Julia Weist is a Brooklyn-based artist, and Nicholas Weist is her Brooklyn-based brother. He’s also an art writer and curator. Julia recently published her first book, a pseudo-autobiographical romance novel entitled Sexy Librarian. The novel was originally written as a proposal that she hoped would be rejected by major publishers, continuing her art practice of investigating the failure of information and deaccessed library material. When Ellen Lupton, Curator of Contemporary Design at the Cooper Hewitt, saw the rejection letters (which Julia exhibited as sculptures in her thesis show at Cooper Union), she offered to publish an expanded version as a full-length book. It was released in January, and is available on Amazon. Julia recently held a solo show at the Kantor/Feuer window in New York.

NW: So in your book you describe how grandma gives you a mani-pedi and lingerie shopping spree for Christmas, right after you had come from a shoot modeling for Playgirl magazine where they had put the same on the company card. Did she really give you that? I feel like she just gives me books. Not that I'm complaining....

JW: Well, obviously certain perks come with being the eldest granddaughter in a matriarchy of unapologetically sexual, sophisticated women. Actually grandma and mom were the first two people who read the finished novel. You know, even despite their bold histories I was irrationally nervous that they'd be embarrassed to read it or to tell people about it. That hang-up was quickly resolved when grandma's doorman started winking at me. I would like to point out that she gave you skin tight jeans from Sweden that Christmas, and we're agnostic.

NW: Fuck you! I was the first person who read the finished novel. But yeah, I still wear those jeans everywhere. Everywhere but church. Get it? So here's the thing about your book that should have been my first question: it's not really a book is it? It's more like a sculpture. A sexy sculpture. Also how did you infect me with your joke structure of "statement, period, slightly amended statement"?

JW: Bad joking is contagious. And don't even try to use that as a segue into talking about STDs. I can't discuss this book without someone bringing up gonorrhea. Anyway, yes, my romance novel is a sculpture. I stuffed some personal anecdotes into the narrative structure of the paperback novels I found chucked from public libraries. The result was a really awful manuscript that I sent to mainstream publishing houses who duly rejected it. The letters they sent me were included in a show I was working on about institutional methodologies for curating intellectual content, the exclusionary reality of building physical repositories for public knowledge… that kind of thing. Ellen saw the show and told me to finish the manuscript and let her publish it. I said hell no, I don't want people asking me about the Clap all the time. Then I said yes, because there was so much potential for getting deeper into my ideas. I did this by investigating all the obstacles a little story is faced with, and learning how we got over or around them with sexy sculptures.

NW: I remember I told you that you shouldn't publish this book, but mostly because I was editing books at the time and didn't want to get drafted into editing yours. Which, I should note, I eventually was conscripted into. So what sort of obstacles have you run into? I mean, potential libel suits brought by ex-paramours alone could ruin you.

JW: You did contribute significantly to the editing process. If it weren’t for your stalwart constitution readers might have wondered why there were so many typos in just the hardcore sex scenes. I was worried about the whole defamation thing, and as a result tried to involve my dudes in the process as much as possible. That's why there are so many ridiculous character names in the book. Roman Steel? Rexford Richter?

NW: At one point a fellow artist, a member of collective The Bruce High Quality Foundation, gave you some excellent recommendations for names that sounded more real, but were as different from your dudes' real names. Is there a reason you didn't use them? Like does the theatricality of their fakeness appeal to you, or were you just really into the characters already, or what?

JW: But I used a lot his suggestions! Man that was a crazy night. We were all in that tent behind Scope Hamptons… At some point the pseudonym question came up and Seth [of Bruce High Quality] had ten alternate names ready for all our mutual friends, as if he had been re-imagining them as normal people for years. Originally I objected to Ezra because it sounded too homo-thug, but I used it in the end.

I find theatricality really productive. The joy and humor of making this book had to come through via exaggeration; cynicism was so inappropriate in this context. Right? There is something undeniably optimistic about getting laid that much.

NW: Yeah, normally I would agree that getting laid a lot is optimistic, but sometimes it makes you crazy! You know that dream journal that I've been keeping? Well apparently in almost every dream I've remembered in the past three weeks, there's a mysterious man who desires me sexually even though I'm not interested in him.

JW: Like that Australian homo-virgin polo player from New Year’s Eve?

NW: No dude, I was SO into him. But I mean that... well it's in the book! The story opens with the main character (i.e. you) feeling oppressed by the sheer volume of sexual interactions she had had in a relatively short period of time. The rest is the story of her working through those feelings and their ramifications.

JW: True. My protagonist was working to be open enough to let someone inside her. In more than just one way. I've been interested artistically in the idea of using my practice to put the happy endings that I've written for my own life out into the world. I don't think it's about fighting to feel less vulnerable as a young artist in the public eye. Actually, I know that's not it because… remember when we ran into Matthew this weekend? I totally surprised myself by whispering into his ear without thinking, "I've fallen for your friend like a tree in the forest." I'd spoken about my love life as if I was one of my sculptures! [Julia's show at the Kantor/Feuer window included handmade lumber.] The happy ending was there, but also the question: If no one is around to hear it, does romance make any noise? And I guess the cliché in this case means, I have a love affair with myself alone in the studio, but it's not a romance. That's for two or more.