This post was originally published on Audible.com.
Note: Text is lightly edited for clarity and does not match audio exactly.
Jerry Portwood: Hi listeners. This is Audible Editor Jerry Portwood, and today I'm thrilled to be speaking with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Andrew Sean Greer. While many know him for his bestselling comedic novels Less and the sequel, Less Is Lost, I've been a fan of his since his book The Confessions of Max Tivoli, and I'm thrilled to talk to him about his latest literary romp, Villa Coco. Thanks for joining us, Andrew.
Andrew Sean Greer: Thank you for having me here, and what a lovely introduction.
Thanks. Well, first, I just want to say how much fun it was listening to Villa Coco. I don't know if you've had a chance to listen.
Not yet, no.
Well, it is a great listen. The language is delicious. It's my favorite type of contemporary fiction, which is not only is it fun but I'm learning so much along the way. And just for everybody who hasn't had a chance to listen to it yet, there's so much discussion about food and history and you have this amazing list of art objects, and I think most of it is real. So, did it require a lot of research, or is this just accumulation of years of knowledge?
Well, I want to pop in and say the narrator is Edoardo Ballerini, who is absolutely the best, and I pushed and pushed to get him, because he's also Italian. He's the only one I thought who could do this and who could do the different accents and say the different words and towns with great joy, and he and I wrote back and forth about it. I think he had a great time doing it.
I am not Italian, but I do live half the time in Italy. I've lived there for 10 years now. But I first came to an artist residency in rural Tuscany in 2005 and it was life-changing to meet the people there and the proprietress and a world of—I realized how little I really knew as an American about food and customs and history and the global breadth of literature. I was very humbled, and hopefully I've learned more.
Well, that’s true, you do have our young man who's the protagonist educated by the baronessa. Are you saying the baronessa is based on someone that you are familiar with, or is she just like an accumulation of knowledge?
I do have my own baronessa. She's 100 years old, but I did not use the details of her personality or life in this, although she inspired it because she really opened a whole new world for me. So, I used her in scenes like when she's insisting that her new assistant—Giovedi, she calls him, which is the Italian word for Thursday—he must learn Italian. And her way of doing it is that only Italian is allowed to be spoken in the car. So, they have these long, uncomfortable voyages where he's struggling through Italian, and she's rattling off some crazy story about Zanzibar.
We should also mention you got married to an Italian earlier this year and you're splitting your time between Italy and San Francisco, right?
Yes. Yes, I did. He's in the other room. He's working as well. He's a writer and a critic.
Tell me a little bit about this. I mean, I visited all the big spots in Italy, but this takes place in a more rural, outside of those touristy destinations. I just wondered, is there something about the Italian pace of life or the local culture that allowed you to unlock specific kinds of comedic timing? Obviously, you've been spending time back and forth, and you can write hopefully anywhere, and I know you go on a lot of residencies, but is there something about Italy itself that lent itself to this?
I found it very funny from the moment I got there, and I also found myself very funny because I'm a big Mid-Atlantic WASP. Big planner. I plan for catastrophes. I'm so prepared for my book tour, I can't tell you. I bought new socks for the whole thing. That is not necessarily an Italian point of view. They do well in a crisis, which I don't do well in a crisis, but they do because it's all crises, because nothing's prepared for. So, you're always improvising and a solution is found and I find it anxiety-producing a little bit, but also really funny that all my plans are for nothing and that their solutions are so creative. So, I tried to use some of them in the book.
"The narrator is Edoardo Ballerini, who is absolutely the best, and I pushed and pushed to get him, because he's also Italian. He's the only one I thought who could do this and who could do the different accents and say the different words and towns with great joy."
Like, for instance, in the book, they're trying to get rid of a sort of weasel. He's called upon to help out the Lebanese handyman. And they don't go about it ever in an ordinary way. The handyman always has some new insane idea about how they're gonna trap the weasel and save the chickens. It never works. He goes on, he has another insane idea. And that was pretty consistent with the time I spent there.
We should say that the handyman's name is Gazelle, or at least his nickname is. And then the weasel you talk about is called the faina, because that is the Italian word for this, what is it? Is it a weasel? I don't know what it is.
