Le romancier acclamé par la critique parle de sa vie et de son œuvre
Par Khatchig Mouradian
Traduction Louise Kiffer
Chris Bohjalian, acclamé par la critique, est l'auteur de 11 romans, dont plusieurs sont devenus des bestsellers du New York Times. Ses romans s'intitulent "Midwives" (Sage-femmes) - une sélection de Publishers Weekly Best Book, et une sélection de Oprah Book Club: "Before you know Kindness"Et "The Double Bind". Ses ouvrages ont été traduits en 20 langues. Bohjalian est diplômé du Armherst College, et habite à Vermont, avec son épouse et sa fille.Les articles de Bohjalian sont parus dans Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest et "The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine"Il est journaliste pour Gannett's Burlington Free Press depuis 1992.
Dans cette interview, menée au début du mois, Bohjalian parle de ses romans et de ses articles, ainsi que de ses passions et de ses souvenirs.
* * *
Khatchig Mouradian – Vous avez déménagé au Vermont, de New York après une épreuve désagréable avec un taxi. En quoi Chris Bohjalian, romancier de New York serait-il différent du romancier de Vermont en termes d'inspiration et de problèmes que vous soulevez dans vos romans ?
Chris Bohjalian – Les romanciers parlent d'un certain nombre de sujets angoissants sur la façon dont ils ont trouvé leur voix. La réalité, cependant, est que j'ai trouvé la mienne dans le Vermont. Le Vermont est un microcosme fascinant pour des questions qui relèvent de partout – l'environnement contre le développement, la médecine alternative et la traditionnelle, tout le bagage que nous amenons sur l'orientation sexuelle, et c'est si petit qu'il est possible d'animer ces problèmes à une échelle humaine, reconnaissable et profondément accessible. Par exemple, je n'aurais jamais écrit un livre sur le lieu de naissance littéral et métaphorique dans notre culture (Midwives), si j'étais resté à Manhattan. Après tout, la maison natale ne fait pas partie du dialogue. Je n'aurais pas non plus écrit un roman vaguement écologique comme Water Witches – et il est intéressant de remarquer que j'ai écrit ce roman en 1993 (il a été publié en 1995) des années avant que nous soyons préoccupés par le changement du climat mondial tel que nous le sommes maintenant. Ce n'est pas que je sois particulièrement prescient, mais en quelque sorte le Vermont l'est.
Même un roman tel que "The Double Bind" qui explore des thèmes que je n'aurais probablement pas abordés à New York – y compris naturellement la maladie mentale, et les sans abris – a trouvé son information dans le Vermont. Il était facile de faire des recherches sur le sujet à l'hôpital psychiatrique d'Etat, et dans l'un des établissements correctionnels, de même que pour trouver des thérapeutes et des assistants sociaux capables de m'aider, puisque nous sommes si peu nombreux. Un appel téléphonique ça et là, et je pouvais obtenir les interviews nécessaires.
Pourtant, j'aime New York. J'y retourne souvent, et la moitié de "Before you Know Kindness" s'est fait là-bas. Mais je pense que j'ai trouvé au Vermont des sujets plus aptes à renforcer mon style.
K.M. – Comment avez-vous décidé des sujets à traiter dans vos romans ? Dites voir comment vous procédez quand vous écrivez un roman.
C.B. L'inspiration provient invariablement de ma vie personnelle. Quelqu'un que j'ai rencontré, ou quelque chose dont j'ai entendu parler, ou que j'ai vu.
"The Double Bind" peut en être un bon exemple. Le roman a pris naissance en décembre 2003, quand Rita Markley, la directrice administrative du logement des sans abris, a partagé avec moi un box de vieilles photos. Les images en noir et blanc avaient été prises par un photographe qui avait été sans abri et qui était mort dans l'appartement de l'immeuble que son organisation avait trouvé pour lui. Il s'appelait Bob "Soupy" Campbell.
Les photos étaient remarquables, à la fois grâce au talent manifeste de Campbell, et à cause du sujet. J'ai reconnu les artistes – musiciens, comédiens, acteurs – et les rédacteurs sur la plupart d'entre elles.
J'écris un article hebdomadaire pour le "Burlington free Press" qui explique pourquoi Rita voulait que je voie les photos. Elle pensait que cela pourrait faire une histoire intéressante et elle avait tout à fait raison. J'ai écrit à propos de Campbell en décembre 2003, faisant des recherches sur sa vie et ses réalisations, et les raisons pour lesquelles il s'était retrouvé sans abri, et à ce jour, c'est resté les textes favoris que j'ai écrits pour ce journal. J'avais rendu célèbres les talents de Campbell (qui étaient nombreux) et j'avais rappelé aux lecteurs la ligne très fine qui sépare tant de nous de ceux qui deviennent sans abris. Mais ensuite, j'ai jugé que j'avais épuisé le sujet.
