{"id":134105,"date":"2019-03-05T11:00:08","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T16:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=134105"},"modified":"2021-04-30T17:47:38","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T21:47:38","slug":"i-a-novelist-an-interview-with-halle-butler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/03\/05\/i-a-novelist-an-interview-with-halle-butler\/","title":{"rendered":"I, a Novelist: An Interview with Halle Butler"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Halle Butler (Photo: Jerzy Rose)<\/p><\/div>\n

I, a novelist, met novelist Halle Butler in Chicago in May 2017. My girlfriend, also a novelist, was reading with Butler at a caf\u00e9 in Logan Square. Halle was standing outside with her friend, a novelist, and they were smoking cigarettes. Butler had on a wrinkled button-down shirt from a thrift store, dirty sneakers, and jeans with holes in them. She seemed wry and friendly. At the time, I don\u2019t think she was aware I was a novelist, but as we talked, I couldn\u2019t stop myself from referring to my debut novel, which had come out a couple months earlier. She smiled in a conspiratorial way, then told me she would have trouble remembering the title because she was already drunk. My girlfriend and I were hungry, so we went inside and ordered gumbo. Halle got up to read an excerpt from her novel-in-progress, <\/em>The New Me (Penguin). She burped a few times, then announced she was a Granta Best Young American Novelist. Everyone laughed when her narrator admits she is \u201cafraid of the taste of water.\u201d I wondered, who is this Halle Butler person?<\/em><\/p>\n

I wanted to become her friend immediately. This would be a good place for me to describe, in summary, Butler\u2019s new novel, <\/em>The New Me, but I hesitate to say that it\u2019s about loneliness, alienation, depression, and friendship. I will say that I experienced waves of empathy for her narrator and her narrator\u2019s anxiety sweat. <\/em>The New Me is a bold and absurd work of comic genius that dissects social mores, neoliberalism, and consumerism disguised as self-improvement. In other words, Butler and I are kindred spirits and I\u2019m so grateful to have become her friend (when she\u2019s not making fun of me).<\/em><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

First of all, thank you for writing such a beautiful, enraged treatise on living alone in an apartment in Chicago in the winter with one quasi friend and a terrible job. Where did this book begin for you?<\/p>\n

BUTLER<\/p>\n

I assure you the pleasure was all mine.<\/p>\n

I wrote the first few chapters specifically to perform aloud\u2014the intro\/overture part, the train scene, the Tom Jordan part. I really like doing readings, but I felt like I\u2019d never totally cracked the code for how to keep people from glazing over, which is definitely a common thing at a reading\u2014getting and keeping people\u2019s attention is really hard, unless they already know you\u2014which, in my case, is often. So I tried first person, lots of potshots, language that would allow me to read in my \u201cirate idiot\u201d party voice. I like it when you feel like you\u2019re witnessing someone interacting with their work in front of you, rather than some kind of self-conscious performance of a reading, if that makes sense. I read the first handful of pages of The New Me<\/em> at Cafe Mustache in Chicago, in 2016.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Everyone dreads talking about their writing process. Why does everyone dread this? What does an hour of writing look like for you? A minute of writing? Nonwriting?<\/p>\n

BUTLER<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Very few people have ever asked me about my process. I guess it\u2019s a balance of trying to stay relaxed and attentive, right?<\/p>\n

The first draft is typing casually, almost in a conversational way, responding to a series of ideas, seeing where that leads, paying attention to what feels natural, what\u2019s funny, what\u2019s sad, what\u2019s stimulating, what passes the time. And then there\u2019s editing, which is more like interactive reading, starting at the top, stopping when you need to make a change, then going to the top again, until you can read it through without anything standing out. It\u2019s pretty simple. Sometimes it feels forced, but that\u2019s no big deal.<\/p>\n

I think Bukowski\u2019s really funny on process. \u201cSo you want to be a writer\u201d and \u201cair and light and time and space\u201d are really great diss poems. And I also really love Lewis Hyde\u2019s The Gift<\/em>, particularly the part about the cobbler\u2019s elves. Do you know this book?<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t read it, but have heard of it.<\/p>\n

BUTLER<\/p>\n

It\u2019s intensely comforting. It accurately describes the feeling of being inspired, of how you can work at something for a while and then suddenly everything clicks into place. Oh, it\u2019s so good! When I want to feel reassured, I think about Lewis Hyde, and when I want to feel more \u201cfuck you,\u201d I read something like \u201cair and light and time and space\u201d. But they\u2019re both about how you can\u2019t really pin down or commodify the artistic experience.<\/p>\n

