Emma Cline

The Girls (Charles Manson)

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For some reason this morning I was thinking about the young author Emma Cline. For those of you who don’t know her, keep reading. Go back to 2016. I’m with my ex visiting New York City. For a couple nights we stayed with a friend of my ex’s in her trendy Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn apartment. One morning while staying there I got up and, unable to locate caffeine of any kind (coffee or tea), and it being early (sort of: 7:30am) and everyone else still being asleep, I checked my iPhone and located a coffeeshop around the block. I threw my clothes on and headed out. It was warm, humid and muggy; late June.

Ten minutes after having checked GPS I walked into the tiny café. I don’t recall the name of the place. I remember it was very small and quite packed with people. To my left I noticed a redheaded, pale-faced woman in her mid-late twenties sitting alone with a thick hardback book on the table in front of her next to a mysterious white paper cup with a brown sleeve; steam rolled off the unknown white foamy liquid. I also saw a bunch of random magazines in a tumultuous pile near the register. There were three people ahead of me in line.

Another ten minutes later I had my large Irish Breakfast tea in a paper to-go cup, brown sleeve, and had snagged a Harper’s Magazine copy with Hillary Clinton on the cover, something about micro-loans to third-world countries. I sat down quite near the redheaded woman. She was ogling her iPhone, texting. Her blue eyes were fierce, piercing and nearly translucent. I sipped on my tea—which was, even with half and half, far too hot, burning my tongue—and gazed at the redhead. After a while I focused on Harper’s and started reading the main article about Hillary Clinton and microloans.

When I at last did in fact look up, at first out the window of the café, I saw that a light, humid summer rain had begun. Then I swiveled my head to the redhead and saw that a young man probably around 40 sat across from her at the small table with a porcelain cup of hot black coffee, wearing fancy dress pants and a starched white button-up collared shirt. They spoke but very softly and I couldn’t decipher what they said. I remembered being at San Francisco State University five years prior (after 11 years and seven colleges I’d gone back for my BA at age 30) and at my first creative writing course being told to leave the class and eavesdrop on random conversations around campus, writing down every word said. It was material, our professor quipped. And he was right.

An hour later—the place by now had largely emptied out—the man stood up across from her, smiled, held his tie while reaching his hand across, shook her pale palm, nodded, dropped his mug into an empty gray food tray, and walked out the door.

The redhead was alone again.

Unable to help myself—and having the ego of a madman—I turned towards her, looked at her brazenly and said, “Are you a writer?”

A bold, dumb question for a woman with a book in Brooklyn. Of course she was. As was I. Weren’t we all writers here?

She smiled, her square jaw seeming rigid, her eyes distant but not unfriendly. “Yes. How did you know?” She laughed softly.

Shrugging I said, “That book looks like it’s yours, maybe.”

“Good guess. That was my publisher who just left.”

Even more boldly and dumbly I said, “Do you by any chance need an editor? I’m a freelance developmental book editor.”

Of course I was. Help: Attack of the cliché.

She smiled again—this time it felt a little mocking and condescending—her smile like a pumpkin mouth carving against the powerful paleness of her square harsh German-like jaw.

“Oh. No. Thanks. My book’s already out. It was just published two weeks ago.”

“Who was the publisher?” I said, feeling my cheeks going a deep crimson. Why had I asked that? I was beginning to feel quite foolish.

“Random House. Actually it’s quite a story. There was a bidding war. Google it.”

Google it?

“What’s your book?” I asked, now feeling positively absurd, pathetic and small, even provincial. Here I am—California Boy—walking into a trendy Brooklyn coffee shop asking this obviously successful author about her book, asking if she needs an editor, for Christ Sakes.

She held up her thick hardback. It was blue with a splotchy red woman’s face (not photo but image) wearing indistinct blue shades. On the right shade it said, in thick white, The Girls and on the left shade it said, also in thick white, Emma Cline.

“I’ll look it up. Nice to meet you, Emma.”

She smiled again, snatched her little black purse and iPhone, stood up pushing her seat back making the chair legs screech against the linoleum floor, said to have a good day, and walked out.

Immediately I Googled her. It was her first novel. She was only 25 years old. She’d recently graduated from a fancy elite college with an MFA in writing. She lived in New York City and Northern California where she was originally from. She’d snagged a literary agent while still in graduate school. The Girls was a novel based on the real life of one of the youngest girls involved, in the turbulent, nefarious late 1960s, with the Manson Family. The book, as she had claimed, had gone through a steep, intense bidding war, eventually won by Random House, the biggest, most powerful publisher in America. She’d been given—get this—a two-million-dollar advance.

That floored me. It didn’t add up. In 2016, many traditionally published authors received very small, sometimes even no advance. Especially for a first-time novelist with no track record fresh out of an MFA program. Right place, right time, I thought. A mix of luck, connections, timing, and possibly gender and era, as well as…talent? I would need to read the book to know that.

*

My ex and I were in New York another week before flying to Berlin and beginning our month-long European excursion (which ended up being 2.5 months for me because I ended up staying and walking 450 miles of El Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain).

