Selected Novels | Lillian Fishman on Edith Wharton

On this episode—our very first!—of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to novelist (and writer of our 2024 advice column, Higher Gossip) Lillian Fishman about Edith Wharton’s novel Age of Innocence. 

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Transcript

Jessica Swoboda  00:15

Hi everyone. Welcome to Selected Novels, a new podcast from The Point Magazine. My name is Jess Swoboda, and I'm here with my co host, Zach Fine. 

Zach Fine  00:24

Hey, Jess, maybe let's talk a little bit about how this podcast kind of came to be and what the the idea for it is. So could you tell us just a little bit, you know, about how the idea for Selected Novels came to you originally?

Jessica Swoboda  00:37

Sure. So the idea came out of this desire to learn, figure out, get insights on novels and novelists from the past that are influencing writers of the present. So getting a sense for okay, what stylistic and generic choices are influencing writers today. How have novels of the past, the modern novel, The Victorian novel, The novel from the 18th century and so on, influencing writers of today and just thinking, okay, what is the relationship between the past and the present? How is the past alive today, and how is the present novelist remaking it a bit? 

Zach Fine  01:15

Yeah, I think it's going to be a really, really great series. And the idea is that every month we'll bring on a different contemporary novelist to talk about one of their favorite novels. So we'll have Clare Sestanovich talking about Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, for instance. We'll have Adam Ehrlich Sachs on Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet. So it's going to be a chance for us to read through a lot of novels from the past that maybe, you know, you're familiar with some of which and others will be new to you. Today we're going to be talking with Lillian Fishman, whose first novel was Acts of Service, published in 2022 by Hogarth Press. She had a monthly advice column about sex and love for The Point called "Higher Gossip," which finished last year. And we'll link to it in the show notes. And I think it really was one of the kind of big highlights of The Point's online offerings last year, and really an exceptional series. So today we're going to talk to Lillian about The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, which I think now is officially one of my favorite novels of all time, but I'd never actually read it before. But Jess, I think you're familiar with Wharton's work, right?

Jessica Swoboda  02:19

Yes, and she's also one of my favorite novelists, and Age of Innocence, is one of my favorite novels. I actually taught the novel maybe back in 2021, 2022 in an English elective at UVA. My students love the novel as well. So it seems to be a hit with multiple generations. 

Zach Fine  02:39

Great. So we have Jess, who's gonna be our Wharton veteran on site here for the episode, and me, who knows very little about Wharton, has never read The Age of Innocence before. And we'll have Lillian to help us kind of steer through Wharton's one of her masterpieces. So we're really excited to share this with you all and hope you enjoyed the episode.

Jessica Swoboda  03:01

We hope you'll enjoy this episode and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you have questions, comments or anything else, send an email to selectednovels@thepointmag.com We'd love to hear from you. And also be sure to subscribe to The Point, the magazine that brings you content like this podcast. You can find a 50% off discount code exclusive to listeners in the Episode Notes. I was so excited when you picked Age of Innocence, because I taught this novel before, and my students loved it. They were all about it. 

Lillian Fishman  03:40

I bet you know it much better than I do having taught it, that's a real intimacy. 

Jessica Swoboda  03:45

I think that's being generous. It was for it was an English elective I was teaching when I was a grad student, and just not the same level as if it would be a grad course or something. So I wouldn't, wouldn't say that. 

Lillian Fishman  03:58

Yeah, well, I'm excited to hear your takes.

Zach Fine  04:01

Yeah, well, I'm actually curious, when did you when did you first come to The Age of Innocence? When did you read it first?

Lillian Fishman  04:05

I think I was probably 20 or 21. I didn't read it in high school, and I don't think I read it as part of any curriculum in college, either. But I remember that when I was trying to write my first novel, which was before I wrote Acts of Service, when I was like 20 or 21, I was obsessed with the structure of Age of Innocence as like a set of structural ideas, which I'm sure we'll talk about. It could be used to structure a contemporary novel, or to think about how to write a novel that was set in a contemporary place. And I didn't figure it out, like I never wrote anything that I think of as being structured along the same lines. But I remember when I must have first read it around then, around 20 or 21. 

Zach Fine  04:50

And when you were looking at the structure, were you like diagramming it out? Did you have like, cork boards on your wall with, you know, like, lots of lines? 

Lillian Fishman  04:57
Yep. Yeah. I had a notebook. Where I would like, take apart each chapter and diagram what I thought was so successful about it, but I think actually, I mean, I do think it's structurally perfect, but I think my interest in this structure was sort of misplaced. You know, I don't really think, as a writer anymore, that you can, like, get anywhere by modeling a structure, or I can't get anywhere by modeling a structure like that anymore. And so I think what I was really interested in was the thematic structure. But that's a much harder thing to pin down or like. It takes a lot longer to understand how a thematic structure is working, and it's it doesn't feel as a bubble in the same way, or it was more elusive to me. I didn't know how to, like think about how I could steal it, but somehow, unknowingly, I feel like the reason that it resonated with me so much is that, like not stealing it, but like everything I do, is sort of like the same thematic structure to me as this. This is like, sort of like the archetypal thematic structure of a novel about, like, grappling with social mores in your time. So, yeah.

Jessica Swoboda  06:11

Yeah. Wait. Can you say more about the thematic structure that you see? That's so interesting to me. Because when I read this novel, and I think this is maybe the third time that I've read it, structure is not something I'm I've thought of. And so when you're framing it this way, and like, oh, wait, I have I been misreading this or misunderstanding it. 