It's actually a stone marten, which sounds like something very English, but it's a faina, and our narrator doesn't really understand what it is he's after for a little while until someone mentions that it's a marten. He doesn't know what monster it might be until he actually confronts it face-to-face.
Villa Coco features this highly entertaining, chaotic carousel of characters. We have a gin-swilling princess, the Bohemian painters, boar hunters. We have pugs named Pushkin and Gorky. I also feel like you structured the Villa to almost act like its own character and this pressure cooker for all these personalities. I don't know, sometimes it's like you have everything in this book. How did you organize it? Did people say, like, there's just too much?
That's a really good question because the truth is I now write my books completely out of order. I think Max Tivoli I wrote in order and then I had a mental breakdown in the middle of it and decided to redo it completely. And to do away with that, now I write whatever scene I can picture. I write them all separately and I don't know how they go together, and then I put them together.
"My editor on this book, on Villa Coco, she said, 'We can never get enough of descriptions of food or landscape or animals.' I was like, 'Okay, you asked for it.' So, what you got was more pugs, more porcupines, and more pasta."
I wrote all of the bits and details first, which seems so backwards. And then I thought, "Okay, I guess it's a young man coming to Italy." I mean, that sounds so crazy because that's, first you have the idea, right? But even with my book Less, I did not know it was a man on a trip around the world. I just wrote the character in different countries. My editor on this book, on Villa Coco, she said, "We can never get enough of descriptions of food or landscape or animals." I was like, "Okay, you asked for it." So, what you got was more pugs, more porcupines, and more pasta.
No, that's what I loved. I loved being able to enter this world and live in this world. I also love that you said that, because when I wrote my novel, which still is not published, I did the same thing. I just wrote what I wanted to write that day and then I figured out later how to piece it all together. So, I love hearing that advice.
I mean, it doesn't do away with the nervous breakdown. The nervous breakdown comes with, "How does this all fit together? This isn't how a novel is written. I'm a failure." But at least you have material.
Right.
You do it the best that you can.
I have another Italian question, which is we have this long history of authors traveling and living in Italy for inspiration, especially queer authors like E.M. Forster, Henry James, even Gore Vidal. I wondered, do you see Villa Coco fitting into that grand tradition of the Italian expat novel in any way?
Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely an Anglo abroad in Italy. It's part of that tradition. Maybe if I really sent him to Venice to take up drawing or something, that might have been more in the intellectual tradition. I think it's also in a very English tradition of a comedy abroad, of the Anglo losing their mind and finding that actually they're probably wrong to begin with and they need to open themselves up a little bit. It's part of that kind of story.
But as you said, I tried not to set it in a major city, and I think most readers are familiar with Tuscany, but I had to use Tuscany because I had lived there for so long that that was what I had. I did try to send him to cities that I think Americans haven't heard of or haven't been to, like Ferrara. Or there's one town, Comacchio, which no one's been to except for me and it's a little village with canals that's full of eels, and that's the only thing to eat there. And I thought, "That is so Italian."
I loved all the descriptions of the eels, the eels with oranges, and the whole idea of eel sex and everything. I mean, it's just so much to have to enjoy. It's a kind of book that you want to then tell your friends about and be like, "Oh, I learned this thing and I hope it's real," because there's so many farcical moments that you wonder. I trust Giovedi and I trust you as a writer, so there we go.
I think they're mostly true, like the superstitions, putting a hat on a bed. That's true, and the cure for it, those were things that were told to me.
So, it's been described as this “bawdy Mediterranean ballad,” and Giovedi, he stumbles into an affair with a married man named Giacomo Giacomo, which is also hilarious. He also has a heist to steal an urn of ashes. I think that's what people love about your writing, is that you're able to blend these capers and kind of farcical moments with these profound meditations on aging and friendship. I was curious, how do you balance those things? How do you know you've gone too far, when it's time to get serious?
That's a really good question, especially because you read some of my other more serious books. They feel like writing the same book in that I'm thinking about a question I don't have the answer to, you know, "What is it like to get older?" That was Max Tivoli. And this one is also about getting older and the nature of really the purpose of life, I think, a little more than I've written about before.
