If you don’t watch all of this video, watch it just to the point where Dickinson shouts “She still takes my calls!” about her daughter Emily. As Amy’s sister Rachel (an old pal and colleague) says, “Amy gives good interview.” Rachel is one of Freeville’s “Mighty Queens,” so you know she’s right. I hope you enjoy!
Solveig Eggerz is not just one of the most interesting authors I’ve had on this show; she’s also one of those whose connection to her novel is most interesting. A native Icelander, Eggerz talks about how a movie titled “Maria” influenced her decision to learn more about the lives of German women who came to Iceland after World War II.
Eggerz also speaks about the hyperliteracy in her homeland and its ancient literary tradition. She’s lovely to listen to, and I hope you will watch this interview — but I do encourage you, again, to read Seal Woman. Its poetic language, historical authenticity, and complicated protagonist make it a novel to watch.
One last note: This interview is our last in this format. The next video author interview you see here will be on a new site with a new name and an entirely new set. It’s tremendously exciting and it’s taken a tremendous amount of work from many different people. As soon as I’m given the green light to tell you more, I will! Thank you all for sticking with us through the past 18 months. The next 18 will be full of great things for book coverage on WETA.org, and I look forward to showing some of them to you.
“It’s a man writing letters of apology to everyone he’s ever known,” says novelist Michael Kimball of his new book Dear Everybody. However, as he points out, Jonathon Bender can’t tell his entire story (for many reasons, most of which will become clear as you read), so there are also notes, letters, stories, dialogue, and other types of documents in the story.
As Kimball tells it, his book is a modest thing; as other writers (including Dave Eggers and Stephen King) see it, it’s an excellent thing. If you watch my interview with Kimball, you’ll see that he is not only a working writer, but a writer who works on his manuscripts. He is one of the best authors we’ve had on in terms of talking about the challenges of finding an idea and working with it as it develops.
I don’t always say this, so I hope you will indulge me: Read Dear Everybody. It is a work of literary inventiveness and great compassion.
It isn’t often that you find someone with active-duty military experience, let alone active-duty military experience during war-zone deployment, writing serious fiction today (once upon a time, of course, far more writers had military experience as a matter of course due to the draft). James Mathews, who was twice deployed overseas with the Air National Guard, now has his MFA in fiction and the blessing of the fiction world, having won the prestigious Katherine Anne Porter Prize. His short stories are offbeat and quirky, but also based on his experiences within and looking in at the American military community, both overseas and on the homefront. I hope you enjoy hearing him speak for a few minutes about how he melds his disparate worlds.
In the second part of my interview with David Baldacci, learn why Divine, Virginia “is not Mayberry.” (I think everyone should read Divine Justice simply to understand some of the things that happen when we push the “unseemly” elements of life, like dirty jobs and prisons, out to the very margins.)
Baldacci also talks about his “Wish You Well” foundation. “You need food to survive, but it never gets you out of poverty,” says Baldacci. “Having books in the home gets you on the road to literacy, and education.”
Enjoy, and let us know what you think. We’ve got some wonderful changes coming up on this site, and we’ll also be offering more chances for your participation — so we want to know what works for you!
For those of you waiting for your next fix of “The Camel Club” from David Baldacci in Divine Justice, take a look at my interview with Baldacci. We talked about why Baldacci’s Washington, DC is one of “undercover” justice, as well as why he’s put an unlikely pair of characters together. You’ll also learn about southwestern Virginia, and while why it may be a difficult place to live, it’s a truly intriguing place to discover as a novelist.
Hope you enjoy — we’ll share more of this interview with one of today’s best-loved novelists tomorrow.
If you aren’t energized after watching this video…
Susan McCorkindale is one of those writers whose voice comes through as clearly in her writing as it does when she’s giving an interview. If you enjoy listening to her, you’ll enjoy reading her book. I can testify to enjoying both!
This week Stephen Hess, Senior Fellow Emeritus in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and Distinguished Research Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University (whew!) took some time to talk with me about his nineteenth book – which is, it is fair to say, quite a departure from Organizing the Presidency. This one is lighter in tone and topic: What Do We Do Now? A Workbook for the President-Elect (Brookings Institution Press, January 2009).
But while Hess’s new book may be lighter in tone and topic, it’s quite serious in its intent. Stephen Hess has been employed by, involved with, and an observer of presidential administrations since the Eisenhower administration (he began there as a speechwriter while still a twentysomething). He knows what happens during good presidential transitions and bad, and he’s got the stories to prove it.
