Perhaps your idea of a riveting coming of age memoir is one filled to the brim with episodes of Augusten Burroughs-style, pulling-down-the-ceiling craziness the sort that are inevitably revealed as half-true, at best -- in which case Emily Goulds new book of youthful remembrances And The Heart Says Whatever might not be for you. Neither a catalogue of childhood horrors or the Letters to a Young Blogger tract that some were anticipating from the ex-Gawker gamine, Whatever is rather a 28 year-old writers diaristic self-examination of how she got from there (living out Chrissie Hynde songs as a suburban Ohio co-ed) to here (balancing a Brooklyn-based life as a yoga instructor with a burgeoning writing career). That turns out to be enough, as its in the skillful telling that Gould succeeds, gliding effortlessly and fatalistically through a blizzard of potentially formative events ranging from her deflowering, at 17, of a younger virgin, to her stint as an ass-busting blues bar waitress, to her disastrous attempt at integrating a new puppy into her life, all while studiously avoiding fashionable self-deprecation and moments of cant-you-just-see-Zooey-Deschanel-for-this manufactured whimsy.
In the way it suggests Goulds impressive recall of events both large and inconsequential, and demonstrates her facility for turning each memory over as if in her hands for inspection, Whatever more than justifies its existence, achieving a measure of authorial gravitas that turns an inner journey into a relatable read. It will also, however, leave some readers blue-balled due to the authors refusal to turn her scalpel onto the media empire that birthed her as a public persona or the failings of the crumbling-before-our-eyes Manhattan publishing world. The zeitgeist of mid-aughts media is conspicuously absent from Goulds account. Her infamous face-off with Jimmy Kimmel on live TV over Gawkers Stalker Map in 2007, dramatic departure from her editorial perch at Gawker over ethical concerns soon after, subsequent 8,000-word soul-baring essay Exposed for the New York Times magazine in summer 2008, and eventual targeting by Gawker itself in a half-witted effort at hoisting-by-petard it all gets short shrift, perhaps because Gould perceives that the only thing more fleeting than Internet fame is Internet disaccord.
Gould also likes cooking a lot. In addition to her long-running primary blog Emily Magazine, she now operates a Tumblr called Things I Ate That I Love in which she lends consideration to her various cooking and eating experiences in addition to indulging ephemeral fixations on, say, Megan Fox or the meaning of a friends new tattoo. Shes also currently hard at work on a regularly recurring Internet show called Cooking the Books, on which she casually interviews selected authors about their upcoming titles while preparing a dish (usually in montage form) with an attempted thematic tie-in and during which no gaffe, self-inflicted or otherwise, will fail to register on the hostesss noticeably fluid face. SuicideGirls recently called up Gould in Brooklyn to discuss her new book, the evolution of the cooking show and its place in her future, her expanding canvas of body art, and how shes putting the past to bed.
Ryan Stewart: What are you working on today?
Emily Gould: Oh, God. I have this thing Im working on. Im not usually this terrible and flakey with deadlines, but it was originally due at the beginning of May -- at the end of the first week of May -- and then I got an extension to June 1st. Now Im blowing that deadline, too. It sucks, because I handed in one draft of the piece and then I got back revisions and I became so daunted by them that I just had to hide from the piece for a while. I think there are two personality types for this kind of stuff: One is like the kid who got the test back from the teacher as a child and really studied the test and was like What did I get wrong? How can I do better next time? But Im the kid who stuffs the graded test down into the bottom of the backpack and tries to forget it ever happened. Im more like B plus? Okay, great, fine! It does make the whole editorial process kind of excruciating.
RS: Is the next cooking show coming up soon?
EG: I think were going to have it done this week. Its Julie Klausner. I just saw the rough cut yesterday and Im really excited about it. We try to keep things pretty brief, because its, you know, the Internet? [laughs] We really think the ideal thing is for it to be, like, five minutes long, and I think even that is kind of long for the Internet. But Julies is all good and its so funny. It was really hard to figure out what to cut, because shes amazingly funny all the time and everything she says is golden. I think we might actually experiment with a slightly longer episode for this one, cause its awesome.
RS: I heard youre having Will Leitch on soon, for his book. I worked with him once at a little magazine called Venture Reporter.
EG: Oh, cool. Was that a long time ago?
RS: Yeah, it was around 2001-2002. Mostly what I remember about him is that the ladies seemed to love him.
EG: As a lady who loves him, I feel qualified on that. Hes always in a relationship, so you feel, like, safe around him. Hes never gonna hit on you and be inappropriate, so you can get super-drunk with him not that Ive ever done that. Also, he just has these non-threatening good looks, the boyishly handsome thing, where youre like Oh, its just Will, its just Will! and then you have a sex dream about him, and youre like, What the fuck? Do I want to have sex with Will? Its horribly jarring, and then you have to have your friends show you a video he made for the Internet a million years ago that features him several pounds heavier than he is now and topless in the shower and then youre like Okay, cured. [laughs] We actually go back, weirdly, to way before I worked at Gawker. We had the same editor of our young adult novels and weve had all these other weird career similarities. Astrology is bullshit, but I totally believe in it. Our birthdays are one day apart, so maybe we have some kind of astrological similarity. Weve also both been humiliated by blowhards on national TV, we both worked at Gawker Media, and our books just came out on the same day too.
RS: Since you brought it up, do you feel like Jimmy Kimmel got the best of you in that confrontation?
