Lit Talk: Author Jonathan Safran Foer on 'Eating Animals'

Jonathan Safran Foer is known for acclaimed novels such as Everything Is Illuminated. Foer was an on-again, off-again vegetarian for years. But the birth of his son led Foer to ask: Was it right to feed his son meat? The result is Eating Animals, his new book on the moral, environmental and health quandaries involved. USA Today's Elizabeth Weise spoke with Foer.

USA: So should everyone be a vegetarian?

Foer: My book is not a case for vegetarianism. It's a case against factory-farmed meat. Basically, that's meat where animals are raised in enclosures, where they don't get to see the sun, don't get to touch the Earth, and they're almost always fed drugs to keep them from getting sick or make them grow faster.

I think there are a lot of responsible conclusions one could reach (about whether to eat animals). There's selective meat-eating (from responsible growers), there's being a vegetarian.

The thing I can't respect is the willful forgetting, the kind of people who say "I simply don't want to think about it."

USA: What was it that you found so morally problematic about factory-farmed pigs and chickens, the focus of your book?

Foer: The rule is animals in tiny cages where they can't turn around, in just this very ordinary kind of misery. The just insane vastness of the industry, 50 billion animals that are factory-farmed every year. It actually just boggles the mind.

USA: What were your assumptions going in?

Foer: That raising animals for food had to necessarily involve a kind of carelessness or violence. And in the process of writing this book, I met a number of small farmers who aren't that way. If my book has heroes, it's some of these small farmers. I was surprised by how moved I was by those farmers. And how statistically negligible they were.

USA: How many are there?

Foer: I thought such farmers might comprise half or a quarter of American agriculture. In fact it's significantly less than 1%. If there's a tragedy in the book, it's that those farmers are the exceptions. (In his book, Foer describes visiting small, boutique pig and cattle farms where animals are given ample space in conditions that at least attempt to allow them natural behaviors and social conditions.)

USA: What about people who can't afford to buy expensive meat from small farms?

Foer: It's exactly the opposite that's true. Factory-farmed food is an elitist food; it's a food that's making hundreds of millions of dollars for CEOs of corporations at the expense of normal people. Yes, it seems cheap when we go to the supermarket, but that's because we're being lied to about the true costs. We pay for them in our health care costs, the destruction of the environment and our values. What we call cheap food is the most expensive food in American history.

USA: But is it realistic to expect that people will stop eating meat because of a moral stance?

Foer: Sometimes we take apart very big things because we come to terms with the ways they're wrong. It's easy to forget that we had slaves in this country until quite recently, we treated women as second-class citizens who didn't have the right to vote until very recently, racism is something we're still working with. These things that have been going on forever can change very quickly.

USA: What suggestions do you have for people who take your research to heart?

Foer: One way is to stop eating meat entirely. Another way is to say, "I don't want to eat that kind of meat, but I still want to, so I'm going to seek out small farmers who raise the pigs and chickens outside."

USA: What choice did you make?

Foer: Not to eat meat. It would be very hard for me to reject factory farming without not eating meat, because I don't really have the time or energy or expertise to know where the meat comes from. (For those who have the time, Foer suggests buying at farmers' markets from farmers themselves after visiting their farms.)

USA: Do you think eventually everyone will be vegetarian?

Foer: There's a very good chance that there's going to be a rejection of factory farming. I think that will happen in my lifetime. The trend has been away from meat. People are eating less meat every year.

USA: You're a novelist. What responses have you gotten about writing a treatise like this one?

Foer: I've been very, very happy with the response I've gotten. Even if they say "I'm still going to eat meat, but you've given me a lot to think about."

USA: Will you be doing more books like this?

Foer: No. Novels.

Text from USAToday.com. See the interview here.

Lit Talk: Melissa Hart, Author of 'Gringa'

Author Melissa Hart's complex and dynamic childhood is the subject of her latest book, Gringa: A Contradictory Childhood. She spoke with The Urban Muse about the inspiration:

Urban Muse: Tell us about the inspiration behind Gringa.

Melissa Hart: Inspiration comes to me in the form of images--in the case of Gringa, I recalled a pack of Spanish flash cards that my mother had when we took language classes together at the local library. I couldn't get one image--a line drawing of a disembodied ear--out of my head. Really, it was that flash card that provided the initial inspiration to sit down and write the first chapter. I'd told part of my story--about my mother coming out and losing custody of me and my younger siblings--in my first memoir, The Assault of Laughter. However, I didn't feel that I'd written the story as eloquently or thoroughly as I could have, and so I set out to write it once more and expand upon it with more sophisticated prose and a greater sense of how the dissolution of my family affected me as a young adult. I'd also been reading memoir and fiction with recipes--Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, Diana Abu-Jaber's The Language of Baklava--and as food provided comfort and intrigue for me as an adolescent, I structured each chapter around a key recipe.

UM: Was it difficult to write about events that are so deeply personal?

MH: It is difficult to write about personal events. After almost thirty years, I still have a lot of pain regarding what happened to my family. Many women with kids who came out during the 1970s and 1980s lost custody of their children, and most don't want to discuss this. However, I think it's a critical period of history that needs to be explored, and while I shed many tears during my writing of Gringa, I also feel confident that this book offers insight into LGBT families and their value. The hardest scene for me to see in print is the sex scene in "Young Americans." I didn't want to include it, but my editor thought it was important. It's not erotic--more "theater of the absurd"--but I blush to think that my journalism students and my grandparents have read it.

UM: In addition to two memoirs, you've published a number of essays. Any tips on writing compelling essays? How is it the same (or different) from writing a memoir?

MH: Essay writing can be so much fun. It requires a lot less time commitment and research than a book-length memoir; however, many of the writing techniques are the same. You have to go into an essay with a compelling introduction, and the whole piece is guided by a thesis (that is, a topic and a point you wish to make about that topic). I think it's important to include research, so that readers learn something about a subject, and you also need to include sensory details, stylish writing, vivid imagery, and a conclusion that really leaves people thinking. I get a lot of my ideas from what I'm thinking about or learning about at the time--for instance, I've just finished an essay exploring Jim Henson's "The Muppet Show," which was so important to my family in the 1980s, and which my three-year old daughter now adores. The trick was to make it personal, while exploring a universal truth and offering readers insight into the program and its influences on audiences then and now.

UM: Since you also teach journalism, what is the single most important thing that you impart to students each semester?

MH: I think the single most important thing I impart is that publication doesn't have to be this far-off dream that one spends years pursuing. It's something that can happen within a few weeks of learning a few crucial skills, such as constructing a compelling short essay and submitting it to specifically-targeted editors with a succinct cover letter. My Feature Writing 1 students regularly get published in places including The Washington Post, The Oregonian, Horizon Air Magazine, and High Country News. They're amazed that editors are willing to publish their work, but why not, if they've worked hard at multiple drafts and submitted a polished piece?

UM: What books would you say should be required reading for aspiring essayists and/or memoir writers?

MH: I'm an evangelist for Sue William Silverman's Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir [ed. note: Sue has also shared her insights on this blog]. It's simply the most thorough and inspiring book I've found for memoir writers, regardless of the level of experience. And I regularly read and assign the "Best American" series to my students; in particular, I like "Best American Magazine Writing" and "Best American Essays." I also really enjoy the writing in the literary journals "Creative Nonfiction" and "Fourth Genre." They're essential reading for memoirists.

-- Whitney Teal

Zora Told Countee: Hurston's Letter to Countee Cullen

As part of their "American Masters" series, PBS published a letter from Zora Neale Hurston to Countee Cullen. Besides addressing the writer's views on white liberals, segregation and Negro writers, it's beautifully written and full of Hurston's famous personality.

