Cruising with a Boy Band in Emma Straub's 'American Fantasy'

This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We continue our show with the latest novel

by Emma Straub. American fantasy is the book's name. It's also the name of a cruise ship

where the action takes place in the course of three days. The American fantasy is setting

a sail on a theme cruise ship that is centered around a 90s fictional boy band like this.

Or maybe like this.

In American fantasy, the band is called Boy Talk. They were big in the 80s and 90s. They're aging

and so are their fans. But the band members make good money doing this annual cruise and it's

an opportunity to keep their fan base emotionally invested. Boarding the ship is Annie and newly

divorced woman. The trip was planned by her sister so she's not really a super fan of Boy Talk

so she feels a little bit out of place. But she forged a connection with a member of the band

who is lonely and just needs to be seen. American fantasy is out today. Emma Straub will be in

conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda tonight at 7 p.m. at First Unitarian Church in Brooklyn.

But she's here now in studio. It is so nice to see you. Hi Alison. I'm just trying to bring back

your MTV youth with the boy band. You know what I mean? It's all for you. You saw me dancing.

Let's get this out in the open. You went on a cruise with New Kizmla Block. What made you go on the cruise?

I mean, why would you not go on the cruise really as maybe a better question? I mean, I

went for research. I went for research. But the reason that I wanted to write a novel that took

place on a boy band cruise is because that's what the inside of my heart sounds like.

Because you're just feeling it, right? Oh my goodness. What surprised you about the cruise?

Oh, so many things. I had never been on a cruise before. And so, I don't know, the smell of

antiseptic cleaning products? Sure, surprised me. The scope of the buffets surprised me.

The crowds, the people, the noise. I packed about 17 different forms of motion sickness medicine,

but I didn't need any of it because cruise ships are extremely stable. Okay.

Hotels on their side. Exactly. But yeah, I guess what surprised me the most was really

that it did feel like a transcendent experience, you know? It's interesting because this sort of

fandom you're writing about, it's a super fandom. It's a very specific kind of fandom. What made

you want to write a little bit about these people who were so dedicated to a boy band that they

would go on a cruise? Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, I just, I'm interested in getting older.

You know, I'm interested in aging because we're all doing it, right? And I'm interested in what

happens to, you know, like these bands like this, you know, you start out, you're playing to crowds

so big that you can't have an individual relationship with any of those people. Like if you're playing

at Madison Square Garden or MetLife or whatever, you're just playing to a sea of people.

But as the years, as the decades go on, that crowd gets winnowed and winnowed and winnowed

until you're left with just like the hardcore people who love you the most. And, you know,

you're, you're, you've all aged together. And so it becomes less of like a pair of social

relationship and more like more a symbiotic one. So I was interested in looking at that.

That's so interesting. The story is told from the point of view of three people. Sarah, a 30-old

who works for the company that stages events on ships, Keith, one of the boy talk singers. And Annie

who was a fan when she was in her teens, but she's really on board only to please her sister.

Let's talk about Annie. Where's Annie when we meet her? So Annie is, Annie's not thrilled.

Annie's not thrilled. She was supposed to go in this ship with her sister, but her sister

has broken her leg and can't travel. And so Annie's on her own. She is recently deforest,

recently empty nested. She's, you know, like having troubles at work. She's struggling.

She's struggling. I think in a way that a lot of women do in middle age when you've checked all

the boxes that you sort of anticipated checking in one's life, you know, professional career,

family life, et cetera. And now she's finding herself, I mean, not to do this, but a bit at sea,

you know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry listeners that I did that. It's okay. I've recovered from that.

Let's talk about Keith. He has a strange relationship with fame. He's had it for a really long

time. How would you describe his relationship with boy talk and with fame? Yeah. I mean,

I think that one of the things that I was really interested in sort of playing with or thinking

about in this book is, is that like what happens? How does that feel? Like if you've been famous

since you were a teenager, like what does that do to your brain? What does that do to your

relationship to your sense of self, your relationship to strangers, to your fans? Yeah, Keith is,

I mean, I think that there are things that Keith really enjoys about being in boy talk. Like

he actually likes to sing, you know, and he likes to give people this pleasure. But I don't think he

likes living under a microscope and certainly not being trapped on a boat with his biggest fans.

