There are not many novels published today that are actually funny.
That's why Elinor Lipman, author of seven satirical novels — including her newest, "The Pursuit of Alice Thrift" — is such a refreshing writer. Lipman knows how to tell funny stories with sophistication and grace.
Not that she has a big ego.
During an interview from her Northampton, Mass., home, Lipman said she had read from her work at a dinner the previous evening. "I read for 12 minutes, and people laughed at lines that I had no idea anyone would find funny. One line from Alice Thrift, was 'I don't play God. I'm only an intern doing a rotation here.' I thought that was just part of the set-up, and it got a big laugh."
She won't even claim to be funny in person. "Oh, I can make an occasional joke — but my husband is funnier. I'm sort of on the C list at home. There is an audience chemistry thing that happens when I answer questions. My friends probably would say I'm witty, and . . . I try."
Lipman harbored no dreams to be a writer as she was growing up. She was 28 years old when she forked over $40 to take an adult-education course in writing at Brandeis University, near Boston. She also had a sporadic job history. "I was a managing editor for the Massachusetts Teachers Association journal, did press releases for the state and I spent a very unhappy three months at WGBH-TV in Boston, working in promotions. I couldn't do anything right. You can be an utter failure at one job and still come out on the other side. C'est moi!"
Now that she writes fiction, the characters come first — especially Alice Thrift. "I was at Penn Station and an odd thing happened. I looked at the board and saw a train listed to Niagara Falls, and I was so taken with it that I went home and wrote a sentence: 'I should have known as soon as the brochure arrived that anyone who chose Niagara Falls as a honeymoon destination, . . .' Then I had to think of who the characters were."
She considered a woman who was a plastic surgeon, an idealist, a little too earnest and not at all attractive. "Then I thought she would be claustrophobic. I needed a man behind the Niagara Falls brochure, so Ray appeared. The next thing I knew, he was meeting Alice for a consultation, and I didn't plan any of Alice's shortcomings. It was just as she started speaking in her overly clinical, overly earnest manner that I had Alice!"
In the book, those who know Alice have informally organized "The Alice Thrift Improvement Committee." All her friends worry about her judgment. Even Ray, who seems suspiciously like a con man, feels like a social worker when he's around Alice. Whatever his flaws, Lipman said, "Ray deserves credit for being the catalyst who brought Alice out of the tunnel and into the light."
If she created Alice to be a little eccentric, she nailed Ray as a guy who knows his way around, "a Boston cockiness," Lipman said. "I didn't know anyone like him, but I got fond of him once he was on the page." Ray is a fudge salesman who is considerably less busy than Alice — so he buys groceries for her, rubs her instep and even names a fudge after her.
Then Lipman created a friend for Alice, a woman in her late 20s, Sylvie, "whom I was exceedingly fond of, but she was not planned. Ray knocks on the door across the hall, and there she is. It takes self-editing. I write an opening scene, Alice meets Sylvie, and then I will think I need to know more about Sylvie. It's not complete. So I rewrite the scene. I need more. It's not sketched enough. I re-write every sentence about 20 times."
Lipman has a huge medical reserve to draw upon because her husband is a doctor, and they were married early in his internship. That meant it was easy to make Alice an intern, who lives in a tiny studio apartment just a walk through the tunnel from the hospital. "My husband lost 15 pounds in the first two months of his internship, and I worried something terrible was happening to him. Once, he went to sleep only 45 seconds after coming home. I've known a lot of exhausted interns and residents. He's still exhausted. But he vetted the entire manuscript."
Lipman took 15 months to write "Alice Thrift," about the same speed she has applied to each of her other novels. "If I start writing it and it doesn't intrigue me, I know it won't intrigue the reader."
Several people have talked to her about the possibility of making films of her books, but none has ever made it. "For instance, I have a nice producer who is interested in my work. He's a very lovely man. He did 'About Schmidt.' Recently, I told him my books don't seem destined to be movies, and he said, 'The money asks, will 19-year-old boys like this movie?' "
Lipman likes to get as close to real life as possible. The Alice she created is closer to you and me than most fictional characters. "I don't picture my readers to be necessarily the ones who want designer labels in their fiction. I find it very interesting to start with a character with low self-esteem.
"I've never enjoyed writing about the prom queen or the head cheerleader. I wanted Alice to emerge, to thaw, to become a better person, to pierce her ears, maybe — but not get frosted tresses or a make-over."
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com