Kate Maruyama was raised on books and weaned on movies in a small New England town. She is the author of The Collective, Harrowgate and Bleak Houses. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles, where she lives. Her latest novel is Alterations, and she recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.
What was your inspiration for Alterations?
I was sitting in my writer friend Toni Ann Johnson's breakfast nook, and she said, "Why aren't you writing about old movies? You love them!" My dad, Joe Reed, was one of the founders of the film department at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, so before VHS, I grew up watching 16 mm screenings of the films he was teaching in our living room. After Toni Ann said this, I started reading biographies of my favorites, Barbara Stanwyck and Cary Grant. It was Cary Grant's seven-year relationship with Randolph Scott, and the slow pressure of the studio for him to end it, that gave me the crux of Adriana and Rose's relationship.
Are Adriana, Rose, Laura, Lizzie, Bart, Jamey, or any of the other characters in the novel (that aren't based on historic figures) inspired by or based on specific individuals?
My characters tend to come from a place just outside my realm of knowledge. I have to believe they are real and listen for the story to happen. That said, Adriana's backstory was inspired by a story my husband's Italian grandmother told me about her own family. Adriana's story was definitely harder than Gram's (we do so punish our characters), but a second husband not wanting to take in three children from a prior marriage is real. Laura is a bit of myself in my 20s when I was a development executive in Hollywood. At the time, I saw smart, talented women working in Hollywood lose their careers to their male partners' rising stars. It happened bit by bit, like with Laura. And for Lizzie, I mined my lonely junior high years after my brothers had left for college—those boring spaces where the house feels empty.
How did the novel evolve and change as you wrote and revised it? Are there any characters or scenes that were lost in the process that you wish had made it to the published version?
I am way happier revising than composing. Sometimes we do a lot of writing to get at the story. I think I cut about 100 pages from the middle of this book and added sixty more. It went through about three drafts before it was finished, another three with an agent, and another two with an editor. My mom was a writer and said after reading it, "This is really good. Now take out everything that's not the book." So no, I don't miss anything I cut from this book. The heart of the story is all that remains.
How familiar were you with the work and lives of Edith Head and Barbara Stanwyck prior to writing Alterations? Did you have to do a bit of research prior to writing the novel? If so, how long did it take you to do the research and write Alterations?
I was obsessed with Edith Head during high school and read everything I could on her. I had a notion I would grow up and be a costume designer for the movies, and I got deeply into designing and sewing. I designed my own prom dresses, sewed madly. Somewhere along the way, that fell by the wayside. I was a much better writer than a seamstress… some of the boning popped out of my dress during the prom and poked me in the armpit. Fun times.
I was steeped in the period through the movies I'd seen, and I admired Stanwyck for the breadth of her roles and her staying power (she worked from her teens into her seventies) but I didn't really understand how hard she worked as an actor, and how she managed to do things most women actors weren't able to in those days. So that research was a great deal of fun.
But honestly, I read three biographies, (Head, Stanwyck, and Grant) and I was off and writing. I did more research as I wrote. What was Melrose like in 1939? How would you get from A to B by bicycle? Turns out some of the roads in Hollywood were still dirt roads at that time. What were they serving at the Formosa Café at that time?
Thank you so much to the movie and history geeks on the internet who have shared all of their geekery. I found a menu from that year for the Formosa, and someone put together photographs and postcards, and you can take a virtual ride on the Red Car complete with sound effects. A lot of my as-you-go research fed my stories in some ways. I learned a lot about how nasty the press was to Edith Head. If she went out with women co-workers, it was covered as "hen parties," which was a nasty way to imply she was gay (definitely not a positive for her career in 1939). The press could not stand a woman in charge. This revelation inspired a crux for the story.
What was the most interesting or surprising thing that you learned during your research about these amazing women?
I found them so deeply inspiring because they were operating in a system that was completely rigged against them. Edith Head was the first Lead Costume Designer for a major studio, a job she held for 44 years. She got there by working very hard for the director of design, working around the clock, designing all the costumes for a film which her male counterparts never had to do. When her boss lost his contract, she was hired to do the same job for a quarter of the pay, and they simply couldn't fire her. She was too efficient. And cheap. Stanwyck was one of the first women to ever get a studio deal where she could negotiate which roles she took and was allowed to be loaned out to other studios in pursuit of them. These privileges did not just come from hard work, these women definitely had to stroke a few egos and handle the men who allowed them this power very carefully.
