Marcy Dermansky, "Hot Air" (Knopf, 2025)

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: New Books Network (Burned by Books)
Host: Chris Holmes
Guest: Marcy Dermansky, author of Hot Air (Knopf, 2025)
Date: October 31, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features an engaging conversation between host Chris Holmes and novelist Marcy Dermansky about her new book, Hot Air. The novel, characterized by its comedic style and sharp social critique, launches readers into a world where outlandish events—like a hot air balloon crashing into a pool—spark explorations of desire, wealth, motherhood, and the sometimes absurd negotiations of modern life. Holmes and Dermansky discuss the novel’s genesis, its thematic focus, character construction, and place within Dermansky’s broader oeuvre.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of the Novel’s Concept

• Hot Air opens with a hot air balloon crashing into a pool during a first date between two divorced parents, Joanie and Johnny.
• This dramatic inciting event originated from a writing prompt by Emily Hopkins Sanders.
  • “It literally had a prompt saying write a short story where a hot air balloon falls into a swimming pool.” (Marcy, 04:37)
• After initial hesitation and a rejected short story submission to The New Yorker, Dermansky’s agent encouraged her to expand it into a novel:
  • “He said, Marcy, I really loved this, so turn it into a novel. And I'm like, no, this is too silly. Too silly even for me.” (Marcy, 05:11)
• She found creative freedom in approaching the project with low expectations and minimal pressure.

2. Narrative Perspective and Character Construction

• The novel features four main narrators—all with “J” names: Joanie, Johnny, Jonathan, and Julia:
  • “There are four narrators. There are four different main points of views and their names all start with J... when people ask me like, why did I do that?…it pleased me when I was writing.” (Marcy, 06:33)
• Dermansky enjoys playing with voice and advocating for character empathy, even when characters are so-called ‘unlikable.’
  • “I never feel that way because I always just feel when I'm going into somebody... it feels like a really close, close first. Third person. Like I'm in their head.” (Marcy, 08:21)
• The democratization of viewpoint—granting both central and peripheral characters interiority—serves to humanize even those readers may find “less than savory.”

3. Mother-Daughter Relationships

• The dynamic between Joanie and her daughter Lucy remains central, grounding the novel’s absurdities in emotional reality.
  • “Joanie is a single mother kind of just coming out of the pandemic and she's really kind of always just like trying to not fail her daughter constantly.” (Marcy, 11:15)
• Lucy, at age 8, is granted two chapters from her own perspective, offering astute observations about her mother.
  • “She always wants to get her mother to something cool. And I really like doing that... I was really pleased with how that voice came out.” (Marcy, 12:54)

4. Exploring Desire—Sexual, Social, and Material

• Holmes notes that in Dermansky’s work, “Women's desires are so often the linchpin of drama and tension.” (Chris, 13:20)
• Hot Air explores multiple forms of desire: sexual longing, freedom from obligation, and the allure (and burden) of wealth.
  • “I think when we're taught about, like what to write a novel, like they teach you, the first thing you have to do is have characters want things... But everybody in this novel, I think wants something slightly different. And it's all about desire.” (Marcy, 14:12)
• Notably, Julia, the billionaire’s wife, ultimately just wants alone time with her cats, subverting typical narratives of ambition:
  • “In the end we find out that Julia…she really just wants her cats.” (Marcy, 15:03)

5. Wealth, Power, and Social Critique

• The novel lampoons the social distance and moral indifference of the ultra-wealthy:
  • “Jonathan and Julia…they basically take on Joanie and Lucy as if they're like projects. They're like, oh, this is an adorable mother and daughter. Maybe we want them…But the minute they become problematic, they just switch off.” (Marcy, 23:46)
• Holmes observes the corrosive influence of privilege, particularly through experiences like VIP treatment at Harry Potter World.
• The character Julia exhibits a lack of self-awareness about her own privilege:
  • “She says to herself that she knows her limitations... what the day's events have taught us is that she has no limits or...really ethical. And she'll break any rule, cut any line, and feel unscathed by it.” (Chris, 25:08)
  • “So I think what that really says is that she doesn't actually know herself at all.” (Marcy, 25:39)

