Courtney Maum, Rawi Hage, and More Take the Lit Hub Questionnaire

The Lit Hub Author Questionnaire is a monthly interview featuring seven questions for five authors with new books. This month we talk to:

Marcy Dermansky (Very Nice)

Rawi Hage (Beirut Hellfire Society)

Caitlin Horrocks (The Vexations)

Daphne Kalotay (Blue Hours)

Courtney Maum (Costalegre)

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Without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about?

Caitlin Horrocks: Ambition, talent, limitations, siblings, friendship, loss, adaptation.

Daphne Kalotay: Friendship, socioeconomic class, and, on the broadest level, western imperialism abroad. On a more micro level, the consequences of a love triangle between three friends—new college graduates—living in the East Village in the early 1990s.

Courtney Maum: Teenage yearning. Humidity. Desire. Angst. Tropical insects. Sexual danger. Broken loyalty. Situations you can’t trust. Mother daughter voltage. Artistic rivalry. Talent versus giftedness. WWII before anyone knew how fucking horrible it was.

Marcy Dermansky: Envy. Swimming pools. Messy families. Writers. Beautiful houses. Standard poodles. Contemporary America. Cell phones. Social media. Curse words. Love.

Rawi Hage: War, transgression, Beirut, Lebanon, burial, religion, atheism, secret societies, coffins, death, dance, Homer, Pavlov’s Dogs, madness, guns, photography, mountains, seas, cremation, free love, prostitution, Virgin Mary, jinns, crosses, churches and mosques, dancing coffins, shovels, crossdressers, killing, gravediggers, caretakers, orgies and more.

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Without explaining why and without naming other authors or books, can you discuss the various influences on your book? 

Daphne Kalotay: Memories of Digable Planets and the Very Pleasant Neighbor and pre-economic-boom NYC, when young people just starting out and artists and people without lots of money could still live there. Also from that time, an acquaintance who was ROTC and served in the Persian Gulf, and my awareness of wealth as a means to avoid the military. Eighteen years of U.S. presence in Afghanistan. The history of the pieds-noirs in Algeria. My childhood aversion to liverwurst. A dear friend’s Red Cross headquarters in Libya being bombed in 2012 (they were all okay). Bowe Bergdahl. James Foley. A long-ago altercation I had with a squeegee guy.

Marcy Dermansky: I write what is in my head, so, me.* Social media. General Hospital. Jane the Virgin. Contemporary politics. I realize I am an author.

Rawi Hage: Arabic poetry, French literature, gnostics and various heretics, Greek mythology, the Lebanese civil war, progressive alternative beings, polyglots. 

Courtney Maum: Lana Del Rey. The film version of Zama by Lucrecia Martel. Sophia Coppola. Jalisco and Costa Careyes. Frightened horses. Hurricanes. Peggy Guggenheim. Surrealism. Hope.

Caitlin Horrocks: Since there are so many composers and artists in the book, the lazy answer here is their work: music by Erik Satie or Claude Debussy or Les Six; the paintings of Suzanne Valadon; the photographs of Edouard Fortin, etc. More personal answer: my experiences as an ex-piano student and not-particularly-good accompanist; living in a place where it’s gray for eight straight months; having a baby and then not sleeping through the night for three years.

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Without using complete sentences, can you describe what was going on in your life as you wrote this book?

Marcy Dermansky: The stolen election. Following the lives of my friend and writers lives on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. My father dying. Fear of running out of money. Taking care of my daughter.

Caitlin Horrocks: When you work on the same book for nine years, a lot: got married, had a child, serious illnesses (not mine, but people close to me), wrote a whole different book because I didn’t at first know how to write this one.

Courtney Maum: Hyper concentration. Channeling. Tequila. Daydreams. Fever dreams. Solid sleep for the first time in a long time. Pure creative energy. A healthy child. The calming smell of horse fur. Research trips to Mexico and a bedroom overrun by scorpions and these little half-monkey half-raccoon fruit thieves called “Mapache.” Joy. And Spanish lessons.

Rawi Hage: The death of loved ones.

Daphne Kalotay: Long walks with a dying friend. Migraine headaches. Moving twice.

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What are some words you despise that have been used to describe your writing by readers and/or reviewers?

Daphne Kalotay: I don’t despise any descriptions of my writing; I’ll take any reviews I can get. There’s a five-star Amazon review I love that says, “Excellent service, book arrived overnight.”

Rawi Hage: “It’s a bit too bizarre and abstract for me to understand on the surface level.”

