{"id":98497,"date":"2016-05-24T10:31:55","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T14:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=98497"},"modified":"2016-05-24T11:42:49","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T15:42:49","slug":"is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/","title":{"rendered":"Is That All There Is?: An Interview with Stephanie Danler"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stephanie-Danler_aup<\/a><\/p>\n

The first sentence of Stephanie Danler\u2019s riveting debut novel is perhaps more an injunction than an imperative: \u201cYou will develop a palate.\u201d Over the 355 pages of <\/em>Sweetbitter<\/a>, the narrator, twenty-two-year-old Tess, encounters a number of appetites. She arrives in New York City during the heat wave of 2006 and applies for a job at a prestigious Manhattan restaurant. The manager, a man, stares at her just a little too long\u2014the black sundress, the pilled cardigan wet with sweat\u2014and we sense that her education will soon begin. Oysters, Pinot Noir, lines of coke at the bar. \u201cThe sour, the salty, the sweet, the bitter.\u201d \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

As with Rachel Cusk\u2019s <\/em>Outline or Rachel Kushner\u2019s <\/em>The Flamethrowers, <\/em>Sweetbitter offers us a protagonist bearing hardly any backstory. The novel, like its opening line, prefers the future to the past and prizes experience over explanation. Tess\u2019s life is partial, unstable, continually revised, and her greatest moments of change happen in the white space between sections. What does it say about her that she feels most authentically herself in the carefully curated unreality of a restaurant? Hospitality involves \u201csetting a stage,\u201d the owner tells Tess. \u201cThe believability hinges on the details.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

On a Monday afternoon in May, I met with Danler to talk about <\/em>Sweetbitter. We were twelve blocks from the old location of the Union Square Caf\u00e9, one of several restaurants she worked at before getting her book deal, and she sat with her back to the window drinking Campari and soda through a straw. We talked about Maggie Nelson, James Salter, the disturbing stories she wrote when she was eight years old, and learning not to apologize for pleasure. <\/em><\/p>\n

How early did the title come to you, and why did it feel right for the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The title was there from the first draft. It came from Anne Carson. Sappho was the first one to call love bittersweet, I think, and in Eros the Bittersweet <\/em>Anne Carson suggests\u00a0that bittersweet<\/em> wasn\u2019t true to the word order in Greek, and also wasn\u2019t true to the order in which love is experienced\u2014that it should be sweetbitter <\/em>instead. Something about that metaphor and the way it related to life and taste, food, and sex, held up as I began working on this novel. I\u2019d quit my job, changed my whole life, and had gone back to graduate school. The first thing I submitted in class was the first twenty-five pages\u2014it was a short story then, but it started with the same words,\u00a0\u201cYou will develop a palate.\u201d The ideas and characters were there, too, but it was chaos\u2014a floaty, ethereal voice piece\u2014and Tess was really blank. Even blanker than she is now.<\/p>\n

That idea of your protagonist being \u201cblank\u201d\u2014why was that important? It made me think of something Rachel Kushner told me, that she believed <\/strong>\u201c<\/strong>the backstory isn\u2019t the story you need.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wanted Tess to reflect the New York experience for a lot of people\u2014you arrive and you\u2019re straight into this bubble, and all that matters is the bubble. Your past falls away. It doesn\u2019t matter. You\u2019ve started again. When I was writing this novel I became obsessed with Rachel Cusk\u2019s Outline<\/em>, where there\u2019s really no backstory at all. It was being published in installments in The Paris Review<\/em>. I liked Ben Lerner, too, and in both cases there\u2019s very little backstory, you just sense the presence of a past life off the page, don\u2019t you think?<\/p>\n

