Jill Smolinski’s latest novel is about “stuff” – what you keep, and what you let go
“A lot of people assume this book is about hoarding and how someone is cured of her hoarding, and that’s not the point at all. The point,” says Jill Smolinski, “is more like deciding what is worth keeping, whether it’s the people in our lives or the things that we have, and deciding what’s really of value. It’s not anti-hoarding, but it’s also not pro-hoarding either. It’s really just about deciding what in life is important.”
Smolinski, who lives in the ghettos of Hermosa Beach, is talking about her third novel, Objects of My Affection, brand new from Touchstone and published by Simon and Schuster. She’ll be talking about it at some more tonight – Thursday – at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in Redondo Beach.
“My main character, Lucy, has written a book called Things Are Not People,” Smolinski says. Lucy Bloom seems highly efficient, with her ideas of what to keep and what to toss. Then she’s hired to remove the clutter from the home of a reclusive, eccentric painter, Marva Meier Rios, and finds that her assignment is not exactly a cakewalk.
Still, one can agonize
The substance of the novel emerged from Smolinski’s own experiences. She prefaces her thoughts by asking if I remember that old George Carlin routine about “stuff,” how we just keep moving our stuff (our belongings) from one place to another. Apart from an old bit by Cheech and Chong (“It’s me, Dave”), it’s possibly the most memorable comedic sketch I’ve ever heard.
Smolinski may not own a lot of “stuff,” but she says she’s constantly moving it around. Well, some belongings are nomadic and some put down roots. “Not long ago I went to move to Michigan for a year. I could have packed up everything and put it in storage; instead I decided it was a good time to downsize and so I got rid of almost everything I owned… down to what would fit in a closet-sized storage unit and my little car. And the guinea pigs took up one seat of the car.
“I had always had the idea of writing about a hoarder, but I wasn’t quite sure where it was going to take me. What I found is that I could easily give away my couches, I could give away an armoire and tables and books, but all of a sudden I’d have a pen, and I would agonize, ‘Do I keep the pen; do I get rid of it?’ And I really wanted to explore what made that so easy in some cases and so difficult in others.”
Ah, that thing called sentimental value.
“A lot of times in my writing,” Smolinski continues, “and this has happened with every book, I’m not sure if I get the idea for the book and then that starts affecting my life, or whether my life affects the book. They seem to overlap a lot, sometimes in good ways and sometimes not.”
As one who collects bound literature, I have to ask her: How do books fit into this?
“Books are a whole different thing,” Smolinski replies. “I know a lot of people who have a lot of books and they want to be able to go back to them – even if you glance at the spine of the book and you remember having read it and what it means to you.” Smolinski herself likes to share what she’s read, so she gives away most of hers. Even so, “There are a few I would never let go of.”
My mind drifts, and I think of what Borges once wrote: “If I were to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father’s library. In fact, I sometimes think I have never strayed outside that library. I can still picture it. It was in a room of its own, with glass-fronted shelves, and must have contained several thousand volumes.” And, much more recently, John Berger: “People hold books in a special way – like they hold nothing else. They hold them not like inanimate things but like ones that have gone to sleep. Children often carry toys in the same manner.”
These days, with e-books, I wonder if bookmarks aren’t an endangered species, along with coral reefs and polar bears.
Getting to know you
What’s your process when you’re writing a novel?
“I typically have an idea,” Smolinski says. “In this case I knew I was going to write about someone who’s a personal organizer who at some point had to go head-to-head with a hoarder. I start with that, and then I basically sit down at the computer and just do stream-of-consciousness – brain-storming – and I’ll do that for days sometimes; I’ll do it for weeks depending on what’s going on, to get an idea of what the story arc might be. Then, once I feel like I have an idea of the theme in the overall story, I sit down and write a pretty detailed synopsis from beginning to end. Then what happens is I start writing and the synopsis goes out the window.” She laughs. Well, what she means is that now she’s up to speed and running with her themes and her ideas and she allows for a little wiggle room.
“For example,” Smolinski continues, “the hoarder is named Marva and she’s an eccentric artist. When I first started writing I knew Lucy the main character very well; she’s a lot of my own voice. Marva I didn’t know. So, in order to get to know her I had to write her. As [the book] progresses – and I noticed in the early scenes I barely put her in – I forced myself to get to know her and then I had to go back and write her in more. Once I got to know her as I wrote her I could go back [because now] she was absolutely clear to me. I could give her dialogue in more places in the book because I met her.
“We writers are often a fairly shy bunch,” she adds, “so I’m slow to get to know people in real life. It’s the same when I write, unfortunately; I’m still slow to get to know them.”
On the other hand, writers – novelists especially – often need to live with their characters for a long time until they come to life for the writer.
Smolinski is easy to read and there’s plenty of light humor in her book. Not surprising, she professes a love of romantic-comedy films and says “I love books that are funny.” But she also points out that she wants her novels to say something, to be thoughtful, to carry some weight.
“At the end of it,” she says, “I miss the characters. I envy people who write series because they get to revisit them again. I hate to say good-bye.”
Yes, saying good-bye is tough. As her character Marva finally puts it, “There are those things you keep, things you let go of – and it’s often not easy to know the difference.”
One notable quality about Smolinski is her commitment to life lists or bucket lists, in which each day she attempts to do one thing that she’s never done before. It makes her pay attention to her surroundings and not simply race through life on autopilot. These experiences not only enhance and enrich her as an individual; ultimately, they provide fodder for her writing. Somewhere down the road, a character or two will be thanking her for her diligence and persistence.
Jill Smolinski appears tonight at 7:30 p.m. to sign and discuss Objects of My Affection at Mysterious Galaxy, 2810 Artesia Blvd., Redondo Beach. It’s also her birthday! (310) 542-6000.