6. Crafting Comedy and Minimalist Style

• Dermansky is praised for her “minimalist, almost stripped down style that manages amazing emotional and comic work…” (Chris, 29:00)
• She attributes comic effect to rhythm, repetition, and brevity, rather than overt joke-writing:
  • “If I actually tried, tried to be funny, I wouldn't be. But sometimes I write something and then I realize it is funny...I'm always writing short sentences…And sometimes I think when I repeat something that already is ridiculous, if I say it again, that makes it funny.” (Marcy, 29:30)
• Major stylistic influences include minimalist writers Mary Robison and Frederick Barthelme (Marcy, 30:20)

7. Setting and Research

• The novel’s setting is a blend of Montclair, New Jersey, and an unspecified (everywhere) upper-middle-class suburb.
• Much of the Harry Potter World experience was researched online and by interviewing children rather than personal visits:
  • “The only thing that I really had to imagine which was interesting for me was I had to imagine Hogwarts because I have them go to the Harry Potter theme park...I literally interviewed one of my daughter's friends and she didn't even know it.” (Marcy, 20:03)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On character empathy:
  “People think things all the time that they're not supposed to say. And that's what I do in writing. And people are just always having these horrible thoughts, and I'm putting them onto the page and then they're. Therefore, people think that they're horrible characters, but I don't know, I think that's just like, sort of more honest and true.” (Marcy, 08:41)

• On writing Lucy’s perspective:
  “I've never written from the point of view of a kid before and what she thinks about her mother. And I made her so astute...she knew just what her mother was doing and what her mother was up to.” (Marcy, 12:54)

• On the corrupting power of wealth:
  “The minute they become problematic, they just switch off, and they just, like, they don't even greet them when they return home. And that's just a horrible way to treat people.” (Marcy, 24:05)

• On writing comedy:
  “I think to some extent it is a magic trick because I think if I actually tried, tried to be funny, I wouldn't be...I'm always writing short sentences...I love to repeat things and I love the rhythms of things...if I say it again, that makes it funny.” (Marcy, 29:30)

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Book Recommendations

By Marcy Dermansky:

• Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian (funny campus novel) (31:07)
• An Education by Susan Choi (31:16)
• Fonseca by Jessica Francis Kane (“so feminist and it's a historical novel…funny in a way you wouldn't suspect”) (31:54)

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Key Timestamps

• [04:35] — Genesis of the hot air balloon plot and novel’s origins
• [06:30] — “J”-named narrators and narrative structure
• [08:21] — Empathy for "unlikeable" characters
• [11:04] — Mother-daughter relationships
• [14:03] — Desire as a central theme
• [19:06] — The importance of domestic, claustrophobic scenes
• [20:03] — Researching Harry Potter World and setting choices
• [23:06] — Critique of wealth and privilege
• [29:30] — Approach to comedy and style
• [30:53] — Book recommendations

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Conclusion

This episode offers deep insight into Marcy Dermansky’s creative process, thematic concerns, and stylistic approach with Hot Air. Through relatable anecdotes and sharp observations, the conversation reveals how Dermansky blends comic absurdity with nuanced critique of relationships, desire, and the moral pitfalls of wealth—all within a concise and propulsive narrative. If you’re curious about contemporary fiction that’s as funny as it is thoughtful, Hot Air and this conversation are not to be missed.

Transcript

[Marcy Dransky]

Hello, everybody.

[Marshall Po]

This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Chris Holmes]

