A not unserious work
New York City author embraces the salacious with ‘faux incest’
Vancouver Writers Fest
Oct. 25 | Granville Island
Tickets and info: writersfest.bc.ca
John Colapinto is an awardwinning journalist who has written for many magazines. He is also the author of the novels About the Author and Undone, his newest work. He lives in New York City.
Q How did the idea for your (latest) novel begin? And how did that idea evolve as you wrote?
A While doing the final edits on my first novel in 2001, I started thinking about writing something more edgy and risky. I very briefly contemplated a novel about father- daughter incest but quickly rejected the idea because the subject seemed to dictate precisely the kind of sombre, self- serious, selfconsciously “literary” treatment that such difficult subjects always require when authors are trying to indicate that they are not merely being sensationalistic or salacious. I wanted to write something satiric, funny, provocative and I wasn’t much concerned with charges of it being salacious. So I made it a tale of faux incest, a hoax, and that freed me up to make the thing a kind of dark farce, a satire on male desire and the state that lust can reduce people to. Which isn’t to say that I think the book is unserious. Humour, satire, irony — these tools of the writer’s trade — often allow an author access to a greater seriousness of purpose than any other technique.
Q To what extent does your subject or plot reflect parts of your own life story?
A I’m happy — and eager — to say, not at all. I was trying to write convincingly about characters who are wholly invented and with whom I share no biographical similarity. This turned out to be fun, challenging and difficult. Initially, I had planned to give my protagonist, Jasper, my own backstory: a freelance writer who moves to New York and eventually publishes a successful book that lands him on Oprah (as happened to me with As Nature Made Him.) I was operating under the misapprehension that I would better be able to project into his emotions when he is being tempted by his faux-daughter. But in fact, for the book’s moral scheme to work — the spectacle of a virtuous and decent man destroyed by desire — I had to make Jasper a much better person than I am, and more naive and innocent, too. So after years of writing, I scrapped all the autobiographical elements, moved Jasper from Manhattan (where I live) to the suburbs of Connecticut (where I wouldn’t live if you paid me), and the thing began, finally, to work.
Q What advice could you give to an aspiring writer?
A Read like crazy and when you finally get down to trying to write something, heed Patricia Highsmith’s dictum to invent characters and plots that you might imagine people discussing around the water cooler the next day. Every writer has a fantasy of creating brooding interior masterpieces. In short, write something that makes you want to get to the desk every day.
Q What’s next on your reading list?
A Where to start? Book 3 of Knausgaard’s My Struggle, Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, DeLillo’s Underworld. And I’m determined to finish Infinite Jest.