Is it wrong for James Patterson not to write his own books?

The answer to the above? Yes.

I just finished reading the NYT Magazine article about how James Patterson no longer writes his own books, but does the outlines and hires different co-writers. He does credit the other writers, and he probably does pay them handsomely, but the whole thing is coiled up in my stomach like bad diner food.

Because I'm a novelist and I know so many novelists, I'm well aware of all the adjectives that go along with being a writer--despair, anxiety, worry, fear, obsession, exhilaration and privilege. It IS a privilege to be a writer, to get to enter those worlds and create something new, to tunnel into other lives and produce what you hope is art. Patterson cheerfully admits he does not write anymore but only outlines, and says he has no interest to do anything different, that this is simply too much fun.

Sigh.

I don't know if readers care one way or another. Maybe they simply want a read that's wonderful to them and it doesn't matter who wrote it. I know I would mind and though I've never read any Patterson before, I now never will, simply because the whole thing seems so distasteful to me. I realize many books are ghostwritten, but that's usually because the person can't write--he or she needs someone to finesse the ideas. But Patterson began as a writer, so this smacks of something quite different.

Sigh. If there were really a key to Writerland, I'd want him to return his. He puts a bad spin of the profession. He denigrates the hard work all the rest of us do. If I had to put up my own co-writers, I'd think they would be Anxiety, Depression, Obsession, and yes, exhilaration.

Read This Book: My Before and After Life by Risa Miller

When a woman's father becomes suddenly very Orthodox Jewish, she's forced to confront everything she ever felt about belief, faith and family in Risa Miller's My Before and After Life. Miller, the author of Welcome to Heavenly Heights, agreed to let me ask her some questions-thank you, Risa!

I’ve read a few articles, notably one in the NYT, which label you as an Orthodox writer. Both your first novel, Welcome to Heavenly Heights and My Before and After Life deal with Jewish Orthodox Religion which informs, changes, and transcends the characters’ lives. Do you think labels like these are confining, or do you simply feel that our subjects choose us, rather than the other way around?

My first impulse is to quote Popeye, “I yam what I yam”. But that doesn‘t really answer your question. No, I don’t feel the orthodox label is confining; it’s more like defining. Oh, so maybe “ I yam what I yam” does answer the question: My characters and subject matter always boil down to people searching for meaning, especially in religious context, or in the case of the characters in My Before and After Life, searching for meaning in-- at the very least--a metaphysical context.

One of the things I most loved about the novel was that Honey Black, a lawyer who deals in black and white, views her father’s conversion to Orthodox Judaism as a kind of temporary madness, which he needs rescue from, yet gradually she comes to see the wonder and surprise of belief herself.How do you think people come to believe in what they believe and how do you personally see the face of Judaism changing in today’s world?

For almost 35 years I have lived in a community full of intelligent and idealistic co-religionists. Many are returnees to Judaism and converts from other religions. They’re parents of large families, community volunteers and often high functioning professionals too: professors, physicians, teachers, lawyers, social workers, (my Torah study partner developed the navigation system for the Ethiopian air force.) It’s been my observation that some people come to religion through trauma, such as the death of a parent. Or, some people-- like me-- come to religion because of a constant existential gnawing. I don’t mean to sound like Thomas Wolfe with that crazy infant memory in the crib, but I do remember being two years old and freaking out about death, infinity, and my place in the universe and possibly an ongoing universe where I didn‘t exist in physical form. Then there are the extremely mind-driven people like my husband whose undergraduate major at Johns Hopkins was logic. He proceeded to acquire belief by proof and rational argument. By the way, among the believers I hang with, belief is not something you acquire like a new set of clothes or a second skin. This is where my character Honey gets it wrong by mislabeling her father a ‘born again’ Jew. Acquiring belief is an ongoing process: growth, personal best, self management in order to fulfill your best intentions and be the person you want to be--all the while standing up for truth and justice. It’s really hard work to be a believer. Oh and as far as Judaism in today’s world, I worry that the demographic charts might be right: that assimilation is such a natural process (especially natural and easy in such an open country as the US) and that commitment to traditional, i.e. Torah Judaism, might at some point be the only identity card carrying forward.

Religion is also seen as a divisive force in the novel. It separates Honey and her father and it also separates the community, which is arguing over the expansion of an Orthodox School. Do you feel there can be a real separation of church and state, or do you feel that religion is such a part of many peoples’ lives that it impacts every decision?

