Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik’s new book is The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food.

From his Q & A with David Haglund at Slate:

Slate: Your background is in art history. In what ways is writing about food like writing about art? In what ways is it not like that at all?

Adam Gopnik: The job of trying to make first-hand sensual experience—this picture, that plate—into second-order sentences (“It looks like…” “It tasted nearly as if …”) is approximately always the same. You wrestle with association, metaphor, analogy, trying to get it right, and then usually discover that the barest hint sends the strongest message. (Look at Hemingway’s descriptions, or M.F.K. Fisher’s—almost never anything “sumptuous” or even particularly extended in either, but the experience registered in one or two small surprising adjectives. Whitney Balliett’s capture of Monk’s piano playing—”vinegary, dissonant, gothic”—is a favorite of mine.)

You also discover that assertion—what a cook says about a taste, for instance (“Birthday cake is the most denatured thing on earth,” another favorite of mine, from a young pastry chef)—is often oddly more effective, just as evocation, than detailed description.

But then all writing poses that same predicament: Whether Updike trying to pin down the pubic hair of a suburban housewife or the poor food writer trying to capture the quiddity of a plate of bouillon, there’s always a struggle, and then a space that can’t quite be spanned. Sentences are always like bridges between the first-order world and the second, and they always shake in the wind of reality, like the ones over Amazonian abysses in Indiana Jones movies. Of course, art historians usually evade the problem entirely by not really writing about the art, but rather about the social history that surrounds it—and too many gastronomic historians, I add grumpily, do the same, making food history into a series of tableaux of clichéd scenes (the housewife in the ‘50s, the French chef in the 1920s) that leave the actual experience outside. That’s why—eerily anticipating your next question!—I wanted to include emails that included real recipes. The greasy facts of lemon and chicken and anchovies and bacon are the basis on which even the airiest food writing rests.

Slate: The Table Comes First includes email messages you wrote to the American writer and cookbook collector Elizabeth Robins Pennell—never expecting a reply, as Ms. Pennell died in 1936. What prompted the epistolary format? And why email, instead of old-fashioned letters?

Gopnik: When I discovered Pennell I thought that the key thing about her, easily missed, were not her...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Joan Didion

Joan Didion's new memoir is Blue Nights, her account of "losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old."

From her Q & A with David Ulin at the Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy blog:

JC: Part of the book deals with parental guilt, or parental failure. You write: "I do not know many people who think they have succeeded as parents."

JD: Just as we can't know our children, I don't see how we can be successful as parents.

JC: When you say "successful as parents," what do you mean?

JD: The ideal thing would be that the child is happy and satisfied with what life eventually brings. I certainly can't say that Quintana was ever satisfied with what life was bringing her, or that she was particularly happy. In fact, she was dramatically unhappy much of the time. I often think I didn't give her credit for that. What I mean is that I didn't take it seriously enough, because I just thought that was the way children were.

JC: That's a tendency with all parents, I think. Not quite to see your children, to minimize their concerns ...

JD: You think of them as little children, and they're cute and they're funny, and you don't take them at all seriously. The adults pay no attention. And we may not even want them to pay attention.

JC: In "Blue Nights," you say that writing no longer comes easily to you. But you've never given the impression that writing was the easiest act.

JD: It...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Banana Yoshimoto

From an Amazon Q & A with Banana Yoshimoto about her novel, The Lake:

Q: Facing difficulties with courage is one of the themes of your latest novel, The Lake. In it the character Nakajima is struggling to overcome sometimes paralyzing emotional trauma that stems from a very unusual ordeal. What compelled you to tell this story?

A: In this novel, I indirectly took up the abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea, which was the biggest news at the time I was writing. Having heard the words of sorrow from the parents whose children had been abducted and who still had no promise of getting their children back, I created a fable of my own, with my own ideas, in my own way. I also looked into the lives of the children who had been in the cult called Aum Shinrikyo (Aleph) and I thought about their immeasurable trauma as well.

Q: The Lake is, among other things, an unconventional love story, and it makes you question the definition(s) of “romantic love.” How do you define it?

A: The relationship between the main characters of this novel falls far short of romantic love. They are only supporting and leaning on each other, because they would crumble otherwise.

On the other hand, you could say that they are definitely the one and only couple for each other in a way, because wounded people can best be understood by others with the same wounds. Perhaps, they believe that they have the deepest possible bond and mutually feel each is the only person the other can trust. This is one of the most passionate emotions, I guess. By visiting the holy people in the precincts of the Lake, they are entering the world of the subconscious.

