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Candace Bushnell, who has produced six novels since “Sex and the City,” at her home in Connecticut.
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The next time I met Bushnell was at her airy boho-chic Greenwich Village
apartment, where she sat on a thronelike chair, and we talked over tea
about her literary legacy. But it wasn’t until the next time that I met
Bushnell, at her Roxbury, Conn., home — a short drive from where she
trains in dressage — that I realized that spending time with Bushnell is
like following a grown woman through a series of disconnected but
equally manicured dollhouse rooms into each of which she fits perfectly.
Or more simply, a Candace Bushnell fantasy world in which Candace
Bushnell is both author and star.
Bushnell, 54, has produced six novels since “Sex and the City,” few of
which have deviated from the formula of “beautiful women navigating
love, status and money in New York City,” or the sort of life Bushnell
lived in her 20s and 30s. The CW Network recently began airing “The
Carrie Diaries,” which is adapted from Bushnell’s novel about a young
Carrie Bradshaw, her famous protagonist, growing up in Connecticut and
defecting to New York, which Bushnell also happened to do.
Meanwhile,
Bushnell is currently at work on a more serious novel starring a new
character — or maybe just an older version of the same character. “It’s
about a middle-aged woman,” she said in a vaguely British accent, in a
tone that sounded as if she were doing the voice-over for a trailer.
“No, it’s about a woman who leaves New York and, I guess, her adventures
in the country.”
A couple of weeks ago, Bushnell greeted me in her Roxbury vacation home
with her poodles Pepper and Prancer in a crisp white-and-navy
Nordic-style ski sweater. After saying hello, she showed me a spread in
Equestrian Quarterly in which she recently appeared, leaning against the
white wooden gate to her pool house, so I could get an idea of how the
place looked in summer. Her close friend and P.R. manager, Jeanine
Pepler, offered me a glass of wine, and the three of us sat by the fire
with chardonnay on ice, petting the dogs and cracking unshelled almonds
and walnuts.
If the scene weren’t so genuinely comfortable, it would have been
unsettling how perfectly it embodied a certain kind of adolescent girl’s
literary fantasies — “Baby-Sitters Club” meets “Sweet Valley High”
meets “Sex and the City” meets all those young-adult books about
horseback riding and pluck. We talked a little bit about the level of
dressage she has advanced to (at one point she acted out a move she’s
trying to get her horse to do, and pranced in place in circles). Mainly,
though, we talked about her writing. For better or worse, Bushnell and
her alter ego, Carrie Bradshaw, are figures that young female writers of
a certain stripe must in some way confront when considering their
literary — and commercial — ambitions. At the very least, there must be
some sort of secret to selling millions of books.
“I know I’m not a wordsmith,” Bushnell said, the afternoon sun shining
on her face through a wall of glass doors. “And I don’t write poetry.
Sometimes I think I should, because it’s really helpful. But I always
wanted to write novels. I think when I was 12, I started reading Evelyn
Waugh, and I loved Evelyn Waugh so much, and I thought: This is how the
world really is. If I could be Evelyn Waugh, then I would be happy.’ ”
Bushnell writes at the computer for six hours every day, and she jots
notes or bits of dialogue on scrap paper too. “I have these pieces of
paper all over the place,” she said, picking up a loose scrap on the
coffee table and reading from it. “ ‘I’ve come to extract my revenge,
sir,’ ” she said in the vaguely English accent. “ ‘Your revenge? Why,
you’re — um — surely a lad — what revenge?’ ‘Silence!’ ‘Speak, boy.
Speak of what you speak!’ ” She laughed. “And then — I don’t know. Just
notes.”
In the year or so that passed between our meetings, and in something of a
bad “Sex and the City” plot twist, Bushnell and her husband divorced.
(He had an affair with a younger ballerina, court papers contend.) The
depth to which it bothered her was hard to tell, but what was obvious,
amid the continually ringing landline, the dogs sleeping on the bed and
the two friends eating a lunch of smoked salmon and chardonnay and
telling funny stories about mistakes they’d made, was that she wasn’t
going to let it. “There’s so many things that mattered so much in my 20s
and 30s that don’t matter now,” Bushnell said. “You don’t have to do
everything by the time you’re 30. Or 40. All you need is a work ethic.”
Then she paused. “It’s what allows you to push through moments of
disappointment and self-doubt and fear.”
