Q&A with Elaine Scott

Elaine Scott is the author of the new children's book Our Moon: New Discoveries About Earth's Closest Companion. Her many other books include Buried Alive! and Space, Stars, and the Beginning of Time. She lives in Houston, Texas.

Q: Why did you decide to write Our Moon, and did anything particularly surprise you in the course of your research for the book? 

A: My only grandson (now 7) was besotted with the moon from infancy on. We had to carry him outside, just so he could reach baby arms upward and crow, "Moon!  Moon!" 

I was fascinated with his fascination, and decided to begin some research in order to be able to answer his questions. Of course, the resulting book is still too old for him, though I just presented it to his first grade class and was delighted with their intelligent questions and observations.

Water on the moon came as a complete surprise to me, as well as its atmosphere. Before I began the research, I would have spouted the general misinformation that the moon was a dry and airless place.

Q: What are some of the most common perceptions and misperceptions about the moon?

A: Well, the moon still occupies a romanticized spot in human history. From the ancient myths about the man in the moon to classic love songs (Sinatra's "Fly Me to The Moon" comes to mind) the moon dominates popular culture. 

People rush to post their pictures of super moons, crescent moons, lunar eclipses, etc. on social media. It's still perceived as something beautiful and a tad mysterious.  

As for misperceptions, I suppose the biggest misperception is that the moon has nothing to teach us about our part of the solar system. Nothing could be further from the truth, as I presented in Our Moon. And don't get me started on those who claim the Apollo missions to the moon were all a hoax...really?????

Q: In the book, you mention the scientists who are working on research relating to the possibility that humans will live on the moon one day. Do you think this will come to pass, and what’s next for scientific exploration relating to the moon? 

A: The desire to explore is in our human DNA. Our species left Africa, moved across the plains of Eurasia, populated the Americas, and now is setting its sites on extraterrestrial locations. 

I am certain humans will return to the moon one day; absolutely certain. Which humans remains to be seen. No one country lays claim to the moon. We need to remember that.

Q: You also have another book coming out this year, a kids’ guide to using money. What can you tell us about that book? 

A: That book had its beginnings decades ago, when my oldest daughter was in about third grade. She was highly interested in money (or at least, what she perceived money could buy) and I remember a particular exchange with her that went like this:  "Mom, I need some money." (Me) "I don't have any." (Daughter) "You could cash a check, just like you did in the grocery store." (Me) "I don't have enough money left in that account to cash another check..." 

I grew up as the daughter of a banker, and I learned how money works almost by osmosis. But our family was headed by a geophysicist, and I realized after that exchange that neither of our girls had the faintest idea how any kind of bank account worked, how credit is established, etc. 

I think that memory was the beginning of Dollars and Sense:A Kid's Guide to Using, and not Losing, Your Money. (Charlesbridge; summer, 2016)

Q: What are you working on now? 

A: I'm under contract for two new books; one I'm not at liberty to announce just yet. 

But the other is a book about the New Horizons spacecraft that flew by Pluto last July and is now headed out into the edges of our solar system, and beyond. It's called To Pluto and Beyond: The Amazing Voyage of New Horizons. (Viking Penguin; September, 2017)

Q: Anything else we should know? 

A: I'm always a little surprised when I run into someone I haven't seen in awhile, and the question, "Are you still writing?" is posed in a way that suggests I should be tired of it by now. 

I can't imagine not writing. Not ever. It's not what I do; it's who I am. And I am very grateful to anyone who takes an interest in what I've written. Thank you.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

April 24

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
April 24, 1815: Anthony Trollope born.

Q&A with David Greenberg

David Greenberg is the author of the new book Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency. His other books include Nixon's Shadow and Calvin Coolidge, and his work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New Republic, where he was acting editor, Politico, and Slate. He lives in New York City.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Republic of Spin, and was there anything that particularly surprised you in the course of your research?

