{"id":84,"date":"2009-08-21T13:24:42","date_gmt":"2009-08-21T12:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.karenessexblog.com\/?p=75"},"modified":"2009-08-21T13:24:42","modified_gmt":"2009-08-21T12:24:42","slug":"candid-and-uncensored-with-andrew-davidson-and-karen-essex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/?p=84","title":{"rendered":"Candid and Uncensored with Andrew Davidson and Karen Essex"},"content":{"rendered":"

Also posted on Vintage\/Anchor Books. Click here<\/a> to check out their site.<\/p>\n

In their respective novels The Gargoyle <\/a>and Stealing Athena<\/a>, Andrew Davidson and Karen Essex both tell parallel stories that take place in two different time periods, intertwining the lives of people separated by centuries. The books also explore common themes of the mystical, the mythic, karmic debt, the creation of art, and romantic love. In a candid and uncensored phone conversation, the authors compare their writing processes and talk about the sometimes numinous, sometimes laborious procedure by which they create stories and bring their characters to life.<\/p>\n

(Click here<\/a> to listen to entire conversation: )<\/center><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/td>\n\"\"<\/td>\n\"\"<\/td>\n\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

KE: Hi Andrew. When I wrote to you I said that Doubleday had sent me a galley of The Gargoyle before it was published and I read it\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: \u2026 and I really enjoyed it\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: Ah, thank you.<\/p>\n

KE: When Anchor asked me to participate in this dialogue, even though I am on a deadline, and I am rather far behind at this point, I was going to skim The Gargoyle again, but the truth is that I have now re-read every word of it, because I was just enjoying it way too much.<\/p>\n

AD: Well, I apologize.<\/p>\n

KE: So if I\u2019m late on my deadline, I\u2019m just going to say call Andrew Davidson, it\u2019s all his fault.<\/p>\n

AD: I think that\u2019s a very wise\u2026 blame me, that\u2019s the way to go.<\/p>\n

KE: Uh huh, I will.<\/p>\n

AD: Okay, good. Before we get into the question, what\u2019s the deadline? Do you have another novel coming out? Or is it an article of some sort?<\/p>\n

KE: I\u2019m here in London, writing my next novel, which is a Victorian gothic novel, and it\u2019s due in November.<\/p>\n

AD: Okay, we\u2019re going to come back to the question that you\u2019re just about to get to, but my question to you before we get to that question is: how are you so unbelievably prolific? Because I just finished reading Stealing Athena, which was great, by the way\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>
\nKE: Thank you.<\/p>\n

AD: \u2026 and there\u2019s a lot of words in it. How did you get another book out of your body so quickly?<\/p>\n

KE: I am remarkably unblocked in most situations, though Stealing Athena was the hardest thing I ever wrote.<\/p>\n

AD: Why was that?<\/p>\n

KE: Well, it was because of the enormous amount of historical research that I had to assimilate, and then spit out into a narrative that didn\u2019t sound like a history lesson.<\/p>\n

AD: But still, Stealing Athena was only two years after the book that came before it, is that correct?<\/p>\n

KE: Right.<\/p>\n

AD: Wow. I\u2019m sorry to get on this\u2026.<\/p>\n

KE: Quite all right.<\/p>\n

AD: But seriously I am in awe. I just don\u2019t know how you can write that much.<\/p>\n

KE: I\u2019m not sure how to answer that question, because people always ask me what my process is, and I always say my method is the obsessive-compulsive method of writing. Which is, that once I get going on something, I almost don\u2019t let it go. In a weird way. Someone once asked me if I took weekends off, and I just laughed, and I said, \u201cI take my work with me to the bathroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: And I wasn\u2019t kidding. I\u2019m trying to correct these measures now, but\u2026.<\/p>\n

AD: The interesting thing is that I write, I think, by that obsessive-compulsive method a bit as well, but what it ends up doing for me is dragging me off down alleyways that are incredibly fascinating, and I write twenty or thirty pages about, but I discover that it ends up being one paragraph in the finished work.<\/p>\n

KE: Right. Well, The Gargoyle was your first novel. Correct?<\/p>\n

AD: That\u2019s right. Yes.<\/p>\n

KE: And you wrote it without a deadline.<\/p>\n

AD: Without any deadline whatsoever.<\/p>\n

KE: Right. So I had the same experience. My first novel was Kleopatra, it took me about\u2026 it took me seven years from the time I thought about it and began to research it to the day I sold it, to what was then Warner Books. So\u2026 and I did a lot of research that took me down fascinating alleyways, which had nothing to do, in the end, with the finished book. But I\u2019m here to inform you that now that you\u2019re a big success\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: Yeahhh\u2026.<\/p>\n

