{"id":313495,"date":"2026-07-13T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/?p=313495"},"modified":"2026-07-09T14:33:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T18:33:27","slug":"famous-men-by-julie-buntin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/famous-men-by-julie-buntin\/","title":{"rendered":"Being a Novelist Only Costs Romantic Compromises and Debilitating Debt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An excerpt from Famous Men<\/em> by Julie Buntin<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

At the Selden Awards, you\u2019re Nathaniel\u2019s guest, with your own seat at the best table. Two years and change, you say to the woman who asks how long you\u2019ve been in New York. People are starting to know you now, at least by sight: Nathaniel\u2019s assistant, his special girl. He is giving a speech about what it feels like to be emerging, and how it never really stops. Wilhelmina Miles. Your name sounds like a stranger\u2019s when Nathaniel thanks you onstage. Someone interesting, important. That very morning, you caught Nathaniel reading your new pages before you even asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the event, you walk through the frigid December night to one of the writer bars. You admit to Samson, who has already found four reasons to mention how surprised he was that Nathaniel nominated him, that you\u2019re writing a book. Good for you, he says. I liked yours, you offer, and this relaxes him. You did look at it for a long time, imagining what it would feel like to have Nathaniel say, in print, magnificent<\/em>, about you. About you, or about your work<\/em>? It will be years before these memories make you cringe\u2014though, in the very back of your mind, that trapdoor behind which people like your mother live, isn\u2019t it there already? Your awareness that this isn\u2019t exactly right, your place here, and how you\u2019ve gotten it? That you\u2019ve made a bargain, without knowing how you\u2019re paying?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s Nathaniel, by the door, talking to a guy you vaguely recognize; Lili, sitting on a barstool with that impenetrable ring of space around her, even as three separate people try to get her attention; Reg, listening to the Hindenburg with his eyes on you, then Lili, then you again. Samson tells you it\u2019s impossible to write a book. That he couldn\u2019t give you a piece of good advice if he tried. It needs to burn itself out of your guts, he says, tongue darting toward a speck of foam on his lip, and then you must be strong enough to wrestle it into shape. The way he says must<\/em> and wrestle<\/em> and guts<\/em>, looking at your waist, then your hair, then your breasts, you know he doesn\u2019t think you\u2019re writing anything at all, that if you have managed a sentence, two, they\u2019re slush, about dolls or blood or other girls, about your silly little self. You\u2019re Nathaniel\u2019s assistant, Samson tells you. Good man. I should see if he needs a drink, you say, thinking, go ahead, dismiss me. Burn itself out of your guts. Your brain gives his words Nathaniel\u2019s red slash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of months later, another reading, another bar just a few blocks away from the last one. In line for the bathroom, Reg kisses you, tasting of gin, and then you\u2019re in a cab going over the Manhattan Bridge, your hand on his zipper. Nathaniel, Reg, Nathaniel, Reg. Then it\u2019s summer, and you\u2019re crashing at Nathaniel\u2019s place\u2014the sculptor, surprise!, is back in town for three weeks. At a book party Nathaniel ducks out early\u2014my head, he says, and whispers in your ear: See you tomorrow. He\u2019s no longer dating Sarah, but there\u2019s someone\u2014his shower drain was clogged with long brown hair. It doesn\u2019t matter. Really, it doesn\u2019t. What\u2019s between you is secret and lawless and yours. His key in your purse, credit card in your wallet, the spearmint taste of his Italian toothpaste in the back of your throat. You sleep together, nights you\u2019re at his apartment\u2014Thursdays, always, because you clean on Fridays, and any time you stay for dinner, and whenever you\u2019re uptown\u2014but you can\u2019t remember the last time you had sex. Is this weird? You like his hand around your waist, his clean sheets you washed, he likes your eggs in the morning, to give you his thoughts over coffee, how you fold the towels, one of your Rosendale tricks. Sex, he says, does it ever make you weary? All that wet and slap. Your legs are in his lap. He puts one finger at a time between your toes. Sometimes I think my panting years are over. You try to remember what it felt like to want him like that. The memory slithers away. But you still make sure you smell clean and sweet, vanilla sugar scrub, something that tastes good to bite. You would let him. You both know that. But more and more you talk like this, about sex, about his women. Once, he even takes you out to lunch with Vilma. When he\u2019s in the bathroom you ask