Complete video here.
We did this Thursday night at Diesel Books in Brentwood.
Luke: "What has the publication and success of your novel meant to you?"
Diana: "It’s tangible reward which is amazing. I toiled for years on this novel and at the risk of sounding dramatic, it really was awful at times because I had no idea if it was ever going to see the light of day. I had no idea if anyone was going to like it. I assumed people wouldn’t. Sometimes it just felt self-indulgent, wasteful, pointless, like I was going in the wrong direction. Other days felt the opposite. ‘Oh, I’m brilliant. Who knew?’ Of course, minutes later, I’d be in the pits of despair. It’s an emotional rollercoaster. It’s thankless work when you’re not getting published. Suddenly, in a day, I had a book deal… Then one day, it looked like a book, and it came to my house in a box.
"I opened the box and thought, ‘There is the fruit of my labor.’ I can’t think of anything more gratifying."
Luke: "Would that be in the top five of things that ever happened to you?"
Diana: "Oh yeah. It’s number one."
Luke: "How has your choice of profession affected you?"
Diana: "I’m a highly emotional person. I don’t know if the writing does that to me or if I am a writer because I am that way. It’s difficult to say because I’ve never been anything else. My adult life has been very tied up in this career path."
Luke: "How would your best friends describe you?"
Diana: "Loyal and hard-working. I’m sure if they were being honest, they would also have negative things to say about me but I’m not sure I even want to think about what those things are.
"How would your friends describe you?"
Luke: "Cynical, sarcastic."
Diana: "Your cynicism seems willful, though."
Luke: "Yeah. Probably my mother knows me better than anyone."
Diana: "What would she say?"
Luke: "Interesting. Disciplined. A lot of things people cry about I find funny."
Diana: "Honestly or willfully?"
Luke: "Honestly. I don’t contrive a laugh. I think of people who want to reform me. They’re really sweet people, good people, good Orthodox Jews."
Diana: "What do you they want to reform you to?"
Luke: "They want to save me."
Diana: "They want you to be more observant."
Luke: "Yeah, and not so cruel in my writing. Be shomer mitzvot [observant of Jewish law] and clean up my act. And that makes me laugh. It’s a really pure place that they are coming from, but it strikes me as funny."
Diana: "Their earnestness?"
Luke: "Yeah."
Diana: "Or their failure to not see it in black or white?"
Twenty second pause.
Luke: "Maybe naivete. I’m a bit of a shark. When I’m around guppies, sometimes it makes me laugh."
Diana: "Because of how easily you can eat them? Because of how close they are swimming to sharp teeth."
Luke: "Right, right."
Diana: "This feels like a scene in a horror movie and you’re about to kill me. Is this what’s happening? I’m glad we’re close to the bookstore I’m reading in."
Luke: "Now you see where Amy Klein was coming from.
"I love to lambast myself. I love to disect myself in the most cruel ways."
"Your sentences [in your novel] strike me as unostentatious."
Diana: "Thank you. A lot of people tell me that I write the way I talk, which I think is true. I do edit. I do like the natural sounding sentences."
"Like every other writer in the world, when I was 13 I read ‘’Catcher in the Rye’ and decided this is what I want to do. I want to write like this. I thought to myself, ‘You’re allowed to write like this. I can’t believe it.’ Because it sounded like a conversation. You can make something so beautiful and it just sounds like someone talking."
Luke: "You mentioned that a few years ago you were on a spiritual search. What were you searching about and what did you find?"
Diana: "I think my main question was, ‘Is there value in practicing Judaism that is not Orthodox Judaism? If I believe, why would I not practice to the letter of the Law? If I am not practicing to the letter of the Law, doesn’t that mean I’m not sure that I believe?’ That was for me. I’m not judging other people."
Luke: "What did you come to?"
Diana: "Sometimes I say, complacency. Sometimes I say, some peace with agnosticism. It depends on how hard I am being on myself."
Luke: "Do you believe in God?"
Diana: "I’m agnostic."
Luke: "Do you believe in moral absolutes?"
Diana: "No. I believe that every person has a right to his safety, to food, water and shelter."
Luke: "Do you have moral guideposts?"
Diana: "None that I can think of. Do you? The Torah, right? Yeah."
Luke: "Anything that I haven’t asked that I should ask you?"
Diana: "No. I’m getting so tired."
I turn off the camera.
Diana: "You want to get a drink?"
Luke: "OK."
I lead us down 26th street. We’re searching for a bar. I’m lost. I don’t drink. I don’t know how to do this.
Luke: "I’m not very good at real life."
Diana: "I’m good at real life."
Luke: "You’ll have to lead."
Diana: "OK."
She finds a bar on the corner with San Vicenete. She orders a glass of red wine. I order a Diet Coke.
I talk about myself. We have 20 minutes to kill before her reading.
I’m just getting started unburdening myself when it is time to go.
The check comes. One of my gentler qualities is that I have never run over anyone or anything to pick up a check.
Diana pays.
