COLUMNS
Talk Show 19 with David Ebershoff, Sheridan Hay, Amy MacKinnon, Kirsten Menger-Anderson & Roxana Robinson
/ Jaime Clarke
11.05.08
TALK SHOW 19: Doubting Thomas
David Ebershoff newest novel, The 19th Wife, is a New York Times Bestseller. Visit David at www.ebershoff.com.
Sheridan Hay’s first novel, The Secret of Lost Things, was a finalist for the Borders Original Voices Prize in fiction, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a Booksense Pick and in hardcover was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Translation rights have been sold internationally to ten countries. Sheridan conducts a Great Books seminar for the Mercantile Library in New York, and in the fall will lecture on Herman Melville. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and lives in New York. Visit Sheridan at www.secretoflostthings.com.
Amy MacKinnon is the author of the novel Tethered. A former congressional aide, she is a freelance writer whose commentaries have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Seattle Times, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Sacramento Bee, Patriot Ledger, and on National Public Radio affiliates and This American Life. Ms. MacKinnon began her writing career at the age of 11 when she wrote the Father-of-the-Year Committee in New York City, nominating her Dad. He won. She lives outside of Boston with her husband, their three children, two cats, and English bulldog, Babe. Visit Amy at www.amymackinnon.com.
Kirsten Menger-Anderson is the author of Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain, a collection of linked short stories. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, the Southwest Review, Post Road, and many other journals. She currently lives in San Francisco with her husband, daughter, cat, and guinea pig. Visit Kirsten at www.kirstenmengeranderson.com.
Roxana Robinson is the author of three earlier novels and three short-story collections, as well as a biography of Georgia O'Keeffe. Four of these were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, Best American Short Stories and Vogue, among others. She has received Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. She teaches at the New School in New York. Visit Roxana at www.roxanarobinson.com.
––Name something others believe is true, but that you personally doubt.
Ebershoff: I don’t believe the book is on the verge of extinction. That’s the chatter in publishing these days: that the book is doomed. A recent newspaper story quoted an editor from a major publishing house predicting we’d all be out of business in eighteen months. After that, the industry would shut down. Last week a reporter called me. He was writing a story about the mood in book publishing these days. He asked if I was hearing any gallows humor in the halls of Random House or at lunches with agents or when gabbing with other writers. He’s a good reporter, and it was an honest question. I told him I don’t believe the book is going away. True, the future of the book is uncertain, but that’s not the same as wheezing on life support.
Hay: Many people believe in an afterlife or, at any rate, in something other than this world. I do not. There is of course a religious sensibility that can sustain one through trials, but I’m particularly doubtful about those who speak to the dead – at least, the ones the dead “answer”. I speak to my dead all the time, but the only answers they give are the same ones they gave in life. The way they “answer” me, in so far as those answers change, mark alterations in my own way of thinking. Contemplating those I have lost is a way to measure a movement away from, for example, anguish. It is my wish for them that informs my thoughts, not their imagined return. I am particularly dubious about those with whom the dead ‘communicate.’ Invariably, the messages from the ‘other side’ are rather asinine. They are rarely illuminating or wise. Just because they’re dead, I suppose, there’s no reason to suggest that they’re any smarter or more articulate than they were in life. But why is it that every translated report from the nether world is inevitably banal?
MacKinnon: Group thought tends to frighten me, so I often find myself at odds with the majority point-of-view on any number of truisms: religion, politics, soul mates. I yearn to believe in something, anything, that’s wholly constant and omnipotent and benevolent in any of these categories. Of course the most controversial is a higher power––call it what you will, God tends to be the most common reference in these parts––but I doubt there is such a thing. I suspect it’s more complicated than that. And I know the same is true for love and politics. What I do believe and try every day to practice (and fail at every day) is something that’s found across the spectrum of beliefs: the Golden Rule. That alone is pretty powerful.
Menger-Anderson: I doubt that the disinfecting wipes at the front of grocery stores do
any good for the average person. And while I'm on the topic, I don't believe that the pervasive use of hand sanitizer is helping society much either. And I don't believe in those "protect your baby" contraptions that nest in the folding child-seats of shopping carts like giant diapers protecting fully clothed children from the perils of what is more or less the same stuff found on playground equipment. I doubt them all.
Robinson: The green flash. I know it doesn't exist. Why would it? Why would there be a sudden streak of emerald light, flaring along the edge of the ocean horizon at sunset, in the tropics? Why on earth would that happen? Even if there were a reason, if there were some obscure scientific law governing this sort of unlikely optical event, it would still be impossible for me to believe. Because apparently it doesn't happen every evening at sunset, it only happens at certain times. But its appearance is not dependent on season or on weather. It doesn't matter if it's cloudy or clear, winter or summer. The green flash happens, apparently, only on evenings when I'm not watching. Is that a scientific explanation for anything? Is that the Eisenberg theory?
