Halle Butler is the most scathing (complimentary) novelist writing today, and Banal Nightmare might be her most vicious yet. The novel opens with Butler’s heroine Moddie fleeing a toxic relationship with a “megalomaniac or perhaps a covert narcissist” in Chicago and returning to her Midwestern hometown of X. There, Moddie navigates a landscape of old friendships, simmering resentments, and elaborate revenge fantasies, all set against the backdrop of a society teetering on the edge of madness.
Like most of Butler’s protagonists, Moddie is brilliant but interpersonally challenged. At a party, Moddie interjects in a conversation, noting that something was interesting "mostly because of how tedious it was," adding that the tedium was "almost thrilling" and "bordering on erotic." With a shifting point of view, Banal Nightmare chronicles Moddie and her cohort of similarly disgruntled 30-somethings as they rant against their unsatisfying and lowkey enraging lives. The arrival of an enigmatic East Coast artist for a university residency soon forces Moddie to confront her demons and reassess her creative path. Following Moddie and her friends (and enemies), Butler singularly captures the volatile, angry, aggrieved, surreal, and entirely disorienting atmosphere of the contemporary era.
Read my conversation with Butler below.
Describe your book in three words.
white blue smooth
Banal Nightmare is the most perfect book title I’ve ever heard—when and how did it come to you?
Thank you. The phrase “banal nightmare” is from an inside joke, but I can’t really say more about that. I’m not great with titles, and I had a pretty boring and crappy working title for this project. A few years ago, I was sitting at my desk, thinking about changing the title, and it occurred to me to use banal nightmare. I laughed in a kind of “no, I couldn’t, I shouldn’t” way, but then thinking about it, it did seem to suit the book well.
Tell me about the development of the book’s shifting POV.
I’ve done it in all three books, but in this one it’s the most pronounced. The way this book started and where it ended up are pretty different. The early versions were kind of patchwork. There was an older woman who gets into fights with her high school friends online (this character makes a brief appearance in the zoomed out, bird’s eye view section about midway through the book). Kimberly and Moddie were merged into one, very odd character who is at a work conference, maybe on the verge of leading some kind of intern rebellion. And then there was a sad-sack character who just got dumped, who was like a humorless version of Moddie. All of the scenes and characters were kind of flat and repetitive. So, then it was like “Ok. It’s flat and repetitive. Is there something interesting about that?” From there, I rearranged some scenes, cut about 100 pages, cut most of the story lines, and I think mainly what I was left with at the end of this process was a page from the first party scene at Bethany’s house (but none of the characters were named), and about a page of decent mopey post-break-up inner monologue. But then I got to refocus, rearrange some character traits to form Moddie, place Moddie closer to the center, think about what dynamics I wanted to write, and think about how I could make the repetitive thing interesting. All of the women are in uncertain places in their romantic relationships, most of the characters are in uncertain places in their careers, they all have some degree of artistic or professional envy, they all participate in some kind of moral posturing. They are all similar. They form a social organism. Some of the shifts in POV are like point counterpoint, some of them are ways for me to express my sympathies and antipathies, but the shifting POV is basically a way for me to contemplate the same idea from different perspectives.
Do you feel like Jillian’s Megan, The New Me’s Millie, and Banal Nightmare’s Moddie are all versions of the same person? (You can say no!)
Yes, but you know I’d be lying if I outright said no! They’re definitely similar, and I’m definitely drawn to this character type, and I’m interested in sympathizing with all three of them. These are people who are on the outside of the group, are hypercritical of the group, incredibly judgmental, difficult, funny, principled in a rigid way, observant. They’re also suffering. It's interesting to me to spend time with them.
Perusing Goodreads, I see a lot of people calling your characters unlikeable, but I adore all of your heroines. Do you find your characters unlikeable, slash do you hate that discourse as much as I do? (I’m hoping for a Moddie-style rant here.)
I mean, if you put characters into a book who are hypercritical of mainstream values, that’s bound to be read as “unlikeable” to readers who live by those values. I think for them, that’s a fair take. But, like I just said, I sympathize with Megan, Millie, and Moddie. I find Carrie, Karen, and Kimberly unlikeable. Kimberly, the Moddie counterpoint in Banal Nightmare, is a Goodreads user who goes on many very unappealing, egotistical rants, and one of the things she says is that she only wants to read books with likable protagonists. You have to think about “likable to whom?” It’s not universal. I don’t know if you like Mike Leigh films, but Happy Go Lucky, High Hopes, Another Year, these are all great examples of sympathetic, fundamentally decent characters who have complexity. I think sometimes what people mean by “likable” as opposed to sympathetic or goodhearted is “conforming to my idea of what behavior I should aspire to.” Also, for the most part, a novel takes place in a fixed time. People change. I am interested in Megan (for example) in a particular time in her life, post college, struggling, angry. I’m sure she has been kindhearted, and I am sure she is not always this messed up, but that’s not what I want to look at. I think sometimes people have a fixed idea of themselves, and reminders of what they would perceive to be their own flaws (deviations from their inner ideal of themselves) can feel disturbing. But, I’m sorry, that’s all the time we have for now.
How do you want readers to feel after reading your work and Banal Nightmare in particular?
Quiet.
Are there any books you feel Banal Nightmare is “in conversation with” as they say?
Absolutely. Balzac was influential on this project--Cousin Bette, Lost Illusions and The Wild Ass’s Skin. A little bit House of Mirth, a little Portrait of a Lady. Cousin Bette was the first Balzac novel I read. His characters are very opinionated and they give incredible speeches, and in Cousin Bette, there’s a scene where the book itself seems to come alive and start soapboxing about how important it is to stay home and work on your art and not go out again and get drunk. It feels like Balzac is scolding himself, or some hypothetical version of himself, for wanting to go out, and then it’s over and the novel keeps going. I was really excited by the choice not to edit that out. Lost Illusions is about the conflict between art and capitalism, Cousin Bette is about the battle between virtue and vice, The Wild Ass’s Skin is like that, too, but supernatural. With House of Mirth and Portrait of a Lady, I was directly thinking about Victorian/turn of the century morals and how they helped form the characters, especially the heroines and the society around them, and how I might think about that story type but using characters and situations from 2018.
What’s a book that made you want to write? And/or a book you wish you’d written?
I would hate to have written any of the books I love! I’m lazy, and I love reading. I started writing in college, because I was tired of art school and I wanted to take more literature classes. I took really amazing classes on Faulkner and Joyce. I’d already used all of my lit credits, so the only way to take more of those classes was to switch into the writing program. It was either that or figure out how to get into a humanities program at another school, and like I said, I’m lazy. And then I liked writing and kept doing it. So it was more like a curiosity about all books made me want to write.
If you were a literary critic, what would you say about your own writing?
“One feels, at times, the potential for a decent novel within these pages, but Butler’s aimless prose style and thin understanding of her own subject matter holds her back. The resulting middle-aged effort is spirited, yet forgettable--if it will ever be read in the first place.”
What are your most overused words?
“Gee-whiz!”
Or, do you mean in my writing?
What’s your relationship to self-promotion?
Semi-estranged.
What author’s (dead or alive) persona is aspirational to you?
I love the video of Doris Lessing winning the Nobel Prize, but I’m trying to move away from emulation and just live my life.
If you could get a drink with any fictional character, who would it be?
The Lorax, but only if he shows up drunk.
What’s your favorite recent read?
Swann’s Way, baby!!
What’s one word to describe what you’re working on now?
Nothing.
