Curtis Sittenfeld Moves to Town

The fiction writer talks about her alternate history of Hillary Clinton, what she got wrong about Minneapolis traffic, and buying her wardrobe at Dick’s Sporting Goods.

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My interview with Curtis Sittenfeld began on the bus. Well, I was on the bus. She was already at Five Watt Coffee in Minneapolis’s Kingfield neighborhood waiting for me. 

“It seems I did not pick the fastest bus,” I texted the recent transplant from St. Louis, as the No. 18 merrily bumped along the potholes of Eat Street, hitting every red light. “Probably closer to 3:40 for me. Sorry!”

Her latest book of short stories, You Think It, I’ll Say It—a Reese’s Book Club pick—was splayed open on my lap, as it had been for many bus rides previous. 

“No worries,” she shot back. 

Minneapolis’s newest resident and one of the most accomplished fiction writers working today—of her six books, all published by Random House, three have been New York Times bestsellers, and one, Eligible, is being adapted into a TV series on ABC—was twiddling her thumbs at the coffee shop that I had suggested, at the time I had chosen, waiting for me. I had worries. 

“No rush,” she texted. “Enjoying some me time.”

So, come to think of it, was I. I was reading the lurid and darkly funny story of Julie, a married woman who swung for an affair and missed.

“Sampling oat milk for the first time,” Sittenfeld followed up. 

“That’s one more time than me,” I said. 

I went back to Julie, but couldn’t help myself, and responded with a classic dad joke: “How do they milk an oat?”

“Gently,” she texted.

Our interview had started before I ever entered the coffee shop. 

You were living in D.C. when you wrote Prep and then moved to Philly. But when your literary star really rose, you did the thing that all writers do when they finally make it: You moved to St. Louis for a decade.

Right? It’s funny because moving to Minneapolis was the third time I’ve moved for my husband’s job—he’s a professor. And people will say to me, “You’re so lucky that your job is so flexible.” But in anticipation of moving to Minneapolis, I said to him, “You know, you’re so lucky that my job is so flexible.”

I don’t know that I can score your move from D.C. to Philly. But I think I can say with some confidence that moving from Philly to St. Louis was, at best, a lateral move. St. Louis to Minneapolis, though: That was a good one.

This was a good one. I was sort of girding myself to not like it that much, or just feel unsettled for two years. But we felt settled very quickly. You know, I’m from Cincinnati originally, and I think I had a favorable impression of Minneapolis, but I didn’t realize quite how great it is until moving here.

If it makes you feel any better, I think most Minneapolis folks are similarly aloof about Cincinnati.

I think lots of Midwestern cities have these groups of young people who are very invested in them, and think they’re underrated, and want to see them have some kind of renaissance. I mean, my brother is on the city council in Cincinnati, so he couldn’t be more pro-Cincinnati. But I haven’t lived there in adulthood. So my idea of Cincinnati is frozen in, like, 1989. I could tell you how to get to the Blockbuster. 

There is no such thing anymore. So, don’t go looking for a Blockbuster around here, either.

The thing I’ve wondered is how long it will be before I can get a little lost while driving here and then intuitively find my way out. This is my first move since having an iPhone. Being able to look at it sort of helps me in the short term, but in the long term it makes me not commit a map of the city to my mind. So, I actually bought a map. Like, a physical map. 

A physical map of just Minneapolis or of St. Paul too? You know there’s a St. Paul?

It’s funny. I interviewed for a one-year writing position at Macalester in, like, the spring of 2002. I didn’t get it because I was right out of grad school and didn’t have any books. So, it’s funny that I ended up back here anyway. 

By the way, that is exactly how Marlon James came to town.

Really? Wait. I wonder if he beat me out!

You recently wrote an essay for The Wall Street Journal espousing the virtues of a brand called Not Your Daughter’s Jeans. Clearly, you’re a fashion maven.

I was invited to write an essay about an article of clothing that I like. And I do not dress in a very fancy way. And those jeans were one of the more upscale things I owned. I mean, I am literally wearing a sweater from DICK’S Sporting Goods right now. I’m not exaggerating. 

I believe you. OK, here’s something that’s harder to believe. In 1992 you won Seventeen magazine’s fiction contest. Seriously?

By the way, other people who have won that contest are Sylvia Plath and Lorrie Moore. You might not have been a Seventeen magazine reader, but it actually had a sort of illustrious tradition. 

I read that you submitted eight stories just to be safe. What was the name of the story that won?

“An Evening in the Beginning of September.” Isn’t that poetic?

It must have been nice to have such concrete early validation that you were good enough.

I never thought about it in those terms. Like, “Am I a good enough writer?” Because it’s like, “A good enough writer for what?” To be published? To make money off it? To win approval? I mean, writing was already a strong part of my identity. I’ve thought about if I’d written my first book and it hadn’t sold, I probably would’ve felt discouraged, but I never would have stopped writing. 

