New York Times bestselling author Ada Calhoun joins Zibby to discuss CRUSH, a visceral, intelligent, revolutionary romance about the dissolution of a marriage and a new midlife romance—inspired by the author’s personal experiences. Ada talks about her novel’s exploration of love, desire, and (open) marriage. She and Zibby delve into the unruliness of love, how people try (and often fail) to control it, and the myths surrounding relationships—especially the idea that they can be managed with rules and structures. Ultimately, Ada reflects on the freedom of writing fiction after years of nonfiction.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Ada. Thank you so much for coming on to talk about Crush, a novel, debut novel. Very exciting. 

Ada: Thank you, Cynthia. It's great to be here. 

Zibby: Can you tell listeners what your book is about, please? 

Ada: Um, sure. It's, uh, about a woman who's happily married, and then she meets this other man, and, uh, they develop this super strong connection, and she tries to figure out a way, mostly through reading a lot of books, to keep both men.

Zibby: Amazing. Can I start by reading this passage, uh, about, you know, devastation and love and loss and all of that? Okay. They say crying clears out the residue of what was there before. When you're disoriented, crying is a proper response. But what about when you can't stop? What about when you dissolve into a puddle that needs to be mopped up by cheerful stalkers in Hawaiian shirts?

I felt dead, only I felt like a graveside mourner too. I kept switching roles the way I had at times in a moment of orgasm, sexual situations flashing through my brain. Only this version was depressing. Now I was the corpse, and the doctor, and the widow, the candy striper who asks the grieving family if she can get them anything, and the we're losing her doctor nurse, the medical examiner, leaning against the morgue bay after a long day of autopsies.

Love killed her, he says, snapping off his gloves. Oh, so good. The way you always write about, I mean, people have been writing about love forever. You think, like, how can people write about love in a new way? And yet you can't. And you did. 

Ada: Well, yeah. I mean, I, when I was trying to work on the book, I tried to read everything I could going way back and trying to find historical books and things from different cultures, talking about love.

And it is kind of amazing to me how everybody has been trying to figure this out for a very long time. And it is so unruly and it is so surprising to every one of us individually and to every culture. 

Zibby: Well, anything, just because it happens to everybody doesn't mean that it makes it easier for it to happen to you.

Right. Like, you can learn and you can digest, I mean, we were just talking about, like, you can, you can know that it's happening to so many people and yet when it happens to you it all feels personal because how else can you interpret anything? Like love and relationships. It's you. 

Ada: Great. And I think it's also true that we all keep thinking we, we have figured it out.

We, we will solve it by rules, by marriage, by, um, by all these different strategies and boundaries. And it's just, it's, it's infinitely surprising to me how there really is no fix, right? There is no one way to make sure that it never, it never gets us and never turns our life upside down. Yes. 

Zibby: Although you do suggest in part some coping strategies.

At one point you said, I'd always liked Books by drunk, older male writers. And I finally realized why by eight 30 in the morning I'd fed my child and gotten him off to school, listened to the news, done a load of laundry, answered a dozen emails, edited a stack of pages, and by 2:00 PM a Harry Cruise character had drunk two beers and checked on his captured bird of prey.

Who needed fantasy novels when their existed such exotic tales of Dispassion . 

Ada: Well, it, it's funny, I wrote this book about Generation X women a few years ago called Why We Can't Sleep, and I interviewed about. 200 of them of us, and there was this consistency of effort, right? Of like, of working super hard, of trying to be this good girl and all things to all people, uh, and pushing down.

Desire and, and pushing down one's own needs in favor of other people's. And so what I tried to do in the novel was to make the narrator, who is, you know, like me in many ways, but not me, be an embodiment of that, that woman who suddenly thinks, wait a minute, what if I do what I want for the first time? So how is the narrator like and unlike you?

Well, I mean, I, as somebody who's done fiction and nonfiction, I'm sure you know, it's, there's something kind of magical about being able to make things up whenever you want to. So I think the voice is a lot like, a lot like my voice. And then some of the things that happened are, are also similar to things that have happened to me.

But, you know, like when I, I tried to do a memoir about the last few years of my life and it just was not working. And so this was this way to actually talk about these ideas I had. And not have to stick to, stick to the facts. 

Zibby: So one of the, the topics, of course, of the book is, is open marriage. Does it work?

Does it work for every party involved? What do we think about it? Talk a little bit about that. 