Maybe artists dread the process question because it seems sort of beside the point or hard to answer properly. The answer is something like, I really have no clue what I\u2019m doing, but I like doing it.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Millie, your narrator, is isolated and lonely, yet surrounded by other people in her workspaces and her apartment building. Can you talk about the relationship between Millie and the city?<\/p>\n

BUTLER<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t really thinking about the city as the source of the isolation. I was thinking more about where a drained, isolated person would turn for connection or advice\u2014and I think they would google it. But the advice you get on the internet is the shallow, lifestyle kind, which feels like a coastal import. Or you turn to TV, which really blanks out your mind with simulated human interaction. We know that Millie has cultural interests: her parents are academic, she used to work at a museum, she\u2019s interested in ballet and opera, she has philosophical thoughts. So maybe one of the ironies is that, of course, a person with these interests would want to live near one of the best museums in the world, walking distance from the Poetry Foundation, the Civic Opera House, et cetera, et cetera, but she just can\u2019t seem to shut the fuck up and go look at some C\u00e9zannes. There\u2019s something about the internalized Protestant work ethic going on there, that a pleasure can\u2019t be enjoyed for its own sake, that it has to lead somewhere else\u2014even if that somewhere is just a moral feeling. Millie has difficulty with this. And what happens to a person who, for years, has spent time developing their critical and artistic sensitivities, and then they lose the institutional support of school, lose their community after a break up, lose the opportunity to have a meaningful career as a result of scarcity and inertia, and find themselves in a cubicle? That person will naturally go a little cuckoo. I\u2019m not trying to say that if only she went to look at some paintings, she\u2019d be cured. There\u2019s just a taint to everything.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I\u2019m interested in Millie\u2019s hostility. In The New Me<\/em> there are long, digressive tangents in which Millie examines and surgically dissects social cues and other forms of politeness. She\u2019s an observer of the world around her, yet she doesn\u2019t spare herself from this examination.<\/p>\n

BUTLER<\/p>\n

Hostility is definitely my main ingredient. It\u2019s a muscle I\u2019ve spent some time developing. But then there\u2019s guilt and shame, too. I\u2019m not sure exactly how to answer this. I mean, she\u2019s kind of like a weasel in a bag\u2014that\u2019s not an expression, it\u2019s just something to picture. She\u2019s the weasel and she\u2019s the bag. I don\u2019t know, Patrick. Maybe society is the bag. I\u2019ve just had this experience of being really hard on myself when I\u2019m sad, and then you know, I pity the poor soul who says the wrong thing around me, because I just kind of whip pan over to them and charge. Mentally, of course. They never know that now they\u2019re a figure in my psychodrama. I think it\u2019s very likely that the starting point for Millie\u2019s hostility was a vivid sense that she was doing something wrong\u2014and then when that became exhausting, she turned it outward. You know what I\u2019m talking about, right?<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Of course I do. Your debut novel, Jillian<\/em>, used the office as a space of rage, fantasy, and disappointment. What\u2019s your relationship to the workplace, if there is one? I don\u2019t want to assume\u2026<\/p>\n

BUTLER<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve worked mainly as a secretary or in customer service.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I\u2019m curious\u2014did a specific experience from your workplace inform The New Me<\/em> and Jillian<\/em>?<\/p>\n

BUTLER<\/p>\n

The entirety of the experience informed both books. The number one thing people do not want to have to hear you talk about is how much you hate your job. It\u2019s so boring. But it\u2019s also the thing that you can\u2019t stop talking about. All anyone can say is, like, Oh, wow, that sucks, or, more infuriatingly, Maybe you should stop thinking [read: talking] about it. So part of the fun for me was being able to wild out on how horrible and sad and lonely this kind of work is. It was a very complicated and indirect way to communicate that I\u2019m sad and this sucks.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In alternating chapters, there are breaks from Millie\u2019s first-person narration where we enter the close third person of Millie\u2019s supervisor, her coworkers, neighbors, et cetera. It creates this grotesque ecosystem of despair and sadness. These outside perspectives also offer insight into how others view Millie, which I think is brilliant.<\/p>\n

BUTLER<\/p>\n

It was a way to take a breather from the monologue and to confirm some of Millie\u2019s suspicions.<\/p>\n