I don’t usually think about separation of church and state. Though I do sigh extra hard every time my real estate taxes go up because the local elementary school needs another renovation--meaning the school I never sent my kids to because I chose parochial schools. On the other hand, now and then I do feel social attitudes acutely--partly what I was writing about in My Before and After Life. For example, in the 1980’s, in our self-consciously enlightened and diversity committed town of Brookline, we and several other families in the community were indeed expanding a n orthodox Jewish day school and building a new building in a commercial zone just at the corner of Beacon St. The neighbors associated and complained bitterly. These were the same people who embraced the expansion of a restaurant at the same corner (with all the increased parking needs at a corner with very few spots). The neighborhood association had the nerve to draw a red line around a neighborhood map and said we will ‘let you‘(sic) build if you promise not to put another Jewish institution in this space we’ve outlined. I’d thought that exclusive and quota driven living had gone out by 1968.

You teach writing at Emerson College. How does teaching impact your writing life?

Aaah-- I’m tempted to use another quote, this time from Anna (The King and I), but I‘ll spare you and summarize: I learn from my students. When I‘m in the classroom, the bubble over MY head is full of a-ha moments--sometimes of great illumination, and often about some craft insight or knot that I‘ve been working on for years. I do love my Emerson students and of course my dear graduate writing students at Bar Ilan University.

What are you working on now and what’s your daily life like?

I have many daily lives: There’s the daily life before book launch when all I seem to do is email and scheme and talk--and double up my efforts to remind myself Who controls outcomes. There’s the daily life around Jewish holidays or the birth of a new grandchild which puts me in high domestic mode. Then, what I think you’re really asking about is my daily life as a writer. Then: I get up, have coffee, say morning prayers and writer for three to five hours. With many interruptions and many more coffee breaks. And sometimes when I’m stuck I go take a shower and it clears my head. Depending on my teaching schedule I do that four to five days a week.

Right now I’m working on the story of two brothers, one religious and one not. And at the heart of the book is a literary mystery--as crazy as it sounds--a true mystery about plagiarism involving George Elliot's Daniel Deronda and a 19th century German Jewish writer. I'd made the discovery some years back and I was asked to research and write about it for George Eliot scholarly journals. But I decided to write it the way I do best, that is, into a book. As of now, I don't yet know who plagiarized whom and bets are on.

What question should I be mortified that I didn’t ask?

No mortification required, but you didn’t ask: How do you manage to have a professional life--and the self generated, always at home professional life of a writer-- with all the cooking, entertaining, homemaking, community roles, kids, grandkids that orthodox lifestyle brings. Well, just for the record, I hate cleaning the house and I have a genetic defect when it comes to things like ironing clothes , but I do enjoy the other domestic stuff. It‘s not required, by the way but part of orthodox life enhancement and yes, many men share domestic life equally. I happen to love cookbooks and food magazines and planning menus and cooking. I always look for opportunities to put out big four course meals, homemade from soup to nuts--for holidays and Shabbos. What a concrete focused and meaningful sense of satisfaction, especially compared to the fuzzy achievement of writing. My husband has a routine when he takes the first bite of my home made challah bread--all my children and guests know what to do to--and he says, “MM mmm mm Dee-licious”. Which always reminds me of the old Campbell Soup commercials. How good is that!?

page proofs

I'm in the midst of looking at first page proofs. It's a terrifying time because everything is sort of set in stone and now is the time when you look at the pages and thoughts of "what was I thinking" get into your head. Jeff is helping me through them, but everything else seems to have stopped until I'm done. Stay tuned for more author interviews, though!

A conversation with Katharine Weber about writing, art and True Confections, her latest novel

Katharine Weber’s life is a novel in itself. (Note: you’ll want to buy and read her forthcoming memoir.) The author of Objects in the Mirror are Closer than They Appear, The Little Women, The Music Lesson and Triangle, and the granddaughter of famed songwriter Kay Swift, she has no college degree, never took a writing course, and yet has taught at Yale and Columbia. Her latest novel, True Confections is an uproariously funny, provocative and smart novel about belonging and family, racism, Jews and the candy business. The raves began prepublication and continue to be astonishing, from the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and more.

Over the course of a few days, Katharine and I got into a discussion about her work and writing in general, reproduced here. I can’t thank you enough, Katharine.

Let’s talk about the unreliable narrator and the whole question of voice. For me, the pleasure of writing is tunneling so deeply into your character you feel merged. With someone like Alice, who often is not quite telling the truth to us or to herself, how close to her were you able to get? Was there ever a moment when you weren’t sure what truth she was or wasn’t telling?