I'm Chris Holmes and this is Burned by Books. Here you'll find interviews with writers you already love, like Jennifer Egan and Rebecca Mackay, mixed in with up and coming voices like Alexandra Kleeman and Roman Alam. You'll find us wherever you listen to podcasts, but check out previous [e-mail] and on Instagram and Twitter at burnedbybooks. Let's start the show. Joni and Johnny are at Johnny's for a first date. They are divorced and their kids are playing together while dinner and a date unfold. Once you know that this is a Marcy Dramansky novel, she of the comic masterpieces Bad Marie, Hurricane Girl, and Very Nice, among others, it will be less surprising that when the dinner date is interrupted by a hot air balloon crashing into Johnny's pool, once Joni has dived in to pull out one of the ballooners, the story takes a weirder turn. The rescued man is known to Joni. In fact, he was her first kiss at summer camp. He's now a billionaire who has just splashed down with his gorgeous philanthropist wife who who really wants zero to do with any of this. So begins Hot Air, Marcy Dransky's novel of sex and desire, wealth and power, real estate and cats and motherhood and swimming. The overnight stay that turns into a partner swap will end up being an extended vacation of sorts for Joni and her daughter Lucy as they are swept away in Jonathan and Julia's mansion and then on an impromptu vacation to Harry Potter world, which will go delightfully off plan. A master of the short novel, Durmanski does more with a brief sentence than most writers today, and she does so with a two handed attention to comedy and critique wherein the latter skewers nearly everyone subtly enough that characters might not notice the wound until the blood begins to pool. Joni's date gone wrong will be a manifold revelation about the things that she truly wants in her life. Intangibles like the purity of the promise she made to care for Lucy. Above all, a novel with a driving plot that also demands to be savored. Marcy Durmanski's Hot Air is a marvelous addition to a growing canon of serious novels that aren't afraid to laugh at themselves or at us. Marcy Dramanski is the author of Critic the critically acclaimed novels Hurricane Girl, Very Nice, the Red Car, Bad Marie and Twins. She has received fellowships from McDowell and the Edward F. Albee Foundation. She lives with her daughter in Montclair, New Jersey. Welcome back to the show. Marcie Drmanski hi Chris.

[Marcy Dransky]

I'm so glad to be back and thank you for that beautiful introduction.

[Chris Holmes]

Thank you so much for being here. Let's start with the conceit of the novel. You love a wonderful and an outlandish conceit and I think for most writers a hot air balloon falling into the pool. Disturbing a first date might feel preposterous, but in your hands, the characters really take it in stride and it simply becomes part of a developing day. How did you come up with this plot catalyst and how did you go about making it feel real in the world of hot air?

[Marcy Dransky]

Right. Thanks so much. And it I actually do believe that the hot air balloon falling into, I'm assuming pool is the most preposterous opening of all of my novels. And it started of all places from, from a writing prompt. There was a period of time when I was struggling with writing and I have friend who sends out a newsletter, Emily Hopkins Sanders. And it literally had a prompt saying write a short story where a hot air balloon falls into a swimming pool. Turned off, maybe the inside falls into a swimming pool. I think I added that in fact. So I embellished. But you know, so I wrote it and I wrote a short story and I really liked it and then that was going to be and I and I Sent it to my agent. And what my agent does for me every once in a while is he sends it to the New Yorker and it got rejected, which is what always happens. And then he said, marcie, I really loved this, so turn it into a novel. And I'm like, no, this is too silly. Too silly even for me. And I don't want to. And I didn't. And I spent a whole year working on another book that, that I just abandoned. And I had a friend who invited me to her house to come write. And it was this great plan. We were going to go right at her house and then have lunch like twice a week. It was like a whole new thing. And I had nothing. I wasn't working on anything. And so I just pulled back to the short story that my agent liked because I thought, well, I'll just do this because my agent is right. And so I really didn't have any high expectations for it. So I just wrote it really, really quickly because I didn't have any expectations for it. And sometimes the. When I'm not trying hard, that's when things come out better, which is really frustrating for a person with the work. But that was easy. Yeah.

[Chris Holmes]

Well, it's. It seems like a good lesson in, in trusting your agent.

[Marcy Dransky]

Yes. Thank you, Alex Glass. Yeah.

[Chris Holmes]

But I love that. I mean, it's, you know, obviously we want our, like, our hard and consistent work and, and purposeful work to pay off, but it is nice that you can just be in it every once in a while and have it turn out well.

[Marcy Dransky]

Yeah. And I mean, like, this novel is very silly in some respects. And you, you probably would ask me. There are four narrators. There are four different main points of views and their names all start with J. There's Joanie and Johnny and Jonathan and Julia. And that confuses some people, though I didn't realize that until after I published the book that it would be confusing. But when people ask me like, why did I do that? I. I did that because. Because it pleased me when I was writing. It just really pleased me. And so I find that sometimes when I'm writing, like, that's what I want to do to keep myself involved in the project because writing can be so hard, is that I'm really trying to please myself.

[Chris Holmes]

Oh, that's so great. Yeah. I did wonder whether you had done, especially the Johnny and Jonathan piece of it, whether you had done that intentionally to have them be like, stand ins, but clearly just to please yourself.

