14 minute read
The Joy of Jodi
NH novelist Jodi Picoult battles book banning, gets goofy on TikTok and reconsiders the real Shakespeare
BY ELISA GONZALES VERDI
It’s a wonder New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult has had any time to unwind lately, between the book tour for her upcoming novel, keeping up with her thriving TikTok account, listening to Taylor Swift’s newest album and speaking out against book banning.
During a brief visit home to New Hampshire, we were able to catch up with the Hanover resident to talk about her new book, “By Any Other Name,” writing in today’s world, and how social media is helping her reach new audiences.
New Hampshire Magazine: Your new book, “By Any Other Name,” comes out on Aug. 20. What can you tell us about it?
Jodi Picoult: It’s the story of two women. In 1581, it’s the story of Emilia Bassano, a female playwright whose work is not allowed before the public because she is a woman. She winds up paying a man for the use of his name, and his name happens to be William Shakespeare. In 2024, it’s also the story of her descendent, a woman named Melina Green, who has written a play about her ancestor Emilia, who can’t get it produced because theater is very much still a man’s world.
The question is whether she, too, will write herself out of history in order to see her work performed. To me, it’s really a book about art and legacy, and about how little has changed for women in 400 years. What makes it really fun, I think, is that Emilia Bassano is a real-life historical figure. She was the first female published poet in England in 1611, and based on a wealth of research that I’ve done, I think there’s a good chance that she might have written some of the plays attributed to Shakespeare.
NHM: What made you want to tell this story?
JP: I had been reading The Atlantic, and there was an article by a woman named Elizabeth Winkler, and in it she was talking about the authorship question — which has been raised for years about whether or not Shakespeare actually authored plays. She was looking at whether there might be any women who were among those who could be potential authors, and one of the things that she said was that Shakespeare had two daughters who survived, and neither of them knew how to read or write, and they signed with the mark.
I thought, wait ... hang on a second. You know what I love the most about Shakespearean plays? The feminist characters. You’ve got Rosalind and Beatrice and Catherine and Portia, and I don’t buy it. I don’t buy the fact that a guy who could write such egalitarian women in the 1500s would not teach his own daughters how to read.
That kind of got me going down a rabbit hole, and the more I learned about Emilia, the more her life naturally seemed to plug up gaps and questions that we have about Shakespeare’s authorship that academics for years have twisted themselves in knots to explain away how he could have the information and the knowledge and the ability to write the things that he wrote. And without even trying, Emilia’s life just slotted right into all that.
NHM: Shifting gears, I love your TikTok account. You’re so funny! What got you online, and do you enjoy being on social media?
JP: There was no social media when I started writing. So much has changed with the rise of social media. I tend to use different formats to reach different people. Facebook is for women who are in their 40s, 50s and so on. There are the readers that tend to find me on their Instagram, where I’m more myself, because I’ll show you pictures of my grandkids or dogs. I used to be pretty political on Twitter, but I don’t post very much there anymore because it’s toxic.
TikTok was a format that I hadn’t really considered because I’m way too old for it, but someone approached me and asked if I would be interested in trying to get my books out on it. Booktok was already a big thing, and I was like, “I want to see if it makes a difference. Let’s do a little experiment. Let’s see if being on TikTok can bring me readers who are younger.”
What I hear most often is from people who are in their 20s or so being like, “Oh my God, I love you on TikTok,” which cracks me up and horrifies my children. It’s really fun. If you’re willing to make fun of yourself, people like you on TikTok. And I don’t take myself all that seriously.
NHM: Have you seen a shift into bringing in younger readers?
JP: If you read the comments on some of the videos, people are like, “OK, you’ve totally convinced me I’m pre-ordering this book,” or, “Oh my god, that’s it. I’m going to read this book now, and I’ve never read you before,” so I know it’s creating a new audience. I gave a speech about book banning at Bucknell University, and I spoke to a creative writing class. And it was all young kids, and they were all like, “Oh my God, your TikTok is so fun.” I do think it’s bringing in a new generation of readers, which is awesome.
