CONVERSATION: Andy Anderegg by Juliet Escoria, an interview-in-pictures about Anderegg's debut novel, PLUM

Press-on nails, Baja Blast, neon dark, puffballs, and time

Second-person narration is a demanding choice, yet Andy Anderegg’s debut novel Plum—out today from Hub City Press—nails it. The perspective felt initially jarring but quickly became immersive, dropping me cleanly into J’s—the book’s narrator—head. Rather than feeling like a gimmick, the second-person felt purposeful, reinforced partially by Anderegg’s deft writing, but especially because it related so well to the book’s contents, a chronicle of a childhood and then adulthood shaped by abuse: the type of experience that seems markedly unusual unless you are the one experiencing it.

The writing itself is rich with sensory details that make the book feel almost tactile. Given that quality, an interview-in-pictures felt like a natural way to talk about her book and personal life. Our conversation took place over several weeks in a shared Google Doc.

Juliet Escoria: What's an object you own that most personifies your book?

Andy Anderegg: It’s definitely these matte coral high-volume gel fantasy press-on nails. I’ve had them for five years and never worn them, but J would. She’d put them on and clack them against a cup as she cams. Me, I’ve balanced them on top of my own nails and wondered what it would be like if I glued them on, if I committed to them. I’ve watched so many videos of people and stared at their nails, watched the ways their fingers moved differently than mine. When I think of Plum, I think of the feeling of wanting to live differently than I am right now, of knowing I could, of bringing that different life closer, living it.

JE: Those nails are amazing. It could just be the name of your book, Plum, and my associations with that fruit-- stone fruits in particular are charged with sensory memory, of juice and taste and summer -- but I feel like your book gives me a strong association to colors: swimming pool blue (although I imagine theirs is more green than blue), that purple-red of plums, etc. Does the book feel like this to you, too? If so, what color would the book be?

AA: Yes, completely. It’s the bright blue of a public swimming pool, which is the same color as a Baja Blast with lots of ice in a plastic cup or the blue color of the swimsuit on the cover art from Camille Soulat. When I saw that image, I was like, That’s it. That’s the feeling of the book. The book is also the color of the dark-bright neons of Danielle Robert’s paintings. I love them so much. They’re dark and hopeful, scary and not scary, dangerous and ordinary. Plums have that color too — that neon dark.

JE: I love J’s obsession with her Walkman. It feels so childlike in its narrowmindedness, and the emotional and logical attachment she has to it is just heartbreaking-- an object that shows just how little comfort and stability she has in her life. What do you personally listen to music with?

AA: Most often, I listen on the wired headphones that came with a phone. We do have a U-Turn Orbit turntable and speakers throughout the house, the kind that can be grouped and ungrouped so anywhere I walk, I can hear the music perfectly calibrated. It is the dream come true I had when I was young, and the beautiful, captivating woman who took care of us before and after school — and painted her kitchen with a pattern of cherries as her own hand-painted wallpaper — listened to Tracy Chapman’s CD New Beginning from her four-foot tall stereo console with the glass doors, so loudly and so joyously. I thought, That’s what my adulthood will have.

JE: What's the first thing you see every day, and how do you feel about it?

AA: This is Marshall, my mass cane plant. We got Marshall a long time ago from a big box store, small enough back then to sit on my boyfriend’s lap on the bus ride home. I’m always impressed by how much we’ve both grown, of how different we all are, of all the time that’s passed.

JE: Can you share a photo of you and your boyfriend “a long time ago” and you two now?

AA:

There’s a photo that exists on a hard drive somewhere of Marshall at 18 inches tall in a pot in the bathtub, like one of those baby-in-the-bathtub photos. Something like this:

I found it and it actually is this:

Memories and time are both so wacky.

JE: You look like such adorable babies! Do you have a vice? What is it?

AA: It’s turning life into a set of tasks — these giant lists — and then instead of doing those, as if that’s a solution, I do something else, an unlisted task. This morning, I spent 45 minutes untangling these 40 yards of puff balls for no other reason than I’d already started and I had a very full day, so how could I stop? I can fall into that kind of thing. I can even like how it feels, my brain wanting to stop and keep going both at the same time, the people around me saying, “Weren’t we going to something else this morning?”

JE: Your book takes place in LA and Texas. Can I see an illustration of total ugliness from these two places?

AA: Beyond mentioning Houston, the book never exactly confesses where it takes place, but I absolutely drew from LA and Texas when I wrote it. Flying into Odessa at night, the torches from the oil derrick flare stacks glow orange everywhere. We are lighting the earth on fire, pumping it inside out. In satellite images, it looks like a disease, every evenly spaced raw spot a puncture, a straw, a flare. Ever since I read Richard Powers’s The Overstory I can’t unsee the ways we’re diseasing the earth. We’re doing it in Texas. We’re doing it in LA.

I do think the more I look, the more I call into question — I recently read that when you tap a maple tree, its response is to heal quickly, but if it heals, the sap stops flowing, so they work to keep it from healing for eight weeks. I’m eating syrup wondering about that, wondering if I really want to keep a tree from healing so long. So far, I’ve still been eating it, but it’s on my mind. I might stop.

JE: That’s crazy to me because I would have sworn the book said Texas and LA. I guess you’re just really good at evoking places, and don’t even need to name them for people to get exactly what you’re talking about. What object would you run for first in a house fire?

AA: Everything’s in the go bag. We actually went through this exercise with the Eaton fire. I learned that I’ve got a lot of go-down-with-the-ship energy, which turns suddenly and completely into “Leave it all behind; I need none of this.”

JE: Can I see inside your fridge?

AA: Of course. That was my favorite part of MTV Cribs. All those drinks! In mine, I’m seeing a lot of condiments, the kind of produce drawer that makes me grateful I’ve ever encountered the writing of Gabrielle Hamilton. If you’ve never read her talk about the Tournament of Snacks, let today be the day. Her writing is a font of hope for me, for the wilted celery, for us all — hope that we can renew our zeal.