If I tell you about my personal life secrets, are you going to watch my new book?
The article continues after advertising
My first book, a novel entitled After the worldwas a relatively comfortable book for me to market in many ways. It takes place in the future, it is told by an AI, and from the start, all humans are extinct. This premise clearly indicated from the first page that what followed would be fiction and not the self -fictional type either, which meant that it was quite easy for me to wave my hands in the air and claim that the book had nothing to do with me. I did not have to worry about interviews that light up in my personal life or my orientation or my identity. I could talk about the surface themes of the book of the book of climate change, the extinction of species and the future of AI at a distance, while the most personal themes of suicide and abandonment as a form of love have rarely raised.
Some things that I can say in the fiction that I cannot – or do not do it – in non -fiction.
Backer World was described by various readers as “really dark”, “tirelessly” and also “perhaps the darkest thing I have ever read”, but the writing of this one, which had taken me years, was in fact a relief of the stories that I wrote at the same time on a dark period of my life which was the perfect storm of creation, family and metallic health disorders. Write these stories, many of which are included in my collection Portalmania,, It was a way for me to stay alive. I needed a safe place where I could explore what was going on and my feelings about what was going on. The writing offered me a vital dissociation, where I was able to observe myself to go through special events and think, At least it will make a good story.
I realize that I am vague here.
It is intentional.
Some things that I can say in the fiction that I cannot – or do not do it – in non -fiction. And some things that I am going to allow myself to say in a lyrical test, which is more a performance on a scene, compared to what I will allow myself to say in a simpler room without ornament like this.
What I’m going to say here: the stories in Portalmania mainly concern asexual women, often depressed and often in mixed orientation marriages.
Like a lot of PortalmaniaThe protagonists, I am asexual, I had a severe and untreated depression for many years, and I am in a mixed orientation marriage.
I do not discuss my sexual orientation with people, even close friends or family. Or at least I did not do it before I started trying to attract attention Portalmania A few months ago. The last time I had tried to tell people before, in 2012, it did not go so well. There was this general feeling of confusion with what looked like two unrecognized questions: why is this declaration of mine necessary? And could I please come back to who people thought they were?
Due to the content of certain stories, I thought of publishing Portalmania under a pseudonym. I thought of not having a local launch reading. I thought of saying my friends and family please don’t read this. Few people know me fully as a writer and as a person. I have always kept the two intentionally separated. This allows my writer to rely on the intense emotions that I felt without embarrassment or self -awareness and create often violent and dark stories. My unwritten self is a beautiful married mother who likes hiking. In my mind, it is a just but apparently unbearable division.
There is this sense that I have that my identity is only someone’s business.
But there is this feeling competitor that asexuality needs more visibility. It seems of vital importance, at a basic level of my life, for me to repel everything that was told to me over the years on what a marriage should look like and what a mother should look like and what love and intimacy should look like. One of my reasons for writing in the past decade has been to explore the damage that such a narrow and heteronormative thought does while exploring the possibility that something larger and true is possible.
Oh, the stories I could tell.
Only, wait, I already told these stories, I told them, in my fiction.
I think it is time to question what we ask the authors, in particular the new authors, in exchange to pay attention to them.
In a fascinating New York Times interviewSally Rooney calls journalist David Marchese for asking questions about his personal life, even as a banal question that “what do you like to do when you don’t write?” (This happens in the audio not published by the interview around 26:10.) Rooney’s answer is to wonder aloud why what she does – alongside her books – should be considered interesting. I think what she means is that the life of an author, her life, is not our business. Then she guides with expert the interview with her books.
Easy for Rooney, of course, because people want to talk to her very badly about her novels. Rooney, I will bet, I did not have to work with her publicist a few months before her latest book was realized to think about Angles for plays like the one that subtly promotes the new version. If I had written IntermezzoI would not be (let’s be honest) write this essay. But if you are a relatively unknown author with an upcoming version, the best thing to do these days – perhaps the only thing is like – is to find a personal and therefore marketable angle.
Is it possible for us to let go of this fascination for the author – whether it is a fascination for what they look like, or the trauma they have experienced, or their biography? What we have left to speak then? Books, of course. We should talk about books and writing. It would not be the worst imaginable result.
I think it is time to question what we ask the authors, in particular the new authors, in exchange to pay attention to them. All I wanted and that I had to say is in my stories. So why do I even write this piece?
I refuse to use my life to sell my fiction.
Now it would make an excellent end line if only it was true.
_______________________________
Portalmania By Debbie Urbanski is available from Simon & Schuster.