Q&A With: CJ Hauser — The Magic Word

Mar 20

Mar 20 Q&A With: CJ Hauser

Bookseller Bex (they/them) sat down with author CJ Hauser (they/them), author of The Crane Wife to talk about cover art, writing fiction and nonfiction, and how our dreams can be a bit confusing!

Bex

So excited to talk to CJ Hauser: the one, the only, the amphibian. I thank you for being here. This is so exciting.

We did it. I'm so stoked.

Bex

Just a couple of they/thems talking away. It's gorgeous, it's wonderful. I was so excited when we did an event with you this past summer because it was the first time I realized that you were using they/them pronouns. I felt so affirmed in how much I loved your book because I was like, “oh, it's been trans this whole time!”

Just a couple of amphibious they/thems hanging out in the ether. That brings me so much joy! I feel like there's so much cute (painful and cute) backwards engineering that happens when you come out where it's like, “oh, all of these things that were definitely not queer before, but maybe were!” It's very validating. I love that you say that.

Bex

I'm so glad. My first question is the same, always, and it's an easy one. What are you reading right now?

Oh my God, I have just finished Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. I am absolute trash for Anthony Doerr. I can't believe I'm gonna say this: I thought that Anthony Doerr was for Boomer Dads. I really did. So for a long time, I didn't read it. And then I read All the Light We Cannot See last year and I cried forever.

Bex

Oh!

Cloud Cuckoo Land also made me cry forever. I think it's really beautiful and humane and I just love the characters. It's the sort of book where you just live inside it and can't wait to, like, crawl into bed and go back to it.

Bex

Oh, I love that. I've never read him. I have also been under the assumption that he is for Boomer Dads or even Boomer Moms. My mom loves All the Light We Cannot See. And I was like, “I'm too busy reading this experimental literature by this author whose name I'll never remember”.

This is exactly my story. I'm like, too busy. I just finished reading McKenzie Wark’s new memoir, Raving. It's so fucking good, so that was bringing me life. I was reading Megan Fernandes's poems that was giving me life. And so I'm like, “who am I?” My friend Isle and I call me a Doerr-head And I accept it: I am.

Bex

Ugh, yes. They're so good. Oh, I'm seeing Isle McElroy soon! We're in a new book club together so we're going to talk about Land of Milk and Honey from C. Pam Zhang. It's going to be great.

Yeah, ask them what they think about Doerr-heads.

Bex

I will. So exciting.

Back to what I said about queerness, my other question relates to that. One of the things that I've become really recently aware of, because I do it so much just in my own life, is looking back and being like, “oh, that was gay. That was a sign” or like, “that was queer” or like, “oh, that was like me wanting to be a writer”.

Yes!

Bex

Just, you know, anything I can attach a personality to, I will. I really love when I connect with a piece of art specifically on some really intimate level and then find out later that the author is queer or just queerer than we originally thought. Like Elif Batuman was the first person who came to mind because I really loved her debut, The Idiot. And then I was like, “I think there's some gay coding in here, but I'm just putting that out there because I want that to be true.” And then Either/Or came out and now Elif is like out and queer and it's lovely. And I was like, “oh my God, I was right. This is amazing”.

It's incredible, it's like we can spiritually clock each other very gently.

Bex

Mm-hmm. Exactly. And I really felt that with The Crane Wife, which, I mean, the titular essay is about a heterosexual relationship, but then even then, the way you're writing about it felt so queer to me and I can't say why. Then I discovered that you started publicly using they/them pronouns (so exciting, congratulations).

So this question isn't really about your coming out story, but I'm wondering, because this is a book, specifically the essay collection, of yearning and searching. I'm wondering how that yearning and searching has shifted alongside the furthering of your identity.

Oh wow, I love that question so much. Still yearning, still searching, but I think there's so many things that feel internally easier now. Writing a memoir sort of made me want to come out. I was working on the book and I was like, “I don't know. I'm not gay enough to take up gay space on the page”. And so I wasn’t going to write about that part of myself but then that created this logic puzzle where it felt really weird and gross to redact that whole part of myself. So then I was like, “well, will I take essays? Will I not take?” So I don't know. This navel gazing for forever obviously made decisions to write about queer life in the book in terms of dating queerly. So I took all of the stuff that made me think “oh, it doesn't really matter if I say this out loud in a book or on the internet because I can be loud about it in life with people and that's enough” and shared it. Then as soon as I did it, I was like, “oh, this is rad. I love this. I wanna be so publicly gay”.