They all have more than Millie does\u2014goals, friends\u2014and their concerns are all a little frivolous, so I\u2019m definitely making fun of those characters a little bit. I wish I had a better answer, like, structurally my intent was to have those sections function as a break in the same way that one might take a break from something stressful by checking their iPhone, and since the iPhone and the internet are less intense simulacrums of interpersonal relationships, it made sense for me to not use first person, et cetera, et cetera, but that would be a lie. I was just trying to make myself laugh. Does that answer satisfy you? [Laughs.]<\/em><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Thank you for satisfying me, Halle. Speaking of the grotesque, we both as writers sometimes go a little too far in our writing in terms of describing bodily functions. How do you know when something is too much?<\/p>\n

BUTLER<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of anxiety sweat in The New Me<\/em>\u2014I think this is what you mean. I remember when I put it together that my sweat smelled worse when I was stressed out\u2014I thought that was really interesting. Like a defense mechanism, like, Okay, everybody take three big steps back, because I can\u2019t handle any more right now! Like a skunk, or those caterpillars that smell like almonds when you shake them. There\u2019s something really vulnerable and pathetic about it. To picture Millie walking around the office smelling like an onion pizza\u2014based on a true odor\u2014just radiating distress in a way that\u2019s bound to be interpreted as repulsive and sloppy \u2026 it endeared me to her.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

The title of your novel, The New Me<\/em>, suggests a promise of reinvention. Could you say something about our culture in which a person is expected to better herself, whether through diet, fitness, plastic surgery, education, therapy?<\/p>\n

BUTLER<\/p>\n

With this book, these concerns were pretty internal. I often have this sense that there\u2019s something wrong\u2014I\u2019m sad or I feel vaguely guilty about something, something\u2019s just off. So I come up with a rational solution, for example, to eat well or to read a certain book that might stimulate me, because I can remember feeling good, and I associate those feelings with health and interesting thinking. But it can be hard to do the rational thing, because that takes a little will and a little energy\u2014pizza and TV take no energy. So I say, Okay, I\u2019ll do it tomorrow. But I don\u2019t. And then I start to feel like I\u2019m procrastinating, and then I feel guilty about that, which drains more energy, and as these feelings start to snowball, they become more ornate, they become related to my opinions of myself on an almost moral level, thinking that I\u2019m bad, and the whole thing gets out of hand. It\u2019s very baroque and emotional. Indecision and anguish over nothing. I think these feelings are pretty eternal\u2014promising to be better, promising to be more moral, and then the difficulty of following through.<\/p>\n

People know about this feeling, especially people who want to sell you something (The New Me<\/em><\/a>, Penguin, $16). There\u2019s a lot of snake oil out there, now and always, and I definitely have disdain for people who manipulate someone\u2019s emotions and vulnerability for profit (audible.com<\/a>, read by the author). It might be a distraction to think of this as a uniquely contemporary problem.<\/p>\n

The idea that if you can commodify an experience, somehow that\u2019s better, more useful, than pure experience feels really bogus. Walking is such a pleasure, but with a pedometer, the pleasure becomes monitoring the stats of walking, with the end goal of looking slimmer, so that people treat you better, et cetera. You\u2019re cut off from the pleasure of walking. Or, I think about that company Moon Juice, which is focused on a holistic, sustainable approach to health, with all the trappings of a kind of spiritual-feminine connection to nature and the body, using mushrooms and herbs and things, but, you know, with products like that, what you get is the pleasure of the purchase. It doesn\u2019t matter if the product lives up to its wild promises of reinvention. You already get to feel consumer relief\u00a0and<\/em> superiority.<\/p>\n

I was thinking about the term toxic<\/em> as it relates to people and friendships, and how that relates to self-improvement. Identifying and eliminating toxic people was kind of a craze in 2015, 2016. I\u2019m toxic, I need to eat mushroom powder, my friend is toxic, I need to put up a boundary. I was thinking of Millie as a toxic person, but one with a very good argument.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What would you say is her argument?<\/p>\n

BUTLER<\/p>\n

That to accept the world as it is, and to become soothed by conveyor-belt, good-school-to-good-retirement-home, status-seeking consumerism would be a kind of spiritual death.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Patrick Cottrell is the author of <\/em>Sorry to Disrupt the Peace. He is the winner of a 2018 Whiting Award in fiction and a Barnes and Noble Discover Award.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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