Sara Lippmann, "Swanee"

It’s December 17. Sara Lippmann, author of Jerks, removes her shoes before entering the ball pit.

How would you describe your story?

SARA LIPPMANN: “Swanee” is the story of a mother trapped inside motherhood set against the backdrop of her son's birthday party, where a child is trapped. It's a story of longing and desire, visibility and erasure, a story that fantasizes transgression as it fetishizes escape.

When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?

SL: It first appeared in Joyland in 2014, so I must have written it around 2012 or 2013, after, or perhaps even during, a birthday party. It dials into a central concern of my work at the time, go figure. Now that I'm nearing the empty nest, preoccupations have shifted.

What kind of research went into this story?

SL: Field research: to Chuck E. Cheese, to Bounce Castle. Countless birthday parties at chaotic play spaces.

I did read up on Al Jolson, whose song informs the story's title. It's no accident that Jack Moore, the pedestalled other husband and object of the narrator's obsession, hums a Dixie tune by an artist whose history of wearing blackface is often glossed over.

What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?

SL: I love the container of the short story. The magic of compression, how the limit frees the form. Steven Millhauser wrote a beautiful ode to the short story a bunch of years ago in The New York Times, which I return to often, as he puts it way better than I ever could. No one expects anything from it, so it can do anything. There's a real, kinda subversive, liberation in that. "The short story apologizes for nothing"—and yet, of course, what lies in that humble grain of sand, that's everything.

Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?

SL: I have a dusty website: www.saralippmann.com.

What's the best gift you've ever been given?

SL: Time. Meg Wolitzer (who I was lucky enough to study with when my kids were very little) once said—likely in response to my complaining about not writing—no one will give you time. You have to take it. So this is a present I have given myself, not nearly enough, but a few choice times over the years—to a cabin in the woods. As little as 48 hours away. Once, an actual residency. It's amazing, to witness what opens up, how creativity begins to sprout in even the most dessicated and inhospitable reaches of the heart and mind. That's the comfort of solitude.

* * * * *

What did you think of today's story? Use the hashtag #ssac2023 on Twitter and Instagram to check in with your fellow advent calendarians.