My new novel, Open Wide, began as an exploration of triads. I’d written about a group of three people before, in my first novel, Hysteria, which took as its starting point Sigmund Freud’s model of the Oedipus complex. That book follows a young woman who—an hour into yet another masochistic, alcohol-fueled sexual escapade—becomes convinced her Brooklyn bartender is, in fact, Freud. Okay, so maybe she’s having a delusion. But the reason she’s hallucinated Freud in particular is that her disengaged parents, both cognitive behavioral therapists, held him up throughout the narrator’s childhood as their ideological nemesis.
In my new novel, I wanted to build on Hysteria’s exploration of the Oedipal triangle, stretching the complexity of triads in different directions. If the Oedipal triangle is the mother (or father) of relational triangles—the one onto which all other threesomes are mapped—in successful development it’s the exclusion from the parental relationship, by which I mean the frustration of Oedipal urges, that enables the child to eventually form healthy relationships. When that original triangle goes awry—when the frustration of those urges is disrupted—things get interesting.
Triads are, by nature, fraught: no one delights at the prospect of being a “third wheel.” But we find ourselves seeking trios anyway (I do, at least). Is it just the perversely pleasurable pain of being excluded—neurotic repetition alert!—that returns us to the disturbed Oedipal triangles of our youths? Or is there genuine good to be found there, too?
In Open Wide, I took as my subject a character named Olive, whom I saddled with a series of threesomes refracted from that original template. There are her parents, who got divorced right before her bat mitzvah and each remarried; there are her two much older sisters; and there is her job, which presents another kind of threesome. Olive is a radio host with her own literary interview show, which means that for a living, she performs duality for the invisible but ever-present third of her audience. This third party, the listener, is essential: under no circumstances but to appeal to an audience would the subject agree to being interrogated; they offer up intimacy as the price of publicity. So Olive’s freedom to ask incisive questions is contingent upon the implied presence of the audience. Writing and reading a work of fiction involves a similar triangulation: there’s the trio of character, character, and reader, just as there is the trio of writer (me), character (Olive), and reader (you). If you want, you can read it like this: Olive is “performing” with other characters for your pleasure, then alternately ditching her fictional friends to privilege her relationship with you.
Triads are, by nature, fraught: no one delights at the prospect of being a “third wheel.” But we find ourselves seeking trios anyway (I do, at least). Is it just the perversely pleasurable pain of being excluded—neurotic repetition alert!—that returns us to the disturbed Oedipal triangles of our youths? Or is there genuine good to be found there, too?
But the main threesome that Olive sought out in the original iteration of the book was with Cora and Martine, her best friends from college, with whom she was still close in her early 30s. Olive was, at last, the bridge in a trio—the friend who was closer to each of the other two than they were to each other—and, without conscious awareness, compulsively played them off one another. There was the element of going to Mommy when Daddy was mad, and vice versa. But Olive was excluded just as often, such as when Cora and Martine each paired up with their own partners, just as Olive’s parents had. I wanted to explore what drew her to that dynamic, and how much of seeking triads was about masochism versus seeking safety.
Interesting stuff—except that, on the page, it wasn’t. I kept getting stuck, so I sent my agent, Stephanie Delman, some early pages. (Having an agent who is willing to collaborate in this manner is, by the way, an intense bit of luck.) Once she’d read what I’d sent, Stephanie suggested in the kindest way possible that Cora and Martine were really boring. What relief I felt when she said this, as I had been feeling the same way without realizing it! What was interesting to Stephanie, though, was Olive’s budding romance with Cora’s boyfriend, Theo. Why not cut Cora and Martine from the book and start with those two?
