June 27

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
June 27, 1872: Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar born.

Q&A with Turkey expert Soner Cagaptay

Soner Cagaptay is the author of the new book The Rise of Turkey: The Twenty-First Century's First Muslim Power. His other work includes the book Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk? He is the Beyer Family Fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, D.C.

Q: In your book, you write that “understanding Turkey is important for understanding the changing global order.” Why is that?

A: Turkey represents a case of a Muslim BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India, and China], a rising economic power. It’s the only Muslim nation that’s a rising economic power. It’s a NATO-Muslim bridge. None of the [other] rising economic powers have deep ties with [Europe]. As such, it’s an interesting case.

Q: You write, “Turkey will rise as a cornerstone of regional stability only if Ankara can leverage its Muslim identity and Western overlay, maintaining its strong ties with the Western states even as it expands its influence as a Middle East power.” How likely is it that Turkey will succeed in this task?

A: I think the jury is still out. In some regards, it’s the glass half full and half empty. It’s half full in that Turkey has transformed itself into a majority middle-class society. It’s the first Muslim-majority country that’s a majority middle-class society, and the majority is literate.

It’s half empty because of the authoritarian tendencies of Prime Minister [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan. He’s responsible for Turkey’s economic rise, but also for holding Turkey down politically.

In its foreign policy, Turkey has been hubristic; it thought its economic power and status would make it a Middle East leader, and it tried to shape the Middle East, including [its actions against Syria’s] Assad regime.

Turkey is an economic power, it has soft power, but it doesn’t have the hard power, the firepower, that is necessary in the Middle East. Turkey has pivoted to NATO and the U.S. in the last few years.

Q: What does the current situation in Iraq and Syria mean for Turkey?

A: It means that Turkey’s hubris to be a stand-alone power in the Middle East, independent of the U.S. and NATO, to shape the region, has been effectively bookended.

The failure of Turkish policy in ousting Assad: the Assad regime will never forgive Turkey. ISIS now is a growing presence, an al Qaeda buildup targeted at Turkey. The Turkish mission in Mosul [was an ISIS target].

The Turks now are realizing that their Middle East policy failed and created threats to them. It will push Turkey closer to the U.S.

Only four years ago, with Turkey’s Middle East policy, it looked like Turkey was friends with its neighbors, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Now, it’s at war with the Syrian regime. It is not favored by the Iraqi government. It’s in competition with Iran in Iraq and Syria. The two countries are locked in a proxy war, and in Iraq, they’re in a proxy political battle. The Kurds sell oil through Turkey. Turkey is now strategically isolated among its neighbors.

Q: I was going to ask you about the Kurds.

A: Turkey’s only friends are the Kurds. With the Kurds, it’s a two-way street. The Kurds provide Turkey with a safety belt. Turkey provides the Kurds with a lifeline to the outside world. The Syrian Kurds realize they need Turkey for survival. Turkey is isolated—it needs the U.S., and the Kurds as a regional ally.

Q: So you think Turkey’s relationship with the U.S. will become closer?

A: Not by a sense of shared values, as in the pre-Erdogan years, but a sense of common threats. Turkey fears the rise of al Qaeda and instability in Iraq and Syria. It is using NATO and the alliance with the U.S. as a security shop.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: The premise of the book is that Turkey has been dramatically transformed. The good news is that it’s wealthier, it’s a majority middle-class society, even with the authoritarian tendencies of Erdogan there is a credible opposition.

The Gezi Park rallies [last year], where Turks protested—Erdogan may have created his own nemesis. Now, middle-class Turks are challenging his policies. He delivers phenomenal economic growth, so he will continue getting reelected [if growth continues], but [this growth] will build a liberal opposition. I’m optimistic about where Turkey is headed.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with author Adelle Waldman

Adelle Waldman, photo by Lou Rouse

Adelle Waldman is the author of the bestselling novel The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., now available in paperback. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and The Wall Street Journal. She lives in Brooklyn.