her if she was ever afraid they weren\u2019t important, literary enough, her stories about women and all the things they think and feel. Jesus, she says. I thought your generation would be braver. Actually, you\u2019re worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You even talk about Reg, who kisses you and then disappears, who\u2019s in Vienna, sending you letters, or France, sending you silence, or in Brooklyn, texting you to come over, please, I can\u2019t stop thinking about that space where your collarbone divots, if it still tastes like snow. Nathaniel says, well, little Wilhelmet, you\u2019re not exactly available either, are you? That\u2019s probably why he keeps coming back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nathaniel says, he\u2019s a poet, what do you expect?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your mother finally comes to New York, a three-day visit, after she gets a Xanax prescription for the plane. The days before she arrives you yearn for her, a desperation returned from childhood, those afternoons you couldn\u2019t wait for her to come home and begin chopping onions for dinner. You put her up with Nathaniel\u2019s card in a Holiday Inn in the Garment District, an anonymous location walking distance to many chain restaurants with food you know she\u2019ll eat. You don\u2019t show her Barth, or the sculptor\u2019s studio, or any of the bookstores or bars where you spend your non-Nathaniel hours reading, reading, reading, sometimes putting the book down for coffee or wine with Lili or Dev. Your mother walks with her arm looped tightly through yours, an intimacy she only allows herself because her fear of the city is greater than all the unspoken bitterness between you. On the subway, she clutches her things. She doesn\u2019t ask you anything, and because that hurts your feelings, you ask her nothing in return, as punishment. After her first twenty-four hours you count the minutes until you can leave her at LaGuardia, and then, even as your heart aches, you\u2019re waving goodbye as she rises on the escalator beside her hulking suitcase, bought for the sole purpose of visiting you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every emergency room in the city is the same, and the adenosine is the same, too: doom, then exhausted relief, the bruise in the crook of your arm where the drip went in, the flutter of your heart before it pumps once, starts again. The bills vary, even though they\u2019re always for the same thing. You\u2019ve long stopped keeping track of how much you owe. At Maimonides they give you Xanax when you arrive, Xanax when you leave, as if this faulty mechanism is something your mind should be able to control. Is it? At Mount Sinai, they test every time for drugs. Vilma publishes a strange, slim novel about marriage, darker than her other books\u2014you read it in a hospital bed, waiting for discharge papers, Nathaniel barraging you with texts. In the book, the wife eats her husband. She doesn\u2019t cook him; she eats him raw, but with a fork and knife sharpened using a special device she built herself. It\u2019s described graphically and for many pages, but before the cannibalism, the book read like a domestic drama. You can\u2019t put it down, and when it\u2019s over you don\u2019t know how to feel. The book, you realize, doesn\u2019t care. Vilma wins a prize in the UK that Nathaniel has never even been nominated for. He repeats that fact over and over. He takes Vilma to dinner to celebrate, and for weeks afterward he\u2019s gloomy and cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t you ever want to do something else with your time, he snaps, coming home to find you pruning expired food from his pantry. Buzz buzz buzz, you\u2019re just here<\/em>. Your chest empties, fills with ice. As quiet as you can, you close the pantry door, pick up the trash bag, and leave. You stop using his card, eat peanut butter toast and cheese cubes from party trays for a scarily long amount of time, weeks, so long you think maybe the whole thing is over, start wondering if he\u2019s going to cancel the electric for the sculptor\u2019s studio, applying for executive assistant jobs that never reach out for an interview. You have no degree, no work experience except for whatever you\u2019re doing with Nathaniel. One night you google cleaning services, the phrase \u201cmaid for hire,\u201d consider applying for a position that clearly involves sex work. When Nathaniel asks you to come back, you cry with relief. When\u2019s the last time you truly cried? Still, you make him ask three times before you agree to meet to talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That night, after two bottles of wine at dinner, after Nathaniel\u2019s apology, after he tells you he needs you, after kissing sloppily in the elevator, you have sex. It\u2019s been a long time, so many nights with Reg in between, a couple of strangers, too, but you feel tenderness for Nathaniel when he bends to retrieve his T-shirt from where it\u2019s fallen off the couch, the freckled