The 15 Question E-Mail Interview


with Stephanie Gertler
author of Jimmy's Girl

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GirlPosse: OK - I just have to know - is there a Jimmy in your past??

Stephanie Gertler: Funny, when people asked this question when the book first came out, I skirted the issue. But, yes, there is. Isn't there a "Jimmy" in all of our pasts? Of course, the storyline in real life is quite different.....

GirlPosse: "Jimmy's Girl" is uniquely told through the eyes of both Jimmy and Emily. Was this always your idea - to tell both sides?

Stephanie Gertler: It occurred to me to tell both sides after I wrote the first chapter. I really didn't want this book to be told ONLY from the woman's perspective. I felt it was very important to include the man's point of view. I felt strongly that the male perspective needed to be unleashed because I truly believe that men have similar daydreams and reminiscences but are afraid to tell. After speaking with several male friends, I discovered that my instincts were correct. They also had a past love that haunted them and were very happy to make their confessions!

GirlPosse: The story of Emily and Jimmy -- both past and present - is so touching and so easy to relate to. How did you come up with the idea?

Stephanie Gertler: There's no question in my mind that the past defines us. To deny the past, to reject it in any way at all, compromises our wholeness. It seemed clear that the only way to know both Jimmy and Emily as adults was to know them as we know old friends. Think about it: the friends we have from our childhoods, college years, even our early twenties are friends who know our histories. They know us the best. We don't have to explain ourselves to them as we do to newer friends who haven't been with us along the way. I wanted the reader to understand Emily and Jimmy – to know them in the way that we know an old friend – inside and out.

GirlPosse: You included a lot of details about being in Vietnam during the war. Was researching that part of the book difficult?

Stephanie Gertler: No, it wasn't difficult. I spoke to two veterans, dear friends of mine, who helped enormously. The Internet was an invaluable tool as well. Not to mention the emotional aspects from Emily's point of view that came from my own memory bank. It was wrenching, for sure, and I learned a great deal I hadn't known before.

GirlPosse: "Jimmy's Girl" felt so personal while I was reading it. How did your husband respond to the idea of the story?

Stephanie Gertler: My husband had no idea what the book was about until he read it. You see, I wrote Jimmy's Girl in the middle of the night. It took me fifteen months. During the day, I was freelancing for several newspapers and magazines and writing the book was something I did "on the side." It was a very personal endeavor. As a matter of fact, I confess that the hours between midnight and three when the household was sleeping and I was writing was like having a love affair. Stolen hours that swept me away.
Anyway, I went to Florida for a week (with a girlfriend – our first "girls-only" vacation) and my husband read the manuscript while I was gone. It's probably a good thing I wasn't home because he didn't even tell me that he read it until the day after he finished it. I think he was a bit shocked. The only question he asked was "So, who stroked the side of your face that way?" (In the book, that's Jimmy's gesture – he strokes Emily's cheek with the back of his hand). Coquette that I am, I said, "You do."

GirlPosse: What would you like people to feel as they're reading "Jimmy's Girl" for the first time?

Stephanie Gertler: I would like them to remember that feeling they had when they were in love for the first time. That heart-pounding anticipation. Don't you just wish you could bottle that feeling?

GirlPosse: How was writing a novel different from writing as a journalist?

Stephanie Gertler: As a journalist, you're writing about other people, places and things. As a novelist, you draw from your own life and the lives of others as they're reflected in your eyes. Writing a novel allows more freedom – not to mention the fact that you create your own beginning, middle and end and there's no cap on length (within reason). Although I loved telling real life stories and writing features about important social topics, I love writing novels more. It's cathartic. A wonderful way to express the embroidery of life...I guess that's why they call storytelling the art of weaving a tale. I love the fact that, in a novel, you can impart the senses with a certain word, a certain phrase....

GirlPosse: What was the best piece of advice you were ever given?

Stephanie Gertler: Years ago, I was having lunch at Café des Artistes in Manhattan with one of my college friends. Well, she and I were dishing about our marriages, our old college days, our fantasies.... There was a very dapper older gentleman sitting at the next table. He was dining alone. When he finished, he came over to me.
"Young woman," he said. "I just want to tell you that it's far better to be scared to death than bored to death."
With that, he tipped his hat and left. It was the best advice anyone ever gave me.

GirlPosse: What did you want to be when you grew up?

Stephanie Gertler: Wait a minute! Am I grown up yet? I guess I want to be what Jenny Joseph says in her poem "Warning:"

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals and say we've no money for butter."

It's one of my favorite poems. That's what I'd like to be when I grow up – an old woman who can do as she pleases...
GirlPosse: Which authors do you admire, and why?

Stephanie Gertler: Oh, so many:
Anne Frank and Carson McCullers because they wrote when they were so young and they were both so wise and in touch with their feelings. Anna Quindlen because she is brutally honest and seems to be a wonderful mother. Sue Miller, Jodi Picoult, Anita Shreve, Kent Haruf, James McBride, Billie Letts, Wally Lamb, Alice McDermott, Evan S. Connell....I could go on and on but I love all these writers because they tell, as an older seasoned journalist once said to me, big stories about little people.

Now for the fun questions:

GirlPosse: Some say that men are the first to fall in love and the last to fall out of love. Do you believe that?

Stephanie Gertler: Hmmm, I don't know that their initial reaction to a woman is one of love as much as it is more of an animalistic lust. I told my husband that when I first laid eyes on him, I knew I wanted to marry him. We met at a New Year's Eve party twenty-two years ago and I was wearing poured-on silver leather pants. I asked if he'd felt the same way and he said that marriage wasn't exactly what he had in mind... Are they the last to fall OUT of love? I don't think that falling in and out of love are necessarily gender-related.

GirlPosse: What's your biggest pet peeve?

Stephanie Gertler: Dishonesty. The one thing I've always told my kids is NEVER to lie to me. It's totally unacceptable. The runner-up would be people who don't react viscerally enough...who hem and haw and don't trust their instincts....You miss the boat that way. I'm not saying that impulse is always the way to go but it sure makes life a lot more fun.

GirlPosse: What is your worst habit?

Stephanie Gertler: When I meet someone new, I tend to interview them! This is leftover from my old reporter days. Really, I just love to talk to people and find out all about them....some people find it offensive, though.

GirlPosse: If you could be any Ben and Jerry's flavor, what would it be?

Stephanie Gertler: Island Paradise. I love the water. And right now, here in New York, it's so cold and windy I would love to be lying in the sun on a beach somewhere...

GirlPosse: Worst person to be next to on a 7 hour flight:

Stephanie Gertler: That would be me. I hate to fly. Although I've flown all over the United States and Europe, I am a white knuckle flyer who's been known to scream aloud when there's any mild turbulence. I have a problem with being hurtled through the air in a steel tube at the mercy of a stranger (the pilot, that is). No one wants to sit next to me. My family pretends not to know me. A woman once punched me in the arm at the baggage claim and told me I should be ashamed of myself for making the other passengers so nervous.

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