Meg Waite Clayton’s riveting ninth novel, Typewriter Beach, shifts from the European settings she has created for earlier novels similar The Postmistress of Paris, The Last Train to London, Beautiful Exiles, and The Race for Paris, to Hollywood astatine the tallness of the blacklist era, and the enchanting seaside colony of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Why the change?
“This caller that has (I hope) an ending that leaves you laughing and crying astatine the aforesaid clip came retired of a weird operation of my fascination with Hollywood successful the 1950s—stars similar Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor each making their mode nether the workplace strategy that gave men truthful overmuch power implicit their lives, and successful the shadiness of the blacklist—and my ain grief,” the writer explains.
I archetypal enactment pen to leafage for Typewriter Beach successful my play penning clip with the ‘JEMS’ (Jenn, Ellie, Meg, and Sheryl)—on Friday, February 11, 2022—eight months aft my dada died and 3 weeks earlier we mislaid Mom. I’d stalled connected a caller novel, and to beryllium honorable my penning that wintertime but for that hr with friends was mostly arsenic executor of Dad’s estate. So I told my friends I was going to acceptable my novel-in-progress speech and effort to get a fewer words connected the leafage for a caller astir the blacklist I’d agelong been fascinated by. Leo, a blacklisted writer with Dad’s mediate name, splashed onto my leafage and offered maine a solid of Dad’s scotch. It was 9 a.m. and I hatred scotch, but hey, it was a fictional drink, truthful I downed it. Gemma—that comes from my sanction backwards. Her mom’s legs are my mom’s, arsenic is the typewriter Leo was sitting at. Typewriter Beach isn’t our story, but that it comes from the shreds of my heart, and is afloat of gobs of my parents’ love.
Our email speech spanned California from Carmel to Sonoma County.
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Jane Ciabattari: Has your consciousness of its timeliness changed since you started writing?
Meg Waite Clayton: My consciousness of its timeliness has perfectly changed. I knew its exploration of the peculiar challenges women look would beryllium timely; sadly, I wonderment if that volition ever cease to be. The silencing of voices done authorities intimidation and prosecution—the timeliness of that is simply a astonishment adjacent to me.
JC: How agelong did you enactment connected this novel? Did it displacement shapes oregon forms arsenic you wrote it?
MWC: I’ve been researching this 1 successful immoderate consciousness my full life, oregon astatine slightest since I was aged capable to ticker aged Hitchcock films with my mom. The existent penning of Typewriter Beach took 3 pugnacious years during which, successful summation to handling my parents’ analyzable estates and dealing with my grief, I saw my hubby done crab treatment. Never caput the pandemic, and each the chaos successful the state and the world. It feels similar a spot of a occurrence to person it really beryllium connected bookstore shelves.
JC: I’m funny to cognize wherever you got this title? Was it your archetypal choice?
MWC: The rubric was fixed to maine agelong years agone by my person Laird Koenig, who has since passed away. I similar the contradiction—these 2 things that don’t spell together. And I emotion typewriters and I emotion the formation present successful Carmel. It’s each melodramatic stone formations and achromatic sand. Rarely lukewarm capable to swim. Often shrouded successful a fog that makes it mysterious.
So overmuch of past looks antithetic successful hindsight, yet my characters don’t person the payment of what is going to happen.
JC: In the caller you toggle betwixt 1957, erstwhile Isabella Giori, aka Iz, who has conscionable started a seven-year workplace contract, auditions for Alfred Hitchcock, and soon thereafter is taken by a workplace “fixer” to a concealed Carmel-by-the-Sea cottage wherever she meets Leo Chazan, and 2018, erstwhile young screenwriter Gemma Chazan is successful Carmel to benignant done her precocious grandfather’s possessions and merchantability his cottage, and discovers secrets that scope backmost into Leo’s past. She besides gets progressive with Sam, a video crippled designer. How did you determine to operation the caller with these clip shifts?
MWC: I’d had successful caput a communicative acceptable successful 1957, but the archetypal words connected the leafage were Gemma cleaning retired her grandfather’s cottage. Sometimes that’s conscionable a mode into a communicative I portion retired later. But Iz would ne'er ain up to her past if not confronted with it, and Leo would ne'er marque her bash so. And Leo had secrets to support too. If I near the communicative successful their hands, it would inactive beryllium hidden successful that harmless successful Leo’s closet.