I’ve been working my way through You Think It, I’ll Say It, your new book of short stories, on the bus. It’s smart but also very digestible. 

I think that I write readable writing. I don’t think that it hurts your brain to read my fiction. 

That’s funny because you got your MFA in creative writing, and there are a lot of people in those programs whose whole goal is the opposite of readable writing.

I almost feel like making your writing readable is good manners. 

Your life really changed in 2005 when Prep became a bestseller.

I was a part-time high school English teacher in 2005 when it came out. Freshmen boys—it was a boys’ school. I was already planning to move to Philadelphia, and I was applying for college teaching jobs that I didn’t get. But the success of that book meant that I could support myself writing fiction, and that is the great privilege of my career. 

Since then, you’ve been on a tear. The Man of My Dreams (2006), American Wife (2008), Sisterland (2013), Eligible (2016), You Think It, I’ll Say It (2018), and a forthcoming novel.

I mean, I’ll see somebody I went to grad school with who had comparable abilities to me, and comparable enthusiasm for fiction, but, for whatever reason, wasn’t able to finish their first book as efficiently, or maybe finished their first book and it didn’t sell. And then at some point maybe that person takes a full-time job. 

Meanwhile, there you are spiking the football by publishing your second novel (The Man of My Dreams) barely a year after your first.

It’s interesting because I actually feel as if that is my weakest book by far. And at bookstores, I’ve occasionally talked people out of buying it. I feel as if that book is not well structured, architecturally, as an entire book. 

What went wrong?

Prep became a surprise bestseller. It had gotten a relatively modest advance for being put out by a major publisher. And in the meantime, I had been working on The Man of My Dreams, so I sort of had this finished manuscript. It felt almost like if you got up and got dressed and left your house and then someone told you they want to take your picture for a magazine. And you think, “Oh, I might have worn something different.” 

Your most recent novel, Eligible, came from a publisher essentially commissioning you to write a modern-day Pride and Prejudice, right?

It was sort of irresistible to have someone say, “We want you to sit at your desk with a copy of Pride and Prejudice, and you get to just think about Jane Austen’s characters for two years.” 

But Jane Austen is gospel to some people. Do you get blowback from Austen acolytes?

Sometimes someone will say, like, “Jane Austen must be rolling over in her grave.” And I’ll think, “And I’m the presumptuous one?” That’s something I learned with The Man of My Dreams. That if someone says, “I don’t like Eligible.” I can say, “That’s OK. You don’t have to. I did what I want to with that book.” 

But my experience is that the real Jane-ites who rent empire-waisted dresses and go to balls appreciate Eligible because there are Easter eggs in it. People can tell that I really climbed inside Pride and Prejudice and thought about the characters and themes. The people who object to it most read Pride and Prejudice maybe 40 years ago and think about it like the Bible. Like, it’s this sacred text that shouldn’t be toyed with. 

It’s always the people who read the Bible 40 years ago—the ones who, in truth, understand it the least—who are the most protective of it.

Totally. Pride and Prejudice has such a sense of fun to it, and so does Eligible. I mean, it’s Pride and Prejudice, but it takes place in Cincinnati in 2013 and it’s full of hate-sex and CrossFit. 

Which reminds me of another hallmark of Curtis Sittenfeld lit: Midwestern settings that are, themselves, characters.

There’s one story that’s actually set in Minneapolis called “The Prairie Wife.” But I apologized at a reading last night because I described the traffic and commute. But now that I have a better handle on morning traffic here, I realized I described it inaccurately. I say, If the woman leaves her house at 7:45 am, it takes her 15 minutes to commute, but if she leaves at 7:55 am, it takes her, like, half an hour. And, really, it should have been, If she leaves at 8:30 am  instead of taking her 15 minutes, it takes her 45 minutes.

I bet most Twin Citians wouldn’t even notice that.

But I’m doubly wrong. The length of the commute and the time that it all changes. 

Speaking of rewriting the past, the novel you’re working on now is a reimagination of the Hillary Clinton narrative, right?

The novel is like an alternate history. In real life, Bill Clinton proposed twice and she said, No. And then he proposed a third time and she said, Yes. And the book imagines what if she said No the third time, too. 

What sparked this?

The idea of writing this alternate history was kind of fascinating because, like a lot of people, I felt, and still feel consumed by, and in shock at, the result of the 2016 election. 

But you’re not just monkeying with a small element of the spacetime continuum here. You’re basically ripping the rug out from under the entirety of the last 40 years of American history. How much did you change?

You’ll have to wait and see!

There are so many questions. Does Bill still become governor? President? Does Hillary become a senator? Does she lose to Obama? Does she use a private email server? Does she even run in 2016? Does she shatter the glass ceiling 20 years earlier? I mean—

Those are excellent questions.

Do you know the answers?

Yes. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Mpls.St.Paul Daily Edit

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