LITERATURE

RANDALL KENNEDY, author, February 26, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Did you or your publisher pick the title of your book?
KENNEDY: I chose “Nigger” as the primary title of the book. The publisher had nothing to do with that. My editor and I went back and forth with respect for a subtitle. I ultimately determined that subtitle. Therefore the title for the book, for good or for bad, is my responsibility.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER novelist, April 14, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Do you have another book or writing project underway and, if so, how far along are you?
FOER: I’m working on another novel and getting farther from the end with each passing day. The hope is that it will come out next year.

ROBERT LITTELL, author, May 15, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: What are your retrospective thoughts regarding Aldrich Ames?
LITTELL: Listen, as long as there are intelligence organizations there will be moles/traitors. How about the FBI’s Hanssen who was just sentenced to life without parole? The interesting question is what motivates these guys. Money is one obvious answer. Hanssen said he couldn’t raise / educate his kids on his FBI salary and so decided to augment his salary. But I suspect that other things played a role once he got started. Adrenalin started to flow. His (perhaps) mundane dull life suddenly got very exciting. He got a thrill from pulling the wool over the eyes of the people he was working with…that kind of thing.

ETHELBERT MILLER, author, May 12, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: How much difference did you find between writing poetry and writing your memoirs? Did you find any greater difficulty writing one or the other? What obstacles did you find with each type of writing and how did you over come them?
MILLER: It was a major challenge. I started out writing very short poems back in the 1960s. Writing a short story or a novel was beyond me :-) I felt that writing my memoir (“Fathering Words”) was a gift from my father and brother who died back in the 1980s. I felt the book almost wrote itself. I made sure that I sat down and wrote everyday. That’s something I don’t do when writing poetry. I did read sections of the memoir aloud…I wanted it to read (and sound) like poetry.

JOYCE CAROL OATES, author, July 2, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: What was your childhood like? Do you see the affects of your upbringing in the characters you write?
OATES: I grew up on a farm in upstate New York, my parents were very concerned with keeping the farm going and my father had supplemented income by working in a factory. Neither of my parents was strong disciplinarian and when I look back upon those years I can see that they must have sacrificed a good deal of their youth to keep the family as prosperous as we were. (They were married very young and I was born when my mother was about 19). It was a different era then and life was generally harder, but in some ways easier.
Certainly I write out of my own experience and novels like “A Garden of Earthly Delights’ which was recently reprinted, I draw upon those memories quite directly.
CZIKOWSKY: Have you ever considered writing a screenplay? Decades ago, many great authors wrote some screenplays, yet some stated they found it more difficult to write a screenplay than a novel. Since then, there have been few novelists who have crossed over to writing screenplays. Have you ever been tempted to give it a try?
OATES: Most writers only write screenplays for money. It’s because the screenwriter has virtually no control over the material, a movie ultimately belongs to the director and producer. Your screenplay is purchased from you and can afterwards be altered or tossed away by the director. This is in contrast to the autonomy we have as writers of prose. Writing plays is different because no director or producer can change any line in a play without the permission of the playwright. The play is not purchased outright.

JHUMPA LAHIRI, Pulitzer Prize Fiction Winner, October 7, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: I look forward to reading your book. In reading the reviews, I am confused. Is your book about people caught between two cultures, or is it your intention to point out the similarities amongst cultures? Or perhaps your argument is both: despite our many differences, many similarities emerge. Or, maybe you do not have any such theme in mind. Did you intend to have any special commentary on cultural differences?
LAHIRI: My intention was to write a story about a family adapting to a life in a new world. As a result, I’m talking about the existence of difference cultures and how they intersect and sometimes don’t intersect. But I don’t have a specific commentary on cultures per se. I think that’s something a reader might bring to the work. But I think my work does highlight the value and significance of culture to individuals, and that is a universal feeling, that we all yearn to feel at home in the world.
CZIKOWSKY: What was your upbringing like and do you believe it had much of a factor in your learning the discipline to become a writer?
LAHIRI: My upbringing was essentially being raised by parents who came from one part of the world and who were learning to live in another part of the world. I have two influences all the time. I spoke two languages on a daily basis, I ate two kinds of food, I knew two parts of the world, in a way. I think one of the things that drew me to writing was the opportunity to create my own world. I felt someone inadequate in both my Indian side and my American side. I always felt I was coming up short somehow because I was not fully one thing. In writing, I felt I didn’t have to answer to anyone’s expectations other than my own.

CHARLES BAXTER, novelist, October 16, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: What are you currently working on? How far along are you? How much will you tell us about the plot or characters or even future ideas of your writings?
BAXTER: It’s interesting: I don’t have any idea of what my next book will be. I feel a bit wrung-out, like a washrag. I’ll have to daydream my way into my next project, whatever it will be. I’m editing a book on William Maxwell, but so far no new book has appeared on my imagination’s horizon.
CZIKOWSKY: Are you or have you ever been a bit of an insomniac? If not, how did you learn to write about insomnia so well?
BAXTER: I certainly was, and am. I suffer from the particular kind of insomnia that allows you to fall asleep but then causes you to wake up in the middle of the night, wide awake. I thought I would put it to use in “The Feast of Love”, and set up Charles Baxter as a sort of sleepless collector-of-stories. That entire book is haunted by moonlight, in any case. Insomnia seemed to fit its contours very nicely.

EDWARD P. JONES, National Book Award Nominee, October 30,2003
CZIKOWSKY: I realize your work is fiction. Yet, what research sources did you use in creating “The Known World”? To what degree did you strive for historical authenticity, and about how much is pure fiction?
JONES: I think it’s probably 98 percent fiction, I used a few names here and there, people like Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, but those are very minor and that’s only in passing that I mention those.
I started out thinking I would read a whole bunch of books about slavery. But I never got around to doing that. I kept putting it off. I started thinking about reading the books in ’92, but while I was putting off the research, I was also crafting the novel in my head. So in 2001, after almost 10 years of thinking about the novel, I had about five weeks of vacation with the day job I had then, and I decided, I could either spend that vacation time and the next year or so reading all those books, and I decided not to do that. I decided just to go with the novel that was in m head. Everything was in my head except for about 12 pages.
In life, you accumulate facts about the world and history as you go through your life. And I figured I knew enough about 1855 Virginia to write the novel. And as I said last night at a bookstore, if I say it’s 1855 Virginia, then you’ll believe me until I say something to contradict that.

MAX BROOKS, author, October 30, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: What piece of literature first mentioned zombies? How the concept of zombies changed over time?
BROOKS: Every culture has its own version of the dead returning to life. The classic zombie that we know today (corpses rising from the grave to eat human flesh) first entered public culture with George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead”. Since that time, the pop-culture has mutated into many forms. You now have “the brain eaters”, “Zombie Dogs (From Resident Evil)”, “Crimson Heads (Again, R.E.).” I’ve even heard of a movie that has zombie birds, although I haven’t seen it.

RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON, author, October 21, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: What were your experiences working as a liaison from the SEC during the Watergate like? What lessons do you believe the nation should take from the Watergate affair? Did these experiences serve as inspirations for subsequent writings?
PATTERSON: First of all, the “Lasko Tangent” is very loosely based on that experience. The short if it was that we were assigned to investigate whether William Casey had covered up wrongdoing by the Nixon Administration while serving as Chairman of the SEC. This investigation was cutoff by the firing of Archibald Cox. What I learned is that we should never tolerate official lying and secrecy, whether it concerns Watergate, 9/11, or the war in Iraq.
CZIKOWSKY: While you are researching the death penalty for your book, may I suggest you look at some of the research conducted by the late Marvin Wolfgang at the University of Pennsylvania? He found the death penalty is not a deterrent: many killers are not thinking of the consequences when they kill. More interesting is some data showing countries and states with the death penalty have higher homicide rates than countries and states without the death penalty. Some believe the death penalty helps induce some people to murder: there is a thrill to challenging death, or a belief one will become a martyr for killing. This might be something worthy of considering when writing about the different reasons people kill and what their psychologically make-up is.
What are your thoughts on what your potential murderous character(s) will be like?
PATTERSON: I’ve looked at that. I’m familiar with much of the research you mentioned and can find no persuasive evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrent. If you want to argue for the death penalty, it is fair to argue that it is, simply, just.
In the end, I believe that we have already executed a number of innocent people. That is an unacceptable price to pay particularly in the absence of any persuasive evidence that the death penalty saves lives.
As for the accused murderer in my novel, he is a retarded 18 year old from an abusive hone—a fairly typical profile for a death row inmante.
CZIKOWSKY: The NRA began as an organization that supported gun shooting competition and promoted gun safety. Indeed, a large minority of NRA membership supports gun control. The problem is the NRA has politicized its membership so many blindly deluge their elected representatives with calls and letters in opposition to any legislation that would restrict the sale of any guns.
The NRA has never disclosed its financial base. I would presume they are supported by the gun industry. At the very least, the sound like they are industry-supported as they support the right to unrestricted gun ownership, and we need authors like you to take them on. Will you be taking on the NRA some more in future writings?
PATTERSON: First, you’ve neatly defined the role of the radical leadership of the NRA. They mislead their followers and raise money by a steady drumbeat of fear: that we all need guns to protect ourselves—whether at home, in church, or at a ballpark—and that folks like you and me are trying to confiscate the weapons of honest people. That enables them to extract money and stampede voters to the polls.
I appreciate your support, as I certainly do anger folks who’ve been taken in by the NRA line. I serve on the Board of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and will continue to work on, and speak out on, this issue.

RICHARD BAUSCH, writer, November 20, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: How does an 800 page novel become a short story? Did you realize that the story could be told just as well in condensed form? What extra existed between the short story and what was contained in the rest of the pages?
BAUSCH: Just like a kidney stone was passed.
I thought I was writing a novel and it ended up being 800 pages of crap around one thing that was real and alive, and unfortunately all the crap was necessary to arrive at that. Nothing is ever wasted. You did this, every single time you do it, you learn stuff. That’s why there’s only one question to ask yourself every day: Did you write today? If the answer’s yes, it’s the only question you have to ask.

