made her think.
"I think this is going to be different from your other books
and I think we should sell it right away."
-Mm-hmm.
I mean, one of the things that I think your books do
is show how much you love your characters and how --
and because of that, I think --
because there are some authors who don't love their characters.
And their, I think,
and their characters then have a kind of distance
both from the author and from the reader.
But I felt right from the beginning
that you just adored your characters
and it was a pleasure for you to spend time with them.
I know that's a little hyperbole, I mean,
because of how writing -- how hard writing is.
But that it and then it becomes a pleasure for the reader,
as well.
Does that make sense?
-Oh, it makes sense and I love that idea and question so much.
Because as soon as you said,
"It's evident that you love your character,"
I immediately thought, well, that's wonderful
and I'm glad that comes through.
But I think it's intrinsically linked to
whether an author loves or regards their reader.
And perhaps that's a more generally note about
how they feel about human beings.
-Mm-hmm.
-And I don't mean to, you know,
to say that ironically since "Beautyland" is literally about
how one cares for human beings.
But I do think my philosophy about what we are to one
another bleeds through all of these craft decisions.
-Mm-hmm.
-And but and so I appreciate that very much
and I hope that you also think that though I love Adina,
which I do, I also love her enough to be honest about her,
to not go easy on her.
I had a really wise professor in my MFA program who said,
"You have to be --" Stacey D'Erasmo, actually,
a wonderful writer.
Who said,
"You have to be willing to get down in the mud
with your characters."
And so I do.
I have a high regard for all my characters
because in order to write them,
I have to know where they're coming from
and I have to understand their motivations.
And I find it's impossible not to like them
when I fully understand them.
And that's when I'm always hoping
that the reader understands, too,
that I don't think there's any truly unlikeable character.
I think there are only characters who you don't feel
like you know enough yet. -Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
That's a very generous view of humanity.
-Yeah, maybe it is. You caught me.
-And the other thing, before we go into,
you know, the plot of "Beautyland," and Adina,
and all of her -- what she's doing in this world.
I just have to say the other thing
that was so noticeable to me is -- are the dogs.
I mean, I think you're so good with dogs
and you're so good with adolescent girls.
And where did those two things come from?
-Well, it might not come as a surprise to you
but I used to be an adolescent girl.
-I was just going to say that, yes.
Did you make notes, though?
I mean, did you keep notes?
-Did I make notes?
I definitely I've written since I had conscious memory.
I've always wanted to be a writer and I think those were
my -- that was and continues to be the way
that I take notes on human beings, for sure.
And I've always loved dogs.
I've always loved animals.
I've always felt a particular kinship to animals
and I think that seems to be automatically coming through
in the stories that I write.
-Yeah, I still remember with such fondness the dog in "2 A.M.
at The Cat's Pajamas,"
and part of the story is even told from his viewpoint, right?
Am I --
-That's right. That's right, Pedro.
And I thought, oh, gosh.
No one's every going to let me write from the point
of view of a dog, but I loved him and, you know,
you always get the question
who is the autobiographical character in your novel.
And in "2 A.M.
at The Cat's Pajamas," I used to say Pedro
because he had wanderlust,
and he didn't want to answer to a master,
and he did what he wanted. And I, yeah, I loved that dog.
-Yeah, yeah.
And so because I've always felt talking
about the autobiographical character in your story,
that's so interesting because I've always, the way you put it,
I hadn't ever heard it put that way.
But that's so true.
I mean, just thinking about, you know,
the novel that I wrote was --
there -- it's not autobiographical at all.
I mean I just drew things from everybody that I knew,
including myself,
but if there is a -- oh, gosh.
That's a really interesting way of putting it.
-Are you thinking of your own work
with kind of building the character in that way?
-Well, when I -- in the novel,
"George and Lizzie," which sort of came -- wait a minute.
This interview is not about my book.
It's about your book.
We're going to go back to "Beautyland."
So many children's books or books for young adults
are the kids are orphans, you know.