Through Gemma’s and Sam’s communicative (with Nyx, Sam’s aureate retriever puppy) I could besides much easy research modern Carmel-by-the-Sea arsenic well—and modern Hollywood and the #MeToo movement.
JC: Your 1957 communicative is acceptable 10 years aft the Hollywood Ten were imprisoned for refusing to archer Congress’s House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, headed by inferior Wisconsin legislator Joseph McCarthy, what governmental enactment they favored, arsenic portion of his run to basal retired “communists and homosexuals.” During this play Hollywood has aligned with McCarthy’s agenda, with loyalty oaths, concealed testimonies and hearings successful which workplace directors, writers and actors “name names” oregon look the extremity of their careers. What benignant of probe was progressive successful penning astir Iz and astir the neighbour she befriends successful Carmel, Leo Chazan, a blacklisted screenwriter who has recovered a mode to enactment successful concern by penning scripts nether the names of different writers, immoderate adjacent being nominated for Oscars, for a tiny percent of what helium would person been paid had determination been nary blacklist?
MWC: For starters, this caller was besides a large excuse to ticker movies successful the day and telephone it “work”! I watched ones written by blacklisted writers—like “Roman Holiday”—and each Hitchcock movie I could get my hands on, arsenic good arsenic each Grace Kelly film! When I could find them, I often watched with a transcript of the screenplay successful hand.
One of the things I emotion astir astir penning is the accidental it provides to research what fascinate me. And truthful overmuch of past looks antithetic successful hindsight, yet my characters don’t person the payment of what is going to happen. So I wage adjacent attraction to the contemporaneous reporting, and to idiosyncratic narratives.
I knew a batch astir the blacklist earlier I starting imagining Typewriter Beach. Still, I started with a documentary, “Hollywood connected Trial,” and Lillian Hellman’s Scoundrel Time. Stanley Dyrector’s the books Shedding Light connected the Hollywood Blacklist: Conversations with Participants was terrific; the stories radical archer him are truthful personal, and it is those idiosyncratic details that let maine to marque fabrication consciousness real.
JC: Another communicative thread traces the steps successful which workplace actresses are capable to debar career-ending circumstances and gossip. What were your champion sources for this constituent of the novel?
MWC: I watched documentaries and work biography aft biography of 1950s actresses: Grace Kelly. Audrey Hepburn. Marilyn Monroe. Ingrid Bergman. Elizabeth Taylor. (Do they marque movie stars similar that anymore?) So overmuch of what I learned amazed me. I didn’t know, for example, that determination was specified a happening arsenic integrative country backmost then, overmuch little that the Hollywood contracts often had provisions allowing them to necessitate actors person enactment done. There was besides a publication titled The Fixers by E. J. Fleming astir Eddie Mannix and the MGM publicity machine. And Jeanine Basinger has written books connected the attraction of women successful Hollywood that were precise helpful.
JC: Your backmost communicative astir Leo Chazan involves a analyzable communicative of a young antheral who faces aggregate challenges connected the mode to success, lone to beryllium blacklisted. Did you person real-life models for this character?
MWC:What I did for Leo—and Iz too—is sorb everything I could larn successful presumption of what existent actors and writers of the clip experienced, and past acceptable it speech and write.
For the quality of Leo, those experiences I researched pass however helium moves done his world. But Leo is astatine his halfway my dad. He has my dad’s big, generous heart. He cares for Iz similar my dada cared for truthful galore people.
Gemma is who she is due to the fact that Leo was ever determination for her, encouraging and applauding her, helping her judge successful herself. She’s ne'er had a father, truthful he’s her dad. And that was the mode my dada was. There was thing helium wouldn’t bash for me. I was truthful fortunate to person him successful my beingness for truthful galore years, and I volition transportation him wrong maine forever, the mode Gemma carries Leo.
JC: How agelong person you lived successful Carmel? You seizure the mounting truthful well—Hidden Beach, China Cove, Carmel Point, Tor House, Hawk Tower Robinson Jeffers’ tower, Memory Bench (is the diary determination wherever passersby constitute their responses to each different real?). How were you capable to weave the fictional into the real?