KE: \u2026 you\u2019re going to have to learn to write faster. And you will.<\/p>\n

AD: Okay.<\/p>\n

KE: My experience has been that you now have a readership, and your readership is waiting for you.<\/p>\n

AD: Right. But\u2026.<\/p>\n

KE: So\u2026.<\/p>\n

AD: \u2026my feeling in my case is that, umm, I mean I\u2019m certain that I could put something out in two years, but I don\u2019t know if my readership would be happy with it, because I know I wouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

KE: Right.<\/p>\n

AD: Yeah.<\/p>\n

KE: Yeah, this is\u2026 I think this is one of the issues that we novelists deal with, and I\u2026 This is what separates what I would call, for lack of a better word, a \u201ccareer novelist\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: \u2026 you know, from someone who has a story or two in them. I think that it takes a brain-shift, almost, to transform oneself into a person who can write to satisfy a readership. And I don\u2019t mean that that\u2019s the primary goal, that we should be feeding product to our readers, but I look at people who are writing thick, idea-driven books like Philip Roth, and John Updike, and the late Iris Murdoch\u2014these are all incredibly prolific people.<\/p>\n

AD: Really, really are.<\/p>\n

KE: So at some point I think they made that shift. And I think that you\u2019re at the beginning now, so I bet you that if we had this conversation in five years into the future, you wouldn\u2019t be so concerned about it.<\/p>\n

AD: Well, you know, I think it\u2019s interesting. Because I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessarily\u2014I completely understand what you\u2019re saying, first of all\u2014but I don\u2019t necessarily know that it\u2019s exactly what you\u2019re talking about, as much as it\u2019s just the different ways that people create. For example, I mean, in music, you\u2019ve got, say, Leonard Cohen versus Bob Dylan. And at some point Bob Dylan was putting out an album every fifteen minutes, and Leonard Cohen puts one out every four years if we\u2019re lucky.<\/p>\n

KE: Um hmm.<\/p>\n

AD: And that\u2019s just how they approach it. And\u2026 recently, I\u2019ve been going through the work of John Fowles. And I\u2026<\/p>\n

KE: Oh yes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
AD: \u2026 and I\u2019m absolutely loving his writing, and the books are so different, and he, I think, produced only seven novels in his life. Well, I mean clearly, here\u2019s a \u201ccareer novelist\u201d who is just not somebody who writes in quite that quick way. And it\u2019s not better or worse, obviously. The one thing I\u2019ve discovered in<\/td>\n\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
this last year and a half, where I\u2019ve actually been meeting professional writers, because I didn\u2019t know anybody before that, is just that everybody works in ways that absolutely surprise me. When I talk to other writers and they say, \u201cWell, this is my method, this is my process,\u201d sometimes it\u2019s all I can do to keep from blurting out: \u201cREALLY? That works for you?\u201d<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

KE: I think my favorite weird process story is that of Graham Greene<\/a>, who got up early every morning, put on a beautiful suit, wrote exactly five hundred words, would stop mid-sentence, once he had reached his five hundred words, was often done by breakfast time, and then would go sort of be a social butterfly, go and hang out with his wealthy friends on yachts in the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

AD: Which is not a bad process at all.<\/p>\n

KE: No. Why can\u2019t I learn that one?<\/p>\n

AD: Yeah.<\/p>\n

KE: I don\u2019t really see it forthcoming, but that\u2019s the process I would most like to learn.<\/p>\n

AD: And why can\u2019t I learn it, either? Interestingly, in Stealing Athena, there\u2019s\u2014you talk about the \u201cdaimon,\u201d the indwelling spirit inside people\u2026<\/p>\n

KE: Uh huh\u2026.<\/p>\n

AD: At one point during the writing The Gargoyle, I wrote a five-page tangent on the history of the word \u201cdaimon,\u201d which obviously never made it in. In the finished version of The Gargoyle, the word gets referenced once. I needed to write my way through those five pages to know that it didn\u2019t belong in the book at all.<\/p>\n

KE: Um hmm. No, I can see that, and I\u2014but I do think that the more that you experience the form of the novel, the more proficient you will be at not needing to go down those roads.<\/p>\n

AD: Well, you know, we\u2019ll have to have a conversation in five years and see if I\u2019ve learned anything. (Both laugh.) All right, so let\u2019s go back, I think I interrupted you mid-question, about five and half minutes ago, maybe a little more\u2026.<\/p>\n