Q: Many reviews of your book praise your ability to create the character of Nate. How did you come up with him, and how difficult was it to write from his perspective?

I’d read many books about bright young men from the provinces who come to the big city full of ambition and seek to conquer the world with their brains, as they cut a wide swath through the female population.

It’s a familiar archetype, and many books I love, books by writers like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, fall into this broad category.

I think too often books like this idealize the male hero. He is so intelligent and charming that even when he treats women badly, we sympathize with him.

I thought I’d do something a little different—I’d write about an up-to-date version of such a young man, but I’d scrutinize the way he thinks about and treats women. I set out to be fair, but not to glamorize or idealize my male protagonist or the pain he causes women.

Writing from the male perspective was central to my project. Nate’s voice is everything. If Nate does not feel like a believable male, the book does not work. Thus, I spent many years trying to get Nate’s thoughts just right.

And I wanted to explore questions that I don’t think most men know the answer to either. That is, I think if I asked a lot of my male friends why they suddenly seemed to lose interest in a girl they’d been dating for a while, someone they once liked quite a bit, they’d tend to say, “I don’t know.” And they wouldn’t be lying; they really don’t know.

So in a sense the book was difficult to write not because Nate is male, but because the questions I wanted to explore are subtle and not easily answered by anyone, male or female.

Q: Did you know how the book would end before you began writing, or did you make many changes along the way?

A: From the beginning, I knew exactly how it would end and who Nate would end up with; that was part of my original conception of the book.

What I didn’t know were the particular scenes that would take me from point A to point B. Especially as I began to show the decline of Nate and Hannah’s relationship, I struggled to figure out how to dramatize that decline in scenes.

The problem is that what is happening between them is so subtle—a slight distance and tension begins to accumulate, but for a while neither acknowledges that it’s happening.

I think this is common in life, in real life relationships, but in books and movies relationships tend to change dramatically—with big fights involving dishes thrown at walls, or someone who is revealed to be cheating.

I wanted to create something that felt more ordinary and psychologically authentic, but I didn’t want to bore the reader with scenes in which very little happens, since so much of what is happening between Nate and Hannah is so subtle as to be barely perceptible in the moment.

Q: Your book has been compared to the work of Jane Austen and Edith Wharton. Were those writers in your mind as you worked on the book?

Austen and Wharton—as well as George Eliot, from whom I borrowed the book’s epigraph—are some of my favorite writers, in part because they focus so much on the analysis of character’s interior lives. They are morally sensitive as well as psychologically incisive. I aspired to bring those qualities to bear in my depiction of Nate and the women in his life.

Unlike those authors, however, I didn’t write from the POV of an omniscient narrator, one who had access to various characters’ inner lives. The whole novel is from Nate’s perspective.

That meant that I wasn’t able to interject, to insert my own analysis and explain to the reader when and why Nate is being a jerk. That was hard—to let Nate’s jerkier qualities go unchallenged on the page. But I felt if I could portray Nate accurately, readers could judge him for themselves.

Q: How was the book's title selected?

A: I always thought I would change the title, that it was a placeholder until I found the book’s “real” title. I came up with this one before I’d ever written a word. I thought it had a funny, old-fashioned, almost 18th century sound.

But I never did come up with one I liked better—the alternatives I played with made my husband and my editor roll their eyes. So, in the end, we stuck with the placeholder. It does at least give a pretty solid summary of what the book is about.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I wrote a short story from the perspective of Nathaniel P.’s platonic female friend Aurit. Nate is in it, but the story takes place before the events in the novel, so it’s sort of a prequel. It was liberating to write from Aurit’s point-of-view, after spending so much time in Nate’s head.

The story is called “New Year’s” and is available as a digital short. Info here.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Hmm, I can’t think of anything. For any other information about the novel, the story or my journalism, please visit www.adellewaldman.com. Thanks!

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with author Naomi Wood

Naomi Wood is the author of the new novel Mrs. Hemingway, which focuses on Ernest Hemingway's four wives. She also has written the novel The Godless Boys. She teaches creative writing at Goldsmiths University, and she is based in London.

