William Deresiewicz

William Deresiewicz is the author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life.

From his Q & A with Michael Schulson at Salon:

If you talk to admissions counselors at elite schools, they’ll swear that they want bright, curious, quirky kids — not just well-credentialed winners. Are admissions counselors being dishonest? Or are the standards so skewed that those types of kids won’t even make it past the first cut?

I think that people who work in admissions offices really have the best intentions. I really do.

I think that they’re looking for quirky kids with something special. But every kid has to pass that bar of having really great grades. You can’t be so quirky that you say, “You know what? I’m a word person. I’ll never become a scientist, so I’m not gonna care about getting an A in calculus, because I’d rather read another book.” I mean, forget it. You can’t be that kid. Also, the kids that do get in have become so good at gaming the system. They know how to look like that kind of person. Kids know how to manufacture the appearance of being an interesting person. That’s not the same as being an interesting person.

There are more than 20 million Americans enrolled in some sort of college or university program right now. Only a fraction of them are going to these elite schools. I guess my question is, “So what?” How much does what happens in this narrow channel of elite education really matter?

First of all, Harvard only admits about 2,000 kids a year. But about 35,000 kids apply. I know this is a rough estimate, but James Fallows has an essay about this from a few years ago, where he estimates that 10-15 percent of American high school students are caught up in the selective college admissions process.

That is roughly 400,000 kids a year. They’re still worth talking about. And then, actually this does impact everybody, if only because...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx is the author of The Shipping News and "Brokeback Mountain," and many other works.

From her Q & A with Christopher Cox at The Paris Review:

PROULX

I wish I’d never written ["Brokeback Mountain"]. It’s just been the cause of hassle and problems and irritation since the film came out. Before the film it was all right.

INTERVIEWER

Did people object to the fact that gay characters were in the center of a story about Wyoming?

PROULX

Oh, yeah. In Wyoming they won’t read it. A large section of the population is still outraged. But that’s not where the problem was. I’m used to that response from people here, who generally do not like the way I write. But the problem has come since the film. So many people have completely misunderstood the story. I think it’s important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience, but unfortunately the audience that “Brokeback” reached most strongly have powerful fantasy lives. And one of the reasons we keep the gates locked here is that a lot of men have decided that the story should have had a happy ending. They can’t bear the way it ends—they just can’t stand it. So they rewrite the story, including all kinds of boyfriends and new lovers and so forth after Jack is killed. And it just drives me wild. They can’t understand that the story isn’t about Jack and Ennis. It’s about homophobia; it’s about a social situation; it’s about a place and a particular mindset and morality. They just don’t get it. I can’t tell you how many of these things have been sent to me as though they’re expecting me to say, Oh great, if only I’d had the sense to write it that way. And they all begin the same way—I’m not gay, but . . . The implication is that because they’re men they understand much better than I how these people would have behaved. And maybe they do. But that’s not the story I wrote. Those are not their characters. The characters belong to...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Nina Darnton

A journalist for thirty years, Nina Darnton wrote her first novel, An African Affair three years ago.

Her new novel is The Perfect Mother.

From Darnton's Q & A with MommiFried:

What drew you to the Amanda Knox case as the inspiration for your book?

From the moment I read about Amanda Knox, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Or more precisely, I couldn’t get her mother out of my mind. As a mother myself, I was obsessed with the horror of hearing such frightening news from your daughter. I mean, imagine that you believe your daughter is doing well, is exemplary in fact, and enjoying her junior year abroad. Then you get a call in the middle of the night and your daughter is on the other end of the phone, crying and saying that someone has been killed and the police believe she did it. I kept imagining this scenario, what would happen next, what would be the worst that could happen, what would be the best, and finally I was compelled to write it. It’s not at all about Amanda Knox. But it’s fair to say...[read on]

Visit Nina Darnton's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Perfect Mother.

Writers Read: Nina Darnton.

The Page 69 Test: The Perfect Mother.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alison McQueen

Born in the Sixties to an Indian mother and an English jazz musician father, Alison McQueen grew up in London and worked in advertising for twenty-five years before retiring to write full time.

Her new novel is Under The Jeweled Sky.


From McQueen's Q & A at Lust and Coffee:

Can you tell us what the inspiration was for your new novel, “Under The Jeweled Sky”?

Under The Jewelled Sky was inspired by memories of my mother’s friends; the women I would eavesdrop on, the hushed voices and grave expressions passed over teacups. My mother’s friends had grown up (many of them in India) in the days before such things were openly spoken of, but it was all there: domestic violence, unwanted pregnancies, addiction, ruin, and occasional salvation.