Once you start speaking out loud like, “this is who I am. This is how I want to move through the world. This is what I believe in” all of a sudden there are more beautiful people who resonate with that who come into your life. Then it amplifies your beautiful queer life in all these ways. All these beautiful people who resonate with what you're saying about yourself and how you're moving through the world, which is then more visible, get to be part of your life and it feels so joyful. It feels like… relief is the word that comes to mind. I think the moment I started shifting to she/they and then like shifting to they/them all of a sudden I was like, “this feels incredible”. I'm so mad at myself for thinking it wasn't enough of an emergency, or something, for me to be able to say “this is who I am and this is what I want” because now that this weight is off of me, it's like, “actually this is a really big deal”. How am I yearning now because of that? Maybe I'm just yearning more specifically. All of the things that felt like I was trying to figure out if I was allowed to be them or say them or do them before have fallen away and I'm just yearning in the open plane out here.

Bex

Yeah. I feel like I was talking to my coworker, Camryn Garrett, who's also a writer, a really wonderful Young Adult writer, and she was talking about how coming out as queer. She was saying that sometimes we think it's not really going to change anything. We're pitched this idea that we're all still people, we're all the same. But because of the community, it changes so much.

It changes everything. It really does. And it's just made my life so much more fun and so much more joyful. Actually, here is how my yearning has changed to become like gayer: somehow every conversation I have with anyone these days winds up coming back to like, “so how will we collaboratively live in a house someday?”

Bex

Oh, yes.

I think that there's something about how queer culture these days, or maybe capitalism these days, where everything always spirals down to be like, “we need to all collaboratively live in a house and just take care of each other.”

Bex

Yeah, also how are we in this economy? You know, you can't afford a house without collaboratively living in one.

So it's both a fantasy and it's a smart move.

Bex

It is, yeah. Trying our best under capitalism.

Yup!

Bex

So, I'm curious. I love a cover story and your cover for the hardback had this beautiful violet cover and this person with a sweater coming over their head, which reminded me immediately of Nora Ephron. Then there was a cover change for the paperback, which is much more flowy and has a lot of circles. I'm wondering, do you have any nice stories about cover creation or being a part of picking the cover, or even just like the font or the colors? Or was that something you weren't privy to?

Cover stuff is so tricky. It's always a gamble. I was kind of braced for the standard issue baby trauma of it when they sent me covers for the book. My editor, who I adore, was like, “now, before you open the file…” And I was like, “oh God”. and she was like, “no, no. When I tell you I am sending you a cover that's kind of pink with a human being on it, you're not gonna be happy.” I was like, “damn right, I'm not gonna be happy”. And she was like, “but just look at it.” I opened it up and I was like, “you know what? I really love this. This is now Sweater Boy.” I love the vibe of it. I loved the art, yes.

The artist who did it went back and kept working on it after we chose it as the cover. And I was like, “no, no. Like it's perfect!” It's like the sketchiness of seeing her line and her art and the humor of that I fell in love with so much. This is probably evident from this book, but I love to be wrong. I'm so often wrong. I have such strong opinions. And I always think I know exactly who I am and what I want. And then like 10 minutes later, I'm like, “I really identify with Gene Belcher from Bob’s Burgers when he goes around shouting, ‘this is me now!!!’” And so I don't know, “mauve cover with a person on it. This is me now.”

Bex

This also reminds me, we were talking about this at work: there’s this trend right now in romance covers that are, like, heterosexual couples where the man on the cover actually just looks like a butch lesbian. There was one cover specifically yesterday where we got the book and I was like, “oh, my God, guys, look like a lesbian romance about these like two cowboys or like two cowgirls or whatever”. I was so excited and everyone was like, “that's a cis man who is not questioning his identity, but probably should be”. And now Sweater Boy is giving me that vibe, but in a way that is correct. It's not tricking us. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. It's not tricking us. Listen, I'm happy that butch aesthetics are being appreciated more widely. That's definitely a win and we will take it. Cowboys, cowgirls, cowpokes, I feel like the whole: cowpokes. I feel like The West is being claimed by queers and people of color in really interesting ways these days and I want someone who is smarter than me to figure out what's going on.

