Poured Over: Sloane Crosley on Cult Classic

“…A part of the point of the book was to not shy away from what we shy away from in real life. And one of the things we shy away from in real life is admitting for exactly how long we are a mess and don’t know what we’re doing.”

From her classic essay collections, including I Was Told There Would Be Cake through her last bestselling novel, The Clasp, Sloane Crosley keeps us entertained with her trademark wit, voice and gimlet eye. Her latest, the genre-busting new novel, Cult Classic, is gobs of fun and utterly original, and Sloane joins us on the show to talk about love and relationships and finding our sense of self, the fantasy of consistency, aiming through the wood and at the chopping block, having the same editor (or therapist) for 14 years, her literary influences, and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. 

Featured Books:

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley

The Clasp by Sloane Crosley

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman

Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark

Pitch Dark by Renata Adler

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Full transcript for this episode of Poured Over:

B&N: I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and I have one job today and that only job is to be straight man for Sloane Crosley. Ah, I’m so happy to see you. Cult Classic is out now. It is her newest book. And it is a novel. And it’s the sibling to The Clasp. So if you’ve read The Clasp, there’s going to be a lot of talk about creating fiction and creating fictional characters, and telling stories. But we’re going spoiler free on Cult Classic because when this airs, it’s going to be wicked close to the pub date. And there’s something that happens towards the end of the book that made me laugh out loud. And I’m so excited for people to experience. It’s so hello, you.

Sloane Crosley: Hi. It’s great to see you. I’m better now that I’m here. It’s great to see you. Thanks for having me. Glamour, here we are glamour, the glory.

B&N: On the fifth floor of the Union Square store, actually, which is, it is glamorous.

SC: It is glamorous, it genuinely is. And of course it’s you know, even if you were not a reader, this is the decoration of choice for the new generation. It should be actually color coded, I think, to make it terrible. These are beautiful. Those are beautiful looking books.

B&N: Yeah, these are all the books we’ve done in the first sort of, oh, start of the show, everyone who’s here has been on the show.

SC: And lived to tell the tale.

B&N: Ah, you know, we try we try. Alright, so let’s talk about Cult Classic for a second because, okay, when did you start working on this novel?

SC: So I started in late 2017, early 2018, which by, you know, fictional standards or fiction standards is actually not too long a stretch. But um, I finished it pretty quickly. For me. Normally, things take me quite a long time. And I finished it pretty quickly, but then handed it in in March 2020. Oh, wow. So we decided to just to be a little to lead with some inside baseball to try to avoid the bottleneck of publishing and move it lightly, which I’m very happy we did.

B&N: That is a really, really good idea. So Lola, is the heart of the story. And you gave me two different ear worms at two different points. And there was a lot of Barry Manilow in my life for about five minutes, and then followed up quickly by the king. So thank you for that.

SC: Do you know how to get rid of that by the way?

B&N: Oh, I can tell you. It’s gone now. So I’m not sure I should have raised anytime.

SC: I know. You have a distinct question. You’re gonna ask me about the book and why I’m here but just as a tip for listeners everywhere. If you have song stuck in your head, you know Neutrogena. The shampoo was supposed to allegedly wash out mildew or not mildew, but like build up. Sort of, you know, refreshing thing. I don’t know if that’s true. I’m not shilling for them. But I will say if you hum anything by Bob Marley, it will kick whatever is in your head out without getting the Bob Marley stuck in your head.

B&N: Okay, this is good to know.

SC: That is my one tip. Now we can talk about the book.

B&N: Okay. But this is love. This is memory. This is New York, this is wellness. This is not so much Bob Marley. But okay.

SC: Very little Bob Marley in the book.

B&N: You started this in ’17/18, you took your time you handed it in in ’20. But how did it start?

SC: For narrative nonfiction, I tend to start either with a story or a theme. And it’s pretty defined, I can point at which essays which for fiction, it sort of comes together in a there’s a little bit of alchemy to it without sounding too insufferable about it. Where I did feel like I was avoiding a certain topic a lot. Don’t despite writing all this narrative nonfiction, and despite writing The Clasp, which has a fair bit of romance in it, I don’t really write about dating and men on a regular basis. It’s just not something I feel like I’ve written about and a lot of as to avoid pigeon holing. And a lot of that is to avoid response, but you shouldn’t operate just because you’re afraid of perception. And so I feel like I’m sort of dove headlong and I found a way I just needed a container that felt original to me, at least I hope it comes off as original but felt original to me to write about relationships and commitment and sort of the philosophy of romance. And do we believe in Happy Endings and all that jazz in a way that felt fresh and literary and not infantilizing towards those topics that permeate every aspect of our lives. And so, once I sort of thought there was a wish fulfillment aspect to it. Where I thought, okay, you have this comedy of manners, where people are sort of desperate to bust out of it a little bit and in that way, it’s similar to The Clasp. Yeah, and this really twisted way decided to have this book set in or partially sent in an abandoned synagogue on the Lower East Side that’s been turned into a mind control cult. But in like a cute way, I think for fans of the Nexium documentary, this is not the book for you, like you know.

