[Photo: Kevin McEnroe]
1) Our Town is your first novel. How long have you been writing?
I
started taking writing seriously when I was about nineteen. I wasn’t a
great student, and, floating through college, I took a fiction writing
workshop simply because it met once a week, and at night. I didn’t think
much of it until our first assignment, which was to write a story from
the opposite sex's point of view. I thought, then, of a time when I was
young, and I was left alone with my grandmother – my nana – one of my
earliest memories. She died soon thereafter, and it’s the only time I
remember her at all, but it must have stuck with me, because after that
my professor came to me and told me I had something. He told me not to
stop. So I didn’t – I’ve been trying to breathe life into her, and thus
myself, ever since – and it was because of him that I finally understood
what school is for.
2) Your novel shares a title with Thorton Wilder's famous play, Our Town - although Hollywood is obviously very different than Grover's Corners. Was this a conscious decision of yours?
It
was, indeed. It was for a long time called Serenity Side Down – a turn
of phrase I liked, and which meant something to me. So, when my editor
approached me about calling the book Our Town, I was nervous at
first, both legally – not sure whether or not one was even allowed to
co-opt a classic name, as such – and in that I didn’t want to
disrespect such a legendary work. But, when I thought more about it, it
began to feel as though Our Town was always the name, in some
ways. From moment one I felt as though a narrator – or “stage manager” –
was necessary to guide the action. And I felt that the hope of fame
that Hollywood of old could provide a certain type of person was similar
to the way people, when reading of Grover’s Corners, could hope for an
easier, simpler life. The value systems that the two places offered up
were no less than entirely opposite, but I found the hope that life
could be better was in some ways the same, and so it began to feel
right. Both right, and necessary.
3) Your novel is fiction, but you also come from a
long line of Hollywood actresses who have struggled with addiction. How
much or how little did your own family history shape this story?
I’ve
always known that Dorothy is based on my nana, Joanna Moore, who is my
mother’s mother. However, outside of some attempt to honor her spirit,
or, at least, attempt to realize what connected her and I, I view the
rest of the novel’s landscape as entirely fictionalized. In many ways, I
see the rest of the characters, and in some ways Dorothy, too, as just
an extension of me. In the end, I do think I found out what connected
her and I, and thus why I was so interested. Her ability to get in her
own way – to do the wrong thing because you don’t believe in yourself,
because you don’t believe someone like you deserves to be happy – is
something that lives in me, too. And I hope, in honoring her, that it
will be as though she’s finally able to gain some of the recognition
that she should’ve believed she deserved from the beginning.
4) Who (or what) have your writing influences been? Where do you get your inspiration from?
I
have a tack board where I pin up ideas, when I have them. My influences
are not all literary, as well. With this book, reading Nathaniel
West’s The Day of the Locust and Joan Didion’s The White Album
provided the feeling that I needed to write. But music also helped me – I
would find songs that suited the tone and rhythm that I needed for a
particular scene, and play them over, and over, and over, until it was
right. And movies – The King of Comedy comes to mind. Oh, and
lastly things like Bravo, for I found the vapidity of that sort of
programming has existed in Hollywood since it’s inception, and it helped
for me to attempt to incorporate that tone.
5) Do you have any more novels on the horizon?
Yes. I am working on a New York book now. I think of Our Town as
my LA book, and I want to treat the city that I now live in with the
same reverence, and also disrespect. Both idealizing the romance of the
New York streets at night, and fearing what happens if you continue
walking on them until the morning. I’m working now, so I’m not sure,
still, if I'll be able to get this balance right. But I’m going to try,
and I can’t wait to do so.
[Photo: Counterpoint]
Kevin McEnroe will sign and discuss Our Town on Thursday, May 14 at 7pm.
