Joseph-Beth Booksellers
“We Had to Ask!” Author Quiz
What is the one thing you could not live without?
A) There’s no “one thing” that I couldn’t live without, of course, because all things are interconnected to other things. Still, I’ve seen men brutalized by war, slaughtered by solitude in prison, and driven mad by love, fear, and iniquity, and I think I can answer your question by saying I’ve learned that what keeps us going through the worst is love, art, and a meaning or purpose for our lives.
Who are your favorite writers?
A) The list is very long, but I’ll name just a few of my heroes in order to give you an idea of the full and growing pantheon: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, Herman Melville, Lawrence Durrell, Graham Greene, Flaubert, Stendhal, John O’Hara, Djuna Barnes, Jonathan Carroll, Herman Hesse, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Yukio Mishima, Moses Isegawa, George Eliot, Cervantes, Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison, Pat Conroy, W. Somerset Maugham, Dostoevsky, Raymond Chandler, e.e.cummings, and Goethe, as one small fragment of the list.
What was the last book you read?
A) Small World: Nature’s Hidden Networks, by Mark Buchanan, a superb study of the new network theory that has resulted from a re-examination of Stanley Millgram’s “six degrees of separation” experiments.
What is the worst book you ever read?
A) I know it sounds as though I’m dodging the bullet here, but it’s an integral part of my cosmological model, and its practical application in life, to praise what I see as good work, rather than to criticize the bad. I don’t name books or authors I don’t like.
What are some great books that you never finished?
A) I’ve always managed to finish a great book. I guess I’m the kind of guy who sees things through to the end.
What book made you so mad that you wanted to throw it against a wall? Did you?
A) I read a book by a noted commentator on evolution, which raised a few hackles because the author refused to see the order in the complexity that is so abundant in the universe. The author repeatedly summarized the data by saying, “Now, I know that this looks like some kind of order, but it just isn’t.” The author’s willful disregard of the evidence, and obdurate dogmatism warmed me up some, but my book-throwing days are over. Instead of throwing the book, I studied it closely and extracted the valuable data from it.
What books have changed your life?
A) Don Quixote, by Cervantes, hurled me into the writer’s
parallel universe for the first time. It had always been my first instinct
to write. I wrote my first play when I was 5 years old (“The Spirit
of Christmas,” which my family indulged me by performing before
Christmas dinner), and I was writing poetry before I could read it properly.
When I was chained to a wall and being tortured in an Indian prison, I
was writing the experience in my mind even as it was happening to me.
Cervantes was the first writer to show me who and what I was: I remember
very clearly the moment of understanding that told me, as I read his words,
this was my work, this was my way, this was my life; the writer’s
life.
Another book, among many, that changed my life, was the story of Phoolan
Devi, The Bandit Queen. I was at the lowest ebb after a series of tragedies
took the lives of several of my closest friends. I was living as a junkie
on the pavement in Bombay, with nowhere further to fall but into the gutter
itself. One night, a friend gave me the book on Phoolan Devi’s life.
The story of the frail girl who endured too much, too bravely and with
too many savage hatreds, impacted so harshly on my sick and sickened sensibilities
that for a time, sitting there in the blue-white loneliness of a street
light, I was ruined by it. I wept, with my mouth stretched wide by the
ache of shame, and I pushed my fists into my eyes. I crept into the corner
of the doorway and hid there, my face pressed into the huddled shadow
that my body made on the walls. Ashamed of the cowardice that had put
me on the street and the weakness that kept me there, I cringed in that
genuflection while ghosts whispered at my back, and every hope I’d
ever held and then abandoned came slithering, one by one, into the snake-pit
of my self-disgust. The next day I set out to clean myself up. Within
a month I was straight, and working as a Bombay mafia forger again. Within
3 months I was living in a penthouse apartment, and I rebuilt the little
free clinic I’d set up in a Bombay slum. I think it’s fair
to say that book changed my life.
What literary character do you most identify with?
A) The narrator, Darley, from Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet.
What literary character are you in love with?
A) I’m not in love with any literary characters, but if the question means “If literary characters were living beings, which one would you be in love with?” then I would say: Justine, from The Alexandria Quartet.
Where would you love to live?
A) I’m a city boy, at heart. Give me Bombay, Hong Kong, London, Milano, Paris, Berlin, Basel, Cairo, New York, Damascus, Madrid, Prague, and Rome.
What CD’s are you listening to? Who are your favorite musicians?