Lillian Fishman  06:28

I think I might just be using structure to mean, like, a mode of thinking or a type of attention that I'm paying. Like I was when I first read this book thinking literally about chapter structure. But I'm not thinking about that anymore. Like, I don't even remember what I thought about the chapter structure, aside from the fact that, like, right, it's a perfect, like, affair novel, in a sense, right? Like, there's the structure of the chapters means that there's a lot of suspense about what the relationship with May signifies, what the relationship with Ellen signifies, and, like, what's going to happen in Newland's life, who he's going to choose and who's going to—you know, there's a lot of logistical suspense, but that's not the part of the structure that I'm interested in. Sorry, I'm rambling about this.

Zach Fine  07:12

You said it was a novel about social mores. Could you say a little bit more? Just like how you would sketch out the plot of the novel for somebody who hasn't read it, like, what it, you know, just in broad strokes, like what it's a novel about?

Lillian Fishman  07:23

Yes, and then I want your gloss on that too, Jess, because I'm sure I'm different, but yeah, so I'm a huge fan of Wharton, who, of course, was herself like a very upper class New York citizen, and wrote this novel as, like a historical novel, right? The novel was set in the New York of her childhood, like fifty years before she wrote it in, like a real Gilded Age setting. And I think that retrospect, like the fact that it is written with such distance, but also distance toward a time when she was alive and like, was living in these social rhythms in this class is, is really the heart of it, and the heart of what I admire about it, and and think makes it an amazing idea of a novel, or archetype of a novel. But it's set in the 1870s and the hero of the novel is Newland Archer, who is like my ultimate hero of a novel. I think he's a controversial and conflicted character, but I've always strongly identified with him and felt an enormous amount of sympathy and admiration for him. He's a young, not particularly driven man from an upper-class family. He has a career as a lawyer, but in this era, in an upper-class family in New York, your career is sort of symbolic. So like, he's a lawyer, and his grandfather was a lawyer, but it's not like he's really a lawyer. I mean, he's a lawyer, but it's not so important. It's not really what the book's about. His being a lawyer is important, relevant, but it's, it's side long, and when we enter the novel, he's about to become engaged to a very young woman in his social class whose name is May. And it's really an ideal engagement for him that he has all sorts of, I think, very socially satisfied fantasies about. I think it's an easy parallel to like, how in more conservative societies now in America, and maybe not just more conservative ones, right? There's real fantasy that young women have about getting engaged and getting married to the right type of man. I think Newland really has that exact flavor of fantasy about May, who he doesn't know very well, but he knows that she's very well bred, and has an innocence that I think we're going to read the quote about this, but has an innocence that he imagines his wife is supposed to have. You know, he's supposed to be older and more experienced than the woman he marries, which he is. 

An important thing in Newland's background is that he's had this affair with an older married woman that ended in grief, not in death, but just heartbreak. And the sort of thing that immediately troubles his engagement to May is that her cousin, Ellen Olenska, arrives from Europe, and Ellen is sort of like, I mean, she's a she's a problem and also a fascination, right? She's someone who's from May's New York family, but she was raised in Europe, and she's been married to this Polish count who's sort of like a good for nothing, like he was rich, but the rumors are that he treated her badly, and she's left him, and so having this semi-disgraced European countess suddenly be a member of the family that Newland is marrying into is very stressful for both him and May. So I think, you know, the qualities that that create an immediate plot problem in the novel when we enter it are, are, in fact, qualities that, like, it turns out, are not—I mean, they're a different kind of problem for Newland. They are a problem, for Newland. They are a problem, but they're like a problem of compulsion, where Ellen's presence starts to make him realize that he, in fact, isn't so interested in innocence and etiquette in the way that he imagines he was interested in it, and therefore he's less interested in May than he imagined he was. But he's also—and this is why I feel so much sympathy for and affection for Newland—he really cares about being a member of his world, and not a judgmental member of it, and not a rebellious member of it, and not a member of it that reflects judgment back at the people that he respects and has grown up with, but a member that expresses the values he was raised with with some kind of nobility, even though he recognizes that they're corrupt values, or they're inadequate values, like he has a real suspicion, even from the beginning, even before his engagement, right, there's in the first chapter, he feels a sort of distance from, or sort of superiority, to the men that he grew up around, his social peers, that he's like, a little ashamed of his superiority because he really believes in the society, and he wants to belong to it, and he wants to participate in it. And I think that that challenge that he is faced with, which Ellen represents, which is like, how can he tolerate being a member of a world that he's become totally disillusioned with, but he still wants to participate in and doesn't want to be outcast from? Right? I think that that's the essential crux of the book, and I think an essential crux of all contemporary literature. That's not true. The literatures I care about most, maybe. Yeah.

Jessica Swoboda  13:03

Well, even as you were talking and describing Newland, Ellen and May, I was thinking of Nathan, Eve, and Olivia and the connections in terms of characteristics and personalities, and they're the way you describe them in the novel. And I'm wondering if there's any conscious connection between the three main ones in each novel.

Lillian Fishman  13:23

You know, I've never, I've never thought of that before, but I'm sure there's a lot of unconscious connection. I mean, yeah, no, there was no conscious connection. I think what it is is that when I read Age of Innocence, this was long before I wrote Acts of Service, but I already felt a sort of kinship with Newland as a character and this question that he faces, which is that he feels that his values are at odds with what's expected of him, but in the end, he's really committed to embodying that expectation. I mean, he's not—he tries to escape it. But I think he does express the values of his society, even though he's conflicted about them. And I think that is certainly exactly true of Eve in Acts of Service. Like she's very conflicted about the values that she's been raised with or inculcated with, but she also really wants to participate in them and express them. And there's a very deep social satisfaction and even personal satisfaction that comes from knowing that she's expressing something that she's learned is valuable. And there's that splitting of the self that I think Newland really has. And I wasn't thinking of Age of Innocence at all when I wrote the book, but I think that there's just, that's just the center of my interest in general, and so it's not really a surprise. 