Q: Though she has her doubtful moments, and is certainly no push-over (especially when it comes to artistic integrity), Chihiro is almost unfailingly conciliatory and optimistic--a worthy heroine in these cynical times. Who was the inspiration for her character?

A: The character of Nakajima had been the central figure from the beginning, so I thought...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Mindy Kaling

The 32-year-old Emmy-nominated writer/actress/producer Mindy Kaling plays Kelly, the ditzy, pop-culture-obsessed customer-service rep on NBC’s The Office.

Kaling’s new book is Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns).

From her Q & A with Jessica Bennett at The Daily Beast:

When did you find time to write a book? You write about working 16-hour days.

One of the ways I unwind is by writing—and I’ll often do it in the form of an email to myself. So when I get home at night, I’ll open up an email, and I’ll put the date in the subject heading, and I’ll write myself something funny that happened or an observation I had. And that’s sort of how it started.

What’s your favorite way to waste time when you’re supposed to be writing?

I love online shopping. Online browsing more than anything. I don’t have an iPhone, which is good, because I love apps and games and things like that. Like I know there’s crazy shopping apps, and I’d be bankrupt.

Did you always know you wanted to do comedy?

I was always writing, even as a really little kid, like 5 or 6, I would write little plays on my parents’ typewriter. But I didn’t know it was comedy really until like high school.

Who were your role models as a teen?

I loved...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman's new novel is The Dovekeepers.

From her Q & A with Arifa Akbar for the Independent:

Choose a favourite author, and say why you admire her/him

Emily Brontë, and 'Wuthering Heights' is my favourite book. I think she was a psychological genius. If I had to choose someone living rather than someone dead, it would be Toni Morrison. I feel I could read just one sentence and know it was her. She creates a world in the most spectacular language that you know is hers.
* * *

Which fictional character most resembles you?

The four women from 'The Dovekeepers' [Hoffman's latest novel] who all resemble some piece of me, although they are very different - one is a witch, one a warrior, one has lost her child, and one has a father who doesn't want to have anything to do with her. I feel the character is a piece of me with every book.
* * *

Who is your hero/heroine from outside literature?

Anne Frank. She is the voice of someone trying to....[read on]

Learn more about The Dovekeepers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Megan Abbott

Part of Jeff Glor's Q & A with Megan Abbott about The End of Everything, her novel about a thirteen-year-old girl named Lizzie who goes on a search for her missing friend, and finds many things she never expected:

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Megan Abbott: I always wanted to write about those magical families we all want to be a part of. I think we all knew one, growing up--one of those families where the big sisters seem nicer, the mother more glamorous the father more dashing, and everyone seems to be having a marvelous time, together.

I had one in my neighborhood, growing up--the family of my best friend. Everything about them had this enchanted quality. Even her house seemed more exciting, filled with hidden corners and alcoves. But, over time, things fell apart for them. It struck me that, when something goes wrong in one of those "perfect" families, it goes very, very wrong. Their "lightness" is so intense, that when dark things happen, they are even darker. Unlike the rest of our varyingly dysfunctional families, these families are not built to last. That crash-and-burn that seems inevitable when something blazes so brightly.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

MA: The narrator is a thirteen -year-old girl and at first that seemed daunting. But I was taken aback by how easy it was to slip back into that febrile mind. I found myself drawing on memories of my own that I wasn't even aware I had--these intense, physical memories. That pressing sense of mystery and painful discovery.

I think for many of us, and maybe women in particular...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Megan Abbott's website.

The Page 69 Test: Bury Me Deep.

The Page 69 Test: The End of Everything.

--Marshal Zeringue

Scott McCrea

Scott McCrea is a drama professor at Purchase College, State University of New York, and the author of 2005's The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question.

From his Q & A with Randy Dotinga at the Christian Science Monitor:

Q: When did people start wondering if Shakespeare was actually Shakespeare?

A: In the mid-19th century, when there was a guy who wrote a book and claimed that Shakespeare lacked erudition and could not have been very well educated, so it must have been [famed writer] Ben Jonson must have been the real writer of the plays. He writes these plays about dukes and earls, yet he was a commoner, a son of a glover. How could he have written these plays? Then people thought it must have been Francis Bacon. He was the most learned man of his time, and Shakespeare was the most learned man of his time, so they must have been the same guy.

Q: Why was his real identity so important to people?

A: Shakespeare had became almost a god of sorts. He became great, he became idolized, and he became a superhuman because of his impact on the culture.

We do this: There's a psychological need for people to displace in some way people who seem to be superhuman.

