Interview with Andrew F. Sullivan about The Marigold
It's hard to balance compelling storytelling with explorations of complex social problems, but this is what Andrew F. Sullivan does in The Marigold. This novel takes place in near-future Toronto and examines the lives of several main characters as they fight the impending disaster of "the Wet," a sentient mold that grows stronger with each body it absorbs. The epicenter of this toxicity is a huge, mostly-empty apartment building, a rich man's folly named The Marigold. This book poses so many questions about our collective problems, but it’s also a fun and fascinating ride as a few vivid characters try desperately to save their city.
The Marigold comes out on April 18, 2023, but feel free to go ahead and pre-order it.
In the meantime, Andrew agreed to answer some of my most toxic questions!
The Marigold tells complex stories of multiple characters. Did you see it all in your mind in a kind of interconnected map, or did you surprise yourself as you wrote?
I knew I wanted to write a novel about a city, and to me, that meant a large cast of characters all struggling within systems they could barely understand. I didn’t have a map, but I did know I would be jumping from brain to brain, weaving together these experiences with confronting something terrifying and unknown. I do like to be surprised by what I’m working on, so usually I’m writing the first quarter of a book without a plan, just riding my ideas into the nothing. Once I hit 20,000 words or so, I start to consider where this might be going and build a very loose structure that could collapse whenever I decide it’s not working. It’s helpful to have direction, but an overly prescriptive process would suck out all the joy for me. And there is joy in there. I like to be surprised and invigorated by my own work, excited in the moment to create.
In this one book I read for research, The Mushroom at the End of the World, author Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing states “Precarity is the condition of being vulnerable to others. Unpredictable encounters transform us; we are not in control, even of ourselves. Unable to rely on a stable structure of community, we are thrown into shifting assemblages, which remake us as well as our others.” I think this applied to my approach to the book. All of these characters have shifting relationships to the sites of power in this novel, whether they are organic, civic, or technocratic. Their precarity in the face of disaster shapes their character; the world imprints on them and they imprint on the world.
I want my process to remain unpredictable and transformative. Each manuscript is new to me and I remake myself and my work with every project. Horror isn’t static, it is blooming and dying and blooming again.
Did The Marigold take you long to write? Do you generally prefer quick drafting or slow steeping in your writing process?
I don’t have a specific drafting process; each project is its own creature and has its own needs. I do think when I’m working on a novel, I am in the world of the novel every day, whether I’m writing, editing, or just wandering around outside. The book is alive in me until its finished.
I write a lot but edit judiciously. Nothing is sacred. In the case of The Marigold, I wrote about 50,000 words before the pandemic started, realized things might change with these new world events, took a break and came back to the text three months later and discovered most of my assumptions about government apathy, collective morality, and civic abandonment were true enough, and just plowed ahead with my original idea for another 50,000 words. Because I work full time in a professional career, I do try to treat my writing like a job. The work only gets done by doing it. I cannot hang around waiting for inspiration to strike. I am always chasing that spirit, hoping it hits, but if I’m not writing, the chase is already dead. Do it or don’t.
I’m lucky my wife is also a writer and understands this. There is no way I could juggle everything in my life without her support. We feed off each other’s creativity and support each other when the big edits arrive. The house is only in true disarray when we’re both on deadline.
Marigold is the last name of a family in the book as well as the awful crumbling building that is the family's possession and namesake. Was there a reason you chose the name Marigold? Does it have a special meaning to you?
I could lie and claim it has an extremely deep origin for me, but originally it just came to me as I was looking at the lists of names applied to condo buildings in Toronto and other major cities. It fit the gesture toward simplicity. I did like the idea of it being an organic name for something manmade, a building obsessed with control and surveillance claiming a natural origin even as its crumbles. Marigolds themselves are perennial plants, but in a colder climate, they are more like an annual. They do not survive harsher climate conditions despite their reputation as an easy-growing plant in most soils. There are also claims that marigolds repel a lot of insects and protect other plants in a garden. They can be seen as guardians but are still quite susceptible to fungal diseases. So, there was a lot to play with there. Stability that can vanish as the climate becomes more volatile. A bright shining beacon that has secretly begun to rot from within.
One of your characters is a tin-foil-hat kind of guy, but indeed, the city is run by competing conspiracies of old money v. new tech bros. What are some of your thoughts about the contemporary conspiracy theory?
It’s a poison, one that has only accelerated with social media. Paranoia appears to be contagious. A lot of fear that doesn’t hold up in the light still gets broadcast every day like truth. Media literacy seems to be at an all-time low, urban legends recur with only minor updates to the formula. There was a great episode of the ‘All Lawyers Are Bastards (ALAB)’ podcast about Alex Jones that pointed to the culpability of our governing institutions in how conspiracy has been allowed to fester and spread for their own goals. I’m paraphrasing, but if, as a government, you end up engaging in secretive, nefarious activities, eventually these theories can end up validated. When you triple down on atrocities, like say, bombing a wedding, you end up ceding a lot of the moral high ground. Our leadership does bear some moral responsibility for its citizens. This doesn’t mean people with these outrageous beliefs aren’t culpable for their own actions or mistakes, but that there has been a sincere loss of trust in our institutions.
