Julie Buntin joins us to discuss Famous Men, a literary page-turner about a young woman’s struggle with power and identity during her college years.
This week on Book Gang, we’re joined by Julie Buntin, whose new novel Famous Men plunges us into the heart of literary ambition, tangled mentorships, and the shadows that linger from girlhood into adulthood. Through candid storytelling and sharp insight, Julie unpacks the inspiration behind her groundbreaking new work, what drew her to the hallowed halls of campus settings, and how she writes into the gray areas of power and agency.
Famous Men traces the story of Will, a young woman shaped by family secrets and the gaze of powerful men. As Will moves from an oppressive childhood to the lure of literary circles and a complicated mentorship with a celebrated older writer, Buntin explores the aftermath of exploitation, the murkiness of agency, and the search for meaning in identity. This novel refuses easy answers and invites readers to reckon with the uncomfortable spaces where self-knowledge is finally forged. For readers who want to hear from a writer who prioritizes craft, this episode is for you!
In this week’s episode, we discuss:
📚 Writing Through Life’s Upheavals: Julie opens up about the nine-year journey between her debut and Famous Men, reflecting on how motherhood, shifting priorities, and the realities of publishing shaped her creative process. She discusses the challenges of returning to a manuscript after life-changing events, and how the evolving literary landscape—less media coverage, more grassroots reader communities—has transformed what it means to connect with an audience.
📚 The Power of Setting: Julie reflects on why campus novels—and the charged spaces of creative writing programs—continue to fascinate her as both writer and reader. She shares what’s unique about academic environments, how they incubate both ambition and vulnerability, and why they’re the perfect crucible for stories about coming of age and questionable mentorships.
📚 Power, Vulnerability, and Retrospective Voice: At Famous Men’s core is Will—a narrator whose sharp self-awareness is complicated by the forces that shape, trap, and sometimes free her. Julie discusses the delicate craft of writing a character who is both in control and deeply lost, and how the novel resists simple narratives of victimhood or complicity.
BONUS BOOK LIST: This week’s bonus book list offers readers 18 novels set in schools, giving you fresh worlds to explore in academia. I’m astounded by how many new releases have back-to-school energy, and I hope you enjoy browsing these selections. Patrons of the show will receive a printable book list and a bonus spoiler chat with Julie.
Meet Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin‘s new novel, Famous Men, is out now from Random House. Her debut, Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, released in ten territories worldwide, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen outlets, including The Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews. She is the co-editor of Notes to New Mothers, a collection of dispatches from postpartum life by sixty writers and artists. Previously, Buntin was an editor and director of writing programs at Catapult. Now, she writes and teaches in Ann Arbor, where she is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
SUPPORT OUR SHOW: Join the Book Gang- patreon.com/momadvice
SUPPORT OUR SHOW: Make a One-Time Donation in ANY AMOUNT- buymeacoffee.com/bookgangpodcast
2026 MomAdvice Book Club Books (All 12 Selections)
BOOK CLUB PODCAST FOR SEPTEMBER: DAVID JOY INTERVIEW (THOSE WE THOUGHT WE KNEW)
NEW BOOK LIST: 18 NEW NOVELS SET IN SCHOOLS
Famous Men by Julie Buntin
Marlena by Julie Buntin
Notes to New Mothers by Rebecca Knight & Julie Buntin
The Animators by Kayla Ray Whitaker
Returns and Exchanges by Kayla Ray Whitaker
The Good Mother Myth by Nancy Reddy nf
Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth
Contrapposto by Dave Eggers
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee & Walker Evans
Marion by Leah Rowan
Half a Life by Jill Ciment
Consent by Jill Ciment
Life with Picasso by Francois Gilot & Carlton Lake
The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
My Education by Susan Choi
Connect with Julie Buntin on Instagram or Her Website
Connect with Amy on Instagram, TikTok, or MomAdvice
Get the Daily Kindle Deals Newsletter
Book Gang Podcast Transcript:
Julie Buntin (00:00)
Hi, I'm Julie Buntin, the author of the novels Famous Men and Marlena, and the co-editor of the forthcoming collection of reflections about motherhood, Notes to New Mothers, which is coming out this fall.
Amy’s Warm Introduction:
Hey Book Gang! I’m thrilled to welcome you to this week’s conversation with Julie Buntin, who now feels like a forever friend of our show after this special interview. With Famous Men, Julie delivers a literary novel that’s urgent, haunting, and bracingly honest. The story orbits an MFA professor and his literary assistant, their dynamic quickly blurring into something far messier than a simple professional relationship as the story progresses. You may think, “I’ve heard this story before.” And you have, but not quite like this! While the contours of this story are familiar for a #MeToo-era novel, Buntin’s touch is fresh and uniquely told.
What sets Famous Men apart is the way Julie leans into the gray areas of power and vulnerability. Will, our narrator, is only 23; Nathaniel, the professor she’s drawn to, is 62—a fact the novel doesn’t shy away from, with a relevant backstory that book clubs will love dissecting. You see, this isn’t just a story about desire or even consent, but about how formative wounds and ambition can make someone susceptible to a particular kind of attention.
In Famous Men, Will is forced to tiptoe around her mother’s boyfriend in high school, every inch of comfort stripped away as she enters her teen years. The casual freedoms of girlhood—wandering the house braless, sleeping in old pajamas—are abruptly revoked, replaced with new clothes meant to “protect” her from his gaze. And then she discovers the worst kind of violation: that Will, alone in her room, has been photographed without her knowledge by the very man who should never have been trusted. It takes her four years to gather the nerve and the money to leave, trash bags taped over her windows to protect her from his gaze as she waits to break it out on her own. Suddenly, every corner of her world is suspect, including her own origin story, in which her mother claims she doesn’t know who her father is.
When Will finds a book inscribed to her mother on her bookshelves—For My Northern Star—she becomes convinced it might hold the key to her father’s identity. It’s enough to propel her out of her small town and into the alluring world of Nathaniel Fellow, a celebrated poet decades her senior. He is not who she thought he was, but he is something else entirely. Powerful, charismatic, and dangerously familiar, a man forty years her senior, whom she discovers has no real connection to her family but is an intriguing literary figure she feels drawn to. As she recounts this meeting to the reader, she offers that Nathaniel would have cut the first four pages of their meet-cute because, “if you need the past to tell a story, you’re telling the wrong story.”
Buntin doesn’t romanticize their relationship; instead, she captures its awkwardness, its transactional nature, and its emotional confusion. That first drunken night with Nathaniel is full of blunt, unsexy realities. The arrangement that follows is both professional and deeply personal: Will is paid for her time, given a credit card, and a spare room, but also expected to cater to Nathaniel’s every need, romantic and otherwise. Her role is ambiguous—assistant, confidant, caretaker, and more—while Nathaniel’s power in the literary world casts a long shadow over her own ambitions..
What’s truly remarkable about this book, though, is how Buntin traces the aftermath of this relationship. Rather than ending with the affair, Famous Men follows Will and Nathaniel through the years, including a #MeToo reckoning. In the end, Buntin explores how formative, lopsided relationships can shape a life in ways that linger far beyond the last page.
If you’re new here, hi! I’m Amy Allen Clark, the voice behind the Book Gang podcast, and I’m so happy to have you here. This space is dedicated to debuts, backlist favorites, and under-the-radar gems.
