Q: Do you often have title troubles?
EB: Well, yeah. I come up with titles that my agent and editor don’t like. For example, Durable Goods was supposed to be The King of Wands, after a taro card that features a character who appears very tough but is in fact quite vulnerable. Range of Motion I wanted to call Telling Songs. In that novel, the husband and wife sing to each other every night. Their songs began as a joke but became very meaningful, became a way for expressing the richness in their lives. The novel that’s coming out next summer will be called Open House, but I wanted to call it The Hotel Meatloaf. Now, what’s wrong with that title? [Laughs] Wouldn’t you pick up a book called The Hotel Meatloaf? Of course you would. Especially if it came with a scratch ‘n’ sniff sticker that smelled like meatloaf, like I had wanted. I also wanted the moon on the jacket of The Pull of the Moon to glow in the dark. It’s up to my agent and my editor to save me from my own tackiness, I guess.
Q: Do you have trouble with endings?
EB: Never. I love writing endings. Sometimes I’ll know the last line or the last scene of a novel long before I’m finished with it. I’ve written the last page of the novel I’m working on right now even though I’m still a good fifty pages from the end. I already know what I’m moving toward.
Q: Do you ever anticipate that your readers might say, “Please just write a few more chapters”? Have you ever changed the ending of a novel to satisfy readers’ expectations?
EB: I don’t think about anyone when I write a book. I can’t. It would freeze me up. I write for myself. Then when the book is done, I worry about everyone else. I’ve never significantly changed an ending, and any changes I have made have to do with what I think, not with what I think others will think.
When I finish a novel, I always feel satisfied that it’s ended where it should end. In Until the Real Thing Comes Along, Patty hasn’t found a marriage, but she has come to understand that what she has will do. The last line is “Or by themselves.” She’s speaking about the roses that look beautiful next to each other, but also alone. That’s meant to signal her acceptance of her single state: It’s viable. It’s fine.
I have had readers ask about sequels. Many readers have wanted a sequel to The Pull of the Moon because they want to know what happens to the husband. Interestingly, I had written a letter from him to his wife that I thought I might include as an epilogue. I didn’t. But my readers always ask, “What did he say?” Readers have also wondered if I’m going to write a sequel for Durable Goods and Joy School I never thought I would, but, lately, I’ve been thinking about it. Still, a sequel is never a matter of dissatisfaction with an ending.
Q: Are you influenced by your readers’ responses?
EB: I’m affected by them, but not influenced in my writing. I have to write what I want to write, not what I think people want to hear. It’s so mysterious, what people want, anyway. It seems to me that if you try to second guess what people want, you’d only be wrong. And even if you weren’t, if you don’t write from a place of personal truth, if you don’t write to please yourself, what’s the point in writing? A lot of my work deals with serious subjects, and I’ve been deeply moved by the stories that women have told me about the friends they’ve lost or the challenges they’ve faced that my novels have recalled. I get a great deal of satisfaction from knowing I’ve pleased readers, and I suffer when I feel I’ve disappointed them. But in the end, always, I have to write for myself.
Q: What is the most surprising response you’ve ever received?
EB: Overwhelmingly, the responses that I get are positive. However, I once received, in the mail, a mangled tape of Talk Before Sleep with a letter in which a woman said she’d had no idea that there were lesbians in the book and that she was furious. So, she had returned the book to me, returned that “filth” to me.
Q: How do you deal with responses like that?
EB: Her response was so vitriolic that it was disturbing. I wanted to talk with her, but she hadn’t left a number. It was, of course, an unusual response. Perhaps the real question is, How do I deal with a lousy review? Happily, I haven’t gotten a whole lot of bad reviews. Still, when I do, I think there’s a good lesson to learn. I think it’s helpful to read bad reviews because it keeps you rooted in the real world. There’s something about taking the bad with the good that’s good for the soul. I don’t mind them so much unless they’re completely off. If the reviewer didn’t understand what I was trying to do at all, or if my intent is misinterpreted, then I get a bit discouraged. I’ve learned, though, at this point, that reviews don’t make a whole lot of difference to people outside of the industry. A lot of critics had a problem with The Pull of the Moon. They found the central character too self-involved. And, yet, it is, next to Talk Before Sleep, my most popular book.