Ada: Yeah. So I think that in, in trying to figure out how to have all the things that she wants, the narrator thinks like, okay, maybe this, maybe this will work, right? There is some way to, there is, okay, there's a framework.

And, you know, you have your, your spouse, and then you also are allowed to have this other person. France. France does it, right? Like, there's this, there, maybe there's models. And what I think she finds is that the, the boundaries are very hard, hard for her to maintain the, the rules. It's, it's just, it, it's very difficult because love is so, it's just so unruly.

And in her case, it just runs roughshod over every. Attempt that she makes, uh, to keep it under control. Yeah, it's definitely not like a, a pro or anti polyamory book. I think there are, there are a lot of both of those out there right now, which is, um, which is great for people who are exploring different ways to, uh, to think about relationships.

But yeah, this is really just one, one woman's quest to, uh, have all the things she wants. 

Zibby: And what about I know that's sort of a broad question, but where does that fit in? Does it fit in, what do we think about how people talk about it in general versus reality? Yeah. 

Ada: Well, uh, I mean, I think, I think things have changed quite a bit, right?

I think, and that was one thing when I was doing that, the book about Gen X was our mothers and grandmothers, you know, would hit midlife and they were probably, you know, Empty nesters. And, you know, if, if they worked, it was like a nine to five job and the phone hung on the wall and there were all of these different things that made their lives not necessarily easier or better or worse or harder, but just different.

Right. And I think that right now, women in midlife often are working, you know, a lot more than nine to five and also might have little kids or no families or, uh, just any kind of permutation of, of a very full and complicated life. So I think finding, finding passion can be maybe more jarring in that state where suddenly you have on top of everything else.

You have these feelings or, or cravings that can be confusing. 

Zibby: True. In the beginning of the book, you talk about literary birding, when you see books by friends out in the wild, and I love that expression. I love applying that. I just thought that was hilarious because I'm always like walking to bookstores being like, Oh, hi. Yes. Look, look who's here. I'm in a new place, but now I don't feel like I'm in a new place because I have my friends here. 

Ada: It's so fun, right? And it's like, and I think, I don't know about your friends, but when I send my friends like their books, it's like, it's always joyful, right? It's always like, Oh my God, like here you are in the Dallas airport.

Of course. You get to check in with your friends that way. And it's just, it's a, it's a real, it's a real plus of being a, an author and having friends who are authors. 

Zibby: It's amazing. So start at the beginning a little bit about how you became a writer and how we got to these books that you've written lately.

Ada: Oh, sure. Uh, so I grew up in the East Village in Manhattan and I started working, I was like 13, I worked at the farmer's market and, um, and I mostly babysat. So I babysat for all these people in the neighborhood and some of them were editors. There was one who's an editor at Spin Magazine and one who's an editor at Esquire Magazine.

And they would say, Okay, when you're done with the children, go into my office and transcribe this thing for me or do this research. And so I started working when I was 16 at, at magazines and then kind of parlayed them into jobs in some in some ways. So I was working at spin in the early nineties of the music editors assistant.

And then I was like, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to work in magazines. And I went to college and tried to become a Sanskrit translator. I did five years of Sanskrit. And, but then, you know, I couldn't find a job job that was Sanskrit, so I wound up working at the local paper, the Austin Chronicle, when I was in, at school at UT Austin, uh, and that was so fun, right?

Like every day was different being a reporter, and I just thought that was so great, and I came back over to Vogue, uh, I worked in New York Magazine, and then eventually I was able to go freelance. 

Zibby: Wow. And talk about why you started Why We Sleep. 

Ada: Yes. So I had a very bad summer, like a really terrible summer.

I was super broke. I had this credit card debt. I was fighting with my husband. I was just like miserable at all these jobs that had fallen through. And it was just, it was so rough. And that was the exact moment when this editor at Oprah. Dot com called me and said, would you be willing to do a story about how generation X women are sad?

And I thought, yes, indeed, I would love to do that right now. Your timing could not be better. And so what I did was I looked at all the things that were different for our generation and the ways in which we had, uh, we had kind of come of age in a time that was uniquely unlucky for, for various reasons.

And especially for women, we were getting this message. You know, you can be anything, you can, you can do it all and aren't you lucky? And it really meant, you know, we're able to, to do everything for everybody and become exhausted and, uh, when it was very little help. So that, that became an article, like a, I think it was 8, 000 words or something and it was, went super viral.