MICHAEL DIRDA, Washington Post Book World Senior Editor, November 20, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: You are an expert in English criticism. Do you have any criticism of film criticism? Do you believe there is enough about film to warrant a separate field of criticism (and its own department in some colleges?) Do you have any advice of what film critics should be most observant?
DIRDA: I would hesitate before going after a degree in film criticism. Why? For purely economic reasons: How may film critics are there who make a living by writing about the movies? Maybe a dozen. You’ll have to be really lucky, as well as talented, to land one of those jobs. That said, I would think a good liberal arts degree would be more useful—art history, intellectual and social history, perhaps cultural studies, as well as lots of courses in literature and some in film. There are a handful of wonderful books of writing about the movies: Agee on Film, the collections of Pauline Kael, some of the writings of Andrew Sarris, Robert Warshow, and Charles Lane. But I think most people would recommend a good general education as the best prerequisite to this specialized filed. Just go to lots of movies on the weekend.

PAUL AUSTER, novelist, December 16, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: It is great to see writing with skillful comedic touches. That is a difficult type of writing to do well. How do you approach adding humor to your work, or do you, say, simply write what you yourself find funny?
AUSTER: Life is both funny and not funny. It has its tragic moments and its hilarious moments. I try in my work to embrace all aspects of what it means to be alive, and humor is an important part of that. So even in some of my grimmest works, there have been comic touches. There have to be, because that’s the way we’re built as human beings, and often when we’re in dark circumstance we survive by cracking jokes.

DAVE BARRY, syndicated humor columnist, December 29, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: I love your columns. Have you ever thought about making your life into a TV series?
BARRY: That was already done. It was called “Baywatch”.

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM, Pulitzer Prize in Fiction winner, January 29, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: So, how does Walt Whitman unintentionally become a character? Did you realize he was just the person needed for a storyline?
CUNNINGHAM: The novel I’m working on is three interrelated novellas, each in a different genre. There’s a gothic horror story, a thriller, and a science fiction story. The first, the gothic horror story, is set in New York City in the mid-1800s, toward the beginning of the industrial revolution, when people who had been working on farms, living according to the seasons and their needs, were suddenly working 12 hour shifts in factories. And I was struck, as I did my research, by the fact that this is when Whitman appeared, and walked the streets of Manhattan saying “I sing the body electric, and every atom of me as good belongs to you.” It was interesting to me that this great transcendental poet appeared just then, and I was struck by the ways in which Whitman was a great and immortal poet, and was also writing poetry that did not entirely contradict the desires of the factory owners. Whitman said, every man is a king, including those who work these terrible jobs. Whitman said, the redwood tree loves the axe, because that’s the redwood tree’s destiny, to be felled. So he becomes a character in the first novella, and I decided, if Whitman’s going to be in one, he should really be in all three. So in the second, the thriller, he’s a terrorist, and in the third, he is a mythical scientist who has disappeared with a great secret.

FRANCES ITANI, author, February 12, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: As with most stories that are based on factual experiences, I’m curious: Which portions of your novel (“Deafening”) are real and about how much is total fiction?
ITANT: As a fiction writer, my job is to create story, but because “Deafening”is set during a particular period of time, I had to do factual research so that I could learn the social and cultural history. In the book, I tried to stay true to actual happenings at the school for the deaf, and for sure, the war scenes are set in real time for the period.
What is made up is the entire story, and all of the characters. But the reason I did so much research was to make sure that every small detail, which grounds the story, is entirely accurate.

JOANNA SCOTT, novelist, March 11, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Do you have many ideas for novels? How do you narrow your ideas down into the novel you choose?
SCOTT: So far in my years as a writer, I have had a lot of ideas, and a lot of dead ends. So I find myself writing in one direction and then another, and sometimes it clicks and sometimes it doesn’t. I feel there has to be a certain amount of improvisation as I’m writing, which means any idea or any commitment to a project is risky. It involves times, it involves gathering of material, and sometimes it just doesn’t work. Sometimes it does. As I’m starting out on a project, I can’t tell if it will click or not. If it will keep generating its own future, in a sense.
It partly has to do with the independence of the characters, the strength of the voice. If I feel there’s a distinct voice that deserves to keep speaking, that has a music of its own, a rhythm of its own, then I find myself seduced by the voice I’ve created, but that I feel that I’m hearing from elsewhere.
There’s a point I set for myself, and it’s an arbitrary point, when I think no matter (what) happens I’m going to finish that book. And that’s when I get to page 100. I have to see it out.
There are two points of exhilaration for me, when I’m writing. There’s the point of reaching page 100, when I think, I’ve got something here. And then there’s the point when I write the final word, and I say, OK, that’s done.
Although I once heard William Gaddis say he wrote long books, because he didn’t like them to end. And I can understand that.

STUART DYBEK and JOHN McNALLY, writers, March 25, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: It has been said that writers write best when they write what they know. How essential was your knowledge of the culture of Chicago to your writings, and how important is it to have your stories set in Chicago?
DYBEK: Whether you’re writing about Chicago or whatever your subject is, I think the writing what you know stuff, what you have to remember is that the imagination doesn’t feast on fact. So sometimes, whether it’s library work, or life work research, what you have to keep in mind is you’re feeding the imagination. What you know is not what you’re writing about. You’re using what you know to make imaginative leaps.
McNALLY: You’re writing about what you know so that you can write about what you don’t know.

BILL WALSH, Washington Post National Desk Copy Chief, March 29, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: I like the mention that the rules of proper writing style are not iron clad. Indeed, the rules of 19th century literature would probably not agree with the general Post circulation. What are the various reasons that causes these rules to change over time?
WALSH: Predominance of usage eventually steamrolls old rules. I write in “The Elephants of Style” about trying to strike a balance between “it’s always been that way” and “that’s how everybody does it.”

ELIZABETH GLAVER, author, April 8, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Do you have a target audience in mind when you write, and, if so, who are you writing for? Or, are you writing for yourself, and you hope those interested will find your work?
GLAVER: I don’t have a “target” audience in mind in any specific way. I have a few trusted friends who see the book in pieces, at various stages: my friend, the writer Lauren Slater sees it first, then other close friends, some of them writers, others not; then my parents, my sister, and my husband.
It then slowly makes its way out into wider circles. My editor, Jennifer Barth, is an amazing editor, and I think of her as an audience as I write in that I trust her taste and also trust her to help me shape my novels. If I had to try to define who my ideal wider audience would be, it would be readers who admire the work of contemporary writers I deeply admire. That list might contain (among other names), the following: Alice Munro, Toni Morrison, Howard Norman, Julia Glass, Margot Livesey, Michael Ondaatje, Grace Paley, Gish Jen, William Trevor…If people who loved those books were also to love my own, I would be thrilled.
During the actual writing, though, I suppose I’m writing for myself, in that I’m inside the world I’m creating, not thinking about being read so much as getting words down, one by one, on the page, until they form into sentences, then paragraphs, then chapters.
CZIKOWSKY: Did you study writing in college? If so, what aspects of collegiate level writing instruction assisted you, if any?
GLAVER: I did study writing in college, at Wesleyan University, and was lucky enough to work with the writer Annie Dillard. Annie asked us to memorize poems; I still remember the ones I memorized in her class. She steeped us in language, and she had no tolerance for sentimentality. She was forthright and brilliant and took her students utterly seriously, even as she was quite hilarious herself. In addition to giving me feedback, writing classes also game me something very simple: deadlines. I think that when you’re starting out, it’s sometimes hard to keep producing, and even harder to revise and revise and revise. The workshops I took in college gave me a structure, as well as a little community of readers, and that was helpful. I think I would have fumbled along and made my own way without it, but it would have taken longer. I also took many literature courses, and those—along with the reading I did on my own—were as important to my development as a writer as any teacher I had.

A.S. BYATT, author, April 22, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What are the four levels of Dante?
BYATT: I’m not 100 percent sure of the fourth one, but the levels are the literal, the allegorical, the anagogical, and I think the fourth one is spiritual. And literal level is what the story means at the literal level—Dante traveling from pit to pit in hell. The allegorical is the metaphorical meaning of this—the people who are talking represent the quality of pride as well as being people. The anagogical is to do with the way he related to the Holy stories and the Holy scriptures. For instance, you can read the whole of the Old Testament anagogically as all the stories in the Old Testament prefigure the truths of the world after the birth of Christ. And the spiritual I think is deep meaning. There is kind of absolute vision, a vision of the nature of things. You end up with a vision of the whole of the heavens singing around God. There’s a visionary meaning. The medieval world was used to reading the Bible is all these four ways, and Dante wrote to be read in all these four ways.

MITCH ALBOM, author, April 27, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: How would you compare and contrast themes from your book “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” versus “It’s a Wonderful Life”?
ALBOM: OK, I love the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”, so I am honored if people think there is a comparison. In the movie, I believe Jimmy Stewart finds out what the world would be life if he had not been in it. In my book, Eddie discovers only what the world really was like while he was in it—but he was too preoccupied or unfocused to understand. I think there’s a similarity in that both the movie and my book celebrate how one life can affect another. That’s a message not limited to me, Jimmy Stewart, or many others, but one that I hope is celebrated just the same.

