Poured Over: Curtis Sittenfeld on Romantic Comedy

By Jenna Seery / April 13, 2023 at 6:00 am

“I can even still have my festively neurotic characters, but they can be working their way toward a happy ending, instead of working their way towards crushing disappointment.”

Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy is a playful, smart and fizzy look at love and pop culture through the eyes of a charming and relatable late-night tv writer. Sittenfeld joins us to talk about how a good novel feels like eavesdropping, what makes a character likable, surprising literary influences and more with Poured Over host Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Madyson.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Executive Producer Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.  

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Featured Books (Episode)
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng

Featured Books (TBR Topoff)
The Lonely Hearts Book Club by Lucy Gilmore
XOXO by Axie Oh

Full Episode Transcript
Miwa Messer

I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and I’m so excited for today’s conversation, Curtis Sittenfeld made her debut in 2005 with a novel called Prep, which, you know, for some of us was just a screaming pile of fun. It was so good. I love this book. I still love this book. And there have been, what, seven novels since then. And a story collection.

Curtis Sittenfeld

Yeah, it’s so funny because somehow the story collection scrambles my brain and makes the math confuse me, I think this is my eighth book, I think this is my seventh novel, eighth book.

And Eligible, we’re gonna get back to Eligible at some point, because you know, who doesn’t need a little bit of Pride and Prejudice. And if I remember correctly, reality TV had a really big play in that book as well. Romantic Comedy is the new one. This book is so charming, it is so charming. But you have this line that you’ve used to describe your work in the past where you’re saying novels need to do more than one thing. And I kind of want to start there. And then we can come back to Sally and Noah and some other folks in Romantic Comedy. But yeah, novels are supposed to do more than one thing, right?

I think most do. And I think they should, just because it’s like a novel is big and expansive. And even, you know, a short novel, which is a side note, I love and aspire to write, but haven’t done it yet. But like a 200-page novel is still 200 pages. So plenty, there’s plenty of room for different things to happen.

This new book is part love story, part workplace comedy part, in a way coming of age for Sally, because you know, our girl and boy do I like this character, our girl maybe gets in her own way a little bit.

Oh, without question. I mean, coming of middle age? Maybe I can write another novel called “coming of middle age.”

You know, I mean, coming of age shouldn’t be limited to teenagers and twenty-somethings. I think you know, better to do it at some point than not do it at all right?

Yeah. Better late than never. Yeah, absolutely.

She’s getting her act together. But can we just talk about how the book started for you? Because it’s fun. It’s just fun. And it’s not totally fluffy, there’s a lot happening. But I just I’m so charmed by this book.

Oh, that’s so, I have to say it’s, it’s thrilling to hear you say that because I really wanted to write a fun book. I mean, to be honest, I wanted to have fun writing it. And then I hoped it would be fun when people read it. But the origins of it are that my family was watching a lot of Saturday Night Live early in the pandemic. And I noticed, as other people have noticed, the pattern of men from Saturday Night Live who are talented, but like, you know, mortal men, dating, and in some cases, marrying women who are guests on the show as hosts or musical performers, who are like transcendent, beautiful, super talented, almost goddesses at the top of their game professionally. And I thought you know; it doesn’t seem like it happens when the genders are switched. It doesn’t happen with the talented but ordinary woman and the kind of transcendently gorgeous celebrity man. And I thought I thought someone should write a screenplay where a female writer at a show like SNL writes a sketch making fun of this. And then that week, she and the male host, you know, have unexpected chemistry and then a few months passed, and I thought to myself, maybe that screenplay should be a novel, and maybe that someone who is writing it should be me.

I have not been watching a lot of Saturday Night Live for a while and I do, like I’ll catch clips on the backside and things like that. But I mean, I don’t know, how long has it been around at this point? It’s been around since the 70s. Right?

It’s so funny because so I know exactly. In the novel, the main character Sally mentioned that she and the stand in for the show, which is called the Night Owls were both born in 1981. In real life, Saturday Night Live and I were both born in 1975. So we are exactly the same age. I did not watch as a baby I’ve been watching off and on since I was about 10.

