Authors share pain and glory of memoirs, at Morristown book fest

Michael Ausiello, author of 'Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies' and Carolyn Murnick, author of 'The Hot One: A Memoir of Friendship, Sex, and Murder,' at the Morristown Festival of Books, Oct. 14, 2017. Photo by Linda Stamato
Michael Ausiello, author of 'Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies' and Carolyn Murnick, author of 'The Hot One: A Memoir of Friendship, Sex, and Murder,' at the Morristown Festival of Books, Oct. 14, 2017. Photo by Linda Stamato
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By Linda Stamato

Carolyn Murnick and Michael Ausiello appeared together Saturday in the grand space of the Morristown & Township Library to talk about their first books—on love and death, intimacy and friendship—and the process of writing them, revising them, and living with their impact.

festival of books 2017 logoThey were among 40 authors who spoke throughout the day at the fourth annual Morristown Festival of Books .

The library session produced a perfect pairing, as both authors reflected on their reckoning with intense friendships, with a life partner, in Michael’s case, and a childhood friendship, in Carolyn’s. 

The authors were ably engaged by moderator Courtney Zoffness, director of Drew University’s Creative Writing Program and former editor at Rolling Stone. 

Kit, Ausiello’s partner for 13 years, is the hero that dies in his book, Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies, and Ashley is the friend of 16 years, in Murnick’s The Hot One: A Memoir of Friendship, Sex, and Murder, who dies a violent death, in Hollywood, in 2001. 

It took Murnick seven years to write her book; Ausiello considerably less than that as he labored, in anguish, to recount the years with his partner and the final 11 months of their life together as quickly as he could. 

Both authors used photographs, notes, mementos, and the memories of friends and companions to stitch together the lives of Kit and Ashley. 

Carolyn Murnick, author of 'The Hot One: A Memoir of Friendship, Sex, and Murder,' at the Morristown Festival of Books, Oct. 14, 2017. Photo by Linda Stamato
Carolyn Murnick, author of ‘The Hot One: A Memoir of Friendship, Sex, and Murder,’ at the Morristown Festival of Books, Oct. 14, 2017. Photo by Linda Stamato

Interviews produced different stories and various versions of the persons they thought they knew.

The authors said their day jobs — in Murnick’s case, covering food and culture, travel and events, for New York Magazine, among others, and, in Ausiello’s, the lives of entertainment celebrities — did not prepare them for writing memoirs.

Both had to overcome insecurities and uncertainties to write in a new form, and to write about lives of those they cared for and cared about–which also meant writing about their own lives. 

And in being honest about themselves, they became vulnerable. For Ausiello, the writing was an agonizing, masochistic process, relieved only by the knowledge—which largely came later—that others “would fall in love with Kit through the book….otherwise they would never have known him.”

The anguish for Ausiello was trying to do justice to Kit, “to capture his essence, so people could come to sense him, to hear him, not only those who knew him and could recognize him but those who would come to know him.”

For Murnick, it was not only a personal story, but a book of compelling themes about the culture that sexualizes girls, that shames them, that forces them to form identities in relationship to—and often in competition with—one another. 

And the consequences of bearing labels—“the hot ones” and “the smart ones”—are considerable, and lasting, as girls are put into competitive boxes.  It’s also a story about female friendship and loss.

Writing, for these authors, about these subjects to be sure, exposes them, makes them vulnerable, opens them to readers, including friends, who know them, now, so well. 

They are exposed but also redeemed, by liberating secrets. Writing is hard. They both recounted the ways they avoided writing. A book coach, a kind of personal trainer, kept Ausiello on track.  Murnick is thinking about hiring one for her next book.

Prompted by the moderator and members of the audience, the authors talked about the process of writing—the struggle to stick to word limits, and the anguished removal of critical stories by editors. 

For Ausiello, it’s hard to part with those 30,000 “excess” words.  Murnick lost the intended focus of her book, a trial that has yet to take place.  The accused was arrested in 2008 and still awaits trial.  The story doesn’t have an ending yet.

Murnick and Ausiello were willing to undergo pain to write memoirs about two enduring relationships, and the impact of their losses on their own lives.

In doing so, they have brought Kit and Ashley back to life so we, too, can come to know them, and, at the same time, to know the authors who loved them.

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