As one of the longest-tenured players on the Portland Thorns, Emily Menges has found multiple ways to fit into her Pacific Northwest community. Since arriving from Georgetown in 2014, she’s won the NWSL Shield, and NWSL Championship, and signed a new contract over the summer that will keep her in the Rose City until 2024.
Off the field, Menges has also gotten involved in Portland’s literary community; she runs a newspaper called Bel Esprit, dabbles in writing, and is known as a voracious reader.
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She spoke to The Athletic about being a writer and reader, and how she once took matters into her own hands when a book let her down.
This interview was conducted before the release of the findings of the Sally Yates report, and has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
I was reading one of the essays on the Bel Esprit site, and you’re talking about Joan Didion, and how she started, “I had better tell you where I am and why.” So as an introduction, where are you right now and why?
My cat’s here. If you hear him in the background, sorry. And I’m in Portland to play soccer. I have grown to love it here. But I definitely would not be living in this city if it wasn’t for soccer. I didn’t really have it on my radar as a college student.
Like it wasn’t on your radar, but you vibe with it now, or not on your radar because there’s certain parts of the country that you do and don’t vibe with?
No, I vibe with it for sure. I can’t tell you if I’ll stay here after soccer. I have no idea. But I have loved every second of living here.
I want to ask you a little bit more about the genesis of Bel Esprit
I had a group of friends who would meet every so often, we called it the Writers Guild. And it was kind of just an excuse to get together and we would never write, because that’s not the environment that you write in. But we’d call it the Writers Guild, and kind of vaguely ask each other what we were working on and we all wrote on the side too. And it was kind of just a glorified creative circle, which was really fun. We’d meet at a random bar at 9 p.m. and talk about what we’re working on. And maybe one person would put their headphones in and write off on their own if they felt like it, but generally no writing got done. And so the newspaper kind of came about off of that.
Obviously the title of the newspaper, it’s from “A Moveable Feast.” It’s Hemingway, this is like interwar France memoir stuff. I’m just wondering what stuck out about that and made you think, let me put this on the top because it’s going to embody the vibe of the paper.
The Bel Esprit segment in “A Movable Feast” is only like two pages long. On those two pages, Hemingway talks about his buddy Ezra Pound, who comes up with this idea called Bel Esprit. And the idea is that T.S. Eliot is working in a bank, and Ezra Pound hates the fact that T.S. Eliot is working in a bank because he thinks that he should be writing, but T.S. Eliot has to work in the bank because he has to make money. And so Ezra Pound is like, all right, we come up with this thing called Bel Esprit. Everyone pool their money and we are going to pay T.S. Eliot so he can get out of the bank and write.
One of my favorite quotes of it is – this is not gonna be verbatim – “at that time I campaigned energetically and my biggest motivation in that time was to see T.S. Eliot walk out of the bank a free man.” So he’s just like, kind of in Hemingway’s sarcastic asshole way, why the fuck not? I have no money anyway. I just gave all my money to T.S. Eliot. I liked that. I liked the attitude. I liked that everyone pooled their money and gave it to someone who we can get out of their job that they hate and get them writing.
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You list your favorite authors as Joan Didion, Hemingway, Dave Eggers, Donna Tartt. I look at the authors, these are all authors who in one way or another have dealt with grief as a subject in their own ways.
I can say, at least for Donna Tartt, and Joan Didion, and probably Dave Eggers actually, too – I can’t really say about Hemingway, I don’t think – but the other three I definitely read at times in my life that it was very influential to me based… just the subject matter in general. And so I can definitely say that about those three authors. I do know that I like (Tartt’s) “The Goldfinch” more than the average person because of the time of my life that I read it. Probably same with Joan Didion. Eggers is just hilarious.
You mentioned in one of the articles (in Bel Esprit) you yourself were working on a novel, but you described it as one chapter followed by a rough outline and then haphazard death scenes.
It is still that. There’s the same amount of haphazard death scenes. Man, I wrote that?
Yeah.
All right. That’s funny. Yeah, it’s still one chapter. The rough outline for sure has thickened a little bit. But it remains one chapter.
Can you give an estimate of how many haphazard death scenes?
Well, I keep changing my mind as to method and cause. But probably like six or seven.
Are there death scenes because it’s related to the crime genre? Because I did see you also wrote a (serial mystery) called “Dick & Bitch.”
(Dick & Bitch) was an experiment. It’s not very good. I recently wanted to write another one because I really liked writing those characters, but I don’t think I’m creative enough to come up with the crime…. The novel is not a crime novel at all. I can’t relate it to Goldfinch at all, but it’s that kind of like, spans generations, you’re following one main character with two other side characters that last the whole time. It’s like you’re just following a person. But those are my favorite kinds of books.
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You wrote in that Didion essay “I’m drawn to characters who let situations evolve as they will, let hardships speak for themselves, and hands play as they are laid.” So I’m just wondering, is that something that you’re trying to evoke in your own character work?
I like when the character’s understating everything that’s happening to them, because that’s what people do in real life. So if a person is always late, they don’t talk about how they’re always late. They’re just always late and that’s something about them. You slowly get to know them as who they are, instead of just being shoved all this random information.
This is very psych 101, it’s not the deepest thing that I’ve ever said, but people tend to drift to characters that they admire and they think embody the qualities that they want to have. I’m just wondering if this tendency of yours towards characters, where their characterization is not so florid, not so direct, but is a little more roundabout, do you think it speaks about you as a person as well?