So that would have started with like Belushi and Chevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd sort of what we think of as legendary comedy, and yet here you are bringing it in to 2020s. I mean, I like this cast. I really like this cast, but I really like Sally Mills. She’s familiar in a way but also, she’s good at what she does and yet she’s still kind of side eyeing her own career a little bit. And I think that’s partially sort of the world we live in. And this is something you’ve done in all of your books, honestly, is sort of play with this idea of, do we get what we want, women more often than men, what do we actually want? And it’s playing in that space, that gray area where you’re very wry, which I appreciate. And I think you’ve said this before in other interviews, that plot always comes sort of first for you and character is a close second kind of thing. Can we talk about structuring all of the beats in this? Because it’s, it’s a little bit of a page turner. I mean, I really wanted to know, and then you do something in the middle that made me, okay, I kind of squealed a little bit when we got to that email exchange, because I was like, yes, this is totally satisfying. And I do want to talk about that structure, because people don’t really use that as a device anymore. And I’m like, we’ve lost the ability to write letters, emails don’t quite count, you get close in this email exchange. But can we just start with the structure of this book.

06:05

I love talking about structure. About 50% of the book is a week in the life of the late-night sketch comedy show. And as it happens, SNL is such an interesting mix of like, it sort of metabolizes current events very quickly and very efficiently. And then it has this incredibly fixed structure week in and week out of like, here’s the cold open, there’s the host’s monologue, there’s some sketches. There’s the first musical performance, there’s Weekend Update, there’s the second musical performance. So it actually had sort of an automatic structure, not the structure of a show on the air, but the structure of preparing for it day by day, from Monday to Saturday. And that fixed structure was appealing, it was super fun to do research to kind of find the ins and outs of how it unfolds. And then I don’t think it’s giving up too much away to say, you know, Sally, and this pop star, Noah, who’s the guest host, they have chemistry, but she, as you said, can’t get out of her own way and can’t believe it, even when there’s overwhelming evidence. She says something rude to him at the after party that makes things go off the rails, and then they lose touch for two years. And then the pandemic happens, and he emails her and basically, you know, not immediately and not this explicitly, but kind of says, I never stopped thinking about you, which in itself, I think it’s very romantic. And then they have this email exchange. And that was super fun to write because I kind of felt like, like, so one of the pleasures of that for me was that the reader would have the same experience that the characters had and would have the exact same information. And so the reader could be like, is that sentence flirtatious? Or is it totally innocent? Or Is that intentional? Or, you know, am I am I too wrapped up in this? And this is just a totally friendly, platonic, COVID penpal-ship? Or is this like the beginning of you know, a great romance? I had a lot of fun with that, that section. And then there’s a third section where perhaps there’s some in person encounters again.

But here we are, again. I mean, here’s a woman who has grown up in an era where, you know, we’ve been told we can do and have whatever we want, and she kind of doesn’t know, and I did have a moment where I was like, wait a minute, haven’t we? Haven’t we gotten past these particular neuroses? And it’s like, well, no, apparently, Sally hasn’t.

Sally has the neuroses of like, am I pretty enough?

Am I pretty enough? Am I smart enough? Am I like, because she even has moments where I think she’s questioning how talented she is.

I think she’s more much more professionally confident than personally confident. And I think it’s almost like, she has personal confidence when her goals are sort of low. But she doesn’t know if she’s entitled to like, shoot for the stars. Like she feels confident that she’s worthy of a man she’s not into.

There are some dogs in her past.

But she’s not sure that she’s worthy of someone. I mean, it’s, it’s like, actually, I quote this line, which I think is attributed to Groucho Marx, I would never want to be a member of a club that would, you know, accept me and so she’s not sure like, is someone that I am into, into me and that feels kind of unfathomable to her.

That’s where I sort of want to tap her, yeah, and I’m talking about tapping a fictional character on the shoulder but such as such as the booksellers lament right like, Oh God, I’m talking about fiction people like they’re real?

That’s my dream. I take it whether or not you mean that as a compliment. I take it as Oh,

10:05

No, it is a compliment. No, it’s totally a compliment. It’s also me making fun of myself a little bit because I am talking about fictional characters. But you know, there were a couple of moments, sort of in that first section, and certainly while she was emailing, with Noah, I was like, Okay, listen, you, someone just needs to give you a little, like, pat on the shoulder and tell you, it’s gonna be fine. Because she really does have this self-sabotage, I don’t want to say, mechanism, but she has a thing for self-sabotage. It’s kind of like, wait a minute, wait a minute, aren’t you a little further along than, like, you know, because I remember coming up sort of, you know, watching my mom wrestle with that whole, like, you know, working and having a life and having kids and just all of this stuff. And I’m like, that’s a lot. That’s a lot to process, like, haven’t we moved a little further along, and yet, here, Sally kind of bopping along, not quite having it together?