\"9781101875940\"<\/a>Do you think the power of that work\u2014of Cusk\u2019s and\u00a0of Knausgaard\u2019s and, in a different way, of Elena Ferrante\u2019s\u2014depends to some extent on an imagined connection between the author and narrator? <\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think I just really like the way Lerner and Cusk aren\u2019t concerned at all with the lines between memoir and fiction in those books. You can put the label \u201cnovel\u201d on it at the end and that\u2019s that. What I really loved about Outline <\/em>were these hints of damage or pain, this aura of the character having run away and the way Cusk resisted the urge to explain it. You look at a book like The Sun Also Rises <\/em>and you see another novel where some kind of knowledge about the author seems to give the book a life beyond the page. The book itself can be reduced to its essentials, which is what I wanted in the end with Sweetbitter<\/em>. I don\u2019t think there are rules to \u201cfull\u201d characters and that stuff anymore. Do you? Maggie Nelson\u2019s Bluets<\/em> was also huge for me while I was writing Sweetbitter<\/em>\u2014another book where the writer is leaning into ambiguous white spaces, as you put it\u2014something I\u2019m definitely interested in doing, fragments followed by longer scenes. Bluets<\/em> is a kind of breakup song and essay and meditation all at once. And then I opened Argonauts<\/em> and read that first paragraph, with the dildos and the ass-fucking on the floor. I love how moments of violent desire pop up in her work.<\/p>\n

They do in Sweetbitter, <\/em>too. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. There\u2019s not enough good erotic fiction. I like writing about sex. I wanted to write about sex. I feel like food and sex go hand in hand. The intensity, the sense of all your senses firing at the same time. The temporary intimacy. All that links restaurant work with sex. There were times when I was writing Sweetbitter<\/em> when I thought I might go even further with the sex, into full Argonauts <\/em>territory. I had dreams of writing a great anal-sex scene like the one in A Sport and a\u00a0Pastime<\/em>. I wrote it, and I cut it. Not because I thought it would be too sensational, but because it didn\u2019t seem true to Tess. But I did want the whole undercurrent of the book to be about sex in some sense\u2014about Tess\u2019s appetites across the board. Figuring sex out\u2014or thinking you\u2019re going to figure it out\u2014is a really important part of becoming a woman.<\/p>\n

Is it frustrating when people assume that Tess is you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tess was never me, not really. I hostessed at restaurants when I was fifteen years old and managed restaurants in my late twenties. I had seen these girls come into restaurants over and over again, new to the place, wanting temporary work, not planning to stay for long, then ending up staying for years, and Tess was very much this idea of the new girl that I\u2019d seen walking in the door so often. Tess would never have gotten a job at the Union Square Caf\u00e9, where I worked. But, of course, she\u2019s also like me in some ways. Her sense of New York when she first moves here is my<\/em> sense of New York. And in the novel, Tess gets called \u201cbuoyant,\u201d and my experience of New York when I arrived was that it made me feel buoyant. Like Tess, I found that in New York I was trying to instigate a new life. Tess is chasing experiences that are textbook not-good-for-you, but she\u2019s hoping to press a button somehow\u2014to move forward into her real life.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Tess arrives in New York, she\u2019s asked if she wants to be a writer, and she says no, honestly or otherwise. Did you know early on that you wanted to be a writer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I did. I knew really young. Always. I read these Edgar Allen Poe stories we had at home when I was maybe eight years old, and I loved them and wrote all these really dark ghost stories afterward, and\u2014this probably isn\u2019t the kind of thing I should be talking about in interviews\u2014I had to go see the school therapist. The teachers had read my stories and they thought I was disturbed.<\/p>\n

What were the stories about? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, a young girl is at a sleepover and she gets possessed by all these demons and goes and kills herself in the kitchen. That sort of thing. I illustrated them, too.<\/p>\n

You said that this novel started out as a voice piece, presumably plotless, but the finished novel does feel like the work of an author who is interested in plot.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In its earliest form, the plot of my novel was The Portrait of a Lady<\/em>, cribbed almost directly, with a little bit of Dangerous Liaisons <\/em>mixed in, and a bit of The Ambassadors<\/em>. I had this summer between year one and two of graduate school, rereading Henry James and discovering Isabel Archer again, and that was the best thing that could have happened to me. I became aware of something I hadn\u2019t thought about when I read James first time round, which was how this was a man writing about Isabel\u2014how there were these parts of the book where he knew, but didn\u2019t know<\/em>, what her experience was. There were these small gaps that I found really exciting\u2014spaces where I wondered what Isabel Archer would have said or thought if it was her, instead of James, writing this story. I remember meeting with different editors. Some of them said things like, Your book is Girls <\/em>meets Kitchen Confidential<\/em>! And Claudia Herr, who eventually became my line editor at Knopf, was really quiet in the meeting\u2014there were all these big personalities there\u2014and she said, quietly, at the end of the meeting, It\u2019s a bit Portrait of a Lady<\/em>. I thought, Yes! You! You\u2019re my person. Done.<\/p>\n