B&N: There is definitely that I mean, And Lola has a very specific kind of, I don’t want to say New York gal. But she’s got her history. She’s got her present. She’s got her history, and she likes having the two closer together, then some. So is Lola, the first character that showed up? Or did you start with the idea that you wanted to do this big exploration into love and relationships? And all of the things you don’t usually write about?

SC: Well, two things. One is, she is quite New York specific. But I think her general desire is for consistency in her life, which seems pretty universal to me as well, the idea that she stayed at all these different people, and people just have this the fantasy of someone who knew you when so you’re not sort of shaking the etch-a-sketch and starting over every single time is frustrating. And she would like a more permanent, you know, witness really, for selfish reasons. And I think that is kind of universal. But she’s actually not the first one who showed up. That’s an interesting way to put it. It’s probably Clive, okay, so she has this relationship with her former boss at a magazine that is called Modern Psychology, which is basically Psychology Today, but it has not folded so good for Psychology Today. But in the book it has. And he’s become this sort of Guru type figure, but I just really liked, their relationship is I suppose what showed up for it’s not really him, but this this. They’ve known each other for so long that they’ve gone through all the possible guises of that kind of relationship where there’s a mentorship. He’s like her older brother, at some point, she thinks that maybe this is the person she’s meant to be with at some point, then she has this sort of disdainful relationship with him. They’re friends. She knows him so well. They have this contentiousness and also this deep love for each other. And I really love the idea of putting someone like that in a novel like this. So it’s not just will she won’t she and you know, you’re, hopefully you’re not wondering if she’s, you know, going to end up with him. But he’s also a very prominent figure that you know, the people you don’t know what to do with in your life are hard to write about in fiction.

B&N: Yeah, and he also, though, he’s such a contrast to Lola, because he is a little more sure of where he sits.

SC: Well he’s rich. Wealth will do wonders, for your self esteem. I recommend it, try it. I’ve heard at least I should say, but he’s also part of her sort of critique of men. So he sort of gets lumped in and represents something that isn’t necessarily romantic. But we sort of watched him get advantage after advantage after advantage. But be quite lovable about it. So he’s a complicated figure. You’re not just you’re not sort of completely resentful about it. He just doesn’t see himself as privileged at all. I have a soft spot for Clive. I mean, terrible. He’s a terrible person. But I just love him.

B&N: But he has his place in the world. And if he were that terrible, I don’t think Lola would still be remotely in his orbit, because she’s not a stupid girl.

SC: No, she’s not stupid. But I think it’s also, again, it’s that that fantasy of consistency, which is not really a way of put it before, but I just, I think it extends and I hate to sound as hokey as it’s about the friends we made along the way. But as much as it’s a romance novel, and the sort of suspense novel about romance. It is truly also about those work friends and the core friends you have. And she’s not getting that consistency from her romantic life. She is getting it from her friends. And so she’s sort of hesitant to give them up even when they are abject problem children. Because these are her people.

B&N: And consistency is such a wild word to use. I keep every time you say it, I’m just like, right? Consistency.

SC: Yeah, she just wants I think it’s, what I wanted to do with the book is, again, like sort of pay tribute or just respect, a kind of life like that, you know, because what would you do with the people you’ve dated for five months, or four months? Whether you have hurt them, they have hurt you, nobody hurt anybody, whatever it is, I mean, one delightful thing that seems to be happening thus far, but that I don’t know how to handle is people are asking me relationship-based questions. You know, there’s a lot about the philosophy of love if there is such a thing and you know, according to like, Elaine … correctly you know, there is a lot of that in the book about you know, what is love is you know, at some cynical person at some cynical character at some point in the book says it’s agree mean to live in someone else’s narrative? Someone else’s, you know, it’s letting someone else put glitter on your face. There’s a variety of, you know, offered explanations for it through fiction, but I’m being asked. And I’m not Esther Burrell. I don’t frickin know.

B&N: There’s another dude in the book who says that falling in love was like trying to remember something you never knew and was like, oh, yikes.

