← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Summer Reads: Long Island Compromise
00:30:34
The novel Long Island Compromise from Taffy Brodesser-Akner is now out in paperback.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:29]
Alison Stewart
You are listening to all of it on wnyc. Hi, I'm Alison Stewart. Coming up later this hour, we will be speaking with author Florence Knapp about her new novel the Names. It's one of the most anticipated novels of the year. But first, Long Island Compromise is the latest by author, journalist and screenwriter Taffy Brutuser Achner. It was a recent get lit with all of it book club selection and it has just come out in paperback. The story was inspired by a real life kidnapping one of Taffy's neighbors. The book table takes things in a very different direction. The story follows the wealthy Fletcher family, a group of Jewish American multimillionaires who made their fortune through polystyrene. But money has not insulated this family from trauma. Years ago, the patriarch of the family, Carl Fletcher, was kidnapped and held for ransom. He's still struggling with the aftermath and his wife, Ruth dedicates more time to caring for him than her three children. And those children are having a hard time of their own. Nathan, the oldest, is a ball of anger, anxiety. He stalled at work and has invested all of his money with an untrustworthy friend. Beamer, the middle son, is a Hollywood screenwriter who's was basically riding the coattails of his more brilliant writing partner. He's addicted to drugs, sex and his dominatrix, Jenny, the youngest child, feels guilty about the money deposited in her bank account. Each month she gives it away and dedicates herself to union organizing. When it appears that the Fletcher money might not be unlimited after all, the siblings are forced to examine how extreme wealth has shaped each of who they have come to become, who they have become. Here's my conversation with Taffy Brettiser Achner from our November get lit with Olivet book club event. Taffy, welcome.
- [02:18]
Taffy Brettiser Achner
It is so great to be here. Alison, thank you so much. You just reminded me that the elevator pitch for my book requires an elevator that will go up. So many stories. It's like one of those elevators whose one of those buildings whose elevators is always broken like in the skyline, the.
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Alison Stewart
New ones, when you were actually working on this, this book here, when you went to write Fleismitters in Trouble, you put this one aside. What was the original concept for Long Island Compromise.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
The original concept for Long Island Compromise was a question about money. I was in Russia doing a story about the US's only male synchronized swimmer. And I was there for 12 days. My young children were home wondering where their mother was. I was trying to make ends meet. And I had this sort of rage at all of the sort of wealthy people I knew growing up. And I wanted to pour all that rage into this one question. I would have an answer in this book, which is, are you better off with money and never having to feel afraid? Or is it better to be able to pick yourself up by your own steam and support yourself and make your own ends meet and survive by yourself? And that's the question that I thought I was asking, are your children doomed by your money? When I started writing it, but that's not what I ended up with. What I ended up with was the story that I guess I keep returning to, that I was in Fleischman, that I was addressing in Fleischman, which was, what happens after trauma? How are we supposed to move on? Can you move on? Is there a way to ever forget the things that happened to you? Do your children survive the things that happened to you?
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Alison Stewart
The kidnapping is based on a 1974 real story. Jack Teich. He was kidnapped from his home near Kings Point, held for what would be $4 million today. He was returned home. You got his okay?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I did. He's a family friend. And when I was writing this book, which I was writing before Fleischman, I couldn't get this kidnapping out of my mind. As a kidnapping asks this great question about money, which is the very money that saved you also put you in danger in the first place. So which is it? Is it good or is it bad? And it's as impossible to answer as the other questions that I was asking about money. That's the spoiler when did you realize.
- [05:05]
Alison Stewart
This would be a good catalyst to start your novel?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I didn't realize it. It just kept finding its way in. It felt like the big event in what could have been a very rudderless novel if I was just talking about money and wealth and Long island, the suburbs. I need. I needed something to start. And there was no version where this wasn't in it. And I couldn't escape it. And it was again, it was before Fleischmann. It was before I understood that the idea that a writer not include all of the things she knows, even about people she cares about, was inevitable. It was inevitable that I would include it. I asked Jack for his blessing. He gave it to me. Which is very, very nice. Because it really is terrible to know a writer. It really is terrible that somebody might return you. To a horrible period of your time in your 80s. But also, Jack was writing his own memoir at the time. Which has since come out. It's called Operation Jacknap, and it is excellent.