In case you missed it, we are celebrating Those We Thought We Knew with David Joy as our September book club pick, and last week’s podcast gave you a warm introduction to this storyteller. I don’t say this lightly: this is one of the best conversations I’ve ever recorded on this show as we discuss this racially charged murder mystery and the boots-on-the-ground work David has been doing in his small Appalachian town. I received so many messages from readers who could not get over David’s story and I’m linking once more to this important conversation in today’s show notes. If you are joining the book club chat, we will be discussing this backlist book on September 24th at 8 PM ET. Plus, our Classics Club has officially launched! We’re reading Jane Eyre together—starting with Chapters 1–13 and meeting for discussion on September 17th at 8 PM ET. Membership is just $5 a month, or save 10% when you prepay for the year. Every member keeps this podcast independent and commercial-free. If you have always wanted to be part of a book club that really does discuss the book club books, this is the club for you!
I do have one additional announcement, the MomAdvice Book Club Facebook group will be closing its doors and moving over to the Patreon community. I’m so grateful for every story you’ve shared, every book recommendation, and the warmth you’ve brought into this space.
But I have to be honest: I’m increasingly uncomfortable with the direction Facebook is heading. From rolling out AI features without my input to ongoing struggles with spam accounts, it feels like I’m losing control over the community we’ve built together. I want a space where our conversations are private, our experiences are valued, and I, as your host, can ensure our group’s spirit stays intact. I don’t love waking up to find that messages have been sent out without my permission or that AI chatbots you think are me are responding.
That’s why I’m moving our community to Patreon. Now, before you worry, joining us there doesn’t require a paid membership (although it is greatly appreciated)! All of our book club announcements, podcast episodes, weekly book lists, and a prompt to share what you’re reading will be free to browse. If you want to participate in other features, the $ 5-a-month membership covers the administrative work of running a community, which has been a labor of love for me as a creator. Patreon simply offers a better, creator-focused platform where I have the tools to nurture and protect our group without interference or unwanted changes.
I have been really grateful that Patreon lets me create and moderate a safe, welcoming space for our community, with no algorithms dictating what you see or AI bots intruding on our conversations. Everything made there is made by a human with a great deal of love.
I truly hope you’ll join me. The door will always be open, and you’ll never need to pay to participate in many of our core activities.
In fact, to celebrate this week’s podcast, you’ll also find this week’s bonus book list, free to browse, celebrating 19 novels set at schools that offer readers fresh worlds to explore in academia. I’m astounded how many new releases have back-to-school energy and I hope you have a wonderful time clicking on the link in today’s show notes to get some fantastic ideas.
Now, let’s meet today’s guest: Julie Buntin‘s new novel, Famous Men, is out now from Random House. Her debut, Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, released in ten territories worldwide, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen outlets, including The Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews. She is the co-editor of Notes to New Mothers, a collection of dispatches from postpartum life by sixty writers and artists. Previously, Buntin was an editor and director of writing programs at Catapult. Now, she writes and teaches in Ann Arbor, where she is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
If you’re enjoying the show, leaving a quick review on iTunes is one of the best ways to help others discover Book Gang—it’s free and means so much to us. And to our wonderful patrons, around here, you’re the only famous men (and women) this community needs! Thank you for supporting human creators in a world turned upside down by AI.
Now, let’s get chatting!
Book Gang- Amy (00:11)
Okay, Julie and I have spent way too much time setting up before we even recorded. Because we have so many authors that we share space with that have been on the show, like Dur E and Lauren, and like I just feel like you and I are intertwined in that way. But also you're Midwest, and I feel like Midwest women can just talk about pretty much nothing for like an hour before we get started. I know.
Julie Buntin (00:33)
For as long as they want. Yeah. Just like gab. Yep.
Book Gang- Amy (00:38)
Well, I really want to talk about for your icebreaker because I was so curious about this painting. And I hate to say it, but you do look a little bit like the subject on the book, which is super uncomfy. But I want to talk about who is in that painting and a little bit of the lore or maybe story behind this book.
Julie Buntin (00:58)
Yeah, yeah, it's such a fun question. So I can say that we had in the cover, it was kind of a long cover process for this book, and we went through a lot of options. I worked in publishing before, earlier in my life as a writer and have sort of like strong feelings about covers and all of that stuff. So we settled on a cover that was a painting by Lucian Freud, and for various reasons, permissions issues, we had to change it kind of last minute.
And in that process, the art directors at Random House. They gave me a few new options. Kind of we were really under pressure to pick something. And one of them was this cover that has become the cover, which is a painting by Meghann Stephenson. She is this incredible, incredible painter. You can find her online and on Instagram. And she often uses this particular model in her work. There's a couple different portraits of her.
Her name is Ana Luisa Corrigan. and she's an artist herself. So it's just a kind of the painting itself, so the crop of the painting that's on my cover is a very zoomed-in like just portion of that painting. And I actually one thing I love about it is that if you go online and you find the whole painting, the whole painting itself has a lot of like interesting resonances and echoes with this book. We see a character who's looking at herself and looking away, and there's this reflection of her. There's like she's doubled in these ways, or this sense of who's she getting ready for, who's watching her, what is she trying to look like, and for whom. And all of that stuff kind of has this interesting sort of like bubbling tension with what is in Famous Men.
So it's a cover I think that works in all of those different ways. And there's just something about her expression and the way that it we can't see her whole face. We get this sense of some sort of tension outside of the scene that just like felt very alive to me and striking, and I think it’s one of those covers too. I personally really like this, and a cover like that has this quality of something's off here or something, like that makes you want to look again. Like, where's the rest of her? Where is she? Why is the background so dark? it's perhaps a little polarizing with the like aggressive kind of quality of the type. so that was all kind of all made it feel sort of alive to me in ways that made it me think, okay, this, this is right.
Book Gang- Amy (03:06)
I love it. Well, when you are involved in this, just for our listeners who maybe haven't heard other people talk about book covers, do you know how it's gonna be cropped? Do they show you like other, you know, ways that it looks? What does that look like for you?
Julie Buntin (03:22)
That's such a good question. So usually so what I saw with this cover is I saw everything kind of with the crop. So when I had a different painting, I saw two different crops, I think, of that painting. So what I see what I usually see is like a selection of covers that have gone through a process with a lot of other people before they even get to me. And I felt really I appreciated this about Random House. I think sometimes people see like three and their team is like, pick one, or like these have
And I was given a little bit more input than that. I saw many. I saw ten maybe. I saw some discards at one point. That's also really like a really eye-opening thing as a writer when you're being really particular about your cover and then you see a bunch of things that already went through meetings and never even made it to you, and there's like 20, and you're like, okay, they've really tried all the random things that I've said.
Book Gang- Amy (04:12)
Mm-hmm.
Julie Buntin (04:12)
And I think it's just it's a hard cover because I think I felt like, I think I felt resistant to having like a beautiful woman on the cover of this book about the things that this book is about. And in some ways that is sort of like what I got, or you get this like kind of alluring, like sideways glance that has a little, you know, of that kind of energy.
But I also think that there's something distinct enough about the coloring and the kind of like the expression on her face that sort of adds this, again, adds this tension that I always like in a cover. Like the tension of what's what's going on here? makes you want to look again.
Book Gang- Amy (04:50)
Yeah, it invites the reader in for sure. And and it's what grabbed me. I mean, I feel like the font choices and everything were just so distinct and I, you know, I'm so glad that your cover was this bold and and pulled me in.
Julie Buntin (05:05)
Yeah, and I like too that the font, like the text treatment has it has this kind of an almost masculine kind of like an aggressive quality to it that I think the combination of that of the face and the text is that to me is where the like that's where the story starts. You can actually see some of the dimensions of the story kind of coming in it in the collision between those two things, I think.
Book Gang- Amy (05:30)
Yeah. Well, obviously it's been nine years, I think, since your last book. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that experience. I just had, you know, this summer interviewed Kayla Ray Whitaker and she had had a very long stretch between The Animators and Returns and Exchanges. And it's really interesting to me because for some reason this feels like a debut even though it hasn't, just because of the time span that has passed. And I would love to hear a little bit about what you think has changed in publishing during this time and you know what maybe you did differently with your writing process since Marlena.