I think I started off thinking I was close to Alice, and so she seemed perfectly transparent and available to me as I wrote her. But as the novel progressed, and her voice became that much more specific to me, she got much more complex, on the page and in my thoughts about her. Her situation drove her character, and her character drove the situation. Consequently, things she had stated as facts started to feel less certain to me in retrospect than they had when I was writing those pages. She thinks she is telling all the Truth but telling it slant, but is she? There are all sorts of ambiguities in the story that I believed one thing about as I wrote the pages and now I am just not so sure what I think I know. Ultimately all kinds of things about Alice and her story are up for grabs, though as I wrote them I had what seemed like clarity at the time -- but it turns out it was the power of Alice's convictions.

You also deliciously blur the lines between truth and fiction yourself, by pushing the 4^th wall out of the way and introducing, for example, the live Zips Candies website, complete with jingle. Because the jingle has a whiff of racism about it, and it sounds and looks and feels so real, it makes the whole idea of racism even more unsettling. We wonder, is this true, is this the novelist playing with us, what do we believe and why do we believe it? What makes us think something is so? Do you feel that writing about racism is ever racist or is this kind of writing really the way to look at it, understand it, and then do something about it?

I love your astute sense of what goes on in True Confections, Caroline. Writers talk about novels in certain ways that are different from the ways critics or readers discuss novels.

To answer you question on racism, I am sure there are sly ways, and careless ways, to write about racism in a way that is in itself racist. But it is racist to mock racism? Surely that is only offensive to racists. I really wanted to confront racism and the definitions of racism head-on. And I do think satire is the perfect way to do it. For one thing, I think that casual, submerged, endemic racism is much more insidious than overt racism, because it is denied and normalized even as it occurs. So, yes, I do mean to make people squirm a little, and then ask themselves why? What about that feels wrong, or what about that makes me feel a kind of chagrin about myself, and what about that activates the PC police, who are, in their own way, as blinkered and close-minded as bigots. Censoring anything that takes up issues of the complex issues of race does not solve racism.

Also -- I think women writers are expected to be nice, and to be well-behaved and proper, and not cause offense or upset anybody in any way, and I am serious when I say that I think the threshold for disapproval -- by purse-lipped priggish readers, by the Mrs. Grundys -- comes much sooner for women writers than for male writers.

Does the guy singing, "Say, Dat's Tasty!" at the end of the jingle seem racist to you? Why? Does it make any difference that the vocalist who sang the line for the jingle is actually Caucasian? Does the word "dat" have a specific connotation? What? Why? How do we feel about Uncle Ben's Rice, and Aunt Jemima on the box of pancake mix? Are they okay? Are they only not okay when pointed out, but okay when not discussed?

True Confections has a lot of threads winding through it. It’s the story of Alice battling for control of the chocolate company that’s become her life, but also the story of the chocolate business, racism, and a plan of the Third Reich to get all the Jews to Madagascar. How, in the writing, were you able to balance all these threads? And how did you make your ultimate decisions in shaping the story?

You left out the runaway slave from the cacao plantations of Cote D'Ivoire, wartime Budapest, the murder of Kid Dropper Kaplan on the steps of the Essex Market Courthouse in 1923, and a few other things, too! It is indeed a three-ring circus of a novel, but that's the way I write. I am always intrigued by the opportunities in a novel to find meaning and substance in those odd intersections, to take apparently disparate strands and weave them together to make something whole and shaped that signifies in new ways.

I recognize that for some impatient readers who prefer the simplicity of a single narrative line, one straight shot, there is too much going on. And you know, it has dawned on me, after five novels, that I am just not going to go into a spasm of anxiety if somebody doesn't like my novel and thinks it has too many parts and doesn't understand why. Perhaps the issue is simply that I am just not the writer for every reader.

I have been asked why, for example, in Triangle there is all that music? Or in The Music Lesson, why is there all that Walter Benjamin? And I can only say that singling out some of the elements in one of my novels that you think are somehow not necessary to the novel feels like asking me why the odd-numbered pages are in one of my novels because you would be happy reading only the even-numbered pages. For me, all these disparate pieces are essential, I have them in mind usually before I begin to write one word of the novel, and the way they fit together IS the novel.

That’s a really interesting question, that one can not be the right writer for every reader. I remember in an interview Dan Chaon said his wife told him to pay no mind to some of the stranger Amazon reader reviews, because those readers were not HIS readers. Because of this, I think many writers realize they can’t write for one audience, because who is that audience? Do you feel that instead the truest thing to do is write the book you are obsessed with writing and hope that what is deeply personal is also deeply universal and will strike some chords?