A: My first book was called Nixon’s Shadow. It’s not a biography of Nixon but a study of Nixon as a symbol…I came to see that although Nixon exemplified that [focus on image], it didn’t originate with him. Politics in the 20^th century were consumed with anxieties about authenticity, and the way the tools of image-making—spin—were threatening to corrupt democracy.

No one had written a book about the White House spin machine, and pulled it all together into a single narrative…

As for what surprised me, I found that the standard narratives about certain historical episodes were wrong.

On an individual level, you could tell a story about how my research [shows] revisionist portraits: George Creel, who ran the Committee on Public Information, a World War I propaganda agency.

In the history books, Creel is made out to be a right-wing monster, whipping up hatred of Germans. In fact, Creel was a liberal guy attacked more by the right wing for being insufficiently jingoistic.

He was not wild and out of control. There were some excesses, but the backlash against Creel was buyer’s remorse about World War I. The war didn’t turn out the way we wanted, and people were looking for a scapegoat. The story of Creel was told wrong, over and over…

In one chapter of history after another, I found significant twists. Many historians suffer from propaganda anxiety. They’re not always clear-eyed in assessing [this issue]. We have an ambivalent attitude toward spin—we denounce spin doctors but deep down we like it if it’s wielded by politicians we support.

Just today, there was an article about negative ads about Trump. It was free of the scolding tone you get when you’re told about negative advertisements against Obama. It’s not the negative ads that people are against, it’s the negative ads against their candidates. If it’s deployed by a candidate or president we support, we applaud it, and don’t realize it’s spin.

Also, one reason I read the sources differently is that I don’t see spin as an inherently bad thing.

Q: I wanted to go through a few of the presidents you discuss in the book. You write, “More than a tactic, publicity thoroughly informed [Theodore] Roosevelt’s conception of the presidency…” Why did you opt to begin with Theodore Roosevelt, and how did his approach to publicity differ from those of his predecessors?

A: That sentence captures the reason I started with him. I don’t suggest in the book that presidents before Roosevelt were uninterested in managing their message or image. They were. It’s important in politics.

But what you see with Roosevelt is a new concept of the presidency, where the presidency is the driver of social reform.

For most of the 19^th century, excluding wartime and crises, Congress was the seat of legislation and of reform. If you were a Washington reporter in the 19^th century, you didn’t go to the White House, you went to Congress. That’s where the action was.

Presidents before TR started to arrogate more power to the White House, but really Roosevelt wanted to do great things as president, and realized he needed the public. It was not just publicity in terms of self-aggrandizement, but making his agenda public—his use of the bully pulpit…staging publicity stunts.

He had an eye on public opinion that his predecessors just didn’t. It was tied to what he wanted to achieve in policy. It is now the norm for a president. Look at [Supreme Court nominee] Merrick Garland with Obama—there are all kinds of dimensions to a publicity campaign.

I feel a lot of that apparatus begins with Roosevelt—before him, almost none of it exists.

Q: Let’s look at his cousin, FDR. In the book, you write that “Franklin Roosevelt proved the equal to his late cousin in the arts of modern communication…” What were some of the hallmarks of FDR’s success in communicating with the American public and the world?

A: FDR is a master. There are several hallmarks. One, he really seemed to enjoy and care about the public and what it thought, not in a slavish pandering way but wanting public support to sustain him.

He was trying to make the call for a more aggressive posture against Germany, and said, I can only go as fast as the public will let me. There’s a fireside chats chapter, where I tried to convey his sense of communicating with the public…

For Roosevelt, communication really was important. When he did the fireside chats, he would visualize people from Dutchess County and imagine them as the intended audience of his speech. He transformed presidential speaking—he would [use a] very easy, conversational way.

FDR reinvented the form of communicating in a way that’s suited to the media. Also, in his easy relations with reporters, in his use of polling, one can look at that cynically, but he was just fascinated to know what people were thinking, and felt that that’s part of what democracy is.

