\u201cMaybe something\u2019s wrong with me,\u201d the novelist Adriana Trigiani said on a sweltering morning earlier this summer at her home in Greenwich Village, \u201cbut I think books are show business. Storytelling is the bedrock of everything. A book has to be exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
After her long and varied experience as a playwright, screenwriter, TV producer, film director and author of 19 novels, she thinks it\u2019s \u201cinsanity\u201d to believe that any creative industry will stay the same over time. So when she began thinking about how she would promote her latest best-selling novel, \u201cThe View From Lake Como,\u201d a characteristically bighearted tale about a divorced Italian American woman who travels from New Jersey to Italy on a quest of self-discovery, \u201cI went to my publisher, and I said: \u2018Look, we gotta pump up the whole situation here. Have you been to a book signing? They\u2019re boring! Stale!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Trigiani is not boring or stale. She greeted me and a photographer at her front door \u2013 at 9 in the morning \u2013 wearing a tuxedo, with a big red rose where a bow tie might be.<\/p>\n
She ended up crafting a \u201cLake Como Show\u201d for the tour, complete with a band. She has been told many times over the years that she should add \u201cstand-up comic\u201d to her long list of roles. \u201cWell, I\u2019m not a stand-up,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be a stand-up, because I don\u2019t want to be out late at night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trigiani estimates that there are about 4,000 books in her home. (\u201cI have a cookbook collection upstairs that\u2019s insane, but we\u2019re not gonna go there.\u201d)<\/p>\n
She had arranged several books on a table in her living room that she wanted to make sure to discuss, the first of which was \u201cThey Had Faces Then,\u201d an illustrated encyclopedia of Hollywood stars from the 1930s. (Trigiani\u2019s love of old Hollywood is frequently apparent. Her novel \u201cAll the Stars in the Heavens,\u201d from 2015, was inspired by the life of actress Loretta Young. When she lists some of the most prized signatures in her library\u2019s books, she starts with Milton Berle, Ginger Rogers and David Niven.)<\/p>\n
We looked at some of the high-wattage stars throughout the encyclopedia, appreciating their glamour.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know every C-lister, too,\u201d Trigiani said, scanning the pages. \u201cNancy Kelly, nobody talks about her anymore, but she\u2019s in here. I don\u2019t know who these authors are, but if there\u2019s a fire, I grab this to go, because this is my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edna Ferber and Anita Loos are now remembered best for Hollywood reasons, having written novels that were made into classic movies (\u201cGiant,\u201d by Ferber, and \u201cGentlemen Prefer Blondes,\u201d by Loos). Trigiani loves both authors for the breadth of their literary efforts and has copies of seemingly every book they wrote. \u201cThis is one of the great books about Hollywood,\u201d she said, pointing to a copy of \u201cKiss Hollywood Good-by,\u201d a memoir by Loos. \u201cI\u2019m obsessed, really, with all of her work, but: women in Hollywood. \u2018Gentlemen Prefer Blondes\u2019 helped me understand everything. When she went to Hollywood, she was 41 years old. She had to hide her age. I have everything she wrote.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noticing another book nearby, she let out a burst of enthusiasm: \u201cOh my God, get ready!\u201d She had found her copy of \u201cTwice Over Lightly: New York Then and Now\u201d (1972), a book co-written by Loos and her friend Helen Hayes, the famed theater actress. Trigiani\u2019s copy is signed by both of them.<\/p>\n
Trigiani\u2019s library is peppered with mini collections, sets of aesthetically pleasing books that spark curiosity about their contents, like the row of several midcentury volumes titled \u201cBest in Children\u2019s Books\u201d \u2013 small compendiums, winningly designed, with samples of a given year\u2019s most notable illustrated books for young readers. (Trigiani has one daughter, who is now in her 20s.) \u201cDoubleday published those, and I have them all,\u201d Trigiani said. \u201cIt took me forever to collect them. Look at the artfulness of these books! I still read them. Look at this. What did I pay for this? Four dollars. I got ripped off. I\u2019m kidding \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the children\u2019s books, there was one especially prized possession: \u201cThe Elves and the Shoemaker,\u201d an adaptation of a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, written and illustrated by Hilda Miloche. In it, an exhausted shoemaker goes to bed with his work unfinished, only to find it done to perfection in the morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll notice something here,\u201d Trigiani said, pointing to a spread of pages in Miloche\u2019s book and then around the room. \u201cThe colors are the colors you see in this room, basically. I have a theory that whatever you read and loved most as a kid, that\u2019s your color palette.