These are some of the qualities I really like in people: big heart, approachable, playful, down-to-earth, fiesty, willing to engage. This is why Lauren Baratz-Logsted is so easy for me to like.
She’s also an easy interview because she’s not one to play it safe. So we tackled the subject of controversy. Lauren’s had a bit of it, and I think this interview gets at something I’m hoping you guys will run with in the comments section – those nasty, anonymous Amazon reviews.
What does controversy say about writers? And readers? And is the ultimate toll of controversy good or bad? Here’s Lauren . . .
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THE THIN PINK LINE: My first published book was a dark comedy set in London about a woman who fakes an entire pregnancy. It got a lot of positive attention – starred Kirkus, etc – and a cult audience has arisen around antiheroine Jane Taylor, also featured in the sequel, CROSSING THE LINE, and several Amazon Shorts.
But the book has had its detractors. The main fault-finders appear to be members of the religious right. They express their outrage in Amazon reviews, questioning the morality of a book where the protagonist lies to nearly everyone she knows and then emerges at the end unscathed. This stance misses a few key facts: 1) Jane does not emerge unscathed – even when she appears to be winning, she’s also losing; 2) the book is a novel, a dark comedy or satire at that; it’s not a prescription for behavior but rather an indictment of how all too often in life people pursue important things – marriage, kids – more because “everyone is doing it” than because any serious thought has been given to the thing itself.
The Jaxter and the best pumpkin shot ever.
How has this affected me? On the negative side, it’s tough to see your work misconstrued. That said, there’s a saying among writers, “Never explain, never complain,” and a writer doesn’t get the luxury of sitting on each reader’s shoulder, telling him or her how to interpret the work. On the positive side, it’s wonderful to be read and have readers react strongly to an author’s work. Just like hate isn’t the opposite of love, indifference is, I’ve come to realize that having a certain type of reader object to my work is a perverse sort of compliment, and that far worse than a strong negative reaction would be a tepid response.
CROSSING THE LINE: This book continues the (mis)adventures of crazy Jane Taylor, this time dealing with the issue of cross-racial adoption. Reviewers liked this book even better than the first, perhaps because it features a kinder and gentler Jane while keeping the madcap pedal to the floor.
But detractors wondered what kind of world would let Jane keep the baby she finds at the end of the first book. Again, this wholly misses the point that the book is a novel, a created world.
I’ve found that the greatest compliment people pay to fiction is that “It reads like a true story,” while the greatest compliment for nonfiction is, “It reads like a novel.” Bizarre, no? We always want the thing that is completely other to what we’re reading/experiencing.
Greg Logsted, author of forthcoming book SOCK PUPPETS IN LOVE.
But some forms of writing simply don’t lend themselves to that perverse formula and satire certainly falls in there. Does anyone read Christopher Moore believing what happens in his books could be happening right next door? Or anywhere on earth? Not unless they’re imbibing while reading they don’t.
Isn’t part of the point of the novel, any novel, to be taken somewhere else? And, while we’re at it, what is it with people finding fault with books – I get this too sometimes – because they can’t relate to the main character? Or because the character is unsympathetic or does unsympathetic things? Nearly 200,000 books published each year in the U.S. – would the world really be a better place if all those books were the same?
A LITTLE CHANGE OF FACE: I really got into trouble with this one. The book is about a very attractive librarian named Scarlett Jane Stein who deliberately alters her looks for the worse in order to see how the world will treat her once she’s no longer a swan.
That’s not the part that got me into trouble. The part that got me into trouble is that one of Scarlett’s gal pals goes by the intitials T.B., which stands for Token Black.
Sunday afternoon reviewers on Amazon accused me of being racist; while I can’t know this for a fact, I suspect those people must be white and that my book rattled their own latent-racist cages. I suspect this in part because the African American readers I heard from all loved what I was doing – they *got* it. They got that I was lampooning, making social commentary on the fact that however far we think we’ve come as a society, African Amercians are still marginalized in Hollywood and on TV and in books.
