From Hollywood.com, an interview with writer Jess Walter and his novel Beautiful Ruins:
Hollywood.com: Did you know that this book would be received differently when you were writing it?
Jess Walter: Every book is so different almost in every way. It's kind of a cliché among authors that you're reinventing [your process] every time you're doing it. The process of writing this one was so different, in part because I was working on it for 15 years. So off and on I would come in and out of it.
It's funny, I never have any preconceived notion of
what a book's going to be or how it's going to land or anything like
that. You're almost a slave to the idea. And so the whole time I was
working on this, I was probably sort of stunned that it's done as well
as it has. Because I would explain it to people and how it's about
Hollywood and 1960s Italy and the Donner Party and Edinburgh, Scotland,
and they would look at me like I was kind of insane. So I think I
worried that it was probably too diffuse and elaborate, so I've been
really pleasantly surprised. But I've also learned to not really have
too many expectations about these kinds of things. You just write and
hope for the best.
You mentioned you spent 15 years writing Beautiful Ruins. Why do you think it was so tricky to piece this book together?
Well, you know, it's kind of funny, but I think what the book ended up being about — which is the span of someone's life and heartbreak and regret and how we are, I think, made better by our failures — I needed 15 years of all that hell. I started the book when my mom was still alive, and she passed away. And I had two kids and watched them grow up, and watched my older daughter become an adult, and I had all sorts of failures and successes. I think the scope of the book almost required a little more living on my part. But I never thought that while I was working on it. Every time I quit working on it I assumed it was because the novel was just bad. I just thought it had failed somehow. I think one of the pleasant surprises of the book was, every time I came back to it, I could reanimate it, which isn't always the case. A lot of times I walk away from something, I abandon it and the paint's dry. I can't manipulate it anymore, I can't get it to do anything else. But it seemed like every time I went back to this book, Pasquale and Dee inspired me. They had more to say. When I started it I thought they would spend 40 years apart, 35 years apart, and by the time I finished it… If it had taken much longer, they would've died before I could've gotten them back together.
You've lived with these characters for so long, was it hard to let them go?
It's always hard to let a novel go, but the characters from all my novels — that old saying that they become real, in a way they really don't. More than anyone, I think the author is aware that they are a collection of your own kinks and narrative impulses. The hard thing to let go of with a book is being afraid that it's not done, "It's not ready! I haven't finished it!" You know, maybe the Donner pitch needs to be a page shorter and maybe Claire's boyfriend needs to get a better job. It's more that you feel you haven't done it justice. It isn't as if the people have an impact on your life other than that you're hauling them around trying to figure out what a satisfying narrative conclusion would be.
Comments