[Marcy Dransky]

They were always, they were always there and one person wrote me and asked me a question when I did an interview about this book, and it was very intelligent. She said, maybe that all four of these characters were all different iterations of myself. And I thought, well, that's so smart, or they're all the same person. But that wasn't what I intended. But it might also be true. Do you know what I mean? I love it when people. And they're correct about it.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, it can be both.

[Marcy Dransky]

Yeah.

[Chris Holmes]

And so you've got these, you know, a third. A third person narration that's moving between these focal characters. And we also, you know, throw in Lucy and Vivian in there and Vivian's, Jonathan's assistant. This democratization of the viewpoints treats all the characters with empathy that we might necessarily not see them as deserving. What was in your line of thinking in approaching how the voice of the novel would live in everybody's head, even in characters who turn out to be in some ways less than savory in their way of seeing the world.

[Marcy Dransky]

I mean, I feel like sometimes one thing I hear about my work from some people, and I like that you said that they were empathetic, is that I write really unlikable characters. And I never feel that way because I always just feel when I'm going into somebody. And even though this is third person, it feels like a really close, close first. Third person. Like I'm in their head.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, very much.

[Marcy Dransky]

And I love writing interior monologue. And I just think people think things all the time that they're not supposed to say. And that's what I do in writing. And people are just always having these horrible thoughts, and I'm putting them onto the page and then they're. Therefore, people think that they're horrible characters, but I don't know, I think that's just like, sort of more honest and true. So if Joanie always wants a pool to swim in and she wants, like a free meal, she's not going to actually say that out loud. She's going to have slightly better manners than that. And I just kind of love to, like, going into the head of, like, a billionaire, which I don't really know anything about, but he was just fun to write. You know, I've kind of had him just, like, sort of masturbating when nobody was watching him and thinking about playing tennis and little disregard for people. So maybe he wasn't like him, but it was just so fun to let my mind go there and try to imagine what somebody was thinking.

[Chris Holmes]

And I think it's true. I mean, do you? You may feel differently, but I feel like the moment that someone is able to like preview all of our thoughts aloud to the public will be the day that I just sort of like shuffle off the mortal, mortal coil. Because I don't think anybody wants their, their everyday thoughts projected.

[Marcy Dransky]

That would just be so bad, wouldn't it?

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, it would. It would be terrible.

[Marcy Dransky]

I would be in trouble all the time. All the time. Joke even. And it's like a joke and I say it kind of deadpan and people don't know and I have to say that's a joke. It happens to me often.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah. Now just imagine once it's every joke you have is, is out there. That's the problem. In so many of your novels you work through mother daughter relationships as one of the primary, primary and, and focal relationships. And, and Joanie and, and Lucy's relationship while never in doubt, despite the weirdness of their experience with these people, there's less an anxiety for Joanie that the reader and the reader, that's. That something might disturb that bond or break the trust between them. Tell us about the role of the mother, mother, daughter relationship in this novel and in your work more broadly. And do you see making transparent things that culture at large overlooks or disregards in those kinds of relationships?

[Marcy Dransky]

Sure, yeah. I mean, I'm trying to think like. And I have a previous novel called Very Nice, which was, which was about a mother and a daughter who have sex with the same man. But this one was about a mother with like a younger child. Lucy's only 8 years old and just to be like. So I wrote a novel with a preposterous beginning. A swimming pool fall, a hot air falling into a swimming pool. But Joanie is a single mother kind of just coming out of the pandemic and she's really kind of always just like trying to not fail her daughter constantly. That's all she's really worried about. Like she just wants to make things nice for her daughter. Like she'll go to Harry Potter land for her daughter or so. And, and, and that's just not made up. That's very close to my experience and I don't even need to like, I wouldn't call this book auto fiction, but I'm always writing things from my own thoughts in my own head and I'm definitely using my own life to some extent, just to some extent. But to put in the book, if that's what makes it true and that what is what I think makes this novel that seems really silly or Absurd on the surface. And it also has some. Some melancholy to it. It's goose in it.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Marcy Dransky]

The mother daughter relationships are just so interesting and important to me, I guess. Yeah.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah. And I think they get. Sometimes they get stereotyped because they're. They are so. They're so fundamental in. In a lot of culture, but they end up sometimes playing in these very expected ways. And I feel like the relationship between Joanie and Lucy doesn't feel. Feel expected in that way. And I wondered if you were working against some of the expectations for how that relationship would operate.

