Jean Hanff Korelitz is the author of the novels You Should Have Known (which aired on HBO in October 2020 as The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, and Donald Sutherland), Admission (adapted as a film in 2013 starring Tina Fey), The Devil and Webster, The White Rose, The Sabbathday River and A Jury of Her Peers, as well as Interference Powder, a novel for children. Her company Book the Writer hosts Pop-Up Book Groups in which small groups of readers discuss new books with their authors. She lives in New York City with her husband, Irish poet Paul Muldoon. Her new novel is The Plot and she recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.
What was your inspiration for The Plot?
I’ve always been interested in appropriation, from “inspiration” at one end of the scale to outright plagiarism at the other. I think most writers share the same preoccupations! This isn’t the first time I’ve touched on these issues in my work Admission deals with them briefly, and The Devil and Webster in depth, but it’s the first time I’ve placed them front and center. And of course, every writer fantasizes about a can’t-fail plot! If all stories have already been told, what could it possibly be?
Are Jake, Evan, or any of the other characters in the novel inspired by or based on specific individuals?
No. Though I’ve met plenty of writers (like Jake) who feel they’ve failed and plenty of students (like Evan) who feel they deserve wild success (sometimes before they’ve written a word.)
How did the novel evolve and change as you wrote and revised it? Are there any characters or scenes that were lost in the process that you wish had made it to the published version?
No, this was a fairly straightforward writing process—propulsive, even. I did have to backtrack at one point when I felt things weren’t happening in the right order, and, on my editor’s insistence, I had to go back and write those chapters of Crib. (I was trying to get out of it, but thankfully she wouldn’t let me. It would have been a far poorer novel without the Crib excerpts!)
Jake’s publisher is Macmillan, which is the parent company of your own publisher Celadon Books. Why did you choose to refer to an actual publishing company in the novel as opposed to creating/naming a fictional one?
Why not? If they had no objection, I couldn’t think of one. When I wrote Admission I began with a fictional college named “Nassau College”, but the book began to read as satire, at least to me. I thought: Who am I kidding? It’s obviously Princeton. Why not just say so? In The Plot it wasn’t necessary that Jake’s publisher be Macmillan, but I thought it would be kind of meta and fun.
The Plot centers around some interesting questions about art, specifically writing, artists’ responsibility to what inspires them, how nothing is truly created, but rather discovered and interpreted, and that the idea of “theft” of ideas can, and often is, be a very grey area of interpretation. If you found yourself in a set of circumstances similar to those in which you place Jake, how would you respond?
I’ve been asked this question often, as you might imagine, and after a bit of early waffling, I think I’ve made up my mind. I don’t think what Jake did was wrong—not at all—but like him, I have a pretty good idea of how the world of non-writers would view what he did. I don’t think I’d enjoy the condemnation of that world any more than Jake would. So no, I wouldn’t do it. But not because it was wrong!
What’s currently on your nightstand?
I read pretty quickly, so I’m interpreting “currently” very narrowly. Just now on my nightstand is a 1940 memoir by the artist Rockwell Kent called This is my Own. Currently on my phone (I use Libby for audiobooks, and always have one going) is We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker. Then, for Book the Writer the book-groups-with-authors series I host (currently online but returning to in-person gatherings this fall) I’m currently reading Natasha Trethewey’s memoir Memorial Drive. But if you’d asked me a day or so ago you would have gotten a different book and a different audiobook and a different Book the Writer book.
Can you name your top five favorite or most influential authors?
Jane Austen
Frederick Forsyth
Chaim Potok
Nevil Shute
Molly Keane
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths. Still the single most important book I’ve ever read.
Was there a book you felt you needed to hide from your parents?
No, but I hid The Exorcist from myself. I was so scared by it that I stuck it under my sister’s bed and left the room.
What is a book you've faked reading?
Probably, but nothing I can recall. There were (and are) many books I’ve been ashamed not to have read. If it weren’t for audiobooks I’d never have made it through Ulysses.
Can you name a book you've bought for the cover?
I do have a vintage copy of Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception with a fabulous cover that I bought at a flea market. I’ll read it…eventually…
Is there a book that changed your life?
D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths made me a lifelong atheist.
Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?
Frederick Forsyth’s The Odessa File. Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice. Molly Keane’s Time After Time and Good Behaviour.
Is there a book you would most want to read again for the first time?
Actually, no.
What is the last piece of art (music, movies, tv, more traditional art forms) that you've experienced or that has impacted you?
My son Asher spent a year in the national tour company of the Broadway show Dear Evan Hansen, and I saw it many times. I’ve come to really respect the show as a work of theater (and not just because my son was in it!). He’s going back to college, but the tour will begin again in December and I urge everyone to see it if it comes to their city.
What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?
There was a day last spring when my husband and I were both having good writing days (I was working on The Plot, he was working on a book with Paul McCartney that will be published in November) and both of our kids were writing songs. That was pretty much a perfect day, as far as I was concerned. (Apart from the fact that there was a pandemic on…)
What is the question that you’re always hoping you’ll be asked, but never have been? What is your answer?
“Why is it important to read bad books as well as good books?”
Because it helps you to tell the difference. Plus, sometimes they’re just fun.
What are you working on now?
The Latecomer, which will be published next April by Celadon.