Bex

Yes, I need every time I have a thought that I want someone else to dig deeper into and like so I can know what I'm actually thinking. I'm like, where's Andrea Long Chu? Why hasn't she written about this yet?

There could just be like a comment box for writers being like, “Dear Melissa Febos, I need your thoughts on this.”

Bex

Yes. Oh, wow. Wouldn't that be nice? I love your thoughts in this collection so much. I know this is obviously not your only book. You have written fiction and nonfiction, what is that like? Especially because your fiction book, Family of Origin, in a very literal way is what brought about this book. The Paris Review essay, The Crane Wife that went viral, was able to come about because you went to go with this research crew to study birds for the fiction book you were writing.

Yeah, it was in a weird turn of events. When you go to school and you take classes and workshops in creative writing at an MFA program or when you go to a bookstore and you look at where things are shelved, they're shelved they’re organized by genre. So in my mind these were just totally different skills: writing fiction vs writing nonfiction. So I was like, “oh, yeah, I write novels. I like making things up. I like being weird. I like thinking about things that are not my own life.” Turns out a lot of very smart people have been writing nonfiction and do all of that really well using the same goddamn toolbox I've got over here in Nonfiction Land.

I fell into it backwards and have since started reading way more widely in contemporary nonfiction, which has been like such a joy in my life. I think it's one of those, my friend Alex, the writer Alex Marzano-Leznovich, always likes to be like “the root of gender and the root of genre are the same thing. And it's like, it's true. They're actually not that different.

Bex

It's just one letter off.

It's all of these genre distinctions and gender distinctions.

Bex

Yeah, wow. I love that description.

They are a wise one.

Bex

You do write a lot about fiction in here, not necessarily like book fiction, but in one of my favorites you wrote about Philadelphia, the movie. And I think it's both a good essay and I also think I just really love that movie. But you write about that, you write about The X-Files, The Fantasticks.

I'm wondering… I feel like sometimes it can almost be hard to write. I know that's not necessarily like ekphrastic because you're examining these things, but sometimes I feel like it can be hard to write criticism because sometimes like when I try to write it, I find it really indulgent. I'm like, “I just love this thing and I want everyone else to love this thing. And the thing is like, you know, Bruce Springsteen.”

What a good thing.

Bex

What a good thing, right? I don't have anything deep to say about Bruce Springsteen. Maybe someone else does, but I just have a great time.

How do you pick which topics are going to go into and criticize? I find art criticism to be kind of intimidating. I'm wondering how it fits so well into this collection of essays that are also acting as a memoir. How do you choose these things? How are you approaching these things that are making up parts of your life, but also talking about them from a critical, lovingly and intellectual lens?

I am very flattered by you calling it loving and intellectual, but I think it might also be fair to describe the way I'm approaching these things as just like a Subreddit of One: I am The Subreddit of One. I am obsessed. The people in my life have tired of me talking about these things. These are things that I really do! I'm like, “how much bandwidth do you have at the bar today for me to talk about what the X-Files means to me?” That's just who I am as a person. And then at a certain point, it's like, “okay, why is this important to me? Like, why do I keep talking about this?” Or like, “what is it that this show like helps me to communicate about myself?” Or sometimes it's something that I'm just really obsessed with that I'm borderline projecting onto the show. I don't think it's, I'm not making it up. It’s like I've gone rogue as a fan in my Subreddit of One and that's sort of the spirit of those essays.

I heard someone being grumpy about braided essays and like the popularity of the braided essay, blah blah, and I was like, “cool, fine, so you don't have to read anything, you don't want to, it's not homework.”

Bex

Yeah. Absolutely.

Can you talk a little bit about for the non-MFA students what a braided essay is?

Just to be clear, I did not know what a braided essay was until someone told me I had written one. A braided essay is basically when there are multiple threads of the piece and you sort of weave them together. So like I'm talking about whooping cranes, but I'm also talking about calling off my wedding and to do that together allows me to talk about sustainability and desires in a way that is much greater by putting them together in principle.