I worked as a development exec in Hollywood in the 90s, which was deeply male-dominated, even though I didn't see it at the time (they call it a glass ceiling because you don't see it). I was fortunate enough to work for women, but each day at work for all women was a careful dance around egos, both writers and executives, knowing when to shut up and what not to say. It was the 90s, so you also had to be okay with a lot of misogyny flying around in story meetings. I was director of development for Sylvester Stallone, so I was in a lot of rooms developing action films—so you can imagine. My boss warned me about Harvey Weinstein—I mean, everyone knew about that guy. Taking this lens to the 1940s was really interesting. It wasn't just comments women had to endure; it was a different operational reality where men were in charge of everything, and their jobs hung on by a thread.
Do you have a favorite film or role of Barbara Stanwyck's?
I absolutely adore her, so it's hard to pick. I loved her in Meet John Doe, as a newspaperwoman in a man's world who saves the paper, and Ball of Fire as well. She had such quick and clever dialogue in the romcoms she was in and stood firmly in her characters. I realize, in looking back on films, that the women in romcoms of the 30s and 40s had more agency than those in romcoms of the 80s. And Stanwyck was all strength. Of course, her performance in (and the writing in) Double Indemnity was amazing, but obviously the character is not admirable.
A favorite film designed by Edith Head?
The Court Jester with Danny Kaye and an extraordinarily young and beautiful Angela Lansbury. I was raised on that movie, and when my dad got it for a class, we watched it 12 times in the two weeks we had it. Technicolor velvet, the cut of the angle on Glynis Johns' dress for the action scenes. Just amazing. But I do love her contemporary (at the time) work, and she dressed Stanwyck so beautifully in The Lady Eve and in Ball of Fire.
We lost Edith Head in 1981 and Barbara Stanwyck in 1990. Did you have the chance to see them in person or meet them prior to their passing?
I wish! I was just a kid and hadn't moved here yet. I did see some legends in the early 90s. I was star-struck only two times when I worked in Hollywood. (When you work for a star, you become a bit less impressed.) Chow Yun-Fat stepped in front of my car when I was picking up my boss at the Peninsula, and my jaw dropped… he actually took my breath away. It was mortifying. But it was when I saw Billy Wilder walking on Beverly Drive that I was completely blown away, and it took every ounce of my being to stay cool. I may have done a bit of a freaky dance on Beverly Drive as I passed by, that was freaking Billy Wilder people! In person!
If you could ask Edith or Barbara a question, what would it be?
How did you handle those men in charge? What advice do you have for women handling men as the pendulum swings backward?
If you could tell them something, what would you tell them?
Thank you. For all of it.
Have you ever visited or lived in Baltimore? Do you have any favorite places or locations? A hidden gem that someone visiting should not miss, but would only learn about from a resident?
I loved Baltimore for its small cityness. My mom went to the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, and she still had friends there, so we visited regularly. We visited one May during the cicada swarm, which inspired one of Adriana's scenes.
In the 90s, I lived in DC, and I was most enamored of the art/film/music scene in Baltimore, which was thriving. It seemed like all the artists, filmmakers, and musicians knew each other and looked after each other. Laura's feeling of being outside their coolness is pulled directly from life. There was a sense of community I wouldn't find again until I stepped into the literary community of Los Angeles.
Your biography says that you currently write, teach, cook, and eat in Los Angeles. Do you have any favorite Los Angeles places or locations?
I love this city so much. We spend a lot of time in Little Tokyo and adore the community there around the JACCC and the JANM. Every New Year, we celebrate at the Oshogatsu festival. We lived in Hollywood for eight years, so I love the history and walking there and do walking tours for out-of-town friends. DTLA is a huge part of our lives for walking, The Last Bookstore with David Lovejoy's book labyrinth, and Grand Central Market. We have a bus from our corner, my son used to call the "magic bus" because it goes all the way downtown in 35 minutes.
We have favorite spots all over the city, as it is a city of smaller cities, and friends who live in different places who will take us to a place we've never been before. That is the greatest delight of living here, those new discoveries of neighborhoods that have been there all along. And yeah, I have "eat" in my bio because our family tends to travel by stomach.
What's currently on your nightstand?
I'm loving Evergreen by Naomi Hirahara and Dispossessed by Desirée Zamorano, a historical novel set in Los Angeles out from the same press as Alterations. I think that book is beautiful and so important right now, everyone should read it.