JOHN DALTON, HANNAH TINTI, and CLAIRE TRISTRAM, authors, May 6, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Congratulations to each of the first-time published authors. Have any of you begun, or perhaps finished, your next project? If so, what may we look forward to seeing from each of you?
DALTON: I have begun a second book. I’ve only got a few chapters. It is not set in Asia. For me to write, I have to know a setting very well. The first setting was Taiwan and China, which I knew very well. This setting is a summer camp, which I also know very well. Beyond that, I don’t write close to my own life. That is, I invent characters who have more interesting dilemmas than I have.
TINTI: I am working on a novel, which has already been bought by Dial Press I’m about three-quarters of the way through. It’s a historical novel about a gang of grave robbers. I’m having a lot of fun with it. There’s so much more space. There’s so much more room to explore these side alleys and side stories that you just can’t do with a short story. With a short story everything has to be on track with your goal. With a novel I can go off with a side character and tell their story. And I’m having a lot of fun doing that. I think it was Alice Murno who said that a novel is a house with many rooms, and if that’s the case, I’d say a short story is a closet—with lots of interesting things in it, but still a closet.
TRISTRAM: I am almost finished with the second novel that I may never send anywhere. The first novel is so explicit, and it really made me feel exposed, because it’s so close to my feelings about the world. Now, everyone knows what I think! I guess that’s good, but it takes getting used to. So this second one has really been for me. I’ll definitely send it to my editor, but I’m ready to move on.
DALTON: I threw lots of stuff away, too. That’s good advice.
TRISTRAM Sometimes things are just for you, and that’s okay too.

THISBE NISSEN, author, August 5, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Living near the Long Island Sound, I am curious about your choice of location for your book. Have you spent time in one of the beach communities and/or islands off of Long Island? What inspired you to pick a beach location and to write about characters in a community with year rounders and summer residents?
NISSEN: Yes, “Osprey Island” is definitely influenced and shaped by summers and weekends spent on Shelter Island, way on the top of Long Island, between North and South Forks. And I think my draw toward that setting is there because I have such a visceral memory of that place and the time I spent there as a kid. The quality of air and light is unique. And I don’t live in a place like that at all now. And I really do think I write in some cases to evoke those feelings in myself to awaken that visceral sense of a place. It’s like going on a private vacation.
CZIKOWSKY: Do you prefer writing short stories? I know some writers who like being able to tackle more subjects, and exploring more topics over shorter periods of time writing appeals more to them than writing at length about one topic in a novel. What appeals to you as a writer?
NISSEN: I think both serve really different drives in me. I really like getting wrapped up on a novel, and the particular kinds of challenges and problems that you have to solve working on a novel, and the research one has to do working on a novel. I love doing that. And the latitude to follow whims and funny trails and see where they lead you I feel is a lot greater in a novel. On the other hand, I really enjoy the economy of short stories and the way it makes my brain have to work to hone ideas into the economized framework. So they really do serve different drives in me.

MAUREEN HOWARD, novelist, September 16, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: I kind of thought Connecticut was a little more mythical than Rhode Island, but each person has different tastes. Why did you pick Rhode Island as a setting (for “The Silver Screen”).
HOWARD: I’m from Connecticut, and I’ve used Connecticut a lot in my work. Indeed I use it in “The Silver Screen”). I very much wanted Bel, the Murphys, to be somewhat displaced people. And they are somewhat displaced in Rhode Island. It’s not home, though they make it home. It’s kind of like a new leaf, a place where given her past and she was recognizably Bel Maher, the actress, it’s a way of escaping reality. I also suppose that I visited Rhode Island, where my daughter and family so often in the summer, and could see the possibility of the sea and how that would tie in with Melville. Whereas the industrial river towns of Connecticut don’t quite do that for me. I don’t have a particular town in mind to name…I could point to it on a map but I didn’t want to give it a name. The actual place would be quite different now.

DAVID SCHICKLER, author, September 24, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Your writing is excellent. You let the reader explore characters facing lots of conflicts and twists. What are some of your thoughts for what makes for interesting reading? When you write, do you write strictly for yourself, or are you aware that you need to keep your stories appealing to anonymous readers?
SHICKLER: Good question! Some writers do seem to write for themselves (almost like therapy), and while that is fine, I personally write very much for others. I write to entertain, and I write because I can’t wait to see what my characters will do or say next. As for what makes interesting reading…I try to put my characters in very high stakes situations, where their lives, their hearts, and souls and sexualities are in danger or on the line.
Also in terms of what makes interesting reading…I often like to write about (and read about) a character who is just reaching a boiling point of epiphany in life, a day or moment when he or she feels it’s time to break out, do something new and daring and frightening, almost as if life itself depends on this new action. The gangster Henry Dante in my new novel “Sweet and Vicious” and his lover, the fire haired Grace McGlone, have both come to such points, and they throw themselves into their torrid love affair, their diamond stealing, and their cross country road tip with not only abandon but with a sense of almost spiritual mission. I thrill to gutsy moves like that in fiction and in real life.

JILL CONNER BROWNE, author, October 18, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: You recommend women search for men in funeral homes? Aren’t there laws against that? Seriously, are funerals really a good time to talk to men and then later ask them out? How does funeral attending for men work?
BROWNE: In the South, at least, funerals are excellent times for Visiting—I’m rarely in favor of asking men out—they really do love to chase the car, so to speak.
CZIKOWSKY: I love your illuminated light that comes on when the lid is up. What didn’t anyone think of that sooner? Think of how much harmony there could have been throughout the world before this.
BROWNE: The Johnny Light is truly a miraculous invention—countless relationships COULD have been saved with this—thank God we have it now! Even if your man absolutely CANNOT be trained to put the seat back down—it is now, through modern technology—no longer necessary to beat him to death with a shoe—you can simply install the Johnny Light so you KNOW when he’s left the seat up! And romance can continue for all of your days! Of course, we’ve got the Johnny Light—and a hot of Queenly Crap—at sweetpotatoqueens.com!

MARGOT LIVESEY, author, December 2, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Your writings are excellent explorations of relationships and families. Are you aware of any particular events or times in your life that drew you to contemplate how people interrelate? What sparked your interest in these matters?
LIVESEY: My father was 50 years old when I was born, and my mother, Eva, died when I was 2 ½. Subsequently my father remarried a woman of his own age, so at the age of 5, I was living with two fifty-five year olds. I took refuge with a neighboring family who had four children. I think this early experience of inventing my own family is a major factor in the on-going preoccupation in my work with what constitutes a family, how we sort out the competing loyalties of family vs. new affections. And I’m aware at the point in the 21st century that many people are in a similar situation of inventing and reinventing their families.

RICK LAYMAN, biographer, January 15, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: It seems writers today have adopted different styles of writing. Do you see any writers today who remind either of you of the writing style of Dashiell Hammett? If Dashiell Hammet was an unpublished writer and submitted “The Maltese Falcon” to publishers today, what do you believe would be their reaction?
LAYMAN: Hannett’s influence is vast. I would name wo writers, though, one mystery and one so-called mainstream writer. Three-time Edgar-winner Joe Gores knows Hammett’s work thoroughly and writes masterful mystery novels. He pays homage to Hammett frequently in his works. The mainstream writer is Paul Auster. His “Book of Illusions” is a tribute to Hammett and his writing reminds me of the clarity and complexity of Hammett at his best.
I can’t believe that any editor worth his or her salt would fail to recognize the timeless value of “The Maltese Falcon”. I am admittedly prejudiced.

JONATHAN LETHEM, author, February 8, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: You state “my plan is to write a different book every time out.” Please define “different”. What are your goals when creating something new each time you write?
LETHEM: Well, of course this is a plan that is doomed to fail…I’ve discovered that like every writer, I’m helpless MYSELF and that means I find myself unconsciously or semi-consciously repeating motifs and themes and even using certain words or images recurrently in my work, no matter how much I think I’m starting fresh. But I’ve always admired artists who made a specific sport of trying to visit different kinds of genres or mediums or modes—not just ‘western’ or ‘detective’, but comedy/tragedy, epic and miniature, traditional/experimental—I think of Stanley Kubrik, for instance. The novelist Thomas Berger is a great example. Graham Greene, to a degree. Part of the pleasure is seeing how much of these artists remains the same no matter how much they try to change…
It may be simpler to mention that I’m easily bored, too. I hate feeling too complacent when I write. I like to be solving new problems.

BARBARA HOLLAND, author, March 9, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: What were your impressions of the future when you were young? The 1940s grew up in fear of global war, the 1950s grew up learning about “duck and cover” and of fear of the bomb, yet the generation of the 1990s (until September 11) did not face these almost universal fears. What is your recollection of how you felt: were world events too distant to you and of little concern, or were you and your friends aware and concerned?
HOLLAND: Sure we were aware. We lived in Washington , we waited for the bombs of WWII and the nuclear holocaust of the Cold War, but at least in our younger years, we weren’t so much concerned as fascinated. Made us feel important. We threw ourselves into war work, digging trenches in the lawn to trap the enemy infantry, and poisoning arrows to shoot them.

IAN McEWAN, author, March 29, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Where, if anywhere, would you like people to place your works, in the context of categories of great works? What do you think of how others are placing your works, or do you not care to think of such things?
McEWAN: I don’t care too much for this ranking business. I’m delighted when people respond with passion and ready intensity to my work. Literature is not as the economist would put it a positional good; in other words, there is infinite space for good literature.
CZIKOWSKY: What ideas do you have, that you may share with us, for future works you are planning to write?
McEWAN: I find it difficult to talk about unwritten works. It’s never useful to start putting words casually around the flimsiest of notions. I finished “Saturday” only in late November and I’m now in the rather pleasant stage of traveling, reading, and writing.

SUE MILLER, author, May 3, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: As someone interested in Sociology, it is noted that one of your critics views you as a type of Sociologist. Do you agree, and how do you wish your writings to be viewed?
MILLER: Well, I think that critic, Richard Bausch, said that. You might say that of many (most?) realistic novelists. And he went on to talk about why. If there’s another critic who used that as a pejorative, I’d react more negatively. But I tend to agree with Bausch, that novelists look at and use the culture around them constantly. I AM enormously interested in what it is to be American today (or sometimes an American, let’s say, in the fifties or sixties), in a family, in a particular geography within our boundaries, with a certain kind of work—all those things could involve a kind of observation similar to that of a Sociologist. But I think most Sociologists aren’t primarily interested in story telling, in trying to make the story utterly compelling, and that’s what I hope for. Basically, I would like to, by writing, be viewed as offering a convincing and fascinating alternate universe, one the reader believes in and lives in for a while.

