A tale of literature and treachery.
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The broad empirical facts are not disputed.
Four friends: Hannah Pittard, Andrew Ewell, Anna Shearer, Ryan Fox.
A couple of weeks later, Hannah found out.
Soon, both marriages were over.
And in its wake, each of those involved finds their own way to deal with it.
Some suppress it all in silence.
Some lean into forgiveness, some dive headlong into recrimination.
Some endlessly replay, some yearn to forget.
But whichever choices are made, the blast radius is usually localized.
Explosions like these are forever going off all around us, but youd barely know.
Then there are writers.
Somewhere in the void between Write what you know and Do no harm sits a whole world of possibility.
In this, too, everyone involved must find their own way.
Im sitting outside a restaurant in the center of Charlottesville discussing such things with Andrew Ewell.
(In the book, they are named Sophie and John and his wife is named Debra.)
Near the end of chapter one, the unnamed narrator sleeps with Sophie.
Later, he clarifies this somewhat.
I mean, then whats the point?
Dont make shitty art, I guess is what Im saying.
Ewell is far from the first writer to pivot on the intimate details of their personal life.
But one circumstance in which he finds himself is somewhat less commonplace.
In May 2021, he sent the manuscript ofSet for Lifeto an agent.
That November, he learned some disconcerting information.
Now, in the real world, Ewell discovered that a version of his story was actually happening.
But lets use a term that both books employ in different contexts: the inciting incident.
At the very least, these two books share the same inciting incident.
And often much more than that.
Before any food has arrived, she is already describing herself to me.
I cant remember when I wasnt writing and making shit up, she says.
And they would say that, I think, with great love.
I always thought there was a better way of telling something that happened.
There was always a better ending.
There was a better twist.
Pittard tells me that when she was young, she had trouble fitting in.
She was stunning, Pittard says.
Soon Pittard also knew Ryan Fox, a poet and bartender who was dating Shearer.
Ewell was the last of the four she met.
They were talking about Ewell.
Soon afterward, she was taken to see a well-liked local band, American Dumpster.
Ewell was the guitarist and, at the time, dating the bands washboard player.
For a couple of years, they were friends.
Then they were together.
Five or six years after becoming a couple, in December 2012, they married.
In 2013, she referred to Ewell as the love of my life.
Hes the most loyal person in the world.
This rendering of their relationship does resurface now and then in my conversations with Pittard.
I had wonderful times with him, she tells me.
When we were good, we were so fucking good.
He could be fucking funny as shit.
He could be charming.
He could be so sweet.
Much of what she most treasured seems to have been anchored to their shared passion for the written word.
Wed read lines aloud to each other.
That really sustained us for a long time.
She pauses, as though assessing whether to voice the sentence cued up in her head.
I never loved his writing, she eventually continues.
And I loved his feedback, and I miss it.
Like, it made me a better writer.
That was one fissure.
And youre a woman, hes a man, and you fucked up getting there first.
Im so used to cannibalizing my own life.
Once she became aware of this, her response was not to pull back.
Last year, Pittard offered another kind of take on such dilemmas.
The caption then changes to:
Later that day.
His name was Bruce.
He made me promise that I would never write about him.
Set for Lifeis Ewells first book.
Before that, he had published a handful of short stories.
I might as well just say whatever the fuck I want to say.
What it was that he did want to say he discovered along the way.
Its just things swirl in your head and they come to take a shape.
I quote to him Pittards words about worrying someone else would write about all of this before she did.
That tracks, he says evenly.
I mean, thats how she is.
We Are Too Manybegins with a hundred or so pages of conversations.
Most, as she explains in the book, are re-created from memory, though a few are imagined.
HANNAH: Thank you for your honesty.
I get the house.
I get the car.
I get the dog.
Ill see a lawyer on Monday.
PATRICK: Did you rehearse that?
But Ive made it incredibly clear from the beginning that there is one woman who is off-limits.
PATRICK: Youre so self-righteous.
And off it goes from there.
Theres enough weight on the wordunnecessarilyin that sentence to push whole cities into the ocean.
I didnt feel that I saw anything of myself, really, he says.
And I dont think I really saw anything of Anna either.
(Ewell and Shearer stayed together and are now married.)
I guess I would say I feel like the portrayals of everyone are not fully convincing.
So thats a very different way of … he says, breaking off.
And again, I dont want to sound like Im disparaging her.
