A Book Chat with Elizabeth Gilbert

hi everyone it's a tea and welcome to another episode of a quick chat with I'm so excited because I finally have the absolute pleasure being here with Liz Gilbert hi Sadie imagine how excited I am to be here with you a little bit at a safe distance yeah we took that six feet that that three meter distance and we just expanded it to about 9,000 miles just to be on the safe side so I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to infect you with anything you're not going to infect me with anything can't be too careful though don't touch your screen [Music] yeah and by the way your little song and dance routine video that you made for it when it came out last year is still one of my favorite things that's ever happened um yeah so the book is a novel it is set in mostly in the New York City theater world of the 1940s and it's about a young woman named Vivian Morris who is a very privileged not a bad not bad person just a sort of oblivious spoiled entitled girl who's very pretty and who is also very lazy and gets kicked out of a sort college for failing all of her classes and her parents were very affluent parents not knowing what else to do with her Center in New York City to live with her aunt peg who is a bohemian woman who owns a theater company called the Lilly Playhouse in midtown Manhattan and that is a down on it's kind of shabby down and it's like bohemian kind of weird Vaught proto vaudevillian show show palace that Vivian falls completely in love with and finds her home in in her place with and she starts hanging out with the showgirls and the actresses and Playboy's and and just breaks wild and goes from being a very sheltered girl to a very promiscuous girl and so it's a book about young women behaving very badly with their sex lives and running around until the consequences catch up with them but it's also a celebratory book about what it means to be young what it means to be to take risks I've wanted four years to write a novel about promiscuous girls whose lives are not ruined by their choices because I thought that it was long overdue that we had a novel like because women are we so punished in literature for being sensual ist's and the book is told from the point of view of Vivian in her 90s answering a question that has come to her in a letter about who were you to my father and so the whole book is told in the form of a letter to a younger woman who we don't know anything about until the end of the book and when it's all pieces together and that is city of girls in my intention with it was to try to write a book that would go down like a tray of champagne cocktails and I am now at this moment on earth I'm more than happy I'm more happy than ever to have written a book that is a frothy piece of diversion for people because I feel like that's really what a lot of people need right now so thanks honey thank you I had so much fun writing it I had so much fun researching it I had so much fun finding all these women in their 90's and hundreds to talk to me about their experiences and you know back in the mid century New York City and in the theater world it was just a blast it was just a blast to disappear into that world so I'm glad you I'm glad you had fun with it too oh my god so did you they were amazing okay so one of the things was that I was really uncertain going into it I was like how am I gonna get these elderly women to talk to me about sex because so much of the book is about sex and it's about a particular kind of girl a girl who's who's more concerned about freedom and excitement than she is about safety and who lives with a certain wildness and abandoned and I know that that kind of girl has always existed she existed in 1946 15 in 1840 she exists now it's um it's it's not that they're hard to find but it's a little harder to find them when they're in their nineties and and they wanted to talk about that they and one of them in particular this woman named Norma amigo who was in her mid 90s when I met her and she'd been a showgirl and an actress and a dancer and she'd been John Wayne's girlfriend and she had so many adventures of men she had never gotten married never had kids never wanted to always was a sensualist always said you know my rule with men it's a line in the book that Vivian says my rule with madness but they could come they could go the door was always open she never wanted to belong to anybody she never want anybody belonged to her and and and she just spoke of her life with such pride you know that she had truly lived her life on her own terms and and she was very funny too because she said my family is still angry at me her family of origin was still angry at her that she had not taken a more conventional life and they were like what did they say that she said they still say to me someday you're gonna be some day you're gonna regret it someday you're gonna be some day you're gonna be sorry that you never married had kids she said I'm 94 I'm waiting you know she was very open about her five abortions she had no regrets about them whatsoever she had some very very fascinating detailed information about what it was like getting abortions in the 1940s and 50s and and how like these crazy little details where she said yeah well all the girls knew you to go to a Catholic City to get your abortion because they gave so many of them because birth control was illegal so she said the the really safest place to go to get an abortion was in Boston or in Mexico City because birth control was illegal so the doctors were really accustomed to delivering abortions and so it was the the safest place to go so we would just get on the train and go to Boston for the day or if your boyfriend had money we'd go to Mexico City and then make a vacation out of it no it's like she talked about her venereal diseases she talked about how she picked men up and and she was just completely in the best line was she said I said so you never regretted that you didn't get married and she said and I excuse my language but I'm quoting directly from a 94 year old woman she said oh hell no who wants to the same man for 65 years okay I'm ready to write this book now because these characters did exist and these kind of women do exist and this book is a celebration of a woman like that so um yeah it was really really fun they really did yeah and and I think that there's a misconception that we have I think every generation thinks that they discovered sex and every generation thinks that they invented it and I definitely think culturally we have a mass misunderstanding where we think that there was no such thing as free love or or open sexuality before the 1960s at the least you know or before the advent of birth control but it's simply not true and and Society has never really known what to do with women like that because they make people really uncomfortable because they're not there's a very narrow path that girls and women are taught that they can walk in order to be considered respectful and that path has not gotten much less narrow over