It’s interesting, because my, my experience of real life is I feel very lucky to have friends that I talk very openly with. And sometimes I’ll have these like, talented, successful accomplished, very attractive friends. And they’ll, they’ll really casually say something so insulting about themselves, one of my friends will say, like, I’m just so incompetent as a mother or like, you know, I’m dating someone, and I saw his ex-girlfriend. She’s gorgeous. And I think you’re gorgeous. I feel like, among people I know, I’m sorry to say, I think being self-critical is very common. Like I don’t I think that, you know, a lot of us in adulthood, find enough confidence to kind of get by and get through the days. But if you really start excavating, and I think this is true, you know, for any gender, any success level, I think, I think people have incredible vulnerabilities and insecurities. And we happen to be privy to all of Sally’s because she’s the one telling the story.

Well, and I mean, it makes for a great novel. I mean, because stuff happens. We need stuff to happen. There are a couple of moments with Noah, the musician, where he’s kind of like, he really is such just a kind, normal human being. Like, he just says things that are grown up. And it’s clear that whatever work is done on himself, he’s done on himself. And here’s this guy and she’s just like, a little amazed that he’s so normal. And yet, we all know so many friends and again, male, female, it just everyone has had this experience where you’re just like, wow, you are a potential partner and there’s no reindeer games, and there’s no like, at one point, he’s just like, Sally, you just have to tell me when you’re uncomfortable. Like, I can’t read your mind. Yeah, I’m paraphrasing.

What are reindeer games?

Oh, that’s a phrase I use with like, people playing games with each other. Like, I it’s something I hate. Like trying to be manipulative and weird. Yeah, I just call it reindeer games. Because I’m like, I can’t like I just, I have no patience for that.

Can I use that expression? I’ll attribute it to you?

Feel free. But I mean, it’s just no, because we all know people who like play games and all that kind of stuff. And I just kind of stare and I’m like, no, no. I’m just like, I can’t read your mind. I’m so not interested.

Right? The older you get, yeah, the less the less patience, because I think if you’re 15 and someone’s kind of playing games with you, maybe you think well, this is what it is and it’s difficult and mysterious to interact with, with people.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I didn’t know anything at 15. Like, I could probably match my clothes and you know, brush my hair, but I don’t know, it was so long ago anyway. But let’s go back to Romantic Comedy for a second because the chemistry that these two characters have, it’s just kind of nice. I didn’t feel like you were trying to say to me, here’s this story— like it was just kind of like, yeah, I really want to see what happens between these people. So who showed up first though, Sally or Noah? Or did they sort of did you know you just needed a pair, and it was going to sort out however it did. Because I feel like you think about your stuff long before we get to read it.

Hmm. Well, I mean, I think that Sally definitely came first, and I felt like okay, who is she and what’s her backstory and it felt important to me actually. She had what she describes as a starter marriage in her 20s. So it’s not as if she’s actually aspiring to get married at this point. And she’s not even really looking for a romantic connection. I think her professional goals are clear to her than her personal goals. I wanted to write about someone who is essentially good at her job, she in some ways feels like she has the world figured out insofar as she needs to for her life. And then she ends up realizing that she’s wrong on many fronts, which is actually, I really love the combination in writing fiction, or writing about someone who’s intelligent, self-aware, and incorrect in their beliefs and assumptions about themselves and other people.

I mean, that’s where the fun comes from, though. I mean, again, if like, nothing happens, and there are some novels that I’ve read, simply because the language is beautiful, and that’s great. And that’s a different experience from this, but here I am rooting for Sally to figure it out, totally just for her to figure it out. And I have to say, I didn’t. I didn’t dislike the first husband, but at the same time, I was like, oh, he’s just not the right guy at all. Like, totally like, I mean, and I think you know, what I’m referring to, at one point, he looks at it and goes, but we don’t live in New York. And I’m just like, oh, honey, you gotta go. Well, this isn’t even this is not, this isn’t something that you fix over oatmeal the next morning. This is, you gotta go.

I think it gets back to what you were saying before about sort of like, what do we expect out of life? What do we have the right to expect? Like, is having, you know, a relationship or a marriage that’s fine, is that something that you know, a person should accept? And is it greedy to want more? Or is it like this is your wild and precious life and like, of course, you should want more? And I’m not really sure of the answer to that question. I think it also varies from person to person, and certainly, you know, has probably varied over time, too.

But there’s a tension to between the public and the private, right? Like Noah is this very sort of famous and has been famous for half of his life, or more than half of his life kind of thing. And Sally has a certain level of fame. I mean, even as a writer, because not everyone knows that television writers, you know, can become their own kind of names, but she’s had stuff go viral. People know who she is, she’s not, you know, some stranger in the corner wanting to do something, she’s actually doing all of this work. And yet the tension between what people expect when they meet Noah or who they think he is, or because of the experience of their music, and it’s just, it’s kind of great. But I want to talk about constructing that because you know, when Prep hit, it turned into a pretty big hit immediately. I mean, \ like when it hit, I remember that book going straight to the top of the New York Times list in what couple of weeks.