SC: But you know, what’s funny? I think that that seems positive to me. There’s something about it, where I feel like the times that I personally have fallen in love. It’s just this joy of finding familiarity, this joy of, you know, if it’s sudden, it’s the walking into the restaurant and thinking, here you are, you know, and sometimes you never knew them before. You know, but I think for her, I just really tried to give Lola, you know, she’s a bit of a mess. She’s over analytical about this stuff. And it’s not like, she has no similarities with me. But I do feel like I just turned up the dial as high as I could. For satirical purposes.

B&N: I have a note in my galley that says Nathaniel, from The Clasp, could have been one of the dudes that Lola dated. And that’s part of what makes me think of these novels as siblings is, you know, this idea that our friendships evolve and would we still be friends with the people that we were friends with before? And this goes back to what you were just talking about? With this four to five month romance? It’s like, what do you do with that person? When you bump into the street? And it has. Yes, it has happened to all of us. And you kind of go, Hmm, do I cross the street? Do I make eye contact? How much of it? How much do I want to engage in this particular situation? And you decide in the minute for the most part.

SC: Also part of her fatal flaw is that what you’re describing, she’s prepared for it. So imagine walking around, you know, with all of those people so fresh in your head, it’s unhealthy. You know, as opposed to not knowing what to do. Imagine running into that person, and then having an immediate sort of index Rolodex of every text exchange you’ve ever had with them, as opposed to just knowing that there was something vaguely awkward and that we’ve all moved on, and we’re living our lives. Do you know, I saw it. So her inability to let go of that is her sort of Achilles heel.

B&N: Lola and I have very different baseline settings.

SC: I imagine her brain is very crowded with this, this crap.

B&N: Well, they’re they’re sibling novels. And, you know, there is a lot to be said for, well, growing up. And that’s a lot of what’s happening in both of the books. And Lola, she’s struggling with the idea of growing up and part of that growing up, is her partner, Boots, her fiance, who is a glassblower.

SC: That was fun. Fun to research glassblowing.

B&N: But here she is, she’s engaged. I mean, isn’t that the ultimate and consistency? I mean, you’re about to spend the rest of your life with this one guy, and she seems to be crawling out of her skin a little bit.

SC: Yes. But who amongst us is not married to their problem? That’s the devil you know. And so I think that it’s really hard for her to accept a healthy definition of what it is to settle. It gets a bad rap. It’s a bad word. But you know, to sort of look around and think what is enough? What is me letting go of my old fantasies of how I thought a relationship should work out and going towards something that may or may not work out.

B&N: Disillusionment is hard for her.

SC: But yeah, I do think what I think the two books have in common, I think sort of started to touch on it before, that really perverse strain of wish fulfillment. Where you have, you know, I didn’t want to write novels about a bunch of kids in New York sitting around and debating about movies and talking in circles and there’s an art form for that and it’s made by Whit Stillman, you know, or even Ben Lerner you know, or like I need and there’s a way and sometimes it’s done to great effect I mean I think Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, if you’ve ever read Muriel Spark I mean, this is not I’m not breaking a new mold and writing about romance in an intelligent way, hopefully. But I do feel like they, they want more than whatever is happening in their social spheres and with their lives and their careers. And I hope to not make them too self pitying about it. It’s just that they feel stuck. And so instead of unsticking them with some sort of casual drama, or some mellowdrama, I like to give them something a little magical. So in The Clasp, one of the characters becomes obsessed with the idea that a necklace in a short story is real, and he ends up going to Normandy to try to find it. It’s a bit unhinged. and underemployed and his friends follow him and chaos and antics ensue. And with this one, you know, she it’s less of a life malaise, but she’s sort of questioning, very specifically the romantic part of her life and her relationship, whether she likes it or not, her old friend slash former boss comes in with this grand, oddly fancy manipulation that I wanted to feel real. I don’t think it’s spoiling it too much to say that, you know, once this process kicks in, the whole point of it, is that if she steps within a five block or so radius of this synagogue slash now club on the Lower East Side, she will probably run into an ex-boyfriend and she chooses to do so. I wanted that choice to feel logical. If that happened to me, I think I would do it because I’d be so curious about whether or not it would work. You know, screw the consequences, which is sort of what happens with her. It doesn’t seem like what the main characters would wish for, but it is, you know, you can’t always get what you want, but you try sometimes.

B&N: But the ex-boyfriends seem relatively okay. Just where they are with their lives.

SC: But that’s also her perception. So they’re the they come in sort of a stream, there are some where you get a more concentrated to use sort of a cinematic reference, like a Linkletteresque evening that she has maybe no sex in a graveyard, but she has with them the indie version of no sex in the champagne room, but but she she either she has this, there’s depth to a lot of them, but a lot of them are supposed to come, you know, she describes at some point then being propelled as it from a t-shirt gun at her. And so you don’t really know if they’re perfectly okay with their lives. But I think that they are more equipped to run into somebody because they are not gripping on with their bear claws to the past the way she is. And there are a couple of moments with them. Where you can tell that there’s an awkwardness for them seeing her that, you know, a lot of the point of it, that they remember her to which is how they are able to be summoned through mysterious means.

