Subverting the Marriage Plot with Louis Bayard

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This week I sat down with my longtime friend Louis Bayard to discuss the recurring themes in his eleven books: marriage, couples, and what happens at the end of “the marriage plot.” We talk about writing from an unfamiliar point of view and pushing yourself as a writer. His newest book, The Wildes: A Marriage in Five Acts, released September of this year by Algonquin Books. You can purchase it here.

Our Friday readers tweeted about Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Free Thinking, Inquiry, and Hope by Sarah Bakewell, The Once and Future King by T.H. White, 1979 by Val McDermid, Willful Behavior by Donna Leon, and State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg.

This week, I discuss Little Women and its whopping 35 various adaptations—stage, screen, radio, books, and even operas—and by the time I finish telling you about some of them, there might be even more!

My Six Recs for the week are all memoirs: All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner, Dirtbag Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald, The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom, Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala, Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James, and finally Country Girl by Edna O'Brien.

Find me on X, Substack, Instagram, Bluesky, and Threads.

The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted by Bethanne Patrick, produced by Christina McBride, and engineered by Jordan Aaron, with help from Lauren Stack.

All titles mentioned: Courting Mr. Lincoln and The Wildes by Louis Bayard, The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Free Thinking, Inquiry, and Hope by Sarah Bakewell, The Once and Future King by T.H. White, 1979 by Val McDermid, Willful Behavior by Donna Leon, State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg, The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Little Women II directed by Kōzō Kusuba, Little Men directed by Ira Sachs, Younger created by Darren Star, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, March by Geraldine Brooks, This Wide Night by Sarvat Hasin, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner, Dirtbag Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald, The Yellow House by Sarah Broom, Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala, Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James, and finally Country Girl by Edna O'Brien.

Transcript:

BP: Hello, readers. Welcome to my new show, The Book Maven: A Literary Revue. This is a podcast where we'll dive into the hottest book world trends, address some of the great or not so great classics, and I'll recommend some of my favorite books to you. We'll have all that and more in this episode, but first I talked with Lou Bayard about the marriage plot as a device and how his work subverts that. Along the way, we talk about some of his other books, including Courting Mr. Lincoln, and we touch on some of the historical figures that he attempts to reintroduce in a new light in his novels, including Mary Todd Lincoln. Join us in conversation as we discuss the downsides of positioning marriage as an ending to a story, rather than as a lens into how characters behave with each other.

BP: The overarching purpose of this conversation is to talk about writing about marriage. And I think this is an interesting challenge for Fiction novelists, as my students like to call them. Fiction novels. It's an interesting challenge for novelists. And you have gone back to that challenge quite a few times in your, how many books now?

LB: 11.

BP: 11. That is fantastic.

LB: Did you see my wince of embarrassment and apology as I said that? 11 times I've inflicted myself on a reading public.

BP: On the reading public. Stop wincing. We love it. We need it. But you are writing about this in various ways in… I don't know. Is it all of your books? It's many of your books for sure. There are always married couples in your books. And part of that is because you often write historical novels. And so there are lots of marriages going on. What is it about marriage that you think fascinates you as a subject?

LB: I don't know. That's a really great question that I haven't analyzed enough to give an intelligent response to. I'm just now thinking that the marriage novel as it's described, and I always associate that genre with Jane Austen.

BP: The marriage plot.

LB: The marriage plot, right? The marriage plot is always, the marriage is at the end of it. So the question that always comes up in my mind, whenever I read Jane Austen, whom I adore, is, okay, what happens? After the wedding, what happens to Darcy and, and Miss Bennett? What kind of lives did they lead after? So, I think that's just a function of being alive, being a man of a certain age, I just turned 60 last year. And being married myself and all the things I think marriage is a fascinating subject, but it's not something I've consciously pursued three books ago. I guess the Courting Mr. Lincoln was kind of my first, I think, real sally in that direction where I thought I took a Jane Austen novel and put Abraham Lincoln at the center of it. And then I investigated Mary Todd. I also investigated Joshua Speed, who was Lincoln's best friend and maybe something more than a best friend. So I just find it eternally interesting to see how people get along with each other. I find it interesting in my own life and I find it interesting on the page as well.

BP: You know, that's fair. That's fair. I was going to say maybe more than that but we can get to that in a moment. However, what you were just saying about being interested in marriage because the marriage plot in its traditional sense, as you said, ended with the marriage. And nothing happens after that. And in some ways, that was a function of the way women were supposed to be presented into society. Once you married, you had no more adventures, right?

