Lauren Rothery's taut debut novel Television follows Verity, an aging A-list actor who’s grown so disgusted with fame that he raffles off his recent blockbuster salary—over $80 million—to a random ticket buyer. Then he starts dating an unknown actress half his age, because why the fuck not? His longtime best friend and occasional lover, Helen, watches dubiously from the sidelines. She has been Verity’s steadiest tether to reality for more than twenty years, always anticipating his self-destruction and staying anyway, caught in the most romantic kind of devotion.
The novel alternates between Verity’s jaded, boozy spiral and Helen’s clear-eyed tolerance, their voices circling each other with the rhythm of a decades-long conversation. Rothery eventually brings in a third narrator—Phoebe, a young filmmaker scraping by on nothing—widening the novel’s scope while maintaining its loose, character-driven structure. Set in a present-day LA where phones are called “rectangles,” Television is about what happens when beauty fades, money corrupts, and luck becomes the only currency left. It’s a sly, stylish debut that treats Hollywood’s moral rot with the same cool precision Joan Didion brought to Play It as It Lays, but with more tenderness for the people trapped inside.
Describe Television in three words.
(A) book about luck.
If Television were a song, what would it be?
'He Needs Me' from Popeye.
If it gets adapted, who is your dream casting for Verity, Helen, and Phoebe?
There are a few cast/director pairings I’d enjoy. But I was careful in the book not to describe anyone too closely. Art is, to me, a balance between what you say and what you don’t. What you let a stranger’s imagination fill in. It was a thrill for me to have this option, which one manifestly does not have in film, of letting the reader make up all the faces. Particularly in a book that spends so much time on appearance, as a topic. Amusingly, almost everyone I’ve asked did select a real movie star to imagine as Verity, but they all chose different ones. When I was writing, I invented a face. In any case that little, surprising, private collaboration between my imagination and yours is precious to me. I’d like to preserve it a little longer.
Favorite time and place to write?
Morning. I usually wake up on the early side, go straight to a nearby coffee place (I move around a lot and having places to be a short term regular in helps with what I want to call mental consistency? Or something?) and read for an hour or two. Then I go home to work until I run out of steam. Sometimes I can write until evening, sometimes I’m out of ideas by lunch.
I think it’s unglamorous, but I write best at a laptop. I always have a notebook in my pocket, and am happy when I’m writing in them, but I hate to transcribe. Other writers tell me that it’s wonderful to have your first edit be from notebook to laptop, but I don’t know what they’re talking about. I feel like an assistant, mildly resenting the woman who expects me to decode her slapdash handwriting. Who does she think I am, Champollion?
What media were you consuming when you wrote Television?
Too many books to remember. That sounds like a cheap answer, but I read a lot and it was a few years ago. I know I read J.M. Coetzee, (a lot of) Jane Austen, Percival Everett, Janet Frame, Sam Shepard, Louise Glück and Kafka’s diaries. At night, when I can’t write anymore and don’t have plans, there’s a thing I enjoy doing where I pick a director and just watch all their movies over a period of weeks or months. I think that during Television I did Preston Sturges, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, and probably about 1/4 of Bergman. Bergman made so many movies, I started to feel insane and had to stop. I found myself laughing at lines like why does the bird fly at night and imagined I could understand a little Swedish (I couldn't). I also watched Seinfeld.
Did you outline or wing it or somewhere in between?
I winged it. I knew about the lottery when I started, and I knew the ending, but I didn’t outline them. It’s better for me to just keep those things in mind.
Best writing advice you’ve received?
Never confuse writing with publishing.
What are your most overused words?
Seem—I’ve been told I overuse that. I’m taking pains to avoid it altogether in my next book. Seems easier than it is.
Are there any books Television is “in conversation with” as they say?
I'm afraid I don't know how to answer this one! I sometimes wonder if a writer is a generally poor judge of this kind of thing in her own work, or if it's just me. It would be too much pressure if I went into the book trying to contribute something to an existing (or imagined) conversation. I really just try to write what I want to read.
If you could get a drink with any fictional character, who would it be?
Normally I'd say Columbo. But I’ve been thinking a lot about Konstantin Levin lately. I love the part, early on, where he is looking at Kitty out on the ice, and he can’t believe he could just go over there and talk to her, it doesn’t seem possible. I’d like to get him drunk right after he discovers Kitty and listen to him go on and on about how he’s filth and she’s the sun. I love to listen to a person in love.
What’s a book that made you want to write?
Seymour: An Introduction.
What’s your relationship to self-promotion?
I don’t think I’m good at it, also it embarrasses me. I'm not a good talker and I haven’t got any social media. I mostly avoid the internet, although I like The Criterion Collection and I like email. I'm always emailing people instead of texting them.
Favorite recent read?
Natasha Stagg's 'Grand Rapids', 'Still Pictures' by Janet Malcolm, 'Absalom Absalom' by William Faulkner, and Molly Young's 'Privacy'.
One word to describe what you’re working on now?
Secret.
