July 4, 1804: Nathaniel Hawthorne born.
Saturday, July 4, 2015
Friday, July 3, 2015
Q&A with Pamela Katz
Pamela Katz is the author of the new book The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink. A screenwriter and novelist, she teaches at NYU's Tisch Graduate Film Program and she lives in New York City and Berlin.
Q: Why did you decide to write about Bertolt Brecht and Kurt
Weill?
A: I’ll start by saying I was interested in it in a
universal way, I was interested in their creative collaboration. I’m a
screenwriter, and I work with directors and actors.
In the particular sense, you can’t put your little toe into
the Weimar Republic without being fascinated forever…what surprised me was the
fact that this book was not already written!...
They wrote "The Threepenny Opera," which transformed musical
theater. They wrote "Mack the Knife." Here were two men whose artistic collaboration
defined the Weimar Republic.
But not only that, their political approach to art and the
differences in their political approach to art [represented] what was going on
in the Weimar Republic as a whole.
A personal, passionate story can illuminate [the times]. You
don’t have to leave them to achieve that.
Q: You write, “What was so critically important about
accessible art? Why did Brecht and Weill, and so many artists of their
generation, believe in the power of music, theater, and painting…?” How do you
answer that question?
A: Accessibility of art is something one could write many
books about!...It’s hard to remember the time when, at the beginning of the 20th
century, the idea of the concert hall was populist; art was often created for
the monarchy. In Brecht’s and Weill’s time they wanted to go a step further,
and bring the opera house to the people. Modern art would bring it back to its
roots…
Q: The book is titled "The Partnership." How would you
characterize the professional partnership between Brecht and Weill, and how did
they get along personally?
A: That speaks to the triumph and tragedy of their
collaboration. The artistic partnership was the inevitable collision of two
geniuses. Brecht was very musical, and wrote poetry with an ear for music.
That’s what Weill recognized…Weill was very literary.
Weill was one of the greatest composers of his generation;
Brecht was one of the greatest poets and playwrights….their interests and
skills overlapped.
They were two very young men who were prodigies from an
early age. They had to meet—they respected each other in ways neither had
respected partners before. They come together, and the first things they touch
are genius.
What happened? They didn’t get along. Weill was kinder, more
outwardly diplomatic. He was married; he was faithful. Brecht was a famous
womanizer, he was used to dominating publicly.
There were conflicts about the role of political art. There
was enough shared territory that their different personalities might have been
overcome. What got in the way was they could not conquer the notion of artistic
hierarchy.
Composers always dominated over librettists. Brecht wasn’t
just a librettist. Weill wanted to be an opera composer. Neither was willing to
accept a subservient position to the other. Each one had to dominate
creatively, and neither would accept that…
Q: What roles did Lotte Lenya, Helene Weigel, and Elisabeth
Hauptmann play in the partnership?
A: One reviewer said I chose to include them because they
contrasted with one another. I didn’t choose to include them, there were there!...This
wasn’t a feminist deal, it was a story that needed to be told.
It was impossible to tell the personal story of Bertolt
Brecht and Kurt Weill, or their artistic story, or their political story, without
including the women. They are completely interwoven. It was the ‘20s, an
important time for women’s independence. The accomplishments they achieve are
another portrait of the time.
Helene Weigel was an upper-middle-class Jewish woman. Her
parents didn’t want her to be an actress, but she was determined. She was
trained to be independent, and she goes to Frankfurt. By the time she was 21,
she was working with the greatest theater directors.
She has an incredible power on stage, and she caught Brecht’s
eye…she was the first woman who figured Brecht out. She found a way to
understand his work, the politics, and his domestic needs…
She was no martyr; she understood everything about him, and
made it possible for him to work. She didn’t want a bourgeois family situation,
and she was willing to accept the pain.
Elisabeth Hauptmann was a modest woman who came to Brecht
and wanted to be a writer. She began by being the first assistant he had. She
was extremely educated; she spoke English….She got a copy [of "The Beggar’s
Opera"] and translated it, and that’s what became "The Threepenny Opera." You
can’t tell the story of "The Threepenny Opera" without Elisabeth Hauptmann…
She was not only his faithful assistant but also his lover…As to Elisabeth
Hauptmann’s suicide attempt in 1929…the fact of her attempt was not confirmed—the
fact that she hinted at it in her short story (unpublished in her lifetime)
made only one thing crystal clear: she wanted people to believe that she
attempted it.