KE: Yes. Well, now that you\u2019ve said that you don\u2019t want to talk about personal things, I\u2019m going to just pretend you didn\u2019t say that and I\u2019m going to ask you, if\u2014because your book is so vivid\u2014I\u2019m going to ask you if you were ever, like your character, either a pornographer, or a burn victim, or a substance abuser.<\/p>\n

AD: No, no, and no. All imagination and research. Not a substance abuser as far as drugs. When I was younger I drank far too much, and I haven\u2019t had a drink in, I don\u2019t know, seventeen years, at this point. Which was a very good choice for me to make, but no I was never a drug addict. It was just a matter of following what I needed to know for these characters, and I\u2014it\u2019s funny, because I do get people who are surprised when they meet me and find out that I\u2019m not burned. Which is interesting.<\/p>\n

KE: I asked the question, but I would have certainly guessed that that was the least likely. I would have thought you were a pornographer, frankly, more than a burn victim. Because your\u2014I could just tell\u2014your research on burn victims was so amazing. And frankly, I\u2019m not sure that a person could live through that and want to write about it in as vivid a way that you wrote about it. I think sometimes that our personal experiences are\u2014I know that I write about the long-dead, so it\u2019s hard for people to confuse me with my characters.<\/p>\n

AD: You\u2019re not Pericles?<\/a> Because I was wondering.<\/p>\n

KE: Well, no, I\u2019ll tell you a little joke, and I\u2019m sure that at this point you\u2019ve gotten your share of strange readers. People always think that\u2014there\u2019s a certain breed of reader that imagines that I was Kleopatra in another lifetime, and so I\u2019m always being asked this question: \u201cWere you Kleopatra in another lifetime?\u201d and I always laugh and say that I certainly wasn\u2019t, but I\u2019m pretty sure that I was Julius Caesar.<\/p>\n

AD: Okay.<\/p>\n

KE: Which leads me to my next question. Because you have said that the genesis of your book was that Marianne Engel started to talk to you.<\/p>\n

AD: And you wrote back to me that Julius Caesar spoke to you.<\/p>\n

KE: Is Marianne Engel an historical figure?<\/p>\n

AD: No, absolutely not. When I go back to medieval Germany, and spend time in Engelthal monastery, she is one of the only characters who I didn\u2019t have at least some indication existed. Ah, now I mean, you know from writing historical fiction and taking characters who exist, like, sometimes you\u2019re only given a grain, a nugget, and then you just go a little bit crazy with what you say about it. I mean, for example, Christina Ebner who is one of the characters in medieval Germany, in the monastery\u2026 I have no idea what she actually looked like. None whatsoever, but I\u2019ve got to describe her so you just kind of make stuff up and hope that she doesn\u2019t come back from the dead to exact her revenge.<\/p>\n

KE: So you\u2019re\u2014did you\u2014let me ask you this: Did you know about the monastery before this character began to talk to you, or did you start doing research about thirteenth century Germany and then this character began to emerge?<\/p>\n

AD: Neither. What actually happened in this case is I had\u2014Marianne Engel came, started speaking to me, and essentially what happened is that she\u2026 I mean, she looked like she does in the book, and she was talking to me and she sounded somewhat mentally unbalanced, but I was pretty sure that she wasn\u2019t. And there was a real religious aspect to the way that she spoke, and I found something old-fashioned about it, as well. And at one point when I put her in a room with the narrator of the book, the burn victim, she said, \u201cWe\u2019ve known each other for seven hundred years,\u201d but I really\u2014at this point, I had no idea what she was talking about. And I had been working on the book for at least a year before I came across Engelthal monastery in completely unrelated pleasure reading, and I followed that line just because it interested me. I mean, in this case it was as simple as going \u201cWell, her name is Marianne Engel and the name of this monastery is Engelthal\u201d\u2014Valley of the Angels\u2014and I just wanted to see if there might be some connection, and there absolutely was, and when I went back and spoke to my character\u2014because I do speak to my characters\u2014I said, \u201cWhen you were talking about living in the past, were you at Engelthal?\u201d And she said yes. Is that\u2026?<\/p>\n

KE: That is fascinating.<\/p>\n

AD: Okay, so that\u2019s not just weird?<\/p>\n

KE: It\u2019s\u2026 it\u2019s\u2026 super weird. (Both laugh.) It\u2019s extraordinary, but I can follow it, and I do understand how these things happen. As I said, I was spoken to by this voice. I was writing, I had just begun to write my Kleopatra book, and the entire book was going to be third-person limited, so I was going to be writing in the third person, but always, always, in Kleopatra\u2019s mind and voice, and from her point of view. And one day I was sitting at the computer and this very officious voice just started talking to me. And I couldn\u2019t imagine what was happening, and he wouldn\u2019t go away, and he wouldn\u2019t go away, and what he was saying was very clever and I thought, well I better start writing some of this down, because this is so interesting. And I was, I don\u2019t know, way into it\u2014you know, way into it\u2014when I realized this was the voice of Julius Caesar. And he was insisting that I give him the opportunity to talk about how he met Kleopatra, and write about her from his point of view. And I couldn\u2019t stop it. I mean, it came to me as fully formed prose.<\/p>\n

