NEW YORK ā Over the past few years, author Curtis Sittenfeld has gotten to know Hillary Clinton in a way uniquely suited for a novelist ā by writing a work of fiction about her.
āI was definitely an admirer of Hillary before I started the book, but writing from her perspective made me feel closer to her,ā Sittenfeld, whose āRodhamā comes out Tuesday, wrote to The Associated Press in an email. āI realize that closeness is NOT mutual ā weāve never met. But she feels very familiar to me now in terms of the trajectory of her life, her relationships, her syntax, so when I see clips of her or hear her voice, I think, āOh, thatās my Hillary.āā
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Sittenfeld's new book is her second imagined portrait of a famous woman: āAmerican Wife,ā based on the life of Laura Bush, was published in in 2008. But while āAmerican Wife" tells of a high-profile marriage that remains intact despite the narrator's misgivings, Sittenfeld follows a different path in āRodham." The āHillaryā in Sittenfeld's book breaks off from Bill early and remains Hillary Rodham, a decision which proves fortunate for her.
It's a premise that has been raised before, including by the author and journalist Rebecca Traister. In a 2015 story for The New Republic, entitled āThe Best Thing Hillary Could Do for Her Campaign? Ditch Bill,ā Traister wrote of how Hillary was endlessly āpulled back, into the shadowā of Bill Clinton and that he, not she, was the political beneficiary of their relationship.
"Iām pretty sure Iāve read every article Rebecca Traister has written about Hillary, and I read Traisterās book āGood and Madā while writing āRodham,ā so itās safe to assume I work under Traisterās influence, among others," Sittenfeld says.
Sittenfeld, now 44, caught on with critics and readers in 2005 with her first novel, āPrep,ā a best-selling coming of-age narrative. Her other books include the novels āThe Man of My Dreamsā and āEligibleā and the story collection āYou Think It, I'll Say It.ā She also has written reviews, including one for Vanity Fair about Michelle Obama's āBecoming,ā which Sittenfeld praised as āso surprisingly candid, richly emotional, and granularly detailed that it allows readers to feel exactly what Michelle herself felt at various moments in her life.ā
The kind of memoir, in other words, that has the power of a novel.
Other highlights from the recent interview with Sittenfeld:
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On why she wrote āRodhamā:
Two things made me write this book. First, in early 2016, an editor at Esquire asked if Iād like to write a short story from Hillaryās perspective as she accepted the Democratic nomination for president. I had declined to write essays about Hillary ā I didnāt feel I had any new analysis to contribute ā but fiction gave me the chance to ask not āWhat do the American people think of Hillary?ā but āWhat does Hillary think of the American people?ā
I also realized around the 2016 election, which I was devastated by, that schoolchildren who knew Hillary was running for president often literally didnāt know that Bill Clinton existed. I wondered if the outcome of the election would have been different if adults were similarly able to see her as independent from him.
On whether āRodhamā is how she wishes Clinton's life had turned out:
āRodhamā is definitely without question a novel ā the great majority of events in it are made-up. I feel that itās important for me to say that if anyone wants to read a definitive account of Hillaryās life, they should read either of her two memoirs or perhaps the non-fiction accounts āA Woman in Chargeā by Carl Bernstein or āChasing Hillaryā by Amy Chozick. āRodhamā is an act of imagination, creativity, and, yes, to some extent wishful thinking.
On political memoirs, including Bill Clinton's āMy Lifeā and Hillary Clinton's āLiving History":
I confess that I read only the first 25% of āMy Life,ā up until the point when Bill and Hillary get married, but I enjoyed both those books. Political memoirs are criticized for being anodyne or else campaign tools masquerading as literature, but Iām often surprised by how revealing and colorful they are. I read memoirs by all the female senators running for president in 2020, and I especially enjoyed hearing about the candidatesā families and upbringings. (For instance, Amy Klobuchar, whoās my senator, went on spring break in high school with three friends. Their friend group was named Amy, Amy, Amy, and Heidi, and they rode the Greyhound from Minnesota to Florida, where they pretended to be college students and met a group of high school boys pretending the same, while wearing fake mustaches.)
On whether she hopes Hillary Clinton reads āRodham":
āIf Hillary wants to read the book, sheās very welcome to and Iād be happy to hear her feedback (even if she thinks parts of it are preposterous), and if she doesnāt want to, I donāt blame her.ā