Daniel Riley is the author of the new novel Barcelona Days. He also has written the novel Fly Me. A correspondent at GQ, he lives in New York City.
Q: Why did you decide to center your new novel around an
Icelandic volcanic eruption, and why did you set the book in Barcelona?
A: In 2010 when the Icelandic volcano eruption shut off all
ins and outs in Europe, one story came out involving Stanley McCrystal and a
journalist—they were stuck in Paris together, and the story that resulted from
it led to his resignation.
I thought, Oh my gosh, if not for this event, both of them
would have had a different trajectory. There must be thousands of versions of
this, of lives put on pause—a relationship, a career, not being able to get to
the place you were supposed to go. It’s an exciting premise for a movie or a
book.
Fast forward—having written my first novel, I had run into a
bad spot with a book I thought I was going to write.
I went on vacation to Barcelona in May 2017. I had
on-the-ground detail and atmospherics while thinking about a new concept. I had
been there a number of times.
I had, as a writer, to know more [about the city]
than my two characters, although I didn’t have to speak with the authority of
someone from there.
Q: The novel takes place over the course of several days.
How did you structure the book, and what was it like to write something that
occurs over a short period of time?
A: It’s interesting. My first novel takes place over nine
months.
[With Barcelona Days,] I liked the idea of creating a very immediate space in which a lot could
change quickly. There are flashbacks. It’s a close third person perspective,
where you can feel in-scene immediacy.
I was able to structure the book out, and plot it out ahead
of time, having that squashed period of time. I found it more clarifying to
know what needed to happen at the end of any given day or scene, instead of an
amorphous period of time.
Q: How did you come up with your characters Will and
Whitney, and how would you describe their relationship?
A: In the first book, I’d written about my parents’
generation. It was set in the early ‘70s, closer to their milieu.
In this book, I situated it with my cohort. The characters
are a little younger, but they live in New York City and I know people in their
kind of worlds and the things they’re concerned with.
I had noticed in my late 20s that a lot of people six,
seven, eight years out of college had a massive pivot. They were looking at the
life they had been leading since college and deciding whether to continue or
trash it all: Are we really going to get married or are we different people?
I’m building a career, but is this what I want to do with the rest of my life?
I hadn’t read a lot of things set in that particular moment
when people really blow up their lives. I was interested in having that
question hang over these two characters. They are obviously compatible in a lot
of ways, but they [are also experiencing problems]. It takes something like
this to bring it to the surface.
They are tempting fate with the argument they have at the
beginning of the book. It’s a version of things I’d seen people go through. I’m
smack in the middle of the millennial generation. We got on a conveyor belt at
13, with all-time records of homework in high school, a lot of work in college,
very careerist, people acting too adult, living an almost married life through
their 20s.
Then there’s almost the opposite: I need a gap of not doing
that, of being single, of not working for a year. There wasn’t sufficient
ability to be young; it was such a grind.
I graduated into the recession, in 2008. There are studies
of the profound implications of graduating into that moment on your long-term
prospects. It’s interesting to watch the idea of millennial burnout percolate.
And then there’s the pandemic.
Q: So what do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: The thing I was most interested in exploring was the
scale of personal trials and tribulations, of conflicts within your own
relationships, versus bigger conflicts in the world. I or people I’ve known
have made things harder for ourselves in some ways.
With this couple [in the novel], it ends on that note. They
could decide not to do this to each other any more. The question “can you
decide to be happy or not” is hanging over it.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have another novel idea—hopefully in three years we’ll
be talking about that one!
Also, I was features editor at GQ and I’m still writing for
them and have nonfiction ideas I’m thinking about.
In our last interview, I talked about the film rights to my
first book, and I wrote the screenplay, which is opening screenwriting doors.
I’m finding a balance between fiction, nonfiction, and
screenwriting.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Now that the U.S. is in poor shape with the virus, and
Europe banned travel for Americans, this book is a small stand-in for a transporting
experience: you can take a little trip and know what it’s like to be in this
place.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Daniel Riley.
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