Yeah, probably I don’t like an uber-dramatic person. Or someone who constantly tells you what’s wrong with them or constantly tells you things that it’s obvious about them. I think I am more drawn to people who either go about their business because they’re interested in what they’re doing, or they’re more interested in other people. I struggle writing characters who don’t have at least a little bit of me in them, because I don’t know how to be somebody else.
What’s your favorite or least favorite question to be asked about writing a novel?
“When are you gonna be done.” That is the worst.
I know someone who’s almost done. He was writing a novel when I met him a few years ago. He’s still writing it now. He’s been almost done the whole time.
I don’t tell people I’m even almost done. It might never get done.
I think most writers whenever they’re described, fair or not fair, they’re described through their writing, not necessarily for who they are. This is a pretty broad question, but how would you want yourself and your writing summarized?
That’s a crazy question. God. Best case scenario? “Somehow gets a general truth out there by talking about her childhood memories.” That is most of what I write, especially for the paper. And that’s a lot of where I write. My novel, it’s not about me, it’s not about my childhood experiences, but it’s very tied to very specific instances as kids and different things and how hopefully people can relate to broader truths. That’s best case scenario, though.
I saw that you read a book, “Verity” by Colleen Hoover, and you wrote that you didn’t like the ending. So you wrote a new epilogue. Would you say it was an exercise almost?
Someone told me to read “Verity,” I think, and I didn’t mind the book. The writing was fine. But then I got to the end, and I had predicted something that would just have been so much better than what she wrote. And that happens sometimes, but not that often. And “Verity” was so popular at the time that I was ready to be blown away. So I wrote the alternate ending and I was like, this is just so much better. And so I decided, because I got on my high horse, I printed out the ending onto computer paper. I wrote “Verity alternate ending” on the front. I got from Etsy a Bel Esprit stamp. It just has the logo, it doesn’t have my Instagram, doesn’t have my name, anything, which I regret now. I should have had my Instagram handle or website or something. But just my stamp and I folded them up and I went to Powell’s bookstore in Portland and I got a whole stack of Verity books, and I stuck my ending in every single one for months at a time. I would go back to the store and be like, there’s new ones because it was sold out for a while too. I mean it might have gotten caught at checkout and they’re like, oh my god, another one with this or they found one and they went and took them all out. But I was pretty relentless about it and there’s three or four Powell’s locations. Went to all of them, stuck ‘em in all of them. So. Sorry, Colleen Hoover.
Emily Menges spent her COVID period trying to let this author know that she goofed it at the end.
Stick to your genre, but then I found out that’s not even her genre. So I kind of felt slightly bad about it, but…write a better book.
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Are there any genres that you won’t touch that you’re just like, it’s not for me?
Fantasy is not really my thing. I will dabble in science fiction if I get a recommendation. I just read “Ender’s Game” for the first time. Surprised I liked it. But other than that, no, I’m a pretty literary fiction person unless someone tells me to read something else. I don’t really read mystery novels that often unless someone sends it to me or tells me to read it. Detective novels, I like better. I read all of Tana French’s books, just right in a row. I liked the way she did that with different lead characters. And she’s just a good writer. Hold on, my cat is eating my toilet paper.
(Menges disappears off screen then returns holding up a shredded roll of toilet paper)
What are you reading right now?
I’m always reading too many things. I just read “Cider House Rules” (by John Irving) for the first time and I had never seen the movie and it quickly became one of my top five favorite books. I went through a phase where I asked my mom to send me all of the books that she had that won the Pulitzer Prize. I don’t why. I think probably because I read “Goldfinch” and (Anthony Doerr’s) “All The Light We Cannot See” and like maybe one or two others right in a row. I’m reading “A Thousand Acres,” (by Jane Smiley) it won a while ago. So I’m reading that. And I’m also reading a Mary Renault book called “The Bull from the Sea,” it’s about Theseus. That was a recommendation.
When you’re known as a book person, do you ever find it a burden when people come to you and they’re like “tell me what to read?”
Yeah, because people hate what I read. Like, people want me to tell them to read “Verity.” I don’t read that. So I’ll usually be like, well tell me what you’d like and I’ll try to help you, or I’ll pick the book off my shelf that is at the front of Powell’s right now so it’s popular and I’ll give it to you. There’s some safe ones. Let’s see. “Where the Crawdads Sing,” very safe for people. Great book.
I had a teammate ask me last year and I gave her like three or four books and I never got those back and then never heard that she read any of them. I wrote my name in them assuming I’m never gonna get them back. Like when you give out a book, I just assume I’m never gonna get it back.
And you’re not going to name and shame this teammate.
No. I cannot.
Last one, I want to invite you to do a little writing exercise. You talked about in Bel Esprit, your author section, you said you have tattoos, but you’ll make up an extravagant lie when asked about them. And so I’m inviting you to make up an extravagant lie about any of your tattoos.
The reason I write is because I’m less good at coming up with things in the moment! Let me think for one second. It’s not going to be funny. So as a child I had a pet eagle and I did not know that I was not allowed to have pet eagles when I was a child but my grandfather had given me one, our family one, and it somehow fell on me to take care of him. And he lived in our basement, but we had this weird indoor terrarium room that we could let it out in. So I have a tattoo of an eagle. All of that was made up.
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(Menges then revealed a tattoo of a seagull.)
(Photo: Craig Mitchelldyer-USA TODAY Sports)
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