Bad marriages were commonplace, but divorce was unthinkable, and the brittle veneers of fake harmony were part of the everyday landscape. Morals and ethics were knotted up with religious doctrine and stiff upper lip. Respectable people did not wash their laundry in public, nor did they question what went on behind the closed doors of their neighbours’ houses.

Part of the story is set in a maharaja’s palace. Although the fictional palace and its location are anonymous, I did have an inside track into life inside an Indian palace. In her twenties, my mother was hired as the private nurse to the Maharaja of Indore’s mother-in-law. She arrived there from Bombay and was shown to her quarters, an enormous suite in a grand building set across the grounds from the main palace.

A car was sent for her every morning, but she said that she preferred to walk. So off she would go, strolling through the grounds while the car followed along a few yards behind, driving at snail’s pace in case she should change her mind. Her breakfast would be served to her on a solid silver service, with a footman standing by should she want for anything.

From what she has told me, I am not sure that she handled it particularly well. She said that she didn’t want any fuss, which was quite the wrong way to go about things in a palace. There was also an incident when she was caught...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Alison McQueen's website.

My Book, The Movie: Under The Jewelled Sky.

The Page 69 Test: Under the Jeweled Sky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Carrie La Seur

Carrie La Seur is an energy and environmental lawyer in Billings, Montana, and the author of The Home Place: A Novel.

From a Q & A at her website:

The main character in The Home Place, Alma Terrebonne, was named in honor of your great-grandmother Alma Fly Kifer. What would your great-grandmother think of her namesake?

My great-grandma Alma was the daughter of Jennie Curtis Fly Kamp, who arrived in 1864, at age 2, in what is today called the Gallatin Valley. Both these women buried at least one husband, because Montana used to be a dangerous place for men, and my grandmothers were not the sort of women to catch a train east when the going got tough. The Curtis family homesteaded near the headwaters of the Missouri River, northwest of present day Bozeman, Montana. The Flys later settled near Sarpy Creek in Big Horn County, one of the settings I used for The Home Place. Alma’s husband, John Kifer, was the Big Horn County sheriff back in the 1910s and later a US Marshall. An old woman when I knew her, Alma was known to insist that only whores wear pants, so she would probably find this book too racy. But she was also a proud daughter of pioneers, so I hope she’d be proud to see her land, her heritage, and her home place portrayed as things to be cherished and preserved.

Like you, Alma Terrebonne went to Bryn Mawr and Yale Law School. Do you worry that readers will think she’s an autobiographical character?

Willa Cather said that a novel is cremated youth, and...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong's latest book is Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence.

From her Q & A with Michael Schulson at Salon:

When you hear, for example, Sam Harris and Bill Maher recently arguing that there’s something inherently violent about Islam — Sam Harris said something like “Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas” — when you hear something like that, how do you respond?

It fills me with despair, because this is the sort of talk that led to the concentration camps in Europe. This is the kind of thing people were saying about Jews in the 1930s and ’40s in Europe.

This is how I got into this, not because I’m dying to apologize, as you say, for religion, or because I’m filled with love and sympathy and kindness for all beings including Muslims — no. I’m filled with a sense of dread. We pride ourselves so much on our fairness and our toleration, and yet we’ve been guilty of great wrongs. Germany was one of the most cultivated countries in Europe; it was one of the leading players in the Enlightenment, and yet we discovered that a concentration camp can exist within the same vicinity as a university.

There has always been this hard edge in modernity. John Locke, apostle of toleration, said the liberal state could under no circumstances tolerate the presence of either Catholics or Muslims. Locke also said that a master had absolute and despotical power over a slave, which included the right to kill him at any time.

That was the attitude that we British and French colonists took to the colonies, that these people didn’t have the same rights as us. I hear that same disdain in Sam Harris, and it fills me with a sense of dread and...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Meg Wolitzer

Meg Wolitzer's latest novel is The Interestings.

From her Q & A with Noah Charney for The Daily Beast:

You’ve been called “an expert social observer” and this seems to be the key to your novels. Which books by other authors do you think are crowning examples of social-observation fiction? And do you find yourself examining the real world around you (dinner parties, events) with a different set of eyes, considering your role in writing about it?

Edith Wharton, of course, writes in such a startlingly sharp and close-grained way about how people live. Just read “House of Mirth.” I rarely think about writing directly about a moment or event that I’ve witnessed or experienced. Instead, a single experience might be a jumping-off place (even only in terms of thinking about the experience) that leads to something more or less unrecognizable on...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up The Bodies, won the Man Booker prize in 2009 and 2012. Her newest book is the short story collection, The Assassination Of Margaret Thatcher.