March 5, 1943

Dear Countee:

Thanks a million for your kind letter. I am always proud to have a word of praise from you because your friendship means a great deal to me. It means so much to me because I have never known you to make an insincere move, neither for personal gain, nor for malice growing out of jealousy of anyone else. Then too, you are my favorite poet now as always since you began to write. I have always shared your approach to art. That is, you have written from within rather than to catch the eye of those who were making the loudest noise for the moment. I know that hitch-hiking on band-wagons has become the rage among Negro artists for the last ten years at least, but I have never thumbed a ride and can feel no admiration for those who travel that way. I have pointed you out on numerous occasions as one whose integrity I respected, and whose example I wished to follow.

Head to PBS.org for the full text. Thanks to Dream Hampton for spreading the link via Twitter.

--Whitney Teal

Lit Talk Events: The National Book Festival Hits the National Mall

The Library of Congress' annual National Book Festival rolls into town this Saturday, September 26th, 2009 on the National Mall.

A gaggle of authors forming the who's who in literature, including children's authors, poetry and prose writers, fiction and non-fiction authors, illustrators, and historical authors, will be present. To see which will be in attendance just take a scroll, and be sure to close your mouth once you get to the bottom!

Patricia Sullivan

Ann Kidd Taylor

David A. Taylor
Julia Alvarez

Junot Díaz

John Grisham

Katherine Neville

Jodi Picoult

Nicholas Sparks

Colson Whitehead

David Wroblewski
Mary Jane Clark

Walter Mosley

James Patterson

George Pelecanos

Ana Menendez

Azar Nafisi

and more!

To find out what time your favorite author will be reading or signing his or her book, click here!

The Library of Congress will also be unrolling its newest initiative--Read.gov--which will combine all the literary promotional material from the Library's archive so that viewers have one specific location where they can find out about all the upcoming literary programs.

Date and Time:

Saturday, September 26th

10 A.M-5:30 P.M

The National Mall

Metro: Smithsonian

Hope to see you on the Mall!

--Nicole Crowder

Poster courtesy LOC Book Festival

Lit Talk: Anita Diamant

Many readers remember Anita Diamant for her unforgettable bestseller, The Red Tent, the story of Jacob’s daughter Dinah over whom the Book of Genesis glosses over. She writes with poetry and an innate understanding of women. Her latest novel, Day After Night, carries these same strengths and focuses on a group of young women who escaped from Nazi Europe to Israel during World War II. In this 2003 interview with William Novak, Ms. Diamant discusses her Jewish identity and a new mikveh (ritual bath) she has helped to start.

***

What are you thinking about these days?

Mostly Mayyim Hayyim, the new Boston-area mikveh, which should be up and running by the time this is published.[As indeed it is: www.mayyimhayyim.org] I'm spending way too much time on it instead of writing, but it's my choice so I’m not really complaining. I've never done a non-writing project before, or a community project. I've never been much of an activist, or an organization person. I've even written an essay on how much I dislike going to meetings, but now I'm going to them all the time. It’s a complicated process building a mikveh; there’s nothing about them when you look them up in the zoning ordinances.

How did this new mikveh get started?

Anita: For me, it began in the mid-1990s when I was writing Choosing a Jewish Life, a guidebook about conversion. I went to the mikveh a number of times with various rabbis as they took converts. I was also chairing the outreach committee at Congregation Beth El in Sudbury, because I thought it was important for the community to have a representative at conversions, so I would try to show up at conversions of our members with flowers and gifts. Only one mikveh in the area--in Brighton, near Brookline--has been open to the liberal community for conversions, and that's only two hours a week, which makes it tough to schedule. There are other mikva'ot which aren’t open for conversion, including a new, Chabad-sponsored mikveh in the western suburbs.

You mean not open to the non-Orthodox world?

Anita: Yes, although I don't care for that phrase, because it seems to imply that Orthodoxy is normative Judaism in the way it refers to the rest of us are “non.” But the problem of most mikva'ot goes beyond that. There's nowhere to stand, to sit, to celebrate, or even to wait. I've been to many conversions, and each time I am moved to tears by the power of the moment, but I've never seen a mikveh with an appropriate space in which to mark the hour after the immersion--or before, for that matter.

I was at the Boston mikveh one spring afternoon when candidates for conversion in the liberal Jewish community were lined up outside, waiting for their turn, and while it was inspiring to see a dozen or so men, women and children waiting to become Jews, having people lined up outside is not a very graceful or welcoming entry into Judaism. Most mikva'ot are set up only for women to come individually and privately, at the end of their periods. Traditionally the mikveh is used at night for modesty's sake, and also because of how Jews count days.

You use the noun “convert,” although many people go out of their way to avoid it, speaking instead of Jews by choice.

Anita: I think "convert" is an honorific, a title of honor, and I see nothing wrong with it. Being a convert, or a Jew by choice, if you prefer, should be a term of the highest praise. For someone to choose this identity and to embrace it--it's a gift to the rest of us. Neither term is great: "convert" makes me think of currency, and "Jew-by-choice" is a little awkward. In the Torah and in classical Jewish writings, the word is ger, which can also mean stranger or sojourner. "Proselyte" comes from the Greek translation of ger, but it's far too archaic.

Where do you think our discomfort about converts comes from?

Anita: According to Jewish law, we are not supposed to make any distinction between someone who is Jewish by choice and someone who was born Jewish. Evidently, Jews have behaved badly toward converts for a long time: there is mention in the Talmud about Jews making fun of them and talking in demeaning ways about their "pig-eating ancestors." And yet the great majority of comments about converts in the Talmud and the Midrash are favorable, such as, "The convert is dearer to God than Israel." When a convert wrote to Maimonides, asking whether he could recite prayers that included the phrase, Elohei Avoteinu, God of our ancestors, Maimonides answered with a resounding yes, saying, "There is no difference whatever between you and us."

***

The rest of the fascinating interview is available here. Ms. Diamant will be touring the east coast in the upcoming weeks:

Thursday, September 10 at 7:00 p.m.
Newtonville Books
296 Walnut St.
Newtonville, Mass. 02460
617.244.6619

Monday, September 14 at 7:00 p.m.
McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince St.
New York, N.Y. 10012
212.274.1160

Tuesday, September 15 at 7:00 p.m.
Book Revue
313 New York Avenue
Huntington, N.Y. 11743
631.271.1442

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo by Mark Ostow

Lit Talk: Author Jonathan Tropper

The dysfunctional family saga is one that has been touched upon many times, but every once in a while a novel comes along that revolutionizes the subgenre. Jonathan Tropper’s This Is Where I Leave You has been hailed as one of these novels, at once side-splitting and heart-rending and cockle-warming. In the interview below, Jonathan talks about his routine and being successful.

***

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
It's hard to pinpoint. I was always an avid reader. I remember, when I was in high school, reading The Stand, by Stephen King and thinking, at some point, that it must be fantastic to be able to be able to make a living just telling stories. But I think it was years before I actually really considered giving it a try. And then there were all those years of denial, when I wouldn't admit to myself that I wanted to try, because failure was such a large possibility. So I probably lost a few years there, and then, at some point, it just became imperative to give it a real shot. I think it helped not being particularly interested in anything else.

How did you get published?
I wrote a book that I thought was pretty good. I submitted to about fifty agencies and a handful of publishers and got rejected across the board. So I gave it up for a while, but never stopped reading. A few years later I felt the urge to write again. This time there was more urgency to it. I felt I actually had something to say. So I wrote what would become Plan B, my first novel, sent out query letters, got interest from a handful of agents, signed with one of them, and few months later we had a deal at St. Martin's Press.