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER, author, May 10, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Do you ever get writer’s block and, if so, do you have a method for overcoming it?
FOER: My father once told me the secret to getting a bee to stop following you around: stand still, close your eyes, and count to twenty. When you open your eyes, the bee will be gone. That’s been my experience with writer’s block. Of course there are times when it’s difficult. So I tend to stop where I am and go away from it. Sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a few weeks. My goal in life isn’t to write as many pages as I can. So I’m not overly worried when I’m not producing.

TERRY McMILLAN, author, July 19, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Marilyn’s husband doesn’t do much (in “The Interruption of Everything”) to preserve the marriage, but do you think Marilyn, in retrospect, could have done anything to re-spark the marriage? I ask because this is such a widespread problem, and sometimes we like to think there is hope somewhere that both parties can wake up and say: let’s begin anew, if differently?
McMILLAN: From my observations over the years, women are the ones who do everything they possibly can to spark the marriage, which is one of the problems. We do everything. And men should be held just as accountable for keeping the spark alive in a marriage as women are. They rely on us to be good mothers, good wives, good lovers, good everything. But many of them don’t see their lack of creativity in helping to keep the love and energy and all of that stuff alive. I’m tired of men always blaming women. And even the question is there something Marilyn could have done…what about Leon? One of the reasons men use when they cheat they always use women as the excuse. They blame us. When in fact sometimes they don’t realize they haven’t done much to contribute to make the marriage better. Or that they aren’t exactly a thrill a minute themselves, but they expect us to be.

JAMES L. W. WEST, III, Pennsylvania State University English Professor, September 1, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: How would you assess the range of Mr. Fitzgerald’s writings: was he successfully able to vary his themes and genres, and how multifaceted do you find his messages?
WEST: F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote well in a variety of genres: novel, short fiction, personal essay, poetry, song lyrics, dialogue. Like most writers he repeats himself, but his comments about American life, about Europe, about fame and money are celebrity, are very fine. He also wrote well about memory, and about remorse and regret.

SALMAN RUSHDIE, author, September 13, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Let me ask the obvious question that maybe many are uncomfortable asking: how secure do you feel making your whereabouts knows when there may be (hopefully not) people out there trying to figure out how to collect five million dollars?
RUSHDIE: Do you need the money?
CZIKOWSKY: If there was particular messages or themes you would wish readers to absorb from reading your latest novel, would it include the need for better understanding among people of different cultures and religions, the need for outsiders to not disrupt toe slow path toward internal healing, or what is it you would like readers to take away and put into own lives and beliefs?
RUSHDIE: You know, I don’t like preachy books. I like books that take me into a world I like being in and tell me a story that holds my attention and make me care about the people I meet. As for “lessons”, I think those are best deduced by the reader and not dictated by the author.
CZIKOWSKY: What are you writing currently, and what future ideas do you have?
RUSHDIE: I have learned by embarrassing experience not to talk about unwritten books. I once made the mistake of saying I wouldn’t write about India again and now here is a big novel, a lot of which is about India.
So, as to future work you will have to wait and see, I’m afraid. (And so will I).

VALERIE HEMINGWAY, author and Ernest Hemingway’s daughter in law, September 15, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: You were more than Ernest Hemingway’s daughter in law, you were also his secretary. What state are his papers, meaning has most material of interest to scholars been published, or are there still hidden gems to be unearthed?
HEMINGWAY: The majority of the Ernest Hemingway papers are housed in the Hemingway archives at the JFK Library in Boston. Very few of these have been published but they are available for scholars (and others) to view upon request. I think there is a great deal of material there. There are still a couple of people who have private collections and most of the letters to Hemingway are in the collections of such universities as Princeton and Yale.
CZIKOWSKY: You describe your ex-husband as manic-depressive. Presumably this is an inherited trait, or would you disagree with that assessment? How similar or different was the depression between the two generations of Hemingways?
HEMINGWAY: I lived with Gregory Hemingway for more than twenty years and I learned a great deal about the manic depressive condition during that time. I do believe that it is an inherited trait. In the two years I was with Ernest and Mary, I was young and inexperienced, and unaware that Ernest’s depression was caused by a medical condition (as was Mary Hemingway). Much less was known about such things 45 years ago. Both father and won had compulsive personalities. Both were brilliant and when they enjoyed life, they did so with gusto. Both suffered from depressions. I would say that Greg’s condition was more acute and limiting than his father’s.
CZIKOWSKY: How do you believe Ernest Hemingway’s works will stand the test of time? There are some authors whose popularity wanes with time, yet I believe Ernest Hemingway, while writing period pieces, wrote with themes and sentiments that will continue to reach readers centuries from now. Which works in particular do you see being read far into the future?
HEMINGWAY: I’m inclined to think that Hemingway’s works will endure the test of time because he wrote of the condition of man. His observations on war are as fresh and pertinent today as they were when he wrote them. Even his journalism (which I reread recently before giving a talk in Toronto) stands up. It would be hard for me to choose.

DAVID BALDACCI, author, September 20, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: What attracted you to write for children? Did you find difficulties making an adjustment to writing for children? Did you find you had to rewrite more or less, or about the same, when writing a children’s novel?
BALDACCI: It was extraordinarily challenging. The idea for the books came from stories I gold my children. I’m heavily involved in literacy and the earlier you get someone reading the better. Writing a children’s book was an ideal way for me to approach that audience. All writing is labor intensive and writing for kids was no exception. There was a lot of rewriting.

DANA GIOIA, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman, September 20, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Do you prefer one type of writing, i.e. poetry, over other types? Which do you find easier to write, and which type do you find the most difficult or frustrating?
GIOIA: I find all writing difficult, except for letters, which I love to write. My old teacher Elizabeth Bishop was the same way. She and I used to joke about how much we hated writing poetry. It was so hard to get right. Letters one usually writes to friends who grant us every allowance of interest and affection.
I find essays very hard to write well. I work them over almost as much as poems. Short reviews are pretty easy, and they always come with deadlines.

DIANA GABALDON, September 20, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Not many people have explored, even in fiction, relationships and marriage of people from different generations. How did you come up with that concept?
GABALDON: You mean the notice of a 20th century person marrying one from the 18th. Well, it was all Claire’s fault.
“Outlander” was a perfectly straight forward historical novel, until I decided to introduce a female character (I had to have a lot of Scotsmen, you see, because of the kilt factor, but figured it would be good to have a female to play off these guys; then we could have sexual tension, and __that’s__always good), and made her an Englishwoman.
So, she walked into a cottage full of Scotsman, Dougal MacKenzie stood up and asked who she was…and she replied (without consulting me), “I’m Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp—and who the hell are you?”
To which__I__said—“Hey! You don’t sound__anything__like an 18th century person!” So I fought with her for several pages, trying to beat her into shape and make her talk appropriately—but she wasn’t having any. She just kept making smart-ass modern remarks about everything she saw,__and__she started telling the story herself.
So I said, “Fine. Nobody’s ever going to see this book’ it doesn’t matter__what__bizarre thing I do—go ahead and be modern; I’ll figure out later how you got there later.”
Live I said, it’s all__her__fault.
CZIKOWSKY: You worked for the University of Pennsylvania for awhile. How did you enjoy your time in Philadelphia, and did you experiences at Penn ever inspire anything you wrote?
GABALDON: Well, to be perfectly honest, we hated the place and couldn’t wait to get the heck out of Dodge and back to civilization in the West the minute my husband finished his MBA. However, we didn’t live there at one of the city’s most salubrious points---or ours. We were totally broke, living in student housing, about six blocks from MOVE headquarters, while the Mayor was bombing the place.
As to inspirational experiences…well, there__was__the time I left the windows open because of the heat, and a number of flies got in and laid eggs in the pans of bird parts I was processing—came back the next day to writhing pans of maggots.
Err…you__did__ask. On the other hand, the food was undeniably great, and I’d love to go back as a nonstudent with money, to enjoy the better aspects of the place.
CZIKOWSKY: It is exciting that “A Breath of Snow and Ashes” will be available at the book festival before it is being released elsewhere. What can you tell us, in advance, about the book and its plot?
GABALDON: I can’t detail everything, of course, because that would ruin the story, but for starters:
Well, there is a big, fat war coming along, of course, and people behave badly under those conditions. House-burning, murder, rape, assault, tar and feathers and that’s before the serious shooting starts.
And then there are the Cherokee Indians, who might fight for the Crown—or they might not, depending on what they think of either side. At the moment, they rather like Jamie, but if he goes on refusing the naked women the peace chief keeps leaving in his bed, that could change..
Then there’s the young soldier with an “M” branded on his face (for “Murderer”) and a bad case of hemorrhoids.
The myself of Young Ian (Jamie’s nephew) and just what did happen to his Mohawk wife and child.
A plague of amoebic dysentery, and some public health concerns about syphilis, which leads Claire to make Jamie take her to visit the local brothel (“If it’s the two of your,” the madam observes, “that’ll be a pound extra.”
Dr. Fentiman and his renowned collection of pickled deformities (Claire takes him a gouged-out eyeball, preserved in spirits of wine, as a token of goodwill).
Ten thousand pounds of French gold that seems to have been stolen by a wandering ghost.
A mysterious slave ship, reeking in the night, and a rendezvous at the dark of the moon.
A baby named “Rogerina” and what Brianne does about it.
An Irishman who comes and goes like a will-o-the-wisp, but is inclined to appear in the most inconvenient places.
And then, of course, there’s that sinister newspaper clipping that says the house on Fraser’s Ridge will be destroyed by fine in 1776, killing everyone. But will it? (As Jamie observes, “If ye ken the house is meant to burn down on a given day—why would ye stand in it?”)
Only time will tell.
CZIKOWSKY: I know a lot of teachers who used their teaching income as a safety net when attempting to become writers. Yet, I find many become so busy they need to make a commitment to one or the other. You made the jump to being a full time writer. How scary or secure did you find yourself when you made that decision.
GABALDON: Oh,pretty dang secure. I came from a__very__conservative (in all senses of the word) home—my father was fond of saying, “You’re such a poor judge of character, you’re bound to marry some bum—so get a good education so you can support your children!”—so the last thing I would have done was to quit a decent job to become a writer.
As it was, I didn’t tell my father what I was doing, until after the book has been sold (my excellent agent got me a three book contract, with what appeared at the time a staggering advance—and in fact, it__was__pretty good). I called Dad, of course, to tell him the news at this point, and we had a nice, mushy conversation—him saying how thrilled he was, and telling me how proud my mother (who had died when I was 19) would be, and so on. Anyway, we said we loved each other. Thirty seconds later, the phone rings—it’s Dad.
“Don’t quit your job!” be blurted, panic-stricken at the thought. So I didn’t—until I finished the manuscript of my second book (and was thus on the verge of collecting another advance for it). At this point, my university contract was came up for renewal, and I said to my husband, “Well, we won’t starve if I quit—and it__would__be nice to see what it’s like to sleep more than four hours at a stretch…”

