Yelena Moskovich describes her second novel, Virtuoso, as a book about “queerness, diaspora, intimacy between women, anger, eroticism, symbolic and literal death and rebirth.” A truly robust overture housed in relatively few pages, this novel explores all of these profound themes and more through the lives of four women, their loves and losses, their explorations of self and other.
Moskovich took time with The Nerd Daily to discuss how Virtuoso, recently longlisted for the 2020 Dylan Thomas Prize, refuses to be constrained by popular conceptions of what a novel should or should not be. Read on to learn more about the author’s diverse artistic interests, how her own life experiences influenced her writing, and which classic ‘80s song makes her want to get up and dance.
Hi Yelena! Thank you so much for taking the time to answer a few questions for The Nerd Daily. And congratulations on Virtuoso recently making the longlist for the 2020 Dylan Thomas Prize! First off, could you tell us a little about yourself and your sophomore novel, Virtuoso?
Sure. I was born in Soviet Ukraine and immigrated with my parents to the American Midwest during the fall of the USSR, in 1991. I then moved on to Boston, and then to Paris, where I have been living for the past 13 years. My two nationalities – American and French – were both worked for in my lifetime, which is a funny, but also quite liberating feeling when it comes to thinking of national identity and territory.
Virtuoso is my second attempt at this entity we call a novel. It’s a space I’d like to propose, a space I made outside of myself, between two covers, that I also hope can be a sort of shelter for a space inside the reader.
It’s about queerness, diaspora, intimacy between women, anger, eroticism, symbol and literal death and rebirth.
Your author bio indicates some notable similarities between the places you have called home and the path of Zorka, a main character in the novel. You were born in Ukraine, emigrated to Wisconsin with your family as Jewish refugees in 1991, and now live in Paris. Zorka grows up in Prague, then moves to Wisconsin, and finally ends up living in Paris. How much is the novel reflective of your life and experiences, if at all?
Since I knew that I wanted to have queer characters that were coming out of the Soviet diaspora, much like me, I leaned on immigration routes and places that I myself was familiar with. On the other hand, Zorka is so different from me, that it was a very separate and fresh way of experiencing these circumstances and places that were otherwise so familiar.
Also, I find that so often the immigrant experience narrative takes place in these big cosmopolitan cities (like NYC etc), but I have no connection to a cosmopolitan youth or adolescence. I grew up in a Soviet household mis- or dis-placed into the American Midwest from the age of 7 to 18. I love this palette of a teenage small town Americana – naïve, insignificant, quietly devastating – a sort of vacuum for the rapture that is coming of age.
Do you have a “favorite” character in the novel, one you felt more attached to than others when all was said and done?
Probably Zorka, she’s everything I am not in the light of day.
Virtuoso has a compelling structure, frequently featuring short bursts of text which are quite impactful. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the structure is your use of internet chatroom conversations to comprise a handful of very unique chapters. Did you begin the novel with this structure in mind or did it evolve over time?
I suppose I always begin with something that looks nothing like a beginning. There’s a lot of free-falling, patting contours, poking around, being nosey, being bossy, being humbled.
The shape of this novel was a miracle I chose to believe in. I think that’s my format in general for all my acts of creative expression.
In terms of the chat rooms: Part of the chit-chatter I overheard when listening in on this shaping novel was this internet chatroom talk. I started reminiscing, remembering what the virtual space of confession and connection and sexual exploration was like for me. It became quite meaningful and essential, as if it had been there all along.
Can you talk a little more specifically about your deliberate use of breaks and blocking of text into shorter chunks or scenes as a device in the novel?
I came to America when I was seven (and was put into an Orthodox Jewish school), and had to learn three alphabets at once (Russian, which I continued, English, and Hebrew). I think it made me very agile in some ways, and quite slow in others. I’m a very slow reader, and when I was young got easily discouraged by a page stuffed with words. I suppose that’s why I gravitated to plays and poetry. Nothing against a textually-hearty page, but it’s very intimidating for me. I like a lot of breathing room. And silence. And space to move, stretch, and misinterpret.
