Edith's War - author interview

Below is an interview I conducted with Andrew Smith about his novel EDITH'S WAR (recently released on March 26 2010).

"EDITH'S WAR is a story of hardship, love, passion, and motherhood during Liverpool's Blitz of World War II. In early summer of 1940 young Edith Maguire witnesses the internment of her Italian neighbours following Mussolini's declaration of war against Britain. Edith is swept up in the unthinkable event of her Italian friends' deportation to Canada on the Arandora Star and experiences first-hand the hardships and grief that ensue as a result of the ship's fateful voyage..."

Andrew Smith tells how he wrote the book, his inspiration and the connections between Britain, Canada and Italy below:

1

EDITH'S WAR tells a little-known story about Italian internment in Britain during WWII. How did you first encounter this information (new to me), and decide it would make a good novel?


I knew I wanted to write about how WWII changed British society, how the war was the mechanism that caused people to examine the way society worked and to call into question many of the conventions that had existed for centuries. I was researching this at the Imperial War Museum in London when I stumbled across the story of Italian internment in UK. The addition of Italians to the book, who are generally viewed as easy-going and uninhibited, especially compared to the British, fulfilled a welcome contrast to the depiction of an uptight British population. Also the accounts of their internment by harmless Italian men were classic examples of the stupidity of war and also of the way normal standards can change and deteriorate during wartime. This wartime shift in morality in relation to how the British Italians were treated, so different to how they might have been treated in peacetime, appalled and fascinated me.

2

I greatly enjoyed your evocation of place in the book - Liverpool, Venice (I am from Warrington, a town near Liverpool). Why/how did you choose these cities in particular to tell the story?

As you know, Liverpool was one of the hardest hit cities in Britain during bombing by the Germans. Liverpudlians suffered greatly during WWII. It was also the port from which many "aliens" were shipped to Canada or Australia, including hundreds of British Italian men. And the juxtaposition of the easy-going hedonistic and sensual city of Venice with the somewhat stiff and proper character that the younger brother had become, made him seem even more inhibited. And I made Venice the original home of the Italian couple who had lived in Liverpool during the war as a device to move the plot along. And finally you tend to write about what you know. I grew up on Merseyside, in Huyton, not far from Warrington, in the 40s and 50s. And I also know Venice well having spent a lot of time there during the last twenty years.

3

What was the greatest struggle you faced in writing the book?


There are good struggles and bad struggles. It's a huge struggle to write a novel like Edith's War because I had to do so much research and then the struggle that all author's face in developing characters, evolving a plot, etc. etc. But these are good struggles; I loved every minute of the research and writing stage. Then there is another huge struggle to get published. I tried long and hard to find an agent and a publisher and experienced many rejections along the way. This part of the process is excruciating and can be depressing if you start to take the rejections personally. One has to be strong, stick by the courage of your convictions, and realize that publishing is a business like any other.

4

Do you feel you are making a political point in writing this story? You decided to address the subject matter in the form of a novel. Why not non-fiction, or some other form?

If I'm making a political point it has to do with emphasizing the omnipresence and senselessness of war, and the fact that society seems unable to change in any significant way. I've written and published two non-fiction books, which I enjoyed writing, but I think it's difficult to impose passion and a distinct point of view into non-fiction. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I think it's easier to do it more effectively in fiction. I wanted to state very clearly how humankind seems unable to avoid war (witness the presence of wars constantly throughout history), yet how senseless and unfair war always is. Even WWII, which might be seen as justified from the Allies' perspective, has hundreds if not thousands of examples of inhumanity and unnecessary suffering imposed by all sides. The novel form allowed me to portray actual events and have the reader make no mistake that I viewed them as senseless and unnecessary. I also wanted to imply how difficult it is for any of us to change, on a personal level but also on a larger scale, as a society. A non-fiction book usually only tells the story, whereas a novel can show the effects of a story and be so much more emotive in the telling.

