Bennett Madison’s wonderful new novel, The Blonde of the Joke, is out and I encourage everyone to buy it and read it. Library Journal said this about it: “Off-kilter humor, moody narration, and twisted psychology make this sardonic exploration of suburbia thrilling—like pocketing lip gloss and walking right out of the store. . . . Dreamy collisions of reality and fantasy, of the nonsensical and impossible, make for a magical, slippery read.” VOYA, meanwhile, called it (I love this) a “John Hughes movie on downers.” Basically, it’s the story of a  wallflowery teenage girl named Val who is drawn out of her shell and into a life of risky shoplifting by the alluring and audacious Francie.

Full disclosure: Bennett happens to be a friend of mine. Long story short is that we sort of met when we both had stories in the (now-defunct) literary journal Rush Hour. My story would turn into the first chapter of my novel—much like Bennett’s story served as the basis for The Blond of the Joke. Bennett was kind enough to answer some questions via email. He even lets me know what his favorite blonde joke is. Enjoy!

The Blonde of the Joke started out as a short story. How much of a challenge was it to expand into a novel? Did you always envision the story as a longer piece?

Expanding a short story into a novel was really a pleasure in this case because I always had a blueprint. There was never that moment of oh shit terror that you get in almost any other project where you really just have no idea where things are going or how to get there. Obviously there were still decisions to be made and obviously the book turned out quite a lot different from the story in really substantial ways, but having the story to work from really kept me from freaking out. Writing this book was without a doubt the most fun I’ve ever had writing any novel. I hope it happens again someday.

You write convincingly from the point of view of teenage girls. How do you do it so well?

Thank you! I hope I do it well; I really have no idea. I guess I really don’t think girls are any different from boys, or rather, you have to look at a character as an individual rather than a gender. Maybe there are some intrinsic differences in the ways men approach the world versus the way women do—I don’t know—but I’m not writing from the point of view of “women” or “men.” I’m writing from the point of view of a specific character, which is a lot different.

I’ve talked to other writers who totally disagree with this: who believe that the gender of a character fundamentally changes the way you should think and write about her. I think that’s kind of crap, though. I mean, I act ladyish in some ways and manlyish in other ways. If someone wrote a book about me and made me watching football because that’s the way a man behaves, they would be getting me all wrong cause I can’t imagine why anyone thinks football is exciting. If you deal with the character in an honest way I think you can’t go wrong regardless of gender.

That said, my next book is about a straight guy and it’s been really hard. I’ll probably have to do a pass at the end just to make sure all the talk about boobs and pussy is convincing. I don’t know why I still haven’t written a book where I myself am the main character. I keep meaning to.

There’s a lot of shoplifting in this novel. Did you do any research on the tricks of the trade? Any “hands on” research?

I know a lot about shoplifting because I worked at the Gap for a lot of high school. I never shoplifted very much myself, though. Stores rely on people’s sense of guilt to keep them from stealing and it usually works. In order to shoplift well you have to believe you deserve it, and I grew up Catholic.

Val’s brother, Jesse, is sick and dying, yet the reader never learns what disease he has, nor does Val seem to know. Why did you leave that out?

A lot of people had a problem with the fact that I never address exactly what Jesse’s problem is. I think they want me to be like, “He has AIDS, wear a condom!” or whatever, even though he doesn’t and that would make no sense.

I didn’t get into it for a lot of reasons: first of all, I wasn’t that interested, and I figured if I wasn’t interested it would be hard to make anyone else care. But more importantly, the book takes place in a sort of skewed universe where you really can just be dying of boredom. What matters most is Val’s perception of her brother’s illness. So much of what happens in the book is driven by Val’s perception of her world, rather than the other way around. There are a few parts where I talk about how the mall rearranges itself for her, and I actually think other things are rearranging themselves for her as well.

Anyway, to really answer your question, I secretly think he’s probably a drug addict but I didn’t want to divert the attention there and make it a book about someone whose brother is a drug addict because to me that just wasn’t the point.

Late in the novel, Val has a chilling exchange with Max. She asks him, “Don’t you have parents?” He responds, “No one has parents around here.” Indeed, that seems to be true in this novel. Or, if they are around, they are big messes. Was this parental absence true of your upbringing, or is it particular to this fictional world? Why are the parents so absent in this novel?

I think I write about people with no parents because I grew up with an abundance of parenting, as did most of my friends. I actually have really great parents who are nothing like any of the parents in this book, but sometimes it was annoying. They were the parents who really did call to make sure someone was going to be home for the party.

So it’s partially just my own wish-fulfillment fantasy about what it’s like to be this weird feral teen. But also it gets back to the idea of unreality in the book: I’m not that interested in what it’s like to be a real teenager. I don’t know and I don’t care anymore! I’m more interested in this, like, idea of teenage. I like to imagine this mythical kingdom of teenagedness that exists. That kingdom is ruled by James Dean and Kim Kelly and there are no parents.

Francie is a fascinating character. Did you know girls like her growing up? What does the future hold for a girl like Francie?

I didn’t know anyone exactly like Francie growing up, although there were a few girls I knew in high school and especially college who lent parts of themselves to Francie: the way she talks, the way she looks, the way she dresses, the way she smokes. All the superficial stuff came from blondes I have known, but I think her toughness and her anger is all her own. (A lot of people who have read the book have said she’s an unlikable character but to me she’s hugely charming—I don’t know what that says about me.)

Although I didn’t know anyone exactly like Francie, I had a couple of friends who sort of filled a Francie’s role while I was in high school without being quite so badass or outrageous or ambitious as Francie. But It’s just like, you meet this exotic person who you think is just going to change everything—who does change everything—and then you realize that she’s just a normal person and you’re actually almost kind of pissed off about it, which makes you sort of hate her.

Actually I think an important stage in any intense friendship or relationship is when you get past the point of being amazed and dazzled by the other person, and then past the point where you feel like you practically are the other person, and you reach a point where you’re almost astonished by the total strangeness of the other person, and by proxy everyone else in the world. How you deal with that makes a big difference and I think it’s in a lot of ways what this book is about.

What are you working on now?

Not telling, but I think it will be out from HarperCollins next year! It’s sort of about mermaids, but not really. It’s slightly more fantastical than this one but has a lot of the same themes and elements. Like I said earlier, the narrator is a dude who loves boobs.

Who are your favorite authors, YA or otherwise?

I love Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Doty, Lynda Barry, CP Cavafy, Mary Gaitskill, Edith Wharton, Alan Moore, Louise Fitzhugh, Tom Spanbauer, Ben Neihart, Daniel Pinkwater, Chris Claremont, Anton Chekov, Mary Robison, Dodie Smith, Alan Hollinghurst, Cookie Mueller, Angela Carter, and a lot of other people. I tried to read Pynchon for the billionth time on vacation and I still can’t get into him, so I guess you can put Pynchon on the list of people I don’t like that much. (Although he can be funny.)

I think Francesca Lia Block deserves special mention because it was reading the Weetzie Bat books that made writing for young people seem like a totally legitimate and awesome thing to do.

What’s your favorite blonde joke?

Courtney Love.

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