What Art Can and Can't Do: An Interview with Emma Copley Eisenberg

Rachel León

May 28

A few months ago one of my writing groups was talking about a particular point of view: novels that feel like third person omniscient, but are actually written in first. In these novels, the narrator can fade into the background so much so that years later, when asked to describe the POV, you might think it was third person—such as Isabel Allende's The House of Spirits, or Andrew Sean Greer's Less. It's a fun point of view, flexible—dare I say, interesting—yet not one you see much, perhaps because it's tricky to pull off. Yet Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of the awards-nominated investigative nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl, does so beautifully in her debut novel, Housemates.

Housemates follows two young artists—Leah, a writer, and Bernie, a photographer—as they embark on a road trip so Bernie can collect her inheritance from a former professor. Leah and Bernie, believing in one another and their art, set off not only to collect what a renowned artist has left behind, but to document America through their chosen mediums: words and images. The result is a messy portrait of the heart of this country, the complications of pursuing ideas and dreams and making art, and, above all, a celebration of queer relationships—and life itself. For readers local to Chicago, Emma Copley Eisenberg will be at Women & Children First on June 6^th, in conversation with Jessamine Chan—an event to put on your calendar. Not only is the novel remarkable and so well-written, but also, if this interview is any indication, Emma is not only smart, but a delight. I had the pleasure of interviewing her and hearing about the novel's POV, structure, and the importance of art.

Rachel León

I want to start with talking about the POV. It's rather slippery—which I mean as a high compliment—and yet your execution is so admirable. Can you talk about how you settled on this point of view?

Emma Copley Eisenberg

Thank you for asking about POV, which is maybe my favorite thing to talk about. I struggled with the POV for a while; first it was from Bernie's POV only in close third, then Bernie and Leah alternated telling the story in close third. But I'm a huge believer in the idea that your craft choices have to foreground what you most want the book to be about, and more than being a love story or a road trip story, I most wanted this book to be about artmaking—the cost of it, what it can and can't do, how it is actually done. Rebecca Makkai (a Chicagoan!) once said that whatever problem she has with a novel is always solved not by writing around it but by putting it in the center of the novel and writing about it. The first person POV just sort of appeared one day, fully formed, talking to me. I took Makkai's advice and let it keep talking.

Rachel León

Now for the road trip, which feels equal parts structure and story. Was that part of your original idea? Actually, what did spark the idea for this novel?

Emma Copley Eisenberg

Yes, the road trip was always the core, the seed even, of the novel. I happened to read a biography of the 20th century lesbian large format photographer Berenice Abbott and there was a part in it where apparently she went on a road trip in 1935 with a woman who had a crush on her and who she also had a crush on, an art critic named Elizabeth McCausland. It was all very gay and very flirty. They left for the trip both single and adrift in their artistic lives and came back a couple with a clear project they wanted to do together. I wanted to know what happened on that road trip and how I could use whatever happened on that road trip to find a girlfriend and figure out what to write. But road trips are hard structurally, they're episodic and they usually hinge on some terrible incident (a flat tire! A murder!) and I didn't want to do that. It took me a while to figure out why they were going on the trip, where they were going and why, but once I figured out that they had met as housemates and Bernie had a creepy college photography professor, I was cooking with gas.

Rachel León

Another thing I admired was how the novel celebrates the importance of art, not only acting as celebration but as a reckoning. I loved the juxtaposition of Leah and Bernie's preferred mediums—the assets and limitations of documenting something through writing or photography—and how blending the two can create a more complete story. Assuming this novel that deals with art always involved two artists, I'm wondering if you ever had them work in different mediums? Or was it clear from the start Leah would be a writer, Bernie a photographer?

Emma Copley Eisenberg

Thank you. Bernie was always a photographer, and Leah was always a writer. One of the core things I'm interested in with the novel is: how can words and images work together to tell a story better than either medium can on its own? I didn't figure it out with the novel you hold in your hands, but Bernie and Leah come pretty close with the project they create inside the novel.

Rachel León

I really appreciated how the novel examines how society values—or doesn't—certain bodies, depending on their relative whiteness, ableness, gender presentation, size, etc. Maybe this ties into the second question too much, but I'm curious how the road trip was a perfect—pardon the pun—vehicle for exploring these issues?

Emma Copley Eisenberg

Writing about fatness and fat bodies was super important to me in this book because I am fat and so are more than half of Americans! If you're writing fiction about America, you're writing about fat people. But I also wanted to write a book that is not about a fat person's body being a problem that gets solved, or even about a fat person who "learns" to love and accept their body. Leah is an artist and a neurotic who just happens to be fat; her progression through the novel re: her body is twisty and ambivalent. I wanted to show her fat folds and the smell that comes from under her boobs and how she is really good at sex and how she feels excluded from queer spaces in the book because these are aspects of fatness that I never see represented on the page. Road tripping, travel, the freedom to move are privileges that are easier for white people, people who look straight, and thin people. Leah never learned to drive because car seats and seatbelts can be restrictive and really uncomfortable for fat people; airplanes are even worse. I wanted to show that travel isn't easy or even safe for fat people, but for Leah, what travel offers her—love, change, new perspectives on her own art and Bernie's—is more than it costs her.

Rachel León

Ultimately, I found this novel to be buoyant, a celebration of life, particularly queer life (thank you for that)—so I can't help but think while it wrestles with the heavier things we just talked about, it's still rather hopeful, like maybe art can save us, reminding us how to truly live.

Emma Copley Eisenberg

Thank you, I love hearing that. My first book had a lot of death in it, and maybe explored the sense of being haunted and fated for death and darkness. The characters in Housemates have those fears too but they're doing everything they can to look for and choose the light, even in a very traumatic national moment. The book is interested in living more than dying, I think, in creating more than destroying. That was the place I wrote it from—maybe, on a good day, art really can save our lives.