Remarkably, Victory Square has ended up in the New York Times again this weekend, as part of their list of “Editor’s Choice” hardbacks, a list that features only 8 books, fiction and nonfiction, all (as far as I can tell) reviewed in the previous Sunday’s edition. Nice.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
I just got off the phone with Austin, Texas. Specifically, with Jeff Salamon, who was interviewing me for a feature in the Austin-American Statesman. It was my first phone-interview, and Jeff was great. He had all his questions lined up, very pro, and seemed like a great guy.
At one point, he mentioned that, in Victory Square, Gavra packs up his most valued records: “The Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, and Elton John.” Jeff asked which one Olen would be listening to. When I said, “The Velvet Underground, of course,” he enthusiastically agreed, and I knew we were on the same page.
But phone interviews are funny things. I’ve only done this by email before, and email is so precise. I have as much time as I like to answer in detail, check my facts, etc. But as soon as I hung up with Jeff, I kept thinking, “I should’ve said this, not that.” But it’s gone now. Jeff recorded the interview, and whatever I babbled is now for posterity (or at least whatever makes it to the paper).
One interesting thing is that (as Kevin Holtsberry is doing), Jeff read the books in order as he prepared for the interview. Because of that, he noticed repetitions that, in fact, I wasn’t even aware of. Generously, he didn’t mark them up to sloppy writing, but asked what I meant by repeating certain phrases from book to book. They were interesting catches, the kind that an astute reader would read something larger into, and I found myself floundering at moments.
Eventually, I explained that, on the book-a-year schedule, where I finish one book and immediately start another, it’s hard to get my head completely out of one and into the next. Unconscious repetitions, then, inevitably abound.
Does that mean that they mean nothing? (He didn’t ask this, but I sort of asked it myself, embarrassed.) Perhaps not. One of the pleasures of writing is discovering all the parallels and hidden motifs you never realized you were writing. Now that he’s pointed some of them out, I want to go back and read them myself, to find out if the parallel trajectories actually work. They might not…who knows?
Anyway, it was an excellent experience, and Jeff made it a pleasure. I’ll post here when the story goes up.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
(Image from the Mego Museum)
I was doing one of my annual self-searches on the web and came across a curious thing—a torrent with my name on it.
For those of you not versed in the ins and outs of video & music piracy, a torrent is just another way of sharing files, usually illegal ones, with the world at large.
Turns out some clever Swede saw the benefit in sharing the audiobook of Bekännelsen—the Swedish edition of The Confession. Hell, I didn’t even know there was a Swedish audiobook of mine out there! (I wonder if I was paid for it…)
Anyway, it’s kind of cool to know I’m out there alongside pornography, Radiohead albums and shaky-camera dubs of The Bourne Ultimatum, even if I’m not making a red cent off of it.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
This is a subject I’ve wanted to bring up over the last year, but never felt sure I had a grip on it. I still don’t, but since my recent posts have been primarily about the movement of my career, it seemed like I might as well get to it.
So, can writers just be people? What I mean is, can we just do our job and then go home and be free of the daily grind? Can we “turn off” and simply enjoy life with our family and friends?
It may seem like a strange question to ask, but in the last years I’ve become more aware that “turning off” is difficult to pull off for a variety of reasons. For one, the next book (whatever it happens to be) is always on my mind, even when I’m relaxing in front of the tube or am out at a party. I can still have normal conversations, mind, and from the outside it would be hard for anyone to know how distracted I am. But one basic truth is consistent: Normal events in life that should make me happy are always tempered by how well my writing is going. If it’s going poorly, excellent news has only a muted effect on my emotions. I think, “That’s great. I just wish my writing was going well too.”
It’s obsession, of course. I haven’t taken a “vacation” in years. That is, I’ve gone to some beautiful vacation spots, but the laptop is always with me, and in fact I tend to do more work when on vacation. It annoys my fellow vacationers no end.
But it’s not just a self-imposed thing. At parties I’m usually reminded (as if I could forget) that I’m a published novelist, simply because I’m the only one. I’m approached by people who want to discuss my books (amazing how many people want to point out their flaws at parties), or want advice on how to become a published novelist, or want me to read the 30 pages they hope will grow into a novel, or tell me the story of their as-yet unwritten opus, or simply want to learn every detail about my work days (which are, in all honesty, a bore).
