Casturbation

Because the writer can’t imagine anything as concretely as the person who is going to get up on stage—it’s going to be their voice, their body, their rhythms of speech, of breathing, of moving—the particular quality of their concentration. —Deborah Eisenberg

Welsey Shaw

I know my novel isn’t even published yet, and already I’m engaging in that favorite author fantasy, casturbation.

Casturbation is when you imagine who would star in your book when it’s adapted as a film.

In my case it’s not because I’m imagining my novel becoming a big glossy movie, courtesy of The Weinstein Company, and me raking in the dough and relaxing on a beach in the South of France or eating anchovy pizza at my favorite place for Anchovy pizza, the Cinque Terre, though all that would certainly be nice. I can see myself working on my tan and reading the rave reviews from The New York Times and RogerEbert.com.

But at the same time, I can’t imagine Entertaining Welsey Shaw being a movie. It wouldn’t work, because it’s one of those “internal” novels driven by the point of view and the voice of the main character, rather than by plot. Which is why I hate it when people ask me, “What’s it about?” They really mean “What’s the plot?”—a very different question. For an example, ask yourself What’s Star Wars about vs. what’s the plot, and you won’t find much difference. Then ask yourself these same two questions about Virgiia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, possibly my favorite English novel, and you’ll see the difference. Not that I’m comparing myself with Virginia Woolf!

Anyway, so then, why casturbate? (And will I go blind the way doctors keep warning?) For the same reason I take pictures of the places in my novel before I write about them. I like to see everything concretely—even the “feel” of the book, which is why I designed my own temp cover. (Lord knows it probably won’t come out in a cover anything like what I made.) So I have specific faces I tend to picture for my people, as well as very specific qualities. I hear their voices, I try to imagine them saying the lines I type. And here are some of them:

For Welsey, I need someone blonde and beautiful, but with enigmatic eyes, someone you can’t read because her expressions tend to stay the same, even though underneath she is capable of a rich performance. I pick Kate Hudson. Yes, really. I know she’s been in a lot of forgettable comedies, but I think she can handle richer roles. (Just check her out in her breakout film, Almost Famous, for an example.) But she has these oval eyes that rarely seem to change expression, and although it may not be obvious in her recent roles, she commands a stillness that Welsey embodies too.

Daniel Ferreira

So who’d get to sit across from her? Who gets to be Daniel, the “ordinary guy” freelance writer and former (briefly) acclaimed novelist, whose tells the story? My favorite choice is Mark Ruffalo, whose “everyday”ness I love, and there’s an ironic twist I didn’t even realize when I first thought of him: he actually has a home in the very small town where Daniel lives in the novel, Callicoon, New York. So maybe we could really meld life with art and film the home scenes in his house! Would chop down the budget, and hey, maybe this could become a movie after all! (No, seriously, I do not have the delusion that this could make a good movie. I studied film and know something about it—more than half the people making them these day, I think—and this is a whole different animal.)

Daniel’s girlfriend Ann Geyer is tricky. She’s a gentle, sensual earth mother, not beautiful but certainly attractive and nice to look at, with gentle eyes and a certain hard-to-pin-down practicality. Vera Farmiga, whom I wrote about in my last post, might do well, though she is a very recent candidate. (Actually, I imagine Ann having a baby face, which Ms. Farmiga does not, but who cares really?) I am a big fan of hers.

Ann Geyer?

Rosalind Summer

But I worry she may be a little to similar to my first choice for Rosalind, Ann’s friend and the character who introduces her to Daniel. Rosalind is based on a real person, an amazing musician I know, and from the beginning I pictured her as Anne Heche. (They even have some facial similarities.) She has the slight, gentle otherworldliness that’s right for Roz. Anne can be amusingly flaky, but I like the warmth she brings to her parts.

Or Rosalind Summer?

But I could go another way with Rosalind, and imagine another actress I greatly admire in the part, a little more grounded and “matronly.” Patricia Clarkson is my other choice.

Brooke Parker is Daniel’s editor, whom he treks to New York every now and then to lunch with and talk about projects. I don’t have an actress in mind for Brooke, because I based her—physically at least—on someone I know from a prior job. She’s young, round-faced, reddish-brown haired (worn in a bob) and a bundle of energy, a real go-getter with an appetite for both material success and expensive restaurant food. (I have no idea if the real person is this way. I based the character on appearance and mannerisms only.)

Even the coffee shop is really in New York. At first I just had a generic Manhattan store in mind, but when I was in Manhattan I came across one that resembled to a striking degree the one I was imagining, right down to the outdoor plaza, so I rewrote the story to reference this literal Starbucks, at 280 Park Avenue.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that it may all just be fantasy, but there’s nothing wrong with casturbation. It’s harmless, it feels good, and it may even be healthy. I casturbate, and I’m not ashamed of it.