Emma Straub's Blog, page 12

Announcements

Whew. This week is going to be a busy one. On Tuesday night, I'm on a panel about love at BookCourt. The panel will be me and two psychoanalysts, so expect a heady discussion punctuated by my laughter. I will do my very best to keep up. I'll be reading from 'Puttanesca,' one my favorite stories in the collection, and the only one truly inspired by someone else's life, which I found too irresistible to ignore.

THEN, on Friday, I'm reading at the first Girls Write Now reading of the season. These readings are so terrific. If you enjoy happiness and wisdom and hilarity and fabulosity, you absolutely MUST attend.

Also on the horizon is my first fiction workshop series with the esteemed Sackett Street Writers' Workshop. I'll be teaching a six-week workshop starting in May, and space is very limited, so if you know anyone who might be interested, please tell them to sign up now!

And now, back to work on ye olde novel.

Yours,

Emma

Today Was The Greatest

I've just had the most glorious Sunday: brunch with my beloved Lorrie Moore, who then escorted me to the Maira Kalman exhibit at the Jewish Museum. Then I walked across the park to my parents' house, where I found my mother watching tennis and leafing through sheets torn from a 1970 Irish newspaper, her own little face, so much like mine, peering back from the gossip page.Then I hopped on the train and came home, Simon Van Booy's novel keeping me company. Once back at the homestead, my husband and I took to watercoloring while watching Nadal and Djokovic battle it out on a Palm Springs' court. A perfect day.

Yours,

Emma

Viva Community Bookstore!

This Wednesday, I was thrilled to do a reading at Park Slope's Community Bookstore, the closest indie to my house, and a warm + fuzzy place. They have two cats and a giant gecko. What could be better? I somehow neglected to take photos, but picture this: a warm night, and a nicely packed room, with friends and strangers both. The Community Bookstore just started a bestseller list, and I'm so happy to be on it! Afterwards, I signed some books. My friend Elliott acted as paparazzi.

My friend Amanda and her adorable bump, glowing all over the place!

Thanks so much for coming, all!

love

Emma

My High-Flying Uncle Gordy

My uncle Gordy has the kind of job that requires him to take tiny airplanes to Madagascar on a routine basis. Much like you and me. Being the thoughtful guy he is, Gordy is toting around a copy of my book, so that the characters get to travel far and wide. Here you see OPWM with a pilot from Santo Domingo.

Sure, it's blurry, but who cares? He's on a tiny airplane, for godssakes.

And here's Gordy himself, surrounded by friends, on a beach in the Dominican Republic. I think the real question is this: why am I not on this beach, too?

Thanks, Gord!

love,

Emma

PS- If you're not in Madagascar, but New York City, come see me read at the Community Bookstore in Park Slope tonight! 7pm.

In Which I Give Myself to the Internet

The finale of The Bachelor aired last night, which means that I am finally free of Brad Womack. You can read my write-up of the final episode here. It contains the following paragraph:

"The jeweler comes to visit Brad, and comes bearing some giant diamonds. Neil Lane is very, very tan. Brad picks a ring, and then stares like a labrador at the beach. If only someone would throw a tennis ball off the balcony, and we could be rid of him forever."

In other news, I'm participating in the Goodread short story panel this week, and you should join the conversation! Free, easy, and you can wear your pajamas! Just like me!

Yours,

Emma

The Dallas Morning News + Goodreads Short Story Panel

This morning my little Google Alert pinged with an exciting new review– The Dallas Morning News reviewed OPWM, and once I agreed to subscribe for a week (!), I could actually read it. Luckily, the review was positive, otherwise, I would be very sad about all the Dallas news I now have access to. I'll post the review below, just in case some of you aren't subscribers.

Starting on Monday, I'm participating in a week-long virtual short story panel on Goodreads. Do you have a Goodreads profile? I do. Maybe we should be friends there? We probably should. Then we can talk about books and you can see what I'm reading and I can see what you're reading and the world will be a glorious place.

Cheers! It's the weekend!

Emma

Book Review: Emma Straub's Other People We Married

In Emma Straub's witty debut story collection, Other People We Married, New Yorkers venture outside their home city to see what the rest of America has to offer, and these trips force the realities of their relationships into stark relief.

In "A Map of Modern Palm Springs," two sisters meet in California for a vacation together. They head to Joshua Tree National Park, about which the local they scored drugs from warned them, "It's the desert. It's only exciting if you've never been there before." It also can be exciting if you take hallucinogenic mushrooms, which the older, more settled and successful sister does, prompting the younger sister to consider ditching her.

