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Q & A WITH CHRIS
The Basics. . .and the Meaning of Life Q.
How do you pronounce your last name? Q. "The Night Strangers" is in part a ghost story. You have always enjoyed ghost stories but you haven’t written one in over twenty years. What was holding you back? If you look at my personal library, you will notice that it ranges from Henry James to Steig Larsson, from Margaret Atwood to Max Hastings. There’s Jane Austen and Edgar Allen Poe and volumes of letters from Civil War privates. It is pretty eclectic. The reality is that I rarely read the same sort of book in a season. And, I hope, I will never write the same book twice. Look at my most recent novels. “Secrets of Eden” (2010) is about domestic violence, a double murder, and a minister’s guilt. “Skeletons at the Feast” (2008) is a love story set in Germany and Poland in the last days of the Second World War, and one family’s complicity in the Holocaust. And “The Double Bind” (2007) is an exploration of a young social worker’s descent into madness after a violent sexual assault; the book moves between a very real Burlington, Vermont and Jay Gatsby’s fictional West Egg, Long Island.
So, why a ghost story? Well, I love them. They’re fun to read – and, yes, fun to write. And when I imagined the subject matter of a plane crash and a pilot’s post-traumatic stress disorder, ghosts seemed as good a way in as any. Q.
How would you describe perfect happiness? Q.
What’s your greatest fear?
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What is your motto or maxim?
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What comment do you hear most often from your readers?
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Any books into movies?
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Have your books been published in other countries? Q. You moved to Vermont from New York after an unpleasant experience involving a taxi. How would Chris Bohjalian the novelist in NY have been different from Chris Bohjalian the novelist in VT in terms of inspiration and issues you raise in your novels. A. Novelists talk with an agonizing amount of hubris about how they found their voice. The reality, however, is that I did indeed find mine in Vermont. Vermont is a fascinating microcosm for issues that have relevance everywhere-the environment vs. development, alternative vs. traditional medicine, all the baggage that we bring to gender and sexual orientation -- and it is so small that it is possible to bring these issues to life on a scale that is human, recognizable and profoundly accessible. For instance, I would never have written a book about the literal and metaphoric place of birth in our culture (Midwives), if I had remained in Manhattan. After all, home birth isn't a part of the dialogue. Nor would have I written a vaguely eco-novel such as Water Witches -- and it's interesting to note that I wrote that novel in 1993 (it was published in 1995), years before we were focused on global climate change the way we are now. It's not that I am especially prescient -- but in some ways Vermont is. Even novels such as Secrets of Eden and The Double Bind, which explore themes that I would have been likely to come across in New York -- including, of course, domestic violence and homelessness -- were informed by Vermont. It was easy to research the subjects at the state psychiatric hospital and one of the correctional facilities, as well find therapists and victims’ rights advocates who were available to help me, because we are just so small. A phone call here and a phone call there, and I was able to line up the necessary interviews. Now, I love New York. I get back there often, and half of Before You Know Kindness is set in Manhattan. But I believe I have found subjects in Vermont that are more in keeping with my strengths as a stylist. Q. Do you have any special writing rituals? For example, what do you have on your desk when you're writing? A. I am frighteningly compulsive when it comes to the library in my house in which I write. It is very clean. And orderly. The books are alphabetized; the pens are lined up in their cases. At night, I put a dust cover on my computer. I actually have two desks. One holds the computer on which I write rough drafts. Along with the computer and printer, it has on it photographs of my wife and my daughter, and two small sting rays made of polished stone from Grand Cayman (an island I love because of the scuba diving and snorkeling) that my daughter gave me. The other desk is smaller, and on it I edit my rough drafts. It has a lamp built from an Art Deco planter of a black panther, and most of my favorite pens. Both desks have glorious views of Mount Abraham, the third-highest mountain in Vermont, and I watch the sun rise over the mountain as I work. Q. What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer— and why? A. I'm actually going to pick a