Sloane Crosley’s Treasure Hunt

It can be incredibly irritating. Nathaniel is essentially stuck with these sort of superficial parameters around relationships and what that’s supposed to be, and he learned that from college. Kezia learned to expect almost nothing from college. Kezia is actually an incredibly common name everywhere in South Africa and Australia and in the U.K. I swiped it — there are tiny little treasure-hunty things in the book for people who love short stories in general. One of them, a big one for me, is that her name is from “The Doll’s House,” which is a Katherine Mansfield short story that’s one of my favorites of all time.
BNR: That leads me to ask about your choice for names in general. Names are meaningful in this book. Victor, for example, doesn’t begin as a victor. Let’s put it that way.
SC:   No, he does not.
BNR:   Did those names land on people after you developed the characters? Or did you begin from things like names and these external signifiers?
SC:   I would say they happened simultaneously for the most part. The minor characters are just fun. You want someone who is an approximation… I had a lot of fun looking up, for example, Olivia Arellano. “Ok, I’ve decided to make her Venezuelan. What’s a great Venezuelan name?” It’s easy, it’s fun, it’s candy, going down this Google Search of what would be a great name, for some of the minor ones.
For the major ones, Nathaniel — Nathaniel was tricky. Because Nathaniel represents, I think, for a lot of women, myself included, an old archetype of what you thought you wanted. I thought it would muddy my mental waters if it was any name of a guy like that. But I know so many guys like that. So actually, for him it was a process of elimination. Then, plus, I love the idea that he is this sort of wannabe literary person. He is a literary person. But I like the idea that he wanted to extend his name, his full name, because he thought that people associated him with Hawthorne at a certain point.
BNR:   I thought of Nathanael West.
SC:   Oh, Nathanael West. We will also accept that as an answer. So for him, it was a little bit more abstract. With Victor, it was pretty much point-blank, this is a name this guy should not have. So I want to give it to him, because he is this sort of Job-like figure. Her, like I said, I swiped it — you don’t also need to read all of Katherine Mansfield. But if you were to read that story, and now, hopefully after having read the novel…it’s her in a lot of ways in that short story, where she’s trying to do the right thing but also trying to fit in, a little bit of a goody-goody, a little bit of a brat.
BNR:   Let’s talk about “The Necklace.” First I should say that one of the things that’s surprising about this book is that it goes in a direction that one, I don’t think, is going to expect from the first few scenes.
SC:   Probably not.
BNR:   One imagines that it is going to be centered on this sort of comedy, this potentially very bittersweet comedy of relationships between these people. And then, suddenly, there is quest, and there is something very different that happens. How did you arrive at that story? And how did Guy de Maupassant’s classic short story play in that?
SC: I did something on purpose that I hope people realize is on purpose — that there is that twist, there is that turn that you don’t necessarily see coming, and it will be interesting to see whether or not it’s too sharp a turn maybe. I don’t know. But I wanted to get them out of the comfort zone. I wanted to get them looking for something. I think one of the larger things in this book is: We want the things that we told ourselves we’ve wanted for so long, and then you get them and you don’t even know if you want it any more. Or there are weird consequences, or unexpected ones. “The Necklace” embodied that for me so much. I knew I wanted a short story before I hit on “The Necklace.” Short stories were my first love. I haven’t actually used the medium myself…
BNR: You’ve gone from essays to a novel, but the novel is really steeped in the idea of the short story.
SC: I feel like short stories are a very specific art form, very separate from novels. Some of the books that I love the most from the past, let’s say, decade or so, at least, are about art. I love Bel Canto. I love The Goldfinch. I’d say The Dancer Upstairs is about art. These are books that immerse readers in a world that’s a tribute to something else.

The tricky thing with a short story is this: music you can sort of describe, and a painting you can describe, but the short story is the description. So how do you get a short story into a novel about a short story without just copying the entire thing and flopping it in there. So it had to be something simple that each of the characters could either imitate, or see themselves in, or follow the trajectory of. That’s really what happens with “The Necklace.” They become something a little bit deeper, hopefully, than how they are presented at first, or they become a little more complex than others see them. And I feel that way about the short story very strongly. We treat that story like a punchline. You know? It’s a simple story. I can’t remember, but I must have read it when I was 12. Yet it’s terribly complicated.