[Marcy Dransky]

I think one thing I felt like working about this. This novel has four points of views. One thing that I did that really surprised me was I wrote from Lucy's point of view and she only has two chapters. I think, like, this novel kind of follows a schedule of four points of view that repeat in the same order. But Lucy twice comes in and I've never written from the point of view of a kid before and what she thinks about her mother. And I made her so astute. Like, I thought she knew just what her mother was doing and what her mother was up to. And she's actually like. She always wants to get her mother to something cool. And I really like doing that. And I was really pleased with how that voice came out. And that didn't answer. I just danced around your question at a hundred percent.

[Chris Holmes]

No, that's. I. That was a lovely answer. So I. I do think that many of the major writers I love have kind of one driving line through their work, even if that thrust finds itself in deeply varied contexts in your novels. Women's desires are so often the linchpin of drama and tension. Desire and hot air reads as deeply confused sexual desire as a desire to be free of the obligations placed upon Joni by men in her life. Desire to have the freedom of wealth without the corrupting obliviousness of it. Talk about the role of desire in this novel.

[Marcy Dransky]

Wow, that's. I just wrote that down. I wrote down Women's Desire, my notebook, and I put a square around it because I think you're right. I think when we're taught about, like what to write a novel, like they teach you, the first thing you have to do is have characters want things. So that's like. That's what you're told to do. And then I met Emily St. John Mandel once. I did a. With my. It was a long time ago, but we talked about the Red Car. And she said that I only wrote about women. I was like, is that True. And it mainly is true. So my next novel I kind of threw in some male POVs and there are men in hot air too. But I think I'm really mainly interested in women because. Because I am one basic as that. So it's, it's a little bit more natural. But I guess isn't that everything? What, what, what, what we want? Like how can. Like that's the whole story and it just can take on manifest in so many different ways and so many different stories. But everybody in this novel, I think wants something slightly different. And it's all about desire. But in the end we find out that Julia, who kind of desires her husband and sometimes desires Julia and also desires a little girl, she really just wants her cats in that.

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[Chris Holmes]

That's the wonderful turn of that in the end is realizing that if she could have some like proper alone time with the cats, everything would be a hell of a lot better.

[Marcy Dransky]

And that's based on people I know. Do you know what I mean? And so there's some real truth to that. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think that's not something you want have to have people publicly know too that you prefer cats to humans. So I think that's not that uncommon.

[Chris Holmes]

Well, and you do, you do a fun sleight of hand in that you make sexuality very quickly the centerpiece of, of desire, as there's a kind of an impromptu partner swap. But that sort of like, goes wrong in, in different and interesting ways. And then desire becomes more diffuse throughout the, the novel. Whereas I feel like, you know, I could see a novelist then, you know, making that, that swap be the center of everything for the rest of the novel.

[Marcy Dransky]

Yeah, it's true, I used it and then I. And then I did tangents from it, but that, that was fun to use. And what, what I love about, about writing is I never know what I'm going to use for my own life, to tell you the truth. And I have not. I have. I had a funny moment at the, at the Watson booksellers when I was talking to people who worked there because they somehow instantly assumed that that was my experience. So I'm like, wow. And I was really writing about my parents generation because that's what was going on when I grew up. Like, that's what the, the adults were doing. And so it's just so fun when I'm writing that I take something that, that I have and I never know that I'm going to use and I put it in there.

[Chris Holmes]

I do, I do kind of have these moments where I imagine my, my mother's generation having these, like, key parties and I just can't, like, I can't square it with like, you know, the mom that I knew so well. But it is, you know, that was a part of society and a part of the way that desire manifested itself.

[Marcy Dransky]

Yeah, it was a big thing. The ice storm. It was real.

[Chris Holmes]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the things I love about hot air is that it kind of operates at first as a theatrical set piece. It's one house, couple of rooms, and a balloon, a hot air balloon looming like, you know, Czech coffee and gun in the pool outside. And it, and it feels like you really sort of are enjoying that claustrophobic domestic space. And you often have that in your, in your novels, often with a pool and where it's conversation that's going to test the relationships of the characters and build drama and that, you know, eventually you're in this novel, you're going to leave that claustrophobic space. But would you talk about sort of crafting scenes in these kind of close quarters where you've got almost a kind of theater piece happening?