Your books tend to be about people dealing with very serious, sometimes tragic life-issues, and yet they're all very funny. Why do you think you tell your stories in such a funny way?
Because that's how life really is. No matter what you're going through, there's comedy to be found. And if you ignore the comedy, than life is just one long funeral. I'm the guy who laughs at a funeral and cries at American Express commercials. You have to be open to the full spectrum of emotional responses. So I try to write books that convey that range. I want you to be moved, maybe to tears, but also to laugh your ass off.

Three of your novels are in development as motion pictures. What do you think it is about your novels that has captured Hollywood's interest?
I couldn't say for sure, but I write very character driven novels. I work very hard to create three dimensional, flawed, interesting, and occasionally over-the-top characters. And I think interesting characters are in demand in Hollywood. Interesting characters attract top shelf actors, who in turn, attract the rest of the talent, and then the financing, which is what ultimately gets a movie made. It all starts from the characters, so I think, when producers are moved b characters, they see a project that has the potential to attract talent.

Are you a disciplined writer? Do you write every day? Do you follow an outline?
I'm a terribly undisciplined writer. I do try to write every day, try to treat it like a job; show up by nine, put in a full day, etc. But it's hard when it's such a solitary process. There are good days and there are bad days. I never start with an outline, I start with a character, and after I've written about that character for a while, I start outlining the novel, but I never seem to follow my outlines anyway. So it just becomes a mess of chapters until finally, hopefully, the book presents itself. I tend to write a lot more than actually makes it into the book.
***

The full interview is available at Jonathan’s website, and you can catch him at these East Coast locations in the upcoming weeks:

Tuesday, August 25 at 7:15 p.m.
215 Sycamore St.
Decatur, Ga. 30030
404.370.8450

Thursday, August 27 at 7:00 p.m.
Inkwood Books
216 South Armenia Avenue
Tampa, Fla. 33609
813.253.2638

Tuesday, September 1 at 7:00 p.m.
The Odyssey Bookshop
9 College St. #4
South Hadley, Mass. 01075
413.547.7307

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo: Jonathantropper.com

Lit Talk: Author Carleen Brice

Kind-eyed, loced Carleen Brice, the author of the highly-acclaimed novel Orange Mint and Honey, published her second novel, Children of the Waters, in June 2009. Children of the Waters tells the story of two sisters’ parallel struggles through prejudice, disease, and family through subtle but finely tuned writing. In the interview below with "One World Books" (from the Reader’s Guide to Children of the Waters), Carleen shares the surreal joy of her success and her thoughts on book clubs.

***

One World Books: Carleen, it’s a pleasure getting the chance to sit with you and talk all things books, now that you’re a seasoned and award-winning novelist! Perhaps the best place to start would be to ask how you feel about the success of your first novel. Orange Mint and Honey earned the First Fiction Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, debut novel honors from the African American Literary Book Club, was an Essence book club pick, there’s been interest from Hollywood—and of course, admiration from readers everywhere. Did you have any idea that this would happen?

Carleen Brice: I hoped, of course, for good things to come, but it’s pretty surreal when it happens. When they called my name at the awards for the African American Literary Book Club, and people at my table—who I had just met that night—screamed for me, it was amazing. The whole process has been incredible. I’m overjoyed and honored that my work has received so much attention. But the best thing has been reader response—I’m so grateful to the people who’ve taken the time to email me or write reviews online.

One World Books: Can you tell us a bit about your visits to individual book clubs to discuss Orange Mint and Honey? How did that come about? How did you find the experience?

Carleen Brice: Book clubs contact me through my website, www.carleenbrice.com, or approach me at events and whenever I can, I make it a point to attend in person or via phone. It’s wonderful to hear the discussions first hand. When you’re writing about your characters, it’s just you and them in a room. It’s really fun to see other people relate to them and treat them like they’re real—feeling sorry for them or getting mad at them—just like I did when I was writing.

At first people are a little shy because the author is right there, but eventually they loosen up (the drinks served at book clubs might have a little to do with that!) and start saying how they really feel about the characters and the plot. I encourage that honesty (though so far it’s easy to do because nobody has hated it). It’s fun to hear one person say “I thought it was wrong for them to act out in the church the way they did.” And then someone else say, “I understand it. If I was Shay I would have been hollering too!” It makes me feel like I did my job when some of the group is siding with Shay and some of the group is siding with Nona, which happens at every single book club.

One World Books: Did any of the early feedback you received about Orange Mint and Honey impact the way you wrote this novel (which, by the way, is simply stunning)?

Carleen Brice: Thank you! I wouldn’t say the feedback impacted how I write. I feel like I learned a lot writing my first novel, but writing this book was a completely different thing so I don’t know how much was applied to it. My goals were the same: to make people think and feel and for them to be entertained. It was inspiring to see how people responded so well to my first novel. Gave me hope that readers are interested in the same kind of characters and stories I am.

***

The full interview is available on Carleen’s website, and you can catch Ms. Brice this week in Denver:

Sunday, August 16 at 6:00 p.m.
West Side Books
3434 W. 32nd Avenue
Denver, Colo. 80211
303.480.0220

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo courtesy CarleenBrice.com

Lit Talk: Author Bich Minh Nguyen

It is somewhat astounding and certainly a blessing that we can count Bich Minh Nguyen (pronounced Bit Min New-win) among today’s authors when one considers her early life.

When she was 1-year-old, her Vietnamese family fled Saigon on April 29, 1975, the night before it fell. Nguyen now teaches literature and creative writing at Purdue University, published a memoir entitled Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, in which she tells the story of cultural identity through food, and will release a novel entitled Short Girls soon.

Below is an excerpt from an interview by Tommy Nguyen of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop with the very personable Bich Minh Nguyen, who talks about her memoir, heritage, and appetite.

***

Tommy Nguyen: There seems to be a very common coming-of-age setting for the very first wave of Vietnamese American children: '70s hand-me-down clothing, '80s pop and new wave music, Buddig luncheon meat and Pringles. Tell me about the socio-economic realities of that particular time and how they helped define this generation of Vietnamese Americans.

Bich Minh Nguyen: Can I ask you where you grew up?

Tommy Nguyen: I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, until I was five years old, and then my family moved to Orange County, California, in the early 1980s.

Bich Minh Nguyen: It's just really interesting hearing where other people resettled after the refugee camps. In my mind, all the lucky people got to go to California. But I think I know more people who resettled in small, more [Middle-American] towns. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, the work that was available to immigrants or refugees was factory work. My dad did that for many years, and so did my uncles, even though they were trained to do other work in Vietnam. My dad, for example, was going to be an eye doctor. But in Grand Rapids, my dad worked in a feather factory, and that smell of feathers was on him whenever he came home. I knew, always, even as a little girl, that this was blue-collar work. I didn't know the word "blue-collar" back then, but I somehow knew it was blue-collar in the pejorative sense of the word. Most of my classmates' fathers did not work in factories. So very often I felt the class difference, which was compounded by the racial and ethnic differences. Children learn right away what the status symbols are. For example, I knew that generic cookies were very shameful, and I thought about these symbols a lot because I felt they prevented me from fitting in. My stepmother really wanted us to have free school lunches, but we were just above the qualifying level. That was her reality-- she saw it as "trying to get by." I didn't see it that way. I read so much as a girl, and I had these fantastical visions from--well, British literature, frankly. I felt that there was this other, better world out there. And I was stuck in this one.

Tommy Nguyen: Tell me more about your obsession with food, and how that influenced your understanding of class and culture as a young girl.