single period in my life, rather than a single book, because I believe it's the most honest way to answer this question. When I was 13, my family moved from a suburb of New York City to Miami, Florida, and we moved there the Friday before Labor Day weekend. I started school the following Tuesday, and then, that afternoon, went to see my new orthodontist—a sadist, it would turn out, if ever there was one. He gave me some orthodontic headgear that looked like the business end of a backhoe, and I had to wear said device for four hours a day when I was awake. Since I couldn't (well, wouldn't) wear it during school, I had to wear it after school. It was inevitable, but I couldn't speak when I was wearing it. And so I couldn't meet any kids in my neighborhood, and make new friends. What did I do that first autumn and winter—winter, such as it is, in South Florida? I went to the Hialeah Miami Lake Public Library. And I read. I read the sorts of things any adolescent boy was likely to read in the mid-1970s. I read William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, Thomas Tryon's Harvest Home, and Peter Benchley's deceptively fine novel Jaws. Also, in all fairness, I read a somewhat higher caliber of literature as well-Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Joyce Carol Oates's Expensive People. I read those books in the library as well as in the den in our new home, and from them I learned a very great deal that would help me profoundly as an adult writer. I learned the importance of linear momentum in plot from Blatty and Benchley and Tryon. And I learned about the importance of voice — and the role of person in fiction-from Lee and Oates. I learned on a level that may not have been fully concrete yet—but that did indeed adhere—that the narrator in a first-person novel is a character, too, and every bit as made-up as the fictional constructs around him or her. Q. Many writers are hardly "overnight success" stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection-slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes? A. When I was a sophomore in college, the writer-in-residence was a novelist whose work I cherished. She was teaching a creative writing seminar in the spring semester, and I wanted very much to be among the anointed she was going to choose to be in it. That meant submitting a short story in December, which she would read over the holiday break. In January, I was summoned to her office in the brick monolith that housed the school's English Department, and there I met her for the first time. She was seated behind a desk the size of a putting green. When she saw me, she adjusted her shawl, fixed her eyeglasses, and said, "You're Chris. I'm not going to try to pronounce your last name." I nodded, a little apprehensive now. Then she slid my short story across the expanse of desk as if it were a piece of profoundly disagreeable roadkill. "Well, Chris I'm-Not-Going-to-Pronounce-Your-Last-Name," she continued, "I have three words for you." This clearly wasn't going to be good, but I am nothing if not optimistic. And so I waited. Then it came: "Be a banker," she said. And we were through. Someday I will dedicate a book to her. Q. Talk about memories from your youth that you cherish most. A. I had a classically 1960s/1970s suburban childhood. I grew up in a variety of dysfunctional ,Cheever-esque suburbs just outside of New York City, (with a three-year detour to Miami, Fla.). When I read Peter Balakian's Black Dog of Fate, I saw echoes of my own childhood. We also moved a lot, however, and in one period I went to four different schools in four years. And so while my childhood wasn't bad, it didn't revolve around great friends once I finished 6th grade. The fact is, my friends changed by necessity almost every year from 7th grade on. My favorite memories, in no apparent order, are: Playing Little League baseball in Stamford, Conn.; Reading Johnny Tremain and To Kill a Mockingbird and April Morning for the first time; Visiting my grandparents in Tuckahoe, N.Y., and listening to Leo Bohjalian--my grandfather--play the oud, after losing to his wife in pool. I can still smell my grandmother's beregs; Organizing baseball cards in my living room before thunderstorms; Flying anywhere on airplanes; Being scared silly by the following movies: "The Birds," "The Haunting" and "Psycho." Q. Women figure prominently in many of your novels. Talk about the challenge of writing a novel like Secrets of Eden or Midwives, where delving into the psyche of the female characters is key. A. I wish I could say there was a specific process, but I don't find writing about women that different from writing about men. In each case, it's an act of imagination. How would a person respond to a specific event or moment? What is an individual experiencing or thinking? What are people seeing or hearing? In the last decade, I have written novels or scenes within novels from the