B&N: Okay, so you’ve said in previous interviews, that plot is the hardest thing for you and structures. The second hardest thing? So I want to switch for two seconds. Also, I don’t want to give away too much. I know you have not you have not, but we’re getting close to Okay. Oh, some stuff, maybe border reveal. But I do want to talk about the actual physical craft of what you’re doing. Because there were some people who have this idea that writing fiction means you just leave all of yourself on the page, right? And yeah, of course, you’re the person who’s creating all of this. So yes, there is going to be a piece of you in everyone, etc, we get all of that. But the actual physical mechanics of building a story like this, it’s a little genre busting. There’s a lot of different elements that you’re playing with here. A lot of different tropes.

SC: Thank you.

B&N: Well, you know, it was fun. It was a page turner, I read it very quickly.

SC: Whether or not as successful at the busting is irrelevant. I thank you for recognizing the effort, keep going.

B&N: But so let’s talk about just constructing a plot like this, and how you know, the beats are there. And we are gonna go spoiler free while we talk about beats in your plot. I’m not entirely sure how we’re going to do that. But we’re gonna figure it out. And then also the structure. I mean, you’ve got a very tight cast again, I mean, it’s essentially Lola boots, to best friends and Clive. I mean, that’s a cast of five.

SC: Good, good headcount. Yeah.

B&N: And, you know, when the boys come in and out, do their thing and whatnot. And there’s some other folks, but that’s really, you’ve got a really tight cast, you’ve got a very specific piece of New York. I mean, this is a really tight, tight novel, and it’s not even 300 pages, right?

SC: I think it might be 300 pages with the acknowledgement? I’m kidding.

B&N: I have no idea what, which is why I’m grabbing the galley. 284 pages with no acknowledgments because I’m working off the galleys. So how do you construct a book like this and still keep the heart and soul of it?

SC: My issue and why I’ve said it in the past that it’s difficult is because I think it sucks all the fun out to do it too much. If I know exactly where everything is going. It feels like I’m spackling instead of painting or building or doing anything creative. I’m just sort of which is what editing actually should feel like. That’s what editing should feel like that you know, you’re not you recognize the shape of something and then you’re just smoothing it out. Writing I don’t think should feel that way. And so but plotting tends to Hit that lever in me. So for this, I knew what the ending would be about 50 or 60 pages into it. And I wonder if that, you know, not to critique my own novel, but I wonder if it’s apparent. I wonder if there’s like a little bit of training wheels, where you’re like, Oh, this is hopefully good, hopefully enjoyable. And I should also say that in terms of the way I write question is very different. For other people, a lot of people have political urgency, something they absolutely need to get out, everybody should shouldn’t have that one. That should be easy. But I do write to entertain people. So for the most part, as long as I’m doing that, it’s fine. But then realizing what the fairly large twist would be at the end provided me or it’s like threading a needle or a pulled it through. And then the plot sort of fell pretty smoothly, like a piece of string, just to belabor the needle, sewing, I should do a glassblowing analogy. So that’s how I did. And so in terms of what when your question about like, how do I keep the heart of it, it is really hard to find. And I think I did it in this book, probably more than I did it with The clasp. I don’t know what the effect is. But I know what was going on in my brain and on my keyboard, a little more finding that balance between I have to know where I’m going. But it feels a little more like stand up comedy or improv. And I just have to, I know that this character, or these things, have to open the door at the end or plug in the toaster. But now how do I get there? And just for shorter sort of spurts so that I’m not babbling for too long as I am now.

B&N: Lola never really stops moving. Even when she’s home. There’s never a moment where she’s just staring at a wall, which part of that obviously, is because she’s sitting in a novel and you can’t have something staring at a wall for very long. Right would not work. But it’s really interesting to see her progression through the story, and how she responds to the challenges and the information that she sort of handed out as it goes, and you have moments where like, she really does love this. And then there are moments where you’re like, oh, oh, she’s not, Lola’s really not okay.