It would, actually it’s so funny, because it was a surprise bestseller, I think, including to me and my publisher. When I look back on Prep, which came out in 2005, I think of it as like the movie version of a first novel that almost no one ever experiences where I mean, I think is a fundamentally sort of different experience. I’m not sure if this is what you’re alluding to but like to be a person who gets recognized in public, which Noah absolutely is, and Sally isn’t and also, I am not. I mean, I think there’s something very different about going through the world and people feeling like they know you when they’ve never met you. If I go to an event where I’m the featured writer that I think someone can look at me and know that I’m Curtis, but I think that when I’m in the grocery store or something like that, like you know, like maybe once or twice a year, someone might approach me because they recognize me as a writer, but for the most part, I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think I think you have to be like Stephen King level to be recognized in the grocery store.

I get that but don’t you think it’s changed your understanding of how people move in the world to a certain extent?

Yes, yes. Like I think one thing I will say so, I feel like you know, I have a book come out every two or three years, and I get attention I mean, like in the form of like, here we are talking or their articles or whatever. But I then feel like I don’t get a lot of attention in for the next two or three years. There’s sort of like a flurry around publication and in all honesty, as a person who’s not primarily a public person and doesn’t have the infrastructure, I find it like a little bit overwhelming and so sometimes I think to myself, Oh my God, if this is what it feels like to have a book come out, which again, I mean, devastatingly to both of us most of the world is not like, you know, huge avid novel readers like, you know, there are many but, like the average American is not is not like waiting for publication day for some novel. So it’s like if I have a very watered down version of having public exposure and attention, and I feel a little bit overwhelmed. I do think oh my god, like, what is it like to be John Legend? Or what is it like to be Taylor Swift? It just must be very strange.

But watching Noah sort of navigate this stuff and the idea that he’s actually a dude who can speak to his feelings in a way, it’s kind of adorable watching him sort of help Sally maneuver this language because there’s this idea that women as women, we’re sort of fluent in this emotional landscape in a way where I’m sorry, I grew up in Boston, like, we don’t do this, we don’t know how to do this. We really, maybe when the gin comes out, like the gin and the cheese and crackers, but even then, it’s like not. So here’s this guy, you know, who’s just like, yeah, I can talk about my feelings and I’m not going to burst into flame.

I mean he is very open about the fact that he’s in therapy, he’s in recovery. I mean, he’s kind of, I think he’s gone to, in the distant past, went to a darker place than Sally and kind of had to address some of his demons head on, where she’s almost like, coasting along, mostly, you know, repressing her feelings. But I remember, a few years back being in touch with this guy that I had known growing up, who was like, singing the praises of Brene Brown, and I was like, so I thought it was so lovely and touching. And I was so happy that he had found Brene Brown, and that he felt comfortable, you know, praising her so openly. And I’m now 47 and I think that if you interact with someone who’s my age, who’s you know, in their 40s, I do think there’s kind of a difference between a person, if you get to know another person, well, a person who has sort of faced some of their challenges or, you know, if you want to say trauma, or whatever, and kind of like thought, you know, maybe these are ways in which my upbringing was disappointing or other people have been disappointing and this is how I’ve tried to work on myself and get to the other side of it. I think there is a difference between someone like that, and someone who’s just chosen to kind of ignore everything that haunts them or everything that ever went wrong.

There’s an intimacy and in sort of a feeling of eavesdropping, I felt like I was eavesdropping on everything that was happening and especially obviously, when I’m reading the emails, I was like, this is excellent. This is so great.

I hope it’s eavesdropping in the best possible way. It’s always I think, actually, that’s my ideal as a novelist is to make you feel like you’re eavesdropping, or l will go for walks with my close female friends and sometimes, I almost feel like more than I aspire to write some like, great literary work of art, I want to tell some story that the reader wants to like, urgently find out what happens and the specific feeling I want to give is like my friends saying to me, it’s crazy thing happened to me and I want to be like, what happened? And then what, and then what? I want the reader to feel that way to feel like okay, wait, but I do want to write like an emotional page turner, not necessarily like a plot, page turner, I mean, to some extent it is, but it’s not. It’s not murderers, but yeah, like, I want somebody to think, okay, I need to know how this turns out.