I'm also trying to think, "What is delightful for a reader? Is it description or is it elegant language or metaphor?" I know it's always those moments where you feel something becomes clear to you. And in a serious book, you can sit with them a lot longer. But in a comic novel, I've discovered you can touch on them only briefly before you evaporate the sort of bubble of joy that you've built. So, you have to sneak them in very carefully. It has to be delicately done. And luckily I have an editor who will say, "We've already said this. If we say it too many times, it sounds like a motto."
Well, but one of the fantastic one-liners that could be a motto, I loved when our young man admits, "I was never moral, just organized." That's a great line.
That came up later when I looked at all my notes and I thought, "His problem isn't that he's against all these sort of dubious things that are going on, it's that he's too buttoned up. It's too chaotic." And it shows the possibility of his participating in some way and taking part in the fun a little more.
As you have been the American fish out of water, you have this other great line, which is, “It's always good to have a young person or an American around because they always believe the future will be better.” Let's unpack that a little bit. Did somebody say that to you, or is that something your Italian husband has said to you?
I'm trying to think, because it's certainly the impression that I've gotten from older Italians when they talk to me, and it's meant as a bit of a dig towards Americans, that we’re so naive. We have no idea how history's gonna roll right over us, the way it has Italians, but I think it's also what's appealing about Americans is that we are naive. We are convinced that through sheer will, we could achieve our dreams, and Italians don't necessarily believe that. I think it's a little bit why they're like, "Take today, eat the dish in front of you, drink the bottle of wine next to you, don't fight too hard for tomorrow, because that we are not sure about." But Americans, our problem is that we can often be just like ants and hoard everything away and not enjoy what's right in front of us.
Well, but there is a bit of hoarding that goes on in—
Good transition! [laughs]
[Laughs] You just gave it to me. I was wondering, there's so many objects, and our protagonist is there to archive them. Are you a collector? Do you have a great amount of treasures?
I'm a poor collector. I wish I were. I mean, when you are in Italy, you often see people, they have in their family houses, and I'm not even saying grand houses, that they've collected things. Generations have collected not even things of value, but they are one of a kind. They're interesting. Not just to travel the world and pick up bric-a-bracs, but some piece of pottery that has been handed down. Or, especially, Italians, I've met a few who have a great eye that they can go to a secondhand store run by nuns and see one thing on the wall and say, "Take it."
"I think it's also in a very English tradition of a comedy abroad, of the Anglo losing their mind and finding that actually they're probably wrong to begin with and they need to open themselves up a little bit."
I remember being there and my friend, the baronessa, I looked at a painting on the wall that was clearly an amateur artist's attempt to draw an icon with gold paint and things, and the amateurness of it charmed me so much. I said, "What do you think about that?" And she just said, "If you like it, get it. It's a euro." That was her theory. She said, "If you like it, get it. If you fill your house with things that you love, they will go together." But she also said, "Always buy things in threes, because then it looks like a collection."
It's true. It's like, is it junk or is it a collection?
Yeah, like one ceramic hippo looks ridiculous. Three ceramic hippos, you've got something going.
You just made me think, you went on tour with David Sedaris and you were opening for him for a while, and you guys were both funny. Are you going to ever write a memoir or give us some personal essays as well, like your Sedaris moments?
I don't think that's my talent. That is definitely his talent. I know he carries around a notebook and he's very alive to the world and curious about the world. So, he notices and maybe judges everything that he sees around him. I try to imitate that, but I end up falling back on being a novelist. My time in Italy, I took notes on so many things that have made it into this book, but for some reason I fictionalize and exaggerate. I like how in fiction you can connect two things together, either through the same character or different characters so that it becomes part of the same world. And maybe I don't think I'm that interesting or something. I don't know. I mean, I've mostly been happy. Claudette Colbert, someone asked her about why she didn't write an autobiography and she said, "I've been happy. There's no story in that."
That's a good point. So, you mentioned Edoardo narrating your book, and this is the first book of yours that he's narrated, but he is bilingual and was raised between New York and Milan. You said you wanted him to narrate this, and it was so wonderful hearing his voice doing all the voices. He has an amazing voice for the baronessa, for example. It's so memorable.
