. I'd like to post the interview questions I got, because they help provide more background on the book.1. What gave you the idea for doing a novel as a scrapbook?
I like to say the idea of making a scrapbook novel was 40 years in the making. As a little girl, I used to pore over my grandmother’s flapper scrapbook filled with dance cards, letters from old boyfriends, ocean liner tickets, and even long curls snipped when she got her hair bobbed.
My first three novels were what I guess you’d call “conventional” format—i.e. just words. My third novel Gatsby’s Girl was inspired by the meticulous scrapbook F. Scott Fitzgerald kept about his first love, Ginevra King—her first note to him, her handkerchief, and a newspaper clipping about her marriage to another man. Later he would turn the story of his unrequited crush into The Great Gatsby.
When I was casting around for the idea for my fourth novel, I wanted to create something that was as visual and powerful as a scrapbook. And then I had a crazy idea—why not make a novel that WAS a scrapbook. Not a digital scrapbook, but an actual one made of real stuff that I cut up with scissors and pasted together with glue.
2. What came first—the story or the memorabilia?
I started with my character, Frankie Pratt, and the outlines of her story, which was set in the 1920’s. I imagined an 18-year-old girl who wanted to become a writer and her journey which would take her to Vassar, Greenwich Village, and Paris.
Then I hunted down and bought all the things that a girl like Frankie would glue in her scrapbook—postcards, movie tickets, Vassar report cards, menus, sheet music, fashion spreads, popular magazines, a New York subway map, a Paris guidebook, and of course love letters. In all, I collected over 600 pieces of vintage 1920’s ephemera.
3. How did the memorabilia dictate the story?
Frankie’s story changed and evolved as I found surprising things—for example an original book cover for The Sun Also Rises. The book caused a huge fuss in Paris when it came out in 1926 because everyone recognized the characters, and she would been right there to bear witness.
4. Did you worry that readers might not get enough character development with just the scrapbook style?
Frankie’s story is not just told through her scrapbook captions. I also included letters (which I wrote) and journal entries which reveal more of her personality.
I think that scrapbooks in some ways can reveal MORE about a character than the straightforward narrative in a novel. Minute details of a person’s life are told in the stuff they decide to save like ticket stubs and menus-- what food they ate, what movies they saw, what books they read, what they wore, what clippings they found of interest in the newspaper.
Certainly I was concerned what readers would make of a scrapbook novel. When I showed the first chapters of Frankie Pratt to my husband (the writer Chris Tilghman, who is always my first reader), my agent and my editor, I just held my breath. But the response was really positive—Frankie felt like a real character to them and they wanted to learn more about her.
5. Do you think this was easier or harder than writing a novel in a more traditional manner?
Creating a scrapbook novel may not have been easier than writing a traditional novel, but it certainly was a lot more fun! Writing a 300 page novel requires thousands of hours of sitting in a chair and staring at a blank computer screen. With Frankie Pratt, I got to track down and buy over 600 pieces of 1920’s ephemera. I spent countless hours and dollars on eBay every day and could tell my husband with a straight face that I was “working on my novel.”
6. What are you working on next?
I am planning a whole series of scrapbook novels set in different time periods. My next one is a scrapbook kept by a bride during her first year of marriage, 1959-1960. I think of it as a prequel to Mad Men.
No comments:
Post a Comment