5

How are you enjoying the publishing process, having your first book released? If there's one thing you could change about publishing a novel, what would it be?


It's very rewarding to hold the finished product of so much work in one's hands. But, to go back to my point about publishing being a business, I don't think many authors are prepared for the dog-eat-dog commercial side of publishing. I'm fortunate because I was somewhat prepared by my work in publishing, I'm a book designer, but even I wasn't ready for the alarming truths of how difficult it is to get one's book noticed and into the bookstores. If there's one thing I could change it would be that books are sold on their merit alone, and not because a publisher paid for a prominent position in a bookstore, or because the author has a TV show, or has won a literary prize, or one of the hundred other reasons a book gets noticed other than for the quality of writing or cleverness of plot, etc. But I'm sounding cynical. I'm really not, and I do still believe that if a book is good it'll get the readership it deserves.

6

A good amount of the novel is set in and about Italy. Do you feel personally connected to Italy?

Not particularly, other than I've spent a lot of time there since I was in my twenties and have quite a few Italian friends whom I love, and I like Italy better than almost anywhere else.

7

Do you remember when you first wanted to be a writer?


Yes I do, because I started writing late in life. It was 1988 and I was forty-years-old, when I took my first creative writing course. Just previous to that I had taken a bus trip over the Himalayas from Kashmir to Ladakh in Northern India and written a magazine article about it, the first piece of writing I'd ever published. The article won an award for travel writing, which inspired me to write more. So I took some courses and started writing short fiction, which I love writing. I don't know why it took me so long. I don't think being a writer was presented as an option at the school I went to in Liverpool so I never thought of it. So I went to art school and became a graphic designer. I've been lucky to have found writing, and to have another profession that allows me time to write but also keeps the wolf from the door. Because, as we know, books rarely provide much of an income.

8

How important are family relations in telling a good story?


I think human relations of any kind are crucial to a good story. We all need something we can relate to and human relations provide a great deal that is familiar to us all. I suppose family relations are often the most intense and usually the most influential on our lives so they hold a certain gravitas that no other relations hold, they're what forms us. So, while not necessary to a good story, family relations are certainly wonderful additions to a story.

9

What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

Once I've done research and am into the writing stage I tend to get up fairly early in the morning and write solidly for four to six hours. Once I actually sit down and put fingers to keyboard the time usually flies by. But I'm as bad as most writers about starting, I'll make a cup of tea I don't really need or thumb through a magazine I've already read. I don't know why many writers find it hard to actually start writing; maybe because it's so intense, it's hard work to write, and it's rather tiring. Often when I eventually stop I'm fairly drained. But once I start I rarely look up, except to check research, until I just run out of steam some half-a-dozen hours later.


10

What are you working on right now? A departure, or something related to historical fiction across different times and places like EDITH'S WAR?


Some months ago, at a stage when Edith's War was out of my hands with an editor, I wrote the first two chapters of a book set in contemporary London. Unlike Edith's War it'll be a straight single time period narrative. The story is about a paparazzi photographer who is down on his luck having lost his business and his wife. He's a recovering alcoholic, estranged from his family, and broke. But he has a cache of photos of celebrities that might be worth a great deal. But because of his alcoholism and past indiscretions nobody wants to know. There's a whole plot in my head about how an opportunity to get exclusive photos of a drugged-out music star falls in his lap. Actually it's a ploy by the recording company to get publicity, etc. etc. The idea comes from a fascination I have with the symbiotic relationship that celebrities often have with the press. Princess Di being a prime example. I'm also interested in the whole phenomenon of celebrity, especially in our society with the proliferation of shows like American Idol and with people like Paris Hilton who have no talent or skill (they don't even model) but who have become celebrities earning millions. I'm keen to get back to writing it, but first we have to get out there and sell Edith's War.


Thank you for your time, Andrew. You can read more about EDITH'S WAR at http://www.edithswar.com/ and on Facebook here.