LB: Right. You settled, you became… You're that loyal help meat for the rest of your life for your husband. Yeah. So the idea that Elizabeth Bennett is going to have affairs or just fall out of love with her husband, that's not a possibility in the Jane Austen universe, the climax is the marriage. And the assumption is that everyone would be happy going forward. Jane Austen, of course, never married. So she would have known something of some other emotions around that subject.

BP: So let's talk about that aspect of someone before and after marriage, as you were saying, women weren't supposed to have more adventures and women weren't supposed to have very strong opinions and all of that kind of thing. So talk to me about your Mary Todd and how you got to know her.

LB: Well, one of the things that became clear when I was researching Mary Todd. And I was coming at both Mary and Abe as young, relatively young people. Mary is still in her lower twenties and Lincoln’s no more than 30. So they're not the people that have been passed down to us. And one of the issues with Mary Todd as a historical figure as a cultural figure is that her story was written almost entirely by men. One man in particular who was her sworn enemy, William Herndon. He wrote, probably wrote the most influential biography of Lincoln ever. It was a collection of oral testimony from all the people who had known him. But his goal in writing the book that he did, at least one of his goals was to humiliate her and, and cast her as this shrew and this. So the more I learned about her, the more I realized, oh, wow. She was a woman, as you said, a woman who had ideas and thoughts, particularly about politics. She was very much a political beast. Her father was a politician, so she had very strong thoughts and she found in Lincoln, somebody who was willing to listen, and she was very much an uncredited advisor to him throughout their life together. The famous line that Lincoln said after he learned that he'd been elected to the White House in 1860 was Mary, Mary, we are elected. And I love that first person plural pronoun because it suggests that she's been there all along. Not just this loyal helpmate, as we were saying earlier, but somebody who is a partner in the whole thing. And so that was a big part of putting the book together was showing how this partnership came about. It wasn't simply like a Southern bell meeting a rough hewn Illinoisian suitor. It was about two people finding their joy together.

BP: We talk so much these days about who's allowed to write what kind of characters. And so I'll, you know, I'll show you mine, which is that, you know, in this historical novel that I am bumbling my way through. A manuscript, not novel. It's a manuscript. I just had a gay man enter the scene, brother of one of my main characters. It's about 1945. And I thought, am I allowed to write this character as a cis-het white woman, or is this something, I don't know what's the word I'm looking for, sensitivity reader, do I need for something like that? But of course you are a gay man, a married gay man, a white man who is writing about people you know, straight women, gay men, married men, all kinds of different, you know, orientations and genders. And clearly you are also a writer of some stature and experience. So you know what you can do and what you can do to some extent, right? But where do you stand on this representation and appropriation question?

LB: Gosh, it's a complicated question, isn't it? So I've always thought one of the most limiting things to say to a writer is write what you know, because that immediately just cribs you into the confines of your own life, which is increasingly narrow the more you plummet. So for me, the my watchword is write what you wanna know. And so every, every one of my books is about people I wanna know more about. And I find a great joy in writing about women, for instance. There are a lot of strong women in my books and I find great joy in bringing them into the world. The bossier they are the better. I just want them there. Bossy. Bossy. Because the bossier, they are the more interesting they are. The more they bring conflict into this realm. You don't want the passive, you know, and I love Jane Eyre, but she's extra super passive through a lot of that book. So yeah, it's just, it's about following my own curiosity and where that leads. So I've written about straight men. I've written about straight women, all those things. It's just about following my instincts, I guess. But I understand too that in today's world, there are places that I probably wouldn't go. I loved Percival Everett's book, James, I thought that was extraordinary reimagining of Huckleberry Finn. I wouldn't have dared to write that.

BP: Of course.

LB: I wouldn't have dared to write that book because I thought he had an angle on it that I couldn't possibly have had. The code switching between the slaves do with each other versus when they were around the white people. I thought that was an extraordinary invention. But at the same time, I don't mind, as you said, you know a straight women writing about gay people. I thought Rebecca Makkai did an amazing job of that in …

BP: The Great Believers.

LB: The Great Believers. And that came from a place of research, but it also came from a place of art. Just imagining your way into these people who are not like you. To me, that's the whole joy of the fictional enterprise, is to figure out what people are like who are not you.

BP: Thank you, Lou. Lou's latest book, The Wilds, a novel in five acts, shows his latest attempt to subvert the marriage plot, and you can get it wherever books are sold.

Now, let's move on to Friday Reads, where we'll see what you've been reading this week.

It's time for another set of Friday Reads posts. As always, I've got my producer Jordan here to help me sort through them. So Jordan, what do we have teed up today?

JA: All right, first off, we've got from Library Thing: ‘It's Friday. What are you reading?’ And they've got a nice graphic asking the same question.