R.L. STINE, author, September 21, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Where do you draw the line at scaring children? Also, isn’t there another line where some things as so extreme the children just yawn them off in disbelief? How do you find that perfect line where children are scared and entertained at the same time?
STINE: That’s the hard part. My aim is to never write anything too REAL in my scary books. The kids have to know it’s a FANTASY. The real world is a very scary place to kids now. I have to let ‘em know that my stories don’t take place in the real world.
CZIKOWSKY: “The Great Blueberry Barfoff” provided many people with Christmas gift ideas on what to give Gene Weingarten. Did you get mostly negative reaction over the name of the book, or do you think most people understood it?
STINE: So far, I think people get the joke about “Rotten School” and its basically gross, 10 year old boy humor. I’m having so much fun doing a funny series and trying to gross kids out in all new ways!

KARIN SLAUGHTER, author, September 21, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: How was growing up in Georgia? Did you find teachers encouraging of creative writing?
SLAUGHTER: Very much so. The South has a great history of writers. My ninth grade teacher, to whom my first book is dedicated, was a great influence on me.

SANDRA BROWN, author, September 22, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: How easy or difficult is it to enter the world of romance writing and getting published? Are there growing or decreasing opportunities in the field?
BROWN: Oh dear, I really don’t know much about that anymore, but I think one good way to acquaint oneself in that market is to join writers group and this is true not only for romance, but any general. They can be extremely beneficial.
In fact, very early in my career before I was published, I was encouraged to attend a workshop and it was there that I made contacts that later proved to be of tremendous value to me---I met agents, editors, and other writers---so friendships were formed and associations formed that are still important to me today, so that’s a very good way to not only get feedback on your work but also to kind of get a league of people with similar interests and ambitions and to kind of tap into the communication grapevine.
CZIKOWSKY: You became a writer because you had the time after losing your job. Another upcoming writer in these discussions left her job in order to write. I detect a pattern here. While you probably didn’t have a choice over losing your job, do you think you could have broken into the world of being published had you continued working full time at another job?
BROWN: Well, it certainly helped to have more time to which I could devote to writing. However, the job from which I was dismissed was part-time and my full-time job at that point in my life was being the mother of two toddlers. So I started writing when my family made great demands on my time. So I think what is very important is that if one is driven to write then it’s important to make time and it’s every day---if it’s two hours or 20 minutes…to set aside the time in which to do it.
CZIKOWSKY: I don’t expect you to give too many details, but would you please give us hints on what types of subject areas we may expect from your future works?
BROWN: Well, I can only talk about one book at a time. The next book is kind of in the film noir mode. It’s set in Savannah, a city which I’m very familiar with and which I love, but I haven’t set one of my mainstream novels there and this story just lent itself to that city.
It’s about a homicide detective who becomes involved with a district judge’s wife.
That’s all I’m prepared to say. Use your imagination.

WALTER MOSLEY, novelist, November 22, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: When you began writing, you stated it was difficult or risky for writers to place within their works political discussions. Now it seems many writers are challenging readers with political viewpoints. If you agree there has been greater acceptance and instances of political writings, what do you attribute this to?
MOSLEY: Hmm. That’s an interesting question. I think as a rule there still is reticence on behalf of publishers to deal with political work. It’s not that they won’t publish it, it’s just that they don’t invest very deeply in it. That being said, we live in very political times. Somebody has to address our wars, our plagues, and America’s deep disconnect with the rest of the world.

JOHN GROGAN, author, January 18, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Does a person who over waters a plant learn not to overfeed a dog (as in “Marley and Me”)? Dogs will eat until they burst, pause, and then eat some more.
GROGAN: We quickly learned Marley would eat anything and everything we put down for him. We followed our vet’s advice and he quickly grew into a magnificent specimen of a dog—98 pounds of rippled muscle. No brains, but that’s another story. As a breed, Labs are prone to obesity, but Marley remained thin in to old age. I think it was all the nervous energy he constantly burned.

MARGARET ATWOOD, author, February 14, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Did you find any inspiration or creative ideas for your own writing while teaching?
ATWOOD: I enjoyed teaching. I liked the students. Having to formulate my ideas about literature made them clearer. I did not particularly enjoy the bureaucratic aspects of the job. However, if you are teaching fervently, your energy and time are used up at a great rate. These days, I teach only in small amounts.

CHRIS BUCKLEY, author, February 27, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: I recall your entering a hallway to give a speech when a woman (one of your fellow Republican politicians, in fact) came up to you and was quite upset. She stated she opened one of the books of yours they were selling in the hallway and the first thing she saw was a swear word. She expressed serious disappointment in the use of swear words. I recall you then turned to me, as I was behind you, and you told me ‘in a few minutes, that woman is going to be very disappointed.” I have read and appreciate your books, and I don’t care if there is profanity or not. Do you have a particular philosophy on the use of profanity?
BUCKLEY: I try to use less and less in my writing and certainly on my TV appearances, but there are times when only the F word will do.
P.S. Give my regards to the lady in the hallway and tell her to fuck off.

ANA MARIE COX, author, March 6, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Have you ever put your blackberry down, stepped away from it, and thought: what would life be like if I never had this thing? Surely you would have been able to survive. How do people get so addicted to one object?
COX: I wish I could better explain the addictive quality better—it’s not like they’re coated in nicotine. And some people are able to withstand the Berry’s charms with ease. My husband was given a Berry for his job and yet sort of just carries it around. Or doesn’t.
And, yes, I think about what my life would be like if I had never gotten it. Part of me thinks, Well, I couldn’t have written my novel. But then again, I might have written it faster.

PAUL STEWART, author, and CHRIS RIDDELL, illustrator, March 20, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Are there plans for future (“ Edge Chronicles”), and if so, how long will be willing to keep them coming
STEWART and RIDDELL: Yes, in Britain we are working on Chronicle nuber 9—Clash of the Sky Galleons. We will then finish with book 10, which will tie up all the loose threads. It’ll be a really big volume!

LISA SCOTTOLINE, author, March 31, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Would you please provide us all with some descriptions into how your life experiences have inspired your writings?
SCOTTOLINE: I think my life experiences have definitely informed by writing but it isn’t even so much as being a lawyer, by that I mean, all the emotions in my life, whether it’s grief or loss or joy or a feeling of accomplishment00those are the real core emotions that I draw upon to give emotional force to the characters’ life experiences.
For example, in “Dirty Blonde” I use that feeling you have when you sometimes take on more than you can chew you have to deal with it. The woman in “Dirty Blonde” makes her own problems to a very large extent. And since I’ve done that too, I draw on life experience which I think is more meaningful than the actual things I did as a lawyer per se.
For me, in writing what you hope is a page turner, the most important thing is the characterization, not only of the main character but everyone around her. And you really have to open your own heart to flesh out a main character that will feel realistic. And that what I do in “Dirty Blonde”, even though I haven’t, quite frankly, had the hyperactive sex life that this character has.
CZIKOWSKY: Are you as tough as your writing seem? SCOTTOLINE: No. I’m the kind of person who has a hard time returning a sweater to a store. I don’t se the limits my characters do. In fact, I strive to be as strong as they seem.
CZIKOWSKY: Aren’t you ones of those Butcher Speakman (dormitory at the University of Pennsylvania) types? Did the Quad (dormitory) provide you any inspiration to write?
SCOTTOLINE: Yes, I am one of those Butcher Speakman types by which you’re referring to our crazy days at the University of Pennsylvania and, if you read me, you will see that almost all of my characters either have gone to Penn or Penn Law or wear Penn sweats. But, of course, no fiction will come close to life in the Quad.

MICHAEL FARQUHAR, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 31, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: What do you think of the writer (Clifford Irving) whoa attempted to write and sell an autobiography or Howard Hughes while Hughes was still alive? He actually was hoping Hughes would remain secluded, read the book and feel it was fine, and not say anything. It was not the best thought out plan as Hughes quickly pointed out that he didn’t write it Still, it was an unusual stab at deception.
FARQUHAR: It was a brilliant stab! Clifford Irving had the folks at McGraw-Hill and Time-Life convinced that he was working with Hughes and produced some brilliantly forged documents to prove it. Unfortunately, he didn’t count on Hughes emerging out of seclusion to denounce the book. But, incredibly enough, those wise editors believed that Hughes was only having second thoughts about his cooperation—not that the whole project was bogus. Irving certainly earned his place on the cover of Time as “Con Man of the Year”.
I have a whole chapter (in “A Treasury of Deception”) devoted to this great literary fraud.
CZIKOWSKY: It fascinates me that some recent authors have written purely speculative books on the life of Jesus. They even admit that it is purely their speculation. And readers are reading them and debating them as if they are non-fiction. Would this count as great deception, in your opinion?
FARQUHAR: Only in that people believe what they need to believe.