the years like it's still pretty narrow and and so when you when you encounter somebody who simply not only refuses to adhere to that path but it's almost as if they can't even see it like what path like they just can't like that's who Vivian wasn't super friend Sylvia was too they just they just can't stay on the path because they don't even recognize it as existing it's kind of amazing talking about like the things that weren't that great how did you go about that aspect of character development was it something that you felt like okay I'm going to plot it out or was it something that kind of like went on it's a kind of a combination of both so for me like generally what I've noticed about my novels is that the first you know a novel is setting character and plot right those are the three elements and I always know the setting first you know it's there's always it's I think as partially has to do with me being a traveler or something about my curiosity about the world before I know anything I know where I want this story to take place because I want to fall into that world and disappear into that world so it's always very easy for me to figure that out and then the second piece is who's in that world okay so now you have the world so for me it was okay I want to write a world by New York City in the 1940s because it just seemed like the most impossibly glamorous moment of New York history one of the most impossibly Glenanne worst moments of world history and and I've always wanted to write a Valentine to New York City because I love it so much and and so this could be a way to do that and and so that was it so first I had the setting and then okay who's in that world you know and that's where I came up with that idea of I want to write about promiscuous girls and what better world for them to be in then wild you know bohemian New York City in the 1940s the hardest part for me is what's it about that's always been the hardest part for me sorry I'm just moving my things so that I'm getting a lot of light reflected in here and I don't want to blast your eyeballs with it so yeah so we know where it is we know who the people are in the world what are they doing and and that takes a while for me to figure out and that usually comes to me very slowly as I'm researching the world and the people within it at that time I start to get hints of character and for me the big breakthrough with the novel was when I decided that it would be a letter and I decided that it would be a letter from the daughter of a man who had been in Vivian's past who wanted clarity about what their relationship was and then once I had that I was able to go but the honest truth was I had the whole book plotted out except for I didn't know what the relationship was going to be between Vivian and Angela's father I knew who he was I knew when they met I knew what the circumstances were of their meeting I knew when he would arrive in the book but once he showed up in her life I actually had not figured out in advance what the central answer was to Angela's question who was he in your life and and what I ended up doing was just having to do this big leap of faith to write the first 400 pages of the book without knowing the answer to that and then when they or whatever 300 pages and then when they finally met each other I let I turned the story over to them because by that point I knew Vivian so well and I knew him so well that I was like okay you two now your meeting you take it from here you tell me what you are and and it too much to my surprise the relationship evolved from that point I thought it was so special about it because and throughout the book for me because I I thought it was like such so excellent I was like a letter and you you're like throughout the book trying to find out exactly like okay was it this guy yeah you see how that relationship evolves and it's and it's such a unique one and I don't really even think I've ever seen it before in a book because I feel like lovers is it's not the right word for it but also like not like having like friends either it feels far more intimate than friendship so I was like interested in and how you felt about the relationship I'll tell you something and they maybe this reveals more about me than then then I should but what the hell um one of the motives for this book was that somebody who had read my last novel the signature of all things which was about a woman who was very brilliant but also had it was very lonely in love she'd had a big misunderstanding at the beginning of her marriage that had cost her a lot of pain and then she had never found true love past that in her life and she was actually a virgin for her entire life and um and somebody wrote to me on Facebook years ago and said I love your writing I love this book I have a challenge for you please give us a love story next time and and I was like oh you're right I've never written over again because this light is following me okay there we go um it's like I've never written a love story that's kind of amazing and then it really became this challenge because I was like I will have to write a love story that I personally believe like I can't write a romantic naive love story and so what's gonna take for me to tell a love story that that I actually believe these two people really loved each other and and stove there were all these tropes that I couldn't follow because I was like I don't know and like and I had thoughts like they can't be young because I wouldn't believe it you know what I mean like it can't be like a young romance because they don't know enough yet in the world hasn't beaten them up enough yet they're not humbled enough yet they're not broken enough yet and damaged enough yet to be able to meet each other as true vulnerable human beings so they have to be older when they meet and and it can't just be a sexual adventure because Vivian has already had so many of those in her life you know it's got to be something completely different so I love that you said that you'd never quite read a love story like it but in the end I submit those two and then I won't say his name because it's a spoiler alert but Vivian and that man really loved each other and and that was a true love story it just wasn't a conventional I'm glad you enjoyed it I'm glad you enjoyed it just laughing out loud I don't think I've ever had more fun writing a scene in my life and that scene again I was like I want to do this differently than it's ever been done how how was that like writing this type of this type of passengers but that you your favorite or whether like all the things that you enjoyed there were a couple scenes in that book that I had a lot of fun writing but that one was the one that I was like as soon as I came up with the idea which was several years before I wrote the book it just was like a secret that I had in my pocket or I was like oh my god I cannot wait to write this scene and even as I was writing the beginning of the book and leading up to it I was like okay hurried along hurried along let's get