{"id":41892,"date":"2025-07-05T23:05:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T23:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/41892\/"},"modified":"2025-07-05T23:05:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T23:05:15","slug":"helen-schulman-on-her-new-short-story-collection-fools-for-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/41892\/","title":{"rendered":"Helen Schulman on her new short story collection, ‘Fools for Love’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Helen Schulman is not afraid to make you squirm. Across her long and distinguished career as a novelist and short story writer, she has fearlessly explored the awkward collisions between our private and public selves, between what we present to the world and what we conceal from even our closest companions. Her 2011 best-selling novel \u201cThis Beautiful Life\u201d<\/b><\/a> dared to plunge headfirst into the shark-infested waters of the internet while most of us were still basking in the glow of the web\u2019s shiny benevolence. \u201cFools For Love,\u201d<\/b><\/a> her latest collection of stories, finds Schulman\u2019s characters weighing the past against the present, looking for redemption in the wrong places and occasionally coming up roses.<\/p>\n

\n

My own artistic hope is to go as long as I can. I live to write!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2014 Helen Schulman<\/p>\n

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)<\/p>\n

\u270d\ufe0f Author Chat \""Fools <\/a> <\/p>\n

Helen Schulman\u2019s new story collection, \u201cFools For Love,\u201d hits bookshelves this July.<\/p>\n

(Knopf)<\/p>\n

When it comes to ideas, what becomes a short story and what becomes a novel?<\/b><\/p>\n

A lot of my ideas spring forward from something Henry James called the \u201cgerm\u201d \u2014 the bit of overheated gossip, the newspaper article, an eavesdropped conversation on a public bus, a story told by other parents when you are both pushing toddlers on the swings in a playground, which injects itself into the writerly imagination and grows \u2014 often over large swaths of time. Sometimes these obsessions entangle, too. That\u2019s what happened in [my story] \u201cThe Revisionist.\u201d My husband had a college buddy over for dinner who told us this story about a friend of his who was walking home from work when a strange man ran into his own house and slammed the door in his face. Why? What? Who? The reality was somewhat pedestrian \u2014 the intruder was a drunken next-door neighbor, who I guess had overshot. But the anecdote stuck with me.<\/p>\n

For some of your characters, the past is ever-present <\/b>\u2014 <\/b>they are fated to live with the sum of their choices, and it engenders a lot of regret. Can you speak to that?<\/b><\/p>\n

My all-time favorite writer is William Faulkner. You must be familiar with his quote from the novel \u201cRequiem for a Nun\u201d<\/b><\/a>: \u201cThe past is never dead. It\u2019s not even past.\u201d I sometimes feel this way about existence in general, like each and every moment in a lifetime is somehow equal, and that as one ages the moments accrue and tag along wherever one goes. Certainly in my own life I don\u2019t sweat my big choices; I\u2019m happy about them. I think a person does the best they can with what they know at the time. But I\u2019m infinitely curious about what could have happened instead.<\/p>\n

There is a lot of status anxiety <\/b>in your work<\/b> \u2014<\/b> not just financial status, but marriage, career <\/b>\u2014<\/b> the things you think will align pleasingly in middle age but often don\u2019t. <\/b><\/p>\n

My husband and I are both working writers. The marriage works; the financial status has gone in and out. I\u2019m not sure I always looked to middle age as a time of \u201cpleasing alignment,\u201d but I also didn\u2019t think the world would be as effed up as it is now. Some of my characters get older and wiser; some are just more wrinkled, taller kids. But there is a lot of endurance over time in these stories \u2014 love, friendship, workplace passions. I would venture to say that most of my characters have real lives, and some very real satisfactions within the stresses that inevitably go along with them.<\/p>\n

There are also secrets in your stories. Are we as sick as our secrets, or are they simply unavoidable? <\/b><\/p>\n

Everyone has secrets. In \u201cThe Revisionist,\u201d the protagonist even keeps secrets from himself. One of my closest friends, after the death of her parents, found out that one was married before and that the other had two other children with someone else. Now everyone is dead, and so we don\u2019t even know if the spouses knew this about each other. There is nothing pedestrian about \u201cordinary lives.\u201d We all roil and we all excite. I feel like one of my jobs as a fiction writer is to dive down beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

In the story \u201cMy Best Friend,\u201d there is a shocking act of violence. Why did you take it in that direction? <\/b><\/p>\n

That story is about two men, one an up-and-coming-actor and the other a want-to-be novelist, who fall into a deep brotherhood while sleeping with the same woman. In fact, they each marry her \u2014 sequentially, of course. At some point, the friendship goes south; the protagonist, Jake, and Jeannie, the woman, have kids together and his career dries up. The first husband, Phil, becomes a very successful TV showrunner and producer. Out of pity, he hires Jake to be a character in one of his nighttime soaps. Jake starts to become an audience favorite, and Phil tortures the character on the series. All their pent up homoerotic attachments and jealousies explode in a \u201cmanly\u201d brawl, which I see as tragicomedic, at the end of the story. The love story is theirs, after all.<\/p>\n