One African American fan, a student at Dartmouth, wrote comparing my work in this book to the work of Spike Lee; as she put it, aptly, if I were racist I never would have named the character T.B. – I just would have had her behave like one as do so many other characters in books and film. I’ll tell you something: I’ll happily take a thousand white people accusing me of racism in exchange for one African American Dartmouth student comparing me to Spike Lee.
HOW NANCY DREW SAVED MY LIFE: Not really controversial at all, at least not yet, just a bizarre little contemporary comic-gothic – a genre I believe I have all to myself – that’s equal parts Jane Eyre, Nancy Drew, and Chick-Lit. So far, the biggest controvery so come out of this is readers wanting to know if Icelanders – much of the book takes place in Reykjavik – really are such big Nancy Drew fans.
THIS IS CHICK-LIT: This one started with someone else’s controversy: the announcement in April 2005 on Publishers Lunch that Elizabeth Merrick was editing an anthology called This is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America’s Best Women Writers.
Of course I was annoyed. Wouldn’t you be? How about if someone did a book called This is Not Sci-Fi? Silly, isn’t it? Or how about These Are Not Coming-of-Age Stories? And, being annoyed, I publicly expressed my annoyance. What writer, having worked years at creating books that will hopefully make readers laugh and think, wants to hear their work denigrated wholesale by someone who is obviously ignorant of the genre in question?
The Jaxter and the trampoline.
Of course I also decided to do something positive with my anger, hence the creation of THIS IS CHICK-LIT, the intention of which was to showcase the broad spectrum of stories – romantic comedy, satire, mystery, paranormal, futuristic, even metafiction and magic realism – that fall under that umbrella heading. I even had the contributors, in an appendix at the back of the book called “Reaching Across the Aisle”, each recommend one lit writer her readership would also love. What could be more concilliatory than that? I’ve been taking the high road here so long, my nose is bleeding!
But still the charges come. Surely, what I’m really upset about, say the charges, is that I wasn’t invited to be one of “America’s Best.” To which I reply, No, you twit, I’ve never considered myself the best of anything, even if the category is Short Women Writers Who Write In Several Genres And Can Probably Kick Your Ass At Pool. On the other hand, I am kind of bothered by your self-anointment as “America’s Best Women Writers” when I don’t see Toni Morrison or Jane Smiley or Anne Tyler or Joyce Carol Oates anywhere on the list. Shouldn’t they be there?
VERTIGO: And now sex rears its head. Well, it had to happen sometime, didn’t it? VERTIGO, as billed by its publisher, Random House, is a literary novel set in the Victorian era with erotic and suspense undertones. It’s about a very good wife who becomes substantially less so when she becomes involved in steamy correspondence with a man in prison for murdering his own wife.
I guess for some odd reason I thought we were all adults here but reviewers, and this time I’m talking about professional reviewers, seem to feel compelled to inform potential readers that there is “graphic sex included.” Well, of course there’s graphic sex – the book is about a turn-of-the-century spiritual, cultural and sexual awakening! I wouldn’t be serving my readers properly if I didn’t give them the whole experience. [Note: Many eyes were on VERTIGO pre-pub and each reader always had suggestions of what he or she would do different – VERTIGO is just that kind of chameleon book – but there was one thing they all agreed on, whether man or woman or gay or straight or lesbian, and that was, “Don’t change the sex scenes!”]
Lauren gets seranaded at her VERTIGO party; later, she’s louder than the band.
I don’t think any of the sex in the book is gratuitous – it’s all dictated by the plot of the story – and I think I’m just as reluctant as any writer to write such scenes, since they can so easily be laughed at. But, as I say, we are all adults here. When did we reach the point where we felt the need to inform adults that there might be some sex along the way? I suppose it must be the neo-Puritan times we’re living in, where the outraged emphasis ends up being on the wrong things.
One journalist asked me during an interview how I felt about my mother, now 83, reading such things and knowing I had written them. My reply: “Wouldn’t it be more relevant to ask how my husband feels about me writing a book where the woman considers murdering her husband to be a possible solution to her problems?” [Full disclosure: Despite that last rhetorical question, my husband loves VERTIGO, says it’s my best novel. Maybe it’s because of the sex?]