Six mois plus tard, en juin 2004, j'ai relu "The Great Gatsby" (Gatsby le Magnifique). J'adore ce roman. Peu d'écrivains ont ciselé des phrases si constamment lumineuses que Fitzerald ou compris la classe et la culture, et le profond désir également.
Ensuite, j'ai été faire une promenade en vélo sur une vilaine route profonde sous une canopée dans les bois. Ma femme avait entendu une histoire à la radio ce jour-là, que des parents avaient dit ceci à leurs enfants: si quelqu'un essayait de les enlever alors qu'ils étaient en train de rouler sur leur vélo, ils devraient se cramponner à leur guidon de toutes leurs forces. Il est plus difficile d'enlever quelqu'un et de le jeter à l'arrière d'une voiture ou d'une camionnette, s'il est fermement attaché à son vélo. La géométrie ne fonctionne pas.
Comme je roulais, je me suis mis à penser à Bob Campbell pour la première fois depuis des mois, et je pensais à lui relativement à Gatsby le magnifique. Pourquoi ? Peut-être parce que nous voyons toujours Gatsby le magnifique à travers la brume des photos en noir et blanc – le medium de Campbell. Et, naturellement, Gatsby le Magnifique est un roman de l'époque du jazz – or Campbell avait photographié de nombreux musiciens de jazz.
Et ainsi l'idée du "Double Bind" (double lien) s'est formée dans mon esprit, sur cette vilaine route. Je savais précisément comment un livre allait commencer, et pour la première fois de ma vie - je savais précisément comment il allait finir.
Bien sûr, cela voulait dire que je connaissais le A et le Z, mais pas les 24 lettres entre les deux. Cela voulait dire que j'avais une série de problèmes différents à résoudre. J'écrivis quatre brouillons avant même de pouvoir commencer à en publier un sérieusement. Un projet Henry-James-ian à la troisième personne; puis un projet à la première personne raconté par Laurel Estabrook (le personnage principal); ensuite un projet avec plusieurs narrateurs à la première personne; et finalement un projet subjectif à la troisième personne – moins froid et omniscient que la version initiale. Le brouillon a marché dans des chemins que le premier n'avait pas pris. C'est seulement là que j'ai commencé à perfectionner et à resserrer le roman.
K.M. – Les femmes figurent éminemment dans plusieurs de vos romans. Parlez-nous du défi d'écrire un roman comme "Sage-Femme" ou "The Double Bind " où fouiller dans le psychisme des comportements est la clé.
C.B. –J'aurais souhaité avoir eu un procédé spécifique mais je ne trouve pas qu'écrire sur les femmes soit si différent qu'écrire sur les hommes. Dans chacun des cas, c'est un acte d'imagination. Comment une personne va-t-elle réagir à un événement ou à un moment spécifique ? Qu'est-ce qu'un individu va éprouver ou penser ? Qu'est-ce que les gens voient ou entendent ?
Au cours des dix dernières années, j'ai écrit des romans ou décrit des scènes dans des romans en partant du point de vue (entre autres) d'une sage-femme, d'une lesbienne transsexuelle, d'une vigoureuse citoyenne âgée, d'un enfant américano-africain placé dans une famille d'accueil, une fillette de dix ans, une aristocrate prussienne de 18 ans en 1945, un jeune homme juif d'Allemagne qui avait sauté d'un train à destination d'un camp de la mort en 1943, et une variété d'hommes d'âge moyen à demi chauves. J'ai vraiment trouvé cette dernière catégorie – les hommes d'âge moyen à demi chauves comme moi, la moins intéressante.
K.M. – Parlez-nous de votre prochain roman Skeletons at the Feast (Squelettes à la fête)
C.B.- Ce roman est un départ – et c'est, au point de vue création – la chose la plus satisfaisante que j'ai faite dans ma vie (cela ne veut pas dire que c'est plutôt bien, ou que j'ai fait quelque chose de juste – c'est seulement que cela a été un combat et que c'était réconfortant).
En 1999, le père d'une petite fille de la classe du jardin d'enfant de ma fille m'a demandé si je voulais lire le journal inédit que sa grand'mère lui avait laissé. Sa mère venait de le traduire de l'allemand en anglais, et l'avait tapé à la machine. Nous étions de bons amis, je fus donc heureux d'y jeter un coup d'œil.