Also, it’s a bit like choral music. I like to put a couple lines or thoughts or images out there, and see how these fragments can sing together.
The end of Virtuoso is causing quite a bit of puzzlement and conversation among those who have read the novel. Without giving any spoilers, what were you intentions with the resolution (or lack thereof) of this novel?
I’m laughing as I’m reading this – only because I remember writing it and feeling like: there we go, I finally wrote a solid ending! (Because I got the same what’s-with-the-ending buzz for The Natashas). But I guess it’s not about being solid or not. I realize the reaction I am getting to the ending is more of a testament to the chasm in our definitions of “an ending.”
I really don’t seek to puzzle the reader or withhold clarity in any way. Quite the opposite, I feel like I am really giving, giving as much and as generously as I can. But I myself don’t seek resolution in a work of art, I only want to be left with a distinct vibration. And so, that is what I try to leave the reader with, a generous, distinct vibration.
Also, my first relationship with text was quite sensuous and transcendental, particularly the influence of poetry. No one scolds a poem for not “tying things up” properly at the end. There is no expectation of such a thing. And yet, when it comes to prose, or “the novel”, we have been so conditioned by our literary heritage (from Aristotle’s dramatic arc to the glorification of “reality”), that it’s no wonder we have such invested expectations from what “a novel” owes us. I don’t mean to suddenly get political, but everything we know about a novel today has an accumulation of decisions throughout history to sanction a certain type of storytelling, with heavy roots in morality or an instructive punch-line – an ending! Is this truly the format that brings us the most pleasure, the most stir, meaning, connection, sense of aliveness, compassion, significance etc? Is this the format that can best hold our paradoxes, that can best include the spectrum, the depth, the right and wrong, light and dark of us? I don’t know. All I can do is create works and seek formats that bring to life these sensations for me – even if elements of my format do not conform with inherited expectations of what a novel should or should not give the reader…
What did you learn from writing your first book, The Natashas, that you applied to writing Virtuoso? Which was more of a challenge to write?
I wrote The Natashas quite blindly, straight from my gut, just following one inkling to another. Before that, I wrote plays or poems. I mainly also read plays or poems. So I had no idea what was expected of me. What readers awaited when someone presented them with a thing called “a novel.” After the release of The Natashas, I was made aware of how much “I had broken the rules” of novel-writing.
With Virtuoso, I had to take more responsibility for my craft and my intended or unintentional rebellion. But I also took more time to be aware of “how I work”, I tried to get to know my own writing process a lot more intimately and precisely.
What books/authors would you say have most influenced your writing?
Like I mentioned, I read mostly plays and theatre. It wasn’t really until say – 8 years ago – that I really started to read novels.
So in terms of influences, without being grandoise, but I would have to say my first significance influence was the Torah (that we read and studied in my Orthodox school in America, from age 7 -10), also the Jewish prayers that we learned, their cadence and textures – these texts that were always a breath away from song – they reminded me of Russian poetry.
Then for theatre, my huge influences were: Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, Sarah Kane, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Carol Churchill, Jon Fosse,
And poetry, Anne Sexton, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna Akhmatova, Ilya Kaminsky, Joseph Brodsky, Bill Knott, Farough Farrokhzad…
In more recent years: Patti Smith’s M Train, Hanne Orstavik’s Love, Andrès Barba’s Such Small Hands, Yoko Tawada’s The Naked Eye…
Your artistic endeavors extend well beyond writing novels. Could you talk a bit about your experiences with theatre and visual art, as well as what draws you to these various mediums of expressing yourself?
My background is in theatre, specifically physical theatre. In my teens, I wanted to be an actor and I threw myself wholly in all acting opportunities (traveling auditions, community theatre, commercial fairs etc), and soon realized that I couldn’t stand the lines I had to read for these monologues. In one acting class, I remember saying I don’t understand why these characters are written to speak like this. The teacher said, if I think I can do any better, why don’t I write a play. And so I did. And I fell completely, wholly in love with dialogue and with writing for the stage, for the body.