Later, he explains more explicitly what he means.
She is good at tapping into whats fashionable and what the marketplace desires.
And right now, divorce memoirs is a fashionable subject.
Again, I dont mean to say thats a bad thing, necessarily.
I point out he is clearly using his marriage in it.
Theres an ex-wife with a boyfriend or something?
She is made full professor in three years.
But thats far from the main part.
Seriously, I dont care.
I was about to leave on a research trip.
Id be in New York for a few weeks, where Maisie and her ex-husband were then living.
Okay, Ill call a lawyer in the morning.
I dont remember that at all.
But, yeah, I mean I guess Im calling on my experiences and memories more than I thought.
I ask whether he didnt consider what Pittard would think if she read this.
It didnt occur to me at all, he says.
This turns out to be the case.
Thats news to you?
I didnt know that.
I mean, its exhausting.
I ask for his thoughts.
I guess my thought is it just seems ridiculous to me.
I mean, Jesus.
Like, she can write whatever she wants.
Well, I dont know, he says.
I dont get it.
(Though maybe within her declared metric: not unnecessarily.)
But as with Ewell, the dam holding back the rawest feelings has severe structural failings.
(This was not a version of reality Ewell recognized.
As I recall, I remember being really excited about her first book and being really excited for her.
Those mixed emotions seem more interesting to me than someone saying, What does this do for me?
That just seems very … that seems not true to history.)
Even so, shes clear that she let this happen, all of it.
I knew it was wrong because I am not unintelligent but I fucking wanted him, she says.
He made me feel cool.
He made me feel validated.
I thought he was so smart.
Ive never had a boyfriend like him before who looked good and, like, other girls envied.
And I wanted to keep him.
So, to be blunt, This is more important I care more about this right now?
That is why it is not his fault.
I did not want to have sex with him.
I was mad as fuck at him.
And I didnt want him to have sex with other people.
But, like, fuck him!
And yet, did my book mean more to me?
Did that contribute to difficulty in the marriage?
I mean, at least to my mind, that comes second.
I guess thats my answer.
Some people will be horrified by that.
People who are writers or artists, or people who are not?
But I get why youre asking.
Let me put it in a more awkward way: Would Anna be comfortable hearing you say that?
Yeah, for sure.
She might add a caveat, which is that the writing had better be good as a result.
Isnt that kind of what draws one to fiction to begin with?
But is that worth potentially destroying things in the everyday world?
You hope the value is that you communicate something to a reader to make them feel less lonely.
Heres one person talking to another and saying something truthful about how they look at the world.
It makes us feel like someone gets us.
Theres someone who gets you right here who youre ignoring to do this!
Yeah, it depends who that person is.
It would be too simplistic to say that I married the wrong person when I married Hannah.
I mean, she had intimated divorce earlier in that year, before anything happened with me and Anna.
And at that time, I was probably a pretty difficult person to live with.
And I was probably kind of a bitch to deal with.
So I dont know.
(His and Shearers marriage was already fractured in complex ways.)
I mean, it was pretty immediate.
He and Shearer spent the next few days together, then Ewell went up to Yaddo.
On July 19, Pittard came to town ahead of a book event the following evening.
That night, just before bed, a friend she was staying with told her about Ewell and Shearer.
She called Shearer at six the next morning.
In retrospect, shes proud of how she handled what ensued.
It was really like a conversation of my fucking life it was so good, she declares.
Then Shearer called right back, and they got into it.
Pittard remembers, at the end, Shearer asking, Do you want me to have him call you?
which infuriated her: Im like, Go fuck yourself.
I did a gotcha with her.
(!!!!????!!!!)
… Hes always known that she is the one person an affair with whom I could never forgive.
Pittard still had five hours to kill before her book reading that night, so she went to Zara.
Now she sought a new version of the same kind of safety.
I was mad and I felt ignored and I felt pissed, she explains.
And this motherfucker just had sex with that person.
She also bought a skirt that she wore at that evenings event at Housing Works.
He said, I think youre fucking other people.
And I was like, The only person not getting fucked here is me.
It was this horrible conversation.
That was the only time I ever remember yelling at him.
The next day, she took the train to Washington for a book event.
And she lost it all over again.
Before the reading, she had her sister smear hemorrhoid cream on her puffed-up eyes.
But when I mention the essay to Ewell, he tells me hes not sure hes read it.
