Lynn Steger Strong
In the novel Want, one of the central plot points is the precarious financial situation of the narrator, Elizabeth, and her family. Elizabeth has a PhD in literature but is unable to secure full time work at a university. Her husband left his job on Wall Street to start a custom carpentry business. They have two children, live in Brooklyn, and find themselves filing for bankruptcy. By contrast, the author’s parents are lawyers who pride themselves on financial pragmatism, though in my reading, their emotional skills are stunted and they have failed to cultivate a warm and loving relationship with their daughter.
A lot of people agonize over the basic tension Elizabeth experiences in this book – the practical necessity to earn an income versus the pursuit of passion and meaning. This theme is very much in the zeitgeist right now as the pandemic drags on, people reassess their lives and quit their jobs in record numbers in the so-called “Great Resignation.”
Question 1 What do you make of the Great Resignation and how does it tie into the themes of Want?
Lynn Steger Strong: I think the systems under which we live have been broken for a very very long time, and as abhorrent as I find any attempts at "silver lining" in our current crisis, I do think more and more people can't help but be aware of this. The idea that if you just work harder things will get better has never been true for most people, and yet, the narrative around it, (bootstraps, etc) is so deeply ingrained in this country's sense of itself that it has still felt impossible to break out of. So many of us have felt such endless personal shame for not working hard enough. So much of these past couple of years showed the absurdity of this idea, the devastation that comes from valuing work and capital above all else. It's not surprising to me that so many people are just screaming, enough! Stop.
Question 2 On my reading of the book, Elizabeth and her husband never seriously consider what seems like a possibly obvious solution to their problem - leaving New York City to go somewhere more affordable. Is this commitment to New York reckless, noble, or both?
Lynn Steger Strong: I'm not sure there's much space or time for nobility when you're in the position Elizabeth is in, but there is the matter of trading one sense of desperation for another. New York is an incredibly expensive place, but it also holds many more opportunities for employment than nearly any other place, especially for creative people or people who want to teach. Moving is also an incredibly expensive and terrifying choice. One has to find a job in a place where maybe they know no one; one has to afford a moving truck and a security deposit and all the rest. There is also an incredible amount of sweat equity that one accrues when one doesn't have much money and lives in a city: you know the grocery store that has the best-priced produce; you've found the babysitter that can be available and is reliable but doesn't cost too much; you have friends who can get your kids at preschool when you're stuck at work. You've gotten your kids into the good lottery public school close to your place. None of this costs money in a city, but it takes years to establish, and, when you don't have money as a backup, it can feel terrifying to give all of this up. That doesn't mean that over time the other place wouldn't be more practical or immediately affordable, it just means it's also not a panacea and it also comes at an incredibly steep cost.
Question 3 You have a new book coming out in 2022 called Flight with Custom House Books – what are you most excited about in that project?
Lynn Steger Strong: I'm excited about lots of aspects of the book and the way, I hope, it builds on what I was trying to do with Want in terms of situating an individual within broken systems, showing the costs and struggles, but also the spaces that still exist for grace and community. In Flight, the point of view shifts throughout a large extended family. I wanted to move outside of a single consciousness and think both formally and in terms of the trajectory of the book of how people come together still and love each other, give to each other, even in the face of all the ways the world feels like it's breaking apart.