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Alison Stewart
The kidnapping is in the chapter titled. Let me say I write Dubuk, the dybbuk. Dybbuk. A dybbuk in the works. And I'm gonna ask you to read two paragraphs. That explain what the dybbuk is. Rather than me just asking you.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
There's a dybbuk in the works was an old Fletcher saying. About machinery at the factory that had begun to malfunction. One that Carl's father Zelig, had imported from Poland. The phrase was a cross contamination of Selig's factory work. And the terrible fables told in the Jewish ghettos. That either warded off or provoked unexplainable happenstance. Like an infestation of ants in a sugar bowl. Or Cossacks murdering your siblings right in front of you. A dybbuk, as tradition tells us, is a miserable soul that cannot progress to a heavenly rest. And instead stays on earth. And takes over someone else's body. Displacing the person's soul in order for the miserable soul to do its final bidding. If an aspirator at the factory was malfunctioning. Zelig said there was a dybbuk in the works. If a group of cables all started snapping in short succession. There was a dybbuk in the works. It was Carl who'd brought this phrase home to his own family. Extending it beyond the confines of the factory. When the electricity went out during a storm, there was a dybuk in the works. When an alarm clock stopped working for no apparent reason. When Nathan couldn't form a sentence for his stammering. When the school called home. About Bernard's behavior. When Jenny would refuse to engage in the feminine activities. That Ruth thought a daughter should be eager to engage in. Shopping, makeup, Learning to bake. What Bernard would later refer to as the Great All Night Nose job war of 1998, there was a dybbuk in the works. A time when things went more wrong. Than mere physics and logic could account for.
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Alison Stewart
That's taffy. Brodesser Akner, reading from her book Long Island Compromise. What do you consider the dybuk in the story?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I think the dybbuk in the story is Is this unknowable? That's such a good question. It's the unknowable source of everything that's going wrong for them. Is it the kidnapping? Or is the kidnapping born from what Zelig did in Poland? And is what Zelig did in Poland born from something we don't even know about? All we do know is that the dybbuk makes its way through each of these characters. And in the end, they make peace with it.
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Alison Stewart
There's no Middle Rock, Long Island.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
There is no Middle Rock, Long Island.
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Alison Stewart
I checked.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I looked at maps.
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Alison Stewart
I checked it out.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I have a good lawyer.
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Alison Stewart
It's kind of, you know, going off context clues. You could be, like. You could be Oyster Bayish or Sand Pointish, we'll say.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
You could say. You could wonder if it's Great Neck. Because my father is from Great Neck. He lives there now. And Jack Teiche was kidnapped out of Great Neck. But it does combine all the elements of all of the sort of. What is so horrifically called the Gold coast of Long Island. I mean. I mean, cancel yourself. It is called the Gold coast of Long Island. But I briefly lived in Dix Hills when my parents were married for a few years. And it was all very different, but it was governed by the same dybbuk.
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Alison Stewart
So what's the unsaid part about the people who live, let's say, on the Gold Coast.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Who are so very rich. What's the unsaid part?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
The unsaid part? You mean unsaid in the book or unsaid.
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Alison Stewart
Unsaid between us in your life's experience that you were able to use for the book.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Okay, let me think about that for a second. What I think about money is that if you always had it, you will never understand the fear for survival that most of us have. And if you do understand the fear for survival that most of us have, no amount of money will cure you of it.
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Alison Stewart
That's what Ruth says to her daughter. You're a rich girl.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
And I have money, but I'm not a rich girl.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Right, Exactly. Exactly.
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Alison Stewart
When you're. You know, when they say about writing that you should be really specific. And that's how you get to the universal. I've heard that before. Because this is a very New York book.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Right.
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Alison Stewart
Very New York book.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
So I'm hoping you're right about that. For regional post. Regional sales.
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Alison Stewart
Well, I was going to ask you, like, what. What does that mean for someone in Iowa who's reading this story?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I guess what I always turn to is how much I loved the corrections. And I had not yet been to St. Louis, which I think is what the town there is doing. Business as I've been. I've read stories that take place in Poland. I have read stories that take place in space. And I guess the question I always have is every story has to face the burden of specificity in order so that the reader could find themselves in it. I guess my question would be for the reader. Is there something that stops you from thinking of New York as a valid place? It's so interesting to me that New York and wealth are both these elements in a novel or in a TV show that a network, a publisher worry out loud that they are, that will alienate a reader or a viewer. And I guess I'm not alienated by it. When I was making the TV show version of Fleischman, I making it, of course, with a lot of help. It occurred to me that the only time you ever really see the Upper east side post a Woody Allen movie, the only time you ever see the Upper east side in TV lately is when someone has to get murdered. In order for you to look at that kind of wealth, somebody has to get murdered. Whereas I grew up, my mother, after we went to sleep, or she thought we went to sleep, would watch Dynasty. She felt like we had seen so little money that she wanted. She just wanted to watch people in fur coats and limousines. Like comically rich people being comically rich.