And then it led to this book where I expanded it and that came out in 2020 in January. 

Zibby: Great timing. 

Ada: Well, I was on book tour, uh, and, uh, and it was this amazing tour, right? Where like, I'm in these rooms with all these women who are close to my age. And so many of them were basically standing up and giving testimonials about their experience and how they connected with the book and what it meant to them and, and just this sense of, wait a minute.

We're not. We're not crazy. There's something going on. There's some, there are some factors beyond our control that relate to how we're feeling or where we are in life that we didn't think we would be. And it was just this magical experience, this tour. And I was on it for a few weeks and then it shut down obviously for COVID and a lot of it went online.

And then my, every night I was like looking at these screens of like, Hundreds of squares of crying women, like it became this incredibly sad, mournful, uh, kind of experience. So I'm hoping, I'm hoping this tour can be more of the, more of the first one, less the second one. 

Zibby: Yes. And what are, what are your plans for the, for the tour and everything coming forward, coming ahead?

Ada: So I'm, I think it's like 15 events or so. There's a couple in New York and then I'm going all over, I'm going to like Books and Books in Miami, which I love things there. Those guys are so great. Uh, and print up in Maine, and uh, Left Bank, um, St. Louis. Just like a lot of my favorite indie bookstores invited me.

And so I'm, I'm gonna do some, some road tripping. I'll have some friends come with me. It'll be really fun. 

Zibby: Amazing. Oh my gosh. Well, the book is so great. I, you're, the way you just write about everything from the everyday things to deep thoughts about love and it's just great. It's like, you can't put it down.

It's really, I love the way you write. 

Ada: Oh, I'm so glad. Well, Thank you so much. 

Zibby: Was it harder to write fiction? I know you said the memoir wasn't really working, but when you went to write this as a novel, did you start from scratch? Like, what was, what was the whole thing like? 

Ada: It's, I mean, I feel like I, I'm like so late, I'm so late to the party, right?

I'm just like, you guys, you can just make stuff up. It's wild. Cause I've been doing this for so long and you have to work so hard. Right to do the interviews and do the research and then with fiction, you can just do whatever you want. It's kind of incredible. So no, it was just, it was just pleasurable. It was just a joy and I feel really lucky.

It was also like when I was doing, the last book was a memoir of also a poet and it's about my father and I put Frank O'Hara. And I was writing it while I was living it, and I kept trying to make everyone do things that would be good for the book, right? I'd be like, okay, now you're really nice to me, and then I have a happy scene to end the book with, where you just, like, say lovely things, and then it's over.

And nobody would do it, right? Like, nobody would act how I wanted them to act. And then, doing fiction, right, you can just You can make everybody do what you want. It's just, uh, it's just magical. 

Zibby: Yeah. And we talk more about that book as well. 

Ada: Oh, sure. So that book, which came out in 2022, it basically what happened was I found all these cassette tapes that my father had made.

They were interviews with the poet Frank O'Hara's friends. Uh, who he, so he died in 1966. Frank O'Hara. And then in 1976, when I was a baby, uh, my father was supposed to be the biographer. And so we'd made all these, these tapes of these interviews, and then he hadn't finished the book. And I couldn't believe it.

I mean, he had like 40 hours of material. And so my day job is like ghost, right? And a lot of times you get like a dozen hours, maybe, right? And sometimes a lot less. To write a whole book. And I was like, how did you not finish this? It's crazy. And then I was like, I will finish it for you. I will magnanimously show up with all my skills and I will do this for you.

And he was like, okay, whatever. And uh, and I thought I was going to like knock it out and it would be such a great like relationship builder for us. Cause we'd always had a sort of strained relationship and it would be so good. And then it wound up being really, really hard on all kinds of levels. And then it became like a memoir about my dad and me.

Zibby: Oh, I have to go back and read that. I have not read that one, but I'll add it to cart. So that's a lot. I mean, you've been nonstop writing to get three books out so fast. That's a lot. Are you, do you have more coming up? Like, have you already written another one? 

Ada: I have a draft of another one. I'm trying, so nothing has been very strategic and everything has been in a different part of the bookstore. Right. So like, you know, memoir and essays and then like women's studies and, um, my first book was called St. Mark's is dead. The many lives of America's hit the street, which is like a 400 year history of the street I grew up on in the village. And so, yeah, they've all been different. And so I'm always working on at least one or two things.

