AUTHOR, AUTHOR!:

Here are some of the interviews we've been lucky enough to do with various authors whose books we reviewed and liked:

Burt Boyar, author of Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr.

BROTHERS JUDD : Still, some of the things he recalls are so painful and some so embarrassing, it must have been difficult for him to share them with you. One incident in particular, when he was in the Army and some racists painted him white, just seems like it would be wrenching both to tell and to hear. Why do you think he was able to and why were you able to get him to? Were there specific methods you used to get through the most difficult parts of his story?

MR. BOYAR : I think Sammy opened up specifically with us because he knew us first as friends, for almost a year before we even thought about writing a book.

The army was excruciating for us all. It took a long time to pry it out of him. Sammy never liked to look back, let alone at something so degrading. We had no specific trick or method of dealing with this ghastly treatment he had suffered.

Jane and I did not drink at the time. Sammy sipped constantly but was never drunk. After the sessions were over we played Monopoly, or played different roles in Hamlet. He bought three copies of several of Shakespeare's plays and we acted them out. And I amused him by singing to him ala Al Jolson. I was a big Jolson fan, after seeing The Jolson Story six times, I knew all the songs and did a fair Jolson. When Sammy was down he'd say, 'Do that corny Jolson thing you do.' and I'd get down on one knee and sing "Mammy" or "California Here I Come" and believe me that would make anyone laugh and forget his troubles. You could say we exchanged humiliations.

Repeat, I think the answer to Sammy's openness with us was both his integrity, he always gave a hundred and ten percent when he was working, and his absolute trust in us, first as friends who had been with him through quite a lot in one year and had apparently proven ourselves. Then, as biographers working toward a common goal, to enlighten. Also, Sammy's philosophy of living was, '...once you make up your mind to get into bed with someone, then it's done, go for it with no reservations.'

Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi: A Novel

OJ: [T]his seems like the kind of book that could have been driven by your need to write about Pi himself, because he's so beguiling, but it's also easy to imagine an author being compelled by just the one mental picture of a man in a boat with a tiger. Did you have some such epiphany or is there a specific story or person or some other trigger that was the original basis for the book or is it a product only of the ideas within its pages?

YM: Briefly, this is how it happened: Ten years ago. Review in New York Times Book Review by John Updike of a Brazilian novel by one Moacyr Scliar. About Jewish family running zoo in Berlin in 1933. Business bad (i.e. someone just go elected to power). They decide to move to Brazil. Ship sinks. Jewish zookeeper ends up in lifeboat with black panther. Obvious allegory of Nazi Germany.

Not a good review. Did nothing to Updike. But premise sizzled in my mind. I thought "Man, I could do something with that". But book already written, so I moved on and wrote my first novel and traveled.

Five years later I'm in India. Remember premise. Explosion in my imagination. Whole chunks of the novel--the two stories, the blind Frenchman, the many animals, etc.--emerge fully formed in my head.

I spent the next six months doing practical research in India, then reading books in Canada. Then I wrote the book. Came easily. Pi was a constant pleasure to write.

Rebecca Kohn, author of The Gilded Chamber

OJ One of the most interesting choices you do make is to have Esther (then Hadassah] and Mordechai be not just cousins but betrothed, was there a certain dynamic that you thought that would give the story that it might not otherwise have?

RC: I sought to make sense of why this young attractive orphan was living in the house of an unmarried cousin. At that time it was common, even desirable for first cousins to marry. So it made sense to me that they would have been betrothed. After I thought this through, I discovered that some of the old rabbinic texts from about the year 200 or so speculated that they were in fact betrothed when she was sent to the king.

In terms of the story, the dynamic of loss is much greater with that attachment. It also brings a sense of betrayal or perhaps weakness from the man she trusted to take care of her, which makes her realize she has to rely on herself. In the biblical story we see she is brave and thinks for herself. I wanted to provide some motivation for that. People don't talk much about Mordechai and what he would have had to give up to be a successful court Jew. I try to imagine that and then show how he goes through a change. The romantic attachment allowed for a greater motivation there, too.

Frederick Glaysher, author of The Bower of Nil: A Narrative Poem

OJ: In that middle portion, which I found the strongest part of the poem, you sound like a cultural conservative--is that a fair assessment?

FG: Liberal and conservative tags and abstractions really have very little meaning to me. They are political and secular historical constructs that fail to represent my inmost being. So I always rankle at them both, loathe all party platforms. Politically, I've always been an independent. In every other sense as well. Group-thinking is very dangerous, whether academic, religious, literary, whatever. All organizations and religions tend to become oppressive to the individual human soul.

