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The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free has been a Bas Bleu bestseller since its release in 2021. It certainly checks a lot of boxes on the Bluestocking list: centering around creative, aspirational women (including a few of America’s most recognizable female authors), it’s historical, immersive, thrillingly inspirational, and endlessly compelling. This week in the Bluestocking Salon, we interviewed author Paulina Bren on her research strategies, how to teach while writing, and her newest venture!

There are no spoilers ahead (since the events of The Barbizon all occurred in the past), but if you’d prefer to read the book first, you can pick up a copy of The Barbizon here. And here’s our review of the book:

This incredibly well-researched history of a hotel and the fascinating inhabitants of its small rooms doubles as a story about how the roles of women have changed throughout the twentieth century…and how the Barbizon—built in 1927 as a safe haven for the "modern woman" working in New York—was there to see it all. Among the well-known residents were Titanic survivor Molly Brown, writers Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion, actresses Grace Kelly and Liza Minnelli, and so many others. The stories are captivating, and the scope of Bren's narrative will blow you away. (SB)

BB: Thank you for taking the time to sit down and answer some questions for us! Your wonderful book The Barbizon has been popular with our readers since its release. Can you tell us why this topic was important for you to write about?

I’m thrilled that so many readers are enjoying the book: thank you!  As to your question, my fascination with the Barbizon Hotel began when I read Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, which is entirely based on her time there in New York in June 1953.  It is a novel but a remarkably autobiographical one, where she renames herself Esther and renames the Barbizon, the Amazon.  But it was my first introduction to the famous hotel and to what it represented for so many young women overflowing with ambition yet often at a time when they were not permitted to express it, let alone act on it.  I loved how the history of the hotel could ultimately offer up a history of American women backlit by an ever-changing New York City. 

BB: What was your writing process like? You’ve also written The Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring (which won several awards!)—did your research methods differ between the two? What did you struggle with most while writing The Barbizon?

I’m so glad you asked this question!  The Barbizon is actually my third book overall, but my first so-called “trade book” (to use the lingo!), meaning it’s aimed at general readers.  My previous two books were academic books about communism and everyday life behind the Iron Curtain.  Once I’d written them, I felt I’d said what I’d set out to say, while also helping to launch a new field of academic study.  Despite being a professor, I’d always seen myself as a writer first and foremost (I have many novels accumulated in the drawer over the years!).  I was about to embark on my third academic book, and I was chatting with my editor at Oxford University Press, when I suddenly confessed that I wanted to write about the Barbizon Hotel instead.  She actually thought I could successfully make this crossover and pointed me toward my brilliant literary agent.  As to process, I walked into this thinking that the research for the Barbizon would be easy: for the first time ever, the research would be in the English language, and there’d be sources galore.  Or so I thought.  No such luck!  All the original hotel documents are gone; all the guest registries are gone.  And so my training as a historian really came in handy in figuring out how to reconstruct the life of this remarkable hotel through other means.

BB: You teach International, Women’s, and Media Studies at Vassar. Did your research for The Barbizon also satisfy some of your academic interests?

I actually only teach the introductory classes in these three programs, which I love in that I’m introducing completely new ideas and materials to first and second-year students.  But it’s also really convenient for my writing schedule: by teaching the same courses, I’m still in the classroom, but I’ve streamlined my teaching obligations, which leaves room for me to research and write.  I think it would be impossible otherwise.

BB: What was your most treasured discovery while researching the hotel?

My most treasured discovery was finding who I believe was the first African American woman to stay at the Barbizon.  As I said, without the original documents, how can you possibly know?  Yet how can you write such a quintessentially American story without addressing questions of race?  The hotel opened its doors in 1928, marketing itself to an upper class and of course white clientele.  Yet, due to the Great Depression, the residents of the hotel ended up being socio-economically diverse: it was not unusual for the debutante to have a room next to the runaway from Indiana.  Still, I really wanted to find out more about when women of color first stayed there, and what that experience was like.  I discovered that the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming holds the office correspondence of the editor-in-chief of Mademoiselle magazine, a publication that, through its prestigious internship program, funneled so many of the later famous women into the Barbizon: Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion, Betsy Johnson, among others.  I was going through thousands of pages of mundane office memos when I suddenly came upon a heated discussion in spring 1956 about whom to choose for the internship program for the coming June.  The editorial staff wanted a student from Temple University, who was a very talented artist.  The business side of the magazine were irate because she was Black.  One of the pressing questions was: would the Barbizon even let her in?!  The editor-in-chief won and Barbara Chase arrived in June 1956.  I tracked her down: she went on to become a famous artist and writer!  She was also the first Black woman to stay at the hotel, and in many ways her summer in New York was her launching pad for a very glamorous and exciting life that followed.

BB: Originally built in 1927 as a safe haven for the “modern woman,” the Barbizon is now a luxury condo building. Do you think the era of the “modern woman” is over? Is there a current equivalent to the historic hotel in today’s world?

I would like to think that every woman is now “modern,” even if the country sometimes seems woefully unmodern.  That said, I think there’s a good argument for bringing back the women-only residential hotel as an affordable and safe place for women who are both starting out or else need temporary refuge.  Imagine: there used to be a place in Manhattan where you could go to if you’d just arrived in the city and didn’t know a soul, where your bed might be too narrow, and you’d most likely have to share a hallway bathroom, but at least you had time to find your bearings.  And you could afford to stay there!  When these women’s residential hotels were first envisioned in the 1920s, and started to go up at a brisk rate all across Manhattan, there was actually an ideology behind them: that women who were spared the demands of housework, cooking, and social obligations could focus on themselves and their ambitions.  What a thought!

BB: The Barbizon gave high-flying women a place to work and find success. What is your own work space like? What are your go-to strategies for staying deep in the writing process?

Ha, ha!  I have to laugh because my work space is famously my sofa.  As to strategies, I am often stretched thin since I’m not only a writer but also a professor and for the next three years now the director of Vassar’s Women, Feminist, and Queer Studies Program.  But I learned an amazing skill once I had my daughter—which makes me wish I’d done it sooner—which was to write anywhere and for any period of time I had available.  No more mulling over whether the mood was right, the chair just so, the lighting adequate.  Now it was about trying to get my daughter as many playdates or activities as possible, during which time I’d sit in the car or a coffeeshop and write. That skill stuck as she grew older and so I wrote much of The Barbizon on the long train ride from Poughkeepsie, New York, where Vassar College is located, to the Bronx, where we live.

BB: What advice would you give aspiring authors who aren’t sure where to start?

When I graduated from Wesleyan University, I won the college’s fiction prize, and one of the perks was that I got to participate in Wesleyan’s quite prestigious summer writing program.  I remember attending a seminar on narrative non-fiction writing, and the instructor said: “It’s all about the writing—if you can do it well, you will get a foot in the door, and you will get to do this for a living.”  I thought to myself: “That’s just too simple!”  I didn’t believe him; but I should have.

BB: What’s next for you?

I’m working on another book, this time coming out with Norton.  When I was writing The Barbizon, I was really struck by the 1970s and 1980s in New York, about which there is actually very little written.  Here was this moment when New York city was looking rundown, to put it mildly, and the Barbizon Hotel could have offered a real haven, yet women had moved on: they wanted to be out there in the city, living independent lives, even as their career options, lest we forget, were not expansive.  While young women were still being encouraged to be teachers or nurses, they were also finding their way to Wall Street, often quite accidentally.  It was a Wall Street that looked, felt, and sounded very different from what it is today.  So my next book is the story of the women who scaled Wall Street during New York’s disco decades!

BB: Thank you for your time! We’re so looking forward to reading your next book.