AD: Hm<\/p>\n

KE: And you know it\u2019s very, it\u2019s very difficult to get fully formed prose. I don\u2019t know if our readers understand how many drafts we go through, to get to something that they want to read.<\/p>\n

AD: Literally\u2014for anybody who is listening\u2014literally, hundreds of drafts.<\/p>\n

KE: Yes, for me too.<\/p>\n

AD: Yeah.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>KE: Hundreds. I mean, it\u2019s extraordinary how many times that you can over a sentence, and find ways to make it better, or more specific, clearer, a better image comes to you. You realize that the grammar is all wrong, and then you realize you don\u2019t need the sentence, and then you continue on, and then you realize that sentence is missing and you have to put it back, and reintegrate it. So it\u2019s just\u2014you know, it\u2019s a very painstaking process.<\/p>\n

AD: Yeah, absolutely. I\u2019m just going to say\u2014like, to give an example of what we\u2019re talking about is when you and I were both approached about doing this interview originally it was supposed to be a written interview, right?<\/p>\n

KE: Right.<\/p>\n

AD: And I came back to you, and I said, \u201cWell, listen, I just don\u2019t think I\u2019ve got a written interview in me.\u201d And for me the reason was, because, man, when I speak I can speak and I can get it out of me, but writing takes forever. Recently I\u2019ve just been doing reviews and I\u2019ve got a review coming out in of another writer\u2019s book in a newspaper and it took me at least 30 hours of writing to write 450 words.<\/p>\n

KE: Oh, that\u2019s painful.<\/p>\n

AD: It is. And I don\u2019t know any other way to do it, because my review was originally ten pages long.<\/p>\n

KE: Um hmm.<\/p>\n

AD: And it took me all that time\u2014it\u2019s like that old joke: \u201cI would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn\u2019t have time.\u201d Like, that explains writing to me.<\/p>\n

KE: Yes, but how do we explain\u2014and now you and I are both faced with this responsibility\u2014how do we explain these characters getting in touch with us, and talking to us? I was telling this man I\u2019ve been dating over the weekend about this process and I realize I sound utterly mad.<\/p>\n

AD: Hmmm.<\/p>\n

KE: So\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: Is that maybe the explanation?<\/p>\n

KE: That may be one explanation. Your character is of your imagination. You created her.<\/p>\n

AD: I actually worry a lot of the time that she created me. But okay, we\u2019ll go with your hypothesis.<\/p>\n

KE: So, somehow you created each other. But in linear time, you came first.<\/p>\n

AD: Okay.<\/p>\n

KE: But we don\u2019t know that, because she\u2019s a voice from the thirteenth century\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: Man, it\u2019s all so tricky, isn\u2019t it? And when did Julius Caesar give birth to you, exactly?<\/p>\n

KE: I think it was in 1995. But he\u2014you know, I have to wonder sometimes\u2014and at the risk of sounding even more like a freak\u2014was Julius Caesar trying to contact me? I have a dear friend who is a spiritualist\u2014she\u2019s, you know, she talks to people\u2019s angels for them. And she says, \u201cYes, absolutely, you know. Julius Caesar is trying to contact you, and speak through you.\u201d And you know, I find that hard\u2014I find that even though I\u2019m a person open to the paranormal\u2014I find that difficult to wrap my brain around. And yet, it\u2019s hard to find another way to explain what happens to us in this process of writing.<\/p>\n

AD: Hmm.<\/p>\n

KE: And what\u2019s interesting is you, you know, you describe the process that we go through, is very similar to the process that your character Marianne Engel went through to create her gargoyles.<\/p>\n

AD: Start with a lot and remove until you find the form.<\/p>\n

KE: Um hmm.<\/p>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: And she was being spoken to by three masters, who were also telling her what to do.<\/p>\n

AD: And they were actual historical figures. And interestingly, you know, we were talking earlier about the sort of way that the connections are made, is that one of the other historical figures in the book\u2014in English, he\u2019s called Henry Suso; in German, he\u2019s called Heinrich Seuse\u2014was a mystic theologian of the time. He had three masters that spoke to him in his head. And that came from him, over to Marianne Engel. So, I\u2019m willing to steal from anybody.<\/p>\n

