Christine Coulson, ONE WOMAN SHOW
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[1:03]Christine Coulson is the author of One Woman Show A Novel.
[1:07]Christine spent 25 years writing for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and left a senior writer
[1:12]in 2019.
[1:14]Her debut novel about the museum Metropolitan Stories was a national bestseller and is now
[1:19]followed by One Woman Show.
[1:21]Welcome, Christine.
[1:22]Thank you so much for coming on Moms.
[1:24]Don't have time to read books to discuss your novel One Woman Show.
[1:28]Thank you.
[1:29]You're welcome.
[1:31]This was so creative.
[1:33]This is the most original form of a novel I've read, and I can't even remember when.
[1:38]So awesome.
[1:39]Tell listeners how you came up with the structure for the story and all the rest.
[1:45]And your whole background and how it relates and it's just pretty genius.
[1:48]I have to say.
[1:49]Well, we'll start at the beginning, which is that I worked for the Metropolitan Museum
[1:54]of Art for 25 years.
[1:56]And my last project there was to write the museum wall labels for the new British galleries
[2:02]that opened in 2020.
[2:04]And it was during that time that I had the idea to apply that very strict form to write
[2:11]labels about people and treat them like intricate works of art.
[2:17]And I didn't know how I was going to do that or what it would become.
[2:21]But I liked that concept of using the form and it's a very strict one.
[2:26]As I said, you only get 75 words per work of art.
[2:30]Every word has to work.
[2:32]And that kind of constraint can yield tremendous creativity.
[2:36]I love limitations.
[2:39]And labels are also the kind of thing where they have to exist in their own sort of place
[2:45]and not necessarily connect to another label because you don't know the order that visitors
[2:51]in the museum are going to read them in.
[2:52]So they each one has to work and you have to stick the landing each time.
[2:57]And so I applied that idea to kind of distilling the moments in a woman's life as they unfold
[3:06]over the course of a century and creating this kind of retrospective exhibition of a woman
[3:14]who like works of art is evaluated, critiqued, prize, and collected from her earliest
[3:23]childhood throughout her life.
[3:25]So neat.
[3:26]So for people who aren't as familiar with museum life in general.
[3:31]So does every individual piece of art, everything has to have a description underneath with
[3:36]the exact same formula and is that across all museums or is it just the med or how does
[3:41]that work?
[3:42]And who writes those?
[3:43]Yeah, most museums do it.
[3:45]Some are hardcore only include, you know, those first three lines in the description
[3:50]are what we call in museums, the tombstone information.
[3:54]So like the artists and the dates and the medium where it came from.
[3:59]So some museums are very limited and they only include that.
[4:04]At the Met, you'll see labels from across the last, you know, 50 years at least.
[4:11]I mean, there are still some labels from the 1940s in those galleries.
[4:14]And so the limitations change.
[4:16]There are some very long labels in certain collections, but the new restrictions that I was
[4:21]writing under 75 words.
[4:23]I got 200 words per century.
[4:26]So the gallery's covered four centuries.
[4:28]I got 200 words per century and 75 per object.
[4:32]It's very unusual for an outside person to come in and write labels that's not a curator.
[4:38]So I was working with a group of seven curators on this huge project and the curator
[4:42]who wasn't charged of it really wanted to unify the voice of the galleries themselves
[4:48]so that visitors would feel a sense of continuity as they were walking through the galleries.
[4:53]So I was the galleries.
[4:55]And so I was a former speech writer and so the galleries were my client.
[5:00]And so I was creating a kind of consistency in how the objects were approached and how we
[5:07]we use that language.
[5:09]And so I was collaborating with people who knew everything about these objects and asking
[5:15]them to pick just one story, 75 words to share with the public.
[5:21]And I think in crafting the novel, it was similar to that.
[5:24]I want the readers to eventually wonder what's being left out.
[5:30]That in the end, you've got 75 words.
[5:33]You've spent the sprawling life and it's action packed.
[5:37]I mean, a lot of happens.
[5:39]And I want there to be a little bit by the end, a little question about the reliability
[5:45]of this narrator, this curator in constructing this life.
[5:49]What we know, what we don't know.
[5:51]I want the reader to be very active in kind of connecting with those texts.