And certainly when I was growing up, that was so true,
that kids were orphans
and these were stories about them being adopted
or being not adopted and what was going to happen to them.
And somebody said way back then in a talk
that I heard is that there are all these books with orphans
because every child wants to be an orphan,
doesn't want their parents around.
And now I was thinking when I read "Beautyland,"
that we all,
you know, think that we're so different from everybody else.
Maybe we're from a different planet.
And you've taken that idea of that feeling of alienness
that we -- that everybody has,
I'm convinced, at one time or another,
and you've made it true.
And that's just so brilliant. I'm just thrilled.
So how did -- where did that -- so you had, on the one hand,
the short story about the man who's faxing --
or the being who's faxing to somebody.
And how did it go from that to "Beautyland?"
-Well, and I agree with you
and what you say about everyone having that feeling
that perhaps they are an extraterrestrial
in some capacity.
Especially since publishing the book,
I've heard from so many people from such a wide variety
of backgrounds, who say, "I am Adina.
I feel like she feels because of this, because of that."
And therefore, and for so many different reasons,
which has been so unexpected and personally gratifying.
And I wrote the short story at first because I had, myself,
been taking notes on all of the things about human life,
and society, and customs that baffle me.
And so I kept a folder on my desktop
called notes on human beings
where I would put things that also delighted me
and that I wanted to remember.
In ways, it helped me remember certain people I had lost,
like for example, my grandmother,
who used to rip the addresses off of her magazines
before she donated them to the local hair salon.
And I -- and if she had forgotten to do that,
she would run down there and rip her address off.
And, you know, conveying to me
if you leave your address on a "People Magazine,"
a murderer will find that magazine, and go to your house,
and your -- it's curtains for you.
And so these little idiosyncrasies of her,
and people I love, and just life,
in general, I was collecting in this folder.
And after I used that folder to write the short story,
I found very quickly that I was not finished.
And I kept throwing notes into the folder.
It grew and grew until, you know, a few years ago, six,
or seven, or eight years ago,
I thought I wonder if there's a novel in this.
But to write the novel
would mean I would have to give this creature,
this alien creature, a location, a name, a family.
I would have to fix her in place on Earth,
and that began the fun/the challenge.
And when I realized
that I was going to have to get very specific about her
and where she lived,
I decided to lend her how I grew up and where I grew up.
Because another parameter of the project for me
was could I write a literary novel set in the kind of place
where I grew up, Northeast Philadelphia,
with the kind of people I grew up around.
From the point of view of a character
and a single mom that had nothing, that had no resources.
And could I put this element of magical vocation
and important vocation on the shoulders of a person
who might seem very unlikely to most people.
But to me,
seems like a likely candidate for that kind of responsibility,
for that kind of human responsibility of documentation.
So that's how the novel grew
and then it was just up to me to figure out what to include
and what to do to her during her Earth life.
-When you write, at that point,
did you outline chapter by chapter,
or incident by incident, or -- -No.
That would have been very helpful but I didn't.
I had a rough sense
that I was going to write it chronologically
and I knew it would be her entire lifespan,
which was a graduation from all of my books.
My, as you know, "2 A.M.
at The Cat's Pajamas" was 24 hours, a set of 24 hours.
And then "Parakeet" was a week.
And now "Beautyland" is an entire lifespan.
And so I did not outline her life
but I had the rough chronology in mind.
And it was meant to be a novel told in vignettes
because I love vignettes.
And the first pass of it told me --
showed me very quickly
that it was too hard to sustain 350 pages of vignettes
that were meant to document someone's entire life.
So I had to group them in some way,
but I knew that a conventional kind of chapter format
wouldn't really work for this story.
So I kind of assigned it to my subconscious
and hoped the answer would come.
And like everything else,
when I'm able to do that,
the answer came in kind of a uncanny way,
which was I looked to
where the vignettes were naturally grouping
and they became kind of five eras in her life.