to that scene let's get to that and you know because again I feel like as a reader and especially the female reader I feel like there are really only two virginity loss scenes that you ever read and one of them is the is the incredibly traumatic one you know which is often the case with people in that situation but like the devastatingly traumatic one and then the other is the impossibly romantic one so there's one that I don't want to read because it's too disturbing which is the incredibly traumatic one and there's one that I don't want to read because I don't believe it you know like like you know it's like it's such a weird awkward thing to lose your virginity it's so like how often is it pleasurable even for the woman the first time she has sex for it to be a pleasure you know it just and and and so I was like I want to do it in some way that is just so completely different that is neither traumatic nor romantic and and so what-what exists does a way that you could lose your virginity that would be neither traumatic no romantic and that would be mechanical and and kind of like what was it like transactional you know transactional you know like transactional in a way where where there was just an agreement that this is what was gonna happen and and that that itself becomes comedy you know that even Vivian is it's happening to her can't stop laughing at Howard I also love it it's that scene is really where she bonds not with the man who's totally inconsequential I think there's like there's line in there where she says like he was a he had he was an you know a regular looking man with average features and then she says if it sounds like I've completely forgotten what he looks like because I'm complete like like he was so an inconsequential but what happened in that scene was that her the losing of her virginity had of course been brokered by her friends the showgirls who found somebody who would take care of it for her and sent her sent her to his house and arranged the entire thing that's the real story that's happening there is that she's having a rite of passage into womanhood and friendship with these much more sophisticated girls who are taking her under their wing and arranging this in the way that they think will be least traumatizing for her and and what she comes away with out of that is she's lost her virginity and she's made these friends and now she belongs and and and it's a real and they're real friendships there's like it's about female bonding more than anything else [Music] exactly exactly and she's rewarded by just them loving her and and there's that that moment where they find out that she's a virgin and they're so horrified and and they're like wow wow they're just so promiscuous they've just been these wild girls their whole lives and and then one of them there's just always cracks me that one of them just says who can we call you think the line in the book is she says they looked at me as though they had just found out that I had never learned how to cross the street you know like what how can you be this age and you don't know how to cross the street like here we'll take care of it who can we call so yeah they just jump to it and and yeah I had a blast I'm glad you enjoyed that scene I had a total blast writing it and one thing that I really enjoyed about reading those passages it's mainly because I I don't it felt it feels a bit silly to save me it felt kind of like permission or something like yes women are not allowed to enjoy things that are like sex so was there anything that you when you were writing those passages that was like really important for you to and include like like for instance like the atmosphere kind of like a message or something like that yeah I think what I wanted to show more than anything was I wanted to show that that not only that women are capable of enjoying sex so what I felt was that that how can I put this women are also capable of behaving very badly and by badly I mean without integrity without ethics and that that's not something that is restricted only to male behavior and that women are capable of making really bad choices for themselves and that they can survive those bad choices I think one of the other messages that is often conveyed in literature about female sexuality is how how terribly terribly dangerous it is how high the stakes are and one false move in your life is ruined and I I just wanted to liberate the reader's imagination from that and instead introduced this possibility as I often say if women could not survive our terrible judgement when it comes to sex and romance and love there would not be a woman left alive we we can have terrible judgment - so so lots of times I'm gonna be reading people talk about city of girls they'll say it's so refreshing to have a book that's about women who are in control of their sexuality and I kind of want to say a little but it's also about women who are not in control of their sexuality meaning it is about women who are being controlled by their sexuality women who are being driven by their urges to behave in ways that are not in accordance with their integrity because sometimes that's what happens too is that you get swept up and stuff and you get carried away in stuff and you and you act in ways that you later like why did I do that so I wanted that to be part of it as well so I didn't just want it to be like yay rah rah sex-positive I wanted it to be yay rah rah sex-positive and there are consequences and those consequences can be really painful and you can survive them it's a lot to try to say in one sex scene but that's kind of where I was going yeah sex and romantic lives are not tidy well that's the beauty of those female relationships is the the ability to you know what do they say comedy is tragedy plus time you know and when you're with your girlfriends that time speeds up and and the tragedy can turn into comedy sometimes within a couple days you know and this is not to lessen true tragedy that can happen to people in the realms of sex or romance or true harm that can happen to people it's just to say that that every woman you know there's a line in the book where where Vivian's says after a certain age we're all we wear bodies that are made of Secrets and stories you know we're all composed of these stories and our histories and and some of it we can reconcile and some of it can't we can't and some of it we can laugh at later and some of it we still cry about and some of it but it's you know we're complex and and so I feel like that's what I want more than anything to do with my time and my talents is to write stories about women who are complex because we are I like going on about the complexity of women another thing that I really liked about the female characters in this book is that um there was obviously so much nuance to them in the sense that for instance you have Edna and Celia and both of them are like so incredibly confident like standing in their women hood but in completely different ways uh-huh I thought that was this like it's so great to