Author2Author: Bruce Bauman & Joy Nicholson, pt. 3

We have a lot of ground to cover before the holiday weekend begins and I lose your attention (and mine) for 72 hours, so this Author2Author post is a bit more extensive than usual!

Bruce Bauman: The Road to Esmeralda is a very personal book with a strong political backdrop. It's a much more mature work than your first novel in the complexity of the relationships and how they shift, and the humor is harsher and more droll. Which book came easier. Or should I say with less difficulty?

Joy Nicholson: The Tribes of Palos Verdes came with physical anguish--writing it made me literally sick with an auto-immune disorder. I felt nothing, really when writing it, but my body started attacking itself. Esmeralda came with emotional anguish. The scales had fallen from my eyes. In living around the world, a stranger, I could see my personal problems were really a microcosm of world problems--everything that was happening in me was happening out in the world, too, and much worse besides.

Bruce: For such a young writer, and a high-school dropout who doesn't consider herself well-read (I think you're wrong), Tribes is so fucking natural, the voice pitch-perfect. How much did you write before you began that book? How much did you rewrite?

Joy: I didn't drop out of high school as a rebellious stance. It was simply overwhelming and impossible to finish the courses I was failing, all the turmoil at home, the pressure in an upper class city like Palos Verdes to be special and noteworthy, the lies my parents were living, the false faces all around. Some of my first writings were letters to friends, my brother, and celebrities that I had fallen in love with. (I remember writing to President Nixon at my father's behest, telling him I was very sorry everyone was lying about him, and telling him people at my grade school lied about me too, and that it was okay--he would be okay. I got an amazing silver-embossed card back in the mail and kept it for many, many years.)

I rewrite a lot--obsessively. In fact, even when writing letters as a young person I would distill and distill until exactly what I meant to say appeared on the page.

More questions after the jump!

Author2Author: Joy Nicholson & Bruce Bauman, pt. 2

Now that Joy has described the torments her characters endure, she asks Bruce about the tumultuous narratives in his fiction...

Joy Nicholson: I've wanted to ask you since I read And the Word Was. You have tackled so many large, unwieldy, psychologically terrifying issues all under the cover of one novel, and you've done it with amazing grace and simplicity. Did you know, setting out, you were going to write about loss of a child, loss of faith in God, and loss of national borders? Did it ever seem too much of a psychological burden to talk about so many different types of loss--and if so, how did you persist?

Bruce Bauman: The key phrase here is "set out." I started this book over a decade ago with the idea to write my version of the Abraham and Isaac myth. One that would absolutely challenge faith in God. The book lacked emotional depth--it didn't hurt, it didn't get to the horror that lives within in me--and the writing lacked the lift I wanted, so I set it aside. I was also being too "smart" for my own good.

I picked it up five years later and I was ready then, both intellectually and emotionally, to go into my pain and loss: to let my unconscious, my conscious and heart become one to create the book. And I didn't find it burdensome at all; in fact the act of writing this book was invigorating. I know that's nuts.

The last loss of borders came so naturally to the plot and character development that it was the least contemplated part of the book. I'm very political and always have been since I was a kid, so I can't imagine writing a novel without some political edge.

Author2Author: Bruce Bauman & Joy Nicholson, pt. 1

Last month, Joy Nicholson recommended Bruce Bauman's And the Word Was to readers of this blog. Bauman got in touch with her afterwards, they got on famously, and, well, here they are talking not just about his book but her new novel, The Road to Esmeralda. (As for that initial recommendation, Joy's clearly onto something; Susan Henderson recently dropped in on MoorishGirl's blog to deliver similar praise.)

Bruce Bauman: Did you know the ending of The Road To Esmeralda when you started? Because I see similarities in how both your books end with the deaths of certain characters, the horrible position of the main character in each book who is left alive, and of one character, each of whom is, in my mind, fairly evil--though one has more complexity than the other--who escapes rather unscathed despite their horrendous behavior.

Joy Nicholson: I'm not sure if it's a curse or a blessing to be alive? We take it for granted that 'living' is a must--worthy of fighting for with every last drop of anguish--but we don't know if that's a true statement, or just a statement based on wishful thinking or even commercial greed. Life is attachment, and suffering--as well as moments of joy. For instance, Jim, the brother in The Tribes of Palos Verdes: What else should he have done except kill himself? His psyche had been battered, possibly beyond repair, by the woman who could have protected him--and his life would have been one long bout of pain (some would say 'learning') afterward. Phil, the father in Tribes, escapes unscathed and relatively unpained--but how much will his life change? Not much, I'd suspect. His life will be an eternal earthly hell--chasing after women, fame, material objects--never satisfied, always looking for the 'next validation.'

In Esmeralda, Sarah's curse of feeling the world's pain and inequity will die with her; horribly, perhaps, but at least it will be over. Nick's fatal passivity will live on with him--and his, when it comes, will be the death of ten thousand mental cuts. Nick will have a long time to reflect--and unlike Phil, he won't have alcohol and sexual distractions to get him through. And Medina is alive at the end of Tribes, yes, but what has she learned? To persist? Does that really matter?