NHM: Speaking of the speech you gave about book banning, you’ve been really vocal lately, especially in New Hampshire, about Senate Bill 523 and the dangers of banning books. What is it like, as an author, to find out a book that you’ve written has been banned?
JP: It’s very frustrating, because the people who are doing the banning do not want to engage with us as authors. We have tried to speak out at school board meetings, and I had an open invitation and wrote to a superintendent in Wisconsin multiple times after a large number of my books were banned in a school district there, and they won’t even engage. They won’t talk to you, probably out of sheer embarrassment.
What’s the most upsetting to me is that the reason “Nineteen Minutes” (Picoult’s book) is banned is not because it’s about a school shooting. It’s because of the word “erection” on page 313. My books are not in elementary school libraries — my books are in high school libraries, and you cannot tell me that an anatomically correct word for a physical response is something that a high-schooler cannot understand or read.
The pearl-clutching that is going on is not protecting these kids, which is what the people who ban books want. What it is doing, is robbing them of tools to understand and deal with an increasingly complex world. That’s what books do. They help kids see themselves reflected, and they help them escape into worlds and lives that they have not lived. They create empathy, and book bans split us apart.
Having a book banned is not a badge of honor — it’s actually a really terrible thing. There are so many authors, mostly BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors, and disproportionately female authors, who are feeling their livelihoods pinched because of these parental rights laws that have passed in states that allow parents to decide what other people’s children should and should not read, and that is wrong.
It is the first step on a very slippery slope. I think that when you start to think about the fact that it’s a very small group of people who are being very loud, all it takes is for all the rest of us to whisper and it will become a roar. We all just need to stand up.
NHM: Is book banning changing the climate of writing? Are authors worried about writing about certain topics because their book will be banned?
JP: I don’t know if the authors are the ones that are feeling that as much as the publishers are. There is an extreme fear of being canceled, and book bans are cancel culture. There is this overcorrection right now, especially in the young adult and middle-grade market, to sanitize books so that nothing can be considered offensive. I think it’s making kids really bored with reading.
I think you can have villains, and I trust kids to understand that when you read a fictional villain, it’s helping them learn the difference between right and wrong. I just think that this weird panic and overcorrection and this fear of being canceled is in some ways changing the landscape, particularly for that age group. Not so much in the fiction I write; I write adult fiction, so it’s a little different.
NHM: What do you like to do when you are back home in New Hampshire?
JP: Honestly, I like to be in my house because I’m not here often enough. And hanging out with my husband is awesome. I think that what I love the most about New Hampshire is that, for three seasons of the year, it is a destination for tourists (except for mud season, which nobody likes). It’s a place other people want to come, and I get to live here! That’s the beauty of living in New Hampshire. I just love the privilege of being able to live in a state that is on everybody else’s vacation bucket list.
NHM: What do you miss most about New Hampshire when you’re travelling?
JP: My husband for sure. But I also miss the sense of community. I think that sense of community also doesn’t exist as much as it does in New England, and I really kind of miss that. There’s this one bend on 89 when I’m coming home from the airport. It’s right around the rest stop; I think it’s around, like, Exit 10 or so, and you come around this curve and you turn to the right, and all of the Upper Valley is spread out like a bunch of jewels that are thrown in front of you. It never fails to take my breath away, because when I see that, it’s like, “Ah, I’m home.”
The Truth and Lies About William Shakespeare
NHM: Were there any specific questions or gaps that you feel like Emilia’s life answered or filled?
JP: First, let me tell you a little bit about Shakespeare and a little bit about Emilia. What do we actually know about Shakespeare? We know factually that he was a businessman, a producer and an actor. We know he evaded taxes twice, and that he had restraining orders taken out on him multiple times by colleagues. We know that he jacked up the price of grain after hoarding it during a famine, and he sold it at a higher rate to his neighbors, and that he was really not a great guy. We also know that he never left the country, but he managed to write all these very detailed stories that involved Italy and Denmark and Egypt with details that weren’t available in guidebooks at the time.