EG: Oh, yeah. I come off as such an asshole in that interview. I completely sympathize with everyone who makes fun of me. Maybe I wasnt wrong about what I was saying, but I was saying it in the most obnoxious way possible. I had also been put in the super-awkward position of defending this thing that I didnt create. It was just part of my job to make sure the interns were doing a good job of maintaining it, so it was hard for me to defend it, really. Yeah, that hugely sucked. Also, usually when you do a remote, like with the Larry King people, theres usually a monitor set up so that you can see the other people who youre having a conversation with and they didnt have that for me -- on purpose, I think. It was really hard to tell by the tone of Jimmy Kimmels voice whether he was fucking with me, and you can see if you watch the video which Im not enough of a masochist to do the moment when I realize that hes not fucking with me, hes not kidding. Its kind of hilarious, because you can see it in my eyes. Im like Oh shit, hes serious. To me it was inherently ridiculous that someone who had a TV show predicated on the idea that both he and his whole audience were drunk would get upset. That was what The Man Show was, and then he got upset because someone said that they saw him drunk walking down the street? You really feel like you have this pristine public image that has been punctured somehow by a random sighting of you? Give me a fucking break. But, I dont know, its not my job to defend what Gawker does anymore. I dont have to say that they were, like, on the side of truth and justice and the truth must out, thank you! I just think its pretty ridiculous when people who get paid millions of dollars complain about their privacy being violated.
RS: Ive always approached you as sort of a humorist, whether on Gawker or other platforms youve written on.
EG: Well, I hope that Im funny. I think my sense of humor is pretty dry and sarcastic. I do have a problem a lot of the time where people will interpret something that Ive said or written as being very serious or earnest, when I was actually totally kidding. And its hard because you cant really say Oh, you dont get it, I was just kidding without sounding like a pompous jackass. What youre basically saying is Oh, my God, Im so sorry that you were too stupid to understand what I was trying to say.
RS: I love that moment in the Kathryn Borel episode of Cooking the Books where she sort of casually says You know, I killed a man once, and your reaction to that.
EG: [laughs] We had trouble editing that, because we felt like we had to introduce this information about her book. Its an important aspect of the book, but it is hard to go from Killed a man to Heres how to make Hollandaise. Its hard for me to watch the cooking show sometimes because Im super-annoyed by my facial expressions. I really wish I didnt have such a spastic, hyper-mobile face, but oh well, thats just how my face is. And my laugh? Oh, Jesus Christ. Its been hard going around doing all of these interviews, because I feel obligated to watch them and listen to them, but it doesnt give me a narcissistic thrill. Its not fun.
RS: Did you create the show just as a way of keeping a foothold in the literary community, or does it figure into the big plan?
EG: Oh, my grand scheme? Actually, this is a great example of how something thats an Internet idea can become something real. I think I tweeted something about how I wished there was a Reading Rainbow for adults. I wished that there was a show about books that made books actually seem fun and interesting, because it really doesnt exist at all. And my friend Val, who was just finishing up film school and was kind of casting around for a project, saw the tweet and wrote to me to say Hey, we could do that, we could do something like that, wed just have to figure out what it would be. And I thought Okay, great! and we probably shot the first episode maybe two weeks after that happened. So, it was sort of a natural thing. I love cooking and I live in New York where all of these writers either live or hang out or visit because theyre on tour promoting their books, so its like, why not? Insofar as how it fits into my career scheme, its just hard to be by yourself all day, hunched over your computer. Its not the most fun sometimes, and to sort of have a project thats collaborative and actually be part of a team with Andrew and Val and work on the show is a really nice counterpoint to pretty much everything else that I do.
RS: Given your history at Hyperion, its kind of surprising that you havent found your way back into the editorial side of publishing.
EG: I dont think they would have me, even if I wanted to be in book publishing right now. Its kind of a bummer, it really seems like everyone I know with the exception of my super-talented Free Press editor Amber Qureshi who is a great, young, up and coming publishing person is bailing. Theyre either leaving the industry all-together or theyre doing some sort of Internet venture that has to do with publishing, or theyre going over into the magazine world. I dont see myself being in editorial ever again. I had a lot of fun working on the books that I worked on at Hyperion, but I dont actually think that Im the worlds best editor. I did the thing that bad editors do, actually, which is I would take writing and make it sound more like me. A good editor takes a piece of writing and makes the writer sound more like themselves.
RS: Do you think Gawker narrowed your career options? In the book you talk a little about the feeling that bridges were being burned during that period.
EG: I say that I felt unemployed and unemployable. I was pretty down. It isnt a bad thing, necessarily. As you get older you go further down one path and other doors close to you, and thats just part of the deal. It would be really hard for me to imagine going to work again at a big corporate blog. I dont think Ill ever have a job-job again. Right now I teach yoga. If I ever have an office-y, you-have-to-wear-non-spandex-clothes job again, it would probably be a teaching job. Im loathe to acknowledge this, but Gawker is kind of the ultimate as far as working for the Internet goes, and I dont see why any print publication would hire me. I have zero print experience. I could go back and do something that reaches fewer people, but it would feel like taking a step back. So, yeah, that sucks for me! [laughs] God, Ryan, Ive never really thought of my career in such a holistic way before.
RS: Gawker is actually directly mentioned only infrequently in the book, but when it is you express regret for the meanness of some of your barbs. Do you see a qualitative difference in the Gawker-style put-downs you created back then and what you still do on your blog?
EG: Well, humor can be really nasty, and one of the surest routes to Funnyville is via super-duper meanness. During my time at Gawker I was not really too quick on the uptake. I should have noticed that this was happening way before I actually did -- and to my credit, when I did notice that it was happening I quit -- but Gawker used to be less powerful than the people it was making fun of. Then it started to become more powerful than the people it was making fun of, and thats just not as funny. The first rule of comedy is that you can make fun of anyone as long as youre not bullying or beating up on someone whos obviously weaker than you. Its not funny to be, like, Hey guys, look at that homeless drunk guy hes retarded! Its like O-kay And thats the position that Gawker was in. It was a gradual shift, it happened over the course of many months, but it definitely happened. Its never been..Im good at being mean. It comes naturally to me. Its like, yay, Im so good at it! But it doesnt make me happy to make other people unhappy. Im not a sadist. And once you realize that about yourself theres really no place for you in the realm of making other people unhappy.