ANGEL’S CHOICE: And now we come to the last, and what may turn out to be the most controversial of my books, ANGEL’S CHOICE, my first YA [just out, December 26]. ANGEL’S CHOICE, about a girl on the fast track for Yale who finds herself pregnant in her senior year, is about the decisions she makes and everything that follows.
I never set out to write a polemical novel, but rather one about one person’s choices and about how for each of us the choices we make do matter – on the micro as well as the macro level. And yet already I can see people on both sides of the pro-life/pro-choice issue lining up to claim the book as their own or even both rejecting the book as being antithetical.
Again, it’s not meant to serve anyone’s agenda – it’s just a story, albeit one that I hope readers will find to be a good one. My editor at Simon & Schuster calls it “an important book,” but who knows?
So back to the issue of controversy and negatives/positives derived therefrom: It does get weary-making, people seizing on tiny threads or the wrong threads or erroneous threads when the whole has to do with something different or something more or even, at the risk of sounding hubristic, something greater; it’s like flies buzzing around your ear.
There are times when a writer is tempted to shout, “Hey, you! Heckler in the back row – I’m talking to you! Do you think maybe the reason my work makes you uncomfortable on some level is because it’s striking too close to home?” But you can’t say that. You can’t sit on each reader’s shoulder and tell him or her what to think.
I don’t court controversy – I don’t sit down in front of my computer screen and say to myself, “What can I do to piss people off today?” – but I’m not running from it either. In fact it’s reached the point where I’ve come to think that if my writing doesn’t upset a certain percentage of people – not through design but through natural reaction to the work itself – then I’m not properly doing my job. All of that said, everything said, I’m grateful to have readers; I’m grateful to be read.
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Bio:
Lauren Baratz-Logsted, in addition to being the editor of THIS IS CHICK-LIT, has written four Chick-Lit novels: THE THIN PINK LINE, CROSSING THE LINE, A LITTLE CHANGE OF FACE, and HOW NANCY DREW SAVED MY LIFE. She is also the author of the literary suspense novel VERTIGO and the serious Young Adult novel ANGEL’S CHOICE. You can read more about her work at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com. And if you’re on MySpace, you should know that Lauren’s on MySpace, too!
And if you want to catch Lauren wearing the interviewer’s hat on LitPark, just click here and read a fascinating dialogue about chick-lit.
Myfanwy Collins
February 14, 2007I applaud your honesty, Lauren. I also applaud that you have written what you wanted to write instead of worrying about how people might react to it. After reading this essay, I want to read every single one of your books (not that I didn’t want to before–but I REALLY do now).
Robin Slick
February 14, 2007What Myfanway said.
Oh god, Lauren, I want you as my new best friend.
Susan, this interview was even better than Neil week. (I know. Every once in a while I am a mature, responsible adult who remembers that she is a writer and other than my family, books are what I care about most.)
Heading over to Amazon now…if I wasn’t snowed in today, I don’t think I’d be able to wait and would be at the bookstore this morning.
Ronlyn Domingue
February 14, 2007Keep stirring it up, Lauren. One of the great gifts a book can give is to encourage a reader to THINK. (And hasn’t history proven that controversy isn’t always a bad thing.) Good luck with the new novel!
Mel
February 14, 2007I am continually amazed by people who treat fiction as truth. I live in a small, very conservative town and I worry about what will happen when the excitement dies down over the fact that I sold two books…and they realize I actually sold 2 vampire YA books. Vampire books for kids?! Oh no! It will happen, but I can’t let that stop me from writing the best story possible. But it’s difficult when you’re questioned parenting abilities are questioned because you let your kid read Harry Potter or the Cirque du Freak series. I just smile and say, “I’m just happy he’s reading.”
Shannon McKelden
February 14, 2007Brava, Lauren! Perhaps your books invite controversy because you write from a place of honesty. And, as you suggested, that honesty, those underlying feelings, strike very close to home for some people. Making readers admit something they don’t want to admit aloud, may very well make them need to point the finger of blame at someone else. The writer.
Good for you! I aspire to have the wonderful outlook you do!