see like that it's when like nothing monolith and that we can be like whenever we want to be and I was just wondering like how did how did those characters not start to form yes so with Celia what I wanted was you know that the the fast girl the that that wicked Jessica Rabbit kind of that's how I always pictured you know somebody who Rita Hayworth would have played in a movie you know um there's stereotypes around that character as well you know all of these all of these characters are there's there's danger everywhere of falling into stereotype and one of the stereotypes that you can fall into with a girl like that is that she later becomes a victim of her own ways of her own beauty you know and I it was so important to me that Celia survived herself and and so there's a little secret in the book that comes later that is just a little moment where we get to be like rock on yeah you know like because typically that story is she gets murdered by a lover she gets beat you know and it's not like Celia has consequence-free sex there's a scene in the book where she's beaten up and basically raped and madurai raped and and not untrim Atty x'd by a bit but also it doesn't alter her identity you know um she's still the same person who she was she still takes the same risks that she took before and you know I I just I didn't want I didn't want to see I can't bear to see women destroyed you know even when terrible things happen to them because the reality of women the real reality of what that were very hard to destroy very very hard to destroy we're very easy to hurt we're very easy to hurt but we're very very hard to destroy female resilience is is quite an extraordinary feature and and then Edna she's an older woman she's a she's her beauty is fading typically the story of her would be that she would be competitive with these younger women but she wasn't she was embracing of them and then when she ends up being betrayed her resilience is extraordinary you know um and and and her power in that betrayal and the way that she chooses to move through that betrayal is extraordinary so yeah there's not a weak woman in that book but there's very few weak women in the world you know like somebody said to me recently why do you always write books about strong women I'm like what other kind of women are there you've been hanging out with like all women are strong you know that's the day it doesn't mean that we're not sensitive it doesn't mean that we're not damaged it just means that we're really really really really resilient yeah yeah no it does I mean I think and I think a problem we have with the stereotype when you have a character in movies or books is a strong female character the way that that's written is she's invulnerable she's she's Rambo she's Girl Rambo right and and that to me is not interesting either you know what I want is that what I want is resilience you know more than anything else my friend Martha Beck always says that when you're reading books about tragedies she goes anybody any author can lead you into hell but I want an author who can lead me into hell and then out and and you know that's like and the people who I love and admire in my life are the people who have been in hell and now they're out you know so like it's that's the definition of resilience is that hell happened and somehow you found your way through it that's those are kind of the only people I hardships and like still being able to like stand strong is this kind of like I don't know it gives you power as well you feed off of that energy and you are their rightful inheritor like you are the descendant of that that's in you too and that's something that I always find when I'm going through really hard stuff I think you know in this moment in history when it's a really scary moment to just remind all of us that every single one of us is the descendant of survivors you know literally none of us would be here if our ancestors had not been survivors its generation after generation after generation of survivors and that's we inherited their DNA quite literally we are that we just don't want to test it out and we'll do anything we can to avoid testing it out because we don't I'd I'd rather certainly if I had children and I don't I would rather that they never had to find out what good survivors they were you know like I don't want them to know that I don't want the people that I know to have to go through that and yet the universe and life is is generous enough to constantly give you opportunity to prove it it's coming it's coming the times when you'll be tested but but yeah that's who we are it's what we're made out of the end and the other side okay I'm still here I think of it as Earth school so I've been meaning for a long time as soon as I can be allowed to be touched by human being and I'm planning to get a tattoo that says earth school class of 1969 because that's the year I arrived in earth school and and I really do think that the only way my in my cosmic reality the only way that I can accept the tremendous amount of suffering injustice trauma loss death pain that that everyone has to to go through in their life I mean no exceptions you know no matter how coddled and no matter how privileged no one gets out of this without massive tests I just think oh it's Earth School it's a school for souls and and it's where Souls come to advance and it's a really tough school and it's a really really tough school and and and as an old woman who I used to admire used to say God saves the toughest assignments for the best students but you're right because you do you do adapt you are resilient you do find your strength and my friend Rob Bell who's this great teacher always says he has got this great thing about it where he says you know he does this thing on stage where he gets these two whiteboards and on one whiteboard he writes words like failure despair loss pain and on the other one he writes like success happiness advancement pleasure and then he's like if you were to look at these two boards all you're trying to do in your life is get away from the one that's failure pain and devastation and get on to the side that's happiness and contentment and success and achievement but he said by the same token if I were to ask you what were the three events in your life that most formulated you into the character who you needed to be did they come off of that's the bad list or the good list you know and and he's they always come to stuff on the bad list is the thing that forges you in the crucible and turns you into who you are and he goes and the conclusion therefore is something very interesting is happening in the universe and that's as far as he'll go with it he's like babies because you don't want to say try the supper you don't want to say like you should be trying to avoid suffering and yet something very interesting is going on here something very interesting with friends and stuff like that and if I wouldn't have had such a hard time at school like being bullied and stuff like that I wouldn't have been like the