Margaret Vandenburg

When I first encountered Margaret Vandenburg, I was a junior at Barnard and she was teaching a not to miss—according to student reviews—class on literary Modernism. Although I was years away from starting my own career as a teacher, I was impressed not only by her intricate knowledge of texts like To The Lighthouse, Dubliners, and The Sound and The Fury, but her skill at forming a classroom in which every student, even those who generally remained on the margins of campus life and class discussion, was made to understand that their insights and experiences were valuable to our class.

Getting to know Margaret over the years—in subsequent English classes, in the online book groups she runs, and now through her work—I’ve come to see this as a throughline in everything she does. From the margins, reaching out toward the center, and from the center, reaching out to the margins. And not just as good pedagogy, although there is that, but to enrich and challenge us all in the process. To make us wonder if we shouldn’t be reconsidering categories like margin and center — if the center can even hold, or if maybe Yeats was on to something.

Craze, her newest book and the sequel to her novel An American In Paris, continues that work. We’re looking at a novel (that most pluralistic of forms) from the woman a binary hates to see coming, she who “topples the tyrant” with joy, the professor helping decades of Barnard students emerge from the ashes of Modernism to grapple with the postmodern condition. And while Craze is a very corporeal novel, with lady lovers (the novel’s terminology) getting off left and right, there’s also an incredible amount of political savvy and theoretical underpinning to the work that Vandenburg is not shy about explicitly including. The politics and theory are central to and inextricable from the narrative plot, and that to me is a real craft flex. Because that’s what it feels like to be alive right now—like the capital-letter forces of History and Politics are bearing down on our personal lives. Especially the lives of queer people. 

Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t insist on joy in the meantime. Here’s Leonard Cohen: “I don’t consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.” 

Wild, wet, wanting—Craze is a Sapphic shout of celebration. I had the chance to speak with Vandenburg over Zoom about the revelry of the Queer Craze, what it has to say about our current political moment, and the importance of fun in the fight for liberation.

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Eva Dunsky: This is such an intellectual, theoretical, erudite…fun and sexy romp of a novel. It’s ‘both and,’ and for a novel that is explicitly concerned with the danger of the binary, it sure destroys that one right off the bat. I’m wondering what you gain from pushing the corporeal, sexy, hot and heavy parts right up against, for instance, a soliloquy about the androgynous nature of Georgia O’Keeffe. Is that a natural mode for you? Is it a conscious choice? What do you think that affords you as a writer?

Margaret Vandenburg: In this case, and maybe in all cases, we know that the body is a political entity in and of itself. When bodies are part of the mix, whether it’s in literature or politics or even interpersonal relationships, they’re a destabilizing force, the thing we’re supposed to repress in order to privilege the mind and spirit. So if you’re writing a novel that’s trying to push back or deconstruct structures—and I think you implicitly framed Craze this way—then the body does this work. It’s a natural complement to theoretical discourse. 

I’m also not a big fan of character and plot-driven fiction; I like novels of ideas better. But there’s always a danger of tipping into an almost non-fictional space. I’m trying to toe the line between fiction and polemic. I think literature can do certain kinds of political work, and I’d like to avail myself of the appeal of fiction to reach as many readers as possible.  

I mean, the novel is the most pluralistic form and is definitely suited to that work. Are you consciously thinking about toeing that line and finding that balance as you’re drafting and revising? Or is it so inherent to the aims of the novel that the bodily sections and the political and historical sections are naturally interwoven?

They’re naturally interwoven, but I have to constantly force myself to do the kinds of things fiction writers are supposed to do. I’ve been criticized because I don’t describe what characters look like, for example. Needless to say, I don’t want to describe what characters look like—

—Yeah, right. I don’t care.

I don’t care either! At the same time, I’m aware of how novelists are supposed to write, so it’s this conscious balancing act as I go along. I sometimes have to go back and add dialogue.

Same!

[laughs] You do?

A reader will say ‘hey, this character has been out of her body thinking about Adrienne Rich for three pages, you need to set this in a scene.’

So why are we writing fiction? Because we want to reach a larger audience? 

Because we want to reach a larger audience, and because there’s some part of me that just wants to entertain. I also feel like the political stuff and the entertainment value are one in the same.

They can be.

And I just love fiction. 

Me, too. 

Until they invent a better form—

But they won’t, because the novel is so great.