And Sarah, Sarah's just trying to get her job done, right? How would you describe what Sarah has

to do on a regular basis? Yeah. So Sarah's like the big cat wrangler, basically. She's trying to

stick-free to enjoy this thing. She's got to get the musicians from their room onto the stage and

back. She's got to make sure everything goes smoothly. She is an extremely capable young woman

and actually quite likes boy talk, or at least Keith, she likes Keith, but yes, Sarah's like

the voice of reason on this ship, I'd say. We're talking to Emma Straub. Her new novel is set on a

cruise ship designed for fans of a 90s era boy band. It's called American fantasy. You're going to

read a little bit from the book. What are we going to hear? All right, let's see. All right, so this

is, this is from Annie's point of view. It takes place at 742 pm on deck three. Catherine, that's

Annie's sister. Catherine wanted pictures and so Annie was taking pictures. She took pictures of

women's outfits of the sexy sunrises, those are alcoholic beverages, of the red velvet chairs in

the theater and of the five men on the stage. Myro was taking pictures too. Her phone never left her

hand and her hand never dropped. It made Annie's arm feel tired just watching. On stage, the guys were

dancing around in their matching outfits, so many matching outfits and everywhere they went,

women screamed. Sean pointed to whatever corner of the crowd he wanted to scream the most and they

did. Annie did. Keith hung toward the back of the stage and she watched him with interest,

the faces he made the way he wiped his sweat on his sleeve. She'd let it all go, the cloak of

indifference she'd been holding on to, reluctance, propriety, shame. When she heard their voices,

Annie was young again, unencumbered. Myro lit a cigarette right there in the middle of the crowd

and passed it to Annie, who took a quick drag and handed it back. Maybe she was young again,

full stop. For a split second, Annie thought, I could do this forever, this exact moment. Everything

complicated left on land and nothing but delight at sea. Two years ago, Annie had gone to her 30th

high school reunion. It was an absurd number, but the older she got, the smaller, 30 sounded.

She'd been happy to go and sit in the gymnasium to eat crudite and drink bad white wine and

look for people she used to know inside the bodies of people she no longer did. There were some

people she was glad to reconnect with. A nerdy girl would become a stage actor and had a

shelf full of Tony Awards. A boy she'd kissed once and wished she'd kissed again, who was there

with a pretty wife who looked not unlike Annie, so many different kinds of lawyers.

Events like that were tricky, though, to be confronted with who you'd been on the outside and

the inside, with friends you'd lost for reasons neither of you could remember. You sat across the

table from someone and wondered what they saw, who they saw. Boy talk was different. The beauty of a

one-sided relationship was that there was no disappointment, no holding oneself accountable for

mistakes, no thinking about what could have been. There was only her own love rushing back.

It felt like watching a wave reach a tide pool, the water easily gliding back over where it had

once been. Catherine, that smart little so-and-so, she had known. Annie turned her phone around to take

a picture of herself, her eyes closed, with the stage behind her and sent it to her sister.

She was happy she'd come. She was happy she'd come alone, even, a thought that Annie had thought

was physically impossible. No one understood better than the talkers, what it meant to push pause on

everything else in your life and to make a choice for yourself. That was what Sean meant at the very

beginning when he told them that they were going to have the best weekend of their lives. It wasn't

a joke. That was Emma Stroud, reading from her new book, American Fantasy. It's so interesting.

How is the cruise ship? How has it become a place where a woman of a certain age, I can say,

as a woman of a certain age? A woman of a certain age can be free.

First of all, just imagine being in a shoulder to shoulder elbow to elbow, and it's all women,

and you've had 14 slushy beverages, alcoholic beverages, and it's two o'clock in the morning,

and you feel totally safe. I think that's part of it. It's mostly women, but I think it's also

it's all mostly middle-aged women. Everyone is showing up as they are now ready to enjoy themselves.

So there's no sort of compare and despair. There's no like, oh, I wish I was 20 pounds lighter,

or I wish I looked like I did when I was 30 years old. It's really about enjoying yourself now.

In that passage you read, you talked about Myra, and this turns to Annie's roommate,

who's kind of like just like a rule breaker. She likes a cigarette. She feeds with other talkers.

What does Annie like about Myra? I mean, we all like the bad girl friend.

You know, like, I mean, those are those are those are the fun ones. Those are the fun ones.

