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| David Hirshberg, photo by Alison Sheehy |
David Hirshberg, the pseudonym for an entrepreneur and business executive, is the author of the new novel My Mother's Son, which takes place in Boston in the 1950s.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for My Mother’s Son,
and for the family you describe in the book?
A: The idea for the novel has a lot to do with what I wanted
to say. I thought long and hard about writing a book that would address really
serious issues—immigration, political issues, the shenanigans that go on in
business, the lies people say to each other, wars.
I thought if I wrote a book about that and set it in today’s
time, it would be a big mistake. Somebody on the left would say I was on the
right. Somebody on the right would say I was on the left. Even as fiction,
somebody would say this is thinly veiled.
I was tremendously impressed with Barbara Tuchman’s book A
Distant Mirror, about the 15th century war between France and
England. But it was really about the First World War. It reflected things she
believed were still in play in 1913-14.
I took a lesson from that. It wasn’t a distant mirror, but
if I could write about an era with similarities to the last few years, it would
be interesting, and would free me up from the talking heads climate of somebody
attacking [the book].
Q: So why the 1950s? Why Boston? And how did you research
the book?
A: The reason I ended up focusing on 1952 is that I was
searching for things—if the 1920s and ‘30s were too far in the past, the 1980s
and ‘90s were too close. I looked to the 1950s. I did some homework, looking
for the issues of immigration, politics, business, war, and sports. They were
all in turmoil. In 1952, all these things were major issues, centered in
Boston.
First, there was a polio epidemic. This was before the Salk
and Sabin vaccines. It was a very serious issue. That was a distant mirror for
AIDS.
Second, there was a vicious Senate campaign between John
Kennedy and Henry Cabot Lodge. Lodge was the scion of a very WASPy family, and
John Kennedy was the grandson of Irish immigrants and was Catholic. The idea
that Massachusetts could have a Catholic senator was appalling to a lot of
people. It was a signal that if Kennedy won the times would be changing.
You can look at the Obama campaign--the campaign against
Obama, against Senator Clinton, they were pretty vicious. I was trying to find
similarities.
The next one was war. The Korean War was raging. Most people
don’t know about the Korean War. They know about World War II, about Vietnam,
but nothing about Korea…Like Iraq and Afghanistan, it was very distant. There
was no [impact] on the home front. Today in Iraq and Afghanistan we are totally
disconnected and there’s nothing on the home front. It’s a nice surrogate.
1952 also happened to be a year that was very big in sports.
It was the first time a baseball franchise moved. The Boston Braves decided to
move to Milwaukee. It shocked people. No one ever thought of baseball as a
business.
Now, in today’s newspapers, almost everything is about
contract disputes, domestic violence, stadiums with bad behavior. Sports today
is almost all about business. That started in 1952.
The last issue was immigration. It’s on everybody’s mind
today. DACA, Trump with the wall. Immigration in the early 20th
century through 1952 was about Irish, Italians, and Jews. Ironically, in
Boston, the Irish were coming of age, the Italians were coming of age, the Jews
were coming of age.
When I looked at all the years of the 1950s, Boston in 1952
was the epicenter of all these issues.
For the research, thank god for Google. I didn’t have to
take trips. It can all be done online. I didn’t do one-on-one interviews. In my
writing, I don’t interview people. I know a lot of people say you have to do
that. I don’t.
For me, it interferes with my creative capabilities. It
could subconsciously affect what I write. The whole thing has to be germinated
from me without any biases.
Q: You are writing under a pseudonym. Why did you choose to
do that?
A: It’s one I wrestled with. In my business activities, I
don’t say this with any braggadocio, but I’m pretty well known. I felt if I
used my name, somebody would say, oh, it’s a book about X because it’s his
industry, or about Y because I know he’s involved in that transaction, or about
Z because he raised money for that [entity]. I didn’t want anybody Googling me
and saying [that].
Or [they could say] I know he calls it literary fiction but
it’s probably some piece of crap he slapped together. That’s the kind of thing
I wanted to avoid. People will look at the book not knowing the author, and can
evaluate the book on its merits.
Q: What do you think the novel says about the impact of
World War II on those that survived it?
A: The question is how did they survive it, and the book
tries to show certain people weren’t involved in the war. Papa and his friends,
none participated in the war because they were too old. They never even talked
about the war. They went about their business as if there were no war.
On the other hand, you had people such as the boy’s uncle
who actually wasn’t in the war but escaped from Germany in 1938. I tried to
show that even though he wasn’t physically harmed…the effect of World War II on
him was profound…
For me, the main point was the fact that there were people
who survived, in Germany and Eastern Europe, who survived the Holocaust by
getting out just before, or sneaking out of the camps, the impact on some was
so profound that they couldn’t cope with life…
Q: Are you working on another novel?
A: I’m two-thirds through another book. I don’t want to say
too much about it. This book is centered on the 1950s; the next is on the
1960s.
It’s very different. There’s a little bit of magic realism
involved. It’s set in the United States. I’m in love with it but I haven’t
finished it. I don’t know if I’ll love it when I’m finished…I’m hoping to
finish by the end of the year.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: A couple of things. First the entire book pivots from the
opening line: When you’re a kid, they don’t always tell you the truth. It’s
really important to the book. It sets up everything in the book [and implies
that] lies are coming.
Second, I had a couple of friends in a book group and they
read the penultimate draft. They noticed the symmetry in the book. Things are
set up in the beginning that [recur at the end]. It’s structured in a way that
allows the reader to be satisfied in the end that everything is wrapped up…
Another thing that distinguishes the book is that I’ve used
hundreds of foreign words. It’s the way people talk. The Irish people talk like
Irish people, the Italians like Italians, the Jews like Jews. I spent an
enormous amount of time making sure this was really how people speak. That’s
very, very important to me, to portray how people actually speak.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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