BNR:   What’s also interesting is its longevity, its resonance. This is a story about the inability to tell the real thing. In a sense, that is a theme that continues to play out in ways, small and large, throughout your book.
SC: There is the very obvious, concrete way, which is the necklace that they’re looking for: Is it real? Is it fake? Was it ever real? And then, yes, their relationships. That’s why it’s called The Clasp. What do we hold on to? Obviously, it has the tie of the necklace. But there are so many times where they’re not even sure if they should be friends any more, and yet, at the same time, there’s also a lot of emotion involved with their time together. It’s all timing, right?
The other thing is, the story did also have to specifically involve Maupassant, who I find fascinating in himself.
BNR:   I hadn’t read much of Maupassant’s biography, but before I spoke to you I read a little bit more about him. He has a wonderful career, and he’s sort of brought by Flaubert —
SC:   — who was his mother’s childhood best friend.
BNR:   Right. Into the company of real pantheon of 19th century French writers. He becomes successful, and masters his art. And he dies very much in a paroxysm of despair and mental illness.
SC:   My sympathy for him has a limit, only because he was a huge womanizer and general misogynist, and he died from syphilis. That’s also where a lot of the depression came from. So he’s not your standard writer, “Why am I here?” existential angst that caused this. But his descriptions, his letters to his doctor of the ghastly wraiths he used to see when he looked at himself, the way he felt his senses were turning on him, that despair… I thought it was beautiful. He’s a fascinating figure in that way.
But I also just liked the idea of Victor feeling this sort of kinship with this guy who is so much better at everything than he is. He was. Maupassant was good at everything. Flaubert at some point I think told him to cool it with the rowing up and down the Seine all day because he wasn’t getting enough writing done. “You’re winning too many championships.” He’s good at rowing, he’s charming, he was apparently amazing at lawn sports…
So it’s just wanting to dip into this other time. I think Victor feels comfortable idolizing someone who is not in the present tense. He’s so used to being rejected, into falling, to missing the mark and falling below expectations… There’s no use comparing yourself to someone modern you’d like to be. It’s much more comfortable to compare yourself to someone in the past.
BNR: Before The Clasp, of course, you had become well-known as an essayist. As you were writing essays, were you working on a novel simultaneously? Were you thinking, “I want to do a novel; how do I get my sensibility into a novel?” Where did you start with this?
SC:   In a way, this predates the essays. In every way, actually, but chronologically. I studied creative writing and wrote short fiction in college. Then I delightfully fell backwards into non-fiction, and will continue to stay in the muck and the mire of that lovely pit that I love so much — I have another book of essays coming out after this. But that sort of ended up being what I was doing, and I felt very much for a novel and fiction I needed more time, and I just didn’t have it, because I have this day job that I love so much that I was doing, and the non-fiction at the same time, and both were keeping me very busy and satisfying everything creatively.

Then it just kept being the case that I still wanted to do this. I mean, it’s the same human being who’s writing these things. You see actors switch from comedy to drama very frequently — Kristin Wiig or Jon Hamm or Eric Bana, who apparently is a laugh riot in Australia. But with authors…the only one I can think of who really does it is Ian Frazier. His Travels in Siberia and also comedic essays about falling in the shower. I’m not really that person, I don’t think. I think that the two are much more intertwined for me. But because you know what you’re there for if you’re writing essays, or at least the kind of essays I write – there’s a little bit of pathos in them. There’s humor. There’s heart. But your wings are slightly clipped, which is the challenge of the form. Whereas for a novel, you can kind of really yourself go. It’s something I’ve always really wanted to do.
Also, frankly, it’s really freeing to start being able to make everything up. It’s nice! But then, of course, you can give yourself enough rope to hang yourself, if you say, “Well, everything in this world is my responsibility.”
BNR:   For someone who is a fantasy novelist, let’s say, the idea of world-creation is very front and center. It’s part of the language of the art.
SC:   It’s why you got into it.
BNR: The character sort of comes later. But we don’t tend to think about that task of building a world as a novelist. Was there a moment of vertigo when you kind of discovered that, you were kind of in the midst of writing this, and you thought, “Oh, no, I’ve created a world, and now I’ll have to keep it running”…
SC:   Right, now I have to be responsible. What happens is, it becomes difficult to make alterations at a certain point. Or it’s like, if you can imagine, a Jenga set. Fine, you didn’t care, and even if you did make an alternation, “ok, whatever, I’ll just fix it,” and now it’s a Jenga set that’s the size of your apartment building. You have to be careful.