Julie Buntin (06:06)
Yeah, that’s such a good question. Kayla and I went to our we went to MFA together. I love Kayla's work. I love her, she’s so talented. I love both of her books. And it's been exactly the same. So The Animators came out the same year as Marlena, and I feel like Kayla and I are like, we're just
Book Gang- Amy (06:21)
wait. Wait, are you guys on a parallel path?
Julie Buntin (06:23)
Yeah, I feel like we're just we’ve like hit some milestones at the same time. and I got to see her now. We have the same editor at Random House, which is really cozy to be list buddies with someone I've known since I was, you know, in my MFA.
Book Gang- Amy (06:35)
I can't believe this.
Julie Buntin (06:37)
But yeah, I mean, I feel like a lot has changed. I really feel like a lot has changed. I think I could talk about some of the depressing things that have changed that we probably all know like that there's no Washington Post book, you know, book section anymore. That legacy media the way I understood it with my debut just doesn't seem to exist in the same way. Marlena was this, I didn't realize at the time how rare and lucky this is, but now I do see. It was reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle and Boston Globe and LA Times. It had coverage kind of from newspapers sort of nationally in a way that I hope that Famous Men will get some reviews of that nature.
But I think what I've heard from my team is that it's a lot less common now because of kind of shrinking budgets. They don't work with freelancers as much anymore, less coverage for books. They tend now to focus on writers from the general regions of places in the San Francisco Chronicle, that kind of thing. that I feel like is all a little; as a writer, kind of with one version of this experience under my belt, I'm like, okay, well this is looking different.
But then the other side of that is that there's a whole new world of things like this. Like you and engaged readers online who have their own followings, their own book communities, their own podcasts, their own whatever. Who are in some ways the best parts of what that was like before anyway, because the best part is like meeting and talking to readers and like the feeling of like, the person who was on the other side of this conversation read the book I intended to write. And that doesn't always happen, right?
And sometimes there's a mismatch between reader and writer, or the project isn't right for somebody. But sometimes you have this kind of magical thing that happens where you're like, this reader was the right reader for this book at the right time. And there's so that's why I do this, right? In those ways, it feels like there's so much more of that online and that feels really cool to me and special and exciting. But it is a little bit, it is totally different. I feel like I've done a lot more kind of like podcasts and stuff like that. and less maybe just sort of less of this sort of like roundups in women's magazines. You know what I mean?
It's just a little bit of a different thing.There was another part to your question kind of about how my processes change or why it maybe just like why it took so long and I can just say really directly. Because I wish that I'd heard more people say this when it was taking me a long time. I had two children and I know many people who have two children and I was just reading this wonderful nonfiction book called The Good Mother Myth, where the writer was talking so much about how she just wanted to work, working kind of saved her when her babies were little. I had a lot of trouble connecting to my work when my kids were little. I was not a productive new mom. I wasn't desperate to get back to the page. I really was like in the thick of it and there were different reasons for that. But I mean I think it just it just slowed. There were long breaks after each of my children were born and then when you take a long break from a project that's underway finding your way back into that project takes a long time and I almost felt like I rewrote it each time I returned, which is quite painstaking and slow. So that just that I sort of went through these big life upheavals and that changed I think the time it took me.
Book Gang- Amy (09:52)
Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, again, going back to Kayla's conversation, I think one thing that she brought up was like you don't know if there is another book and that you're really happy that you had a book in the world, but not every writer has a second book. And so going in with maybe some of that expectation too that you can write a debut and then it could be close to a decade before you write something else, or that could be it. And that was something that I think some people have to reckon with is that maybe it is just one book and you know, giving yourself grace that you had a whole thing, you were like making humans and you’re a little busy with with human life, you know, like that that is a totally real thing. And also I feel like when you come back to something, when your kids get a little bit older, you just appreciate maybe that time more, that creative time more. Do you feel like that's true?
Julie Buntin (10:51)
Yeah, I do. And actually it was, it's weird. It's like after my son was born, I went through a period of time. I've written about this a little bit, where I really was like that's my first child, where I really was like, I don't know if I'm a writer anymore. I just didn't feel I didn't feel connected to that part of my life in ways that made sense to me. I was just like I used to feel so compelled to do this and it was like an itch I had to scratch in the back of my brain all the time.
And what was really alarming to me is that I almost felt like, I just didn't care. I think I was having some kind of hormones. Like I look looking back, I'm like, ugh. but I was having, a lot of the things that interested me didn't interest me anymore. And I was really, really just like let me gaze at my baby in ways I didn't, in ways I didn't expect to be, in ways that were a little obsessive, a little bit maybe a little unhealthy.
When I kind of got back into my book, I was really, really deep in it when I was pregnant with my daughter. And I went away to residency at and left my son for 10 days, which was really hard. He was only two and a half. I still think about that.
But when my daughter was born, I had to take time away because I had some postpartum complications and was quite sick after she was born. And then I had the complication of two kids, which is just logistically like so hard. And I had a hard, I have a hard job. So I just some of it was life that was in the way, but actually I desperately wanted to write and felt like I needed that time away from my family even more than I ever had. So it was almost like a different tension then. It was the tension of life has become too big for me to like hold my writing and my family and my professional life all together. But after my son, it was like, I don't know if I want to be a writer.
And like that, I think has been a real lesson for me about my process and about just being a writer in the world and a mom and a person. It's just that like there's no way to easily measure how your life is going to intersect with what you make or want to make and how changes that you experience in your life, like they do seep into the work. And they do change how you work and how you think about art. So that was really all just like such an education. But now I'm like no one who knows what will happen. I would not have said it would take me nine years between books before, but I don't think it will take me just I don't think it'll take me that long again for the next month. 'Cause it's just a different thing now somehow.
Book Gang- Amy (13:05)
Yeah, I can I can say like, you know, nearing fifty and now my kid being my kids being in their twenties that so much of who you are as a mother is like what you identify with and you know, being on the flip side of that, you know, trying to figure out now now who am I in my creative life, right? And I started this podcast in that season because I was like, I feel like I need something that creatively drives me and also I need to be around people who are creative that can help inspire me. And I feel like those seasons in motherhood. It's like who am I without my kids and who do I want to be? And you have to lean into whatever that season is.
Julie Buntin (13:43)
Yeah, and I'm trying to make peace with that too. It's like my son is five now. So I spent a year and a half not doing much, but like being with my son. I can feel how quick how quick this goes. Like he's, you know, I can like he's like plays T ball and he's gonna lose a tooth. I couldn't have even fathomed that when he was six months old, you know, and I'm sure when they're 24, there's a whole other layer of that, right? Like so I'm just kind of like
Book Gang- Amy (14:04)
Yeah. Weird. So weird.
Julie Buntin (14:11)
I really enjoy, I do enjoy a lot of things about motherhood so much more than I thought I would. That's also part of it too, is like a real sense of like I this is like the most fun part of my life in a lot of ways, and I don't wanna show up for my work and show up for my kids.
And find a way to do all of that. And I think a lot of mothers are all trying to wrestle with that stuff. But yeah.
Book Gang- Amy (14:34)
Well, once you got the ball rolling, let's talk a little bit about what the process looked like for you. I know that you have talked about that this novel really began with a feeling of being alone in your studio at McDowell and wondering who could see you when you thought you were safe, which I'm like, what a dark thought to be carrying around in your brain. So can we talk about how the seeds of this story really started for you?