There’s a great exchange sort of early in the first section where Noah and Sally are working on the show. And they’re prepping for what’s going to be this live appearance. And they’re sort of joking back and forth about Sally, she knows she wants to write sort of feminist romantic comedies. And he’s like, well, what is that? I mean, is that just, you know, a romantic comedy with an Indigo Girls soundtrack. And she’s like, no, actually, like, your characters get to be flawed, they get to be people they get to— and she’s got this whole great riff. And it’s kind of the perfect encapsulation of what you do in your novels and your short stories in general, which is kind of like, I’m going to give you these messy people and before you know what happens, you’re going to totally care about, you’re gonna be so invested, you’re going to feel like you’re eavesdropping on them and you’re going to feel like you don’t want to let go of them at the end of it. I mean, listen, I hope everyone’s doing what they need to do. And again, I’m talking like about fictional characters like they’re sitting down the hall from me.

They might be, they might be!

Anything is possible. But are we talking about a structural trick? Is that something that comes out of like, knowing your characters cold and knowing where the plot needs to go or is that just kind of like, I’m going to noodle and see what happens, I’m going to let these characters surprise me because I feel like there’s more engineering in here than maybe people think. Because when stuff flows on the page, not everyone thinks, oh, a lot of work went into this, you know what I mean? Like you’re making it look easy.

It’s effortless. Now, you’re, you’re 100%, right that I think, you know, sometimes a scene kind of comes out exactly as I would wish for it to and then sometimes a scene that’s supposed to be fun and fizzy. It’s like I labored over it and revised it seven times. And I think it’s really a combination of what you’re describing, sometimes the characters have a conversation and I just sort of follow the dialogue and let it unfold organically almost the way a conversation between real people might and then other times, I do think very concretely and deliberately like, obviously, Sally is someone who has pain inside her as almost everyone does. And it’s like, what is that pain? You know, is it is it kind of temperamental? Is it based on experiences? What was her upbringing, what was her relationship with her parents, she was an only child. She grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, she snuck watched the stand in for Saturday Night Live when she was you know, starting in like fourth grade, her mother bribed her to sleep in her own bed by giving her a TV, she kind of entered the world of comedy writing through the world of writing, as opposed to the world of comedy, she didn’t do stand up, she didn’t do improv, which is relatively unusual for that sketch comedy world and but instead she was she like, worked for a luxury credit card magazine and she worked for like the newsletter of a healthcare company and she would submit these comedy packets to the TV show every year, kind of with no hope, thinking there was no hope of ever making it on and then you know, she did. And so, it’s kind of like, I mean, I think it’s some of it, I have to, I think there are some people who are almost like, I need to know my characters, favorite food, and I need to write their diary entries and I don’t go that far, but I do feel like they need to feel real to me, to allow me to make them feel real to the reader.

I want to build on something you just said that feeling real for you and feeling real for the reader likeability and bring up the L word, and I hate the L word. And I am kind of amazed, we still occasionally have conversations about you know, whether characters are likable or not. I don’t need to like characters to be involved in a story. I just I need to be in the world of the novel and I don’t mean that necessarily in a Sci Fi/ Fantasy, kind of I mean, every novel is its own world, right? Regardless of whether it’s domestic fiction. One of the things I’ve always appreciated about your work is that you’re kinda like, well, you like him, or you don’t, this is not my problem. My problem is how to figure out how to tell the story well and be really invested that way. And I’m just like, um, why? And, I mean, you did write a novel called Rodham, you wrote American Wife, like, everyone has opinions about some of these women. And, you know, the idea that Sally just gets to be messy on the page, or like, your Elizabeth Bennett, from Eligible gets to be really messy. I love that. And I don’t necessarily like them every minute, but I like them enough. And certainly, I like your Rodham, and I like your American Wife enough to say, all right, where am I going with you? And Lee is adorable Lee from Prep. She’s just, she’s great.

I mean, there’s no consensus really, on what likable is. So I don’t know how a person would almost try to write toward likability. Like it would be like, whose definition you know, like, would it be, like someone who never swears or something? Like, if that’s some people’s definition of likable? Or would it be someone who’s like a super loving, attentive mother? Or would it be like a very irreverent mother, I mean, you just you can’t please everyone. So you might as well kind of write the book you want to write, write the characters, you want to write and trust that some people will go along with you. Not everyone will and like, I always get some bad reviews. And you know, I think sometimes it’s just I have a sensibility that’s different sometimes from some reviewers and like, that’s okay.