person I am now today who like loves books and found like a whole new space on the Internet where I found like the most wonderful friends who have like I've never had such friendships before and it's just like okay through all that suffering I still ended up with like amazing people that I can now I have the privilege of calling my friends and like even getting to talk yeah you like oh my gosh like it's such a delight I mean and it's so and yet if you had a child wouldn't you do anything to spare them from that pain and if you cared about somebody all you would do is spare them from that pain and that's part of our humanity too is that we know for ourselves I always think about this my friends who are parents I'm like you know damn well that the things that made you into who you were were the worst things that ever happened to you and all you're trying to do is make sure that that never happens to your kids you know but but it will despite you know like it will and they will be shaped by it and and you can and you'll have to watch well somebody suffers and that's the worst it's the worst you know it take yeah stop go ahead who are able to provide like a comfortable life and like have everything set out for their kids and still they'll find like a way to like they'll find a way yeah and life will find a way life will find a way to get in that bubble to you know it it's just it's just well it's you can't you can't you cannot protect a human being from the experience of being a human being yes you just can't no matter how much you wish you could was wondering like had you ever considered like other scenes like for instance old Hollywood or like the music scene because like theater I didn't really because the whole book got started when I found so I went to visit my great-aunt lolly who's now almost a hundred and I went to visit her when I went to visit her however many years it was she was cleaning out her house and she gave me a stack of books and they included a pile of books by a guy named Alexander Woollcott who makes a brief appearance in my novel as a side character and Alexander Woollcott was in the 20s 30s and 40s a very prominent columnist theater critic playwright and he was a member of the Dorothy Parker's Algonquin Circle he was part of that whole gang and he was extremely famous back in the day and he's not very well-known now at all he wrote a play called the man who who came to dinner which i think is what he's most remembered for but i mean he was one of the most famous men in america at the time and he was a writer for The New Yorker magazine and he had a column in the New York Herald and and so one of these books that my aunt gave me was a collection of profiles that he had written in the New Yorker magazine and they were profiles of actresses and actors and they were about the theater world because he was so featured in the theater world and they were all written in the from the late 20s to the mid 40s and OH I fell so in love with that world just by reading those and a lot of them were were actors I'd never heard of because they were stage actors and that's there's a line in city of girls where she's talking about Edna and she says you wouldn't have heard of her because she was that she was a very famous stage actress but the tragedy of a stage actress is there's no record of it and once she's gone she's gone and so you know and she never did films so you wouldn't have known who she was it was people like that who were these great British and American Grandin's and divas who were coming to New York to do shows and he would go and sit at the Sherry Netherland with them at the hotel and have cocktails and talked to them and write these profiles and I just wanted to jump into that world you know like that's and that's usually how my novels start is like I want to play in there like I want to play in that playground I want to be at the sherry-netherland having cocktails with it a beautiful aging actress from London who's very witty and is here to play Lady Macbeth like in 1938 I want to be in there like put me in that scene and so that's what began so it didn't occur to me to change it to Hollywood I wanted it to be in New York I don't know as much about music I feel like music is such a specific it's really such a gift to understand I feel like I understood the theater world more intrinsically because I used to do plays when I was younger so I felt like I kind of know it's like to put on a show and it's just like yeah and it's so vivid I mean I never was you know I put on plays in high school but a friend of mine who's a Broadway actor when he read city of curls and he read the scenes of the product producing of the play because in the book there's a play called city of girls that's being produced that's a musical end and you see it from inception to being brought to the stage and and he was like how did you know all this like how did you know that how did you know that the week before the play opens everyone is always sick everyone is sharing the same makeup and they all get the same cold sores and herpes you know that in this in this book in the book actually the girls are sharing the same dancers are sharing the same costumes and they all get like pubic lice from each other you know and that costume directors like stop you have to stop sharing makeup and and and instead of the play getting better as it gets closer to opening night it gets worse and there's a dress rehearsal where they every single time they do it it gets worse and everyone's exhausted and sniping at each other and he's like you know did you go and study Broadway theater I was like no I was in a play when I was a 42 years old oh that's what it was like you know it's like it's the same if you're 14 years old as if you're doing a Broadway show that's just what it's like to put on a production at the end everyone's stressed everyone's exhausted nothing is working you know and then there's that moment of magic where it actually all comes together and and and and I remember that feeling you know at my own level of doing you know Guys and Dolls in high school or whatever so so yeah you can take these as a writer you can draw experiences from your life I don't need to be a Broadway actor to know what it's like to put on a play I just have to remember what it was like when it's the same because we all know that the whole world is just high school it's the same the same rivalries the same love triangles the same heartbreaks it's just never any different so yeah things won't get better but you'll get better at handling things [Laughter] take a lot of things out I have a really great editor at Riverhead um Sara McGrath she's she's I've had some great editors in my day but she is really top-notch and um and and she did she has a light hand but a judicious hand and I have great faith in her so we worked together on the editing of it but it was she really loved the basic structure of the book so there wasn't massive editing that needed to be done but she was more likely to come in and say you know this scene is