The novelists talk sex, porn, and writing outside your perspective.
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Ive been in an uber since my early 30s, texted Brodesser-Akner.
What if I die in here?
It only escalated from there: Im horrified, she wrote.
Her app had been telling her that she was nine minutes away for the past 28 minutes.
she asked, before spiraling outward to question reality itself.
Is there another version of me?
Was she on time at least?
She is a longtime fan of Perrottas books, and his latest,Mrs.
Fletcher,has a lot in common with hers (which Perrotta blurbed).Mrs.
Why write from the perspective of the opposite gender?
Does anyone actually want to watch ethical porn?
And how would they have learned about sex if not for John Irving and Philip Roth?
Because its squid is the answer.
Tom Perrotta: I dont eat anything from the water.
TBA: I thought when I became successful people would be more accommodating of my neuroses.
TP: First of all, youre already limiting yourself to people who know youre a writer.
TBA: Ugh, youre right.
People are very accommodating of the writers who are recluses.
Im not saying Im a Salinger, but …
TP: Thats a good point.
Because he gotverysuccessful not that youre not very successful.
Novelists dont have the leeway they once did.
You both succeed in other mediums movies, magazines.
TBA: I think the goal of the novel now is also absorption.
Can I give you relief from this other thing?
TP: Reality is so relentless and so superficial that a sustained act of imagination is radical.
TBA: Thats the feeling I have with novels now gratitude for anything that holds me.
I wanted to do something about divorce.
I wanted to do something about relationships for people my age.
But there was no place to pitch it.
What have you been reading lately?TBA: I cant read anything else while Im writing.
I was so worried that reading other peoples stuff would cause me to inadvertently steal it.
The one thing I read while I was writing [Fleishman] wasMrs.
Fletcher,because the minute I saw the cover I was instantly jealous of it.
I couldnt not read it.
And then when my publisher was talking to me about a cover, I remember angrily saying, Well!
TP: Our books do have certain things in common.
Theyre almost a mirror image of each other.
The idea for the novel came from hearing all my male divorced friends telling me their stories.
Certainly its important to the history of the novel.Madame Bovary
TBA:Anna Karenina!Anna Kareninawas really good.
TP: Probably there were women who could have written some version ofAnna Kareninathat wouldve been just as revelatory.
I also think there is something interesting about moving outside of your comfort zone.
The writer can fall on their face and maybe thats part of the interest of it.
TBA: Youre right.
I remember I was like,I will read thisMrs.
Fletcherand see if he got this right!
I think about that all the time.
She goes for the eight instead of the ten.
TP: Yeah, Terry was just like, How did you know about this?
And It was such a funny question.
First of all, Im married to a woman.
Also, I always read womens magazines.
The things that women want on the apps lately are so depraved.
You didnt even scratch the surface.
TP: Theres this desire to simplify, and to say, Well,Mrs.
Do you ever hear that?
And in a way, that was really useful for the adaptation ofMrs.
We only have women directors on the show, and the writers room was very heavily female.
TBA: I love the way you write about that porn!
The thing Im so jealous of in your book is the evenhanded way of describing the porn.
Its not prudish; its almost journalistic, its really quite beautiful!
What were the objections in your writers room?TP: There was a debate.
Theres a certain kind of feminist porn which is about womens pleasure.
And some people thought she should be watching that.
TBA: Kosher porn.
Its the same desire.
There is a category of female desire that is watching a man get what he wants.
Cause you have to really be a connoisseur to get to the very specific thing that you want.
TBA: You definitely have people that say, I am only watching female-gaze porn.
Do people really pick the porn they consume by their politics?TP: I dont think so.
TBA: I think we all wish we did.
We allwantto watch ethical porn.
But when I speak privately to women friends of mine, you know
TBA: Theyll say it.
I spent time on the apps doing research.
What are you doing?
Life isnt hard enough?
How do you know?TBA: We know what men want.
How do we know?
From the porn, right?
But for women, our desire isnt just desire.