MWC: Memory Bench is real! (Although I don’t deliberation anyone but Mac and I telephone it that.) The journals are real. I constitute successful them sometimes myself. It’s incredibly moving. There is thing astir penning thing down anonymously successful a diary that…I don’t know…allows you to fto spell of it, oregon statesman to fto go, oregon ideate you can. And the presumption there, to Carmel Point successful 1 absorption and Point Lobos successful the other—where they truly did movie scenes from Hitchcock’s Rebecca—is ne'er little than amazing, adjacent erstwhile it is truthful foggy you tin hardly spot your ain hands.
We moved present successful the archetypal months of the pandemic, erstwhile I couldn’t get to, say, Paris, to cheque retired immoderate particulars I needed to cognize to acceptable a caller anyplace else. So I conscionable explored Carmel, which was truthful overmuch fun.
I bash walk my days stepping successful to different people’s shoes arsenic a writer….But I signifier those lives with my words, and successful immoderate consciousness each 1 of them is portion me.
Lucky for me, the Carmel Pine Cone, our section paper, is archived online going backmost forever. The columns Iz reads truly did tally successful the paper, which is afloat of quality similar the information that Bing Crosby was backmost from wherever he’d been, oregon Mrs. So-and-So has a caller telephone successful Big Sur truthful you tin telephone up to marque definite she volition beryllium location erstwhile you visit. And the ads! Whenever I get annoyed astatine ads now, I punctual myself that they volition beryllium a large root for aboriginal humanities fabrication novelists.
JC: What was the astir analyzable portion astir portraying Hollywood successful these 2 eras, with the workplace system, the scandals and governmental statements (Ingrid Bergman became large with manager Roberto Rossellini’s’s kid erstwhile they were some joined to others, starring to a brutal scandal; Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller and others resisting HUAC), Iz having occupation landing roles arsenic she grows retired of her twenties.
MWC: I accidental the hardest portion for maine was imagining Iz erstwhile she was young, due to the fact that she longs to beryllium thing I would ne'er privation to be. I don’t similar cameras connected me; I similar to beryllium looking done them from the different side. I bash walk my days stepping successful to different people’s shoes arsenic a writer, similar she would bash arsenic an actor. But I signifier those lives with my words, and successful immoderate consciousness each 1 of them is portion me. A beingness wherever each azygous happening you bash is public, oregon mightiness go nationalist and scrutinized…ugh. I americium excessively backstage to bask that. But she’s Iz.
JC: What are you moving connected now/next?
MWC: I’ve go excessively superstitious to springiness immoderate benignant of straightforward reply to this question. After The Wednesday Sisters was a beauteous success, I kept saying my adjacent would beryllium a caller based connected the existent experiences of the pistillate journalists who covered the liberation of Paris successful WWII. But it was lone aft I stopped talking astir that publication being adjacent that it was published arsenic my fifth novel, The Race for Paris, 3 books later.
So adjacent my exertion isn’t definite which of a fewer ideas I’ve kicked astir with her volition beryllium next.
Maybe it volition beryllium based successful London. Or Paris. Or again successful Carmel-by-the-Sea. I’ll beryllium amazed if it’s not humanities oregon dual timeline. I’m successful a spot of a 1960s signifier close now. That was the epoch The Wednesday Sisters explores, though someway that was marketed arsenic modern fiction. But determination was truthful overmuch chaos and alteration then—a batch to explore.
For me, the archetypal draught is ever daunting. And this adjacent one…as idiosyncratic pointed retired to maine recently, the adjacent 1 volition beryllium treble digits: #10! And each publication has its ain way and each its ain challenges. There are a batch of agelong walks and journaling and scratched retired words betwixt maine and immoderate is next. Maybe immoderate travel. Certainly tons of speechmaking to beryllium inspired.
Honestly, erstwhile I started writing, I would person sold my psyche to person a archetypal novel, overmuch little a ninth, with books published each implicit the world, reaching radical I would not cognize however to accidental hullo to successful their language. I truthful admit each the hard enactment that has gone successful to that: by my publishing teams and booksellers, librarians, reviewers and others each implicit the world—and particularly by readers. That is however astir of america determine what to propulsion disconnected a bookstore oregon room support next: by 1 person telling different “You person to work this.” So I anticipation everyone speechmaking this interrogation volition work Typewriter Beach and, erstwhile they’ve finished it, manus it to a friend.
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Typewriter Beach by Meg Waite Clayton is disposable from Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
