Welcome to the book show A Celebration of Reading and Writers.
I'm Joe Donnie.
Held as a masterpiece by NPR Tinkers, Paul Harding's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut is a
modern classic.
The Dallas Morning News observed that, quote, like Faulkner, Harding never shies away from
describing what seems impossible to put into words.
In his new novel, Inan, Harding follows a year in the life of Charlie Crosby as he tries
to come to terms with the shattering personal tragedy, grandson of George Crosby, the protagonist
of Tinkers, Charlie inhabits the same dynamic landscape of New England, it seasons mirroring
his turbulent emotional journey.
It is a great pleasure to welcome Paul Harding to this week's book show.
Thank you very much for being with us.
A delight to have you here.
Oh, thanks.
It's great to be here, Joe.
Appreciate the chance to talk.
What is...
Because you are really one of the few people that we could ask this question to.
And that is, what is it like to follow up a debut novel that wins the Pulitzer Prize?
It's never a dull moment.
Winning the prize for your first book, you sort of...
You just get dropped out of the sky, you know, and people don't...
You don't have a reputation, you don't have a body of work.
So it can be intimidating.
I think I could imagine people being knocked off their perch by it.
I was just in the fortunate circumstances of already having received a contract for writing
Inan before Tinkers won the prize.
And even better was that the editor at Randermaus who bought Inan had at the time, she bought
it, not red Tinkers.
So then when Tinkers sort of had this big phenomenon, it became a kind of phenomenon
and started to exert its kind of tractor beam, gravity pull on my leg.
I was already 75 or 100 pages into writing Inan.
And so just sort of had that project to just concentrate on.
Because it would have been tough to try to start a new project from scratch in the middle
of the kind of post Pulitzer life.
As I mentioned in the introduction, there is a connection.
The protagonist of Tinkers is the grandfather of this novel's protagonist.
So did you have that in place in those first 7,500 pages?
Yeah, I did.
It's funny the way that Inan came to me was, I had this almost photographic or an image
of just a silhouette of a hill, a dark hill that was studded with gravestones.
And there was the figure of this man sort of skulking across the top of the hill.
And I knew it was late at night and he had been up to no good.
And I knew at the same time that he was sneaking behind his daughter's grave.
I just came to me all at once.
There was this vision of this guy doing this.
And I knew that he was Charlie Crosby.
I knew that he was George Crosby's grandson and that this was happening in Inan, which
is the little town in Massachusetts where George Crosby from Tinkers ends up being a clock
repairman.
Is that an idea now that you think you will follow through of investigating various facets
of this place?
It seems to be trending that way.
I have a couple of other ideas, very, very small germs of ideas and both of them are set
in Inan.
Right now what I'm kind of trying to figure out is do I keep writing about the same family
or do I keep writing about the same place with different families?
It's these sort of kind of pleasant things to contemplate and not have to quite be committed
to one way or another at this point, sort of in between the two books.
I mean, my model for that is Faulkner's Yoke Nipatafa.
The idea of having this fictional world that you return to and sort of keep mining for
material and for inspiration is appealing to me.
What is fascinating about this novel is that it's current day unlike Tinkers.
So because of that and as you say mining, I would think give you great latitude and freedom.
Yeah.
And one of the things that I, as you say, the new book is contemporary but a large part
of the book consists of the protagonist taking the memory of his daughter and sort of repatriating
her in a kind of invented imaginary version of the town that includes all the people who
have ever lived there since it was first colonized in the 1620s.
So there, I mean, I sort of, I certainly don't limit myself temporally.
I love the idea of all of the different eras in the town's history being compounded
and being able to move around in them.
And that, you know, I just, that just comes out of being a sort of very, very amateur sort
of like local history buff.
I like to read all the old town minutes.
Which most of which are boring, you know, they're all property boundaries.
You know, Joe's property is, you know, the from the ash tree to the rock, you know, that
sort of, but then you get these occasionally you get these incredibly sort of almost just
these luminous details that come out of the past that any one of which can sort of be
the spark for an episode or a story or something that you can take one of your characters
and have them interact with.
And I found that happening with the new book, In On All the Time.
Well, you talk about luminous detail and that certainly seems to be a style of your
writing, your description, let's take of nature, for example, of how you describe that
rock.
Right, right, right, describing rocks.
No, I think it's true.
And I think one of the things that I, the ways I try to discipline the writing that's
just descriptive of its pastoral say, sort of lyrical, its pastoral is descriptive of
nature is that I try to never just describe the rock.
I try to describe the rock as refracted through the perception of a character so that a
landscape is never just a pretty landscape.
It is in some way a kind of objective kind of exposition of character still.
It's the experience of the landscape that the character is having that I'm interested
in.
