Catie Disabato: The Nervous Breakdown Interview
Why did you decide to make the relationship between Taer and Nix a love relationship?
(This is also where I say that I “got déjà vu” and ask: Is it the alcohol leaving my body or were we all here in our past lives? “We are spiritual kinsmen,” says Nicky. Catie is busy chewing.)
CATIE: I’m a huge fan of Haruki Murakami. I was an even bigger fan in college and I started writing this book right after college. One of the things that annoy me about his books, based in what I’m interested in reading, is that he writes about men searching for women who have disappeared. I always wanted the women to be the ones searching. An early idea of mine was to flip the Murakami narrative. And then, instead of flipping it and having a woman searching for a man, because I also wanted to write about a pop star that disappeared, I thought to have a woman search for a woman. (Catie’s chorizo and scramble arrives. She says, “This looks really amazing.”) Ultimately the relationship between the people who search for Molly and Molly herself is not romantic or sexual, though I’m sure there is some element of Taer having a celebrity crush on Molly. On some level. A woman searching for a woman felt a lot “queer-er” than Murakami, so it was very natural to have one of the primary relationships in the book to be a romance between women, a lesbian relationship. I also think of Berliner and his relationship with his girlfriend Kraus, although it’s a heterosexual relationship, as a little queer just because their sex life is so weird and different.
Get the rest of the interview here! And remember, THE GHOST NETWORK is amazing and you should already be reading it.
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