Simon Rich published his first short story collection three years ago. Now, aged just 26, his first novel has won critical acclaim. He talks to Stephen Jewell.
From Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to Batman and Robin, popular culture has boasted many classic double acts. Now Elliot Allagash and Seymour Herson, the main protagonists of Simon Rich's debut novel, can be added to that celebrated list.
The story of the titular billionaire socialite who remarkably transforms a nebbish misfit into a Manhattan private school's most popular pupil, Elliot Allagash is a brilliant, hilarious read that has led to the fresh-faced 26-year-old author being hailed as one of the year's most outstanding new literary sensations.
"The villain has always been more interesting to me than the hero," says Rich. "The idea first came to me when I was in college and I read a book about Ivan the Terrible. I was shocked by how young he was when he committed all those brutal murders. I wanted to write a novel about him but I didn't want to do any historical research. So I thought what about having a character who is completely monarchical, scheming and wicked who lives in present-day New York, which meant that I didn't have to do any research because I already knew all about that."
The son of New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich, writing is evidently in the Brooklyn resident's blood. He has previously published two short story collections, 2007's Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations and Free Range Chickens, published last year. Since 2007 he has worked as a scriptwriter on popular comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live, based at NBC's Rockefeller Centre headquarters a few blocks from the Midtown bar in which we meet.
"I'd written several novels before this but they were all so horrible that I never showed them to anyone," he admits. "It's taken me a while to figure out how to do it because I kept painting myself into corners. I would come up with some fun premise but when I got 100-150 pages in, I'd discover that I'd outstayed my welcome. I ended up re-reading all my favourite comic novelists like Roald Dahl and Joseph Heller, who I realised were all very digressive writers.
"They would constantly break away from the main narrative to tell various anecdotes so I decided I would come up with an idea that was simple enough that it would allow me to go off on as many tangents as possible. That finally allowed me to write what I wanted."
Elliott Allagash is inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald's novella The Diamond As Big As The Ritz, which first appeared in his 1922 collection Tales of the Jazz Age.
"That story has influenced a lot of people," says Rich, who describes his novel as "a rip-off of all my favourite British authors like P.G Wodehouse and Douglas Adams".
Although he gives his name to the book, Elliot is very much an enigmatic presence, whom the reader never really gets to know.
"He lives his life vicariously," says Rich. "There's a scene early on where he ranks all of his fellow students in order of popularity but he doesn't put himself anywhere on the list. He's emotionally repressed in a number of ways. He doesn't eat food and is disgusted by matters of sexuality. He's asexual and asocial. He sees any human urges as a pathetic weakness and refuses to acknowledge that he has any kind of human vulnerabilities."
The novel is instead told from the hapless Seymour's perspective. "Sherlock Holmes was another big model in that it was always Watson's story," says Rich. "But it wasn't called Watson, it's called Sherlock Holmes."
The New York City that Rich depicts is also very different to the real place. "It's obviously not the New York of Bright Lights, Big City," he says, referring to Jay McInerney's novel. "It's about New York in the same way that Sherlock Holmes is about London; it's more about the idea of New York."
Elliot Allagash explores the arrogance, power and money that exists at the heart of New York, says Rich.
"No matter what your upbringing is, everyone is really aspirational in this city," he says. "In the novel, there's a rich kid called Lance, whose father is a millionaire so he has the nicest clothes and goes to a fancy school. Yet his wealth is dwarfed by Elliot's wealth. I wanted to write a character who was off the grid, who was so wealthy that he puts everybody else in their place."
Rich is preparing his second novel, which centres around a band of angels working in heaven's miracle department, who set out to run Earth. But first he will finish the screenplay of a movie of Elliot Allagash for Juno and Up in the Air director Jason Reitman.
"When I was writing the novel, there were scenes that I thought would work better on screen and then I thought maybe I should do them differently in a way that uses text. That's why there are so many parodies in the novel such as fake essays, exams and newspaper articles, which is me trying to use the particular medium as best I can. None of that will be in the movie, which has to be visual and fast. When I have an idea, I think about where it belongs."
Elliot Allagash (Serpent's Tail $29.99)
