exclusive
interview :: 
Author
of ::girls:: and his next to be published novel, The Behavior
of Light
Nic
Kelman
By Adrienne Mand Lewin
:: Moving
from a character's
bad behavior in "girls" to "The Behavior of Light"
Manhattan resident and author Nic Kelman says, “Everybody
is sort of thinking a lot of the things I say in the book,”
he says, “but across gender lines, people never discuss
it.”
By Adrienne Mand Lewin
Nic Kelman is one of those rare individuals whose brain operates
functionally, and perhaps exceptionally, on both its left and
right sides. He studied brain and cognitive science at MIT,
intending to be both a scientist and a writer, and he was awarded
the university’s Burchard Scholarship for outstanding
performance in both the arts and the sciences.
An aversion to doing research led him instead to earn a fellowship
to Brown University’s Creative Writing MFA program, and
the scientific community’s loss was the literary world’s
gain. Kelman’s thesis went on to become his debut novel,
“girls,” published by Little Brown in 2003 and became
a bestseller internationally.
The provocative novel tells of wealthy, powerful men and their
sexual relationships with women much younger than they are,
pursued despite their obligations to wives, girlfriends and
friends. “It was just one of the most unusual pieces of
fiction I had read in a very long, long time,” says Kelman’s
agent, Sarah Burnes of The Gernert Company. “It was very
viscerally powerful, upsetting, compelling and beautiful in
equal measure. He really achieved what he was trying to do.”
What he was trying to do, Kelman says, was simply imagine how
his life might have turned out had he pursued money rather than
his art. His thesis, hatched when many of his MIT friends were
becoming Internet millionaires, was “an exercise in making
myself feel better about going for my MFA. I thought about how
I’d end up if I didn’t do something I believe in.
The guys in the book are doing something they don’t want
to be doing. They’re making compromises … the characters
in the book aren’t me, but I feel like they could be a
future me if I didn’t get my MFA.”
The raw portrayal of the characters struck a chord with readers
of both genders. “I think every guy has some of that character
in him,” Kelman says. “These characters are obviously
extreme examples of that personality type, where it’s
taken over their whole life.”
He says both men and women tell him they loved “girls”
but readers of the opposite sex must be offended by it. “Everybody
is sort of thinking a lot of the things I say in the book,”
he says, “but across gender lines, people never discuss
it.”
One of the biggest compliments he receives about the book is
that most people believe he’s retelling real stories.
“I’ve heard only one single conversation in the
whole book that’s reality,” Kelman says. “Everything
else is completely fictional.”
Though he wrote “girls” in the second person, Kelman
says it was not by design -- it “just sounded right.”
“It is the way that we actually tell certain kinds of
stories to each other. We do that, ‘You know when you’re
at the beach and some guy comes over …’ What’s
strange is it’s colloquial, but when you see it written
on the page it looks kind of strange.”
For the storytelling, he says, “It simultaneously detaches
the characters from their actions and involves the reader.”
When it comes to the craft of writing, Kelman fully immerses
himself in his work. “It’s more sort of a lifestyle
thing for me,” he says, adding, “It fills the rest
of my life. I can’t go out the night before. It’s
not even going out late or drinking. If I see people the night
before, I find I’m not productive.”
Generally, he wakes up at 8, enjoys a cup of tea and reviews
his work before writing from about 9:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. “I
have to put myself in that place all the time, at least for
extended periods of time,” he explains, adding, “I
really feel like I’m inhabiting a new place, so every
reminder that I’m not in that place makes it really hard.”
For his next book, Kelman delved into entirely different subject
matter. “Video Game Art,” published in 2006, explores
the imagery and design of video games in the context of art
history.
He says there are many misconceptions in the general public
about games, despite the fact that the industry is booming.
“You’re either a gamer or not a gamer,” he
says. “You either know everything or nothing.”
Kelman has finished his sophomore novel, currently titled “The
Behavior of Light,” and is looking for a publisher. “It’s
better than ‘girls,’” he says of the work,
which he describes as “a much more traditional narrative,
almost chronological, about a relationship disintegrating, basically.
“It’s totally fictional again,” he says. “The
emotional content is much more through personal experience,
but it is fiction … I’m proud of it.”
So is Burnes. “I think that his mind doesn’t work
like other people’s,” she says. “It’s
just incredibly interesting to see what it is that he’s
working on. He really has a very unique voice -- that’s
such a banal way of saying it, and it’s fundamentally
true.”
Calling both novels “incredibly interesting and intense,”
Burnes hopes people will stay tuned to Kelman as his writing
career advances.
“I think, if we look back five books from now, there will
be this kind of purposeful, intelligent path there,” she
says, “and I just can’t wait to see what the next
thing is.”
Adrienne Mand Lewin
is a freelance writer who formerly was a national news producer
with ABCNEWS.com and a national news reporter for FOXNews.com.
She is a frequent contributor to WordSmitten.com and lives and
works near Manhattan.
More
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Getting a Lit Permit
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:: Writing
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:: Attending
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:: Fundamental
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