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Alison Stewart
The Fletcher family makes their money through polystyrene. Styrofoam. Why Styrofoam?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
So first of all, I have this sort of affection for the post war Jewish or Italian or Irish factory invented from need the least glamorous job you could have. Like we are going to put, you know, wall to wall carpeting in all the schools. We are going to air condition a mall and Styrofoam, which is something people use a lot and is sort of terrible for the environment. The thing I loved about it was that it's called insulation. It protects even as it destroys the things it is trying to protect you from. Without any sort of editorial commentary on whether or not those things deserve to be destroyed. I liked it too much as a metaphor. These people who live inside this deadly Styrofoam, which is maybe, maybe capitalism or late capitalism, that you live inside it and you are protected while the world falls around, falls apart around you.
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Alison Stewart
You did a lot of research into Styrofoam. Like what happens when you're journalist. I'm A journalist.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I'm a journalist, and I. The easiest parts of the book for me were the. Were the parts where you just have to go to a factory and say, can I look around? People are so nice when you ask those things. Or you call up a chemist and you say, what would happen if a factory burned down? Or you call up someone who went to Yale and you say, what was the union like? There's people are so generous. I'm writing right now the introduction to a new edition of Bonfire of the Vanities.
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Alison Stewart
Oh, my gosh.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yeah. I'm really excited about it because it's the first time I'm reading about Tom Wolfe's process. And his process was to understand that you could. That the old write what you know adage only takes you so far. It's really mostly like, write what you think. And then how do you fill out the rest of the book? With reporting. And, of course, I'm also a reporter.
- [14:44]
Alison Stewart
You're listening to my conversation with author Taffy Bretisser Achner, author of the novel Long Island Compromise. We'll have more with Taffy after a quick break. This is all of it. All right. There are so many characters in this book, so we'll just concentrate on the Fletchers. Carl and Ruth are the parents, and then their children are Beamer, Beamer, Nathan and Jenny.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
How would you describe Ruth, the wife of Carl Fisher? Because moms play an important part of the story.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yes. So Ruth Fletcher is the quintessential person in a terrible position. She was poor. She married this guy knowing that it would mean safety for the rest of her life. And then he's kidnapped and traumatized. And so she feels that it is her punishment for making such a devil's bargain that she has to take care of him in his traumatized state for the rest of his life, not be a great mother. Or the version of being a great mother was that she took care of Carl. Of course, she's in this impossible position because she thought what she wanted was safety. But then she raises these children who themselves are the products of never having had the fears she has, and she can't even relate to them. She looks at these children and does not know who they are because they haven't struggled the way she has, and she hates them a little for it.
- [16:23]
Alison Stewart
She says, in your character building, you give people different behaviors. And one of the things. Ruth has a tick when someone says something she doesn't like or she doesn't agree with, like the mental health issue. She says, ah, Sigmund Freud over there, or. So the daughter is being dramatic. She says, oh, you're being Sarah Bernhardt over there.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
What made you give her this saying?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I love to listen to people talk. And when I overhear something that is not the sort of like exposition of information, but sort of a true character moment. I grew up going to this pool club. It just was a pool with a concrete block. And it was a bunch of Jews sitting around and deciding whether or not they'd eaten long enough ago that they could go back into the pool. That's all I remember is hours and hours of debating whether or not you could go swimming now. And I would hear all of these little sayings. And I did not know that I was collecting them. But then Ruth came out fully formed, and that's what she said.
- [17:38]
Alison Stewart
The Fletchers are living this great American story. They make money, they spend it on their family. We learn it's a lot more complicated than that. And you have to do what you have to do. Even it edges towards meanness. Why does Carl's family. They tell lies about where they got their money from or how their money was made?
- [18:01]
Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Why do they tell lies?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Because the truth is so ugly. Because what people do when they are trying to survive, they do acts of desperation. They commit acts of desperation. And it's one thing to commit an act of desperation when you're trying to flee Poland. It's harder to explain your act of desperation when you are merely trying to get through the day. And so I think that dishonesty and the sort of assassins that live in the house with you, that hold a gun over you, that kidnap you and don't let you actually say what is going on in the room. That is why we lie. Because we know we'll get shot if we say it. Sorry to extend that metaphor to death.