Zach Fine  14:45

Yeah, you describe Newland as one of the ultimate heroes. And it reminds me, there's this quote in a Janet Malcolm piece about Wharton, where she says that Newland is the ultimate heroine, and that he's like an unmanned man. And I don't know exactly exactly what she means by that. Like, can you like, how do you read that?

Lillian Fishman  15:03

God, I've never read that, but she's a genius. I think that's so true. Like, there's something about, you know, in this novel Newland has to be a man. Because part of what is so devastating, I think about the plot of Age of Innocence is that he is, in fact, meant to be in control, he understands himself to be in a position of control. And therefore, you know, the the meat and the harrowing confusion of the book is his internal confusion, and not actually him fighting an impossible situation, right? Whereas, for someone like, if this book was told from the perspective of May, it's like her, the tragedy of the book would be that she can see that her fiance isn't in love with her, but she still needs to marry him, and so she goes through this, in fact, sort of quite manipulative process of trying to make sure that he stays with her, and that he doesn't leave her for his cousin, and that he's going to be a good husband, and she gets pregnant so that she can maintain his loyalty, because she knows that that's an important route. And there would be a very interesting, important psychological problem in a novel that followed May, but she wouldn't be fighting with herself. She'd be fighting with the structure that she's living in and and that's, of course, its own type of heroism, but it's just not as interesting to me. Like, I'm not really interested in stories about people who are victims of their circumstances purely, which is what a lot of novels about women in these periods are, um, and Newland, right is like he is a victim of his circumstances, in the sense that we all are, but it's like an internal victimhood, right? Like he can at any point decide to call off this engagement and and say, I'm gonna run away with Ellen. And, you know, I think the only reason that doesn't happen is because Ellen also lives in a society, and she resists that idea, but also he doesn't even have the opportunity to really figure out whether he would make such a socially alienating decision, because she doesn't allow him to actually be faced with the responsibility of the decision. You know, she refuses it. Again but like, I think there is something, I mean, it's not, I guess, what makes him sort of a heroine, is that his crisis is very romantic, and usually like the tearing in his loyalty and love that he feels is usually a woman's tearing of loyalty. Historically in literature, like it's he feels sort of like an Anna Karenina type of crisis coming on. But the reason that this book is so much less strictly tragic than Anna Karenina is because he's a man, and so everything is blunted by the fact that he can, in fact, just relax into his role if he accepts it, and he won't be a true prisoner of his circumstances in the way that someone like May is. But it's very subtle. I don't know.

Jessica Swoboda  18:21

A lot of what you were just saying comes out in the passage you selected. So why don't we read that now?

Lillian Fishman  18:28

Yeah, it was so hard to choose a passage, and that's how you know a book's really well plotted—like, she doesn't just, like, give you one passage, you know, um, okay, let's read it. So when I'm speaking, it's just "he," but "he" is Newland. 

Jessica Swoboda  18:41

Great. 

Lillian Fishman  18:42

"He did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a simpleton. He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to develop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own with the most popular married women of the "younger set," in which it was the recognized custom to attract masculine homage while playfully discouraging it. If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity (as he sometimes nearly did) he would have found there the wish that his wife should be as worldly-wise and as eager to please as the married lady whose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years; without, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred that unhappy being's life, and had disarranged his own plans for a whole winter. 

How this miracle of fire and ice was to be created and to sustain itself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out; but he was content to hold his view without analyzing it, since he knew it was that of all the carefully-brushed, white-waistcoated, button-hole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club box, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and turned their opera glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product of the system. In matters intellectual and artistic Newland Archer felt himself distinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old New York gentility; he had probably read more, thought more, and even seen a good deal more of the world, than any other man of the number. Singly they betrayed their inferiority; but grouped together they represented "New York," and the habit of masculine solidarity made him accept their doctrine on all the issues called moral. He instinctively felt that in this respect, it would be troublesome—and also rather bad form—to strike out for himself."

Jessica Swoboda  20:23

I hadn't noticed until you're reading it out loud, which is a random thing for me to notice based on what I'm about to say, and it's the parentheticals are doing so much work. And I wish our listeners could see these parentheticals, but it's just both, at the same time, praising Newland and also jabbing at him as well, and like, kind of poking fun at him. And I just, I think this is something Wharton's so good at doing. 

Lillian Fishman  20:46

Yeah, he feels so young and ignorant and casually privileged, and a little bit taken down a peg, in these pieces by her. But I also think, I think actually what she respects, what you can feel that what she respects most about him is that reluctance to set himself apart, like she's like his his arrogance, is sort of like we feel disparaging toward it, and she feels disparaging toward it. But in fact, this  desire to accept the doctrine of these men who, in fact, he thinks are inferior is very charming and sympathetic. I think like that, he doesn't want to be set apart. I think that's very lovable, and you can feel at the end that she's sort of like, I don't know that there's a um, like, appreciation, almost, the way you appreciate something childish, like she's patting him on the head, and being like, You're being a good participant.

Jessica Swoboda  21:44

There's also, like, the idea of fire and ice, "the miracle of Ice and fire was to be created." And I feel like throughout this whole novel, there's this tension, but yet, connection between these things that shouldn't be going together, that don't mix well.

Zach Fine  21:59

Who's fire and who's ice? 

Jessica Swoboda  22:00

Yeah, who is fire and who is ice?

