missy

I was thrilled to find out that one of my favorite novelists, Emma Forrest, was a member of SuicideGirls. Emma's debut novel, Namedropper, was finished when she was just twenty-one, and her newest novel, Thin Skin, was released in the U.S. this year. Thin Skin is the story of Ruby, a twenty-year-old movie star trapped in a downward spiral. In addition to novels, Emma works as a journalist and is working on the screenplay for Thin Skin. She agreed to talk to me about her books, writing, women, the media, SuicideGirls, and anything else we could think of.

Sarah Jaffe: So this is the girl who finished her novel at age twenty-one.

Emma Forrest: Here's the deal. The greatest gift. . . well, I'm a pretty good writer. But I knew what I wanted to do. I think sometimes the really brilliant people are the ones who end up adrift. And I was bad at everything except for this one thing, which was writing. And I had that and the good old Jewish gift of chutzpah.

SJ: Yes.

EF: You've heard of Nigella Lawson?

SJ: Yes.

EF: Now she's this big celebrity cook and everything, but when I was thirteen she was a serious columnist. So I interviewed her for my school newspaper, and that's how I got my first piece. I got this call from the London Evening Standard, and they said "Oh, Nigella said you're a really good writer, and we want a young person to do a piece on Madonna." And this was when Erotica came out, and that was the first piece I ever wrote, about Erotica. And then there was this snowball effect, that once you have one thing published, and you're really pushy (laughs) you can send it out.

SJ: I understand. That's what I've been trying to do.

EF: . . .I find it hard to differentiate between fiction and journalism. My favorite writer, as you can tell from Namedropper, is Truman Capote, and my favorite stuff of his is actually his interviews. Aside from Breakfast at Tiffany's, there's this book of his that if you don't have it, you should get it. It's called the Truman Capote Reader, and it's got all the celebrity profiles he did for Esquire magazine. I try to use those as a template for any journalism I've ever done, so that it's hard to tell the difference between fiction and nonfiction, and there's a journalistic quality to my fiction, and a fiction-like quality to my journalism.

SJ: I found it funny that one of the quotes on the back of Thin Skin, they called you a "literary Lolita."

EF: (laughs) That's from Vanity Fair. When I was sixteen they did a profile on me. So that quote's a little. . .

SJ: Out of date?

EF: Yes! It's funny because I went to see Blur the other night, and I was thinking that I've been writing for ten years now, making my living writing for ten years. When I was sixteen, I was trying to balance being a serious music writer, and having these hormones and being a teenage fan. Now watching these years go by, realizing I've been writing for ten years, realizing I've been in and out of these people's lives, they've been in and out of mine, there's been so much written about Britpop right now, but it's been ten years since all that stuff came out, but it was a strange time, I was a literary Lolita.

SJ: Like a girl Almost Famous.

EF: It was so like that. That movie was actually hard for me to watch because that was my life.

SJ: Well I don't think too many people would complain about that life!

EF: It's interesting...I've been thinking about the sexual politics of SuicideGirls. It's really interesting to me. I've been thinking about it a lot lately because I'm twenty-five now, but when I was younger it was always the women who helped me with my career, never men. Men would look at this sixteen-year-old girl, who had a column in the Sunday times, and say "She must have fucked her way there." And it was really upsetting to me. And in retrospect, I realized what you learn as you get older, is how to get control of your sexuality. The reason I got into Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner was that I was this ridiculously anachronistic shape at a time when everyone was worshipping Kate Moss and I was like, "What am I going to do with these tits?"

SJ: I hear you. I have the same problem.

EF: And I saw an Elizabeth Taylor movie, and I just felt less alone. If you see a kid wearing a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt, it's because that band makes him feel less alone. I saw Elizabeth Taylor, and she had this shape that reminded me of me. What was happening to me was, I was sixteen, I was being viewed sexually whether I wanted to be or not. When I moved to New York, it was the first time that I acted like a kid, was a kid. The whole time I was in London I was in these little suits, trying very hard to be a grown-up. I moved to New York and started dressing like a kid. I started wearing jeans for the first time. I started making friends my own age.