Q: Why did you decide to write about Hemingway's wives, and why as a novel?

A: I'd always been a big fan of Hemingway but only knew him as a prose stylist - a master of that tough, taciturn approach we know from the short-stories and novels.

But when I delved into his letters I discovered they were quite mushy with sentiment! I thought the love-letters to all four wives were so intriguing - even more so when you realised there was already a mistress on the scene. It was these marriages made à trois that I thought would make a great basis for a novel.

Q: At one point in the book, Mary Hemingway thinks of herself and the other wives, "A strange family indeed; such unlikely sisters." Did the four women have much in common?

A: I think Hadley, Pauline and Mary perhaps had a few traits in common. I think they were patient with the vicissitudes in Hemingway's mood, and were able to quietly weather the more difficult times in temperament. From biographies they also [were] fun-loving, clever, and all three had a good editorial eye.

I think Martha Gellhorn was the one who was different. She was much brasher, probably more independent and more career-focussed, and didn't have time for Hemingway's moodiness. Perhaps, like the other three, she was also wickedly good fun!

Q: How difficult was it to turn Ernest Hemingway into a fictional character?

A: It was quite difficult to turn him into fiction because he's such a well-known figure, and a figure who also self-mythologised and self-promoted during his own lifetime, so it was difficult to peel back the many layers of the onion, so to speak, and work out what the "real" Hemingway might sound like over coffee and breakfast with his wife, rather than the publicized He-man Hemingway who was busy telling you how to skin a lion. 

Q: What is the significance of the character Harry Cuzzemano?

A: Harry Cuzzemano is the only purely imagined character in the book (although he is based on the collectors, fans and Hemingway obsessives I found while working) and I needed him because by the 1950s Hemingway had managed to estrange many of the friends he'd made in the 1920s (or, like the Fitzgeralds) they'd already died.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm working on short-stories and gearing up to start the third after a long holiday this summer!

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

June 26

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
June 26, 1892: Writer Pearl S. Buck born.

Q&A with author Adam Rogers

Adam Rogers is the author of the new book Proof: The Science of Booze. He is articles editor at Wired, and he lives in Berkeley, California.

Q: You write of alcohol, “Our history with the stuff is our history on earth, a history of humans becoming modern, tool-using, technology-making creatures.” Why is there such a close connection?

A: It is one of the first ways we started to make stuff, one of the first examples of a thing that happens in nature that we changed and domesticated.

This is something that few animals really do, to tune it and hone it. They tend to do it by instinct. We, instead of taking what nature gives us, we build from it. [Alcohol] has traveled with us from the moment we became civilized to today.

Q: In the book, you discuss hangovers and the lack of information about what causes them. Why is there such a lack of information?

A: I can only speculate on the “why.” Some of the people who do the work say that one possible reason is that government funding agencies are worried about the effect of working on a drug that could make people drink more. There’s a vast amount of research on addiction, and that makes sense.

You could argue that hangovers [lead to] lost wages and work time, but there’s a little bit of a moral question [when it comes to] government research. Why the drinks companies don’t fund the research—maybe some of the same moral issues [come into play]. Now, [many of the people who study these issues] are at a meeting in Seattle—it’s possible they’ll introduce new information.

Q: You also talk about the impact of ethanol on the body. What happens once the person tastes the alcohol, and what is the effect?

A: That’s a huge question. Pieces of it are not well understood, especially the effect of alcohol on the brain. Ethanol is a very volatile small molecule, and it evaporates at a lower temperature than water. It dissolves a lot of other substances, and carries flavors and aromas. We perceive five tastes, but there’s a lot more going on. Also, there’s a burning sensation from the ethanol, and a cooling sensation from the ethanol.

As the molecules move to the inside part of the nose, thousands of nerve endings pick up pieces of what you’re smelling and tasting. That’s how the brain generates flavor.

This is all before it has an effect on the brain and the gut. When it gets to the gut, the body starts to break down the ethanol using enzymes. With digestion, the pancreas, kidneys and liver are involved.