Le journal racontait en détails la vie de cette femme dans une propriété massive et une ferme dans la Prusse orientale, et il y avait un tas de choses qui me fascinaient – principalement les déplacements désespérés des femmes au cours des derniers mois de la seconde guerre mondiale pour atteindre les lignes britanniques et américaines avant l'arrivée de l'armée soviétique. Je l'ai proposé à plusieurs éditeurs, mais aucun n'était preneur.
Des années plus tard, en 2005, j'ai lu "Armageddon" de Max Hastings son compte-rendu non romanesque de la dernière année de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale en Allemagne, et je suis tombé sur des références à des scènes qui m'étaient familières. Puis je me suis rendu compte que j'avais lu ces mêmes faits dans ce journal six ans auparavant. J'ai demandé à mon ami si je pouvais le relire. Quand je l'ai revu, j'ai décidé que je voulais écrire un roman situé dans cette période, et c'est ainsi que j'ai commencé une partie de la recherche la plus intense (et l'écriture) de ma carrière professionnelle.
Skeletons at the Feast est un roman d'amour, un triangle d'amour, en fait qui se passe en Pologne et en Allemagne dans les six derniers mois de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale.
Les personnages ? Il y a Anna Emmerich, 18 ans, une fille d'aristocrates prussiens qui étaient à l'origine satisfaits quand leur propriété massive redevint allemande en 1939, mais qui découvrirent au cours des cinq années suivantes ce que signifiait réellement pour la gestion nazie leur district rural.
Il y a son amoureux, Callum Finella, un prisonnier de guerre de 20 ans, qui a été détaché du stalag dans sa ferme familiale comme travailleur forcé. Et il y a un caporal de la Wehrmacht de 26 ans, que les deux autres connaissent sous le nom de Manfred – mais qui est en réalité un chanteur, un Juif allemand qui s'est débrouillé pour oser s'échapper d'un train à destination d'Auschwitz, et qui a depuis lors saboté l'effort de guerre nazi.
Le roman raconte la plus longue journée de leur vie. Leur essai de croiser les rescapés du troisième Reich, de Varsovie au Rhin s'il le faut, pour atteindre les lignes britanniques et américaines.
K.M.- Nous avons discuté du rôle que le Vermont a joué dans votre œuvre. Qu'en est-il du rôle que vos parents et votre famille élargie ont joué, et de celui que votre épouse et votre fille jouent maintenant ? Comment diffusent-elles votre œuvre ?
C.B.- Ma mère s'est éteinte en 1995. Et mes parents – mon père naturellement depuis 1995 – vivent à des milliers de kilomètres depuis 1988. Il est certain que mon père est fier de moi. Ma mère l'était jusqu'à sa mort. Mais je ne dirais pas qu'ils ont influencé ma décision de devenir écrivain. Ils aimaient et soutenaient, et lisaient tout ce qu'un enfant pouvait désirer de ses parents. Mais ils ne furent pas un facteur conscient de ce que je faisais ou des sujets que je choisissais pour mes romans.
Ma femme et ma fille, en revanche, on joué un rôle critique dans mon travail. Ma femme est une éditrice merveilleuse et patiente. Elle, et Shaye Areheart (mon éditeur à Random House) sont les deux premiers lecteurs de tout ce que j'écris. J'apprécie énormément le jugement de ma femme.
Et le fait d'être parent a considérablement changé ce que j'écris. Voyez les romans tels que "les Sages-Femmes" et "Before you know Kindness", et le "Buffalo Soldier". Etre parent a été très important pour eux. Ils n'existeraient pas si ne n'avais pas eu la chance d'avoir ma fille. Et la petite fille dans "The Law of Similars" ? Mais, c'est ma petite fille quand elle avait trois ou quatre ans.
K.M.- Parlez-nous de vos souvenirs de jeunesse qui vous plaisent le plus..
C.B. J'ai eu une enfance classique de banlieue des années 60-70. J'ai grandi dans différentes banlieues à problèmes juste à l'extérieur de New York City (avec un détour de trois ans à Miami, Fla). Quand j'ai lu "Le Chien noir du Destin" de Peter Balakian, j'ai perçu les échos de ma propre enfance.
Nous avons aussi beaucoup déménagé, cependant, et à une certaine période, j'ai été dans quatre écoles différentes en quatre ans. Et ainsi, bien que mon enfance ne fût pas mauvaise, elle ne rassembla pas autour de moi beaucoup d'amis une fois que j'eus terminé ma 6ème année. Le fait est que mes amis ont changé par nécessité presque chaque année, depuis la 7ème année.