[Marcy Dransky]

It's true. And I did, I did try to imagine the house I was just like, how can they like leave the kitchen to get into the backyard? And at one point I tried to imagine a backyard with a head. There are always these sort of logistical questions that you need to do to make a scene work that I don't think I always write out on the page, but I'm trying to imagine it and. And sometimes honestly I feel like I need to travel a little bit more and then maybe my books, my characters might go to my might explore a little bit more soon. I mean this book is really set. I live in Montclair, New Jersey and if you wanted to ask me where the house was, I would, I would put it. I would put it in Montclair, but I just put it nowhere. I literally did. Situated everywhere. You just sort of imagine it. It's just going to be somewhere on the east side. And so the only thing that I really had to imagine which was interesting for me was I had to imagine Hogwarts because I have them go to than Harry Potter theme park. And a true fact is this just that I've never been there. A place like that would give me an anxiety attack.

[Chris Holmes]

Oh, you haven't been there? Oh, wow.

[Marcy Dransky]

I've never been there. I couldn't stand these places. It's something. I actually feel incredibly guilty as a parent that I haven't given my daughter that experience. And so I haven't. So in the book Joanie and Lucy get to go. They don't have a good time. So maybe. But I send them there and I literally interviewed one of my daughter's friends and she didn't even know it. I just asked her all these questions. Like I asked her what's your favorite ride? And it was the Hagrid. And then I went onto, I went onto the Internet and I ended up looking at pictures of it because I hadn't been there myself.

[Chris Holmes]

And so yeah, it's going to ask you. One of my questions was going to be that when you leave the, the domestic space, you go to a space that has a huge popular imagination attached to it. Both, you know, how. How many people have read the Harry Potter books at this point, but also Universal Studios, like Disney World is a place where millions of people are going. And I wondered what you're. And I think it has to do obviously with the fact that you haven't been there. But do. Were you able to kind of like balance the anxiety of needing to like present something that would be truthful to people's experience while also, I mean when you write the scenes you really keep the. The focal camera lens of the narration so tight on. On Joanie and Lucy that it's almost like we don't see things as much. Was that your strategy?

[Marcy Dransky]

I definitely. I definitely worried about it. And the first draft, by the way, there definitely wasn't enough, and that's why I had to go back in. And I think I put in some cobblestones and I put in some details about VIP services, and I definitely have to do more work than I originally put in. And I was worried about it. But I've done that before, and in Bad and Read. There's a lot of. That book is set in Paris, and I really, unfortunately only spent a weekend in Paris, and I just used my knowledge from seeing a lot of French films and from looking things up on the computer, and I just want to take more trips. But I definitely worried about not getting away with it, and now I'm admitting it. And I do have a great memory of going to Disney World as a child. And there's a picture of me next to Goofy. It's an actual Polaroid beaming at him like. It's, like one of my happy moments in that picture. So I know that it's possible for children to just have the best time in the world there. So.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah. And. And it is a place that I. I feel like it's almost universal, although I say almost because there's a lot of exceptions to this, that parents don't particularly enjoy it, but sometimes they enjoy it vicariously through their younger selves or through their children experiencing it. But it is so noisy and chaotic, and you stand in a lot of lines. And I want to pick up. I mean, you're. You're absolutely right about that VIP thing. I think it's notorious now that you can be. If you're wealthy enough, you can just eschew entirely the. The line aspect of things. And it's. You know, this is a novel that's at least partly about the corruption of wealth.

[Marcy Dransky]

Yeah.

[Chris Holmes]

And. And it's very difficult for Joanie to see how much Lucy is drawn to some of the excesses of Julia's life. And that includes that VIP movement through Harry Potter world and the ability to drop everything and simply fly somewhere. And certainly Joni feels some of that, but she also, I think, sees it as corrosive to things like loyalty and kindness and empathy and decency. And this is a novel full of comic delights, but it has a substantial critique of that at its core. So do you want to talk about its. Its critique of corrosive wealth.

[Marcy Dransky]

Well, I mean, it's. It's really bitter. I mean, there's these characters, Jonathan and Julia, and they're billionaires, and they basically take on Julie, Joanie, and Lucy as if they're like projects. They're like, oh, this is an adorable mother and daughter. Maybe we want them. It's almost like they're people, but we're going to acquire them. Like, Julie wants a daughter, and they're. And Joanie's a published writer, and why not? It's so good. But the minute. The minute they become problematic, they just switch off. They just switch off, and they just, like, they don't even greet them when they return home. And that's just a horrible way to treat people. And I was very much aware of it while I was doing that. And I was just like, I don't know. I don't think everybody treats people that way. I think it would be like, way over generalization to say that all rich people are cooler.