Q: What advice would you give to beginning writers?
EB: To trust the process. Writers are born, I think, not taught. You can hone your technique, but what makes a writer is a certain sensibility. You simply have it and it doesn’t go away. This is why I advise people not to despair when they encounter what is known as “writer’s block.” There are seasons. There are times when you’re rich inside and times when you’re poor inside. During the poor times, you have to learn to trust the process. You have to learn over and over again the lesson of just waiting. It returns.
Q: Do you turn to other writers for support in your own writing?
EB: I do have a writers’ group. It’s a wonderful thing. There are six of us. We meet weekly. It offers camaraderie. For someone who writes for a living and talks to herself a little too often, it’s good to have others’ responses. It’s also motivating. We bring up to ten pages each. You don’t want to arrive without your ten pages. And it’s a good sounding board. When you establish a group of individuals you trust and admire—and it takes a while to build up the trust—it becomes a wonderful place to try things out, to really take risks. It gives you an opportunity to see if your work speaks to other people. It gives you a chance to hear as you read aloud—and we do read aloud—if your work does what you intended. You hear things when you read aloud that you simply don’t hear in your head—repetitions of words, references that are unclear, concepts that you understood when you wrote them but not when you read them.
Q: How do you revise?
EB: I revise, but not extensively. I think a lot about what I’m going to do before I do it. I think in the shower and when I’m walking. There is a point when a book begins writing itself. It’s almost as though I see a scene and then write what I saw. I hear lines of dialogue. That’s when I know it’s okay—when it’s writing itself. It’s like a flower opening. It opens by itself. It’s unexpected and, oftentimes, surprising.
Q: What is your greatest success as a writer?
EB: Of every novel I’ve written, someone has said, “I’ve read all your books and this is my favorite.” Every one is the favorite of someone. I’m really thrilled by that.
Q: Is there an overarching theme to your writing?
EB: I have often said that writers write about the same thing over and over. Certainly, I do. Not that books aren’t about different subjects. Still, there are themes that surface again and again. I guess, for me, it’s always the theme of the extraordinary in the ordinary. That, and life-affirming messages. I once had a friend say, in a rather critical tone, “Your books are always so life-affirming!” I guess they are. Am I supposed to write one that leads the reader to despair? She thought I should access my dark side.
Q: What are you working on now?
EB: A novel called The Courtship of Falcons, which is about a fifty-something-year-old visiting nurse taking care of a dying patient. He’s a man she had a terrific crush on in high school, when he was super-stud and she was, as she describes it, the ugly girl who “everybody liked and nobody wanted to hang out with.”
Questions for Discussion
1. In the prologue Patty describes her “house game,” a game about choice and commitm
ent that reveals the “characteristic” Patty likes most about herself [this page]. What is this characteristic? Is it the characteristic that you admire most about Patty?
2. How is Patty’s work as a real estate agent related to the “house game” she describes? Why is she such a “lousy” [this page] real estate agent? What significance do houses have for Patty? For her clients? For her family?
3. The novel records Patty’s glimpses into others’ relationships—her parents’ relationship, Artie and Muriel Berkenheimer’s relationship. How do these relationships serve as models for Patty? In what ways do these relationships exceed her expectations? In what ways do they fall short?
4. As Patty describes her parents’ marriage, she insists that “everything they have, I want” [this page]. Still, she’s surprisingly unaware of the details of their courtship and life together. She didn’t know that they had fallen in love at first sight [this page]. She hadn’t heard that they never had a honeymoon [this page]. Does this lack of awareness surprise you? Why? Why not?
5. Is Patty similarly unaware of events in the lives of her dearest friends? Why? Why not?
6. Although intimacy with her dearest friends and family members seems, at times, to be a real struggle for Patty, she is surprisingly intimate with her real estate clients, neighbors, and her manicurist. Artie Berkenheimer invites Patty to use his “breast glasses” [this page], Sophia predicts Patty’s pregnancy [this page], and Amber offers friendship as well as advice [this page]. What makes Patty so successful at establishing intimacy in these unexpected moments?
