four questions
Susan Shapiro chats with Platinum.
A self proclaimed "shrinkaholic."
WHAT BOOK, CD OR OTHER
MEDIA DO YOU LONG TO SHARE?
When I was in high school at Roeper City
and Country School in Birmingham, I was
drawn to two hilarious sex-- Jewish female
authors. One was Erica Jong, whose poetry
and novel Fear of Flying rocked my world.
Aside from the sex, I loved all the crazy
shrinks. When I moved to New York, I met
Erica, and she became a mentor who gave me
a great blurb for my book Five Men Who Broke
My Heart. As a teenager, I also was entranced
by Michigan girl Gael Greene's novel Blue
Skies No Candy. She's also a great role model
and a riot in person.
author SUSAN SHAPIRO has found
a way to work psychotherapy into
the therapeutic art form of writ-
ing. Her debut comic novel. Speed
Shrinking (Thomas Dunne Books:
S23.99). due out this month. focuses
on a self-help author's desperate
search for a replacement therapist.
Shapiro, 48. grew up in Southfield
and West Bloomfield and now lives in
Manhattan with her husband. TV/film
writer Charlie Rubin. She points out
•IR
that many of her closest family mem-
bers don't believe in psychotherapy,
but "overanalyzing is a good quality
for a writer because you have to understand the motivations of your characters, -
she explains. The University of Michigan graduate is a New York University and New
School joumalism professor and the author of four nonfiction books. She's also writ-
ten for the New York Times, Washington Post, Glamour magazine and numerous other
publications. "My parents hate all of my memoirs so much they inspired a line I tell
my students," Shapiro says. "The first piece you write that your family hates means
you have found your voice." Shapiro will hold a local reading and signing for Speed
Shrinking 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 11. at Borders in Birmingham (248-203-0005). Here,
we ask her our version of the Four Questions.
— Robin Schwartz
IF YOUCOULD HAVE BRUNCH
WITH ONE BIBLICAL OR
HISTORICAL JEWISH FIGURE.,
WHO WOULD IT BE?
I'd love to have brunch with Sigmund Freud.
I grew up in a conservative West Bloomfield
family of doctors who didn't believe in
psychotherapy. So, of course, right after I
graduated from U-NI, I moved to Greenwich
Village, became a shrinkaholic — and I put
that line in my novel. In fact, in the middle
of a recent argument, my father e-mailed me,
"Stop wasting your talent on psychobabble.
Repression is the greatest gift of the human
intellect." I love all of Freud's books and theo-
ries. I went into therapy afraid I'd never find a
husband or a book editor. My shrink actually
wound up dancing at my wedding and at my
book party.
\\ FLAT IMPORTANT LIFE LESSONS
HAVE YOU RECENTLY LEARNED?
My favorite lesson, which I overuse in my
books Lighting Up and Speed Shrinking, is a
line from my shrink.: "Lead the least secretive
life you can." I personally find secrets can be
poison, and opening up is liberating.
WHAT WOULD PEOPLE BE
SURPRISED TO KNOW ABOUT YOU?
People would be surprised to know after all
of my autobiographical work that most of the
time I'm a private person who has tons of stuff
I haven't revealed. (At least, not vet.) Now I
have the guise of calling what I'm working on
fiction. 111
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