David Ebershoff newest novel, The 19th Wife, is a New York Times Bestseller. Visit David at www.ebershoff.com.
Sheridan Hay’s first novel, The Secret of Lost Things, was a finalist for the Borders Original Voices Prize in fiction, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a Booksense Pick and in hardcover was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Translation rights have been sold internationally to ten countries. Sheridan conducts a Great Books seminar for the Mercantile Library in New York, and in the fall will lecture on Herman Melville. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and lives in New York. Visit Sheridan at www.secretoflostthings.com.
Amy MacKinnon is the author of the novel Tethered. A former congressional aide, she is a freelance writer whose commentaries have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Seattle Times, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Sacramento Bee, Patriot Ledger, and on National Public Radio affiliates and This American Life. Ms. MacKinnon began her writing career at the age of 11 when she wrote the Father-of-the-Year Committee in New York City, nominating her Dad. He won. She lives outside of Boston with her husband, their three children, two cats, and English bulldog, Babe. Visit Amy at www.amymackinnon.com.
Kirsten Menger-Anderson is the author of Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain, a collection of linked short stories. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, the Southwest Review, Post Road, and many other journals. She currently lives in San Francisco with her husband, daughter, cat, and guinea pig. Visit Kirsten at www.kirstenmengeranderson.com.
Roxana Robinson is the author of three earlier novels and three short-story collections, as well as a biography of Georgia O'Keeffe. Four of these were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, Best American Short Stories and Vogue, among others. She has received Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. She teaches at the New School in New York. Visit Roxana at www.roxanarobinson.com.
––Name something others believe is true, but that you personally doubt.
Ebershoff: I don’t believe the book is on the verge of extinction. That’s the chatter in publishing these days: that the book is doomed. A recent newspaper story quoted an editor from a major publishing house predicting we’d all be out of business in eighteen months. After that, the industry would shut down. Last week a reporter called me. He was writing a story about the mood in book publishing these days. He asked if I was hearing any gallows humor in the halls of Random House or at lunches with agents or when gabbing with other writers. He’s a good reporter, and it was an honest question. I told him I don’t believe the book is going away. True, the future of the book is uncertain, but that’s not the same as wheezing on life support.
Hay: Many people believe in an afterlife or, at any rate, in something other than this world. I do not. There is of course a religious sensibility that can sustain one through trials, but I’m particularly doubtful about those who speak to the dead – at least, the ones the dead “answer”. I speak to my dead all the time, but the only answers they give are the same ones they gave in life. The way they “answer” me, in so far as those answers change, mark alterations in my own way of thinking. Contemplating those I have lost is a way to measure a movement away from, for example, anguish. It is my wish for them that informs my thoughts, not their imagined return. I am particularly dubious about those with whom the dead ‘communicate.’ Invariably, the messages from the ‘other side’ are rather asinine. They are rarely illuminating or wise. Just because they’re dead, I suppose, there’s no reason to suggest that they’re any smarter or more articulate than they were in life. But why is it that every translated report from the nether world is inevitably banal?
MacKinnon: Group thought tends to frighten me, so I often find myself at odds with the majority point-of-view on any number of truisms: religion, politics, soul mates. I yearn to believe in something, anything, that’s wholly constant and omnipotent and benevolent in any of these categories. Of course the most controversial is a higher power––call it what you will, God tends to be the most common reference in these parts––but I doubt there is such a thing. I suspect it’s more complicated than that. And I know the same is true for love and politics. What I do believe and try every day to practice (and fail at every day) is something that’s found across the spectrum of beliefs: the Golden Rule. That alone is pretty powerful.
Menger-Anderson: I doubt that the disinfecting wipes at the front of grocery stores do
any good for the average person. And while I'm on the topic, I don't believe that the pervasive use of hand sanitizer is helping society much either. And I don't believe in those "protect your baby" contraptions that nest in the folding child-seats of shopping carts like giant diapers protecting fully clothed children from the perils of what is more or less the same stuff found on playground equipment. I doubt them all.
Robinson: The green flash. I know it doesn't exist. Why would it? Why would there be a sudden streak of emerald light, flaring along the edge of the ocean horizon at sunset, in the tropics? Why on earth would that happen? Even if there were a reason, if there were some obscure scientific law governing this sort of unlikely optical event, it would still be impossible for me to believe. Because apparently it doesn't happen every evening at sunset, it only happens at certain times. But its appearance is not dependent on season or on weather. It doesn't matter if it's cloudy or clear, winter or summer. The green flash happens, apparently, only on evenings when I'm not watching. Is that a scientific explanation for anything? Is that the Eisenberg theory?
