Interview: Amy Sohn, NYC Columnist & Novelist

Back in the late 1990s, as the world was falling in love with the fictional Carrie Bradshaw and her friends, and their fictional friends’ dating adventures (in a mostly fictional NYC), a real columnist named Amy Sohn was writing about her real dating adventures in the real NYC.

First at the New York Press, then at the New York Post, then at New York magazine, Amy wrote with a blunt, hilarious honesty about the vicissitudes of not only sex and romance but also about the challenges of being a human being in a city that worships money, power, and vanity. I first discovered Amy in 1999, right after I’d returned to NYC from college, and her original New York Press column, “Female Trouble”, was an eye-opening look at the NYC single life that I was entering into. More than just entertaining and funny, her column was educational.

Amy’s work has evolved from those days, and she is now a successful novelist. Along the way, she’s also become a wife and mother. Amy was kind enough to share with Mr NYC some background about her life and work, as well as her thoughts and feelings about #MeToo and relationships and life in NYC today.

Tell us a little bit about your background and what made you want to become a writer?

When I was 19 I was a summer-camp counselor and my boyfriend at camp, the cook, turned me on to Bukowski, Fante, and Algren. I started writing autobiographical stories, mostly about dating and sex, in the vein of Buk, my hero, in a big unlined notebook. Around 1994, when I was a junior at Brown, I began performing the stories downtown at a performance space called AS 220, at open mics and variety shows. It was a vibrant scene filled with music and provocation. I felt I fit in really well there. I always wrote for the purpose of reading my stories aloud.

Your New York Press dating column "Female Trouble" from the late 1990s was shocking and groundbreaking. It was honest and raw, very personal and intimate, and I don't remember reading anything quite like it at the time. Then came along "Sex and the City", blogs, etc. and shocking became mainstream. What made you want to write this column back then and do you view "Female Trouble" as the precursor to a change in the culture?

I was a temp and actress (temptress) living with my parents right after graduating and my dad used to bring home this weird paper. I got into it and was taken by the first-person columns, especially Howard Altman and Jim Knipfel. The stories felt real and honest and they were painfully funny. I wanted to get published. I think my first actual published story was in Playgirl but that’s another story. I sent a piece to John Strausbaugh at New York Press and he sent it back with a note in the margin that said it might be right for SWANK or Penthouse. I had never heard of SWANK but I got the idea. I tried a different story, “The Blow-Up Boyfriend,” and sent that one to John. It was about my fantasy of having an inflatable boyfriend that I could deflate whenever he talked about his band too much. They bought that one, and one or two more, and a few weeks later they offered me a column. I wanted to call it Maidenhead, a terrible title. Sam Sifton, John, and Russ Smith convinced me to call it “Female Trouble.” Of course they were John Waters fans, Russ and John having come from the Baltimore city paper. (They later taught me what a "Baltimore round" is.)

I agree that the term “sex and the city” was very shocking at the time. Just the word “sex” was arresting. The nineties were very odd in the mainstreaming of sex. In my column I tried to be honest and self-deprecating. When I was grandiose it was done with a big wink. Behind my pathetic stories there was really a lot of rage. I didn’t understand why men my age were so cruel and disinterested in love and connection. But I picked very bad paramours. Thank God no one I was obsessed with in the 90s reciprocated. It would have ruined my life. I would be mother to a lot of elusive rocker boy babies and figuring out how to deal with my co-dependence. Did I really want to be a member of any club that would have me? Probably not.

“Female Trouble” had good timing. I think women my generation, dating in the recession, in the “reality bites” scene, were frustrated with these narcissistic guys. I can’t speak for why “Sex and the City” the column came along when it did. She was chronicling a different demographic but I think we were both struggling with a feeling of anger and powerlessness. Why did men control the stories? Why did men always get to pick? Why didn’t women get to pick?

You went from the New York Press in the 1990s to the New York Post and New York magazine in the early 2000s. What did you do at those jobs and what was it like working for those publications as the Internet was changing the journalism business?

I was at New York Press for 3 1/2 years, sometimes writing weekly, sometimes biweekly, and at one point also writing an advice column. I left for the New York Post, thinking it could be a chance to do more pop-cultural writing but it was a very bad fit. They wanted the sentences short because the typeface was big. I also made the mistake of posing in a nightie, lying on my stomach, feet kicked up behind me, with no shoes, and even though I have wide, flat feet I got fan letters from foot fetishists for years. I quit after about four months. I had also published my first novel, Run Catch Kiss by the time I left New York Press and wanted to devote time to writing a second novel.

At New York my column was first called “Sex Matters,” then “Naked City,” “Mating,” and “Breeding.” In it I interviewed New Yorkers about their sexual predilections. I learned not to judge people. I also learned that under the cover of anonymity people will tell you almost anything. Some of the people I interviewed are really famous now in their chosen fields - composers and stylists. They would talk to me about how there were no bottoms in New York or what it’s like to date two people at once. I enjoyed the chance not to write about myself but I also felt that the short length allotted to the column made it hard for me to dig deep with my subjects. The magazine was never quite sure where the sex fit in, I remember the column moved around, from the back near penis-enlargement and personal ads (when New York had its own personals) and later to the front when I was writing more about marriage and kids. I was at New York from 2001 to 2006.

You've published five novels (Run Catch Kiss, Motherland, My Old Man, Prospect Park West, and The Actress) about relationships, parenthood, and the challenges of life in NYC. Do all of these novels relate to your experiences that came with the stages of life in NYC, i.e. going from single woman to wife and mother?

Some of my books are less autobiographical than others. The Actress was mostly set in LA and I did a lot of research for it. I wanted to break away from social satire and try melodrama. It didn’t really work because the novel needed a murder and my editors and I did not agree about that. I also learned that modern novels about marriage and divorce are troubled and troubling because divorce is so widely accepted, even if upsetting and expensive.

What does feminism mean to you? Do you consider yourself a feminist and does your work relate to it in any way?

I have called myself a feminist since I was a teenager. I grew up in the progressive Jewish Reform movement and progressive values went hand in hand with religion. I attended a big pro-choice rally around 1992. I never thought “feminist" was a dirty word. Years later, in the 90s, I interviewed a celebrity who was uncomfortable when I asked if she was a feminist and I found it absolutely bizarre. That was another era, when the word itself was something women feared.

What do you think of #MeToo?

My feelings are incredibly complicated. It’s important that women are sharing their stories and bringing sexual harassment and rape into the national conversation. As a strong believer in due process, I'm concerned about the cases in which men have lost their jobs based on extremely limited evidence, sometimes just one story that has two sides. I worry that we are in a moment of sex panic. None of us know the ultimate outcome of the movement. I also think about women who need to be mentored by men to advance in their professions (because men still hold the vast majority of the power) -- and men who are now afraid to spend one-on-one time with them for fear of false accusations. As with so many things, women are the ones who pay the price for that. What do you hope to write about in the future? I’m now writing narrative non-fiction (historical) for Farrar, Straus & Giroux. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done but my book deals with women’s rights in the 19th century and I find the stories deeply gratifying. This was a time when marital rape and forced pregnancy and childbirth were the norm. It was just called “marriage."

How do you feel about how NYC has changed over the years? Do you ever get nostalgic for the old days?

Of course I do - I’m a native New Yorker! The money bums me out. The people bum me out. The phones on the subways. The phones everywhere. The corporate stores. But when I get depressed I walk up and down Church Avenue in Brooklyn. New York is still alive, you just have to know where to find it.

Finally, tell us something about Amy Sohn that we might not know.

I was a child actress and got my Actors Equity card at age 12.

Thanks Amy!