curve of his shoulder, his baby powdery smell, the way it takes his penis three tries to get hard and stay that way. You expect something when he leaves to catch a flight\u2014a kiss on the mouth, some return to how it was in the beginning between you, but having sex only rewinds you part of the way, back to where you\u2019d been before your break, companions, sexless husband and wife. He ruffles your hair, tells you to order a takeout, stay at his while he\u2019s gone, reminds you to type up his old notebooks so they\u2019re easier for him to read. It almost makes you sad. Nathaniel\u2019s lukewarm desire seems to have less to do with you\u2014my God, Wilhelmet, he\u2019d said, when he unzipped your dress, you\u2019re in full bloom\u2014than with the way he has begun to drop his sentences right in the middle, repeat the same story twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your phone rings. You don\u2019t answer. Some days the calls come every few minutes. On the other end of the line, there\u2019s a person whose job it is to call only you\u2014that\u2019s how much money you owe. Do they strategize the pacing, four calls in a row with an hour break, or what area code to use, the most sensitive time of day to deploy the one from where you grew up? Will they get a reward if you finally pay? You wonder how much they make, what their health insurance is like. Would they garnish your wages if you had a W-2? That happened to Tray once; you remember your mother telling you. You learn to keep your phone on silent. Popular, Reg says, watching it light up on the bar. And then months with no calls at all, so long you start to believe maybe the hospitals just gave up. But they always, always start again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It happens overnight. Oh, everyone says, with the exact same note of awestruck heartbreak, how is it fall<\/em> already? You meet Lili at a speakeasy near Belvedere<\/em>\u2019s offices in Dumbo to toast to her promotion. She dresses all in black now, most days, or big oversized button-down shirts over skin-tight jeans, her vintage dresses and hats pushed way back in her closet. To the associate editor, you say, watching the olives jounce as your martinis collide. Nathaniel buys you a new scarf, cashmere, the color of the frost on the Great Lawn of Central Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your book is sixty pages, then zero, then eighty-two, one hundred, a single radiant chapter, halfway done, almost finished, roughly twelve pages, eighty thousand words. No, you don\u2019t have an agent, you say, when people ask you at readings, at parties, but you do have Nathaniel, Nathaniel who reads every version, Nathaniel who tells you, when you really think you\u2019re truly done, to set it aside, to write it again, like a real writer. You\u2019ve completed the practice rounds, he says. But, Will, this is real work! I am so proud of you. You bury your head in his chest when he says this, so he can\u2019t see your face, how happy it makes you. When you start again, you write slowly, you aim for poetry in every line. Purple, Nathaniel writes in the margins. Breathe. You\u2019re in a rush, but you\u2019re also not. You\u2019re only twenty-what, five or six, still Nathaniel\u2019s assistant, his very best girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, you don\u2019t have an agent, but you do have Nathaniel, Nathaniel who reads every version, Nathaniel who tells you, when you really think you\u2019re truly done, to set it aside, to write it again, like a real writer.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Your job has swelled and swelled. Do you ever feel, you ask Lili, like something odd is happening with time? Now you manage Nathaniel\u2019s life, you make it bigger, busier. You\u2019re working with his agent on a new selected\u2014prose this time. And he\u2019s got so many meetings, Hollywood things you schedule that never seem to pan out, he likes for you to send gifts after, cocktail shakers, personal notes. You write recommendation letters for his former students, blurbs, spend a week researching mattresses for lower back pain and coordinate the replacing of his bed, the installation of blackout shades, the doctor\u2019s appointments, the insurance claims, the copies for his classes, groceries, dinner, shoes to the cobbler, the first draft of the book review, the speech, the questions for the interview at the 92nd Street Y. Sometimes you pick out his clothes. He likes to keep baby wipes on the toilet tank, just in case. He wants you to record him talking about screenwriting, for a craft book. He wasn\u2019t trained, you know, he learned it all himself. Why is he always out of bananas? He doesn\u2019t trust transcription services, wants you to do it by hand. He never asks you about health insurance, even when he collects you from the hospital, even though he knows about your heart, the urgent care visits you sometimes pay for with his card. You\u2019ll be done with the book when Nathaniel tells you you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best of the New<\/em>, same as every year, Nathaniel\u2019s students switched out. You sit in the front row. Tilda nods hello, but at some point, it\u2019s like you never knew her at all. When you pick up your plastic cup of wine, she doesn\u2019t even nod, doesn\u2019t try to meet your eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