I can't worry about the response of individual readers while I am writing. Of course I hope to find a wide audience, and I think I have a fairly diverse following, as it is, one that expands in new directions with each novel. (For example, Triangle was probably read by more men than any of my previous novels, and at two of my Connecticut library readings, firefighters were there, in uniform, in the back row, with their hook and ladder parked out in front of the library!)

So of course I hope for a broad readership. I have said more than once that if you are a carbon-based life form with the price of the book, then you are my reader. I have never subscribed to the Franzenian definitions of my work as too "literary" or too "high art" for certain audiences. However, I know my novels have been deemed "too much" by some readers. But trying to be all things to all readers is just a hopeless and pointless enterprise (for me, anyway) and it really has nothing to do with the deepest reasons why I write. In one sense, the first reader I am writing for is myself. I was a reader before I was a writer, like all of us, and I think my sense of what I wanted to write came from my sense of what I have always responded to most deeply and found most appealing and moving and satisfying in the novels I have read over the course of my lifetime. So I try to write novels that I would want to read.

I usually think of your work as very serious and literary, and while True Confections is certainly that, it’s also hilariously funny. Can you talk a bit about the progression of your novels. What parts were a progression by design and which novels simply happened and surprised you?

First of all, I happen to think that each of my novels has a lot of humor, although they haven't been characterized that way by critics, and although there are very sad pieces to some of them as well. You know that old cliché of a perfect book review? "I laughed, I cried, I couldn't put it down!" Well, that really is, for me, the perfect response from a reader. I want my readers to be moved, I want them to be challenged, but also, I want them to be very entertained along the way.

I am not sure I have ever thought about my novels as a progression other than the way I like to write very different novels each time out, so there is a natural progression in that sense that each novel has a different narrative strategy, a different sort of structure, and a very different sort of narrator.

With True Confections, I had the story and the substance of the novel very thoroughly planned without really having the narrative strategy in place. Alice actually came along after the Ziplinsky family and Zip's Candies were well mapped. In a way, I think what I am describing is that each of my novels has come into being with a left brain-right brain sort of dual energy being harnessed. I make a plan, I have all kinds of intentions and elements in mind, and that is all very governed and detailed. But then I deviate from the plan in intuitive leaps, with a purely associative and playful, imaginative engagement with the material. Out of that I can find myself developing completely new elements in a kind of organic way as I am writing. These pieces of the story feel both surprising and inevitable. I am always willing to be surprised by where the novel goes -- and by that I do not necessarily mean plot -- and I have never failed to be surprised by some imaginative alchemy that occurs during the writing.

Oh yes, I meant categorized by critics as humorous. Which leads to another questions, how do you deal with the way critics categorize your work? What is it like to get a brilliant review but you feel the critic was not reading the book you wrote?

It's frustrating to be praised but not understood. We all like praise, but maybe even more important to most of us is being understood, being really truly understood. But you can't let yourself be too reactive or too defined by reviews. Like most thoughtful writers, I would rather have a strong mixed review of high intelligence than an empty-headed rave. But even that rave feels good because you know it might win you a few more readers, and among those readers there might be someone who really gets it.

A negative review hurts (and I read my reviews) but it would very rarely make me regret the way I have written my novel. It's hard not to be defensive. It can feel as if someone has just said your wonderful child is ugly and stupid. But opinion is only what it is, one person's response to something you have spent much more time thinking about than she has. And it is important to remember that unless the critic has a personal agenda (in which case he or she shouldn't be reviewing your book in the first place) then the review is not personal -- your book is of you, but it is not you.

The biggest issue for me is that I don't want to be pigeon-holed as a writer. Each of my novels is very different, and that's always going to be the case. But critics and booksellers, and maybe some readers, too, like to slot writers into categories. I do think that every serious female novelist is pigeonholed in a certain way just because she is female. I know this is a tired subject, but it doesn't go away. I believe my novels would be read somewhat differently if I were not a woman. If I were a man, I believe that there would be more obvious comparisons to certain male writers in reviews of my novels. And I believe male critics would more often read and consider my work.

I’m fascinated that you are able to be working on so many different projects at once. How do you juggle all of this and what’s up next—and why?

I feel a bit overwhelmed by the various projects I am juggling these days, in fact. I am working on a screenplay revision of my own adaptation of The Music Lesson, which is now on its third option, with a dynamic young director who has made an award-winning short dramatic film of a short story of mine. And I am working with a creative team to revive the hit 1930 Broadway show Fine and Dandy, the score for which was written by my grandmother Kay Swift, whose musical legacy my husband and I manage. And I am on staff at Star in the Arizona desert at least once a year. There are just not enough hours in the day or days in the week or weeks in the month or months in the year.