Lillian Fishman  22:04

Well, you know, I think that there is a really, a beautiful comment in this book about the fact that the sexual and romantic ideal is someone who has a fire of passion, but, but the sort of ice of innocence, right? Like, that's, that's sort of like, do you know what I'm saying? Like, I think what he ascribes fire to is, like, this married woman who was so in love with him and was so, like, overwhelming in her passion that, you know, she just arranged his plans for a whole winter. And then, like, also, when he starts to appreciate Ellen more like she has more of a fieriness than someone like May, because she has a little bit of experience of life and a little bit of sexual experience. She's like someone who is working not only off of training, but off of like learned instinct a little bit. And I think that what's meant as like ice, what she means by ice is like this sort of cool, considered, careful facade that, like these young women who don't have any experience, but are engaged for the first time, are like trained to use and trained to think about as the basis of their behavior like this, sort of, like acquiescence that's very mild and implies a sort of understanding that isn't there. And I think even it's not as though he wants one or the other, right, like, I think there is, like an attraction to innocence that's genuine and and in fact, even though Ellen is so experienced, there's like, an innocence of need and an innocence of her being unloved and being alone that he, like, wants to fill as a hero. Like, it's not only that he's attracted to the fact that she's older and that she's worldly, but also that, like, she doesn't have the safety and support that someone like May has. She's sort of out in the cold, and he has something very masculine to offer her in a different way than he has something very masculine to offer May, who's very well kept and very tended to but also very childish.

Zach Fine  24:18

Can I ask, do you think that Ellen, over the course of the novel, becomes a fully realized character? Like, do you feel like she really is sufficiently three-dimensional by the end? Like, I know we have her like, with her fan of eagle feathers and her monkey fur muff, and her house with all the paintings and the exotic flowers and everything, and it's like all these things, all these details that kind of filter in. For me, reading it for the first time, by the end, I wasn't really sure that I had a good grip of her in many ways, like she seemed a little elusive to me.

Lillian Fishman  24:51

No, I mean, I think the only fully realized character in the book is Newland. And I think, like May is quite you know, also a symbolic character. And I think Ellen is also completely a symbolic character. And I think, you know, for me, like this is a love story, of course, but it's not a great love story about love at all. It's a love story that serves as a vessel for a symbolic question about living with your values or with your society. Like, that's what I think, that that's really and so the fact that these are symbolic characters, I agree. Like, I don't think that Ellen is like a real woman, like she's like a Manic Pixie Dream Girl of the 1870s you know, like she's very like, gives her all the qualities that we could conceivably imagine are both, like, tasteless in this society and like erotically appealing, right? Like that combo of things that a young woman with taste would never choose, but are also exotic or seem to speak of womanhood. You know, I don't really believe in her, and I also don't really think that they would have a loving relationship. It's not about that. She symbolizes his disillusionment with the life that's been laid out for him. And that's very compelling and very tragic to me, regardless of her importance as an actual person that he knows.

Zach Fine  26:23

And you think Wharton makes her assemble, or like we're seeing the world through Newland Archer's tendency to fantasize and render everything two-dimensional. You know the fact that he chooses not to go in at the end of the novel and continue the fantasy, like is her two dimensionality an artistic choice that Wharton makes, or one that we're experiencing through Archer?

Lillian Fishman  26:45

I read it as like, this is obviously what Wharton means the novel to be about. I don't think I'm projecting something onto it. And I think the reason is that the coda of the book right, which is we zoom 25 years, 26 years into the future, since he's last seen Ellen and May is now dead, and Newland has a adult son who's engaged to be married, and they go to Europe. And of course, it's like an open secret that he had this care for Ellen, right? Like his son knows about it. His son invokes it and is like, don't you want to see this woman who everyone knows you had this passion for, who's also like a member of our family? Because this is an era in which that's a normal combination, and in part, that ending is about him as a fantasist, right? Because he doesn't go up to see her in reality. But I actually think there's so many things about that ending that are meant to convey how much Newland was living on the cusp of a change in era and a change in social mores. And 25 years later, for his son, those social mores basically don't exist in the same way, like his son is not subject to the same ideas about taste and same ideas about marriage that he was subject to, and he was, as is often true of many of us, right? This is, of course, something that we can all sense, and not everyone is conscious of it, but a lot of people are conscious of it, right? Like his sense of conflict about the tightness of the structures that he was living in was an intuition about how tight they had become, that they were too tight for everyone, right? And that, like, there was about to be a cultural shift, which, of course, continues and escalates and escalates in the next 100 years. But like, even in 25 years, there's a huge shift. And one of the ways that we're supposed to see that symbolized is that the person that his son is engaged to is the daughter of this couple that, in the course of the novel in the 1870s are totally disgraced. When he's young, this is a family that he would never dream of marrying into. They're a family that are new money. They disgrace themselves financially. They're an object of derision. The place that they're gonna have in the world that Newland lives in is very precarious because they've bought their way into it. But they're also like, not really accepted. Like Newland's from the type of old money family, traditional New York family that would never allow himself to be engaged to a daughter from this family and his son is, like, very proud to be engaged to this girl, right? And so you can see that there's already a real shift in what's permitted. And so even though Newland is totally a fantasist, and that's why he doesn't want to go into a new reality with an older Ellen in a world where they're both free spirits, or whatever, freed from their existing relationships in the existing diagram of how they knew each other. Like, I think the reason is because the thing that she symbolizes is no longer relevant. And so I do think that ending, I mean, you could interpret it either way, that it's about Newland being a fantasist, that it's about these characters as symbolic of a social structure that is, like, ready to be dissembled. But like, I think, the fact that it ends on this, that she goes so far forward in time, and that things are so different in that future. Like, not only has have things really changed for his son, and what's available to him in his relationships is not to us so different, but to him so different. Also, it's so casual and not scary to his son to know that he had this passion for this woman, like his son doesn't consider this some shameful thing that no one should know about, right? He's like, yeah you can go and see her. Yeah, there's no transgression anymore. And, and that's quite heartbreaking for Newland, because he was, in a way, born in the wrong time, like, as we would say now, you know, like he was born 25 years too early for for himself, and that's, that's what's so tragic about the book. And I do think that's what she intends. I do think these characters are symbols of an internal conflict about, like, what's the best way to live? Yeah, yeah.