I mean, I know that I heard about it.
I know that people called me and said, Oh, did you see Hannahs piece?
Pittards account of that time is different.
Ewell knew she was working on it, she said.
And he wrote me an email after it came out.
It was, like, classic Andrew.
It was very paternalistic and a little bit patronizing and a little bit generous.
It was everything that was wrong with us in one email.
I understand your question.
Do you think he really believes it?
We talked about the essay!
It drives me crazy.
But maybe he forgot!
In my inbox the next morning is a copy of Ewells email.
Hi, Hannah,
I just want to say I read your essay.
Its candid, elegant, and true in the Keatsian sense, which is to say, beautiful.
(I confess I cried a little.)
I admire your honesty, and I envy your bravery.
Anyway, I guess I just want to congratulate you.
One was titled I GET THE HOUSE, CAR, DOG.
Another, Stanley Lleweling was in love with his own charm Lleweling being some mutant version of Ewell.
Another, There were so many reasons to hate Minnie Grizwald.
(I gave me a really horrible name, she notes.)
Around that time, she says, her momentum as a writer felt stalled.
I had deadlines, I was going through divorce, she says.
Its like a classic story of betrayal.
Every story has been told, but this is my story, and I have intimate understanding of it.
She resolved to write it as fiction: I thought this was going to be so easy.
I especially tried writing it from Annas perspective, Pittard says.
Because I thought it was going to be very easy to make fun of me.
And I had some fun with that.
But as she pressed forward, she realized that it wasnt working.
I guess I thought,Whats at stake?
What made my story interesting to me is it was my story, at the end of the day.
Id rather just fucking tell the truth.
Lets get it over with.
I felt so like a caged animal up there.
And I was interested in the conversations where things had been lost for me that I hadnt noticed.
Because I like to think of myself as a good writer on whom very little is lost.
Which is why this setting and situation I think it hurt my ego.
And that may be something that happens in a lot of literary marriages.
Sure, he replies, considering this.
I dont think thats that glib.
Upon hearing this news, she Googles her ex-husband, looking for more details.
I was crazed, Pittard says.
You wrote a book about it?
Hes written a book about it.
That was when, in real life too, Pittard resorted to Google.
Which I havent done, she says.
Because who the fuck Googles him?
Sitting across the kitchen table from Clymer Hes like, What are you doing?
And Im like, Nothing she chanced upon Halloween and began to read.
First of all, she says, its my favorite thing hes ever written.
I actually really liked it.
But it started to get to her.
Halloween was necessary, a hundred percent.
And then it like clearly blossomed.
And taking his name for your partner, Bruce, and using it throughout your book?
It is one of my favorite things I have done.
And its a great name.
Im so grateful for Andrew for giving him such a good name.
And I skimmed them, she says.
I thought,Thats plenty.Ive seen what I need to see.
Then he wrote: Sad!
To which I responded: Sad!
He registered Pittards misreading in her book but saw no need to contact her about it.
It didnt bother me that much, he says.
Fox did write about this part of his life, though not immediately.
For a while after the summer of 2016, he was, he says, in life mode.
I was in a new relationship right after.
I didnt really have time to process what had happened.
I was sort of, like, focusing on survival and things like that.
Addressing, he says, a lost love.
Where have you gone, my eyes and ears,
Dumpster of a dozen years?
Where are you, hand of my glove,
What became of courtly love?
Accessing, he says, the sort of gallows humor and the tenderness of a failing marriage.
I mean, no, he says.
That would have been a classic us.
We werent discussing that.
She was like, Great job thats an awesome poem.
Like, Lets celebrate.
That was our M.O., honestly.
It was something that became clear after a certain time that there was a problem we needed to address.
But werent able to.
And we probably had ways of addressing it that were nonverbal like through the poems.
Within a year, they were together.
He became friends with Pittard through Shearer.
He tells me that he found PittardsWe Are Too Manyexhilarating to read.
He particularly liked the scenes between Pittard and Shearer back in those early Charlottesville days.
How would you say she portrayed you?
Um, I guess as a maudlin drunk.
Why do you think that was her take?
Theres nothing defamatory in that portrayal of me.
And nothing probably untrue.
There were some nights, you know, when I was the maudlin drunk and tried to call her.
That parts not untrue.
Its that its at the expense of the rest of the character that I take issue with.