And I just think that the more precisely you can describe anything and fiction, the more
immersive and experience it will be for the reader.
You talk about writing so much about the history of the town.
And it's one of the things I loved in this novel.
And it struck me as you were talking, would it be the same if it were Alabama or Iowa
or Colorado?
Is there something about New England or even the south that we think of that has more
of a richer history?
Yeah, I'm sure.
I think that's an open question.
I think that every place is rich in history and it's there to be discovered and turned
into art by whomever pays close enough attention to it.
I mean, in New England or in Massachusetts, part of Massachusetts, where I'm from, the
problem almost is the danger is that it already has such a rich literary history that it can
be intimidating to think that you might have something to contribute to that.
I actually don't worry too much about that.
I'm happy to be part of what I consider to that tradition, the kind of transcendentalist
tradition, I think.
Emily Dickinson and Emerson and Hawthorne and all those people as my aunts and uncles.
Although I have read interviews with you where you have distanced yourself a bit from
the transcendentalist, well, you don't over determine things.
I like to keep my options open.
You know, if I'm feeling a little Thomas Manish, I want to be able to leave from New
England and go up to Lou Bicker or whatever he's from.
And I think the idea too is that you, I mean, as a writer, you want to think that as happy
as I am to be associated with those writers and as obvious as their influence is on my
writing in my books and I'm happy to sort of wear that influence on my sleeve.
You just want to make sure that people don't think that you're merely derivative or
imitative of them, that you're actually actively working in that tradition, but not
just parroting or mimicking what they did.
You find that kind of that particular, those aesthetics still viable to bring to bear
on our own experience now, contemporary experience.
Do you think that that could have been a reason that originally Tinker's was rejected
by so many publishers?
It's possible.
I mean, one of the things that Erica Goldman at Bellevue Literary Press, she's the editor
and publisher there.
One of the things that we had conversations about before the book came out was that this
may just be a quote unquote New England book and it may just be kind of too regional for
a broader appeal.
It was very lucky that that just, that wasn't the case.
And part of it is that I didn't write about it thematically in terms of New England.
You know, people say, oh, it's all about New England.
I just say because it's just said in New England, I didn't have to deliberately think about
that.
I just described what I saw.
And by virtue of it being itself, it was New England, you know, most of the initial
rejections I received for Tinker's were head more to do with the way it's put together
and the point of view and received rejections that said nobody wants to read a book with
more than one point of view, which just seemed absurd to me.
I just rejected the rejection.
Most of the books I like, I like because they have different points of view.
You know, there's a richness to other people said nobody wants to read a quiet book that's
full of interiority and full of sort of lyrical pastoralism.
And I just thought, I just thought I do.
I want to read books like that.
I like to read books like that.
And I teach writing a lot and this is one of the things that it feels counterintuitive.
One of the things I often say to my students is, don't write your books for the people
who aren't going to like them.
Right.
But you have to have a confidence.
I mean, there has to be an inner confidence that what you have written is, is at some
level, at least the best you can do.
That's right.
But you feel that it is good and we'll connect with someone.
That's exactly right.
Yeah, yeah, because then I mean, this is another lesson that my teachers taught me that
I had to learn profoundly when Tinker couldn't get published at first, which is don't
ever mix up writing and publishing.
Publishing is just a different thing.
And when you're writing, you're just trying to write, you're trying to create the best
work of art you possibly can.
And then hopefully it'll be published.
But in some ways, it ended up being liberating because then when I couldn't get Tinker's
published for those four years, I spent four years making art for art's sake.
It was sort of liberating and that if nobody's going to read this, I can write it.
I can write exactly what I want to write and not worry about it.
And I think that that sort of proves or demonstrates the virtue of just not, if you're writing
literary fiction, don't think about like, what are the editors going to like?
What do you like?
And you can have some fair amount of confidence that other people are out there who will like
the same thing you like.
So the new book is published by the granddaddy of the publishers.
Random house by random house.
And the first book published by Bellevue Literary News, which comes out of Bellevue Hospital,
right?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It's the Tinker's is published by the NYU School of Medicine.
Is there a huge difference in how you are, I don't know, treated, but at least that the
experience in writing and having, as you say, that four years of artistic freedom?
Yeah.
I mean, at my experience with the two different publishers has just been wonderful.
I think that my experience with both of them has primarily been my experience with the
editor.
You know, and both of both Susan Camelitt, who's my editor at Random House and and
Eric Goldman, both are just absolutely world class editors who know how to engage authors
and bring the best out of them.
Both of them were tactful.
They were discrete.
They're brilliant.
They've had virtue that editors virtue of getting, you know, getting me to think that
I came up with all the ideas that they had, you know, for sure.