Q: Getting back to Nixon, you write, “White House image making and message control—and concerns about it—reached full flower during the presidency of Richard Nixon.” How did Nixon’s approach resemble those of previous presidents, and how did it differ?

A: I think what Nixon does is he puts the White House on a permanent spin footing. Certainly with Nixon--this had been gradually building for some time—there is no initiative undertaken without a significant game plan, pages on pages detailing who will talk to which reporters, a whole strategy for everything he wanted to achieve.

After this, spin was never absent from presidential considerations. It had been present since TR, but there were times when it was not in the forefront.

With Nixon, it pervades White House operations. Even when Watergate happened, his immediate response was to think of it as a public relations problem. He couldn’t see it as a scandal, a moral or ethical error.

Q: How would you describe Barack Obama’s approach to spin, and what do you see looking ahead?

A: I do have a section on Obama. It’s a little shorter. I feel as a historian we’re still close to it. I describe Obama’s approach as the spin of no spin. Like other candidates, he very deliberately tried to fashion an image of “authenticity”—it’s a very problematic term. He operates at a time when the public is fully aware of spin, and is sick of [it]. We crave politicians we feel are going to give it to us straight. He was very good in 2008 in fashioning that image for himself.

The truth is…I don’t mean to say politicians are phony, but there is a craft in their photo ops, Obama as much as anyone…The spin of no spin is great in certain contexts, but didn’t serve him as well as he had hoped….

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Promoting the book! I have a few other ideas in the works…

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Another thing I tried to communicate is how much I’ve tried to make this a narrative that contains analysis and understanding of spin. The narrative is three stories: the presidents, the spin doctors, the writers and thinkers who comment on spin and its implications for democracy. The braided three strands give the book its forward propulsion.

I’m talking about democracy, propaganda, and the fact that there are these characters. You see across the 20^th century a new political type, experts in words and symbols who are now dominant in American politics. The rise of that type is what holds the book together.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Lindsay Starck

Lindsay Starck is the author of the new novel Noah's Wife. Born in Wisconsin, she teaches and writes in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Q: You write, "These two elements--the concept of pairing and the belief that the flood story was more complex than toy companies would have it--led me to Noah, and from there, to his wife." What about those elements intrigued you?

A: Well, by “pairings,” I mean relationships— and I consider Noah’s Wife to be a novel that explores many different kinds of relationships. I wanted to write about marriages, friendships, families, communities.

And, like the flood story itself, relationships are complex. They have their darker elements as well as their moments of laughter and hope.

My characters battle grief, disappointment, infidelity, and fear. They learn that no one is perfect, that even the people they love can let them down—and through these encounters they also become more patient, more forgiving, and ultimately more courageous. 

Q: Noah's wife wasn't named in the Bible or in your novel. What does this say about her identity?

A: Noah’s wife wasn’t named in the Bible because, I think, her name didn’t matter. She was a figure on the margins of the story. My task as a writer was to transform her from a marginal character into a protagonist.

And yet, even when it comes to her own story, my Noah’s wife is a character who prefers to define herself through her relationships. She doesn’t have a strong sense of self, which is why she surrenders herself so willingly to others.

At one point she worries that if she doesn’t keep her gaze fixed upon Noah, he might disappear. “What would become of her then?” she wonders.

Over the course of the novel, she will need to learn to stand on her own. That’s her struggle; and, even if she doesn’t realize it, that’s her eventual goal. 

Q: What role would you say religion plays in the novel?

A: For me, religion is a kind of backdrop, or setting, for a story that is all about people’s relationships with one another— not about their relationship to the divine.

I wanted this novel to be about faith in a very broad sense. I was interested in exploring the faith people place in each other, in themselves, and in their community.

In the biblical story God destroys the world while saving the best part of it; so I was curious about the things that people were most interested in saving from destruction, if they could.