I'll also be posting this interview on http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/ and a link from my website http://www.mattfullerty.com/.

Biography
Andrew Smith was born in Liverpool, England. He moved to Toronto, Canada in 1974 since when he's worked in magazines and book publishing. Andrew Smith's writing has been included in the Journey Prize Anthology, has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards, and has garnered a Western Magazine Award for Travel Writing. He has published two non-fiction books: Highlights, an illustrated history of cannabis (co-author) and Strangers in the Garden, the secret lives of our favorite flowers. He's enjoyed writing fiction since 1990, which, fortunately, is when he began.

Where a writer is from is neither here nor there

Passport control at Gatwick Airport.

We should beware of paying more attention to a writer's nationality than their fiction.

In the literary world, there is perhaps nothing more insulting than being labelled "insular". Any accusation – such as Nobel prize permanent secretary Horace Engdahl's 2008 comments about the parochialism of American letters – is damaging, hurtful and also guilt-inducing. Insularity, after all, is inimical to literature, the opposite of fiction's artistic goal of understanding others. And it's not just writers who are shamed by the allegation. Publishers and, by implication, readers are often indicted on similar charges, their rigid tastes blamed for the shockingly low availability of fiction in translation.

The idea of insularity cropped up in a hugely enjoyable and occasionally bristly recent panel discussion between Aleksandar Hemon, AS Byatt and Tom McCarthy. Together to celebrate the launch of Best European Fiction 2010 – which Hemon edited – the three novelists gave a fascinating insight into what European fiction meant to them, where its boundaries were drawn and what, if anything, bound it together. While the conversation was provocative and illuminating, it was a single comment from AS Byatt that stuck with me as I picked up the anthology later that night. Byatt – about whose fiction I may be critical, but whose understanding, perception and passion for world literature is inspiring – mournfully bemoaned the fact that she knew only one Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare. It was a frustration that seemed both entirely genuine and at the same time slightly acquisitive – as though she saw literature as a sort of Risk board, with Albania a weak point of entry that needed bolstering.

It wasn't hard to see her point: for a reader as avid and engaged as Byatt, to be ignorant of writing from anywhere on the globe is to miss out on new voices, new methods of expression, new windows on different cultures. But to me she seemed to be going at it all wrong. Does it really matter that she's only read one Albanian novelist? Is it acceptable to know two Belgian writers but for them both be Francophone rather than Dutch speaking? In short, does it really make a difference where the hell these people are from?

If there's an answer to this question, Best European Fiction 2010 isn't the place to find it. It does not claim to be a complete overview of a continent's literature, nor does it confer national-writer status on those sandwiched between its yellow covers. As Zadie Smith writes in her preface, "Anthologies are ill-fitting things – one size does not fit all." What it offers, instead, is a partial snapshot of Europe's concerns, a whistle-stop tour of old and emerging literary territories, some of which are familiar (Alistair Gray's Scotland; Victor Pelevin's Russia), others discovered for the first time.

Hemon has done an astonishing job in lighting up the map of Europe, opening the doors to these writers, many of whom – Michał Witkowski, Antonio Fian and Ornela Vorpsi in particular – I hope will become more widely known in the English-speaking world. But it hasn't encouraged me to seek out more Polish, Austrian and Albanian literature. Nor has it made me feel that I need to look for countries not included in the collection and find out about their cultural heritage. Their sensibilities as writers are necessarily bound up in their particular upbringings and cultures: centring on them simply as Poles, Austrians or Albanians is to denigrate their status as authors. As readers we should resist tokenism as much as insularity.

It's anticipated that the Best European Fiction anthology will become an annual publication, which should go some way to bringing such exceptional voices to the attention of anglophone readers. If this is the case, this volume will certainly become a highlight of the cultural year. But I hope that in future editions, the writers will be arranged alphabetically, their country of origin left as nothing more than an interesting endnote at the back of the book.