From Stephanie’s homicidal suggestion, the book blossomed. Now it wasn’t about a triad anymore, but about a duo. (There is still a peripheral character called Martine in the book, because the name is just too good.) It was perfect timing, as I had recently entered into my first serious romantic relationship in years, and was grappling with questions about intimacy, like: how 2 do dis? My main confusion was about boundaries, which have never been my forte. I struggled to understand where I was supposed to stop and my boyfriend, Matt, was supposed to begin. Weren’t we meant to join ourselves together, to “become one”? How, then, to stay two? And also, why? (Because Matt is, as it turns out, a separate person with a separate consciousness.)
Writing and reading a work of fiction involves a similar triangulation: there’s the trio of character, character, and reader, just as there is the trio of writer (me), character (Olive), and reader (you). If you want, you can read it like this: Olive is “performing” with other characters for your pleasure, then alternately ditching her fictional friends to privilege her relationship with you.
I gave these questions to Olive and then, as I usually do in my fiction, sought to amplify the intensity of her struggle by several orders of magnitude. If I had boundary confusion, she would have boundary oblivion. If I wanted to merge with Matt, Olive would make it so with Theo, by force. One day, I was journaling about how to get all of this across on the page when I had an idea: why not have Olive literally, bodily, try to become one with Theo? I had used surreality as a tool in Hysteria; why not here, too? But I was nervous, as I always am when I contemplate writing in a very weird direction. So I tried out the idea on Matt in the kitchen one night.
“What if, in my book, the main character climbs inside her boyfriend’s body?” I said, laughing nervously.
Matt suggested that would be, indeed, weird.
“I’m serious,” I said.
He had, apparently, thought I was joking, but now that he knew I meant it, he found it fantastic.
Buoyed, I got to work. I wrote and wrote until, about 100 pages in, Olive did the deed. The scene was absolutely bizarre and disgusting and thrilling to write, but once I’d gotten there, I didn’t know how to proceed. I went back to the beginning and revised, up until the climbing scene, where I got stuck again. So I went back to the beginning and revised, up until the climbing scene—over and over again, until finally I gave up and sent Stephanie what I had. I asked her if it was too crazy and if I should just make this a realist novel after all. She replied in no uncertain terms that I should keep going. In fact, rather than get less weird, the book should get even weirder.
So it did.
I won’t tell you what I wrote next, but I will tell you that this ended up being a triad book after all. In draft after draft, there was one relationship that emerged as formative of Olive’s dynamic with Theo, and at least as important: Olive’s relationship with her mother. The more I wrote—both on my own and in response to feedback from Stephanie and, later, from my editors—the stranger that dynamic got, too, and the further from my own maternal relationship. It wasn’t until the latest versions of the book, shepherded by my very incisive Abrams editors, Abby Muller and Ruby Pucillo, that it became clear that Olive, Theo, and Olive’s mother formed their very own triad.
The third person’s presence can serve as protection against terrifying intimacy—but just as easily, they can serve as audience, enabling the other two in the trio to connect with each other. They can act as competition or as a prize. They can influence the dynamic of the other two with or without conscious involvement. And, just like incorporating some freaky surreality, introducing a third into a novel can make it a lot more tense, wild, and fun to write, and hopefully also to read.
I wouldn’t say that Open Wide is “about” triangles anymore—the exploration of boundary issues, of the impossible desire to merge with another person, takes center stage—but triads are still a vital element of the work. The third person’s presence can serve as protection against terrifying intimacy—but just as easily, they can serve as audience, enabling the other two in the trio to connect with each other. They can act as competition or as a prize. They can, as in Olive’s case, influence the dynamic of the other two with or without conscious involvement. And, just like incorporating some freaky surreality, introducing a third into a novel can make it a lot more tense, wild, and fun to write, and hopefully also to read.
I’m currently reading Open Wide and I’m absolutely LOVING it
Since Freud, many psychotherapists have written about the inherent instability of triangles—extra-marital, marital, sibling, etc. But the brilliant sociologist Georg Simmel reduced it to its formal essence.
Your book and the writing of it reminds me of the Goldberg Variations on Bach with some Goldbergs not working and discarded, but leaving the best. Sounds like fun. Thanks.