[Chris Holmes]

But I. Yeah, sure, sure.

[Marcy Dransky]

But they also have the capacity. I think sometimes I feel emp. I do feel empathetic for rich people because I can imagine that they must think that everybody wants what they have, which is also true. And so I think that makes them put their defenses up right away. And I wonder if that's why so many wealthy people only spend time with other wealthy people. It's like this weird sort of differentiation, but I definitely wanted to show how corrosive it was that wasn't an accident, and they were really, truly awful. And what I really love is it's not in there, but there's implied that Joanie's gonna get. Get her revenge. Yeah.

[Chris Holmes]

For me, one of the great ironies is sort of thought by Julia. She. She says to herself that she knows her limitations.

[Marcy Dransky]

Yeah.

[Chris Holmes]

And I think what the day's events have taught us is that she has no limits or. And either physical or really ethical. And she'll break any rule, cut any line, and feel unscathed by it. And I wonder if you viewed her as. As being, you know, really false and thinking about not having any limitations.

[Marcy Dransky]

That is just so wonderful because I really. I didn't think of that. And I think you're right about that. I thought I was saying I have limitations, and so that's why she gives up on people. But at the same thing, that's showing just that she doesn't, you know, she's so unlimited. Yeah. So I think what that really says is that she doesn't actually know herself at all. But I Do know people in real life that like, take on other people as projects and that's always a really dangerous thing to do. And. And I feel like no one should ever take on another person as a project if they're not gonna see them through. It's a terrible thing to do to people. And I feel like it happens more than we would like to think.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, no, I agree. Vivian, who gets. Who gets some. Some bit of her own narrative focus exists in maybe the sort of furthest circle outside of the action of the interwoven couples and Lucy. But she is in many ways the kind of all seeing eyes that can help us judge some of the characters actions. But I'm very interested in her deep disappointment in meeting Joni, who. Who turns out is a writer that she has admired for some time. Because Joanie seems to fall under the umbrella of power and influence of Jonathan Julia. Her acting, grateful for the trappings of wealth that are served up to her, make Vivian kind of turn on her. And I, you know, take us through Vivian, as would be writer stuck in this, maybe permanently stuck in this job as Jonathan's assistant. And. But who sees, you know, herself outside through Joni and then is disturbed when Joni is as in some ways trapped by wealth as she is.

[Marcy Dransky]

Yeah, Vivian came last. She was always in the story. She was always the assistant. But she didn't have a point of view until after I finished the draft, until after I submitted it to be published. And my. My editor was just like, this wants something else, but I don't know what it is. And sometimes as a writer, you know what you're not giving us. Like, I knew Vivian needed a voice, so once I was pushed, I put her in. And so she basically sees everything. She almost is like the omnipresent narrator, even though she doesn't serve that role in the book. But one thing that I really kind of loved about Vivian, who is so judgmental, is she judges Joni, who's a writer who wants all these things so harshly. And that was kind of great to do. And in a twisted way, if Joanie was semi based on me, but not really to write a character that was looking down on her was kind of being thrilled to myself where he could do some such a game. And I just enjoyed it. And another just small detail that I loved about about Vivian is that I really. She's. She's Vietnamese, she was adopted. And I reference a modern family. And one of the things about myself as a single mother is I have spent so much time watching television that I wouldn't want to watch because that's what my daughter loves to do so much. And so I loved that I could put the insane amount of TV that I watch and use it in a novel. And that really thrilled me.

[Chris Holmes]

Hmm. Oh, I, I, that's a great answer. I like that very much. You are really a comic novelist of the highest order and I think it's a, it, it's something that's so difficult for even I find even people who are quite funny in, in their everyday, ordinary lives find writing funny to be very difficult. And you do it with a really kind of minimalist, almost stripped down style that manages amazing emotional and comic work. It's sort of like your magic trick. Do you, how do you understand your style and when you're doing craft and drafting work, how do you work on the parts that you want to be funny?