Mes souvenirs favoris, dans le désordre, sont:
Jouer au baseball dans la Little League de Stamford, Conn.;
Lire pour la première fois Johnny Tremain et " To Kill a Mocking Bird" et "April Morning".
Rendre visite à mes grands-parents à Tuckhahoe, N.Y. et écouter Léo Bohjalian – mon grand-père jouer du oud, après avoir perdu sa femme dans une piscine. Je peux encore sentir les beureks de ma grand'mère.
Organiser des cartes de baseball dans mon salon avant les orages;
Voler partout dans des aéroplanes
Etre follement effrayé par les films suivants: "The Birds (Les oiseaux) "The Haunting" et "Psycho".
K.M. – Vous avez écrit des articles pour Burlington Free Press depuis environ 17 ans maintenant. Parlez-nous de cette expérience.
C.B. J'aime bien écrire des articles, sinon je ne le ferais pas. J'écris habituellement à la fin de la semaine, et c'est un charmant répit de mon roman, qui peut être parfois sombre. Cela ne veut pas dire que je n'aborde pas des sujets graves dans mes colonnes à l'occasion. Je le fais. J'ai écrit par exemple, sur la mort de ma mère, sur le changement du climat dans le monde, et sur la guerre en Irak. Mais généralement, c'est une occasion d'explorer quelque chose de personnel, ou quelque chose qui me fait sourire.
Et alors que les gens me disent que ça doit être stressant de rédiger un article chaque semaine, ça ne l'est pas vraiment. C'est beaucoup moins stressant qu'un roman. Le secret ? J'essaie de ne jamais perdre de vue le fait que quelques heures après la parution de l'article le dimanche matin, il aide soit à allumer le feu dans le poêle à bois soit à être étalé sous la litière du chat.
http://www.armenweb.org/espaces/louise/reportages/chris-bohjalian.html
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
An Interview with Chris Bohjalian
Critically Acclaimed Novelist Talks about His Life and Work
By Khatchig Mouradian
The Armeian Weekly
December 22-29, 2007
Chris Bohjalian is the critically acclaimed author of 11 novels, several of which have become New York Times bestsellers. His novels include Midwives (a Publishers Weekly Best Book and an Oprah’s Book Club selection), Before You Know Kindness and The Double Bind. His work has been translated to 20 languages. Bohjalian graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.
Bohjalian’s articles have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Reader’s Digest and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. He has been a columnist for Gannett’s Burlington Free Press since 1992.
In this interview, conducted earlier this month, Bohjalian talks about his novels and columns, as well as passions and memories.
* * *
Khatchig Mouradian—You moved to Vermont from New York after an unpleasant experience involving a taxi. How would Chris Bohjalian the novelist in New York have been different from Chris Bohjalian the novelist in Vermont in terms of inspiration and issues you raise in your novels?
Chris Bohjalian—Novelists talk with an agonizing amount of hubris about how they found their voice. The reality, however, is that I did indeed find mine in Vermont. Vermont is a fascinating microcosm for issues that have relevance everywhere—the environment vs. development, alternative vs. traditional medicine, all the baggage that we bring to gender and sexual orientation—and it is so small that it is possible to bring these issues to life on a scale that is human, recognizable and profoundly accessible. For instance, I would never have written a book about the literal and metaphoric place of birth in our culture (Midwives), if I had remained in Manhattan. After all, home birth isn’t a part of the dialogue. Nor would have I written a vaguely eco-novel such as Water Witches—and it’s interesting to note that I wrote that novel in 1993 (it was published in 1995), years before we were focused on global climate change the way we are now. It’s not that I am especially prescient —but in some ways Vermont is.
Even a novel such as The Double Bind, which explores themes that I would have been likely to come across in New York—including, of course, mental illness and homelessness—was informed by Vermont. It was easy to research the subject at the state psychiatric hospital and one of the correctional facilities, as well find therapists and social workers who were available to help me, because we are just so small. A phone call here and a phone call there, and I was able to line up the necessary interviews.
Now, I love New York. I get back there often, and half of Before You Know Kindness is set there. But I believe I have found subjects in Vermont that are more in keeping with my strengths as a stylist.
K.M.—How do you decide what issues to tackle in your novels? Talk about the process of writing a novel.
C.B.—Invariably the inspiration is something in my personal life: Someone I have met or something I have heard or something I have seen.