Yeah, whatever, but just very, very in both cases, I felt like that they're advocates
for the work.
They're not antagonists.
They don't think, oh, this is a haptease an idea upon which we will base a book.
They both bought the book I had written and said, we're buying this book because we like
the book already.
And then the editorial process is just that of just helping you.
So just having great, really, really super deep kind of molecular atomic kind of level
discussions about the book just so that it evolves into the best version of itself
that it can become.
Paul Harding is our guest.
His new novel is Inan.
It is published by Random House.
There has to be some part of you, though, that thought, you know, I will never go to a
major publisher.
I will always stay with literary press.
Of course, and then there's the payday aspect of it.
Yeah.
There's that the bottom line kind of thing and sort of the parting of the ways with
Bellevue was, it was benign, you know, Tinker's had done well enough so that, you know, I
could get money for the next book and I needed money to live on.
And to Erica Goldman's credit, what she didn't want Bellevue to become the house of Tinker's,
she wanted to keep what she was able to give to others at the same level so that she could
publish as many books as possible, you know, as many good books as possible on that, at
that same sort of level of, you know, financial level.
And so she just said, I just realized that that means that you'll probably publish the
next book someplace else.
She just has my undying loyalty and whenever Bellevue asked me to do anything, I just
said, yep, I'll hop on a train.
I thought, you know, just, yeah, because I mean, it was, it turned out to be the best experience
I could have possibly had being published by them.
So with the Pulitzer Prize comes a new role for you, which is, which is not only author,
not only Pulitzer Prize winning author, but you become the poster child for every writer
who has a drawer filled with rejection letters.
Yeah, it is.
I feel like my experience winning the Pulitzer was, you know, I benefited from the fact
that from the beginning, Tinker's had its life in the world due to incredibly generous
people in the independent book selling and publishing realms.
And so that when Tinker's won the prize, I felt like I was just sort of the figurehead
or the ambassador or the deputy that had, who had all these other people behind me who
had supported the book and just sort of word of mouth, grassroots support for it.
So I think that when it, that when the Pulitzer, there was just this great backstory that
had to do with, you know, in terms of writers, yes, just keep writing in this, there's, there's
hope, I think some people get cynical or jaded about the Pulitzer and they think that the
fixes in.
And you know, the fact that Tinker's this small book from a small independent publisher
was able to sort of win this large literary prize means that there's hope for us all.
So, you know, that this sort of, the state of the art is such that the fix isn't in,
the United States still has a vibrant and viable artistic community.
And so, or literary community, I mean, in particular, then you have to be careful because
then you don't want to speak, you know, you do just stick with it, you too can win your
Pulitzer.
I mean, one of the things that I, that you, that I've realized, you're the law, as the
Pulitzer, as I've lived sort of with having won the Pulitzer for three or four years now,
is just that there is an aspect to it that is just, you have to realize you sort of won
the lottery too.
Because on that day, when I found out that Tinker's won any one of several dozen other books,
it had been published that year, could have come up as the prize winner and I would have
just thought, oh, that's great.
She won a Pulitzer good for her.
The only appropriate response to winning that is humility and gratitude.
Of course.
And it's hard because it seems to me that it's hard to put it into a context, I guess,
other than there are so many books published and there are always the quote unquote front
runners of books.
Yeah.
The prominent writers that you expect.
And when I read your book right after you, as you say, the independent bookstores were
all over it and said, here you go.
And we're very instrumental in getting it into people's hands.
And I remember reading it and thinking, well, yes, this, of course, this should have
won the Pulitzer prize.
But it says a lot, not only about you, but also about the prize itself and that someone
like yourself from a small publisher can win this prize on the merit of the work.
Yeah.
And so it's not so much a practical, a practical thing like, oh, I could, I might win a Pulitzer
too, but it's just the general idea of sort of being enfranchised as a serious writer.
The NYU School of Medicine can throw its hat in the ring and still be seriously considered
along with these other gigantic books that are coming out on larger.
I mean, because now I'm on the other side of it where I've got a random house that's
putting out the next book.
And so now I'm the underdog.
Right now, you know, now I've got the, you know, it's a prize one of the prominent books
that's coming out this season.
And it's, but it's great because, for example, the book tour that I'm on, that going on
for Enoch, I've just been able to go back to all of the independent bookstores that
had me when Tinker's was first out and three or four or five people showed up to the readings.
Random house, let me book my book tour with all those independent bookstores.
That's right.
So I get to just go back and keep it at that level because it's a good life just going
around and talking to people like you and just like, you know, dropping in and talking
about art and truth and beauty and literature and reading it.
It's a lovely way to live.
The other curious thing about the prize was then it was the next year they didn't
award two years after that.
Two years of Egan one for the Goon squad.
Oh, that's right.