I remember early on to lots of folks were like, well, Prep isn’t as “chick fic-y” as I thought, I mean, “chick fic” was a phrase we used back then for that kind of package. Right? And I remember folks saying, you know, well, it didn’t feel that chick fic-y to me. And I’m like, because it’s not. I mean, it’s just, it’s not. It’s sort of this darkly comic like, are you kidding me? Did you just say, oh, yeah, you just— that, okay, like, all of these moments that happen and granted, it’s a prep school and whatever, and you know, everyone’s raised by wolves. At the same time, you know, the idea that people keep trying to sort of slot you into a space and I’m like, no, it’s just Curtis being Curtis.

That could be like, like in bookstores, I could in the Curtis being Curtis.

Seriously, Curtis being Curtis. I mean, just this idea that we’re always trying to categorize. And, you know, just and say, this is where this belongs. Like, it’s kind of just a great story about characters I wouldn’t have encountered necessarily unless Curtis Sittenfeld put them in front of me.

I mean, I do think that categories of fiction exist more as like a sales and marketing tool. Then they exist as like clear distinctions in the minds of writers. And I think there are plenty of writers who kind of transcend like, it’s like a literary sci fi book, or it’s like a historical romance or whatever. So I don’t, I think that, in my experience, writers rarely kind of take those clear delineations into consideration.

I mean, if Emma Straub can do time travel, y’all I mean, like, that’s just, it’s all in the delivery. One of your characters says that, no, it’s all in the delivery, and it is all in the delivery. Can we talk about though some of the influences? I mean, you studied with Ethan Canin and Marilynne Robinson at Iowa, which I can only imagine how great both of those experiences are. I mean, you workshopped a little bit of Prep, while you were still getting your MFA there, but can we talk about some of the other literary influences that have helped sort of form this voice that I think of as yours?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, I actually think my, my biggest single influence is Alice Munro, the Canadian short story writer, who I first read in high school. I mean, I feel like she’s a magician, and every everything she does is perfect. But I mean, some of the things like in terms of actually, the likability question, I’ve never met her, but she appears to be totally indifferent to it. And like, she appears to operate on the assumption that, of course, we’re all self-interested. Of course, we all have, you know, unattractive impulses, which we might or might not try to conceal from other people. She’s just so good at the really specific moment, the really specific, nuanced emotions, she’s so good at kind of like, you know, showing how people do and don’t find connections with each other. And so even though I mean, it’s like, she largely writes about people living in rural Canada, maybe 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, or whatever. And so I don’t I don’t think that people, most people, I think when people think of influences, they often think in terms of subject matter more than style. And so I don’t think most people would be like, clearly Curtis was influenced by Alice Munro, but I definitely was.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, yeah. I wouldn’t have drawn a straight line, but I love hearing… because I mean, I was talking to someone the other day, too. And she was like, Edward P. Jones, it was Rachel Heng. We were talking about The Great Reclamation, which is set in Singapore in like, the 40s and 50s.

I love her stories, I haven’t read that, is that out yet?

Yeah, it’s just out and it is so good, you’ll fly through it.

She’s a phenomenal writer. I think I’ve read two of her short stories.

Right. The one from the New Yorker in the nursing home, that one and you’re just like, what did I just read? Yeah, this is wow, this is amazing. But Edward P. Jones, Lost in the City and The Known World, like the way he uses time. I was like, I totally get that. Not what I would have expected and I just I love the idea that we’re always sort of going back to, you know, these influences that may not appear immediate, but then you hear it and you’re like, Oh, that makes perfect sense. Yeah,

Yeah, I think that’s probably true for all writers have their sort of their like person that, you know, they kind of revere even if no one else know, that they revere?

Well, I mean, telling stories is probably the first human thing any of us ever did, right? Like, even if you’re not doing it as a published person. I mean, telling stories is one, really fun but also how we find our place in the world and how we give context to what we’re doing. I mean, the context to for Romantic Comedy. I mean, did you watch a ton of romantic comedies by the way, or did you just let yourself write the book you wanted to write because honestly, I can’t imagine watching a lot of… yeah, I’m not good with that. I’m really, it’s weird. My brother loves romantic comedies and I’m kind of like, if stuff blows up, I’m good. I can’t explain it. It might be the Boston thing. But no, let’s talk about research for a second because there I mean, obviously, there’s the Saturday Night Live piece, there’s the pop culture piece, there’s the who’s dating whom kind of thing but yeah, I mean, when you’re watching a romantic comedy, you know you’re watching a romantic comedy. Like When Harry Met Sally just pops into mind, like all of this stuff. But I feel like there’s a little bit of that running through Romantic Comedy, but not in an obvious way.

I mean, absolutely. So like, I think that in some ways, some of what made Romantic Comedy really fun to write was that I think all of the components were already, like inside me. From a very young age, like fourth grade, fifth grade, I read romances, including Harlequin romances, and, you know, the sort of books with the couple embracing on the cover while their hair was back. I loved romantic comedies, like see, you know, I saw When Harry Met Sally in the theater, Say Anything…

Oh my god, the boombox right?