What's up next is a nonfiction consideration of family stories, memory, and the impulse to create narrative. It is manifestly a memoir, with the title Symptoms of Fiction, but it is also very much about telling stories in a family, how we are shaped by those stories, and how we tell our own story to ourselves and others. I have contributed several essays to collections over the years that touch on key aspects of my story, and finally it felt that the time was ripe to put this kind of writing front and center. But I have three novels in my head that will come after that's done, I hope in the middle of this year, and as much as I am loving writing this memoir, I really look forward to returning to fiction.

Yes, I'm really working when I'm writing

Picture this scene. I’m in my twenties, deep in the middle of my very first novel, working at home, not answering the phone or emails or instant messages, when the doorbell rings. I’m wired, excited and nauseous, all at the same time, because I’ve been working so hard and I feel so completely over my head. I go to answer the door, thinking it might be a FedEx package I’m expecting. Instead, it’s a relative. She’s been out shopping and decided to take a break. “Thought I’d drop by!” she says, and I blink at her. “I’m thrilled to see you, but I’m working, “ I explain. I glance at my watch, not wanting to be rude, doing some quick, desperate math. “Can I meet you for lunch? In about an hour? I’d love to see you then.”

She looks at me askance. She points out my mug of tea and the muffin by my desk, the music that’s on. “Working?” she looks around the house. “You’re at home writing! You’re not working!”

I try to explain that I’m on deadline, that while I’d love to see her, I really have to push on with my work. She shakes her head and then she notices my misery. “Oh honey, I get it,” she says. “It’s like when I’m in the middle of watching my soap operas. I don’t like to be interrupted either.”

Sigh. This year, I would so dearly love for people to understand better what it is that writers really do, what our life really is like. I’ve taught high school where my students all thought writers had beach houses and lots of lovers. I’ve been approached at parties by people who have a great idea for a book and they are going to jot it down on weekends because unlike me, “they have to work for a living.” And of course, I’ve had people tell me, casually, that as soon as they have enough money in the bank, they’re going to write that book they’ve always had in them because what could be more lovely than sitting around making up things? “That’s the easy life,” someone told me. “It’s so glamorous.”

Sigh again.

As a writer, I work every day. If I take a two-hour lunch, I’m still working, because some part of me is still thinking about my novel. It may look like I have the life of Reilly, sitting in my cozy office, music blasting, at my computer. It may look as if I’m asleep because I’m not moving, I haven’t typed in hours, but what is going on might be the exquisite agony of trying to figure out my story, trying to give my characters some breath so they come alive on the page. I may seem placid, but I’m eating myself up with worry, self-doubt and questions. Is the work any good? Will it sell? Even it does sell, will people buy it and read it? And will I ever write another book after this one? And what freelance work do I have to take on so I can help pay our bills and continue to write?

You may think I’m lucky not to have a boss telling me what to do, but I still work with people—my agent and my editor and the other writers who read my work and tear it apart for me so I can put it together in the right way, and the criticism is often brutal, which it has to be, in order for me to get better. In a sense, I work with readers, too. We writers work really, really hard, for endless hours, sometimes for years on a single project without ever knowing if it is going to be a success. And because I don’t have paid health benefits (my husband is also a writer and editor), we have to deal with paying for our own health insurance, which as any freelancer knows, is the cost of a small country.

If you really want to be a writer, I’m delighted! I’m willing to help you with support and encouragement. I’ll show you the ropes and be a willing listening and your biggest champion. I’d absolutely love to have you as company. But please, don’t think of my profession as an easy retirement dream or the way to get rich and famous. We writers don’t go into this for those reasons, and besides, we’re acutely aware of how few do get those perks. We write because we have to.

So, the next time you see a writer at a café or at a party, instead of imagining the beach houses and the fame, imagine how little we often work for, imagine the long hours and the punishing self-doubt, and the toughness of our work. And then imagine how much we love it. How we do it not for any of the reasons you might think, but because we have to. Because it’s who we are.

Ten questions never to ask a writer

From Lauren B. Davis, posted by novelist Mameve Medwed on Shewrites.com. I could not have said this better!