In the winter, the best part of the bar after the reading is the second bar after the reading, the group whittled to an unlikely handful shuffling through the snow, you and Reg coming up behind, slipping away to smoke and make out in the cartoonish whirl of flakes\u2014wait. Pause here. This time was different, wasn\u2019t it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reg stops. You look at each other, eye to eye. He kisses you again, both of your eyelashes full of snow, the kiss you dreamed of as a girl, or would have, if you hadn\u2019t been thinking so much about poetry. It\u2019s been six months, more, since you last touched. Reg, who\u2019d started doing things like taking reporting trips, had been on one of those, or Nathaniel was being extra needy, or Reg had a girlfriend, or you were dating Nathaniel\u2019s agent\u2019s forgettable assistant, oh, who knows. \u201cCome with me,\u201d Reg says, and he hails a cab crawling slowly through the sheets of snow, the only car in sight. When it stops, you\u2019re not at his place in Greenpoint, you\u2019re at Prospect Park, the grand entrance near the library. You stumble through the snow\u2014it\u2019s coming down too hard and fast for the plows to keep up, and anyway, why would they bother, when you and Reg are the only two people in the whole city. Snow is in your boots, melting down your back, it\u2019s in your bra, your ears, in the crevices where your fingers and Reg\u2019s fingers meet. Everything glows. In the circles of light cast by streetlamps, the flakes are sparks, so bright they hurt your eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere are we going?\u201d you ask, and he tells you he doesn\u2019t know, that he wanted to be somewhere outside of the city with you, and this was the best he could think of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought you were made of snow, Michigan girl,\u201d he says when you stop to brush a thick layer off your hair. And you\u2019re annoyed, just a flicker, because he\u2019s wearing one of those expensive puffer coats with cuffs that extend to the knuckles, a wool hat pulled below his eyebrows, waterproof Chelsea boots. You\u2019re in one of Lili\u2019s old coats, wine red and fuzzy, with torn silk lining and plastic buttons shaped like daisies. Tights, faux leather cowboy boots a quarter of an inch taller than the snow you\u2019re walking through. He pulls you with him toward a break in the trees, and Long Meadow opens out before you. No one. Just a plain of empty, alien white, as if you\u2019ve traveled somewhere impossible, like Greening, or the surface of the moon. You don\u2019t even see the tracks of a squirrel, or a rat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere,\u201d Reg said. \u201cWe made it.\u201d See how he looks at you. \u201cRemember your first Christmas here, when I tried to walk you home?\u201d Feel the wobble in his hands as he turns yours over, unfurls your fingers from your palm. He kisses your forehead, then puts his hat on your head until it covers the place his mouth touched. Neither of you are drunk anymore. In the story you\u2019ve told yourself, Reg was the one with the crush, who, as soon as you showed interest, couldn\u2019t commit. Reg was the one deciding where and when and how, but here he is, looking at you like he\u2019s been waiting outside your door for years. \u201cWill,\u201d he says, \u201cI really like you. I like you so much. I\u2019ve been an idiot. I wasn\u2019t ready. But I think I could be now. I got stuck on you a long time ago and it just doesn\u2019t go away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You try to think of one thing you\u2019ve ever asked of him, and you come up with nothing. Wasn\u2019t that Nathaniel\u2019s advice? Let him come to you? It occurs to you only there, snow in your mouth, that\u2019s exactly what you didn\u2019t do with Nathaniel. It\u2019s taking you too long to respond. You both feel it. \u201cTook you long enough\u201d is what you finally say. What you mean is, why didn\u2019t you tell me before it was too late? (Later, when it really is, you\u2019ll see that, of course, it wasn\u2019t too late at all.) And then, because you want it to be true, because you\u2019ve slipped out of time together, onto this blank page with no record of your mistakes, you say: \u201cI could be ready, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Reg\u2019s bathroom mirror, you look older than you do in Nathaniel\u2019s. At Nathaniel\u2019s, you\u2019re always a girl of twenty-two, begging the great writer to take you seriously, because that\u2019s what he needs you to be. Here, you\u2019re someone else. Who? Back in Reg\u2019s bed, he tells you, haltingly, as he fiddles with a hank of your hair, that your job with Nathaniel makes him uncomfortable. That he knows what Nathaniel is like, and even though\u2014\u201cEven though what?