SC: Well, I think a couple of things. You know, you can always if anyone was making the grass growing joke, I did think that, you know, one person who has, you know, Otessa wrote a book where the narrator is unconscious for 98% of the time, and I was like, good on you, girl. That’s a neat trick. She’s a part of the reason why there’s always action in the book, or there’s always, hopefully, suspense as well as the threat of suspense, those are two different things. Is because there’s so much of her interior world, that you can have her staring at a wall because she’s, it’s this constant engine in her head. So it is much easier for the reader for me for the book for everyone involved for her to be walking from Point A to Point B, while she’s thinking of these things, as opposed to you there is one moment where she wakes up really early. And something has happened. And, you know, it’s so funny. I guess it’s not in danger of being a book where nothing happens, since neither of us can talk about it. I’m like, well, not that he keeps I feel like I keep on eating these like weird cul de sacs of conversation where I can’t actually share. But something has happened. And she wakes up the next morning, and there is that specific light that comes into the apartment, and she’s just sort of moving her hand in the air. It’s like a moment of quiet, but the fact that it sticks out the fact that I can count the moments where there’s not a lot coming at her sort of, you know, the exception proves the rule.

B&N: She’s a bit of an outsider in her own life. I know she doesn’t really like it. But she doesn’t know how to change it, per se. She really gets in her own way a lot.

SC: She does. I mean, I think with that, again, a part of the point of the book was to not shy away from what we shy away from in real life. And one of the things we shy away from in real life is admitting for exactly how long we are a mess and don’t know what we’re doing, you know, books, tv shows any form of art. We’re very fine with saying a 20 something or even a mid 30 something. All these shows should be called Shouldn’t You Know Better By Now? Like they should all have this ambitious 37 And she actually has a lot going for her and she still feels a little bit at a loss and a lot of the book is about she gets in her own way because she feels that pressure for closure that now, you know, you’re asking before about her relationship with Boots and her fiance, she feels that because she’s with him, that it’s she’s almost feels the societal pressure to forget or to minimize everything that came before him. And that, if for any reason, anyone in the past was just as big or important in a different way, the world will tell you, that means that you are not ready to move on, do not pass go, you cannot rescue yourself from a tower. It’s not happening. And I actually think that part of the lesson of the book is in debunking the myth, or that philosophy that we’re fed.

B&N: I know you’ve covered this ground, but I mean, any any comic writer has covered this ground to a certain extent. And, you know, we’ve gone through these periods in our society, in our culture, where, you know, we declare that irony is dead and humor is gone, and that we can’t…
SC: After every tragedy.

B&N: Yeah, exactly. And obviously, we’re living in a very strange, it just it seems like everything is on fire, and everything is on fire. It doesn’t seem. Everything’s on fire. But there is a certain power in humor, and there’s a certain relief in humor. But do you start with the funny or do you start with the idea and you let the characters lead you to where that relief in that care and that instinct is, I mean, it’s not like you’re sitting down and saying, Hi, I’m going to be funny today. It’s, I’m looking at the world right and saying.

SC: I feel like flicking my hair. This old thing? What? No, you don’t you don’t sit down. And I would imagine that would make you very unfunny. You know, well two things. Did you ever read The Writing Life by Annie Dillard?

B&N: Not in a million years.
SC: Not a million years, right. But it’s a time I can’t believe they haven’t fit the font on the spine, it’s so thin. But she talks about the process of writing that I think, for me, it’s the process of humor, where she says, this is an analogy that she has a right to, and I do not where she says that if you’re chopping wood, and you aim for the wood, you will miss and if you aim for the chopping block, you’ll hit it, you have to chop through the wood. And I feel like that is if I’m funny how I’m funny. He had to do that. But it sort of works. You can’t look it directly in the eye. It’ll bite you. It’s actually really interesting about the timing of this book and what I’m doing out. Because when you talk about escapism and humor, you know, the world is a very dark, terrible place. And it’s always hard to tell if darker, because the present always seems darker, you know, you sort of nostalgia for the past or if we are really barreling towards the sixth extinction. Probably the latter. That’s a different podcast. Anyway, but I feel like during COVID, that escapism really took the form of genuine escapism, people wanted to watch Game of Thrones, they did not or you know old episodes of Friends or The Office, you know that they weren’t, I think craving the sort of more there are fantastical elements to this book. But it’s a lot of what I hopefully makes them successful as they are tethered to the ground by realistic dialogue or funny dialogue or, you know, just real, recognizable interpersonal relationships. And it’s like they didn’t want that. And I think they mean, I’m not just saying this, because I hope someone buys the book. I do think that there’s a thirst again, for escapism, just simply being humor. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be massive, large-scale fantasy. But that wasn’t actually true. It’s like almost hard to remember all these things about the past few years. It’s weird that we pretend that they’re three different years. First of all, like 2020, 2021 and 2022. I’m like, Give me a break. One year.

B&N: My concept of time, completely shattered.

SC: Right? I have some people, they wanted to be on a different planet. And now I feel like there’s a little bit of a return home. And the nostalgia for the recognition of a life that has not necessarily passed, but that is reforming especially in New York.