We are being lied to all the time. You can see the environment being destroyed around you and be told it’s fine. See East Palestine, Ohio. Every day we are hammered with this cognitive dissonance. People are desperate for meaning, but there’s also an uglier impulse, one that wants someone to blame. One that requires a sacrifice. And we need to reject that. I recommend checking out Colin Dickey’s work, his books Ghostland and The Unidentified both explore an obsession with the unexplained and inexplicable and how we build meaning around these incongruities. He also has a new one coming out soon called Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy that I’m excited to check out this summer.
For those of us who've never been to Toronto, what do you love and what do you hate about your city? Where should we go if we find ourselves there?
I love Toronto’s food. Toronto is an incredibly diverse city with cuisine from around the world that has grown into its own with time, from downtown roti joints to the jerk chicken on Eglinton, from the strip mall BBQ of Scarborough to the fancier spots in the outer reaches of suburbs like Markham. It’s a place where I’m always excited about what I’m going to eat at any price point.
When it comes to hating Toronto, it has to be the ongoing abandonment of the city’s infrastructure. Whether it’s transit, sidewalks, or the treatment of unhoused people, we are watching the rapid decay of city services, an apparent commitment to entropy. The streets themselves are crumbling while people are locked out of public bathrooms 10 months of the year. The city is run by people who do not take transit, people with second homes and cottages, people who see the living, pulsing, creative communities within it as obstacles to their commute and threats to their ever-rising bank balance. Toronto remains a deeply insecure city, screeching about greatness, but refusing to even consider paying what that might cost.
Are there any characters here you especially relate to?
The Marigold is a novel filled with short pieces that we’re calling Suites, windows into the lives of different characters in the titular building that are targeted by the Wet, a fungal mold infesting the structure. One of these suites is about a former hockey goon named Malcom “Motown” Tremblay. One of the earliest victims of the Wet, he’s a washed-up athlete who has made a bunch of bad investments and feels trapped in the building. He’s also carrying on an affair with Sidney, the building’s owner’s wife. I never played hockey and am not experimenting with any affairs, but Motown’s defeated masculinity does resonate in some ways, the inability to live up to ridiculous, outdated expectations and the crushing defeat that can come from attempting, failing, and plain old aging. The recognition of past selves you can never be again, and the regret about the choices you made before you realized they were choices. Certain gates close behind us as we move through life. The Wet taunts Motown, but he is still in charge of his choices. The Wet offers him a way to change his life. He just doesn’t understand how it will change. He doesn’t see the gate.
I noticed that the most compassionate characters in The Marigold were particularly vulnerable to danger. Do you think compassion is the key to solving our collective problems, or do you think very compassionate people will just have a harder trudge through the apocalypse? Or both!
I don’t propose any solutions, but I do think those who suffer hardship have the potential to be more understanding and aware of the stakes for others in similar straits. There’s a huge disconnect between the wealthy and the poor that goes beyond material goods—it feels like a literal rupture, where they cannot process the lived experience of others. They are unable or unwilling to acknowledge the struggle and the humanity of people outside their circumstances. I do not think fiction is an empathy tool, or a solution to anything, but I did want to reflect that callous barrier between the classes, the very way they look at the world making the divide clear to the reader. I do think the vulnerable and the marginalized often are forced into facing problems collectively, but that doesn’t make it an essential aspect of their existence. Everyone is capable of causing harm. Compassion is a daily struggle; a necessary antidote to our selfishness, but something that must be nurtured and protected. It can disappear in an instant. It is work.
When are you going to move into the woods and get some chickens?
Unfortunately, chickens are demons. A terrible creature that provides us with so much sustenance. To confront them daily on my own would be asking too much. I do not trust birds.
I don’t think I could ever live alone in the woods. I do need people despite my more solitary tendencies. A lot of folks think they can make it alone, but the world is a harsh place. We require each other. We cannot make our way through this life alone. But I do like the trees. They comfort me. I wouldn’t mind visiting them every day, learning what I can if they let me.
What question would you like to be asked (and please answer it)?
What is the Wet supposed to be?
A fungus. A third form of life. An expression of every dead body that has leaked into its pool and joined its consciousness. The memory of a city and all the people within it. The Wet is desperately lonely, but also reshaped by every interaction it has. Fungi learn quickly. They are reactive. They are shaped by their experiences, much like people. The Wet continues to change shape and form as it discovers new ways of interacting with people. Some it takes by force, some by guile, some with kindness. It changes to meet the needs of its prey. But it also wants company. It wants people to join. It’s a symptom of the fatigue, the loneliness, and the emptiness found in the city, the lack of a true self, the need for community. The Wet invites you in and then asks, demands, and declares you stay part of it forever.
Thanks so much for these insights, Andrew. To learn more about our friend Andrew F. Sullivan, please visit his website - https://www.andrewfsullivan.com/
AND here is a fascinating Twitter thread Andrew made about his influences for this novel, ranging widely from the stately Iggy the Bread Dog to Clive Barker to Evelyn Waugh:
Looking forward to this dang book
Great interview!