[5:56]It's almost the opposite of an museum where you see a work of art and then there's a
[6:01]little description that kind of explains it.
[6:03]Here, you're getting the label, but the page opposite is blank.
[6:08]And so I want the reader to conjure what I'm describing to kind of make their own work
[6:14]of art in a way.
[6:16]And I love that kind of active reading that sort of participatory experience in a book.
[6:23]So cool.
[6:24]So when you were doing this, as you said, so many things happen in this woman's life.
[6:29]And you also give us points of view from her friends, and we kind of track a couple
[6:33]of the friends, which is also really fun.
[6:35]Did you start and say, okay, here are the things I want to happen to this woman over time.
[6:41]This is what happens.
[6:42]You know, this, oh, well, this time period is going to coincide with this war and I'm going
[6:45]to make this happen.
[6:46]Or like, how did you do that and did you plot it on some sort of timeline?
[6:50]Like it felt very well.
[6:52]I have to say I did not set out to write a book about this woman at all.
[6:56]So this is an interesting instance in where, you know, that the character kind of took
[7:01]over.
[7:02]I wrote a label about this woman, what I call her kitty, as an experiment.
[7:07]It was the first experiment in writing a label about a person.
[7:11]And I just picked this woman standing in the Met's galleries, a kind of typical park avenue
[7:16]lady.
[7:17]And I wrote a label about her.
[7:19]And I liked it.
[7:20]That label's still in the book.
[7:21]It's about three quarters of the way in.
[7:24]And I thought, huh.
[7:26]I'm going to try and write 20 labels about that woman.
[7:29]And I just, it was a way of kind of stretching the form and seeing if it was possible testing
[7:34]its capacity.
[7:36]And so as I was doing that, I was coming up with things that could happen to her.
[7:41]Probably the last label in the book is probably the third one I wrote.
[7:45]So I was always writing to that ending kind of a speech writer thing to do.
[7:50]And I had a destination in a way.
[7:53]And then the story itself kind of spread more like an ink blot than a linear timeline.
[8:00]But I would think of things like at the Met during World War II, all of the important objects
[8:06]went into storage in a house in Pennsylvania.
[8:10]And I thought, oh, maybe kitty goes into storage.
[8:12]I like that idea.
[8:14]And so I was kind of working a little bit with things, ideas I would have.
[8:19]And then I'd have to fill it in so that the reader is going to buy that.
[8:23]The reader is going to be ready for what I want to happen to her.
[8:27]So some of it was a very kind of traditional novel writing, character development, plot,
[8:33]emotional engagement, all those kind of standard traditional modes of storytelling.
[8:38]But within this restricted form.
[8:41]And I write, when I write a label, I tape it to the wall.
[8:44]So the whole book is actually on a wall in my writing studio.
[8:48]And so I was just kind of populating that wall with moments distilled in this form.
[8:55]And kind of, she was sort of revealing the story to me in a way.
[8:59]I mean, it was very complicit.
[9:00]It's an interesting thing that sounds hokey, but it was really happening in real time
[9:06]that, because kitty's complicated.
[9:09]She's not always likable, she understands her own limitations and restrictions and
[9:17]resist them at times, but not, you know, kitty never wanted to be a CEO.
[9:23]But she certainly understood how she was being evaluated and compared to her friends.
[9:29]That dynamic with her friends is an interesting one to explore.
[9:32]So I loved sort of being introduced to these characteristics of her personality.
[9:39]As we went, isn't it funny, like the sounds ridiculous.
[9:42]But when you look at the cover of the book, you don't know necessarily that it is the
[9:46]structure and how unique it is.
[9:48]Do you know what I mean?
[9:49]I would love your cover, by the way, love it and like your website design, like the whole
[9:53]package is just so sleek and cool and I don't know just it's evocative and amazing.
[10:00]You know, I don't know. I was very deliberate in a lot of that though. Like the cover is meant to evoke like a museum banner on the museum's facade and the font in the that we use is the font that then that uses for its labels.
[10:15]You'll note that there's no page numbers because labels don't have page numbers and you see these three porcelain figures on the cover mainly because I wanted to use the language of porcelain to describe Kitty.