Jessica Swoboda  31:18

You've totally changed my mind about Newland as you've been talking because I read this novel, and I'm like, you're annoying. I can't stand you. I don't want to have to read more about you. My students, even they're like, I think May is the real winner of the novel, because she secretly knows everything that's going on and still is able to keep up appearances. And I think that's arguable, but yeah, you're really making me look at him more favorably and have more sympathy for him. 

Lillian Fishman  31:45

What you just said is so rich. Let's roll the tape back. I'm sorry. Your students think that the winner of the novel is May, because she knows everything that's going on and she still keeps up appearances. Are they living in the 1870s? Is that what winning is, is winning knowing everything that's going on and keeping up appearances. What? 

Jessica Swoboda  32:07

Right? Right? 

Lillian Fishman  32:08

That's what. That's what your undergraduate, or the undergraduates, yeah,

Jessica Swoboda  32:11

Well, that was one of the comments that they made. Because I'm like, okay, who, where, where are we what are we supposed to do with these characters? Where? Where are we going with them? What are we supposed to make of them at the end of this novel? And they, a lot of them, were impressed by May, in some regards, because she knows the situation with Ellen, she's working behind the scenes to make sure that Newland and Ellen actually don't get to spend time together, that she sends her off before they can that she tells her she's pregnant before she tells Newland all of this. And they're like, She's the smartest and she's, yeah, she's the one who wins at the end of all of this. 

Zach Fine  32:51

That's wild, wow. 

Jessica Swoboda  32:52

And I'll always say, well, she died early as well. So I'm like, Let's make something of that.

Lillian Fishman  32:57

I even really want to interrupt that, like, no, no, please not her dying or, like, the reason that she's not the winner of the situation is because she's living in a totally stultified, coddled way, in a totally restricted way, like, I'm sorry, she's a total prisoner of a situation which she is intelligent enough to make the most of. But like all the characters in this novel are total miserable prisoners of the situation that they're in, the situation of this social structure, which Wharton is lampooning, right? And so, like the idea that May, I'm really shocked by this, but I'm just gonna take this in. I mean, I guess this is like an ideal now, like a woman who somehow, secretly, connives to have things go her way. I guess this is an ideal we have. That might be the attraction there.  Yeah, like, I agree that Newland is heavily confused and badly behaved for almost the whole novel, like he's not and nearly as intelligent as he thinks he is, and he doesn't have a coherence of purpose, right? He's very torn. He's very torn the whole time. But that's what a moral hero is. I mean, the reason that he's the winner of the novel is that he becomes self aware and goes through a process of grappling with himself and his society, which is not what May is doing. I mean, I guess May is happier than him, but who wants to be May?

Jessica Swoboda  34:34

Right. And I would challenge them in this regard. But you see the society in which May is living in. So you would be quite happy here in her situation, as long as you knew everything that was going on. And I think that was cause for debate, and it causes, especially the women in the class, to pause. I'm like, wait, I don't want to live in that type of world. And I said, but yes, but choosing May as the winner, as the one who comes out on top at the end of this, is inherently saying, yes, living in this type of system that May is living in is totally fine and totally acceptable, and you'd be totally game to be there in the 1870s

Lillian Fishman  35:12

Yeah. I mean—

Zach Fine  35:14

Wait, I'm interested by the word you used, connive. Would you describe what May is doing? Is it conniving? Or is it like she's just her instincts are kicking in? I guess I, reading it for the first time, I didn't—the first word I came away with wasn't like, she's conniving, she's operating behind the scenes, you know.

Lillian Fishman  35:32

She's not conniving, although I think maybe the lcontemporary figure that she's resonating with, for a young reader now, is like a conniving woman, I don't know, okay, like a woman, like a woman who's powerful and intuitive enough. Nothing gets by her. She can manipulate things to go her way from behind the scenes. I do think that's like something we have in drama now that May's behavior in this book taps into in a way.

Zach Fine  36:04

So it is manipulatory. I think that's what I was trying to figure out. Like she's actively, you know, playing with the gears to, like, orchestrate a situation. 

Lillian Fishman  36:12

I think she is.

Jessica Swoboda  36:13

I think she is too, yeah.