And when I Googled the number five to see
if it had a celestial significance,
it very shortly arrived that the lifespan of a star
is set in five eras, as well.
So the book takes its structure from the lifespan of a star,
which felt very appropriate to me in the story.
-Yeah, right.
When you got to the end of Adina's life,
did the book become harder to write?
Did you kind of delay because you didn't want to get there?
-That's a good question.
I don't -- I maybe delayed a little bit.
I think even more so than delaying,
I went very, very slowly. And I felt like, okay,
this is my gravest responsibility
to write this part, and honor her,
and, you know, honor the people I've lost
and what I know about end of life, as well.
Because while I was writing this book,
I went back to school
to get a certification in end of life facilitation.
So I was also learning about the end of life process
and what that looks like.
And so I weaved a few of those details
into the death scene in the novel and that helped, too.
But more than anything,
I just wanted to do right by this character.
And that doesn't mean go easy on her,
like I said,
but to not look away, and to show it all the way,
and to be honest about not only her life
but how she leaves the world. -Mm-hmm.
Wow, that's so interesting
how taking that course in end of life,
I mean, those kind of coincidences
always fascinate me.
I mean, it's not exactly a coincidence but, you know,
I -- it brings up things like, you know, karma,
and fate, and free will, and all of that kind of stuff.
Are you -- was this --
was one of your novels harder than the others to write,
and when you published "2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas,"
it was after your collection of short stories, right?
Your short stories came out first and then "2 A.M."
So moving from the short story format to the novel,
the expansiveness of the novel even
though that book is set over 24 hours,
which I love, the eve of New Year's.
What -- was it -- what made you want to write that first novel
and what keeps you going novel by novel?
-Hm.
Well, up until I wrote "Cat's Pajamas,"
I thought I would only write short stories
because I considered them
and still consider them now to be my first love.
I love the short story form.
I actually am going to have a collection published next year,
my second collection.
But -- and I was just listening to your interview
with Elizabeth McCracken, actually.
And she was talking about
how she knows the difference between what is a novel
and what's a short story and she knows immediately.
I think that happened to me, as well,
when I thought of the characters of "Cat's Pajamas,"
that they would take a little bit longer to develop,
and reach their conclusion, and live their lives on the page.
And that -- but that was a quality
of noticing that I was only just beginning to understand
when I began "Cat's Pajamas."
So I would say that for many reasons,
that being one of them,
"Cat's Pajamas" was the hardest novel I've written.
Because in addition to just learning how to write a novel,
it had the added challenge of having to prove to me
that I could write a novel at all.
And that's something that you only have to do once.
After you write your first novel,
you never again have to worry that you can't write a novel
because you have written a novel.
And so "Parakeet," I didn't have to get over that obstacle,
as well,
because I had already read --
I had already written "Cat's Pajamas."
So the first was hardest for me,
but not to say that, you know,
the other two or those to come won't be hard in their own ways
but they won't also have to prove to me that I can do it.
-Do it, right. Right, yeah, yeah.
And do you have an idea for a new novel?
Are you thinking about it?
-I'm making notes and I have a first draft.
It's actually a trilogy that I've wanted to write for years,
and years, and years.
But because of my teaching schedule,
I haven't been able to have the uninterrupted concentration time
that I will need.
Because I -- they're all interconnected,
the three novels,
and I kind of have to build them all at the same time.
-Right. -So it's interesting.
I will have to --
this project will also be teaching me
whether or not I can do this,
and hopefully each project is a new stab in scary and, you know,
heretofore unexplored terrain. -I recently met a little girl
who doesn't start a series of books until -- she's 11.
She doesn't start a series of books
until all the books in that series are published.
And I totally get that because, you know, I remember when
"The Lord of the Rings" was published when I was little,
a tween, a young teenager, I think.
And we had to wait a year between, you know,
the first book, "Fellowship of the Ring" and "The Two Towers,"
till it came,
you know, it was published in the US
from its English publication.
And how frustrating it was and how I always felt
that I needed then to go back and reread
"The Fellowship of the Ring" before.
