Adrienne Miller was born in 1972 in Columbus, Ohio. She moved to New York in the spring of 1994, a week before her college graduation. She worked at GQ, as an editorial assistant, then as an assistant editor. In 1997, she became the literary editor of Esquire, a position she still holds. Her first novel, The Coast of Akron, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the summer of 2005. She is working, very slowly, on her second novel.

We started off the conversation around the name Fergus. Through an initial email exchange, I was delighted to see the name in a book for evoked something personal in me as my father's name is Fergus and I asked Adrienne how she came up with this particular name, which ironically enough, suits this character impeccably well.

I was visiting a friend of mine in London about six years ago, before this book was even a twinkle in my eye. I met this guy named Fergus - who is not, I adamantly submit - the Fergus of the book, nor does he have anything to do with that character, other than share a name. At any rate, I thought that Fergus was the most incredible, evocative, juicy (all apologies to your father) name, and I knew I had to use it somehow, in something. I didn't even know I was a novelist yet, although I hoped I would be someday. I hoped I had it in me. So I built this thing, whatever this thing is, around that fabulous name. Readers might have their own take on this, but, to me, Fergus is both the stylistic and emotional heart of the book.

There is a great deal of mask wearing in The Coast of Akron, there is the idea of reality and rejecting reality (as simple as the fact that there exists no Coast of Akron) and I was thinking of all the paintings of Lowell, where he's always in different garb, pretending to be someone else (characters from the Canterbury Tales, for example) or enacting a scene or the perfect life Merit projects for herself even though she has her adulterous "slip-ups", Fergus and his fixation of making a dollhouse an accurate representation of his over-the-top Baroque home. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the concept in this book of reality versus the lives these characters create for themselves.

Let's see, how do approach question? It's such a complex, multi-pronged one!

I have many more!

Oh no, (laughs), this might require a few more glasses of wine. Reality versus illusion. It's funny, you know this too, writing your own book, how little aware you are of things, how the story just instinctively works itself out – instinctively by your ear, by your gut, by your eye. Maybe I'm just sort of dim – actually, I know I'm sort of dim, and perhaps more of an emotional writer than an intellectual one -- but it seemed to me that a lot of that thematic stuff sort of happened. I know it's not a very satisfying answer, but it was not something intentional. The thematics, I found, happened sort of indirectly, and in service of character. And after about two or three years of work, I realized I had a theme, an obsession I was working toward. But I'd say that they're are all characters who are deeply unsettled in their lives, deeply disappointed in their lives, all of them -- even the world-famous artist who isn't even really a world famous artist is, I think, at bottom, a bitter depressive, maybe even an alcoholic -- and I guess I wanted to do something in which identities and realities were self-created. And that seemed real to me, being a product of the Midwest: you create yourself rather than accepted what you've been given.

I'm even thinking about Lowell, how his greatest work of art really, is the creation of his own identity and the portraits painted of him are really just a confirmation of that identity, his fame not a result of the literary canvas.

Oh good, I'm glad you found his character convincing because that was the part of the book I had the most trouble with. Where are you from, by the way?

Brooklyn.

Because there's something really weird going on in Ohio and the Midwest, I think. This is obviously not a thinly-veiled autobiography, yet there are a lot of indirect, autobiographical elements in it. I had sort of a fanciful childhood in Columbus; I lived about thirty miles outside of Columbus in a very rural farming community. I was surrounded by, during my early, pre-Akron childhood, with silos and cornfields. I'm an only child, and there was nobody else around. I developed, as isolated and lonely children do, a vivid imagination. The life in my mind was much more vivid to me that the life that was actually happening. Then when I was nine, my parents and I moved to a suburb in Akron, which wasn't really a whole lot better in terms of activity… Oh man, my early life sounds so boring. I apologize.

None of the decadent parties?

Maybe in my crazy, socially-maladapted fifteen-year-old fancy: when I grow up, this is the fabulous life I'm going to have, right here in little old Akron. Because I couldn't comprehend actually leaving Akron, by the way, because nobody I knew ever left. You don't leave where you're from. It's simply not done. The old “apple doesn't fall far from the tree" saying.

And actually, most of the characters in your book don't even remotely consider leaving Akron.

I don't mean to judge them, but it always amazes me that 99% of the people from my high school are still living in the same town, living a house away from their parents. Which must have its own distinct comforts and satisfactions, I suppose. But it also seems to me that you can never be an entirely independent person if you've never left. Especially as a woman. So I wanted to write about a place that was emotionally consistent with the place I know and love, but I then wanted to describe it in this more imaginative, surreal way, that seemed realer to me than the actual reality of Akron. I should add that know a lot of weird, oddball artists in Ohio. Some of the most fascinating people I've ever met have been in Ohio. So I wanted to give Ohio its due as something much grander and weirder than flyover country. I couldn't in any capacity have set the book in New York or California, by the way. I can't seem to write about them.