Process

I've spent six hours today writing my new novel, and the story seems stubbornly out of my reach, and the three decent lines I wrote today prove it. Sometimes, I think you need to take a leap of faith, to just desperately hang onto the character's coattails and let them take you deeper into the story, but it isn't always easy to be patient, to wait for the reveals. I teach writing and I edit manuscripts privately, and it's always thrilling for me to see my students' or my clients' work, suddenly make a quantum leap and get richer and fuller and more alive. (Why I seem to know how to help them and not myself some days is another story!) I see their struggle firsthand, and in many ways, being a part of that has helped me be more patient with myself. In many ways, it's like a whisper: if they can do it, so can you.

Read this Book: Alice I Have Been

Who isn't in love with the story of Alice in Wonderland? In Alice I have Been, Melanie Benjamin creates a hypnotic portrait of the real Alice and her tangled relationship with Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), who immortalized her in his books. I'm thrilled to have Melanie here to answer questions about her novel.

Charles Dodgson photographed other little girls, but what was it about Alice in particular that haunted him so? Was it that she knew her power, and if so, what evidence is there that she did (other than the intense photographs you include in the book?

The only conclusion that I could come to, based on the knowing expression in her eyes in that photograph, is that she did understand her power over him. Obviously, as well, she later asked him to write down "her" story that he first told her and her sisters on that summer afternoon; the story of a little girl named Alice who tumbled down a rabbit hole. Dodgson would go on to photograph other little girls and call them his "child friends," but Alice was the only one who inspired both a photograph and a book. That speaks volumes to me.

I couldn’t help but feel a nod to Roman Polanski, another artist who had a fondness for young girls, the difference, of course, being that Polanski was a predator who drugged and raped a young girl, while Dodgson seemed to just take photos. Recently, though, a letter was found from Dodgson that hinted of his being a pedophile (he admitted liking little girls better than boys.) Is it known if he ever acted on his feelings?|

I can't compare the two at all; there's absolutely no similarity. The letter you speak of wasn't known when I was researching ALICE, but having done a quick check, it seems to me it's quite cryptic, hasn't been authenticated, and doesn't at all add to the discussion of Dodgson's relationship with Alice. You have to remember it was a different time; Victorians dearly loved to discuss romance but acting upon it was often quite another matter; and Dodgson, like all of the dons at Oxford, took vows of celibacy as he was expected to be a member of the clergy, as well. While we will never know for sure, I find it difficult to believe he was very physical. He clearly struggled with conflicting thoughts and emotions - this is obvious in his diaries - but beyond that, we'll never know for sure.

What’s interesting to me, too, is how sympathetic Dodgson is in the book. We understand and feel for him, even though we know something is clearly off. Although his interest in her is peculiar (and John Ruskin’s is truly creepy), instead of taking her innocence, Dodgson actually gave her a great gift, immortalizing her in Wonderland, so in a way, she would not ever grow old. I’m wondering, what do you think would change with the public’s appreciation of Wonderland if it were discovered that Dodgson did indeed molest Alice? Or do you think it is easy to separate a great artist from not-so-great actions?

To me the relationship between Dodgson and Alice is truly complex, as most relationships are. I think they were two very lonely people who found each other at a particular time and what resulted because of this was both beautiful - it gave the world Wonderland, after all - and tragic, in that they were both forever changed and in some ways, denied happiness, because of their early devotion. I was never interested in portraying Dodgson as simply a predator and Alice as simply a victim; the truth is always more complex than that. The truth is we never know everything about those who give us beloved art, literature, music, etc., no matter what we might think. Yet we still enjoy the gifts they have given, all the same.

The great Victorian art critic John Ruskin figures prominently in the book. I remember reading inParallel Lives about his thwarted marriage to Effie (according to that book, seeing her naked so horrified him that he could not consummate his marriage.) What do you think it was about Victorian England that made so many of these literary figures (Jonathan Swift also had an aversion to grown women) appalled by adult females and so interested in little girls?

It's interesting, isn't it? That two men who never seemed to have healthy relationships with adult females would both be captivated by Alice Liddell? I have to think that again, the Victorians so romanticized love and the role of women that for some, the physical reality was just too much to handle. Thus they found it easier to perhaps focus on younger girls who had not yet hit puberty, preferring to extend the fantasy of the pure, ethereal idea of love and romance rather than earthly, physical reality of it.

Your notes about the research were as fascinating as the book itself—primarily about the torn diary page from Dodgson the day the split between him and Alice occurred and a cryptic remark by Alice’s sister Ina, in the beginning of the novel, in a letter, intimating that Dodgson had grown too affectionate? Can you talk about the research process, about what surprised you and what you expected? And what do you think was on that missing diary page?

