On September 16th,
we’ll announce the 2009 First Novel Prize Short List and on November 9th
at our Annual Awards Dinner, we’ll announce this year’s winner. The First Novel Prize is one of the
most important ways the Center for Fiction supports emerging writers, along
with our low-cost writers studio space, our writing classes, and our many
readings and events featuring new writers. We hope you'll read all the short-listed writers this year and
join us for the annual dinner to meet them and join in the
excitement as we announce the 2009 winner.
In the meantime, you
might enjoy reading this excerpt from my interview with Hannah Tinti, our 2008
First Novel Prize recipient, who won for The Good Thief.
Hannah and her Random House editor Susan Kamil will appear at the Center of October 21st at 7pm as part of our new Wine and Words series. Susan is one of the finest editors working today, so it will be interesting to hear how she ushered this wonderful debut novel into print.
The Good Thief is not your usual literary novel. It’s a riveting page-turner set in a
Dickensian New England that tells the story of a twelve year-old orphan, Ren,
who is missing his left hand. He
was abandoned as an infant at Saint Anthony’s Orphanage and remains there until
a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be his long-lost brother.
As Ren begins to find clues to his hidden parentage he comes to suspect that
Benjamin not only holds the key to his future, but to his past as well.
After winning the
First Novel Prize, The Good Thief
also received an Alex Award given to adult novels likely to appeal to young
readers. (YA category) So if there’s a pre-teen or teen in
your life suffering from post-Potter depression, think about giving them this
beautifully written, gothically spooky book.
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The Good Thief is in some ways a very dark novel, steeped in the
grotesque and full of murder and mayhem, but the tone is often playful and full
of humor. What made you decide to write this particular kind of a novel in this
particular way?
I grew up in Salem so this kind of darkness, the world of the witch trials, was very much a part of my growing up, and it felt very natural as a place to explore. I grew up playing in graveyards; that wasn’t usual at all in that part of the country. One of my first jobs was working at the witch dungeon in Salem, a basement filled with torture devices used on witches. So my book doesn’t feel that dark or morbid to me. I chose to write in this tone because I find it very difficult to read a book that is all dark—that can be brutal to the reader--and I wanted to write the kind of book that I would want to read, something that would have thrills and would explore the dark side of experience, but also have some humor and an element of hope. I wanted to write something that would be a bit of an adventure tale.
Can you talk about
the many damaged characters in the book?
The scene I wrote first was the graveyard scene and as I was describing the scene I described Ren holding the horse’s reins and his breath clouding in the air, but when I tried to describe what he was doing with his other hand, I realized he didn’t have another hand. So that deformity came out of the ether. I didn’t purposely set any of these deformities into the story, they evolved as I was writing, but maybe they relate to the idea of people wearing their hurts on the outside.
But Ren sees all
these people beyond their deformity, doesn’t he?
Yes. In that sense there are elements of me in Ren. I was drawing on that ability I somehow developed growing up of being able to relate to and become friends with all sorts of people. He’s a listener and he observes and it isn’t really until the middle of the book that he begins taking responsibility and making decisions for himself.
What were you
influences outside of particular books or writers?
Movies, I love good movies, visual art. “Star Wars” was a huge influence, my brother and sisters and I would make our own super8 movies, a lot of it based on our excitement about “Star Wars.” We’d use these old fencing swords, then draw on the film to create the lasers.
Also, my mother was a librarian at the Brookline Library and ingrained the habit of reading in all of us. We’d read every night, sometimes aloud. And we’d eat together, each having our own book at the table. That was a treat, a special night, when we could all bring our books to the dinner table!
What were some of
books that shaped you as a writer?
Danny, the Champion of the World and all the Roald Dahl books had an impact on me. He’s probably one of my favorites. And, growing up, I read Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as all those fairy tale books by color—The Red Fairy Tale Book, The Green, the Blue. And I loved the Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L’Engle and Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. The Italian folktales collected by Calvino were a big influence.
