Marcy Dermansky Is In Your Head

'Hot Air' and the joy of gentle gossip.

Like the titular hot air balloon, Marcy Dermansky’s sixth novel doesn’t pop on impact — it floats and careens through two lightly dramatic days of the lives of four deliciously unlikeable capital-A Adults.

While plowing through Hot Air over the course of just three frenzied reading sessions, I found myself blissfully floating through Dermansky’s gently off-center world. It’s one where a tech billionaire and his fed-up wife crash a hot air balloon into a suburban swimming pool on two single parents’ first date, but isn’t a big deal; where, for some reason, all the characters’ names begin with J, and at any moment, may or may not start swinging with each other; where no geographical place is named except for Harry Potter World and the Rainforest Cafe.

Alternating between each character’s POV, Hot Air is like reading smart gossip, uncovering all the humiliating things Joannie, Johnny, Jonathan, and Julia are thinking, tracing in hot pink gel pen the difference between what they say and what they do. But while everything is charged with a vague early post-pandemic horniness, the emotional core is between Joannie, a failed writer, and her daughter: sweet, tender moments of longing, loneliness, and small embarrassments.

“I think most of the times when I write people's thoughts, they're always a little bit inappropriate,” Dermansky tells Language Arts. “I feel like so much of what I think I should never share. Sometimes interviews scare me because I'll just say anything. But I think most of our thoughts are inappropriate and that’s what’s really interesting about existing.”

Below, Language Arts talks with Dermansky about how writing books should be fun, taking the things that matter seriously, and the unexpected utility of writing prompts.

This is your sixth novel. Your books are so joyful and fun to read, but don’t come at the expense of good writing or profound moments. Can you talk about your approach to writing?

That's what it's all supposed to be, you know what I mean? The funny thing about this book is I didn't take it very seriously when I was writing it. When you sit down to write a novel, you don't know if it's going to work and they take a lot of time. I didn't feel like this was a book that was going to be a book, so I thought if I'm going to write this, I'm going to write it really fast. I wrote the first draft in three months.

I wrote it really fast because I hate wasting my time. I had written a chapter — a short story — and my agent loved it and said: Write this and I said “no.” A year later I wasn't working on anything, so that's why I wrote it so quickly. It just seemed really silly. When I go back and read it, there's one character who’s the Joannie character. I am not Joannie and Joannie is not me, but I gave her a lot of what it's like to be a single mother. I think that's why this is such a silly, fun book, but it has some real stuff hidden inside of it.

You can tell from reading your books that you have a lot of fun!

I absolutely do. There's a lot of writers who complain a lot about writing, as if it’s misery. I see people on Facebook say: “I wrote for three hours and got one paragraph and I'm unhappy.” I try not to do that. I try not to worry about writing. I hate sitting down to write; it’s the dread of actually doing it. But when I'm writing, I really love it.

Do any of your other books have single mother characters? Or have you written about that experience before?

This is my first book about a single mother, which I hadn't actually realized until this conversation.

What was it like to write about that experience? I grew up with a single mother, too. I loved reading about the intimacy and companionship you wrote about between the daughter and the mom.

Thank you. That could also be from watching Gilmore Girls. I think I've seen that show from beginning to end maybe four times. She loved that show. I loved it too, but I didn't love it four times worth.

“I think most of our thoughts are inappropriate and that's what’s really interesting about existing.”

One thing I like to do is interior monologue. That’s why I like writing novels. I once tried to turn one of my books into a screenplay and I couldn’t because you’re only supposed to write dialogue. How can you do that? All I want to do is have what people are thinking. I love dialogue, but if I can go into someone’s head, that’s the point. I think if you feel like you’re close to the characters it’s because I’m giving you everyone’s thoughts.

I think sometimes writers can be a little self-serious. Sometimes we forget that that books are entertainment and escapism.

I think sometimes people don't think it's good writing if it's fun. That’s a pet peeve of mine. It doesn't have to be hard to read to be good.

When Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer prize for writing Less, everybody was so taken back because a funny book won, and I was like, hooray! It can happen!

Where did this idea begin?

I feel embarrassed, but the fact is this started from a writing prompt. I have a friend who has the Substack Emily Writes. In this newsletter, she gave four writing prompts. One of the writing prompts was having a hot air balloon fall in the middle of the first date. I read that and wrote the first chapter, a short story called “First Date.” And it was good. I sent it to my agent and he sent it out to the New Yorker, and it got rejected and I didn't do anything with it for a long time.

Then somebody invited me to their house for a group where you write and then order lunch. I needed something to write, and I hadn't been writing, but I had to go to this person’s house and write and eat lunch. And so I went back to the short story. My agent said I should turn it into a novel, because he's almost always right.

The Red Car wasn't the same kind of writing prompt, but it started in my mind as a writing exercise where I decided I wanted to write a book like Haruki Murakami. I was going to write my own version of a Murakami book because he was my favorite writer for a long time. I reread some of his books, and I stole the structure of one. My first chapter started 10 years in the past, and then it jumped ahead, and it worked.

For people who haven't read your books before, what would you recommend they read next?

I always want people to read what's new. But I think the book that's closest to this book would be Very Nice because it's multiple points of view and it's a little soap opera. The Red Car is really special to me because I was in a bad place in my life and I used that book to write my way out of it, and that's the only book where I did that.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.