That's [Ohio] where you found the inspiration for the character, Fergus? What I found also interesting about the book was the fact that it is about Lowell, but indirectly. His partner, Fergus, is much more dramatic and flamboyant than Lowell and has a great deal of "air-time". Lowell doesn't have that much page space (in terms of direct scene/dialogue), he's absent for a great portion of the novel. The book sort of feels like the book wouldn't be there without Lowell, but at the same time wouldn't work if Lowell was completely immersed in it, voice and all. The other characters revolve around him, and are a bit more desperate and heartbreaking than Lowell, because of his affect on them. There's a beautiful quote in the middle of the book where Merit claims this famous house is the house of misery, likening it to the House of Usher. Although the bok is so wonderfully comic, they are so sad and I felt that profoundly with the Preston Lymphany situation – he is so genuinely in love with Fergus, and all Fergus can do to return that love is give him money. I guess I'm going through a very roundabout way of asking this: In your eyes, do any of these characters have the capacity to be happy?

Before I forget, let me get back to your first comment about Lowell. Lowell is not given a lot of air-time, that's true, because I never wanted Lowell to speak for himself. I actually tried giving Lowell a few chapters in earlier drafts of the book but I couldn't do it, I couldn't get the voice; it just wasn't convincing. But I think that Lowell's perception of himself is probably quite different from anybody else's perception of him. While the other three narrators' perceptions of him seem somewhat similar, in contrast, I think that Lowell sees himself as an incredibly sympathetic, in fact tragic, character. I knew I always wanted Lowell to have the last word of the book (and the last word is “dreams"). So “dreams" was always the object I was working toward [for the ending of the book]. Lowell is painted so villainously through the eyes of the other characters that I wanted to turn the reader's affection at the end of the book, with the very last paragraph.

Do the characters have any capacity to be happy? I don't know. Does anyone have the capacity to be happy? (laughs) Maybe I'm just sort of a sad, melancholic person, but I think they try to be happy, and they try to be good. That's what makes them heartbreaking, and to me, interesting and real. And that's why I have a great deal of affection for them. I hope that readers feel the same way. My goal in writing this book was to write a book in which the characters felt real to me -- felt as real, and as exasperating, as real people.

And they're not necessarily likeable, but we come away with loving them anyway.

Absolutely. I hope so. And I wanted to write characters who were real people, and maybe I have an enormously contentious relationship with real people, I don't know…although I have great relationships with my boyfriend and with my parents, and those are my three primary people in life). Anyway, the characters drive you crazy, just, I hope, like real people. You kind of understand what motivates them. You kind of don't understand what motivates them. I mean, “motivation" is a purely literary construct; do you ever really know what motives people in real life? My characters are maddening, I'm aware of that, but they are capable of good. Although it's true that they don't behave in the way that you think that they should. Let me put it this way: I have very little tolerance for a purely, and falsely, sympathetic character, someone you want to cozy up to and with whom you want to be “best friends." Like the mawkish, phony, cloying chick lit female protagonist who is meant to remind you of yourself on a bad hair day: like, Oh, she's insecure, too! Maybe she would be my friend! People, especially current women writers, seem to be reluctant to create complex, conflicted, unpleasant, difficult characters. Or maybe it's the readers who are to blame, because they're the ones who want to be spoon-fed.

I think that's where the difficulty and risk lies for most writers. It's easy making characters sympathetic but the challenge is creating unlikeable characters and keeping the reader hooked in. For example, in TCOA, Merit and Fergus can be perceived as unlikeable characters.

That always amazes me to hear that [Merit could be unlikeable, unsympathetic]. I did a reading a couple of months ago in California and I talked to a ladies' book club in Brentwood before my reading.

(laughs) in Brentwood? I know where this is going.

They were very sweet women, but it was fascinating to see how furious they were with Merit. One lady said that Merit wanted to be a band groupie but she didn't have enough sexual stamina to be one! I mean, they were going right in there and destroying her, just as if she were a real woman. But I thought that was a real compliment, although it surely wasn't meant to be. You see, you sort of understand why Merit would sleep with her assistant but then you realize, but gee, that wasn't really a smart move to marry an anal-retentive statistician with whom you have nothing in common. Who knows? I suppose Bret Easton Ellis finds his characters sympathetic too, which is terrifying.