Bich Minh Nguyen: Let me start off by saying, Vietnamese food in Grand Rapids, up until very recently, was just strange. All the Vietnamese shops were in a particular part of town, totally segregated. We were the only ones in our neighborhood who were Vietnamese and cooked this "weird food." I had a very strong sense that it was not normal. Of course, I would never want to invite my friends over; they were always white girls. I was afraid they would think I was gross-- I think "gross" was a word that was used quite often back then. Secretly, I loved my grandmother's food. But I would never bring her food to school; that would be like wearing a "Kick Me" sign.

***

You can check out the full interview here. Nguyen will be reading at Women and Children First next week.

Wednesday, August 5 at 7:00 p.m.
Women & Children First

5233 N. Clark St.

Chicago, IL 60640773.769.9299

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo: Nguyen's site

Lit Talk: Author Gay Talese

Italian-American author Gay Talese has lived for the majority of the twentieth century and made an illustrious career for himself. With Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and others, he helped to define the genre of New Journalism in the 1960s, and since then has been covering topics from Frank Sinatra to boxing to mob violence to swinger culture. At the beginning of this interview with Robert Birnbaum, the full version of which is available here, Talese discusses inspiration and what makes a writer.

***

Robert Birnbaum: I know you are an avid Yankee fan. Is there a story that you think sportswriters are missing about the Yankees and the Red Sox?

Gay Talese: I could come up with 50 stories that I am thinking about.

Robert Birnbaum: Seriously?

Gay Talese: I have, without being immodest to you or anyone, a way of looking at a subject—it could be the Yankees, it could be a tree in Boston—where I would say to myself, There is another way of looking at this tree, or this ballgame or these players. Yes, indeed. Do you want a whole series of story ideas? No.

Robert Birnbaum: In A Writer’s Life, you are sitting at a restaurant and you see a man eating a fish—then the paragraph continues on for another page or so—it reminded me of when we were in high school biology and you are shown a drop of water under a microscope—

Gay Talese: Yeah, it’s the imagination of the nonfiction writer. It is nonfiction we are dealing with, as you know—it’s what can be—the way of seeing is very private but can be very creative, and you can take any assignment, any subject, and write about it if you can see it in a vividly descriptive or instructive way. And as you mentioned, I am a restaurant-goer. I go to restaurants a lot. I work alone all day. At night I like to have something to do where I am around people and a restaurant is the best excuse of being around people. I don’t care about the food that much. I care about the atmosphere. Restaurants are a wonderful escape for me. And are for a lot of people. People go to restaurants for so many different reasons. To court a girl, to make some deal. Maybe to talk to some lawyer about how to get an alimony settlement better than they got last week. What I have done since I was 50 years younger than I am now—which is to say 24; now I am 74—I think what I do is write nonfiction as if it were fiction. On the other hand, it is clearly, verifiably factual—but it is a story. It is storytelling. It isn’t telling you a story of somebody you already know. It is, more often than not, somebody you do not know. Or if it is somebody that you do know that I am writing about, it will be something that you don’t know about that person. It is a way of seeing, a way of going about the process of research. It might be interviewing, or it might be hanging around. For example, many colleges in their writing programs teach some of my work. What they often do is teach something like “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” something I wrote when I was 25 years younger or more. That isn’t about Frank Sinatra at all. I didn’t even talk to Frank Sinatra—

Robert Birnbaum: [laughs]

Gay Talese: What I did was I hung around people who hung around Sinatra. You mentioned in reference to the book I have out now, “You go to a restaurant and you see a guy having a certain fish for dinner.” And he is eating the fish, and across the room I am watching him from another table eating the fish. And I am thinking, Now let’s take this fish and do it in reverse. Instead of the fish in his mouth, let’s take it out of his mouth and move the whole process of that fish back to the time when it was in the kitchen being prepared by the chef. And before it was in the kitchen with the chef being cooked to a certain specification by the diner, it was in a box of ice and before it was in a box of ice, it was being transported by plane to a New York airport, thence to the Fulton Fish Market. But before that the darned fish was in the water somewhere being caught by some disgruntled fisherman who was in water that he shouldn’t have been in—

Robert Birnbaum: [chuckles]

Gay Talese: And he is having trouble with his wife and he is on his miserable ship off Newfoundland somewhere and this awful guy, this awful guy, is a fisherman now, and he is grousing to himself when he catches all these damned fish and a whole process is going back into the personalities of the people who catch fish, the people who are trolling—watching fisherman in places they shouldn’t be because they are in lawless waters. All these things that can rise to the mind of a creative person just by virtue of being across the table from a person devouring a piece of tuna. It’s all traceable in a factual sense if you move backward. But it also is something that many, many people sitting in a restaurant, idling their time over their own dinner wouldn’t have the curiosity—it’s all about curiosity.

***

Readers will have the opportunity to see Gay Talese promote two re-released works, Thy Neighbor’s Wife and Honor Thy Father, in New York City on Tuesday:

Tuesday, July 28 at 7:00 p.m.
150 East 86th St.
New York, N.Y. 10028
212.369.2180

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo by Fred R. Conrad/New York Times

Lit Talk: Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks is a true woman of the world. She was born and raised in Australia, but completed her Master’s in journalism at Columbia University and married her husband Tony Horwitz in France, during which period she converted to Judaism. As a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, she covered crises in the Middle East.

Her international experiences are tangible in the diversity of her books: The Nine Parts of Desire deals with her work among Muslim women in the Middle East; Year of Wonders centers on a plague outbreak in 17th-century Puritan England; Pulitzer Prize-winning March tells the story of the absent father of Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters; People of the Book chronicles the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest versions in Europe of the traditional Passover service text. Below is an excerpt from an interview on her website about People of the Book:

***

Interviewer: Your previous two novels are set during Europe’s plague years and the American Civil War. Now, you’ve created an epic story about art and religious persecution. What is it that draws you to a particular subject? Or a particular historical era?

Geraldine: I love to find stories from the past where we can know something, but not everything; where there is enough of a historical record to have left us with an intriguing factual scaffolding, but where there are also enough unknowable voids in that record to allow room for imagination to work.

Interviewer: What do you think it is about the real Sarajevo Haggadah that has allowed it to survive the centuries?

Geraldine: It’s a fascinating question: why did this little book always find its protectors, when so many others did not? It is interesting to me that the book was created in a period—convivencia Spain—when diversity was tolerated, even somewhat celebrated, and that it found its way centuries later to a similar place, Sarajevo. So even when hateful forces arose in those societies and crushed the spirit of multi-ethnic, interfaith acceptance, there were those individuals who saw what was happening and acted to stop it in any way they could.

Interviewer: Were you already working on People of the Book when March won the Pulitzer Prize? How does winning such a prestigious award affect your writing?

Geraldine: I was working on People of the Book even before I started to write March. I’d been struggling quite a bit with the World War II story: it’s such a picked-over period and I was looking for a backwater of the war that wouldn’t perhaps feel so familiar to readers. That search was leading to a lot of dead ends when I suddenly got the idea for March and it was so clear to me how to write that book that I just did it.

The Pulitzer Surprise, as my then-nine-year-old son so accurately dubbed it, affected my writing only in that it interrupted it for a while by drawing renewed attention to March. But after a few weeks of pleasant distraction I was back at my desk, alone in a room, simply doing what I’ve always done, which is trying to write as best I can, day after day.
***

The full interview is available here, and Geraldine Brooks will be at the following sites this summer:

Sunday, August 2 (Time TBA)
Martha's Vineyard Book Festival
520 South RoadChilmark, Mass. 02535

202.645.9484

Thursday, August 13 at 7:00 p.m.
Martha’s Vineyard Museum
59 School St.Edgartown, Mass. 02539

508.627.4441

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo by Randi Baird/Viking Penguin Publicity

Lit Talk: Author Carla Laemmle

Those who have grown up on digitally-enhanced movie monsters and other special effects of the Computer Age might chuckle at the mechanically or cosmetically created monsters of Old Hollywood. And yet in their heyday, these monsters made audiences gasp and screech, and theirs is a legacy to remember.