KE: Well, you know the expression, they always say: new writers imitate, but experienced writers steal.<\/p>\n

AD: Right. And as I understand, I think that it was T.S. Eliot who said that, but if I\u2019m not mistaken he stole it from Picasso.<\/p>\n

KE: And Picasso was a notorious thief of all kinds of things, so who knows where he got it.<\/p>\n

AD: He heard it in the bar. But it\u2014I find it very interesting the way we do meet characters because not all of my characters come and start talking to me. This was a very specific experience with my character Marianne Engel. But sometimes it\u2019s an entirely different path to meet a character and sometimes it\u2019s torturous. There\u2019s so much work you do before they\u2019ll say anything to you.<\/p>\n

KE: Um hmm. Well did your protagonist\u2026 you don\u2019t ever give him a name. Correct?<\/p>\n

AD: Because he never gave me a name. I kept asking him; he wouldn\u2019t tell me.<\/p>\n

KE: So he preferred to remain anonymous, and you have to respect that.<\/p>\n

AD: And I tried to give him names. You know, I\u2019m not even going to say which names I gave him, but I tried for about a year to call him by a name, and it just didn\u2019t work. It didn\u2019t stick.<\/p>\n

KE: I love that. Because in retrospect, once things have manifested the way they\u2019re going to manifest. So here we have your protagonist who has no name. You gave him no name because he would give you no name, and yet there\u2019s a perfection to it. When I think of trying to call that character a name, I can\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: And it\u2019s really\u2014you know, so there\u2019s a perfection in the way it turned out.<\/p>\n

AD: And one of the reasons too, is, that in the story, it happens over and over, that as people enter a new life, they leave behind the name that they had previously.<\/p>\n

KE: Mmm. Oh, that\u2019s very true, and that\u2019s perfect, because it\u2019s almost as if\u2014he has lost so much of his identity, in being burned.<\/p>\n

AD: And not always in a bad way<\/p>\n

KE: No, certainly. I mean, he lost his physical beauty. But losing his physical beauty enabled him to start learning to love, so you can\u2019t really qualify that as bad. Even he says it\u2019s the best thing that ever happened to him. But so much of his identity was burned away, and then I think the evidence of who he was\u2026 like, his driver\u2019s license would have been burned away, and he says he won\u2019t have access to his bank accounts anymore\u2026.<\/p>\n

AD: But he still has a bank account that is set up in a false name\u2026<\/p>\n

KE: In a false name.<\/p>\n

AD: \u2026that he can still access. That he was using to hide proceeds from his pornography business.<\/p>\n

KE: Right. So he\u2014that\u2019s what I\u2019m saying. There\u2019s just a perfection in him not having a name, and he doesn\u2019t\u2014actually, he\u2019s not even located geographically.<\/p>\n

AD: Right. And again this was sort of a combination of, well, not really being told when I was asking the characters, but it also wasn\u2019t important. And in fact, I thought it was important to not set it in an actual location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
KE: Hmm.<\/td>\n\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
AD: Which is not something that, obviously, you can\u2019t do in your books. You have very specific locations.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
KE: If you\u2019re going to write about Pericles, you know he\u2019s in Athens.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

AD: He\u2019s not in downtown L.A.<\/p>\n

KE: I don\u2019t have to worry about those particular issues.<\/p>\n

AD: Now, but do you find that constraining, or freeing? To have that information laid out for you?<\/p>\n

KE: Both.<\/p>\n

AD: Okay. Elaborate!<\/p>\n

KE: It\u2019s very interesting. I find it both constraining and freeing. It\u2019s freeing because I don\u2019t have to decide where Pericles lived, or where Aspasia, my other heroine, where she came from. In writing Stealing Athena, I was lucky enough to be able to read the letters of Lady Elgin, and so her personality came through loud and clear. And, you know, if it was 1799 and she was pregnant, well, she\u2019s pregnant in 1799 in my book too. So it\u2019s freeing in that it gives one less to invent, but then its also constraining in that it gives one less to invent.<\/p>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: And sometimes, you know, our lives don\u2019t really unfold all the time in a way that is convenient for a narrative. So the challenge in writing historically based fiction is to take what really happened and without sacrificing history, and without just making things up, or ill-using history or historical characters, you have to figure out how to tell a story with a narrative out of a life that didn\u2019t really unfold as one.<\/p>\n

AD: Hmm.<\/p>\n

KE: So that\u2019s the challenging part.<\/p>\n

AD: And how much license do you give yourself to make up details that you\u2019re quite sure aren\u2019t true, and do you worry about, for lack of a better word, \u201cdisrespecting\u201d the life of the story, or the story of the life that you\u2019re telling?<\/p>\n