Because Patrick Bateman was such a nice guy (laughs). I am a huge fan of Ellis's work and I was reading the press he was doing for his new book, Lunar Park, and he was saying that he thought American Psycho was a satire of the 80's Reagan era and the culture of excess & greed; he wondered how could anyone not see American Psycho as a comedy.

I remember reading something like that, that he thought his book was a satire. I think he revised his opinion of the book when the movie came out. The movie was such a different sensibility than the book.

I remember when I first read his book and I was applying to MFA programs and I wasn't an English major, I only read classic (dead) authors.

Where did you go?

Columbia.

Oh my god, while having a full-time job?

Part of the application was this essay: what writers have influenced you in the past decade and I had no idea about who Rick Moody was, or any contemporary authors, and I wrote about Bret Easton Ellis.

And you got in?

Judy Budnitz (when I got accepted) actually called me and she said that the submissions panel was so intrigued with my essay and I remember when I first arrived for orientation, I told everyone the story, and you could practically hear the crickets, see the tumbleweed. No one got it.

That is hilarious!

Because it was such a risk for Ellis to take. True, Patrick Bateman was a sadistic character, but still we're angered, we're engaged. And I think on a smaller scale, we walk around with anger, rage, but we're conditioned in our society to not to want to feel these things, or ever think these things. Darkness is everywhere but take yoga, smile, watch television. Be happy.

But back to the book, what I loved most about the story was the fact that if there were no photographs taken by Fergus (Fergus would photograph subjects before the artist would paint them), there would be no art. And I loved the end when you see him gluing his snapshots over the paintings, displacing them. It kind of reminded me of the part in the beginning when Merit says that her first art was erasing. And here is Fergus, again, mimicking Merit.

Interesting. I hadn't even thought about that. Good point.

And it kind of renders Fergus a contemptible character for destroying someone else's art, but I can understand it. I could rationalize why he would do what he did because he always felt shunned from Lowell and Jenny, the artists. Which gets me to thinking about how there's this intriguing dynamic between Lowell and Jenny. There is a reason for them to dislike one another, but then have this very complicated, somewhat destructive, symbiotic, yet parasitic/hosting relationship. Would Jenny feel that if there were no Lowell, would Jenny as an artist exist and vice versa?

Yeah, I think exactly so, definitely. But I also think there is a real love there. Yet, I don't know if that is something that effectively comes through in the book. I think Jenny and Lowell feel they need each other to survive, sort of host body to parasite. Actually, I had many, many titles for this book, and actually, one of the working titles was The Host Body. At that point, about five years ago, Jenny narrated the entire book. And she had, sorry to say, the voice of Fergus. So, basically, Jenny sounded like a gay man. It was not in any capacity working, obviously. A mutually symbiotic relationship – definitely, but I think all the characters do sort of need each other. Merit needs Wyatt in that way (but we don't really know about Wyatt because he's of a different breed, perhaps because he provides a stability in her life), in order to essentially survive the world. I think Merit needs, and really loves, her stepdaughter, Caroline, because she represents Merit's hope for family. Fergus needs Merit in much the same way that Merit needs Caroline – they have similar functions. Oh, and they're all crazy. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

The impetus for the book starts with the fact that the "great artist", Lowell, stopped painting five years ago for reasons unknown, but which we learn of later on in the book. I wondered what would happen if Lowell would have kept on? What would happen if that moment didn't happen – him ceasing work? His relationship with Jenny coming to a halt?

Well, there wouldn't be a book, in the first place. As tremulous as it is, I think that in order for Jenny to keep surviving, she had to make that break from Lowell. Although it wasn't a very effective break, it was sort of her attempt to asset herself, and asset her personhood against him, against this leeching creature who sucked the life, talent and ambition – everything, out of her. But I never thought about that – what if Lowell were still painting, what if the relationship continued to exist? I'm sure they would have self-destructed, and even in more of an obvious way than the flair-up at the end of the book.

I'm thinking about Fergus and how he always asserts that he is part of this family, although he's clearly not. Fergus is never really included, even in the beginning, when Jenny is in London and he sort of imposes on her, lands on her doorstep.

It's so sad, it breaks my heart.

You could see the train wreck happening. Why did he need to latch on to these people? Why did he need Jenny?

I think Fergus's essential weakness is that he confuses possession for love. Don't you?

Absolutely, and it's so sad at the end when he has all these bundles of money that he's doling out to people to win their favor, their love. He thinks though money he can acquire love and people. I think he wants to give Merit this life, this dollhouse, but in another sense, he keeps saying, I want to be you. I think you articulate that wonderfully.

We then break a bit and talk about the café we're in, 71 Irving, and how a normally quiet coffee shop turns into a raucous happy hour.

How much research was done on the art world for the writing of The Coast of Akron?

