Jennifer Spiegel's Three "Top Fives"

 

First, however, I want to thank TNBBC for working hard on behalf of the “literati.” As I prepped this, I realized that I’ve guest-posted here an amazing five times, dating back to 2012, when my first book was published. Thank you, TNBBC!

 

Second, I’m now into it, into the thick of it, this writing life. I never think I want something else. I have regrets and sorrows—but I have to admit: I don’t foresee some kind of midlife crisis about my vocational choice to “be a writer” (though money would be nice).

 

So, in honor of my fifth book, Kids Without Horses (description below), I thought I’d give you a glimpse into this, um, “writing life.”

 

My Top 5 Most Humiliating Writer-At-Large Moments 

(these are pretty tongue-in-cheek, because there have been MANY agonizing moments I can't even talk about)

 

a.      A.  Reading to no one at a busy cafe in Seattle:

I read at the Wayward Coffeehouse in June 2019, when I was “touring” (I arranged a few dates) for my novel, And So We Died, Having First Slept. Though I swear I booked ahead, I apparently was not expected. They were, like, Well, you can go do it over there. I had a box of books, my husband, and two Seattle friends (embarrassing). I stood up and announced, “I’m the entertainment” (this is my husband’s favorite part). Then, I read. No one paid attention. Maybe one guy did.

a.       B. Not having a profound moment with David Sedaris at a book-signing:

In November 2017, I went to a Sedaris reading. I have a whole “Ode to David Sedaris” in Kids Without Horses, so you might say I’m into his writing. When I got to the front of the book-signing line, I was really hoping for this epiphanic moment, some kind of kismet between us, like Sedaris and I would bond over our mutual aesthetic concerns. Sedaris is actually known for trying to be nice to the people in line. And that was just it. He was very nice to me. He asked me what I did. He signed my book. The End. Nothing magical happened. Only my husband who was watching us detected my private humiliation. David Sedaris did not look deep into my eyes and say, “I know you . . .”

Here's a better photo, taken by my friend—Geoffrey Varga: Sedaris pretending to read my book.

C.  Not selling a single book at numerous events, including a reading with Lydia Millet at Antigone Books in Tucson:

In December 2012, we read together (arranged by Antigone) and we sat side-by-side at a table for the book-signing—not a soul came up to me, except for my best friend since second grade. And she had already read my book. WAIT A MINUTE! As I was writing this, I remembered that Stacey Richter, who wrote My Date With Satan and Twin Study, attended for me (!) because I reached out to her as a fan! So it was my best friend and Stacey Richter!

D. Falling flat on my face in the book fair at the Associated Writing Programs Conference (AWP) in Portland (2019) when I was trying very hard to be cool.

No photo exists, thank God. I was probably wearing those same clothes as above, likely holding a hot coffee, and some trendy writer-dude probably asked me if I was okay. And then I said, Oh, I’m fine! (He couldn’t see my skinned knees. Miraculously, my lip wasn’t busted open.) Coolness, you elude me, bro.

 

E. On a serious note, having the rug pulled out from under me when my pub closed shop and I decided to self-publish And So We Die, Having First Slept.

No one actually asks about my self-publishing thoughts, and it’s not easy to even talk about it in this Brave New World, but there were many ramifications from self-publishing. I can’t say I’m a fan. I did not enjoy the experience.

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My Top 5 Books, Movies, or TV Shows That Compelled Me to Positively Fold While Watching For Some Peculiar Writer-Reason 

(even though I might like others better)

 

a. Sex, Lies, and Videotape, especially Andie MacDowell’s singular performance

b. Succession, especially Jeremy Strong with his spectacular acting

c. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I will never not say that this is my favorite book.

d. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. It’s not my favorite book. That movie killed me, though.  

e. Home by Marilynne Robinson. I don’t know. I read it and might have heard Peter Frampton singing “Show Me the Way” in the background.

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My Top 5 Writer-Sorrows 

(not to be confused with familial or existentialist or soul-crushing personal sorrows, OR humiliations)

 

a.    a.      I'll probably never get to see The Cure in concert. I feel like this is important.
b.       I never got to be friends with Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I’m sad that I discovered her only after she died in 2017 at the age of fifty-one.
c.       When the editor of my first novel, Love Slave, asked my husband and I if we wanted to have dinner after my Colorado reading in 2012, I initially said no—not because of him (Fred Ramey) but because it was late and I didn't get the etiquette (my editor was asking me to dinner!)—and this embarrasses me to think about. We went for dinner with him that night anyway, because my husband kinda let me know that I was supposed to say yes, and I was, like, Oh! I am? Okay. I mean, I just didn't get it. Did Fred feel slighted? Did he realize I’m awkward? (I think so.) Wait, how do I schmooze? I don’t know how to schmooze! NO WONDER MY BOOKS DON’T SELL.
 