\u201d Tucked inside the book is a picture of Trigiani\u2019s paternal grandfather. She said that the book reminds her of him and a factory he owned, and that the story of the elves is \u201cessential\u201d to her understanding of the subconscious. \u201cYou go to sleep; your subconscious does all the cooking, all the writing, all the creating, everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trigiani said that when she is writing a novel, she avoids reading fiction. But it\u2019s clear that the nonfiction she reads is in constant conversation with her work. \u201cI went on a bender about Orson Welles that I can\u2019t even tell you,\u201d she said, reading \u201cwhat anybody wrote about him. He was a big part of my novel \u2018The Good Left Undone,\u2019 and I cut all of it, like 300 pages. Because I said, \u2018It\u2019s a separate thing, it\u2019s not the same thing.\u2019 And my editor agreed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me just tell you how my life works, and how my mind works,\u201d she said, right before describing another \u201cbender,\u201d this one involving works by and about Ludwig Bemelmans, the writer and illustrator best known for the \u201cMadeline\u201d series for children. Trigiani read about how the actress Elsie de Wolfe once said to Bemelmans: \u201cItalians are fortunate. They can always cry it away or sing it away or love it away.\u201d She was already into the writing of \u201cLake Como,\u201d and she plucked that line as the book\u2019s epigram; the triumvirate it describes became the structure of the novel, the first part titled \u201cCry it away\u201d and so on.<\/p>\n
By the time you\u2019ve spent an hour in Trigiani\u2019s company, somehow it isn\u2019t strange when she suddenly says:<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in a movie with Meat Loaf. I played a cockroach.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the movie, \u201cDead Ringer,\u201d Meat Loaf played himself. \u201cThe director said to me, \u2018I want you to act like a cockroach.\u2019 And I thought (in a mock-refined tone), \u2018I\u2019m not going to act like a bug in my feature film debut.\u2019 So the other girls are on a settee, doing like this. (She mimics cockroach squalor.) And I\u2019m standing like this. (She leans elegantly against the wall.) Like I\u2019m not in a giant brown garbage bag. It\u2019s my delusion. That\u2019s how much I love the movies!\u201d<\/p>\n
And yet all of this leaves out many other anecdotes and observations from Trigiani during a visit of 90 minutes or so. A small sampling: The autographed photo, given to her by a nun, of Clark Gable\u2019s son. An analysis of the classic children\u2019s book \u201cHeidi\u201d that I imagine is the first of its kind. (\u201cIt\u2019s the most constipating diet in the world in this book.\u201d) Her idea of heaven. (\u201cTo me the afterlife is hanging out with David Niven.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Toward the end of our time together, Trigiani pulled down a volume from the children\u2019s encyclopedia \u201cThe Book of Knowledge.\u201d She opened it and began reading sub-headings that were a dizzying combination of comprehensive and random: \u201cHow deep is the sea?\u201d \u201cWhy must a baby learn to walk?\u201d \u201cWhat do we mean by the trade winds?\u201d \u201cThe works of William Shakespeare.\u201d \u201cCoal and what it can do.\u201d \u201cThe story of the circus.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then, almost as proof that when Trigiani is around, life has an entertaining script, we saw an entry for the Grimms\u2019 fairy tale about the shoemaker and his elves.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about the subconscious,\u201d she said. \u201cThe elves don\u2019t frolic in. The elves are in you!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMaybe something\u2019s wrong with me,\u201d the novelist Adriana Trigiani said on a sweltering morning earlier this summer at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-367471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115078641999563939","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}