KE: I worry about that all the time and I don\u2019t make up anything that I know isn\u2019t true. I never do that. I did it once, in a very small way, and I got caught by a classical studies scholar who gave my second Kleopatra book, Pharaoh, an absolutely brilliant review, except she said: \u201cShe distorted the historical fact in this way, and it really bothered me.\u201d And so I never did it again. I did it once, I knew I was doing it, I think I got tired of obeying my own rules, and so I broke my rule. But I don\u2019t\u2014if there is a truth available to me, I always use it. And then, if I\u2019m inventing things, I make sure they are possible and hopefully probable.<\/p>\n

AD: Okay.<\/p>\n

KE: So I would never\u2014so let\u2019s say that Cicero was banished from Rome in 58 B.C., or whatever, I wouldn\u2019t have him appearing in Rome in that year even if it was dramatically convenient for me.<\/p>\n

AD: Hmm. Okay.<\/p>\n

KE: So I don\u2019t mess with the facts. And I have a great respect for these people who, ah, without knowing it have let me use their lives. I really do, I always try to\u2014even in a case when they\u2019re just absolute bastards like Lord Elgin, I always try to give a character his or her humanity and dignity.<\/p>\n

AD: You know, I\u2019ve got to say, talking about Lord Elgin, boy, did I have a reaction to that character. Boy, did I hate him. And I mean that in the best possible way. There is no greater compliment to a writer than to say I loved, or I hated, your character.<\/p>\n

KE: Yes. And would you believe I worked hard to actually make him more human than he, I think, was.<\/p>\n

AD: Really? Because every time a millimeter of his nose fell off, I was cheering and hoping that it would spread further throughout his body.<\/p>\n

KE: He did terrible things, umm, certainly he did terrible things to his wife. But I didn\u2019t want to write an out-and-out villain. Because, you know, I try not to make value judgments on my characters\u2026.<\/p>\n

AD: Oh, you never can.<\/p>\n

KE: People are always\u2014people think that I manipulated that story to make Lord Elgin worse than he was so that I could make his wife some sort of martyr, but neither of those things is true at all.<\/p>\n

AD: It\u2019s interesting\u2014I\u2019m going to interrupt for a second\u2014when you\u2019re talking about not making value judgments on your characters, I mean, in writing that\u2019s absolutely essential and I imagine that every time you\u2019re writing something that Lord Elgin is doing, you\u2019re looking at it from his side where he honestly believes he is doing the best possible thing.<\/p>\n

KE: I certainly worked that way with him\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: \u2026and I hope that even though I fully exposed all the dastardly things that he did to his wife, and also the fact that he was certainly acting with the arrogance of empire in taking the Elgin marbles, and he was acting out of ego because he was directly competing with Napoleon\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: \u2026I also hope that I demonstrated that he did have the spirit of a preservationist\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: \u2026 and that when he saw the degraded state of the Parthenon, it bothered him, and there was a part of him that thought: I am the man who can save this. I can save these beautiful treasures.<\/p>\n

AD: And it\u2019s worth saving, and if I get the credit, all the better.<\/p>\n

KE: Yes.<\/p>\n

AD: Right. And it\u2019s interesting when you\u2019re talking about Mary being a martyr, because, you know, I didn\u2019t necessarily read it that way. At the same time that I\u2019m hoping that more of Lord Elgin\u2019s nose falls off, I\u2019m also thinking, well, why does she keep putting up with this and how is she constantly tricked by him, why doesn\u2019t she open her eyes and see what\u2019s actually happening?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/td>\nKE: She does see, but I think it\u2019s so difficult for us in our twenty-first century perspective to understand what it was like to be a woman and a wife in the late 1700s, early 1800s. Women had no legal standing, and one simply did not just leave one\u2019s husband. Mary thought that it was her job to do whatever it was she had to do to help make her husband the<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
great man that Destiny intended him to be.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: And for a very long time, she loved him and she acted in that spirit, until it became completely intolerable. And then she rebelled. But then, even after she rebelled, she was still willing to stay with him. You know, it was Elgin who took the final steps to end the marriage.<\/p>\n

AD: Right. I\u2019m just thinking that if I was Mary and Elgin was locked away in France, I don\u2019t know that I would have been crusading quite as hard as she was to get him out.<\/p>\n

KE: I know. And look at\u2014not only did he not reward her for it, he accused her falsely of doing terrible things, while she was doing nothing but trying to help him get out of prison. I don\u2019t see her as a martyr, either, by the way, and I\u2019m glad you didn\u2019t read it that way. I think she was someone who\u2014I admire the way that even after many terrible things happened to her, she still went on, and still lived a good life, and a fulfilling and productive life. And in many ways, a joyful life, and found meaning in her life. Even though he tried his best to utterly destroy her.<\/p>\n

