Dorin Schumacher is the
author of the memoir Gatsby’s Child: Coming of Age in East Egg. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Brooklyn Rail and At Large.
Q: Why did you decide to
write this memoir?
A: My mother was a wonderful
storyteller. I grew up on her stories about Helen Gardner, her eccentric silent-movie-star
mother. My mother narrated dramas such as the affairs Gardner had with men that
she had her young daughter try to hide from her lesbian lover. It didn’t work.
The lesbian lover “flew into violent jealous rages.”
I too love to tell true
stories, especially funny ones. I had a head full of memories from my childhood
that demanded to be written. I began writing, and they began grouping
themselves into chapters that I would pick up, work on and then put away. This
happened over several years as I built a university career. All along, I didn’t
know if my work would ever be worth publishing.
I received a notice of a
memoir-writing workshop at a Yale Summer Writing Conference and submitted my
chapters. The leader of the workshop was Eileen Pollack, a professor in the
University of Michigan MFA program and a successful writer. I was brought to tears
when she and the participants in the workshop said they loved my memoir and I
just had to get it published.
Q: How was the novel's title
chosen, and how do you see your life relating to The Great Gatsby?
A: My father, a first-generation
Jew trying to pass as Gentile, a man barely making it who wanted to pass as
wealthy, moved us from New York City to Sands Point on the “Gold Coast” of Long
Island. We lived for a time on the grounds of Beacon Towers castle, a Gilded
Age medieval fantasy built by Alva Vanderbilt Belmont in 1918. The castle is
said to have inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald to write The Great Gatsby, in which
he fictionalized Sands Point as “East Egg.” My father was a Jay Gatsby type, a
phony trying to impress the old-money upper-one-percenters hidden in their
mansions behind thick hedges.
My mother let it all hang
out. My father lied about everything. As a child, I saw what was going on around
me and ultimately decided I didn’t want that life. Since I wasn’t allowed to
say what I knew, I stored it up and ultimately wrote it down as Gatsby’s Child:
Coming of Age in East Egg.
Q: Did you need to do additional
research to write the book, or did you remember most of what you write about?
A: I remembered it all, in great
detail. The sad, the ridiculous, the hilarious, the classist, and how I managed
to survive.
Q: What do you hope readers take
away from the book?
A: The book is a story of
survival, of how a determined young girl used her inner resources to live
without love and without moral teachings to become a strong woman. I hope my
readers will be inspired and encouraged as they face their own life challenges.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My book on Helen Gardner’s
film, Vanity Fair (Vitagraph, 1911), has just been accepted for publication. I
wrote it in an innovative style that blends film art and literary art. It will
become part of the coffee table book that I am writing about Helen Gardner’s
movie career. Just as with the historic contributions of so many women, her
impressive achievements are largely unrecognized. I hope to correct that.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: My advice to aspiring memoir
writers is Write it Down. Don’t worry about style. Just get it down. And keep
working on it. The book will come. Write the truth from your heart. Don’t worry
about what the people you write about might think. These are your memories, your
stories.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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