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| This undated photo provided by courtesy of Simon & Schuster shows author Jessica Knoll. Knoll, who posted an open letter saying the gang rape her character endured in the best-selling "Luckiest Girl Alive" was based on her own experience in high school says the past few days have been a "whirlwind." Knoll told a Wednesday night, April 6, 2016, gathering of 50 friends and fans at a Barnes & Noble bookshop in New York the response to her essay has been intense and overwhelmingly positive. (Leslie Hassler/Simon & Schuster via AP) |
A novelist who last week
posted an open letter saying the gang rape her character endured in the
best-selling "Luckiest Girl Alive" was based on her own experience in
high school said Wednesday that the past few days have been a
"whirlwind."
Associated
Press report continues:
The
32-year-old Knoll, beginning a tour to promote the book's paperback release,
told a gathering of about 50 friends and fans at a Barnes & Noble bookshop
that the response to her essay had been intense and overwhelmingly positive.
"This
has been, to put it mildly, a whirlwind week," she said, adding that she
had been thinking about a quote by W.H. Auden, "Art is born of
humiliation."
"This
book was born of my humiliation," she told the audience. "This book
is my pain, and this book is my power, after years of powerlessness."
"Luckiest
Girl Alive" was published last year and caught the attention not just of
the general public but of Reese Witherspoon, who is producing a planned film
adaptation, with Knoll writing the screenplay.
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This
undated photo provided by courtesy of Simon & Schuster shows author Jessica
Knoll's new book, "Luckiest Girl Alive." The novelist who posted an
open letter saying the gang rape her character endured in the best-selling
"Luckiest Girl Alive" was based on her own experience in high school
says the past few days have been a "whirlwind." (Courtesy Simon & Schuster via AP)
|
Parallels
between Knoll's life and the heroine of her novel, Ani FaNelli (or TifAni
FaNelli), were clear from the start. Both grew up in the suburbs, attended
private school in Philadelphia and worked in magazines (Knoll is a former
editor at Cosmopolitan). But Knoll had long kept a crucial connection secret,
acknowledging that she had dodged questions about Ani's rape, questions raised
in part by the book's dedication: "To all the TifAni FaNellis of the
world, I know."
"I've
been running and I've been ducking and I've been dodging because I'm
scared," Knoll wrote March 29 in an essay titled "What I Know,"
which appeared on LennyLetter.com, a website co-managed by Lena Dunham.
Knoll
was greeted warmly Wednesday and read a brief passage from the novel about
Ani's determination to leave high school behind. To the author's surprise and
relief, she received few questions about her essay. Audience members asked
instead about her favorite authors (Gillian Flynn, Donna Tartt, Flannery
O'Connor), her writing process and her work on the screenplay.
"I
do want to talk about the essay, but I don't want it to drown out the
book," she said after the reading. "I think it was a good balance
tonight."
One
attendee, Elizabeth Blanchard, said that she had bought "Luckiest Girl
Alive" when it first came out and that Knoll's essay intensified her
feelings about it.
"It makes it more
personal," the 24-year-old Blanchard said. "To learn about what she
went through takes the book to a different level."
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