Bex

Oh!

If you're like a well-adjusted person, which, who knows what that is? I am not and was not. I just write about art. I write about the The X-Files. I write about whooping cranes. I write about these things because the idea of just writing about myself in a vacuum makes absolutely no sense to me in my brain. That's not how I feel as a person in the world.

I'm always pinging myself off of the things I love and that I'm obsessed with, whether it's like a hobby or it's art or it's a friend group or whatever. We're in relation to stuff and the planet and art and so at a certain point it's like, “is it a braided essay? Or is it art criticism? Or is it actually just a person talking back to the world and maybe it would be cool if nonfiction let the world in a little bit more?” That doesn't seem like a form to me. It seems like, I don't want to say like realism, but it seems like what the world is.

Bex

Yeah. We did the event for Nick Flynn's newest poetry book recently. And it was such a lovely event. Someone in the audience during the Q&A was like, “you know, I am a writer, but I just haven't had a lot of publishing and that kind of stuff. And sometimes it's hard for me to think of myself without wondering if I am interesting enough to actually be writing these things that other people want to read. How do you develop like ego and confidence to actually write about these things”’ And Nick was like, “I am not interesting. Just out the gate I am not interesting enough to be doing these things. Everything else is interesting and I can write about everything else. I inevitably end up in these pieces because I'm the one writing them, but the world is what's interesting.”

Ooh.

Bex

And I was like, “dang, that's such a good response.”

It totally is. Incredible. I love that so much. And to add onto that, too: when I think about talking with a friend about their life or even like a stranger about their life, I'm not thinking “are they interesting enough for me to listen to them? Or am I interesting enough for them to listen to me?” I'm like, “oh, look, another human soul.” The idea that we have to prove to ourselves that we are interesting or useful is a fraught way to think about personal narrative. We're just trying to communicate what's up over here on this end of the line.

Bex

Just what is up? What’s going on? Or just 4 Non Blonding it all day long?

I love that as a theory. The only true art theory is 4 Non Blonding it.

Bex

I remember I went to NYU and I was in a program that was very competitive, but everyone was just kind of like, a little bit boring, but we all thought we were hot shots. I remember there being so many of my people in my program, because it was just really filled with, you know, white men trying to be stand-up comedians. They were so interested in only being friends with other people they thought were interesting. Like, “oh, if you aren't interesting enough, you can't be friends with us.” I remember being both hating that and also being so jealous of who they thought were interesting. Then I grew up and was like, “wow, that's a horrible way to live.”

I'm so deeply disturbed by that. I think it's like a widespread cultural phenomenon. But, just to be clear, my friends are interesting as shit and I love them. They're fascinating, they're funny and they're cool, but like that's not why I love them or listen to them.

Bex

Yes! We can both be interesting and not need to be interesting. It’s not mutually exclusive.

Who decides what's interesting? For example, I am obsessed with Ross Gay writing about vegetables. I will listen to Ross Gay talk about his garden and his vegetables all day. Is that inherently interesting? Would most people find that interesting? Probably not. But he's so passionate about it. Whatever it is about the way he talks about this thing he loves, lights up something in me, and I'm like, “oh shit, now I'm so invested in how you harvested this garlic.” To be surprised by what interests us is pretty rad.

Bex

Absolutely. In your exploration of nonfiction, have you read Monsters, the Claire Dederer book?

Oh yes I have. I screamed about that book the whole time I read it. I loved it so much.

Bex

It was so good. I've been thinking a lot about that in terms of objectivity and subjectivity and when you said “something being interesting is so subjective.” It was one of those books that makes me love when someone can articulate something that I feel but haven't tried to articulate myself. She's so good at that.

Yes, she's so good at that. I am low-key obsessed with her. I read Love and Trouble last year and then was like, “where is the rest of the Dederer? Give it all to me now.” She's so good.

I think in a lot of my favorite nonfiction you really see the person's mental, spiritual, and emotional process of working through the things that they write about live on the page. Dederer is really generous and intimate with the way that she does that. That makes just about anything interesting to me.