So if my mood is dominated by my writing, and I’m never able to forget what I do for a living, then I wonder, in the end, if I’m really living.
Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong, and John Lennon had it right: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
But I do sometimes feel that this obsession is getting in the way of the living of life. That it distances me emotionally and time-wise from the things people do and refer to as “living”. I’m a slow enough writer that the entirety of each year is full of the act of writing. And because I’ve placed writing at the top of my priorities, it leave little or no time for the other things.
It wasn’t always so. One of the reasons the death of our dog, Bogi, was so hard to take was that (I realized afterward), caring for and playing with him was one of the only activities that took me completely out of my career. With him gone, I lost a large piece of the normal life I’d been leading, a piece that let me feel joy that was never limited by the constraints and disappointments of my job.
My friends do things like go skiing. They head out to Balaton Lake and run around in sailboats. My girlfriend cares for our garden; other friends find the time on vacation to get suntans and swim. As time passes, I start to think I’m missing out on something, holed away in front of my laptop in a completely solitary endeavor.
But the worst thing about this is extremely telling. My fear doesn’t ask “Is this kind of life bad for you, Olen?” Instead, it asks, “Will this kind of life be bad for your writing?” And if there was any sure sign that my life is firmly out of balance, this has to be it.
Do any of these fears strike a chord in others out there?
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
Stasio, that is. Turns out the New York Times has seen fit to run a review by the esteemed La Stasio in this coming Sunday’s Book Review, alongside James Lee Burke, Rupert Thomson, and Stef Penny. Does she like my little tome? It seems so, despite my tendency toward contrived plot devices (further evidence of how writers masochistically remember only the slights)!
VICTORY SQUARE marks the end to Olen Steinhauer’s grim but fascinating police procedurals set in an unnamed Soviet-bloc nation very much like Romania. Emil Brod, the thoughtful protagonist of this well-plotted series, has grown more fatalistic since we met him as an idealistic young cop in “The Bridge of Sighs,” but sliding into retirement isn’t an option in the charged political climate following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Not in 1989, when revolution is in the air and the lieutenant general of the Ministry for State Security has just been murdered. While it seems contrived to force a casual relationship between Brod’s first case and his last assignment as chief of the murder squad, Steinhauer doesn’t dwell entirely on the past. As Brod tries to go about normal business in a police state that’s about to collapse, currents of rebellion and pro-democracy fervor sizzle in the air, and this story catches all the danger and excitement of the historic moment.
Over at Betwixt, Robin has returned from a mid-journey rest from his trans-European journey in order to reflect on the Venice of His Breakdown, the Venice that becomes more authentic every day, the Venice of Las Vegas.
With the gun’s emergence we all hit the floor and made screaming noises. Then Mr. “X†made a run for the door – where outside there was an ugly Bermuda’d line waiting impatiently for access. At some point a large security guard hit him rather hard; Mr “X†went down as heavily as shortly would an Enron executive.
I’m crushed. A day after learning of Bergman’s death, Michaelangelo Antonioni, another great from that same period, has also departed.
You may have caught the news by now, but I’ve just found out that the great Swedish filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman, died today in his home on an island off the coast of Sweden. See:
The Guardian
The NYT, and the NYT’s book-blog, Paper Cuts
The Vancouver Sun
Kevin informs me that yesterday’s Telegraph ran my “My Kind of Town” piece, in which I answer a series of questions about Budapest for the potential visitor. Things like where and what to eat and drink, places and scams to avoid, and why to even bother going.
There’s something great about being mentioned in the same paragraph with an insanely successful author.
As the Harry Potter media frenzy begins to fade I want to focus on another great series that is coming to a close this year. Olen Steinhauer’s Eastern European Series will soon be complete with the release of Victory Square in August.
When I got the Victory Square ARC recently I was inspired to treat this series the same as the Potter series and re-read the previous books in anticipation of the final book. Luckily, Steinhauer writes crisp tight prose and none of the books run to 800 pages! So I am diving back into the world of post-war Communist Eastern Europe and looking forward to the climatic conclusion of this great series.
