'There's not really a template for midlife'
Author Emma Straub on fandom, joy, and the huge expanse of time between having children and dying.
Former English major, reporting for duty! I love novels and I love authors and for better or for worse, I have largely made good on the promise I made to myself when I graduated from college over 20 years ago to never again read a novel by a man. I gotta tell you: It’s been a wonderful two decades of reading women writers.
So it should go without saying that I’m a huge fan of Emma Straub — and bought her latest novel, “American Fantasy,” the day it came out. The plot: A middle-aged woman goes on a boy band reunion cruise.
I was all in from the jump — and dying to talk to Straub, 46, about writing middle age, being middle-aged, plus loving The Babysitters Club and NKOTB.
Conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What would you like to see conversation about women and midlife look more like culturally right now?
Part of my project with [“American Fantasy”] was trying to show the parts of midlife that I feel like are rarely seen, which is the continued possibility of change.
I think that when you are in your 20s, especially if you’ve been conditioned by the patriarchy or just sort of the culture of our society, you have these things that you sort of expect and you expect to happen in a certain order, whether it’s getting married, having children, having a career, maybe taking a break from that career if you’re also taking care of your children.
But the thing is — there is this huge expanse of time between, say, having children and dying.
What I see in my own life and in the lives of women around me is, of course, that this idea of this order is completely false and ridiculous.
I was 37 when my husband and I decided to open a bookstore and our lives completely changed. I have so many friends in their 40s and 50s who have gone back to school, have changed their lives in lots of ways, whether it’s gotten divorced or gotten remarried or moved across the country or moved to another country — and I find all of that so inspiring. I think that the people who are most open to making those changes are middle-aged women because there’s not really a template for midlife, but women are so good at figuring things out.
What is most different about being the age you are than what you would have imagined 10 or 20 years ago?
Twenty years ago, I would have guessed that I would be a novelist and that I would have children — I always knew that I wanted to have children — and both of those things are indeed true. The bookstore would have been a surprise, but I still live in New York City, where I grew up, I just wrote a book totally inspired by New Kids on the Block, and just wrote a new Babysitters Club book, so you’re catching me at a point right now that would have been extremely visible to my 12-year-old self.
The surprise would be my comfort and my self-confidence. I just feel quite steady in my life. I mean, I am an anxious person and a very scattered, total ADHD mess — but I have always loved what I love and I have done, I think, quite a good job surrounding myself with it in lots of different ways.
I feel like you are living every middle-aged woman’s fantasy: You not only own a bookstore, but now you have actually written a new Babysitters Club book — and one all about Stacey, my daughter’s favorite member of the Babysitters Club.
Listen, Boy Crazy Stacey — she was a blonde from New York City and she had cool clothes. I was like, “Well bing, bang boom! There I am!” Stacey is my girl, so when they asked me to do it, I immediately said, “Please give me Stacey. Please, please let me do Stacey.”
Ann M. Martin is just a legend. She’s soft-spoken. She’s a total introvert. She’s very quiet. But what I appreciate the most about her is that she really let us all in and let us do what we wanted to with our characters. She really gave us the reins to these kids who she created 40 years ago, which I cannot imagine is easy. Ann really trusted us.
What was it like to dip back into this mythology, this stage of life, and Boy Crazy Stacey especially?
“American Fantasy” is about a million Boy Crazy Staceys.
I can say as a bookseller that readers really respond to stories about longing and desire.
And I think there are so many interesting parallels between puberty and menopause, where you are transforming and you are becoming and you are changing.
I got my period when I was 10 and I was so excited. I was so excited. I was so excited to have training bras. I was like, “I am a woman.” I just couldn’t wait for all of that. And you know? I am also excited for that part of my life to be over now. I haven’t hit menopause yet, but I’m into it. I’m into new phases of life. I’m into learning how my body is going to work differently.
What has surprised you the most about your body as you’ve moved through your 40s?
I had two surgeries this year — one last spring, then one in the fall — and after that I realized I really had just been leaving my body alone for years. I just really had not moved my body in like six years and I had these two surgeries and I just decided, “OK I have had enough. I am really gonna start taking care of my body.” And so I did.
I’ve been lifting weights. I work out with a personal trainer twice a week. I eat so many vegetables. I have stopped drinking pretty much totally. I have a glass of wine maybe once a month if that and I enjoy it so much and then that’s fine. I really am trying to walk.
I want to be a strong old lady. I want to be active for as long as I possibly can be and I understand that the habits I build now will help me then.
What do you hope for the next 20, 30 years of your life?
I hope I get to keep writing novels. I want to write as many novels as I can. That’s really my goal: Just keep writing books.
I want to learn to enjoy things more. I want to learn how to celebrate things better and plan things just for fun. Travel more for fun. I’m terrible at doing things for fun.
What excites you the most about being this age and just not giving a shit about liking what you like and being who you are?
I mean that’s really exactly it.
When I went on [the New Kids on the Block reunion] cruise as research for the book, I was familiar with the New Kids fandom for sure, but I had never really participated in a fandom before. It really was paradigm-shifting for me to be on the cruise and to realize what it was actually about, which was women’s pleasure. I just didn’t understand.
I knew I wanted to write this novel and I knew that a cruise is such a perfect setting for a novel and I had all these ideas about the boy band and their peccadillos and complications, but I hadn’t really thought about the fan and the supremacy of the fans’ experience and the importance of women’s happiness and what it meant for this many middle-aged women from truly all income brackets and all different kinds of places — from rural places, from cities, from different kinds of lives — to prioritize themselves. And not just prioritize themselves in the way of, ‘I’m gonna start eating healthy! I’m gonna start lifting weights!’ but just to prioritize their own pure pleasure and that was incredible to behold and really has changed the way I think about fandoms, I think probably forever.
Last night I went with my middle-aged friends to see Louis Tomlinson from One Direction play at Madison Square Garden. I don’t personally care about Louis Tomlinson but my one friend, a bookseller from Texas, she loves him. And just to be there with her and watch her lose her mind was so satisfying. Everyone in the arena was watching him and I was watching her. And not just her — I was sitting there laughing with joy at all of the people around me who were so happy and I feel like that’s my new hobby: just being a witness to people’s happiness.