Generally Horrible Questions: Melanie Benjamin

Melanie Benjamin

Gianna here.
 
Melanie Benjamin is able to do what very few authors are able to do (and if you are an unpublished historical fiction writer - read her books, follow  her on FB and Twitter). Melanie takes a little known piece of history and crafts a fully developed, complex, and intriguing page-turner. Most writers hit one or two off that list. Alice I Have Been is  the story of Alice Liddell who became Lewis Carrol's 'muse' as he wrote Alice in Wonderland (I was the only one on the planet that hadn't heard the rumors by the way). The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb is the truly fascinating story of two-foot eight-inch tall Mercy Lavinia “Vinnie” Bump. This novel takes you on a ride of the twentieth century; anyone who was important met with Tom Thumb and  his bride. This magnificent and dignified story made my 2011 best-of list. I highly recommend both of these for your book club--so much to discuss.

Melanie has two national bestsellers under her belt, is finishing up a third novel for Random House, which sure to be another bestseller...yet things aren't so great right now for this author.  You see, baseball season is now underway and Melanie is a Chicago Cubs fan. As the summer trudges on we ask that you keep her in your thoughts and maybe every now and again if you could throw a little "Go Cubs" her way...it would be appreciated. [For the record, the Astros are ranked dead last for the second year in a row.  We don't have the Cubs fans' fortitude.  Go bourbon.  Lots and lots of sweet bourbon. Let's blay pall!]

Melanie was naive enough to agree to do our Horrible Questions. She won't make that mistake again.

Go Cubs.

1. What book are you always trying to get people to read (besides your own…that’s our job)?
Galore by Michael Crummey. It’s a tough one to categorize but it’s absolutely wonderful and magical and stays with you a long, long time. [This gem is Liz's #1 book of 2011, so obviously Melanie has excellent taste.]

2. What is the single most interesting thing you’ve learned researching your books?
That authors were concerned with sales figures even as far back as Lewis Caroll and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland! [Luckily Disney really brought this book to life.  I mean, who read if there's a Disney movie to watch instead?]

3. I’ve never read ____ and I am so ashamed!
Faulkner. [We know people in Mississippi and we're telling on you.]

4. What book (or books) changed your life?
Gone With the Wind. I was a voracious reader, always, but Gone With the Wind was the first adult book I read (even though I was probably 11 or 12 when I read it). I’d never been as transported into a different time and place, as I was with that book. I think it’s probably what led me to write historical fiction, to tell the truth. I remember reading it on a long car trip from Indiana out to Colorado; I was in the back seat of the family station wagon, and I don’t think I looked at a single bit of scenery the entire trip, I was so sucked into that book. [Imagine a long debate between Gianna and Liz about the racial and/or gender implications of acting out scenes from Gone With the Wind.  Suffice it to say that Gianna should be involved in the delivery of babies and Liz will never go hungry again.]

5. Are there movie plans in the works for either Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb or Alice I Have Been? You can tell us, no one reads this blog.
A wonderful actress named Meredith Eaton has optioned The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb. She wrote me the most beautiful letter sharing how much the book meant to her, an actress with dwarfism, and how it’s now her greatest ambition to bring the story to the screen. I hope she can! [That's pretty awesome.]

6. Best and worst book tour experiences?
Back before I was with Random House, I had two other books published to little fanfare, so I organized some tours on my own. Now I know, when it’s the author behind a tour (instead of a publisher), bookstores don’t really take you very seriously. There’s a tendency to just stick you up by the front door so you can accost everyone who comes in, begging them to buy your book. On one such occasion I was told to circulate throughout the store handselling the book. So I did; I went up to one woman with a game smile on my face but before I could even say hello, she hissed, “Go away! I will NOT buy your book!” Afterwards, I sat in my car weeping as I stuffed a huge chocolate chip cookie in my mouth, and I called my husband and wailed, “I’m never going to another bookstore as long as I live!”

Now that I’m with Random House and writing historical fiction, my experiences have been MUCH less humiliating! I think my favorite booksigning recently was at Prairie Lights in Iowa City; it was packed with students attending a journalism boot camp at the university, and their assignment was to cover my appearance. So during the talk, they were all Tweeting about it, and afterwards I was swarmed by students asking to interview me – it was all so much fun. And such a treat to read their pieces the next day, up on the seminar’s website. It was just so lovely to see students excited about their future careers; it was a privilege to be a part of that experience. [You were kind to grant them all interviews, though we think you should nurture your inner diva and hiss cruel things at them.  Like Gianna hisses at Liz.]

7. I have read _____ and I am so ashamed.
The Bridges of Madison County.  [Holy God.]

8. Liz or Gianna?
Both! [The Random House employee who "works" on this blog is now dutifully offended.  The correct answer is always Liz.  Always.]