Shannon
Susan Henderson
February 14, 2007Lauren – You’re absolutely awesome. And this week’s question brought about some of the most interesting and unexpected answers on LitPark.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. Regulars know a little bit about my mother-in-law and I wanted to tell you what she gave the boys. As you may know, she lives in Hawaii and we visited over Christmas. A few days ago in the mail, we received very fat cards addressed to each boy with instructions not to open them until Valentine’s Day. What was making the envelopes so fat? If you were my boys, you were thinking candy. But inside their envelopes were their old dirty socks they’d left at her house over vacation.
Myf – I feel the same way.
Robin – Wow. If Lauren’s topped Neil Gaiman for you then that’s saying something!
Ronlyn – I agree. Who wants to read a book and not be stirred by it?
Mel and Shannon – Welcome!
LaurenBaratz-Logsted
February 14, 2007I woke up this morning cranky, despite the promise of chocolate, because I had an unmovable foreign object in my eye that would prevent me from spending the entire day working in front of the computer. No writing quotas will be met today! But then I saw this lovely valentine.
First, thank you to Susan Henderson for creating the generous place that is LitPark. It’s easy to sneer at the kind of writing I do – I’m talking to you, Maureen Dowd! – but Susan has made LitPark a smart, funny and literary place where all are welcome, even me. Oh, and that sock thing is very funny. I used to have a boss who regularly threatened to give her nephews pictures of herself as presents.
Myf, I appreciate your support, both spiritual and financial in supporting my career.
Robin, I am always happy to have new best friends – bring it on, baby! – and the favorable comparison to Neil Gaiman is humbling.
Ronlyn, as you well know, I loved your book.
Mel, congratulations on the two books for kids. The Jaxter is only seven now but she’s a precocious reader so I’m sure she’ll be reading yours before I know it…but not before I will.
Shannon, I suspect I’ve developed this wonderful outlook because, compared to the ladies on our usual loops, I’m older than dirt. 🙂
Maureen McGowan
February 14, 2007Great interview! Lauren, you are so right, I think, that it’s better to have some “haters” than to have a tepid response to your work.
I recently read Angel’s Choice and I agree with your publishers. It is an important book. And it’s a page-turner too. I couldn’t put it down.
Kimberly
February 14, 2007OMG – Susan… if you don’t start writing about your M-I-L, I will!
Lauren, can’t wait to help your next royalty check get a little fatter!!
(And for those of you who feel about today as I do, I urge you to visit http://www.meish.org/vd/)
patry
February 14, 2007I love LBL for all the reasons mentioned–especially for her unpretentious courage, and her generosity. Both are much in evidence here.
Yes, to fat royalty checks and more novels that are not afraid to tell their characters’ truths!
patry
February 14, 2007P.S. Thoroughly enjoyed the photos of the Jaxter!
Richard
February 14, 2007One of the great things about Lauren — and there are many — is that she is willing to take risks in her work and never plow the same ground twice. Well, maybe that’s two great things.
Lori Oliva
February 14, 2007Great topic! Thanks Lauren for your honesty. I really love “This is Chick Lit” and will be re-reading it now that I know the story behind it! With that said, how do your interesting choices come to you? What inspires you to write your complex topics?
LaurenBaratz-Logsted
February 14, 2007Maureen, I’m so glad you liked Angel’s Choice and thanks for the kind words!
Kimberly, I appreciate your financial investment and, I don’t know why, but I love that “Stop talking about your f***ing wedding” card.
Patry, your book looked like it was right where it belonged, situated on Borders front table when I was in the other day. Oh, and I enjoy The Jaxter photos too. 🙂
Richard, there’s no one else like you.
Lori O, I’m so glad you liked TICL! As for where I get my inspiration, I’m a little bit nutty + the ideas come from life. E.g., while on vacation in Colorado back in December, The Jaxter and I were talking about our whole family maybe writing something together for younger readers. She said, “How about something with eight sisters, each one a different age from one thru eight?” I said, “How about eight sisters who are octuplets and who are (almost) eight years old?” And we were off and running.
Gail Siegel
February 14, 2007Very observant, your comment about how we think the best fiction reads as non, and the best non like novels. Wanting the opposite of what we’ve got.