You can find Kids Without Horses here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSVTQ179/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.0PoHFwuajVs1a5JxZcFlQINI5PWPi3l07LF_2uiIsQTAptpB5xtJWnDyLhnSBOpPaaPkPF0BjC6AJNLLM9WoySTGKa-SAEO6pa2QRljn3Mg.ONgAm9Y8p4ni7ifhVkLXmIXCabbzm73Imm0OntrQsNI&qid=1736787602&sr=8-1

a.       d.      I guess I think the stereotype of the eccentric artist who suffers, often alone, is true—even though I think it's now uncool to claim any kind of singularity. So I'm saying that writing is a bit sad. Writers are in tune with sorrow. Sting: King of Pain?

b.       e.      I love my audience—I do. But I'm a bit resigned to not being widely read. I can deal. Don't worry. But it's a sorrow. 

 

And that, my friends, are my Top Fives. Five books out there. Each breaks my heart just a little. Each is a secret treasure too.

 

What is Kids Without Horses? This is a collection of weird creative nonfiction pieces. In this personal pet-project of sorts, gathered and shaped when Covid hit through mid-2024, Jennifer Spiegel brings together some previously published pieces, an “Ode to David Sedaris,” and a little Gen X-obsessing. The topics are diverse: Philosophizing over Pulp Fiction or recalling Spiegel’s failure to pass the Foreign Service Exam might give way—and often does—to thoughts on creative writing and Art (uppercase “A”). Frankly, this is a myopic, personal, and eclectic collection. It’s okay to repeat that: a myopic, personal, and eclectic collection. From Red Square and Dublin to Oklahoma and Brooklyn, from Nelson Mandela and Michael Scott to Donald Trump and Larry David, from Rick Springfield and Ethan Hawke to U2 and Elena Ferrante, Spiegel writes with, well, gusto on religion and race and rock ‘n’ roll. This is, at the end of the day, unorthodox orthodoxy. #Truth.

 

Who is Jennifer Spiegel? Jennifer Spiegel is a writer and professor. She is the author of four other books: The Freak Chronicles, Love Slave, And So We Die, Having First Slept, and Cancer, I’ll Give You One Year. She’ll soon be an empty-nester living in Massachusetts with her husband and pets. No one ever let her name a cat “Bono” or “Dave Chappelle.”

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This is a collection of weird creative nonfiction pieces. In this personal pet-project of sorts, gathered and shaped when Covid hit through mid-2024, Jennifer Spiegel brings together some previously published pieces, an “Ode to David Sedaris,” and a little Gen X-obsessing. The topics are diverse: Philosophizing over Pulp Fiction or recalling Spiegel’s failure to pass the Foreign Service Exam might give way—and often does—to thoughts on creative writing and Art (uppercase “A”). Frankly, this is a myopic, personal, and eclectic collection. It’s okay to repeat that: a myopic, personal, and eclectic collection. From Red Square and Dublin to Oklahoma and Brooklyn, from Nelson Mandela and Michael Scott to Donald Trump and Larry David, from Rick Springfield and Ethan Hawke to U2 and Elena Ferrante, Spiegel writes with, well, gusto on religion and race and rock ’n’ roll. This is, at the end of the day, unorthodox orthodoxy. #Truth.

Eat Like An Author: Jennifer Spiegel

When most people get bored, they eat. When I get bored, I brainstorm new series and features for the blog, and THEN eat. A couple years ago, as I was brainstorming and contemplating what I wanted to eat, I thought how cool it would be to have a mini-foodie series where authors share the things they like to eat. Photos and recipes and all. And so I asked them, and amazingly they responded, and I dubbed it EAT LIKE AN AUTHOR. 




Today, Jennifer Spiegel, author of the recently released And So We Die, Having First Slept, shares what she likes to eat most: 

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I am known for making exactly one dish.

And it’s beautiful.

Quiche. My quiche runneth over.

I’ll put anything in it: organic shredded pepper jack, chicken sausage with garlic or sundried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, sautéed spinach and onion and mushroom. Good stuff. I mean, it’s gorgeous! Despite my uber-traditional family unit (a mom, a dad, two kids, two cats, one dog, four glow fish named Sprite, Siri, Galaxy, and Fish Stick), and our seemingly orthodox gender roles, I avoid cooking and baking whenever possible. We eat a lot of burritos and spaghetti. However, I love “The Great British Baking Show,” chiefly for its character development and weird English dishes (Blood Pudding! Suet! Game Pie!).