Sometimes our desire is a submissive kind of pleasing.
Its being the thing the man desires.
It actually works out evolution-wise really well!
I dont know if its so bad either.
I think desire is desire and it doesnt matter what the root of it is.
Its almost like the world of porn.
I stayed away from porn for a long time.
I didnt want to go to that back room and rent those tapes and then return them.
I dont want those magazines around my house.
But when it was suddenly there on the internet, it was just like, how would you not?
Unless you really like it, and then it becomes your
TBA: Your thing.
You both have kids.
I remember Dr. Ruth in my 20s being like, Its all right to masturbate!
TBA: Its true.
My mother is ultra-Orthodox, and her sex education was: Dont.
You cant teach your children because you dont even know what theyre learning.
Or get some lube.TBA: Oh my God.
Somewhere in Brooklyn, she just dissolved, because you said that.
TP: She doesnt know what lube is, so its okay.
You say, Whats a novel for?
For me, as a kid, that was how I learned about sex.
What was the first book that introduced you?TP: Well, John Irving was huge for me.
TBA: Me too!
TP: And I remember readingPortnoys Complaintfreshman year in college.
I was undone by it, you know?
The anarchy of lust.
TBA: My first wasPortnoy, but I was in eighth grade.
My mother wouldnt let me read young-adult books.
TheSweet Valley Highgirls were such sluts to her.
But those Philip Roth books, they were literature.
It normalized sexual thought in men for me.
Id never be shocked again.
And what did you do?
TP: I rode right on by.
TBA: Whats there to gain?
TP: Yeah, theres some writers who might be happy to be interrupted in their brooding.
Youre both married but write about divorce.
Why is that?TP: You know, um, its a simple reason.
There arent a lot of novels about happily married people.
Theres no drama in a stable life.
And he would say, very easily, Shes obsessed with divorce.
TP: I get that too: Why do you always write about adultery?
TBA: And are you ever like, Cuz Im cheating on my wife?
TP: [Laughing.]
I highly recommend it.
But a character needs to desire someone or something.
Sex seems to be the human urge that interests me way more than any other.
TBA: Everyone in my familys divorced.
Its interesting to me.
But then again, who knows?
And one of them was writing a novel about divorce?
How did you two first meet?TP: We met on the set ofThe Leftovers.
I liked her right away.
I thought your piece onDamon Lindelofwas great, but it was more conventional than what you do now.
And Ive been wanting to ask you: What happened to you in these past few years?
Suddenly, youre very present in these stories, a wonderful, interesting comic persona.
I care about your subjects because youre writing about them.
TBA: And because of Gwyneth.
We all care about Gwyneth.
This is what makes her have this power.
Everybodys insecure and shes saying, I have a cure for that.
TBA: Theres just no way to beat her.
Shes funny, she is beautiful, she is smart, she is cool.
And Im not any of those things.
I am not even
TP: Youre funny.
TBA: But all I wanted was to be cool, Tom!
TP: I think youre cool.
But can you tell me how you became a much more adventurous journalist?
TBA: I became more confident.
At first, I saw that I was adept at profiling.
I learned two things: that every story gets its own voice and that everything is a great story.
I was so broke at that time that I wrote so much.
How did you balance writing a novel with all that?TBA: So scrappily.
That year, I had written 100,000 words that were published in magazines.
My book was 100,000 words.
And I was exhausted.
But the way I did it it was like an act of defiance.
TP: Writing a novel is just such a monogamous act for me.
If my attentions anywhere else, then its really hard.
TBA: Are you gonna write a novel after [working on the show]?
TBA: Yes, Ive sold it already.
Its calledLong Island Compromise.
TP: That sounds like a dirty sex act.
TBA: [Laughs.]
Itisa dirty sex act!
Its a made-up euphemism for a dirty sex act.
Youre the only person who guessed that!
TP: Which one?
TBA: Its anal sex.
That was the Long Island compromise.
So whats my third novel, Tom?
Tom: [Laughs.]