too long or we need more development of this character here or you know shorten the stuff after shorten stuff of the reporting on what was going on during World War 2 that's starting to drag some of the dialogues she felt with the showgirls was to cliched it was a little bit too like wow I done all my research on 1940 slang yeah exactly yeah exactly I had done so much research my friend Ann Patchett always says about certain books she goes that person researched that book for seven years and now we all must pay weird it's like why do we need to know everything you know right like so so definitely with the dialogue in my first draft she every reader had to pay for the fact that I had done research and I knew every 1940 slang and I'd stuck six examples of it into every sentence she's like I don't think they were just only speaking and slang link they probably had real conversations too so yeah she did stuff like that but she it wasn't it wasn't a massive undertaking we work really well together and because it was such a fun book I think we both just kind of had fun just shaping it up and you know the thing is you've done your best so it's not like turned in something that I mean you might not think it's very good but you also know that you've made it as good as you can make it by the time you turn it in so there's a little bit of a sense sometimes when editors come back and do that and they're like improve it or you're like I would if I could I absolutely this is be at my best like improving it's going to be very difficult because this is as good a writer as I am you know but that's where the beauty of the editorial relationship can come in where somebody can coach you and guide you to actually be better than you are I don't know much more than you do actually but yeah go ahead and ask your question yeah okay so that I can't answer because I am lucky enough that I've had been in this situation a couple of times before so Eat Pray Love of course was made into movie and then also on the movie coyote ugly was a movie based on a article that I wrote for GQ magazine 25 years ago or however long ago and and and I'd had a number when I was a journalist I I've sold like the signature of all things the movie rights for that were sold to BBC and they ended up not doing it so I've had a lot of interaction with it and so here is what I have learned I have learned the four words that you need to know as a writer if you're dealing with anything having to do with a Hollywood or movie production or adaptation of your work are if you want to have a serene life those four words are stay out of it today out of it it's none of your business you sold it be very happy that you got to cash the check and basically my position has become over the years thank you so much I'm a hundred percent honored I'll see you at the premiere right like do what you want to do do what you want to do it's not mine anymore I think where you get into it a kind of an ego battle is when you sell something but you don't give it away right so so if you sell something you have to also give it away I feel otherwise it's gonna be really hard so so I'm like very hands-off and and you know I would I was on the ate Pray Love set for one afternoon for about an hour in in Rome just to see it happening and I was like okay bye and then you also get the fun of seeing what they do no I'm getting to enjoy that the read the big reveal like what did they make it into what did they make it into so I am NOT particularly involved I had a woman sue crawler who's the producer and she was one of the producers behind a star is born and motherless Brooklyn and she's great she's a she's a very strong woman who's been working in Hollywood for years and when we had lunch I'm almost like too dismissive like when we had lunch I was like I don't care she was like well we would like you to have some involvement in it if you would I said yeah because I always assume they don't want me around either because they've got their own vision and they're doing their own thing and so that is all I know except for that there are lovely team they're super excited about it and I assume that like everything else in the world all production has been shut down at the MoMA in picton I would certainly love to see that book on screen because just for the costumes right just for the [Music] thanks honey I'm excited too quickfire questions they use nothing - okay let's do it I liked quickfire questions l frank baum The Wizard of odd series the whole box set not even necessarily the one that everyone's familiar with the first book but the whole series with the original illustrations are techo illustrations from the early 20th century oh my god they are the most beautiful exquisite books and they've reprinted them now with the original illustrations in every household should have these books they are truly magical so great and it's the first major work of children's literature whether the adventure belongs to a girl and not by accident because l frank Baum the author of The Wizard of Oz both his wife and his mother-in-law his wife and his mother-in-law were both incredibly prominent suffragette feminist activists in the late 19th and early 20th century his mother-in-law was the head of the Kansas women's suffragette organization so he had a very feminist streak in him and it's no accident that it's a hero's journey starring a girl and and there really were not any before that so it's also very groundbreaking as a feminist tract treat yourself to The Wizard of Oz books they're soapy and get the ones with the original illustrations because they're so fantastic well I think the greatest living author at the moment is Hilary mantel she wrote The Wolf Hall series I'm right now in the middle of the third book at the third and final book I literally do not know how she exists she is so staggeringly brilliant and those books are so devastatingly and I think as an author a lot of times you I can admire there's so many authors whose work I admire but when I read them as their peer I read the book and I see it from an admiring standpoint and I say oh yeah I see how you did that that's cool that's really good it's kind of like a carpenter looking at another carpenters work and saying like Oh nicely done on those drawer poles yeah like you know but when I read Hilary mantel I'm like you're not from this planet like I don't know I how do you how are you an existent being how are you able to do this you're so good so yeah I think I don't think there's any and I've read her earlier work as well I mean she got very famous with the Wolf Hall books and the to book her prizes and and the movies and the and the Broadway show based on it and everything but she had a big body of work before that and again it's miraculous every single book is completely different a completely different voice I am like I truly don't really think she's fully human it's like how I feel it's like how it's so much easier for me to believe that aliens built the pyramids than to imagine how you know I'm like how is it even