Also, I feel like that character maybe bore the brunt of the drinking for all four.
Which I understand from, like, a literary perspective.
He says he enjoyed EwellsSet for Lifea lot more.
I love the levity of it and the caper aspect of it, he says.
I like a good comedy.
He enjoyed his own character, George, too.
Its a comic character, so it is larger-than-life in a way, he says.
But also its a very charming character.
It was, I think, an open secret among our friends, he says.
He received that information on the day of Pittards New York book reading.
How was this happening?
Youre not supposed to think that about your own life.
I was like, Well, I guess yall wont be at the reading tonight.
And well be in touch about whatever paperwork or whatever we need to handle with the lease.
As for the reading, a really great night is how he describes it.
Hannah and I were like, Yeah!
Literally that was how we greeted one another.
Pittard also told me that Ewell considered her inability to stay friends with the group a failure of imagination.
By this measure, Fox was more successful.
He and I had beers every time he was in town thereafter.
It was a little bit tense or different at first.
I explain to Fox the premise of Pittards next novel, which he does not know about.
Okay, he says.
People cant get enough of each other.
Cant wait to read it.
When Im in Charlottesville, Ewell tells me about a novel Shearer had written but never published.
He describes it to me as about her years in New York.
No, not really, he says.
I dont think she cares, he says.
Not that I do either.
Its also just a nice title, you know?
And I wasnt alone in thinking this.
But I couldnt find a real version of what it felt like to be in the throes of this.
Often, the women, they have too much wine, and then, like, they get confused.
And they always remember how they got home.
Theyre, like, embarrassed: Oh, I made a fool of myself at that party.
And I would read that and be like, Really?
Theres something real here, and women dont really know how to write about it, for whatever reason.
So I was trying to tackle that.
But I couldnt figure out what it was.
I thought I was going to die, Shearer tells me.
I was pretty sure of it.
Thats who I wrote it for.
That downward trajectory does eventually break in the novel as, thankfully, in life.
Even if she ultimately had to find the answer within herself, one catalyst would be an old friend.
In the novel, we first meet Ewell when Shearer first met him, back in Charlottesville.
It has about the same amount of syllables, and its a strong main-character name.
When Patrick reappears in her book, much later, he now has a wife, Elisabeth.
Shearer was writingNights and Weekendsin 2020 in the early months of COVID.
That movie sounds fantastic.
In time, the four of them shared this.
We were all serious, she says.
It mattered a lot to all of us.
We didnt really see another path necessarily.
We were kind of all in, in a way.
She describes their collective mind-set with a kind of affectionate mockery.
You feel that you were chosen, and you are special, and youre going to make it.
But when she and Fox moved to New York, she declared to herself that she was done.
Im tired of feeling guilty.
Im tired of feeling like I failed.
I just want to move on.
I just have the gift of not giving a shit about that, she says.
But eventually, writing drew her back.
Before Shearer sent outNights and Weekendsin January 2021, there was one more bridge to cross.
She knew that Ewell needed to read it.
I was terrified, she says.
He didnt know how bad it was.
He didnt know the exact bang out of relationship that Ryan and I had at that point.
But I didnt want to say it.
I had to give it to him.
Sometimes I think I wrote it just so I had it as a record so he could see it.
Maybe thats just one part of the broader utility of capturing ones life in words.
Sometimes its easier to write about things than think about them, she says.
You dont have to think about reality.
You think about a description.
you’re able to live in the pages of your book.
She says she also thought about showingNights and Weekendsto Fox.
But she didnt and still has not.
She points out that this aspect has been difficult for Ewell.
Its unfortunate that his book keeps getting drawn in to this Hannah planet, she says.
He didnt want to write a memoir.
He never wanted these people to be treated as real individuals.
This isnt a game to Andrew to make a run at secretly say stuff about real people.
I keep telling him, Just write another book.
Dont involve any of these people just dont think about it.
Hes been doing this seriously for as long as Ive known him, Shearer says.
I mean, hes just committed.
Hes dedicated to the form and to the art.
Its not like a hack opportunity for him.
He wants to be thought of as the best writer of his generation, you know.
They talked, caught up, and when his novel came up, Beattie expressed enthusiasm for reading it.
The encounter ended warmly.
In the following days, Ewell received communications from Beattie that he considered contradictory.
On the one hand, he and Shearer were invited to brunch.
She was, after all, still friends with my ex-wife.