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Alison Stewart
The book is full of bar mitzvahs and two day burials. There's like an angle for the nose jobs. Some words I won't use.
- [19:04]
Taffy Brettiser Achner
I love that. I love the angle for the nose job.
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Alison Stewart
As you were writing this, how did you fall into archetypes of Jewish folks versus stereotypes?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I guess I didn't even think about it. I just thought about who are the. What generation is it that I'm writing about right now? And what did they sound like and what did they do? And I think stereotype comes from laziness and maybe a little bit of contempt. And maybe the answer to your question is, I don't have any contempt for these people. I am these people. Right. I mean, that's when I. When I read a review saying that some of them are unlikable. I can't even understand what they're talking about, which I guess means that I'm not likable. I guess I'd be a terrible character.
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Alison Stewart
Or you've fallen in love with them. It's nice to spend time. You've fallen in love with the characters.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
That's nice. Thank you for saying that. I just feel like. I feel like it is a strange time to write specifically about anybody. But the only thing I can do, the only way I could justify anything I write, because so much of what I read right now is not art. I'm not being derisive about it. I'm saying it's not art. It's about the anxiety of making art, which is the story of our time. The fact that we now know that whatever we write right now in 10 years will be abhorrent to a new generation. And what are you gonna do? You're either not gonna write or you're just gonna know that I'll have a good 10 years. That's all you have as a writer now in this culture. So the only thing I can defend is writing about who I am and what I've seen.
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Alison Stewart
Beamer.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yeah. Okay.
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Alison Stewart
Real name Bernard.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yes.
- [20:59]
Alison Stewart
No one calls him that now. Beamer is short for BMW.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
No. People thought it was short for BMW.
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Alison Stewart
BMWs built Nazi Germany.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
No, no, no. I mean, there's a whole debate about. I mean, the thousand pages that were left on the cutting room floor have debates about whether or not you should drive a German car or if it's the ultimate triumph to drive a German car. Beamer is named Beamer because some people think it's because that was his first car and some people think it is because his eyes are like high beams and people are like deer in headlights when they look at him, especially women. But actually it's because his beloved younger sister could not pronounce Bernard as a baby and called him Beamer. And it took.
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Alison Stewart
Beamer is a co writer of film franchise. He did it with his friend. His friend kind of did a little work.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Beamer's like the cheerleader, I guess. Beamer decides he wants to continue the series on. The guy's not having it. Do you think he can actually write a good series? Write a good sequel, prequel, whatever it is?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I think he is trying to write something in the realm of the fourth in a Die Hard series back when there's no real hope in this current day for anyone. Green lighting that project, can he write a good version of that? Probably not. The real question is, can he write a great version of the story that he wants to write? And the question that he grapples with, probably without knowing it. The question I grappled with was, it's a lot of risk to write personally. It is a lot of vulnerability. The reason I do it is because the thing that hangs over my head is, you know, having a different job than the one that I want to do. If you have all the money in the world, why would you take a risk? Why would you be vulnerable? And he comes very, very close to understanding that. And that's where I'll leave it, because I don't want to spoil anything.
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Alison Stewart
He has an idea for a film, he gets really carried away with it. That's what we'll say. Leave it there. How far did you want to go in his mental decline over the course of this experience?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I wanted him to divorce himself from reality in a major way. But the first time I wrote this novel, when I first wrote it, he was a studio executive. He became a screenwriter when I became a screenwriter. And a lot of his anxieties about his success and about screenwriting are my. Were my anxieties when I was writing the television show version of Fleischman. But what I also noticed is that it's very easy to lose any sense of reality when you're talking about these projects, because forget Fleischman. But, you know, you go on to talk about an idea and someone will say, oh, you should attach that person to this idea. And so he's trying to package this idea, which is a great way to avoid writing it. And I think that's what Beamer's doing there is he has the idea, he has the theme. He knows it's gonna be brilliant. He knows it's gonna be thematically charged. But before he puts pen to paper, why doesn't he find a director? Why doesn't he find a star for it? Why doesn't he figure out a way to make it before he has to write it? Because writing as I was doing, felt like the hardest thing in the world.
- [24:52]
Alison Stewart
Nathan is a well meaning soul. He can't get out of his own way. He's a lawyer. He looks for loopholes that lets big business like usurp small ones. But there's this interesting back and forth he has with a newly minted partner, it's Dominic Romano. And they debate who has it harder, Jewish immigrant family or an Italian immigrant family.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Right.