AD: Yeah, it really did seem to be a case of Lord Elgin\u2019s punishment in life was having to live with the fact that he was Lord Elgin.<\/p>\n

KE: Yeah, can you believe some poor woman came along afterwards and had eight more children with him?<\/p>\n

AD: You know, when I read that in the afterward I was thinking: \u201cWhat? Really?\u201d But he must have been\u2026<\/p>\n

KE: I know, it\u2019s shocking.<\/p>\n

AD: \u2026he must have been a very charming man when he put his mind to it.<\/p>\n

KE: Yes, and I think there was something about that four-letter word \u201cLord\u201d in front of his name, gave him a certain amount of privileges.<\/p>\n

AD: Umm hmm.<\/p>\n

KE: But you know, we still haven\u2019t answered my question, and we may never answer my question, which is: how can we explain that figments of our own imagination rise up, and contact us, and have psyches that are separate from our own to the extent that they start bossing us around?<\/p>\n

AD: I\u2019m weak-willed. Is that the answer? I don\u2019t know. Like, I mean, I suppose we could guess, or put out our hypothesis, but I don\u2019t really have an answer. All I am is glad that it does happen, and happy to write it down when it is occurring.<\/p>\n

KE: So you are a person\u2014as am I\u2014who is happy to accept the mystery of it?<\/p>\n

AD: Yeah. It\u2019s not always so mysterious to me. Marianne Engel did come to me in an entirely mysterious way, present herself more-or-less fully formed, and talked to me. But for me that\u2019s the exception rather than the rule. I mean, a lot of time I do so much background research on a character\u2014character sketches, diary entries, letters they wrote, umm, drawings of what they look like, decisions on what type of clothing they will wear\u2014that eventually I coax a persona out of the research.<\/p>\n

KE: What\u2019s so interesting to me is we go through the exact same research process, but you\u2019re researching a fictional character, so your facts are coming from research and really from your own mind, and I\u2019m going through the same process but I\u2019m researching the actual facts about an historical figure who existed.<\/p>\n

AD: Right, so you\u2019re reading\u2026<\/p>\n

KE: But we\u2019re still going through\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: You\u2019re reading the actual letters of Mary\u2026<\/p>\n

KE: Yes.<\/p>\n

AD: \u2026whereas I would read those letters, too, but I\u2019d also have to write them.<\/p>\n

KE: Right, right. Yeah, that is fascinating, and I think that\u2019s an interesting point for readers. I know\u2014I also write screenplays, and I do those same exercises when I\u2019m working on screen characters, you know, I write biographies for them, and maybe will write a letter in their voice, and that sort of thing, and imagine what their school experiences were like. And that\u2019s\u2014those are just the nuts and bolts of creating a character, right?<\/p>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: I think people don\u2019t really understand that, that there is this birthing process.<\/p>\n

AD: I think that what would really surprise people is just the enormous amount of work and research that\u2014even as we\u2019re doing it\u2014we just know it\u2019s never going to make it into the final book. It\u2019s what we have to know, it\u2019s essential that we do it, we can\u2019t create these characters without doing it, but you just know\u2014the poetry that your character is writing is not going to make it into the book, for example.<\/p>\n

KE: Hmm. So did you write the poems that he wrote to Marianne?<\/p>\n

AD: Yeah, of course I did.<\/p>\n

KE: Very interesting. I don\u2019t know if I would have guessed that. That\u2019s wonderful. Umm\u2026 so maybe someday you\u2019ll publish them. Now I want to see them.<\/p>\n

AD: Oh, but I think this is quite interesting as well. I will not publish them. I will burn that stuff before I leave this earth. I have no desire to leave behind the research materials or unfinished writing.<\/p>\n

KE: Hmmm.<\/p>\n

AD: For me, the only thing I want to see published is what I\u2019ve signed off on. A book where I feel that every word is exactly the way that I want it to be.<\/p>\n

KE: Well, Andrew, you\u2019re going to have a lot of angry biographers after you\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n

AD: Well, yeah, okay, along this line, final question\u2014well, maybe this is the final question, we\u2019ve been talking for almost an hour now, you know\u2026<\/p>\n

KE: Oh wow. It flew by.<\/p>\n

AD: \u2026we had that bit before we actually hit the record button. Nabokov. The publication of The Original of Laura, his unfinished book, which he left behind and he instructed his wife to destroy his unfinished work. She couldn\u2019t do it, and it was passed along to his kid and now, I think it\u2019s after\u2014oh, I don\u2019t know, however many decades\u2014it\u2019s finally coming out. Umm\u2026 you know what I\u2019m talking about?<\/p>\n

