I can't remember where or when I started to know Larry Baker, only that I'm glad that I do. Maybe we grew up together in an alternative reality, because it really feels that way. And I'm thrilled to host him here for his gripping new novel FROM A DISTANCE. Larry's the author of The Education of Nancy Adams, Love and Other Delusions, A Good Man and Athens, America.
I'm so jazzed you are here! Thank you, Larry!
Q: What’s FROM A DISTANCE about?
A: Love, Sex, and Death? The usual trifecta of
life. Not just love, but insane obsession. Not just sex, but illicit and
sometimes violent sex. Not just death, but the voice of a dead woman.
Alternating chapters tell the story of a 30-year affair between a man and woman
who met as children in Charleston. From different social classes. Bobby was a
pampered only child. Ellie was a sexually abused step-daughter. She lies to
him, but he finds out about her brutal home life, and he tries to rescue her,
only to be left beaten and physically scarred for life. His father has her
institutionalized, and Bobby flees to New York City. But they never stop loving
each other. She remains his secret, even though she comes to live with him in
the mythic Windsor Building in NYC. It is left to Bobby’s assistant editor
Sally to uncover the truth as she reads the thousands of journal and diary
pages that Ellie has written over her life. At the end, it is also left to
Sally to literally write the final chapter of Bobby and Ellie’s story.
Q: What compelled you to write FROM A DISTANCE?
A: I’ve always wanted to do a story about the
publishing business. Not the writing business. Writers are not the main
characters in this book. Hell, writers as characters show up too much in modern
fiction anyway. Mine is a story about an editor, the most famous editor in
America, a dying man with a secret. And I make no claim about my story being a
realistic view of publishing. It is pure myth. Publishing as a noble pursuit.
(My writer friends laugh when I tell them this.) I lived through the German
takeover of Random House, and that is the backdrop for my story. Adding to that
impulse was another long-time interest of mine...a clash of cultures.
Specifically, Northern Commerce versus Southern Gentility. Finally, my writer
fascination with how point of view
can be used to both reveal and conceal the truth about characters. Half the
book is written from the point of view of a totally unreliable narrator, but
her “voice” is the most compelling thing I have ever written.
Q:
And the title? Where did that come from?
A: The original title was Windsor House, based on the name of the publishing company. But, as
I was literally writing one of the last chapters from Ellie, I realized that she had provided the best title. She was
trying to explain to Bobby how she had arrived at some final wisdom about their
relationship, and she referred to the song by that same title. They had always
been too wrapped up in the passion and drama of the moment, that they had
failed to truly see themselves. Time had finally become the distance they
needed. And it was too late.
Q: I know you have said that this was your most
difficult book to write. Why?
A: This was definitely my most difficult book to
write, and the final version is a stark contrast to the first draft. I gave up
on that first version and set it aside for five years. As you know, the story
is set in alternating chapters, opening with the first person pov of a dead
woman, which then alternates with the third person pov of the story of a her
lover’s public life. For most of the story, that dead woman is not part of her
lover’s life. But as her private story starts to parallel the man’s public
life, everything the reader knew before has to be re-interpreted with this new
knowledge. Finally, in the last few chapters, the two versions come together
and a reader has to figure out which version of reality is actually true---the
public or the private.
The
problem? I was happy with the public story, but the private story---the tale as
told by a dead insane woman---simply did not work. It was a mess. And the woman
eventually became totally incompatible as a character to fit with the male
character. I had to create a new love affair that would still work with the
“public” half of the book. If you think you are confused now, imagine how
confused I was as the writer. And it took five years to have one of those
“light-bulb” moments. And the light-bulb illuminated a thirteen year old girl
from the wrong side of the tracks in Charleston who is caught stealing books by
a Southern blue-blood boy who grows up to be an editor in New York City. Knowing
his public story, I was able to write Ellie’s story to mesh with his...finally.
Q: Critics have commented about how you seem to
write intriguing and memorable female characters. Alice Kite, in The Flamingo Rising as well as A Good Man, and Nancy Adams, from The Education
of Nancy Adams, are remarkable. How would you describe Ellie and Sally as
compared to your other female characters?
A: Of all my characters, in all my books, Ellie
was the most interesting one for me to create. She is the only character for
which I had to do some real research...into the mental issues related to sexual
abuse, compounded by schizophrenia and border-line bi-polarism. I talked to
counselors and people who had to deal with such issues in their real life. And
I also had to write from the point of view of a voice that begins at age
thirteen and ends at age 40-something. She must have a child’s voice that
slowly grows into an adult voice over time. The result? A very few early
readers hate her and stop reading. The overwhelming majority are drawn into her
mind, as I intended, and stay. So, an insane thirteen year-old girl grows into
an insane 40-year old woman. The expression of that insanity becomes more
coherent over time, and often profoundly insightful. Which leads to my goal for the Sally
character, the ever faithful assistant to Bobby, who has never understood why
her love for him has never been reciprocated. Reading Ellie’s version of her
life with Bobby, Sally finds herself wishing she had been Ellie, with all her
baggage, if she could have experienced the love that Bobby felt for Ellie. All
in all, I think Ellie and Sally are the best female characters I have ever
written.
Q: Any interest from Hollywood about this new
book. As I recall, your first was a Hallmark movie in 2001.
A: I wish. And so do my children. All I know for
sure is that this is definitely not Hallmark material.
Q: What’s obsessing you now, and why?
A: Well, my first grandchild is at the top of
that list. An incredible experience, and
more and more (happily) time consuming for me. But as for my writing, I think I
have one more good book in me. Almost a Biblical saga, set in the South in
2016, mixing politics and murder. The story of a family that took root in
Florida in the 1860s but which, by 2016, has devolved into jealous factions.
Two cousins, each pushing 70, one the patriarch of the town, the other the
Sheriff, and each thinks he knows a secret about the other. Their wives were
sisters. One disappeared forty years earlier; the other died in a bizarre
accident about the same time. I have always wanted to do a Cain and Abel story.
This is my attempt.
No comments:
Post a Comment