Julie Buntin (14:59)
Yeah, yeah, it totally started with that feeling and maybe kind of mixed up with that. So I started this book when I was at the MacDowell Colony in the summer of twenty nineteen, which was a couple years after my debut had come out. My debut did better than I think than I expected, maybe slightly better than my publisher expected, and I was in this space of a specific kind of space of I know I wanna write another book, but I don't know if I can. I mean kind of what we were already talking about. Can I do it?
And that was just like a lucky lucky thing that happened to me and now I'm here at MacDowell, a place I've never gotten I only got into because of my first book, but I don't even know what to write and I can't write and I was quite stuck when I was there. And my studio had this giant window, no curtain, you know, MacDowell's a very safe place. MacDowell's the best place in the world as far as I'm concerned. I would not have finished this book if it weren't for MacDowell. But it has this giant window and it was the kind of space where like no matter where you are in that studio, you knew you could be seen from outside because there was no curtain and the window was large. It might have a curtain now, but it didn't then.
And I just had this itchy feeling the whole time I was in there, especially at night. I like I like to write at night and I'd have my lamp on and you could see, you know, I couldn't see into the woods, but I knew that anyone walking by could see me. Of course no one's walking by. But but just I think a lot of women are familiar with this feeling. It's the feeling of walking home at night in the city, there's no one on the street, but then there's someone turns on the corner and you're like, or you didn't know someone was there and you realized there was someone behind you all along. This just very and probably it's fine, and it's it's actually just your neighbor. You know what I mean?
Like all the things you kind of go through in your mind, but just this sense of like awareness. Just a kind of like something was turned on where I just had to be aware. I was just aware of that. I wasn't scared, I was just aware. It was like slightly more uncomfortable than I would have been if there was a curtain. and I was also reading Philip Roth in that space, which was Zuckerman Unbound specifically, which is like such a funny, naughty, illicit book to me felt like it was full of this kind of like hard-earned freedom, like a sense of a writer just being like, I have fought some battles and now I'm writing whatever I want and I don't care. Which was exactly the feeling that I could not access in that space. Do you know what I mean? Like I could not access a feeling in my creative life of like, I don't care, I'm just free, I'm writing whatever I wanna write without regard for like what people will think of me or the consequences of it. And I just it was something about those two things together, like that feeling and the freedom of it and my envy of that and a feeling of imposter syndrome and then this sense of like a watcher, which is always the fear, right, is always of a male watcher, right? So somehow those things kind of combined together and I felt like, there's a lot here. There's just so much friction here that feels so true to my experience in the world, in my adolescence, my young adulthood.
And I had been working on a novel and stuck in a novel that had this teacher character who was a prototype of Will, like way d really different. But I kind of like picked her up, kind of like stuffed her psyche with all of this stuff that was in mine, really. And then sort of set her on a path. And it was in those days, I think it was really that kind of unresolvable sort of contradiction of all of those things at once that kind of kicked me forward with the book. And really early in, I settled on this kind of question that I thought might animate some of those tensions, which is this kind of desire in her to f this question of like who is my father? How do I find him? But then what happens if that desire gets like really wrenched out of off course and kind of complicated in all these different ways.
So yeah, I mean it's it it's tricky, I think, because we were just talking about this a little bit off camera, but like it's not a story that is really straightforward in terms of like where did this come from, how did how does this work, but it is sort of an honest story about like how I think sometimes things kind of coalesce as a writer. It's not always like I experienced this thing in my life and then this thing happened or I had this idea that was in this way and I don't plot a lot in advance. So the first draft really is a kind of exploration of tensions and questions that I don't know the answers to through the lens of a character usually.
Book Gang- Amy (19:13)
Yeah, and I told you, literary fiction is so tough to talk about because it's like it's a lot of vibes, it's a lot of like characters, like just like descriptions of characters and scene setting. And sometimes, you know, I think when we're on pass for trying to tell a story, you know, through formats like this, it's harder to capture. But luckily, I told you, I wrote your pitch for you, so it's gonna be fantastic. You guys have already heard this pitch, and so you don't have to do that. I, of course, I’m curious, you know, the title is Famous Men, which is plural. So I wanted to ask you, why is that the title? Why is that the perfect title for you?
Julie Buntin (19:53)
Yeah, that was that's a I love that question and it was a hard road with this book. For a long time the working draft of this book was originally the workshop and then it was for a long time it was The Volta. And I'm mentioning this for anyone who's listening who writes, who's working on a novel draft, because I actually think each of those in progress titles were connected to something I needed to figure out about the book.
Like when it was the workshop, I was really thinking through the dynamics of the like MFA space and maybe just kind of artistic spaces in general, The Volta is a kind of rhetorical move in a poem where the meaning kind of like switches. There's like a shift. And that felt really important to me when I was kind of clocking this some of the like Me Too trajectory of this novel and thinking about the sort of hinge and what pressures might have to be put on this character to help her see her own story in a different way. And that was the title I was maybe most attached to.
And there was a lot of like conversation in my team that was like no one knows what a volta is. Like it's not like a legible. And it's funny now, Dave Eggers has a book out called like Contrapposto or something. I'm like, look like
Book Gang- Amy (20:59)
Yeah, that's true. Okay. See, and I would never connect the dots on that. See, we need someone you need to just come and talk to us and teach us things so that we can understand titles and processes.
Julie Buntin (21:07)
I'm like, hang on, readers can get with this, readers can get with this. But I actually don't think in the end that was the right. So that was the working title for super for the longest amount of time. And then in the final kind of refining periods of this book, I was thinking about for some reason the title, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, great book, no beefs with that book. but it's a book that Nathaniel would love. And so that was kind of just for some reason it was like knocking around in my head. I was like, can I do some play on that that's not like disrespectful in some way? Because I do really admire that book. And I was talking to another friend actually and she was it she, she is the first person who put it in my mind. She said, what if it's just Famous Men? And it was like so many things clicked into place because there are so many, really Will's life has been shaped in very complex ways by different male figures who are fantasies, are real, are very active in her life or totally absent. She doesn't know who her dad is. And that kind of question is like huge. It's like the start of her journey in some ways.
Nathaniel obviously is the first contender for the Famous Men, famous man of the title. But then there's also the all of the there's her mother's boyfriend who kind of casts this long shadow over her life in different ways. Maybe even the boys at school who get to grow up and have their own relationship to kind of whatever happened when she was a teenager.
So I saw this, and then the and then of course, like the famous men of our like the famous literary genius kind of just the sort of archetype of that. So it felt so right to me. And once I landed on that, actually I was in the kind of final refining stages of the book. And it did help me sort of like pull out different strands and kind of burnish them a little bit more, make certain things turn up the volume in certain places and cut in others.
So I do think weirdly now I recognize it as a bit of like process related advice of like of like titles can change and like paying attention to your instinct for what a title can be can like show you something new maybe about a project as it's underway.
Book Gang- Amy (23:12)
That you refer to Nathaniel's reading life in this like little section here that we're talking about because I was actually thinking when I was going through these questions and preparing for this morning, like how Nathaniel would have cut this whole first part. He would have been like, Let's clip all of this, right? He’s let’s get to the root of this story, and he would think that all of this is nonsense part.
Julie Buntin (23:31)
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That is totally true. He would have been like, this is all like none of this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Book Gang- Amy (23:39)
We need to cut it. Scale down.
Julie Buntin (23:44)
I think in some ways, like the whole book, you know, Nathaniel is a composite of like so many different things. People and historical figures, people I've known. I mean he's just a composite. And I tried really hard to make him a character that you can’t attach any, you know, any one person in history or in literature, literary culture in real life. But like, I do think in some ways this book is a little bit of me like finding a vessel to really react against a lot of received like advice about writing, whether I received it from like things I read or in weird workshops or just criticisms of other things I've written, like whatever it was, like some way for me to say for me to kind of try to find a way of accessing something that felt f free from that, you know.