Alcohol inhibits a hormone that keeps you from peeing too much, so you will pee out more liquid. The body can’t keep up, and the ethanol makes its way to the brain. It passes through the blood-brain barrier like a ghost.

What it does in the brain is not well understood. No one is sure which receptors are responsive to ethanol. What does ethanol do to the brain? Inhibition of inhibition. It slows down the brain’s ability to slow us down. It’s telling the brain we don’t have to feel we’re up and awake.

This is the impact with one or two drinks. In the book, I’m less interested in the impact of binge drinking. With just [a small amount], it will change your behavior and the way you perceive situations.

Q: What surprised you most in the course of the research for this book?

A: Not being able to articulate the complete mechanism [relating to the effects of ethanol] surprised me. I knew there was a huge body of research on the effects of ethanol, but it surprised me that there was no mechanism.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: When I pitched the idea for the book, I planned on not having history [be a big part of the book], but the history of ethanol was so fascinating, it’s in the book. How we make and consume it is a lens on our relationship with the natural world and how we study it.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with author Nikesh Shukla

Nikesh Shukla is the author of the new novel Meatspace. He also has written the novel Coconut Unlimited and the food novella The Time Machine, and co-written the nonfiction essay Generation Vexed: What the Riots Don't Tell Us About Our Nation's Youth. He is based in London and Bristol.

Q: How did you come up with Meatspace's main character, Kitab?

A: Kitab is Swahili, Arabic and Hindi for book. I wanted someone in stasis, someone who was consumed by static, someone who needed a strong kick up the arse to pull him back into living his life.

He's a cypher for me. I was suffering from writer’s block. My mum passed away around the time of the publication of my first book and I wasn't doing great. Kitab is what would have happened if I'd embraced the darkness.

Q: The book focuses on the boundaries between the online world and its real-life counterpart. What do you think is a good balance between the two, and is it getting more difficult to achieve?

A: Here are two differences between Jonathan Franzen and me. Multi-award-winning, critical darling, beloved bestselling author, voice of a generation, internet bore Jonathan Franzen and me... a chubby enthusiastic manchild who was described by his school as, ‘who? Did he go here? Never heard of him. Sorry.’

The two differences between MAWCDBAVOAGIB (that’s short for Multi-award-winning, critical darling, beloved bestselling author, voice of a generation, internet bore) MAWCDBAVOAGIB Jonathan Franzen and me is, I’m not afraid of the internet. I embrace it. I love it.

I love wasting time on the internet. I love Wikipedia. It is the fountain of all useless knowledge. I have never once used it to research anything serious. I have used it to find out if the Hollywood actresses I have a crush on are currently seeing anyone.

The thing about the internet is this – when framing it alongside your life as a writer in a plugged in world – it’s unavoidable. Trying to go off-grid to write your novel is a worthy and faintly pointless task. I think, we often fantasise about the writing process, almost fetishise it, more than we do actual writing.

We think it’s all late nights with quills or typewriters and a cup of coffee, or whisky, hammering away, in the zone, in constant dialogue with our muse, distraction-free and able to concentrate.

I treat the internet functionally and pragmatically. It’s a tool to help me. And if I compartmentalise it as such I can TCB. Take care of business.

Q: Another theme is the constant self-promotion that authors are encouraged to pursue. How does Kitab deal with that, and how have you experienced it yourself?

A: I like attention so I'm happy to be an idiot online. Same with Kitab. I think the constant self-promotion is less a theme and more a construct for stasis and laziness. This is a universal tale about choosing life not heroin, like Trainspotting or the internet, like Meatspace.

Q: Which authors have inspired you?

A: I think Colson Whitehead is one of the greatest novelists around at the moment. As is Teju Cole. And Junot Diaz. Also, my peers JoeDunthorne, Evie Wyld, James Smythe and Rebecca Hunt keep me wanting to be better.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: A third novel, and a baby.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: The colour orange appears in my work a lot. 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb