Jane Smiley on her novel about 10 days of swimming, eating and screwing
by Joey Rubin
Jane Smiley’s latest novel, Ten Days in the Hills, is creating waves in the world of literary criticism the way Britney’s shaved head seems to be doing everywhere else. The cause? Graphic sex, of course. John Updike wrote that Smiley has “set a new mark for explicitness in a work of non-pornographic intent.” And New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani found the “pages and pages of R-rated (sometimes X-rated) accounts of sexual shenanigans” too much to bear.
Smiley, the author of eleven other novels, including the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winner A Thousand Acres, tells the story of ten people waiting out the beginning of the Iraq War in two mansions in the Hollywood Hills. The characters — which include a famous aging director named Max, his legendarily beautiful ex-wife Zoe, and their children, friends and lovers — sit around talking about the war, worrying about the world, watching movies and screwing.
But according to Smiley, all the sex is just a way of talking about love. “My theory of love includes a lot of sex. And yes, it’s pleasurable and enjoyable and interesting and deeply communicative sex.” Nerve spoke to Smiley about what it means to “make love” in a novel, and why she’s glad she’s not Angelina Jolie. — Joey Rubin
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