I asked Hess first why he chose to call this a “workbook” and not a “handbook.” He said “I started with a handbook in mind, but then it became kind of a literary conceit in my own mind. I thought, if I call this a ‘workbook’ I can throw in all of these exercises.” The exercises range from the straightforward (“What promises did you make?”) to the fun (“Pick a Presidential Portrait”).
The inauguration is just days away when I speak to Hess, so I asked him if he thought the “PEOTUS” (President-Elect of the United States) is ready. “There’s a lot of loose ends,” said Hess. “Suddenly he still has one cabinet appointment to make. However, this president has really found remarkable people and made very creative choices for his cabinet.”
Hess told me that the book had its beginnings last year when he thought about the upcoming election: “I realized that I had been involved, in one way or another, in every election/inaugration/transition since the late 1950s, and I started to draft my first chapter, ‘My Life in Transition’ so that readers could understand why I was writing the book. “
Of course, says Hess, “Coming in is more fun than going out, I can assure you!” His “Checklist for the President-Elect” reads like the elaborate timetable for the greatest event-planning situation ever – and that might not be too far off the mark. Obama has “beat my markers,” says Hess. “Clinton, for example, had one of the truly awful transitions – that may be good for Obama, since John Podesta has had 16 years of experience to realize and analyze what went wrong and what to do differently this time.”
Hess believes that a key to a successful transition is “creating a plan to balance efficiency and creativity with work habits.” Does he think that Obama’s gym-rat habits will withstand the transition? He laughs, but admits that “Right now Obama has to be laser-like about the economy while there are lots of other things trying to force themselves onto his agenda. I think this is what happened to some extent with Bill Clinton. He was a very smart, very creative president who just kept moving around between all of the things that interested him and got truly sidetracked along the way. We shall see if that happens with Barack Obama. Our expectations are that it won’t.”
One of the reasons Hess wanted to set out all of these transition guidelines is that “It’s almost inconceivable, but conceive it: Presidents know so little about how government is really run, that after one of them has made a decision, he hardly knows what happens to it or why it doesn’t come out as he expected. The intereaction between the executive branch and the people who really run things – the high-level civil servatns – can be tainted with a lot of misunderstanding and suspicion, but it doesn’t have to be. I think President-Elect Obama is off on the right foot because he’s got a lot of people who are still relatively young coming back in, people who have great ideas, but experience, too.”
There are some goofs that can be made during presidential inaugurations (Hess says “Look at William Henry Harrison, who spoke for two hours in the freezing cold, got sick, and died a month into office – you can’t beat that in terms of idiocy”), but Hess doesn’t think that anything will upstage Barack Obama’s inaugural address. “Read Dreams from My Father. It’s a great book. It’s clear we are about to have a president who is our most literary stylist since Lincoln.”
Tomorrow: An Giveaway in Honor of the Inauguration
We know that Cain killed Abel. But how? With what? (One of my childhood church school teachers had us memorize this frightful mnemonic: “Cain killed Abel/With the leg of a table,” but that’s not historically accurate!)
Brad Meltzer’s been wondering about Cain and Abel for a long time. He’s also been wondering about how and why Mitchell Siegel, the father of “Superman” creator Jerry Siegel, was killed. After a while, he started wondering what it would be like if these two murders were somehow connected…
That’s how novelists roll. They see possibilities in stories that some of us might not. It’s a real treat to listen to Brad Meltzer talk about his creation process, but it’s even more fun to hear him tell me that “Graphic novels is just the snobby word for comic books,” not because I dislike the term graphic novels, but because it gets him talking about comics and his love for them.
Enjoy the interview, and as always, let us know what you think: thebookmaven at gmail dot com.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention yesterday that I’ll be posting Part II of the interview today…stay tuned!
This was a difficult interview, but that’s not author Dick Meyer’s fault — he was trying his best to answer my many and convoluted questions!
Well, maybe it was his fault, since my questions were many because his book is so interesting and convoluted because his ideas are so smart. You can see this simply from Meyer’s first answer explaining the book’s title; one small word change can signify a lot!
Even if you don’t always watch these interview videos, take a peek at this one to hear Meyer talk about the sense of community that comes from understanding our role as individuals, families, and a society in history. It might spark a valuable New Year’s Eve conversation or two.
Thanks to all of the authors, readers, and others (valiant Producer Mark and valiant Booker Suzanne, take a bow!) who have helped make this site work in 2008 — here’s to a new year and (teaser) a new site!
