missy

Janice Erlbaum raised eyebrows in the literary world of nonfiction with the release of her first memoir, appropriately titled Girlbomb. Girlbomb takes you on a wild ride through the destruction, instability, and pure chaos of her adolescence and young adulthood in New York City's pre-Giuliani era, when the city was a little more exciting, dangerous, and free. A teenage Janice embodies the same kind of fearlessness that Jack Kerouac did in On the Road, which makes her a most enticing and enchanting character, a heroine of sorts. Recently she wrote another work of nonfiction titled Have You Found Her, in which she revisits the same youth shelter she once lived in. This time, as a volunteer, she becomes mesmerized by a talented and charismatic young and tough orphan named Sam and finds herself going on a desperate mission to help her heal. I caught up with Janice to chat about both books and her experience as an artist.

Buy Girlbomb and Have You Found Her.




Lily Suicide: My friend cut out an article for me about you and Girlbomb when I was still living on the streets and using drugs, like, "Look, she made it! So can you! What's it like to be an inspiration to the underdogs?

Janice Erlbaum: It feels great to be told that youre inspirational. But I dont want to be a hypocrite about it I made it with a lot of help. My grandmother died and left me money for an apartment; my mom helped me negotiate it; my dad paid for college; I got a terrific shrink. I dont want anyone to think I was especially smart or brave or worthy, and thats why things turned out so well for me. I had a lot of help, and a lot of luck. I know a lot of people who have deserved both and had neither.

LS: The world you describe in Girlbomb is practically non-existent now; I think the kids growing up in NYC these days vie for the NYC of the '80s...

JE: Yeah, it was a different social climate, thats for sure. New York used to be much more gritty and shady and underground. And the early and mid80s were the Golden Age of Unfettered Underage Drinking, where a 16-year-old with big enough tits and the right makeup could get served in almost any bar or club in the city. That sort of tacit acceptance of underage drinking ended abruptly when 17-year-old Jennifer Levin was killed by Preppy Killer Robert Chambers after drinking at a bar on the Upper East Side called Dorrians after that, all of a sudden everyone wanted to see your ID, and fake ones werent cutting it anymore. Everyone groused about fuckin Jennifer Levin that summer, but I was like, You should be pissed at Robert Chambers, hes the scumbag who did this.

LS: What and who do you credit for the wild child Janice of the '80s evolving into the well respected writer and creative adult that you are today?

JE: My shrink, Judith, to whom the book is dedicated. I met her when I was 25, and my old self-destructive patterns of behavior were seriously on the verge of killing me. Judith helped me tremendously in understanding my own feelings and behavior; its because of her help and care that Im a sane, happy person today.

LS: It's kind of weird for me to read interviews or articles suggesting that your book was depressing. I think you were able to navigate through the war zone of your girlhood while still sometimes poking fun at the circumstance and the world around you. Do most people agree that your book is a tough read? Because I thought parts were hilarious.

JE: I take it as a compliment when people say it was a hard book to read, because I think theyre sad for what Young Janice had to go through. I mean, some of it was really fucking unpleasant that cant be easy to witness. Also, I made horrible choices again and again, and watching someone do that can be very frustrating and depressing. So I get where those people are coming from. I too thought parts were very funny, though Im not supposed to laugh at my own jokes. Im glad you got that too.

LS: In your new book Have You Found Her, you revisit the same shelter that you once lived as a teenager, this time as a volunteer. What was that like?

JE: Going back to the shelter was a totally necessary step for me to finally get over what Id gone through during that time of my life, and to move on. I thought I was going there to volunteer and help others; I didnt realize how much I was looking to help myself. And it did help me it also fucked me right up. It was an intense, cathartic, terrible, amazing experience that changed me profoundly. Just like it was the first time I went there.

LS: Do you get some interesting fan mail? What are the fans that you have met like?

JE: I get great emails and blog comments from people mostly from young women, though there have been a few dudes in there. I respond to and save every encouraging email I get there are days when those emails save my fucking life, because I also get shitty reviews and rejections and other disappointments, constantly. Thats part of a writers life. So hearing from people who like my books is vitally important to me. Many of the people I hear from have had similar circumstances to mine, whether theyve dealt with abusive homes or addiction or whatever, which makes me feel a lot less alone, but it also makes me sad that these devastating issues are so pervasive. Ive become very friendly with some of the people whove contacted me about my writing; theyre an awesome bunch.

