It’s fabulous, and your fourth novel, which means you are enviably prolific, or. Not surprisingly, neither lady lost her cool.įiona Maazel Congratulations on the book. We talked about just a few of them in my apartment, over soup and beer and my cat, who kept molesting the recorder as Heidi spoke. The novel is by turns moving and funny and tanked up with ideas that stay provocative well after the novel ends. In her new novel, the big stuff comprises nothing short of identity politics, apprehensions of selfhood, and an allegorical rendering of self-sabotage whose MacGuffin is already pleasingly complex-a girl whose mom committed suicide when she (the girl) was just a month old, and who, at 26, is now vulnerable to assaults of grief. She is also a founding editor of one the most relentlessly compelling venues for nonfiction extant today, a teacher of literature and creative writing, and, in all these ventures, very much engaged with the big stuff. Heidi is a prolific novelist- The Vanishers, which publishes this March, is her fourth book. Refuse to stir or, just as often, are denied the chance. Memorable, often hilarious, and in all cases shrewd, she is a real thinker, which sounds condescending until you consider the way so much contemporary fiction and-I’m just going to say it-so many women writers refuse to enter arenas of debate or stir us to a sense of bigger things. Because what’s most winning about Heidi-in person and on the page-is the alacrity of her mind, the way it will scope the room for what’s of interest and make something memorable of it in about ten seconds. I don’t remember when we first met I do remember one of the last times we met, at the MacDowell Colony, where I spent our two-day overlap slavishly trying to keep up with her wit, and fledging my girl crush with evidence that I had not, and would not, succeed. “Why is she so smart and funny?” “How is she pulling off this career with two kids?” “How does anyone that intelligent also dress that well?” “What does she know that we don’t?” And so, Heidi, who tends to inspire this kind of awe among her readers and peers. Other questions came in private and were rhetorical. “How does The Believer, the magazine she co-founded and edits, continue its reign of excellence?” I forgot to ask that, too.
“Is she ever going to collect her short stories?” I forgot to ask. “How does she pronounce her last name?” Jewlavitz. Call me populist, call me lazy, but to help prepare for this interview, I posted on Facebook that I was talking to Heidi Julavits for BOMB and asked if anyone had any questions for her.
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