In his third novel, “The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter,” Peter Orner tells the tale of the true, unsolved murder of actor Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet in the tumultuous, buzzing era of 1963, a time gossip columnists held a unique social and cultural power, and the moment generations later that a man decided to pore over family stories, newspaper archives, old photos and crime scene notes to find the truth of her death. There are, of course, ramifications – and these are all the more portentous considering Orner’s own family history inspired the book. We spoke with Orner ahead of his Monday reading in Cambridge about that, the lost art of a common conversation and his goal in writing fiction. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Where did the idea for this book come from?
I work a lot with old family stories, and this one was a story that was kicking around my family for 60 years – and was kicking around my head for 15. And I wanted to tell a story about the breakup of a friendship that was connected to the death of a child.
The book is based on real history from your own family?
Yeah, in a way. It’s based on a real case – in November 1963, a week after the Kennedy assassination, a young actress was found dead in her apartment in Hollywood. She was the daughter of a famous gossip columnist in Chicago. It was a big story at the time, and a shocking story at a shocking time, because of JFK’s assassination. In my own family history, it related to the end of a friendship that my grandparents had with this newspaper columnist and his wife, so there was a kernel of truth, and then I took total fictional liberty with it.
Are characters based on family members?
Yes and no. They’re inspired by, is how I would put it. Much of the story is set in 1963, before I was born, and so I’m imagining a friendship that did exist in real life, but I know nothing about it. I fictionalized a kernel of truth.
What did the research process look like?
It was intense and lengthy. I researched the book for 15 years, and because it involved a famous gossip columnist, there were reams and reams of reams of columns that I could read to get a sense of the time and the writing style of a gossip columnist from the ’50s to the ’80s. If you wanted to be famous in America, you had to go through Chicago. To go through Chicago, you had to go through Irv Kupcinet. He was the guy that made you: If he put you in his column, you could be something. So I had a lot to work with. There’s an archive in Chicago with all the newspaper columns, photographs and all sorts of fascinating stuff. The other part of this was that the death of Irv’s daughter was a big news story at the time, and it continued to have a life of its own online – it’s gotten folded into some of the crazier JFK conspiracy stuff. I was interested to see how a wonderful young actress whose life was cut short had the story of her life taken over by bloggers online, true-crime people. I wanted to take it back, in my own way, and to give her another life through this book.
What were some of the biggest influences on this book?
The era of when newspapers mattered more. I went back to the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and looked at Chicago Sun-Times editions and tried to get into the world of when everyone in a big city was reading the same person, resulting in a common conversation – something we don’t really have anymore. We have social media, but it’s not a common conversation, for better or for worse. It’s not always a good thing, but I think that was a big influence, when newspapers and columnists really mattered.
There are not enough depictions of friendship breakups in art and media, and I am really compelled by that being crucial to “The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter.” Is there anything you noticed in researching and writing this book toward how people approach friendships and the impact of a friendship breakup?
The book takes as its point of departure this very sad death, but what it is really ultimately about is how friendships survive, and how they don’t survive, catastrophic events in people’s lives. I thought a lot about this, and there isn’t a lot out there, especially in friendships between two couples. I can think of one book that was very instrumental for this one – I’ve probably read it six or seven times – and that’s Wallace Stegner’s “Crossing to Safety,” which is a beautiful novel about two couples who have been friends for many decades. But I can’t say I did research on friendship; I thought about how it’s a form of love. It is love. Nine times out of 10, a novel’s going to be about romantic love, and friendship love often is romantic love in its own way, or it’s even physical too. I thought a lot about how friendships survive, and like I said, don’t survive, and why.
Was there a specific moment where you realized you wanted to tell this story?
It goes back to that idea of a friendship being severed abruptly. I became obsessed with how one day, the closest people in the world are these friends you have, and the next day you’re at a funeral and they box you out. You realize you’re not part of the inner circle anymore. That was it – the scene I imagined that was in the book, where the two friends come to the funeral of the daughter and they realize that they are no longer in the inner sanctum. That was the point-of-departure moment.
That’s devastating.
Totally, and especially when you’re having your own grief over this death. You’re there because you’re friends with the parents, but you’re also there because you are mourning the death of this daughter too.
What do you hope readers take away from this book?
My goal always is the same in fiction: I want you to feel it. I want people to feel it. That’s what makes fiction fiction – it’s not for information or learning, it’s for an emotional jab, a punch. Kafka called it the icepick of the soul, getting an emotional response. It’s why I do what I do.
Peter Orner reads from “The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter” at 7 p.m. Monday at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave., Harvard Square, Cambridge. Free. Author Tova Mirvis joins.
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