BNR:   There are consequences to moving certain parts of it.
SC:   Exactly. There are consequences. Mostly for me, that happened with timeline stuff, not scenery stuff. It’s easy enough to fix the hair up in one scene, hair down in the next. That’s not that hard. Those kinds of consistency things. But I think those were the biggest sort of logistical edits I would get – the timeline. How long have they been in France? You get a couple of “because I said so” cards that you can play, as an author. You can do that about twice, when the copy editor says, “This doesn’t make sense” and I say, “I don’t care.” I think, honestly, twice is probably pretty generous. After that, they’re pointing things out to make sure everything is intact.
BNR:   Do you think that the stakes for that kind of precision and believable quality are higher when you’re aiming for comedy? I’m thinking of the fact that if time or causality in a very moody, kind of tragic play are muddied, we might forgive them because of the intensity of the actors, perhaps the emotions that they are able to convey on stage. But in a comic piece, timing is everything.
SC:   You used the analogy of a stage play. I mean, there’s nothing like seeing the stagehands move back and forth, or seeing a piece of scenery fall down, or Townperson #6 is picking their nose, and suddenly you’re looking at that and not at the central drama of the stage.
BNR:   I would like to see the play in which Townperson #6 can’t stop himself from sort of violating certain rules of hygiene. I think that would be an interesting play.
SC:   I always to have one of those roles and put it on my resume, like “16th person to shout on Spartacus,” which was my big acting debut. Yeah, but you just don’t want that to be an irritant. I notice it, too. It’s not even…
BNR:   Did you notice it when you were reading your own work?
SC:   Oh, of course – it becomes like a treasure hunt. Once you get the thing solid and it makes sense, and you feel like “I’ve said…” That’s the biggest accomplishment I could possibly have, writing a novel and to have said what I wanted to say when I started, and I learned new things I didn’t even know I wanted to say by the time I finished. That’s exactly what happened for me, and it’s great. Then occasionally, it was borderline fun. At a certain point it becomes fun. It’s very hard to edit, it’s hard to write, all these things are difficult. Plus — was it Hemingway who said it? — “Writing is easy; you just open your wrist and bleed…”
But I have to say, it becomes fun when you’re on the hunt. It’s like a game of memory, like a children’s card game. I remember finding this and being giddy at some point: at certain point, in the beginning, one character puts a vodka tonic that he’s ordered for a woman and puts it down, and I wrote “Victor sneers at the non-brown alcohol.” Then, 250 pages later, I have him order a vodka tonic at a bar in France. I was so excited to find out he would do it! I mean, no one is going to notice this. But it’s so glaring to me.
BNR:   As you’re pointing out, one of the things you have to pay attention to is that constant legerdemain of its realness. But if you’re someone who likes stage plays then the fact that you know how artfully it’s crafted, curiously doesn’t take away for a moment that magical sense of the legerdemain.
SC:   Oh, here’s a jewelry analogy, since the book is partially about jewelry. If you have a pearl in a setting, usually if it’s a really good pearl you can move it slightly, because if the setting is too tight on it, the way you would have on a sapphire diamond or a hard stone, it will crush it or it will hurt it. I mean, it’s not spinning around in there, but it’s slightly…
BNR:   But if you can get a grip on it, you can actually move it?
SC:   Right, you can actually twist it a little bit. That’s honestly the best way (and it’s something I’ve thought of before now) of what it’s like to keep the structure in mind and keep everything in mind, but don’t suffocate it.
BNR:   That’s a lovely metaphor.
SC:   The other thing I think of, when, if I didn’t want to write, I would always think, “Go play with your toy; you’re lucky; go do it.”
Annie Dillard in The Writing Life says a thing about good writing. She said, “It’s like splitting wood, and if you aim for it…” Apparently. I would not know this; I’m not an outdoorswoman. But apparently, if you aim for the wood, you will most likely miss. If you aim for the chopping block, you’ll get it. She says you have to aim just past the wood; aim at the chopping block. That’s how it feels. Just keep this consciousness of where you want to go without it suffocating you. Sometimes it’s hard to have that balance. In some ways, I think the book would probably be better served if I had outlined better. But it also wouldn’t have, I don’t think, the energy or the humor it does if I had outlined, if I had known exactly where I was going.