How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S3 BONUS EPISODE How to Fail: Kristen Roupenian

Episode Date: February 22, 2019

Ahead of next week's season finale, I offer you, my wonderful listeners, a whole new BONUS EPISODE.I know, I'm too good to you, I really am.No, but honestly, thank you so much for your continued support - for all those lovely messages, ratings and reviews. I appreciate it so, so much. Here, by way of a thank you is the amazing Kristen Roupenian, author of the viral short story sensation Cat Person, and an all-round brilliant woman who has such interesting things to say about failure.This episode was recorded earlier this month in front of a live audience at Foyle's Bookshop in London as part of Kristen's UK tour to promote her newly published collection of short stories, You Know You Want This which has ALREADY been optioned for adaptation by HBO.In this episode, we talk about how Kristen dealt with her unexpected and overnight fame and what it's like to be confronted by the forceful opinions of strangers when all you've done is written a short story. We also talk about her failed attempt to re-home a dog (leading to lots of profound realisations), a serious relationship break-up and how she lost her way in her 20s, as well as why it's pointless to live your life in anticipation of 'a future you' that might never exist.  You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian is published by Jonathan Cape. You can order it here The book of the podcast, How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day is available to pre-order here. Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayKristen Roupenian @kroupenianChris Sharp @chrissharpaudio4th Estate Books @4thEstateBooks      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host,

author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. It's such a pleasure to welcome Kristen Rupenian as my guest for this first ever live recording of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day at the splendid Foyles Bookshop in Charing Cross Road. Many of us will no doubt remember exactly where we were when we first read Cat Person, Kristen's scintillating short story which so brilliantly explored the awkward thrills and grubby weirdness of modern romance. I was sitting in a cafe in LA, reading it on my phone in the sunshine, wincing in recognition at the pitch-perfect rendition of 21st century dating, and the story hasn't left me since. Catperson appeared in the New Yorker in December 2017 and became the magazine's second most read

piece of the year, attracting almost three million hits. For a short story, it did the unthinkable. It went viral. Kristen signed a two-book deal, and the first of these, a collection of short stories called You Know You Want This, is published this week. It has already been optioned for an HBO series. Kristen grew up near Boston and spent her 20s traveling the world with the Peace Corps, as well as working in a bookshop and as a nanny. She has a PhD in African literature from Harvard and a Master in Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. I'd say I write horror stories, she said in an interview last year, explaining that the pull and push of revulsion and attraction is what inspires her work the most. So Kristen, welcome and welcome to London and thank you for being here. Thanks so much for having me and thanks all of you guys

for coming. The push and pull of revulsion and attraction, for many of us that will strike a chord as being a perfect encapsulation of modern dating. Yeah, unfortunately, yes, I guess so. What was it about Cat Person do you think that resonated so deeply with so many people? I mean, that's a question I've been trying to find an answer to this whole past year. What happened with Cat Person took me completely by surprise, as I think it did everyone. And as I've talked about before, I like essentially missed it. Like once it was going viral, I immediately was like, this is too much. I can't read this. I can't keep track of this. I'm going to close my computer and walk away. So I did. And then over the last, like a few weeks later, I like opened my computer again and was like, hmm, what has happened here? And

I am still figuring it out. I think it's a bunch of different things. Like, and truly, like I learned this as much from like other people talking about it as me actually being able to do the diagnosis. But I mean, I think certainly it arrived at the right moment. Like, I think that there were a lot of people who were ready to have conversations about sex

and about sort of the messy edges of sex that is like, we've been calling gray area sex, like sex that leaves you feeling terrible, but like you can't quite articulate why. I think the hunger for that conversation wasn't clear to anyone until cat person sort of served as a way for people to talk to each other. And I think having a piece of fiction actually also let people have conversations that maybe they hadn't figured out how to have before in terms of being able to talk openly and really thoughtfully about people who didn't exist.

So you could talk a little more freely about their choices and what they meant in the sort of security of the knowledge that no one was going to be hurt. So those are two thoughts that I have. But truly, I feel like anyone can say it's still very mysterious to me. I should just say that in the green room beforehand, we were talking about how nervous you get before live appearances. And I am just so astonished by that admission,

given how eloquently you answer questions. Thanks. Just want to put that out there. Well, now I feel better. But when Cat Person went viral and when everyone's attention was drawn to it and everyone started having opinions because it was the most tweeted short story of all time. You were the only. Yeah.

How did that feel as the person who'd written it? It must have felt very weird. It did. Because writing is quite a solitary activity. It felt very weird and it felt very terrifying. I mean, truly, it's hard to even explain what those first few months were like or like the difference between my life in August and my life in December, right? I mean, I was finishing up. I wish I had an MFA in finance or a degree in finance. It was in fiction writing and literature.

Fine arts. Fine arts, isn't it? No, it's not finance. No, fine arts. Oh, fine arts. That's why I asked for it. I was like, should I correct her? And then I was like, I don't know, maybe you'll get a job out of it or something.

You're going to have to get a master's in finance. Big failure. Oh, my gosh. All my eloquence down the drain. Yeah, no. So I had finished my MFA, but I was on a fellowship and I was submitting stories, but was getting nowhere. I had been submitting stories for like five or six stories, had gone out to several different magazines and been rejected by them, which was par for the course at that point. But it was still sitting at The New Yorker for several months. And I assumed they had just, like, forgotten to send me my rejection letter, you know, that there just wasn't even a point. And so it was sitting there, and I got an email from, or my agent got an email from Deborah Triesman, the fiction editor of The New Yorker.