Carla Laemmle, who turns 100 in October, was there from the beginning, as her uncle, Carl Laemmle, was the founder of Universal Studios. Carla witnessed 1923’s "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" being filmed in the same studio lot that she played in as a child, landed the role of Prima Ballerina in 1925’s "The Phantom of the Opera," and spoke the first line of dialogue in a horror talkie, 1931’s "Dracula." Now an icon and a poet, she has published (with Daniel Kinske and a foreword by Ray Bradbury) Growing Up with Monsters, which tells the story of her own youth and the youth of the horror film in charming verse.

Clixk here to watch a brief interview with the amazingly well-preserved Carla at Monsterpalooza 2009. Carla will be reading from and discussing her book at Book Soup shortly:

Sunday, July 19 at 4:00 p.m.
Book Soup

8818 W. Sunset Blvd.

Los Angeles, Calif. 90069310.659.3110

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo by Carl Gunther

Lit Talk: Author Alia Yunis

Though One Thousand and One Nights was written hundreds of years ago, it’s still a goldmine of inspiration for readers and writers. Its most recent reincarnation is The Night Counter, a novel by Alia Yunis, in which a dying old woman spins nine final tales for the Scheherazade of legend and in doing so, unveils her dysfunctional family and strange, long life. It is a novel of charming humor and magical realism. Below is a Random House interview with the author, who was born in Chicago and has roots in Lebanon:

***

Random House: In The Night Counter, the description of the sights and smells of Lebanon are so evocative, the reader feels transported to the Middle East. What sounds, tastes, smells, etc. make you feel transported to that region?

Alia Yunis: For every season of the year and for every season of my life, there are smells and sounds and pictures I associate with the Middle East. But there is always the smell of jasmine, the calming, time-setting, sound of the call to prayer, and the sad sight of overflowing garbage bins. Within the region, your senses let you know that now you’re in Jordan, now you’re in Egypt, now you’re in the Persian Gulf. Lebanon, whose beauty is literally Biblical, is blessed with spectacular mountains and seascapes, like a petite, delicate, somewhat fragile California. It is where I fell in love with the sea, and ever since, I have not been comfortable living far from the sound of waves.

Random House: At heart, this is a novel about the meaning of family. How did your family shape the story and the writing process? How do they feel about the book?

Alia Yunis: As a result of the “troubles” in Lebanon and Palestine, my extended family lives around the world, and I have first cousins I have never even met. So in many cases our commonality is limited aside from a shared love and passion for those places. Some are more liberal than me, others more conservative, depending on the topic being discussed. I think some of them will find certain things in the book offensive or not tasteful, while others will relate to those very things. In fact, I imagine most would have both reactions, depending on what part of the book I was referring to. For example, Amir’s homosexuality would make some of my relatives cringe, or in some cases even stop reading, whereas my parents would just shrug and say, “Oh, yet another gay man in her life.” On the other hand, my parents would be so offended by the “foul language” Bassam uses and probably wouldn’t read that part.

Random House: How much of the novel is based on personal experience?

Alia Yunis: I don’t think anything we write, no matter how researched and fact-based, whether fiction or nonfiction, takes its shape without going through the prism of our personal experiences. This is a work of fiction, and I can’t honestly point to any character and say “that’s my best friend” or “that’s my grandmother.” But I know the people in my book very well just the way they came out of my head, and they wouldn’t come out my head if they weren’t a conglomeration (subconscious and/or conscious) of my reality.

Random House: The oral storytelling tradition is strong in Lebanon, and the power of myth, fable, and story are evident in the shape of the novel. Did you think about these cultural touchstones as you were writing? If so, which ones?

Alia Yunis: My mother is a voracious reader—self-help, religion, politics—but she considers reading fiction a waste of time and takes no joy in the unraveling and revelation of characters and their worlds, which makes fiction so great to me. This is highly ironic as I recently realized after meeting a distant cousin for the first time that my mother is the biggest storyteller in my life. That cousin knew almost nothing about me. However, I knew so many stories about him. When my mother came to the United States in her twenties, she had no relatives in North America, and like Fatima, she longed for them. And I think to make up for that longing, she would tell me stories about them, long stories that went off in scores of tangents and involved people who over the years I came to know quite well although I hadn’t yet met them. Often the stories were stories her mother had told her about her parents. She was my first Scheherazade, but I have known many in the Middle East, as there has been so much loss and change there in recent generations, and with little recorded history, oral stories are what sustain the memories.

Random House: What aspect/character/moment in your book do you think book groups and other readers will talk about the most?

Alia Yunis: This is hard for me to say. At this point, I’m too close to everyone in the book to pick a favorite character or event. I’d be more curious in people telling me what aspects and moments they found interesting.

***

Ms. Yunis will be reading at the following locations in the upcoming weeks:

Sunday, July 19 at 4:00 p.m.
Vroman’s Bookstore
695 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, Calif. 91101
626.449.5320
Saturday, July 25 at 5:00 p.m.
Book Soup
8818 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, Calif. 90069
310.659.3110

--Emma Silverman

Photo by Gabe Medway
Wednesday, August 5 at 7:00 p.m.
Books, Inc.
601 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, Calif. 94102
415.776.1111

Lit Talk: Author Achy Obejas‏

Achy Obejas, a Cuban lesbian living in Chicago, is a true “writer’s writer.” She has published six acclaimed books, reported on arts and culture for The Chicago Tribune and on Latin music for The Washington Post, and won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. Her novels tend to investigate questions of personal, national, and sexual identity, and have been noted for their gritty, lyrical honesty. Below is an interview with Laura Sheppard-Brick of the National Yiddish Book Center about Obejas’s 2001 novel, Days of Awe, which focuses on the Cuban-American protagonist’s unearthing of her Jewish roots.

***

Sheppard-Brick: You are not Jewish, but Days of Awe is largely about Judaism and Jewish identity and has probably been widely read in the Jewish community. Has this in any way changed the way you relate to the Jewish community? Has it changed how you look at your own heritage?

Obejas: When I began Days of Awe, I was pretty comfortable with my relationship to the Jewish community and to Judaism; to a great extent I even took it for granted. My father’s side of the family is descended from anusim [Spanish Jews, forced to convert to Christianity], my family lived for a long time in a neighborhood with a significant Jewish presence, and my brother, who lived in Israel for several years, is married to an Israeli. I can’t begin to count the number of Jewish lovers I’ve had, and how easy it was to slide in and out of each other’s cultures. I know the values I subscribe to — particularly when it comes to social justice and individual responsibility — are more the result of growing up around Jewish friends and having Jewish teachers than anything else. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always celebrated Pesach, and as an adult I’ve made a conscious choice to fast on Yom Kippur. But the more I studied and researched for Days of Awe, the more immersed I became in Jewish history and lore, the more complicated I saw any claim to identity. What I’ve said before is that I don’t have Jewish damage; that is, I wasn’t raised with any of the negative effects. I have Cuban damage, which is probably close enough — I really think there’s cultural affinity, if not outright overlap. If anything, writing this book has only deepened my respect for my Jewish ancestors and my gratitude to the Jewish people I’ve had in my life. The process, while wrenching at times, has been wholly enriching.

