Jesse Kellerman Talks about His Plays and His First Novel, Sunstroke
Jesse Kellerman Exclusive Interview With Book Help Web
Jesse Kellerman produced his first novel last year, but he's by no means a new writer. In fact, family legend has it that he's been writing since childhood (and yes, he is a part of that most prolific and talented Kellerman family).
For many years, Jesse Kellerman focused on playwriting, producing several plays including a collection of six plays called 3m1w that was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He studied psychology at Harvard University, but went on to earn a master's of fine arts in playwrighting at Brandeis University. His talent and promise earned him a 2003 Princess Grace Award, a foundation that recognizes the work of young, aspiring artists. His writing in all forms is erudite and clever with a wicked vein of humor in them.
Anyone expecting a straightforward, heavily plot-driven tale that drives straight from point a to point b are bound to be disappointed, for Jesse Kellerman's writing is all about the journey and it insists on guiding readers through the scenic route.
Jesse Kellerman graciously agreed to be interviewed by Book Help Web. In the interview we covered both his plays and the novel that he says shouldn't be shoved into the peg of crime fiction.
Book Help Web: Plays, Inc. recently published 3m1w, a collection of six of your plays which you performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Have the plays changed any since they were performed? What changed?
Jesse Kellerman: Not much. I did alter the names of the characters in the play A Metaphor to pay homage to the actors who created the roles. I happened to work with four very gifted comedians, all of whom brought new material to the script during rehearsals. If the script changed at all from conception to execution, it was usually in response to one of their queries or ad-libs — and those changes were reflected both in performance and in the published text.
BHW: What was the reception to your plays and what feedback was the most meaningful to you?
Jesse Kellerman: In general I've gotten good feedback on my plays. In Edinburgh we got great press and, following our review in the Scotsman (the local paper), sold out almost every night thereafter. British people seem to find me funny. I'm not sure what that says about them, or me.
The other plays have also gotten nice reviews, when they've been reviewed. Few have, because I haven't had too many high-level productions.
Probably the most delightful thing I've ever heard came from a grad school friend of mine, who called my play Fafrotskies "the most disturbing thing I've ever seen on a stage." If you've gone to grad school in theater, you know that disturbing things on a stage are rather commonplace — creating them is part of the curriculum — so to have distinguished myself as the ne plus ultra of screwed-up...well, I took it as a compliment.
BHW: While your play Beyond Our Control has elements of the absurd, it's very different in feel from the six plays in 3m1w. Do you find it more engaging to write either comedy or drama?
Jesse Kellerman: I often find it impossible to distinguish between the two. Drama without comedy is melodrama, and comedy without any trace of gravitas is silly. (If forced to choose, of course, I'd rather have silly. At least that's entertaining.)
A instructive story: once, during rehearsal, we decided to see what would happen if we slowed down one of the comedies in 3m1w — the play Whatever, Whenever. Running it at half speed turned some of the funniest moments in the play into crushing tragedies. It was horrible to watch, just horrible. A man loses his job, his marriage, and his will to live — not very chuckleworthy stuff.
Until you speed it up, that is. And then it becomes a riot, because your brain isn't given time to appreciate the depth of the horror — only the surprise it brings with it. One of my professors in college once defined comedy as tragedy sped up to 100 MPH. I tend to agree.
I try to drive at right around 50, where the line blurs a bit. Things Beyond Our Control could be called either one, I think. And I've tried to inject some humor into my novels, as well — although, because they're more realistic in feel, I haven't been able to go whole-hog with my sense of the surreal. I hope to, someday.
BHW: If all things were equal — royalties, advances, etc. — would you rather be writing plays or novels?
Jesse Kellerman: Both. They fulfill different parts of me. Playwriting appeals to my social, collaborative brain. Novels appeal to the autocrat living in my belly. He carries a scepter.
BHW: Sunstroke read very much like a standalone novel with Gloria Mendez developing quite a bit throughout the course of the story and making plans to move on in a different way with her life at the end. Is she someone you think you would revisit in another novel?
