Laura Zigman spent several years as a book publicist before
leaving the industry to work on her first novel, Animal Husbandry. The
last house she worked at was Knopf, which is now the publisher of her latest
book, Her. "It's such a beautiful irony to have my old boss working for
me," she quipped during an interview in a hotel room blocks away from her
publisher's office. "Everybody should be so lucky." But she also empathizes
with the plight of the assistants who have the responsibility of assembling all
the press kit mailings and keeping her tour schedule organized. "I'm so
grateful for everything they do, especially since I'm turning into one of those
authors who's probably really annoying, constantly calling and saying, 'I
hope you don't mind, but if you get a chance, could you...?' But I try to keep
that under control."
RH: Animal Husbandry was one of the first of the American
successes in the chick-lit genre. Do you feel the competition a lot more
fiercely now, five years down the line?
LZ: When Animal Husbandry came out, everyone compared it to
Bridget Jones, which had already been published in the U.S. by then. But I'd been
writing my book five years before all that. There are just trends out in the aether that simply
happen. But you're right, it's a very crowded field now, and in England, there's even more
chick-lit writers, many of whom are now being published here. People call them all
"copycat books." I'm sure some of them are, but many of them were just out there in the
aether at the same time, too. They just happen to be by women writing about the experience
of being single.
RH: I would imagine there was a certain amount of pressure when you
were writing Dating Big Bird and Her because of the
increased competition.
LZ: Well, with the second book, you truly cannot win. I saw it happen many
times when I worked in the publishing industry, long before I had my own second book
come out. If you had any measure of commercial success with the first book, people can't
wait to tear into the next one, so if you get any reviews, they're usually bad, and i or else
they'll just ignore it. But I enjoyed writing Dating Big Bird, and it was what I was
thinking about at the time. With Her, I never thought I'd say that writing a book
was a lot of fun, but this time it was.
RH: One bit of baggage that comes with the chick-lit label is that your
books are often dismissed as fluff. But Knopf and the Dial Press are both
very literary imprints.
LZ: I am not perceived as a literary writer, and most of the time that's fine. I
think I'm on the receiving end of backlash not just against the chick-lit thing, but also for
what happens if you have any degree of commercial or financial success. It's not
considered literary to have a movie sale or other splashy types of success. And books with
humor in them are also generally perceived as much more lightweight. My books aren't
Proust, by any means, but I think they've got a little more substance to them than reviewers
generally see. It can be frustrating, but what are you going to do?
With me, the reviews are either great or horrible, and I just have to try not to pay attention.
It's the only thing you can do. I remember Animal Husbandry got the worst review
I'd even seen in the New York Times Book Review in all my years in publishing.
It was just epically, meanspiritedly bad. I wouldn't even read it all the way through. Life's
just too short to listen to things like that, because you'll just freeze. So they think what they
think, and as far as I'm concerned, I could have far worse problems. I'm lucky to have had
the measure of success I have, which is the luxury of being able to write fulltime, which
allows me to spend time with my son, and to be published. And I never take that for
granted.
I had friends publish books and just disappear without a trace. If anyone knew what made
a book successful, they'd do it every day of the week. But it's a mystery, and perfectly
good books go unnoticed because there's so many books published, and the number of
media outlets is shrinking... Nobody likes to think of publishing as a business, but it is,
and it's a tough one.
RH: Do you keep up with a lot of the competition? Do you read chick-
lit for fun?
LZ: You know, I don't. It's the biggest cliché, but you have no time to
yourself after you have a child, so the only time I have to write is at night or when he's
napping. So I stopped reading fiction a while ago. My concentration level just dropped,
and if I read books at all now, I find it easier to read nonfiction or magazine articles. I don't
even read many kid's books. My son won't sit still for them. There are exceptions; I started
The Corrections, and I plan on finishing it at some point.
RH: How was the process of the book Animal Husbandry
becoming the film Someone Like You for you?
LZ: I have no complaints. I was kept in the loop, even though I had official
capacity with the film production at all. It was nice of Lynda Obst to keep me around, keep
me informed. I was able to meet with the screenwriter in New York, show her my old
neighborhood, that sort of stuff. Every six months or so, I'd get a phone call, and then
finally I got a call to go over to Tony Goldwyn's studio to see a rough cut of the film and
help them rewrite the voiceover, although they ended up not using any of what I
wrote.
The finished film ended up being a lot different than what I saw that day, and they hadn't
changed the title yet at that point. There were a lot of things I wish had been done slightly
different, but it's a different process, and there are a lot worse problems to have than liking
or not liking the film version of your novel. Tony Goldwyn's a great director, really smart,
and he put a lot of great stuff into that movie. Unfortunately, the reception wasn't good.
The reviews were terrible--but I think if you look at the reviews for romantic comedies,
they're almost always terrible.
RH: Like your other books, Her started with something from
your life, but you took it into a completely fictional direction.
LZ: I wish I could say it was fiction. "Oh, I've never been insecure about another
woman." (laughs) My fiancé was married before, and his ex-wife and their
daughter live in Denver.Once we knew things were going to last, we went to Denver
together. Now, I'd seen pictures of his ex-wife, I knew she was attractive, and even
though my friends all said it wasn't going to be that bad, I was nervous about the trip. The
entire day that I spent with him and his daughter, I knew I'd be meeting the ex-wife, but I
was in complete denial about it.
We spent the day at the zoo and the Rainforest Café. By the time we dropped his
daughter off at her apartment, I was in a parka, my hair was frizzy, and when she opened
the door, of course she looked fabulous, even more attractive than she looked in the
pictures. I just slunk in, unable to even speak. It was traumatic, but humorous too, and by
the time I got home, I'd told the story a thousand times.
Of course, as soon as you start telling a story like that, other people come back with their
stories, and there are just so many. Everyone has an ex of their partner that they're
obsessed with. Men do it, women do it. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the
spouse still having feeling for the ex. You just become obsessed--not with all the exes, just
that one. In some cases, sure, there's still some feeling there, but in my case and most
other cases, it has nothing to do with that. Your spouse doesn't behave inappropriately;
you just develop this huge bubble of neurosis. Everybody does it and if they say they
don't, they're lying.
RH: Your fiancé was familiar enough with your work by that
point to know there was a possibility something from your life together
might wind up in a novel one day.
LZ: There's some of him in Donald, but I don't reveal anything truly personal.
He has a great sense of humor, and he's been fine with it.
RH: I remember you and I had some concern when Animal
Husbandry came out as to whether you'd even be able to date again for
a while.
LZ: It took a really long time, believe me. (laughs) No one came
near me for a while, because they all thought I was a manhater. But I got
really lucky.