Q: For it to have been worthwhile to create a fake Shakespeare, it seems like he would have had to be incredibly appreciated in his own time. Was that the case?

A: There's this assumption that people knew during his own time that...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Alma Katsu

Alma Katsu is the author of The Taker, a gothic tale of desire, obsession and the need within us all for redemption.

The Taker has been described as "an epic supernatural love story" and compared to The Historian," Interview with the Vampire, and Twilight even though it doesn't have one vampire in it.

From her Q & A with Jennifer Haupt at the Psychology Today's One True Thing blog:

JH: I love the central question of your book: What price are we willing to pay to completely possess another? Do you think it's human nature to want to become obsessed with someone or something we can't have?

AK: Absolutely. And I think this urge is strongest when we're young and every experience is new to us, e.g. how strongly we feel the first time we fall in love. Another form of obsession-maybe one that's more readily understood-is collecting, which is a recurring theme in the book. I think many people go through a phase when they become mad for something, whether it's shoes or antique toys or automobiles. On one hand, collecting can be one of life's simple pleasures. On the other hand, carried to extremes, it can be a way to try to fill a need in your life, whether in the hope of finding a replacement for the thing we want but can't have (as is the case of Lanny, the heroine in The Taker) or, when we feel powerless, to be able exercise control in one area of our lives. For instance, I knew a woman who, on a clerk's salary, collected designer purses that cost thousands of dollars. Her friends might've questioned the wisdom of going into debt for a somewhat transitory pleasure, but it filled a need for her. Learning when a personal choice goes from being harmless to harmful is part of the maturing process, which is why some of us-but not all-find it easier to resist temptation as we get older. And that's Lanny's journey in The Taker.

JH: The Taker is a unique story -- part historical romance, part suspense thriller. What books and which authors have been your inspiration?

AK: Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire might be the most predictable inspiration, but I think that's because it's a seminal book that influenced the way a lot of writers think about the human experience, inside and outside of the horror genre. The biggest influence-and a book I reread several times in the course of writing The Taker-was Casanova in Bolzano by Hungarian novelist Sandor Marai. That novel is an exploration of the complexities of love, the transcendent and the profane. I wanted Lanny's experience of love to run from the rather black-and-white way we think of it when we're young, to our understanding of love when we're older and we've learned that our actions have consequences. Marai's novel explores the meaning of love to its fullest, in the most entertaining and clever way.

The other great influence on The Taker is...[read on]

Writers Read: Alma Katsu.

The Page 69 Test: The Taker.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Garner

The actor James Garner is now out with a memoir, The Garner Files.

From his Q & A with crime fiction maven J. Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet:

J. Kingston Pierce: Is there anything about Jim Rockford, who you played in The Rockford Files, that you wish was true of you, as well?

James Garner: I wish I could have quit smoking as easily as Rockford did: During the first season he smoked, but we decided it was a bad example so we had him quit. Aside from getting beat up by thugs and stiffed by clients every week, Rockford didn’t have a care in the world. That’s the difference between television and real life.

JKP: You say in your book how much you loved the relationship between Jim Rockford and his father, Rocky, played by Noah Beery Jr. What was so special about that relationship?

JG: Our head writer, the late Steve Cannell, based it on the loving relationship he’d had with his own dad, Joseph Cannell. “Pidge,” as everyone called [Berry], was perfect in the role of Jim Rockford’s dad because he was not onlya fine actor, he was also a gentle man. I think the relationship between them was...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Gerald Elias

A graduate of Yale, Gerald Elias has been a Boston Symphony violinist, Associate Concertmaster of the Utah Symphony since 1988, Adjunct Professor of Music at the University of Utah, first violinist of the Abramyan String Quartet, and Music Director of the Vivaldi Candlelight concert series.

His novels include Devil's Trill, Danse Macabre, and Death and the Maiden.

Raymond Taras is Willy Brandt Professor at Sweden's Malmö University for 2010–11. He was director of Tulane University's world literature program before Hurricane Katrina forced its closure. He is the author of numerous scholarly books on nationalism and identities in Europe.

Taras and Elias's exchange over Death and the Maiden:

Taras: What literary purpose is served by making Jacobus blind, in addition to his being both a crank and a legend in the classical music world?

Elias: When I created the Jacobus character I had two things in mind by making him blind. The first idea was pragmatic; the second, metaphorical.

As is pretty common knowledge, when someone loses one of his senses, very often the slack is taken up by the others. In Jacobus's case, his sense of hearing, already finely-honed as a superior musician, becomes absolutely super-acute. Combined with his highly analytic mind, he can draw conclusions, whether about music, personalities, or solving mysteries, by calling upon his non-visual senses.