And, uh, I think the next one might be a novel, but I'm I don't know. I'm trying to, still trying to figure it out. That's exciting. And where do you like to write? Um, so this is, I'm in my office right now. So I'm here maybe half the time and then half the time at the New York Public Library, which has been so good to me.

I love librarians and libraries so much and, and eternally in their debt. 

Zibby: Oh, I love that. That's amazing. Are there any genres you particularly like to read? I know you write all, all kinds, but do you love, are there any authors you're obsessed with or just books that, I don't know, have meant a lot to you?

Ada: So Sigrid Núñez, I just, I think she's brilliant. And Emmanuel Carrere, I'm reading B13 now. Have you done this one?

Zibby: I haven't, no. 

Ada: I just think he's a genius. I've been reading Annie Baker plays. Do you know her? I'm sort of like, I, I used to be a theater listings editor at New York magazine. And one of my good friends is, uh, Times Arts writer and so we go see a lot of plays and he's taken me every time there's an any bigger play he has to take me So yeah, I don't know.

I blurb a lot. So I have a lot of like books coming out. There's this memoir destroy this house I really enjoyed Middlespoon is a Viking book. Anyway, I just yeah, I piles of everything I like philosophy and religion and fiction and memoir and yeah, history. 

Zibby: And how did you get drawn to Sanskrit? 

Ada: So I traveled alone when I was 18 for like three months through India.

And, and it was kind of random. I just, I got this for a volunteer program thing in Bangladesh. And then I was like, well, I'm already over here. I might as well travel for a while. And I ended up working at Mother Teresa's mission in Calcutta. And then I just was like, went on the road and took trains and ran around.

And while I was there, I was like reading the Upanishads and I was like, this is the best book that's ever been written in the history of the world. And I was like, wouldn't it be incredible to read it in the original? And then when I went to college, I first went to McGill in Montreal and they had this incredible Sanskrit program.

And so I just took it and I, it's, it was such a revelation. I'd done a lot of languages before, but. It has more grammar than any other language, and it's so sophisticated the way the grammar works and all the things you can do with that language that you can't do in other languages. So I, you know, I just, and I just do it for five years.

I loved it so much. And I've taken it like again, I've tried to like refresh where I went to the, the Indian consulate for a while and took classes there, but it's really hard if you're not doing it all the time to, to keep it up, unfortunately. 

Zibby: I mean, I would imagine Sanskrit is hard, even if you're keeping it up.

I mean, even if you're keeping it up. 

Ada: But it's really pleasurable. Pandemic, one of my, one of my friends, who's a, who's a, I have a few Sanskritist friends still, and one of them, she and I did, we took a hymn and, uh, from the betas and we did like a line every week. Like it would take us a whole week to do like a line and talk through it.

It was a really fun, fun way to pass the time. 

Zibby: Oh, I love that. Wow. I mean, here's to creative interests, right? It's amazing. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? 

Ada: Yeah, I mean, I, the way, I was having so many breakfasts with young writers because I'm always happy that people want to, want to write and I, and I love hearing what they want to do and trying to think of ways to, to make it better.

And so I wound up starting this, like, women, women's journalist night. Uh, journalist women. Anyway, we started this, this thing called Sobsisters, a couple of friends of mine and I, where we have like, you know, women who are starting out as writers and then some who like want a bunch of Pulitzers and we all get together in a room and just support each other and help each other and talk through it.

Talk through issues, talk through things we're excited about, and it's, um, so I think like finding a community like that for whatever kind of writing you're doing, whether it's fiction or poetry or history, and just getting people in an actual room together, it makes such a difference just to, to be around other people who know what you're, you're doing or trying to do, because it's hard, right?

It's like hard to do these things, and so it's good to be reminded that other people are trying to do it too. 

Zibby: Amazing. Ada, thank you so much. Thank you for this fabulous book, Crush, and all your other work, of course, and for uplifting Gen X women my age. Exactly. So thank you for all of it. I appreciate it.

Ada: Well, thank you so much for, um, for having me on and reading the book and also for everything you're doing for writers and for books in the world. 

Zibby: Oh, my pleasure. All right. Thank you. See you soon. 

Ada: You caught me in the background too. 

Zibby: Thank you. Okay. Bye. 

Ada: Bye. Thanks again.