This
was something I found far more interesting than trying to guess at something we
can never know for sure. Whether or not she was that unhappy about Brecht’s
marriage to Weigel, the “fact” is that she was a creative person who insisted
upon controlling her own legacy. If there were rumors or anecdotes to be
repeated after her death, she wanted to be in charge of them…
Lotte Lenya was the most colorful. She was Kurt Weill’s
wife. She grew up to nearly illiterate parents, and left home at 14 and never
came back. She was self-educated. She was not a trained musician, but she had a
phenomenal memory and a great ear, and she made his songs famous. She’s the one
who, in America, we know the best.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working on a couple of things. One is a project with
[German director] Margarethe von Trotta. We have done three films, all
historically based, serious films. A year and a half ago, we asked, “Don’t we
deserve a comedy?” [and we thought,] “Now’s the moment!” It will be a
German-based film, but likely in English, and it will take place in America.
I’m working on another script about a historical subject,
about the 1967 war in Israel, which is one difficult subject. I’m finding my
way through that maze, [working] with a terrific Israeli director, Avi Nesher.
Q: Anything else we should know about the book?
A: I would just add that it’s one of my first nonfiction
projects, though my fiction projects have been wrapped up in historical events.
I agonized over the style in which to write the book. I had
thought nonfiction would be easier because you don’t have to make anything up.
I was naïve. You have to find the story.
I wrote it [in the way] biographers I admire so much [write]—stick
to the facts, but find a story. You have certain instincts about what people
are like, and then you have to prove it. There are 900 footnotes; if you’re
going to tell it in an entertaining tone, you have to remind people the facts
are correct!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Q&A with Rebecca Makkai
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the new story collection Music for Wartime. She also has written the novels The Hundred-Year House and The Borrower. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Harper's, and a variety of other publications, and she lives in Chicago and Vermont.
Q: You write that you were "handed more stories than I
could ever decipher or use" from your family. How did your family
background affect the writing of the stories in this collection?
A: Specifically, there are four stories (the three
"Legends" and "Suspension: April 20, 1984") that are
overtly about my family, specifically my father's parents. They were both
deeply involved in the politics of 1930s Hungary, but on opposite sides of most
issues.
And while those are the stories that deal with their legacy
head-on, there are other stories (like "Museum of the Dearly
Departed," the last in the collection) that mean something different when
you know my family background.
There's an old Hungarian couple in that story; they're quite
different from my grandparents, but they're analogues for them, in a way. If
you read the story out of context, that doesn't matter -- but within the echo
chamber of the collection, you'll see another layer to them.
Q: Many of the stories do indeed focus on music, or war, or
both. Was that something you were aware of over the years you were writing the
stories, or was it something that just ended up happening?
A: They're not all about music so much as about the arts --
and the question of what it means to be an artist, or to try to make beauty, in
an ugly and conflicted world.
They were themes I noticed early on in my own work, and then
I wrote to that a bit--to fill out the collection--and I also omitted a lot of
finished stories that didn't speak to that central theme as well.
There's a lot of diversity within the collection--in one,
the "war" in question is a reality TV competition that pits artists
against each other--so it's not as if these are all disturbing stories about
war zones. I do worry that people will assume that going in, that it will scare
them away.
Q: You note that the stories were written over a period of
13 years. Do you think your style changed over that period?
A: Definitely, although I've gone back and revised the early
stories so much that I think it's hard to tell which stories are the earlier
ones. I'm grateful for the ability to do that; you can't revise, years later,
with most art forms. If I were an actor, I couldn't go back and redo my
interpretation of Ophelia from 13 years ago.
Q: Do you prefer writing novels or short stories?
A: Yes.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I've started a novel that's set in Chicago in the mid-80s
(against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic) and Paris in the present day (where
a survivor of the Chicago scene is searching for her estranged daughter). The
working title is The Great Believers, but of course that might change.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Yes. Can I say a word in favor of story collections? They
don't get read in book clubs, and they don't get talked about as much (maybe
because they're harder to describe), but they're really where the most exciting
things are happening in literature. (And they would make great book club books,
really).
We write these things basically knowing they won't sell --
they're labors of love, but I think they benefit from that.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. To see a previous Q&A with Rebecca Makkai, please click here.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Q&A with Alysia Burton Steele
Alysia Burton Steele is the author of the new book Delta Jewels: In Search of My Grandmother's Wisdom. She is a photojournalist and an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi. She has worked for The Dallas Morning News and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and while at the Morning News was part of the team that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi.
Q: Your book was inspired by your grandmother, who raised
you. How did you come up with the idea of interviewing other grandmothers and
writing a book about them?