In the touching "Hot Springs Eternal," Richard and Teddy, a gay couple from New York, visit Glenwood Springs in Colorado, and Teddy, the younger man, gets a kick out of the rampant bad taste on display, enjoying hotels "that looked on the verge of destruction, with words spelled incorrectly, or ones that looked like cottages where Snow White or the Swiss Miss might work at the front desk." Their relationship appears doomed at the outset, with Richard feeling older and crankier, and no longer amused with Teddy's antics, but the story ends with an old-fashioned gesture of chivalry: Richard takes off his T-shirt to reveal the "pale expanse" of belly about which he's sensitive, and offers it to Teddy, who lacks a shirt.

In the quirky "Fly-Over State," a New York woman named Susan finds herself sentenced to Wisconsin, where her husband has taken an academic job, and she has little to do but study the habits of the locals, in particular the grown son of her neighbors, who introduces himself as "Mud" and lives in his parents' basement. Although she fears Mud is a "serial killer," Susan takes to him, as he displays "the first sign of unfriendliness" she's encountered since moving to Wisconsin. Mud asks whether living New York is like it is in the movies, and she thinks, "nothing was as much like the movies as the last month of my life, when strange women brought me lemonade and baked goods, which I then consumed without worry that I was being poisoned for the lease to my Co-Op."

A fly-over state resident reading a collection like this might worry that the writer is going to make fun of other parts of the country, or depict non-New Yorkers behaving in some prejudiced or provincial way, but Straub doesn't. Instead she's out to convey the charm and unique attributes of the variety of places she depicts, even if she does take time to delight in each locale's home-grown kitsch.

Some of Straub's stories are most memorable for their amusing one-liners, such as this one from "Some People Must Really Fall in Love": "A waiter appeared next to us, a kid with a beaded necklace and a surfer's tan. I hated for him to find out we were in Ohio ; how painful that would be." But there are other stories that build a deeper resonance, particularly those that move beyond an examination of the romantic and professional dissatisfaction of young adults, such as the moving "Puttanesca," which explores the complicated feelings of a woman who was widowed at a young age as she tries to carry on with a subsequent relationship, and in "Marjorie and the Birds," about another widow who begins to take bird-watching classes at the Museum of Natural History.

A good sense of humor is a great place to start as a writer, and Emma Straub is off to a promising beginning with these funny, sensitive stories.

Jenny Shank's first novel, The Ringer, is being released this month by The Permanent Press. She is the Books & Writers Editor of NewWest.Net.

Advice for the Spooked + Library of America

This week, two very different requests came in–Toronto's Eye Weekly asked me to answer a question about marriage for their advice column, and the Library of America asked me to write a guest-post for their blog. I did both.

Click here to read my advice for a woman who is bored with her 7-month-old marriage. The regular advice columnist describes my book as "funny/rad/genius," which means that I will love her forever.

Click here to read my post about Raymond Carver for the Library of America.

Cheers!

Emma

In Which I Have Tea And Sell My Novel

This has been one of the most crazed, hectic weeks of my life. Let's rewind, shall we? Last Tuesday, my agent sent out my novel, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures. It's terribly glamorous, all about a movie star, with most of the action taking place between 1930-1970. There were exciting phone calls from my agent, and everything seemed too good to be true.

So, my husband and I got on a plane to Palm Beach. My mother-in-law (also named Laura, a good omen) had arranged a tea for me with all of her friends, and we met in the Tapestry Room at the Breakers yesterday afternoon.

My mother-in-law's shoes.

I try to coordinate with my book jacket.

We drank champagne.

I table-hopped.

Everyone got a book.

And lots of tiny sandwiches.

Including tiny lobster rolls.

While we were having tea, my husband had $50 fish tacos on the beach. Oh, The Breakers.

The lightbulbs.

Mike wandered around some more. It takes a while to drink tea and champagne and eat little chocolates.

All the while, we were having a grand old time, being serenaded by a pianist, and gabbing up a storm. The ladies left slowly, one by one, until it was only the three of us. Then the phone rang. This is what I looked like when my agent told me the pre-empt offer was on the table.

Readers, I took it.

I couldn't be happier to be with Riverhead. They publish so many of my friends (Julie Klam! Danielle Evans!) and so many writers I admire (Meg Wolitzer! Sarah Vowell!), and those are only a few. I am over the moon.

Yours, dreamily,

Emma

I Love All the Hipsters Today

And here's why. A nice review came in today from the Hipster Book Club, and this is my favorite part:

"…Emma Straub crafts characters so compelling that they linger quietly on the periphery of one's consciousness days after reading, waiting patiently for the reader to consider and then understand them. Trendier writers may grab a reader's attention with outrageous spectacle, but it's the strong, silent types like Straub who are the true writers to watch."

Strong and silent! I love it. I'm basically Jake Ryan.

Yours,

Emma

Say Yes

An interview I just did with Liz Colville for Flavorwire went live today, and you can read the whole thing here. Should you be averse to clicking on links, though, here's a tiny excerpt:

LC: Any advice to other young writers emerging in the age of the Internet?

ES: Be friendly. Be kind. Say yes.

That about sums up my entire philosophy.

love

Emma