Craze takes place during this remarkably tolerant and free moment in U.S. history, when there’s this flourishing of queer life, but there are also so many labels, rules, and expectations that govern it. It’s something Henri has to grapple with as she’s navigating this new-to-her New York scene, and it’s a really interesting contradiction. How did you make sense of it through your narrator?

I wrote An American in Paris [the prequel to Craze] 25 years ago, knowing full well I would write the sequel one day. In the meantime, I wrote several other books and plays about pressing political and cultural subjects—drone pilots, psychopharmacological crowd control, disinformation campaigns in American elections, things like that—until the recent backlash against LGBTQ+ rights took center stage. When we write historical fiction, we’re also writing about what’s happening right here, right now. So, for example, Craze’s treatment of gender labels and the rules governing queer life during the Roaring Twenties also pertains to things like the proliferation and policing of gender categories in the new millennium.

If I were to theorize these parallel historical moments, I might reference Michel Foucault’s ideas about how categories are intrinsically prescriptive rather than liberating. I’m deeply concerned about the unintended consequences of these trends. But I’m also gratified, because I think we’re moving away from this way of understanding gender fluidity. And that’s our ultimate goal, isn’t it? If I write another sequel, Henri will be older and able to make some of this implicit commentary more explicit . . . something to look forward to!

Being able to inhabit that retrospective mode at the end of a potential third book would be really cool. Speaking of narrative distance, how did you decide to set the narrator in 1934? Can you explain some of the history informing that decision?

I wanted to take advantage of the paradox that Prohibition was one of the generators of the Queer Craze. Outlawing alcohol inadvertently funneled everyone—jams (heterosexuals) and queers alike—into the mafia-run realm of the speakeasies. As a result, so-called slummers rubbed elbows with lesbians like Henri Adams. The end of Prohibition signaled the end of this fabulous free-for-all. In other words, 1934 sounded the death knell of the Queer Craze. The raid at Frank’s Place in the last chapter of the novel was the beginning of the end.

If An American in Paris and Craze are both meant to focus on historical moments of queer joy, isn’t the coming decade of queer history post-craze too depressing for a third installment? 

If I write another sequel, I’ll place Henri (who was born at the turn of the previous century) in the post-Stonewall era, right at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. I’d have to make short work of the nightmare of those intervening 35 years, which is fine by me, because what is there to say about biding time in the closet? Then the narrative would slow down and follow the Civil Rights movement, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and how queers managed to meet the historical moment. This is my current preoccupation, another echo of the conclusion of Craze, where Henri and her friends contemplate the possibility of mounting a resistance movement that never really gathers steam. My concern now is that we don’t have the muscle memory of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, which we might need to exercise again—because queer people, not unlike African Americans, are among the most effective protest leaders and civil rights communities in American history.

Because queer people are often the first to fall under fire. 

But also because we have that capacity. Other people often don’t, right? It might be a chicken and egg question. In any case, sometimes I think queer people are quintessentially American. African Americans and queer people are the ones that really champion freedom. The ones that stand up for our rights.

Henri reflects on the societal and political events of the 1920s in ways that show her consciousness of the reader. Do you imagine that she’s speaking to someone? Who is she speaking to?

The first book, An American of Paris, was geared toward young people who weren’t aware of their rich history. Thankfully, that’s changed over the last 25 years. In Craze, I’m trying to reach a larger readership. It’s still for young people who can benefit from knowing that we’ve been through this before, but also older people like me and possibly you, people who have experienced the remarkable queer Renaissance we’ve enjoyed over the past two decades. I’m writing for the larger queer community, of course—one of the reasons Henri’s best friend is Crystal, a renowned Pansy Craze drag queen—but also to lesbians in particular by way of writing us back into queer history. I would also venture to say that Craze is a crossover book, like Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. A little—if not a lot—of something for everyone!

Is that just to address as wide an audience as possible because that’s what we’re meant to do as fiction writers making marketable work, or is there a political underpinning to that decision?

It’s political. There’s an essay I wrote for The Gay and Lesbian Review as part of an issue called “Strange Fruit.” I claim that queers get into trouble when we’re no longer “strange” enough. In other words, during the Queer Craze, so-called straight people flocked to see drag performers at the Astor Hotel and the Cotton Club. The Hamilton Lodge Drag Ball in Harlem attracted 6,000 spectators in its heyday. We’re living in a similar moment in history, with things like RuPaul’s Drag Race and marriage equality. That’s when it gets potentially gnarly. That’s when the powers that be get upset.

At the same time, it’s a political strategy, a way of dissolving exclusionary boundaries between us and them, a potentially good thing. Some queer people militate against what they think of as a conservative process of normalization. I don’t think it’s conservative. I think you have to work both inside and outside the system. Harvey Milk and Jared Polis on the inside, Lavender Menace and ACT UP on the outside. That kind of thing.

Definitely—bring lesbians back into the fold of queer life, but also bring queer life into the fold of “mainstream” life. Again, it seems you’re concerned with challenging the rigid labels that we apply, because that’s where we get into politics that are dangerous to us as humans.

Agreed. I’m not even sure I think gender is a thing, let alone multiple categories of a thing. What I mean by this is that asking why someone is transgender or homosexual is like asking someone why they’re cis or heterosexual. Labels potentially underscore dangerous distinctions, especially if we assume people are “born that way.” Bearing in mind that the crackdown in the wake of the Queer Craze included pink triangles and Nazi concentration camps, I think we need to be careful with categories and labels, not to put too fine a point on it.

This is such a heavily researched book. What were your North Star texts, or the texts that were really important as you were writing?

George Chauncey’s Gay New York is a great book. Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. Chad Heap, Slumming. Langston Hughes, The Big Sea. My favorite is probably Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer. It’s incredible. He’s a model historian to me, because he writes history like novels, with just the right balance of research and storytelling. 

In some ways, we’re always decrying the end: the end of art, the end of democracy, the end of free expression. Most recently—and I know that you’re writing about this—the end of the planet amidst climate change. We’ve certainly cried wolf before, but it also seems like this moment is subject to uniquely catastrophic pressures. Have we seen this all before? Is the world really ending this time?

The apocalyptic vision is an archetype. It’s been around forever. At the same time, there are historical tipping points. This is the moment in human history. We’ve been trashing the planet for centuries, and it’s finally caught up with us. There might be a silver lining. Being on the brink means we have an unprecedented opportunity to reawaken our survival instinct, to put it in the grandest terms. Postmodernists like Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida warned us about this apocalyptic turning point. We could have listened to them forty or fifty years ago, before it was almost too late. The good news is that it’s unlikely that a mere 10,000 years of so-called civilization has eclipsed our instinct to survive. The bad news is that it’s going to be a rude awakening.

The tipping point of all tipping points is happening at this moment.

Yes, and it’s everything everywhere all at once. Climate change. Artificial intelligence. Even human rights to the extent that they’re increasingly at risk in the face of all of the above.

And still this book is full of optimism, fun, and revelry—up until the very moment when that becomes impossible. It seems sort of like a map. 

It’s meant to be a roadmap, especially the call to arms at the end of the novel, along with its investment in bodies and pleasure. We talked about this a lot at Craze’s book launch at the LGBT Community Center in New York—about how fun and revelry can be deeply disruptive forces, ways to destabilize coercive structures. Never underestimate the power of fun.

Is there anything else that you want your readers to know?

We haven’t said much about Crystal—Henri’s best friend in the novel—a trans or transvestite character, depending on how my readers respond to Crystal’s version of gender fluidity. When I describe Crystal as a “body in motion,” I’m in conversation with Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood, novels that prefigure contemporary nonbinary gender identities. I’m also engaging with how Postmodern theorists like Helene Cixous claim binary oppositions always flip into hierarchies—male over female and minds over bodies, for example—and how Jacques Derrida offers ways to deconstruct these oppositions. A lot is at stake, given the coercive power structures I was just talking about. Gender fluidity is one of our most powerful weapons. We need to make sure we win the culture war this time around.

The parallels between now and almost 100 years ago are astonishing. We need this. Recently I’ve heard people claim that the conservative right is trotting out the trans or gender question as a distraction from more meaningful issues, but I don’t think that’s quite right. I actually think it’s foundationally important, and not just their means of distraction. It can be a really important tool, as a means to the end of collective liberation. And I think that comes across really clearly in Craze.

Eva Dunsky is a writer, teacher, and translator. She has been named a semifinalist for the American Short(er) Fiction Contest and the Driftwood Story Prize, was nominated for the PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, and has received grants from Institut Ramon Llull and Columbia University to fund her translations. She teaches first-year Writing and Literature courses at School of Visual Arts and Baruch College, and is at work on her first novel.