ROBERT PINSKY, poet, April 18, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: How is the Poet Laureate chosen? You are certainly the perfect choice. You served for three years. How does this position operate?
PINSKY: The person is appointed by the Librarian of Congress.
It should be an honor recognizing excellence as an artist. I sometimes worry that Rita Dove, Bob Hass, and I ruined the position by making it seem that the Laureate must be active and extroverted or public.
Shy people like Elizabeth Bishop, older people like Stanley Kunitz, private people like Louise Gluck, have brought honor to the post.
Such poets should not be excluded, or the position would be diminished.

CAROLYN SEE, author, May 23, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: How did the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 personally transform you?
SEE: The destruction of the towers were just another straw on the camel’s back for me. When I was 11, my dad left and a couple of weeks later the Bomb dropped. Lots later, when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, I wrote “Golden Days” out of combined irritation and terror. I imagine things will go like this!
CZIKOWSKY: Tell your critic that a memorable villain means there obviously was a good story that caused such a memorable reaction. Every great hero has overcome a great adversary, and often it is defeating a villain. Good villains in stories is something that is positive.
SEE: You are a nice person! Thank you for standing up for me. I appreciate it. And I send you a hug.

T.C. BOYLE, author, July 18, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: You’re T.C. Boyle? What a coincidence, that’s what my credit cards and passport say, also.
BOYLE: Dear Impersonator: Enjoy them. Unfortunately, I am bankrupt. I guess the creditors will be coming after you any minute now…BTW, a few years ago one of messagistas at tcboyle.com messaged as me for a while, just for the fun of it, but the fans saw through him/her.
CZIKOWSKY: May we now what you are working on that we may look forward to seeing in the future?
BOYLE: Right now, I have done a bunch of new stories and am about one-fifth of the way into another novel, this one a return to the twentieth century and one of the big egomaniacal figures of the age. Also, you might check out the current issue of McSweeney’s which contains the novella, “Wild Child”, which is written by Dana Halter, the heroine of “Talk Talk”.

ANDREW CLEMENTS, author, September 19, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Do you have ideas for novels for other age groups? If so, may I inquire what else you’d like to write? Or do you plan to devote your work towards middle school readers?
CLEMENTS: A book called “Things Not Seen” is a young adult novel that was published in 2002 and the companion book “Things Hoped For” was just released this month. I’m working on the third (and final) in this set called “Things That Are”. But you’re right to observe that the middle grades are where I spend more of my creative effort.

KATHY REICHS, author,, September 25, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: You work and write about a fascinating field. As a teacher in forensics, I know you keep up with the latest technology. What are some of the things being researched and developed that we may soon see added to make forensics yield even more information?
REICHS: That is such a broad question. I try to bring many fields into my novels, not just forensic anthropology. To keep up, I read the JFS, and attend meetings of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. I have to. This year I am Vice President!

SPIDER ROBINSON, author, September 28, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: I sent my question by telepathy. Did you get it?
ROBINSON: You know I did.
CZIKOWSKY: What are some of the major changes you have seem among science fiction fans over the past few decades? As science changes, is it reaching different types of audiences?
ROBINSON: First, we’ve all gotten a bit better looking. Unfortunately, we’ve also dwindled sharply in numbers; fantasy fans now outnumber us about four or five to one. Just as science is starting to fulfill its promise of a better tomorrow (witness this online chat), readers are for some reason becoming less and less interested in science, and in science fiction. I wish I knew why, or how to reverse it.

MARISHA PESSI, novelist, October 26, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: What were some of the inspirations for your characters and settings (in “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”)? How much of the emotion that you write with are from personal experiences and how much haven’t you experienced that you write about? What have you based any conjecture upon?
PESSI: Strangers that I encounter, that I observe in a waiting room or riding a bus, or have some sort of fleeting encounter with, whether it’s a professor I have in the case of Gareth, or a very shy person that I once observed in terms of Blue, these kinds of strangers inspire me to create characters rather than people in my own life. Not knowing them allows me to invent their histories, their joys, and sorrows.
At the same time, writing is a sort of acting exercise. You have to bring yourself and your own sensibility to your character, and yet you much diminish or augment certain aspects of yourself, see the world through their eyes, and judge the world according to their moral compass.
I took an acting class in New York called Stella Adler Studios, and one of the teachers was taught by Stella herself, who of course, taught Marlon Brando. And this teacher said that Brando would go to Central Park and would watch people for hours, and this is how he would create his characters, including Vito Corleone. And I started doing that after taking this class. It’s in tiny details, someone’s bitten fingernails or in the way they stoop as they walk, it’s in those details that human qualities are revealed. And I used that with my own characterizations.

CALVIN TRILLIN, author, January 11, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: It seems, for you it was love at first sight (with your wife Alice). What were Alice’s first impressions of you?
TRILLIN: She says she thought I was funny. In fact, she used to say I had never been funnier than I was that first night, so I peaked in December 9f 1963.

IVAN TOLSTOY, historian, January 29, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Did the CIA have any other known involvement in attempting to influence the Nobel Prize process (other than for Boris Pasternak)?
TOLSTOY: Not to my knowledge. It would be appropriate to note that the KGB tried to counteract the CIA’s efforts by pressuring the Swedish Academy into removing Pasternak’s name from the list of candidates, both through communiqués by the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm and through various influential European figures, by way of bribes or coercion. Final score: CIA 1, KGB 0.
CZIKOWSKY: What is the Nobel Prize process?
TOLSTOY: The only two bodies with the power to nominate a candidate for the Prize are a.) past laureates and b.) institutions that have been granted right a right. This is different from the nomination process for the Oscars or the Golden Globes. The nomination is an attempt to bring the Swedish Academy’s attention to a particular figure in contemporary literature. There have been many cases of the Nobel Prize awarded to non-nominated candidates, just as there have been many nominated candidates who never won the Prize, like Nabokov and Borges.
CZIKOWSKY: How did you find the information regarding the CIA?
TOLSTOY: It took nearly twenty years, during which I took countless interviews with Russian émigrés in the U.S. and in Western Europe and shifted through numerous public archives.

JOHN RIDLEY, author, March 20, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: How did you come up with Sothern Cross (in “The American Way”)?
RIDLEY: Well, somebody had to be the real bad guy in the story, and as the heroes were meant to be icons of parts of America, the concept of Southern Cross was easy to come by. The thing was, and early on in the story, I really wanted him to be heroic, not just a sniveling racist. That really played into how other characters saw him. A good man who had a real, real bad streak.

STEPHEN HUNTER, author, March 27, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: I noticed you used a truly heart-wrenching device (in “Point of Impact”): a dog dies. That gets readers really upset. What were your thoughts when you were writing and decided to have a dog killed?
HUNTER: Given when I had set up, the dog HAD to die. However, I was proud not to dramatize it, but merely to reveal that it had happened offscreen. Happy to say Antoine and Jonathan agreed with that take.

DAVID IGNATIUS, Washington Post columnist, April 13, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Is the British World War II incident (in “Body of Lies”) about masterpiece espionage a true story? If so, I am unfamiliar with it. What were some of the circumstances of this?
IGNATIUS: I did begin “Body of Lies” with an intelligence ploy that’s drawn from the history books. During World War II, the British mounted an operation that was described in the book “The Man Who Never Was”. They found a corpse in Britain, dressed it up in suitable officer’s dress and floated it ashore from a submarine in the Mediterranean so that it would land on the Spanish coast and be discovered by the Nazis. The corpse was carrying documents that indicated the Brits were planning to invade southern Europe not from Sicily (which everyone was expecting) but further east on the Greek coast. The Germans took the bait. In “Body of Lies”, I explore a similar (imaginary) deception by the CIA, intended to make al-Qaeda operatives believe that the agency has penetrated their organization. Does it succeed? I give the author’s answer: Read the book!

MICHAEL CHABON, author, May 15, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: I put your works into your own class, as it seems there is no one else like you approaching your creativity. How do you feel when people put your works into subjective categories? Do you care or has this ever upset you?
CHABON: Human beings have a gift for taxonomy; like all powerful gifts it is prone to abuse and as useful for destruction as for constructive analysis. Luckily the world keeps sneaking through the gaps among the pigeonholes.
CZIKOWSKY: What information are you willing to share on current and future writing projects you are doing or planning? We look forward to them and seek insights on what to expect.
CHABON: Right now I’m so lost on the book tour that I’m not really working much. I would like to get a new novel going. I would like it to be set in the present day and feel right now the urge to do something more mainstream than my recent work has been.

IAN McEWAN, author, June 5, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: How important to your book (“Chesil Beach”) is it that this is set in England? For instance, were French or American attitudes towards relationships so different in 1962 that this would have been a totally different book if it had been set in another country, such as France or America?
McEWAN: I think that “Chesil Beach” is without question an English novel. Its characters are inhibited by both their Englishness and their class and by the peculiar weight of history that some English people feel. But at the same time I’m sure this story could be told in a different way for every country in the world because it discusses the universal experience of first love.
CZIKOWSKY: May we readers learn some about what more to expect from you in the future? What other works are you working on, and what may you tell us about them?
McEWAN: I’ve just finished the libretto of an opera called “For You”, which will have its premiere in England in 2008 and I hope it will come to the States in 2009. As for fiction, I am still in the moping stage, reading and moping.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE, author, June 19, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What are you currently writing and what has inspired your current work?
ADICHIE: I’m thinking of the next book which, if it happens, will be about Nigerians in America and my perception of Nigerians who have made America their home.