I know very little about the art world. It was all an act. And my lampooning of the art world was frankly, a little bit of thinly veiled mockery of the literary world but in an indirect day, because I still have a job. I felt I couldn't really do it directly; I had to do it subtly through the art world.

I think someone needs to lampoon the literary world; it's a bit out of control in New York.

It totally is, I think so. But maybe it's just not that interesting. Maybe you just have to write about it in a mass way for it to be effective.

I shy away from literary gossip – it makes me think of In Touch magazine for the smart set, and I remember reading something on someone's website that someone had discovered Jonathan Safran Foer in the Duane Reade downtown, Soho I think, and someone had reported that he was perplexed about which brand of shampoo to buy and he finally went with the 99 cent shampoo when he has this $6.5MM house (why do know this, why do we care?). And I'm thinking to myself that this is absolutely insane. There is so much else going on in the world other than who's your agent, when's your book coming out – it was more about the production of your work and gossip in the literary set, as opposed to the actual work itself. This, in a way, makes me think that many people have seriously lost perspective on craft and what it is to be a writer and love the work, not necessarily immerse yourself in all the volley that surrounds it.

Writers are just not that interesting. I know the reality – the lameness of writers. They have no glamour; they hold no appeal. Sorry, guys.

This small world tries to glamorize them, when really; these writers are in their house, in pajamas, cracked out.

Totally. Unbathed, sort of gamey. Not even going to the gym. But I go to maybe one party a year, and it's the party I have to go to or else be excommunicated from a friend's life. There is this relentless judgment that isn't productive or healthy for any artist. I guess [this occurs] because the stakes are so low, partially, because so few artists have any power or money, and novels have such a marginalized place in our culture. But the only thing you can do, and it's so difficult in New York, is to focus, ignore phone, ignore email…

(laughs) Email?

You have to ignore email and just do your work. I know that's easier said than done. And I know for me, over the course of five years writing this book, the struggle between the rest of the world and this [the writing].

Are you going to go through this again? Are you working on something new?

Yes, of course. How tragic would that be if this were my only book? I'm not saying that it will be soon, out in the world in the next year or two, but I'm working on something new. I'm such a slow writer.

There is no rush for new books to come into the world; do you know what I mean? No one is expecting your book. It's something that I have to tell myself over and over.

That's the great thing about writing the novel. There's not really an audience for a literary novel, even if it's a successful literary novel, the world doesn't really care. So let's take as much time as we want and make it as good as it can be.

Unless it gets made into a movie.

Right. I've seen so many writers destroyed when their books are optioned. The odds of it being optioned are small, and then when it is optioned, of it being made, are slimmer yet. I know writers who obsess about the soundtrack of their movie that will never get made. Do you know people like that?

Yes.

If the movie is in production and you're watching it being edited, it can so ruin your life. You've lost it.

I remember when my agent first sold my book and there was movie interest and I freaked out. Because my book is so personal, I want it to go quietly out into the world and it's just weird to see the Hollywood response and their analysis of my book. I don't want to worry about who would be playing me, maybe with fiction, I'm a little less sensitive about it being butchered, but still.

This is a memoir, you're writing. This is totally deep and personal.

I have horror images of Jennifer Love Hewitt staring. And the soundtrack will be Britney or Jessica Simpson.

(laughing) Oh god!

My title in bubble letters. I have these fears.

The only thing you can do if the book gets optioned is to just ignore it. Take the money and run and don't look back, and when the option is renewed in a year and a half, just take the check then too and enjoy that money because nothing else good will happen from that.

One other question – I ask this question of everyone because I love the answers I get. If you had a huge cocktail party or a salon with artists living and dead, who would you invite over and why?

Diane Vreeland because she was fabulous. Truman Capote. This is getting interesting, right. Truman Capote because he was witty, and had a caustic comment for everybody and everything. Jackie O. because it's not a party unless Jackie O. shows up. Dressed to the nines. Jerry Hall.

Eclectic group, I like this.

Oscar Wilde. You see they all share a certain aesthetic and sensibility.

Jackie O. and Oscar Wilde in the same room, could you imagine?

Is that happening in heaven? or hell, right now?

I love it.

Quentin Crisp.

Who?

The extremely elderly (it seems he was elderly for his entire life) gay English comic who had a one-man show on Broadway (this is how far we've fallen in culture) in the 70's and early 80's. A one-man show where he sat on stage with a cigarette holder and unleashed his witty vitriol to the world. That is the party in which I would want to be a fly on the wall. I wouldn't want to participate because it would be way too terrifying. I want to hide behind the bar and watch everyone.

Well, I'm going to turn this off so we can dish a little more. But thank you!

No, thank you! It's been very fun, Felicia.