A) My brother, Nick, is my favourite composer, singer, and musician. He writes for an outfit called The Black Sorrows, in Melbourne, Australia, and I can recommend everything they do. Currently, I’m listening to a compilation of the brilliant Indian composer, A.R. Rahman; an Australian band called Lynchpin, and also from Australia, the biggest voice in the country, Chris Wilson; Jessye Norman, singing Richard Strauss “Vier Letzte Lieder” with the Leipzig orchestra; an album called “Some Day Soon” by a very talented kid named Kristian Leontiou (check out the second track “Shining”); Dame Janet Baker, singing “Che Faro Senza Euridice” by Gluck; and, of course, all the latest Bollywood movie soundtracks.
What is your favorite TV show?
A) I have to make another list.
For Information TV: “Dateline” in Australia, hosted by Mark
Davis; BBC Worldwide;
For Crime TV: “The Sopranos”; Law & Order Criminal Intent;
and “Jonathan Creek” & “Dalziel and Pascoe”
both out of the UK;
For SciFi TV: “Babylon 5” on cable; “Voyager”
latest series;
For Comedy TV: “Black Books” and “People Like Us”
both out of the UK; Curb Your Enthusiasm, and absolutely anything else
with Larry David in it or writing it.
For Drama TV: “The West Wing”; “Six Feet Under”;
“The O.C.”
What is your favorite movie?
A) Damn! Another list:
War: Casablanca; The Thin Red Line; Castle Keep;
Peace: The Birthday Party; The 400 Blows; Cries And Whispers;
Comedy: Groundhog Day; The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie;
Epic: Lawrence of Arabia; Spartacus; Gangs Of New York;
SciFi: Blade Runner; Alien;
Crime: Get Carter (Caine version); The Getaway (McQueen version); Mean
Streets; Traffic; The Big Sleep … Okay, Okay, I’ll stop now
…
Who would play you in the movie version of your life?
A) Johnny Depp has signed on to play the character Lin, in the movie version of my novel, Shantaram.
What is your favorite internet site?
A) I love all the Bollywood sites, such as www.indianmasala.com, and I always get a laugh out of the front page at www.theonion.com; there’s a brilliant science summary at www.your.abc.net/starstuff; and beyond that, I read all the world’s daily papers online;
What’s the best cure for writer’s block?
A) I know this sounds terrible (to other writers), but I never get writer’s block: I never get time to write all that I want to write, and I always have several projects on the desk at the one time. Maybe, being leg-ironed in maximum security prisons on three continents, and having a price on your head as your nation’s Most Wanted Man while you roam the world for 10 years as a gun-runner, passport forger, gold smuggler, and mafia soldier, in between stints in two wars and setting up and running a clinic for 25,000 slum dwellers, and acting in Bollywood movies when you’re not singing as the front man for a successful rock band … maybe that’s a cure for writer’s block, and heck, it seemed to work just fine for me, but I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone else.
What is the most over-used word in fiction?
A) Magic.
What three words would your best friends use to describe you?
A) On a good day, Honourable, Intelligent, and Loving; on a bad day, Extreme, Gullible (about love), and Late (for everything).
Who are your favorite heroes in fiction?
A) Philip Marlowe (from Chandler’s novel, The Big Sleep), Sam Spade (from Dash Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon), Orlando (Virginia Woolf’s version), and Darley, from The Alexandria Quartet.
Who are your favorite characters in history?
A) Are you kidding? Another list question yet? Gautama Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jesus Christ, Queen Boudicca, Spartacus, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Atemisia Gentilesci, Isaac Newton, Joan of Arc, Kierkegaard, Michael Faraday, Einstein, Albert Camus, Che Guevara, Betty Friedan, Heinz Pagels, Steven Pinker, Margaret Wertheim … Okay, I’m stopping now …
Who are your favorite heroes in real life?
A) My mother is my hero: the strongest, bravest, most intelligent, forgiving, and loving human being I’ve ever known; my step-father is a hero: I spent 10 years searching for the man who could fill the father-shaped hole in my life, and returned to Australia to find that my mother had married him.
What is your favorite expression?
A) Love the truth, and be true to love.
If you were asked to appear on Oprah’s show, what would you wear?
A) I wear a back suit and open-necked white shirt to all of my readings and appearances. But hey, if Oprah asked me to wear a grass skirt and no shirt at all I’d have no problem with that. Writers come in two kinds: those who have something to say, and those who don’t. If you’ve got something to say, as I have, you jump at the chance to reach an audience as vast and interested in life as Oprah’s is.