The Best Summer Beach Read: Christopher Bollen’s “Orient”
As the former editor-in-chief of Interview magazine, Christopher Bollen has had a front-row seat to the voices, personalities, parties and cliques that have comprised the ups and downs of New York’s art world. His new novel, “Orient,” out May 5th from Harper, explores the white-walled scene’s darker, more sinister corners. Set in the idyllic small town of Orient on the easternmost tip of the North Fork of Long Island where Manhattan’s cultural elite has declared their current weekend destination of choice, Bollen’s novel twists the claustrophobia of East Coast summer playgrounds into a tale of murder, mystery and the inherent tensions between a small town and the very big city.
Here, he discusses his personal desire to portray the art world accurately, the funny concerns of mystery writing, and New York City’s looming shadow over his process.
Yahoo Style: How does it feel to be on the eve of release of your second book?
Christopher Bollen: Well, you know it always feels really surreal. I always feel like a little part of me cuts off all emotion and understanding when it comes time to promote this book. I am excited because I wrote the damn thing two years ago so it feels like it’s high time.
YS: I’ve been reading your work as journalist for years. Your first book, “Lighting People,” might be considered a classic novel, for lack of a better word. I was surprised to discover you had written a murder-mystery this time around.
CB: I have always really loved murder mysteries. They were my first love in reading. That being said, I never anticipated becoming a murder-mystery writer, at least not yet. But I think after “Lighting People,” I learned a lot about writing and myself. One of the things I learned was the tether of a structure so I don’t just write on tangents endlessly. One of the aspects that appealed to me about the murder mystery was that it was such a great organizational tool for writing. Whenever I felt like I was getting too lost in description a story or backstory, I thought, “Oh god, I need to move this plot along or kill someone or throw a clue out.” So for me it was a really good engine to keep moving.
YS: I imagine murder mystery as a genre has its own set of rules.
CB: There are two things I learned about writing a mystery: One, you’re not so much trying to solve the mystery for yourself, you’re trying to prevent the reader from solving the mystery. So in a way you’re throwing up smoke screens and red herrings. You have to create diversion and confusion, which is a funny thing. Two, if you’re writing just normal literary fiction, you don’t have to necessarily fix your ending. You can write a great book and it can kind of fade out or fall out at the end of the book, but it’s still an amazing book. But with a murder mystery, no matter how great the book is overall, if it doesn’t succeed in the end people will always walk away disappointed. You have to do a Nadia-Comăneci-perfect-10 landing or else people will feel like they’ve been cheated. But Mrs. Dalloway doesn’t have to return to the party; she can just take a Klonopin and go to bed.
YS: The novel explores a series of unexpected events that go down when wealthy Manhattan denizens bum rush a small town on the north fork of Long Island. There are also quite a lot of moments that explore the pathology of New York art world and the artists that inhabit it. How much did you draw from a your personal experience having of writing and witnessing the city’s art scene for the past decade?
CB: I have wanted to write about the art world for quite a long time. It’s been something that’s been such a part of my life and I know it intimately. I don’t find in contemporary fiction many accurate portrayals of artists. It’s always a really cartoonish version of the art world or who artists are. It’s easy to make fun of, I know, but I wanted to make a book that takes the art world and artists seriously. Some of it is absurd, but I absolutely wanted to do the art world justice. It was a huge part of me wanting to write “Orient.”
YS: So why didn’t you set the novel in the city’s traditional art neighborhoods, like Chelsea or somewhere else downtown?
CB: Well, I think it’s difficult sometimes to write about the art world in the city because the city is so over-determined. “Orient” seemed like a really great opportunity to take them out of that environment and place them in this kind of bizarre country-suburban watering away from the galleries downtown. Even though I was excited to get out of the city and write about something else, unfortunately you can never really get so far outside. I felt like the city ended up coming to Orient by the end of the book. There are a lot of New York characters and it’s about the art world, but it was also an opportunity to escape a little bit. I guess “The Great Gatsby” is like that — it’s a Long Island novel but it’s also a New York City novel in a lot of ways.
YS: It’s interesting to think about the poor representation of artists in the contemporary literary canon.
CB: I really felt a responsibility to make artists seem serious. I didn’t want artists to feel taken advantage of. I didn’t want to be another writer taking cheap shots. Sure they may seem absurd on the outside, but they take themselves seriously and from what I’ve witnessed they are very hard workers. I did take a lot of liberties, but artists are in such a comfortable and powerful position in New York City that I think they can handle a close examination in fiction.
YS: And what about the portrayal of rural community of Orient itself?
CB: In the end, I actually felt more responsibility to the people of Orient. In New York City, you can parody anything because there are so many people and so many different New York Cities so no one really gets offended. But with Orient, there aren’t so many other Orient novels. I felt a little concerned about how I was portraying Orient. Even though that didn’t stop me from how I chose to portray it, I just felt slightly guilty as I did it. [laughs]
YS: As you’re killing them.
CB: Right, as I murdered them one by one.
