There was really a woman who copied her ass at work in the 1980s.
Curtis Sittenfeld, 49, heard about the incident when she was a girl and submitted it. Four decades later, Great Butt Xeroxing will be appearing in her new collection of short stories, “Show Don't Tell.”
She mentioned it last week when she met Anne Morris, Cincinnati's oldest childhood friend, when they both grew up. Sittenfeld, who lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two daughters, returned to town during a tour of her latest book. Boston leadership coach Morris was there to celebrate his mother's 83rd birthday.
“It happened at my mother's real estate office,” Morris said. “I remember processing it with you, and you had a question!”
“That's all I think,” replied Sittenfeld.
Why did she do that? The mystery of human behavior is a special interest for Sittenfeld, who created her name in her debut novel “Prep” 20 years ago, along with repentance that often follows bad behavior and statements. She is the patron saint of women who want the floor to open and swallow the whole thing.
“People will react very differently to my writing,” she said. “People would feel like 'I felt so annoyed by this character. They were either so neurotic or numb, so I wanted to reach for the story and shake my shoulders',” or people would be like, 'I felt like you were in my brain.' ”
The two friends lined up behind a female student's gag at local favourite Graeter's Ice Cream. They ordered cups of mocha chips (Sittenfeld) and chocolate chips (Morris's) and took advantage of the warm, unseasonable days to take a stroll in the park.
They sat on the bench and saw a group of middle school girls from Uggs and leggings making videos of themselves dancing Tiktok. The girls ran to their phones to watch the recording, deleted it and danced again.
Morris, along with Sittenfeld, Hillary Clinton Bob and silk scarves wearing New Balance sneakers and a blue heather sweater, did not appear to have inspired the haughty Queen Bee character of “preparation.” However, Morris claimed they were “screepy girls” back in middle school.
“Did we mean girls?” Sittenfeld said. “Obviously, I'm a bit defensive, but I think we were more popular than mean in middle school.”
She then contemplated her statement, as if against her own memories.
“In fact,” she continued. “I'm sure we were mean. I recently unearthed several diaries. I've read them to my children, and one of my children said, “You should write an essay called “The Diary of a Stupid Child.” ”
Opening up another childhood trauma, Sittenfeld recalls her and Morris in the 8th grade when she and Morris stopped being friends for a while. The division came when Sittenfeld described her as her own “social downfall.”
Because she fucked a fake PA that skipped her friend's sleeping party. She is then expelled from her usual peer group and finds herself sitting with a student council boy at lunchtime. She eventually felt so isolated that she left the Midwest to Groton School, the elite board academy in Massachusetts, providing “preparation” materials.
“You were interested in the world in a way that the rest of us didn't,” Morris said.
It took Sittenfeld a while to consider this.
“Be honest,” she said. “I don't think I look great as a child. Frankly, I don't think I look great right now. Sometimes I run into writers, they're very clever, and they read everything there is, and it's like having intelligence that they can't access. I'm not saying there's intelligence that I can't access.”
“The messiness of life”
In “Preparation,” Sittenfeld focused on a girl who wraps a pinball between hunger that is noticed and desire to disappear. In her eight books, she has mined the terrain of women's self-consciousness and status anxiety across all life stages.
In “Show Don't Tell,” the story that opens up her new collection, she examines the implicit rivalry between a pair of students, women and men in her graduate school's top writing program. When we met at the hotel bar almost 20 years later, the woman was the author of five bestselling books and the man was the winner of the prestigious literary award.
“He is the kind of writer I trust in the current students of the program's intensifying views,” writes Sittenfeld. “I'm like the writer my mother read while recovering from knee surgery.”
But here's what I'm talking about an American woman recovering from knee surgery. They shape the country's political, social and cultural debates. Critics want to know why the majority of white women voted for Donald J. Trump. The documentary tells the warning story of a wealthy woman who defeats the rabbit hole on social media. Sittenfeld records this demographic from within, not as a fair observer.
“I'm not an ornithologist. I'm a bird,” she said. And she is not troubled by flashy male critics who may tend to dismiss the people and subject matter at the heart of her work. “If you have an opinion, you should write a 1,000-word essay,” she said. “If you want to explore the messiness of life, you should write fiction.”