Do you think Tess\u2019s appetites, and her attitudes towards those appetites, change over the course of your portrait of her?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I do. At twenty-two, she\u2019s had a healthy, average amount of sex, but hasn\u2019t really yet understood desire or real lust. And I think that happens a lot, that young women don\u2019t find real lust until later, although perhaps it\u2019s happening earlier and earlier now. In New York, she starts playing with intimacy and learning how to work her body, and how to not be embarrassed about being a sexual being. She begins in a mode where she\u2019s apologizing a lot about everything, and by the end, if there\u2019s any epiphany at all, it\u2019s probably that she no longer apologizes for her appetites. Of course, indulging one\u2019s appetites can lead to a lot of unraveling, but she doesn\u2019t know that yet.<\/p>\n

In an essay on knitting last year<\/a>, you used that word, unraveling<\/em>. You wrote that there are two kinds of women, \u201cthose who knit and those who unravel,\u201d and you suggested you were a great unraveler. Is that also true of Tess? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s a fun distinction\u2014knitters versus unravelers\u2014and fun to write an essay about, but of course women don\u2019t fall neatly into either category. I think most unravelers long to be knitters, and I think Tess is in a mode of seeking\u2014a dangerous mode to live in, but perhaps also the most interesting one. There\u2019s a dissatisfaction in her. There\u2019s this question of, Is it enough? That\u2019s always on her mind. That question caused her to leave her home in the Midwest and move to New York City all alone. I think that trait, if it\u2019s there, doesn\u2019t leave people. It doesn\u2019t mean she can\u2019t have a fulfilling life, and eventually have all those things that a knitter has, which in my essay are a husband and children and long-term friendships, but I think that impulse she had to leave her home behind and start somewhere new will always stay with her. People like Tess keep moving. They knit, they unravel, they move on.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Lee\u2019s most recent novel is <\/em>High Dive.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first sentence of Stephanie Danler\u2019s riveting debut novel is perhaps more an injunction than an imperative: \u201cYou will develop a palate.\u201d Over the 355 pages of Sweetbitter, the narrator, twenty-two-year-old Tess, encounters a number of appetites. She arrives in New York City during the heat wave of 2006 and applies for a job at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":616,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[3401,22480,15323,13206,71,21402,1132,21403,11000,125,747,16584,12043,9330,21594,22481,21596,10657],"class_list":["post-98497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-anne-carson","tag-bittersweet","tag-debut-novels","tag-elena-ferrante","tag-fiction","tag-high-dive","tag-interviews","tag-jonathan-lee","tag-knitting","tag-new-york-city","tag-novels","tag-outline","tag-rachel-cusk","tag-rachel-kushner","tag-stephanie-danler","tag-stephanie-danler-interview","tag-sweetbitter","tag-the-flamethrowers"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStephanie Danler on \u201cSweetbitter\u201d & Reducing Fiction to Essentials<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"That idea of your protagonist being \u201cblank\u201d\u2014it made me think of something Rachel Kushner told me, that she believed \u201cthe backstory isn\u2019t the story you need.\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\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is That All There Is?: An Interview with Stephanie Danler by Jonathan Lee\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"May 24, 2016 \u2013 The first sentence of Stephanie Danler\u2019s riveting debut novel is perhaps more an injunction than an imperative: \u201cYou will develop a palate.\u201d Over the 355\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/\" \/>\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=\"2016-05-24T14:31:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-05-24T15:42:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/stephanie-danler_aup-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1050\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"701\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jonathan Lee\" \/>\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=\"Jonathan Lee\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"10 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jonathan Lee\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/fa3d1a4c90813aa63293d62cb95f58c5\"},\"headline\":\"Is That All There Is?: An Interview with Stephanie Danler\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-05-24T14:31:55+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-05-24T15:42:49+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/\"},\"wordCount\":1991,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/stephanie-danler_aup-1-1024x684.