But there is nothing about my eating habits to suggest that I write. Except for the incessant cup of coffee by my side. I can, perhaps, create some writerly edicts related to my food intake:

•     We have bad reputations as drunks and smokers, so whenever you eat a salad, post a photo of it on social media and be sure to mention that there’s kale in it. (I eat a lot of salad and kale!)

• ·         When you go to Trader Joe’s in the autumn, be sure to appreciate the sensuality and color and aesthetic thrill of pumpkins and cranberry and all that other stuff that you know you’ll never make. (If I were to suddenly start cooking, I’d like to make it artful to reflect my sense of beauty, right?)

• ·         Occasionally, make a pizza. As with your writing, be unruly, bold. But remember that a pizza is still a pizza. (My cuisine is frightfully ordinary, but extraordinary too—if you know what I mean.)

I wish I could call myself a foodie. I wish I could reveal a sophisticated palate, or tell you about my experiences with French cuisine. I love good food. I really do. I am enamored by chocolate hazelnut whatever, and Chicago hotdogs, and chicken and waffles, and sweet potato fries, and street tacos, and lobster tail, and sprigs of this or that.

Alas, this particular writer is more of a voyeur than anything else. Don’t eat like me. Let me eat like you.

I want to know what you are eating. I want to eat like you.  

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Jennifer Spiegel is the author of three books, The Freak Chronicles (stories),  Love Slave (a novel), and And So We Die, Having First Slept (forthcoming in December from Five Oaks Press). She’s also half of the book-reviewing duo, Snotty Literati.For more information, go to www.jenniferspiegel.com. 

Where Writers Write: Jennifer Spiegel

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

Where Writers Write is a series in which authors showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Jennifer Spiegel. 

She is the author of three books, The Freak Chronicles (stories),  Love Slave (a novel), and And So We Die, Having First Slept (forthcoming in December from Five Oaks Press). She’s also half of the book-reviewing duo, Snotty Literati.For more information, go to www.jenniferspiegel.com. 

Where Jennifer Spiegel Writes

Part Deux

Am I the only writer who’s doing this twice? Yes, I wrote about my place before. Check it out here! It looks like I’m pretending to write in panty-hose. Really? Where’s the brie? Get me some shrimp!

Actually, it wasn’t as off as I anticipated. We moved since my last publishing bout. My “office” seems to be the hottest room in the new/now-old house (Why Do We Live In Arizona Again?), and so now I write on the couch, on my laptop, surrounded by miscellaneous pets. Different ones. My blog was (is) called “Bosco’s Going Down,” named—Pathetically? Sweetly?—after my cat, Bosco, who finally went down. Man, Bosco was a great cat. RIP Bosco.

So I write on the couch. (Kids at school, coffee in tow, music off.)

I did write almost the entire first draft of my new novel at a Starbucks in North Phoenix. Things got sad, though, and I left. First, I would’ve preferred a funky, local, downtown-ish coffeehouse, but I live in North Phoenix, home of Walmart/Sprouts/CVS/Starbucks. Second, I started to get sad when I realized I was waaaaayyyyy more attached to my local baristas than they were to me—like I loved them and, to them, I was just another loiterer, albeit white (Sorry! I couldn’t help myself!). Third, I got breast cancer and went through chemo, which resulted in me hiding out for months, bald—a routine I’ve yet to reverse in any real way, though I now have hair.

So, the couch.

Where Writers Write: Jennifer Spiegel

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

Where Writers Write is a weekly series that will feature a different author every Wednesday as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where some of TNBBC's favorite authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen.

Photo by Anastasia Campos 

This is Jennifer Spiegel. She has an MA in Politics from New York University and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Arizona State. Also the author of the story collection The Freak Chronicles, She lives in Phoenix with her husband and two children. She reads a lot, tries to buy mostly organic food, and drinks strong coffee with cream. She may stop coloring her hair soon, but there’s no guarantee. Love Slave is her debut novel.

Where Jennifer Spiegel Writes

 Hemingway and Jennifer in Cuba,
where she tried to learn to write on
paper napkins on barstools 

It’s complicated. In a beginning creative writing class, I heard that real writers can write anywhere, at anytime.  I wasn’t supposed to need props or special music to get into the right mood. Paper napkins on barstools or laptops in train stations: I should just write like a mofo.
Really?

coffee, taken by
 Anastasia Campos 

Here’s the deal. I write fiction in cafes. I write nonfiction at home. No music for fiction. Background noise is okay; actually, I like it—unless it’s my own children making the noise. Music is fine for nonfiction. The constant for any writing:  coffee.