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Alison Stewart
What did you want to explore with that exchange.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
In that exchange, I was not exploring the differences in ethnicity because especially where I grew up, I was a late teenager when I found out that Italians and Jews are not the same people from just different regions. It did not occur to me. And what they're actually talking about is being without money and being with money. And Nathan, the Jewish character comes from money and his partner friend does not.
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Alison Stewart
I read somewhere you put torture them a post it on your computer.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Who was it hard to torture?
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
All of them. The reason the post it says torture them. My kids love it. They make fun of me for it. The reason the post it is on the computer is to remind you that it is your obligation as a storyteller to bring everyone to their lowest point, because once you get them there, it is so hard because you love them. I love every single one of these people. They are comprised of thoughts I've had and theories I've earned and pieces of me. And then my obligation as a storyteller is to just beat them up so that they can figure out a way to redeem themselves. That is something that I don't know if it comes naturally to anyone. It certainly doesn't come naturally to me. And so the post it endures.
- [26:56]
Alison Stewart
I'm not going to explain what Long Island Compromise means.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yes, this is a family. What people explain this is a family show.
- [27:01]
Alison Stewart
But then it turns into something else. Yes, it becomes clear that the family money's gone.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Right.
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Alison Stewart
Whose world do you think gets rocked the most?
- [27:13]
Taffy Brettiser Achner
This is a strange answer, but I think the people around them.
- [27:19]
Alison Stewart
Interesting.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
Yeah, the people around them. So you mentioned that there are a lot of characters. Listener, please don't be afraid of that. No.
- [27:29]
Alison Stewart
It'S 440 pages, and they're just like coming and they're going and they're in, and then they're back, and then they come and they go anyway. Continue.
- [27:34]
Taffy Brettiser Achner
And the the book, it is hard. It took a long time to figure out. How can you write about wealthy people and explain what your point of view on the wealth is? If you are doing a novel that is a close third person on these five characters, and the answer is through the people around them. Meg Wolitzer, who has become a dear friend, explained that to me. Whereas my first novel had an actual journalist narrator speaking directly to the audience, I didn't want to do that this time. And her answer, because she has all the answers, was a very simple. Have someone in the corner just say what you want to say. Which seems elementary, but I am here for all elementary Lessons.
- [28:20]
Alison Stewart
Speaking of, what did you learn from Fleischma is in trouble that you're going to put to work this time when this has been adapted for screen?
- [28:27]
Taffy Brettiser Achner
For screen. That's a great question, and I'm going to answer it technically. I'm not going to answer it thematically. I'm going to answer technically that when I wrote Fleischman, I had this misconception that there's so much money in television that it would also equal time. And I didn't realize that every time you write a scene, this is also so dumb that every time you write a scene and you change out of the previous scene, you have to change the lighting and you have to exhaust your cast and your directors and you have to change their costumes and you have to exhaust everyone with this sort of maximalist, ebullient version of things. This time I am going to know what the thing I'm writing might mean. On the day we're on the set, they say, on the day, I'm going to be able to hold my head up high and look at everyone and say, I tried to make this more humane for you, but everyone was so nice to me about how inhumane I was. They were very supportive, but I didn't know what I was doing.
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Alison Stewart
Well, you learn.
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Taffy Brettiser Achner
I did learn. And I had so much support. And I had a network and a studio that were rooting for me and producers who explained things to me. And still there's stuff that it's only once you see it that you understand the physics of it. I had a cast who showed up for every crazy moment for it and was willing to try and was willing to do things that did not seem like they might work. And it felt magical. It felt like the wind. Is it that the wind is at your back? Yes. That's the good one, right? You're right. When it's at your front, it's bad dust in your contact lenses. But it felt like the wind was at my. Is everyone trying for this one goal? It reminded me of a newsroom. It reminded me of a newsroom on election night. But now imagine every night is election night. It's really tiring.
- [30:31]
Alison Stewart
And good luck to you.
- [30:32]
Taffy Brettiser Achner
Thank you.
- [30:34]
Alison Stewart
That was my conversation with author Taffy Brettiser Aichner from our get lit with all of it book club event. Tomorrow is another get lit event with Katy Kitamura, author of Audition Special Musical guest is Reeve Carney. We will be at the New York Public Library tomorrow at 6pm you can reserve tickets now by going to wnyc.org.
- [30:54]
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