And she said, and the email said in its entirety, I do have it memorized. Like, this is, sorry for the delay. This is an intriguing piece. We'll be back to you shortly. At which point I, like, lost my mind with joy. Because I was like, whoa, she knows my name. And I forwarded it to my mom. And I was like, of course I won't get in. But like, you know, at least she's read it.

Like this is real. And it was real. I mean, it was a real success just to get to that point. And then at that point also, like I had started putting the collection together and I talked to my agent about it. And she's like, you know, like collections don't really sell. And then she said, you know, but of course, I mean, if it gets them from New York or everything changes, I mean, I kind of laughed at, like, how unlikely that was,

because truly it was. And then the story got in, and it was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me, which is all just to say that, like, even before any of the internet stuff happened and even before there was this whole other whirlwind of things, it was the biggest thing that ever happened to me and sort of upended my whole life.

It really felt like, oh, this writing thing, which I felt like I had gone as far as I possibly could going to school and sort of cobbling jobs together and trying to figure out how to do it. Truly, it felt like I had months left on the clock to keep doing it. And it came in and kind of turned my life around. So that was the place that I was at when my girlfriend was sitting next to me

a few days after my story had gotten published and looked up at me. It was like, something's going on with your story. Understatement of the year. And yeah, so I guess I didn't answer your question, but I get us up to the point of answering your question. You did. We'll get there. We'll get there. Because one of your failures that you've spoken to me about and that we're going to discuss is the fact that Cat Person was rejected from almost every history magazine that you sent it to.

Yeah, almost. One important exception. Exactly. The most important one was that, yes. What did those rejections and miniature failures teach you? I mean, were you able to process them? Yeah. I mean, at that point, I feel like truly anyone who has done fiction writing, especially short fiction, knows that, like, every success is built on a backlog of just years of failure, essentially. Even before, so with Cat Person, it was the first story that I had a literary agent for.

But before that, I had spent years, like I had the whole spreadsheet and everyone should make one if you're sending out a short fiction where it's just like had a list of all my stories and I had a list of all the magazines and where each one was. And when one went out, I had a little X there. And when it came back with the rejection,

which it almost always did, I colored that red. And then you just work, you send it to the new place and just work your way through. Every once in a while, someone would send you a little like note and be like, good job, send again. And you'd like put it on your wall and frame it because it was like the tiny little like blip of hope. And so by that point, I think I had come to understand that like just the the failure that's built into the process and that like truly it doesn't matter how good a story is or isn't like it's still not going to be the right story for like 99 of people and so you just have to do whatever you can to like give yourself the stamina to keep rolling the dice and like to turn it one thing you do is you like turn it into a game and

you're like yes another rejection here I get to go you know just like going through it until it doesn't feel like failure anymore it just feels like the process of submitting. I love that you have an actual process for processing failure yeah so that's I think that's really interesting the idea that failure is the acquisition of necessary data and that actually it's such a key skill and talent as a human not to take it personally and not to attach emotion to it yeah and I think that's not how I approach failure necessarily in other areas of my life and it's not how I always felt about writing stories but it was a real like it took time and effort to get there right where you

wrote like it truly used to be you know I'd write a story and then I would like show it to one person and if they like said anything negative about it I would die and hide in my room for three days you know and that's like one stage and then the other stage is like you show it to a workshop or a writing group and then like they're nice until they're not you know like one Like, one stage of that process, I feel like, is, like, submitting something to a workshop and everyone hates it. And they're like, this is the worst thing I've ever read. And that makes you want to die too. But, like, you're still alive.

So, like, you just keep going. And then at some point, you're used to it enough that it does not feel anymore like failure. It feels like, oh, I'm doing the thing I'm supposed to do every day, which is, like, send out my stories and get my rejections back. And then the next stage is that you go viral everyone it seems in the world has read your short story and everyone is pontificating about it and has opinion not only about the story but about who you are oh yeah how did you cope with that yeah I mean it's funny I I said when this all happened I felt like it's like you get sort of good at something

like coping with other people's opinions about your stuff, and then you're like immediately promoted to the next level. And I felt like I got yanked up. They were like, oh, you think you're so tough. You don't care what people think about you. What if you're all over Twitter and everyone hates, like, you know, is screaming, fighting about your story. And, yeah, it was really hard.

I wasn't ready for it. I feel like I was more ready for it. I mean, I'm 37. I have been doing this for, like, a was really hard. I wasn't ready for it. I feel like I was more ready for it. I mean, I'm 37. I have been doing this for like a fairly long time. I feel like I was more ready for it than I would have done at 27 or, you know, younger. But it was really hard. And it was, I don't know. I mean, it's strange.

I feel like, I mean, to get back to kind of that day, it was, it's good, right? Like, you want people to read your stories, or at least I do. And when it first started happening, I was like, oh, this has to be a good thing. And yet, I felt like I knew. I was like, especially as it, like, gained momentum. And it wasn't just people saying, like, I liked the story. Why don't you read it? But someone being like, you know, I have very strong opinions about this story.