The Double Bind may be as good an example as any. The novel had its origins in December 2003, when Rita Markley, the executive director of Burlington’s homeless shelter, shared with me a box of old photographs. The black-and-white images had been taken by a once-homeless photographer who had died in the apartment building her organization had found for him. His name was Bob “Soupy” Campbell.
The photos were remarkable, both because of Campbell’s evident talent and because of the subject matter. I recognized the performers—musicians, comedians, actors—and newsmakers in many of them.
I write a weekly column for the “Burlington Free Press,” which was why Rita wanted me to see the photos. She thought they might make for an interesting story, and she was absolutely right: I wrote about Campbell in December 2003, researching his life and accomplishments and why he might have wound up homeless, and to this day it remains one of my favorite essays I’ve written for the paper. I had celebrated Campbell’s talents (which were extensive) and I had reminded people of the very fine line that separates so many of us from being homeless. But then I thought I was done with the subject.
Six months later, in June 2004, I reread The Great Gatsby. I love that novel. Few writers crafted sentences as consistently luminescent as Fitzgerald or understood class and culture and longing as well.
Then I went for a bike ride on a dirt road deep in a canopy of woods. My wife had heard a story on the radio that day that advised parents to tell their children the following: If someone ever tried to abduct them while they were riding their bikes, they should hold onto the handlebars for dear life. It’s more difficult to abduct someone and throw them into the back of a car or a van if they are firmly attached to their bike. The geometry just doesn’t work.
As I rode, I started thinking about Bob Campbell for the first time in months, and I was thinking about him in regard to The Great Gatsby. Why? Perhaps it’s because we always see The Great Gatsby through a haze of black and white photographs—Campbell’s medium. And, of course, The Great Gatsby is a jazz age novel—and Campbell photographed a lot of jazz musicians.
And so the idea for The Double Bind formed in my head on that dirt road. I knew precisely how a book would begin and—for the only time in my life—I knew precisely how it would end.
Of course, this also meant I know A and Z, but not the 24 letters in between. That meant I had a different set of problems to solve. I wrote four drafts before I could even begin to seriously edit it: A Henry James-ian third person draft; then a first person draft narrated by Laurel Estabrook (the main character); then a draft with multiple first person narrators; and, finally, a draft that was third person subjective—less cold and omniscient than that initial version. This draft worked in ways the earlier ones hadn’t. Only then was I able to start refining and tightening the novel.
K.M.—Women figure prominently in many of your novels. Talk about the challenge of writing a novel like Midwives or The Double Bind, where delving into the psyche of the characters is key.
C.B.—I wish I could say there was a specific process, but I don’t find writing about women that different from writing about men. In each case, it’s an act of imagination. How would a person respond to a specific event or moment? What is an individual experiencing or thinking? What are people seeing or hearing?
In the last decade, I have written novels or scenes within novels from the perspectives of (among others) a midwife, a transsexual lesbian, a vigorous female senior citizen, an African-American foster child, a 10-year-old girl, an 18-year-old female Prussian aristocrat in 1945, a young Jewish man from Germany who has jumped off a train on the way to a death camp in 1943, and a variety of balding middle-aged men. I actually found this last category—the balding middle-aged men who are like me—the least interesting.
K.M.—Talk about your upcoming novel, Skeletons at the Feast.
C.B.—This novel is a departure—and it was creatively the most satisfying thing I have done in my life. (That doesn’t mean it’s any good or I got anything right—just that it was a struggle and it was rewarding.)
Back in 1999, the father of a girl in my daughter’s kindergarten class asked me if I would read an unpublished diary his grandmother had left behind. His mother had just translated it from German into English and typed it up. We’re good friends, and so I was happy to take a look at it.
The diary chronicled this woman’s life on a massive estate and farm in East Prussia, and there was a lot in it that fascinated me—especially the desperate journey the women made in the last months of the Second World War to reach the British and American liners ahead of the Soviet army. I shared it with some editors, but there weren’t any takers.
Years later, in 2005, I read Max Hastings’ Armageddon, his non-fiction account of the last year of the Second World War in Germany, and I kept coming across references to scenes that were familiar. And then I realized why: I had read of similar occurrences in that diary six years earlier. I asked my friend if I could see it again. When I reread it, I decided I wanted to write a novel set in the period, and thus began some of the most intense research (and writing) of my professional career.
Skeletons at the Feast is a love story—a love triangle, really, set in Poland and Germany in the last six months of World War Two.
The characters? There is 18-year-old Anna Emmerich, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats who were originally pleased when their massive estate once more became a part of Germany in 1939, but who discovered over the next five years what Nazi management really meant for their rural district.