Lillian Fishman  36:15

I think, because I do think the implication is that she knows about the relationship between Newland and Ellen, and she organizes her pregnancy and how she reveals it in order to ensure that he's loyal to her. And I don't have any antipathy. I think that May is like a completely—I mean, I don't know how to, like, I don't think that May is a villain in the novel. I think the idea, you know, and I think this is sort of the arc of understanding about May, that Newland goes through in the novel is that, early on, he believes that she's totally ignorant and innocent, and that she only has the knowledge and capacities that have been implanted in her to make her a good wife, and that she wouldn't know anything that he doesn't tell her. And I think he starts to understand over the course of the novel that in fact, she has an intuitive capacity, and the training that she's gotten is not to not be able to intuit things, but to be very careful in what she expresses. And so he starts to realize that, she can sense when he's not in love with her. She can sense when he's distracted or disinterested in her, but she's never going to respond in a negative or beseeching way to that intuition. Right? She's going to behave correctly by responding to that intuition as though nothing is going on. But he knows, and we know that she, in fact, has that intuition, and in private, without revealing that she's trying to act based on this intuition, she does have it, and she can and what she does with that information is that she tells her cousin, who she knows Newland is in love with, that she's pregnant, so that her cousin will exit the theater of the marriage. And it's not in any way like I think it's completely justified in that May is a completely sympathetic character, but I do think there's a consciousness and an intentionality, like she does manipulate the situation so that her husband won't leave her. Now I think we're supposed to understand, in the context of the novel that Newland was never going to leave her anyway. I don't think he's going to leave her anyway. He's not the type of character who would leave her and the reason that he's a tragic hero is because he's in a situation once he encounters Ellen where nothing is going to work for him. Staying in the society, having had this revelation that in fact, his marriage is not the one that is going to make him perfectly happy as he imagined it would, is not going to work for him. Leaving May and running away with Ellen would be horrible for him. He's so invested in his community life. He's so invested in the mores he grew up with. He's so invested in his family's respect, there's no world in which that would make him happy. So he's he's totally trapped.

Zach Fine  39:08

Wharton's just dangling that possibility the entire novel, but early on that it's not going to happen. 

Lillian Fishman  39:14

I think so. I think so. And, you know, I think it's to create a real plot suspense, which she does masterfully, like she's dragging us through crises and choices that feel very high stakes and feel very suspenseful in the story of Newland's love, and they are. But of course, we know he and Ellen aren't going to end up together, and the we know the whole time, him and Ellen aren't going to end up together, the novel can't end like that, and so either it's going to end with one of them dying, or it's going to end with him living unhappily in his marriage. And I think that's sort of one of the ways that you know that it's a symbolic story, more than it's like a character-driven story. I think if it were really a character-driven story, we would be on the edge of our seats about whether him and Ellen were actually going to end up together. 

Zach Fine  40:08

I'm curious about the you know, you call him a tragic hero. And reading this novel, it was so—I've never done this before. I was reading your novel and Age of Innocence, like shuttling between them. So I'd read a few paragraphs of one and then, and then I read a couple chapters of the other. And so I know that they're not, you know, yoked together, necessarily, character by character when you were, you know, as you were writing it. But how would you describe Eve, like, as in the kind of hero scheme of things? Like, is she compared to Newland Archer? Just as a contrast, what does Eve become that Newland Archer isn't?

Lillian Fishman  40:45

You know, I think the big difference, I mean, listen, let's, let's start with, there are a lot of differences between my book and The Age of Innocence.

Zach Fine  40:55

Except they're both set in New York. Importantly, both set New York and New York novels. 

Lillian Fishman  40:58

A lot, a lot of differences. And you know, I hope one day to write something that can live in the shadow of Edith Wharton. But I do think the the main difference in the whole situation, or one of the fundamental differences to me that makes it so hard to even think of these things in the same scheme, right, is that Eve and we live in a world that, at least to our understanding based on history, although probably not based on the future, which is unknowable to us, but basically, Eve and we live in a much freer set of circumstances sexually and romantically than Newland does, and so the crisis that Eve is facing about whether to conform with the ideas about sexuality and selfhood that she's been inculcated with as a woman, or to live according to a set of chosen political values that she's been educated in ideologically as an adult. Right? This crisis that she's facing is comparably completely trivial and not at all like, you know, actual crisis about how to structure one's life. It's almost invisible to the eyes of other people as Newland's crisis is not you know, the judgment that she imagines is infecting and informing her life and her choices is, in fact, mostly projected. Right? She doesn't at all live in a society in which people are walking around her, watching her relationships and being like, well, your life's over if you choose that one, like, you

Zach Fine  42:48

Can't bring the carriage to that person's house. 

Lillian Fishman  42:50

She lives in a much less restricted world, as we all do, although, you know, I do think it's worth saying, and I do believe this pretty deeply, that I think that at the time that Newland is growing up, he probably conceives of his world as much freer than the world that his parents grew up in. And I think that when our children grow up will be like, amazed at the strictness with which we lived, you know, like, it does seem to us that we live, it seems to me right now that Eve lives in such a freer world than Newland. But, like, how free is it? You know, not so free. Really. We just—

Zach Fine  43:32

You don't think our kids are gonna look back and say, like, what was a polycule? Like, they're gonna, they're not gonna try to figure out, like, what our kind of sexually liberated moment—you think, you think it'll just, it's always gonna tend towards, like, more and more kind of progressive and loose—

Lillian Fishman  43:48

Well, what's complicated is that there's so many splits socially, right? Like, on the one hand, I was at a party recently that was thrown by my girlfriend's mother, and so most people at the party were in their seventies, and all of these men in their seventies were all drunk, so they were, like, really expressive, and they were like, You kids are so conservative, you, you know, in the Seventies, everything was available to you, and you threw it away, and now all you want is to, like, get married, you know, like she was so like, like, these men really couldn't believe that their children, even their children who are gay, had chosen to live in this regressive way, right? And at this. And of course, I had a lot of responses to this, obviously, but I and I think, like, that's one way of reading. Like, my parents also grew up in a very hippie, radical subculture. They aren't married. They certainly have, like, an anti-conservative orientation toward relationships. And so, like, I do think that even my parents conceive of the world of relationships that I live in as regressive, but I also think it's really split, right? Certainly many of the parents of people that I know who are my age were living in a totally opposite world, which was much more conservative than the world that we live in. And there these splits just continue, right, like to me, I think that we're so much freer than my parents were in the Seventies, when in order to be so free, they were living in a really consciously anti-authoritarian way which was at odds with the mainstream culture, even though it was gaining traction. And like, I don't really conceive of myself as living in a subculture that's at odds with the mainstream, even though I have a much freer life than they do. But like, it's hard to say what direction it's going in. And I think that people conceive of it very differently. Like, it could certainly be the case that our children are, like, what was a polycule and like, I mean, they will say that. But will it be because there's no such thing as a couple anymore, or because, like, the couple is so foundational that no one could possibly want to trouble it? Who can say, I mean,