\u201d you say. Reg stops, tries again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve been his assistant forever, as long as I\u2019ve known you. Don\u2019t you want to do something else?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Nathaniel is like. The worst part of that line, and you\u2019ve heard it so much, is what it assumes about you: that you\u2019re either delusional, a sweet little girl who tripped and fell sideways into a trap, or something even more pathetic, a woman who takes any crumb she can get. \u201cI want to write. That\u2019s it. Who else will give me my mornings free? All those days off every month when he travels?\u201d It\u2019s too hard to explain. It\u2019s not something Reg would ever understand. Maybe you had other ways of getting here, but would they have worked? You also don\u2019t say the next thing you think: that Reg only knows you because of Nathaniel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re either delusional, a sweet little girl who tripped and fell sideways into a trap, or something even more pathetic, a woman who takes any crumb she can get.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not one of those crazy jealous people. I just don\u2019t like how much he\u2014it\u2019s like you\u2019re his pet or something, or he sees you like that, like he can just . . .\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s almost possible. You could tell Reg about the Visa, your debt, how you\u2019re nine credits shy of a bachelor\u2019s degree. You could tell Reg about your mother, about Tray, about your dreams of Rosendale, how they come to you still, as if part of you is already banished there, hands dishwater raw, bleach in your hair. As if part of you never left. How Tray never touched you, but how he made<\/em> you think about what he imagined, how you still feel him outside every window. How in your book, Nathaniel says you need to write it plain, but you still haven\u2019t figured out what that means. How he feels\u2014even with Reg right there beside you\u2014like the most solid thing you have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the morning, Reg kisses you before either of you has brushed your teeth, like Nathaniel never would. It feels different, this time, like Reg is trying to tell you something he doesn\u2019t know how to say. Sweat pools in his lower back, the curve of his neck, and when it\u2019s over, both of you are damp, breathing hard. He has to go to the office to file a piece. He says he\u2019ll see you after work. He whispers something into your hair, that word again, and you reach for him, confirming. But when he calls, you\u2019re at Nathaniel\u2019s, putting the salmon in the broiler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You text back, sorry Reg, I can\u2019t now. Talk later?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Samson is, somehow, always there, at the reading, at the bar after the reading, at the second bar, the diner after the nightcap at the editorial assistant\u2019s shockingly well-appointed apartment, the used bookshop on Twelfth Street in the middle of the afternoon, when everyone else is at their normal job. One night you kiss him back half-heartedly after Reg shows up at the Housing Works holiday party with a date, a bony butterfly of a girl who works in marketing for Time Out<\/em>. Samson hasn\u2019t written another book\u2014no, that\u2019s not right, he\u2019s still writing it, he had that story, Nathaniel took him out for a beer, it\u2019s been a struggle. He gets some help from his parents, but just a little\u2014really, he hardly gets by. Most of the time he says nothing to you, either that or you wind up gossiping furiously in some dark corner after you\u2019ve both had too much to drink. At some point you realize you\u2019re not so far apart in age, you and Samson, him perpetually at work on book number two, you promoted to typing up Nathaniel\u2019s archives, the stacks of impenetrable legal pads from the past he thinks might hold a kernel that can become a new novel. Sometimes, when it\u2019s late, his handwriting very messy, you let yourself write, a little, in his voice. When you show him the pages, you wait for him to notice where you took over, but he never does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are you different? You\u2019re twenty-seven. There was something you were supposed to do by now\u2014what was it? You measure your face in Nathaniel\u2019s mirror. Nathaniel says hair is youth; you let your eyebrows creep toward each other. You cut your hair, let it grow back out. Your mother gets sick, but she doesn\u2019t tell you until after she\u2019s better, stage 2 breast cancer, nothing chemo couldn\u2019t fix. For a while, you call more frequently, but the long silences, how neither of you can ever seem to find a way to ask a question of the other that elicits more than a single-word