Okay.
2011 and 2012 they write, that's right.
They didn't, they didn't award one.
And that says a lot too.
Yeah.
I, that's, it's strange because I, they hadn't done that since 1977.
I don't know.
You know, when I put on my writer's hat, I think it's too bad that they didn't award
one because it really, as a writer, it's just like the more prizes you can give out the
more publicity you can give for good books.
Right.
You know, and there are lots of readers out there who, who use prizes as the sort of, you
know, the way that they track down a lot of their reading, which is perfectly legitimate.
So I just think the more prizes, the better.
But then just completely dispassionately, I think, but the Pulitzer, it's their prize and
they can do what they want with it, you know, but that, but you do think that surely
there must have been a book that they could have gone back and found one that was
worth it.
You know, it is impossible for me.
I felt this way with Tingers and I feel this way with Inan.
Your books take me a while to read because I keep on going back.
I love the sentences.
I love the, the passages and, and the mood that you create.
So for the time it takes me to read, I can only imagine what it is for you to create
that, that art and to spend that time and the creation.
Yeah.
A lot of the process is, I guess technically it's
called it would be revision, but I don't think of it as revision.
I almost think of it as almost like painting, you know, where you add layers of paint and
then you scrape them off and then you build them back up again and you get pentamenti
and it's almost like there's a topographical aspect of it too where you just keep deepening
the pros and deepening it and making it layers and layers and layers thick.
And so that even, for example, in both of the, both of the books, the initial drafts,
the first drafts of both books were probably twice as long as the published book.
And I just would end up just stripping the book down and taking all the, but all the stuff
that I cut out of the manuscript somehow or another, I infused into the published work.
So that even though tinkers is only 40,000 words long, I think of it as 120,000 words deep
in some ways, you know, I think a lot of writers have all sorts of different analogies that
they use for that.
I want people to go back and reread the books and I want people to, I like it when people
say, oh, I had to go back and reread the paragraph twice because that's not an act of provocation.
Some people are provoked by I didn't get the sentence that was long and I didn't get
it the first time.
If you have to go back and read a sentence twice or a paragraph twice that you will be rewarded
and that that's actually a mark of a kind of deep generosity in the pros is a richness
to it that sustains repeated reading.
As a writer, one of the biggest horrors I have is people being able to read one of my
books and read it once and say, oh, yeah, I get that and just be done with it.
And the difference of wanting to read it again and having to read it again.
Right.
Exactly.
And so there's the differences because you have to read it twice because there's depth
to it and substance to it rather than it's poorly written and it's merely obscure.
I found it in this just looking at the at the first chapter of of Enon where you are
writing about Charlie and the death of his of his daughter.
And I can't think of anything more horrible yet.
The way you write it is it's beautiful.
It is haunting, but it is beautiful.
Yeah, it's sort of a mystery.
It's choosing subjects or how subjects sort of choose you.
I don't mean to mystify it.
It's I mean, on the one hand, I sort of feel like why bother trying to make art if you're
not going to put everything at stake?
You know, so you write about the you write about the most important things in life, which
I mean, I have to do with the loss of a child in the case of Enon.
It was difficult.
It presented challenges that I didn't anticipate, but you know, when you choose the dramatic
premise of a parent losing a child, you immediately have all these very predictable
perils that are very, very close by.
You make one fall step in any direction and you immediately lapse into Bethos, into sentimentality,
into melodrama, that sort of thing.
But at the same time, that's the reason to carry on rather than to shy away from it.
I know I think we all know people who have suffered those sorts of losses.
And to me, it was always I just that's the loss.
I always feel like I couldn't survive.
And so I just decided to sort of interrogate that as a premise and just put this sort
of aesthetic pressure of art and literature to bear on that experience and see what I
came up with.
And it's true.
It's a sad book.
It is sad, but it's also finally affirmative.
I mean, to me, the danger is just again, lapsing into sentimentality, into cheap sentimentality,
or to me, equally bad is just lapsing into a kind of nihilism or cynicism.
And so I just give my protagonist my own difficulty with the subject.
I give him that life experience and then sort of try to work through it.
Very surprising to write this book as all sorts of stuff I never expected to happen happen
in the course of writing it.
Well, it's remarkable and beautiful.
It's in on.
It is published by Random House Paul Harding.
A great pleasure to have you on the program.
I wish you all the luck in the world on the book tour.
And I thank you so much for being with us.
Oh, thank you kindly.
It was a great pleasure.
Great pleasure.
We enjoy hearing from our listeners about the show.
You can email us at book at wamc.org.
You can listen again to this or find past book shows at wamc.org.
Sarah will do produces our program bookmarks for next week.
And thanks for listening for the book show.
I'm Joe Donaue.
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