Cynthia Kling talks to Cathi Hanauer about her new novel, Sweet Ruin (Atria Books).
1.You seem to enjoy poking around in uncomfortable issues. Your first novel, "My Sister's Bones," looked at anorexia. For "The Bitch in the House" you selected and edited 26 wise and whiney women who wrote about everything from sex and marriage to bad bosses and drinking (and yes, I was one of them). Your new novel, Sweet Ruin, examines the death of passion, death of a child, and adultery in an 8-year old marriage. How would your categorize your beat?
A. I write about people who've made their choices, who like their lives and their choices, but who are trying to figure out how to realistically live with them. Sometimes things don't turn out quite as advertised. For instance, in Bitch and Sweet Ruin, you have women who chose to marry, have children, and work. Now they're dealing with the reality of their complicated lives rather than the candy-coated myth that they were fed growing up.
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2. You are a serious person, dealing with serious issues, and yet the pink décolletage cover of this book puts it squarely in the Chick Lit category. Whose decision - yours or the publisher?
A. (Laughs.) Mine. I love this cover; I think it's sexy and provocative. Do I think it says Chick Lit? Absolutely not. Has it gotten to the point where you're not allowed to use the color pink anymore without your book being called Chick Lit? I find that term derogatory.
4. True. Whether it is a chick movie or chick lit, the implication is that it is second rate. But there are some great writers who've been tarred with the pink brush - Allison Pearson, Elinor Lipman, Melissa Banks. Does that change your feelings?
A. All three of those women are smart serious writers who write about real, important issues. I'd be thrilled to be in their company.
5. Can we can call your book a chick book?
A. I'd be the first to admit it has more appeal for women than for men. As Boston Magazine said, it's a "slow burn that bursts into a page-turner." Let's be frank, that's a girl thing. (Just watch porn and you will realize that's not how men's brains work.) Some men will read it but I'm not deluding myself that I'm gonna get Philip Roth's audience. It's a chick book, okay. But please don't call it chick lit.
6. The creepy thing is that whether whether you call it "a Chick book" or "Chick lit," for the most part, it's getting ignored or dissed by serious critics - even female ones.
A. Women are competitive creatures. Recently the New York Times selected the best work of fiction in the last 25 years. Their list had two books by women - Beloved by Toni Morrison and Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson - and 23 books by men. What is shocking is that a good number of those judges were women. What's that about? Why won't women - or men - consider books by women serious fiction?
7. The other annoying thing is that men have to denigrate women's books while, at the same time, taking their pleasures - like baseball and golf - and raising them to the level of intellectual discourse. What are they scared of?
A. I don't know if it's fear so much as power. If men are in charge of a publication, they're gonna run what interests them. Just compare the coverage in the New York Times Book Review of books about childbirth - or really anything domestic -to the coverage of books about baseball. If you were an alien visiting earth, you'd conclude that birthing and raising children aren't very important, but baseball is of the utmost godliness.
8. Is there an upside to getting shunted into the pink ghetto?
A. Chick lit sells a hell of a lot better than most literary fiction.
9. On that up note, let's move into the subject of marriage. The main character in Sweet Ruin finds herself in a passionless marriage after 8 years. Is that inevitable?
A: I think that sex lives wax and wane, though I have my own ideas about what you would call "passionless." I spent a lot of time when I was younger agonizing about whether we were 'doing it enough,' whether we should be having sex every third day on the dot, whether it was 'okay." I finally got over it. Now, I'm so sick of people like Oprah trying to make us feel it's dysfunctional not to be fucking like rabbits every day for 65 years.
11. Jay MacInerny recently said that the term "married sex" was an oxymoron.
A. Monogamy clearly poses some sexual challenges. They say that of the 4000 species of animals, a whopping 3% are monogamous - and those tend to be the ones going extinct. So why do we feel so terrible when monogamy isn't perfect for us all the time? Maybe it's not supposed to be.
12. Can you have good sex after you've been married for a while?
A. You have to be willing, creative...and accept the fact that married sex is a different thing than single sex - at least for the women I know. One of the difficulties is that we live in such an era of idealized monogamy.
13. What does that mean?
A. We have a 50% divorce rate with the Christian Right espousing candy-coated marriage and monogamy -- even though they themselves cheat and divorce. It's hypocritical and obnoxious and we'd be much better off telling the truth. Marriage is hard and imperfect and sometimes unexciting, but you get a lot of good stuff with it too, if you pick the right person, if you go in thoughtfully, and if you take the time to grow up a little first so that you can make the necessary sacrifices.
14. Do you think that couples can get over an infidelity?
A. I would hope so, because it happens so frequently. In up to 40% of marriages, one partner winds up cheating, according to some stats. Look at Bill and Hilary. Bill did just about everything he could to fuck up that marriage and yet they still have an incredibly strong partnership. Who cares whether they have sex exclusively with each other or not?
15. Many of us, even Bill and Hilary, struggled under those extreme standards of marital perfection - that old, antiquated myth. Your book is a great examination of this topic, so can you supply us with a new one?
A. How about if, instead of pledging to "be faithful till death do us part," we pledge to "try to be faithful till death do us part." How about if, instead of spending a year trying to pick out the perfect bridal gown and table arrangements, we spend the time talking to some honest old marriage veterans who are less concerned about presenting a perfect front than telling the truth? How about if we stop deciding a marriage is over if one person has a lapse at some point in 50 years? How about if we cut each other some slack? Marriage isn't perfect. And neither are we?
Thanks Cathi.
For more on Cathi Hanauer, her opinions or books, check out www.cathihanauer.com