After reading author Catherine Linka’s latest novel, What I Want You to See, I had the pleasure of talking to her about her experiences with art, the housing crisis, music, and of course her dog, Carter.

Mild spoilers for the novel to follow!

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Mary: I’m really excited to get to talk to you and I loved your book, What I Want You to See. I just finished it yesterday and was truly blown away.

Catherine: That’s super, and I’m so excited that you enjoyed the book. 

M: Yes, that’s always the best, you know? To really fall in love with a book like that. Something that I kept thinking of while I was reading is that so much of this novel focuses on the artistic process-- the preparation to paint, researching painting, actually designing and beginning to paint—and other types of art as well like fashion design. You describe all of these steps so wonderfully. Me, not as an artist, I was enraptured by this process. What was your research process like to prepare to write this book?

 C: I was fortunate in that I had grown up painting and drawing and doing ceramics and photography, so I understood how to use the different media. It made it a lot easier to talk about. I think it would’ve been hard coming into that cold and never having created that way. I also augmented that; I spent about a year indulging my love of art and art history by going to museums and galleries around Los Angeles—LA has this incredibly vibrant contemporary art scene—and this [novel] gave me an excuse to do something that I really hadn’t put the time into, which was so great. I thought, maybe I’ll sell a book, maybe I won’t sell a book, but I will have had this incredible experience. And I also am fortunate that I have friends who attended CalArts, and I did my MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, so I was really familiar with what it’s like to be in a position where you’re critiquing work. I was in a writing program at VCFA, so I was very familiar with what it’s like to have your work under discussion, even though I had never had any visual art that was critiqued.

M: Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m just finishing up a PhD in a program that has majors in creative writing and English, and there are so many similarities between getting artwork critiqued and your artwork critiqued. Do you see your experience in workshops or on panels that critique other work as influential to this novel? Is competition inherent in critiquing creative work?

C: I think so much depends on the organization or the culture of the group that has brought you together for the critique because certainly there are groups that are well known for being really brutal. And fortunately Vermont has a very different culture, which is, let’s focus on the work. How can this work be made better? It’s not as competitive in terms of pitting students against each other. So fortunately I avoided most of that. I’ve only had a couple of instances where I have been attacked in a highly unbelievable way!

M: I was drawn in, in the book, by CALVINA’s extreme competitive nature and how all the students were sort of simultaneously trying to encourage each other while also knowing they were each other’s competition.

C: I was very shocked when I learned that the odds of getting a solo show are so low—something like 1 in 200 art students. That is scary. 

M: That is very scary, and I think that’s part of the reason why I felt so invested in these characters. I really wanted them to succeed, knowing how rare success is. The two themes I really picked up on in the book were first, the discussion of art and the creative process, but also the address of homelessness—and maybe even more specifically homelessness in younger populations that we don’t always consider. How did you know homelessness was going to be part of your novel?

C: You know, I didn’t set out to write about homelessness—I really didn’t. I wanted to write a story about art and I also wanted to infuse a crime into it, so that was the direction that I was heading, but you know I live in Los Angeles, and we have a real crisis right now, of homelessness. When I started writing the novel, the very first draft of the very first chapter Julie appeared. She actually was a woman that I had seen and I couldn’t get her out of my head. You know, the description of Julie is this woman who looks almost beatific in the smile that she has, and yet she has this white rat on her shoulder—she’s a really unforgettable person. As I began to write the story, I kept thinking why is Sabine being so desperate that she would make such a poor choice, you know she makes a choice that endangers everything that she cares about. That’s when I realized that she was that desperate because she had lost her mom, and as a result had lost their apartment, so she had no fallback. When I really started thinking about that, and the fact that she had lived in her car, that gave her a very different perspective. At the same time that I was developing my understanding of Sabine, I kept running into anecdotal articles about homelessness among college students. And as I began to really dive into that as a research issue, I was flabbergasted. I was absolutely floored to learn the scope of the problem. In California, it’s estimated that we have at least 300,000 community college students who do not have fixed regular secure housing—and that’s only on the community college level. It continues into Cal State, and even into UC, because we have very expensive housing. So that was how this book that wasn’t supposed to go in that direction ended up going in that direction.

M: I mean, those numbers are staggering and shocking. You write this in a note that explains more in the back of the book—but these are people who maybe we know in our classes or our classrooms. It’s important for people to hear—even if we live in an area that’s not affected that much—because there’s something we could all be doing, even if that’s just raising awareness.

C: You know, raising awareness is so important because it extends to everything from how we talk about people who are experiencing homelessness to whether or not students at a college create a swipes program to donate unused meals to fellow students or whether they create a food pantry or whether they create a career clothing closet for foster students who need something to wear to job interviews.

