The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

On Thursday, February 11^th, Fixed on Fiction met to discuss The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer-

The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. 
In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. 
Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules’s now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. 
The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken. Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.

-Summary courtesy of Goodreads.

We had a wonderful discussion of The Interestings as this novel received a variety of reviews with three thumbs up votes, three so-so’s, and one thumbs down. Here are some of the initial comments readers made while explaining their votes-

• I loved the premise- following 6 people throughout their lives. Do we value being interesting more than anything?
• I liked it, but I didn’t love it. After 500 pages I didn’t feel like I knew the characters well.
• I had a hard time with this because there were a lot of descriptions of ugly things, a lot of unpleasantness. It felt more like a book of ideas. I might have liked it better if it was shorter.
• I loved it- amazing! It reminded me of Donna Tartt- the NYC setting, the beautiful writing. I didn’t like Jules, she was grasping and obnoxious. Dennis was amazing and Jules just couldn’t stop whining and complaining. I had no patience with her. I felt like the characters were living, breathing people. I felt connected to these people. These were normal people but she brought so much beauty to them and to their lives.
• This was my era. I knew these people when I was in high school. I liked that they were poking fun at themselves, calling themselves “the Interestings.” The storyline was just the everyday norm- but she discusses envy and class, how money equals power, friendships that last a lifetime, the role of class and art, the topic of envy…
• I did like it. I enjoyed that we saw these characters from 15 to 55, it felt very real to me. I liked the observations of how relationships stay intact over time or don’t.

On Goodman-

• Goodman and Ash have the same parents. How is it that the parents “ruined” Goodman but allowed Ash to thrive?
• The parents enabled him- he never had to accept responsibility.
• I found it frustrating that Jules only realized Goodman wasn’t a great guy when he appeared in the woods looking a bit rough with a gold tooth. She couldn’t figure out his true character when he was good looking.

On Cathy-

• What happened with Cathy after she broke up with Goodman? Was she envious that she wasn’t the center of attention anymore?

The group spent some time discussing the incident between Goodman and Cathy. Was it rape? Did the rest of the Interestings respond to it fairly? We also talked about how consent was discussed differently in the 1970’s than it is today. One book club member brought up the cup of tea analogy as an example of a resource that is available to young people (all people, really) today that wasn’t on hand while Jules, Ethan, Cathy, Goodman, etc. were growing up.  

On jealousy vs. envy-

• In this novel, jealousy is described as “I want what you have,” while envy is “I want what you have, but I also want to take it away from you so you can’t have it.” Who is envious and who is jealous here?
• Ethan is envious of Dennis- he wants Jules and wouldn’t mind taking her from Dennis
• Goodman is envious of Troy- he wants Cathy
• Is Jules jealous or envious of Ash?

And a few notes from a book clubber who wrote in her response to The Interestings-

Although I had a hard time getting into it, I fell in love with The Interestings so much that I hated for it to end and found myself reading it in smaller and smaller bits as I approached the end in order to delay parting with it. After initially setting aside The Interestings after 100 pages, not sure if I would return, I went off and started Middlemarch. But then, after reading an article about the way we now watch TV series, comparing binge-watching to the weekly viewing of single episodes in a series and how that affects how people process them, I got to thinking that in 19th century England novels like Middlemarch were commonly published in installments or as serials. Middlemarch itself was published in 8 installments during 1870-71. I got the notion to give The Interestings another try and perhaps to read them in tandem.

Once I got myself established in Middlemarch, I resolved to read another 50-100 pages of The Interestings, and that did the trick. I got hooked and kept going. Not only did I keep going, I fell in love with it, not all of a piece at any point but page by page. Every time I thought I couldn’t like it or love it more, some new reveal or twist of plot or deepening of character drew me in and hooked me more tightly. 

Wolitzer develops her characters with so much craft, care, detail, and precision and, I would argue, genuine affection, that I found that they became vibrantly and intimately real and alive to me. That, I think, more than any other factor is why it was so hard to read the last page and put it down. It took me nearly two weeks to read The Interestings not because it dragged--apart from my initial stuck point at 100 pages--but because I wanted to stretch it out. I not only did not want to leave these people, I craved the time to process and assimilate this intricate novel.

As a study of talent and creativity and how it does and does not blossom, flourish, and thrive, I thought it was fascinating and well-crafted. Who knew at that first meeting at the camp that Ethan would be the super-success? That Jonah would be crushed, drained, and suffocated by Barry Claimes? That Goodman's absence would become an inescapable presence? That Jules’ true talent would become a sort of connective tissue and calming balm to the whole of the group albeit not always directly? Ironies abound.

But I found it to be even more profound as a study of the ordinariness of life and how we all have to navigate the mundanities and banalities while at the same time weighted down by some heavy burden, Jonah's trauma, Dennis's depression, Goodman's & Cathy's calamity, Moe's autism…, and each of these not being only an isolated element in its "owner's" life but intersecting all the others. We all have this stuff, and we all have to navigate the mundane while at the same in various ways and at various times we also have those big dreams, the "thing" that we want to believe our life is really about. I'm reminded of something that I’ve heard expressed in various ways by meditation teachers: "Whatever you think is in the way, is the way." Is that not one of the themes in this book?

At the time of writing these thoughts, I am still in the midst of George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I find that the two are quite similar in some respects. Middlemarch is subtitled "A Study in Provincial Life", and that's really what they both are, a study of lives; yet the people and times are so (superficially) different that there's no strain in reading them simultaneously. I only flip between books like this if I find it comfortable. More often I flip between fiction and non-fiction, almost never do I read two novels simultaneously, but I find that in this case prolonging the overall reading duration of each gave me time to process and assimilate each. I wouldn't care to read either in a rush.

I think one could write a paper about the parallels between Eliot’s Middlemarch and Wolitzer’s The Interestings: establishing oneself as an adult in life and work, the urge for authentic self-expression while needing to establish a dependable means of earning a living, the complications of socio-economic class in marriage and friendship, the interwoven connections between friends, family, and loves, to name a few.

I highly recommend this short review by Meg Wolitzer of Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch published by NPR on January 27, 2014:

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/27/265045935/a-new-look-at-george-eliot-thats-surprisingly-approachable   (accessed on 2/14/2016)

And if you can, listen to it in Wolitzer’s own voice; the recording is less than 4 minutes.  I’m struck by this comment by Wolitzer: “When Mead described these various characters, even minor ones whom I'd forgotten about, I imagined I was at a dinner party at which a really smart person was holding court about some real-life people I'd never met. But by the end of the meal I felt as if I knew them.” Does it not describe her own work The Interestings, how well she crafts her own characters?

My choice to read Middlemarch at the same time we read The Interestings for group was entirely coincidental, but it’s turned out to be a rich experience and a lesson for me in the comparative value of classic and contemporary literature.