RS: On your blog you recently commented on Lynn Hirschberg seemingly setting up M.I.A. with those truffle fries. Did you notice that Hirschberg also used truffles in her Megan Fox profile?
EG: Oh, no. Poor Megan Fox! But I also feel like, okay, lady, youre sitting down with Lynn Hirschberg. I mean, dont you have access to Google? You have to know what youre getting into a little bit. Maybe its your publicist or whoever saying Its the Times Magazine, you have to do this! Did she literally do the same thing?
RS: As I recall it was similarly put to the reader as an observation, like Megan is having some truffle French fries in the hotel restaurant
EG: She probably just takes them all to that same restaurant. I know that when Im interviewing people its like, you know your places where you can go and its quiet and the people know you and theyll give you some corner booth. Its probably less nefarious than, like, fallaciously getting them to eat something, but yeah, I do feel weirdly defensive of M.I.A. and people in that situation. For people who like to talk about themselves, its so dangerous to just let yourself babble on and on about every thought in your head. Its so fun, its so great, someones finally asking you about yourself -- then you read the profile later and youre like Oh, my God. Its very easy to focus on someones worst asset. It takes a lot of restraint to not just do that over and over again, and its hard to write a great celebrity profile. Ive never done it.
RS: Some interviewers try to compensate by going overboard with the crafty editing afterwards, shaping things.
EG: Thats just shady. The really crafty interviewers are the ones who are just silent and make you feel so awkward that youll appreciate anything just to fill the holes in the conversation. I love her, but this is what Vanessa Grigoriadis does, and it works! She gets amazing stuff, because people are just sitting there and total silence has fallen over the table and theyre just picking at their sushi, so they say something. Youre put in the position of making the interviewer feel less awkward, and of course theyre completely playing you. Its actually real easy. See, this is why Im not a brilliant, Janet Malcolm type of investigative reporter. I dont have that much game.
RS: Do you have any thoughts about the recent news of Megan Fox being booted off Transformers 3 because she wouldnt get a tan and put on weight?
EG: I havent really formed an opinion about that, until you just mentioned it. But its funny, I just posted a photo of Megan Fox from US Weekly on my Tumblr today to illustrate a quote from this early 80s Martin Amis book that I just happened to be reading for whatever reason. The narrator of the book is this caricature of an over-the-top horrible alcoholic misogynist, hes a kind of very obvious stand-in for the authors worst impulses and the quote says You know, Ive been told that I dont like women. Its not true, I love women. I think chicks are cool. And people have also told me that men dont like women, period. Oh yeah? But if they dont, who does? Ill tell you who doesnt like women. Women dont like women. And I think Megan Fox is a good example of how women dont like women.
RS: Have you always been alert to the dangers of being pigeonholed as one kind of woman? In the book you recall that even your feminist-minded short story teacher at the New School was trying to put every girl in her own little box.
EG: Well, as a writer everyone is put in that kind of box. Its what makes your work marketable and shelvable, you know? It has to be classified and categorized somehow, its just that the categories are so inherently problematic. Its just the idea that something is Chick Lit if its by a woman and it concerns itself with love and romance, and if a man writes a similar book then its not that, its just a novel, a coming of age novel. I think of people like Nell Freudenberger and Nicole Krauss, who early in their careers took a lot of shit. It was like Oh, look at this author photo, shes clearly trying to trade on her looks and her sexual attractiveness as a woman. You dont have a choice about that stuff, you know? They had to take a picture of her, so what is she supposed to do, splash acid on her face? Then shell be taken seriously? Now both of the writers I just mentioned are in their early 30s, they have children, and people do take them more seriously. I think our culture doesnt really know what to do with women who are past the stage of being dewy ingnues who you can project anything you want onto, because she clearly doesnt have her own agency or thoughts at all. You can just make up what shes thinking and project it onto her. Then there are mommies and wise crones who the culture can revere, like Patti Smith or something. But if youre in an in-between mode then youre really scary, because they dont know what to do with you. Theres no label for you, no box for you.
RS: Is part of the reason why you decided to get conspicuous tattoos to sort of force people to lend a few more seconds of consideration to you up front than they otherwise might have?
EG: My God. What a question! Its interesting. I think everyone who gets tattoos gets them for a whole lot of different reasons. Theres never one primary reason. And there are some reasons that you only realize in retrospect, like Oh, this might have been why I got tattooed. But Ill just give you an example. My rule for comments on my personal blog, Emily Magazine, is that I will approve all comments as long as they dont insult other people. Its fine to insult me, but youre not allowed to insult other people. And recently that rule put me in the position of approving this comment. Im just gonna read it to you, if I can find it. I have to log into the site. Here we go. Its someone named Jonathan. [in creepy Penthouse letters voice] As cute as you are, Em, shame about the tats, though. Iiiikk! Ive got to say that the content here just doesnt make the grade, nor does your participation help anything along. My advice is to get on with your life. Fulfill your biological function, and leave the Internet to those that actually have something clever to say.
RS: Oh my.
EG: It just goes down the line and hits all the notes. Its like, youre worthless, except for bearing children, and leave the Internet to those that have something clever to say? Yeah, cause thats what the Internets for! [laughs] So, yeah, that guy is skeeved by tattoos. Too bad! I really wish I hadnt gotten my tattoos now because my whole self-worth is dependent on whether he thinks Im attractive! They are kind of a good screening process. I would never want to have a job where they wouldnt want to hire me if I had tattoos. Id never want to date someone who wouldnt date someone who had tattoos, you know? So, yeah, it is definitely a way to filter out a certain kind of attention.
