For eight years, Lisa Taddeo (New Jersey, 1980) followed three strangers to question them about their relationship with sexuality and desire. “I am interested in these issues because we are not sincere when talking about them. The most important things in life are sex and death, and we lie about both, ”says the author, a journalist with long journeys in magazines like Esquire or New York , who debuted as a writer with Three Women (Principal of the Books), become one of the editorial phenomena of last year in the United States. “I thought he was writing a discreet book,” he says about his best seller, in the process of translation in half the world. "My only imposition is not to choose pink covers," warns publishers tempted to assimilate it with the most innocuous chicklit .
Taddeo lives far from the urban elites who have acclaimed his book, in a small town in Lichtfield County - where he demands not to give the exact location to be left alone - the only one in all of Connecticut where Donald Trump won the last elections . “I don't want to be with people. Not that I hate others, but here it is easier for me to write and raise my daughter than in New York amid the noise of ambulances. Here I have more peace of mind. ” Looking out the window, the writer looks at the grocery store on the corner, distressingly neat and tidy; a lazy police station, where the agents must not have much more to do than rescue kittens from the trees, and a church of enormous proportions, the essence of the Puritan project that landed with the Mayflower . On the other side you can see the dark interior of a lush forest, the last stronghold of a nature pending civilization.
"The hangover of puritanism will not disappear"
His initial idea was to talk about the desire of men. "I had been working for the male press for many years and had an immediate connection with what that reader wanted," says Taddeo, almost excusing himself. He immediately understood that women would be a more stimulating subject of study. “They gave me more honest answers. The men were less willing to tell me about the negative side. Even my brother, whom I interviewed at the beginning of the process, and who obviously does not need to impress me in the sexual sphere, was afraid of not looking like a stallion, ”he says. "Women had less ego, or even none."
Their method of work consisted of asking strangers when it was the last time they had practiced sex or hanging advertisements requesting testimonies of unrequited love affairs. Unmotivated by the lack of results, Taddeo moved to Indiana to work with a women's therapy group coordinated by the Kinsey Institute, which in 1948 scandalized the country with that report that discovered the average American that half of the male population had trends bisexual and, worse still, that his grandmothers also masturbated. There he found the first of its protagonists: Lina, a Catholic housewife who was a victim of a group rape during her youth, married to a man who has not kissed her for a decade. Then he moved to North Dakota, where he found the story of Maggie, a twenty-year-old woman who had a relationship with a married teacher in the institute, which she brings to justice. In third place, she found Sloane, who owns a restaurant in the well-off Rhode Island and fond of practicing threesomes with her husband, although her free sex life also hides some wounds. What did they have in common? “All three were judged morally. That's why they decided to talk. ”
"Women are very supportive of each other, except outside of Twitter"
Three women revive the tradition of the great American literary journalism, in the wake of a volume like The Woman of Your Neighbor , by Gay Talese, who examined the consequences of the sexual revolution in the middle class. Taddeo also admits the influence of Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe and, above all, the lesser known Tracy Kidder, author of Home Town , who exposed the ins and outs of an idyllic town in Massachusetts, or the soul of a new machine , over The process of manufacturing a computer. “I don't care what they write because they are authors that always interest me, even when the topic can't matter less,” says Taddeo, who grew up in a home of Italian immigrants where “Virginia C. Andrews [ best author rugged sellers ] and not Virginia Woolf. ”
More than on desire, Three women talks about the subaltern position that women continue to have in the emotional and sexual field two centuries after Madame Bovary (not by chance, Taddeo begins his book with a quote from Flaubert). The author describes a society wrapped in social dignity worthy of the nineteenth century. Harold Bloom described Hester, the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter , as "the American Eva," punished for giving in to her adulterous desire. Taddeo portrays, in that sense, three contemporary Evas. In the American psyche, is sex still malefic? "The hangover of Puritanism will take time to leave, it will not disappear immediately, let alone in the current political climate," he replies. “I have presented the book in many countries and mine is the most Puritan of all. There are readers who come to ask me for a signature and, incidentally, take the opportunity to tell me that my characters are real foxes. ” Are the effects of Me Too still limited? "It is not the fault of the movement, but as a society we do not want to hear stories that do not follow an upward and uplifting logic," says Taddeo. In that sense, its protagonists are uncomfortable counterexamples. “We just want to read profiles about empowered celebrities. I have written dozens of them myself. This time I preferred to do the opposite: talk about normal people and their circumstances, ”he adds.
Taddeo describes women who live without a network of solidarity, surrounded by other women who follow the patriarchal dictation strictly and perpetuate their misogynistic tics. "Women are very supportive of each other, except outside of Twitter," Taddeo ironizes. “We still fight for a partner who gives us a baby. That is the biological reality and, as much as we have advanced as a society, it has not yet disappeared. Even in the case of homosexual couples there is a competition pattern, which is identical to the world of work ”. Taddeo recalls that a close friend told her that Lina - who is driving for four hours to have a 20-minute sexual encounter with a married man who has made it clear that she does not love her - seemed like a pathetic woman. "I reminded her that, years ago, she used to cross the Hudson River to Hoboken to have fleeting encounters with a Goldman Sachs vice president," the author recalls before disappearing in the rain. "The whole book is written for that friend to understand her."
Get 'Three Women'
Author: Lisa Taddeo.
Translation: Aitana Vega Casiano.
Editorial: Principal of the Books, 2020.
Format: 320 pages, 17 euros.
Find it in your nearest bookstore
