Your House is My House

“What House would you be in?” Lev Grossman asked Erin Morgenstern. We were sitting in the bottom floor of the McNally Jackson Bookstore on Prince Street. They on stools. (Thrones, if you will.) I on a folding chair with thirty-some-odd others. 

“Well, if you boil each of the Houses down to their defining characteristic. You know -- Hufflepuff is kind, Gryffindor is brave, Ravenclaw is smart and Slytherine is cunning -- then I would have to say I’m Slytherine.”

“No!” Lev was flabbergasted.

“Yes,” said Erin. I wasn’t surprised, maybe just that she admitted to it. “And yourself?”

“Well I took a Jo-sanctioned (Lev’s on a first-name bases with J.K. Rowling because he’s interviewed her for Time) Sorting Hat test and it turns out that I’m Hufflepuff.” A collective groan erupted from the spectators. “I know. I’m still coming to terms with it myself.”

Images from Sleep No More which, Erin is the first to tell you, greatly influenced The Night Circus.

Erin has been to see Punchdrunk's version of Macbeth at least 10 times in various locations and leaked that she may be working on a collaborative project with the director.

These two authors of some of my favorite genre fiction did actually go on to talk shop in a way that dug into their craft and addressed the tedium of writing, the demons of self-doubt and their respective strengths and weaknesses (which were opposite). But I did find it remarkable that their launching off point was Harry Potter and both possessed unabashed enthusiasm for the moppy-headed wizard, especially as their own work tends to be for an older readership, has more roots in the “real,” contemporary world and explores the darker underbelly of what magic they conjure.

A piece of fan art by Christopher Shy (<-- enter at your own risk) of a scene from The Magicians. Lev revels in and stokes the fires of online fan culture. 

Anyway. These are some interesting things they said:

• They both felt lucky to have grown up in New England, believing that it is a rich land to draw from for fiction. The Salem witch trials factored in. (I was surprised by this since, for me, growing up in Connecticut always seemed so bland and regular when I compared it in my head to all the other places where I might have been a kid. But, then again, everything is “normal” when it’s all you know and it takes a special kind of sight, and often the perspective that comes with distance, to be able to see what’s been in front of you all along with fresh, inquisitive eyes.)

• Fantasy borrows more from its archives/ancestors than other genres. Steal as much as you want.

• It’s really hard to have faith that an educated, alternative, adult audience (their ideal audience) will follow you down into magic fountains and up through jungle gyms made out of clouds. Especially before you’ve established yourself as a writer. But you have to take a blind leap. Lev’s first two novels were realistic fiction and the first time he wrote about casting a spell, he nearly gave himself a hernia. 

• Erin began her book during National Novel Writing Month (really!?!) where you are challenged to produce 50000 words.

• That the amount of publicity tours, readings, lectures and appearances required if/when one’s novel gets popular is toxic to the development of story that begins to grow after it.

So then the talk was over and the authors were ushered behind a large oak table. A line had snaked itself around the stacks of books before they could even assume the position. 

I wanted to say, ‘Hey, so should we ditch this lineup and grab a beer?’ As if we went way back. Because in a way, we do. Their characters walk around with me and make snide comments about passersby or chill in the tent villages in my paintings on a regular basis. And I actually have written with Lev and he’s into my paintings. Especially this one.

When I Was A Boy

So it figures that these authors, who write in the genre that I work in and whose characters can read minds, should be able to sense that I am part of the same House. That we should shoot the shit in the common room. But, of course, there's no spark of recognition and I’m just the girl who awkwardly holds eye contact for a beat too long and cuts through the line to get to the door.

Junebug

June was one of those months you saw coming from a ways off. A dark swarm of notation descending like cicadas on your field of calendar days. The buzz was ominous and getting louder. All you could do as it rose up in a roar was take a deep breath and dive in. 

I’ve been putting in my time this month in someone else’s shoes. I’ve gained a lot of ground and seen quite a few sights but all of my travels were in service of someone else’s internal compass, following their trajectory. 

