The Best Revenge

Everything Circles Back

Earlier this year Nick Levin told me…

… The backstory of his father’s classic horror novel, Rosemary’s Baby. In the late ‘50s, Ira Levin had been living in a subdivided townhouse on the Upper East Side in NYC. Levin rented a two-story apartment, and a sealed staircase divided his place from the landlord’s two floors. The building changed hands, and the new owner wanted to occupy the full structure. Levin had a lease and stayed put. Tensions rose.

The building’s new owner was Eleanor Roosevelt, and only that sealed-off stairway separated Levin from the former First Lady. Eventually Ira Levin caved. He gave up his apartment, and Roosevelt took custody of the whole townhouse. Still, his revenge was sweet.

While the ordeal was fresh in his mind, he wrote a novel about a young woman whose apartment adjoins the apartment of an oddball, nosy, intrusive older woman — who also runs a coven of witches and is plotting to bring the devil to Earth. Only a sealed-off closet divides the young woman’s apartment from the devil worshipper’s. In effect, Levin used the unhappy recent history with Eleanor Roosevelt to fuel his biggest success. So while he lost the battle, Levin won the war.

That’s what I adore most about writing. As Georgia O’Keeffe said, “Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.”

This it seems is the townhouse in question. The conflict that became the seed for Rosemary’s Baby started here. By inference all of Roosevelt’s illustrious guests are cast as satanists. It’s no wonder the real estate agent doesn’t mention that juicy connection to literary history. So much for the house’s “historical provenance.”

Me? While writing Lullaby I had a neighbor who blasted music. For a bit, I blasted back with my own music. Then I got quiet and wrote a novel about intrusive memes, deadly memes, and when I came home from that particular book tour my music-blasting neighbor had moved. What made this a miracle is that she’d always vowed to stay put. That house was to be her “forever” house. So, yeah, when you turn your conflict into a story, some weird powerful mojo takes place.

You express and exhaust your attachment to a conflict, and the conflict vanishes.

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I’m fishing for a “Gloves Off” story. Throw your hat in the ring by posting a link in the Comments below.