Still waiting on that. And I also, I mean, I read people.com like, every day of my life, and I think I read it as kind of like, nontoxic procrastination. So it’s not like there’s some gossip sites where you’re just like, I feel dirty. And like, I know that the subject of that little article wishes that article didn’t exist. And that doesn’t usually feel like the case with people.com. So it’s like, you know, this sort of, not just celebrities, but like how we talk about celebrities, like all that is, is in my bloodstream. So it’s like I definitely did research about how Saturday Night Live works. And I you know, listen to comedian podcasts, which was a joy, like, you know, Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out, or WTF with Marc Maron. Yeah, so it was like doing that research was a delight, reading memoirs by former cast members was so much fun. But I already had been an SNL viewer for like, more than 30 years. So like, there were certain facts I had to nail down. But the general sensibility and a lot of the topics were ones that I was naturally interested in well before writing the book.

Did you surprise yourself at all, while you were writing Romantic Comedy?

So it’s funny because I’ve had the experience more than once, where after I’ve finished a book, I’ll be going back and like looking for something and I’ll find an email. In this case, I found an email that I sent to my editor and agent laying out what the structure would be. And it actually totally conforms. Except that I said, seems so delusional that I can’t even believe I sincerely, I said, I think it’s gonna be about 90 pages. It’s gonna be like a super short novel. So I think that word count does surprise me, which is ridiculous. Because my other books are like 400 or 500 pages. It’s 300 pages, and it’s like an airy 300 pages. But I think I thought, this is gonna be like the tightest, shortest, like, maybe it doesn’t even count as a novel. Maybe it’s a novella. And that was totally incorrect. So I did surprise myself with the length of it, but not really with the structure or the focus.

Yeah, I’m frequently the person who’s like, yeah, I could have lost 100 pages. I mean, yeah, I’m totally that person. I’m looking at this book going. I don’t know. Like, I don’t think it could lose anything. And when you say breezy, 300 pages, I mean, yeah, I flew, flew through this book.

Yeah, I think it is a quick read. A lot of people have said to me, Oh, I read it in a day, you know, like, I read it before bed, and then I woke up at 6am and I finished it.

There’s a similarity to Eligible because obviously, I mean, Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy, like, you were having a, you were clearly having a good time with that book. There are some notes you have to hit because it’s Pride and Prejudice, right. And this book sort of felt like you were kind of flying around on the page, and just having a really good time and literally writing the book you wanted to read?

That’s totally true. I mean, it’s funny because actually, I wrote Eligible because these two British editors reached out to me and said, we’re doing something called the Austen Project. We’re asking various writers to write modern retelling of Austen novels. Would you like to be the person who rewrites Pride and Prejudice, which as a side note, I mean, anyone can, the copyright has expired, so it’s not like I was like asked by the estate of Jane Austen. It’s funny to think about maybe I wouldn’t have written Romantic Comedy if I hadn’t written Eligible because, at the time, this is going back to like, 2011, I thought to myself, oh my God, if I sat at my desk and wrote, you know, my own Pride and Prejudice, I would know, that I was writing toward a happy ending, like I would, it’s almost like mixing my own, you know, angsty personality with you know, this like fun and lightness and I was kind of radical to like think somebody else had given me this happy subject matter if it just I mean, a fallen in my lap, essentially, which was such as stroke of good fortune. But like, I could say yes to it. Like, it wasn’t like my, my fate that I can’t fight is to write, you know, dark or depressing or sad books. And I can, I can even still have like my festively neurotic characters, but they can be working their way toward a happy ending, instead of working their way towards like, crushing disappointment. And like, the truth is that I started writing a different book in 2020, not Romantic Comedy, like, I knew that I wanted to write a fun, light short book, I started writing a book, it became apparent after six to eight months, it was not short, not like, not fun. And then I was kind of casting around. And I definitely feel like, I just function better as a human being when I’m writing and when I’m not writing, like, I think my brain almost as just need something to like, focus on. And so I almost like when I thought, oh, you know, that idea that I thought someone should write that screenplay. I was like, could I do this? Is this is this like legal is, you know, can I write something that’s just so frothy and fun? And then like, I had to be like, yes, Curtis, you can.