And everyone who has a different opinion is wrong. Like, when it started leveling up like that, I was like, oh, this never ends well. Like, people don't just, especially women, don't just, like, write about sex, go viral, and then, like, live happily ever after. You know? Like, truly, there's always a reckoning. And, like, there was less of one in the immediate aftermath of Cat Person than I thought there was. I mean, really what happened was, like, there was this huge, complicated conversation. I tried not to pay attention to it at the time.

It seems like there were ugly strands of it, for sure. And there were parts of it that were very difficult for me as, like, the writer but also a human being to kind of like wrestle with or even understand I feel like one of the things that was really characteristic or that people talked about afterwards was that there was a tendency to mix me up with my main character which was understandable and since nobody knew anything about me but was also strange because we were so different I mean she's 20 I'm 37 like's 20, I'm 37. Like, she's straight. I'm in a relationship with a woman. Like, it was just this very different version of me. And it seemed like it was sort of wandering through the world. And yeah, and in some ways, actually, like, I felt

like that protected me a little bit. So it's like, it's weird that everyone thinks I'm like this. But also, I know that I'm not. And so when, for example, some guy at the National Review wrote literally an open letter to Margot, and the open letter was, Margot, you've had sex with too many people. That's your problem. I had not taken it as personally as I might have if I was the person he presumably thought that I was. That level of cruelty came at me, but I sort of dodged it inadvertently just because I was slightly more removed from the whole thing

than maybe I might have otherwise been. It's so dispiriting. Because obviously you're the writer of that short story, and that short story contains a male protagonist too. So actually you wrote these two characters, and your brilliant stories in this collection, some of them are written from the point of view of a man. One of the most powerful ones, I think, is written from the point of view of a man. Like one of the most powerful ones, I think,

is written from the point of view of a man. And I feel that it's a charge levelled specifically at female authors, that they are always autobiographical. Yeah, that seems true and fair. And I think it's hard to know what to do about it. It doesn't feel like the kind of thing where arguing about it makes it better but it's really distinct that I notice it still I mean it's funny because like the story is you know Margot Caperson is a story just about dating so it could have been me but the rest of

the collection is filled with like murder and monsters and so obviously those things haven't right those things have not happened to me and yet I do still feel like sometimes I hear people talking about the book and it sort of feels like they're imagining a young, recent grad writing the stories out of this raw material of experience, which, I mean, the stories are made out of the raw material of my own experience, but also they're not. Also they're crafted. Also they're not also they're crafted also they're shaped like also you know I didn't just write down things that I felt I shaped a story to have

a certain effect I mean there is a story in this collection about a woman who falls in love with a thigh bone and I'm assuming that that hasn't happened to you only metaphorically one of your failures which I find incredibly poignant, is that when Cat Person was becoming this international sensation, you were struggling with a different kind of animal, with a dog that you had adopted. Tell us about what happened with that. Sure. And so I've never told this story in public before. My friends know it. But if I, like, start crying or lose the way, forgive me in advance.

I adopted this puppy, Lena. I had been in a long-term relationship that ended. And as part of recovering myself after that, I was like, I'm going to get a puppy. I'm going to get a dog. And I had two ideas in my head. One was, I'm totally unequipped to deal with a dog. Who am I to be able to raise a small puppy?

And the other one was if everyone else can get a dog, why can't I? I certainly am responsible enough. I was 35. There may have been some sort of vague child dog thoughts going on about what I was capable of taking on. And so I adopted the dog, and her name was Lena. She was beautiful. She was gigantic sort of from the beginning.

They told me she was the mix between a German Shepherd and a Newfoundland. Which I think in the end, she wasn't. She was the mix between a German Shepherd and a slightly smaller but way more ornery breed of dog. I don't know. But she was very sweet. She was very anxious. And I had her for a year. And then out of nowhere, we were walking. I was walking downtown with her. And she had up to that point, like, loved dog, loved people, like, was a little shy

about them but loved them. And a kid asked if he could pet her. And said sure because I'd never known it to be a problem and she jumped up and barked and nipped him and he was bleeding downtown and I was it was terrifying so yeah it was and you know his mother was furious understandably and I was horrified and I apologized and like you know I was like she never does this I don't know where this came from but he was bleeding and she took him home and she eventually called like the public health department and, and it was fine. They were like, this happens, like just keep an eye on her. You know, she had all her shots and everything, but I was like, well, this is really scary. So I hired a trainer and the trainer came in and the trainer in retrospect correctly said, this dog has a lot

of anxiety, has a lot of problems, is going to be reactive. You need to do some really massive training with her. And she was like, you need to cover your windows so she can't see people pass by. You need to, she can't be out in the yard. She needs to be on full-on training. And I was like, and there was this part of me that I look back because I'm like, how did things get so tough? I was like, I almost, it was like too intense to listen get so tough I was like I almost it was like too intense to listen to and I was like she's being melodramatic like I know this is a one-time

incident also like training sessions cost like 150 dollars and I was a student then and I was like oh I can't really afford it so I was like well what I'll do is keep her away from any situations that might like maybe she just doesn't like kids but I'll keep her away from children I'll keep her away from like crowded places I'll take her to the dog park because she loves other dogs I even I was like I'll move like I didn't have a car so I couldn't get her to the dog park but I was like had an apartment came available close to that park so I'm like I'm gonna move and like in retrospect I look back and it's like all these decisions that were so felt right at the time or felt like the necessary thing to do but were getting more and more intense.