7. Patty admits that “sometimes it’s hard to be [Elaine’s] friend. A lot its hard to be her friend” [this page]. Why is it hard? Do you blame Patty or Elaine for the rifts in their friendship? How satisfying is the friendship they offer to one another? What are the barriers to their friendship? Are these barriers surmountable?
8. Ethan and Elaine are united in encouraging Patty to pursue her relationship with Mark. Ethan encourages Patty to “just try” to make the relationship work [this page], while Elaine insists that Mark is “the best thing” to happen to Patty in a long while [this page]. Does Patty “try” to make the relationship work? Do you sympathize with Ethan and Elaine’s insistence that Patty “try” harder? Or do you sympathize with Patty? Why?
9. Patty admits that she had never known the “real” Ethan during their engagement. She “could get close, but not there” [this page]. Does she ever know the “real” Ethan? Does she ever feel that Ethan knows her “real” self?
10. Patty and Ethan both have certain hopes and expectations about the relationship a straight woman can have with a gay man. At what moments do these hopes or expectations converge? At what moments are they clearly in conflict? Is Patty fair to Ethan? Is Ethan fair to Patty?
11. Ethan insists that Patty’s behavior during the pregnancy is “definitely” [this page] his business. Is it? What claims does he have on her behavior? What control should he be able to exert over Patty’s life? Over their daughter’s life?
12. In a disturbingly frank conversation, Amber tells Patty that she feels Ethan is “running away from something” [this page] by moving to Minneapolis. Although Patty dismisses Amber’s comment, she later questions Ethan about his motives [this page]. What are Ethan’s motives for moving? What are Patty’s motives?
13. Patty insists that she wants a conventional home. She says, “I thought all you needed was a husband, a house, children, and a decent oven, and you could be happy” [this page]. However, the life she creates for herself is anything but conventional. How do her parents and friends respond? Are you surprised by Patty’s choices? Are you surprised by others’ responses? Why? Why not?
14. Amber offers Patty a firm and difficult directive—“Be careful with your heart, kid” [this page]. Is this possible for Patty? For any woman? What are the risks of failing to follow Amber’s directive? What are the risks of succeeding?
15. When Patty’s father tells Patty of her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease, she realizes that she had known all along. When did you know? Why didn’t Patty acknowledge what she knew?
16. As Patty’s pregnancy advances, she becomes increasingly aware of human mortality. Artie Berkenheimer acknowledges his cancer. Patty’s mother suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Ethan’s friends struggle with AIDS. How does this overwhelming awareness of disease and death impact Patty’s experience of pregnancy? How does it shape the expectations she has of relationships?
17. In the early paragraphs of the novel, Patty distinguishes between what is imaginary and what is true. Although she acknowledges that she has a rich imagination, she admits that “what I never imagined was the truth” [this page]. How powerful is imagination? What are the limits of imagination?
18. The novel’s concluding image, “the creak of the rocker, the luscious fact of my sleeping daughter …” [this page], is extraordinarily reminiscent of an earlier, imagined scene, “Here I am in a little bedroom in my little cottage …” [this page]. In this way, the novel demands that we compare the real world Patty has built for herself with the imaginary world she had envisioned. How do these worlds—imaginary, real—compare?
19. Why is the novel titled Until the Real Thing Comes Along! What is the “real thing”? Does the “real thing,” in fact, “come along”? Does Patty’s definition of the “real thing” change over the course of the novel? Does yours?
20. Patty imagines that God’s definition of “human beings” is that “they are supposed to make what they want out of what they are given” [this page]. Is this a definition with which you agree? How successful a human being is Patty?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ELIZABETH BERG is the New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including The Year of Pleasures, The Art of Mending, Say When, True to Form, Never Change, and Open House, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as American Library Association Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was shortlisted for the ABBY award in 1996. The winner of the 1997 New England Booksellers Award for her body of work, Berg is also the author of a nonfiction work, Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True. She lives in Chicago.
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