Mrs. Tom Thumb.
The tall guy is P.T. Barnum

9. Melanie, please think long and hard before answering this question. We all know that the Cubs are awesome (in a heartbreaking sort of way). Who is the most awesome Cub ever? Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Greg Maddux, Ryne Sandberg, or Billy Williams?
Ron Santo! Unfortunately, I only moved here 16 years ago, so I didn’t grow up a Cubs fan (or a baseball fan, really; I grew up in Indianapolis, a town with no professional baseball team). But I have grown to love the game and it’s primarily because I listen to the WGN radio broadcasts, and of course, Ron Santo was the color guy until his death last year. So Ron Santo became real to me, in a way those other players have not. [Before Gianna abandoned Liz for UT Press, when we took road trips together, we brought Gianna's satellite radio along in order to listen to Ron and the Cubs broadcasts...and debate his level of intoxication.  RIP.]

10. Just a small hint of what you’re working on next…please?
It’s called The Ambassador's Daughter, and it will be out in 2013. It’s the story of the marriage between Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Charles Lindbergh, and it’s absolutely the most difficult book I’ve yet to write – and also, I think, the best. (She said, modestly.) What an epic, complex, exhilarating and heartbreaking story they shared! Anne had a strength I’m not sure is always evident in the writing she left behind; that’s the Anne I wanted to share with the world. [Hurry it up already!]

Thanks Melanie.  We hope your career isn't too damaged by associating with the likes of us. 

What I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up

Ernie Banks

Gianna:

I love Ernie Banks and my Chicago Cubs. When I was around eight, or maybe ten years old, I had a not-so-detailed but what I thought to be a winning (insert joke about the word "winning" used in reference to Cubs…I dare you) plan that I was certain would land me on the Cubs roster. [Okay...like, Charlie Sheen's definition of winning?]  I won’t go into the plan but let's just say I always carried a baseball and glove with me in case the scout drove down Tulip Drive (ABPB...Always Be Prepared Baby!). Spoiler alert: I never made it on the team. I know your thinking that the Cubs are so stinky that I should give it another try.  Yeah, maybe.

 

Something happened though when I hit the age of twelve or thirteen. [Your womanly hormones?] I began to lose my confidence. I no longer felt that I could compete with boys, although in reality I still could, but the confidence was gone. I wanted to be a professional baseball player a few years before but now…I was sort of being steered toward other careers like nurse or, god help the children, a teacher. I remember at some point mentioning that I wanted to be an airline pilot.  I was quickly steered toward being what we called then an airline “stewardess.” Had I been a boy, no one would have doubted my ability (although to be fair, my god I would be a terrible pilot).

Peggy Orenstein

Of course I didn’t realize any of the above until I read what remains to this day as one of the most important, life-changing books I have ever read; Schoolgirls by Peggy Orenstein.  For an entire school year Orenstein shadowed and interviewed eighth graders from two different communities in an attempt to discover when girls first begin to doubt themselves. What she finds is not only heartbreaking but somewhat shocking.

 

Not long after reading Schoolgirls I went to hear Naomi Wolf speak at a conference. She asked the entire audience to think about what they wanted to be when they grew up at the age of five, then seven, then nine…some women shouted out their dreams: spy, priest, explorer, and inventor are the ones I remember.  And then Wolf asked, “Well what happened?”  The room fell silent. For the first time I asked myself, what did happen? [You would have been a terrific priest....]

Naomi Wolf

Everyone (yes, I said it) should read Schoolgirls and Flux by Peggy Orenstein (she also has a new book called Cinderella Ate My Daughter, and you don’t have to be a parent to get that reference). Naomi Wolf has written several books; The Beauty Myth and Promiscuities are both excellent.

And while perhaps it is too late for me to play for the Cubs, it’s certainly not too late to learn how to fly.








Liz: 


I wanted to be Hakeem Olajuwon.  Then I injured my ankles.  I wanted to be writer.  I still sort of secretly harbor that ambition but at least I work in my chosen field.  I believed in certain inalienable rights guaranteed to all humans...and then I went to college.  


Backing up, there are many, many things about growing up in a tiny town that I resented and against which I've struggled for most of my life.  It's an invisible cloak that, for better and worse, I will never shed.  Small towns--and I'm talking a town of 2,500 residents--are gossip factories and offer limited resources.  At the same time, though, I am well aware that, though I couldn't take Latin in high school, I could participate in any activity I chose.  Sure, there were the mean girls who terrorized junior high and high school as detailed in the wonderful Queen Bees and Wannabes and Tina Fey's adaptation Mean Girls.  By the fifth grade, though, I threw down, told the worst to go to hell, and though junior high had it's petty, girl-on-girl spats, I mostly worried about other things.  Like band.  And basketball.  And academic competitions. And pretty much any activity in which I chose to participate.  One of the good things about small towns is that in order to have teams and activities, everyone has to play, and there weren't stigmas about being a band geek or jock or whatever.  The drum majors for the band were also captains on the football team and stars in the one act plays.

These images are all over the web...
and they are appalling.

