Jay Neugeboren
Author Interview - Jay Neugeboren
Author of After Camus
A troubled marriage-and love story-set against the background of the AIDS pandemic, and the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq lie at the heart of After Camus. Saul Davidoff and Tolle Riordan, who meet during a protest against the Vietnam War, marry, live through the Plague Years of the AIDS epidemic, raise a family ... and burn out. Camus is a hero to both of them: Tolle, a young dancer and choreographer, has a liaison with him in Paris shortly before his death; Saul, inspired by Camus's The Plague, becomes an infectious disease (and AIDS) doctor ... and Camus becomes a ghostly presence central to our story. Hoping to repair their marriage, Tolle and Saul return to a village in the South of France where they lived when they were first in love, and where Camus lived when recovering from a siege of tuberculosis. The novel draws a vivid portrait of a marriage that spans a series of historical events: from the Vietnam war through the AIDs epidemic and Gulf War, to the Iraq War and the advent of the right wing Le Pen movement in France. After Camus is both a fictional meditation on recent history and a compelling tale of how various forms of love and friendship do and do not survive in times of social and political upheaval. In this novel of enchantments, internationally acclaimed author Jay Neugeboren is at the peak of his powers as a master storyteller.
Author Interview - Jay Neugeboren
Author I draw inspiration from:
The list is long! Starting with childhood favorites--High Lofting, Howard Garis, James Ramsey Ullman; Herman Wouk and John Steinbeck, to Chekhov (currenty rereading, slowly, the 13 volume Constance Garnett translations of his stories) and Dickens... also: Penelope Fitzgerald, Richard Powers, Saul Bellow, Isaac Babel, Nicolai Gogol, Willa Cather, William Trevor... and of course: Camus
Author Interview - Jay Neugeboren | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
In my Upper West Side living room --in my 1934 wide-armed Sears Roebuck armchair.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
Natasha from Tolstoy's War and Peace. How does it play out? We fall madly in love and fly away for a wild sybaritc idyll on an island off the coast of Maine.
Author Interview - Jay Neugeboren | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
When I was 8 years old and wrote a novel from which I read a new chapter to my 4th grade class every Monday morning for several months
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
Hardback preferred (if it opens flat). Paperback--best for subway reading. I've never (yet) read an ebook or listened to an audiobook
The last book I read:
Walter Isaacson's biography of Einstein. An exquisitely researched book, wonderfully readable... about one of the most fascinating men ever.
Author Interview - Jay Neugeboren | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
I usually make notes haphazardly--on half-sheets, backs of envelopes, in margins of books--for a year or so before beginning chapter one of a new book. I'll sketch scenes, do homework (research), type out random musings, etc. By the time I begin the writing, I'll have hundreds of pages of notes as well as annotated books and articles, but I will rarely consult any of them, other than to verify facts, data. I write on my computer but edit long-hand. Begin every day editing what I wrote the day before, and don't move forward until satisfied with revisions.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Antonia from Willa Cather's My Antonia. She'd understand, without many words spoken, just how beautiful and how hard life can be.
Author Interview - Jay Neugeboren | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
If not an author, I would love to have been a geologist.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
The thirties-I Iove clothing that inhabits art deco designed spaces.
Place I’d most like to travel:
Norway. I have been there often, lucky me, and find its landscape ever new and beautiful--from the fjords to the frozen north, from the magical forests to the enchanted harbors.
My signature drink:
Morning coffee from my French press. Kumbocha prepared by Cui Ying Peng.
Favorite artist:
Another long list due to my eclectic tastes: I love Bach, Mozart, Sibelius, Copeland, Gershwin.... Rodin, Ingres, Chagall, Goya, Turner, Bosch, Sisley.
Number one on my bucket list:
Returning for a lengthy sojourn in the South of France--in the foothills of the Alpes Maritimes--where I lived for a few years once upon a time, and where After Camus is set.
Anything else you'd like to add:
A new novel I just completed, and another I have begun! I'm collaborating on a movie script based on an early story of mine, "The Year Between,." I have also written a play for stage based on my novel The Stolen Jew and have put together a collection of recent essays, and a fifth collection of new short stories. I find it strange and delightful that recent years, when I've passed the proverbial three score and ten, are proving to be the most productive writing period of my life. How'd that happen?
Author Bio:
JAY NEUGEBOREN is the author of 22 books, including five prize-winning novels, four collections of award-winning stories, and two prize-winning books of non-fiction. His stories and essays have appeared widely—in The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Ploughshares, Tablet, and Commonweal, among others, and have been reprinted in more than 50 anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, and is the only author to have won six consecutive Syndicated Fiction Prizes. His archive is housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Center in Austin, Texas.
