Author Q&A

Author Q&A: Karen Finley

By Jennifer Pullinger, WIW Member

Karen Finley, a New York-based author and performance artist, has written a risqué political and pop culture satire that plays on America's fascination with the great George and Martha's of all time: George and Martha Washington and the infamous characters from Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" In writing George & Martha (Verso Books), Finley, also a professor in the Department of Art and Public Policy at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, has created a love-affair story featuring the president of the United States and Martha Stewart—a story that is passionately dysfunctional, and one that reflects the "out of control" mores of our culture.  

Set in a seedy hotel room the night before the multi-media domestic empress fulfills her prison sentence and before the Republican National Convention, George Bush and Martha Stewart find comfort in each others arms as both face personal and professional crises. They also antagonize each other to the breaking point, much in the same way as Albee's George and Martha. Many of the scintillating lines in George & Martha will make you laugh as hard as any great celebrity impersonator [like "Late Night with Conan O'Brien's" Syncro-Vox video skits featuring a still photo of Bush or Stewart with only the impersonator's lips moving]. But there is something more going on beneath the humor—and misery—that George and Martha inflict on their relationship, Finley explains. The narrative is accompanied by over 200 provocative illustrations, which she also drew to help to tell the story. Finley, who also uses the New Yorker font for the cover jacket and chapter headings, says the illustrations function as New Yorker -esque "psychotic breaks" within the text to give the reader pause.

Here, she describes the concept of the book, why George is more of a complex character than we think, and how to stay "genuine" as a writer.

How did you come up with the idea for this book? What makes George & Martha such a great pair?

I wanted to create a work that was in response to the current [Bush] administration—to look at where we were. At first I was working on the idea of "Bush: The Musical." But then I realized that you could see at the beginning how it would end. You could easily imagine each person in the administration—for example, Cheney singing "My Heart, My Heart, I Have a Problem with My Heart." Meanwhile, Martha Stewart was in the news so much, and I was interested in why America had placed her in such a position of celebrity. So George and Martha were both on my mind, and I started thinking about history, about George and Martha Washington, and then also about George and Martha from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" And that's when the pairing happened.

Do you ever wonder if the president or Martha Stewart have heard of or read your book and what they might think?

When I was writing it, I was thinking about the public hearing it and reading it. No, I wasn't concerned about that.  

I ask because some writers are more practical in concerning themselves with how the book will sell [when considering whether or not to include graphic material]. You can compare it to a movie—should the movie be Rated R or do you go for the wider audience and get the PG-13.

I don't start that way. I always go with where the art [is] and [with] the magnificence of the idea . . . I go with the genuine impulse.

What was your approach to writing the dialogue? How did you put yourself in their minds?

I wanted to create a farce, a satire, and to use humor to conjure their relationship . . . They are funny characters: Martha Stewart is so intent on her position. I think it was a very funny moment when she was chopping cabbage on [the CBS Early Show and the host] is asking her about her legal problems, and she's saying "Look, I've got to get back to making coleslaw."   And then there's George, always screwing up words, and his lack of awareness…the humor is already there.

You seem to portray Martha closer to how the public might actually view her, but you caricature George more to the extreme.

They're supposed to be symptoms of our culture . . . I look at characters in more expansive ways. Martha personifies this idea of "comfort in crisis" that we enforce in this culture, especially now that we are at war.   Why are we so attracted to Martha as a cultural icon? Because we are attracted to fulfilling our own needs for material comfort, which is what she's about. Why is it that Hummers are being sold when we're in a gas crisis? Why are we spending so much money on our homes? What does this have to do with Homeland Security? Everything! Martha is like our dysfunctional mother . . . and George is our crisis. We're at war, and he's out of control, and we're out of control.

My characterization of George also looks at his relationship with his own father, and how we're living through his relationship with his father. It's very Greek. We see that he never lives up to the image of his father; he's like of a poor copy of him.

Why did you write the book from Martha's point-of-view?

George lacks awareness . . . He doesn't reflect in the same way. So it's Martha who writes and Martha who's going to jail and will have that time for reflection.

I have several words to describe your book. One of them is "uninhibited." How can one release the creative inhibitions they may have that are holding them back as a writer?

I think that when you're starting [to write], you shouldn't think about grammar. You should just write whatever you want and you can always come back and edit later.

I do edit myself. It's a process of conscious decisions about what to leave in and what to take out . . . I use sexuality within the work as a device. Our culture right now is so out of control, sex can be a way to bring people together.

What other writing projects do you have coming up?

I finished a piece called "The Passion of Terry Schiavo." It's looking at the different positions people had on Terry Schiavo, and how she became a place for their projections. I'm looking at her story as a national narrative, and thinking about how certain women are made into these tragic figures that we respond to as a culture.

Jennifer Pullinger is a freelance writer in Richmond. Her email is jlpullinger@yahoo.com.