Since I was most interested in following Alice Liddell beyond Wonderland, through to the end of her long, fascinating life, I enjoyed seeing the world change through her eyes. I have always been interested in the Victorian era and beyond; my interest in history really begins there. Previous eras don't fascinate me as much. So I had a very good working knowledge of all the changes Alice herself faced; gaslights to electric lights; horse and buggy and train to the automobile and even airplane; corsets to bobbed hair. Researching all that was great fun. I also enjoyed learning about Oxford; I knew very little about it, its traditions, history, architecture. Naturally I researched Lewis Carroll's life, but remembered always that my book was Alice's story, so we could only know what Alice herself knew about him. As I said above, as I learned more about Alice Liddell herself, I was very surprised to see the other figures from history that she knew well as the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church; John Ruskin, the Prince of Wales, Prince Leopold. She truly lived in a privileged world.

Others have speculated about what the missing pages of the diary might say; there is one scholar who recently claimed to have found them, although this is disputed. What most interested me was merely the fact that, 150 years later, we still find the relationship between Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson so fascinating. And we will never have all the answers.

In the book, there’s a great scene where the real Alice meets the real Peter Pan, and while he hates the mantle, she is now able to embrace it, which is a monumentally poignant moment. Would you say that Alice’s growing up, becoming an adult, something Dodgson seemed unable to do, was her salvation?

Yes, definitely. That unflappable, wise little girl in the books was already a miniature adult. Or as I say in the book, "A man who fancied himself a child and a child who thought she was a woman turned to each other on a hot summer day, mindful of nothing, no one, but each other" - that, to me, sums up their relationship perfectly.

You mention the other Alice narratives, Dreamchild, a fabulous film and Katie Roiphes’ book Still She Haunts Me. How do you feel those works act as companion pieces to your book? Do you disagree with any of the material?

I've not seen the film. Initially I did not read the Roiphe book, not until long after I turned in Alice I have Been. I can't agree or disagree with it as it's fiction; obviously it's not the story I wanted to tell, the story I saw in the eyes of that little girl in the original photograph, or the story I saw in the eyes of the wonderful, wise old lady in the photograph of Alice taken near the end of her life. That was my Alice, and it was her entire life story I wanted to tell. The story of this remarkable little girl who grew up to be an equally remarkable old lady, and all the things she was denied yet all the ways in which she ultimately survived - and it all begins and ends with Wonderland.

The fine art of photography

For me, the thought of getting my book jacket photo taken was akin to root canal without anesthesia. It's been so difficult that I've had Jeff take shots and this year was planning on having Max take them, but when they did, the shots were grainy. They didn't look quite professional enough, so I bit the bullet and decided to hire someone. In the past, when she lived in NYC, I hired the fabulous Carol Seitz, but I needed someone in the area who was going to be great, sensitive and reasonable, and I wanted to feel comfortable.

I roamed around on line, looking at portfolios, and talked to a few people, but it wasn't until I saw Thaddeus Rombauer's page that I felt a kind of kinship. (By the way, that's not Thaddeus in the shot above. It's a shot he took.) What I loved was that he put emotion into his shots. You felt as if a story was somehow brewing behind the features. And in talking to him, I liked him even more.

The shoot was really easy, and really fun. And because I'm obsessed with creative process, I wanted to talk more to Thaddeus and ask him how he does it, what it means, all the etcs. So thank you, Thaddeus, for the gorgeous shots and for answering all my questions!

When and why did you decide to be a photographer?

It was the day I went to the Boston Museum with my Father to see the Herb Ritts exhibit - from that moment I knew what I wanted to do. I loved the connection he made with people through the use of his camera.

What I loved about the photos of yours was that you put a real emotional quality into your work, as if every photo really is telling a story. How do you do this? Is this conscious?

Photographing someone can be an extremely intimate process and in order to capture an image that I am proud of there needs to be that trust and honesty between us, to capture a true view of who they are in my eyes. Generally, I like to get to know my subject before shooting with them so their guard is down.

Besides book jackets, portraits and fashion shoots, You also photograph architecture. What kinds of things do you look for in shooting a space that you don't with a person?

I look for angles in everything, like in a person’s face; everything looks different depending on where you are standing. I quietly walk around the space and in my mind mark where the shot should be set up and taken. My photographs come from being in the moment and in a strange way letting the space speak to you.

Why do you think people hate to have their photograph taken and what do you do to make things easier?

I feel in general people hate to be judged and photographing someone can really put them on the spot. I find when you let the person know you are human too and have fault, they start to relax and enjoy the process. I put them at ease by telling them a story of my day or talk about something funny or personal in my life. I think this starts to allow us to build a trust in one another and results in better images.