Jessica Swoboda  46:04

I just want to turn to one passage in Acts of Service that kind of not haunted me, but followed me throughout my entire reading experience. And it was when Eve speaks about her primary fantasy that she has early on, and it says that "the primary fantasy that followed me everywhere was a vision in which I was naked, lined up in a row of twenty girls, one hundred girls, as many naked girls I would fit inside the room I was in the cafe the lobby of Romy's building. The subway car opposite the line of girls was a man who scrutinized us. I can't tell you what this man looked like. He was nondescript, symbolic. I would never actually fuck him. After about thirty seconds, he pointed, without equivocating, at me." And this whole idea of being selected, being chosen, follows her throughout. It's one of the impulses of the connection with Olivia Nathan's like they chose me out of all of these other pictures. And I'm just and again, sorry. We've been talking a lot about symbolic and I'm like, Oh, it shows up here as well in this passage. And I just was wondering if you can talk more about this primary fantasy and how it does kind of follow Eve throughout the novel, how it is present, and the relationship that she enters into with Olivia and Nathan. 

Lillian Fishman  47:24

Yeah, I mean, I think, first of all, I do think of my book as, like, primarily symbolic and the characters as primarily symbolic. 

Jessica Swoboda  47:31

Oh, good, because that was going to be. Another question is, is character-driven or symbolic driven? 

Lillian Fishman  47:35

Oh, to me, it's very symbolic, like I think Nathan especially is a total symbol in the way that Ellen is, is we've been talking about is sort of like, not a real like, he's not a real man. He's an idea of a man, I think, which is intentional. For me, it's not what everyone wants as a reader, but I care a lot about literature that sort of expresses on that level. You know, it's interesting that I started the conversation talking about how Newland has the attitude almost of like a girl in a conservative culture in America now, who just has a fantasy about getting married and getting engaged to the right kind of man. Like Newland has this fantasy about getting married and getting engaged to the right kind of woman. And for him, it's that he's attractive enough and from a good enough family that he can get the right kind of girl, like a girl who people really admire and is beautiful and innocent, right? Everybody has these ideas about themselves, like, what social success would look like, and often those ideals are at odds with what actual fulfillment would look like, as is certainly the case in Age of Innocence. But we still, if we have some self awareness, are aware of that ideal and contradiction. And I do think for Eve the ideal of social success that she has right, is not to like get engaged to the right type of man, but is to be like the ultimate woman to a certain type of man. There's a type of woman in mainstream American society, who is like, ultimately desired and Eve, who knows that she isn't fundamentally that type of woman, in a way because no one is, and that she doesn't live in a world that really consciously values that type of woman. She's still grown up in America watching this type of woman be admired and valued and harassed in all the media that she consumes, and she does have a real fantasy about the right kind of man, a man who's rich and successful and misguided, to look at her and say, Yeah, that's the one I want. That's. The perfect woman. And of course, for a lot of women, this is not their ideal of how to be a perfect woman, because it's sexual. And a lot of women are raised, of course, to want to be chosen in a non sexual way for some more class based, innocent reason. But not for Eve, right? She wants to fulfill this sexual ideal, but she's very ashamed about wanting to fulfill the sexual ideal because it's at odds with her social values, about what beauty is, what sexual value is, heterosexuality, all these things. And so she's really motivated by that desire to to be a symbol as well as to be a person. And, you know, she encounters Nathan as a symbol, and he encounters her as a symbol. And that's, I think, very fulfilling for both of them, even though we don't imagine that that should be so fulfilling, I think it can be.

Zach Fine  50:58

Is that, where you see the novel, like, Where does Eve end in the novel? Is that the the kind of that she's able to, you know, stay there with being a symbol, or is like, what's, what's the transformation that happens once we get to the end with her?

Lillian Fishman  51:13

No, I mean, I think it's exorcised in a way, you know, okay, like, I think

Zach Fine  51:19

exercise with an O like, it's like, released from her, or just like exercise like, she goes through the motions.

Lillian Fishman  51:25

And then I think, in a way, I think the distinction between our society and Newlands, one of many distinctions is that, like in our society, I think you can have a good life without caring so much about conforming to what you imagine are the cultural ideals that are haunting you, right? And there are exceptions to this, right, like, mostly that have to do with money. But like in this, in this sort of, like, romantic subject that we're talking about, right? Like, there isn't really a way for Newland to have a good life with, like, the type of woman that he wants. But like, for Eve, like, there are a lot of ways for her to structure her life that would be fulfilling. And so she has the opportunity to have this sort of experience where she receives an idea of herself as a symbol, and she can feel that she has this sort of successful relationship to mainstream sexuality, or she feels that she participated in it, and then she can stop. I think that is one of the great things about our society, and also one of the things that makes it very hard to write a meaningful novel in the society. You know, like we have a little too much freedom for the good of the novel as Vivian Gornick says, you know, we have a little too much freedom for the like. She doesn't say it that way, but like, you know, the fact that we have the opportunity to like change what kind of person we are and what kind of relationship we are over and over again, what we're in over and over again through the course of our lives, is like means that we don't quite have tragic heroes in the way that we had Newland once.

Jessica Swoboda  53:10

Do you think the contemporary novel is moving more in a direction of symbolic or character driven?