Book Gang- Amy (24:36)
Do you see this book in conversation with your first book?
Julie Buntin (24:40)
I do. I mean I think it's hard to like it's funny, like I think I was worried in some ways that it was too alike, and that we have if both books we have a woman looking back on a f on a sort of obsessive relationship that she can't make sense of that has changed her life in ways that are like really profound. Like both books have that shape. They're both first-person retrospective narrators. They both deal with people from Michigan, they both have two settings.
I mean, they’re both really interested in class in different ways. I do think that like tonally they're extremely different novels. Famous Men, I have a character who is I had to exist in this really delicate space when I was writing her where she like can and cannot see how stuck she is.
And in Marlena, there's a little bit of that with the narrator too, but it's not it's more of her excavating a kind of grief. And that I think the emotional beats of that are in some ways they're not as complicated or something. That's maybe not exactly what I mean. Like grief is very complicated, actually. But I felt like I was tapping into like a pure well of feeling.
And I will say, like a feeling I had. I lost a friend in my twenties. That grief was really like real. Like I was really channeling like a real feeling of grief in the writing of this book. Of that book. And this book, I was trying to create a character at the intersection of a lot of difficult things that felt sort of taboo like a live wire to talk about. And implicating myself weirdly as the author in the process. And that just was like a lot more dangerous of a space.
Will is not a character who's in touch with how she feels about things. In fact, she's a character whose like upbringing has very intentionally conditioned her to not trust what she thinks and feels. It's like really important thing about how she functions as a character. So that is really hard. Like, how do you write somebody who was raised to not listen to her own emotions or to trust what she perceives and how do you talk about that? But it felt really important to me to talk about that because I just feel like that is like such an, it's just such a common experience. And it's not one that I felt like I had seen embodied in fiction in a particular way. Or I felt like I had something to add to that conversation, I guess.
Book Gang- Amy (26:54)
Yeah. How do you celebrate once you finish this book? Tell me.
Julie Buntin (26:59)
You know, in a funny way, I think I still haven't. It's funny, like I'm such a meticulous sentence level writer and I don't say that as like a way of giving it's like the thing in the job interview where they're like, What's wrong with you? And you're like, Well, I'm a perfectionist
Book Gang- Amy (27:14)
I'm just too, too good at this. Yeah.
Julie Buntin (27:18)
Yeah, it's I don't mean it like that. I mean it actually as like it's like a truly, it's like part of why it took me so long to write this book. It's not pleasant. Like it's kind of it's not always good for the work. It's like very I just get very so w I say that because I was still obsessing on the line level up until I was, you know, late spring. Like I was annoying people. I was asking if I could change a beat in the book. I was getting told I had to stop. Like I was not being a good publishing partner to my team.
So I never really like I remember when I got the galley, my first feeling was a feeling of like, this has so many errors. Like and I really I say that just to be totally honest, like it's not actually like a healthy way to do this. Like I really think, I hope in the future that by the time we get to a galley, like when I hold the galley in my hand, I can say, I'm ready to celebrate now. But I did hold the finished copy. I saw my publicist in Chicago for like a bookseller thing, and I held a copy of my book for the first time. And I had a feeling of like, okay, it's done. I mean, I can't do anything now. It's done. Like how the world receives it, I can't control, it's done. It's coming out, you know, soon. And I think when that is once I've celebrated like the launch and stuff, I'll have a chance with maybe some close friends to be able to like have dinner or something. But I haven't quite taken it in, honestly. You know?
Book Gang- Amy (28:39)
Yeah. I do think like we don't talk often enough about the mental health aspect of launching a book into the world. I just recently ran across an Instagram post from I think Leah Rowan who wrote Marion. Honestly your books I would put you on a a little table together, if you haven't read it. It's a retelling of Psycho from the victim in the shower, but she takes hold of her story. And I think you would absolutely love it. But she was talking about in her Instagram about struggling with OCD. And how this whole launch process has been really, really tough for her as a writer because you're obsessively looking at numbers or you're obsessively looking at like what's the response? How do people feel about it? And I just think that being transparent about that is really important for people to hear because you're not alone. I mean, you're putting some of your most vulnerable work out into the world and then asking everyone to review it, critique it, give their opinion on it.
Julie Buntin (29:35)
Yeah, it's yeah, I am glad you said that. I think it's really hard. Like making something that's really private, public, like just the transition of that is really jarring. and it's it's a dream and it's a gift and I anyone who spends their time with this book, whether they like it or don't like it, I appreciate that time and I d I don't take it for granted. But it is like definitely it's more vulnerable than I think people expect.
Like I was at my son's T ball game actually some friends who are not writers were like, Your book's coming out I saw it on like the New York Times anticipated list or something for the summer and I was like, Yeah, but then you're like, god, have they they're like, I'm gonna get it. You're like, have they looked at my Goodreads review? Like are you like and what do they think? And what if it gets a bad review? And then will they think less of me? And I mean of course all of those things are just you know, we can think those things about anything in our lives, but I do think they're quite magnified. I often feel this feeling in my real life, like as a mom, outside of my life as a teacher and outside of my writing life, where I just actually would kind of rather people are just like not not know.
Book Gang- Amy (30:37)
Same, same. I know. I ran into a neighbor and she was talking about starting a podcast she may be listening, for her nonprofit and I was like, I could help you and she was like, What's your podcast? And then I like was walking home like sweating because I'm like, my gosh, now my neighbor knows like I have this whole it's not a secret life, but you have these other identities to yourself that are like more vulnerable and it's just strange to say like this is what I do, even though that is what I do and I'm living publicly with it. But it is one of those things where it's like, what is she thinking? Like replaying every conversation or like what episode was the last episode? Like, I need to go back and listen to myself and hear what I said. And it is such a vulnerable and you are doing something where you have to like live a life with your children and also you have this creative world as well.
Julie Buntin (31:25)
Yeah, and I don't write like this is what I always wanna say. I always when people are like, I'll pre-order it, I w I'm always like, first of all, I'm like, thank you, you are supporting me and you're making it possible for me to write more books. But on the other hand, like I wanna be like, hey look, if you don't like, if you don't like literary fiction, that that intentionally drives towards dis discomfort in places.
Just don't read it. Like let's just like, you don't need to know that my imagination, but I like I'm a quite like easy going, like affable person, but my imagination is like pretty weird. Like we can just like not have that. You know what I mean?
But then you but then at the same time, it's funny, like I say that, but then I'm always surprised by the people who do really respond, you know, to the work. And like sometimes it's not the person, you know, that you would expect. So it's just a funny thing. It's like living a double life. I totally get that. And I could see how the podcast would be the same way.
Book Gang- Amy (32:18)
Yeah. It is. It is. I’m like, no, you know, or I'll be listening to it in the car and leave it on because I'm like replaying it to make sure the sound sounds good or like editing and thinking about it and obsessing, did I say the wrong thing or did I you know, and yeah, my kids will get in the car and are like, We're not listening to this, are we?
Julie Buntin (32:35)
They're like, please take it off
Book Gang- Amy (32:38)
I know. We get to hear you all the time. You are a living podcast. So thank you very much. Let's move on.
Well, I want to talk about your story and get into that a bit. Will's voice is very direct and I do think, you know, you're talking about her being very complicated, but I think she is very self aware. So especially in moments where she is critiquing the narrative of herself, which is really replaying things that she's heard. So one of the things that Nathaniel says, if you need the past to tell a story, you're telling the wrong story. So how did you settle on the tone for her character and pulling readers into this book?
