Meghan Daum, a columnist at The Los Angeles Times, wrote this week's cover story about the writer, actress, screenwriter, producer and director Lena Dunham. Daum's new book of essays, "The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion," will be published in November by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Lena Dunham has been a sort of cultural phenomenon for some time now. Was this the first time you met her, for this story, and if so, what surprised you about her?
Yes, it was the first time I met her. She was incredibly open and friendly and down to earth, and while I can't say that totally surprised me, I did find it rather remarkable that she was so warm and utterly without guile. There wasn't any of the stilted interviewer/subject dynamic you often get with celebrity profiles — though we both knew this was more of an essayist profile or think piece than a traditional celebrity piece. Over all, I found Lena to be a smarter, more interesting, more mature and generous version of the character she plays on "Girls." I noticed that she tends to dress very similarly to that show's characters, so she gets recognized on the street all the time. It's almost like she's walking around in costume. I think it's kind of surreal for people.
I imagine you got an advance copy of Dunham's book. Are you authorized to talk about some highlights or what you enjoyed?
In the profile, I quote from the book, so I guess I'm authorized to talk about it, though I should mention that the manuscript is embargoed and there are no stray advance copies floating around. I really enjoyed the book. As with "Girls," there were parts that were cringe-worthy in their relatability — the kind of relating that feels cathartic in a way, but where you're also thinking: I wish this story of lazy, phobic, neurotic, all-around lame adolescent behavior felt totally foreign to me, but, alas, I think I acted just like this when I was 16! That said, there are just as many moments that resonate in a way that's both positive and cathartic. There's a line where she talks about having clarity about your purpose here on earth and how threatening or alienating that can sometimes be for other people. I found that idea very moving.
Dunham's confessional style is incredibly intimate, much more so, I think, than that of Woody Allen, to whom you compare her. What do you think are the dangers of her approach?
Well, Lena may seem more confessional than Woody Allen, but I think it's worth asking why we might see it that way. Woody wrote movies that were very true to his own life experiences and relationships. He put his own girlfriends in his films, playing the girlfriends of the character he played. He wrote about his parents, his childhood, his shrink sessions, his affinity for very young women. Obviously now he's older and has made a million movies and is colored by his legacy, much of it problematic. He certainly has movies that are not autobiographical at all, movies that are very stylized and genre based. But films like "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan" and "Hannah and Her Sisters" seem deeply confessional to me. In "Husbands and Wives," you've got the Mia Farrow and Woody characters breaking up when their relationship in real life was falling apart. It seems to me that "Tiny Furniture" is very much in this vein. But because Lena is both young and a woman, I think she gets branded with the "confessor" label in a way that male artists do not. That's not to say she's not confessional. She is. But plenty of other artists are, too, and for various reasons it's not considered a weakness or the central quality of their sensibility.
As to the dangers of this approach, well, there are many and they are obvious. Eventually you run out of material — or at least it doesn't flow as quickly, because you kind of "write up to now" and then have to wait and do some more living before you can start strip-mining yourself again. There's also the fact that while a lot of audiences really love very personal work, there are always going to be those who are predisposed to hating it or who don't see that someone like Lena is actually applying craft and technique to what she's doing. She's creating characters and stories that come from her imagination as well as her life. It's not like she's dumping her diary onto the page and saying, "Here you go!"
You write that she was "perplexed" about some criticisms of the world she portrays as too all-white or idle. Did Dunham, or you, have any more thoughts on that?
My sense about this is that she feels these are important questions that she doesn't want to address on Twitter. It's frustrating because people are raising complicated issues that require nuanced thinking. However, too often they come up in social media or in comment threads of blogs or online magazines, which generally aren't conducive to nuance. But I don't want to put words in her mouth.
Dunham says she wants her book tour to be politically engaged, and her sister has lined up some Planned Parenthood connections. Do you have a sense of her politics more generally? What are some of her other political issues?
I get the sense that she is very, very committed to issues around women's reproductive health and social issues generally. Again, I don't want to speak for her, but I think that she has become more political in recent years, and I suspect she'll continue to move in that direction.
