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Photo by Ján Jakub Naništa on Unsplash
Five years after her wildly successful debut, Fleishman Is in Trouble, Taffy Brodesser-Akner returns with an engrossing new novel, Long Island Compromise. The book opens in 1980, when, thanks to the success of their polystyrene molds factory, the Fletchers lead a privileged life on Long Island. But after the head of the household, Carl, is kidnapped and held hostage for five days, no one in his family or community is the same. Carl’s three adult children — Nathan, Beamer, and Jenny — all deal with PTSD in different ways, and Carl’s mother and wife attempt to shield him from any further difficulties. While their intentions are good, the outcomes of their actions are unexpected and everlasting. Long Island Compromise is about how one person’s actions can impact their family, and how their legacy — well deserved or not — will shape future generations.
With humor and humanity, Akner discusses how her career as a journalist helps her to craft indelible characters, the ways in which the specifics of Judaism can resonate with wide audiences, and the best actor to star as Mandy Patinkin in the TV adaptation of her new novel (Mandy Patinkin).
Evie Saphire-Bernstein: I read in an interview you did with The Bookseller that you started writing Long Island Compromise before you wrote your debut novel, and then put it on pause to finish Fleishman first. Could you tell me more about that process, and what inspired you to write Long Island Compromise?
Taffy Brodesser-Akner: Sure! I decided to try to write a novel while I was in Russia for twelve days to do a profile of the only US male synchronized swimmer. My children were very young at the time, and when I traveled, I would show them on the calendar how many breakfasts at home I would have to miss. Usually my older son was fine with it, but when I told him I was going to Russia for twelve breakfasts, he freaked out — like really the only tantrum he ever had. I felt so guilty and miserable. But when I got to Russia, I thought to myself, I’m doing these stories so that I can make ends meet, but it isn’t enough. I have to try to get ahead, so I’m going to try to write a novel—which, by the way, is how you know how little journalists make. The idea that you would try to write a novel to get ahead financially is bonkers.
I was so vexed by how much money I didn’t have that I started writing the story of a rich family. I wanted to write about wealth and trauma and whether it was better to be from money or to have survival skills. That was my question going in, but the book ended up being much more about trauma itself, and the foundational trauma of this family was a kidnapping. Growing up, I knew someone who’d been kidnapped. It’s not the same story as in Long Island Comprise, and it’s not the same family for sure. But I asked for my friend’s blessing and he gave it to me.
When I started writing Long Island Compromise, I wasn’t truly ready to write something of its scale and complexity and a narration that spans years. It was good that I started with Fleishman instead; it’s structured like a magazine profile, which is what I write as a journalist. I still wasn’t ready to write Long Island Compromise when I returned to it, but I had a contract for it by then. So I just kept turning in new versions of it. I’ve never had such a hard time writing something. I’ve never worked so hard on something. When I say I wrote nine drafts, I’m not talking about revisions. They were wholesale rewrites. When I was talking to producers about adapting it for TV, I told them, “Guess what? There are thousands of pages of this that are not in the book. There’s plenty of runway for this.”
ESB: It struck me that the Fletchers and their community are bound together not so much because they have a shared history, but because they all share a struggle with wealth and none of them — rich or poor — are happy. I wonder, what was it like to tell this story set in the ’80s today, at a time of economic crisis? How did the current time affect your story?
TBA: I can’t think of a better way to tell a story about money and the way that capitalism has changed and the way this country has changed vis-a-vis the American dream than telling it from the point of view of a super wealthy family. Everybody knows families like the Fletchers. Their story is the story of this country. I know a lot of people who were set for life and then suddenly weren’t.
Though, what’s interesting is that now, in the 2020s, that can’t really happen. I wasn’t raised with money, so when I was researching ways for the characters in Long Island Compromise to lose theirs, I asked my friends who have generational wealth. Everyone was like, “I don’t know.” Then I realized why they didn’t know: because they can’t lose their money. Nowadays, money is so diversified. And the amount of money some people have is so absurd that they would have to work pretty hard to lose it.
I think of this book as the fiction companion to Thomas Piketty’s Capital. When I read that book I sobbed, because I realized that young people today don’t stand a chance of acquiring wealth unless they go into finance. Unless they go into a business that is literally: Here is how your money can make money through loopholes that not everyone can see. That’s the only way you can become rich now.
ESB: Most of your characters are morally gray.
TBA: Out of curiosity, did that make it unpleasant for you to read the book?
ESB: I didn’t dislike them, but I will say that the book gave me a lot of anxiety. Especially everything with Nathan, Carl’s oldest son. Nathan tries to become a partner at a law firm despite knowing that he’s not cut out for it, and he ends up losing his job. Then he invests his money with an old friend instead of a well-established bank — another major misstep. I kept thinking, If only I could sit down and talk with you, I could fix this.
