Read to Know Basis: Emma Copley Eisenberg
The author of Housemates defends form over function.
Read to Know Basis is a weekly interview series with authors. It features debut authors and established writers talking about reading, writing, and of course snacks. This series is free to all. If you like what you read considering subscribing to support the work of Unstacked, and of course go out and buy the book!
Emma Copley Eisenberg is the author of the novel Housemates (Hogarth, May 28) and the nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2020 and nominated for an Edgar Award and a Lambda Literary Award among other honors. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Granta, McSweeney's, VQR, Esquire, The New Republic, Time, and other publications. She lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts.
What are five words to describe your book?
Cheeky, physical, maximalist, sexy, American.
What are three books that are in conversation with your book?
All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews for the way the characters are on a journey from being an “I” to being a “we.” The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker for the artistic collaboration plot. Nevada by Imogen Binnie because of lesbians roadtripping.
What is the strangest thing you googled while researching/writing this book?
I looked at how exactly The New York Times insinuates that a man who has recently died was a sexual predator without saying so explicitly. That was fun to parody.
Describe your ideal reader?
Someone who likes a book that has more than one layer – timeline, POV, way of answering a question. Someone who is interested in seeing queer group houses, fatness, nose picking, large format film photography or Philadelphia depicted in fiction. Someone who likes to laugh.
When is the first time you really felt like an author?
When I got the call that my first book had sold, I drank champagne right from the bottle by myself on the beach. It felt like I’d finally achieved the right combination of glamor and anticlimax.
What is a piece of writing advice that you’ve received that you think is really bad? What is a piece of writing advice that you think is really good?
People (ahem Aristotle) love to say that every element in a novel must have an essential narrative function, must make something happen in a cause and effect way. It’s like, sure, but what about the gorgeous pages Emile Zola spends on the fat cabbages in The Belly of Paris or the sexy sexy scene with the red satin ribbon in Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby? Sometimes things are just there because they are beautiful, pleasurable, funny, or express the author’s core sensibility.
Rebecca Makkai once said that when she has a problem writing a novel, she never resolves it by writing around the problem, only by writing about it–making the novel about the problem. I think about that solidly once a week.
What are you reading right now? And what book are you desperate to read next?
Right now, I am reading nothing because it is book publication season – I am only surviving by watching episodes of Dog House UK. But before my brain vanished, two recent books I loved were Brother & Sister Enter the Forest by Richard Mirabella (devastating; more books about siblings please) and A Quitter’s Paradise by Elysha Chang (so funny). Like everyone else, I am desperate to read Miranda July’s All Fours.
What book are you an evangelist for?
Problems by Jade Sharma. It’s about wanting to be better artistically than you know how to be yet and figuring out how to be less ashamed of being an immigrant and being fat. Sadly Sharma died young, and this is the only book we’ll get from her. But what a book!
What’s a book you found at just the right time in your life?
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. I was 16 and very sad, and so was the book. But it was also hopeful and took these huge risks writing across lines of difference and with its form – there’s a 30 page monologue about white supremacy in it, for example.
Who is your literary crush?
Susan Choi. That mind! That silver hair!
If you could not be a writer what would you do?
Open an ice cream shop called Goldman’s in homage to the one Emma Goldman operated.
You’re invited to a literary potluck, what are you bringing? Could be food or drink.
Ice cream. Vanilla swiss almond Häagen Dazs or Tillamook Mudslide.
Connect with Emma: Substack | Instagram | TikTok | Website
Read to Know Basis is a weekly interview series with authors talking about reading, writing, and of course snacks. This series is free to all. If you like what you read considering upgrading to a paid subscription to support the work of Unstacked, and of course go out and buy the book!
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“It felt like I’d finally achieved the right combination of glamor and anticlimax.”
I’m all-in for this book based on this sentence! Thank you for the introduction!
so excited to read!!