Michael Chessler is the author of the new novel Mess. He is also a producer, director, and show-runner of a variety of television shows. He lives in Los Angeles.
Q: What inspired you to write Mess, and how did you create your character Jane?
A: I’ve always been interested in the ways people cling to not only material possessions, but also to emotions, memories, beliefs.
When I read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, the animism of her organizational rubric—asking if an object brings joy, and if it doesn’t, sending it off with fondness and thanks—resonated with me. The way people approach physical clutter reveals so much about how they deal with mental clutter, and I wanted to explore this.
A specific incident that inspired me was an actress I was working with was moving, and I suggested my niece—who is a professional organizer—could help her. To be clear, my niece is nothing like Jane.
I wanted to center this story on a character who is perceptive and almost cripplingly self-aware, yet still somehow estranged from her own emotions. Someone who struggles to see past her judgments not only of others, but also of herself. Someone who is a Type A perfectionist—a mindset that can make a person their own worst enemy—resolutely determined to change.
Q: The writer Dana Spiotta said of the book, “The connection between who we are and what we accumulate becomes a delicate and intimate story in Michael Chessler's witty debut.” What do you think of that description?
A: Dana Spiotta is a remarkable writer, so her praise means a lot to me, and she’s elegantly distilled the essence of my book. People’s beliefs about their possessions can reveal so much about them, which makes the job of organizing them unexpectedly intimate and revealing.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: Mess began as a short story, and early readers asked me if it was the beginning of a novel. Even though I hadn’t conceived of it as such, once asked, I immediately envisioned how the novel would unfold and knew what I wanted the culmination of the romantic arc to be.
Mapping out the journey from the beginning to what I hope is a satisfying ending required lots of adjustments and fine tuning.
Q: The novel is set in Los Angeles--how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: I am a native Angeleno and have lived here most of my life. It’s a city I know well yet it still manages to surprise me. It’s a city that I love but can also find exasperating. These dichotomies are fertile ground.
Also, LA is also a pop culture capital, and I like to delve into the gaps between the glossy Hollywood stories we’re told—which are essentially fairy tales—and what’s really going on.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working on my next novel—which is also set in LA—and I am developing a television version of Mess. Ironically, writing Mess was a respite from the grind of the television business, so at first I was reluctant to think about a TV adaptation. But once I was done with all the revisions, I was ready to explore it and am currently working on it with my television writing partner.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Lesser-known works by two of my favorite 19th century novelists—Charlotte Bronte’s Villette and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey—are mentioned in Mess. Now I could be entirely wrong, but I hope some of their DNA is baked into Mess, which—like them—is both a coming of age and a romance story. In any event, if you haven’t read those novels, I heartily recommend them.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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