Q: How did you decide to write Better Than Sane?
A: I didn't make a decision, not really. One day, around Christmastime, when I had my office at
The New Yorker, Tina Brown, who was the editor then, called me into her office to say she had heard I had a terribly interesting life something like that and asked me to write a piece about it. We talked, too, about what the life of a single woman was, and she asked me how married people treated a single woman. Then she said, emphatically, that women on their own it seemed immensely funny at the time, and true didn't have anything to do over Christmas, so why didn't I write a piece over the holidays, which is what I did. When "How I Became a Single Woman" (some people who didn't know me thought it was fiction) was published the following April, I received an unimaginable number of telephone calls from publishers, all of them asking me to make the piece into a book, which is how
Better Than Sane came into existence, all of which is to say that, to begin with, I never actually decided to write the book.
Q: You have done much for many magazines including Vogue and The New Yorker. What type pieces have you written for magazines? Do you enjoy magazine writing?
A: With the exception of a piece or two, I wrote exclusively for The New Yorker for twelve years, and then for Vogue. Before I wrote "How I Became a Single Woman" for The New Yorker, I had written dozens of reporting pieces; mostly for "Talk of the Town" (I like nothing better than having a conversation with a person and writing it down; I still do it in so-called real life), and then a profile on Albert Brooks, and other longer reporting pieces. For Vogue, I have written about fashion to some extent, but my stories are inevitably connected with events and characters in my own life, like describing a dress I once wore to dance around my own room in, or clothes that friends wore at various times in our lives. Yes, I do like writing magazine pieces. Their shortness is enticing, no matter how long (as compared to a book), and the interaction with editors is on-going, sometimes constant, so that the aloneness of writing doesn't seem alone.
Q: Are there any specific writers that have influenced your own writing style?
A: Writers I knew at The New Yorker influenced my own writing style, definitely. George Trow, my mentor, of course, and Harold Brodkey, though only in my mind. (Brodkey once suggested I write sentences that sounded like his, and since I wouldn't be able to do that he was both droll and serious when he said this I would be myself, pretty much, and a writer, in any case.) Renata Adler, now and forever, and an Irish short story writer, Maeve Brennan, who had also written a column for Talk of the Town, "The Long-winded Lady," when William Shawn was editor. And Salinger. How can I leave out Salinger, when I should have referred to him first. No one had a stronger influence on a lot of us than Salinger. It's almost embarrassing to talk about him. My mother gave me The Catcher in the Rye in the fifties, at some point.
Q: What kind of work do you do for the film industry?
A: I work, as they say, as a "creative consultant," on various feature film products. The very best part is working on the script, page by page. The second best is "consulting" about the casting; suggesting actors, watching tapes of actors' tests for the movies, saying which actor I like best for which part. The next thing, once the shooting starts, is watching the dailies (hours and hours and hours), giving my opinion on what works and what doesn't, taking notes endlessly, writing them up in a way that makes sense to the director. After the dailies phase, I watch the film after it's been cut together. I help to decide what works and what doesn't. I like the movie work, even in its tedium, especially as the final decisions belong to someone else, no matter what I say, though nearly all of what I say remains in the movie, as it turns out.
Q: The photograph on your book jacket was taken by Bruce Weber. What was it like to work with Bruce Weber?
A: Bruce Weber and I were friends when we were twenty, twenty-one. He was a good friend. When I moved to L.A., in the early seventies, he put my New York cat, Whipper, on a plane and sent him to me. When I worked with Bruce, I already knew him, and so I wasn't intimidated. Also, as to famousness, he wasn't Bruce Weber the way he is Bruce Weber now. But the work was different from the friendship, the way work, despite the friend, often is. In the original photograph that was transformed, somewhat, into the book jacket, there was a horse and a tall boy with dark hair alongside me. Bruce shot rolls and rolls, and then more rolls of film. And then more. He was determined to get the images he wanted, and he did get them, by being deeply serious and to some extent amusing at the same time, which is one reason he is Bruce Weber, of infinite Bruce Weber fame. I have all the contact sheets in their original envelope. Using Bruce's photograph is, to me, like putting a part of post-childhood, so to speak, right on the cover of Better Than Sane.