 Jennifer's desk at home
(yes, that appears to be an issue
 of Ranger Rick on her desk)  

I’m afraid to say this aloud, but I think I will. I value my fiction more! I need to remove myself from my home and its demands. I can’t know I need to put in a load of laundry or the dishwasher needs to be emptied. I can’t get stuck listening to the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song. If there’s music playing in some café, that’s okay; I just don’t want to think too much about it. In that café, over my coffee and laptop, I am artiste—responsible only to my art!

I love writing nonfiction too. I do. But it comes from somewhere else, somewhere less precious, less pretentious, more responsible. That nonfiction writer may need to change the cat litter soon. She accepts this.

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Now that you've seen her writing space, get to know her writing!! 

Unbridled Books has generously given us 5 copies

to give away to celebrate its release!!

 (US residents only, sorry guys!)  

                  
What it's about: 

It’s 1995. When she can, Sybil Weatherfield works as an office temp. But in her jobless hours she may be her generation’s Dorothy Parker, writing a confessional column for the alternative weekly, New York Shock. Her friends include a paperpusher for a human rights organization and the lead singer of a local rock band called Glass Half Empty. Together they try to find a path from their own wry inactivity to something real and lasting that can matter to them. Richly funny and wincingly specific, this cunning debut novel is a bittersweet and ironic look at what it means to be enthralled by an idea—by even the most ragged possibility of love.

And check out Unbridled's cool pin board for the book!

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment stating why you would like to win a copy.

2 - Your comment must have a way to contact you (email is preferred), and you must be a US resident. 

That's it! No strings attached!

Good Luck!

Giveaway ends September 11th.
Winners notified on September 12th here and via email.

Indie Spotlight: Watch TV Like an Author - Jennifer Spiegel

Jennifer Spiegel is no stranger to TNBBC. In fact, she may actually be the most frequent author contributor here on the blog, for which we are incredibly appreciative. 

Back in November, she self published her novel  And So We Die, Having First Slept. And today she's here sharing an essay on how much she digs.... TV.....

Watching TV Like A Writer*

I love TV.

I may need to justify my TV habit, my love affair, which it is. Nightly, when the kids are down, my husband and I—shamelessly—make our way to the big, brown couch in front of the big screen. He brings over his ubiquitous bowl of Frosted Shredded Wheat and raisins (why, oh, why did I fail to invest in raisins?). Sometimes I wear my purple socks with paw prints on the bottom for traction. We call our stinky dog into the room. And then, then, for one hour only, we watch TV.

 It just seems so—I don’t know—gauche?

I’m going to tell you a little story. It’s embarrassing.

I grew up with parents who watched Primetime TV. Like every night. My skinny-ass dad pulled out this black goblet from the kitchen cupboard, filled it with ice cream, and settled in for a night with my mom, miscellaneous pets, and the Idiot Box. Reading this now, I’m like, Oh No. I turned into my parents.

As a teenager, I couldn’t wait to get my nouveau-independent, brie-eating, book-reading self out of there, straight into the halls of Academia, where I could get on with the scholarly life. Always a dork, I didn’t dream of being a supermodel. I dreamt of Nabokov, Roth, Brontë. While I never stopped shaving and I never joined a Kill-Your-Television Hate Group, I did ban most TV-watching for years, making exceptions here and there.

But, by the new millennium, single-womaned out, I succumbed. There was a brief, dark time in which I watched “The Bachelor”—alone, in my thirties, with my now-dead cats, prior to hitting up e-harmony with a fake name (Jennifer Jacaranda). I had thought I was done with self-inflicted psychosis when I had stopped binging-and-purging in the nineties, but apparently not. I got a grip—though months had passed—and I turned it off, with a kiss-my-ass swivel and a clash-bang-boom.

Screw That Reality TV!

TV-tainted, I swore I’d never relapse again.

The rest of that decade is a hazy blur. I know that, somehow or other, I got married to another hater, had kids, read a book by Donna Tartt (seriously, this is all I remember), saw one doctor about removing varicose veins but didn’t follow up, and began—not without a measure of indignity—watching “Lost” with my husband.

But the crazy part is that TV seemed okay now, even among us faux-intellectuals. No one was ashamed anymore. TV was cool. Forty was the new thirty, and TV was the new novel? Getting old wasn’t that bad. Was there a TV Renaissance happening? Were we on the brink, with “Lost,” of Literary TV?

