Booklyn #21: Talking to Paula Bomer

Author of The Stalker and many more

Paula Bomer is the author of The Stalker, which received a starred Publisher’s Weekly, calling it “dark and twisted fun”. She is also the author of Tante Eva and Nine Months, the story collections Inside Madeleine and Baby and other Stories, and the essay collection, Mystery and Mortality. Her work has appeared in Bomb Magazine, The Mississippi Review, Fiction Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Green Mountain Review, The Cut, Volume 1 Brooklyn and elsewhere. Her novels have been translated in Germany, Argentina and Hungary. She grew up in South Bend, Indiana and has lived for over 30 years in Brooklyn.

Photo credit: Patricia Aquino

Please tell me a bit about your background.

I grew up in South Bend, Indiana. My father taught French at St. Mary's, which is the sister school to Notre Dame and was the local piano teacher, and my mother was a multilingual high school teacher who later won an NEH grant to translate a rare diary of a handmaiden to a princess from medieval German into English. She was also a painter, so I grew up in a very artistic, multilingual household, but in a very small town in the Midwest. I left home when I was 14 to attend a boarding school in Connecticut and when I first spent time in the city, I was like, look, you can walk around, do things. I lived in Berlin briefly and Barcelona for a year. I didn't think I would stay in New York when I moved there after college in Boston because in 1990, living in Boerum Hill was dangerous. You had to take illegal cabs. It was very dirty. The air quality is so much better now. Electric buses really help! But I've built a wonderful life. I love New York.

What do you see as the common thread through all your writing? What drives you?

I have always been bookish, and I always liked to tell stories. In my early childhood, our next door neighbor told my mom, “You better watch out what happens in your house because your little daughter comes over and tells me everything.” In my house reading was considered a great privilege. Like, okay, we get to go to the library! Best day of the week!

Every day to me is just full of things of interest. I write about women and what it means to be a woman. I identify as a feminist and as a person who's primarily trying to shed light on how we live in the female body and what that means to live in this world, which remains a man’s world. Every time we leave the house, we're leaving as a woman or a girl.

Can you tell me about your latest book?

My latest book is The Stalker, which is set in the early nineties when I moved to New York. It's a very important time. You're young, you've moved to the city. You're from a small town. This is the first time I wrote a novel from the point of view of a man, and it just made the subject matter, which is really gruesome, more manageable. I was trying to write from a female perspective, and I got nowhere. And then all of a sudden I was like, oh my goodness, here comes the chorus of all the men in my entire life just being ridiculously awful. The entire process was not cathartic, but that moment when I figured out a way in was an amazing feeling, and then really it was just hard work.

When did you first start writing?

So very young. I can't remember when I started keeping a journal, but I remember being very sad that I lost my ones from high school. I've been a daily writer since I was about 12. My first attempts at fiction were in high school. My junior year I was allowed to take an advanced class for seniors on creative writing, and that's when I first wrote fiction.

What do you do when you're not writing?

This morning I've managed to get a three mile walk in. I'm a certified yoga instructor. I read a lot. I raised two children. Now they are now grown up and one of them is a writer and a translator, and the other is a scientist. And now I'm an old person who basically is retired in a small apartment and I get to focus on writing and traveling. I climbed Machu Picchu recently. I was the only person over the age of 26 in my group of 14. I once rode on the back of a motorcycle up and down the coast of the Indian Ocean in Goa. So I really am trying to do more of that.

What do you love about living in Brooklyn?

I think it's incredibly healthy to leave your home and see other people. And I do not have to have everything delivered. I do not have to get in the car, so I just love cities. And Brooklyn is a melting pot. I think that it makes me a better human in some way. I feel like living in New York gives you a broader existence. No other city I’ve been to is so diverse.

What's your favorite recent read?

I recently finished Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation, which was fantastic. And prior to that I read Nolan’s Ordinary Human Failings. Prior to those I read Liars by Sarah Manguso, and I loved her book so much that I wrote her a fan letter. I think I've only written six fan letters in my life. And then I had the great privilege to see her read in Brooklyn at Urbane Arts Club, even though she lives in California, and have her sign my book.

I read Jonathan Franzen's most recent book Crossroads, and it was 600 pages where you're so tense the whole time, wondering what is going on, what is happening? And you can't put it down. He’s our Tolstoy.

But primarily, I like to read books that have stood the test of time. I read a novel by Barbara Comyns, I don't know if I'm pronouncing her name correctly. That's the problem with writers and readers. We don't actually converse that much. The Vet's Daughter, that book was so dark and yet so good.

How can readers find you?

My website is paulabomer.com which has a lot of information about my books, and links to essays, short stories, interviews, and podcasts.