possible to like right but isn't it incredible I bet you know I haven't heard the audio who do you know who did the narration and is it a man yeah I would think it would have to be yeah I need to download that because I bet that is so good I bet it's a great British stage actor or something and I bet but it's so because the dialogue is so good yeah very cool write your book to somebody my sister taught me that and it's my sisters also writer actually uh I would love for you to read her book that just won the Newbery Prize last year she's a young adult novelist and her she wrote a book called book of boy that I have just his really appropriate for this moment I might need to make an Instagram announcement about this because it is a book about a young boy who's traveling on foot with a mysterious stranger through post plague Europe and it's one or two years after the plague has completely decimated Western Europe and and it's this just completely transformed landscape of empty housing it's a post-apocalyptic in a way in a way and it's such a good book and she won that the the the new Paris for it um but she taught me at a young age because she was always a writer make sure that whenever you said to have to write something you're writing it directly to one person one person so not a demographic don't talk to a demographic and don't talk to the void choose one person who you know in your life who you would like to delight or educate or entertain or help and then write that book directly in your voice to that voice and that will bring your humanity forth and it will bring it also brings company into the writing room so that you've got that person that you're talking to you don't have to be alone [Music] nope each one of my books has been written to somebody else and and that's why it's so it's such an important question because you speak differently to different people you change the you change the intellectual level of your voice depending on how you're speaking to you you changed the way you use curse words you change the tone you change the patronizing tone of your voice or the intimate tone of your voice we all speak differently to every single person in our life we we modulate that and so it's a really important question and it's the question I always ask people when they tell me they're working in a book and they're struggling with that I always say who you who talking to and usually they don't know or if they do know they answer with the demographic you know this is a book for you know middle grade readers you know or this is a book for women over the age of 50 who are starting their lives over after an illness you know I'm like okay that's not a person that's a voting bloc so find one person in your life who represents that and then tell your story directly to them it changes everything it opens up the whole dynamic yeah okay okay weird recently that I most enjoyed was called boy swallows universe and it's by an Australian writer named Trent d'Arby he's an Australian journalist and it's a semi autobiographical novel that has some supernatural elements as well which I loved and it's about two young brothers in Queensland Australia in the 1980s who are trying to survive their childhoods they've got and it's no small feat they've got a drug-addicted parents and who are not just drug addicts but drug dealers and who are really lovely people also I mean there's this is how you know that he was actually writing from life is that the subtlety and the paradox of the fact that he how much he loves his mother and she happens to be a drug addict and she and how much she loves his stepfather who happens to be a drug dealer and they're also trying to survive the drug wars that are going on in between rival gangs between Vietnamese immigrant gangs and and and other native Australian gangs his babysitter who's looking out for him the whole time that his parents are off being on drugs or selling drugs is an escaped convict who turns out to be just this the really lovely wise figure he's it's just a it's and there's this weird supernatural time kind of strange element to it as well it's brilliant brilliant brilliant and I I described it as like do you know that candy pop rocks that you put in your mouth and it bubbles it reading boy swallows universe is like taking the entire pack and putting it in your mouth and then setting your head on fire like it's got this energy that's just like so outrageous um so that's the book that I most enjoyed the one that I'm looking forward to what am I looking forward to Samantha Irby is a writer who I love so much she's also fantastic on Instagram her new book which is called wow thanks know with the bunny on it I haven't got it but I haven't read bits of it because she's an essayist so parts of it have come out already she is hilarious like anything I when I found out she had a new book coming out months ago I put a picture of the cover on Instagram with the note saying there's only two words you have to put on a cover for me to buy it and those words are Samantha Irving [Applause] for two she's brilliant hilarious observant essayist beyond she's beyond beyond I bet you have a very significant TBR list my dear but besides that and yeah my favorite pastime is I'm to one is walking I'm a really big Walker um and last year I did a trip with a friend of mine where we walked through France for two weeks yeah and I mean I really could just walk forever that is my joy and I'm so I'm always happy on a long walk and I got that from my dad and he actually hiked the entire Appalachian Trail which is several thousand miles and I did pieces of it with him but I'm not a hike I don't love hiking as much like hiking to me indicates a lot of discomfort with a big heavy backpack and camping and all those hard things I love walking I just lived and I loved being dropped into a new city and spending an entire day walking around the city and learning my way around it on foot that's my greatest joy and it makes it's it straightens out my head it straightens out my emotions it's it's a beautiful way to see the world on foot I love it and and I also love writing in my journal and drawing in my journal and I love writing poetry which I very very rarely share but I write a lot of poetry just for fun no I'm not as well-read and adept in poetry as I wish that I were but but no I do write a lot of it it's not terrible I don't read a lot of it but I write a lot of it I only read my own I would read them no I have my favorites I love the poet Chuck Gilbert I love Mary Oliver obviously we all do I love David White there's you know certainly living poets who I love but I definitely would not say that I am the mistress of all poetry in terms of being well-read it's like I feel like it's like opera I was taught by somebody how to watch upper because that's another one where you feel like End Modern Art where you feel like if you're not educated in it you're not allowed to understand it or enjoy it and so you can feel like you're very it's very off-putting that you're not invited that you're not