[Marcy Dransky]

I think to some extent it is a magic trick because I think if I actually tried, tried to be funny, I wouldn't be. But sometimes I write something and then I realize it is funny and then I'm really pleased by it. But I'm not trying to be not a stand up comic and I don't write jokes, but I think I'm always writing short sentences. When I'm writing and revising, I'm always taking short sentences and adding an end and then I'm cutting them back. And I love to repeat things and I love the rhythms of things. And sometimes I think when I repeat something that already is ridiculous, if I say it again, that makes it funny. And I don't know exactly. I think if I knew then I wouldn't be able to do it.

[Chris Holmes]

Oh, that's so funny. Although it's bad news for all of us who wish we could write funny. And I know maybe you can just like pass along your magic wand and we'll be able to.

[Marcy Dransky]

I just went to graduate school and I studied with two writers that are really known for being minimalists. I studied with Mary Robeson and Frederick Bartholomew and I don't know.

[Chris Holmes]

Oh yeah, yeah, that must have, I mean, Bartholomew is like such a, like quintessential, both a, a minimalist, but also like such a dry cutting wit too.

[Marcy Dransky]

Yeah. And so that's who I studied with, so that worked out really well.

[Chris Holmes]

Marcy, before I let you go, I'd love to know what you're reading I'm loving recently and whether you have some books you'd like to recommend.

[Marcy Dransky]

I would love to. And you know what? I just finished reading a book and then I noticed that you. She was one of the last people you interviewed. And I bought this book randomly at an airport because I had nothing to read. I just read Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian. Oh, yeah.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah.

[Marcy Dransky]

And it's a campus novel, and I just loved it so much. It was a book that I almost finished on. On the plane. It was just so good and so compelling and so funny, by the way.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, very funny and such a great. I love the conceit of having it be a master's thesis that's been turned in.

[Marcy Dransky]

Yeah, that was really well done. And I had. Honestly, I had just read An Education by Susan Choi before that, so it's like, I really love, like, sort of comparing them before.

[Chris Holmes]

I do love a campus novel. You've got to write a campus novel. I think that's in your. Your wheelhouse, I think.

[Marcy Dransky]

So I kind of did a tiny little bit of that, and very nice, but I kind of dodged around it. But I wrote a college professor, but it wasn't a. And in another book, I would thank you for that. I would love to recommend which it was funny in a way you wouldn't suspect, which was Fonseca by Jessica Francis Kane.

[Chris Holmes]

I have that on my tbd. TBR pile.

[Marcy Dransky]

It's so good. She. Jessica has a style where it just seems like it's going to be so dry, and she just captures you in. And it's about Penelope Fitzgerald, who. Whose books I actually haven't read, who goes to Fonseca, and she's pregnant and she has a child because she thinks she might get an inheritance by these two alcoholic Irish women. And it's just so funny and it. But it's so feminist and it's a historical novel, but it doesn't feel like that. She throws in Edward Hopper and his wife and.

[Chris Holmes]

Amazing.

[Marcy Dransky]

It was so good. It was so good. And I feel like I want more people to be talking about that book because I really.

[Chris Holmes]

I. I had heard from somebody else recommended it who was on recently, and so I think now I have to try and. And interview her because it's.

[Marcy Dransky]

Yeah, I think that would be great. She's really interesting.

[Chris Holmes]

Well, those two are. Are great. I. I love Seduction Theory and. And think it should move into the campus novel canon. And I'm definitely going to read Fonseca, but I want to recommend Hot Air by Marcy Dramansky. It just adds to already a growing collection of some of the funniest, most thoughtful books about the way we project our desire into the world, the loyalties that we have for one another, and the ways that community can break down in sometimes the the oddest and most unhinged ways. And it was really wonderful to get to talk to you again, Marcy.

[Marcy Dransky]

You too, Chris. I'm so glad we got to do this. Thank you so much.

[Chris Holmes]

Yeah, me too. Well, that's all from me for now. My thanks to Marcy Drmansky for coming on to talk about her latest hilarious novel, Hot Air. You can find links to purchase Hot Air and all of Marcy's recommended books at the website burn by books.com there you'll find all of our previous episodes, links to buy, a podcast, T shirt, and ways to get in contact. As you listen, take a moment to rate the show on itunes, Spotify, net, and now YouTube, or wherever you find your podcasts. Until next time, this has been Burned by Books.