Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Imagine being at a dinner party with people who look great on paper- a photographer, a writer, an up-and-coming actress- but being completely horrified by them, their behavior, their actions, and their desire to be in the know at all times.

Zoe Dubno's debut novel, Happiness and Love, follows one such evening on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Our unnamed protagonist has returned from London to attend the funeral of a friend, but she has become aware that the crowd she used to hang with is, well, a bit awful. One night, we get to know Alex, Eugene, Nicole in ways that you can't imagine. Dubno has a field day satirizing the creative class that she knows a little. Well, her event tonight is sold out at McNally Jackson, but she will be appearing at the Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side on September 11th. She is in studio now. Welcome to the show.

Zoe Dubno: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Alison Stewart: We're excited to have you here. Now, in the back of your book, you say this novel came from a template of a German novel called The Woodcutters. It isn't the same, but it's the same structure, totally.

Zoe Dubno: Right.

Alison Stewart: What was it about that novel that you wanted to expand on it and to use it as a template?

Zoe Dubno: Well, I have to correct you just on what I think, because the Bernhard heads will come for me, and he's Austrian, not German.

Alison Stewart: Austrian. Thank you.

Zoe Dubno: They're specific, the Bernhard guys and women. Anyway [chuckles]. I think what really spoke to me about Thomas Bernhard's novel was this one-paragraph form, which readers of the book might hate me or Bernhard for.

[laughter]

Zoe Dubno: I just loved that it let you go so easily. You could contain all of these different things in just this one paragraph. You could switch seamlessly from one thought to the next while grounding it in one specific place. Though it might seem like it's the worst possible thing for somebody with ADD, it's actually amazing because you just go, "Oh, and then I realized this, and then I thought that." This one-paragraph form, it's amazing. That was the first thing about Bernhardt that I loved.

Alison Stewart: It was interesting because when I first picked up the book and I handed to somebody, they're like, "Wait, there's no chapters. Wait, it just keeps going. Wait, it keeps happening." When you first went to a publisher and said, "Hey, I'm going to write a book like this, what did they think?

Zoe Dubno: I think that only one publisher was like, "You need to break this up." I think that Thomas Bernhardt is a very big deal writer who did that, and people like it. At least there was a proven [chuckles] test case for it. I think that some people really liked it, enjoy the one-paragraph thing, and thought, "Oh, it's weirdly easier to read because I just can't stop. I'm just going to read this book in one sitting." [laughs]

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask you, what did it do for you creatively?

Zoe Dubno: Writing it and editing it were two very different things. When you're editing a novel and you say, "Somewhere on paragraph 1 [chuckles], we need to move that thing," so that was harder. While I was writing, it was amazing. I've written short stories and I've written other things, and you're playing with the dialogue and you're playing with where things go. This, I was just, "Oh, my God, I can just keep writing. I noticed this, and now I write about that." It really flowed out of me quite quickly, this novel, I think maybe because of the Bernhardian rant one-paragraph thing.

Alison Stewart: Who is the protagonist of your novel?

Zoe Dubno: The protagonist of the novel is a youngish woman who does not have a name. She's ditched all of these old friends of hers, but accidentally finds herself back with all of them. She is a writer, but she might not really be as celebrated as she would like [chuckles].

She's somebody who's very, very engaged in art and in culture, and I think has a little bit of a sadness to her because she has discovered that this world that she wanted so much to be a part of, and the ideas that she thought would be there just aren't there. I think that the narrator is a bit of a sad person.

Alison Stewart: She went to London. Was she escaping New York or the people who made up the downtown scene she was part of, or was this supposed to be a great plan when she first went to London?

Zoe Dubno: I think for her, she had just had enough of the New York people. Then New York can be a very small world. New York is huge, but New York, in a certain cultural context, you're going to run into some people everywhere you go; at a screening-- Anything that you want to go to, you can't anymore. I think she just up and left. Part of this book is also-- I'm from New York, I love New York-- is about how you can allow certain things to be poisoned that you love until you realize, actually, it's just me. It's me that's letting this be poisoned. I like it here. I like it.

