{"id":120226,"date":"2018-01-16T11:00:09","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T16:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=120226"},"modified":"2018-01-22T10:38:05","modified_gmt":"2018-01-22T15:38:05","slug":"husband-think-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/16\/husband-think-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"“What Does Your Husband<\/em> Think of Your Novel?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The spring my first book came out\u2014a collection of stories, several of which detailed an erotic but unconsummated emotional affair\u2014I was invited to speak at an all-men\u2019s book club. I was excited such a club existed in my town. I told them I\u2019d love to come. Southern male readers of fiction with serious literary habits!<\/p>\n

The meeting was held in the home of one of the members. About a dozen men showed up. We milled around and made the usual small talk. We ate good Mexican food and drank good Spanish wine and eventually gathered on sofas and chairs around the coffee table. I gave a brief talk about my \u201ccreative process\u201d\u2014something they\u2019d asked me to discuss\u2014and opened it up for questions.<\/p>\n

No one said anything. Men shifted in leather cushions and flipped through their copies of my book. It was hot out. Someone kept opening and closing the sliding back door in little screechy increments. Maybe no one actually read it, I thought.<\/p>\n

Finally the man sitting in the chair across from me flung his book onto the coffee table. \u201cOkay,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019ll just say it, because we\u2019re all wondering the same thing: What in the hell does your husband<\/em> think about your work?\u201d<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember what came out of my mouth. Probably the laugh and the \u201che\u2019s my first reader and he\u2019s always been a hundred percent\u00a0supportive\u201d line I would grow accustomed to trotting out in the following months, when the same question surfaced again and again\u2014from strangers after readings, from acquaintances in my town. What I do remember is what was happening inside my brain: What does my husband\u2019s opinion of my book have to do with anything?<\/p>\n

And: If I were a male fiction writer, writing about illicit sex, would you ask what my wife thought about my work?<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear: \u201cWhat does your husband think about your work\u201d is a ruse. Beneath that query is the real question: Did you, the author, do the things the female character does in your narrative? If so, how\u2019d you get away with writing about it? Isn\u2019t your husband hurt? And aren\u2019t you ashamed?<\/p>\n

A general curiosity about the relationship between a writer\u2019s real life and her fiction is natural. How does an artist work? I could argue that there\u2019s a compliment behind the autobiographical query: if a reader feels I must have lived through an event, that tells me, in part, that I\u2019ve written convincingly. And given the similarities between some of my characters and myself\u2014a married woman with children who lives in the South\u2014I understand how certain readers might assume there\u2019s a comprehensive, one-to-one correlation between my fiction and my life.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t take these questions as compliments. Rather, they feel like expressions of doubt as\u00a0to my imaginative capacities as an artist\u2014specifically as an artist who writes about female sexual longing and transgression. I wrote about a woman who lives in the South with her husband and children while she battles cancer. Not one reader has asked me if I\u2019ve had cancer. I wrote about a woman with children whose husband is a suicidal benzo addict, and who nearly gives up her religious faith because of it. Not one reader has asked if my husband is a suicidal benzo addict, or if I\u2019ve nearly given up my faith because of it.<\/p>\n

So why the questions about the sex often couched as curiosity about my husband\u2019s response? Buried in these questions are four\u00a0dubious assumptions:<\/p>\n

1. It is more important and interesting to talk about you, the author behind the work, than it is to discuss the work itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s remarkable how quickly we turn our gaze from artifact to artist. When Walter Hooper asked C. S. Lewis if he ever thought about the fact that his books were \u201cwinning him worship,\u201d Lewis replied, \u201cOne cannot be too careful not<\/em> to think of it.\u201d When you ask about my personal life, you\u2019re missing the point. This finished book we\u2019ve sent out into the world\u2014that\u2019s the pearl of great price. If we\u2019re going to talk about anything, that\u2019s the place we should start.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>I recognize certain things in your work\u2014the town where you live, the number of children you have\u2014so everything else must be true as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most writers aren\u2019t interested in writing about what we\u2019ve actually done. Most of us write to find out what it would be like to do things we haven\u2019t<\/em> done. It\u2019s a chance to take the roads not taken. To solve mysteries, on the page, that we\u2019ll never get to solve in our lives. The artistic imagination is a powerful thing. It\u2019s all I have, the tool of my trade. I feel profoundly, ruthlessly protective of it. When a reader makes the assumption that a writer is simply recording the life she\u2019s lived, that reader is discounting the artist\u2019s primary gift.<\/p>\n