SJ: How old were you when you moved to New York?

EF: It was when Namedropper first came out in England, so I was twenty-one.

SJ: I can totally relate to what you're saying about having this shape that's...

EF: It's out of time.

SJ: It really is. It isn't what anybody wants these days.

EF: Yes. You look at the two role models for women these days, and one is Gwyneth, who I think looks like a dead, anorexic doll, and then you have J.Lo and you have in place the same cliches that are sort of put there to keep women down. Like there in the fifties, it was either Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe. The girl with the curves is seen as basically overflowing. Like she can't control her passions, her emotions, her impulses. And it really pisses me off that someone like Gwyneth--and, I was never an Audrey Hepburn fan--

SJ: Me neither.

EF: --was seen as innately elegant, and classy, because they've got no tits. Truman Capote was horrified that they cast Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's because he wrote that for Marilyn. And they said, "Well, if we put Marilyn in it, people are going to know that it's about a call girl. So we have to cast Audrey, because she's classy and then we can get away with it."

SJ: I know what you mean.

EF: One reason I do like Audrey Hepburn is that I like phonies. I don't like Catcher in the Rye, and the reason I don't is Holden Caulfield and his whole horror of phonies, when phonies were what saved my teenage life. Like Bowie, Bette Davis, Courtney Love - they're fake. That's the point. How rad was "I fake it so real I am beyond fake." That totally meant something. You look at Bette Davis with this made-up accent, Audrey with this made-up accent, painted-on eyebrows, Bowie...anyone I idolized was phony. But so phony that they had soul.

SJ: I think your books have a very interesting take on the whole appearances issue. Ruby in Thin Skin is obsessed with trying to make herself ugly because she learned at a young age that appearances matter. Viva in Namedropper says she always judges a book by its cover--which is funny, because I first picked up that book because I liked the cover.

EF: The American cover of Namedropper is gorgeous, the English cover sucks. But the English cover for Thin Skin is so amazing because it was actually a Terry Richardson photo of me but you can't see that it's me, it's just hands, my fucked-up nails. The American cover...you don't understand what I went through trying to get them to change that cover. They wouldn't and I hate it and I won't give it to anyone, but it's like the girl writer, anyone under fifty who's moderately attractive, you're not Zadie Smith so you're not too highbrow, you're not Bridget Jones so you're not mass market, so what they do is they give it a pink cover.

SJ: I was just happy to NOT see it on the rack with the "Bridget Jones Clones" they were featuring at Barnes & Noble when I went to buy it. There is always the critique of writing for and by women that they're always finding salvation in a man, and I like your novels in that even though the main characters spend a lot of time looking for a man, they end up finding what they need without one.

EF: I'm so glad.

SJ: It's nice.

EF: I think the most important friendships in my life are with older women. My best friend I think is Barbara--she writes about politics for the Observer, in London. I met her when I was seventeen, she was thirty-six, a single mom, there's the same age difference between me and her daughter and her, and it's been this really interesting relationship that people could never understand, they're like "Why are you hanging out with a seventeen-year-old girl?" But we gave each other so much and she coined this great phrase, "emotional networking" that she thinks all women should do. And that means me to you, or her to me, or anyone, it doesn't matter, it's like this great chain of female support. It doesn't happen enough.

SJ: No, it doesn't. It's too easy for women to just fight, especially over men. Back to your book for a second. In Namedropper, when Viva discovers her two best friends are sleeping together, it seems like she is more betrayed by the female friend: almost like Treena is cheating on her.

EF: Exactly. Don't you find that, that it's always the friend that hurts more? My friend Barbara, whenever I'm bitching about some guy, she says to me "Emma, it's just boy crap."

SJ: Exactly. I've been single now for a while, and I'm spending time on things for me rather than wasting all my energy on some man.

EF: I think the boy crap becomes, for women, procrastination. There's so much procrastination, especially for American women, that prevents them from really achieving. In England, they don't have weekly manicures and pedicures and eyebrow waxes, bikini waxes, and I'm not putting any of those things down. But I'm saying that when that's the timetable of your week, how do you have time to do anything?