There I was, all highfalutin about character development (Sawyer and his heart of gold) and the combo of a backstory (I don’t remember it) with a current story (the Others!), along with the beauty of this story confinement in terms of time and place, et al.

Well, this tale ends badly, I’m afraid.

As you know, “Lost” went south with its craven ending (and the Smoke Monster). I still can’t talk about it. That grand finale—rife with McGuffins, a Deus ex Machina or two, and red herrings galore—killed me, like, religiously. Part of me died. I mean, by now, I was already in the throes of pretending I was a real writer—and I wanted “Lost” to work. I wanted it so badly. I wanted narrative success, not unlike a sinner craving redemption. With each show’s offering of clues and with climactic tension building, my hopes were high. My disbelief was so suspended that I was utterly convinced in the Dharma Initiative and All. But that conclusion was so unbearably lousy, so disappointing, so theoretically unsound, that I turned off the television for another couple of years. My hands still stained with the sin of Bad TV, I was in need of cleansing (not to be dramatic or anything). The TV stayed off.

Till the Renaissance was in full-swing.

And that was when the TV was declared a source of marital together-time, a discussion piece, a happy ritual. However, I needed it to somehow benefit my writing too. I then started my Big Project: Watching TV Like A Writer.

We discovered gold in the Renaissance. “The Office” was a gift. We only began watching when it was over.

And now a crash-course in what I look for . . .

Veracity/Emotional Truth: I am ever-conscious of authenticity. It’s a literary habit, yeah?

It was the appeal of “The Office.” The absurdity of the real. The side glances. The cast of nuts in our lives. The ordinary setting. The I Am A Nut Too-ness of it. The “Breaking of the Fourth Wall,” if done in a particular way, draws our attention to what is and isn’t real, to artifice. When Michael (or Leslie in “Parks and Recreation”) addresses the audience, the audience is asked to be active, not passive, to note the absurdity of the moment, to see it for what it is.

But it can be even larger than that. It can speak of the human experience. I might turn to “Better Call Saul” because I am perpetually blown away by strange human ministrations in the scenarios. It’s a quiet show, you know? One just watches Jimmy live out a breathtaking humanity that almost embarrasses the viewer with its scrutiny but also evokes empathy. It speaks to what it means to be human.

I often think of certain odd moments in “Saul.” One thing I really love about that show is how it will dwell in the moment. It will linger. TV (and other mediums) often doesn’t let the individual moment sink in before racing onto the next, maybe more exciting, moment. “Saul” savors such times, and I think writers might learn much about the ravishing or devastating or colorful effect of minutia. Watch this scene. There are many, many others like it. “Saul” dwells. Should writers do the same?

Character Development: This is really hard for TV, I think. It’s a plot-centric medium, yeah? Built to be an After-Dinner Drink, following the long, hard day. Characters on TV, for the most part, have always been stable. Reliable. We could count on Lucy to be Lucy. (Laverne to be Laverne!) Which is why we might make a case that there’s a TV Renaissance going on. Characters have the potential to develop as at least some shows get novelistic. Tony Soprano of “The Sopranos” goes into therapy, and it affects his behavior. Walter White of “Breaking Bad” transforms over the course of several years, making the phrase breaking bad meaningful. The direction of the plot hinges on character development.

(Side note: This is why I’m done with “The Walking Dead.” Rick gone, protagonist no longer on any kind of character-trajectory: The show is dead to me.)

The Good Detail: This, too, is maybe novel in television, because formulaic recipes have proven so successful. But how great is it that the family unit in “Breaking Bad” consists of a high school chemistry teacher, a pretty unlikeable mom, and a kid with cerebral palsy? How great is it that Jimmy’s brother in “Better Call Saul” is cra-cra and demands that cellphones are put in the mailbox? These are great not because of the eye-popping weirdness, but because they’re not formulaic and they’re painfully true. That’s the stuff of my life, your life. We’re the chemistry teachers, the ones with the crazy brother (or maybe we are the crazy brother).

Production Values That Are Probably Equivalent to Language: Well, yes. I listen for dialogue. But there are other kinds of language. I’m thinking of Nina Simone at the end of the first season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” or the use of the color red in the show. I’m thinking of the stylized settings and clothes from “Mad Men,” “Peaky Blinders” maybe (watch this!), and even early “Walking Dead.” I think, personally, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is the best in making a beautiful language out of its production values. Ouch--this is so great. I find it utterly chilling, nearly perfect.

