Scott Spinelli: From what I’ve been able to discover about you, it seems as if we both grew up in the 1990s, so while it might seem obvious, I’m curious, what exactly was your inspiration for writing this story?
Marty Beckerman: A huge part of it was the recession. Back in the ’90s, there was a hit song titled “Why Don’t You Get A Job?” That’s a cultural relic of a full-employment economy. Now it’s the age of unpaid internships. Nobody romanticizes being a slacker like in the ’90s — this is a time of constant anxiety unless you’re a multimillionaire. Who doesn’t want to travel back to the Clinton years, when boy bands seemed like the biggest problem with the world? It was an objectively happier time — you’re not from Rwanda, right?
Another part of the inspiration was seeing ’90s nostalgia become such a huge thing — during the aughts, I couldn’t stand the ’80s nostalgia wave, because it seemed so forced and backward-looking. But suddenly, my favorite bands were reuniting and my old clothes were fashionable again. Which is awesome, and makes me feel all tingly inside, but shouldn’t culture move forward?
Generation Y is hitting 30 in very scary times, when traditional markers of adulthood — home ownership, health insurance, retirement savings — often seem like impossible fairy tales, so we’re collectively regressing to childhood for a warm, fuzzy comfort that might not be totally healthy. As the protagonist of
‘90s Island says, “Everybody needs a golden age. All that glitters is old.”
Scott Spinelli: As a writer myself, I’m always interested in the process that other writers go through. Talk about yours, from idea conception to the story being fleshed out and the actual creation of what we can all see as the finished product.
Marty Beckerman: Every writer has different little quirks, whether it’s writing at a certain time of day or in a certain location or under certain influences, and it’s not super useful to emulate them, because you have your own natural quirks. Really, the main thing is just sitting down and typing. The first draft sucks, the next draft is better, and you have a finished book when you’re just rearranging the commas for the umpteenth time. Outlining is important, so you know where it’s going and how to pace it, but the best parts are the ones that take you by surprise — a lot of authors talk about their characters “coming to life,” and it’s a pretty amazing moment. If you feel like you’re forcing a scene, the reader can tell it’s forced. The best stuff writes itself.
The final part of my “process” comes a couple years after publication, when I want to change every goddamn word but can’t and have to live with it. I’m pretty sure I think about time travel more than most people.
Scott Spinelli: One of my favorite elements of this story is its ability to make me laugh consistently throughout. How did you balance the need for plot development and humor? Were there pieces of the novella you kept in simply because they were funny and didn’t do much advancing of the plot?
Marty Beckerman: With nonfiction humor, the author can have a stronger voice — that’s the appeal, like with stand-up comedy. With fiction, though, you don’t want to get in the way of your own storytelling. I absolutely did that with my book Generation S.L.U.T., and it detracted enormously. There were jokes I chopped from ‘90s Island because they didn’t serve the plot or characterization or anything besides my own self-indulgence. You want it to feel natural, even if it’s satirical. As I get older, my writing is less about me and more about the writing, you know? Also, there is nothing less funny in the universe than analyzing humor.
Scott Spinelli: What made you decide to keep this story’s length to just a novella, as opposed to a shorter story or even a novel?
Marty Beckerman: I showed the manuscript to a half-dozen novelist friends for critiques, and a few encouraged me to expand it to a novel. But I just honestly didn’t think the story would stretch that far. I knew it worked at 100 pages, and I’d have to add a bunch of filler to make it 200 — either contrived subplots or so many ’90s references that it’d be unreadable. It wasn’t a matter of laziness, because I worked my ass off perfecting those 100 pages for almost a year. If a book reads quickly, that probably means the author spent a huge amount of time on it. If you suffer through each page, it’s probably dashed-off, unpolished shit.
With digital publishing and shrinking attention spans, though, novellas are super popular again. They feel more satisfying than a short story, but it’s not a huge time commitment like a 9,000-page fantasy series. At worst, you’ll feel like you wasted an afternoon that you would’ve wasted on Twitter anyway. At best, you’ll have the thrilling experience of a novel without the dead-weight fluff required to meet a commercial publisher’s word-count quota. Besides, that 9,000-page fantasy series probably begins sucking around book four.
Scott Spinelli: Lastly, are there any future plans for ’90s Island and what’s next for Marty Beckerman, the author? Are you working on another novel?
Marty Beckerman: I have a full-time editing gig at a major media company, so it’s tough to find time for another book right now. But there’s been some interest from Hollywood about ’90s Island, so maybe I’ll try screenwriting. Or, as Hemingway affectionately called it, “Whoring.”