RS: Do you involve yourself in any kind of tattoo subculture? I think youre sort of in the SuicideGirls demographic.
EG
h yeah? I think Im a few body mods away from being viable for actual SuicideGirlness. No piercings, except for my ears. Although I did have my holes stretched for a while, but I let them get back to normal size so that I could just wear normal earrings again. No, I guess? I mean, I do really love tattoos. I think theyre inherently beautiful and interesting, otherwise I wouldnt have so many of them. But I dont go to conventions or read Inked or anything, although I probably should because Inked seems to have had an editorial makeover and gotten a lot cooler recently. But no, Im just a person who happens to have tattoos. Unless I leave New York and go to another city or country that isnt Asheville or Berkeley or L.A., Im usually surrounded by people who have tattoos all the time.
RS: Did I read correctly on your Tumblr that you have a quote from Videodrome tattooed across your stomach? I love that movie.
EG:Thats my friend Val. Yeah, Tumblr is confusing. Thats Val, who does Cooking the Books with me. She has the best tattoos of anyone I know. She has a full scene from Barbarella, which is amazing. She has the Videodrome quote. Shes one of those people who, for a long time, never had one tattoo and over the course of a couple of years really made up for lost time in a serious way. But I love it, I think its awesome. It really suits her; shes becoming more and more herself with every tattoo.
RS: In other media youve been asked why you chose to write a memoir that largely recounts interpersonal relationships and mostly shies away from media critique or telling The Gawker Story. Your position is that you just dont find that as interesting.
EG:Well, I didnt even work there for a year. And my friend Moe, who worked at Jezebel during part of the time that I worked at Gawker, we were talking about this the other day and she uses this great word to describe her time at Jezebel -- she says that the days were textureless. Everything just kind of blurred together. Honestly, when I was working there I would often actually fall asleep and dream about checking my email. I would dream about having instant message conversations. There was so little actual, physical life being lived during that time. It was so boring. It was so fraught with intensity and that go-go drive that enables you to assimilate so much information so quickly and then shut it all out again. But in terms of my actual life I describe this in the introduction to my book -- my decisions were like Okay, I can only have one more glass of wine, I have to get at least five and half hours of sleep, otherwiseevery day was like running a marathon. It was just not interesting! [laughs]
RS: I remember also reading an interesting post on your Tumblr where you begin a dissection of the millennial generation, the late-Gen Ys, and you sort of concede that your perception has diverged from theirs and that youre not the one to carry that torch anymore.
EG:I think its up to someone from that younger generation. You and I youre like, 32 or so? the Internet is kind of a second language to us. And for people who have never really had any other kind of lives social lives besides ones that have been heavily mediated by social media, I think they have a way better handle on this stuff. Theyve always had to deal with it. Theyve never had to adapt to dealing with it the way that we did. Id be really interested to hear a first-person take on that. I mean, I can write about it in a certain way because we noticed it happening because it was near us. But Id like to hear about what its like to have always had this stuff in your life. So, yeah, Im probably not the person, which is fine. Im not the spokesperson for anyone besides myself. Its not a job that I applied for or one that Im really interested in.
RS: Still, I think it would be interesting to hear any criticisms that you have of the younger Gawker writers, the new generation.
EG:I dont know enough about the new Gawker generation, because I dont read Gawker and I havent in a couple of years, to weigh in on it in an informed way. And its hard to make a sweeping generalization about a generation of people how do you delimit that? But I have generally positive feelings about younger people. The people who come to my book readings tend to be in their late teens or early twenties, and theyre the ones that seem to be having a really strong connection to the book. There are also people who are forty that have had a strong connection to it -- it doesnt mean they cant -- but from my perspective that seems to be whats happening. So, of course right now Im having a surge of The kids are allright! Everythings gonna be fine!
RS: Do you think that, as a writer, youll eventually move away from a first-person perspective and start to do more third-person writing?
EG:I would love to get away from writing about myself, and I really hope that I can. Its my most cherished dream, to not write about myself, but well have to see how it goes. I feel like I still have some work to do. I have to figure out why I do the crazy shit that I do before I turn my attention to why other people do the crazy shit that they do, but I am interested in that and always have been. Maybe thats where Ill go next.
RS: Some people have commented that this book wasnt as salacious a read as they were expecting.
EG: [laughs] There are definitely times that I mercifully pan over to the fireplace. My mom would love to hear you say that my book is not salacious. Ive had so many conversations with members of my family where they basically, in the sweetest, nicest, most supportive and gentle way possible tell me that Im basically a whore. I think Im really frank and blunt about not just sex, but also the social and emotional experiences that surround sex, what its like to go over to someones house and awkwardly watch Curb Your Enthusiasm with their roommate for a perfunctory half-hour before you do what you obviously came there to do. Thats the kind of stuff that Im interested in. Sex in and of itself is not really my.Im not an erotica writer. In fact, I had to take an erotica class in college as a graduation requirement for my concentration in writing, and I did really badly in the class. I was a total failure at writing anything remotely hot, because I would always try to be funny. Being funny is a huge enemy of writing something that someone could actually masturbate to. Those are two totally opposing impulses.
RS: Is there anything in particular we should take from that Belladonna song? The heart says danger, and the heart says whatever. What wisdom is Stevie trying to impart to us?
