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Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Live From Hollywood And The Pages Of Vanity Fair - Jessica Handler!

And with a title like that I say let's get to it. Author and poet Collin Kelley, a dear mutual friend of mine and Jessica's, is here to talk about her memoir Invisible Sisters and see if she'll dish on the stars.

M.Perry: By the time you were nine both of your younger sisters had been diagnosed with terminal illnesses - Kostmann’s syndrome and leukemia - and you began introducing yourself as ‘the well sibling.” How, and when, did you realize that your family was different from others in this respect?

Jessica Handler: I probably didn’t consciously realize that we were different – and in so many ways, not only medically – until the moment that I said phrase to a doctor. I was nine, and, as you’ll read in Invisible Sisters, was at Duke University Hospital with both my younger sisters and our parents to undergo some lab work to try and figure out how this anomaly – two sisters with white cell disorders on opposing sides of a spectrum – came to be. (No one’s ever figured it out, as far as I know.) I introduced myself that day as “the well sibling.” This is a real term now, but I don’t know if it was then. I doubt it. I think I’d overheard my father say it about me, or perhaps I thought of it then, but it seemed to define my role pretty efficiently.

Even then, though, I knew that our family was normal for us. My sisters weren’t treated differently; they had slumber parties and pets and schoolwork, and lived very regular lives for the most part. It was normal for me to be that calm around doctors, for us to travel to medical centers and be examined. That experience is a little bit like living in the third person voice.

After Invisible Sisters came out, friends who’d known me even during those times told me they’d never known the extent of our story. That’s a testament, good or bad, that’s a reader’s call, to how normal our lives were.

MP: In writing a memoir you must spend a lot of time revisiting past situations and feelings. Did this ever bring about a different viewpoint on any situations for you while writing Invisible Sisters?

Jessica Handler
JH: Oh, of course. You can’t write memoir well when the crux of the story is so fresh in your mind and heart that the work is an emotional explosion rather than a crafted story. Of course there was a great deal of emotion in writing the book, sad and happy, but distance is crucial. I came to understand so much more about my father in writing the book, I think in part because by that time I was older than he was in the story I was writing. I viewed his losses and his reactions as a fellow adult, not solely as a wounded daughter.

Collin Kelley: Is there anything you didn't put in the memoir that wish you had now?

JH: I’m very satisfied with the scope of the book. I worked closely with my editor at Public Affairs, Morgen Van Vorst, who had great insights about shaping the book, which helped me at the time to figure out what I wanted and needed to put in that I had perhaps skated over in earlier drafts. There’s nothing in Invisible Sisters that I wouldn’t tell someone in conversation. That said, there are pieces of my family’s stories that I have omitted due to personal privacy issues and the fact that those bits weren’t crucial to the story I was telling. Those I won’t tell you in conversation. They’re just for me.


MP: It was so exciting to see you in Vanity Fair magazine. Tell us about it. Fun? Did you get to keep the dress? Anything to dish?

JH: The Vanity Fair shoot was amazing fun, and after eight hours on various lawns of the Swan House I was pretty much in giggles the whole time. I didn’t get to keep the dress, but honestly, what would I do with it? I’m a jeans and t-shirt gal. I knew five of the women before the shoot, and had of course heard of everyone, so it was a delight to meet the others. I am a huge admirer of Natasha Trethewey’s poetry particularly, so meeting her was kind of a fan-girl thrill.

Hmm, what to dish... It took two passes with dish soap to get the ‘product’ out of my hair. It doesn’t stand up like that on its own! And I learned that couture comes in two-digit sizes, not just in size four. And I’m wearing my grandmother’s pearls in that shot, because she would have kvelled. I texted my publicist pretty much every twenty minutes to essentially shriek with joy. The whole day was extremely girly.

Collin Kelley
CK: Tell us about working in Hollywood? Can you dish on a famous celebrity encounter?

JH: I’m still so touched and honored to have met Divine; Harris Glenn Milstead. He was a guest on a talk/variety show where I was a production coordinator, and I spent some time talking with him in the green room. John Waters’s movies had been big with my college friends and me. He was kind, soft-spoken, and just so elegant and gentlemanly. And he was wearing a grey pinstriped three-piece suit and a big diamond earring. I just loved him. And no, I won’t tell you here who the rock star at the after hours club is in the LA chapter of Invisible Sisters, but if you ask me in person, I might. The club was Club Zero, on North Cahuenga though, if that means anything to any 1980s archivist-types.

JP: Hmm, maybe when the three of us meet up at Agave for some nibbly things and a few of Collin's stories. Thank you so much for spending time with us, Jessica.

JH: Of course, happy to spend time with. Soon, IRL.

CK: XO Love and smoochies!

Jessica Handler's nonfiction has appeared in Brevity.com, More Magazine, Southern Arts Journal, and Ars Medica. You can visit Jessica Handler's website, or follow her on Twitter.

6 comments:

Christopher Hudson said...

Congratulations to Ms. Handler, but you had me going, Madame, with, '... let's see if she'll dish on the stars,' ... and she didn't!

Madame Perry said...

Christopher, I didn't intend to let you down but I thought Collin could get her to spill. Maybe after cocktails I'll get a remixx.

jessica handler said...

Jennifer, what a great thing to come home to! I'd been kind of off the grid for a few days, and this is a fun welcome home. @Christopher - I don't have much to dish! Everyone I worked with back in the day was pretty nice, some remarkably so. The less than nice? My lips are sealed.

Rebecca Glenn said...

Fascinating interview! Madame Perry, thanks for linking up at The Book Frog!

Becky (The Book Frog)

DMS said...

I really enjoyed this interview- even withouth any dish on the stars. :)

I found you through Book Blogs and signed up to follow you. When you have a chance- please stop by and follow the blog for my middle grade novel that I am hoping to get published. http://thesecretdmsfilesoffairdaymorrow.blogspot.com/

Take care-
Jess- although I may show up as Fairday, the main character from my novel. I can't figure out why that happens sometimes and I can't fix it. :)

Jessica said...

Being in Vanity Fair sounds like such a fun experience! Writing for me really helps to process my thoughts and feelings. You say that things with your sisters and their illnesses were pretty much normal life situations but I'm sure there were still struggles along the way. I would imagine your writing would have helped to soothe you in a way. Would you say so or you were just telling it like it is? Just curious. Good blog :)