We chat with author Olivia Wolfgang-Smith about Mutual Interest, which is a classic in the making: a mesmerising novel about marriage and ambition, sexuality and secrecy, and the true costs of building an empire.
Can you talk a little about what inspired Mutual Interest? Was there a real-life personal care empire you drew inspiration from?
I’m generally fascinated by the personal care industry of the 19th and early 20th centuries—then as now, it’s interesting to look at cosmetics and hygiene products as powerful tools of self-expression (of both personality and gender identity) as well as instruments of shame and capitalism. But the biggest single historical inspiration for Mutual Interest—a tidbit of trivia with which I took enormous liberties—comes from the origin of Procter & Gamble. William Procter and James Gamble were initially rivals, a candlemaker and soap maker in competition for their industries’ common raw materials. They happened to marry into the same family, however, and were thus persuaded to form a partnership. Among many other changes, I escalated things into a true love story and invented the character of Vivian, as a mastermind to orchestrate it all—but there’s a seed of historical enemies-to-partners truth there.
Oscar and Vivian are both transplants in New York, yet come to make a home for themselves in the city. What role does New York City, especially New York City at the turn of the 20th century, play in the novel?
I’m a New York City transplant myself, and I was definitely interested in writing about the transformative power of this particular city for transplants and natives alike—the way it attracts people itching with existential or practical ambitions, and how it serves those people (or doesn’t) in different phases of their lives. It often feels to me as if there’s a core collaborative tension in New York between the urges to reinvent for the future and to mythologize the past, which made it a natural fit for this story and these characters.
Mutual Interest takes place in a time of enormous technological and social change. This era and its influences are still with us, but that awareness can be hard to access day to day. I think in some ways this book is my attempt to better connect with New York’s layered past.
What was life like for queer folks in early 1900s New York? How would Oscar, Squire, and Vivian have found community?
The short answer is that, then as now (and as in any era and place), queer people of all persuasions and personalities were making their lives all over the city. Labels and conceptions of identity may have been different, and archival records can be frustratingly incomplete, whether for reasons of prejudice or of self-preservation. (We see some of these eliding tactics at work in Mutual Interest, most notably the lavender marriage designed to disguise the protagonists’ relationship.) But we have always existed, and there is a rich history with which to commune. In New York in particular, centers of queer community included Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Harlem, and the Brooklyn waterfront.
For those whose archival interest is piqued by the glimpses we get of historical queer community through Oscar, Squire, and Vivian’s individual journeys in Mutual Interest, I recommend the following books as starting places: When Brooklyn Was Queer by Hugh Ryan, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman, and Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives by Amelia Possanza.
How did you come to the narrative style of the novel? What were some of your literary inspirations?
For my entire reading life I have most loved “novels of manners,” the drawing-room romances and social satires of Edith Wharton, E. M. Forster, and other titans of the genre. With Mutual Interest I am playing with the themes, plots, and material culture of these geniuses—and adding another queer story to a shelf that I wished, growing up, had been more crowded.
Much of this novel’s style grew out of its highly omniscient narrator—a voice that, as I wrote and revised, became increasingly conspiratorial with the reader, affectionately judgmental of the characters, and highly interested in tangents. Attempting to write an all-knowing narrator creates fascinating questions of scale and focus—where to begin and end the story, for one thing, and where to declare the limits of certainty. (A god-like point of view, I found as I wrote, lends itself to primary interests in gossip and geology.)
Can you talk a little about how capitalism and empire function in the novel?
One thing that the characters in Mutual Interest are trying to sort out is whether and how a job can love you back. Capitalism functions within the novel as it does in the world outside: as an all-pervasive force that tangles itself into questions of identity, security, and creative practice. Some folks strive for meaning by working within this system; others strive for meaning by working to disrupt it. No matter one’s philosophy, temptation can be high to outsource one’s sense of equilibrium or self-worth to meeting a standard of productivity—or attaining a standard of power over others.
Throughout Mutual Interest, all three protagonists are repeatedly reassessing their priorities in navigating their personal and romantic lives alongside capitalist definitions of success. In our current era of “rainbow capitalism,” with corporations pandering to the LGBTQ+ community every June, I enjoyed playing with a different story of queer identity and commercial commodification.
What do you hope readers take away from Mutual Interest?
I set out to write a unique love story that broadened my own sense of connection to history and community. I’m enormously hopeful that these characters, and their relationships, struggles, and enthusiasms, resonate with readers as well. Of all my influences, I was perhaps most mindful as I wrote of Forster’s posthumously published queer classic, Maurice, and its poignant dedication “to a Happier Year.” Writing Mutual Interest, I felt in communion with queer readers and writers both before and after me. If I’m able to join that conversation, and if this book finds its people and speaks to some of them in a way that matters, I’ll be very happy.