Alison Stewart: Well, you went to London and then you came back. Did you have the same reaction as your protagonist to the city?

Zoe Dubno: I think that I did have a similar reaction to the protagonist. I'm maybe it's the Zohran effect [laughter]. I love Zohran. I do think that the city is back in a really nice way from a-- For me, I think I did let New York become this very small, small world full of yucky stuff. Now, I'm like, "Oh, no, it's great." I walk around. I love everybody [chuckles].

Alison Stewart: Why did you decide not to name your protagonist?

Zoe Dubno: It's funny because the cover of my book is very clearly a woman, but I did want the-- The thing that I loved about the Thomas Bernhard novels, because all of his novels are himself as the narrator. It's unnamed, but it's a Thomas Bernhard unnamed thing. I love that. While I was reading it, I thought that he was a woman at first.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Zoe Dubno: I just thought, like, because he doesn't say my name, whatever, even though-- I'm just thinking, "Oh, this is me." When you're reading the best books, you're not like, this is me, but you're like, I'm the main character perspective. I didn't want to close off anything for anybody by giving too much about the narrator. I wanted her to feel like you could step into her shoes and feel those feelings. That was really the main reason.

Alison Stewart: My guest is author Zoe Dubno. We're talking about her book, Happiness and Love. The narrator, we learned she's got a little visa problem, but she does come back to the States for this funeral. This woman, Rebecca, what did Rebecca mean to the narrator? What was it about Rebecca's death that made her want to return?

Zoe Dubno: I think the Rebecca character was the first person to really take the narrator seriously as a artist. The narrator also took Rebecca seriously as an artist. The two of them were both-- The book takes place at the house of these two characters that both really used and abused Rebecca and the narrator. I think they bonded over this feeling of being used, but also this feeling of using the central couple using their nice houses, using their nice food, using their comfort.

The narrator, in losing Rebecca, they haven't seen Rebecca in a while, but it feels like they've lost a co-conspirator. They also were always hoping for big things from Rebecca. Now that she's really gone, those things can't come to fruition. It's mourning for a future.

Alison Stewart: All these people have gathered for dinner, and they used to be in the narrator's world. I'm going to ask you to briefly describe Eugene for me.

Zoe Dubno: [chuckles] Eugene is the son of a very famous artist who Eugene has this interesting relationship with trying to usurp his father, but also be his own thing. It tortures him. He is an artist, but he's more of a commercial artist where his work is very much for sale or for advertising. He's very, very successful and he's a little bit of a creep.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: All right, Nicole.

Zoe Dubno: Nicole is his partner. She is a curator who curates these big exhibitions that might not have a whole lot of substance to them. She's the one who has the real money and therefore has this really tricky relationship with her friends where she can't really be sure if they like her or they like her for their money. She ends up pushing everybody away because of that.

Alison Stewart: In your mind, what fight do Eugene and Nicole have? Could be in the book or you can make it up. What fight would they have?

Zoe Dubno: I think that the fight that they would have is really about that money issue because Eugene, by being her husband, is the number one recipient of her largess, and also then the number one recipient of her skepticism that she's really good for him for reasons beyond the money. I think that the fights really center around that.

Alison Stewart: Alexander.

Zoe Dubno: Alexander is, I think, the character that the narrator feels the most ambivalent about, because Alexander is another writer who is more successful than the narrator. She's certainly jealous of him. Also, he took advantage of her in certain ways, and so she feels a little bit of hatred towards him. Then, also, he nurtured her talent, and he encouraged her up to a point. Alexander and the narrator have a little bit of a weird [laughs] thing going on.

Alison Stewart: I'm going to ask you to read a little bit from the book. Set this up for us.