I asked for podcast recommendations the other day and a friend asked me what kind of podcasts I like. And I was like, “you know, the kind where a fluke thing happens and the person gets sort of obsessed with it and then they spend three years reorganizing their entire life.” That's my favorite thing. It doesn't even matter what it's about. It's the fact that they got so into it.

Bex

That's incredible. I love that. I was gonna suggest you to listen to Normal Gossip because that's my version of me changing my whole life for this thing. Um, that's so good.

I feel like Dederer also has so much generosity in what she’s writing and how she's writing about it. I don't, I just, I, yeah, I had a deeper thought about that but I distracted myself by asking about Normal Gossip.

Hell yes. There's no wrong time to talk about Normal Gossip.

Dederer is so good at not letting herself off the hook. She doesn't let herself hover above the thing she's writing about. She gets down into it and she's like, “if this is what I'm understanding about art, about writing, about “monstrousness”, what does this mean about me? Why am I fascinated? How does it reflect back on me?” When I think about the willingness to turn the lens back, for it to be a circuit where the thing that you're writing about touches you and you touch it back (that sounds like very horny now that I'm saying it out loud) it has to happen. When a writer doesn't do that on the page, I feel sort of like, “get out of here. Get some skin in the game.”

Bex

That reminds me of what my question was going to be. You were talking about really loving to see the writer figuring it out as they write. That’s also like one of my favorite things: to watch a really good actor in a play and see them not know what they’re going to say until they say it out loud.

This almost living archive of Dederer’s journey, which I feel like you also have, particularly in the essays. I don't know if that's just a function of writing a memoir, because as soon as it's down in writing, it's going to change. As soon as it's here, the mirror is going to exist and reflect something else. Do you keep an archive of some sort of your writing or just things in your own life?

No, I am so bad at this. I want to be a person who keeps a journal. My whole life I've wanted to be a person who keeps a journal. So, you know, every year I really get a journal and I'm like, “this is my year.” And in the end I just am not interested enough in myself to keep an archive of this sort of thing. And so what I have instead is like a Pepe Silvia murder board journal that's just full of tiny notes and obsessions.

Bex

Oh my god.

It’s got recommendations for music to listen to or books to read or a funny expression someone will say. I keep those for a little while then eventually throw them away. I keep letters. I usually keep a couple letters from friends to remember the tenor of our correspondence from certain times. That's a thing that's archival but it's never about like, “oh, this big thing happened. What did we think about it?” It's more like, “aw, we were being cute and making jokes about animals. And like, here's what the vibe was. Here's the sticker that Bee sent me.”

Bex

Have you done The Artist’s Way?

I have not. Should I do The Artist’s Way?

Bex

That is, well, that's the only reason, not the only reason, but I was a very on and off journaler. I was very on and off in keeping a journal my entire life and The Artist’s Way had me journal in the morning, which I did it, but I didn't do the full thing, which I just, I didn't feel like making collages as often as what I was supposed to, which is fine. I still got a lot out of it.

How often are you supposed to make collages?

Bex

You know, I think probably only once or twice. But also my chapbook has, like, three or four collages so I don't know what I'm going on about. I'm not anti-collage. We love art!

The Artist’s Way has morning tasks. You write in the morning. The idea of doing something in the morning was so mind blowing to me. And then I realized that I have been a morning person my whole life. In high school I would go to bed at 9 PM and then wake up early to finish my homework, which is so wild. I don't go to bed at 9 PM anymore, but I'm back into being a morning person. And I feel a little blasphemous just in the world in general or a little witchy, you know, for liking the morning. My journals are not those of Susan Sontag or like Kafka. It’s a lot of meal planning to be honest. But it's so nice! Maybe The Artist’s Way will maybe help you get into journaling.

Oh, that's great. I like that. I am also a weird morning person. I have always been a weird morning person. I like to write in the morning, I like to read in the morning. Someone told me that it's actually just sort of in your body, your circadian rhythms, and that you can do a little bit to change them but some people just truly are night people and some people are morning people and you can't do shit about it.

Bex

I only write in the morning.