BP: I love that Library Thing participates in Friday Reads, because Friday Reads is just something that is totally free range, like this field of sunflowers in their graphic, right? You know, no one owns it. No one pays for it. No one has to do anything except use the hashtag and then get some ideas about what to read next. So I get ideas about what to read next on Friday Reads all the time. And so since Library Thing is asking, I will say that I am actually reading … I'm not decided yet this week. So, hey if you're listening, go ahead and send in some recommendations to, you know, I am happy to hear them. Let's see what's coming up next. Maybe it'll give me an idea, Jordan.

JA: Yeah. Next we've got from Peter Heggy ‘Sarah Bakewell's Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Free Thinking, Inquiry, and Hope.’

BP: I love this cover. Sarah Bakewell is a terrific author and thinker, and there are such interesting and different thinkers on the cover, including, we've got, Bertrand Russell, Zora Neale Hurston, Frederick Douglass. So I love it. Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope is the subtitle for Humanly Possible. I think that could easily become one of my Friday reads. Maybe not this weekend. I need something a little lighter, but I definitely want to take a look at this. Thanks, Peter. So, next one.

JA: Next one's from Jennifer Messner, and they say, ‘good morning, happy hashtag Friday Reads’, and they've got a wonderful picture of their cat with the book, The Once and Future King by T.H. White.

BP: I love this photo. Jennifer Messner, who's Twitter moniker or X moniker is @occasionallyzen because the cat is a beautiful tortoise shell. Who can resist a beautiful cat? But The Once and Future King by T. H. White is one of my all time favorite books. I, you know, I read it young, I read it early. It's King Arthur, what's not to like? So Jennifer, I want to recommend The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman, which just came out about a month ago. It's another retelling of the Arthurian legend and it's quite different. I think you'll enjoy it. So there you go, a rec from me and on to the next one, Jordan.

JA: All right. And up next, we've got from Craig Pittman, who says @TheBookMaven finished 1979 by Val McDermid and Willful Behavior by Donna Leon. And started State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg.

BP: Craig, as I've said before, is the most loyal Friday Reads poster ever. Craig has been posting since 2009 when I started Friday Reads. So, if you went back through his Friday posts on this, platform, you would get so many great recommendations. Craig is also an incredible writer, writes often about the state of Florida where he lives, and he is extremely funny on all of that. So Craig, big shout out to you. Thanks for being, you know, a longtime Friday Reads person. Finally, Jordan, we've got…

JA: We've got another great graphic from Power Wielders book series who says, ‘give us a number. On average, how many books do you read in a year?’

BP: This made me laugh, and I have to end this set of Friday Reads posts with this because I know that even if I tell you how many books I read in a year, I know people who read more.

So, in a really good year, I read between 175 and 200 books. That sounds like a lot. Last year didn't get anywhere near that. Last year I was about 120 books. I'm back on track for this year, but believe me, I know people who read 200 to 250 and on to 300, and that doesn't even account for the people I know who are on prize committees, like the National Book Award or the Pulitzer, who wind up going through 400 to 500 titles. Do they read every single paragraph and page? Hmm, I don't know, but anyway, I love thinking about how many books we read in a year because ome of us, you know, can read a lot. Some of us can't read a lot. It doesn't really matter. What matters is what you take in.

JA: That's really great. Yeah. It's not about quantity. It's about quality.

BP: There you go. Thank you, Jordan, for another great Friday Reads Roundup.

It's that time of year where we give thanks, and one of the things I'm grateful for is the bevy of Little Women adaptations that have been introduced to the world in the last century and a half. In today's Pop Goes the Culture, we dive into all the different places Louisa May Alcott's beloved novel has found itself, including movies, musicals, opera and anime.

Raise your hand if you've watched Sutton Foster in Younger on television or seen her theatrical performances. She's a wonderfully talented star. I don’t want to brag, but I got to see her in one of the world's shortest lived Broadway musicals. That was 2005's Little Women, in which she played the lead, Jo March. I do have the mug we bought afterwards because we brought our own two little women at ages 7 and 12 to see it for their first Broadway musical experience.

The production ran from January to May of that year. As short, sad, and sweet as Beth March's life. If that was a spoiler for you, you've come to the wrong podcast. Yes, Beth dies. We have to have some way for the preternaturally cheerful and productive March women to experience true sadness. But I'm getting ahead of the story and our roundup of its many, many adaptations.

This might be the biggest Pop! Goes the Culture for us since Lolita earlier this season. At last count, about 35 versions of Little Women. Stage, screen, radio, books, even operas exist. And by the time I finish telling you about some of them, there might be more. Which fascinates me, because first, I was named after the character of Beth.