perspectives of (among others) a midwife, a transsexual lesbian, a vigorous female senior citizen, an African-American foster child, a 10-year-old girl, an 18-year-old female Prussian aristocrat in 1945, a young Jewish man from Germany who has jumped off a train on the way to a death camp in 1943, a Baptist minister, and a variety of balding. middle-aged men. I actually found this last category -- the balding middle-aged men who are like me -- the least interesting. Q. How do you decide what issues to tackle in your novels? Talk about the process of writing a novel. A. Invariably the inspiration is something in my personal life: Someone I have met or something I have heard or something I have seen. The Double Bind may be as good an example as any. The novel had its origins in December 2003, when Rita Markley, the executive director of Burlington's homeless shelter, shared with me a box of old photographs. The black-and-white images had been taken by a once-homeless photographer who had died in the apartment building her organization had found for him. His name was Bob "Soupy" Campbell. The photos were remarkable, both because of Campbell's evident talent and because of the subject matter. I recognized the performers-musicians, comedians, actors-and newsmakers in many of them. I write a weekly column for the "Burlington Free Press," which was why Rita wanted me to see the photos. She thought they might make for an interesting story, and she was absolutely right: I wrote about Campbell in December 2003, researching his life and accomplishments and why he might have wound up homeless, and to this day it remains one of my favorite essays I've written for the paper. I had celebrated Campbell's talents (which were extensive) and I had reminded people of the very fine line that separates so many of us from being homeless. But then I thought I was done with the subject. Six months later, in June 2004, I reread The Great Gatsby. I love that novel. Few writers crafted sentences as consistently luminescent as Fitzgerald or understood class and culture and longing as well. Then I went for a bike ride on a dirt road deep in a canopy of woods. My wife had heard a story on the radio that day that advised parents to tell their children the following: If someone ever tried to abduct them while they were riding their bikes, they should hold onto the handlebars for dear life. It's more difficult to abduct someone and throw them into the back of a car or a van if they are firmly attached to their bike. The geometry just doesn't work. As I rode, I started thinking about Bob Campbell for the first time in months, and I was thinking about him in regard to The Great Gatsby. Why? Perhaps it's because we always see The Great Gatsby through a haze of black and white photographs-Campbell's medium. And, of course, The Great Gatsby is a jazz age novel-and Campbell photographed a lot of jazz musicians. And so the idea for The Double Bind formed in my head on that dirt road. I knew precisely how a book would begin and-for the only time in my life-I knew precisely how it would end. Of course, this also meant I know A and Z, but not the 24 letters in between. That meant I had a different set of problems to solve. I wrote four drafts before I could even begin to seriously edit it: A Henry James-ian third person draft; then a first person draft narrated by Laurel Estabrook (the main character); then a draft with multiple first person narrators; and, finally, a draft that was third person subjective-less cold and omniscient than that initial version. This draft worked in ways the earlier ones hadn't. Only then was I able to start refining and tightening the novel. Q. What are your ten favorite books, and what makes them special to you? A. I feel guilty limiting the list to a mere ten, given how many books that are indeed special to me. I have, however, always enjoyed that game in which you have to pick a few books or movies to have with you on a desert island, and so here's a group that I've read multiple times-the ultimate compliment, I believe, one can bestow upon a book. Incidentally, the list has 12 titles. I couldn't possible delete any one of them. Mea culpa. The Voyage of the Narwahl by Andrea Barrett-A tale of icebound sailors and scientists in the 19th century (and the women they leave behind) that I found as moving as it was gripping. The Joyous Season by Patrick Dennis-Imagine Holden Caulfield with less angst and a better sense of humor, and you have the howlingly funny narrator of this book. The book chronicles the near-dissolution of one wealthy Manhattan family in the early 1960s, and what it takes to keep it intact. Nearly every page is a scream, especially read today, because every moment feels so fabulously retro. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald-Individual sentences give me a whopper of an inferiority complex, but I love every one. You'll see echoes of it in my new novel, The Double Bind. The Cider House Rules by John Irving-I savor Irving's books because his characters are so gloriously eccentric and idiosyncratic, and this sweeping story is filled with people I cherished. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer-The tale is riveting, and not simply because it's all true. Krakauer is a terrific storyteller. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee-There is obviously so much to savor in this book and so many ways to examine it. Among the elements that I cherish the most is what an authentic father-daughter love story it is. Last Rights, by Stephen Kiernan – An exploration of the ways we have died have changed in the last quarter-century, and how the world of medicine needs to catch up to the world of hospice. Moving and illuminating. Homeboy by Seth Morgan-The only novel Morgan left us before he died in a motorcycle accident. The prose (from page 1) is electric, the story is gloriously seamy, and the ending profound and poignant. A Stranger in the Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher-A story about race, yes, but also a tender story of fathers and sons, and the unexpected places where we find friendship. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje-I love novels that teach me something, and in this book I learned a bit about Africa, archeology, and Egypt in the years immediately before the Second World War. It's also a breathtakingly beautiful and authentic love story. Sophie's Choice by William Styron-Perhaps the most sad and wrenching novel I've ever read. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe-Wolfe is characteristically bemused in this history of the Mercury space program, but he also captures the sense of adventure and courage that peppered the endeavor, as well as the humanity of the test pilots, the astronauts, and their wives. Q. Who is your favorite fictional hero? A. Atticus Finch Q. Who is your favorite fictional villain? A. I tend to prefer moral ambiguity to straight out evil. Q. What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered? A. I'm asked on occasion what advice I might offer aspiring writers. Here are ten random suggesstions – the last a reference to the fact I was told by a creative writing professor when I was in college that I should become a banker. 1) Don’t merely write what you know. Write what you don’t know. It might be more difficult at first, but – unless you’ve just scaled Mount Everest or found a cure for all cancers – it will also be more interesting. 2) Do some research. Read the letters John Winthrop wrote to his wife, or the letters a Civil War private sent home to his family from Antietam, or the stories the metalworkers told of their experiences on the girders high in the air when they were building the Empire State Building. Good fiction is rich with minutiae – what people wore, how they cooked, how they filled the mattresses on which they slept – and often the details you discover will help you dramatically with your narrative. 3) Interview someone who knows something about your topic. Fiction may be a solitary business when you’re actually writing, but prior to sitting down with your computer (or pencil or pen), it often demands getting out into the real world and learning how (for instance) an ob-gyn spends her day, or what a lawyer does when he isn’t in the courtroom, or exactly what it feels like to a farmer to milk a cow when he’s been doing it for 35 years. Ask questions. . .and listen. 4) Interview someone else. Anyone else. Ask questions that are absolutely none of your business about their childhood, their marriage, their sex life. They don’t have to be interesting (though it helps). They don’t even have to be honest. 5) Read some fiction you wouldn’t normally read: A translation of a Czech novel, a mystery, a book you heard someone in authority dismiss as “genre fiction.” 6) Write for a day without quote marks. It will encourage you to see the conversation differently, and help you to hear in your head more precisely what people are saying and thereby create dialogue that sounds more realistic. You may even decide you don’t need quote marks in the finished story. 7) Skim the thesaurus, flip through the dictionary. Find new words and words you use rarely – lurch, churn, disconsolate, effulgent, intimations, sepulchral, percolate, pallid, reproach – and use them in sentences. 8) Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine. . .and then make them plausible. 9) Write one terrific sentence. Don’t worry about anything else – not where the story is going, not where it should end. Don’t pressure yourself to write 500 or 1,000 words this morning. Just write 10 or 15 ones that are very, very sound. 10) Pretend you’re a banker, but you write in the night to prove to some writing professor that she was wrong, wrong, wrong. Allow yourself a small dram of righteous anger.
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