KE: Yes, and are we Nabokov fans happy about that?<\/p>\n

AD: Well, I\u2019m a Nabokov fan. I\u2019m incensed. Like, I am so unhappy that his wishes are being ignored\u2026<\/p>\n

KE: Right.<\/p>\n

AD: \u2026and that work he considered unfinished is being published. I mean, this is not a case of some writer where we don\u2019t have enough work. I mean, he produced, what, a dozen? Thirteen novels, or something? Like I mean, this isn\u2019t necessary for his legacy, as it is. This isn\u2019t necessary to provide material from which to work. I find it to be a publication of stuff that he didn\u2019t believe was ready to go. And where do you fall?<\/p>\n

KE: You know, I think the problem with the Nabokov is that we\u2019re too close to it. I think it would be fascinating to see an early draft of Jane Austen\u2019s at this point. Because people would examine it from a purely scholarly point of view, without sort of passing judgment on the author. Certainly if someone had said to me, \u201cDon\u2019t release this,\u201d I wouldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n

AD: Um hmm.<\/p>\n

KE: I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m very torn, because there\u2019s a scholarly part of me (that) thinks that at some point our work belongs to the world.<\/p>\n

AD: Right.<\/p>\n

KE: We belong to the world. But we are also\u2014you know, in a way I think of us as I think of my characters. We belong to the world, but on the other hand while we\u2019re alive in this world and our descendents are alive, we also have to function as private human beings, you know, who hold a sense of ourselves private and dear. So you know, I\u2019m a little bit torn. I would love to see Nabokov\u2019s work in a hundred years, but maybe not right now. I\u2019m having the sort of opposite experience because my next book is a retelling of sorts of Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula. But from a female point of view. And I just recently read Bram Stoker\u2019s handwritten notes for the book Dracula\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: Um hmm.<\/p>\n

KE: And I have made use of them. Some of the things that he toyed with and characters that he toyed with, who didn\u2019t make it into Dracula, I have decided, it just hit me, that it would be so much fun to include these characters in my book. So you know, I\u2019m sort of directly involved in this process that you\u2019re talking about. And funnily enough, Stoker\u2019s widow didn\u2019t\u2014she sold his handwritten notes on Dracula for two pounds.<\/p>\n

AD: Oh!<\/p>\n

KE: To a library. So he mustn\u2019t have left any instructions for them, and she certainly didn\u2019t care about them whatsoever. So you know, but here I am, a hundred years later, kind of making personal use of them, so it\u2019s an interesting and complicated question for me.<\/p>\n

AD: Right. And it\u2019s very interesting to hear you talk about your next book. You don\u2019t worry about it flying away if you talk about it before it\u2019s been published?<\/p>\n

KE: Umm, I don\u2019t worry about it because I know it won\u2019t fly away, because, one, I\u2019ve cast a spell on it, and, two, I work from a very extensive outline. So before I agreed with myself to sell this novel to Doubleday, I wrote a hundred-and-something page outline, convincing myself, that I would be able to deliver the book. So\u2026<\/p>\n

AD: Good Lord.<\/p>\n

KE: \u2026 I know the book is solidly within me.<\/p>\n

AD: How closely do you stick to that outline?<\/p>\n

KE: Well, it\u2019s very interesting, and you\u2019ll appreciate this. It sort of goes along with what we\u2019ve been talking about. About a week ago, a few of my characters decided that they were going to change a couple of plotlines.<\/p>\n

AD: Which is a very, very good sign.<\/p>\n

KE: Yes. And what can you do? You have to let them.<\/p>\n

AD: They don\u2019t like to be pushed around.<\/p>\n

KE: They don\u2019t. You have to give them their freedom. Because we know that they will tell us exactly what this is supposed to be. Now, I was so frustrated with the lack of speed with which they were filling me in on the details, that last Thursday I had a good long cry about it. I was so frustrated with them changing up everything behind my back that I literally sat on this sofa where I\u2019m sitting now and I wept. So I think they took pity on me and they\u2019ve been slowly divulging more of what they want.<\/p>\n

AD: I see this as a natural ending point for our conversation, with you weeping for your art. I love that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Also posted on Vintage\/Anchor Books. Click here to check out their site. In their respective novels The Gargoyle and Stealing Athena, Andrew Davidson and Karen Essex both tell parallel stories that take place in two different time periods, intertwining the lives of people separated by centuries. The books also explore common themes of the mystical, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-stealing-athena","category-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}