Zoe Dubno: The part that I wanted to read is about how the narrator actually has this moment of-- A lot of the talk about the book has been about the art world, but I think that my grandfather actually said this to me, that he recognizes these emotions towards these people from when he was a lawyer in the 1970s adn interacting with people that were more successful or whatever than you.

This is a piece about the narrator is realizing that these people allowed her to change, adn that she doesn't recognize herself because of what these people did to her.

Alison Stewart: This is Zoe Dubno

Zoe Dubno: Reading from Paragraph 1.

[laughter]

Zoe Dubno: "I don't mean to fetishize living in the moment, but it seemed to me like Eugene, Nicole, the actress, were all living to prove that they had lived. This most of all, more than their unlived-in houses and their unread books and their unused minds, was why I despised Eugene and Nicole and these idiots I'd managed to take a vacation from until tonight.

Because they had enticed me with the promise of an artistic community and made me believe when I was 19 that their world was a wonderful place where people exchanged ideas and created things together for a public, for each other with a purpose, I had believed them. I thought that when they were cruel to others, it was for the greater benefit of the high ideal that was art. When they excluded someone purposefully from a dinner party, when they laughed in someone's face, when they made a display of hating their art.

Like the time Nicole got so drunk at an opening she told the painter's husband, pretending not to know who he was, that the show is absolute bourgeois garbage. They made me believe that these cruelties were necessary to uphold the sanctity of something greater, of art. Because I am of weak will and of a simpering character, I allowed myself to be influenced by them. I became known as a judgmental person. I was cruel to people.

Though I was often a good judge of who deserved poor treatment, I also behaved badly towards people that were simply weaker than I was, otherwise benign people who lacked the mental faculties to produce good work, to produce good conversation because being cruel is easy. It is fun. It is seductive, especially if you enjoy conversation and have a quick tongue, which I do. I always know just what to say to give someone a dressing down.

I loved it when Nicole laughed when I said the right thing, disarming someone she hated, even if they probably didn't deserve cruel treatment, because I'm a total weakling, lacking in character. I could never forgive Nicole and Eugene because I could never forgive myself for abandoning myself, for making myself believe that I was not the tender and soft girl who had sewn bunny rabbit dolls from socks for my third-grade teacher, who had sung along to folk songs about plants and freedom and labor organizing in the car with my grandfather, but instead that I was a vicious attack dog.

I'd let them harness my intelligence and my quick wit as a weapon. I'd led myself to believe that I had to choose between the didactic and humorless world of politics and the soulless and cruel world of art. It made me feel completely sick to know that I'd once thought I had finally found people from whom I could learn something about art.

I started laughing to myself in my seat on the corner of the sofa, laughing hard to myself out loud, repeating, "Learn something about art," out loud to myself at first under my breath, but then loud enough for the people around to hear me as I repeated, "Learn something about art." I saw them all look at me, confused by what I was saying to myself, by the unseemly display I was making there on the sofa.

Alison Stewart: That is Zoe Dubno reading from her novel Happiness and Love. I notice she's sitting on the edge of a white sofa.

Zoe Dubno: [chukles]

Alison Stewart: Was that a choice?

Zoe Dubno: That was a choice. In the Woodcutters, which my book is an homage to, he's sitting in this famous wing chair. He repeats it way more times than in my-- People are mad at me that I'm staying on the sofa so much. They should read the Woodcutters. He's really on that wing chair. I thought, :In Vienna, sure, they might have a wingback chair, but in a New York, nice loft department, they're going to have a Restoration Hardware white sofa. That's where she's going to be.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting, though. I can see her sitting on the arm of the chair. Not quite on the couch, though, like on the edge. Like, I don't really want to be a part of it anymore.

Zoe Dubno: Exactly. I'm not really here [laughs].

Alison Stewart: It's interesting. In the book, they're waiting for this actress to arrive, and she stirs things up a bit. I don't want to give too much away, but there's this big discussion about who makes art, what is art, entertainment and art. Was there a moment that led you to this conversation with yourself when you thought, "I want to tackle what is art? What is entertainment, nd do they even mix?"

