"You do all this background information, most of which never makes it into the book."
—Vendela Vida
It's hard for me to believe that it was just a week ago when I talked to Vendela Vida on the phone about her intense new novel, 'The Lovers' (Ecco / HarperCollins ; June 22, 2010 ; $23.99).
At the time, I was still certain that the Gary Shteyngart live audio was a wash. I had two big interviews ahead, including Vendela Vida herself in the live appearance for which I was gathering the phone interview to broadcast on my Agony Column Radio show. I was well into the Möbius loop of interviewing authors, with no exit in sight. Worse still, Vida's novel of a middle-aged widow revisiting the scene of her honeymoon struck a chord with my own melancholy. Well-written novels have a way of getting inside your life.
Phone interviews conducted in one's home have their own tensions as well. We're used to talking on the phone and dealing with interruptions to phone calls, the sounds of our houses and lives burbling away in the background.
But when you get on the phone for an interview, in my case, my living room is transformed into a studio. Every sound is an intrusion, even if it's just the dog snoring in her basket. Moreover, you can hear all these sounds quite clearly while you're listening to an author. Getting them off the tape requires a bit of surgery.
Fortunately, Vendela Vida knows how to talk about her work, and given the very low-key nature of that work, it's quite remarkable. 'The Lovers' is a closely observed, sparse and intense story of revelation, in which the plot in part consists of our discovery of just who the main character is, and why she behaves as she does.
It is also part of a triptych of novels, intended as such, by Vida. Her first three works of fiction; 'And Now You Can Go,' 'Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name' and 'The Lovers' all put a woman at the center and look closely, very closely at who she is, and what she becomes in the course of the novel. Vida is remarkably observant and bracingly honest with her characters and her readers. You can hear her talk about her craft and the inspiration behind 'The Lovers' by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
08-19-10:Gary Shteyngart Live Reading and Interview at Bookshop Santa Cruz
"...please like me, this will make up for Hebrew school if all of you like me.."
—Gary Shteyngart
Stumbling into the future is easy enough; all you have to do is truncate the present, and spend the time when you should be preparing for an event instead gawping at a funny-ad on your iPad. Let me show you how.
It was all very easy, in theory, if tightly scheduled. I had the 7:30 PM gig at Bookshop Santa Cruz, no time to prep the location, and a show at KUSP that didn't end until 7:00 PM. Of course, that was only if, I found out, I could get someone to fill the 7-8 PM slot for me. And I didn't think to figure that part out till around oh, 6 PM.
No matter how hard I tried to twist the wheel and drive the truck into a wall, I was consistently helped out. After a bit of flailing, I managed to get Richard Gingell to sit in for me at KUSP; I even got to leave early. So my first right turn off the cliff was avoided.
But upon arriving at Bookshop Santa Cruz, I just sorta wanted, everything. So in trying to set up my recording gear and get patched into the existing PA system, I bypassed what I knew would work, in favor of what I wanted to work. And in my haste to get things (seemingly) working, I managed create a temporary setup that I had every intention of rewiring.
Then, when Gary Shteyngart arrived, he distracted me with his damnably funny book trailer, and his desire to see it play on my iPad (which I use to display interview notes). We look up and it is time to start. I've got what appears to be working setup and go with it, until it stops. With loud beeps heard over the PA system that completely discombobulate me. Internally, at least, I keep that poker face and soldier on.
But wait, there's more. Or less, at least recording time, because not only have I managed to leave the thing on batteries, I've also put in the wrong card. And then, while interviewing Gary in front of the audience, I realize that my voice isn't going through the PA, which implies I'm recording only half the interview. While that proves not to be the case, I find myself thinking it is, and animating the corpse in front of the audience while under the impression that all my current wound-up tension and terror will result in exactly zero minutes of usable audio.
08-18-10:David Corbett and Barry Eisler for The Agony Column Live at Capitola Book Café, August 7, 2010
"This is NewSpeak."
—Barry Eisler
You can judge books by their audience; and if you read good books, and bring in smart writers to talk about them, don't be surprised if the audience proves to be every bit as engaging as the writers.
