Wow, I am so impressed! As a long-time theater-goer I would never have guessed that your exposure was so limited. Your depiction of Mona and your in-depth understanding of her roles felt spot on.
John Barton was definitely some kind of inspiration for Milton, particularly when I thought about how Milton liked his Shakespeareâthe preference for âcoolâ over âhotâ Shakespeare, the way he thought that every line, every word, every syllable mattered, and conveyed some kind of meaning. But John Barton (at least as far as I knew him from the Playing Shakespeare series) was a more sedate and avuncular figure that the Milton I had in my head. I imagined Milton as someone who had perhaps been quite sexy and dynamic in his youth, and continued to act in the same way as he aged, someone who perhaps found himself (as do we all) a little out of his place and time. I donât have that vibe from John Barton. I read a lot of books about directors and was fascinated by themâa lot of Joe Papp went into Milton, and some Peter Hall, and some Peter Brook, and a dash of Tyrone Guthrie, and others also.
My wife works for the United Nations, and Iâve followed her around the world now for almost twenty years. It would have been very hard, almost impossible, for me to have lived in Haiti had she not had a job there. I did the research for Mona Acts Out when she was assigned to a New York duty station for a couple of years, and for the same reason weâre living now in Istanbul. (I lived in Thailand before I met her, but I did write Fieldwork while we were living together in the early years of our relationship.)
Every novel is, I think, autobiographical, but itâs always life distorted in a fun-house mirror. Very rarely are literal elements of the authorâs life included in a novelâthey tend to feel false. And yet the made-up stuff will often feel to a writer like itâs drawn directly from lived experience, even though in a strictly technical sense there was no analogous moment in the authorâs life. Itâs the emotions that you try and capture that might be true.
Thank you! But thatâs what actors do every day, isnât it? To provoke the suspension of disbelief? The truth is that my knowledge of Shakespeare, or theater, or, to take examples from my earlier novels, of life as an anthropologist or a missionary is very thin. Itâs a veneer: I know just enough to convince my readers that I (or the narrator) know much more. Readers need just enough to believe that the characters (who are experts) are moving through a real world, with just enough real-world detail that the imaginary project becomes credible.
Were you already living in Thailand when you decided to write a novel, or did you move to Thailand with the intent of writing there? And what was it like learning Fieldwork had been nominated for the National Book Award?
Are you currently working on another novel, and if so, can you tell us a little bit about it?
Hi Kim! I think this might be our last questionâour session ends tyoday, no? Iâd like to thank you and any readers who followed for your collective curiosity and attention.
I generally prefer not to discuss work in progressâor, in this case, hypothetical future work in progress. I find it jinxes the writing to think too much about it. (I tend to spend a lot of my time actively avoiding thinking about writing, which is a subject that makes me anxious and unhappy.) Writing is a little like putting a dinner party with your boss and his family on the calendar and forgetting about it. At seven thirty on Friday evening, just as youâre cozy on the couch watching Seinfeld reruns, the doorbell rings and youâre forced to confront a kitchen in which the only edible ingredients are a half-open jar of olives, some capers, a little cheese thatâs kind of moldy, and three tortillas. Sometimes those kind of dinner parties work out all right, but most of the time itâs pretty stressful. It doesnât do to overthink these things: the anxiety just makes it harder to find a solution.
Thanks again to everyone at BookBrowse!
Thanks so much for stopping by, Mischa! Itâs been a real pleasure chatting with you. Best of luck on your next book!