[10:30]It's a very human kind of medium. You know, it's hard but fragile made of fire. It has in Kitty's case, it has limited utility like my curve. It's easily moved and I grouped with other things and it's very hard to hide its damage.
[10:48]You know, in museums we talk about when something has a flaw. We say it has condition issues. And I feel like that's such a human term. Like what are we if not filled with condition issues.
[10:59]And so that idea of our own flaws and their visibility or their invisibility and how those appear and how they get critiqued and what we hide versus what we reveal.
[11:10]I thought was really interesting to explore in this language. And I love how the art language whether you know all the terminology or not. I think the way that it's used.
[11:21]I figure it out. Yeah. No, it's amazing. Yeah. Even the different color pages. Right. Like yeah. So those are so as I'm writing label after label about Kitty.
[11:32]I needed there to be a signal when it was not Kitty and it was like what we would call it a museum comparative material. So that's her parents and her friends and kind of creating some sense of a shift in in tone there.
[11:47]I really wanted it to be funny because I think that sort of humor and struggle the darker moments in life. Those two things combine or what make it really feel authentic to the way that we experience life.
[12:03]You know, if you're talking about the entire expanse of a life there's joy and there's darkness and I think it's important to keep those things pushing against one another.
[12:12]Wow. Can I just read one of these so people know what I'm even talking about. Sure. So here's an example. This was hilarious because I love William Cole. That's why I turned this one down. But this is one of the gray pages.
[12:25]This is all caps tune a salad on white toast with carrot sticks. And then the next line is italicized lunch 1950 and then not italics collection of William Cole specialty foods and catering 1051 Lexington Avenue New New York City.
[12:38]And then below it you say a rectilinear composition of four diminutive sandwich triangles punctuates circular porcelain plate and an abstract portrait of caloric constraint three orange stripes field carrots of limited dimension.
[12:54]Adrian rigor drawing the eye without tempting the palette. Kitty eats this still life alone and with the quiet resolve of a squirrel unable to temper the determined lust of its consumption. A cigarette follows.
[13:09]You know, you know that lunch, but you also know that woman. Yep. You know that that I think that that it was fun to think about things like that. And some of that was often challenging myself to say like, you know, can I write a label about a lunch like that stretching the form as much as I could, you know, I write about I also write about a miscarriage and I, you know, wanted to write about, you know, I'm going to give something away.
[13:35]But more as a tease, you know, Kitty has sex with Picasso. And so writing that label was like, what if she does have sex with Picasso. How do I write that? And so that kind of challenge.
[13:46]I think really comes across in the writing because I really enjoyed it. How many labels are there. Oh, in the end, I think it's the whole thing is 206 pages. Those aren't all labels, but I don't really know how many actual labels are. You know, there's those interruptions that happen too. Yes.
[14:01]So there was a point at which the labels I had written probably about 50 of them. And the architecture of it was all very stable, but maybe getting a little bit rigid. And so I thought, you know, it's time to kind of blow it up and disrupted a little bit.
[14:19]So I thought about when you're standing in a museum and there are other people in the gallery and you're reading the label, but they're talking behind you.
[14:29]And they have their own opinions about what you're looking at. And so they're saying, and you can kind of hear them that there's this, we call those pages the chatter.
[14:37]And often that chatter, those bits of dialogue that interrupt the labels. They first, they allowed Kitty to have a voice, but often they undermine what the authority of those labels, they go against what you're reading.
[14:49]And so again, there's that idea of where is the truth in this and who's story is being told and by whom and where.
[14:58]How does it get a little bit slippery. And so again, I like that kind of active. I like label as catalyst rather than label as exploration.
[15:08]I haven't read metropolitan stories. Yeah, tell me about that. And that was your first novel. So now of course I have to go back and read that. Tell me about that.
[15:17]That was my first novel and I was still at the Met at that time. And they gave me a year long sabbatical to write that book, which had been like cooking inside of me for 23 years.
[15:29]And then just came like pouring out of me. I had exactly a year. It took exactly a year to write. And it is really a love letter to that place.
[15:38]Really focuses on my first 10 years there. I started there in 1994. I'm kind of wide eyed and there are incredible sort of larger than life characters then.