LS: Do you think the audience that read and loved Girlbomb will hold Have You Found Her to the same degree of love?

JE: I hope that people who liked the first book will like the second theyre certainly very similar books in terms of tone, and if you liked the character of Young Janice, Im hopeful that youll like Not So Young Janice. The settings are similar, too, in that Im back at the shelter 20 years later, trying to fit in once again, but the new book has the benefit of some great supporting characters that the first book didnt have. It also has an insane plot twist, one that made me seriously question my reality. Slightly less sex and drugs, but twice the action. I recommend it.

LS: This is a question I often find myself wanting to ask memoir writers, how hard is it to choose to regress back into painful memories in order to write about them, and then have them displayed like battle wounds. Is it cathartic enough to be worth it?

JE: Writing a memoir is awful. Its excruciating. It brings back unpleasant feelings youve been doing your best to ignore. It causes PTSD, rage, depression, and complete emotional exhaustion. I took so many goddamn naps while writing my two books; I thought I had leukemia or something. And yeah, its totally worth it.

LS: It seems like you had a hard time writing Girlbomb, was the new book just as hard or worse?

JE: The new book was easier in some ways because Id already written a book before, so I had some experience and knew what to expect and how to pace myself. But it was emotionally much more difficult, because I was dealing with events that had just happened, events I was still dealing with as I was writing. Girlbomb was emotionally painful, but the events occurred almost 20 years before I was trying to write about them, and Id spent years in therapy discussing them. Whereas Have You Found Her was written while things were still very raw and bloody.

LS: In Girlbomb you mention Janice's sort of heroine doppelganger that visits her during acid trips and in times of need... is she still there?

JE: Well, the acid hallucinations are gone, thank God. But the eerie feeling of being two people one whos living and reacting in the moment, and another whos observing from a distance that remains. When I write in my notebook, which is pretty much every day, I tend to end my entries with, I love myself. (Totally corny, I know! But true.) Apparently I still think of myself as an I and a myself. (Does that make any sense at all? Or did the acid totally fry my brain?)

LS: In your blog, which I adore by the way, you wrote about how your shrink thinks that you should write politics. What would Janice's revolution look like? What do you think needs to change most in the world, if you could create your own utopia?

JE: Ah! As President and Ruler of the Universe, my first act is to harness the brilliance of the worlds greatest scientists in order to make solar power a reality. Then we work out a computer program that constantly tracks and distributes global resources such that we eliminate poverty and starvation I mean, if McDonalds has a program that ensures that they never run out of ketchup in all of their seventy billion locations throughout the world, surely we can write a program such that drought-prone areas of Africa never run out of grain. Then my scientists find a cure for sociopathic behavior, and we eliminate human cruelty, and we all exist under the golden rule, which is, Dont be a douchebag.

LS: Are you done after Have You Found Her or are you going to be one of those prolific writers who can't stop?

JE: Im working on a third book right now, about female friendships. The relationships I had in high school with my friends Hope and Alice were so important to me, and yet so dysfunctional, and I find that not a lot has changed in my 30s were still putting each other down, blowing each other off, competing in unhealthy ways, trying to be each others moms, gossiping constantly its depressing! As for whether Ill ever stop writing books, I dont know I know Ill never stop writing, but I dont know what form it will take in the future.

LS: Can you tell us a little more about your latest book?

JE: The new book, Have You Found Her, came out in paperback (cheap!) in February of this year, and its another memoir sort of a follow-up to Girlbomb. Its about what happened when I went back to the shelter at the age of 34, to volunteer, and also to sort through what happened in my own past, when I was there as a halfway-homeless kid. Thats where I met a 19-year-old junkie poet named Samantha, a brilliant and damaged kid with one of the worst life stories Id ever heard. She and I developed a very deep friendship, and I stayed in touch with her as she moved from the shelter, to a detox, to a psych ward, to a rehab, to a halfway house, and finally to a hospital, where the effects of her former lifestyle were catching up with her. And just as I was on the verge of becoming her legal guardian, I discovered her real illness and youll have to read the book to find out what happened!