If any more proof was needed that Wesleyan is a hatchery for the weird and bold, the first novel by Lisa Dierbeck ’86, “One Pill Makes You Smaller,” is certainly it. Published in September, Dierbeck’s novel dives into the seedy world of 1970’s New York, dabbling heavily in free love, psychedelic drugs and pedophilia. Drawing on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” the novel follows 11 year-old Alice Duncan, who becomes something of a giant as she prematurely reaches puberty.
“This is a small girl trapped in a woman’s body,” Dierbeck said. “She’s forced to experience the world of an adult.”
While attending an arts school in North Carolina, Dierbeck’s Alice is befriended by a fellow artist moonlighting as a big-city drug dealer. Alice, mistaken for a teenager, is sexually pursued by her new mentor, and the pair subsequently develop an eerie though surprisingly compelling relationship.
In addition to Carroll’s novel, Dierbeck drew on her own experiences growing up in New York for “One Pill Makes You Smaller.” In 1982, Dierbeck began attending Wesleyan, where she studied philosophy.
“When I was at Wesleyan, I hadn’t yet settled on writing,” Dierbeck said. “I studied a little with Tony Connor [a professor at Wesleyan]. I started one novel that was really bad. It took me a while to learn how to write. I wish I had focused on [writing] earlier.”
After graduating from Wesleyan, Dierbeck entered the work force. Her first job was working for a First Amendment rights organization affiliated with the ACLU. Afterwards, Dierbeck held several similar jobs, including a position as a speechwriter. She published several short stories in literary journals over the next few years. It wasn’t until six years ago while living in Italy, however, that she decided to write a novel.
“I actually started writing one big novel set in the present day about a woman who encounters her sexual abuser,” Dierbeck said. “It sort of became my ‘Monster in a Box’ and got so big I had to split the book in two.”
The first part of this book, detailing the events of the protagonist’s childhood, became “One Pill Makes You Smaller.” Despite the volatile subject matter of her novel, during the writing process, Dierbeck tried not to focus on what the response would be to her work when it was finished. When it came time to look for a publisher, however, she began to have more apprehensions.
“I got some really terrible rejection letters,” Dierbeck said, who was turned down by nearly every publisher she applied to. “One called it a ‘moral train wreck’. I’m so proud of that. I wanted that printed on the back cover.”
While getting such strong emotional reactions to her work, Dierbeck knew she had struck an important chord. In the wake of the Boston Pedophile Priest scandal, Dierbeck expected, and received negative feedback about her novel, which deals with sexual predation.
“If you write about a controversial issue, people think you’re trying to be sensationalist. They question your sincerity,” Dierbeck said.
Dierbeck’s novel is anything but insincere. Where “One Pill Makes You Smaller” becomes truly radical is in Dierbeck’s treatment of the victim/victimizer relationship.
“The main character is very attracted to her sexual pursuer,” Dierbeck said. “She’s battling with her own desire, and her own body to a certain extent.”
According to Dierbeck, there is a tendency in our society today to demonize sexual transgressors.
“The ’70’s had a very different value system about sexuality,” Dierbeck said. “The vibe coming from the streets was that nothing to do with sex could be harmful. Repression and morality were suspect. I wanted to send the reader back to that era.”
Today, according to Dierbeck, there is a cultural agreement that young people are vulnerable to predators, and that many sexual encounters are dangerous and harmful. “This wasn’t the thinking in the ’70’s,” she said.
Embedded in these changing moral standards, however, is a countermovement that has begun to portray those referred to today as “sexual predators” as human beings and not total monsters. Dierbeck cites the film Capturing the Friedmans as an example of this movement. She describes the pathos behind her book.
“Every individual’s experiences are particular. As a writer you want to restore moral ambiguity and complexity so that your reader really hast to think things through.”
Lisa Dierbeck is writing at the front of her field and of her culture, expressing ideas that some find uncomfortable. Her understanding of her characters, and of people in general, is a direct result of her fearless recognition of the bond between depravity and love, paternal admiration and sexual desire and the changing face of American morality.
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