THE ANTHOLOGIST SINCE 1927 THE LITERARY AND FINE ARTS JOURNAL OF RUTGERS COLLEGE I N T E R V I E W S Reprinted from The Anthologist Spring 1998 Jonathan Carroll graduated from Rutgers in 1971. He then went on to teach high school in North Carolina, and afterwards went to the University of Virginia at Balch Creative Writing Fellowship. He moved to Vienna in 1974 to teach at the American International School. In the mid-eighties, he stopped teaching full time to concentrate on writer. He has ten novels, a collection of short stories, and a handful of screenplays to his name. His latest novel is Kissing the Beehive. The books have been translated into eighteen languages. Tell us about your experience at Rutgers and its influence on the development of your writing. I went to Rutgers after an awful three years at New England boy's prep school which taught me little more than how to tie a Windsor knot and envy the wrong kind of people. As a result I had about an inch worth of confidence in myself and even less in my abilities. Rutgers changed all that. I was blessed with wonderful teachers-Mason Gross, Julioan Mynahan, Richard Poirier, Nancy Tischler, Jack Spector (among others). They showed me rather than taught me and their lessons were invaluable. They made me hungry for more. There was a wonderful line from a Star Trek episode that encapsulates this: "I like who I am when I'm with you." For the first time in my young life, I liked who I was when I was at Rutgers because the people, the environment, the place itself made me feel whole and valid. I don't think anyone could ask more from an experience. How did you go about getting published and established as a novelist? After Rutgers, I went to the University of Virginia on a creative writing fellowship. I began publishing short stories in small magazines. As part of my graduate work, I wrote a novel. One of the instructors said I should get a literary agent. When I asked how, they said find out who represents your favorite writers and send them a query letter. Astonishingly (in hindsight), the first one I wrote to agreed to read some stories and she has been my agent ever since. A good agent opens big and important doors, particularly for a writer just starting out. Many people say getting an agent is more difficult than getting published and that seems particularly true today when there are fewer and fewer magazines and publishers around. How do you approach the writing process? How often do you write? What inspires you? How I write and how often is a result of what inspires me. And I don't mean that in any kind of "mot just" / purple quill pen / pompous or pretentious way. When I have a story idea I want to write it. I want to get it down and get it right. I love to roll up my sleeves and try to tell it the best way I know. I get excited because I know if I do it well, it's the best kind of seduction: I own the reader for that half hour or week they're reading this thing. Usually if you writer about what bites you, it'll bite the reader as well. Because I love the process, I usually writer every day when I have a project. But if the [mental] cupboad's bare, I do other things without worrying about it too much. If your creativity or inspiration decides to go on holiday, let it go and don't fuss. It'll eventually come back tanned and rested. I think people who sit in front of a blank piece of paper for hours and curse the fact nothing is coming are either misled or faking it so they can elicit other people's pity Is your latest novel, Kissing the Behive, a significant turn from your previous works? What were you trying to accomplish by making your main character a novelist? Kissing the Beehive is a realistic novel because I wanted to get away for a time from the Magic Realism I had used in the previous six books. I think it's good for a writer to change hats now an then. Beehive is based on a boyhood experience: I discovered the body of a girl who had been murdered. I always wanted to use that incident as the basis for a novel. When the time came, this story seemed the perfect place for it. The main character is a writer because it felt right for him to be. I played with the idea of his being a politician, but the idea of a writer lost in his life seemed more believable than a politician, particularly today when politics is sordid and dubious. Do you see all of your novels as variations of one, broader them? All writers have one theme and that is how their experiences have affected their lives. However I don't think there is specifically one BIG theme because we grow older and our feelings change about things. For example another Rutgers alumnus, Philip Roth has written one long autobiography over his career, but if you read the books in sequence, the view of the world is decidedly different from, say, MY LIFE AS A MAN and his latest decidedly darker novel. Which novelists do you enjoy reading? Cess Nooteboom, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Robertson Davies, James Salter, Haruki Murakami, Bruce Wagner, Harry Mulisch How do you approach public readings? What do you like and dislike about interaction? I love to do readings a singings. I love the interplay between you and the people who have come to see and talk to you about what you've been doing all alone at you desk all those quiet months and years. Once in a while you get a lunatic who says or does something unpleasant, but that is rare and not worth thinking about. How do you respond to reviews and criticism? Do they allow you to get a better perspective on your work? Bad reviews are always tough. No one wants to be told they didn't do it right. Unfortunately, there are critics who pride themselves on scorching the earth of every book they review. Valid criticism definitely helps. Stupid or mean-spirited reviews make me angry because I know how easy it is to write them and get away with it without there being any substance or intelligence involved. How do you see mass media affecting fiction and literature in general? I worry that books as we know them might well be on their way out in lieu of the Internet and other visual bullies that seem to take up more and more of the air in our mental room. People in the know and who I respect keep telling there is nothing to worry about but I'm not so sure. Where does the future of fiction lie? John Updike said something about his perfect reader being a fifteen year old boy in Kansas or some such place happening across one of his books in a public library and sitting down at the nearest table to give it a try. I would say that's where the future of fiction lies. Opening a book by someone you've never heard of and suddenly discovering you're involved in a conversation between the present and the absent. How could this writer know so much about my life when she doesn't even know me? What would you say to the aspiring fiction writers? The world doesn't need anything from you, but there are some things you need to tell the world. Do it, don't expect any results, try to love the process itself, and if you succeed, keep your head (and ego) down and keep writing.