--

Stuart Evers, Wednesday 27 January 2010

Lebanon Valley College interview!

Dear England, I'm pleased to report I've been invited for a campus interview at Lebanon Valley College. LVC is located in Annville, a small town in Pennsylvania about 35 miles east of the state capital, Harrisburg. It's a picturesque part of the country, and I am excited to visit next Wednesday and meet the faculty at the English department.

University of Michigan interview!

Dear England, I am pleased to have an initial phone interview at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The job is for Lecturer in English literature, and would involve teaching upper-level courses in poetry, literary studies, romanticism, drama, digital rhetoric and undergraduate advising. Ann Arbor itself is a pretty college town in the American midwest:

For those of you uncertain where Michigan is, the whole state is surrounded on three sides by the Great Lakes, specifically Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. The college town of Ann Arbor, home of the main campus of the University of Michigan, is also very close to Lake Erie and Canada itself - see the map! Ann Arbor is in the south-east corner of Michigan, close to Detroit:

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So far I've visited Ann Arbor three times, twice in the last two years, and I'll be visiting again in September - for the football! The University of Michigan is famous for its American football games, which are played at literally the biggest stadium in America: it holds 100,000. It's nickname is The Big House - also a term for prison in American slang!

Click the pic to learn more about Michigan American football and stadium!

London transport!

I made it home!

I tried to walk to a nearby cinema. Here's what happened - the walk was a nice hour and a half, a long way, but I caught the bus to shave off the first 30 minutes. Then I figured the best way from Hendon to Kensal Rise (across North London) was the overland train to West Hampstead, then walk. So far so good.

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On the way back, however, I realized that the train was moving quite fast. The first stop flew by (mine was the second) and no one really looked up. Then I realized it was a packed train. Okay, I might be on the wrong train...Then a kind of sinking feeling as Hendon flew by with no sign of the train stopping. Clearly I was on the express, and then it hit me - to Bedford. In Bedforshire. That's Bedfordshire, as in, not London. As in another county, called Bedfordshire. Bedfordshire!
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It took me three hours to get home. Anyway, it was surprisingly okay, as it stopped at St. Albans, half way home. I got the stopping train back, which was empty of course, because who travels into London at 9 pm on a week night? Me apparently.
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Interested in visiting Viet Nam?

Who wouldn't be, with a host of destination cities like these? Follow the pics or this link for a new website dedicated to visiting cities a little off the beaten track.

Ruba.com's first featured country is Viet Nam, and as you can see, that could mean any one of the following cities Can Tho, Chau Doc, Da Lat, Da Nang, Hanoi, Hoi An, Hue, Mui Ne, Nha Trang, Sa Pa, Saigon and Vung Tau.

Now that's what I call travelling!

University of Puerto Rico shortlist!

My latest job possibility (for Assistant Professor of English) is at the University of Puerto Rico. Click the pic above the learn the history of the oldest university of Puerto Rico, an American territory (but not a state). The university is run in a similar way to a US state university, offering courses to both Puerto Rican and mainland US students, and I am very excited to have made the shortlist there. Beautiful buildings and palm trees can't be bad!

Groundhog Day!

Bad news: Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning: 6 more weeks of winter!

Click the pic for the official Groundhod Day Club - "I wouldn't be a member of a club that would have me as a member" (Groucho Marx).

White House Christmas Tree!

Dear England, Last night I took this pic of the White House Christmas Tree. I am quite pleased with my skills, although the lights may have something to do with it! You can just make out the Washington Monument in the background. No sign of W. the elf though...

Click the pic to learn the history of the tree and how they get it into place! Pretty interesting actually - 'The Tree' won the National Christmas Tree Association's (NCTA) Christmas Tree contest held back in August in Des Moines, Iowa!

In case you're wondering, it's a massive fir tree.

Ancestor of Dead Parrot Sketch found!

Looks like the Ancient Greeks were the funniest guys after all. Click here or the pic for the article.