So, you know, kudos to that little girl.
I think she has the right idea.
-What a savvy 11-year-old. -Yes, yes.
-I would have had no idea how to do that when I was 11.
-Oh, me --
-Because my favorite books were like
"The Black Cauldron" series that Lloyd Alexander wrote
and Madeleine L'Engle.
And I didn't even realize writers were people,
at that time,
let alone that books were something
that were like written by people and published.
I would have no idea,
but I came to those series after those authors had written them,
so I was very lucky.
I got to read them all at once
and then reread them over and over, again.
-So fantasy was one of your loves as a child, as a young --
-Deep love. Deep love, absolutely.
-Yeah, me, too. Me, too. And who do you read now?
What are you reading these days
or do you avoid reading particular types of books
when you're working on
or thinking deeply about a new work?
-I can always read poetry no matter what and poetry
helps me with the line,
so I very much enjoy contemporary poetry,
the New York School. I love the poetry of Ross Gay.
So poetry is my constant companion.
Also, I grew up and I wanted to be a poet
and I am now a failed poet, so I, you know,
that to me is one of the highest art forms, poetry.
And I, you know, it's interesting.
I think my love of fantasy
as a child has grown into a love for uncanny fiction,
uncanny contemporary fiction now,
though I love realism, as well. But this summer, for example,
I'm going to be reading Mariana Enríquez and Samanta Schweblin.
And a few summers ago,
was my contemporary Japanese female short story summer
where I read Yoko Ogawa and Taeko Kono.
And all of these brilliant,
beautiful, contemporary authors
who are writing in this uncanny realm from Japan.
And they've been massively inspiring.
But I don't see them as removed from the works
I loved when I was little like "The Lord of the Rings" series
and, you know, I just see them -- I see them all
as siblings of that what if, of that big what if.
What if the things we feel actually are possible
and what if the things we feel could happen?
What would that look like?
-So Kelly Link? Would she --
-Mm-hmm.
-She would fit into that category.
-Absolutely. -Yeah, yeah.
-Aimee Bender was a huge touchstone
while I was learning how to do whatever it is that I do,
yeah, all of those. -So what's one --
I know you teach writing at various places
and what's the most important bit of advice
that you would give --
that you do give to someone who wants to be a writer?
-Who wants to be a writer?
So, I mean, so many, depending on the writer
and depending on what they ask.
I think that the best advice I ever received
was the simplest and the hardest,
and remains the simplest and the hardest,
which is just keep writing throughout everything.
Throughout the hard times, throughout the good times.
It's not different from your life.
It is your life.
It is the way that you are expressing what it means
to be human on Earth is the writing to me.
And so I think of that.
A professor told me
that when I was having a tough time in college,
"Keep writing, keep writing."
But also, I've developed the belief
that so many things are writing
and so you'll hear the maxim write every day,
which has never worked for me
because I've never been able to write every day.
But I do consider --
I do have a very generous definition of what writing is.
So talking about writing, reading, going for a walk,
paying attention in any way, shape, or form.
Talking to one's mother like I did earlier today,
hearing about a fun lunch she had yesterday.
As long as you're noticing the world
and you are keeping track of
and always working the muscle of noticing what you're noticing,
I feel like all of that falls into the same basket
that I call writing.
So that helps me. That helps me a lot.
And it tends to help, especially emerging writers,
feel, you know,
it takes them off the hook a little bit,
that pressure to constantly be producing pages.
Sometimes that's not the right thing to do.
Sometimes it's a gathering period, a listening period,
a period of research and art dates.
A period of saying,
"Okay, this summer,
I'm going to watch all of the movies of Chantal Akerman,"
and things like that. And I think that counts.
-Yeah. Wow.
Well, that's a good note for us to end the interview on.
Thank you so much, Marie, and I can't,
of course, wait for your collection of short stories
to come out, not to mention the trilogy.
Thank you. -Thank you, Nancy. My honor.
-Bye-bye.
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