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I am an unapologetic collector of gossip. Bring me your tales of accidental reply-all, familial faux-pas, sartorial misadventure. I can certainly keep a secret, I never talk about my friends, but to me, there is no greater conversational gambit than “I just heard the wildest thing…”. The celebrated author John Updike once called literary criticism “gossip of a higher sort,” and—perhaps as a justification of my habits I’d like to lump fiction under that umbrella too, as a kind of artful gossip, rumor spun into gold.
The Shampoo Effect, my new book, was inspired by two different gossipy scandals. The first is highbrow enough: I grew up in Ipswich, Massachusetts. John Updike was the pride of the town, but he also created a major controversy in 1968 when he published his bestselling novel Couples, a tale of sex and adultery among his social set. Even though he changed the names of the real people he was writing about, his stories of afternoon trysts and partner-swapping were perhaps a little too close to home, and the novel blew up his entire circle of friends and cast a spotlight on all of their marriages. Out of the ten real life couples in his group, only two marriages survived the scrutiny. I grew up hearing this story, and then, as an adult, I took a job as an editor at Knopf, Updike’s publisher. I became intrigued by the idea of him, a writer in a small town, mining his social set for material, and the way making art might lead to betrayal.
The second inspiration for The Shampoo Effect came from a less literary (but equally Massachusetts) fixation. In 2007, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady famously had a baby with the actress Bridget Moynahan while dating the supermodel Gisele Bundchen. Brady and Bridget Moynahan were no longer together, and he was with Gisele by the time Bridget realized she was pregnant. It was a tabloid sensation, a love triangle that paid salaries across Us Weekly and Page Six.
So, these two gossipy scandals tangled together in my mind to become a novel. The Shampoo Effect is the story of a young woman, a writer from New York, who moves to a seaside town in Massachusetts for a fellowship, but instead of writing, she falls in love with a local guy and his wild group of friends. Soon this young woman is enmeshed in their circle, their long running jokes, their secret affairs, their late nights. But when it’s revealed that her new boyfriend is having a baby with one of the women in the group, the delicate balance of the relationship is thrown off, and she does something unforgivable, exposing a secret that fractures families, marriages, and her own heart. It’s a novel about parenthood, about the betrayal of making art, about love and sex and the nature of secrets and morality in a small town.
Gossip is a wonderful barometer of storytelling. If you find yourself hanging on every word of a whispered story, chances are the reader will too. But, a few words of warning: If you choose to write about real people, you have to disguise them cleverly. If you’re going to spill their darkest secrets, it helps if they are dead. If you’re gossiping about another writer, well, beware the inevitable rebuttal. For my own practice, I prefer to use a blend of harmless gossip and that which has already been well-documented. Unlike some literary icons, I’m not here to blow up any marriages or lose friends. But if you happened to hear a juicy tidbit that has you whispering with glee, by all means, come sit next to me.
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The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson is available via Pamela Dorman Books.
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