Its just a funny stance for a writer in her 70s whos been around the block, he says.
She had not, so I briefly explain to Pittard the above story.
I have to tell you, she eventually begins, I have a really bad back.
And only one time have they ever given me morphine.
I have to say I have a feeling of morphine-induced warmth right now for Ann.
But Im brimming with love for Ann right now.
As they each express versions of what was, there are a few stark areas of contention.
Shearer is adamant that this isnt so.
I always thought it was pretty clear that I didnt feel that way toward Andrew, she says.
I never had a glimmer of it, Fox concurs.
There was plenty of people who I was jealous of with respect to Anna.
But Andrew was never one of them.
And I was genuinely shocked that it was him.
And I dont, in fact, think that Anna was interested in him until this happened.
Why do you think Hannah thinks otherwise?
I mean, I think it fits with her conception of Anna as a more conniving sort of villain.
Whereas, if anything, I think her sort of mistake, or whatever, is her impulsiveness.
I dont think Anna has the patience to hatch a plan like that over a multiyear period of time.
Pittard is out walking her dog in Lexington; Shearer is in a New York bar.
In the book, the conversation begins like this:
TRISH: Ive met someone.
HANNAH: Youre always meeting someone.
TRISH: I mean it.
He makes me want babies.
TRISH: He makes me want to leave my husband.
HANNAH: You say that several times a year.
TRISH: I want him to put babies on me.
That, to Pittard, was a betrayal on a whole other scale.
I couldnt parse it.
It didnt make sense to me.
My brain sort of shut down.
It was, she says, a call that will never leave her.
I fucking hate being hoodwinked.
And I hate being hoodwinked by people that I think I have a pretty good read on.
And I was hoodwinked that day.
I wouldnt have done that, she says.
I press that I feel sure Pittard believes that she remembers this quite specifically.
I mean, I dont doubt she believes she remembers a lot of things, responds Shearer.
I press on, quoting to Shearer the above dialogue from the book.
After I read the babies line, Shearer exclaims, Thats disgusting.
I would never say that.
I have never said that sentence in my life.
Pittard is infuriated to hear of this denial.
Pittard at first assumed Shearer was talking about someone older whom theyd previously discussed.
I said, You want to have babies with this guy?
And she said, No, its someone new you dont know him.
And I asked his name and she said, Hes our age.
I think shes just getting things mixed up, says Shearer.
She probably put it in her book, and now she remembers it that way.
Thats what writers do.
Im not trying to say she made something up.
I think a creative mind hears things in strange and interesting and different ways.
In turn, Pittards affect is one of a long-simmering exhaustion.
It doesnt matter to me anymore, she says, but I know that Im right.
Her middle name was quietly changed to Christina.
Perhaps itll come as no surprise that those most affronted in this regard are Pittard and Shearer.
Shearers objection is to Pittard calling her Trish.
When I meet Ewell, he has previewed her objections.
Trish is cheap, right?
It signifies sort of slutty or something.
I mean, I think thats a cheap low blow.
Shearer, who is from just across the border, in Ohio, asks me.
That just burned a little bit.
Pittard is no more taken by the name Ewell chose for her.
They named me Debra, she says.
And Im going to say they because I think it was a joint conversation.
I think of the two of them at breakfast, having coffee, going, Dawn?
No, Debra!!!
And then the two of them just cackling.
Did they know Id hate it?
They sure as fuck did.
They might as well have named me Nell!
And I bet you Nell was on their shortlist.
At which point Pittard said she stopped him.
She had something she needed to tell him right away.
… Wouldnt Lily die laughing if I told her what Rita said this afternoon?
I couldnt get Rita off my mind.
Shes all I thought about.
I wanted to talk about her.
And then we started fighting.
He was like, Are you fucking real?
I get to write.
I would love for young people everywhere to get to experience art and conversation in this way.
Lets make eye contact.
Lets piss each other off.
Lets say, You stole that from me; I stole this from you; Thats not true.
Andrew and me, at the end of the day, were nothing.
But are you kidding?
Id rather be a character in somebody elses book than not acknowledged at all.
Yes, he said.
I think it would probably be wise.
She described to me her reaction: I was like, I heard what you said.
But then we kept dating, and I didnt have an immediate inclination to write about him.
you’re able to write about me.
And I was like, Good.
Because Ive been thinking of some stories …
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