Caitlin Horrocks: I can’t think of anything I really mind that isn’t a straight up insult, like “this sucks.” I don’t even mind “quirky,” which I think everyone is supposed to despise.

Courtney Maum: To be honest, I enjoy the way my work has been reviewed so far. Perhaps this is because I only read my reviews in the media—that is to say, I don’t read my Goodreads or Amazon reviews, nor do I read the public comments on online pieces that I publish. So that certainly protects me from seeing or hearing anything I might despise. (And thank you, by the way, to anyone who has ever written anything nice about my writing—or any writing!—in these various places.) My first two books were often called “intelligent beach reads.” Some people think that “beach read” is a negative term. I don’t. It is very hard to create work that’s easy to read. So I take that as a compliment!

Marcy Dermansky: I read this question wrong and found words of praise, so here are some adjectives Roxane Gay used to praise my last book: “Taut and smart and strange and sweet and perfect.” I don’t feel like fixing it. I don’t like to repeat unkind things about myself. Let’s see if Teddy Wayne lets this go.

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If you could choose a career besides writing (irrespective of schooling requirements and/or talent) what would it be?

Courtney Maum: I would choose the side-career I actually have! I work as a freelance corporate namer, and it’s a fantastic gig. I would also like to be a hairdresser, a cowboy, and a veterinarian, or rather: a hairdressing cowboy veterinarian, in a life parallel to this wonderful one.

Caitlin Horrocks: When I was a kid, I really wanted to be the person who played piano at the fanciest department store in our local mall; if that job still existed somewhere, I’d still enjoy doing it.

Daphne Kalotay: Scientist who discovers a cure for migraine headaches.

Rawi Hage: Photographer (black white analogue photography) / Michelin-starred chef, or a carnival barker at a circus.

Marcy Dermansky: I would be a marine biologist and take care of sea lions.

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What craft elements do you think are your strong suit, and what would you like to be better at?

Rawi Hage: Writing. I would like to be better at swimming, and cursing under water.

Daphne Kalotay: I think my strengths are incorporating description, background information, characterization, etc. in ways that aren’t blocks of exposition. I’d like to improve my facility with dialogue. In real life, I’m a good listener who rarely has anything witty to say, which makes writing dialogue scenes particularly excruciating for me.

Caitlin Horrocks: I care a lot about character and language, although obviously caring doesn’t always mean doing something well. I thought that in tackling a novel I’d be sending myself off to a much-needed Plot Bootcamp. But because I was writing about historical figures, I inherited a lot of fixed points; I don’t know that my Plot muscles really bulked up.

Courtney Maum: Plot makes me want to tear my hair out. My agent says to me a lot about my early drafts, “I love the world-building, but what will make me turn the page?” So I guess I’m good at world-building, whereas plot comes less naturally. I think I’m good at dialog. I’m extremely good at revision: I’m really brutal about what I cut. I take no prisoners. Most of my books are very voice-driven, really centered on one character. I don’t see that changing. I’m tempted to say that I would like to learn how to write a sweeping epic from multiple points of view, but there are so many writers who are gifted at that—it’s sort of like with gardening. I live in the countryside so everyone assumes I garden. I don’t garden. I have brilliant gardening friends. And they always have too many tomatoes, squash, what have you. So I profit from their talent. Same thing with the sweeping epics from multiple POVs: I get so much pleasure from reading these kinds of books. Why ruin it for myself by trying to write one?

Marcy Dermansky: Strong suit: Dialogue, pacing, plot, characterization. Manufacturing coincidences. Better at: Willingness to do research. Starting new projects.

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How do you contend with the hubris of thinking anyone has or should have any interest in what you have to say about anything?

Caitlin Horrocks: Wake up every morning an hour before my alarm goes off convinced that they don’t, they shouldn’t, that no one ever will. (Joking!—this only happens every other morning.)

Courtney Maum: Writers are our cultural observers. With exceptions, of course, writers are eloquent, erudite, and have both true and funny things to say. I think writers are a pleasure to speak to, and listen to, as long as they know when to stop talking.

Daphne Kalotay: There must be some reason I’m here, and since I’m not raising children or saving whales, maybe it’s this.

Marcy Dermansky: I guess I don’t suffer from this problem. I write fiction. I try to take people into imaginary worlds. I am not an op-ed writer. I tend to stay quiet about my actual opinions, at least straight out. If I did this, I worry would start getting into trouble and I hate when that happens.

Rawi Hage: By being simultaneously witty and offensive.