Introduced by legendary writer and Kenyon professor P. F. Kluge, Stephanie Danler walked into Finn House last Thursday with a smile and an intention— to read about “sex and drugs, of course,” talk about her experience writing her debut novel Sweetbitter, and signing those perfect pink books.
Published in May of 2016, Sweetbitter is a coming-of-age story about twenty-two year-old Tess, a backwaitress at hip restaurant in New York City “loosely based on Union Square Café,” where Danler herself worked. The plot mirrors the process of serving a dinner: slow and intricate, too much so to some, but just how Danler likes it. Although Sweetbitter’s Tess separates from Danler when she interacts with other characters, Danler stated that her novel started as many do, as an autobiography— she lived in the same apartment with the same plan to work temporarily in a restaurant, instead going on to work in the restaurant business for nearly a decade.
Danler’s start to adulthood was all but easy. Although a talented writer, her high school transcript was “troubled,” and she left public school for a school for students with “troubled transcripts.” While she was there, a teacher of hers with a particularly close connection to Kenyon College took an interest in her writing. When he inquired about her plans for college, she brushed him off, replying that she was “going to Europe to be a server.” At the end of her senior year, however, high test scores and a persistent professor paid off– Danler came off of the waitlist at Kenyon College, where her writing skills would blossom. Fast forward over ten years later, when Danler told her coworkers, friends, and family that she intended to write a novel. This idea was initially not well-received, but Danler pursued her dream regardless. While working for her MFA at the New School, Sweetbitter was the only thing she worked on. Upon it’s completion, she sent “a million letters to find query agent,” before sparking the interest of Melissa Flashman from Trident Group Media, who agreed to work with Danler. However, while serving tables at Buvette, Danler struck up a conversation with restaurant-regular Peter Gethers, a publisher at Alfred. A. Knopf. He convinced her to send him the manuscript, and promptly responded that he knew within the first ten pages that this book was something special. Shortly afterwards, Danler was offered a six-figure two-book deal with Knopf, and Sweetbitter has flourished from there.
Now on the third month of book touring, Danler claims that “this book was always meant to find its readers.” Creating a book is a collaborative art, including the writer and the publisher and the graphic designer, but the reader makes the book. Although the media tends to portray Sweetbitter as a Cinderella-story, it is the opposite: it is a painful-but-accurate account of a young woman’s coming-of-age, not at fourteen or eighteen, but at twenty-two. Twenty-two is the new eighteen—it’s a time when young people are expected to change their lives, and oftentimes change plans each week without direction. This story partly inspired by the recent college graduates who want to be a yoga instructor one week and a firefighter the next, who work in restaurants “in between.”
After being featured by major publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The Paris Review and selling countless copies of her incredible novel, the audience in Finn House was eager to pick Danler’s brain on everything from literature to publishing to anchovies (Ortiz in a can—she puts them in everything). Her advice to young writers? “Finish the first draft. You won’t know if it’s brilliant or garbage until you’ve finished the first draft. And it will be garbage, but then you can work with it.” What’s harder, the faith in writing or the work of writing? “The work. Lots of writers have a lot of faith and talk a lot about their writing, but haven’t written a word.” Faith doesn’t get the draft written. And her thoughts on moving to New York? “In New York, your past isn’t currency. We all have them, but New Yorkers don’t care.” You’re better off being a blank slate in New York. What’s her ideal work day? “The Virginia Woolf Day.” Three hours for work, an hour for lunch, an hour for correspondence, three hours of writing, dinner. Six days a week. Her typical work day? There isn’t one—Danler wrote around restaurant work and graduate school in the form of sporadic “writing binges,” in which she struggle to eat, shower, sleep, or do anything but write for hours on end.
As Tess craves the sweet, fans eagerly await Danler’s future writing—it won’t disappoint. Sweetbitter is ultimately a story of a young woman learning the difference between the bitter and the sweet—and learning to appreciate the both of them, as everyone must learn in real life.
Image Credit: Vanity Fair, Warby Parker, Sarah Mueller Designs