So I moved in a large part so that she could be somewhere else. It was an apartment, which turned out to be really bad for her because people were coming and going. She was getting really, really anxious. Sorry, this is a long story, but I can't tell it any other way. I would go, and this was like a full summer, and it was into the fall when I was writing Cat Person. It was off work because I was on this fellowship. I would go for like two or three hours a day to the dog park.

It was like we would just sit there, and she would play, and she was like bigger and bigger, and she would just run, and she loved it. It seemed like I used to make jokes that she was the mayor of the dog park, but it was like the only place she could go and be comfortable because she was just getting more and more nervous around people. So that was that. And then in the early, and I thought it was sort of working. I kind of tuned out of my head that she couldn't be around. I wasn't having people over because it made her too anxious, but I was like, oh, we'll figure that part out. It's almost like you were

in a dysfunctional relationship with your dog and you were restricting your life. It deeply was. It really was. And it was like, it's so weird how much it like brought out in me that had to do, that like reminds me of like messy, complicated relationships where, yeah, slowly I started giving up all this stuff to try and make it work. I felt so responsible. I was so anxious. And then I was anxious because she was anxious, so it was feeding in. And then I brought her to the dog park one afternoon and she attacked another small dog. It was okay, but it had to have stitches. At which point I was like, she can't go to the dog park. She can't go anywhere else. She can't be downtown. What am I going to do? And the answer should have have been you can't do this anymore you can't

handle it but I was like I can't that's wrong like I just had this idea that if I gave up on her I was doing the wrong thing and so I like hired another trainer and I like put her on medication and I was like doing all this stuff and that was exactly like that is where I was when cat person went viral like that's what was like going on in my head and so it's a strange like memory of that time because there was this whole world of like massive success and like intense celebration and I was really happy but like what I remember November December of 2017 I remember being like taking Lena out and like being like, when can we walk where we won't see anyone that she might bite? You know, what can I do to like

manage this clearly unmanageable thing? And so it was really hard. It was really sad. And I remember being so angry at her, which is like something I think about all the time. And I think about like, in terms of, I don't know, all sorts of relationships where it was just like, I was like, I need to protect you. I am the one who has to protect you. So I have to control your behavior. But I can't control your behavior. So I'm furious that I can't control your behavior because it's like if you misbehave, you're going to get taken away. Do you know what I mean?

Totally, yeah. It was brutal. How did it end? So yes, I will now bring that very long story to an end. I'm totally into it. I warned you, I can't stop now. So basically, I had a moment where I realized, where I saw where we were,

which I do think when you're in an untenable situation, there are these moments where suddenly you sit up and you see it and you're like, this isn't working. And also, I don't know how I could possibly have gotten here. And it was like that. I trying to like hire someone to go I wanted to my sister was having a baby and I would like need to go see my niece but I was like I can't because of my dog I can't hire someone to take care of her because she's gonna bite someone and someone's gonna hurt and I was like I can't live if I keep her her, someone's going to get hurt. And then she's going to get hurt. And it's going to all fall apart. And now there was just a moment in January,

I was like, this can't work. And like, the thing is, I had gotten her from a rescue. And they agreed that if you couldn't take a dog, you could give it back and they would rehome her. So I like had an out that whole time. And in fact, they took her back. And it was the worst drive of my life. She had to go to a kennel for a little while while they looked for a home. It was like the worst drive of my life. I felt so guilty when I left her there. But within a month, they had found a family for her with a yard that was far from town where it was quiet and she was happy. And I think about it still. I'm like, how could I have for so long been so sure that there was one answer, which was me figuring out how to keep my dog,

and I let my whole life kind of fall apart around it because I couldn't just snap out of that idea and admit, to tie it back, to admit that I had failed, right? That's why I couldn't do it. I let her suffer more than I was willing to just be like, I failed at this, and it's okay. I can let it go. How much do you think that relationship with Lena was compensation for the human relationship that

you'd had that had failed? Whoa, yeah. They told me this would be hard. I think it was about control. I feel like there was a similar thing where when that relationship was ending and it had been ending for a really long time, like we were together for seven years, we were engaged, and I knew fairly early that I, or not early, but like years before it ended, like at least a year,

I knew in my heart that it wasn't working out, that I just couldn't fix it. And I sort of like surfaced into that knowledge and then immediately buried my head in it. You what I mean and then I did everything I fucking could to like keep it going and make it work and make it work and make it work and like we suffered more we suffered more because I couldn't just say like this sucks I screwed up like I was wrong I shouldn't have done what I did and I just couldn't let go and admit what I secretly knew and so I think it was a similar dynamic.

And I think it's a dynamic. I think, I just feel like it's a, I realized it with Lena actually. I was like, this is a thing that you do. This is a thing where you have a flaw and the flaw is not like any deep human failing. It's that when you see that you have made a mistake, you feel so guilty and so terrified that you refuse to look at it directly for a long time. And that's scary, but I don't know. What can you do? I guess I know it a little bit more than I did before. So painful, yeah, move into self-knowledge.