Sheppard-Brick: Your first novel as well as many of your short stories speak very directly about issues in gay and lesbian communities, while in Days of Awe Ale’s bisexuality is presented as simply an unimportant fact of her life. Do you think that there are areas of society where homosexuality has become a non-issue? Do you attempt to influence perceptions of the queer community with your writing?

Obejas: I don’t think Ale’s sexuality is unimportant. To the contrary, I think it’s vital, like all our sexualities. Of course, many people live lives under siege because of who they love. This is an injustice. But there are some of us who are not conventionally heterosexual who are lucky enough to live lives in which we don’t have to hold up a placard or struggle every minute. Sometimes that means living in a civil society where different sexualities are protected, other times it may simply mean societal lassitude. Sometimes — like in my case in Cuba — it means carving a niche with different elements, which may include privilege, a certain indifference, or any other set of circumstances. When it comes to sexuality, I've never been especially interested in assimilation but I am interested in normalization. In Days of Awe, I tried to just let everybody be whatever they were going to be, to live and love according to their hearts rather than any particular label. What I hope my writing does is touch readers, no matter who they are.

Sheppard-Brick: Days of Awe draws many parallels between Cubans and Jews. Do you see these as authentic similarities, or just the creations of someone trying to reconcile disparate identities?

Obejas: I honestly believe there is tremendous cultural affinity, if not overlap, between Cubans and Jews. I have a whole list in Days of Awe, kind of tongue-in-cheek, which ends with both groups thinking they’re god’s chosen people. But some things are real: the emphasis on education, the intense importance of family, all the weird tensions and ambivalences around assimilation and what it means, the stubbornness too — although that plays more to stereotypes. We share some of those too: being passionate, and loud, and the whole connection with commerce. Cubans are called the Jews of the Caribbean, and that springs from a prejudice toward both groups. I think what’s most important for me is that we’re both dynamically spiritual people — and by that I don’t mean necessarily mean religious. What I’m talking about is having a sense of the divine in everyday life, not just awe but also a sense of accessibility and intimacy: among Cubans we call that speaking to god as “tú” instead of “usted.”
***

The full interview is available here. Achy Obejas will be reading at the following locations soon:

Friday, July 17 at 12:00 p.m.
Harold Washington Library
400 S. State St.
Chicago, Ill. 60605
312.747.4396

Saturday, July 18 at 7:00 p.m.
Book Cellar
4736 N. Lincoln Ave.
Chicago, Ill. 60625
773.293.2665

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo: Flickr

Lit Talk: Author Stefanie Wilder-Taylor

As an author, blogger, comedian, producer, and mother of three, one could get a little frazzled. But if Stefanie Wilder-Taylor ever does, she keeps her sense of humor about it. On July 7, she comes out with her latest collection of personal essays, cumbersomely and hilariously entitled It's Not Me, It's You: Subjective Recollections from a Terminally Optimistic, Chronically Sarcastic and Occasionally Inebriated Woman, which recounts the stranger episodes of her life with wit and winning candor. Below is an interview by Mommybloggers with Stefanie, after the publication of another excellently titled book of hers, Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay.

***

Mommybloggers: Welcome, Stefanie! Let's jump right in and get to know you better. You have said you don't like people who say "one thing to know about me." So, tell us 5 things we should know about you.

Stefanie: Well, since you asked… you probably should know that I’m addicted to carbs. I couldn’t last twenty minutes on the Atkins diet because my body craves hash browns like a heroin addict craves smack. Mmm… hot crispy hash browned potatoes… what else? I was the least popular person in my junior high school. It was just like Welcome to the Dollhouse and I was Weiner Dog. All right, stop crying! I’m over it. Pretty much. Let’s see, I’m a really big tipper, my breasts are real, and I own a Celine Dion CD. There you go.

Mommybloggers How did you get into blogging and does it ever interfere with your book writing? Which is harder, in your opinion?

Stefanie: I got into blogging because I needed an outlet in the first few months after giving birth. I was so damned anxious and felt I was going crazy from my new schedule of feed, cuddle, feed, sing, feed, check my email, feed, watch baby sleep, repeat. Once I got the book deal I stopped blogging until the first draft was done and then I went back to it. Writing a book is definitely a lot tougher than blogging. The trouble with blogging when I’m writing about parenting for a book is trying to save the material for the book instead of purging it right then and there. Sometimes I can look at a post and see the nugget for a chapter and that helps, but then I have to take it down from the blog.

Mommybloggers: Your book Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay: And Other Things I Had to Learn as a New Mom is a fantastically humorous read and one of the most honest looks at motherhood out there. What was the catalyst that caused you to take these thoughts and make a book out of them?

Stefanie: I have to say that I read a lot of books on pregnancy in the first year of motherhood and found most of them mind-numbingly boring or terribly alarmist (mostly the preggo ones). I felt that despite the huge number of books offered on the market, I had yet to find one that captured my experience. I realize that not everyone has the same experience I do but walking through Target and seeing all the tired, expressionless moms, I knew I had to write something different. Something funny but not in an FM DJ way.

Mommybloggers: You received a lot of flak for the section of your book on breastfeeding. How did that affect you? Or did it?

Stefanie: It did affect me. I wanted to shake people when I read some of the harsh reviews and say, “You didn’t even read the book, you moron.” A lot of people who came down hard on my book based it on that one chapter. If they’d actually taken the time to read it, it would’ve saved them the time it took to wrongly tear it and me apart. I never say that anyone shouldn’t breast-feed. My point is that for the people who are having a tough time of it and want to stop, they shouldn’t let people make them feel guilty. I wasted too much time on guilt when I could have been enjoying my baby. Now, I just don’t care anymore. Breast-feeding is just one of those politically charged topics (although I don’t know why) that get the crazies out writing letters. Hey, why not protest the war and forget about my boobs for awhile?

Mommybloggers: Since then, have you ever felt the need to censor your words either on your blog or in your books?

Stefanie: I don’t feel the need to censor. Obviously I struck a chord, and in doing so, must’ve helped some people. If people don’t have a strong response to your writing (good or bad), you aren’t writing anything interesting.

***

The full interview is available here, and you can catch Stefanie at the following locations in the next couple of days:

Wednesday, July 8 at 6:00 p.m.
Tony Burch Boutique
40 Little West 12th St.
New York, N.Y. 10014

Monday, July 13 at 7:00 p.m.
Book Soup
8818 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, Calif. 90069
310.659.3110

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo by Jon Taylor

Lit Talk: Author Dr. Kwei Quartey

Dr. Kwei Quartey leads a busy life in Pasadena, California. He is the lead physician at an urgent care center and tends to patients at a wound care clinic. And on top of his medical career, he just published his debut novel, Wife of the Gods, which he wrote incrementally in the mornings before he headed off to work. As the novel is a detective story set in Africa, Quartey has been compared to Alexander McCall-Smith, but Wife of the Gods is a breath of fresh air in its own right. It is a Ghana-based mystery that at once examines family dynamics, traditions clashing with new practices, the AIDS crisis, and a panorama of compelling characters. Click here for a Writer’s Cast audio interview with the charming author, in which he talks about his childhood in Ghana, his work, his transition into a writing life, and his novel.