SJ: Exactly. . .So getting back to Thin Skin--I loved it, but it was very much darker than Namedropper.

EF: Yeah. It's funny because it really did well in England, had a wonderful publisher, Bloomsbury, they made it their lead publication for spring, it was a huge hit, got great reviews, but here it was a really tough sell. It really showed me the difference between European readers and American readers. Here it was like "This person is not a heroine, this person is not likable." And I'm like "Huh? Haven't you seen Taxi Driver? Haven't you heard of the anti-hero?" And actually I think she's very sympathetic.

SJ: Yes, because everyone's been through that, and even though they might not like dealing with that person. I've been reading interviews with Christina Ricci lately, because she did Prozac Nation and that's coming out soon, and everyone is like "This is the least sympathetic character." I've read Prozac Nation, and while you may not always want to be her best friend, you understand what she's going through, and I think it's important to explore things like that. And I liked Thin Skin, thought it was great.

EF: I definitely couldn't write it now. It definitely came out of a terrible place, a place of darkness, and it was an exorcism, and I am as happy and stable now as I've ever been, I think partially because that book came out of me. It's no coincidence that the book I'm finishing now is closer in tone to Namedropper. It's about halfway between Namedropper and Thin Skin, but it's definitely more snappy.

SJ: How old were you when you started and finished Thin Skin?

EF: I actually started it at a time when I ended up in a psychiatric ward for a while. I wrote notes while I was in there, and then when I got out I went to the Chateau Marmont, where I've done a lot of writing, and made sense of the notes, so it really is like a postcard from the edge. (laughs) But I guess I started it when I was twenty-three and finished it almost a year ago. A weird thing happened, while I was putting the final touches on it I was back at the Chateau Marmont and some motherfucker on my floor was playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers nonstop. I was going to kill someone. I was trying to finish this book. Nothing but Chili Peppers nonstop. So I went out and got into the elevator and Anthony Kiedis [from the Red Hot Chili Peppers] and I was like "Um...are you making music here?" And he was like "Yeah yeah, we're recording our album in that room right there." And I said "Oh, I'm trying to finish my book." He was like "Oh, do you want us to keep it down?" And I can't ask the Red Hot Chili Peppers to keep it down when they're recording their new album. I haven't heard the album yet. I keep thinking I should go around and pick it up to see if there were similar vibes floating around on that floor. 'Cause there were definitely weird, challenging vibes going around the Chateau Marmont at that time.

SJ: So I have to ask, aside from autobiographical things, was there anybody you were thinking of as you were writing Thin Skin?

EF: I was thinking about--I come from the kind of middle-class family that had books rather than money. One of the things I was thinking of was the classic poor little rich girl--the Edie Sedgwick archetype, you know, the girl who comes from the south with her dad's credit card and set up living on the Lower East Side in some disgusting apartment, but go and blow money at Marc Jacobs or whatever it is. I've seen those girls come and go, and one of those girls, she's passed on, was someone I really loved, she definitely has elements of Ruby, Ruby has elements of her. Everyone knows someone like that. They go out to sea, and just don't come back.

SJ: Most of mine have been guys.

EF: But I have two cats now, and that helps a lot. It's great for a writer to have a cat, because they just sit there and purr and it helps me get into the writing zone. The two of them come and sit by the computer, and their purring helps me concentrate. . . Speaking of cats, have you ever seen the original version of the forties movie Cat People?

SJ: I have seen parts of it. . .

EF: You have to see it, it's so beautiful, and it's all about--the same reason I love Splendor in the Grass, actually--it's the same issue, about wanting to fuck and yet being terrified of what that's going to unleash. It really speaks of that emerging female sexuality that kicks in between, I don't know, twelve and twenty.

SJ: When I picked up Namedropper, I picked it because the cover drew me in. I flipped it over, read the back, and saw "Her bedroom walls are plastered with posters of silver screen legends, and underneath her school uniform she wears vintage thigh-high stockings," and I thought, "This is me." And I read it, and it was. I've read some other authors who are I guess in the same genre as you, but I didn't buy a lot of it.