B&N: Let’s talk about who you are as a reader and who your literary influences are maybe just specifically on this book. Let’s talk about, let’s stick to the fiction.

SC: Fiction eviction. I know it’s hard to do. I certainly don’t write both at the same time, right? Because I think that does a massive disservice to both of them. Having said that, of course there are details or details, observations or observations you’re going to take notes and possibly funnel them down, you know, one river or the other. But I do feel like I read a lot of things that struck me I mentioned Muriel Spark before. Loitering with Intent. Pitch Dark, the Renata Adler like things like that. After, which is a very weird thing to do is to basically I look at books and see how someone might have done them better, right? Or addressed a topic in a different way. It’s like reading a restaurant review after you’ve been there. Just to confirm your experience, I have no idea. But so, for this book specifically, I would say, there’s no one book that influenced me, but I would say that I pulled from different places. So the Rachel Kushner The Flamethrowers, that sort of not to be totally hokey, but love letter to New York aspect of it is a lot from her, you know, and in terms of the sort of romantic vibe of it. You know, I had read The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

B&N: It’s a great book.

SC: Great book. I feel like, again, my entire sort of generation has taken swipes at this and not just the ladies, you know, you’ve got Ben Kunkel did it in indecision? Like, you know, while ago, same thing with Keith kesin. And I feel like, or Ben Lerner. I mean, there’s a lot of instead of books really, I think it was this idea and the culture of the boys need to learn a lesson. Right? Like, okay, and that is, I mean, if we’re really going to talk about influence, that’s Dickensian, you know, we’re gonna you’re gonna be visited by a series of ghosts. And you’re gonna learn how to be a good person and what love is for and it’s a wonderful life. It’s always the boys, there’s also the mystery elements. I think I am. How can I put this? When it comes to fiction, maybe when it comes to nonfiction, too. This is not really for me to say, but I’m gonna say it anyway, I think I am a recently retro writer.

B&N: What do you mean?

SC: I mean, that I think I write novels like, I love Jonathan Latham’s novels, and Michael Shavon novels, and Donna Tartt’s novels. And there’s something and I’m not saying I’m not putting myself in the ring with those people by listing them. I’m just saying that they’re funky. But they’re not particularly experimental. You don’t have a billion line breaks. And nobody is throwing around words like autofiction. They are just autobiographical novels that has some serious weirdness to them. And I think those are people who I look up to.

B&N: The word story covers a lot of ground too. I mean, it’s okay to just tell a story. And if you hit some other points while you’re telling a story.

SC: Well, it’s not a PSA. I mean, that’s weird. I mean, everyone’s sort of looking for the lesson. And I do think that the character, that Lola learns a lesson within Cult Classic. But I don’t think that the reader has to, I’m yelling at her, not you.

B&N: Oh, that’s clear.

SC: Like you’re cool reader who buys this book, we’re fine.
B&N: But Lola, I mean, she is genuinely deeply messy.

SC: Yeah, she’s deeply messy. But I do think that’s where the discomfort of friction comes from is finding yourself in deeply messy people. And, you know, historically, I’m not going to name names. But historically, that that’s where the profound discomfort comes from, and someone talking you into you introduces themselves and says, I am a monster, please come with me, you know, or I’ve done a horrible thing. But let me tell you why. And I think it is sort of modern, more maybe casual challenge to say, I am a mess. And I have treated people poorly. And I am potentially treating my own partner poorly. And I am self pitying, and a little bit embarrassing. Still, like me, and not to say that I am concerned with the likeability of characters as a notion. I think it will be a bit of a kerfuffle around a Claire Masood book at some point about female likability. No, that’s not what I mean. I just mean, literally, there has to be an outlet somewhere that the reader can plug into. And that’s true with the most heinous of narrators. And I don’t think she’s the most heinous. But I do think that that’s where the source of discomfort comes in.

B&N: You’re working on the next thing. Yes. Yeah. And the next thing is a little different. When are you delivering that manuscript?

SC: Oh from your mouth to my editor’s ears. Um, I will be working on hopefully notes will come in shortly. And then it’ll probably be I assume, the latter half of next year.

B&N: I mean, it’s been announced. So I mean, I do want to hit it a little bit because it is sort of a classic memoir. Ish, which is a little different for you. I mean, we’re not we’re not doing the essays. We’re certainly not doing fiction. Would you let folks know what this is.