When I arrived at college, though (and again, this was a small university of 1,250 students), I encountered both more opportunities and open minded approaches to the world...and the backlash.  Sure, I could now take a greater variety of classes and participate in more activities, and I took advantage of many of those opportunities.  I majored in English and History, took a zillion hours worth of Women's Studies courses, worked on the Residence Life staff, was an officer in several campus organizations, and played intramural sports.  I also encountered the a minority of women and more of the men who were buying into the backlash against feminism.  Girlfriends cleaned their fraternity boyfriends' frat houses.  What the fuck?  Women worried about working out because they might sweat or get muscles. Women talked about wanting families and babies.  There's nothing wrong with families and babies, but I never understood how these could be the limits of one's ambitions.  I myself suddenly worried about the way I was perceived.  I panicked about speaking in class.  I worried that I wasn't good enough to compete against big city-educated students, and I worried about the ways I was perceived outside of the classroom.  It was a gut check.  This was supposed to be a liberal university and the feminist professors were an extremely vocal, powerful group on campus.  Why were the students pushing back against them?  It baffled me, and to an extent it silenced me.  (College friends who might read this entry will guffaw at the idea of me being quiet, but there was a time when I was afraid to state that I liked a book or movie or song for fear of judgment.)

Susan Faludi wrote a classic book, Backlash, about the movement to tear down what advances Second Wave feminists made in the 60's and 70's.  While it was at play while I was in college in the 90's, I fear that it's only grown worse in the 15 years since then.  Women are called "chicks."  Worse, they accept that label.  Sarah Palin.  That's a whole backward trend wrapped within the facade of "liberated woman" in and of itself.    Women's healthcare is toxic and women on birth control are called "sluts." Preteen girls are sexualized, often encouraged by their mothers who want princesses and mini-Barbies.  Rick Santorum pretty much wants women wearing burkas.  What the fuck? The things about which Susan Faludi wrote in the 80's, and which Margaret Atwood predicted in her dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale, have either grown worse or eerily become reality.

I am proud of my job. I work in a field that was a childhood dream--I always wanted to be involved in some way with books (assuming that I'd never be Hakeem).  I am proud of my sister, who always wanted to work in the space program and now is an aerospace engineer in a male-dominated field.  I'm proud to work for a company where I see women at the top ranks of the management and make up a significant part of what was a boys club back in the day.  I am treated as an equal with my male counterparts.  Books are tricky, though.  I also see what's selling, what the general reading public wants to read.  I wonder if there's a chicken-and-egg argument going on here--do publishers print books glorifying submissive women because that's what readers want, or do readers want books about making the husband the focus of one's life because that's what we suggest is correct as publishers of the material?  I think it's probably some of both.

This is a weird, weird, imperfect world.

Sales Conference, Or a Tale of Awkwardness

The view from my
hotel room

I, Liz, flew to Florida very, very early this morning for the annual in-person sales conference for fall books.  For those of you dozens of readers who aren't in the book business, basically this is the company pep talk meeting, awards presentation dinner(s), and discussion of new books.  Parts of conference are exciting...and parts involve socially awkward people attempting to interact with other socially awkward people, to varying levels of self-awareness.  It's a hoot.

Here are some observations before I have to turn in my computer so that the IT people can remove an entire cat's worth of Zorro fur from my keyboard.

A beautiful site.

• The Sanibel Resort is a Marriott property.  Marriott signed a deal with the devil (Pepsi).  My colleague Toni drove in from Tampa and brought me a case of Diet Coke, but she's staying in another building, so I had to claim my Diet Coke at the front desk.  I'm rationing.
• Here's the thing: I work from home, not an office.  I therefore don't see the same people every single day, so technically I could wear the same clothes every day if I wanted.  To come up with clothes for five days can be a challenge.  
• Also, we are book people.  We don't speak normal English...which is fine since the big boss, Markus, is German.  There is the whiff of desperation out there, the "Talk to MEEEEEEE!!!" of people who spend lots of time talking to the cat.
• My boss asked me to be on a panel. She claims that my participation isn't just to provide an excuse to fire me.



Sales people flock to receive
a signed book from Grisham.

• John Grisham.  I sat at his table for dinner.  He requested the vegetarian plate.  Considering the frightening slab-o-cow that was deposited in front of me, I ate the whipped potatoes and the salad.
• Speaking of Grisham, he has a new novel coming in April.  He's been a huge baseball fan all of his life (in spite of the fact that he's a Cardinals fan), and this is his first baseball-related story.  Calico Joe tells the story of a rising star playing for the Cubs, Joe Castle, and a struggling pitcher for the Mets, Warren Tracey, set during the summer of 1973.  Joe explodes onto the scene, breaking a record with his first few at bats.  He's a superstar in the making for the long-suffering Cubs fans (ask Gianna about her pain).  Warren Tracey's son Paul tells the story of these two baseball players, the baseball code, and a fateful August day when their paths collided.  It's a good read--reminiscent of The Natural.
• I "celebrated" my fifth year with Random House.  And then I pointed out to a colleague celebrating her 35th year that I have only been alive 35 years.  I'm classy like that.

Unless Gianna figures out how to post on the blog, there might be a couple of days hiatus.  Just remember, Liz is always the answer.

Coming April 2012