Those qualifications aside, I understand your point. I was baptized, raised, and confirmed a Catholic, and I genuinely respect the Church, the Pope, and the social and transcendent order and teachings of Christianity. Marx and murderers like him have never been my cup of tea. What Jonathan Swift called "prognosticators" have been the scourge of modern times. I believe many of our cultural problems are fundamentally spiritual and moral problems, heresy among the academicians these days. On the other hand, Christians who regard the United Nations as the anti-Christ, and so forth, aren't my cup of tea either. Moderation in all things is the old saw we should all do more to reinvigorate.

John Ehrman, author of The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan

OJ: The two themes that I thought really stood out were: that you view the 80s as more of a transitional period than as the revolution that both Left and Right may see it as -- in particular a time when the economy was evolving from a basis in heavy industry to one in information technology and a time when conservative ideas, though they did not displace liberalism entirely, gained back the credence they'd lost in the New Deal/Great Society era. How would you assess the importance of the twin transitions and how well were they handled?

JEThe twin transitions of the eighties, as you call them, were exceptionally important. Start with the economic changes, which altered the arrangements that had governed the country since the mid-1940s and gave us the technology-based, highly-competitive, and more individualist system we have today. In fact, I think it is hard to see how the economy of the 1990s and 2000s could have developed without the changes of the eighties. Would the Internet have taken off if AT&T had not been broken up? Would large corporations have become as competitive or brought as many new products and technologies to market without the threat of hostile takeovers? I doubt it. The same is true on the political side. If Reagan had failed -- if inflation and unemployment had remained high, and growth sluggish -- then conservatism would have been stopped in its tracks. Instead of the steady move toward the right that we have seen in the last twenty years, we would probably have a worn out, stagnant system like Western Europe has today.

Reagan handled the transitions very well. He understood that new advances were improving the American economy and life, and he knew better than to try to stop or interfere with the changes. I think it is noteworthy that Reagan's greatest policy initiative was to cut taxes; in most other areas, like deregulation, he either built on policies that already were in place when he became president, or was content to let developments take their course.

A final point to remember is that, even though strong forces were pushing change and innovation in the eighties, their success was not guaranteed. Reagan often was under pressure to take various actions that would have been counterproductive, like stopping the corporate merger wave or raising taxes, and sometimes he was forced to give in, as when quotas were put on Japanese car imports. We can see from the auto example, which cost consumers billions of dollars and did nothing to improve the health of the US car industry, what kind of failures would have occurred had Reagan not tried to hold the line or if a different president had followed other policies.

Steven Malanga, author of The New New Left

OJ: The title of your book refers to the New New Left--who comprises this group and what's "New" about them?

SM: The New New Left, which I also sometimes call the public sector economy, consists of those taxeaters who live off government, either through transfer payments, public sector employment, or employment in sectors like private social services or health care which are increasing funded by government. These groups began acquiring political power 40 years ago, largely with the help of the vast expansion of government that began during the War on Poverty.

I call the movement "new" because about 10 years ago members of these various groups began recognizing that they had the same interest in an ever-expanding government and started working together in coalitions that support bigger government and government solutions to our problems. In many states and cities the coalition has now gathered so much power that it is in control of the political agenda.

Caroline Coleman O'Neill, auhor of Loving Soren

Judd: One of the great things about your novel is that the historical figures speak for themselves so much. How much research did it require for you to be able to render them in their own words?

O'Neill: I had to do a TON of research. I read 2/3 of Kierkegaard's books (a Herculean effort, as I'm not a philosopher by nature, and as I believe SK was probably manic depressive and his output during the maniacal periods was enormous); I read Kierkegaard's obsessive musings about Regine in his private diaries; I read Regine's side of the story and their letters; I read contemporary accounts (all conveniently translated in Bruce Kirmmse's wonderful Encounters with Kierkegaard); I studied biographies; and I read books on 19th century clothing and manners. I also traveled to Copenhagen and the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands). And I pored over the beautiful paintings of the period, known as the Golden Age of Danish Painting. It's probably a good thing I didn't know how much research it would require, or I never would have embarked on such a reckless journey.

Joshua E. London, author of Victory in Tripoli

JUDD: When you started working on the book, Victory in Tripoli, were you already aware of the parallels to the War on Terror that would be there in the story? What are some of the parallels you see and what can this first encounter with Islam and terror teach us about our own?

