In their debut nov­els, Anto­nia Angress and Emma Cop­ley Eisen­berg focus on rela­tion­ships between queer artists on the cusp of adult­hood and their careers. In Angress’s Sirens & Mus­es, Louisa, a trans­fer stu­dent to Wrynn Col­lege of Art, is drawn to her aloof, tal­ent­ed room­mate, Kari­na. In Cop­ley Eisenberg’s House­mates, grad­u­ate stu­dent Leah is sim­i­lar­ly attract­ed to and inspired by Bernie, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who has recent­ly moved into the West Philadel­phia house Leah rents with friends.

In ​“Unteth­er­ing the Muse from the Male Gaze,” Angress dis­cusses how her book sub­verts tra­di­tion­al ideas about the artis­tic process, and the Jew­ish his­to­ry that under­pins her book’s themes. Cop­ley Eisen­berg responds in this essay that explores her book’s take on the artist – muse relationship.

In her inter­view ​“Unteth­er­ing the Muse from the Male Gaze,” Anto­nia Angress recalls a stu­dent ask­ing her: ​“Do you think artists and writ­ers need mus­es?” Angress respond­ed that no, they don’t. ​“But,” she said, ​“you need a subject.”

What hap­pens when your sub­ject is some­one else’s art, and when that some­one else is also your roman­tic part­ner? Can the rela­tion­al pow­er dynam­ic ever tru­ly be equal when one per­son cre­ates from noth­ing and the oth­er cre­ates in response? This was the ques­tion in my mind when I began my own nov­el, House­mates, which fol­lows Bernie, a large-for­mat film pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and Leah, a grad stu­dent and jour­nal­ist. Both char­ac­ters are in their twen­ties, liv­ing in a queer group house in West Philadel­phia in 2018, and both are feel­ing adrift and dis­sat­is­fied with their lives, their bod­ies, and their art. 

There are many ways in which Leah and Bernie’s rela­tion­ship in House­mates mir­rors Louisa and Karina’s in Sirens and Mus­es. Both Kari­na and Leah are from sec­u­lar Jew­ish New York City fam­i­lies and have more class priv­i­lege than their part­ners, who come from rur­al Louisiana and Penn­syl­va­nia, respec­tive­ly. While nei­ther Bernie nor Louisa is Jew­ish, Leah and Karina’s Jew­ish­ness is inter­ro­gat­ed through their fam­i­lies in ways that influ­ence both nov­els’ explo­rations of art, knowl­edge, and belong­ing. Karina’s father is an art col­lec­tor con­stant­ly on the hunt for pieces that his fam­i­ly owned before the Holo­caust. Leah’s broth­er is a Zion­ist Jew for Trump, a thing that dis­gusts Leah, and her par­ents are avowed athe­ist intel­lec­tu­als, which Leah finds both famil­iar and lonely. 

In House­mates, Bernie is full of ideas for sub­jects but lacks the will to make art, where­as Leah is all will but lacks a sub­ject. As Leah watch­es Bernie make pho­tographs using an intri­cate, slow process called large-for­mat 4 x 5 film pho­tog­ra­phy, she real­izes that Bernie’s eye and how she com­mu­ni­cates her vision through pho­tog­ra­phy is what she, Leah, wants to write about. Leah begins writ­ing about Bernie’s process, the sub­jects of Bernie’s pho­tographs (the chang­ing state of Penn­syl­va­nia in the year 2018), and even artic­u­lates Bernie’s cre­ative pur­pose in a way Bernie her­self nev­er could. Yet, with­out Bernie’s pho­tographs, Leah isn’t capa­ble of cre­ativ­i­ty. Does this make Leah less than Bernie, inter­per­son­al­ly or artistically?

In Sirens & Mus­es, Angress nego­ti­ates a sim­i­lar dynam­ic deft­ly and with enor­mous nuance. Louisa’s work is re-ener­gized with a boom when Kari­na pos­es for her. Yet Kari­na also makes her own paint­ings in which Louisa plays no part. Must mus­ing go both ways to be tru­ly equal?

By queer­ing the artist/​muse dynam­ic and mak­ing Kari­na a suc­cess­ful painter in her own right, Angress offers us a new read­ing of the muse: not as some­one dis­em­pow­ered, but rather some­one with pow­er who choos­es to give some of it to anoth­er. Kari­na is such an effec­tive muse for Louisa pre­cise­ly because she is an artist, too, and knows what artists need when they are strug­gling: the inten­si­ty of a true north. The rela­tion­ship between the two women seems tru­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive to me, tru­ly equal — a pli­able and plas­tic exchange of ener­gy, will, and inspi­ra­tion. There will come a time, the nov­el implies, when Kari­na will need Louisa’s light. 

Still, no mat­ter how a rela­tion­ship — even one between two queer women — func­tions in pri­vate, the way the world sees it remains anoth­er mat­ter. It’s this dual­i­ty that I set out to explore House­mates. Once Bernie and Leah’s rela­tion­ship turns roman­tic, Leah becomes obsessed with Bernie’s per­son as well as her art. But although Bernie returns Leah’s attrac­tion and affec­tion, her artis­tic out­put is in no way depen­dent on Leah. I took inspi­ra­tion from the real-life roman­tic and artis­tic part­ner­ship between large-for­mat film pho­tog­ra­ph­er Berenice Abbott and art crit­ic Eliz­a­beth McCaus­land. The optics of a rela­tion­ship are skewed fur­ther when one part­ner is seen as an artist while the oth­er, like Leah, is per­ceived as ​“only” a crit­ic. Many peo­ple know Abbott’s name, but few are famil­iar with McCausland’s, and if they are, it’s almost always only because of Abbott. If two peo­ple are col­lab­o­ra­tors but only one becomes famous, is the love and ener­gy that ignit­ed the col­lab­o­ra­tion inher­ent­ly unequal? Can art ever real­ly be made or under­stood in isolation?

As I wrote, I strove to acknowl­edge the real­i­ties of cap­i­tal­ism and homo­pho­bia while hold­ing onto the idea that the ener­gy between two peo­ple who love each oth­er as both humans and artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tors cre­ates a very par­tic­u­lar kind of force field. Noth­ing is ever equal, the nar­ra­tor of House­mates offers near the end of the book, yet per­haps it is not exact­ly equal­i­ty that Bernie and Leah seek. Touch­ing that force field for a time, being at its live­ly cen­ter togeth­er, even if it’s unsta­ble, is worth it.