Isn’t it possible, though that sometimes frothy and fun is also really subversive. There are times where I’m just like, you know, we can actually have joy. I mean, the world is a complicated place, and lots of bad stuff is happening. And but like, sometimes I just need, and yeah, here I am saying I don’t really watch romantic comedies, which I don’t, but I like I will watch a movie where stuff blows up. And it’s ridiculous. I mean, the premises are more ridiculous than any kind of meet cute. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, want to fly a car where? No.

No, but I think you’re so like, I almost feel like when you’re saying, we can actually have joy, there should be like, T shirts or pillows that say that. I mean, you’re right. And I’m someone I’m like, an extremely lucky person and yet, I have to remind myself of that. You know, it’s just you can kind of, sometimes it’s hard to remember that some of our daily grind is self-enforced and doesn’t need to be.

And sometimes you just need a really good book.

Sometimes? Always, always, you need a really good book.

A really good book. Do you miss Sally and Noah and their world?

That’s an interesting question. I will say, so I wrote this book more quickly than most of my other books. In part because of COVID, because I was writing it, you know, while things were still kind of shut down, and I wasn’t traveling, so I wasn’t interrupting myself. But I also wasn’t interrupting myself and kind of, you know, writing 80 pages, and then being like, oh, I’ll write a short story. And I think the reason I wasn’t interrupting myself was that I was always glad to go back to them. I was always glad to enter their world like it was, it was fun and funny and romantic. And so now, sometimes somebody will ask me or like, as I, in this moment, prepare for the publication and think about like, oh, if I’m going to read a little excerpt at an event, what will it be if I open the book? I do, I feel this sort of, like, happiness and light and like, I like to be around them. I doubt that I’ll ever like write a sequel, but…

oh, yeah, I don’t know, I wasn’t asking if you were gonna write a sequel. I think the book as itself, I don’t think everything needs a sequel, or I think sometimes the thing is just the thing. And it sits in the world and you’re like, this is great. I wish I could read it again for the first time and yet, you know, and also, when you’re a bookseller, too, it’s like just this live in the house or does it go back? Because honestly, otherwise, you end up with just too much. It’s am I going to reread this or it’s always kind of fun to sort of think about what comes next. But yeah, it’s the right book for this moment that we’re in. It’s just, it’s, smart, frothy, and it’s smart fun. And it’s just kind of great. And, you know, Noah has really good taste in houses. So you get to do the whole, like, you know, spying on someone’s architecture kind of thing where it’s like, you know, I, especially when you live in New York, and they’re tiny apartments, everyone knows that art. But are you working on anything new? Is there a story collection maybe coming? Or is there another novel?

I think I think there is likely to be a story… I mean, I think in the fullness of time, there’s likely to be a novel and a story collection. I hope, I hope that I will write a story collection sooner rather than later. Because I definitely love stories in addition to loving novels.

Yeah. Can we just all try and bring story collections back? I mean, every now and then a story collection will pop, and you’ll just be like, yes, see, stories are awesome. And then you go back to this moment, where it’s like, people don’t really want story collections. And I’m like, listen, if you can scroll for 15 minutes on your phone, you can read a story on your phone. You can totally read a short story on your phone and sometimes you can, you know, read a short story on a like, placard. I mean, stories are amazing, flexible things.

Yeah, it’s the perfect like, before bed. I think in some ways, because I’ll get this feedback, where sometimes people will say I don’t usually like short stories, but I like yours. And I think that’s not entirely a compliment. Or like, I think, oh, my God, you just haven’t met enough lovely, nice, short stories. But I think some of people’s hesitation seems to be like, you know, I get to know a character and then I lose them. And I’ve invested in, you know, knowing them and memorizing their name or whatever. But I think that if you read one story a night before bed, you kind of get around that where you sort of know this, and then you can go to sleep and forget it. And we’re like, you know, like, just remember a few outlines, remember the feeling the story gave you or like some moment in it. And then the next night, you read another one and then your brain, your brain will be ready for it.

I do love a story collection. I mean, I love short stories on their own too. But I do love a story collection where you’re just like, because the thing is too, if it’s a writer I really like I don’t care that the characters change from place to place. And I also don’t need, you know, it’s a linked story collection, you can pretend it’s a novel. It’s like no, it’s okay for it to be a linked story collection or, you know, novels in stories. I’m like, yeah, it’s okay if it’s a short story collection, I swear. I want the experience of those characters and that narrative voice and just you can do whatever you’re gonna do, and I’ll follow you. But anyway, Curtis Sittenfeld. Thank you so much, Romantic Comedy is out now and if you haven’t read Eligible, and if you haven’t read Prep, well go back and get them I know everyone else has read American Wife and Rodham but I’m going to yell for the ones that you know, everyone should go back and reread.

Thank you. This was so fun. Thank you so much.