Julie Buntin (33:18)
Yeah, I love that question. It's such a thoughtful, like nuanced question, and in some ways it's it's so hard to answer because there's a part of it, there's a part of it that's like, for me, with a character's voice, that really is just like this really difficult thing to talk about that's very musical. It's like just trial and error kind of. Like I wrote myself into her mind and the rhythms of her mind took on a certain kind of music to me and then I felt like sort of faithful to that. That's not really a helpful answer, and in some ways it's actually true, though it's like I have an instinct to say it.
I think of Will a little bit as a character who like you know the character who like goes or maybe you know someone like this in your life who or maybe I will I can be like this in my life. you go to therapy and you're like, here's all the things going on and you like there's a certain level of self-awareness, like I'm doing this because of this, this is happening for this reason, but then nothing changes. It's like the self-awareness does not yield. It doesn't like translate to the outer self or something. I think of Will a little bit as a character who's been like that in her life.
And if the book the act of telling, like the act of confessing or of, or of unpacking this story and going back in and telling it in her way on her terms is the vehicle towards change, I would hope. But that that action is the act is like the active thing where she's making that self-awareness like concrete. But it's like she is a character who is in this difficult space where she knows so much better at so many moments, and yet she is also still really trapped in this. And then sometimes she just doesn't know.
And then at the same time in terms of point of view, we have Will telling the story retrospectively. She's looking back on something that happened to her, and she knows the ending from the beginning. But she doesn't have a ton of distance. Like this is one way this book is different than my first book. With that book, we have a woman telling the story of her past retrospectively, but it's many, many years after it happened. So she has 20 years of time to kind of like she's sat with it. She's it's changed in her mind. And I really think this is also for any aspiring writers listening who work with first person, that kind of question of vantage point and how much time is in your built into your perspective does something to how the voice unfolds.
So Will is a character who's very much standing at the end of this really difficult thing that happened to her and going, what was that? She hasn't the book itself is the making sense. And as she's kind of interrogating different decisions about how to tell it, I think that's where we see her kind of s again, that self-awareness and sort of in action. But it's like when she's relaying the events of the past, she's just like a lot of us are in our early twenties of smart and stupid at the same time. Think we're in control when we're not, blinkered by our own like limited world perspective, like, you know, experience in a lot of ways it was it was interesting and t and tough but fun and in all of the good kind of writerly ways to try to write a character who exists in kind of both of those planes and and encapsulate it into one voice.
Book Gang- Amy (36:13)
Was it hard to tap back into your twenties or because you have students you knew how to tap back in?
Julie Buntin (36:17)
That's a good question. I think it helped that I have students. One thing that was really helpful with writing this is that I've now been on both sides of the table. Like I have been a student, an MFA student myself, and I've also been a professor. And I remember this feeling I had as an MFA student that is definitely in the book of like I was so ambitious and I was so hungry. And I thought I was calculating and strategic, but actually I was really, really vulnerable. But I don't think I knew how vulnerable I was until I became a professor and then saw it in my students. Does that if that makes sense?
Book Gang- Amy (36:54)
Yeah.
Julie Buntin (36:54)
Like I saw how they would come into a program that's really competitive and be so hungry, but how that hunger, it’s just a delicate thing. Like it's they they're so much more vulnerable than they fully understand, I think, because of how much they want it. And that was really eye-opening for me actually. Like to recognize like I thought I had been like a smart person in my twenties and I was like, no, no, no. Like none of us, no one is, right?
So like that was a helpful thing to see. And I try to be careful. I mean, it's a delicate thing to write about these spaces when I'm very much embedded in one in my professional life. I try to write about difficult things honestly, but I recognize that like there's a lot of stickiness in that.
But I do think being around them helps. I do remember, I mean, I do remember that time, like it was a really formative in some ways. I remember it better than like yesterday, because now I have small children, you know? Like it's like more vivid.
Book Gang- Amy (37:50)
Right. I totally get that. Well, I think this was interesting with starting from a place where she thinks Nathaniel's her father. And I think this is one like point that we should talk through, maybe a little bit of the unboxing, because starting from that place and then involving yourself in an affair with someone after contemplating this other type of role that he could have played in her life, why did you begin with a search for her father?
Julie Buntin (38:21)
Yeah, and it's such an uncomfortable thing, right? Like even describing it as uncomfortable, and that's like part of the terms of this book. Like it's uncomfortable, I think. Like if there's a lot of things that it walks right into. And I think that became really interesting to me in the writing of it of like not like on discomfort for discomfort's sake, but like where are again the places where we like don't talk about the intersections between some things that are because it's too dangerous or it feels like we shouldn't say it.
I was very interested in this idea in not having that it kind of maybe two things. Like Will she doesn't know who her father is, and so her entire early life is kind of has this like thread of mystery, right? Like just anyone who grows up without knowing a parent, you just part of you always wonders like who is that person? Where did I come from? What are they like? What might I be like in ways I didn't I don't yet know because I don't know who they are. I think it's one of those things that if there is an unknown there.
I almost think it's kind of like a writerly activation. Like it makes you want to make up a story to explain the absence. So it felt important to her identity as a person and important to her identity as a writer in some ways. I think it puts her in a position early in the book of seeking something, like seeking some kind of answer. And I liked that energy for the beginning of a novel that I did always intend to be kind of like a long coming of age, like a journey with a character.
Book Gang- Amy (39:44)
Yeah, a quest.
Julie Buntin (39:45)
Yeah, exactly. And so I liked the kind of motivating energy of that, but I also knew I didn't want to write something like, I didn't want to write like an incest story or have it be like I wasn't that was not it the interest to me was more in what might that absence on the desire so so profoundly to find that person, how might that shape your way your life in ways you don't quite expect?
So she has this kind of parasocial fantasy about Nathaniel. It's no spoiler to say he's not actually her father, but it is true that this again is uncomfortable that their meeting and what happens between the two of them is all complicated by the fact that she did have this idea of him having this really important role in her life. And I think that does make her forgiving about certain things and welcomed to certain things that she wouldn't otherwise have been. And that felt again like very like an escalation to me in an uncomfortable way, like a space where I could I understood it psychologically, I think.
She doesn't go into their relationship pursuing a sexual relationship with him, but she does want closeness to him. And I think that those things become quite confused for her early on. And I was also interested in this idea of the story takes place over a long period of time. I think of this really as Will's story, not even Will and Nathaniel's story, like the story of a young woman's life and how she makes her way to adulthood sort of perilously. And by the end of their relationship or where the book ends, they they're almost more they are in a more kind of like caretakery friendshipy; there is something they move through a lot of different stages. And that was interesting to Me Too and how it would complicate kind of our questions of like victimhood, complicity, and just relationships I mean, this is so lame, but relationships are complicated.
Like I think this is why I write novels. They rarely do look the way that we the way that we think that they will, or that they sound like they will, or they seem to look on the outside. I think our relationships to our parents do inform the kinds of relationships that we have with other adults later and what we seek and what we think we can ask for and can't, what we're willing to take, right? what we're willing to accept. So I was interested in unpacking kind of all of that, and it felt really important to me to have that there. And in some ways if this is a story with some familiar beats in terms of like young woman meets older man who derails her life in these ways, to me that was the part that felt especially like a fresher door into talking about that, I guess. Or a door with like a more unexpected room attached to the house that we've been in before or something.
Book Gang- Amy (42:21)
Yeah, 'cause I was thinking, you know, I think one of the things for me, I mean, I can point to a stack of novels that I've read about inappropriate relationships that evolve from a student with a professor, right? An older man who kind of has this status is leading this life that the young student wants to be adjacent to, whether that's in pursuit of especially I feel like in books about books, right? They want a book or they want to be in the literary circles. And so I was thinking about why did this book stand out to me. I feel like the reason why this book is different, or what sets it apart from other books, is that we often don't play the real all the way through, right? We see them when they're young, enjoying being adjacent. Now he could be in his 40s, right? He could be older and like in midlife, it's often a midlife man, but we don't see him getting old. And like, what does that relationship look like if you are young and you are following it all the way through to the end of the story, right?