From the author's Q & A with Rosanna Greenstreet for the Guardian:

What is your greatest fear?

Words fail me.

What is your earliest memory?

A spider.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?

Persons are best considered posthumously.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

I don't finish my sentences because I…

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Finishing them for me. Believe me, that is not what I was going to say.

Your most embarrassing moment?

It's complex. It involves...[read on]

Mantel's Wolf Hall made Ester Bloom's top ten books for fans of the television series House of Cards, Rachel Cantor's list of the ten worst jobs in books, Kathryn Williams's reading list on pride, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of books on baby-watching in Great Britain, Julie Buntin's top ten list of literary kids with deadbeat and/or absent dads, Hermione Norris's 6 best books list, John Mullan's list of ten of the best cardinals in literature, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on dangerous minds and Lev Grossman's list of the top ten fiction books of 2009, and is one of Geraldine Brooks's favorite works of historical fiction; Matt Beynon Rees called it "[s]imply the best historical novel for many, many years."

--Marshal Zeringue

Kelli Stanley

Kelli Stanley is a critically-acclaimed, multiple award-winning author of crime fiction (novels and short stories). She makes her home in Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco, a city she loves to write about.

Stanley is best known for the Miranda Corbie series of historical noir novels and short stories set in 1940 San Francisco. The first novel of the series, City of Dragons, introduced Miranda, the unforgettable protagonist Library Journal calls "one of crime’s most arresting heroines.”

City of Dragons won the Macavity Award for Best Historical Novel, and was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Shamus Award, a Bruce Alexander Award and an RT Book Reviews Award, was a Mystery Guild selection of the month, and placed on many “best of the year” lists.

City of Secrets, the sequel to City of Dragons, was released by Thomas Dunne/Minotaur to great critical acclaim, was nominated for a number of awards and won the Golden Nugget for best mystery set in California.

Stanley's latest novel in the series is City of Ghosts.

From the author's Q & A with Sandra Parshall at The Big Thrill:

A lot is going on in CITY OF GHOSTS—a murdered client, dangerous undercover intrigue involving the federal government—but Miranda is driven most strongly by her desire to find her long-missing mother and learn the truth about her mother’s disappearance. Why does she want to reconnect with the woman who abandoned her to be brought up by a despicable father?

Why wouldn’t she? Any decent memory of her early childhood is connected to her mother, as evidenced by the recurring theme of the Irish lullaby in both CITY OF SECRETS and CITY OF GHOSTS. We largely define ourselves by who are parents are—they are the starting points of our identity before we reshape ourselves into independent adults. Her father is not someone in whom she wants to see any familial connection. What she does want is to believe that her mother did not abandon her, but was somehow forced away. She’s also driven by the desire to believe her mother is alive and that she, Miranda, can rescue her, whether from an individual circumstance or from German bombs dropping on England. Finding her mother is finding herself, which is the ultimate Hero’s Journey narrative.

What drew you to writing about San Francisco in the 1930s and 1940s? Why that place and that time in U.S. history?

I’ve always been drawn to the time frame of U.S. and world history between the 1920s and the 1950s. Maybe it’s because my parents were...[read on]

Learn more about the novel and author at Kelli Stanley's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Kelli Stanley & Bertie.

The Page 69 Test: City of Dragons.

The Page 69 Test: City of Secrets.

The Page 69 Test: City of Ghosts.

My Book, The Movie: City of Ghosts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Torch and the memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

From Strayed's Q & A with Jennifer Billock for Yahoo! Travel:

What would you do differently if you hiked the PCT today?

That’s a hard question to answer because on one hand, the reasonable part of me would say I would pack lighter. My pack was so heavy and caused me a lot of physical pain and hardship. Likewise, my boots. I would have shoes that were a better fit to my foot size and shape. But then, in some ways I’m grateful everything was just the way it was, because you never forget a lesson you learned the hard way. That turmoil and suffering and discomfort I went through contributed to making the trip so transformative for me. If everything had been easy, I would’ve had an experience that wasn’t as deep as the one I had.

What is the most common thing people ask you about the hike?

People are always saying, “Are your feet OK now? Did your feet recover?” It’s so funny because in fact, they are recovered — but it took a good few years for my toenails to grow back. Especially because I lost both of my big toenails, which it turns out is a big deal. It took them years to come back and another few years beyond that to be entirely normal. I also get asked a lot if I would do it again, and the answer is...[read on]

Author Pam Houston on Wild: "I read it on a long airplane flight, and by the time I was done the people all around me were seriously afraid of me. I was laughing so hard I was shaking the whole row of seats, and when I wasn’t laughing I was crying."

--Marshal Zeringue