Author2Author: Amanda Filipacchi &
Adrienne Brodeur, pt. 3

Amanda Filipacchi: I was very impressed with the amount of research that seems to have gone into Man Camp. Did you already know about all these topics, such as economics, the mating rituals of birds, and what it's like to work on a dairy farm? Or did you have friends who knew about these things, which gave you the idea to write about them? Or did you first decide on the subjects and then seek out experts?

Adrienne Brodeur: I am as familiar as the next writer with the age-old adage: "Write about what you know." In fact, that saying banged around my head quite a bit as I tried to figure out where to set the book's actual "man camp," the location where the urban men would be sent to reconnect with their masculine instincts. Was I crazy to think that I should try to place it somewhere as foreign to me as a dairy farm in West Virginia? Or should I try to find more familiar surroundings, say a fishing boat on Cape Cod, where I might be able to accomplish my goal while "writing about what I know?" In fact, I was so unsure about where to send the campers, the book came to a screaming halt for several weeks (or was it months?) after the New York section was completed. Not writers' block per se, rather fear of the unknown. Still, I had a hunch about farm life ...

So, to answer your question, I researched the topic extensively by visiting a friend's dairy farm in West Virginia. I stayed for about a week and immersed myself in farming life--got up early, milked cows, drove tractors, spread manure, fed calves, even inseminated a couple of unflappable heifers. Right away, I knew my instincts about locating man camp on a farm had been correct. Perhaps it was because I already knew what I wanted to accomplish there (that the city men, expected to fail in the face of true masculine activities, would thrive, and that the women would fall short), but it turned out that the sexual stereotypes prevalent on a farm worked seamlessly with the ones I was making fun of in the book--everything from the language of bovine reproduction (a cow is "freshened" when she has a calf) to the fact that only one bull is required to service the reproductive needs of an entire herd--played right into my themes.

The biggest shock, however, was comparatively how much more quickly I wrote the second half of the book, the part set in West Virginia. It flew! Perhaps it was as simple as having the end in sight (the way a horse speeds up on his way back to the stable), but I think it also had to do with the thrill of writing what was unfamiliar to me. In some unexpected ways, research made my writing livelier, because I couldn't take for granted knowing something. For instance, I could write a description of the back of a taxi without ever leaving my apartment. Not so with a tractor. For that, I needed the fresh experience of riding one, where I could pay attention to all of the rumbles and bumps and smells.

(As for the rest of your question, I'm embarrassed to admit that not much research was needed: I'm a science geek at heart. When I'm not lost in a novel, I love to read about why ducks' feathers repel water or how one gene can change a prairie vole from being a promiscuous philanderer into a monogamous mate and attentive father. Fascinating!)