And I think that in that way, if I was going to give a story like that to my daughter, let's say in her twenties, I would be like, I think you need to read this book because you're following this all the way through, the trajectory of this relationship. Do you think that that's what sets your book apart?
Julie Buntin (43:44)
Yeah, I do, and I love that you said that and I think that that's true. And I think I mean, I think to me that was always really important. I think in some ways it's complicated, right? Like I think it would be maybe more dramatically like more just sort of dramatic fireworks or something if the book was like smushed around the kind of like explosiveness of their first meeting and becoming involved, say or something. But again, that felt like a far less interesting story to me than the ways that mutual obligation and care and like what happens if you know you've been taken advantage of but you still have really deep feelings for someone.
What about the fact that Nathaniel is in so many ways like the most stable person in Will's life, kind of. I mean, he provides her with a level of stability that she's been sort of seeking, and then that becomes its own kind of trap for her. And it's not just financial. It's certain like kinds of reliability. He's there for her in different ways. So it's the the idea, again, that there are some relationships that we can’t get out of and can't easily explain felt really interesting to me. the fact that when I was writing into her and I like she wouldn't even know how to describe this. She works for him, but then they're not even really sleeping together. I mean that's kind of a spoiler. Like th there's no like it's just transcended a lot of different things and I don't mean transcended in a good way. It's just entered this other space of of just infinite complexity. And I do think as I get older and I reflect my own relationships they they're just relationships are j again, they're just so much weirder and more complicated than friend, lover, you know, I just so that felt kind of endlessly interesting to me.
Book Gang- Amy (45:21)
Yeah, and there's even that transactional end of things, right? Like I'm giving you a credit card with this amount of money added or things like that. So how does that change the balance between these two people when you are struggling and you need that money and you also have this very strange relationship with this man?
Julie Buntin (45:38)
Yeah, and how do you get away from that? How much harder does that make it for you to escape that? One thing I remember an early reader saying to me, something in a what some early draft of like getting to the end and being like, I feel bad for N Nathaniel. And I was like, That's bananas.
Book Gang- Amy (45:54)
Whoa.
Julie Buntin (45:58)
But okay. Like I was like, Whoa. But like the idea that like actually Will might be judged more harshly for what she accepts than he would be also felt really interesting to me. I have strong thoughts about if readers sympathize with Nathaniel more. But just this idea that because Will takes this she takes the money from him she she does and try to get some other kind of job she does accept these sort of crumbs she does become kind of used to a certain lifestyle even if it's kind of like a scrappy, you know, not necessarily aspirational one, but that's better than maybe what she thought she would get and doesn't like that's sort of unappealing. Why doesn't she want more? Why doesn't she take so little? Why is she also still accepting this? She's too old. That felt really fraught to me.
And again, I think we see or I've seen in the world so many dynamics where I feel like we see people accept less than they should or make compromises in ways that we can't quite understand. And trying to get inside of that, I think I tried it was a way of trying to understand something again that I've witnessed and haven't always been able to make sense of in the world around me.
Book Gang- Amy (47:05)
I think every book club should have one person rooting for Nathaniel just for like conversation.
Julie Buntin (47:08)
Just to like throw everybody off. I really was like, are you okay? But in a way I was sort of the c the complexity of that was sort of like, okay, I guess that's okay, fine. I don't know.
Book Gang- Amy (47:22)
Okay. Well, I want to talk about this in the sense of it being like the Me Too movement and so many books have come out about Me Too. And I read in an interview, because I do prepare for these, that you said that this is not a Me Too novel, even though it exists in conversation with the movement. So what territory does this book occupy that you think a Me Too framework alone cannot explain?
Julie Buntin (47:51)
Yeah, I love that question and and and it's it's so insightful and it's a little like cagey to be like it's not a Me Too book because Me Too exists in the book. I mean, it happens in the book. It kind of crosses the same, it exists in time during when the Me Too movement took place.
And for me, I was thinking about that really as almost like a plot, a plot element, like as a way, like what was something in the external world that could apply pressure to this story that would again, we were talking about titles and the Volta, like that would allow for this kind of shift to happen. And I was interested, in in Will's perspective at least, and I was interested in something that I remember about living through that time that I think, you know, I've read a lot of those Me Too novels too, that I still think I'm like still trying to like this itchy thing again that I'm still trying to work through of it really felt like there was a moment during the kind of Me Too height where it was like what was what we looked the other way about on Thursday is like completely different on like next Friday.
Book Gang- Amy (48:52)
Sure.
Julie Buntin (48:54)
Like there was like it it felt like I know that's a little bit in my mind the quickness of that is a little bit in my mind. But no, of course what happened last Thursday was never okay. But it's like we this suddenly we had developed like a whole new way of talking about that and it felt really sudden.
And I remember feeling during that time something a little bit maybe like what Lily feels in the book of like Will's friend of yes, like finally we are talking about this. And I thought like how interesting to have a character who doesn't experience that shift that way. And instead is like, wait a second, what? I actually built my life knowingly or unknowingly, knowingly in some ways and unknowingly in others, around this really I can't I can be part of this change? Am I a victim? Am I complicit?
The idea of somebody who was like really in the murk during that and didn't have like a clear reaction to it felt again felt like an area that I hadn't seen unpacked all the way or felt again like a live wire or something I wanted to get into that wasn't so all of that makes it sound like I was writing explicitly a Me Too novel, but it's but weirdly, I just always really started this book with Will first and then kind of the way that Nathaniel kind of comes into her life and how it changes it and the pressures that puts on it and how she escapes or doesn't, depending on how readers react to the story. So it's hard for me to think of it in that context because I thought of it so much as a story about her and like where she comes from and how she moves through the world, really kind of like a deep character study in that way.
So it doesn't totally like align for me or something that it is. And then I tried also too, I mean, I think this is something we're all experiencing a little bit now. Me Too was a very specific thing, but it's like also these having a relationship and then reconsidering what it was that happened before Me Too and will happen after Me Too like it's like some of these things felt sort of timeless to me. I think sometimes when we put books into categories and say this is a Me Too book, it seems like we were actually doing something kind of misogynistic. And do you know what I mean? Like we're actually saying this is a story that looks a specific way and is about a specific thing that is that we can be pinned to this specific time and actually it has no other, you know, it's one of those stories. And is that just like another way of shuffling those stories aside? I invite readers to think about that. I suspect it might be a little bit. You know what I mean? Like the idea that it's like responding to a trend or like there are too many or, you know, yeah.
Book Gang- Amy (51:29)
It's so interesting because, talking to a lot of writers, there's so much resistance to labels and genres and things like that, especially with historical fiction writers for some reason, they really just resist being labeled a historical fiction writer. They're like, it's a literary story set in a different time. And it's like they don't want to identify. And this has happened multiple times that I recorded this summer where they were like, Well, I don't consider myself that or like that's what they call me or whatever. And I just think it’s so interesting how the person who writes a story may resist the things to which they are assigned. But, you know, to me, this was definitely a Me Too story as a reader, only because of the timeline to which it existed towards the end of the novel, right?
And so if I was going to like put you because I actually do have a Me Too list, if you can believe it, where I put all of these novels and many of them exploring similar kind of dynamics in campus novels and stuff like that. I just think it’s very fascinating to me to what the author identifies with the genre or without the genre.