Oh, I can't wait to hear it. Yes.
Are you much of a listener, or do you have any things in audio that you like to listen to?
I do. For a long time, I always had an audiobook because there's a long walk to my office in San Francisco, and long walks in Venice, too, where it's just great to have the book going. And then you can also have another book you're reading. Somehow, it's the only time where I can have two books going. But for some reason, I lost the habit when I moved to Venice. Maybe there was a Wi-Fi problem. The last one I listened to was Barbra Streisand's autobiography, which, all through New York, I was doing all this travel, and she was always there as a solid companion. I listened to her at twice the speed because when she's reading, it's wonderful, but it's an older Barbra, speaking slowly. But when you speed it up to twice, it's the young Barbra, it's What's up, Doc? Barbara, and I just love it.
Yeah, it's a good trick. She also had great lists of food and all of her meals and things that she seemed to be obsessed with as well. Another version of a baronessa.
Yeah. A coffee ice cream. I think she goes on and on about that coffee ice cream.
There's a very specific coffee ice cream that she's obsessed with. So, by the end, you say the secret to living a good life is finding the humor in the stories about life and love. That's sort of my paraphrase of the message. Can you explain a little bit more about that? Because it does feel like that's what you're giving us in your latest books, and what you're really interested in is excavating that humor that we see in all the mistakes we make.
That's very smart. That is exactly what I'm thinking about. Why have I decided to become a comic novelist suddenly after I've written books you would not crack a smile? I realized it was becoming a little older where I was able to find humor in myself and find a real release in tackling the same serious material with humor to then get through it in a way.
"Americans, our problem is that we can often be just like ants and hoard everything away and not enjoy what's right in front of us."
I think in this novel, he has this realization when he's told, "You need to make a funny story out of that" that it's a gift to the person listening, that you've processed it enough to make it a story for them instead of just, "Oh, this thing happened to me today," and complain, complain, complain, complain. That's fine when you're young. When you get older, you really sound like a kvetch, you know? It's not as pleasant to be around, so you have to kind of gain a lightness about it all, especially things that happened a long time ago. Make them into a funny story to put the listener at ease and also something you therefore have learned about it, that you turned out okay in the end.
Both Less and Villa Coco are comedic novels, as we've said, and they deal heavily with geography and travel and finding oneself in an unfamiliar land. I wondered, do you view Villa Coco as a thematic sibling to Less? Or did it require you to tap into something completely different?
For me, it won't seem this way maybe to readers, but for me, it was totally different. The narrator of Less, for instance, is not Arthur Less, and he had a very specific way of talking that's very erudite, and part of the humor I think is in the language. It's some ridiculous words, and I strip that down for this one. And also because it's a story that's a little less poignant. I mean, there's a poignancy to it, of course. There's some death and thinking about aging and life, but he's 21, 22 years old, so what he is is unformed, and that feels like a different narrator. In my mind, he's much older, looking back on his younger self and being amused at who he used to be, having become someone else completely. And that's a nice point of view for me. Also, because it tells you, like I said, if you can make fun of that younger person, you probably are happy with who you are now.
Well, I agree and—
Maybe not.
No, no, no. I love that. I was also thinking, though, and because you've written one sequel already to a book—even though everyone told you that you can't write a sequel to a Pulitzer Prize-winning book and then you did it—are you ever thinking about continuing these characters? Because you leave us in this really great moment, no spoilers, but the ending is so satisfying. You could imagine a life for these characters afterward. Is that something you care to explore?
Certainly not in my next book, which I'm already working on, which is to my agent's great relief, because then she would have said, "All you would do is write Less books and then Coco books and then Less books." But I do feel not completely done with the characters, and I have set them up for something, although I realized it's winter—I won't say anymore—which makes things a little more difficult, but I don't have to tackle it yet. I think it was such fun to write this book that I think I'm going to save it as a delight in my future if I decide to return to these characters.
Well, I hope so. Andrew, I just want to thank you again for this wonderful novel. It has filled me with a lot of joy, and I think listeners are going to really enjoy it. So, thank you.
Thank you, Jerry.
And listeners, you can find Villa Coco and Andrew Sean Greer's other titles on Audible now.