When I had David Corbett and Barry Eisler at Capitola Book Café, the audience Q&A turned up some of the best questions and answers of the evening. As a matter of fact, this Sunday, I did have the pleasure of broadcasting on my NPR Affiliate KUSP, a bit of hand-biting audio, courtesy of Barry Eisler.
There were a lot of good questions after the general discussion I led for Barry Eisler and David Corbett. Since Capitola Book Café has a wireless mic that they use for their other authors evenings, I made use of it to be sure I could, for the most part, get the audience on tape clearly as they asked questions.
"I'd wanted to write from the beginning an epistolary novel; this is just an epistolary novel that's consisting of one letter."
—Howard Norman
It's good to listen. Alan Cheuse told me that I should take the time to read Howard Norman's new novel, and make sure to talk to him when he came to the Capitola Book Café. Cheuse knows his writers, and I took his advice and found myself listening not just to him, but as well to the voice of Wyatt Hillyer. But there was another voice to listen to as well, that of Howard Norman.
I spoke with Norman in my home away from home, so to speak, the office wedged in the back of the Capitola Book Café. I have to thank my gracious hosts, for having an office with superior audio absorption, and for being willing to clear it out when I set up an interview there. I find the setting much more conducive to good conversation that the radio studio. We're surrounded by good books and the people who love and sell them. I also have to thank Melinda, who very kindly helped me out for this particular interview.
I had Norman read the opening passage of his novel and then set about finding out how he created such a remarkable voice. He confided that he'd long wanted to write an epistolary novel, and this one just happened to consist of one letter, from a father to a daughter.
Though Norman lives in Vermont, he spends a lot of time in Nova Scotia, the setting for 'What is Left The Daughter.' His relationship to the setting and writing is really quite fascinating, as is his research for this particular novel. In a sense he had to become one of the obsessed characters whose lives he chronicles so well.
01-23-12: Commentary : Sara Paretsky Nails 'Breakdown' : The Machine Stops
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Interview with Sara Paretsky : "Everything in a courtroom is a story; it's not justice, it's combating narratives."
01-18-12: Commentary : Téa Obreht Conjures 'The Tiger's Wife' : The Grammar of Vision
01-13-12: Commentary : Hard Case Subterranean Block : Not from Bob's Basement Tapes
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Phone Interview with Lisa Randall : "...there seems to be some evidence, especially from one of the experiments."
01-10-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Terry D'Auray Catches Lawrence Block and 'The Burglar on the Prowl' : "A show well worth the price of a ticket."
12-29-11: Commentary : My Life in the Bush of Books : Island of Vice by Richard Zacks, Iago by David Snodin, The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leith and The Dipatcher by Ryan David Jahn
12-21-11: Commentary : Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman : From the Seedy to the Sublime
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books with Alan Cheuse : 'Kill Bin Laden' ; Ryu Mitsuse, '10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights' ; Michael Crichton and Richard Preston, 'Micro'
12-20-11: Commentary : David Blackbourn Visits 'Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in a Nineteenth-Century German Village' : Externalizing a Culture Clash
12-15-11: Commentary : Ayize Jama-Everett Reveals 'The Liminal People' : The Powers That Be
Agony Column Podcast News Report : The Agony Column Live with Lisa Goldstein and Ayize Jama-Everett, and music by Fenyang Smith, December 10, 2011 : "... let's look at what happens if people have abilities that other people don't have ..."
11-28-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Scott Wallace : "Within months of first contact, these groups experience a huge die-off."
11-22-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Charles Frazier, Part Two : "It's not me telling you, there's this storyteller voice."
11-21-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Charles Frazier : "If we're going in the wrong direction, we could turn around and go back."
11-17-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Gianni Mola : "The only way you can learn, I told them, is to watch me cook it."
11-11-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Karl Marlantes : "...the way I "think" about things, with quotes around think, is I tend to write them down..."
10-31-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Colson Whitehead : "In the Apocalypse, somebody's gonna have to do the grunt work..."
10-17-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Russell Banks : "They are in a sense, permanently marked and thrown into this darkness..."