***


You can catch Dr. Kwei Quartey at the following California locations in the upcoming weeks:

Tuesday, July 14 at 7:00 p.m.
Book Soup
8818 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, Calif. 90069
310.659.3110

Sunday, July 19 at 2:00 p.m.
Mysterious Galaxy Books
7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
Suite 302
San Diego, Calif. 92111
858.268.4747

Monday, July 20 at 7:00 p.m.
Vroman’s Bookstore
695 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, Calif. 91101
626.449.5320

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo courtesy Dr. Kwei Quartey's site

Lit Talk: Author Shilpa Agarwal

Shilpa Agarwal, a Mumbai-born professor at the University of California, comes from a family uprooted by the Partition of India in 1947. Her intimacy with this displaced, disenfranchised generation has informed her first novel, Haunting Bombay, which deals with the literal and figurative ghosts of a Bombay-based family in the 1960s. In this interview with Uttara Choudhury of India’s Daily News and Analysis, the author discusses the Mumbai community and the mechanics of writing ghost stories.

***

Choudhury: Would you describe your book as a snapshot of Mumbai or a ghost story?

Agarwal: It is a ghost story set in 1960s Bombay, so I would say it is both. A reviewer on Amazon said it reminded him of Toni Morrison's Beloved as it brings the weight of history, the past and supernatural elements into the writing.

Choudhury: Have you lived in Mumbai?

Agarwal: I was born in Mumbai and my parents came to America when I was very little. I've spent many summer vacations there with relatives. When I was in Duke's, I did a study-abroad program in St. Xavier's College in Mumbai. I feel it is a city of my roots, so it was very natural for me to set my book there. I feel connected to Mumbai, although I have grown up mainly in America.

Choudhury: Is the supernatural in your book a metaphor for the dispossessed?

Agarwal: Yes, absolutely. I have always been intrigued by the idea of utterance -- who is empowered to speak and who is not -- within a family, a community or a nation. What would happen, I wondered, if we could hear the voice of the child who drowned in Haunting Bombay or the child's ayah who was banished after she was blamed for the death? Their versions of the truth haunted me, and my story took a supernatural turn.

Choudhury: While writing the ghost story did you get spooked?

Agarwal: Absolutely! It's funny, because I have always been afraid of ghost stories. I never really realized I was writing one when I started. I have two little girls, so I used to wake up at dawn – 4:30 a.m. was the quiet part of the day where I wasn't 'mommy' but just me, the writer. I would be in my office typing away, and I would light this candle near my computer. Sometimes, I would be tapping away and I would glance up at the candle wondering: is it flickering weirdly? I would then do this shoulder-check -- turn my head around gingerly.
Choudhury: You are right on trend with a cool film trailer for your book.

Agarwal: So much of the word-of-mouth and attention is on the internet. I think people respond to books in different ways. Some people are intrigued by reading a summary, others by book covers. My husband James is in the digital field so the book trailer was really his idea.

I wanted the trailer to provide an artistic glimpse into the novel, to give not just a narrative arc but set the mood for the world in the story, something that spoke of mystery but could also project the literary quality of Haunting Bombay.

I put together a one-page script, aiming for a 90-second trailer and approached my director-friend Shishir Kurup. We got help from unexpected sources -- my sister-in-law who runs a visual effects studio and my brother-in law who designed the sound.
Choudhury: How long did it take to write the book?

Agarwal: I started in January 2000, when I was pregnant with my first child. There was a lot going on in my life, but my novel started coming to me. I have been through many revisions and two children along the way. Through the years and doubts, I knew I would finish my book. I call it my third baby -- nine months each for my first two and nine years for my third.

***

Shilpa Agarwal has two upcoming readings in California:

Thursday, July 9 at 7:30 p.m.
The Booksmith
1644 Haight St.
San Francisco, Calif. 94117
415.863.8688

Friday, July 10 at 7:00 p.m.
Book Passage Café
51 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madera, Calif. 94925
415.927.0960

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo courtesy Shilpa Agarwal

Lit Talk: Author Paula Uruburu

Those of us who occasionally (or frequently) scoff at photos of panty-flashing, brazenly drunk starlets in tabloids might be interested in Paula Uruburu’s new acclaimed biography, American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White: The Birth of the “It” Girl and the Crime of the Century. The book examines the life of Evelyn Nesbit, a model and chorus girl, at once virginal and highly sexualized, who rose to fame around the turn of the century. The decline of her career, precipitating from her abusive husband’s murder of her ex-lover, was one of the juiciest scandals of the time. In this interview with Sarah Weinman of New York magazine, the author discusses biographical writing and connects the events of more than a hundred years ago to today’s starlet culture.

***

Weinman: I’ve been struck by how many news stories quote you for historical context about the Miley Cyrus photo flap.

Uruburu: I've become the resident expert on the degradation and lasciviousness of young girls [laughs]. Nothing's really changed in 100 years. I don't want to use the word serendipitous, but as I was writing the book — and it took ten years from start to finish — the parallels between Evelyn and current culture, be it Girls Gone Wild or Mean Girls or Britney and Lindsay, were hard to ignore. Evelyn's celebrity lasted from age 14 to 21, and her entire life was defined by that period.

Weinman: There are about 50 photos in the book, and many of them look surprisingly modern…

Uruburu: Yes, exactly! I've had a few people, who when they saw the book for the first time, couldn't believe the photos were taken more than 100 years ago. Some even remarked that they could see why someone was killed as a result of knowing her; she was that beautiful but also other. They're right, in a way: the fashion for models at the time was for a more voluptuous, more zaftig look. Evelyn was almost of the wrong time, being much slimmer and more like the flapper girls of the 1920s.

Weinman: Was it strange to immerse yourself in old New York, now that the city’s changed so much?

Uruburu: I say in the book several times that Evelyn's fate was subject to greater forces at work, and those forces — the clash of old money with new and the rich and powerful lording it over the poorer classes — are still at work. And when I finally finished the manuscript for American Eve and turned it in to my editor, the building where Stanford White had one of his apartments, which figures prominently in the book, collapsed! Before I had another chance to take a look, the building was buried in rubble. I felt this twinge of what was lost and what couldn't be brought back.

Weinman: This is the age of the fabricated memoir, and you relied heavily on Evelyn's two memoirs and a vanity-published account by Harry Thaw. How did you ensure that everything was accurate?

Uruburu: One of the reasons it took me so long to write the book was because I wasn't going to accept anything at face value. It was real detective work: Some facts were easy to check; others required much more legwork and a number of perspectives to put together a framework for what took place. I went back to the transcript of the trials, a total of 6,000 pages. I found a collector who owned hundreds of letters Evelyn wrote much later in life, when the need for an agenda probably wasn't as strong as it had been in her youth. Interestingly, Harry Thaw's book, which was published in 1925 not long after he was released from a mental institution, is very bizarre. It's pretty clear he was still angry and still had an ax to grind against Evelyn. And yet he corroborates dates and times even when it's not in his interest to do so.

Weinman: What lessons, if any, can today's starlets learn from Evelyn Nesbit? Can her story be viewed as a cautionary tale?

Uruburu: I hate to sound didactic and preachy, but Evelyn's story is a real metaphor for destruction. When The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, the movie of her life and the murder, came out in 1952, she described herself as "living in the everlasting now." Right now I feel like we're in a culture of the everlasting now, where an actor who starred with Bonzo the chimp can become president and the Terminator ends up as the governor of California. The hypocrisy of celebrity culture is that the private is now public and nothing is sacred anymore. So I guess I do want American Eve to be a cautionary tale for parents, those who would sacrifice their children on the altar of the feeding frenzy of fame.

***

Paula Uruburu will be discussing her book on the following dates:

Wednesday, July 8 at 4:00 p.m.