SC: Sure. I mean, it is a little less of a dance monkey dance in which was what the essays feel like. And it’s one of the pride myself on is entertainment. Basically, it’s called grief is for people. And it follows the, it’s in five parts and it follows the Kubler Ross stages of grief, they have not been debunked in and of themselves individually, but they, you know, we can move them around like a shell game, things kind of go emotions come and go, sort of similarly, I guess, to the point of Cult Classic, because, you know, I don’t believe in slamming the door, and not having something sneak up on you. So, you know, there’s a little bit of bleed, but it’s about a series of unfortunate events. I was burglarized. And then a month later, someone you know, too, beloved figure in publishing, my former Boston, best friend, Russell Perot died from suicide, and then COVID hit. And it’s mostly about him and our friendship. So in that sense, I suppose there’s a sort of truth and beauty aspect to it. You know, it’s called Grief is for People because it’s about different types of grief. I don’t want to spoil it. Because weirdly, there is a couple of unexpected things happen. So it’s not a straight grief book. But it was very hard to write. I’ve read it during the pandemic. And I will say before, when I was saying that editing should be more like spackling. It was editing Cult Classic. Well, that was writing Grief is for People, which I normally don’t really do. And that was a very strange feeling. I could never have never, ever have written them both at the same time. But instead, you know, punching up jokes, or taking things down a notch and fiddling with Cult Classic, was such a welcome respite from crying. Yeah, all the time, every day, I did a really sort of stupid thing that I hope will pay off, which is take a very sad moment in all of our lives. And write about suicide. And inside of it.

B&N: You’ve had the same editor since your first book in 2008. I do actually want to shout this guy out. Yeah. Cuz, I mean, here’s the thing. What’s that? He’s worked with you on essays. He’s worked with you on the novels. And you took what 200? And something pages out of the class before you passed it for press.

SC: We airlifted it Yeah. Okay, we got some heavy machinery, lifted it.

B&N: And now you’re working on this memoir. I mean, so when you’re sitting down, though, with your editor, and you’re sending in pages for the first time, what happens next? Does it depend on what it is that you’re sending? Does it depend on like, how does that relationship work?

SC: I am really lucky in the fact that I can come to Sean McDonald, which he has a name is a person. I can come to Sean, probably, I would imagine a little messier than other authors can come to their editors who don’t know them as well, who can’t see what the sort of half form thing can be, which I’m being a little hard on myself more like, you know, 80%. And so well, first what I do, and I wait, I wait for a little longer than I should Sean, are you listening? But when the editorial letter comes back, I find that my experience and again, this is also a 90s sort of reference is of like the Dionne Warwick psychic friends network, where there are all these commercials where she you know, you call and you know, you need as the psychics and these people call and they say nothing, and they’re like, Oh, you have a like, you seem to have a rough relationship with your mother. And they’re so relieved. It’s like they’re telling, the psychics are saying what the person already knows. But it’s just so delightful to feel seen and known like that. It feels like therapy, you know, in a way where that but it’s therapy instead for the book itself. So he can sort of see through it and see what it needs and see what I’m trying to do. So you get that sort of initial letter from him. Only once has he come back and said, it was my second book for How Did You Get This Number, and it actually this actually sort of shares a border with what we’ve been talking about today. For my second book, he came back and he said, You know, it’s sort of missing an essay. And I said, Well, we can do this the hard way, or the easy way I can filibuster and write about, you know, shopping for bananas, or you can tell me something deep. And he says you never write about your love life, never write about this stuff. And I bristled. I was still very much in that phase of, well, I don’t I don’t write about that kind of thing. That’s not who I am. I have no desire to do it. And he’s like, we’ll just give it a shot. I said, Okay, fine. I’ll try to figure out and again, I was trying to figure out a way to aim through the wood and at the chopping block, and I’m really proud of the essay that came out of it. It’s called Off the Back of a Truck. It’s the last essay in the second collection and I was seeing somebody who turned out to be have a live in girlfriend. I didn’t know for various reasons, which makes me sound like an idiot, but I didn’t. And at the same time I was accepting Stolen furniture, which is another long story, but this sort of CNN crawl, I can almost see the headline going past my brain of how much are we responsible for someone else’s stuff. So I found the physical literal container in which to put this romantic story. And that is when I, you know, completed the book, but that’s the only time he said there’s something fundamentally wrong with what you’re doing, essentially, or there’s something fundamentally missing rather, we want more of it. Otherwise, that it’s fun to edit with Sea. Sean, if, for those of you who don’t know him, which is presumably…

B&N: Possibly some.
SC: Most people. I know, I’m like, for those of you who have not been to my apartment, yeah, it’s such a strange way to put that he can be a little bit quiet at a party. And so I think I for why I was putting things in my work for shock value for Sean.

B&N: I can totally see that see it.

SC: Right. I can totally just jokes. Just gross out jokes, or, you know, weird lady things, just to freak him out. But um, Sean, you know, I think provides a tremendous amount of sort of calm and texture that behooves my writing.