Lillian Fishman  53:17

I think it's more character-driven. I think people care more about individual character than they do about symbols or ideas now, and I care. I mean, I love the character driven novel, and I would love to be able to write one like, I love to read them, and I think they're very difficult to make and precious to read. So like, I don't this doesn't paint me at all. Like, I think this is a wonderful thing, but I think it has to do with the sort of much repeated idea that we have now, which I think is entirely true, that, like, we're much more interested in the individual than in the societal or the communal. Like, we're much more interested in individual experience than in, like, the evocation of a structure that we're all living in. Like, I don't think, I don't think a lot of people really think about themselves as living in a structure, the way that Newland, obviously, was brought up to think about himself as living in a structure. I very much think of myself as living in a structure. And like, that's sort of the way I've been trained to look at characters and people, but I think that that is, like, less prevalent now. What do you guys think?

Jessica Swoboda  54:33

that's a great question. Yeah, I I wrote a dissertation on characters. So I'm immediately saying character driven is where my inclination goes. Though, I think for for your novel, I became really attached to Eve. And so for me, it was still character focused, because that was what my where my kind of inclinations went, while also thinking, okay, what are  the structures in which Eve is operating. So for me, it's like, let me attach myself to a character and then think through the structures in which they are existing, and then reflect back on myself, to what extent are these, the structures in which I myself am also existing, sort of dynamic. 

Lillian Fishman  55:16

And I think that's the true situation, right? Is that, like, there's not a division between these things. There's an emphasis like Newland. Like, I was saying that I think Ellen and may are symbolic characters, and I do, but I think Newland, even though he represents a person struggling in this situation, is a very full character. Like, I really believe in Newland, and think that he's a complicated person who reflects us back to ourselves as well. I think you're completely right. It's not so divided in that way. But I think some novels have more of an interest in what they're symbolizing, and some novels are just a story about a character, for sure.

Jessica Swoboda  55:58

Oh absolutely, yeah, for sure.

Zach Fine  56:02

Lillian, before we go, can I just ask you quickly, you've been writing this column for The Point called "Higher Gossip," where you're, you know, we're taking in anonymous letters and, you know, giving people sex advice in many cases, or maybe we could frame it differently, but I'm curious how that's been for you. And like, did you know when you were writing your novel that, like, you would become this kind of authority on sex writing and issues around sex, like, what that experience has been like?

Lillian Fishman  56:30

No, and I also don't think I'm an authority at all. I think I'm really interested in—okay, I'll give you an example. Anytime my girlfriend makes any comment to me about romance, sex, anything, I'm immediately like, oh, did this person also do that? Where have you seen this before? Like, I immediately go into comparative framework of mind, and she's like, I'm talking about you. And I'm like, no, no, but I'm interested in, like, what pattern you've noticed with this quality. Because I think I'm just really interested in trends in the way we articulate and conceive of romance and sex. And I think, obviously these are ancient practices and structures, but that morph and morph and morph over time in very slow ways. But I think the way we talk about them, or conceive of ourselves in relation to them, is, like, hyper-specific to the moment in time, not hyper-specific to us as individuals, but like, hyper-specific to, like, this six-month season. 

Zach Fine  57:34

I think that's how that local, that that narrow in terms of the window of change and kind of cultural temperature, that it's like turning over that quickly.

Lillian Fishman  57:42

There's so—I don't mean that like ideas or conceptions of romance and sex come into being that quickly, but like, I think there are shifts at that scale, like the ideas right now that, like someone who's thirty years old, who's in the dating world is dealing with as the basis of their conception of sex and romance are ancient ideas, right? Like, we have centuries and centuries worth of ideas undergirding how, how a person, like, in my position, conceives of romance and sex. But like, I think that the way that person conceived of it a year ago is different, like, they would use different words and they would make different comparisons, and they have different points of reference in the culture, online or in television, for like, what the expression of their crisis is. And I'm just really interested in that, and so I've asked people to let me talk about it, but I don't know, to me, it's like, who wouldn't be interested in it, but that's not, that's not the situation so,

Zach Fine  58:46

but we love the column, and we know it's, it's a big hit. Everybody we talked to loves it, so it's, it's been a really great thing for you guys.

Lillian Fishman  58:52

Yeah, if you have any problems, send them your way. I'm on the lookout. Okay, okay, okay, great. No, that goes, that goes for you guys too.

Zach Fine  59:01

I've actually, it's tuned me differently when I'm like, a lot of your there's a scene in your novel, but also in your column where something happens at a party. And now that my parties, I'm always listening in the conversation, like, would there be anything that is I'm overhearing right now that would be like, we could send to Lillian. So I'm always like, trying to pick up.

Lillian Fishman  59:17

No, I mean, and you should, I think, I think you can pick up, you know, because a party is the place where people really, like, choose how they're gonna gloss what's happening to them. And it's not, not to an intimate friend, but like, they're like, Oh, here's how I'm gonna pitch this to a stranger. And it's very

Jessica Swoboda  59:34

rich. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Lillian, it's been really fun to talk with you about Wharton's novel and your novel.

Zach Fine  59:42

Yeah, thanks so much. 

Lillian Fishman  59:43

Thank you guys so much a pleasure. A pleasure.

Jessica Swoboda  59:49

Thanks everyone for joining us for this episode of Selected Novels. We'd like to thank John Trevaskis for editing the podcast and contributing the original music. As always, subscribe wherever you get your podcast, and please subscribe to The Point. There's a discount code for listeners in the show notes. If you have questions, comments or anything else, send an email to selectednovels@the pointmag.com We'd love to hear from you. Until next time, listeners.