Jami Attenberg - Saint Mazie

Elio Ferrante

Death, that’s the real end of the story; am I right? Now will you turn off the recorder, darling, and come to bed?

Phillip Tekverk

I heard there was a diary though. Fannie said she’d seen her once with one at the theater, that she’d walked up to her at the ticket booth and startled her. But she saw it, this brown leather diary, the words across the cover in gold, and when Fannie rattled on her cage, Mazie looked up, quite shocked, and shut it closed. A diary, could you imagine? What I wouldn’t give to read it. That was the real story right there. But I never saw it. Did you?

Mazie’s Diary, August 15, 1939

Just for a minute I thought I needed someone to know what I knew, but I can see I was wrong. I’ve been wrong before. I’ve talked to enough people about my life already. I’ve written enough in these pages. It’s enough that it happened. It’s enough that I survived. It’s enough that I have a warm bed to sleep in at night. I got enough. I got more than enough.

Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography

of Mazie Phillips-Gordon

Somebody loved them once, and that’s all you need to know.

This book was inspired by the life of a woman who was profiled in the essay “Mazie,” which appeared in Joseph Mitchell’s brilliant and essential essay collection, Up in the Old Hotel . Many thanks to John McCormick and Vannesa Shanks for introducing me to the collection, and to John for naming this book.

Lisa Ng took me on an epic tour of the passageways, stairwells, and gardens of Knickerbocker Village. I am grateful for early reads from Kate Christensen, Bex Schwartz, Lauren Groff, and Courtney Sullivan. Thanks for love, support, and housing to: Rosie Schaap, Wendy McClure, Stefan Block, Molly Dilworth, Sunil Thambidurai, Rien Fertel, Alex Chee, Roxane Gay, Brendan Fitzgerald, Ron Currie, Jr., Kerri Mahoney, Gabrielle Bell, Cinde Boutwell, Matt Laska, Jenn Northington, Maris Kreizman, Rachel Fershleiser, and Amanda Bullock. Bright stars all of you.

The stellar Doug Stewart and Sterling Lord Literistic have given me a decade of unwavering support and invaluable wisdom. I write to impress Helen Atsma, my talented, generous editor. She, along with Sonya Cheuse and Grand Central Publishing, have given me their faith, and have changed my life forever, in no small part because they are all extremely good at their jobs. A thousand thanks, a thousand embraces.

With love, as always, to my family.

Saint Mazie is told through diary entries and snippets of contemporary interviews. How does this narrative style change the story for you? Did you ever find your sympathies or attitudes about the characters shifting as you heard new perspectives?

Does anything about Mazie’s New York, and the streets she loves, remind you of today’s United States? What lessons might a reader learn from exploring this era of history in fiction? Do you often read historical fiction?

Is it a compliment or commentary to call Mazie a saint? Is the word saint ever used in a negative way?

Why might Mazie, a Jew, feel so drawn to nuns like Sister Tee and Catholicism? Did anything about Mazie’s relationship with Sister Tee surprise you?

Who belongs to Mazie’s family? To Rosie’s? To Tee’s? What does family mean to the characters in this book?

In what ways is Mazie’s cage a comfort? A constraint? Are there any nonliteral cages that constrain or comfort her as the story progresses?

Why do you think Jeanie keeps leaving home? Why does Mazie stay? Does she really stay, or do her and Rosie’s many moves make her more like Jeanie than it might at first seem?

What do you think motivated Nadine to conduct interviews and track down information about Mazie? In a novel filled with so many first-person perspectives, did you wish you could hear from Nadine in her own words? Why or why not?

What comfort does Rosie find in the gypsies? Why does she turn to them in times of need? Who or what does Mazie turn to in similar times?

Everyone seems to fall in love with Mazie, even strangers who read her diary after she’s gone. Can you identify anything about her character that might explain this phenomenon? Did you fall in love with Mazie?

Should Mazie have broken things off with the Captain? When? Does her participation in adultery diminish the good works she did?

Did you find the ending of Saint Mazie satisfying? Were you left with any questions?

Q. How did you come upon the historical Mazie Phillips?

A. I had a dear friend, John McCormick, tell me about her and suggest I read the essay by Joseph Mitchell in which she originally appeared. (It was first published in The New Yorker and then later in the seminal collection Up in the Old Hotel .) John had felt deeply inspired by her, so much so that he designed and built a beautiful bar called St. Mazie in Brooklyn. I fell for her instantly too. I was working on another book at the time, but I knew almost immediately that I would write my next book about her.

Q. What kind of research went into the writing of Saint Mazie ?

A. I read a lot of books. Obviously all of Up in the Old Hotel was a huge influence, as was Luc Sante’s Low Life. Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century by John F. Kasson was very helpful. Lionel Rogosin’s On the Bowery is a gorgeous film, and the patter and the look and the feel from that was an influence, even though it was made in the 1950s. I also spent some time on The Roaring Twenties, a website that maps the sounds of New York City in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Just in general I spent a good deal of time online watching little films and videos here and there. Although the book doesn’t necessarily drip with historical detail, I wanted to know what it looked and sounded like as I was writing it.

Q. Do you keep a journal yourself? Have you always, or ever? What kind of story might it tell, if a stranger were to find it?

A. I do keep a journal, but it’s mostly a jumble of things, to-do lists, story ideas, the occasional letter to myself, reminders of how to be in this life, etc. I think if anyone read it they would find it quite repetitive. I actually committed to keeping a daily journal a few years ago when I spent the winter in New Orleans, and I thought I was writing the most brilliant thing ever, but when I look back at it now I realized that our (or at least my) day-to-day existence is usually pretty dull. But it turned out coincidentally to be a good writing exercise for this book. I realized I didn’t need to document every little bit of Mazie’s life — just the interesting stuff.

Q. Is Mazie your favorite character in the novel? If not, who is?

A. Of course I love Mazie the most! She’s the reason why I wrote this book. I fell in love with her, daydreamed about her, heard her in my head chattering at me until I had no choice but write down everything she had to say. I hope people read her as smart and complicated and sexy and strong and as having a beautiful, generous spirit, much as I imagined the real-life Mazie was. This book is really a tribute to her.

Q. Your previous novel, The Middlesteins , followed the lives of a Jewish family. In Saint Mazie , the heroine is Jewish but is drawn to Catholicism. Why do you find yourself writing about faith?