I got my undergrad in Dramatic Writing (Theatre Studies) at Emerson College in Boston, but was increasingly drawn to physical theatre (or what is most known as dance-theatre). I read Jacques Lecoq’s book Le Corps Poétique, and knew I had to study this method. I came to Paris and did the 2 year programme at Ecole Jacques Lecoq — which was completely physical work. We were not allowed to write. Everything had to be explored with your body in space. And everything was collaborative. It was a very challenging but also liberating way for me to better understand how art “moves”, how it is composed, how it breathes. We did a lot of cross-medium work, like transposing a painting, text, colors, music, light, architecture etc into physicalized spaces. After being frustrated with what I felt was a “falseness” of traditional theatre, I had the space and time and structure to hone my own way of composing that rang true to me.
After Lecoq, I co-founded my own theatre company, La Compagnie Pavlov, and we developed one creation together (Vestiges / Vertiges) that we performed in Paris and in Los Angeles. Soon after, however, I just got burnt out. Theatre is such a particular profession, it wrings you out completely. I missed writing, words, just being able to create without applying for funds, rehearsal space, residencies, etc etc. I went back to my roots so to speak, and step away from theatre and began writing The Natashas – as I mentioned – pretty blindly. I just wrote. And wrote. And wrote. For two years. And suddenly, I looked down and I had a novel.
As far as my visual art, I’ve been doing this and that my whole life. Drawing, constructing, sewing, whatever I could get my hands on. Most recently, I’ve fallen in love with color, with paint. So I paint a lot these days.
Are you currently working on any new projects that you could share with our readers?
I’m currently working on my third novel, which I’m very, very, very excited about – but unfortunately I can’t say anything more just yet. But I will say that painting has really unlocked something for me with my writing. This third novel is a manifestation of this new space in me.
Let’s Get Nerdy: Behind the Writer with 9 Quick Questions
- First book that made you fall in love with reading: I think it was Jean Genet’s The Maids that I found by chance at a used book store in my early teens. There were definitely texts I connected to deeply before that, but always a fragment, a poem, a line. This was my first experience with a whole book (or a play in this case) being very meaningful to me.
- 3 books you would take on a desert island: Collected Anne Sexton Poems, Collected plays of Jon Fosse, the screenplay of Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders
- Movie that you know by heart: Aimée & Jaguar by Max Färberböck
- Song that makes you want to get up and dance: 99 Luftballoons by Nena
- Place that everyone should see in their lifetime: That dark, stuffy pit in yourself that holds both shame and forgiveness?
- Introvert or extrovert: I’m an extroverted introvert.
- Coffee, tea, or neither: Coffee.
- First job: Working at a conveyer belt, sticking stickers with bar-codes on magnets when I was 14 I think? (my dad had to sign off for me because I was under the legal working age, and I think the legal age was 15)
- Person you admire most and why: Maybe it’s my Soviet past or innate renegade-ness that makes me a bit stubborn to the idea of “admiring” someone in particular, also because pedestals make me feel very uneasy. But I admire gestures that are simultaneously subversive and kind. I admire people that can hold faith and doubt together in their heart with softness.
Yelena Moskovich was born in Ukraine (former USSR) and emigrated to Wisconsin with her family as Jewish refugees in 1991. She studied theatre at Emerson College, Boston, and in France at the Lecoq School of Physical Theatre and Université Paris 8. Her plays and performances have been produced in the US, Canada, France, and Sweden. She has also written for Vogue, Frieze Magazine, The Paris Review, Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, Happy Reader, Mixte Magazine, the Skirt Chronicles, and Dyke_on Magazine. She is the winner of the 2017 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize. In 2018, she served as a curator and exhibiting artist at the Los Angeles Queer Biennial. Her first novel The Natashas was published in 2016. She lives in Paris.