I was in the middle of reading a book at that time, a biography of the Kennedy brothers, so I didn’t actually get to The Girls until I returned home to the San Francisco Bay Area in September 2016. Not long after my return I walked into a local bookstore and bought a copy, holding the blue and red cover in my hand. I’d always been intrigued with the Manson family and had read a couple biographies about it over the years. (I even had a former-friend-family-connection to a one-time actual Manson girl. Long story.)

I read the book in a few settings, fairly quickly. In short: It was good. I chuckled to myself thinking that it did, in fact—in my humble opinion—need some editing. It was probably too long by 50-75 pages, maybe even 100. The diction, tone and style were fascinating, gorgeous and powerful a lot of the time…but sometimes were, in my view, over the top. Sometimes the language got in the way of the story; it felt like a young semi-genius throwing too much paint onto the canvas for their debut. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t.

But in the end it was, for me, a very strong book. She clearly had great talent. There were some throwaway lines, even graphs, even pages. But 70% of it, let’s say, was close to incredible. She was a new hot young writer on the American Scene.

A former book editing client—a sci-fi novelist—who lived in New York texted me one day saying that he was coming to San Francisco for a few days and he was going to see Emma Cline interviewed about The Girls at The Booksmith on Haight Street. I agreed to meet him there.

It was held at night, at 7:30. It was mid-January, 2017 now. Just before Trump took official power. My old client-friend walked in and we smiled, shaking hands and chatting. I saw Emma up at the little mini-stage, sitting in a plastic chair in front of a microphone, her book in her lap. Her red hair fizzled out behind and below her, cascading over her slight shoulders. The place was jam-packed. Her book had become a sensation. Understandably. It felt like the older generation of women authors were handing down the baton. From Didion to Cline.

Everyone sat down. The moderator asked Cline some questions. She answered them. Same stuff: Bidding war, Random House, the huge advance and how it'd changed her life, being a famous 25-year-old novelist in 2016, Trump, The Girls, her 14-year-old complex narrator, why she chose the POV of an older version of the narrator looking back on her 14-year-old self, her thoughts in general on writing, style, MFAs, literary agents, the industry, Manhattan versus Nor-Cal/Bay Area, etc.

She read us her prologue from the book, one of the best prologues I’d read in a while, a scene establishing the voice, tone and style of the novel showing the Manson girls walking dangerously through a park and then dumpster diving. She made them sound so cool, so unconventional, so avant-garde, so off-the-grid, so tough so mean so real.

And then the reading ended and she took audience questions. There must have been 100 people crammed in there, probably 80% women under 30. Cline was known as a feminist. The Manson Family told not through the master male manipulator Manson himself, but from one of the young, taken advantage of, teenage female victims. It was a potent historical reversal.

Eventually people lined up for autographs. I’d brought my copy. About fifteen people were ahead of me. My old client-friend and I stood in line, patiently waiting as the numbers dwindled. Cline, sitting behind the gray plastic desk, smiled at each person and erratically signed her name and sometimes a miniature, messy message.

When only two people were ahead of me I suddenly felt powerfully nervous. What was I going to say?

One person ahead of me. A young woman in her early twenties wearing a long black trench-coat.

Then it was me. I felt my heart thundering in my chest. My cheeks glowed. Blood pulsated through my veins. This woman had achieved at 25 everything I’d ever wanted from my writing life: Traditional publication, a fat advance, fame and notoriety, and a damn good book. She was on her way. The gate had been opened for her as if by the literary gods. Who was I? Nothing. A small-time unknown writer with a few dozen published short stories, a lukewarm blog, and one famous editing client to my name.

“Hi,” I said awkwardly, my hands literally trembling. “I don’t know if you remember me, but we met in a little café in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn about six months ago. I asked if you had an editor.”

She leaned back eyeing me hard for a moment, and then her blue eyes bloomed with awareness. “Yes. I do remember. You were sitting next to me. Early morning. Reading Harper’s. I’d just met with my publisher.”

I smiled widely. “That’s right. You told me to Google you.”

Her pale cheeks went crimson.

“Anyway I did and wow, what a thing, huh? You were very successful. Are very successful.”

She shrugged with false modesty. “I got lucky.”

Clearing my throat ruggedly—louder than I’d hoped—I glanced briefly behind me. There were a solid twenty people lined up behind me.

“Well I read your book and it’s very good.”

“Thank you.”

She took my copy of her book from my trembling hand, opened the cover and signed it sloppily. After setting the thick blue pen down on the gray plastic table she said, “Maybe for my next book I’ll contact you for editing.”

We smiled at each other. We both knew she was mocking me. We both knew that would never happen. She was with a major publisher; they had their own professional in-house editors.

“Best of luck with your writing,” I said.

“You too. Take care. Maybe we’ll bump into each other again someday.”

“Right.”

I grabbed my book, feeling totally ridiculous and exposed, and walked off, as if somehow doing the walk of shame the morning after. I passed everyone in line, jerked my head for my old client-friend to follow, and burst out the door into the cold January night.