Jesse Kellerman: I have always considered Sunstroke a standalone. There's been a certain amount of pressure from readers to bring Gloria back, but if I'm honest I'll admit that it's unlikely to happen in the near future. I love her, but I have a lot of other competing voices in my head, all of whom deserve their 95,000 words. I purposefully left Gloria's story semi-unresolved and semi-open: open enough for anyone to imagine its next step. That's for the reader to do, though, not me.
Too often sequels kill the magic of their predecessors by answering too many questions. If for some reason I did return to the book, it would probably be to examine the life of one of its ancillary characters, such as Gloria's ex-husband, Reggie Salt.
BHW: How do you go about getting inside the head of someone who is so unlike you in background and personal life experience?
Jesse Kellerman: I regret to say that it's nothing more than pure imagination. In not a few ways — our senses of humor, notably — Gloria and I are more similar than a list of our particulars (male v. female, white v. Latina) would suggest. I tend to believe that an individual's personality is more compelling than his or her culture. Which is not to say that culture is irrelevant; merely that I think we overvalue it. And since I'm most often interested in characters who stand out, who are exceptional, rather than a predictable product of their social machinery, it's precisely the salient features of their personality that obsess me as a writer — not what defines them on a census form.
BHW: What type of research did you do for Sunstroke?
Jesse Kellerman: I spoke to a private detective, spoke to some lawyer friends of mine, read the California probate code (that was a blast!). Not a whole lot more than that. I'm sort of lazy and would rather make things up than do actual research. (For my second book, which is partly set in a hospital, I had to get off my butt.)
BHW: How would you personally classify Sunstroke? Is it meant to be genre fiction, or were you pushing at the boundaries of thrillers with an infusion of something more literary?
Jesse Kellerman: I think of the book as a character study, a portrait of a woman grieving and recovering from grief. That's what I set out to write.
I've been surprised at the degree to which I'm being pushed and classified as a crime writer. The book has a mysterious set of circumstances at its center, but there are no flying bullets, no thudding corpses. Some people have gotten that and enjoyed it, and a few (not many, but they are vocal) have been absolutely enraged. One person actually wrote me an e-mail ticking off my sins as a "thriller writer": 1 sex scene, he wrote, 1 lame gun scene, what the $%^* was that. Something along those lines.
To a certain extent my publisher, which has in most regards been exemplary, has contributed to this confusion by stressing the thriller angle. They got blurbs from writers like Nelson DeMille and Harlan Coben. At the time I didn't realize what effect this was going to have on how I was perceived. I merely thought, "Cool, Nelson DeMille and Harlan Coben! Maybe I'll sell a few more books." In retrospect, I might have raised more of a stink — I could have saved that guy the bother. (Not to mention the $25.)
At the same time, though, I take heart: literally dozens of people have written me saying, "I expected one thing, didn't get it, but was very pleased anyway." All I can ask is that people try to read with an open mind.
I dislike the way we are quick to shove writers into boxes. (See my essay Pigeonholing on my website.) I think it limits our ability to see books except through certain lenses: this is for entertainment, that is for edification, this is genre, that is literature. People who place too much stock in these categories are, in my opinion, sorely misguided, and uncreative readers.
BHW: On your Web site, you wrote: "I think that the current generation of Jewish writers — and I am a Jewish writer, if not a writer of Jewish fiction — will have to find new ways to describe ourselves and our place in the United States, to capture the many facets of what it means to be modern and observant... I'm talking about a literature with self-respect, with the honesty and knowledge to convincingly and seriously describe the current cohort of educated, committed Jews." If you were to write that book (or that play) — the work that would achieve all that — what would it look like? What type of story would it tell?
Jesse Kellerman: Good question. I have no idea. Sorry, that's the truth! I'm not there yet. Judaism is a big part of my life, and if I choose to face it in a book, the project will require a lot more planning and thought than I've given so far.
BHW: Whether writing a play or a novel, what audience do you write to?
Jesse Kellerman: That's easy. My wife.