By the way, thank you for sharing that story. No, sorry, I felt like I talked forever. So please. It was beautiful and really meaningful, but I think that you're being very hard on yourself because another way of looking at it is you're the kind of person who will put everything into something you love so that when you look back on it, you don't feel regret that you didn't try hard enough. I mean, yeah, I would like to think that. And it probably is like, that's probably a counterpart, but the

regret then is that I, that there, that I, you know, hurt a dog or a person that I loved because of essentially what's pride, right? Like it's pride that will keep you from admitting, you know, even if your pride is sort of taking the form, and this may actually circle back to the stories, even if your pride is taking the form of, like, oh, I'm such a good person, I would never give up a dog. I'm not the kind of person who would, like, return her dog to the rescue. I'm a better kind of person who would like return her dog to the rescue I'm a better kind of person than that and so your dog suffers and she didn't need to if you just could have been like a little less invested in the idea that you were a good person I interviewed someone recently I asked him about what advice he'd give when people are broken up with by their

romantic partner and he said the thing that I would say to that person is congratulations because even if you're not the one who's done the breaking up, I guarantee you that you were suffering before that relationship ended, so you want to prolong the suffering. And I just thought that that was a really helpful way to look at the ends of relationships that you learn from each one. Has that been your, I mean, it's interesting that so many of your stories are about people failing to listen

to each other. Yeah, definitely. There's an incredible one in this collection called, is it the Matchbox Point? Matchbox Sign. Matchbox Sign. Will you explain what the story of that story is? Sure. So, and I'll look out at the audience that I've been like resolutely pretending wasn't there while I talked about my talk. Hello. So the Matchbox sign in a book that I wrote is a story about two people in a relationship and the woman starts itching. She starts having some kind of skin problem. She thinks it's a parasite or some kind of physical, has some kind of physical cause, but she goes to the doctor and the doctor tells her and her boyfriend that no, in fact, it's a manifestation of anxiety and like she just needs to kind of forget about it and, like, take medication and move on.

And it's about that sort of the setup. And then the way the story plays out, it's from the point of view of the man. And it's about him kind of wrestling with to what extent do I believe my girlfriend? To what extent do I choose to believe her even when it seems like what she's saying can't possibly be true? To what extent do I choose to believe her even when it seems like what she's saying can't possibly be true? Where does my responsibility for taking care of her meet my responsibility for letting her be an autonomous human? Yeah, and then things get even weirder and grosser. It's such a fantastic story and it's got an incredible ending. And for me, it was about a woman's voice not being heard.

Yeah. And what she was saying not being valued for its factual content. Right. But it was, again, being sort of seen through a prism of, like, hysteria. Yeah, yeah. And that seems to be one of the things that really interests you as a writer, hearing women's voices and allowing them to be heard. And I wonder how long a process it was for you to find your voice. Yeah it took a really long time.

I think that I say sometimes that I think it's like true and not true is that I had writer's block for like 10 years. That there was a really long time in between when as a reader always and I like wanted to read. I wanted to read all the time. I did not want to go to a job or do anything else. I just wanted to read books all day and I knew not want to go to a job or do anything else. I just wanted to read books all day. And I knew you weren't allowed to do that. And the thing you were supposed to do if you love to read books all day was to be a writer. And so I would try. And I had various stages in my life, you know, in high school and early. We're like, I would try and write stories. And the stories were like, they weren't terrible. But the problem, I mean, objectively they were, but for a high schooler they weren't um they never

felt like reading felt reading for me the point of it was that you disappeared into it and that like you set your sort of miserable ego aside for a little while and then you read and then you finish the book and you have to like deal with yourself again you know it's like the process of putting that away was what was delightful and for a long time, writing just felt like my ego was front and center. You know, no matter what, when I wrote, I was just like incredibly conscious. Like, this is a story that I am writing. I, Kristen Rupenian, am writing this story. This story will go out in the world with the name Kristen Rupenian on it.

What do I want people in the world to think about stories written by Kristen Rupenian? And that's like a very stultifying and kind of, it's a deadly way, I think, of looking at stories. And I hated it. I hated the process of writing for a really long time. And it's like so funny how true that is. It feels like for almost every writer who really wants to write, that there's a point where there's like, it's true that I hate it. And then it makes me absolutely miserable, but I will continue regardless. And like, like that sucks but it's like seems natural you know so I was in that stage but I was in that stage forever or for what felt like forever and to the point that I kind of gave up and I gave up for years I didn't write fiction and I went and did a

PhD was like okay well if I can't write books I'll write about books and that was like a little easier but still really difficult and sort of just not satisfying like it just didn't give me the satisfaction of reading and nothing did and then I was older I was this was pre-spreadsheet chart time but I was like I was 30 and I was finishing up my PhD hadn't finished my dissertation what was your dissertation on it was on contemporary African literature I wrote about a Kenyan literary magazine called Kwani which is great and fascinating they They may even have it here. You should check it out. It's true. It's good. Which I loved reading about. Again, I like loved doing all the research. I got to meet the writers. I got to like learn all this stuff. I loved it. And then the process of actually writing down

what I thought about it was gruesome and grueling. So I wasn't doing it. I had this dissertation completion fellowship. I think in retrospect, I think a couple of different things happened. I was like just old enough that like truly anyone who'd ever been invested in the idea of me writing had given up on me. Like the one English teacher and my mom, like they, even they were sort of like, yep, this probably isn't going to happen, you know? So like nobody cared but me. And I hadn't written anything in so long that, like, the idea of it being good or bad was sort of stupid to worry about since, like, what is worse than literally nothing? And then also it was because it was fun. It was because I was, like, supposed to be writing my dissertation.