The the girls who break the rules. And I think that that's true when you're in high school.

And I think it's true in your 50s. You know, it's good to have someone who's who's like

breaking the rules just a little bit. We're talking about American fantasy. It's out today.

My guest is Emma Straub. Okay, we've talked about Keith. Who are the other boy band members?

Okay, so there's there's Keith's older brother, Sean, who is like the really the boss, the boss of

it all. There's Terrence, who's the creep. Terrence has a creep with a ponytail.

There's Scotty, who has since the band was popular come out of the closet. He sells vitamins

on the internet. Wait, who else? How many did I name so far? Sean Keith.

I did Sean Keith. And then, oh my god, who else? I feel like I'm forgetting someone.

Terrence, right? Terrence with a ponytail. Okay, we've got Terrence. We've got.

Oh my god, I'm this is this is horrible. This is probably this is live radio. We'll come back to it.

I can't remember either. Hey, we're three. We're one of a certain age. You can't remember this is

remember. It's interesting though, but Keith has he has a weird relationship with his brother.

Yes, I mean, I you know, I think that I think that it's it's impossible to imagine

working with one's sibling, I think, and especially. Corey. Corey West. I you know what,

I think Corey deserves it though. Corey deserves it because the thing about Corey West is that

he's the one who like broke out on his own and had the biggest arm and he is the one who would

be most upset at this situation. He's temper like in it. He's temper like in it. You know, I like it.

I will say like I don't want, you know, you played both new kids on the block and in sync at the

top of this segment. And I think that's good because I don't want anyone to think that this is

just about one boy band. It's not totally fictional, but I will say when the body cam footage

of Justin Timberlake getting arrested came out. I did think about Corey West. I did think about

Corey West. I'm laughing, we're laughing because the book it has jokes. You got lots of jokes.

Annie describes herself as not being, quote, ready to slink off into the corner of an

island fisher until her or desiccated bones start to disintegrate. Or it seemed impossible that

it was only two days ago that three drinks had felt like a lot of drinks. Why was it important

to make the book funny? Oh god, don't we need it? Don't we need it right now? I just, I

this project for me was all about giving was all about pleasure. It was about giving myself

pleasure while writing it and about giving the reader pleasure in some distant future. You know,

I just, I wanted to make myself laugh. And I mean, it's, it is inherently funny to me the setting,

you know, like these poor men trapped on this ship with all these women who have been obsessed

with them for decades. Like, you know, you could go one of two ways. It could be, it could be hilarious

or it could be like a horror movie and, you know, this is the direction that I went. It's interesting

on your book tour because you're having sort of like two people in conversation. You're going to

talk to Lynn Manuel Miranda on Friday. You'll be on L.A. talking to Susanna Haas from the Bengals.

What is a format like that allow you to do on a book tour? Oh, it's so fun. I mean, that's the

best part of a book tour is being like, okay, who can I talk to in this city that will, that will

elicit, you know, a different conversation. And I mean, both, I talked to Lynn quite a lot as I

was writing this book. And Susanna Haas was who I only know because she wrote a novel. Really good

novel. Yeah, the bird had this bird has flown. She's a great novelist, which should be no surprise

because she's a fabulous writer. But she, I interviewed her, I guess you could say,

to about what, like, what does it feel like? What does it feel like to write a song that 30 years

later, people are still, people still want to hear, like, are you happy to sing those songs? You

know, so I'm, I can't wait to have that conversation with her at the book tour. And also, we should

point out, you did actually speak to a member of a boy band. We won't say his name if you don't want to.

What was one piece of information that he gave you that helped you write this novel? I'll say,

I'll say his name is Joe McIntyre. He let me put him in the acknowledgments. So it's all right.

I mean, he was really very generous with me and answered so many questions that I had just about,

you know, I don't know, what does it feel like to grow in this way? It's such an unusual childhood

and young adulthood. And now, you know, middle age. So I mean, he was extremely generous to me,

and he talked to me all about crews, the crew's lifestyle, and what it, what it feels like on the

other end. The name of the book is American fantasy. Tonight, Emma Straub will be in conversation

with Lynn Manuel Miranda at 7 p.m. at the first unitarian church in Brooklyn. Emma, it is always

nice to see you. Thanks for having me all of a sudden.