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July 27, 2001/Av 7, 5761, Vol. 53, No.42
Broken relationship generates book
NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
The Los Angeles Jewish Journal
Jennifer Weiner began writing "Good in Bed" (Pocket Books, $24.95 hardcover) during a bout of Dumper's Regret in 1998.
She'd been dating her nice-Jewish-writer boyfriend for a few years, but no engagement ring was forthcoming. So she requested a trial separation.
"I went home and proceeded to think about the relationship, and he went home and proceeded to date someone else," she says.
That's when the Dumper's Regret kicked in. Weiner moped around, feeling like she'd never smile again, lunging for the phone every time it rang in case it was her ex.
"I obsessed about him," she says. "I'd get mad whenever his horoscope said he was going to have a good day for romance."
One Friday night, six months after the breakup, Weiner called the ex. "His phone was by the bed, and it became clear that he had female company," she says. "I was devastated."
That weekend, she vowed to do something constructive with her pain - and decided to write a novel about a broken-hearted woman. Weiner tried to envision what would make the fictional breakup the worst one ever.
She recalled the day she opened Cosmopolitan magazine and discovered the "Sizzling Sex Tips" column had been written by a guy she'd casually dated. Never mind that the guy hadn't been good in bed; Weiner was terrified he'd written about her.
She wasn't in the article. But the heroine of "Good in Bed" isn't so lucky. At the beginning of this frothy, semi-autobiographical novel, the fictional Cannie Shapiro discovers she's the subject of her ex-boyfriend's new sex column. A series of comic misadventures ensues.
Like Weiner, Cannie is a tall, zaftig Philadelphia entertainment journalist with a deadbeat dad, a lesbian mom and a quirky rat terrier. The wickedly funny, light summer romance turns serious but retains Weiner's witty, satirical voice.
For the outspoken 31-year-old author, who's marrying a nice Jewish attorney in October, the novel is sweet revenge. She got to make Cannie's ex-boyfriend a loser-slacker-deadhead, just like her own ex. And she gave him a dorky name: Bruce Guberman. "The day I named him, that was a very happy day, because it makes him sound like such a drip," she says with a laugh.
During a Journal interview, Weiner is warm, sardonic, sarcastic, alternately self-confident and self-deprecating. She fields calls from her agent and her therapist, then apologizes for leaving the interview. She talks about her Jewish wedding, which is going to be fancier from the "Good in Bed" dough.
Like Cannie, Weiner's tortured childhood propelled her into becoming (what else) a writer. "I was funny-looking," she says. "I had braces. I felt like an outsider in so many ways."
In Weiner's WASPy hometown of Simsbury, Conn., her house was the only one on the street without Christmas decorations. In second grade, a classmate told her she'd killed Jesus.
"I insisted I'd never killed anyone," she recalls. "He said, 'It must've been your parents.' "
The Jewish kids weren't any nicer. "On my teen summer trip to Israel, no one wanted to room with me or sit next to me on the bus," Weiner recalls.
"I had to hike up Mount Masada alone."
When she returned home, she discovered that her hyper-critical psychiatrist father had abandoned the family.
"He never cared to see us again," Weiner says. "That kind of thing really messes you up. "It makes you feel worthless, like you did something to make him leave."
The angst was great for Weiner's writing habit, however. At Princeton, she impressed all her creative writing professors, including the legendary authors Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates and John McPhee.
After graduation, she snagged a less-than-thrilling job at a newspaper in small-town Pennsylvania, where she slaved away reporting on the sewage commission or school lunch menus.
"I'd type, 'Monday: Hot Dog in Bun, Tater Tots, Cookie,'" she recalls. "I'd think, 'For this, I went to Princeton?' "
But Weiner was ambitious. At the crummy Pennsylvania paper, she started writing a Generation X-themed column that was syndicated on the Knight-Ridder wire service. The column eventually caught the eye of big-city editors. At the age of 24, Weiner was hired as an entertainment columnist for The Philadelphia Enquirer.
Her efforts paid off. Pocket Books bought "Good in Bed" for $550,000 in May 2000; the novel made the summer reading lists of People and Entertainment Weekly; critics are comparing it to "Bridget Jones's Diary" and the rights have been sold in 13 countries, including Israel. Weiner has been receiving amusing e-mail from her German translator: "She asked me, 'What are tater tots?' " the author says with a laugh.
Weiner says her childhood insecurities continue to plague her. "It's the old legacy of having my father leave," she says.
"But I'm getting better," she reports. "Most of the time, I think I'm pretty cool."
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