I didn't want to do that. So I was, like, I'm going to do something fun instead. And I, like, started writing a thriller. And it was so much fun. And I, like, wrote it. And it was so much fun and I like wrote it and it was just like a noir like it like it had nothing to do with my actual life it wasn't a story that I was like trying to impress anyone with but I like sunk into it like the thing that felt I felt like happened with books which is like I disappeared and there was just the story that started happening

and that is still one of the best feelings I've ever had, where it's like, oh, it can be like this. It was amazing. And it's funny, because the book was not good, because it was the first thing I'd ever written, really. And it was clunky, and it had all these weird plot dynamics and stuff. And so it wasn't personal. And yet, it also really was.

A bunch of feelings I'd had about the Peace Corps and all this other stuff that I'd never been able to write directly managed to kind of like work their way in because I was writing about this thing that didn't have anything to do with me at all it was amazing I mean it was a really wonderful experience and it's like that book will never see the light of day at the end I'd be like tell my dissertation advisor it's like oh sorry I did not write my dissertation the way I promised. And so it was hard. But yeah, I mean, that is what the process was. That is so interesting because something very similar happened to me with my last novel where

I'd started writing something extremely depressing and worthy. And I remember one day sitting down being like, I cannot take this anymore. It felt like I was winching up sentences to a great subterranean depth. That's totally exactly how it is. And I did exactly the same thing. I was like, I want to write about something fun and glamorous. I want to write about a rich person's party. And it became the party and it's also a thriller. So now I like to think I'm basically as successful as you. That was my long way round. Well, I think we're right. I think we're onto something for sure.

But you touched there on what is your third failure, which is that you spent your 20s not being very good at various jobs. These are Kristen's words. Yeah. Not my employer's jobs, although they would certainly agree. While you weren't writing, you were doing all of these other jobs. And I'm so glad you chose to talk about this because I know that so many interviewees for the podcast and listeners of the podcast feel really lost in their 20s and I'm no exception to that. So tell us what was happening in your 20s. Sure I was miserable as probably everyone is so I don't know maybe there's some people who are happy in their 20s or happy in high school I don't know yeah I mean I

wasn't always unhappy but but it was really hard. It was a really hard time. I was a Peace Corps volunteer for a little while. What does that mean, by the way? Because I'm definitely a volunteer. Sorry. It's a long-term volunteer position. It's funded by the government. They send you overseas, and you live embedded in a community for two, two and a half years. And I went, I was 21 when I went.

I went six weeks out of college, and I was placed in a village. I was an HIV AIDS educator, which, in retrospect, truly, I cannot imagine. What were they thinking? I was a child, you know? And that was the thing, I think, not to, like, immediately just, like, talk about the 20s in, like, an abstract way. But, like, I took full responsibility for all of what felt like my failures there. I lived with a family that I loved,

that we were very close. I'm still close with them today. I was grateful to be able to know them. I learned the language, which was amazing. But I was in a truly impossible position. This was 2003. So it was right, it was when the HIV rate in Kenya

was at an extraordinary high. It was like one out of eight people in the area where I lived. And everyone knew that. You know, the information was out there. They knew what was going on. And it was right before ARV drugs, like the treatment, was first made available. I think the six months before I left, Doctors Without Borders, like, opened their first office to distribute medication. Doctors Without Borders opened their first office to distribute medication.

And so I showed up there ready to teach people who knew exactly what was going on and happening to them and who expected me to be able to provide some kind of solution because why would someone come from the United States to live in a village if they did not have some kind of answer? And I did not have any kind of answer because I see now as a full adult, how could I possibly have done so it was an impossible circumstance but it was crushing I mean it was just like the level of guilt and responsibility I felt every single day was just like it's dizzying to me I can't even imagine it's like and that's what's so weird about being young I just feel

like now the story about the dog suggests I'm not that quick actually to know what an impossible position but it does seem like I would have had some sense and this was also I think it's important to say like sort of before like there was the internet but I feel like you didn't have access to the kind of conversations that now are at everyone's fingertips about like white savior complex and like why it might be problematic to like be in that position or like you might be afraid to cause that you might be causing harm I didn't be in that position or, like, you might be afraid to cause, that you might be causing harm. I didn't have any of that framework.

I was just like, this feels incredibly wrong. I feel all of this trauma is happening around me. I can't do anything about it. And I feel guilty about the fact that I can't do anything about it because I thought, well, I'm a full-grown adult. Like, they sent me here, so, like, I should be able to do my job. And, like, only now can I see, like, that's insane.

There was nothing I could do. And the fact that I didn't know that. Two and a half years? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you came back, did you have any kind of therapy about what you had seen or? No, nothing. And, like, I didn't even talk about it. Like, that's the thing.

Like, it took me years to be like, that was a traumatic experience. You know, I was like, that was really hard. I'm really sad. I'm really worried about my friends. You know, like, I've gone. But also, that's the thing about secondary trauma. Like, I was like, nothing's wrong with me. I haven't gone through anything. It's my friends who are suffering like this. And so I would have been, I think, almost offended if someone had said like, you need help for this because what did I need? What did I need? I needed nothing. I felt

incredibly, incredibly guilty about how lucky I was. I didn't feel like I needed help. So it was really hard wow that was the beginning of your 20s yeah so that was that takes us to 23 yeah but it was also and I mean to be fair like to the experience and to like the young kid I was who was trying really hard it shaped me really formatively and I and I had a lot of like experience and I think it made me braver in a lot of ways to have done it. And so then I came back and this also I think played into my writer's block,

which is I was like, well, that was an absolutely unfathomable experience that has changed me and probably deeply traumatized me in a million ways. I know what I'll do to process it. I'll write a book about it. And so I sat down and I was like, I'm going to write a story.