EG: She is very profound. I think the other sort of graphic element besides the title on the cover of my book is a picture of one of my tattoos, and I think that if you were to ask anyone why they got a certain tattoo theyd probably have a really hard time telling you. There are probably twenty or thirty different things that it means or has meant to them. And the title of my book is like that, too. It has a lot of different meanings besides the obvious, but I guess the obvious one would be a sense of romantic surrender, the sense that the heart wants what it wants. Its giving in to impulse. But as anyone who has ever given into impulse will tell you, its always a little bit more complicated than you think. In times that you think youre ceding control youre sometimes grasping control, and when you think youre grasping control its likely that youre actually giving control up. So, yeah, its like the Janet Jackson album.
And The Heart Says Whatever is available in bookstores now.
In the way it suggests Goulds impressive recall of events both large and inconsequential, and demonstrates her facility for turning each memory over as if in her hands for inspection, Whatever more than justifies its existence, achieving a measure of authorial gravitas that turns an inner journey into a relatable read. It will also, however, leave some readers blue-balled due to the authors refusal to turn her scalpel onto the media empire that birthed her as a public persona or the failings of the crumbling-before-our-eyes Manhattan publishing world. The zeitgeist of mid-aughts media is conspicuously absent from Goulds account. Her infamous face-off with Jimmy Kimmel on live TV over Gawkers Stalker Map in 2007, dramatic departure from her editorial perch at Gawker over ethical concerns soon after, subsequent 8,000-word soul-baring essay Exposed for the New York Times magazine in summer 2008, and eventual targeting by Gawker itself in a half-witted effort at hoisting-by-petard it all gets short shrift, perhaps because Gould perceives that the only thing more fleeting than Internet fame is Internet disaccord.
Gould also likes cooking a lot. In addition to her long-running primary blog Emily Magazine, she now operates a Tumblr called Things I Ate That I Love in which she lends consideration to her various cooking and eating experiences in addition to indulging ephemeral fixations on, say, Megan Fox or the meaning of a friends new tattoo. Shes also currently hard at work on a regularly recurring Internet show called Cooking the Books, on which she casually interviews selected authors about their upcoming titles while preparing a dish (usually in montage form) with an attempted thematic tie-in and during which no gaffe, self-inflicted or otherwise, will fail to register on the hostesss noticeably fluid face. SuicideGirls recently called up Gould in Brooklyn to discuss her new book, the evolution of the cooking show and its place in her future, her expanding canvas of body art, and how shes putting the past to bed.
Ryan Stewart: What are you working on today?
Emily Gould: Oh, God. I have this thing Im working on. Im not usually this terrible and flakey with deadlines, but it was originally due at the beginning of May -- at the end of the first week of May -- and then I got an extension to June 1st. Now Im blowing that deadline, too. It sucks, because I handed in one draft of the piece and then I got back revisions and I became so daunted by them that I just had to hide from the piece for a while. I think there are two personality types for this kind of stuff: One is like the kid who got the test back from the teacher as a child and really studied the test and was like What did I get wrong? How can I do better next time? But Im the kid who stuffs the graded test down into the bottom of the backpack and tries to forget it ever happened. Im more like B plus? Okay, great, fine! It does make the whole editorial process kind of excruciating.
RS: Is the next cooking show coming up soon?
EG: I think were going to have it done this week. Its Julie Klausner. I just saw the rough cut yesterday and Im really excited about it. We try to keep things pretty brief, because its, you know, the Internet? [laughs] We really think the ideal thing is for it to be, like, five minutes long, and I think even that is kind of long for the Internet. But Julies is all good and its so funny. It was really hard to figure out what to cut, because shes amazingly funny all the time and everything she says is golden. I think we might actually experiment with a slightly longer episode for this one, cause its awesome.
RS: I heard youre having Will Leitch on soon, for his book. I worked with him once at a little magazine called Venture Reporter.
EG: Oh, cool. Was that a long time ago?
RS: Yeah, it was around 2001-2002. Mostly what I remember about him is that the ladies seemed to love him.
EG: As a lady who loves him, I feel qualified on that. Hes always in a relationship, so you feel, like, safe around him. Hes never gonna hit on you and be inappropriate, so you can get super-drunk with him not that Ive ever done that. Also, he just has these non-threatening good looks, the boyishly handsome thing, where youre like Oh, its just Will, its just Will! and then you have a sex dream about him, and youre like, What the fuck? Do I want to have sex with Will? Its horribly jarring, and then you have to have your friends show you a video he made for the Internet a million years ago that features him several pounds heavier than he is now and topless in the shower and then youre like Okay, cured. [laughs] We actually go back, weirdly, to way before I worked at Gawker. We had the same editor of our young adult novels and weve had all these other weird career similarities. Astrology is bullshit, but I totally believe in it. Our birthdays are one day apart, so maybe we have some kind of astrological similarity. Weve also both been humiliated by blowhards on national TV, we both worked at Gawker Media, and our books just came out on the same day too.
RS: Since you brought it up, do you feel like Jimmy Kimmel got the best of you in that confrontation?
EG: Oh, yeah. I come off as such an asshole in that interview. I completely sympathize with everyone who makes fun of me. Maybe I wasnt wrong about what I was saying, but I was saying it in the most obnoxious way possible. I had also been put in the super-awkward position of defending this thing that I didnt create. It was just part of my job to make sure the interns were doing a good job of maintaining it, so it was hard for me to defend it, really. Yeah, that hugely sucked. Also, usually when you do a remote, like with the Larry King people, theres usually a monitor set up so that you can see the other people who youre having a conversation with and they didnt have that for me -- on purpose, I think. It was really hard to tell by the tone of Jimmy Kimmels voice whether he was fucking with me, and you can see if you watch the video which Im not enough of a masochist to do the moment when I realize that hes not fucking with me, hes not kidding. Its kind of hilarious, because you can see it in my eyes. Im like Oh shit, hes serious. To me it was inherently ridiculous that someone who had a TV show predicated on the idea that both he and his whole audience were drunk would get upset. That was what The Man Show was, and then he got upset because someone said that they saw him drunk walking down the street? You really feel like you have this pristine public image that has been punctured somehow by a random sighting of you? Give me a fucking break. But, I dont know, its not my job to defend what Gawker does anymore. I dont have to say that they were, like, on the side of truth and justice and the truth must out, thank you! I just think its pretty ridiculous when people who get paid millions of dollars complain about their privacy being violated.