Kurt Vonnegut has a quote about, when one reaches advanced middle age, life becomes an epilogue. That is a hard thing to carry. Do you feel that this is the case? I guess I\u2019m thinking about your story \u201cIn <\/b>a<\/b> Better Place,\u201d which revisits the characters from the book\u2019s titular story in old age.<\/b><\/p>\n

No, honestly I don\u2019t. That story is really about the celebration of long love between the couple at the heart of the story, its healing powers and sustaining comforts. What may make this all feel epilogue-y to you (not a word, I know) is because these two people feel happy and fulfilled by their marriage. \u2026 My own artistic hope is to go as long as I can. I live to write!<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcf0 The Week(s) in Books \"Charlie <\/a> <\/p>\n

Charlie English spotlights the CIA\u2019s use of literature to fight communism during the Cold War in his latest book.<\/p>\n

(Angel City Press at the Los Angeles Public Library)<\/p>\n

Valerie Castellanos Clark weighs in<\/a> on Charlie English\u2019s \u201c<\/b>The <\/b>CIA Book Club,\u201d<\/b><\/a> about how Polish citizens fought Russian communism with books. \u201cAs with the best spy novels, we know the good guy is going to win \u2026 but how English gets us there is exciting,\u201d Clark writes.<\/p>\n

Melina Sempill Watts calls<\/a> Josh Jackson\u2019s book, \u201cThe Enduring Wild: A Journey Into California\u2019s Public Lands\u201d<\/b><\/a> a timely book for a state that is in danger of losing its most precious public resource: \u201cJackson\u2019s assertion that we are all landowners is a clarion call amid a GOP-led push to sell off public land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leigh Haber raves<\/a> on Amy Bloom\u2019s latest novel \u201cI\u2019ll Be Right Here.\u201d<\/b><\/a> \u201cAs Bloom has demonstrated throughout her stellar literary career,\u201d writes Haber, \u201cshe can train her eye on any person, place or object and render it sublime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jim Ruland calls<\/a> Megan Abbott\u2019s latest thriller, \u201cEl Dorado Drive,\u201d<\/b><\/a> a novel for our present age of anxiety, propelled by Abbott\u2019s masterful narrative drive and her skill at \u201crendering the hot, messy inner lives of young people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcd6 Bookstore Faves \"In <\/a> <\/p>\n

Ken Concepcion, owner of Now Serving, tells us what\u2019s been flying off the shelves at his Chinatown bookstore that specializes in cookbooks.<\/p>\n

(Shelby Moore \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

This week we are perusing the shelves at Now Serving, a cozy bookshop devoted to the culinary arts and located on the ground floor of Chinatown\u2019s Far East Plaza. Co-owner Ken Concepcion gives us the scoop on the hot goods.<\/p>\n

What books are selling right now?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cUmma,\u201d<\/b><\/a> \u201cBy Heart,\u201d<\/b><\/a> \u201cFat + Flour,\u201d<\/b><\/a> \u201cSalsa Daddy\u201d<\/b><\/a> and \u201cThe Choi of Cooking.\u201d<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

What food trend are customers excited about right now?<\/b><\/p>\n

Being that we are in L.A., there has always been a demand for vegetarian and vegan titles. The interest in plant-based cookbooks that delve into specific cuisines such as Filipino, Vietnamese, Mexican and Japanese has definitely grown over the years, and the diversity of voices has been wonderful to see. There needs to be better representation for Ecuadorian, Guatemalan and other Central and South American cuisines as well \u2014 there is a real demand for it.<\/p>\n

Why do you think cookbooks are still important, despite the ubiquity of recipes online?<\/b><\/p>\n

As with anything that you can find online, recipes are no different. There are thousands upon thousands available. Most of them are copycat recipes. We think cookbooks are still unparalleled in that they can deliver a narrative, historical context and incredible imagery and stunning design in a world that is more reliant on technology than ever. Cookbooks at best are functional objects of art that can be then passed down from generation to generation. They can often become keepsakes, time capsules and family heirlooms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Helen Schulman is not afraid to make you squirm. Across her long and distinguished career as a novelist…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":41893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[3601,3602,3604,1022,3596,3606,3603,3605,171,3607,2323,3599,3600,2252,3597,3598,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-41892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-author","9":"tag-bestselling-novelist-silvia-moreno","10":"tag-book-exploder","11":"tag-books","12":"tag-chef","13":"tag-conversation","14":"tag-daughter","15":"tag-doctor-moreau","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-fiction","18":"tag-garcia","19":"tag-keith-corbin","20":"tag-l-a-times-book-club-newsletter","21":"tag-life","22":"tag-memoir","23":"tag-thrills","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114803135519863313","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}