invited into Opera you're not invited into the modern art but that a friend of mine just said you go to the Opera and you shut your eyes and you let it break over you like a wave and and that's all you have - I don't need to know what they're saying and you don't need to know what the story is you know the history of the of the musician is you just let it break over you like a wave and that is so beautiful to me and I feel like poetry is a little bit like that too and if it's breaking over you like a wave then it's working and if it's not then it's not a good problem the job of the poem is to break over you like a wave of course yeah that's what glasses are for it's their ultimate fate their ultimate fate is to be left on the floor and stepped on and that's so incredibly itchy on your nose if you haven't tried like had them on for a very long time so this one time I was going just to I was like volunteering at like an old people's home and I was on my way there and it was just so annoying sighs like okay I'll just put it in my pocket but I was going over like a car way so there was this bump and so I went up with my bike and my glasses fell off oh my god something oh no no the worst and the worst part was that there was a car coming Oh like in the movies with the slow bullet the guy just passed and yeah they were just just decimated basically and it was like not like a movie as well because like I I had done like my shift afterwards and I had to ride my bike home and of course it had to rain and I was scared because I had it just for like two weeks and I had to come home and tell my mom like those expensive glasses that you bought me like two weeks ago this this spoiled so I spent like half an hour in the ring like crying oh that is I don't think it's any hyperbole to say that is the worst story and saddest thing I've ever heard but that's the stuff that makes you resilient as we were discussing you'll be stronger you'll be stronger good job good plays plays no doubt about it Oh lays lays Conway blaze West some kind of yeah something like that last night and it would be midnight love it so what's something like fashion-wise you wish would come back women wearing men's suits I mean a lot of that happens when people are identifying you know a different gender there's like some beautiful you know or gender non-conforming there's some beautiful old tailors now in Brooklyn that are making great soothing for women and my partner Rena had a gorgeous three-piece suit made but I love those pictures of Marlena Dietrich and Greta Garbo back in the day wearing those men's suits and they is nothing like sharper but then a beautiful woman in a man's suit it is so hot so yeah that is like that's definitely something that I wish and it came back a little in the 70s because like Diane Keaton used to wear suits and still does um you know when in Annie Hall that kind of look I think that's I think that's really hot I mean it comes back periodically I'm thinking again it also came back in the 80s there was a slow period of women wearing shoulder pads and shooting and um yeah I think as I'm saying it I'm just fantasizing about like next time I go and do an event in public whenever that may be maybe it'd just be really cool to have like I just loved the idea of wearing like really could a really good suit but not a suit that's supposed to be not a feminine suit that kind of masculine suit on a woman's body I think that's great yes yes exactly and tails with tails you know that's like the Garbo yeah you know who has the best style in all of literature is Donna Tartt if you look at pictures of her she dresses actually I kind of modeled Edna in the book I modeled her style and Donna Tartt but she wears a lot of suits and vests and kravitz and she always liked riding jackets and she's very petite and she's got this great sharp blunt Bob and she just looks like a billion bucks so yeah if you want to see how an author should dress Donna victory roll they're so beautiful yeah yeah I would never be able to do that myself though I can barely do what I do during this quarantine to shave my head I've always wanted to do it and I was like this would be the really cool time to try it so if it goes on much longer I might just get out my part my partner Raya was a hairdresser I might just get our old Clippers and just buzz it down it'd be fine it's just what would be your perfect cocktail drink well I actually stopped drinking about a year ago so for me at this moment it would be I've been having fun I go into restaurants and bars now and I will ask the bartender to make me a really fun non-alcoholic cocktail because I want to feel like I'm part of it you know I want to feel like I'm part of what everybody's doing but I don't want the alcohol so mostly for me it would have to involve a and they usually ask for direction and I direct them toward the flavors of ginger and lemon so it has to be something very sparkly that had ginger and lemon and it may be a little bit of mint I like those bright sharp flavors more than anything else I know yes don't think I don't know what's going on yeah that's what you want you want to go right up your nose yes yeah I wanted to come out my eyes yeah I love it exactly like perfect drink and I try to get it online and since they're now doing like online delivery but yeah it was sold out no this is the second most tragic story I've heard today it's just one catastrophe after another I was thinking about something like really fancy like red very dark kind of maybe because I've been watching a lot of vampire but something like fruity and sickeningly sweet something with um grenadine and I used to be a bartender and my I was a bartender at the coyote ugly saloon which was a very dumpy run a redneck place and then my I didn't really know how to make drinks um other than to pour beer and give people shots but um and people in that place didn't often order mixed beverages they mostly just ordered beer and shots but the the owner of the bar said to me if anybody ever comes in here and orders a fancy cocktail do your best to make it just get the color right as long as the color is right they usually don't protest you get the color right and then charge him $20 for it and then take them outside and beat them up we don't want that kind of person in this bar well honey it's been so fun talking to you thank you so much we went from day and tonight someone left you in the Sun left me exactly thanks angel I love what you do in the world just obviously keep doing it and you've such a great spirit and it's a happy that we finally got a chance to talk face to face safely from a safe from the safe distance bye sweetheart left lots of love take care [Music] you [Music]

Channel: The Artisan Geek

Views: 4,725

Rating: 4.959322 out of 5

Keywords: Elizabeth gilbert, liz gilbert, interview, a book chat with, seji, the artisan geek, literature, reading, books, book, black booktuber, black booktube, stad van meisjes, literatuur

Id: nhYLygM9bm8

Length: 74min 53sec (4493 seconds)

Published: Tue May 05 2020