RS: Ive always approached you as sort of a humorist, whether on Gawker or other platforms youve written on.
EG: Well, I hope that Im funny. I think my sense of humor is pretty dry and sarcastic. I do have a problem a lot of the time where people will interpret something that Ive said or written as being very serious or earnest, when I was actually totally kidding. And its hard because you cant really say Oh, you dont get it, I was just kidding without sounding like a pompous jackass. What youre basically saying is Oh, my God, Im so sorry that you were too stupid to understand what I was trying to say.
RS: I love that moment in the Kathryn Borel episode of Cooking the Books where she sort of casually says You know, I killed a man once, and your reaction to that.
EG: [laughs] We had trouble editing that, because we felt like we had to introduce this information about her book. Its an important aspect of the book, but it is hard to go from Killed a man to Heres how to make Hollandaise. Its hard for me to watch the cooking show sometimes because Im super-annoyed by my facial expressions. I really wish I didnt have such a spastic, hyper-mobile face, but oh well, thats just how my face is. And my laugh? Oh, Jesus Christ. Its been hard going around doing all of these interviews, because I feel obligated to watch them and listen to them, but it doesnt give me a narcissistic thrill. Its not fun.
RS: Did you create the show just as a way of keeping a foothold in the literary community, or does it figure into the big plan?
EG: Oh, my grand scheme? Actually, this is a great example of how something thats an Internet idea can become something real. I think I tweeted something about how I wished there was a Reading Rainbow for adults. I wished that there was a show about books that made books actually seem fun and interesting, because it really doesnt exist at all. And my friend Val, who was just finishing up film school and was kind of casting around for a project, saw the tweet and wrote to me to say Hey, we could do that, we could do something like that, wed just have to figure out what it would be. And I thought Okay, great! and we probably shot the first episode maybe two weeks after that happened. So, it was sort of a natural thing. I love cooking and I live in New York where all of these writers either live or hang out or visit because theyre on tour promoting their books, so its like, why not? Insofar as how it fits into my career scheme, its just hard to be by yourself all day, hunched over your computer. Its not the most fun sometimes, and to sort of have a project thats collaborative and actually be part of a team with Andrew and Val and work on the show is a really nice counterpoint to pretty much everything else that I do.
RS: Given your history at Hyperion, its kind of surprising that you havent found your way back into the editorial side of publishing.
EG: I dont think they would have me, even if I wanted to be in book publishing right now. Its kind of a bummer, it really seems like everyone I know with the exception of my super-talented Free Press editor Amber Qureshi who is a great, young, up and coming publishing person is bailing. Theyre either leaving the industry all-together or theyre doing some sort of Internet venture that has to do with publishing, or theyre going over into the magazine world. I dont see myself being in editorial ever again. I had a lot of fun working on the books that I worked on at Hyperion, but I dont actually think that Im the worlds best editor. I did the thing that bad editors do, actually, which is I would take writing and make it sound more like me. A good editor takes a piece of writing and makes the writer sound more like themselves.
RS: Do you think Gawker narrowed your career options? In the book you talk a little about the feeling that bridges were being burned during that period.
EG: I say that I felt unemployed and unemployable. I was pretty down. It isnt a bad thing, necessarily. As you get older you go further down one path and other doors close to you, and thats just part of the deal. It would be really hard for me to imagine going to work again at a big corporate blog. I dont think Ill ever have a job-job again. Right now I teach yoga. If I ever have an office-y, you-have-to-wear-non-spandex-clothes job again, it would probably be a teaching job. Im loathe to acknowledge this, but Gawker is kind of the ultimate as far as working for the Internet goes, and I dont see why any print publication would hire me. I have zero print experience. I could go back and do something that reaches fewer people, but it would feel like taking a step back. So, yeah, that sucks for me! [laughs] God, Ryan, Ive never really thought of my career in such a holistic way before.
RS: Gawker is actually directly mentioned only infrequently in the book, but when it is you express regret for the meanness of some of your barbs. Do you see a qualitative difference in the Gawker-style put-downs you created back then and what you still do on your blog?
EG: Well, humor can be really nasty, and one of the surest routes to Funnyville is via super-duper meanness. During my time at Gawker I was not really too quick on the uptake. I should have noticed that this was happening way before I actually did -- and to my credit, when I did notice that it was happening I quit -- but Gawker used to be less powerful than the people it was making fun of. Then it started to become more powerful than the people it was making fun of, and thats just not as funny. The first rule of comedy is that you can make fun of anyone as long as youre not bullying or beating up on someone whos obviously weaker than you. Its not funny to be, like, Hey guys, look at that homeless drunk guy hes retarded! Its like O-kay And thats the position that Gawker was in. It was a gradual shift, it happened over the course of many months, but it definitely happened. Its never been..Im good at being mean. It comes naturally to me. Its like, yay, Im so good at it! But it doesnt make me happy to make other people unhappy. Im not a sadist. And once you realize that about yourself theres really no place for you in the realm of making other people unhappy.
RS: On your blog you recently commented on Lynn Hirschberg seemingly setting up M.I.A. with those truffle fries. Did you notice that Hirschberg also used truffles in her Megan Fox profile?