It's best to be able to sync all of your schedules such that you can do the things you wish to do at the time of day that is your best time. We should do it! I love the morning. No one can bother you in the morning. If you wake up early enough, and you do not have children, then no one can bother you. My brain isn't thinking about whether I'm able to sleep more. Not to sound selfish, but I'm not thinking of other people in the morning. I'm just sitting down to write. Luckily I'm able to do so. It's complete magic. I love it so much. I don't always get to do it, but when I do it's the best. I used to keep a dream journal all throughout middle school in the nineties and have started again. They are mortifying and incredible.

Bex

I love that.

I've on and off kept dream journals for my whole life. I have really, really weird, surreal, long strange dreams. I like to write down little images and notes from them in the morning. Then like when I look at them later, I'm like, “who did what? This is like news to me.” It's like I'm reading something fresh. And I'm like, “it was an undead aquarium with bejeweled taxidermy with demon eyes.” It's cool. Probably was scary for last night CJ, but today this is entertainment.

Bex

A friend of mine started keeping a dream journal but her dreams were a little too realistic. She'd wake up and she'd be like, “I can't believe you said that to me.” I was like, “what did I say to you?” It would just be things from her dreams. I'd have to be like, “dude, you have to stop. If the dream journal is making you remember these things that no one has actually wronged you by, you have to stop. It's not going to go well.”

Oh my god. No, because it's too confusing when it's too much like reality. That's it's like an uncanny valley. Whoa.

Bex

Exactly. Yes. Wow. Now I'm just thinking about all of the mutual people we know. Just writers we probably both know that keep finding ideas from their dreams. I don't know how these guys are finding these things. My dreams are so boring. They don't have undead aquariums. You know?

Is it a blessing? Is it a curse? It's hard to say. My friend, Adam, we used to live together and then we worked together so we would commute together to our job at Camp Broadway for kids. On the train, I'd be like, “I dreamed that the dolphin was playing chess with my dad.” And he'd be like, “literally all last night, I had the dream where I was just checking my emails again. And now we're here on the L train and I'm going to go to work and have to actually check my emails. But I feel like I've been doing it for hours. Give me your dolphins. I want dolphins instead of emails.”

Bex

Oh my god. Wow. Is he a Capricorn?

Actually, yes.

Bex

I only ask because that sounds like a dream I would have. I often have the dream where I wake up, get out of bed, and eat pancakes. Then I wake up and there are no pancakes to eat because I'm still in bed. It's pretty sad. That's so depressing now that I say it to someone else.

That's so sad! Listen, all I’m saying is that it is in your power to stock pancake mix in your home. You could make every morning a pancake morning. You have the pancake dream, it must mean that you make pancakes that day.

Bex

It is. You know what? That's really good feedback. Birch Benders Pancakes with just enough chocolate chips.

So good you'll dream of them!

Bex

Yes, see, we did it. Are we writers? I don't know. Probably. Yes.

Thank you so much for doing this. I love chatting! I love talking to you!

Me too, this is so fun! I love to chat about books and dreams and journals and queerness and all the things.

Bex

Yeah, I'm so excited to do an event with you in the spring.

Do you have anything you'd like to plug either of your own or of someone else's?

Oh, what a very good question. Yes, I have three friends who have books that I'm very excited about.

So Marie Helene Bertino’s Beautyland will make your heart so big. It has aliens in it, it has sweetness, it has art. It's so smart and it's so beautiful to be inside. It will heal you. Everyone should read Beautyland.
Everyone should read Annie Liontas’ Sex with a Brain Injury, which is really, really important. It talks about ableism and brain injuries of various kinds. And it's also just a raw, gorgeous, incredible memoir that everyone should read.

And Temim Fruchter’s City of Laughter, which: what beautiful and poetic title. Oh, Temim is such a beautiful writer, and I am so, so excited for a whole book of her words to enter my brain.

Bex

Wow, that is all so exciting! I've seen Sex with a Brain Injury on the table and I'm like, “great, now I should read it.”

Oh my God, take it home right now.

Bex

Yeah. Amazing. I love that. I love asking what people want to plug because then it just gives me recommendations too of what to read or watch. Thank you so much!

Thanks so much for having me!

Sources Mentioned:

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See by Sabrina Imbler

Raving by McKenzie Wark

Megan Fernandes's poems

The author Isle McElroy

Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang

The Idiot & Either/Or by Elif Batuman

The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser

The author and BAM bookseller Camryn Garrett

The author Nora Ephron