He didn’t play an instrument, but there are over 300 very detailed references to music and musical instruments in the Shakespearean plays, and we know that he was self-educated, and that he didn’t go to university. When he died, he didn’t own a single book, and he wasn’t buried in Westminster Abbey, even though lots of poets and writers who you don’t even know were buried there. And when he died no other playwrights or poets mourned his loss publicly. That’s what we know about Shakespeare. Here’s what we don’t know: We don’t know that he wrote a single word. There’s just no proof of that.
Emilia was born to an Italian family, who were hidden Jews. They were Jewish, but they had tied their faith in England, and were talented musicians who were brought over from Italy to be the court recorder consort to King Henry VIII. When Queen Elizabeth took over, she kept them all on. When Emilia was 7 years old, she was given to a countess, who was this really feminist lady, who gave her a very rich, classical and legal education, which was very rare for women at the time. When Emilia was 12, the countess remarried, and Emilia was kind of stuck in limbo. So, she wound up living with the countess’s brother, Peregrine Vardy, for a year. He was a baron and the ambassador to Denmark. During the summer that she lived with him, he took a trip to Denmark, and probably either brought her with him or at least told her about the trip. When she was 13, she was given to the Lord Chamberlain of England to be his mistress, who was 56 at the time. She spent 10 years living with him, and what’s important about that is that the Lord Chamberlain was in charge of all theater in England. Every play that was written crossed his desk and had to be censored; he had to go to every rehearsal and opening nights. He knew every player in the theater community. Emilia, while living with him, absolutely would have been introduced to all of those players in the community.
When she got pregnant, she was kicked out of his house, and she wound up being married off to her cousin, who was a real jerk, who blew through all her money and left her in a state with a kid where she had to constantly try to make money to support her family. She had this drive to do something to make money. Then, in 1611, when she’s in her 40s, she publishes the first book of poetry by a woman in England, which is an extraordinary feat. But people don’t just walk into a publisher’s office at age 40 having never written anything before.
It’s my belief that she was writing and she just wasn’t doing it under her name. One example I find compelling is in “Othello.” Othello winds up killing his wife, Desdemona, and there’s this speech in it by Iago where, two lines in, he uses these really weird metaphors. He talks about a monkey, a goat and a woman who represents truth in a town called Bassano del Grappa. That’s this tiny little town in Italy where all of Emilia’s family is from. In the town square, there’s a big fresco with a mural on it, and in the mural, there is a monkey, a goat and a woman who represents truth. There are also two apothecaries in the town of Bassano del Grappa. One is run by a man named Othello. Then there’s the fact that between the first incarnation of Othello, which was published in the first quarto, and the one that was published in the First Folio a few years later, there are 161 new lines. Shakespeare died between the two versions, and we know he didn’t write the lines, and the lines are mostly given to Desdemona’s servant, and are a big, long soliloquy all about how women have the same flaws and fears and hopes as men, and how terrifying that should be to men. Of course, Desdemona’s servant’s name is Emilia. When you start picking apart stuff like that, it’s just too many coincidences.
Off the Cuff with Jodi Picoult:
Songs on Repeat:“Forever Like That” by Ben Rector “Fortnite” and “loml” by Taylor Swift (“I’m a major Swiftie over 50 — Taylor can you come to New Hampshire? I’ll open for you, even though I can’t sing!”)
Next on the reading list: “Whet” by Ali Hazelwood (“One of the perks of being an author is getting to read unpublished manuscripts — it comes out next year! I do not think there is a more perfect summer read than anything by Ali Hazelwood.”)
Things To Do When In NH:Swim. Hike. I wouldn’t rule out a maple creamie. Get the ice cream flight at SuperSecret Ice Cream. (“I would like to be their new spokesperson. It was delicious. I’m thinking: Taylor Swift, Super-Secret Ice Cream — we do a whole New Hampshire experience?”)