EG: Oh, no. Poor Megan Fox! But I also feel like, okay, lady, youre sitting down with Lynn Hirschberg. I mean, dont you have access to Google? You have to know what youre getting into a little bit. Maybe its your publicist or whoever saying Its the Times Magazine, you have to do this! Did she literally do the same thing?
RS: As I recall it was similarly put to the reader as an observation, like Megan is having some truffle French fries in the hotel restaurant
EG: She probably just takes them all to that same restaurant. I know that when Im interviewing people its like, you know your places where you can go and its quiet and the people know you and theyll give you some corner booth. Its probably less nefarious than, like, fallaciously getting them to eat something, but yeah, I do feel weirdly defensive of M.I.A. and people in that situation. For people who like to talk about themselves, its so dangerous to just let yourself babble on and on about every thought in your head. Its so fun, its so great, someones finally asking you about yourself -- then you read the profile later and youre like Oh, my God. Its very easy to focus on someones worst asset. It takes a lot of restraint to not just do that over and over again, and its hard to write a great celebrity profile. Ive never done it.
RS: Some interviewers try to compensate by going overboard with the crafty editing afterwards, shaping things.
EG: Thats just shady. The really crafty interviewers are the ones who are just silent and make you feel so awkward that youll appreciate anything just to fill the holes in the conversation. I love her, but this is what Vanessa Grigoriadis does, and it works! She gets amazing stuff, because people are just sitting there and total silence has fallen over the table and theyre just picking at their sushi, so they say something. Youre put in the position of making the interviewer feel less awkward, and of course theyre completely playing you. Its actually real easy. See, this is why Im not a brilliant, Janet Malcolm type of investigative reporter. I dont have that much game.
RS: Do you have any thoughts about the recent news of Megan Fox being booted off Transformers 3 because she wouldnt get a tan and put on weight?
EG: I havent really formed an opinion about that, until you just mentioned it. But its funny, I just posted a photo of Megan Fox from US Weekly on my Tumblr today to illustrate a quote from this early 80s Martin Amis book that I just happened to be reading for whatever reason. The narrator of the book is this caricature of an over-the-top horrible alcoholic misogynist, hes a kind of very obvious stand-in for the authors worst impulses and the quote says You know, Ive been told that I dont like women. Its not true, I love women. I think chicks are cool. And people have also told me that men dont like women, period. Oh yeah? But if they dont, who does? Ill tell you who doesnt like women. Women dont like women. And I think Megan Fox is a good example of how women dont like women.
RS: Have you always been alert to the dangers of being pigeonholed as one kind of woman? In the book you recall that even your feminist-minded short story teacher at the New School was trying to put every girl in her own little box.
EG: Well, as a writer everyone is put in that kind of box. Its what makes your work marketable and shelvable, you know? It has to be classified and categorized somehow, its just that the categories are so inherently problematic. Its just the idea that something is Chick Lit if its by a woman and it concerns itself with love and romance, and if a man writes a similar book then its not that, its just a novel, a coming of age novel. I think of people like Nell Freudenberger and Nicole Krauss, who early in their careers took a lot of shit. It was like Oh, look at this author photo, shes clearly trying to trade on her looks and her sexual attractiveness as a woman. You dont have a choice about that stuff, you know? They had to take a picture of her, so what is she supposed to do, splash acid on her face? Then shell be taken seriously? Now both of the writers I just mentioned are in their early 30s, they have children, and people do take them more seriously. I think our culture doesnt really know what to do with women who are past the stage of being dewy ingnues who you can project anything you want onto, because she clearly doesnt have her own agency or thoughts at all. You can just make up what shes thinking and project it onto her. Then there are mommies and wise crones who the culture can revere, like Patti Smith or something. But if youre in an in-between mode then youre really scary, because they dont know what to do with you. Theres no label for you, no box for you.
RS: Is part of the reason why you decided to get conspicuous tattoos to sort of force people to lend a few more seconds of consideration to you up front than they otherwise might have?
EG: My God. What a question! Its interesting. I think everyone who gets tattoos gets them for a whole lot of different reasons. Theres never one primary reason. And there are some reasons that you only realize in retrospect, like Oh, this might have been why I got tattooed. But Ill just give you an example. My rule for comments on my personal blog, Emily Magazine, is that I will approve all comments as long as they dont insult other people. Its fine to insult me, but youre not allowed to insult other people. And recently that rule put me in the position of approving this comment. Im just gonna read it to you, if I can find it. I have to log into the site. Here we go. Its someone named Jonathan. [in creepy Penthouse letters voice] As cute as you are, Em, shame about the tats, though. Iiiikk! Ive got to say that the content here just doesnt make the grade, nor does your participation help anything along. My advice is to get on with your life. Fulfill your biological function, and leave the Internet to those that actually have something clever to say.
RS: Oh my.
EG: It just goes down the line and hits all the notes. Its like, youre worthless, except for bearing children, and leave the Internet to those that have something clever to say? Yeah, cause thats what the Internets for! [laughs] So, yeah, that guy is skeeved by tattoos. Too bad! I really wish I hadnt gotten my tattoos now because my whole self-worth is dependent on whether he thinks Im attractive! They are kind of a good screening process. I would never want to have a job where they wouldnt want to hire me if I had tattoos. Id never want to date someone who wouldnt date someone who had tattoos, you know? So, yeah, it is definitely a way to filter out a certain kind of attention.
RS: Do you involve yourself in any kind of tattoo subculture? I think youre sort of in the SuicideGirls demographic.