The Museum of the Gilded Age at Ventfort Hall
104 Walker St.
Lenox, Mass. 01240
413.637.3206

Wednesday, July 22 at 6:30 p.m.
New York Public Library
455 Fifth Ave.
New York, N.Y. 10016
212.340.0833

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo of Urubur by Robert Ecksel

Lit Talk: Author Cristina Henriquez

One of the oldest adages about writing is “Write what you know,” and Cristina Henríquez proves that this is at least a good place to start. Her highly acclaimed first novel, The World in Half, follows a young woman who is, like Cristina herself, a Chicagoan with roots in Panama. However, the novel departs from this autobiographical starting point to explore the journey of Miraflores, the narrator, down to Panama to pick up the pieces of her broken family and her divided self. The characters compel and the prose delights. Below are excerpts from her interview with Oxford American, in which she discusses writing, envy, superstition, and home.

***

Oxford American: Why do you write?

Cristina: Honestly, I have no idea. Why does anyone do anything? Because he or she is drawn to it through a combination of genetic disposition and environment. I just like it. I like stringing words together on a page—a surface that's flat, a tool that's ordinary—to create something that's full and alive and that tells us about ourselves. I'm fascinated by the idea that we share this language, we use it every day, and yet how a writer orders the words on the page and how he or she chooses those particular words can so drastically make meaning and change meaning.

Oxford American: Does reading great writing by others inspire or deject you?

Cristina: Mostly it inspires me. Occasionally, it pummels me with the idea that plagues every writer I know from time to time: I will never be able to write like that. But mostly it provides inspiration.

Oxford American: The all-knowing Wikipedia says that "all writers are superstitious." What is your pet superstition?

Cristina: I have a few. I can't sleep when a closet door is open. I refuse to listen to the flight attendants when they do their safety demonstration because somehow I believe that by listening, I'm jinxing the flight. If I don't get any e-mail the first time I check in the morning, I think it means I'll have a bad day. I'm sure there are others, but those are the first few that come to mind.

Oxford American: Even the greatest writers must endure a period of writing juvenilia. What happened to cause you to grow beyond the "struggling-young-writer" stage and find your own voice?

Cristina: I think what happened was I found my material. I found Panama. I had been writing stories set in the United States, and they all sounded like terrible rip-offs of the writers I was reading and admired: George Saunders, Kurt Vonnegut, Jason Brown, Aimee Bender. Then I read a story by Sandra Cisneros and I realized that there was a whole side of myself that was untapped. I hadn't written about Panama because I wasn't sure I had the authority to. I was only half-Panamanian, after all, and I had never lived there. But reading her work made me at least want to attempt it. And when I did, it just felt so different. It was like making this giant leap. I had never read a single other story set in Panama. For me, it was uncharted literary territory in the way that the United States wasn't. There was so much freedom in that.

Oxford American: Mira struggles with her identity and at one point says that she doesn't know where her "home" is. Her Panamanian friend, Danilo, says home "is where you feel most like you belong." Where is "home" for you?

Cristina: This is the second time in my life I've been asked this question and I don't think I'm any closer to being able to answer it now than the first time. I've lived in Delaware, Florida, Virginia, Indiana, Iowa, Texas, and Illinois. I've spent extended portions of my life in Panama. And yet, where is home? Is it where I live now? But I've only been here for three years. It doesn't feel any more like home than any place I've been. Is it where I primarily grew up and where my parents still live? But when I go back there, I hardly recognize it anymore. The best I can do is to say that home for me is with my family—my husband and my daughter. When I'm with them, I feel at home.

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The full interview is available here. Cristina Henríquez will be reading and signing books at the American Library Association Annual Conference at the following date and location:

Sunday, July 12 at 11:00 a.m.
McCormick Place
2301 S. Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, Ill. 60616
312.791.7000

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo by Cheryl Diaz Meyer / Dallas Morning News

Lit Talk: Author Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a Barcelona native who lives and writes in Los Angeles. Originally a young adult fiction author, he switched to “adult” fiction in 2001 with the bestseller The Shadow of the Wind (or La sombra del viento), to which his latest novel, The Angel’s Game (or El juego del ángel) functions as a prequel. The novel emphasizes the power of the written word and has been compared to Edgar Allan Poe’s work, with its themes of love and obsession and its penchant for the supernatural. In an interview with Three Monkeys Online, Zafón discusses the global nature of books, his works, and his literary philosophy.

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TMO: You often mention British, French or Russian writers among your influences. Which Catalan or Spanish language writers have inspired you most?

Zafón: Yes, it is true that most of my literary influences tend to come from other traditions. I really cannot explain why that is. I am not really aware of specific influences coming from either Catalan or Spanish authors, although I admire and enjoy reading many of them, from Perez-Galdos to Merce Rodoreda and many others. There are many Latin-American authors as well whose use of prose and narrative devices has been very interesting for the last few decades and has generated a school of its own. I guess in a way when a writer reads she/he tends to internalize and analyze things and therefore everything has an influence, an impact and a consequence. In my case, for some reason, since I was a child I’ve always felt more attuned and interested in authors that came from other traditions. In fact I don’t think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you’re born is simply an accident of fate. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn’t born in the U.K. I do not have an ethnocentric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There’s only one true literary tradition: the human.

TMO: The ambience in some of your work, with fog, snow, and so on, is very northern. I’d guess Stevenson and Conan Doyle are among your favorite English language writers? Who else do you admire in terms of scene-setting and description?

Zafón: Too many to mention, I guess. I tend to like some of the great 19th century writers, especially Charles Dickens. That said, a great deal of my influences come from the cinema rather than from literature. Visual storytelling is very much part of my wiring.

TMO: The Shadow of the Wind is set in the early Franco era. The logical next step might have been to pick up where you left off chronologically. Instead, in your latest novel, The Angel’s Game, you’ve written a prequel going back another generation or so. Why?

Zafón: I never meant to write a sequential saga, or a series of sequels of sorts. The idea is to write stories around this literary universe centered around the cemetery of forgotten books, exploring this gothic, mysterious universe through different characters and storyl ines. As you say, perhaps it would have been more commercially advisable to do that, to write a straight sequel and pick up the story where we left it, but it was never my idea to do so and I think it is more interesting to play around with the narrative spaces and lines to pull the reader into a fictional universe that plays by its own rules.

TMO: The history of Catalonia/Spain is well documented from the Civil War period onwards ,but outside of the country itself, there is little focus on the earlier part of the 20th century. Was that in your thoughts at all? Has the Franco era has been done to death in terms of both history and literature?

Zafón: It would be hard to overstate the impact and significance of the Franco era (40 years) after the war. The Spanish Civil War is the most significant event in modern Spanish history, and it would be naïve to think it is been already covered, although probably it generated almost as much bibliography as World War Two, to which in many ways it’s a prelude. You’re right that outside of Spain there isn’t much focus on earlier Spanish history, but then again we could say that of almost any nation. We seem to live in a world where forgetting and oblivion are an industry in themselves and very, very few people are remotely interested or aware of their own recent history, much less their neighbors’. I tend to think we are what we remember, what we know. The less we remember, the less we know about ourselves, the less we are.

TMO: Does fiction have to be historically accurate?

Zafón: No. Fiction has to be effective, moving, stimulating, seductive. Fiction has to tell a good story in the best possible way. Then it can choose to be emotionally honest and accurate or not. History writing should be accurate, on the other hand, but that’s another long debate I guess.

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You can check out the full interview here, and if you’re in any of the following areas this week, you can catch Zafón himself:

Monday, June 22 at 7:00 p.m.
Harvard Bookstore
1256 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, Mass. 02138
617.661.1515

Tuesday, June 23 at 7:00 p.m.
Nicola’s Books
2513 Jackson Ave.
Ann Arbor, Mich. 48103
734.662.0600

Wednesday, June 24 at 7:00 p.m.
Bagdad Theater & Pub
3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, Ore. 97214
503.236.9234

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo: The Age