Julie Buntin (52:38)
Yeah, and I think it's interesting too. It's like it's like your Me Too list, I wanna read your Me Too list, and I wanna know every book on your Me Too list. for my f my friends and readers that I like and critics who are in writing in that space, I'm like, yes, but what I resist the Me Too label, I think comes from I remember early conversations actually with in my with my publishing team that were like, well, Me Too's kind of had its moment. You know, so there's this sense Yeah, so I think that's where my like resistance comes from to like what do we what does that mean? Like it's had its moment.
It reminds me a little bit of how sometimes we have agents come to campus to talk to our MFA students. And I remember a couple of years ago, somebody this was a game of telephone, like who knows what this agent really said, but somehow the student had internalized something like motherhood books are over or something. And I remember being like, motherhood books can’t be over. Like, let's just like stop for a second. Like, motherhood is an experience that like a very many, many people have. It's like it just they cannot be over. it's just not a thing. And obviously this is little different than that, but I think sometimes I think maybe that's where it comes from with writers. Like I feel like I'm like, no no no don't not read my book because you're like tired of Me Too books.
Book Gang- Amy (53:49)
Tired of Me Too.
Julie Buntin (53:51)
But also if you like Me Too books, yes, actually there is Me Too in this book. Right? It depends on your relationship to that subject matter or something. But I think maybe what all writers want is for our books to just be like bigger than any one thing. That's what we aspire to, you know?
Book Gang- Amy (54:04)
Totally. Yeah.
Julie Buntin (54:06)
And we hope for that and there's so many ways, right? The market wants us to be easily identifiable or something.
Book Gang- Amy (54:14)
Well, if readers do like this book, what other books would you recommend they check out? Do you have comps for this? Did you have to do a formal pitch for your book or because you already had a contract? Okay.
Julie Buntin (54:19)
Yeah. No, yeah, no, I didn't. And it's literary fiction, so I feel like that's you don't if it I feel like maybe or maybe I'm just insulated by my agent who I feel like she'd she does that. But I really loved there's a bunch of things. If you haven't read Jill Ciment, it's C I M E N T, her memoirs, Half a Life and Consent are I read them I was pretty much done with this draft when I read them, or close to done with this book when I read them, but they are they're really interesting in in these themes.
There it's about her relationship with her husband, who is much older than her. She met him when she was very, very young. And Half a Life is kind of about how they met and fell in love and their relationship, which sort of saved her in some ways. And then Consent is her revisiting that relationship kind of post Me Too. It's like a memoir about the memoir and there’s just a lot in it about what was that really? She can't change the years of love and the real companionship that they had, but also really kind of revisiting those early moments between the two of them. Post Me Too, what did that actually, you know, what did that actually mean?
I would also recommend this is also nonfiction, Life with Picasso by Francois Gilot. I might be pronouncing her name wrong. I'm sorry if any listeners know the right way and I got it wrong. She’s sort of famous, she's a painter, sort of famously, who knows if this is true, but one of the things people say about her is she's like the only woman who ever left Picasso. She again there's this sort of an age gap relationship, but in the context of kind of like art and ambition. There's a lot there and she's a strong, incredible, incredible artist and powerful person in her own right in every way. so I would recommend that too.
And then also maybe this isn't maybe less direct in terms of the themes, but but anything by Claire Masud, Woman Upstairs, especially maybe for this book, Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, and maybe more of a Susan Choi deep cut, My Education by Susan Choi, which I love, which is about a young woman who has a relationship with a professor's wife, actually. It's just a there's a lot. I love Susan Choi's work and definitely was thinking about both of those books with this and Trust Exercise is some of its narrative hijinks and kind of interaction with these themes and My Education maybe more for the like sort of place the characters in yeah.
Book Gang- Amy (56:56)
I love it. I can see the fingerprint of that a little bit on your work. Yeah.
Julie Buntin (56:58)
Yeah, yeah.
Book Gang- Amy (57:00)
I love that. Well, are you working on anything now? Are you just savoring this moment? What's happening?
Julie Buntin (57:06)
Yeah. I have another project coming out in the fall, which is like a collaborative nonfiction project called Notes to New Mothers . It's a book I made with like my best friend from my MFA.
Actually, after my son was born when we both weren't writing. I talked about that a little earlier in this conversation. We started exchanging notes about postpartum life and new motherhood, and we really liked each other's notes. So we started asking other writers for their notes and we created a kind of like group. It's almost like if you imagine a diary of the first postpartum year-ish, written by 65 writers. It's like none of the essays are longer than like a page. They're like designed for moms who are up in the middle of the night nursing. It's broken into sections. Work is one section: marriage, family, feeding.
And there's a lot of amazing writers in it, like Julia Phillips, Jenny Slate is in it, Naima Coster, Crystal Hana Kim. There's a lot of cool women in the book. And I'm really proud of that and excited about that. That is coming out soon. And then I'm also working on another novel. But I feel superstitious about saying too much about it, but it's not in first person, I'll say that. There's a different vibe.
Book Gang- Amy (58:07)
Okay, we'll keep it up. I’m very intrigued. This has been so much fun, Julie. We always end our main show the same way. And before I do, if you are a patron of the show and you've finished this novel, you can join us behind the paywall for our spoiler section where we're going to unbox this back half of the story so we can keep all the mystery alive for our readers, especially since it's lit fic We don't want to get too in the weeds with plot. We want you to be able to enjoy that experience. And it's $5. It keeps us commercial free and independent.
But we always end our show in the same way, which is asking our writers, what are you feeling proud of right now, whether it's with this project or with life in general? And it just gives me a chance to say, I love talking to you. I was just wondering if we could just hang out tomorrow. I feel like Midwest writers are just so much fun and so warm. And I feel like really lucky that I got to be part of this book's launch. I think it's a really, really important book. It's a great one for book clubs.
Julie Buntin (59:14)
Thank you.
Book Gang- Amy (59:15)
I hope book clubs will pick this book for their book clubs because I think it brings up so many of old, you know, things that I went through and navigated in my 20s, trying to make sense of it as an adult, strong voice in this. I love the contemplations around Nathaniel and his role in the story, but I especially love that you played the reel all the way through for young people because I think this is a very important book to see from that aspect. But I would love to hear what you're feeling proud of right now, Julie.
Julie Buntin (59:45)
Thank you. That made me feel proud. Thank you. That no, but seriously, like that, that is kind of like it's so hard, right, to measure when you write a book, like what is success gonna be? What is it gonna mean for you? And I really do like when I hear from readers that they responded to it, even if their response is prickly in some way, but that it provokes something in them, I do if that makes me that does give me some kind of sense of pride.
And I guess maybe I'll add like I'm feeling proud of myself for not looking at good reads. Because it's very tempting. I'm not doing that. I've stepped away from that.
Book Gang- Amy (1:00:23)
We do have a writer friend who can send you Goodreads reviews that are fantastic.
Julie Buntin (1:00:28)
That's nice. I don't know. Sometimes it's like the good ones and the bad. It's just like too much noise.
Book Gang- Amy (1:00:31)
Okay, I don't know. We don't even want to think about it.
Julie Buntin (1:00:34)
So thank you though for reviewing the book on Goodreads or anywhere else where you review books. It definitely helps the book's lifespan, but I just gotta
Book Gang- Amy (1:00:43)
I love how you're protecting your mental health. I think that's a really great thing. Well, listeners, we hope you enjoyed this time. And if you finish the book and want to follow us on the other side, I'll meet you over there. Thanks, Julie.
Julie Buntin (1:00:54)
Thank you.
This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the transcription, errors and omissions may occur. The content of this transcript may not be comprehensive and should not be relied upon as a substitute for professional advice or judgment. The views and opinions expressed by individuals in this transcript are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the transcriber or any associated entities. Furthermore, this transcript may be subject to copyright protection. Any reproduction, distribution, or other use of this transcript without the express permission of the copyright owner is strictly prohibited.