M: There’s so much that people can do but I think that awareness is the first step. You have to know there’s a problem in order to address it. Something you just said is also really important; we need to not only know there’s a problem, but learn that people experiencing homelessness as a problem are real people who have emotions and feelings and a history and a life and should be treated with dignity and respect.

C: The stigma is so great. And the stigma forces people to hide their lived experiences. It reinforces the stigma because we don’t see that there are many faces to homelessness.

M: It’s not just one type of person.

C: Exactly!

 M: I felt really moved by your inclusion of Julie in the book and in combination of your description of Sabine’s art, I could imagine Sabine’s portrait of Julie beautifully, and it was very touching!

C: Well, I’m glad because when you’re writing about a painting, you’re writing about something visual, especially for people who may have never painted or drawn—you always wonder, “Am I giving enough detail for people to imagine it, or am I boring them to death by giving them too much detail?” You know, it’s a fine line.

M: It is! And some of the painting techniques you’re describing made me look them up. I felt a little bit educated looking up things like encaustic painting, mixing beeswax and pigment. It’s really interesting and I have a greater appreciation of the art’s description because of the level of difficulty of the art itself, even mixing those paints.

C: I didn’t even know about encaustic painting until I talked to a painting restorer who explained it to me, and then of course I delved into it further. That was a total new one on me.

M: It’s fascinating, truly. A big theme that I haven’t asked about is the concept of art forgery and black market painting sales. Obviously we have issues of Sabine’s personal development and growth, but then also we have this world of art forgery tied to issues of mental health. I’m curious how you approached bringing all this together, or what got you interested in the process of art forgery.

C: Oh, I have always been fascinated by art crime and art forgery is so intriguing because you really can’t be stupid. You have to have an understanding of art history, you have to be a good enough artist to be able to reproduce something, and you have to also delve into the ideas of what might not be readily available. You’re not going to go out and do a reproduction of the Mona Lisa—that’s absolutely not going to work! Art forgers will look to create something that they can claim was lost—this is the lost Rembrandt or whatever—and so it’s this interesting mix of history and talent. Oh! And the other thing I love about art forgers is that they’re often really aggravated that their talent hasn’t been recognized. 

M: Yeah! That’s a good point!

C: So they’re very interesting people.

M: You obviously have to be talented to reproduce this art, and why haven’t they gotten recognized?? I also have to note that I loved your use of sparing pop culture references. Of course there’s mention of all of these great visual artists like Cindy Sherman and Francis Bacon, but then also we get a mention of Mandolin Orange!

 C: Are you a fan?

M: I am! Are you? Or is there something about their music that seemed particularly important to that moment in the book?

C: When you think about the character of Kevin and the music that represents him—you know Kevin plays guitar, he plays banjo, mandolin—and so I was looking for a song that would really represent him. When he says “I’m a fool for the finest girl, but she’s no fool for me,” I was like, Oh I really want to put that in the book. I couldn’t believe when Mandolin Orange said OK!

M: It fits so well and I love that you got to put it in there. And this reference does feel specific to the character. It makes sense for him.

C: That’s the kind of guy he is. For Sabine, the song that I really associate with her is Lucie Silvas’s “Smoke”—unfortunately I didn’t get to put that in the book, but I would’ve loved to.

M: I love all of this art coming together—painting, writing, music—all packed in here. I have one more question, and this is sort of specific to our podcast. On our podcast, we love our pets and we talk about animals a lot. Do you have a pet or favorite animal in your life?

C: Oh, yeah, he’s pretty ridiculous. His name is Carter. He’s named after John Carter of Mars. He’s a yellow lab and he’s turning 5—it’s his fifth birthday. And he’s the most ridiculous! He loves everyone, and he should be a Walmart greeter because he would do an amazing job. He will approach you and then he’ll flop down on his back so you can rub his belly, and my husband will look at him and go, “Oh my God, have some respect!” We were trying to get ready this morning and he got really excited because he goes to camp a couple of days a week, and he comes in the bathroom, he steals the washcloth and runs up and down the hall because he’s so excited! He’s doing donuts, where he’ll get to the end of the hall and then turn around and come back again.

M: I love that! I love silly dog and cat stories! Carter sounds very cute. Pets are good.

C: Indeed! Pets are good.

M: I could talk about the book in specific detail all day, but thank you so much for talking with me!

C: And thank you and thank you to everyone at Book Squad Goals! It’s a pleasure—happy reading!

Catherine Linka’s book What I Want You to See is available now from FreeForm Books!