Of course, when you’re writing you don’t always realize what your influences are or you’re writing about; your unconscious is tying the threads together. In this book, I knew I wanted to explore the concept of resurrection in various ways, not only in the religious sense, but also in the physical sense. I was also thinking about the reinvention of the self through story-telling. Benjamin Nab tells story after story and each story is a reimagining of who he is and who Ren is and what their situation is. He teaches Ren how to tell a story, and in the end Ren is able to tell a story that saves his life and turns out to be true. He stumbles on the truth through lies.
Do you think we tell
stories to save our lives?
I think so. I think we lie constantly, lots of little lies, making our way through the world. We have to lie to ourselves sometimes to get from one place to another. We have to lie to other people sometimes to alter how they look at us. All that lying is not necessarily bad. I’m drawn to things that aren’t black or white. There are elements of goodness in moments of badness, in sins.
Can you talk more
about your writing process?
I don’t outline, I don’t do note cards. I try to follow my intuition. The only way I can describe it is as using a divining rod. I just sit and try to write and let things come. I don’t realize what I’m doing until afterward and then I go back and do editing and try to make things make more sense.
I saw an interview with John Irving and he said he thinks of the ends of his books first, then he spends a year plotting, and then writes. But I creep along wondering do I turn here? Do I open this door?
When I was a little girl, I once went net-casting on a fishing boat. They throw a net overboard, then drag it a hundred yards, then pull up whatever they catch into a big tank onboard, and you toss things over that you don’t want, and keep the fish that you do. I remember that the water seemed so clear and empty, but when they pulled the net on board, it was full of the weirdest things I’d ever seen. Bizarre creatures from the bottom of the sea. Novels seem to be like this—casting a net through a writers’ subconscious and pulling the unexpected into the light.
What do you think of
the idea that people graduate from writing short stories to writing novels—a
bit of an irritating idea, but can you respond to that?
As editor of One Story, I consider stories as completely separate works of art. That’s our format and the reason why we publish them individually rather than in an anthology. We publish one at a time so they can be looked at as separate works of art, so the reader can sit down and have a complete artistic experience in a very short period of time.
So of course I don’t feel writers graduate to writing novels. The only reason I wrote this as a novel is because I somehow knew it wasn’t a short story. That knowledge filled me with dread and trepidation. I’m a very slow writer; it often takes me six months to write a short story. The idea of devoting years and years of my life to this was daunting.
What do mean by
saying you’re a slow writer? Are
you revising and fine-tuning as you write?
It took me six years to write The Good Thief. I write slowly--a page a day maybe--and I revise as I write. Perhaps this is because I’ve done so much work as an editor—at Boston Review, then Atlantic Monthly, then at an agency, Writers House, for three years going through manuscripts, then editor of Washington Square magazine at NYU and then starting One Story where I’ve been for six years.
Will you continue to
work as an editor?
Yes, working as an editor gives me a lot of pleasure. If I see a story that’s not done but has something really spectacular in it, I’ll work with the writer to help them say what they want to say.
But it’s more difficult
with a novel isn’t it, which can say many things at once? What if someone asked you, for example,
what you wanted to say in The Good Thief?
Yes, it’s harder with a novel. I don’t know if I could answer that now. There were so many things I was trying to explore, loss, storytelling, loneliness. And I wanted to explore death in different way, an unconventional way because it’s a topic most people are concerned with but block out. I try to deal with my fears by writing.
Can you tell us about
your editor and agent and how the book came to press?
Susan Kamil is my editor and Nicole Aragi is my editor. The magazine Story and its editor Liz Rosenthal published my very first story and she said that when I was ready I should think about sending something to Nicole. So years passed and when I had something polished and ready, I sent it to Nicole. She called me and asked to meet. I had the collection and the two chapters of The Good Thief at that time. Later she admitted she wanted to meet me before agreeing to represent me because after reading my stories, she wanted to make sure I wasn’t crazy.
I was very lucky to have the book placed with Susan Kamil at Dial. Susan’s a great editor. She cooks me dinner and we sit down at her kitchen table and go over things page by page. She treats us, the Dial authors, like her kids. It feels like family at Dial.
What next?
I can’t say. I was revising this book right up to the last second. They were ripping it from my hands at the last minute.