Jennifer Belle's first novel, Going Down, about a coed working her way through college as a call girl, was received to critical acclaim. It's whip-cracking wit, sharp prose and confident narrative earning the author comparisons to Dorothy Parker and J.D. Salinger and the title Best New Novelist by Entertainment Weekly. The film option was immediately snatched up by Madonna and, more recently, Academy Award–winning director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas). High Maintenance, Belle's follow-up, became a national best seller, also optioned for the screen. I recently chatted with the lovely and talented Ms. Belle to discuss her latest, laugh-out-loud, highly compelling Little Stalker (Riverhead Books, $24.95), the story of a writer's-block-suffering novelist so consumed by a famous filmmaker she begins writing him fan mail under the guise of a 12-year-old girl ("Dear Awful Writer," the letters begin). Our meeting took place not at a café where the light struck Belle's glossy jet-black hair, heart-shaped face and enormous brown eyes at a certain angle—or from where I could report back what she wore, looked like that day, nibbled or scarfed, drizzled with essence of whatever—but on our respective computers. From one laptop to another, this is how it went.
Gabrielle Danchick: I loooved Little Stalker.
Jennifer Belle: Thanks, Gabrielle.
GD: The Grolsch scene had me laughing so hard on the train that tears began streaming down my face and then I had an asthma attack. It was very embarrassing.
JB: I was thinking of putting an ad in Backstage and hiring actors to read the book on the subway and laugh and look like they're enjoying it, but it's much better if you do it and I don't have to pay you.
GD: No prob. At one point reading that scene, I thought, "It's no longer funny -- it's scary and nerve-wracking," but then, I was back to, "Oh my God, it's fucking hilarious!" Your timing's spot-on.
JB: The Grolsch scene was a little controversial. My protagonist, Rebekah Kettle, asks an English man she likes if she can get him a drink at the bar, and he asks for a Grolsch, but she can't understand him, so she keeps asking him to repeat himself. I read it to my writing workshop, and most people thought it went too far -- that the joke was over long before I ended it. But it was a rare time I disagreed with them. It felt funny and psychologically true to me and, of course, was completely based on something that happened -- although in real life, I think it actually went on several beats longer. In fact, maybe I should have had it carry on longer.
GD: Is writing funny stuff technical or intuitive for you?
JB: There's nothing too technical about the comedy. My feeling is the sadder you make it, the funnier it is. I'm just now getting used to people saying Going Down was sad, when I thought it was funny, or that High Maintenance was funny, when I thought it was sad.
GD: Does it all come down to hard work?
JB: It gets hard at the end when I have to stop writing and start solving problems, like why Rebekah can all of a sudden see into the very man's apartment she most wants to see into or why she's on a whale-watching boat off Martha's Vineyard in February.
GD: So Rebekah Kettle is stalking Arthur Weeman. The novel has a Lolita-ish feel: Love, obsession and objectification but also redemption by eventually stepping back from that object in question to get a more realistic picture.
JB: Thanks for comparing it to one of the best novels ever written.
GD: Sure. Actually, everyone is stalking someone in Little Stalker. But it's friendly stalking, not freaky stalking à la Peter Braunstein. Well, some of it's questionable, namely, Weeman and Young Girl, aka Y.G. Why stalking as a subject?
JB: I really don't know how I came up with the idea. I set out to write my most autobiographical novel and ended up with my least. I'd never written a fan letter or even been tempted, so a novel about a girl who writes fan letters is a surprise. I'm not a stalker -- a snoop or spy or thief, maybe, but not stalker.
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