And the weight of the world landed on my shoulders. And I was like, the Peace Corps volunteer walked into the village. I was like, this is garbage. I hate it. And I, like, deleted it so fast. And so I was trying to write. And that was when I got the job in, like, the bookstore. And that's when I was a nanny.

And I was like, oh, I'll take these jobs that I don't want to have because like what I am is a writer. You know, like what earns me my space on this earth is the fact that I am going to write about these experiences. And I think, again, in retrospect, writing can't do that for you. You know, like what I wanted it to do was explain something

that had been essentially inexplicable. I wanted it to rescue me from my shitty job as a nanny that I didn't want to have, which it couldn't do. And I was, you know, working 50 hours a week and I would come home exhausted and I'd open my computer and there'd be that one stupid sentence about the Peace Corps volunteer. And I'd be like, ugh. And then I would try and like keep going and I couldn't. And then I'd close my computer. I'm like, oh, I'm such a piece of garbage. I'm so lazy. I can't like write anything. And that was hard. That was not a good way of looking at the world. Yeah. What advice would you give to people in their 20s currently feeling

lost and like they're being left behind and everyone else is doing so well in this age of constant comparison? Yeah. I mean, I, I don't know. Probably. I mean, I'm like kind of wary of advice. Like I was so hungry for advice when I was in my 20s. I was like, if any idiot could have been like, I have some advice for you, and I would do it because like all I wanted was to escape where I was. It's sort of the obvious from that situation, which is it does seem to me a characteristic of being in your 20s that you think you have more control over your life than you do or you feel like you should have more control of your life

than you do and I feel like if I could go back and like say to that 23 year old I'd be like no one could write a book after working for 50 hours a week as a nanny and just having gone through this incredibly crushing experience take a breath let yourself off the hook for a little bit. Because that was the perspective that I didn't have. I didn't have the perspective that like, in fact, my life was hard. Weirdly, I thought my life was great. I was like, oh, I'm so, you know, I'm so lucky and I'm wasting all my luck and privilege because I can't do the thing that I want to do. But it was like, I didn't have any money. And like, I lived with four roommates. My house was disgusting. It was really hard. And I feel for that person because she like, couldn't even see that, I guess, to turn it into advice. I think that's often true. I think

especially now it seems even harder. And that doesn't mean that it's unbearably hard or that you should just like, throw your hands and give up. Like, things got better for me. They did really consistently, but it was slow. And I didn't see it, like, while it was happening. And so, I don't know, not advice, but, like, sort of gentle encouragement. I do think life is not harder for anyone, like, at any age than, like, maybe 11 and 12. Those are hard ages. And then it's 24 and 25. That's super interesting.

Maybe 23, too. How have your 30s been so far? They've been really good. I mean, this last year has been weird. That's super interesting. Maybe 23 too. How have your 30s been so far? They've been really good. I mean, this last year has been weird. That's true. But my 30s were better. Every single year was better than the first. And it was just like a moment of, I don't know.

And it's funny because I was so scared of them. Like I had, like in some ways, it was like one of the things that made my 20s hard was that I had this timeline that I had imagined for myself that had really set points. And I think that's super common, like to the point that it's a cliche, where you're just like, I want these things by this year, and if I don't, I don't even know, it's too terrible to think about. I'll just be a failure for the rest

of my life. And what happened was, I, like, got into my 30s, and, like, I had the deadlines I had set for myself were just flying away left and right. You know, and then, but it was weird because like it wasn't just that I didn't have those things and a child is specifically what I'm thinking. Like it was like, oh, you're definitely going to have a kid by the time you're 32 or whatever I had made up. And it was like, I got to 32 and not only did I not have a child,

but I realized I didn't want one. That I had like imagined a 32 year old version of me who would only be happy with a husband and a baby and a house. And I worked really hard to get things in order for that future self because I thought she would hate me if I didn't get there. I remember just feeling like when a relationship would end or something would go wrong, I'd be like, oh, man, you're going to look back at this when you're 32 and you're going to be like, 24-year-old Kristen, why didn't you take that job? I just imagined this total meanie out there the end like looking back and shaking her finger and then I turned 32 and I was still myself and I didn't want any of the things that like I had imagined this rando was gonna want you know I like wanted the same things I had wanted before and I could get

them and that was amazing and like as that story that sort of fell away it became really clear that I thought I wanted a lot of things that I didn't actually want. And I had just been telling myself all these stories about what would make future me happy to the point that I was ignoring what present Kristen actually wanted and in fact could have. That is just the best description of my psyche I have ever heard. You also have a future Elizabeth who's like yelling at you all the time. Not anymore. And interestingly, because you mentioned that 30, the projected 32 year old Kristen would have a baby and a husband. You don't have a baby or husband. You have a girlfriend and an unbelievable career. Yeah. So are you still projecting? Do you have a 42 year old Kristen? It's hard. You know, it's weird. I think less so. I think in part that's cultural. I think we don't see that many representations of 45 year old women. And so it almost just disappears into the