Carolyn Burns Bass
February 15, 2007Like many satires, Thin Pink Line could be art imitating life. An old friend of mine faked a pregnancy when one of our married friends became the first of our group to get pregnant. Once we began to pick up on her odd affectations and unexpanding waistline, rather than admit that she’d lied all along, she faked a stillbirth at around seven months. We were all relieved that she didn’t go so far as to fake a funeral.
Great interview Susan and Lauren.
Kathy Holmes
February 15, 2007You are enormously creative and talented. And I’ve learned from writing on the Orlando Sentinel that if you speak truth and are passionate about it, you are going to create controversy. It’s a wonderful compliment – not always easy to take – but a compliment. Keep it up.
Juliet
February 15, 2007One of the reasons I actually love Lauren’s writing is the fact that she stretches us with the thin-line approach to so many things: Normal vs. Abnormal Right/wrong passion/apathy and allow us to touch the emotion we often forget. And then she makes us laugh, she makes us question our own motives, relationships, theories and thoughts.
Sadly, the people who leave all the Amazon comments are often just there to vent their misunderstanding and views.
I’m no far-right, but I am Christian, and found nothing that offended me in your books. You’ve not said “live this way” or “this is ultimate truth” rather you’ve said “live this for a day, and feel someone elses’ skin…”
I have no issue with sharing your books with anyone (including my mother).
amy
February 15, 2007Lauren, this made me smile right out loud! It also made me want to read THIS IS CHICK-LIT and VERTIGO. I think I’m going to start with VERTIGO! (I always say: you just can’t have too much sex.) (Well. Actually, you can. And then you might have a problem and may need to seek professional help.) (But reading and writing about it can’t be bad!)(I hope.)
My favorite thought from this piece: I’ll happily take a thousand white people accusing me of racism in exchange for one African American Dartmouth student comparing me to Spike Lee.
Awesome.
Jodi Fitzpatrick
February 16, 2007Lauren,
I bopped over from the chick lit loop where I’m always amazed and greatful for your pithy and resourceful posts. But after reading this interview, you are my new heroine. Respect, for your work, for your soul. Whenever you speak from a place of truth, you’ll upset somebody. I bought TPL and This Is… they sit in the TBR pile. I’m picking one up tonight.
Lance Reynald
February 16, 2007nice interview.
and I love Lauren’s candor, about everything.
xo-L.
LaurenBaratz-Logsted
February 16, 2007Gail, thank you!
Carolyn, what a tragic story. While my book is a satire, even a comedy, right after it came out there were a few high-profile cases involving fake pregnancies. A friend sent an email: “What have you started???” Of course, I didn’t start anything and these women were already on their sad paths. But still…(shudder).
Kathy, thank you. Writing for the Orlando Sentinel must be quite a gig.
Juliet, I love readers like you. In fact, you might just be my ideal reader. Can I run you through the photocopy machine?
Amy, thanks, and I’m so glad you’re starting with Vertigo. As dark as it is, I have a soft place in my heart for Vertigo and feel it’s one of my best.
Jodi, thanks – I knew you looked familiar!
Lance, thank you. I value candor…and it’s nice that one of the men finally showed up. 🙂
Susan Henderson
February 16, 2007Hey, all you lovely people, there will be a weekly wrap today, but it’ll be later than usual (obviously).
xo
jenny gardiner
March 2, 2007Really interesting piece. Enjoyed reading it and am so glad that there are people out there willing to tackle controversial subject matter–our hugely heterogeneous society is being thrust into a homogeneous mentality, and its scary. There’s room for all sorts of opinions, IMHO!
Great job, Lauren!
Samara Leigh
March 20, 2007I loved Vertigo. It was the first book of Lauren’s that I’ve read. I actually listed it as Recommended Reading on my blog a couple of days ago. I can’t wait to ready the rest of her books. Thank you for such a wonderful interview.
andrea
December 6, 2007i just got “Angels choice” yesterdayy and ive fallen in love with it. I finished it bacause i had to find out the ending. This b0o makes girls think and wonder if that was them. Well it made me think. maybe because im the same age but i truly do believe this book is my favorite and i hope to read more from Lauren Baratz-Logsted.
Lauren Baratz-Logste
December 22, 2007A belated thank-you to Jenny, Samara and Andrea!