TBA: That’s very Jewish of you.
ESB: Even Zelig, Carl’s father, is a morally gray character. He suffered in the Holocaust, but the things he did to survive are the root of the family’s problems, no?
TBA One of the questions of the book is: Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to set a fire? That, to me, is the story of survival. Jewish survival in this country is doing what you had to do to survive. Until you get to a certain generation and then they’re just doing what they want.
ESB: On that note, I find this book much more Jewish than Fleishman. It delves into the Holocaust and interfaith marriage. There are two bar mitzvah scenes, which are the emotional tentpoles of both the family and the book. Why did you decide to feature Jewish themes and traditions more prominently in this book?
TBA: For people like you, who came to Fleishman from a Jewish perspective, it was just a book. But people who interviewed me for non-Jewish outlets thought of it as a really Jewish book, which confused me. And I realized, Oh my God, I guess choosing the name Fleishman was enough to label the whole book. To choose specificity instead of flatness was a decision, but it was a writing decision. I did not set out to write about American Jewry, even though that’s what I ended up doing.
It was a similar situation with Long Island Compromise. You start out with a story and if you’re being rigorous, then you ask yourself, What are the details of this story? I took my questions about money, and I attached them to a family. And then I had to ask: Where is that family from? What are their jobs, and how old are their kids? If one of the kids is eleven, that means there’s a bar mitzvah coming up … And so on. People don’t remember the broad strokes. They remember details. I was just talking to another author and she told me that her publisher asked her to change the name of one of her characters. And we were debating whether that was antisemitic? It was a Jewish last name. I don’t think it was — I think it came from the tendency for anyone who’s trying to sell something to say, Let’s appeal to the greatest number of people we can. But because I’ve spent so many years doing journalism and not having the choice to change someone’s last name or other details, I know that it’s the specificity that allows people — including people from different backgrounds — to see themselves in this Jewish novel. I mean, the interview before you was with a non-Jewish woman who couldn’t get over how much the characters were like her family. So should you change the name of your character to something more generic? No, you should make it weirder. You should make it more memorable.
Should you change the name of your character to something generic? No, you should make it weirder. You should make it more memorable.
ESB: Speaking of craft, I’d love to talk about the symbolism of the house in this book. None of the characters feels safe in their homes, right? Carl was kidnapped right outside his home; Nathan’s house is destroyed; Beamer is kicked out of his; and Jenny is a squatter. What does home mean in this story?
TBA: You know, no one’s asked me a question like that before. I think that sometimes, when you’re writing a novel, you put your characters in a place where you would like to be. While I was writing Fleishman, I was longing to move back to New York so much that I put Toby and Rachel in Manhattan. Through my work, I could daydream about being in Manhattan all day.
I lived in about six or seven homes growing up, maybe more. I haven’t ever counted them. My first year in college, the house we were living in burned down. Maybe what I was doing in Long Island Compromise was fantasizing: What is it like to have a home? What is it like to have a place that people associate with you? I haven’t given that much thought to the symbolism of home, except that it was always remarkable to me that I could not get the Fletchers to consider selling their estate. That it’s the most obvious solution to their financial problems. And it doesn’t even occur to them.
ESB: Like Fleishman, Long Island Compromise is going to be made into a television show. I know you wrote the screenplay and were the executive producer for Fleishman and will be doing the same for Long Island. Do you find it challenging to convert your books into screenplays? Did you walk into this book knowing you might want to do that, and think of ways to make that easier for yourself?
TBA: No, not at all. There’s nothing I did with this book that would make anything easier on anyone! This book was like a disease that I finally handed in to cure myself. I gave it to my agent with a note saying that second books are hard; it’s time for me to be done with this and whatever my third book will be, it’ll be born out of the failure of this one. And then people started reading it at the agency and at Random House, and they would call me up crying about their upbringing and their homes. And part of me was like, No, no, no, this is supposed to be my terrible second book. Then the book leaked through a scout, and I got a letter from an Apple executive. It was so effusive and it said everything I was trying for in this book. And I was like, Oh my God, is it possible it worked? I was hoping someone would bid on it because of the success of Fleishman, and I’d live to fight another day, but I’m still very confused about how it turned out like this.
You know, at one point in the book, Beamer says to his daughter, who is rehearsing her flute, “If you keep trying” — in a case of the least wise character saying something very wise — “If you work really hard and put all of your energy into something, then the thing will rise up to meet you.” That’s how I felt about this book. Somehow, I worked hard enough that something happened.