Do you believe that some people really are not just photogenic? Can anyone be made to look better through retouching?

I don’t believe everyone is photogenic; I do feel every person has an interesting face since people are so different. Each time I photograph someone new it’s like learning a language – you might know its foundation and structure – but having a conversation and getting what you want out of it is entirely different. Frankly, I feel photographing just photogenic people is boring – I like different and unusual faces, ones that tell you everything without even a word.

Thaddeus's work can be see here:
Thaddeus Rombauer Photography
www.thaddeusrombauer.com

Learning to live with discomfort

Ah, here it is again. 2000 words today and I feel as if I've lost control of my novel. I have no idea anymore what it is I want to say and it feels derivative, as if I am rewriting Pictures of You. The plot seems a shambles and there seems way too much work to do and not enough time to do it. What kind of a novel is this? Why doesn't it get easier with each new book?

I've written about this life-saving John Irving quote before (and no matter what you think of Irving, you'll love the quote, I bet). He says if you don't feel you are on the edge of humiliating yourself, if you don't feel you've lost control, then you aren't digging deep enough. You aren't putting enough blood on the page. You aren't risking enough, and if you aren't risking, why write? Somehow this quote is something I cling to. It gives me permission to make a mess, to write pages that I know I will throw out, to risk failure before I find any success.

For me, too, what I cling to is that one obsessive idea that began this novel--this one thing I have felt compelled to write about. I can't yet find the right shape for it, but in writing, I know I will. If I can just burrow down, write more, live with the anxiety, I know I can.

Happy 2010

Happy 2010.

Well, almost.

Instead of making resolutions, I think everyone should watch this remarkable trailer for Dani Shapiro's new memoir, DEVOTION (coming in Feb, along with a Question and Answer here on my blog.) Dani's book, about her search for spiritual meaning, is really everyone's search, and most appropriate right around now. What do we believe and why? How do we live and connect to others and to the universe around us? What really is our truth?

I carried this book around with me for days, unwilling to put it down, and often weeping as I read. Go watch the trailer, and get the book. Then let's talk.

Very merry

The holidays are always sort of strange to me. I'm Jewish, so we never celebrated Xmas, though Hanukkah was a very big deal growing up, complete with eight (count 'em! 8!) gifts. The first Christmas I really adored was my first year in Manhattan. My friend Beth, who lived across the hall, came to my tiny apartment and we made a sea bass with black bean sauce (I wasn't a full-out vegetarian then), which we promptly burned, then we went out all day to movies, crashed a party, and came back home and watched movies all night long. I loved it. My worst was also in New York City, when someone I had loved had died, and I was alone, and the city had emptied out of all my friends. Again, I turned to the movies, going until two in the morning, me and the other disenfranchised in the city! I would have kept going but I chose the wrong movie, a really tragic one, and I ended up crying in the theater, walking home at two, crying, and crying the rest of the night in my apartment.

These days, holidays are with my funny husband and funny son and if you think I don't count my blessings about how lucky I am every second, you'd be wrong. We've been seeing movies, hanging out, going to a movie in about two hours, and hanging out some more. And tomorrow, we go to Boston to see my mother and Jeff's cousin and his family.

I haven't written as much as I have wanted to, but I'm thinking, thinking, thinking, and I'm gearing up for 2010. I have a novel coming out in August, I just finished a script, I'm writing another novel. There's this feeling that anything could happen.

Sort of like when you think you see reindeer in the sky.

Magic, anyone? Maybe the trick is to make your own magic, and then spread it around.

Happy end of 2009 everyone.

Fighting fear

Writing a new novel is an often hallucinatory process. It always starts out, for me, anyway, with a bang. I have an obsession, an image in my head of something pulling me forward. The first chapter nearly always writes itself, and it's a good thing, too, because the rest of the chapters are always terrifically tough to get out on paper, and in the months and years that follow, that first chapter is the thing I cling to, the reason why I can't just toss everything in the wastebasket and think about going to dental school instead.

By mid first draft, which is where I am now, fear sets in. Is this good enough? Am I good enough? Is there really a story here and has it not been done before? Is it uniquely mine? I spend a lot of time trying to not listen to my fears, but of late, I've been listening, nodding my head the way you might at an uncle who's telling you the same old tiresome story, and then going ahead and keeping at it.

All writers really have, like any of us in life, is the moment. I try to focus on that moment--on creating--rather than fears about whether the book will get published, whether anyone will read it, whether I've failed. In the end, I can't control any of it, but I can dig deeper into the work and tell the story I want and need to tell.