David Samuel Levinson isn't just brilliantly talented, he's also hilarious. I'm thrilled he's another Algonquin writer, because that means I get to see and hug him at Algonquin parties and events, and it gives me carte blanche to email him incessantly to talk about writing, life, art, and desserts. His novel Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence is an extraordinary, shocking, funny novel about writing, art, fame and mystery--and it's fantastically good. I'm so thrilled to have him here on my blog. And New Yorkers, go see him at Word on June 6th, and at a lot of other terrific places, too.
Your novel deals with literary critics, how they can make or
break novels. It's probably a little unfair of me to ask this, given as your
novel will be out in the world, but how do you feel about literary critics?
About user reviews from places like Goodreads and Amazon? (And by the way, as a
book critic, I have a policy of not reviewing books that I dislike. I just
think I'd rather spend the real estate on books I love rather than trash ones I
don't. No one deliberately sets out to write a bad book, after all.) Except
maybe James Patterson writers!
I love literary critics! I don't always agree with them and I'm
sure I won't agree with a lot of what they say about my novel, but they're
readers just like anyone else—though it seems that they're also the kind of
people who look for flaws. My favorite critics are those who have no connection
whatsoever to the publishing industry, who aren't invested in giving a good or
a bad review. I just got an incredible endorsement from a librarian at a middle
school in El Paso. It was the most amazing review I've seen of my novel to
date. She really just got the whole thing, all of it, from beginning to end. No
one's mentioned how the novel's framed, but she did. She didn't give anything away,
either. I love this woman. She's my ideal reader. And as for user reviews—I say
the more the merrier. We put our work out into the world to be talked about and
discussed, to raise issues, etc. I'm just happy that people are talking about
Antonia Lively. Whether it's favorably or unfavorably is totally out of my
hands...
What I loved so much about the book is the pitch perfect
unfolding of what it means to be a writer: the pain of knowing you are good,
but being ignored has; the way a bad or good review can either derail or
elevate you; and the sometimes unfairness of advances! In your opinion, where
do you think publishing has to be heading?
When I started to write the novel, back in 2003, publishing was
still very much the way I portray it, I think—lots of enormous advances, a sort
of primeval infrastructure, etc. Today, I think the industry is much better
situated and poised to continue to do great things and put out excellent books.
There's never been a dearth of quality but there has been a dearth of support
for marginalized writers. I hope that as the world around publishing continues
to change that the industry leaders will take note and perhaps lose some of
their trepidation about taking risks on new writers. From various sources, I still
hear that books aren't selling, though I'm not sure this doesn't come out of
the mouths of alarmists. People will always read. People will always buy books
no matter what form they take. I'm thrilled about the ebook revolution and even
about self-publishing. Level the field, I say, and everyone wins.
Your novel also talks a lot about the thin line between fact
and fiction and where stories actually come from. "Good fiction lies to
get at the truth," one character says. Can you talk about this whole idea?
Do you think it's true? How hard is it to stay close to the truth when your own
subconscious needs/wants get in the way? And is that necessarily a bad thing if
the goal of writing is to explore and express your own inner truth?
My thought about the thin line between fact and fiction has
shifted over the years, especially as I came to understand, more fully
understand, each of the characters and their own relationship to the truth.
Truth, like memory, is never static and is always correcting itself. What we
think we remember is often very different from the way an event unfolded,
though as writers, I believe that it's our jobs to record as much of the facts
as possible. Does good fiction lie to get at the truth? To be honest, I'm not
so sure. Good fiction is one long elaborate lie, yet this lie can be more
genuine, more real, than the truth could ever hope to be. To me, every story
ever told is a fiction, mainly because it's completely unverifiable—unless of
course you're sending sexy naked pictures of yourself to someone else, etc.
Then we have fact, which cannot be altered. Antonia's truth is very different
from Catherine's truth and Catherine's truth is very different from Henry's, etc.
If every character experienced the same event in the same way, well, that'd be
a profoundly boring book. Luckily, each character came to know his own truth,
and in this way came to also know his own nature. The only thing I did for them
was to act as a kind of midwife for their stories.
The novel keeps unfolding layer after layer of character
while keeping the tension tight--something I deeply admired. Can you talk about
your writing process? Do you map your novels out? Are you a big rewriter?
What's your writing life like these days?
I wish I had a writing process right now! I just finished
teaching a 3/3 load and found that I couldn't carve out any writing time. It's
not that I didn't have time to write, it's just that teaching tends to take a
lot of emotional energy, energy that usually goes into my work. When I can
carve out time, I need only two things: a desk and absolute quiet. I cannot be
distracted in any way and have to live in the dream I'm creating or it just
won't work. The mornings are best, when I'm still cocooned within the dream and
I haven't spoken to another human and I haven't left my house. I think this is
vital for a writer—to maintain that sort of distance from the reality of which
he writes. I've also never been the kind of writer who outlines his stories,
though I always have a vague sense of where they're going.
In Antonia Lively, I
wrote toward the end, which, in previous versions, was a conflagration a la
Jane Eyre. Then, in one of the last revisions, I realized the fire was
unnecessary, that it tipped the scale of the novel. So I reined the fire in,
cut it out, and what was left was more manageable and credible, for me and the
reader, I think. I rewrote the draft of Antonia Lively that would later be sold
over a ten-day jag, yet I did umpteen revisions of it throughout the next
couple of years. At one time, it was a first person-third person novel, but the
first person never quite worked and my editor suggested I just turn the whole
of the book into third, which I did. It was the right decision. Yet I always
missed that first-person confessional, that closeness, and thus the prologue
and epilogues were born. Right now, I'd love to say that I've completed another
novel and that it's on its way into production, but the process of writing
Antonia Lively and getting it published has taken a lot out of me, emotionally
and physically.
As a writer, I need to be incredibly inspired by what I'm
writing and right now I'm lying fallow, waiting for that moment again. I'm
working on stories in the meantime. I think eventually these stories will
become a novel of linked stories, but only time will tell. The first one of
them will be published by Post Road and is called "People Are Just Dying
to Meet You."
What's obsessing you now?
My obsession with social media is obsessing me right now. I'm
not sure when I just gave over to it, but it seems I have. I live a pretty
peripatetic life, hopping from one teaching gig to another, so sometimes the
only interaction with my friends I have is on FB or Twitter. I'm not saying
that this is necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. All I'm saying is that I
was never the kind of person to check FB or Twitter all that often. I'm hoping
that I can unplug eventually, set down some roots, and become less tied to the
Internet.
What question didn't I ask that I should have?
You asked great questions, Caroline! But in the spirit of your
question, I will say that you might have asked me where the story of Antonia
Lively came from. Since you didn't, though I know you wanted to, I will tell
you that it came from a chance meeting at a small cafe in Brooklyn. It was
early January of 2003 and I went to a cafe to do some work. I set up my
computer at a table near the door—the other tables were taken—then went to get
a cup of coffee. When I returned, a young Latino man was sitting at my table. I
was irritated. He asked me if I was a writer. I muttered a surly yes and hoped
that was the end of it. But it wasn't. He went on to tell me that he had a
great story to tell me and that someone needed to write about it. "Tell
me," I said. And he did: he told me about a man in Brooklyn who killed a girl
with his car. He was drunk. He knew the family. Instead of going to jail,
however, the parents of the girl settled with him out of court. I can't tell
you what the settlement is because it became a part of the fabric of the novel,
but suffice to say I wrote down that story, then found it months later. It
became the germ out of which Antonia Lively sprung.
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