Marcy Dermansky’s sixth novel, Hot Air, opens with a bang—or rather, a hot-air balloon crash. Writer and single mom Joannie is on a date with her neighbor Johnny when her childhood crush quite literally falls out of the sky and into Johnny’s pool. What follows is a spicy weekend of old flames and semi-deranged decisions. As always, Dermansky’s writing is quick, dreamy, and dryly funny. The perspective shifts among multiple narrators, each testing the limits of their own lives. Everyone is reaching for something more, even if they don’t know exactly what it is.
Describe Hot Air in three words.
Joannie wants more.
If Hot Air is adapted, what’s your dream casting?
It’s hard for me to do this. Like I want Parker Posey or Margaret Qualley or Rachel Sennot to play Joannie and none of them are the right age. Same for Cate Blanchett who I see as the perfect Julia. The male leads, interchangeable, handsome middle aged white men, they could be almost anyone. But not George Clooney, because he is too handsome. I am not good at this and I should be. These are characters I created.
Ok Joannie, Johnny, Julia, Jonathan—please tell me about your naming choices. Are they all meant to be iterations of the same person?
I love this idea that they are all an interaction of the same person; it had never occurred to me but I think you might be right. Or, you aren’t wrong.
Honestly, I started with Joannie and Johnny and it just seemed fun, and then, when I had to name the couple in the air balloon, I made them Jonathan and Julia. I don’t always think about things that much when I write. I love for my books be interpreted by my readers. I learn things reading my reviews. I learned things about myself, the last time you and I talked about Hurricane Girl.
What is your favorite time and place to write?
It changes constantly. Right now, ideally, I like to write at my desk in the morning, right after my daughter leaves for school, both of my cats in my office. Fresh pot of coffee, cold water with lemon, my fairy lights on. Sometimes, however, my cats won’t cooperate. Some mornings, sadly, I also don’t write. I am answering these questions at night, listening to Slene Gomez which seems entirely random except that Spotify suggested it. I just wrote an essay about how writers should be kind to themselves and I probably need to read it, remind myself.
Do you outline or wing it or somewhere in between?
I am always, only winging it. But in my head, long before I wrote the ending, I knew where the ending of Hot Air was going to go. So maybe, there was an outline in my brain, but this is fluid. I might forget or shift. If I outline on paper, I instantly don’t want to write it, feel constrained, don’t want to bother.
Are there any books you feel Hot Air is “in conversation with” as they say?
I recently read Animal Instinct by Amy Shearn, which came out on the same day as Hot Air. Shearn’s novel is about a newly divorced woman, mother of three, figuring her life out, figuring out how to embrace her new found freedom. In Shearn’s book, the protagonist, Rachel, hits the apps and she has a lot of sex. Men and women. Once, with three different partners on a single weekend. Whereas in Hot Air, Joannie goes completely inward after divorce, takes care of herself and her kid, enters an extended period of celibacy – until she breaks out and kind of regrets it. I think Joannie and Rachel would like each other.
If you were a literary critic, what would you say about your own writing?
Oh, wow, I would say Marcy Dermansky is such a great writer. Her writing is so deceptively simple, such a pure pleasure to read that readers don’t even realize how complex and astute her books are. Her off brand humor is a sideway pathway to addressing sadness and longing and possibility.
I would also like to award myself a literary award that comes with a large cash prize.
What part of your book was most fun to write?
It’s not a part, necessarily, instead it’s always the individual sentences. An observation, a line of dialogue. When Julia, for instance, suggests a partner swap, I didn’t know she was going to say that until she said it. That made me happy, and then the plot took off from there.
In one of those pivotal scenes, the character of Jonathan Foster concludes a tense conversation with his personal assistant, by saying “No more carbs.” He could literally have said anything. I knew that line was good when I wrote it, it was just so absurd, and it got a big check mark from my editor. I also love sliding the little details of my life into the book, it’s full of Easter Eggs for myself. There is money stashed in a desk in the house, for instance, that gets stolen. My father also kept cash in our house, which disappeared, if someone took it, or if maybe he hid somewhere we could never find. We still don’t know what happened to it.
What’s a book that made you want to write?
Anywhere but Here, by Mona Simpson. I mean there were a lot of books, but I read that book as a sophomore in college and it felt like everything – a different reading experience than my earlier love affairs with books like A Little Princess of The Secret Garden. It was grown up book about a young woman, stealing her friends clothes, having sex for the first time, fighting with her mother. I wanted to be about to do that, too, write about a book about a woman that I could relate to, who was a version of me. This, still, is my favorite kind of novel.
What’s your relationship to self-promotion?
I hate it. I also have fun with it. I wish I were better at it. I love meeting people through social media. Or making a post, getting praise, likes, comments. I also get very anxious. I don’t have a proper email list or a substack. It feels like all authors have substacks now. I had three years between Hurricane Girl and Hot Air to figure out TikTok and be active in Booktok and I never did.
What author’s (dead or alive) persona is aspirational?
Maybe Joan Didion, the super thin wrists, the iconic image on a tote bag. I just want to keep on writing books.
I have to ask: have you been in a hot air balloon?
I haven’t! I think I would be scared but I would ultimately love it, being up high, looking down, floating, feeling the breeze. Trying to touch a cloud. I would pack a picnic. Brie.
What’s one word to describe what you’re working on now.
Sequel.