"Thank you," I say from the bottom of my heart.
While no Orthodox Jew touches money on the Sabbath, I’m more religious than most. I don’t like to touch money on Thursdays as well.
When we walk back to Diesel Books, I lose touch with Diana. I try to find the bathroom on my own. It’s a major trauma.
I could write a novel about it.
I spend ten minutes on The Decameron and then rejoin Diana for her reading.
As I watch the replay on video, I notice that my nightvision feature makes Diana’s clothes see-through.
Diana talks about her whirlwind tour. "I haven’t slept yet. I wake up every morning and I have no idea where I am."
Luke: "You care to tell us more about that?"
Diana: "Be careful what you say. Luke is famous for recording careless things people say on his blog. Right? I just thought I should warn them. Many of them are my family."
Luke: "Tell me the truth."
Diana: "You wish."
Diana reads for two minutes and take questions.
Bloke: "How come the father doesn’t narrarate?"
Diana: "He’s absent."
Another Bloke: "Is that symbolic?"
Diana: "Like what?"
Another Bloke: "Like God the father?"
Luke: "Yeah, because God is absent from the book and the father is absent from the book. It’s a Godless universe that they are living in."
Diana: "Well, not Ash [the ba’al teshuva]."
Luke: "He believes but [he’s a nutter] there’s no reason to believe in the book."
"He [Ash] believes in God but I’m wondering about the universe of the book."
Diana: "I don’t really know what you mean."
Luke: "Are all three voices equally authoritative?"
Diana: "Probably not. As a reader, you’d probably trust Bits and Ash more than you would trust the mother."
Luke: "I wouldn’t trust the mother and I wouldn’t trust the guy who became Orthodox. Even though Bits is screwed up, she’s still the most authoritative voice in the book."
Bloke: "I’d agree with that."
Luke: "The guy went off the deep end. The mother’s a nutter. The girl’s a slut, but she’s still the voice of reason in this universe of insanity."
Girl: "I think the book is more about family than about religion. You could substitute any religion in there and it would still work."
Diana: "I think so too."
"I think I was writing a family story before I was writing a Jewish story. To me it’s a story about guilt, rescue and family bonds before it is about anything else."
Luke: "Did you have an experience of trying to rescue that backfired?"
Diana: "Many times, probably. I think we all do. You’ll start to think that someone needs rescuing and what that means is that you want that person to be more like you, or more like society, or more capable of fitting in in some way, you think it is for the good of the person, but it’s really a form of narcissism. Growing up and gaining maturity allows you to see that for what it is. If someone is not asking to be rescued and you are offering rescue, you have to question your own motives."
Luke: "Do you see people drowning and do you feel driven to rescue?"
Diana: "I’ve never seen someone drown."
Luke: "Not literally."
Diana: "Like struggling? Yes, I do. Many people feel compelled to fix, especially when you see a friend take a bad turn. It can be really difficult not to give in to the tendency to try to fix it."
Luke: "Did your theme evolve from the characters?"
Diana: "It came later. I came up with the characters first."
Bloke: "How long did it take you to write?"
Diana: "Four and a half years."
Bloke: "Do you think you’ll return to these characters again?"
Diana: "I think these characters are better off without me. I cause them nothing back grief."
"I know exactly what they look like… The girl looks like me."
Bloke: "What was your profession while writing this?"
Diana: "I’ve always had odd jobs. I would never take on another career because I didn’t want to have a career that wasn’t this. Currently I’m teaching and working in a bar and working as a ghostwriter. I’ve done all kinds of things. I had a fellowship at San Jose State for a year. I was a writer-in-residence at a boarding school. Whatever I could do to make writing the center of my life."
Luke: "Were your parents concerned when you said you wanted to be a writer?"
Diana: "Yeah. My mom thought it was something I should do as a hobby. I don’t think they knew anybody who did it professionally. The thing about choosing to be an artist is that you make up your own life. You don’t have a template. When you’re an artist, you just have to do what works for you to make your art your main focus."
A dark mysterious woman asks a question: "When you were writing your book, what was the most self-revealing part?"
Diana: "You’re so pretty, by the way. You’re strikingly beautiful."
Woman: "It’s make-up."
Diana: "Self-revealing?"
Luke: "Probably the anonymous sex."
Diana laughs and sips her water through a straw.
Diana: "The thing I learned about myself that I was happy to learn was that I don’t give up very easily. There was a lot of reason to… I also learned that I can lose it very easily. So it’s disconcerting. I remember one time I lost three days work because my computer was having a problem. I literally was screaming and trying to pull my hair out of my scalp."
"I don’t find writing to be magical or therapeutic. Now that I’ve been doing it for so long, it feels like work… The actual process is not cathartic for me."
"This is like book club, except that half the people haven’t read it."
Luke: "You don’t have an interpretative dance about the novel?"
Diana: "That’s something I’d have to prepare for. I don’t think that I could do it impromptu."
At the end, we give Diana the clap. Clap, clap, clap.