response\u2014it\u2019s too much for you to bear, and you\u2019re both comforted, you tell yourself, when you slide back into the rhythm of talking once a month, less, on holidays only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nathaniel\u2019s taking his new Lili out for dinner. She\u2019s Chinese\u2014he tells you this over and over\u2014and writes like her head is on fire. What would he say about how you write? A year later it\u2019s a different girl, a blonde with crooked teeth and a Southern accent. He reads you one of her poems out loud. For two months, he\u2019s out almost every night with a brassy girl from Queens, tiny with humongous breasts; the next semester, you hear through the grapevine, she drops out of the program. Sometimes the Lilis make you jealous, but there\u2019s never another Will. You read every single draft. You let yourself into his apartment on a Saturday morning, so you can be there to show the super the noise the toilet makes when you flush it, and find a young woman, no more than twenty if you had to guess, eating a bowl of Kix at the kitchen island. Just his assistant, you say, and scoop up his laundry, throw in a load of wash while you\u2019re waiting. The girl is gone before the super arrives, and you never see her again. It takes you a few days to realize\u2014you never asked her name. Whenever you find women\u2019s clothes mixed in with his, you fold them carefully, leave them on the foot of his bed. Once, you steal a pink cashmere sweater, hip length and so soft; when the radiator breaks at the sculptor\u2019s studio, you sleep in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reg and Lili, even Nathaniel, they transform, transform again. But you, it\u2019s as if the monumental effort of finding your way to him, of turning yourself into the person Nathaniel needed you to be, blasted your power source, got you stuck in this endless loop forever, pairing his clean socks, fucking him a couple of times a year, as if performing routine maintenance on an antique car. Writing and rewriting the same book, publishing your secret poems here and there, for usually zero, sometimes fifty dollars apiece, hitting ignore when your phone rings. But you have an apartment, a job, Nathaniel\u2019s notes in the margins. This is the story you tell yourself: There is no life in the city without him, not for you. Isn\u2019t that why you dodged Reg for months after that night in the snow, let your relationship slide back into an uneasy friendship, why you never let him talk like that again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reg writes a piece about ghosting that goes viral, starts getting bigger and bigger assignments. He goes to Flint to report on lead in the water, texts you a selfie from the Detroit airport. In your home state, he writes, and you don\u2019t bother trying to explain that Detroit is as much of a different universe from where you grew up as New York, that you\u2019ve never even been there. Lili becomes the managing editor at Belvedere<\/em>, starts dating with great seriousness one of the hedge fund guys from the board. It seems like you only hang out with him three or four times before she\u2019s engaged, before you\u2019re at her wedding, telling people over and over, no, you don\u2019t know Lili from college, you met through poetry. Her husband, Jake, is forty-one, a tasteful age gap, with a dimpled chin and earnest political opinions, eager for children. He\u2019s never once made you laugh. He seems double Lili\u2019s height. Sometimes he picks her up and cradles her in his arms like a baby. Maybe that\u2019s his appeal. Lili, who stopped writing after her second promotion, wins the Selden the year of her wedding, for a chapbook she published two years prior. You know Nathaniel nominated her. You want to ask her what she\u2019s doing with the money, where thirty thousand dollars goes when your husband is a hedge fund manager. You\u2019re supposed to attend the ceremony as Nathaniel\u2019s plus one but you tell him you have the stomach flu, and then you lie to Lili, too, pretend you were so sad to miss it when she shows you a photo later. But you\u2019re also happy for her, truly\u2014you hope it will make her write again. You miss her poems; you never feel closer to her than you do when you are reading them. The exact opposite of how you feel about Nathaniel\u2019s work, which you still value unthinkingly, even when it bores you, makes you squirm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the election, everyone is shocked. You are, too. But when you press against the feeling, are you, really? You know, without ever asking, that your mother and Tray probably didn\u2019t vote at all, but if they did, it was for the man. On the subway the next morning, the atmosphere is funereal; an elderly lady sitting across from you openly sobs. You go to the Women\u2019s March with Reg and feel inspired, yes, but mutely so. What has to happen in a life to make a person believe that if they say no loud enough, the bad thing will stop? That rescue will come. Was it something someone was supposed to teach you? Where was that teacher? Was it protest, what you did, leaving Greening and refusing even to visit? Taping the bag over your window?