Mrs. McGinn wants to save her town, Dr. Yu wants to save her father, Noah's wife wants to save her husband, etc. "Salvation" is a key concept here, but it's not the classically or solely religious idea of salvation. It's something much broader, and much more human. 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing, or did you make many changes as you went along?

A: I revised this novel for six years— and I tried many different endings before hitting on the right one!

I always imagined the town as the “ark” in this story, and I knew that I wanted to someone to leave and to return from the town/ark the way the dove does in the biblical flood narrative.

But I didn’t know who would be doing the leaving, and that was something I had to figure out after I had grown more familiar with the characters. Very little of the novel has remained unchanged from the first draft, except perhaps for the prologue. 

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Since I’m a graduate student by day (novelist by night), first I’m finishing a dissertation about literature and gossip! Then I’ll be working on my next novel, which will be very different than this one. It will be set in the Midwest, where I grew up, and will include as little rain as possible. 

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was growing up. (I read all of the James Herriot books over and over again.) I think that’s a huge part of what drew me to the Noah story… I wanted to write about animals!

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Amit Majmudar

Amit Majmudar is the author of the new poetry collection Dothead. He also has written the poetry collections 0° , 0° and Heaven and Earth, and the novels The Abundance and Partitions. He is the Ohio Poet Laureate, and his work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Kenyon Review and The New York Times. In addition, he is a diagnostic nuclear radiologist. He lives in Dublin, Ohio.

Q: How did you choose the title of your new collection--which is also the title of the first poem in the book--and what does it signify for you?

A: The title of the book relates to the title poem, in which I refer to the dot worn on the forehead by a Hindu woman. Its significance is that of a poignant personal symbol (related to my mom) and a powerful mythological symbol (related to Shiva's third eye) that was commandeered by hatred and turned into an ethnic slur; and which I, by writing the poem, and the book itself, have "taken back."

Q: Your poems touch on a variety of issues, and you write in a variety of forms. How do you decide on the form to use for a particular poem, and is there one that you prefer?

A: I don't decide the form. The poem decides the form, and I find out the poem's decision as I write the poem.

Q: How did you decide on the order in which the poems would appear in the book?

A: I put "ethnic" and "political" content first, to attract the attention to book review editors, who would conclude that the book as a whole was "relevant" to a larger social conversation--and hopefully earmark it for review.

In the middle I put some historically based poetry because non-American history is not a typical theme in poetry. If American poets write about history, they're usually writing about racism and slavery. I was writing about World War I and Rimbaud running guns in Africa; one must bury such things in the middle or end.

At the end I closed out with a poem called "Invocation," which was just to be contrary--an invocation is supposed to go at the beginning of a book, not at the end.

Q: You're also a radiologist, and in a recent NPR interview you described the similarities between seeking patterns in medicine and language. Can you describe how the two fields coexist for you?

A: Independently, in practice. But I would point out that a good radiology report, like a good poem, knows when to be precise, and when to stay ambiguous.

Q: In addition, you're the poet laureate of Ohio. What does that responsibility involve?

A: Whatever I wish it to! That's the up side to being the first one. I get to make this up as I go along.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: As always, more. More poetry and more fiction; and, hopefully, more truth and more beauty.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

April 22

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
April 22, 1873: Ellen Glasgow born.

Q&A with Yvonne Cassidy

Yvonne Cassidy is the author of the new novel How Many Letters Are in Goodbye? She also has written the novels What Might Have Been Me and The Other Boy. Born in Ireland, she is based in New York City.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for How Many letters Are In Goodbye?, and for your main character, Rhea?

A: One of the things I found in writing novels is that it’s different parts of my life and consciousness, and they go in a blender.

For Rhea, the idea of her being homeless came from my own experience working with homeless people. I teach writing to homeless people, and had curiosity about what it would be like, [especially] for a girl from Ireland.

I wanted to write a gay character for a while, but not a “gay book.” It irritates me how fiction can be [put] in these genres—it’s just part of somebody’s story.

