Jessica M. Goldstein is a journalist and humorist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vulture, Marie Claire, McSweeney’s, and more. Her debut novel, Retro, follows Ash, a struggling aspiring actress who lands a job leading wealthy tourists on time-travel vacations to America’s past. From Old West romance adventures to Roaring Twenties birthday trips, the work is equal parts thrilling and surreal, offering Ash the exciting life she always wanted. But as an impossible love triangle unfolds and strange gaps begin appearing in her memory, Ash discovers that escaping into the past may be putting her future at risk.
We asked Goldstein to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers can get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing.
What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?
Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina. It’s such a satisfying book to read (or have read to you) as a little kid. Just pure anarchy with the monkeys. A cleverly-solved conundrum. Those punchy illustrations. Nothing too cute. This was in heavy rotation at bedtime for a loooong time in my house.
What book helped you through puberty?
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is probably my favorite coming-of-age story of all time. I read it for the first time when I was eleven. I actually reread it recently and was so taken with how matter-of-fact it is about adult topics—sex, poverty, violence—in a way that I only partly understood as a child. But I do remember feeling that this was a book that respected my burgeoning intelligence and curiosity, that it wasn’t cloying kid stuff, and I was so sensitive to that back then—to feeling like adults were always talking down to me. It was a revelation to be taken so seriously by a book meant for someone so young. I still think about Francie every time I pour my leftover coffee down the drain.
What book do you wish 16-year-old you had read?
I didn’t read The Children by David Halberstam until adulthood. But if I’d read, as a teenager, about people who were basically my age, refusing to wait until they were older to be instrumental in building the country they deserved? That would’ve have been everything to me! Really could’ve kicked open a door in my brain to read this line, in which Halberstam cites an argument made by Diane Nash against seeking parental permission for participating in lunch counter sit-ins: “…why go to their parents for permission to do something which they all agreed ought to be done, and which their parents had failed to do? If their parents had failed to do it themselves, then surely they would not let their children go where they had feared to go.”
If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the syllabus?
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin
The Devil Finds Work, James Baldwin
How to Cook a Wolf, M. F. K. Fisher
The Neapolitan Quartet, Elena Ferrante (I know that’s a lot for one semester! But this is a dream class, no?)
Dispatches, Michael Herr
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
What books helped guide you while writing your book?
I’m always thinking about The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. It is simply a perfect book. Technically it’s for children but only gets richer and deeper and more complex to you as you age and hits even harder in adulthood than it did in my youth. While writing the beginning of Retro, I spent a lot of time with Juster’s opening paragraphs. They have this perfect cadence and clearly convey how Milo feels so aimless, so bored by the world, no matter where he’s going or what he’s doing. Later, he is slowly, really despite himself, awakened by the curiosity-sparking adventure he takes to the Lands Beyond — but never in a way that feels forced or rushed, or not true to who he always was.
The other book that really helped me see what Retro was all about is John Le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl. I love spies and spy stories (I am never not telling people to watch The Americans). For me, it’s less about the high-gloss glitzy escapades—though that part is very fun—and more about those big psychological questions: how does leading a double life prevent me from ever knowing who I truly am? Am I my cover? Are any of my relationships real? Le Carré’s Charlie is a theater actress who gets lured into the world of spycraft with the promise that she will be taking on the role of a lifetime in “the theater of the real.” But the deeper in she gets, the blurrier the boundaries become between what she’s pretending to do and what she’s actually doing, what “counts” and what’s make-believe. I thought about Charlie all the time as I was finding Ash.
What books are on your nightstand now?
The biggest thing on there right now is The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson: Master of the Senate. I decided this year would be my Caro year, so I started January with The Power Broker and now I’m reading my way through the LBJ books. They really are as great as everyone says and I cannot stop talking about them. I’m a nightmare. My friends are so sick of me. My family is exhausted. In my defense, though, every time you’re stuck in traffic, it really IS because of Robert Moses! It’s never not relevant!