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Anne Carson\",\"bittersweet\",\"debut novels\",\"Elena Ferrante\",\"fiction\",\"High Dive\",\"interviews\",\"Jonathan Lee\",\"knitting\",\"New York City\",\"novels\",\"Outline\",\"Rachel Cusk\",\"Rachel Kushner\",\"Stephanie Danler\",\"Stephanie Danler interview\",\"Sweetbitter\",\"The Flamethrowers\"],\"articleSection\":[\"At Work\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/\",\"name\":\"Stephanie Danler on \u201cSweetbitter\u201d & Reducing Fiction to Essentials\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/stephanie-danler_aup-1-1024x684.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-05-24T14:31:55+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-05-24T15:42:49+00:00\",\"description\":\"That idea of your protagonist being \u201cblank\u201d\u2014it made me think of something Rachel Kushner told me, that she believed \u201cthe backstory isn\u2019t the story you need.\u201d\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/stephanie-danler_aup-1.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/stephanie-danler_aup-1.jpg\",\"width\":1050,\"height\":701},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Is That All There Is?: An Interview with Stephanie Danler\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/fa3d1a4c90813aa63293d62cb95f58c5\",\"name\":\"Jonathan Lee\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b5732716502181d07056c78dc80125da6405ca25fcaef19821bc78c55cb32952?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b5732716502181d07056c78dc80125da6405ca25fcaef19821bc78c55cb32952?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Jonathan Lee\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/jlee\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Stephanie Danler on \u201cSweetbitter\u201d & Reducing Fiction to Essentials","description":"That idea of your protagonist being \u201cblank\u201d\u2014it made me think of something Rachel Kushner told me, that she believed \u201cthe backstory isn\u2019t the story you need.\u201d","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Is That All There Is?: An Interview with Stephanie Danler by Jonathan Lee","og_description":"May 24, 2016 \u2013 The first sentence of Stephanie Danler\u2019s riveting debut novel is perhaps more an injunction than an imperative: \u201cYou will develop a palate.\u201d Over the 355","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2016-05-24T14:31:55+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-05-24T15:42:49+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1050,"height":701,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/stephanie-danler_aup-1.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Jonathan Lee","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Jonathan Lee","Est. reading time":"10 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/"},"author":{"name":"Jonathan Lee","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/fa3d1a4c90813aa63293d62cb95f58c5"},"headline":"Is That All There Is?: An Interview with Stephanie Danler","datePublished":"2016-05-24T14:31:55+00:00","dateModified":"2016-05-24T15:42:49+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/"},"wordCount":1991,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/stephanie-danler_aup-1-1024x684.jpg","keywords":["Anne Carson","bittersweet","debut novels","Elena Ferrante","fiction","High Dive","interviews","Jonathan Lee","knitting","New York City","novels","Outline","Rachel Cusk","Rachel Kushner","Stephanie Danler","Stephanie Danler interview","Sweetbitter","The Flamethrowers"],"articleSection":["At Work"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/","name":"Stephanie Danler on \u201cSweetbitter\u201d & Reducing Fiction to Essentials","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/stephanie-danler_aup-1-1024x684.jpg","datePublished":"2016-05-24T14:31:55+00:00","dateModified":"2016-05-24T15:42:49+00:00","description":"That idea of your protagonist being \u201cblank\u201d\u2014it made me think of something Rachel Kushner told me, that she believed \u201cthe backstory isn\u2019t the story you need.\u201d","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/stephanie-danler_aup-1.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/stephanie-danler_aup-1.jpg","width":1050,"height":701},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/is-that-all-there-is-an-interview-with-stephanie-danler\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Is That All There Is?: An Interview with Stephanie Danler"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/fa3d1a4c90813aa63293d62cb95f58c5","name":"Jonathan Lee","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b5732716502181d07056c78dc80125da6405ca25fcaef19821bc78c55cb32952?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b5732716502181d07056c78dc80125da6405ca25fcaef19821bc78c55cb32952?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Jonathan Lee"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/jlee\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/616"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98497"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98542,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98497\/revisions\/98542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}