There is her lover, Callum Finella, a 20-year-old prisoner-of-war who was brought from the stalag to her family’s farm as forced labor. And there is a 26-year-old Wehrmacht corporal who the pair know as Manfred—but who is, in reality, Uri Singer, a German Jew who managed a daring escape from a train bound for Auschwitz, and who has been sabotaging the Nazi war effort ever since.
The novel chronicles the longest journey of their lives: Their attempt to cross the remnants of the Third Reich, from Warsaw to the Rhine if necessary, to reach the British and American lines.
K.M.—We discussed the role Vermont played in your work. What about the role your parents and extended family played, and the role your wife and daughter play now? How do they inform your work?
C.B.—My mother passed away in 1995. And my parents—my father, of course, since 1995— have lived thousands of miles away since 1988. Certainly my father is proud of me. My mother was until she died. But I wouldn’t say they were instrumental in my decision to become a writer. They were loving and supportive and literate —everything a child could want from parents. But they were not a conscious factor in what I do or the subjects I choose for my fiction.
My wife and my daughter, however, play critical roles in my work. My wife is a wondrous and patient editor: She, along with Shaye Areheart (my editor at Random House), are the first two readers of all that I pen. I value my wife’s judgment enormously.
And being a parent has monumentally changed what I write. Look at novels such as Midwives and Before You Know Kindness and The Buffalo Soldier. Being a parent was pivotal to them.
C.B.—I had a classically 1960s/1970s suburban childhood. I grew up in a variety of Cheever-esque dysfunctional suburbs just outside of New York City, (with a three-year detour to Miami, Fla.). When I read Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate, I saw echoes of my own childhood.
We also moved a lot, however, and in one period I went to four different schools in four years. And so while my childhood wasn’t bad, it didn’t revolve around great friends once I finished 6th grade. The fact is, my friends changed by necessity almost every year from 7th grade on.
My favorite memories, in no apparent order, are:
Playing Little League baseball in Stamford, Conn.;
Reading Johnny Tremain and To Kill a Mockingbird and April Morning for the first time;
Visiting my grandparents in Tuckahoe, N.Y., and listening to Leo Bohjalian—my grandfather—play the oud, after losing to his wife in pool. I can still smell my grandmother’s beregs;
Organizing baseball cards in my living room before thunderstorms;
Flying anywhere on airplanes;
Being scared silly by the following movies: “The Birds,” “The Haunting” and “Psycho.”
K.M.—You have been writing a column for Burlington Free Press for almost 17 years now. Talk about that experience.
C.B.—I enjoy writing the column. Otherwise, I wouldn’t do it. I usually write it at the end of the week, and it’s a nice respite from my fiction, which can be rather dark. That doesn’t mean that I don’t address serious issues in my column on occasion: I do. I have, for instance, written about the death of my mother, global climate change and the war in Iraq. But usually it’s an opportunity either to explore something personal or something that makes me smile.
And while people tell me that it must be a lot of pressure to turn out a column every single week, it really isn’t. It’s a lot less pressure than a novel. The secret? I try never to lose sight of the fact that a few hours after the column runs in the newspaper on Sunday morning, it is either helping to light a fire in a wood stove or lining the bottom of a cat’s litter box.
By Khatchig Mouradian
The Armeian Weekly
December 22-29, 2007
Chris Bohjalian is the critically acclaimed author of 11 novels, several of which have become New York Times bestsellers. His novels include Midwives (a Publishers Weekly Best Book and an Oprah’s Book Club selection), Before You Know Kindness and The Double Bind. His work has been translated to 20 languages. Bohjalian graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.
Bohjalian’s articles have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Reader’s Digest and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. He has been a columnist for Gannett’s Burlington Free Press since 1992.
In this interview, conducted earlier this month, Bohjalian talks about his novels and columns, as well as passions and memories.
* * *
Khatchig Mouradian—You moved to Vermont from New York after an unpleasant experience involving a taxi. How would Chris Bohjalian the novelist in New York have been different from Chris Bohjalian the novelist in Vermont in terms of inspiration and issues you raise in your novels?
Chris Bohjalian—Novelists talk with an agonizing amount of hubris about how they found their voice. The reality, however, is that I did indeed find mine in Vermont. Vermont is a fascinating microcosm for issues that have relevance everywhere—the environment vs. development, alternative vs. traditional medicine, all the baggage that we bring to gender and sexual orientation—and it is so small that it is possible to bring these issues to life on a scale that is human, recognizable and profoundly accessible. For instance, I would never have written a book about the literal and metaphoric place of birth in our culture (Midwives), if I had remained in Manhattan. After all, home birth isn’t a part of the dialogue. Nor would have I written a vaguely eco-novel such as Water Witches—and it’s interesting to note that I wrote that novel in 1993 (it was published in 1995), years before we were focused on global climate change the way we are now. It’s not that I am especially prescient —but in some ways Vermont is.