EF: Have you read any Rachel Resnick?

SJ: No.

EF: There's this book, it's called Go West Young Fucked-Up Chick. It's so great.

SJ: That's a great title.

EF: I met her at a party, and it was like. . . she's like the West Coast me.

SJ: But with your books, it's somehow believable. In Namedropper, Viva is in this totally unbelievable situation--she's best friends with a pop star, he takes her to L.A., then she runs off to Vegas with this other pop star who magically just wants to kiss her, not have sex with her, and yet, through it all, I believe it.

EF: I'm having this conversation with my agent right now, because I've shown her two versions of my new novel, one is more commercial and the other is more personal. And of course, she's an agent, she wants me to have a blockbuster book, go with the commercial one. I'm going to see, because it's harder for me to write the commercial version, it just doesn't come as easily to me. And I think if I do keep going with that one it's not going to have that truth to it.

SJ: It's tough. Everyone tells me, "Write for yourself, write for yourself," but then I look around and think, "I hate waiting tables and would like to be able to stop someday."

EF: Well that's how you get away from that, though. If you can tell the truth in anything, no matter what it's about, whether anyone gives a fuck about the topic or not, if there's truth in it, people connect. I can read a book about--in England there was this great sports columnist, Jeffrey Bernard. Now, I could give a fuck about sports. But he wrote so truthfully, there was such a transcendent truth to whatever he wrote about, he wrote a lot about racehorses, basketball, but there was real life in there, and it was fascinating.

SJ: Writing for movies is so much different than writing a short story or a novel. You said you're not involved with writing the screenplay for Namedropper?

EF: No, they have a guy writing it.

SJ: How do you feel about having a guy writing it?

EF: I don't really care. I couldn't do it. I tried to. He was really nice about it, offered to send me copies of it, but I told him "Do what you want." What I have done, though, that was really interesting, was write a pilot for a TV show. For a "dramedy" as they call it. But it's actually set in a tattoo parlor. It's a half hour format, and I loved writing it. It was like the biggest lark I ever had. It's for channel 4 in England, and I really hope it ends up here, or something. Maybe HBO, or something. its got the sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, but you can show that on British TV.

SJ: Yeah, American TV is just--blah. So, set in a tattoo parlor. How'd you come up with that?

EF: Well they're like "Ooh, high concept." But they're commissioning a series, so the tattoo parlor can have new people coming in and out every episode.

SJ: Interesting. I would like to see it.

EF: Well, hope it gets picked up by HBO or Showtime.

SJ: OK...let's see. What else do I have to say? I think it's interesting that we found each other on SuicideGirls. I guess if I'd thought about it, it was an appropriate place to meet you. There's always these threads about which celebrity should be an honorary Suicide Girl, and I think you fit well with the site.

EF: Who else do they mention?

SJ: People like Angelina Jolie, and Rose McGowan--

EF: Oh, Rose is one of my best friends! She's one of those people like you who called me up and said, "This book is me." Of course, she said it about Thin Skin. She's amazing. I actually interviewed her--let's see, about a year ago, and within ten minutes we were great friends. I think within a week she had actually called up and said "I want to go to England, are you going to be there?" and I said "Actually, yes, I'm going to visit my family," and she said "Can I come?" and I said "Yes, but you have to sleep on the sofa--"

SJ: (laughs)

EF: So she came, and she slept on the sofa, and she did makeovers with my mom, and she was just wonderful.

SJ: I think she's great. She's another one of those people that looks like she should be in the fifties. I think she needs to make more good movies!

EF: Well I think she'd make a good Ruby, actually, and she does too, so we'll see.

SJ: That would be cool. You said you are writing the screenplay for Thin Skin, as well, so I am interested to see how that turns out.

EF: One girl that I've been thinking about lately as I've been reading through Thin Skin is Kate Bush. . . with the idea of the madwoman in the attic, you know, which is the whole Jane Eyre thing, but made into insane rock music. So she's my number one suicide girl.

SJ: It has been so nice talking to you. Thank you so much.