Bad Guys: They need to be fully human, right? Tony Soprano and Walter White were bad guys who were also good guys. Remember Tony’s weird soft-spot for animals? Sometimes, there are great bad guys roaming the sets of so-so shows. I loved Boyd Crowder on “Justified.” (That show was a fave, though I’m not totally sure I can make a big case for it.) “Ozark,” a newbie, seems to have a great mix of complex characters.

Endings: I’m possibly over-sensitive about endings. I have a thing for closure. There is little I like better that a seven-year commitment to a television show with resolution at the end (this is hyperbole.) Resolution can be in different forms. I’ll try to avoid spoilers. There are two kinds of satisfying endings.

First, the This-Is-The-Way-It-Goes end of “Breaking Bad,” which was close to flawlessness. What true thing will follow these other true things? That is the lovely path of “Breaking Bad.” A variation of this kind of end is the Hate-It-Love-It End of “The Sopranos,” which requires the viewer to ponder the inevitable. That show ended with the lingering presence of the Inevitable.

Second, there is the metaphoric, Somehow-This-Totally-Works End. “Mad Men” did it. It’s right. It’s philosophic, symbolic. It’s probably—because everything is—a little Great Gatsby, even if no one rides off into the sunset like I was hoping they would. Another winner here was “Six Feet Under,” which you know we’re still thinking about . . .

I guess I would say that I’m in constant lookout mode for the satisfying end. I’m a student of ends. I don’t know if other writer-types feel as strongly about this as I do. For me, the value of the story may just depend on the end. I say that, and I’m sure that I can think of a ton of exceptions. Still, I always marvel at the effective ending. (“Seinfeld” bugged me; “St. Elsewhere,” a formative show in my early life, robbed itself of veracity.)

The Perfect Show is probably “Better Call Saul.”

Though “The Handmaid’s Tale” might be another kind of perfect: stylized writing—think about how George Saunders is real, but not real.

Watching TV Like A Writer means that school is never out. There is no such thing as downtime. I’m not all snob. I do or did “Downton Abbey,” “Call the Midwife,” “This is Us,”” The Americans,” and “Orphan Black.” I feel like I demand a lot from my narratives. Happily, my demands are often met.  

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Jennifer Spiegel has an MA in Politics from New York University, and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Arizona State. She teaches college classes and writes. She is the author of three books: THE FREAK CHRONICLES (Dzanc Books), LOVE SLAVE (Unbridled Books), and AND SO WE DIE, HAVING FIRST SLEPT (November 2018, Five Oaks Press). Spiegel is also half of the book-reviewing team, Snotty Literati. She lives with her husband and two kids in Arizona. Please visit her at www.jenniferspiegel.com.

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* Some of this appeared in a slightly different form in an essay I wrote on “The Walking Dead” in Dead Inside: Poems and Essays About Zombies.

Jennifer Spiegel Takes It To The Toilet

Oh yes! We absolutely have a series on bathroom reading! So long as it's taking place behind the closed  (or open, if that's the way you swing) bathroom door, we want to know what it is. It can be a book, the back of the shampoo bottle, the newspaper, or Twitter on your cell phone - whatever helps you pass the time...

Today, Jennifer Spiegel takes it to the toilet. She is mostly a fiction writer with two books and a miscellany of short publications, though she also teaches English and creative writing. She is part of Snotty Literati, a book-reviewing gig, with Lara Smith. She lives with her family in Arizona. And So We Die, Having First Slept, following ten years of an unorthodox marriage involving Sappho, brain injury, and bath salt addiction, will be published in December 2018. 

I was looking for a Band-Aid. That’s why I was in there.

I opened cabinets, opened drawers, peeked behind dusty brown bottles of peroxide. Surely, we had one. Our kids had passed the Decorative Bandage Stage – no more Dora strips to be found. But everyone hurts. Everyone bleeds.

There was his toothbrush. There was his Über-Manly Hair Gel. I saw his contact solution, his floss.

And, right next to a roll of toilet paper, his book. . .

Greek Mythology!

My husband, on the throne, studies Zeus.

The books we read!

I have a vivid memory of my sister as a teenager: she is reading The Exorcist in the bathroom. She won’t come out. Hours pass. She is so enthralled that she apparently plans on spending the day reading on the toilet.

When she appears, the demon is gone.

Who doesn’t like a good book?

Yes, I’m more interested in what you’re reading in the bathroom than what I’m reading. What are the books that you keep by the stash of tampons, the stick of deodorant?

Why am I less interested in my own reading material?

Because I’m not reading anything in there.