At night, when I’d get back to my room, I’d throw my spent self on the bed and look over at my own neglected Toms. Still in the box. I’ll open them tomorrow, I’d think. But my legs ached with growing pains - teenage-style - and I knew I’d been stretched. 

It’s hard to quantify what you take with you when you work for an artist. The real lessons are hard to look at straight on, squirmy muse-like creatures. Perhaps metaphor is as good a method as any to describe it. When you walk in their shoes, you know their stride, what they stop for and consider, their pace, the height and brand and style of their heel, their posture and weight. You learn these things when you are busy trying to be an effective shepherd of the work that you respect and admire (which better be the case because it isn’t worth it - all the time and acrobatics involved in facilitating someone else’s journey - if you don’t believe that the byproducts of that journey are good seed for the earth).

One downside to assisting is that often my head is so full of someone else’s logistical matters, that my own get crumpled under the bed in a rat’s nest of receipts. (That one’s not a metaphor.)

I was at a garden party with Julie Heffernan, a painter I used to work for, in Woodstock last week as June conceded to July and I ran for the hills (of upstate New York). The attendees were art folk from the City and one painter was raving about a translation of Proust’s Swann’s Way by short story writer Lydia Davis. How expansive it must be, the painter exclaimed, to work so closely with such a master work of literature. To bring it down from its canonic pedestal on high and get your hands dirty with it. But wouldn’t she be tempted, another artist chimed in, to change the meaning here and there, just a little, in the service of making it more contemporary or flow better in English? A formalist painter asserted -- form is meaning. She changes the whole thing every time she translates a word. But wouldn’t it be daunting too? I asked. Probably, was the consensus. 

I asked because I’ve chosen to learn by surrounding myself with artwork and artists that inspire me the most. I imagine Lydia fully exploring every nook and cranny of this great work and then turning to her own short story. How do you make your own work on your desk beside something that’s carved its place in the pantheon of immortal works? Is it in hopes that your humble, awkward attempts will one day yield great shape or content, fed from the nutrients of their predecessor? Or are you really content to grow in the literary forest as a lesser tree, providing some shelter while you stand, some organic matter while you decay, and be neighbor to the greats?

Being asked to join Julie at the garden party (I was dog-sitting for her that weekend in her cozy Woodstock cabin) and talk shop with the artists there is another boon of assistantship. Strong artists have hungry minds and gather good company to feed them. Julie is very generous and quick to include me in her group.

Bags of shoes and clothes sent to the Studio.

The end of June was punctuated by a photoshoot for Elle magazine’s Women in the Arts issue. They are featuring the artist I assist. (It comes out in December!) She decided to have the five women who work for her included in the photo. She believes that having a strong team around her is invaluable and she wanted to showcase that. We used spider imagery for the set -- creating a web or a network.

I would like to say that I fell right into the roll of professional model. But the fact of the matter is, the Studio got into the body bags of shoes and tried on half of them before the wardrobe people arrived and we guiltily zipped them back up. I ran around with two different cameras snapping pictures of all of the stylists until they banished me to the far end of the room. The Studio greedily devoured the catered lunch that the chef had delivered herself, staying just long enough to explain each dish and the local origins of the ingredients, well before noon. When the shoot was over, I started posing various members of the Studio for my own photographs until the head of wardrobe commanded me to take off my shiny black fairy dress (not her exact words) and stay out of the camera crew’s way. It was awesome.

Light check for Elle shoot. Testing out the center of the spider.

So now it’s a few days on the other side of June. The rushing sound isn’t impending appointments but rather wind roughing up the river and rustling the oak trees. I’m in my family’s cabin on the St. Lawrence River. It’s the last day of vacation for me in the North Country, where time returns like a monarch each year, perching on the Point for the same view as always and getting ready for the next go-around with a cold river bath.

4th of July flairs at dusk in Oak Point, New York.
(Photo by Billy Freeman)