Rhea’s character—she came alive to me. I got to know her: a tenacious, resilient, sometimes funny, frustrating girl….

Q: Why did you decide to write the book in the form of letters?

A: Books written through letters or a diary format always appealed to me. The intimacy with the reader was not there in other types of fiction. When I was at the start of the book I was not always sure what it [would be]. I would sit down and scenes would come out. I realized these are letters, written to someone.

Then the question was, Who are the letters written to? I remember the day it hit me: She was writing to her mom. I already knew her mom had died.

It scared me a little. The first two novels were written in straight narrative. Can I do this? I read a lot of books written in this format, and thought I could do this.

Q: Relationships among members of a broken family are key to the novel. Why did you choose to focus on this, and what do you hope readers take away from the novel?

A: I like to explore relationships. One reason I write is to explore that, and understand that. I felt the idea of a nontraditional family across two continents gave me more room for Rhea to experience different things.

In my writing, the characters are taking me to places. It really grew. I’m not sure in the beginning I knew what she was doing in New York.

In terms of what the reader takes away, what I love is if I do a book club and meet readers, I like when readers have different opinions of the characters.

I like to write characters that are well rounded; even if you don’t like them, you understand them. I like readers coming away not necessarily thinking of heroes and villains of the book, but understanding the complexity of the situation and maybe reflecting on situations in their own lives.

Q: Rhea is a teenager. Did you see this book as being for adults, or young adults, or both?

A: I didn’t really think about it as I was writing it. It was part of a book contract with Hachette, and it was thought of as an adult book. It had a teenage narrator [and was] a coming of age story. In Ireland, it was published as that.

When I came to the States, myself and my agent thought long and hard about it. She thought it was more for the YA market over here. [We decided,] Let’s just put it out there and see who gravitates toward it.  It was the YA editors who were interested right off the bat. It’s funny to have it [in] different markets. I see it as both, as a crossover…

Q: Did you know how the book would end before you started writing, or did you make many changes along the way? It sounds as if you were figuring some things out as you went along.

A: For me, I don’t think I have yet had an experience where I knew where it would end when I start. The process is more organic. I got a sense of the ending about midway through—this is good, I know where I’m going!...

I got a sense of the ending and wrote toward that. I would normally work up a few drafts. For the most part, as I’ve written more novels, I get closer to where I want to be the first time out. I’m getting more efficient!

Q: The novel takes place in New York and in a suburb of Dublin. How important is place in your writing, and do you think this story could have taken place somewhere else, or only in those locations?

A: Place is a big thing in my writing. I have yet to set something in a place I’ve never been. It’s very important for me to have first-hand experience of the place, so the character can feel it.

The Dublin suburb is a place I didn’t know well. Every time I was visiting home, I’d be driving 12 miles to the other side of the city.

A sense of place is important. I don’t know if it could be set anyplace other than New York. It’s her experience of New York—she’s drawn toward [the city] in large part because of her mom, but the whole city [fascinates] her.

The fact that she’s from Ireland—I like the juxtaposition of the two. I often write about Irish characters who find themselves somewhere else.

Q: And why did you set the book in 1999?

A: There are a couple of reasons for that. I wanted Rhea’s teenage growing up in Ireland at a time I knew well. She’s younger than I me, maybe five years, but I wanted it to be of a time when things like being gay were something she [would not] have been out about at school.

And even practical things—if it was set today, how social media would have influenced her, how she would have been found. To a certain degree I didn’t want to get into that. I also wanted it in pre-9/11 New York as well…

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m working on a new novel, I’m Right Here, which will be published in Europe in January of next year. I’m not sure yet of the details in the U.S.

It’s a very different story—it’s two intertwined stories, one of a young girl in Brooklyn who starts to have memories of someone. It’s a slave girl on a plantation in the 1850s. Their lives intersect. It’s got more of a historical dimension as well. It’s a point of connection they have, and the influence they have on each other.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb