Interview with Elizabeth Merrick, novelist, for Venus Zine, January 2006.
Elizabeth Merrick
Novelist Elizabeth Merrick chats with Venus about her new novel, Girly, starting her own press, and remedial math
By: Gretchen Kalwinski
Brooklyn-based Elizabeth Merrick is a writer, editor, writing teacher, creativity consultant, independent publisher, blogger, feminist, and founder of two reading series. Her personality is representative of New York City’s energetic power and creativity, and though she purports to be “deeply lazy,” it’s hard to buy the claim. Here’s an extended laundry list of her accomplishments—after receiving a BA from Yale, an MFA from Cornell, and an MA in Creativity and Art Education from San Francisco State, she founded and began curating the well-known and women-focused Cupcake Reading Series, followed by the launch of the Grace Reading Series in September 2005. She is the editor of the upcoming Random House anthology called This is Not Chick Lit, a collection of new short fiction by literary women authors, (read: authors NOT writing with a fashion-mag mentality). She has taught classes at Cornell and NYU and began her own writing school several years ago, where she teaches students in the Brooklyn area how to tap into their intuitive and creative powers, along with conveying her extensive knowledge of technique and craft. The cherry on top is that she just started a small press called Demimonde Books, with its initial release being her first novel, Girly—a 524-page tome that was published in December 2005.
Girly takes place mainly in rural Pennsylvania, and depicts the unfolding of events in several women’s lives, most primarily the lives of the Hart family women, made up of Racinda Hart, her psychologically damaged sister Ruth, and out-of-it mother Amandine, who became a born again Christian when Racinda was a baby. The themes of Christian fundamentalism, and spiritual and sexual awakening pervade the novel, which was called “smart, sharp, and on the edge” by Hannah Tinti, the editor of the brilliantly unpretentious One Story Magazine. When I talked with Merrick, she was relieved to finally have a few days off, after a year of 12-hour work-days spent getting Demimonde Books up and running.
In Girly, there are 7 different points of view with women’s voices being the dominant ones. Was it your intention to use so many points of view from the get-go, or did that just gradually evolve during the writing process?
It was definitely my intention. Part of writing it was that I was very much interested in NOT writing a typical first novel or just write a novel to write one. I wanted to write something that resembled the books that blew me away. One of those authors for me is Louise Erdrich, who is Faulkner-ian; I actually think that she takes Faulkner to the next level. She is commanding and I loved the sense of a community telling a story—this community of characters. I loved finding things from one character that the other characters don’t know about. That to me was the most interesting part, interesting part of the endeavor of writing a novel. I really loved that part of it.
You said you wrote Girly because you were looking for a book on the shelves that you wanted to read, and couldn't find it, so you decided to write one. So I wanted to find out what you think Girly offers that other books might not?
In the late 90’s, publishers were putting out a lot of amazing fiction which isn’t as true now—it’s gotten a lot more corporate. But the book that I wanted to read was one of these epic books (that are mainly written by guys) that are formally ambitious and long, like David Foster Wallace for instance. I wanted to see a version of those books by a woman of my generation, and one that took into account Toni Morrison and Louise Erdrich; our epic women writers who are amazing and who have carried literature a step further into the 20thth century. I couldn’t find that book, so I tried to write it and am not sure if I got there, but I tried and it’s a decent effort and people seem to like it well enough. I think Girly is challenging in certain ways—the language is dense, for instance. I tried to make it beautiful but hope that the story still grips you. A lot of times there is not a category of books like that by women. There are women writers who are in their 40s or 50s who have been writing dense epic books forever, and they aren’t nearly as well known as they would be if they were men. Joanna Scott is one who comes to mind—she is amazing but yet a lot of writers and a lot of people in publishing aren’t aware of her work. Although, some young guy writers are often aware of her work. I think David Foster Wallace has said that she is one of our best living writers. And the same thing happened with Paula Fox; she is in her 80s now, but she only got back into print because Jonathan Franzen introduced a book and made a big fuss over her. So there are these women producing serious literature but who fall through the cracks; with women artists, that’s the way it is, you know. That’s what the Guerilla Girls are making such a big noise about, and you spend decades of your life battling this stuff to whatever degree you can.
So, you’ve got a big presence on the Web—I especially enjoy the “Remedial Math” section of the Grace Reading Series Web site, where it talks about the fact that the New Yorker bylines are 79% male, versus 21% female and it lists different statistics of male versus female bylines. You’ve also stated that part of the problem is that literary men simply don’t enjoy reading literature by women, and I just thought that was fascinating. Can you talk more about that? I haven’t done a study myself on that but there was an informal poll, I think in the UK Guardian, where they asked men what books they had recently read and the guys came up with books by men, you know, basically the men had read books only by men whereas women had read books by men and women. I’m okay with this. I think that if men don’t want to read books by women that’s okay with me, they’re grown-ups, it’s fine; it is not my job to be telling anyone what kind of taste they should have. I am in no way interested in that. What I am interested in is equal pay for equal work. And that is why it always comes down to those numbers. And that 21% at the New Yorker is a very strange status quo because it is representative—it really does tend to be only about 20% women across the board. And it’s fascinating that it is so consistent! Even with the young upstart literary magazines that are certainly not making a lot of money and are very much not part of mainstream pop culture, it's still only about 20% women. And I can tell you right now that people paying for MFA’s are more than 20% women. And English majors certainly make up more than 20% women. There’s a weird disconnect that happens when we get to the job, and the paycheck and the authority of the byline.
I think all those figures you just mentioned point to how difficult it is financially to be a woman writer, because, like you said, many women are paying for writing degrees and not getting any work—how do you work rent into that equation?
Yeah I started looking at the bylines in graduate school and counting them because I was thinking; “Wait a minute, what’s the plan?” It’s not like it was some political cause. It was very practical—it’s like I need to pay rent when I leave graduate school and was thinking, “This is not a very good plan!” You see it’s just thematically so predictable, and then you start to realize that it’s bigger than just you…I know tons of freelancers—brilliant women—paying rent by writing for Cosmo Girl or Elle Girl when they want to be writing for Harper’s and they should be writing for Harper’s, and Harper’s would be a hell of a lot more interesting if these women were in it. But for whatever reason that didn’t happen. I think that Harper’s is especially insidious on the issue of women’s bylines. I have a friend that told me that the gender ratio of men to women over at Harper’s is like a Star Trek convention. [Laughs].
This might be a whole separate conversation, but do you think that literary men are perhaps less interested in reading literature by women because women tend to tell the stories of their lives a bit more—not even necessarily autobiography—but stories adjacent to the lives they’ve lived?
It’s possible, but the thing is, of course women should be telling those stories! It’s been only 35 years since the 2nd wave of feminism. Women didn’t get to go to Yale until 1969. So it has really only been this one generation and yet, the rightness of the idea of men and women being equal and being equal partners in relationships etc, etc. is so true and so right that [society] has adjusted to that very quickly because things simply work better. But the changes are so huge that it's a lot for people to deal with, I think men especially. So, because it’s only been 35 years, of course we need to tell all these stories, because they are so important and fascinating, but these stories are not valued yet. No one cares what happens to a 12-year-old girl, really. And that is very sad, but very true if you look at the policies in our country, especially where children are concerned, and you look at the gender inequalities that still exist. It’s a blind spot that we have. And what are valued are male stories—it’s just still kind of true. And guys naturally want to write their own experience and read their own experiences, and—lucky them!!—their experiences are more valued! And win awards! And are granted authority. And it’s interesting because we just got the news today that the James Frey book is largely fabricated. In his book there is vomiting and serious drug use and crazy arrests, and that book was considered serious literature. And it was so funny to me when Girly came out, because as a teacher, I think I give my students optimism and belief and trust in their intuition, all that kind of stuff. I’m a bit airy-fairy and part of Girly was narrated by a goddess and the book has this very strong spiritual belief. So it was really funny to me, this kind of literary Pollyanna in my everyday life that the reviews of Girly say things like “it’s so dark with massive drug use and filthy sex.” And there is not actually that much of that stuff in there! I mean there is some drug use but people mostly smoke pot, and it was very funny to me that because I’m a woman the reviews read that way and people are sort of shocked and reviewing it like, “it is so dark and bleak and nihilistic.” Whereas for a guy, reviews for that kind of book with dark themes read like, “he’s the next inheritor of literature after Dave Eggers.” So I got a big giggle out of that because my regular life is so herbal tea and optimistic, and then I got to be like this deep, dark, hot Sylvia Plath lady with those reviews.
Your book is being published by Demimonde Books, a press that you started up, and the stated mission is “to focus on risk-taking literary prose of exquisite quality.” I was wondering how you decided to start your own press, and if you have a staff or it’s a one-woman show at this point?
Oh my gosh, what an adventure! I just had my first week of slight downtime in a year because Demimonde Books has been taking 12 hours a day, which is not my natural bent; I am actually deeply, deeply lazy. I recently took a little personality quiz, one of those Myers-Briggs things and found that I am the personality type that is introverted and really spaced out and idealistic and on another planet, the kind of person that can’t find their keys. So I was laughing so much because starting a press is all about all those kinds of details, the business end of things and organization. And I have the reading series and my workshops and have way more going on than one person who was practical about how much person could actually do at one time. But I really wanted to do it all, so I just did it, and people really showed up to help. I have people helping out with publicity, and Emberly Nesbitt, who is an editor of the Grace Reading Series, is also an editor at Demimonde and we’re looking at manuscripts now, which is a really fun generative phase as opposed to production, which is getting everything out and at the right time and the right phase. I also have some administrative help at the press and there is a lot of crossover with the Grace Reading Series. With my workshops, too, it can be hard with the phase we’re in to find a space that celebrates gorgeous writing but that doesn’t have literary one up-man-ship which I cannot stand. I am not interested in a “literary lifestyle”. I am interested in the writing, which to me is something that is really earthy and connected to all the old stories and it has to be funny and has to be a place where there isn’t ego, and those are kind of ugly and uncomfortable places sometimes, but can also be fun and delightful places. All of that is really different from a publishing cocktail party, which can be fun, but is not where I live and thrive.
You have three more books coming out on Demimonde in 2006, right?
Yes, we’re going to publish three books, but it might carry over into 2007. Something that I’ve learned about publishing is that it’s always better to wait until you have all the pieces, so it’s looking more like late 2006, early 2007. Plus, I found this really amazing literary cookbook, actually sort of a dirty literary cookbook, by someone who lives in Park Slope and works in publishing. It is these sexy recipes with a literary bent, but we’ll see what happens.
Since your book is the first published by Demimonde and since it runs approximately 500 pages, I was wondering what the editing process was like?
It's been edited by a few different people, one of them was Emberly, the editor at Demimonde. People were really generous with their time in editing it; I was really grateful. And actually, the director's cut is 700 pages. But this 500-page version I'm pretty happy with. So, the Grace Reading Series has been going on since September 2005, is named after your grandmother, and has featured Beth Lisick and Jill Solloway among others.
What is unique about the reading series other than the fact that it is women-centric?
Well, the series is only once a month with one or two writers, so that there is a clear vision of trying to focus on literary books by women that are crafted with care and thought, and that are substantive. It is a way to focus attention on them because they don’t get it in bookstores, and they don’t get it in book reviews, (we have statistics on this on the Grace Web site—most of the review space goes to male writers). And a lot of attention goes to commercial women writers and “fashionista lit.” So, it’s an activist wing in many ways, without being dreary, like a fun activist wing. Also, we just started a book club where we do review recommendations of 3 books a month. We started doing that because I was finding that everyone—from my friend who is a comp lit major at Yale and conceptual artist, to my very cool hairdresser, to friends in academic publishing— were telling me that they’ve given up on contemporary fiction because, “every thing I happen upon is crap.” This has to do with publishers being so big and corporate and kind of out of touch with the community of serious readers and just trying to sell the latest Paris Hilton book or whatever. This seemed like a shame to me, because there are still wonderful books being published, but there is a disconnect there. So Grace is a way for people to find out what those books are and how to get them so that they can start reading again. It was my little way to do that.
You have a writing school that is run out of your living room?
The writing school just turned 2 years old. It’s grown a little bit, so now I just have the advanced classes at my home, and the rest are taught at a location in Park Slope and SoHo sometimes, too.
What is the demographic of those classes?
It’s funny—it’s mostly women. For awhile I wondered if that was because of all of my other endeavors, but I think it also has to do with what I specifically offer to students. The big thing I give to people as a teacher (underneath all the craft and everything else), is how to quell through the terror and doubt of “Why do I have any right to say this at all? Why would anyone ever be interested?” Women feel that and it’s paralyzing! And part of the reason is that stories about 12-year-old girls DON’T win Booker prizes.
