Q&A with Jane Borden

_Jane Borden has been comedy editor for “Time Out New York,” a freelance writer for “Saturday Night Live” and a spy in Chinatown.
She’s also been a North Carolina debutante and a member of UNC’s chapter of Tri Delta.
Today she will read from her book of humorous personal essays, “I Totally Meant To Do That,” at Bulls Head Bookshop.
In the book, Borden, a 1999 UNC graduate, focuses on the differences between her Southern upbringing and her time in New York City.
One of the book’s essays mentions the physical pain that resulted from Borden’s attempts to — in the custom of the South — smile cordially at every person she passed on the streets of the city.
Another mourns the tendency of Borden’s Southern acquaintances to assume that her New York lifestyle was like that of Carrie Bradshaw, of HBO’s “Sex and the City.”
Borden also performed standup and improvisational comedy during her seven years in New York._

DTH: As someone who grew up and went to college in North Carolina, what was your transition to New York City like?

JANE BORDEN: The world got a lot bigger when I moved to New York. I thought Carolina was pretty big when I was there. I went to a boarding school where we may as well have been wearing house arrest bracelets, so I got to Carolina and that was freedom. But in New York there’s no one watching you at all.

At first I found that enticing. My immediate transition was kind of going off the deep end. I wanted to do everything and go everywhere, which to a certain degree meant leaving behind a lot of my friends from Carolina who had moved up here with me.

DTH: After seven years in New York, you’ve moved back to Sewanee, Tenn. Have you had to readjust?

JB: I’m having a strange reindoctrination. It’s a reverse transition of what I went through in New York. I have to talk to people in the streets and in stores, and it’s weird because I have to remind myself that that was something I missed in New York.

Also, now that I’m back in the South, my home is full of beautiful things that my mother wouldn’t let me take to New York.

DTH: What were some of the jobs you had in New York?

JB: I had 13 jobs in my first four years there. I had a stint writing TV trivia for a gaming website — that was one of my stranger employments.

I was a secretary at a leveraged buyout firm. It was interesting to see that side of New York City, the financial side.

I was a spy in Chinatown for a firm that did investigations for brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton. We protected their trademarks from selling illegal knockoffs.

I was a researcher for a couple of TV shows. I had to find out the ideal vacation for dudes for SPIKE.

I worked for Tom Wolfe, organizing his archives. I filed through his original notepad.

And then I freelanced at “Saturday Night Live” and I was the comedy editor for “Time Out New York.” Basically I just covered the comedy scene, and I got to interview a lot of my favorite comedians and some up-and-comers.

DTH: Your book is a book of personal essays. What’s your process in recalling stories and putting them on paper?

JB: I have to approach it from two different ways. I think of a story I really want to tell, and I have to figure out whether it fits into the larger picture. You can’t just throw any funny story in there.

Contact the Arts Editor at arts@dailytarheel.com.