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, a miracle. Nathaniel tells you the book is done. You\u2019re in Paris, just the two of you. He\u2019s there for a festival and he brought you along. I can\u2019t believe this is my life, you think, as you follow him around the city. You watched him read your latest draft on the plane. It\u2019s the shortest version, barely one hundred and fifty pages. No fat, all scene, a numb third person, lots of white space. You had a feeling he liked it because of how he was breathing, his irritation when the flight attendant interrupted to ask what he wanted to drink. When he tells you, you\u2019re at a caf\u00e9 in the 11th arrondissement, hallucinatory with jetlag, sharing a plate of cheese so pungent that forever after, whenever you see your book\u2019s title, you smell mold. Even after Nathaniel passes the book to his friend, the publisher of a prestigious small press you\u2019ve read for years, after he calls to offer you three thousand dollars and a contract, tells you during your first meeting how the book reminds him of The Sun Also Rises<\/em> but with a distinctly female point of view, you smell mold, mold, mold, as if the cheese were still melting on your tongue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You and Nathaniel eat it all. On bread, it is delicious, veined with blue, crumbling at the edges. You press it against the sponge of yeast until your fingers stink. The two of you stop at a tabac for a Kir Royale, and then another, for another. You attempt sex in the creaky bed near the window, which looks like a doorway, opening outward. It doesn\u2019t work. You tell Nathaniel you\u2019re tired, you want to stop. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he says, and you almost laugh. Is it possible he thinks this was ever what you really wanted from him? The next morning, standing by the steps to the pop-up stage, you help him adjust his clip-on mic. He stops your hands before you switch it on, puts his palms on your cheeks, says, \u201cYou are very dear to me, Wilhelmet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know,\u201d you tell him back. And you do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

How will you account for all these years? You\u2019re nobody\u2019s poor little fiddlestick anymore. When your book comes in the mail\u2014in a cardboard box, like it could be toilet paper, a sheath of lightbulbs, a replacement filter for Nathaniel\u2019s air cleaner\u2014the first thing you can\u2019t believe is your name, in silver foil, slick against the matte cover. Wilhelmina Miles, almost as large as the title, as if the publisher wants you to be the thing the reader remembers. You pick it up\u2014there\u2019s that taste again, fecund and earthy\u2014and flip to the first chapter, the fourth, the very last page. You swallow, trying to clear the taste from your mouth. The endpapers look expensive, too, especially for a small press, and when you crack the binding for a flash of a second, you\u2019re in Nathaniel\u2019s office again, begging him to let you in, you\u2019re widening the hole in the neckline of Reg\u2019s black T-shirt, you\u2019re listening to the shrieking EKG, you\u2019re at Rosendale, trying to outrun Tray. Turn back to the first page. There you are, just behind the text. Alone in the sculptor\u2019s studio, writing down a word that becomes a sentence that becomes a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For so long, you\u2019ve been watching yourself try to figure out how to live. Is it writing that does that, skips a person a little off the track of their own existence, or something broken in you? You pick up another copy. Wilhelmina Miles. You wouldn\u2019t take any of it back, even if you knew what came next. Look, you say out loud, though there\u2019s nobody in the sculptor\u2019s apartment to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look how far I\u2019ve come. Look at what I did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An excerpt from Famous Men by Julie Buntin At the Selden Awards, you\u2019re Nathaniel\u2019s guest, with your own seat at the best table. Two years and change, you say to the woman who asks how long you\u2019ve been in New York. People are starting to know you now, at least by sight: Nathaniel\u2019s assistant, his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1546,"featured_media":313554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5557,63],"tags":[178,100,109,5577,94,20,556],"class_list":["post-313495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lit-mags","category-recommended-reading","tag-family","tag-new-york","tag-publishing","tag-recommended-reading","tag-relationships","tag-sex","tag-work"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBeing a Novelist Only Costs Romantic Compromises and Debilitating Debt - 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