[15:49]And it's a completely analog world. So a lot of a lot of our time there was spent kind of navigating that building. You know, it's four blocks long and two blocks deep and a lot of your cred came from your ability to like physically move around there.
[16:03]And because of that, you were kind of put in rooms with very important people. And you've got to be sort of a fly on the wall to a lot of things. And that just takes on this surreal nature.
[16:14]And there was a kind of very familial aspect to that institution. And I kind of family law stories were repeated over and over again. So I use a lot of that.
[16:23]So really wanted to write from the point of view of the works of art themselves. So there are a whole chapters devoted to that. There's the third chapter in the book is from the point of view of a chair in the 18th century French period rooms.
[16:38]And it's kind of lament about how it will never be sat in again.
[16:42]So that's arrived in this very lavish sort of retirement home, but longs for like human contact. And I think that too came from the great privilege of being able to live in that building for 25 years.
[16:56]You start to see things differently when you have that kind of access and you just really relax around those works of art in a way that, you know, they feel like they're again revealing themselves to you.
[17:09]I wanted to put that down on paper that that sensibility if only to to model to visitors how they too can, you know, stop worrying about what they don't know.
[17:21]And just really enjoy looking and thinking about the path that these objects have traveled. I mean, we really isolate them in a museum when we put spotlights on them and you feel like this is where they've always been.
[17:33]But you know, that chair spent decades in storage and, you know, started, you know, in some furniture makers in Paris. And I love the idea of moving it to the upholsterer and then that whole process.
[17:46]I think it's nice to remind people of the lives that objects have lived. It's amazing. So what's your next project going to be?
[17:54]Well, I'm not sure yet. But I have I like that first book, you know, that book was in my head. I never wrote anything down. Never took notes kept a journal, nothing.
[18:04]And just let it cook and then same thing for this book. I had an idea. I had this idea when I was working on the British Gower. So that was spring of 2019 and didn't start writing for another two years.
[18:17]I let that kind. I like to have an idea and go sort of visit it from time to time and let it cook. I think withholding it actually is a very active thing to distinctly not write it down to let it do a little bit.
[18:30]And so now I have similarly like another bad idea that's impossible to do that I visit from time to time. And so I feel it cooking. It's nice. I love that.
[18:41]There's something very special about that time to just let it just date and and have it there. So that's there, but I find it difficult. I'm very disciplined as a writer.
[18:52]So when I start writing, I'm almost superstitious about how I write. I like the same breakfast at the same place in the same chair every single day. I write from 10 to 3 never get out of my seat. No breaks.
[19:07]I'm really rigorous about it and it works. So when I get into that mode, it's I sacrifice everything else for it and both books because of that I think took exactly a year to write
[19:17]mainly for because of that time before of letting it do its thing.
[19:23]Have you ever done and I should have looked and bet you have Patrick. What's his name who wrote the other book about working as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Do you know what I'm talking about?
[19:34]Oh, yes. All the beauty.
[19:36]Yeah. All the beauty that lies within or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. I mean, it's a beautiful story of how the museum and the galleries can really provide a sort of solace for people. And I really wanted to write about that too in
[19:51]Metropolitan Stories is a chapter in there that tries to capture that as well. If the guy who changed changes the light bulbs.
[19:59]I wrote about that.
[20:00]They're called Lampers and I wrote about the Lampers
[20:02]because I think they're really sort of rock stars
[20:05]at the museum.
[20:06]So I've created a Lamper who's afraid of the dark.
[20:09]And I love the idea of the museum as a place.
[20:15]I mean, it's how it works for me as a place to go
[20:17]and feel some kind of solace to feel like it's, you know,
[20:21]it's a very, for me it's a very spiritual place.
[20:23]It's a place where you can experience great beauty
[20:26]but also contemplate survival.
[20:28]And I feel like the presence of that in a world like
[20:32]what we're living through now is really important
[20:35]as a touchstone.
[20:36]I also think the museum can be fun and funny
[20:40]and, you know, and I think people should relax there
[20:43]as much as possible.
[20:44]So I feel like the more people write about it,
[20:46]the more we break down some of that intimidation
[20:49]that exists when you walk through the door.
[20:51]So what is the rest of your life like when you're not writing?
[20:55]I read your essay about your son and his field trip.