For years, her book has captured the concerns of a group that has recently become a culturally obsessed. One day, a middle-aged woman wakes up and realizes that her life isn't what she planned. After reading Miranda's July “All Fours” or watching Halina Reijn's “Babygirl,” some have had candid conversations about sex and marriage. Others are simply spiral.
Citonfeld's heroine seems to want more than they should while he is bumping into the limiting forces of age and withered ambitions. She explored such women in two works and bestsellers selected for the Reese Witherspoon's Book Club. Hollywood executives who chose her book suggest cast stars like Anne Hathaway and Naomi Watts.
Her two teenage daughters revealed that they were not particularly impressed with her career. “They think of me as a bit ridiculous,” Sittenfeld said. “My 15-year-old said, “I can't believe you write a book, you seem so far from the world.”
It helps her live in Minneapolis. There, her husband teaches media research and feels far from the greenhouse worlds of Brooklyn and Hollywood. “In interviews people will say to me, 'Do you feel a lot of pressure when writing your next book?” And who do you think I'll feel pressured? ” said Sittenfeld. “No one cares about what I'm doing.”
Still, the more older Sittenfeld gets, the more she feels more clear about what she wants to do in her job.
“Are you looking at 'someone'?' ” she asked Morris, referring to the HBO show starring Bridget Everett as a woman returning to her Kansas hometown. There is a moment in the show, Sittenfeld recalls the main character and her petite sister talking about the “pencil test.”
“You put a pencil under your chest. When it falls, it means you have a healthy breast,” Sittenfeld said. “Then Bridget Everett's character takes a big salad dressing bottle and wedges it under her huge boobs. That's the storytelling tone I want to do. People who have a salad dressing bottle, not those who have a pencil dropped, stay under her boobs.”
She added, “Is it not that strange and rude to be a person?”
“Very authentic”
Shortly before 6pm, Sittenfeld was set foot into the commercial library where he was scheduled to give a speech. Library executive director John Faherty greeted her with praise for her new book, noting that the depiction of marriage was a bit darker.
“I called you and said, 'Are you okay?” he said.
“That's not a blurb for a paperback,” replied Sittenfeld.
She and Fahhty have come close over the years through various book talks at her hometown library. “I held an event here in 2016 to be 'eligible',” she said.
“We were told we could reveal the Skyline party,” she added, referring to the restaurant chain.
“Do they say “boys” with hot dogs? asked Faherty. “I'm scared to ask what's there for the girl.”
“Are you not getting a hot dog?” Sittenfeld said with a laugh.
She grabbed the phone and opened a text from her 15-year-old daughter. “We saw “retirement” as a family and she was like, 'Can I see it myself?”,” Sittenfeld said.
“If she says no, she'll see it anyway,” Fahhty proposed.
The throbbing of the voices grew louder as the crowd gathered. Sittenfeld has replaced her regular New Balance sneakers for what she called her “fancy sneakers.” She went to the bathroom to put on makeup – “A little foundation,” she said.
In the main room, Sittenfeld and Faherty sat in front of an audience, including Sittenfeld's 77-year-old mother. Sittenfeld explained the kind of question that comes up in her new book. If you eat a cup of sauerkraut in 1000 island dressings for lunch every day, will your spouse find that disgusting thing?
The audience has been cast. An older woman in a lilac sweater buried her face in her hand and laughed. When Fahty appeared to be on the crisis of handing out plot points, the spoiler-away audience cried out, “We haven't read the book yet!” In the front row, someone knocked a glass of wine before wiping it off on their hands and knees.
When Sittenfeld compiled her speech, readers rushed forward to seek selfies and autographs. In Sittenfeld's book, she realizes over and over that her character never escapes the embarrassment of being alive. You just need to find someone who responds kindly, or at least someone with a good-natured laugh. The pain of recognition filled the room.
Readers totted copies of “preparation” and “American Wife” that appear to be passing through the washing machine. One declared that she drove for three hours to get there. Another boasts a book club made up of Sittenfeld's devoted fans.
Sittenfeld's third-grade teacher, Bobby Kuhn, sat in the second row and said of her former student:
This is the type of compliment that Sittenfeld uses to receive.
“People will be like, 'You're so authentic.' That probably means you're saying something wrong,” she said with a laugh. “It's like someone you're bravely saying. I like you a bit – Ah, no!”