LISA SEE, author, June 26, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What are the goals of Tan Ze? Do you feel the character was developed as much as you wanted it to be, or do you agree with some critics who thought the character required more depth?
SEE: I think the best way to answer your question is to talk about the point of view in a novel. There were various ways I could have told the story of the three wives. I could have written a non-fiction book. I could have written a novel that followed the first, second, and third wives’ points of views and they could have been in a kind of dialogue with each other. I wanted to stay with one character and tell the story from Peony’s point of view, even though she’d have to be dead for two-thirds of the book. (That idea alone certainly posed some interesting writing challenges!) I was intrigued by the real life Chen Tong, who’s given name has been lost to history. (Tong means “same”, and she was given this name because she had the same name as her future mother-in-law.) I guess I wanted her to find and have her own voice, to be heard for who she really was, and for readers to see-through the eyes of one person, who I hope people will connect to and care about—what she went through to be heard, and finally for her to be truly honored for what she started when she began writing in the margins of the Peony Pavillion.
CZIKOWSKY: 17Tth century China is such an exotic time and place for American readers. What research did you do to capture that era.
SEE: I did a lot of reading about the time and place, and then about how women lived. I also read as much as I could that had been written by the women writers of that time. There were over a thousand women writers who were published in the Yangzi delta in the mid-17th century and a lot of their work is still available, even in English. Obviously, many of them wrote about their lives in the inner chambers and what they could see in their gardens—flowers and butterflies. But many of them ventured farther afield not only physically but with their thoughts too. Their worlds, ideas, and emotions are all woven to create a 17th century world. Finally, I went to Hangzghou. It’s a very modern city today, but the area around the lake still has many old remnants from the 17th century and even earlier. I also explored some of the water-towns nearby, which really haven’t changed at all. As I think about it, I do all kinds of things—look at paintings on silk, tableaus that are painted on ceramics, listen to traditional Chinese opera from that region.

COLIN THUBRON, author, July 10, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: If you could one, or perhaps just a few, of all the places you visited, which would you most wish to return to, and why?
THUBRON: I’d go back to the Taklamakan desert in northwest China: especially the southern route, through Hotan. It’s tough, but wonderfully unspoilt, and is the heartland of the indigenous Uighurs: a hospitable Moslem people, threatened with ethnic swamping under the Chinese.
CZIKOWSKY: You witnessed a part of the world when the people were fearful of SARS. Did you have any fear you might be at risk? Did you take any precautions?
THUBRON: About SARS: I never really felt myself at risk. There’s always an understandably panicky reaction to a disease with no known cure, but this one wasn’t easily transmitted, and in the northwest provinces of China where I mainly traveled it made no inroads at all. In the end, among all China’s millions, this much-feared plague killed only a few hundred (sadly, several of them doctors). It’s dangerous to be cavalier about it, of course, but even when I was interned for SARS on the edge of the Taklamakan desert, it was hard to feel threatened: the nearest identified case was a thousand miles away.

KAREN HOUPPERT, author, August 27, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: I see you wrote a book on military families (“Home Fires Burning”). Are you from a military family? What is your book about?
HOUPPERT: Yes, I’m an Air Force brat. And my book is about military wives whose husbands have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. I spent a year, checking in with them, to see how the war and their husbands’ absences effected their lives—and their kids’ lives.

DIANE ACKERMAN, author, September 17,2007
CZIKOWSKY: How did you research this book (“Zookeeper’s Wife”)? What records and survivors of this story remain?
ACKERMAN: I did a huge amount of reading! Wartime photographs and film footage were especially helpful. And, although Jan and Antonina are no longer alive, I was fortunate enough to interview their son, who went with me to their old home in the zoo. Some survivors of the war in Poland are still alive. And there are lots of archives, letters, diaries, sermons, memoirs, articles, and other writings and filmed testimonies of citizens of the Warsaw Ghetto. I must say, it was great fun studying Poland’s natural history and folklore, and even Nazism’s crazy origins and values. And, of course, many wonderful details loomed on my travels in Poland.

GARRISON KEILLOR, author, October 3, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: I’m originally from a small town. The same person who won the town’s Brad Pitt Look-a-Like contest also won the town’s Gilbert Godfrey Look-a-Like Contest, and a year later came in second in the town’s Martha Stewart Look-a-Like contest. What do you believe is the attraction of small town stories, even amongst big city people like big thriving metropolises like Arlington?
KEILLOR: It’s an old literary convention, the small town, Stories about cohesive society and family relationships tend to be set in small towns, and stories about estrangement and alienation are set in big cities. Doesn’t always make sense to me, but that’s how it is. People love small towns from a distance, or while visiting briefly; in fact, it’s a struggle to live there, to survive, and also to keep one’s spirit intact.
CZIKOWSKY: Why was there a six year gap in-between novels, and how long might it be before there is another novel?
KEILLOR: I was writing other stuff that didn’t work. And a political screed. But “Pontoon” was such a blast to write. I’m planning on writing three more short Lake Wobegon novels in the next three of four years, bam bam bam bam.

ROBERT PINSKY, poet, December 4, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What are the earliest examples of poetry in human history that have been found?
PINSKY: I’m not scholarly enough to know the answer—presumably something Sumerian or Babylonian, either that part of the world or something pre-Columbian? I feel like I’m flunking an exam.
One of the most interesting moments for me in school, in an Old English class, was learning that poetry preceded prose by centuries: people were composing poetry, reciting it, even writing it down, long before there was such a thing as prose.
(You see, I am trying to supply SOME kind of information, even when I can’t answer the main Q).

RICHARD BAUSCH, author, and MARIE ARANA, novelist, December 10, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What is your advice for handing or avoiding writer’s block? I know some have advised to just keep writing, even if it is nonsense, until something sense-ical emerges through the block. Is this good advice?
BAUSCH: Yeah. Lower your standards. Keep on going. That’s William Stafford’s advice. It works. I don’t get blocked that much. For me, it stopped being a problem back when I stopped trying to hit a homerun with every line. I’m just a story teller. I’m just telling a story. Just try to be clear.
CZIKOWSKY: When you start a novel, do you always know what the ending will be? I’ve had some novelists tell me different answers, and I was wondering how you put your novels together?
ARAN: Interesting question!
I was so surprised to hear John Irving tell me in an interview that he always writes his last sentence first. That seems to me like an impossible task, but he does it, and CANNOT begin until he has it down. Apparently, once he’s decided it’s just right, he never changes it. I, on the other hand, don’t know where I’m going. Oh, well, I do vaguely know whether it’s going to be a 1. wistful, 2. tragic, or 3. happy ending. But every day that I sit down to write, I’m just trying to find out where my bumptious, eccentric, and thoroughly unmanageable characters are going.
BAUSCH: It varies from book to book and story to story. Sometimes I write to find out what at the end is, knowing it, RE-write. Over and over.

ROSEMARY WELLS, children’s book author, December 11, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What is your writing process, if you have one? Do you form a story first and then seek things you think would appeal to children, or do you have a moral or message you wish to bring to children and find a story to shape it? How do you construct a children’s story? WELLS: The story always comes first. The story comes to me from the air. This is my job. It is a writer’s job to have ideas and know how to construct a story from them.

JAMES FREY, author, May 20, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: If you are presenting a wider view of Los Angeles (in the book “Bright Shiny Morning”) than just the entertainment world, how much of a wider view are you presenting, since the description mentions modeling and the porn industry, which perhaps are sidelines to the entertainment world? I know you can not present the story of everyone in Los Angeles, but what about the city do you want the reader to learn?
FREY: The book takes on LA in many, many ways. Sections involving modeling and porn are very small, maybe 20 pages out of 500. I tried to write a book that structured, and built, in a new way, that presented huge amounts of information, and multiple narratives, in a very easy and accessible way.
CZIKOWSKY: How do you develop your characters? Do you know people who are like them, or do you research people of that character, or what do you do?
FREY: I try to write about universal issues, ideas, things that everyone feels in some way. I try to write about love and loss, pain, family, friends, God, ambition, the desire for a better life in some way. I believe if I can tap into those feelings, that the characters will form themselves in the stories.

MARY KARR, Washington Post columnist, June 17, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: You wrote vivid descriptions of the frightening world as seen from the eyes of a child. You wrote a great reflection of these sentiments. How painful or difficult was it writing these descriptions?
KARR: Writing the descriptions was a lot easier than living the events, I promise, but still hard. Some days after writing, I’d collapse in a heap and sleep as if I’d driven cross country, but I’d had a lot of therapy. My mother was sober then, my daddy passed away. It was a time of psychic peace, or I could never have done it. Thanks.
CZIKOWSKY: Do you have a preference for writing poetry or prose? What causes you to decide which to write?
KARR: It’s sad to say that I currently write the memoirs because they pay me. It’s otherwise too hard to do. If I were less venal, I wouldn’t write them. It’s a form I love to read but not write. I adore doing the columns for this paper—that feels like luck. The poetry is hard, but it’s more absorbing technically. I get wrapped up in the noise and the music, and in the writing process that can soften the discomfort of hard subject matter. Thanks.

JULIA GLASS, Washington Post magazine contributor, July 14, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: To what extent are your writings (in “Real Life”) based on your own life and actual people and events you have observed, how much is extended from such observations, and what degree is pure fiction from your imagination?
GLASS: I could write a long essay in answer to this question! I like to say that all my fiction is EMOTIONALLY autobiographical but most of my characters and the events in their loves are made up out of whole cloth (with help from my subconscious, no doubt), though I am well aware which characters have the most in common with me…and with my mother, who was a direct inspiration for an important character in my first novel. (She recognized herself right away.) That said the book coming out in October will be the closest to “literal” autobiography of any fiction I’ve written. Yet still I’ve invented a great deal of it. Otherwise I would have written a memoir—something I have never been tempted to do at book length.
CZIKOWSKY: What made you realize, after you had found yourself, that you hadn’t?
GLASS: Oh, that took another decade! And it was a gradual, painful process. I look at my kids and wish that I could “package” the scant wisdom it took me so long to accrue, but each of us has to go it alone, right?

JEANNE MARIE LASKAS, departing Washington Post magazine columnist, July 16, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: You used to run away a lot as a child. Please stop running away. Stay wish us, please!
LASKAS: HA!!!No, I swear those running days are over. Seriously, I got all the attention I need and more! Stopping the column is really a life affirming deal. (Is that corny?) Don’t we all have those times? You know, I think of it as a TV show that had its run. Better to stop it when it’s still strong. Or like a rock band that had its hits. I didn’t want to keep playing and have people say: she still singing that same stupid song? Better to move on to a new kind of music that challenges and matures. I think I’m really getting corny here with the metaphors. Sorry.

PAUL LEVITZ, DC Comics President, July 18, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Thank you for “The Legion of Superheroes”. Are you planning on writing anything else in the future and, if so, what?
LEVITZ: I have a Legion plot out to Jim Lee for a special book of his work that’s being produced next year, and I hope I’ll be able to do something more extended. Dan DiDio keeps talking to me about a Legion miniseries with Keith Griffen, and I would love to find the time.

KALEB NATION, Twilight Guy blogger, August 1, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: How did you decide to begin your writings? Had you written things before?
NATION: I had been blogging for years before I started TwlightGuy, on my own site, http://www.kalebnation.com/, so I was very accustomed to blogging before. I started my site when a.) I blogged about Twilight and got 600+ comments (my usual back then was…three) and b.) when the front of my website had more talk about going on about Stephenie Meyer than my own books, when I had never read a word of Twilight. That pretty much brought me to my senses that there was “something” about Stephanie that brought about an enormously devoted fan following, and I wanted to find out what was special about the Twilight books.

SANDRA TSING LOH, author, September 2, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Now that news of a politician firing a librarian over censorship has reemerged, what are your views on whether local governments should be able to ban books of their choosing from their libraries?
LOH: Wow. That’s a big question. Part of me is horrified that extraordinary works of literature have been censored in America, part of me is wary about things like “The Anarchist’s Cookbook” which instructs one on how to make bombs out of regular household materials.
I should mention that I’ve just come from Burning Man (which I went to because I thought it was an important event to see, as a writer, if I were to understand contemporary American culture) and…I honestly believe a bit of self-control in our society is a good thing, a web of rules keeps us from being howling animals!
That’s a short answer to a big question.

ARTHUR FROMMER, travel guidebook author, September 16, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Is there anywhere you haven’t traveled to that you wish to?
FROMMER: I so much regret not having gone to the Antarctic, but the thought of hazarding the Drake Passage and its seasickness-causing seas is too much for me to consider.

NICHOLAS SPARKS. Novelist. September 17, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: How far ahead have you found that you begin thinking about a story before you begin writing the book? Are you able to give us some insights into some stories you are now thinking about?
SPARKS: Usually, I start thinking about my next novel soon after completing the latest, and it can take anywhere from a month to six month to come up with a story.
As for my next novel, I already have the idea and Disney just purchased it (though I’m not done writing it yet). It will star Miley Cyrus.
CZIKOWSKY: Were you involved in the screenplays of any of the movie adaptations of your books? How happy are you with their work?
SPARKS: I toss in my two cents worth, but I’ve been fortunate that I’ve liked the adaptations. The screenplays were all excellent.

ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH, novelist, September 19, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: How much time do you spend as an attorney? When do you find time to write along with your legal work and teaching?
SMITH: I was a law professor rather than a practicing attorney. I used to write in my spare time, such as it was, before I became a full time writer.
CZIKOWSKY: I think Basic is a nice name. Nothing to be ashamed of.
SMITH: I like the name Basil too. Our cat is called Augustus Basil.

BRAD MElTZER, author, September 22, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: What is the “Book of Lies” about? In DC, it is going to be hard to distinguish a book with that title from most of the other locally written books.
MELTZER: In chapter 4 of the Bible, Cain kills Abel. But the Bible is silent about the murder weapon that Cain used to kill his brother. And that weapon is lost to history.
In 1932, a man named Mitchell Siegel is killed in a robbery. In grief, his young son creates a bulletproof man called Superman. And that weapon is still lost to this day.
The question is: what do these two murders, thousands of years apart, have to do with each other? The answer is in “The Book of Lies”. (How’s that for stealing the back cover of the book?)

TERRY PRATCHETT, novelist. October 1, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Do you have a writing process? About how long do you think about your storyline before you put it down on paper? How much of writing is rewriting?
PRATCHETT: Good one. “Nation” was written in a very strange way. I was doing draft five of the first few chapters when I was on draft one of the editing. In a sense, it was written in a way more suitable to painting, in effect I was working on the whole thing all the time. Generally, I start writing when I have even the smallest idea of how a book is going to go, because the physical process of writing itself keeps the mind active and focused on the job at hand. Usually I write about five drafts, but that simply means there are five definite times when I go in a linear fashion from the beginning to the end of the book.

PHILIPPA GREGORY, novelist, October 8, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: How did you develop your interest in British history and royalty? Was this an interest from childhood, did you study it is school, and when did you decide you wished to pursue it so thoroughly and so well?
GREGORY: Funnily enough, I am a republican (in the anti-monarchy sense) so I am not really interested in the royal family. I was not interested in history until I went to university, at the age of 21000and then I fell in love with it as the explanation of everything. Then I did my PhD in the eighteenth century and wrote my first novel “Wideacre”.

JOHN GROGAN, memoralist, October 22, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: “Marley and Me” is one of the greatest books I have ever read. I highly recommend it to others. Is there going to be a movie made of the book and, if so, have you been involved in the screenplay or providing any advice?
GROGAN: Yes, the movie comes out Christmas Day and stars Owen Wilson as me and Jennifer Aniston as my wife Jenny. They’re great together and delivered really strong performances. I acted as a consultant on the script, and am happy how it turned out. It captures the spirit of the book and faithfully reenacts most of the memorable scenes.

ANITA SHREVE, novelist, November 14, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Did you think you may be awakening people (in “Testimony”) to a potential growing issue and providing warning to an emerging kind of scandal?
SHREVE: I never write a novel with an agenda, but in this one I think I did have a message. I’m very concerned about underage drinking. By this, I mean thirteen and fourteen years olds and up. As a novelist, I remain interested in the notion of a single reckless act and its consequence.

JOE GARDEN, The Onion Feature Editor, and MEGAN GANZ, The Onion Assistant Editor, November 17, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Which story (in “The Onion”) generated the most cards and letters?
GARDEN: Oddly enough it was a trifle of an article. It was an editorial entitled “That Mary Kate Is Dragging Ashley Down”. We received hate mail about that for YEARS, but none seemed to be from anyone who understood that “The Onion” was satire.
GANZ: We also got a few letters about a column “Are Your Cats Old Enough TO Learn About Jesus: from a---and I use this term lovingly---a complete wack-job who wanted more information, as in her opinion her cats were mature enough to welcome the Lord into their hearts.
CZIKOWSKY: Has anyone ever tried to sue you for anything you published?
GANZ: We’ve gotten a few cease and desist letters in our day, but libel laws are such that we aren’t in any real danger. We’re obviously a satirical newspaper, not meant to be taken literally, and the 1st Amendment still exists for the time being.
We did get a letter from the White House telling us that we had to stop using the Presidential seal next to our weekly Presidential Address podcast but there are clear laws stating it is public property. So we had our lawyers send the White House a nice letter explaining that, and cc’ed the New York Times.
GARDEN: Things have come up before, but as we move on, we become more secure that the law is on our side. We’re not concerned.
CZIKOWSKY: Has there ever been a celebrity who sought to be satirized in “The Onion”?
GANZ: Not that I know of, but sometimes people are a lot cooler about getting made fun of than you might think. We published a magazine cover with Bill Nye the Science Guy’s face on it, with a headline reading “Crack Almost Killed Me”, and then we received an email from him saying, “Thank you for dealing compassionately about this matter” It made me think a lot more highly of him, for being able to take a joke/
GARDEN: Yea. No one really tried to get in “The Onion”, but once they’re there, they usually have a good sense of humor about it.

DEAN KOONTZ, novelist, December 1, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: What did you teach when you taught and what did you think of your teaching experience?
KOONTZ: I worked in Saxton, Pennsylvania under Title Three of the Appalachian Poverty Program, tutoring disadvantaged kids. Then I worked in Mechanicsburg, Pa. teaching 9th and 10th grade English. I loved teaching, enjoyed the kids---some of whom still write to me even now that they’re 90 and in nursing homes---but I didn’t care for the bureaucracy of the educational system. Hated it. Quite. Became a writer.
CZIKOWSKY: How do you come up with your plots?
KOONTZ: Ideas come from many sources. “Life Expectancy” from a line in a song by Paul Simon. “One Door Away From Heaven” from my disgust with the utilitarian bioethics infecting our medical schools. “Your Heart Belongs to Me” popped into my head while I was in the middle of a phone conversation with a friend who was talking about transplant ethics and technology. He mentioned one curious fact, and I stopped listening to him for a minute because my brain spun up a novel idea from what he had said.
CZIKOWSKY: Your wife deserves credit for giving you five years to see if you could write I believe a lot of frustrated writers wish they had similar family support. Obviously, your wife recognized you had talent. How did you come to realize this gamble was worth it and how did her agreement to this come about?
KOONTZ: Gerda is a special human being. I was lucky to find her. Of course, the deal was that if I didn’t produce enough work to make a living in five years, she would not only stop supporting me but cut off my left hand. I was highly motivated.