[20:58]So I know there's that ethic.
[20:59]There's some other hood aspect of your life as well.
[21:02]But like what do you do when you're not intensely writing?
[21:06]Well, it's funny because I am a collector.
[21:08]So I think I do collect art and I have a real relationship
[21:12]with objects.
[21:13]I think the most soothing thing I can possibly imagine
[21:16]is like moving objects around and making conversations
[21:19]with them.
[21:20]It's like my version of meditation.
[21:22]I'm an incredibly visual person.
[21:24]I think that's why I do write on the wall
[21:27]is because I was able to kind of see the book
[21:30]in a way.
[21:31]And the gray page is started as that kind of visual cue to me.
[21:35]So I could actually see the cadence of the pages
[21:38]as they unfolded and sort of the rhythm of the book
[21:41]as each label got either interrupted with those bits of dialogue
[21:46]or a new outside person would come in.
[21:49]I wanted to see that, but I had to see it visually.
[21:51]I'm intensely visual person.
[21:53]And so I think even when I write,
[21:56]I write visually rather than having like a pile of paper
[22:00]on the desk, which I find that incredibly overwhelming.
[22:04]And I think it's an issue of control or the ability
[22:08]to kind of wrestle with the whole book rather than be like,
[22:13]I'm just, you know, the part of writing that's about like,
[22:15]you write a sentence, it becomes a paragraph,
[22:17]it becomes a page, it becomes a chapter.
[22:19]And sometimes it's great to break those things down
[22:22]and feel that.
[22:23]But I also feel like there's a point in every book
[22:26]where it starts to get unwieldy
[22:28]and you get a little bit like, whoa,
[22:30]what is this thing?
[22:31]And you're trying to kind of hold it all.
[22:33]And I think visualizing that it's the easiest way
[22:35]to manage it and feel like you can kind of get in there
[22:39]and wrestle with it.
[22:41]I love that.
[22:41]Oh my gosh.
[22:42]Any advice for aspiring authors?
[22:45]Oh, I think the best thing you can do is be disciplined
[22:49]about your writing.
[22:50]I know plenty of writers who, you know, write unposted notes
[22:54]in the subway and I'm incredibly impressed by that.
[22:56]But I think if you really want to dig in
[23:00]and get what's in your head onto the page,
[23:04]I think there's nothing more important than rigor.
[23:06]I think creativity is like waiting for a bus.
[23:10]And it's gonna come.
[23:12]And you could either be at the bus stop and be there
[23:15]and get on that, get on board.
[23:16]Or if you get distracted and you're not there,
[23:20]the bus passes you by.
[23:21]And so I really believe that just allowing yourself
[23:26]the discipline to be there.
[23:28]And some days are great.
[23:30]And some days are totally not productive.
[23:32]But I think the rigor of it is what yields what you need.
[23:37]Even though it doesn't seem so day after day after day.
[23:40]Think in the aggregate, there's nothing better
[23:42]than discipline.
[23:44]I love that best analogy.
[23:45]That's fabulous.
[23:47]Don't miss the bus.
[23:48]And I know, don't miss the bus because it does show up.
[23:50]I mean, we live in a city with buses
[23:52]that are not particularly reliable.
[23:54]And creativity is not always reliable either.
[23:56]But it does come.
[23:58]And I think there's a moment that you just,
[24:01]you gotta be there.
[24:02]And you gotta be willing to like then take that
[24:06]and really ring it dry.
[24:08]Amazing.
[24:09]Christine, thank you so much.
[24:11]Thanks for coming on mom's and her time to read books.
[24:13]I hope to meet you in person very soon.
[24:14]I'm gonna have to invite you to.
[24:15]I know, thank you.
[24:16]We'll do something together.
[24:18]So thank you.
[24:19]And bravo, really creative and inspirational.
[24:22]Very cool.
[24:23]Thank you.
[24:24]I'm so glad you enjoyed it.
[24:25]Really did.
[24:26]Okay, take care.
[24:28]Bye bye.
[24:28]Bye.
[24:30]Thanks for listening to this episode of
[24:32]Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:33]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[24:36]at Zebioans and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[24:45]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[24:47]Take Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[24:49]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[24:51]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.