The metaphorical aspect of having him blind has to do with his renunciation of the classical music world. He believes that external pressures imposed upon the performance of great music compromises its artistic integrity. Though the "show biz" factors are not necessarily visual, Jacobus's blindness enables him to understand music as it was intended, as a purely aural experience. In a way his blindness enables him to "see through" the artifice of the concert world.

How do think through his reaction to various situations, like being on stage in Carnegie Hall and not seeing the audience--and tactfully spice it with great humor?

By having Jacobus blind I created an unanticipated challenge for myself. I want the readers to perceive Jacobus's reality through his blind eyes. As a result, whenever he is in a chapter (most of the time), I have to minimize any visual descriptions of his surroundings. In order to do this I've spent time putting myself in his shoes by closing my eyes and letting my other senses take over. Or, for example, in Devil's Trill, Jacobus is confident when he will arrive at a street corner in Manhattan because he knows how many footsteps are required to get from one corner to the next. The reason he knows this is that when I was in the city I counted out my own footsteps.

I related to Jacobus's situation on stage at Carnegie Hall in a more personal way. Back around 1980, while a young member of the Boston Symphony, I performed the Mozart A Major Violin Concerto with John Williams and the Boston Pops. Unlike playing in an orchestra, as a soloist you feel the eyes of the entire audience fixed upon you. It can be a very intimidating experience for someone not used to performing in that capacity day in, day out. Some of the thoughts that went through my head while I performed the Mozart were: "Why did I think I wanted to do this?" "What's the next note?" "I still have thirty minutes to go!" and "I knew I should have been an anthropology major!" Jacobus's reactions to the situations in which he has been placed, and those of other characters as well, are reflections of my own real-life experiences, so I'm not making anything up out of the blue. And that includes the humor!

Your attention to technical detail, whether related to the murder plot or to how the bow is being held by the violinist in the Schubert quartet, stands out in the Jacobus series. Can a writer who's enjoyed a long successful career as a classical musician playing with leading orchestras and with acclaimed soloists ever escape the imperative of precision?

You're absolutely correct that in order to be a professional classical musician, especially in any kind of ensemble, requires an extraordinary degree of physical and mental precision. I think by the time a musician achieves that level of ability so much of it has become ingrained that the musician is hardly aware of the first 99% of what he's doing. In one of my early drafts of Danse Macabre, for example, I wrote an entire chapter about the thought process that goes into playing just the first note of the Beethoven "Kreutzer" Sonata! Eventually, I was convinced to pare it down to make it a better fit with the rest of the story, but I think the readers will still get the idea.

The challenge, though, in music as well as writing, is to make sure that the details don't drown out the message. Both music and literature, after all, are means of communication, and if the listener and reader don't go away from their experience emotionally effected, then all the precision in the world is just a meaningless exercise.

I'm impressed by your convincing depictions of characters coming from various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, in Death and the Maiden, for example, from Russia, Peru and, well, New York City. These portraits avoid stereotypes but nevertheless capture the essence of what it means to be Slav or South American or Jewish or, for that matter, a young Japanese female musician. How did you develop these extraordinary observational skills?

If one is to write a legitimate story about classical music, it's absolutely essential to have characters from diverse backgrounds, because the international quality of the profession is one of its fundamental characteristics. Orchestral musicians, for example, work everyday with other musicians, guest artists, conductors, and of course the music itself, from every corner of the world. And don't forget that one important component of a professional career is touring, where one meets not only other musicians but people of all walks of life. I can't count the number of countries where I've concertized; plus, I've had the good fortune to have traveled for extended periods in Japan, Italy, South America, Australia, and New Zealand. In developing international characters in my books I try to create a balance between some of the general cultural characteristics I've observed and specific individual personality traits, all in an effort to make every character interesting and three-dimensional.

Given the wealth of experiences you have had as a professional musician and the ability to capture them with words, have you considered writing an autobiography?

If I did that I think I would take Mark Twain's approach and not have it published for a hundred years. But by then, unlike with Mark Twain's autobiography, I don't think there'd be all the much demand.

Learn more about the book and author at Gerald Elias' website.

Interview: Gerald Elias.

The Page 69 Test: Devil's Trill.

Writers Read: Gerald Elias.

The Page 69 Test: Danse Macabre.

My Book, The Movie: Devil's Trill and Danse Macabre.

The Page 69 Test: Death and the Maiden.

--Marshal Zeringue