Even a novel such as The Double Bind, which explores themes that I would have been likely to come across in New York—including, of course, mental illness and homelessness—was informed by Vermont. It was easy to research the subject at the state psychiatric hospital and one of the correctional facilities, as well find therapists and social workers who were available to help me, because we are just so small. A phone call here and a phone call there, and I was able to line up the necessary interviews.
Now, I love New York. I get back there often, and half of Before You Know Kindness is set there. But I believe I have found subjects in Vermont that are more in keeping with my strengths as a stylist.
K.M.—How do you decide what issues to tackle in your novels? Talk about the process of writing a novel.
C.B.—Invariably the inspiration is something in my personal life: Someone I have met or something I have heard or something I have seen.
The Double Bind may be as good an example as any. The novel had its origins in December 2003, when Rita Markley, the executive director of Burlington’s homeless shelter, shared with me a box of old photographs. The black-and-white images had been taken by a once-homeless photographer who had died in the apartment building her organization had found for him. His name was Bob “Soupy” Campbell.
The photos were remarkable, both because of Campbell’s evident talent and because of the subject matter. I recognized the performers—musicians, comedians, actors—and newsmakers in many of them.
I write a weekly column for the “Burlington Free Press,” which was why Rita wanted me to see the photos. She thought they might make for an interesting story, and she was absolutely right: I wrote about Campbell in December 2003, researching his life and accomplishments and why he might have wound up homeless, and to this day it remains one of my favorite essays I’ve written for the paper. I had celebrated Campbell’s talents (which were extensive) and I had reminded people of the very fine line that separates so many of us from being homeless. But then I thought I was done with the subject.
Six months later, in June 2004, I reread The Great Gatsby. I love that novel. Few writers crafted sentences as consistently luminescent as Fitzgerald or understood class and culture and longing as well.
Then I went for a bike ride on a dirt road deep in a canopy of woods. My wife had heard a story on the radio that day that advised parents to tell their children the following: If someone ever tried to abduct them while they were riding their bikes, they should hold onto the handlebars for dear life. It’s more difficult to abduct someone and throw them into the back of a car or a van if they are firmly attached to their bike. The geometry just doesn’t work.
As I rode, I started thinking about Bob Campbell for the first time in months, and I was thinking about him in regard to The Great Gatsby. Why? Perhaps it’s because we always see The Great Gatsby through a haze of black and white photographs—Campbell’s medium. And, of course, The Great Gatsby is a jazz age novel—and Campbell photographed a lot of jazz musicians.
And so the idea for The Double Bind formed in my head on that dirt road. I knew precisely how a book would begin and—for the only time in my life—I knew precisely how it would end.
Of course, this also meant I know A and Z, but not the 24 letters in between. That meant I had a different set of problems to solve. I wrote four drafts before I could even begin to seriously edit it: A Henry James-ian third person draft; then a first person draft narrated by Laurel Estabrook (the main character); then a draft with multiple first person narrators; and, finally, a draft that was third person subjective—less cold and omniscient than that initial version. This draft worked in ways the earlier ones hadn’t. Only then was I able to start refining and tightening the novel.
K.M.—Women figure prominently in many of your novels. Talk about the challenge of writing a novel like Midwives or The Double Bind, where delving into the psyche of the characters is key.
C.B.—I wish I could say there was a specific process, but I don’t find writing about women that different from writing about men. In each case, it’s an act of imagination. How would a person respond to a specific event or moment? What is an individual experiencing or thinking? What are people seeing or hearing?
In the last decade, I have written novels or scenes within novels from the perspectives of (among others) a midwife, a transsexual lesbian, a vigorous female senior citizen, an African-American foster child, a 10-year-old girl, an 18-year-old female Prussian aristocrat in 1945, a young Jewish man from Germany who has jumped off a train on the way to a death camp in 1943, and a variety of balding middle-aged men. I actually found this last category—the balding middle-aged men who are like me—the least interesting.
K.M.—Talk about your upcoming novel, Skeletons at the Feast.
C.B.—This novel is a departure—and it was creatively the most satisfying thing I have done in my life. (That doesn’t mean it’s any good or I got anything right—just that it was a struggle and it was rewarding.)