By the way, in my first draft, Beamer was a studio executive. Then I made him into a writer because I needed a place to put all my anxiety about writing this book. I’m not a drug user, but basically everything else about Beamer is from me. Like, Have I been at a drive-through desperately trying to finish writing something? Yes, I have.
ESB: I love that Beamer is the little bit of you because I was looking for you in the book the whole time. One of the things that make your magazine profiles unique is that you always discuss your own experience of your subjects. But it was harder for me to find you in this book.
TBA: God, they’re all a little bit of me. The only one I’m not like is Jenny. I’m not like Jenny at all, other than the fact that when I’m sort of shocked or traumatized, I get very tired. My publisher had arranged for me to do all these things the day Fleishman came out. They took me to bookstores to sign books, and to speak to the press. I could not, I was so tired. Not even adrenaline was helping me. And as they were driving me to different bookstores, I’d fall asleep. Finally, I was like, I don’t even think I can do my event tonight. They gave me two hours before the event to rest. And I went to my mother, who lived nearby, and said, “Listen, I have to sleep here for a couple hours.” I slept and I felt better. She drove me to the event, and I kept telling myself, Don’t worry, no one’s going to be there. When we pulled up, I saw the crowd inside and just fell right back asleep.
But I’m a bit like Ruth, too. I look at my kids and sometimes they’re like casually paying for something with their Apple Pay and I want to tell them that I used to keep the lights off at home so that the landlord wouldn’t come for the rent.
ESB: Which character do you think most deserves the ending that they got?
TBA: Oh, that’s so interesting. You know, I spend so much time with these people — how could I judge them? Because they’re of me, even though they aren’t me. I can’t bring myself to even think that their stories are over, that’s how close to them I still am. Hmm. I guess a minor character, Mickey, gets his deserved ending.
ESB: I think Nathan gets the ending he deserves. He learns from his mistakes.
TBA: You know, I guess deserve is a strange question, because it’s moral. They were all headed toward this ending from the start. As a writer, it’s really good when you ask not What do I think should happen, but what is obviously going to happen. You know enough about human nature that you’ve set this up, what’s going to happen.
ESB: Zelig has made up a story about his past, and that story becomes a touchpoint for the whole family. What are the ramifications of this type of family lore?
TBA: I’ll tell you through a metaphor. The other day I was wearing a necklace and I saw my mother and I said, “See, I wear this necklace that you gave me, because it brings me luck.” And she said, “I didn’t give you that.” I had mistaken the necklace I was wearing for the one she gave me. Does that mean it’s fake, that the meaning behind the necklace isn’t real? It’s still the one I thought my mother had given me. There was no lie, there was no purposeful falsehood, right? And so what is the significance of the necklace as an heirloom: is it the necklace, or is it the story that goes down from generation to generation?
I know that one of my most annoying qualities is my pursuit of truth. Part of the reason I still identify very strongly as a journalist and journalists are still my favorite people is because that’s a journalist quality. But I don’t think most people are in the pursuit of truth. I don’t even think that’s a goal for most people. They are just trying to survive.
I don’t think most people are in the pursuit of truth. I don’t even think that’s a goal for most people. They are just trying to survive.
ESB: Like how when Carl and Ruth miss one of their son’s bar mitzvahs, and then when her children mention it years later, she’s like, “What are you talking about? We were at the bar mitzvah!”
TBA: I mean, isn’t that amazing? I don’t think Ruth is trying to lie. I think Ruth has rewritten the past so she can live with herself.
ESB: The Mandy Patinkin cameos in the book are such joys. If you don’t get Mandy Patinkin to be in the series, that would be such a crime, I’ll—
TBA: Die, I’ll die. Like, who’s going to play it? No one but Mandy Patinkin!
ESB: One final question. “There’s a dybbuk in the works” is a phrase the family uses to explain away bad things without having to examine why they happened. It almost becomes an emotional crutch for them. Why do the Fletchers need that?
TBA: I think that in a society where people have decided that your good fortune is not a blessing, but something you earned, you ascribe the things you can’t explain to the supernatural. There’s a dybbuk in the works. Also, if you read the book closely, you’ll see that an actual dybbuk is present in almost every scene. It’s haunting the Fletchers the whole time.
Evie Saphire-Bernstein is the program director of Jewish Book Council. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a B.A. in English and a minor in Jewish Studies. Before joining the Jewish Book Council team in 2015, she spent a year and a half working within the Conservative Movement as the Network Liaison for the Schechter Day School Network. She is a recent transplant to New York City, after living in Chicago for most of her life. In her spare time, Evie is a writer and blogger.