Sam Gridley
Author Interview - Sam Gridley
Author of The Bourgeois Anarchist
Susie Alioto is a longtime political militant. After college she spent two decades in an anarchist commune, and at age 66 her beliefs haven’t wavered. Yet she now teaches at an expensive private school, and her life is comfortably middle-class. Her son Eric, a budding mathematician, mocks her as a “bourgeois anarchist.” As the story opens, violence breaks out at a peaceful rally, and Susie is drawn into a mysterious intrigue involving angry activists and devious capitalists, gentrification, arson, even mobsters. Though Susie tries to hew to her values, the true nature of justice becomes muddled, and her anarchist principles provide no clear answer. People’s lives are at risk, and she struggles to decide how to respond. Along the way, Susie stumbles into unexpected romance, but the new man is another mystery; he may be no more reliable than the ones who’ve failed her in the past. Meanwhile her son, the apolitical math geek, adds an offbeat and comic perspective that may offer a clue to the personal and political intrigues.
Author Interview - Sam Gridley
Author I draw inspiration from: So many to choose from! Current authors include Richard Russo, Vikram Paralkar, Elise Juska. Past authors: Jane Austen, Ford Madox Ford. I admire strongly drawn characters and complicated situations, portrayed in a style clear on the surface but with depth to it.
Author Interview - Sam Gridley | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book: An old IKEA chair, near collapse, with a dog demanding to be scratched.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. I might try, with no luck, to woo her away from Darcy. More to the point, she'd understand how to get us out of the elevator.
Author Interview - Sam Gridley | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: In high school, when I had the foolish notion that I had ideas to express and stories to tell. At that time, too, I realized I'd be no good at anything else.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: Though I used to devour paperbacks, I now prefer the convenience of ebooks, where I can set the type size myself and keep the book safe from my wife's anti-clutter crusade. Audiobooks are both too slow and too fast for me, if that makes sense. In ordinary passages I want to go faster than the narrator, but now and then I want to stop and go back a few paragraphs.
The last book I read: Jennifer Steil, EXILE MUSIC, a strong novel about a family of musicians that flees Austria before the Holocaust and ends up in Bolivia. It has many themes: music and exile, as the title says, plus LGBTQ romance, revenge, coming of age, cultural adaptation.
Author Interview - Sam Gridley | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer: Computer, for sure. I can hardly write a sentence (including this one) without revising it midstream.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: Fitzwilliam Darcy from Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. After failing to steal Eliza Bennet from him, I'd forgive him for his snooty first name and ask him for a loan. Actually, I'd admire both his reserve and his moral compass. But he probably wouldn't invite me to dinner.
Author Interview - Sam Gridley | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a: Faceless bureaucrat. Minus an outlet in writing, I could see myself sinking into dead-end routine. Or else, having reached a snapping point, I'd be that guy spouting insane political rhetoric in the park.
Favorite decade in fashion history: Look, being a fashion leader myself, in my 20-year-old khakis, I pay no attention to other people's clothes, and my sense of fashion history comes only from movies. I guess I would like an era with big hats because they're so wonderfully absurd.
Place I’d most like to travel: Berkeley, CA, where I went to college. I'd like to connect somehow with the idealist I was then, though it's probably impossible. Berkeley is a fascinating city apart from the university, and I'd like the chance to be a townie for a while.
My signature drink: Coffee. Always a cup nearby. Hot or iced. With a tiny bit of milk. Otherwise, O'Reilly's Stout from Sly Fox Brewing Co.
Favorite artist: Henri Matisse, no question, because his characteristic colors are so bright and weird, jumping out at you, so much like real life.
Number one on my bucket list: Write six more novels.
Anything else you'd like to add: Well, I think if people read THE BOURGEOIS ANARCHIST, they may fall in love with the protagonist, Susie, as I did. I had no choice but to write about her.
Find more from the author:
Twitter: @SamGridley2
Author Bio: After being born in Pittsburgh, Sam Gridley lived in Camden, Providence, Bristol, Westchester, Inglewood, Palos Verdes Estates, Torrance, Redondo Beach, Northridge, Culver City, Berkeley, Oakland, Cambridge, Brighton, London, Palo Alto, Bellefonte, Baltimore, Lyndhurst, Rutherford, and perhaps other communities he has forgotten. This was before the age of 29. Since then he has settled in Philadelphia and scarcely budged.
As an author, he has published two novels, THE SHAME OF WHAT WE ARE and THE BIG HAPPINESS, as well as stories and satire in more than sixty magazines and anthologies. He has received two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.
Married for many years, Sam has two grown children, one neurotic dog and a small backyard where several gerbils are buried. He hangs out at the website Gridleyville.blog.