Back in 1999, the father of a girl in my daughter’s kindergarten class asked me if I would read an unpublished diary his grandmother had left behind. His mother had just translated it from German into English and typed it up. We’re good friends, and so I was happy to take a look at it.
The diary chronicled this woman’s life on a massive estate and farm in East Prussia, and there was a lot in it that fascinated me—especially the desperate journey the women made in the last months of the Second World War to reach the British and American liners ahead of the Soviet army. I shared it with some editors, but there weren’t any takers.
Years later, in 2005, I read Max Hastings’ Armageddon, his non-fiction account of the last year of the Second World War in Germany, and I kept coming across references to scenes that were familiar. And then I realized why: I had read of similar occurrences in that diary six years earlier. I asked my friend if I could see it again. When I reread it, I decided I wanted to write a novel set in the period, and thus began some of the most intense research (and writing) of my professional career.
Skeletons at the Feast is a love story—a love triangle, really, set in Poland and Germany in the last six months of World War Two.
The characters? There is 18-year-old Anna Emmerich, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats who were originally pleased when their massive estate once more became a part of Germany in 1939, but who discovered over the next five years what Nazi management really meant for their rural district.
There is her lover, Callum Finella, a 20-year-old prisoner-of-war who was brought from the stalag to her family’s farm as forced labor. And there is a 26-year-old Wehrmacht corporal who the pair know as Manfred—but who is, in reality, Uri Singer, a German Jew who managed a daring escape from a train bound for Auschwitz, and who has been sabotaging the Nazi war effort ever since.
The novel chronicles the longest journey of their lives: Their attempt to cross the remnants of the Third Reich, from Warsaw to the Rhine if necessary, to reach the British and American lines.
K.M.—We discussed the role Vermont played in your work. What about the role your parents and extended family played, and the role your wife and daughter play now? How do they inform your work?
C.B.—My mother passed away in 1995. And my parents—my father, of course, since 1995— have lived thousands of miles away since 1988. Certainly my father is proud of me. My mother was until she died. But I wouldn’t say they were instrumental in my decision to become a writer. They were loving and supportive and literate —everything a child could want from parents. But they were not a conscious factor in what I do or the subjects I choose for my fiction.
My wife and my daughter, however, play critical roles in my work. My wife is a wondrous and patient editor: She, along with Shaye Areheart (my editor at Random House), are the first two readers of all that I pen. I value my wife’s judgment enormously.
And being a parent has monumentally changed what I write. Look at novels such as Midwives and Before You Know Kindness and The Buffalo Soldier. Being a parent was pivotal to them.
They wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t been blessed with my daughter. And the little girl in The Law of Similars? Well, that is my little girl at three and four.
K.M.—Talk about memories from your youth that you cherish most.
K.M.—Talk about memories from your youth that you cherish most.
C.B.—I had a classically 1960s/1970s suburban childhood. I grew up in a variety of Cheever-esque dysfunctional suburbs just outside of New York City, (with a three-year detour to Miami, Fla.). When I read Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate, I saw echoes of my own childhood.
We also moved a lot, however, and in one period I went to four different schools in four years. And so while my childhood wasn’t bad, it didn’t revolve around great friends once I finished 6th grade. The fact is, my friends changed by necessity almost every year from 7th grade on.
My favorite memories, in no apparent order, are:
Playing Little League baseball in Stamford, Conn.;
Reading Johnny Tremain and To Kill a Mockingbird and April Morning for the first time;
Visiting my grandparents in Tuckahoe, N.Y., and listening to Leo Bohjalian—my grandfather—play the oud, after losing to his wife in pool. I can still smell my grandmother’s beregs;
Organizing baseball cards in my living room before thunderstorms;
Flying anywhere on airplanes;
Being scared silly by the following movies: “The Birds,” “The Haunting” and “Psycho.”
K.M.—You have been writing a column for Burlington Free Press for almost 17 years now. Talk about that experience.
C.B.—I enjoy writing the column. Otherwise, I wouldn’t do it. I usually write it at the end of the week, and it’s a nice respite from my fiction, which can be rather dark. That doesn’t mean that I don’t address serious issues in my column on occasion: I do. I have, for instance, written about the death of my mother, global climate change and the war in Iraq. But usually it’s an opportunity either to explore something personal or something that makes me smile.
And while people tell me that it must be a lot of pressure to turn out a column every single week, it really isn’t. It’s a lot less pressure than a novel. The secret? I try never to lose sight of the fact that a few hours after the column runs in the newspaper on Sunday morning, it is either helping to light a fire in a wood stove or lining the bottom of a cat’s litter box.
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