Second, I gobbled up the story when I was a child, and even today cannot watch Jillian Armstrong's and Greta Gerwig's film adaptations enough. Third, because Louisa May Alcott, the celebrated author of Little Women, loathed her own book. In her journal, she wrote, I don't enjoy this sort of thing. Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters. But our career plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it.

Read to write it because it was a condition the publisher set if her father was to see his own musings in print. And she did love her father, Bronson Alcott, a radical transcendentalist who suffered from depression. Ultimately, Louisa May Alcott became a literary success through Little Women and its companion volume, Little Women Two, and Little Men.

Her simple story about girls was the YA sensation of its day. Yes. Think Twilight, The Hate U Give, and The Hunger Games all wrapped up in one irresistible package for the tweens and teens of late 19th century America.

It's a coming of age novel for the March sisters as a whole. It's Joe March's bildungsroman and picaresque. It's a war novel in which the Union army looms large for the entire family. It's an account of a young woman who wants to overcome her gendered role and be a writer. It's a novel of manners in which Meg and Amy March choose nearly Austenian roles as wives.

Cue the Chappel Roan. There's no way I can do justice to every cultural instance of Little Women adapted. So consider this a sizzle reel.

The first dramatic adaptation came in 1912 on Broadway, written by Marion de Forest. In 2019, Kate Hamill staged a new drama in New York City. The first film adaptation, made in 1917 by Alexander Butler, is considered a lost film, as is the next one that came after it. The next oldest that survives is George Cukor's 1933 remake, famously starring Katharine Hepburn as Jo.

Jo!

The first color version starred June Allison as Jo and came out in 1949. In 1958, Richard Adler directed the first TV adaptation for CBS. The BBC has made four versions of Little Women: In 1950, 1958, 1970, and 2018.

Little Women has been adapted into anime, a Bollywood film, and a Korean television show. It's had two other musical adaptations, two radio drama versions, and about a dozen retellings by authors, including Geraldine Brooks’ March, told from the father's perspective, and This Wide Night by Sarvat Hasin, which has a four sister family living in Karachi during the 1970s era Bangladesh War.

Alcott might have disparaged her novel about sisters, but no piece of literature, as I've said in the past, is complete until it's been read. Readers continue to respond to Little Women with enthusiasm, joy, and recognition. It's a cultural touchstone that transcends different eras, languages, and perspectives. We should all raise a glass of Aunt March's finest champagne to its continued reception and adaptations.

Little Women is a novel, but since it's also a reflection on Alcott's actual life, it got me thinking about the importance of memoir as a medium. And so for this week's Six Recs, I'll be serving you up some great memoirs that I love.

Okay, it's time for another Six Recs. These are going to be memoirs. And as usual, my producer Jordan is here to time me. We're going to try to do six of these in less than three minutes. This time I'm going to try to beat the bookcase. Jordan, are you ready?

JA: We're rolling.

BP: All right, here we go.

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner is a biography within a memoir. It's unusual structure made possible because its subject, Mildred Donner, Mildred Donner Harnack, was her great aunt. And, it's really fascinating. I hope you pick it up.

Dirtbag Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald is the confessions of a former fat kid, altar boy, smuggler, unhoused person, and more, all foreshadowed by Fitzgerald's untimely conception. It's a dirty bomb of love and compassion.

The Yellow House by Sarah Broom is all about can a structure itself form the structure of a book? If you're as talented as Broome is, absolutely. She lays out her family's history through the layout of their New Orleans shotgun house. It's extraordinary.

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala is one of the purest narratives of grief ever written by a woman who lost her husband, sons, and in-laws in the 2004 Thailand tsunami. Really, really important book.

Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James is completely different. It's one of the funniest books ever from the Australian critic who called it an autobiography disguised as a novel. I promise you'll snort at least once while you read it.

And finally, Edna O'Brien's Country Girl. Rest in peace or power to Edna O'Brien, whom we lost in the summer of 2024 and whom we venerate for books like this one, in which she flees her parents home to the Isle of Man and is followed by her father and his henchmen in a private plane.

That is it for this week's Six Recs. Jordan, how did I do?

JA: Well, while that wasn't technically the fastest we've ever done, you came in at an impressive minute and 49 seconds.

BP: Not the fastest, but that is pretty tight. And I wish I could have said lots more about each of these fabulous memoirs. I hope you'll pick at least one of them up. Jordan, thanks as usual.

Well, that does it for this episode of The Book Maven: a Literary Revue. Follow us on Substack for daily posts about new book releases, commentary, and more. It's free. Talk to you next week.

The Book Maven: a Literary Revue, is produced and hosted by me, Bethanne Patrick. It's also produced by Christina McBride, with engineering by Jordan Aaron, and our booking producer is Lauren Stack.