Peter Mann

Peter Mann grew up in Kansas City. He teaches history and literature at Stanford and is a past recipient of the Whiting Fellowship. He is also a graphic artist & cartoonist and draws the online comic The Quixote Syndrome. The Torqued Man is his first novel.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The Torqued Man might seem an enigmatic title at first blush, but readers soon discover it speaks to the predicament of both main characters in terms of their conflicted identities and convoluted allegiances.

German spy handler Adrian de Groot is a closeted gay man living in Hitler’s Germany as well as a literary translator and anti-Nazi who finds himself working for the Reich. For these reasons, his Irish charge Frank Pike refers to him as The Torqued Man: “pulled one way by inclination, and another by propriety... with merchant’s blood but literature in his heart, he had become a reluctant middleman for book-burners.”

Yet Irish spy Frank Pike is similarly torqued. An Irish socialist recruited to collaborate with the Nazis, he must untangle himself through a secret redemptive mission aimed at bringing down Hitler’s empire. To do this, he adopts the alter ego of the Celtic hero Finn McCool, who, when the battle frenzy is upon him, undergoes “a torqueing.”

What's in a name?

Names are important in this novel. Adrian de Groot is a somewhat odd name for a German, since “de Groot” (meaning big) is a common Dutch or Frisian name. But it signals Adrian’s liminal identity. As a German from the northern border town of Flensburg, his roots are more Dutch, Danish, Frisian, and the cosmopolitanism of Hanseatic ports. Yet, despite this marginal geographical or cultural status, he is still firmly within the Reich. Adrian’s first name is my nod to Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus: The Life of the Composer Adrian Leverkühn, Told by a Friend, whose narratorial perspective was an important model for me.

Frank Pike, the anglicized name of Proinnsias Pike, is both a nod to the real-life historical figure Frank Ryan who inspired my character, as well as an evocation of Pike’s sharp, thrusting, libidinous personality.

Because both characters are engaged in espionage, they also have several aliases. Pike’s official cover in Germany is Frank Finn, but he soon takes on the mythical alter ego of Finn McCool. And Adrian is first known to Pike in Spain as Johann Grotius, who in Berlin adopts the new alias of Emil Fluss, according to Pike, “sounds like something you pour down a clogged drain.”

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Openings have an energy of pure possibility that I like, but I definitely find endings tough. And by endings I mean third acts, not just the final pages or paragraph. Those final words I find easier and enjoyable, like putting a good button on a joke or scene where you’ve already done the important legwork of premise and payoff. But the challenge, at least for me, is earning my endings by building the right amount of dramatic tension that can then be satisfyingly resolved. I like to think I got it right in this book, but it took some wandering in the dark before I found my way.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Parts of me are definitely there: Pike’s cheery cynicism, his penchant for the profane as well as pints of porter; Adrian’s contempt for mass modernity, his bookishness, his struggle between feelings of complicity and desire for justice, and, of course, both men’s love of Don Quixote.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Studying and wandering around Europe, particularly trips to Germany, Spain, and Ireland and long stints in Berlin, Madrid, Salamanca, Prague, and Copenhagen. I wonder if the annals of history count as “literary” in this question—if not, then certainly the abyss of the past is an endless source of inspiration.

Also, German Expressionist painting and woodcuts, Marx Brothers and Tarantino movies, Monty Python, and the historically- and literary-minded concept albums of musicians like John Cale, The Kinks, The Decemberists, Terry Allen, and Neutral Milk Hotel. Though the music I listened to most while writing the book included Paco de Lucía, Bach fugues, Ariel Ramirez’s “Misa Criolla,” and the incredible musical time travel offerings of radioooo.com.

Visit Peter Mann's website.

--Marshal Zeringue