Right; their fears are justified!
...And they DON’T see those bylines in the New Yorker. And maybe they’re not thinking about that consciously but that is what they’re battling with. And so all those years that I battled with that in Girly, to get to the point where I was comfortable with my own authority as a writer, I learned things that I am able to help my students with. And it’s so rewarding to see it work and it’s amazing to see women start to progress and trust themselves as writers. Everything is kind of condensed down to this foundation class that I require students to take first. When I started teaching these workshops that is what I came up with, and it is a progression that takes you through both getting to your creativity and opening up that intuition. Then very quickly in the 3rd or 4th week I move into all of the craft stuff and progression on a curriculum, which is pretty much wholly missing from workshops in academia! Really, no one gives you this stuff! Emberly and I laugh all the time, because all of the years in workshops, no one ever told you how to do that stuff; you had to figure it out on your own. You’d go to workshops and people would critique this or that but then you never knew, “OK, how do I then go home and do that?” So, there was no way I was going to teach an insipid, ineffectual writing workshop; it had to be really essential information that was going to work. So I boiled it down and it works—people become productive writers who know how to write stories that people want to read and are able to craft a beautiful sentence. It’s almost to the point where I’m present, but the process carries the students along almost on their own, once they get this information.
Seeing your students’ progress must be ridiculously rewarding for you.
Oh, my god! My crew right now is really working hard, and they recently had a reading at Lolita Bar where they each read for 5 minutes and all of their friends came, and I was so blown away that I could not speak. And they are so much better than most of these review copies I get—everyone was electrified, and I was like a dorky mom cheering at a game or something.
How long have you been writing—did you write as a kid?
Well, I think writing was always my natural strength. But, because it was something that came easily and got me things like good grades in English, I didn’t trust it. I kinda wanted to be a punk rock bassist and then I was a film major. But then I figured out that you had to be really extroverted for those things, and deal with all of these physical irritations like lighting and microphones. So, after trying a bunch of different things, it became clear to me that I wasn’t just writing because of praise or whatever, and I could do what I wanted, and be as expansive as I wanted and not have to lug around a camera and mic all the time.
Speaking of music, I know you like Sleater-Kinney, Bjork, and PJ Harvey; do you listen to music while you’re writing?
In the early phases, yes. I’ll drive and drive and drive and the stories will show up. And then at a certain point, the music will start jangling and I’ll hear the characters speaking, and I’ll have to turn the music off. What the music does is get me into my right brain—all of the intuition stuff—and then once I can access that and the story is there, I turn it off. The music for me is the way to feel unconstricted .
Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?
I'm glad we got to talk about the women writers who have gone before, because for me, that is where the sanity is. Even Demimonde is linked to that—it's all part of a larger picture. Also, I wanted to mention that I think magazines like Venus are so important because that is a place for curious women writers, especially young women writers to write about and hear about a broader range of topic beyond “how to take a bath” or whatever the features are in the women’s magazines. I just think that it is so important to have these spaces because that is where women really get to express different ideas and ways of life. I’m so grateful for what you guys are doing, because a lot of women have no stuff that is in magazines like Venus or Bust. I taught a class at Cornell titled “Women’s Secret Stories” and one woman in the class was from Louisiana and had always been anti-choice and I started bringing in magazine articles for the class about women, like Margaret Cho for example, and her world was turned upside down.
Right, and once you plug these women into stuff that they don’t hear about in the mainstream, give them those tools, you’re helping to bridge a gap to everyone they know, too.
Then, the really fun thing is that what they then come up with! I experienced the same thing with the writing of Girly. I would read every interview with Margaret Cho and listen to Sleater-Kinney and PJ Harvey, and every little bit of something like that, that I absorbed it like it was encouragement to me, that, “Yeah, you CAN do something that is not going to fit into ‘Must See TV’.” And now, from all of those women doing amazing things, things like Grace are formed, which is another place for women to come together. For me, I don’t know if I could survive the Bush administration if I wasn’t working hard on this stuff. It’s the only way that I can think of in my own little way, to push for an alternative version of the story.
For more information, visit elizabethmerrick.com