The Monty Python crew have classic taste, even the Greeks would agree.

British muppet speeding on German autobahn!

The title post says it all... a British muppet has been speeding on the German motorway/freeway/autobahn, and has yet to be caught! Skills!

Click this link for the full story, kids. Rated PG-13.

Obama's America - but no electioneering!

Election Day is here at last. But apparently, according to T-shirt seller cafepress.com (who are worried about inciting riots), in some states it’s "prohibited to wear political gear at the voting booths. In fact, donning political attire may result in your being turned away - and in some cases, your arrest.

By definition, displaying political messages on T-Shirts, buttons and such is considered “Electioneering” (defined as, to work actively for a political party). To prevent voter intimidation, electioneering is not allowed near some state’s voting booths. Be sure to look into restrictions in your neck of the woods. To get you started here are a few recent articles discussing electioneering":

Issue of what not to wear emerges as voters go to polls: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=20789

County won’t allow “passive electioneering”: http://www.ncnewsonline.com/local/local_story_261100909.html

I am a fan of cafepress.com since I have my own shop here selling everything from sweatshirts to postcards! Cafepress lets you easily become a business partner, so I set up www.cafepress.com/mattfullerty a few weeks ago, and I've already sold a mug!

This time next year, I'll be a millionaire (Rodney)!

American Wedding Trip!

Austin, Texas Wedding! (American Wedding 2008)

Last weekend I did my job as Best Man at my buddy's (US) / mate's (UK) John (Boy) Shaw's wedding, which he had in Austin, Texas baby!

It was a beautiful, lavish and memorable weekend. The boy Shaw, the dreamer-schemer romanic-believer, stepped up and characterisitically lacking in nerves, hitched his wagon to the girl from Richmond, Texas. I made sure the ring was there.

Good luck to Malcolm and Alana who got married the very next day in a helicopter flying over the Las Vegas Strip. We wish we could have kept the party going in Vegas (baby)!

Austin, though, proved to be a fun town - if you're not in the bars on 6th street, the mad ones, you're in the cool open-air ranch bars of 4th street with the slightly older crowd. It was the first day of class and suddenly there were 8-9000 students on these streets. We naturally wore our Road Trip (American Wedding 2008) T-shirts and cowboy hats. Is there such a thing as a British Urban cowboy?

Congrats to the Nunans-Shaws and the Duncansons!

Marine Corps Marathon

Not long to go now!

With just over two months before I attempt my 3rd marathon, I have begun my training in earnest! I even went running at 6:30 this morning, which was lovely and cool. I trotted along the trails and streams of Rock Creek Park and it was 72 degrees when I got back at 7.20 - already getting hot!

Anyway, I've now reading Haruki Murakami's great little memoir about running and writing: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It's a little gem! The Japanese writer most famous for his novels of love, loss and pop music takes us back over his 20-plus years of running, starting with his first marathon distance - when he ran from Athens to the town of Marathon (the orifinal race run by Pheidippides after the ancient Greeks beat the invading Perisans at the Battle of Marathon).


Murakami only discovered afterwards that the distance from Athens to Marathon is technically 25 miles, a mile or so short of today's marathon distance! Oops!

The Big Easy!

A great little picture I found of Rue Bourbon, New Orleans, graffittied with 'Love Wins'!

Click on the pic to see more of the city!

Sweet!

New Orleans - the beautiful!

Beijing Olympics Medal Count!

Dear England, As you can see from this chart we're not doing bad in the medal count so far!

The UK has 2 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze, putting us in 10th place! You can see the breakdown for our Gold (Cycling and Swimming), Silver (Cycling and Canoeing) and Bronze (Horse riding x2 and Swimming) at this link.

Come on England!

Shouldn't that telephone box be red?

As telephone boxes are fast disappearing from the UK altogether, they're surviving on the campus of George Washington University - albeit in blue. Dear England, we miss our red telephone boxes!

Adirondack Park, upstate New York