I usually don’t bring a book (though sometimes I do).

But here is a list of some of the writers who are not in my bathroom:

There is no Sherman Alexie, who makes me laugh and cry. (Can he ever be in my bathroom again?) Elena Ferrante, with her brutal intimacies between women, is nowhere to be found. Hope Jahren does not offer her scientific ministrations, and Patricia Lockwood fails to turn these bathroom absurdities into poetry.  Francesca Marciano, who might offer international escape or expatriate memories, is not next to my body soap. Why are there no snap-crackle-pop Lorrie Moore sentences behind the color-safe shampoo? Sometimes, I have wished for a little Jenny Offill—for a snippet of wise-cracking prose. Marilynne Robinson, in story/devotionals, is not in my mirrored cabinet. David Sedaris, with his too-close-for-comfort and myopically perfect observations, doesn’t rest atop any tank. Colson Whitehead fails to offer me his perfect sentences when I am staid, captive to a porcelain bowl.

I have no books in the loo.

There, I’m just a mom.

I am mostly counting inventory, checking for parabens.

Parabens, here. Parabens, there.

No writers around.

Indie Spotlight: Jennifer Spiegel

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series. In which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!


Today, we have a returning guest, and dear author friend of TNBBC, Jennifer Spiegel. Her latest book, Cancer, I'll Give You One Year, released just this past January. Here's what the Goodreads page claims:

The book is 100% narrative nonfiction and 0% self-help. It was actually written for the author’s children in case she died. This sounds morbid, but maybe “pointed” and “candid” are better words. Embracing candor as an aesthetic, this real-time story hits upon the sacred, the profane, a trip to Epcot, a colonoscopy, her kids’ responses to everything, and OJ Simpson’s parole hearing. Writing-centric, voice-driven, and conscious of a death sentence . . . no diets or exercises are offered, but the author may give horrible parenting advice. It’s undoubtedly funny, but also a meditation on meaning.

Now that you've got a better idea of what the memoir's about, check out Jennifer's unorthodox reading list below:

An Unorthodox Cancer Reading List: Annotated, Of Course

The Ferrante photo is literally in the pre-op room . . .
the socks were put on by the hospital.

Say you’ve got cancer.

You will have time to read, assuming, well, assuming you’ve got time. Crap. It’s tough. Read some books. It may be hard to focus, to delve into an alternate reality, to even want to give credence to someone else’s perspective . . . on, like, the disease that is possibly killing you. You may get angry. I don’t know how you process things. There are so many cancer offerings and they seem upbeat and positive and reading them might give you peace or, um, reading them might make you want to kill yourself.

I was going to include this as an appendix in my memoir, Cancer, I'll Give You One Year: A Non-Informative Guide To Breast Cancer, A Writer's Memoir In Almost Real Time. I removed it. I don’t know why.

Alas, here’s an unorthodox reading list . . .

• Charles Bock’s Alice & Oliver. Very real characters, a marriage and cancer novel. With its New Yorkisms, its East Village collisions, CBGB-Limelight-Patti-Smith-Yaffa-all night Polish diner ministrations, I was bedazzled. I loved how a chic life could be turned on its head, the brutality of it—like some kind of plucked peacock. Which would make a great title of a story: A Plucked Peacock. Dibbs. All Rights Reserved. Copyrighted. Whatever.

• Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment. Yeah, don’t read this one. I literally read it on the chopping block. Like I think they took it out of my hands as I slipped into sweet slumber and rolled into surgery to take of my breasts. This was my first Ferrante. It’s very Ferrante. That excruciating intimacy. Like you’re in the head of the protagonist, unraveling her madness which sounds a lot like your own madness, and you’re so close to her that you can smell her breath. You might just want to skip this one and move onto her Neapolitan Novels, actually. You will not forget yourself or lose-yourself-in-a-book. But you will recognize the complicated lives of others. Ferrante is brilliant.

• Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Vol. 1. A graphic novel! This book is AMAZING, a tour de force. The artwork is fabulous. The writing is great. It's a complex story with monsters-as-metaphors, and interweaving narrative threads about the Holocaust and survivors, Chicago in the sixties, the murder of MLK, cancer, coming-of-age, not fitting in, being an artist, and siblings.

• Vincent Gilligan’s “Breaking Bad.” Which isn’t even a book. I’m not going to tell you that Walter White was an inspiration or that, since you’re possibly dying, you might want to give up your ordinary existence and break bad. But I will say that this show did have something to say about endings and finality and taking care of shit before you go.

• Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams. It’s decidedly secular, maybe postmodern, feminist, scholarly. I began to envy Jamison for her ability to step into some foreign world and be more than just a voyeur and write with empathy. Isn’t this something many, many writers long to do? Go to the places to which we aren’t invited and absorb the world in a real way, make it ours, if only for a moment? And to do so with empathy?

• Adam Johnson’s Fortune Smiles. Johnson’s wife had breast cancer, and she went through everything. We’re not talking lumpectomy, folks. We’re not talking out-patient surgery, friends. I like Johnson’s work in general, but there’s a great cancer story in here.

• Meredith Maran’s Why We Write About Ourselves. I mean, maybe you should write your own book. This collection of essays by famous memoirists is a good intro to memoir-writing. It can be summed up like this: Be unsparingly honest, willing to expose yourself and your own horribleness without reservation, do not neglect craft ever, and try not to hurt people--though you might have to and probably will. Cheryl Strayed emphasizes universality--how she's striving for universals. I loved James McBride's essay.

• Sandra Marinella’s The Story You Need to Tell: Writing to Heal from Trauma, Illness, or Loss. (She blurbed my book.) I learned two things quickly upon my own diagnosis . . . First, everyone has cancer. Second, everyone with cancer writes a book about having cancer. Which is to say that there are a ton of books about cancer. Some stand out, and Marinella had me when I hit the Nelson Mandela epigraph. I loved the combo of craft and cancer. I loved the emphasis on storytelling--its power. I believe that fully, and here is a full and well-written and inspiring exploration.

• Tig Notaro video. I actually forgot what I watched, but I think it was on Netflix. Though it may send my conservative friends into a full-blown tizzy, I have to say that I was utterly moved by the way she made art out of her cancerous life.

• Roger Rosenblatt’s “I Am Writing Blindly” (TIME, November 6, 2000). This one-page essay, maybe, is the best thing I’ve ever read about why people write, and you can find it online. It’s why I write. About cancer and everything else.

• Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev. And this is a must-read. A treatise on art and life. Cancer-free or cancerous. It’s so brilliant that, once I start gushing, I won’t be able to stop.

• Mary Elizabeth Williams’ A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles. Is this my only “real” cancer book here? I read others, but only this one—ONLY this one—stuck. It’s miserable to say, but it's best when writers get cancer. Their books are the good ones. And here’s a game-changer. Personal with some science talk. Maybe, someday, our kids will survive because of this science.

Here are other books I liked:

Jennifer Hayden’s The Story of My Tits. A graphic memoir!

Teva Harrison’s In-Between Days: A Memoir About Living with Cancer. A graphic memoir!

Andrea Hutton’s Bald Is Better With Earrings. Orthodox-ish.

Tania Katan’s My One-Night Stand With Cancer. A little raw on the lesbian-side of things, but quite real.

Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air. Super moving. Downright beautiful. I could almost push it up to the top half of this list.

Meredith Norton’s Lopsided. How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting. She died, so I get sad. This one is strongest when she talks about being a black woman from America married to a white man from France. Which brings me to her surviving husband. Thibault, if you're reading this, I'm sorry for your loss. Really so very sorry.

Nina Riggs’ The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying. This book terrified me. Nina Riggs is dead, and her death hovers over the memoir; what scared me horribly was that her initial diagnosis/prognosis seemed better than my own. Apparently, we were diagnosed around the same time. Maybe the exact same time. She's dead. I'm alive, supposedly okay, always conscious of my tenuous okay-ness. Her surviving husband is romantically involved with Paul Lalanithi’s surviving wife. How’s that for a love story? I liked the writing better in Riggs (the writing is actually pretty excellent), but I liked Paul Kalanithi, the person, a bit more. Is that okay to say? Nina’s story hit way too close to home, and I was actually wondering if this were healthy for me to read.

Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951, when she was a mom and wife—at the age (I think?) of thirty. Without her knowledge or permission, her cancer cells were taken (a sample of them) and harvested/multiplied/used all over the world in medicine. These "HeLa" cells have been instrumental in medical advancement for the last 60-70 years, without Lacks's family's knowledge, permission, or acclaim. Henrietta was a poor black woman at a particular point in history, and this book explores her contribution, her life, and her family.

Kara Tippetts’ The Hardest Peace. Religious. I liked it.

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Jennifer is mostly a fiction writer with two novels, one story collection, and one memoir. She also teaches English and creative writing. Additionally, she is part of Snotty Literati, a book-reviewing gig, with Lara Smith. She lives with her family in Arizona. For more information, visit www.jenniferspiegel.com.