As to horror, which is what I also write, Tiny Threads by Lilliam Rivera was about my favorite thing this year. It is set in Vernon and works in the palimpsest of history that is Los Angeles. And I’m loving Forgotten Sisters by Cynthia Pelayo.
I'm usually reading four things at once.
Can you name your top five favorite or most influential authors?
I can't! I think I am most influenced by what I'm reading now or have been reading in the last five years. That said, I've been rediscovering the Oz books, which taught me everything about horror. L. Frank Baum wrote most of them from Hollywood, so hooray, LA writer history!
As to now, look at my nightstand question above and I'd also like to shout out traci akemi kato-kiriyama's Navigating Without Instruments which holds layers of this city in its pages, and Toni Ann Johnson, to whom Alterations is dedicated (see that first question), is doing such beautiful and important scenework in her short stories. Her first collection Light Skin Gone to Waste won the Flannery O'Connor Award and was nominated for the NAACP Image Award. I teach stories from that collection as a how-to in scene, dialogue, and characterization. She is simply a beautiful writer.
I am so excited to be surrounded by brilliant writers in this city who influence me with everything they write, and personally as well.
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
The Oz series. I inherited my grandfather's and mother's collections, which my kids also read. They are falling to pieces, so we had to spread out a towel on my daughter's bed, teach her how to turn the pages carefully. It made them more magical somehow.
Was there a book you felt you needed to hide from your parents?
Haaa! They were hiding books from me. Our house was floor to ceiling bookshelves in every room, cranny, and hallway. I read J.G. Ballard’s Crash entirely too young for my own good.
Is there a book you've faked reading?
Moby Dick. And it was a BIG fake as it was one of my dad's favorites, and I was tested on it in my oral exams for my American Studies major. I only got halfway through the book. Turns out of the five of us (they gave oral exams to teams of graduates), not one of us had finished the book. I know people love that book, but reading is subjective, it really is. Melville was not my thing.
Can you name a book you've bought for the cover?
Not that I've bought, but as a kid at the library, I always read by the cover. I still have a cover burned on my brain. A mitten frozen on the edge of a pond, a house in the distance. The book was absolutely terrifying, and I'm so glad I read it, but I don't remember the title now.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Every single new book I read does that. Although my high school crush, then boyfriend, now husband did loan me Stephen King's Night Shift, and yes, I liked scary stories before, but is that how I ended up writing horror? Maybe so...
Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?
That's kind of a yearly thing. It's the book I buy for everyone in my extended family for Christmas. Last year it was Time’s Mouth by Edan Lepucki and Annalee Newitz’s Stories Are Weapons. This year it will be Dispossessed by Desirée Zamorano.
Is there a book you would most want to read again for the first time?
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Wow, she could write.
What is the last piece of art (music, movies, TV, more traditional art forms) that you've experienced or that has impacted you?
I am a sucker for a ten-part series and they really do help with novel structure. I often have my novel in the back of my head as I watch them, and things sort themselves. Issa López's Season 4 of True Detective is as brilliant as any novel I've read recently.
What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?
A walk in the morning, touching base with our local mountains, or a bike ride by the LA River. Meeting a writer friend for a writing date at a coffee place I haven't been to yet, writing more in my backyard. Then cooking a really terrific meal to enjoy with my family.
What is the question that you're always hoping you'll be asked, but never have been?
You've done a really good job here with questions! I was super stoked to geek out about Edith Head and Barbara Stanwyck. I guess, "Can you tell me about the LA Writers Community?"
What is your answer?
Why, yes, I can! Los Angeles is made up of a beautiful Venn Diagram of writers. So many crossovers that any book event you go to is like a reunion. I have my Antioch people from my MFA program, my friends from Women Who Submit, a local literary org that came out of that school that supports femme identifying and nonbinary writers, the Horror Writer community and the genre crossover (scifi and fantasy) community, the Writing Workshops Los Angeles community, The Writ Large Community (from 90x90LA) The Little Tokyo Community (which incorporates artists and musicians as well), the poets and activists community, and just writers you know from around the way. Most folks are just writers who support and know each other. The notion of literary status that comes from other cities is drowned out by "Hey, how've you been, what are you working on now?"
What are you working on now?
I have another literary novel in the wings that's a family story told through the lens of memory, family, and Alzheimer's. At the end of the summer, I will be digging into that again and looking for an agent. Right now, I'm working on a collection of science fiction short stories. I just had a second one accepted to Analog! and a different collection set against the background of a magical Los Angeles. Thank you so much! What a lovely set of questions!
