Published June 15, 2006, in the Waukesha Freeman

Story by Matthew Webber

MILWAUKEE – Curtis Sittenfeld is not a fictional character. She's a real-life, best-selling author whose tour to promote her second novel, “The Man of My Dreams,” brought her to Milwaukee on June 6.

It's not uncommon, however, for readers and reviewers to equate Sittenfeld with the protagonists of her novels – Lee Fiora in “Prep” and now Hannah Gavener in “The Man of My Dreams” – because of her realistic prose and certain biographical tidbits.

Like Lee, for example, Sittenfeld attended prep school. And like Hannah? Well, Sittenfeld has held jobs and gone on dates, just like her readers.

Her new book, then, is not necessarily the story of something that happened to her, but it is a story of something that could happen to anyone – to everyone, that is, who ever spent their 20s struggling to balance their professional and personal lives.

While just as authentic in its details as “Prep,” “The Man of My Dreams” is not an autobiography. Nor is the tale – a search for love and happiness – based 100 percent on the author’s life.

But Sittenfeld – while dishing on her characters, the writing process and the publicity machine in the following interview excerpt – understands why some people might make that mistake, even as the increased scrutiny makes her feel like Jessica Simpson.

The Freeman: I didn't want to ask you what I think a lot of people do, which is how much of your characters are based on you, but I wanted to ask you why you think people do ask that so often.

Curtis Sittenfeld: I think people ask me that question because there's nothing that happens in my books that's beyond the realm of possibility. Everything is realistic or plausible.

And I guess maybe people think if you were going to make things up, you would make up stories that were more farfetched or wild, and so therefore I think the fact that everything that happens to the characters in those two books could happen in real life makes people like, "Well, it must have happened in my (life)."

You know, if I were making stuff up, I would've included an alien invasion or maybe, I don't know, some life-threatening disease or something more melodramatic or tragic or thrilling.

And then, with "Prep," ... I did go to boarding school. So if you knew one thing about me and you knew it was that I went to boarding school, ... sometimes people feel like, well, if one element of a book is drawn from real life, then every element is.

You definitely had a success with "Prep." It's a best-seller. It was on many top 10 lists last year. I don't know if you felt like that was beginner's luck or that you deserved it, but having had that success then, what do you hope for the second book here, the follow up?

I think there's very little I can control about the process of having a book come out, except for the writing. So really, that's the main thing I concentrate on.

You know, if you said to me, "Would you like it to be a best-seller I would say, "Yeah." But if it's not, there's a lot of factors at play.

Really, if there are 15 factors at play, I would say maybe one and a half are within my control. So you can only worry so much.

I think I'll be someone who always writes. Even if my audience dramatically shrinks from what it was for "Prep," I still would write.

I think there's something like 600,000 copies of "Prep" in print. Actually, weirdly enough, it's being published in all these other countries, so I don't even know what that is.

It's a best-seller in Korea, strangely. I wanted to laugh when my agent told me, she's saying, "It's selling 1,000 copies a day in Korea," which is actually more than it sold in hardcover ever. ...

But if, instead of there being 600,000 copies in print, if there were 5,000 copies of a book I wrote, I would still write it.

I think that, at the risk of sounding narcissistic, I think you always write for yourself first, and then you write for other people. I do think of my audience, but I don't feel like I'm writing primarily for other people's benefit.

Earlier, you mentioned that there's only a few things the writer can control, one of which is the writing, and I wanted to talk about that between the second and the first book. "The Man of My Dreams" is shorter, of course, but I think the voice is still very analytical, and the dialogue is still really sharp. ... What changes did you make? What did you think about trying to keep that same voice, have the great dialogue, have very vivid settings and situations, but what did you change from book to book?

Well, one thing is that I had written about 75 percent of "The Man of My Dreams" before "Prep" was published.

After it was written, before it was published?

Exactly. Random House bought "Prep" in June ’03, and then they published it in January ’05. And during that time, I wrote most of "The Man of My Dreams."

So I don't think I was writing in reaction to the public response to "Prep," although maybe I was writing in reaction to my own experience of writing "Prep."

I would say, I do think that in my first book, if in doubt, I included a thought or a description or a scene. (With my second book) I tried to write a sort of tighter, leaner book, and maybe let more be kind of implied, so I think that that's one difference.

I think also Hannah has an opportunity to become an adult, which Lee – I mean, she actually is telling the story (as an adult), in retrospect – but you don't really see her adult life, and you definitely do see Hannah's adult life.

I think "Prep" is sort of defined by place, where "The Man of My Dreams" is more defined by theme or by subject, which is Hannah's preoccupation with finding love and figuring out what it means, and does a soulmate really exist?

Something you probably don't control is the marketing, from the book cover to just the way it's placed in stores. From what you've seen, how is "The Man of My Dreams" being marketed, and how do you feel about this? It is your book, and it's somebody else's, maybe, twist on that.

Well, actually, I definitely had plenty of input for both of these covers, and I OK'd both of them. And I like both of them. I mean, neither is what I would have expected from the beginning. But there are ideas that they came to me with and I would not have been happy with, and there are ideas I went to them and then they were not happy with.

But I feel like these covers represent a happy compromise. They don't represent an unhappy compromise.

I mean, with "Prep," there was an ad that ran in the Sunday Style section of the New York Times, and it was really absurd. I won't get the wording right, but it said something like, "Money. Fashion. Ambition. 'Prep.'" And it was like, fashion? It's all these students wearing, like, fleece jackets and LL Bean khaki pants or something.

But some of the stuff, some of the ways I feel like my books are possibly misunderstood are actually amusing to me. I don't feel distressed about them. I mean, there's a lot to feel distressed about in the world, and if my book is put on the, you know, "beach reads" table at a bookstore, that does not seem like a devastating problem to me.

You mentioned the covers. They're very similar-looking. Almost like a brand for yourself.

The brand called Curtis Sittenfeld. I know.

Do you have a book three on the horizon?

Well, I'm under contract, so I will at some point, but right now my writing cupboard is bare. "The Man of My Dreams" was published a year and a half after "Prep," and I don't think I'll probably ever have that quick a turnaround again. I don't think I'm a slow writer, but I'm not a fast writer, either.

What would you do to get that train of thought going again? What would you do to inspire a third book?

I have plenty of ideas. I mean, it's just sort of a matter of concentrating and avoiding distractions and not traveling. I think probably the biggest thing I could do to kind of help my writing is say no to every request I get.

Like talking to reporters?

No. Obviously, I'm promoting the book, and that's part. I feel like promoting the book is part of seeing it through to the end. And having been a reporter, it's sort of like now I get to be the self-centered one and have the questions asked of me instead of asking them. But I think in terms of just not going places to speak and not reading other books to give blurbs ... I have to sort of take responsibility for my own schedule.

You were a reporter, so sometimes you probably are aware that there are questions that feel like they have to be asked.

Oh. Of course.

So I do want to ask, have you found the man of your dreams? Are you looking? What's that search like for you?

(She laughs.) I live with my boyfriend – actually, his name is Matt – in Philadelphia. Actually, I don't know if you read, but in the acknowledgements, I asked him if he thought people would tease him because I had said that he was "dreamy." And he said, "I hope so." (Laughs.) But he's very appealing. It makes me feel like Jessica Simpson to talk about my relationships, or like Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise.