Louise Rafkin - Writing Sample

Business Lunch With Amy Bloom

This therapist, fiction, nonfiction and copy writer talks about career trajectories, mental health and summer reading.

You may know Amy Bloom the writer. Her short fiction appears regularly in the New Yorker, Harper's, Story and Best America Short Stories. Her non-fiction has been a staple in Mirabella, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and New Woman. She was nominated for the National Book Award and teaches at Wesleyan and Yale.

What most people don't know about are Bloom's two other lives. She's a practicing therapist, and joined in a therapists' roundtable discussion last spring that resulted in a New York Times magazine article, "What Do We Talk About When We Are Paying Someone to Listen?" She is also a copywriter for top commercial companies: Before its demise, Bloom was one of the high-stylists writing for the slick J. Peterman catalog (think Elaine of TV's Seinfeld).

Bloom's latest story collection, out this month, is A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, (Random House, $22.95).

What's the career trajectory of someone who writes highly-regarded fiction, does psychotherapy, and turns out copy for national catalog companies?

Before I went to college, I waitressed, picked peanuts, tended bar, worked with autistic children, founded a hotline for pregnant teenagers who wanted abortions, worked as a courier for the Boston Stock Exchange and realized that, with a college education, much of this might be unnecessary. I approached college like a job, did it in three years and waitressed for five years, about 20 hours a week, first at a falafel place, then at a Mafia bar. (I bragged, "Hey, I speak Italian," and the manager said, "Nobody has to know that.")

After college, I fell into a plum job, acting and working in a repertory company. I thought about directing. My then-boyfriend and his young son missed me, so I went back to Connecticut and became a social worker. I loved, and still love, doing psychotherapy. I opened my own practice after a couple of years, because I didn't know any better, and brought in a couple of colleagues; our small group made a name for itself in providing intelligent, compassionate, well-trained psychotherapy, from psychoanalysis to treatment for toddlers. That was in the good old days before HMOs.

Now, I write a lot and practice a little and I see every patient on a sliding scale, since I hate HMOs and won't do business with them, and this arrangement allows me to sleep at night.

I started writing unexpectedly and here I am. Sometime in the last decade, I stopped scanning the want ads for waitresses. Five years ago, I stopped scanning for social work jobs.

Several of the places in which you've made a name -- Mirabella, the Peterman catalog -- have gone under. How is it riding a sinking ship?

My emotional investment as a writer is in my fiction. I feel lucky to have worked for J. Peterman, particularly for Don Staley, who was the Creative Director and the actual voice of J. Peterman. He was a wonderful teacher ... And I was sorry to see Mirabella close shop, and was sorrier, in the first place, to see it become something other than what Grace Mirabella had tried to make it in its first incarnation. But I'm not much given to nostalgia.

Do you draw any larger lessons -- about market forces, public appetites, whatever -- from the demise of these places? Any general thoughts on the state of women's magazine today?

If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at who She gives it to. If you want to know where feminism went awry and the cultural shoals it crashed on, look at Cosmo Girl and the rest. Lots on makeup and the shopping experience, and more on the stock market than there used to be. I miss the fiction, the intelligent articles and the old ratio of editorial to advertising that used to give you the sense of reading, rather than skimming a catalogue.

How did you get into copywriting? Does psychotherapy training give you an unfair advantage in knowing how to market to people, or manipulate their desires?

I got lucky with copywriting. I liked the J. Peterman catalogue and got in touch with Don Staley, sending him two short stories. He liked them and gave me an on-the-spot audition, (writing a blurb about) a Javanese caftan. He hired me right then and we worked together for six years.

Psychotherapy gives no one an unfair advantage in anything, except that one has the capacity to be a good listener and assess when people are lying to your face. I think most of marketing is common sense and a willingness not to assume that the people you're selling to are stupider than you are.

How does your work as a therapist impact your writing? Do your clients end up in your stories -- veiled, of course?

Second question first. I don't need to use my clients, because I have the rest of the world, and my imagination. I wouldn't use my clients, no matter how veiled, because it would be utterly and unequivocally, morally and ethically wrong. And anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't understand the meaning of the word "wrong."

I think the only way being a therapist has affected my writing is that I've had the privilege of observing people close up, in their most intimate thoughts and in extreme situations. It makes one a better listener and more thoughtful about people.

What do you think of therapy as an ongoing thing? Do you think anyone ever "gets better," or is therapy something that can go on and on?

Therapy can go on and on. Some people are so damaged, the relationship with their therapist is one of the few they will ever succeed in having. With healthier people, one hopes that 10 years would do it. I rather think that for many people, a couple of years should do the trick. Yes, people get better -- meaning that they understand why they do what they do, and in understanding, they come to shift their conflicting wishes around so that they actually act on their wishes and the healthy ones outweigh the destructive ones, and they can tell the difference.

What do you think of the burgeoning practice of doing therapy with clients online rather than in person?

Good for helping people stay on their medications. Better than nothing for the phobic, the isolated, the schizophrenic. As a substitute for face-to-face, when that's available? Ridiculous.

And what do you think of the quality of fiction, and non-fiction, that serious readers can find online? Are there things best not done online, and some things for which online is perfect?

Online is a great place for non-fiction, essays, news, anonymous safe sex, and shopping. I like to hold a book.

Do you surf the Web? Where do you go? What are your bookmarks?

ArtsandLiteratureDaily.com every day -- this site excerpts news from around the world. The New York Times (online) every day. Bookmarks: Amazon, Bibliophile, Lush, Epicurious, Slate, Salon, Homeportfolio, and Blue Mountain greeting cards -- mostly to my children and other children that I am fond of.

What are the best books, in your opinion, in your different fields -- psychotherapy and fiction?

Top three in psychotherapy: Anthony Storr, The Art of Psychotherapy; Lester Havens, Making Contact; Roy Schafer, Language and Insight.

In fiction, The Deptford Trilogy, Robertson Davies; Sacred Country, Rose Tremain; Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen.

Any advice on summer reads?

See the above, of course. Do add Zadie Smith's White Teeth, which is as good as, but deserves better than, the gushing hype she is getting over her youth (which, of course, is not her fault, nor is evidenced in her work) or her skin color.

Sarah Waters' book Tipping the Velvet is full, rich, bawdy and fascinating. In terms of classics, I recommend all of Jane Austen; Chekov's short stories; V.S. Pritchett's short stories, and Alice Munro's book Open Secrets.

If you could have lunch with any three people, living or dead, who would they be and where would you go?

The trouble, of course, is that with all these famous people, above all, we want them as we believe them to be, not as they are. I don't want Oscar Wilde's whining, Otis Redding's marital complexities or Colette's anti-semitism. I want them as they are in my heart. So, Oscar Wilde -- if I could take him to Aureole in New York City. Otis Redding -- I'd take him anywhere he wants and hope that lunch leads to dinner, and breakfast. Colette -- dinner at The Little Door in Los Angeles. Of course, I wouldn't want to bring these people together. Them paying attention to each other and not me? No, thank you!