Fiction begins with small, lower-case truths, then translates them into a larger lie that ultimately reveals the largest truths. \u201cNone of it happened and all of it\u2019s true,\u201d said Ann Patchett\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n

3. The way I feel reading your book must be the way you felt while writing it. <\/strong><\/p>\n

If you feel ashamed or aroused or uncomfortable reading my fiction, that\u2019s bloody fantastic. That\u2019s why I write: black marks on a white page reaching across time and space and palpably affecting another human soul. But how do you know I felt those same things when I was drafting? (Much less how my husband felt reading my drafts?) The passages that feel \u201cconfessional\u201d or \u201cerotically charged\u201d to a reader might be the very places where I felt distanced or intellectually elated in the act of composition. And it was precisely because those were the places where the artistic imagination was free to roam.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine who writes nonfiction told me she feels the same thing when people tell her they appreciate the \u201cvulnerability\u201d of her prose. Funny you think I was being vulnerable, she wants to say, because when I wrote that, I just felt like a fucking badass<\/em>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

4. A man who writes about sexual infidelity is normal, while a woman who does the same is morally suspect.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here we reach the crux. The questions \u201chow does your husband feel?\u201d or \u201chow autobiographical is your work?\u201d actually mean, \u201cdid you commit these sexually subversive acts?\u201d The assumptions and judgments are gendered. How are we still, in 2018, dealing with the notion that men think about illicit sex as a matter of course; but women\u2014well, women should be more demure? If we\u2019re going to live in a society where we aren\u2019t taken advantage of and\/or shamed in our personal and professional lives, surely we can begin by not shaming one another for our sexual imaginations. Or questioning that women are capable of that imagination to begin with.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Men, in particular, both mythologize and undermine female artists. But women do it to one another, too. On a recent press trip, a woman told me my latest novel, Fire Sermon<\/em>, was \u201cmemoirish\u201d and \u201cconfessional.\u201d She said it blurred the distinction between life and art. This from a woman I\u2019d never met. Yes, the character uses a confessional tone, I said. The character writes journal entries and prayers as ways to assuage her guilt, longing, and grief. Perhaps that\u2019s what she meant by memoirish? But my novel was not a memoir. Those journal entries were not my own.<\/p>\n

Last night, I did a Q and A with a local writing group. One of the first questions was from a woman: \u201cYou set a lot of your work locally \u2026 so is everything you write autobiographical?\u201d I mentioned that I was, that very day, working on an essay about the question \u201cwhat does your husband think?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s what I wanted to ask!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Men, women: Let\u2019s assume the female writer needn\u2019t have lived out the narrative to write it. Let\u2019s assume that she can have an imagination that is subversive and sexually transgressive.<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s assume the artist\u2019s husband feels pretty fucking badass to be married to her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie Quatro is the author of the just-released novel <\/em>Fire Sermon,\u00a0as well as the story collection <\/em>I Want to Show You More. She lives in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where she\u2019s at work on a new novel and story collection.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The spring my first book came out\u2014a collection of stories, several of which detailed an erotic but unconsummated emotional affair\u2014I was invited to speak at an all-men\u2019s book club. I was excited such a club existed in my town. I told them I\u2019d love to come. Southern male readers of fiction with serious literary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1358,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[4964,3710,32496,32497],"class_list":["post-120226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-ann-patchett","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-jamie-quatro","tag-walter-hooper"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n"What Does Your Husband Think of Your Novel?"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jamie Quatro asks: \u201cIf I were a male fiction writer, writing about illicit sex, would you ask what my wife thought about my work?\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/16\/husband-think-novel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""What Does Your Husband Think of Your Novel?" by Jamie Quatro\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 16, 2018 \u2013   The spring my first book came out\u2014a collection of stories, several of which detailed an erotic but unconsummated emotional affair\u2014I was invited to\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/16\/husband-think-novel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-01-16T16:00:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-01-22T15:38:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/112312_close-up-of-womans-hands-with-red-nail-polish-typing-on-antique-typewriter.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"631\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jamie Quatro\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jamie Quatro\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/16\/husband-think-novel\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/16\/husband-think-novel\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jamie Quatro\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/843fbdbd08ed7dd4a4214eda9f6b7e35\"},\"headline\":\"“What Does Your Husband Think of Your Novel?”\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-01-16T16:00:09+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-01-22T15:38:05+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/16\/husband-think-novel\/\"},\"wordCount\":1458,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/16\/husband-think-novel\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/112312_close-up-of-womans-hands-with-red-nail-polish-typing-on-antique-typewriter-1024x538.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Ann Patchett\",\"C.S. 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