Episode summary
Teddy Wayne, Author of 'The Au Pair' | Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily
· · 19 min · Hosts: Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec · Guests: Teddy Wayne
Summary
Teddy Wayne discusses his new novel The Au Pair, a literary thriller about a failing middle-aged Brooklyn novelist whose marriage and self-image unravel after a young Norwegian au pair enters his home. He says he is drawn to characters who already have comfortable lives but are driven to self-destruction by the pursuit of more money, sex, status, and validation. That interest, he argues, comes from living in New York, where ambition is ever-present and the temptation to keep reaching for more is hard to resist.
Wayne also frames the book as a response to the changing economics of writing. He says literary fiction has become much harder to support financially, and that concern shaped both the novel’s premise and its themes of dependence, insecurity, and masculinity. The book began as a shorter, more sellable concept, but he says the story grew as he wrote it.
He describes a highly collaborative process, relying on friends in law enforcement for procedural details and on his wife, writer Kate Greathead, as a first and last reader. He also says technology, especially phones, is eroding attention and character, and that his goal is to write books that disturb comfortable readers while still turning pages quickly.
Key takeaways
- Wayne says The Au Pair is built around a middle-aged novelist whose dependence on his wife exposes insecurity and emasculation.
- He argues that ambition and status-seeking often drive self-destruction, especially in New York’s money-and-power culture.
- Wayne says literary fiction is harder to make a living from now, which influenced the book’s theme of a writer chasing income streams.
- He uses friends who are a detective and an assistant DA to make the crime and legal details feel credible.
- Wayne says technology and phone addiction are eroding attention and making both writing and personality worse.
Notable quotes
“I think I'm just entranced by the idea of someone destroying their life who has a pretty good one”
“I strongly believe that past a certain point it actually goes down your happiness”
“the industry has contracted greatly. It's much harder to make a living as a novelist”
“I'm in the business of disturbing the comfortable”
How the episode opens
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. — You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio. Teddy Wayne writes novels you can't put down. — I already know I'm outnumbered, but go ahead. — Yeah, sorry, Carol. Uh, you know, you can hang.
I can hang.
You can hang. All right. Teddy Wayne writes novels you can't put down.
I know this because I've read all seven of them. They include The Winner, which has been optioned by Sony for a film starring Tom Holland, The Great Man Theory, The Love Song of Johnny Valentine, Capitol, and others. Teddy's a novelist, a screenwriter.
He's also a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Mick Sweeny's other publications, too. He was a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, Pen Bingham Prize, and Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
I feel like it's Outlander for guys. I'm just going to put it out there. But anyway, his new book, The Opair, is a literary thriller that comes out tomorrow. We're not going to spoil it. Um, we're going to get to that in just a moment. Teddy, of course, joining us in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Welcome. Welcome.
Thank you for having me.
Your book is being kind of passed around our newsroom to be quite honest and and different people reading it. Um, anyone who reads your book, and I listen to a bunch of podcasts. Um, it's often men who make really questionable or in some cases really bad decisions.
What's up with that? I think I'm just entranced by the idea of someone destroying their life who has a pretty good one, a fairly accomplished or content life, but is driven by the American pursuit of of more and more happiness, more money, more sex, more status, and that ambition is their downfall.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- literary fiction
- au pair
- personal scandal
- desire and deception
- marriage and infidelity
Watch the episode
Watch “Teddy Wayne, Author of 'The Au Pair' | Bloomberg Businessweek” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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