Zoe Dubno: Yes. I don't know if there was a specific moment, but I think it's just my whole Life. There is a certain class of people that see very high art as something that's inaccessible, or even stuff that is, like, quite accessible. I think that novels are mass entertainment. They're super fun to read, and it makes people not want to read great works of literature because we act like they're super hard to understand when actually it's just like the most fun that you can basically have is to read a great work of fiction.

I think that it was something important to me to have the actress be a Hollywood actress who's saying, how come you guys have let us in Hollywood define what having a nice creative experience is and say that this is locked away for the super intellectual people in some high tower. Reading is great. Watching movies is great. It's just great. [chuckles] I think that is part of what I wanted to say.

Alison Stewart: It's so interesting that all of this is happening after a funeral.

Zoe Dubno: Yes. Oh, yes.

Alison Stewart: They're all having these conversations after the funeral of this woman.

Zoe Dubno: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What does that say about the people at this party?

Zoe Dubno: They're yucky. They're yucky stuff.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Zoe Dubno: I don't know, I hope that nobody has had the experience of having somebody that's close to them or medium close to them pass away too young, but there's something really bizarre that happens where people are trying to both exaggerate their closeness to the dead person, but also try to have a nice time afterwards [chuckles]. It's like, that's part of what I wanted to get at because I've witnessed that, unfortunately. It's really bizarre. It's really bizarre [chuckles]. Yes, that's part of it.

Alison Stewart: This is really a New York-centric book. If you live in New York, I think you get an extra level of excitement from the book. What are some of your favorite New York-centric books?

Zoe Dubno: Oh, God, my favorite New York-centric books. I was just thinking about The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, which is like the best story about a New York City transplant. People are always talking about transplants, but that woman, she comes, she conquers New York City. [laughter] She really does it. What else? I love American Psycho.

Alison Stewart: Oh.

Zoe Dubno: I don't know. Somebody called my book Holden Caulfieldish, and I took that as a huge compliment because I love The Catcher in the Rye.

Alison Stewart: What have you seen as similarities between your books and the books that they've mentioned? They've mentioned Bright Lights, Big City, a whole bunch of different books. Which ones really make sense to you?

Zoe Dubno: I don't know. That's the nice thing about criticism and critics is that they open up an unbelievable other layer of your book that you didn't know about. I really do like being compared to all of these things that I didn't think about. I don't know if there's a specific one.

Alison Stewart: What was your writing schedule like for this book? I'm curious, considering it's one giant paragraph [laughs].

Zoe Dubno: Yes, one giant paragraph. Well, the one giant paragraph is nice because I think that, for me, at least, when you're writing a book, you want to live in the book. You just want to be really thinking about the world of the book and the characters and what they're doing. Just to start, I'm like, "And back in the paragraph." [chuckles] That was great.

My schedule for this was really, I have to write 1,000 words today. That's like, it has to happen or else-- When you think about it that way, most novels are like 50 to 100,000 words. Like, so if you think I'm going to write 1,000 words, you could be finished with a book in a month and a half.

Alison Stewart: I wonder what "or else" is [chuckles].

Zoe Dubno: Well, you can't actually begin to think of the "or else," because--

Alison Stewart: Or else.

Zoe Dubno: If you could think of the or else, then naturally you can handle that, like, fine, okay, I can go without ice cream, whatever it is, but or else-- You don't want to know what the or else is or else--

[laughter

Alison Stewart: Or else--

Zoe Dubno: Or else-- That is what I did. I did my 1,000 words, or else-- You just truck through that old paragraph.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is Happiness and Love. It is by Zoe Dubno. Her event tonight at Jackson McNally is sold out at the Seaport, but she will be at Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side on Thursday, September 11th. Congratulations on the novel.

Zoe Dubno: Thank you so much.

Alison Stewart: That is All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.