void. And you're just like, I don't know, who knows what I'll be doing, like witchcraft or something. But it's great because you can do what you want. And I don't know, I mean, I think a lot about my girlfriend who's here, so I won't talk too much about our actual relationship, but I do think about what I want with her

and do I want a house? Where do I want to move? Do I want to have kids? But it just feels like I'm imagining myself in the future in the way that I just did it. I don't know why,

where I just invented this other person to try and please for no reason. I don't know necessarily what I want like invented this other person to like try and please for no reason like I don't know necessarily what I want next year but like I feel like okay I know what I want right now and I can sort of like slightly extrapolate so like I can make a reasonable guess and that seems fine it's so different it's the only wise way to be I think it's yeah but it takes its hell to get there yeah Yeah. Given your current situation, how weird is it for you so often to be referred to

as the kind of poster girl for dysfunctional heterosexual relationships? It's very weird, especially when you put it that way. No, it is. I also put it that way, basically. It's very weird. I mean, it was hard when it first happened. It was a piece

of that feeling that a story that I'd written had just gotten sucked up and like thrown into the whirlwind. And now everyone thought these things about me that weren't true. One being that I wasn't 20, another being that I had a girlfriend. It was like, I just didn't know. Like I was like, am I supposed to tell people the truth? Do I have an obligation to like let people know who I am or can I protect myself and hide, which is what I wanted to do. It was really hard and it's still hard and it's still weird when people make assumptions about me that aren't true and it puts you in this awkward position where you're just sort of like, I don't really care what you think, but I also do kind of want to be seen accurately for the person that I am. I don't want to be the poster girl at all for anything. So I think it's weird to be promoting a book that is fiction

and then giving your opinions about it and also life, which is just baffling to me. I feel like I'm up there and people are like, so what do you think I should do about dating? And I'm like, have you read this book? This person does not know. And so I think it's much more less about, like, my specific romantic circumstances than it is about a general feeling of how strange it is to be sort of, like, the

personal avatar of a book that, like, came out of this weird space in my subconscious and still kind of feels like a weird dream I had, you know? It's so ironic you say you don't want to be a poster girl because I happen to know that billboards are going up around London as we speak advertising this book. And it's, like's like great and I was so grateful to everyone who made it happen and at the same time I was like I don't my name is like it has this weird life and it's just so weird like my google alerts now that used to suggest me like fun celebrity news and like actual things I cared about are now like would you like to read this story about Kristen Rupinian and how much someone hates her book?

And I'm like, no, I would not. Thank you, Google. But because you're just like, you're living in a different world now. You wrote this brilliant thing for the New Yorker about what it was like when Cat Person went viral. And I'm paraphrasing, but you said something about how as a writer,

your job stops when you've written. And actually other people's opinions of what you've written is none of your business. Yeah, I believe that deeply. It is something I have to remind myself of every day because every day I forget. I think it's an ideal. Like I don't know that you can ever as a writer

fully not feel like some kind of ownership over your story and want it to be interpreted at least like within a certain spectrum of like ways that correspond with your intent or like occasionally someone will like see a really smart thing that you had no idea was there and you're like yes that's okay that part is fine but I do think like and I think this is one of the things that I got that I'm lucky now to have from doing my PhD where I wrote about other people's work for a really long time. And sometimes I knew them. And sometimes like, I would be sitting there and I would be writing and I'd be like, what will they think? Like, what if they're just like, no, Kristen's wrong. You know,

like, it felt like I knew in my heart, they didn't have the right to do that. You can't once you're a writer, you put your book out and like, it's the job of like, do we be grad students to like interpret it? And you probably feel shitty sometimes when it gets interpreted in a way you don't want. But that is real. And as a reader, which is, I remind myself what I was for way longer than I ever wrote anything. I think that's a J.D. Salinger quote, actually. I was a reader. I owned the books that I read.

They meant something to me. I internalized them. I didn't want some writer to be like, actually, you know, you're thinking about that wrong. I want them to go away. And so like, I should do the same. Sorry. Yeah. My final question is whether you can acknowledge your own success, how that feels to you, whether you see it as success. In some obvious ways, certainly. No, it makes success feel really real is money. Your bank account is real and they can't take that away from you. You know, like Twitter can come and go and like reviews can go up and down. But like if you can pay your rent, it feels really good.

And there were a lot of, there was a lot of time when I couldn't. So like I know that that's real and I feel good about that. But the larger stranger parts, I'm still feel, it's like not even that I can't acknowledge it. It's, like, I can't feel it. Like, it's too big to take in. And every once in a while, I'll, like, once I saw, like, a foreign book cover from, like, Bulgaria or something, and I was, like, whoa. And, like, that I could feel because it was, like, manageable. It was small.

And I could be, like, yeah, this is the thing that I wanted. But, like, when it's all happening at once and it's happening on a scale that's like billboards, I can't even feel it. I'm just watching it from afar. But I think over time, that will change. I think you feel it in bits and pieces. And I think probably I'll feel it more and more the more time goes on. Kristen Rupanian,

even though you don't have a master's in finance... Bring up my one mistake. Even though you failed exactly your success is real you can pay your rent and more if you haven't bought a copy if you know you want this already I can highly recommend it please rush out and buy one you have been a delight I think you're amazing thank you so much for coming on. Thank you.