LONDON: I did have a vague sense that America's war against Muslim piracy in North Africa held some superficial, if striking, parallels to the War on Terror. It was only as I began to sink my teeth into the details, and especially into the journals and letters of William Eaton, that I began to see just how significant aspects of this really were.

The United States encountered Islam very early in our history. America's first diplomatic encounter with Islam, in the form of John Adams' and Thomas Jefferson's meeting with the Ambassador of Tripoli to Brittan in May 1786, explicitly revealed, over two hundred years ago, the religious nature of the conflict -- the jihad -- facing the United States. That was before what we call "Colonialism" entered the lands of Islam, before there were any oil interests dragging us into the fray, and well before the founding of the State of Israel. America became entangled in that part of the world and dragged into a war with the Barbary States simply because of the religious obligation within Islam to bring belief to those who do not share it. From there, the other similarities and parallels become almost comically obvious -- the hostage crises, the arms for hostage deals, the basic sociological communications divide between Americans and Muslims, the back-handed dealings, the political calculations and expediency, etc.

Despite all of that, however, I didn't want to tell the story as a gloss on current events. I think that makes for bad history and, frankly, bad storytelling. I wanted to give a straight, completely reliable, and interesting account of this history, leaving the punditry to, well, pundits. The parallels and similarities are starkly there, I think, to anyone with an open mind.

Jim Black, author of River Season

OJ: How did you come to write the book? For some obvious reasons the story calls to mind Huckleberry Finn--were you aware of that as you wrote?

JBI first wrote the story for my wife, mom, sister, and my two best friends. Using only a personal computer, paper cutter, and some glue I fashioned a homemade “trade paperback” which I gave as Christmas gifts in 1999. It was titled, There’s a River Down in Texas. As it was loaned out, others wanted copies, and so I began distributing them. Over the next two years, I made and sold over seven hundred. It took me nearly an hour to make each one, and so I spent many a long night and weekend doing so. Having grown up in Larry McMurtry’s hometown of Archer City, Texas, my sister thought I should send him a copy. I'd never met him and wasn't about to bother a Pulitzer Prize wining author with my piddly homemade book, but she was persistent, and I finally relented. To my amazement, just four days later I received a card from him with some very nice comments about the book and permission to use them! I then decided to try and get it professionally published and began sending out queries to agents and publishers. After twenty-nine rejections, an agent in New York finally agreed to take a look at my manuscript. She loved it. At her suggestion, I lengthened it and changed the title, and it was promptly picked up by Penguin Putnam. River Season was released as a Viking hardcover in July 2003 and a Penguin paperback in Sept. 2004. It is also available in large print and audio from Recorded Books.

I'd like to think one could spot the influence of my favorite authors in my work, but suspect you'd have to look hard. In addition to being a Larry McMurtry fan all my life, I greatly admire Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek), and greatly enjoyed Stephen King’s early novels.

Despite the book’s constant comparison to Huck Finn, none was intended.

The fact is, I last read Twain’s classic back in high school and am ashamed to say I don't remember much about it.

Robert Ferrigno, author of Prayers for the Assassin

OJ: The topic of the novel is inherently controversial. Did you experience any difficulty in publishing the book?

RF: I expected difficulty and I got it. My former publisher, where I had happily published four previous novels, passed on the book. My agent was adamantly against me writing it for several reasons, but eventually came around. My current publisher, Scribners, was completely supportive. Foreign publishers in France, Germany and Italy, where I have always sold well, all declined to publish the book, citing potential legal and physical problems. Hollywood studios, which had optioned almost all of my prior books, declined to make offers.

W. Hodding Carter, author of Flushed : How the Plumber Saved Civilization

OJ: Can you describe the Washlet you bought for your house for those of us who may still be suffering on a mere toilet?

HCIt's sort of hard to describe love at first sight, know what I mean? Put simply, the washlet is a super-modern toilet seat functioning as a bidet--or is it the other way around. See? I still can't think straight when I talk about Jasmin--the washlet's given name. Anyway, the seat is constantly warmed to a soothing 100-plus degrees. No recoil when you sit down on Jasmin. Registering your arrival, a deoderizer that acts more like a catalytic converter kicks on and so there's no stink in Jasminland. You do your business, press a button on the remote control and a wand comes out to wash you. Hard, soft, oscillating, pulsating, forward, back--whatever you desire. You can then hit the drier button but since that takes about 5 1/2 minutes to work, you might want to skip that function, and instead, hit stop and use toilet paper, like the common folk. The thing cost about $1000 but I think it's worth every penny. But, then, I'm a bit biased, being in love and all.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 5, 2006 12:00 AM