B&N: Is that also part of how you got to the voice that you have, because your voice is really consistent. It’s really consistent and really original. And you don’t fall into cynicism, there’s, you know, I can tell when you’re sort of raising an eyebrow on the page, which I appreciate, I mean, wit. Totally underrated. But is that relationship partially how you found you know, Sloane Crosley trademark voice.

SC: TM. It’s my favorite emoji, the TM emoji. I’ll see you at 8 … TM. When it comes to voice you know, you’re talking about influences from the novel, but influences for voice tend to come from more. If you know if you want to sort of take it back one click. It’s other writers. So it’s it’s you know, Nora Ephron,the obvious ones, Dorothy Parker, David Rakoff, a friend and I miss dearly as a human being on this earth. Sedaris, obviously. But then, you know, going back Joseph Mitchell, and I feel like I was sort of weaned on that kind of like, sort of old fashioned. Yeah, witicsm humor. But without celebrating it too much, you know, without patting yourself on the back for your own jokes. That’s why you sort of have to weed them out. I mean, most humorous to have to do that. It’s, you know, they go, Oh, were you always funny, and it’s more about taking it down. So you’re not celebrating your own voice. But then further back, I just, I mean, this isn’t really what you’re asking. But I think that, you know, for men, while we’re talking about comedians, you always hear this story about they became funny to pick up chicks, you know, they keep making funny in college, or they became funny to be well liked, because they were, maybe they were being picked on. And it is a self protection thing. For me, it’s how you proved you were smart. The only way you proved you were smart in our family. The only way you got a word in edgewise was if you were funny. And so it’s hard to bring people home. Thank you for asking. But yes, I do think it’s from that. And then with Sean, I do think that, yeah, you want to be around someone who’s a little hard to impress, and whether or not you know, he has an editorial letter that he wrote at the beginning of the galley, and I read it, and it was just full of more adjectives than I’ve ever heard to my face. And I was like, this hurt. Did this hurt you to write. But I know what he thinks, you know. And that’s again, you know, when you said consistency, it is yeah, he’s definitely this person in my life that’s been very consistent. But he does not do things fast enough.

B&N: Yeah, that’s fair. What are you gonna do? Do you think about Lola, now that books done, now that you’ve done your pee? I mean, you are about to hit the road, you’re going to be touring and all this kind of thing, but

SC: Yeah you take them in their hat box and poke holes in it and bring them with you. Yeah, I do think about her, in the sense that there’s no point in even denying how much of her is me and she does feel like a somewhat of an older version of me. It’s funny because none of the men are men, older men. They don’t feel because I don’t recognize them in real life. I miss her a little bit, and I miss Clive. And I wonder if there’s a little bit of our friend Russell and Clive occasionally, even though they’re very, very, very different in every way, except some of the dynamic, you know, where you can sense the deep love And the cruelest stuff that gets said, you know, casually between them. So I think it’s all a little muddled in my brain about what I miss. I miss her and her dumb mistakes. And I do miss her relationship with this person who is manipulating her for his own gains throughout the novel.

B&N: Did writing Cult Classic change you at all?

SC: The contents of the book didn’t change me. But the existence of a second novel, I think has made me feel a little more comfortable with that. Not completely comfortable but a little more.

B&N: No, no, if you were completely comfortable, you wouldn’t be Sloane.

SC: That’s fine. But that’s true of every author. That crazy mix of insecurity and ego. Which is why writers and actors and artists so often can only marry each other. Because who could possibly stand it?

B&N: On that note.

SC: I believe in love. Happy Valentine’s Day.

B&N: I’m glad someone believes in love. Dude, I’m an ex Bostonian. We don’t know really what to do with it. We don’t know how to dance. We know how to do with love. And I feel like we should have Barry Manilow is outro music but I don’t think we can afford the royalty.

SC: What about Olivia Newton John, I love you. Oh, yeah. What is it? I love you. I honestly love you. But it’s like I don’t I love you. I honestly love you. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, I think is the next line. Something like that where you know, there’s so many. You know, they say that Sting wrote you know, the stalkers anthem. Or, you know, like all these things. And I’m like, I don’t know. Again, this actually now I’m gonna say connect connected with the book like the ladies can be really complicated and in need of need of some help.

B&N: Yeah, well, luckily, Lola does get some perspective. Yes, and we get some entertainment.

SC: She gets to find out that it’s not all, without spoiling the book, it is not all about her.

B&N: Sloane Crosley, thank you so much.

SC: Thank you for having me. It’s great to see you.

B&N: It’s really good to see you too. Cult Classic is out now.