EG
h yeah? I think Im a few body mods away from being viable for actual SuicideGirlness. No piercings, except for my ears. Although I did have my holes stretched for a while, but I let them get back to normal size so that I could just wear normal earrings again. No, I guess? I mean, I do really love tattoos. I think theyre inherently beautiful and interesting, otherwise I wouldnt have so many of them. But I dont go to conventions or read Inked or anything, although I probably should because Inked seems to have had an editorial makeover and gotten a lot cooler recently. But no, Im just a person who happens to have tattoos. Unless I leave New York and go to another city or country that isnt Asheville or Berkeley or L.A., Im usually surrounded by people who have tattoos all the time.
RS: Did I read correctly on your Tumblr that you have a quote from Videodrome tattooed across your stomach? I love that movie.
EG:Thats my friend Val. Yeah, Tumblr is confusing. Thats Val, who does Cooking the Books with me. She has the best tattoos of anyone I know. She has a full scene from Barbarella, which is amazing. She has the Videodrome quote. Shes one of those people who, for a long time, never had one tattoo and over the course of a couple of years really made up for lost time in a serious way. But I love it, I think its awesome. It really suits her; shes becoming more and more herself with every tattoo.
RS: In other media youve been asked why you chose to write a memoir that largely recounts interpersonal relationships and mostly shies away from media critique or telling The Gawker Story. Your position is that you just dont find that as interesting.
EG:Well, I didnt even work there for a year. And my friend Moe, who worked at Jezebel during part of the time that I worked at Gawker, we were talking about this the other day and she uses this great word to describe her time at Jezebel -- she says that the days were textureless. Everything just kind of blurred together. Honestly, when I was working there I would often actually fall asleep and dream about checking my email. I would dream about having instant message conversations. There was so little actual, physical life being lived during that time. It was so boring. It was so fraught with intensity and that go-go drive that enables you to assimilate so much information so quickly and then shut it all out again. But in terms of my actual life I describe this in the introduction to my book -- my decisions were like Okay, I can only have one more glass of wine, I have to get at least five and half hours of sleep, otherwiseevery day was like running a marathon. It was just not interesting! [laughs]
RS: I remember also reading an interesting post on your Tumblr where you begin a dissection of the millennial generation, the late-Gen Ys, and you sort of concede that your perception has diverged from theirs and that youre not the one to carry that torch anymore.
EG:I think its up to someone from that younger generation. You and I youre like, 32 or so? the Internet is kind of a second language to us. And for people who have never really had any other kind of lives social lives besides ones that have been heavily mediated by social media, I think they have a way better handle on this stuff. Theyve always had to deal with it. Theyve never had to adapt to dealing with it the way that we did. Id be really interested to hear a first-person take on that. I mean, I can write about it in a certain way because we noticed it happening because it was near us. But Id like to hear about what its like to have always had this stuff in your life. So, yeah, Im probably not the person, which is fine. Im not the spokesperson for anyone besides myself. Its not a job that I applied for or one that Im really interested in.
RS: Still, I think it would be interesting to hear any criticisms that you have of the younger Gawker writers, the new generation.
EG:I dont know enough about the new Gawker generation, because I dont read Gawker and I havent in a couple of years, to weigh in on it in an informed way. And its hard to make a sweeping generalization about a generation of people how do you delimit that? But I have generally positive feelings about younger people. The people who come to my book readings tend to be in their late teens or early twenties, and theyre the ones that seem to be having a really strong connection to the book. There are also people who are forty that have had a strong connection to it -- it doesnt mean they cant -- but from my perspective that seems to be whats happening. So, of course right now Im having a surge of The kids are allright! Everythings gonna be fine!
RS: Do you think that, as a writer, youll eventually move away from a first-person perspective and start to do more third-person writing?
EG:I would love to get away from writing about myself, and I really hope that I can. Its my most cherished dream, to not write about myself, but well have to see how it goes. I feel like I still have some work to do. I have to figure out why I do the crazy shit that I do before I turn my attention to why other people do the crazy shit that they do, but I am interested in that and always have been. Maybe thats where Ill go next.
RS: Some people have commented that this book wasnt as salacious a read as they were expecting.
EG: [laughs] There are definitely times that I mercifully pan over to the fireplace. My mom would love to hear you say that my book is not salacious. Ive had so many conversations with members of my family where they basically, in the sweetest, nicest, most supportive and gentle way possible tell me that Im basically a whore. I think Im really frank and blunt about not just sex, but also the social and emotional experiences that surround sex, what its like to go over to someones house and awkwardly watch Curb Your Enthusiasm with their roommate for a perfunctory half-hour before you do what you obviously came there to do. Thats the kind of stuff that Im interested in. Sex in and of itself is not really my.Im not an erotica writer. In fact, I had to take an erotica class in college as a graduation requirement for my concentration in writing, and I did really badly in the class. I was a total failure at writing anything remotely hot, because I would always try to be funny. Being funny is a huge enemy of writing something that someone could actually masturbate to. Those are two totally opposing impulses.
RS: Is there anything in particular we should take from that Belladonna song? The heart says danger, and the heart says whatever. What wisdom is Stevie trying to impart to us?
EG: She is very profound. I think the other sort of graphic element besides the title on the cover of my book is a picture of one of my tattoos, and I think that if you were to ask anyone why they got a certain tattoo theyd probably have a really hard time telling you. There are probably twenty or thirty different things that it means or has meant to them. And the title of my book is like that, too. It has a lot of different meanings besides the obvious, but I guess the obvious one would be a sense of romantic surrender, the sense that the heart wants what it wants. Its giving in to impulse. But as anyone who has ever given into impulse will tell you, its always a little bit more complicated than you think. In times that you think youre ceding control youre sometimes grasping control, and when you think youre grasping control its likely that youre actually giving control up. So, yeah, its like the Janet Jackson album.
And The Heart Says Whatever is available in bookstores now.