A: I talked about this in the beginning of the book in the Inspiration
section. It was important for me to talk about why I did this right off the
bat. I saw the Delta and it reminded me of my paternal grandmother, the
one who raised me. She was from South Carolina.
Seeing the older homes, the greenery, reminded me of summers
in Spartanburg with her people. It took me back and I wanted to pick up the
phone to call her and talk about it, but I couldn't. She passed away 20 years
ago.
I knew she was gone, I miss her terribly, but it hit me -
for whatever reason - that I would never hear her voice again. I became full of
regret all over again. So much time wasted by not talking to my grandmother
about her life when she was alive.
Young people don't think ahead oftentimes, and I wish I had.
I thought I had much more time with her. I didn't. So, I decided I could
pay it forward and interview other people's grandmothers. It was that simple
for me. So, I just did it. No funding, no backing. Just me and the Delta.
Q: How did you find the women you interviewed, and what do
you see as some of the common themes in their lives?
A: I reached out to Clarksdale (MS) Mayor Bill Luckett. He
is also co-owner of Ground Zero Blues Club with actor Morgan Freeman. Bill,
being the mayor, knows a lot of pastors. I didn't really know anyone in the
Delta, but I knew Bill.
He gave me five pastors' cell phone numbers and told me
about them. I reached out to one, Rev. Juan Self, who agreed to meet with me
and who wanted to find out more about the project.
Rev. Self liked what I wanted to do and gave me a referral
to a mother. He also referred me to another pastor, Rev. Andrew Hawkins of
Mound Bayou, MS.
Both pastors reached out to mothers in their communities and
helped me meet other pastors. In the end I had 19 pastors helping me. It was a
domino effect. I couldn't have started this book without these three men.
Common themes? Education is the key to a better life. Over
and over I heard it. These mothers wanted more For their children, and
education was key.
Q: The book includes your own story, interspersed among the
stories of the grandmothers. How did you decide on the structure of the book?
A: Everything was organic. I just went with the flow of
order. So many of the women reminded me of my grandmother and I would scribble
down notes after I left meeting them.
Whether it was what their house looked like, what songs I
listened to when something touched me…I started to write down how almost every
woman reminded me of my beloved Gram. I met with a mentor, Larry Wells, who
told me I needed to include those thoughts in the book. I resisted.
Then when the manuscript was bought by Hachette Book Group,
my editor, Adrienne Ingrum, said I needed to add more details and take the
readers on a journey with me.
I was initially worried my stories would push the mothers
aside, but it was a very smart, gratifying move. I'm so glad we did it. Everyone
asks me how I met the women and how did I get them to talk, so it was important
to start with why I did it, how I did it and what was said and done. It just
flowed naturally. Order was easy.
Q: Your photographs of the grandmothers are a big part of
the book. As a photographer and writer, how do the two complement each other
for you?
A: I am a photojournalist by trade. I see visuals first -
always have, since childhood. But this time, I needed to sit down - listen,
talk and share. And in that order.
I needed to make eye contact and get to know the women. I
couldn't do that if I went in photographing first. Photography is another
language. It's very personal and can be intimidating.
Everyone wants to know what you want them "to do,"
for the photograph, but I didn't want them to do anything. I just wanted them
to look at me.
I wanted them to sit in their favorite places or stand
wherever they wanted to stand. I wanted to interview them first, watch them -
look at their facial expressions, see their mannerisms and I wanted to look
inside the home.
Once we had a connection, guards came down and things
flowed. I was more stressed out about photographs than their stories. I was
able to take photos when the women were relaxed. Photographs came after interviews.
For once in my career photography was secondary and such a
great learning experience. When I was a newspaper photographer and editor, I
advised staff that photographs were complements to words, not mirrors. I still
feel that way.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I was on a very hectic national book tour. Now, I'm home
gathering all the women to meet on July 11 in Mound Bayou, MS - the Jewel of
the Delta (and the inspiration for the book title).
How appropriate to meet in such a town and during their
128th anniversary for Founders' Day. Mound Bayou is the first all-black town in
Mississippi formed by former slaves. I wanted the women to meet.
I'm partnering with Mississippi Delta National Heritage, which
sponsored a traveling exhibit of my photographs from the book. I don't
know if the women will ever meet again, but I thought they needed to meet each
other.
I am also doing several book festivals this year - Jackson
(MS) Book Festival in August, Decatur (GA) Book Festival in September and
Nashville's Book Festival in October. This is a very exciting time for me.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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