Stuff
Interview with Richard C. Morais
Interview with Richard C. Morais
Interview with Richard C. Morais
Author Richard C. Morais sat down with some fans at Simon & Schuster offices in New York to discuss The Hundred-Foot Journey. Here is a look at that conversation.
Hi Richard. Thank you for being here today. Your novel is about an Indian chef who becomes a three-star French chef in Paris. The protagonist, a Muslim Indian named Hassan Haji, tells the story of his “journey” and how he got to this elevated position. We hear you had never even been to India when you began writing The Hundred-Foot Journey. Can you tell us why you wrote in an Indian’s voice?
Richard C. Morais: The main reason was practical. I was inspired to write this book by my late friend, Ismail Merchant, the colorful film producer behind Merchant Ivory Productions (“Room With A View,” “Remains Of the Day.”) We became friends over the years when I was Forbes’s European Bureau Chief in London, and we bonded over our mutual love of good food. So my intent was to write a book that would marry Ismail’s love of the kitchen with his love of filmmaking. I was trying to make a literary property that ultimately could be developed into a film, which I was secretly hoping he would produce. Sadly, Ismail died before I completed my novel.
But that sounds like there was another, less-practical reason?
Richard C. Morais: There was. I am an American who was born to American expat parents in Portugal. When I was ten months old we moved to Switzerland, where I was raised. At the age of 16, I finally moved to the U.S., to attend Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. It was the first time I had ever lived in America. It was a difficult time. I did not feel like I belonged anywhere. I was not really American but neither was I really European.
But that’s when I took a fiction class with the great New York writer, Grace Paley. Grace was from and steeped in Jewish Brooklyn; that's where all her stories were located. One day Grace walked into our class and said, "The reason we write is to show how we are different from other people."
I was just 19 at the time, and Grace was a great literary figure, but I could not let her comment pass. With a shaking voice, I said, "Grace, that is the most irresponsible comment I have ever heard a teacher say. I know why I am different from other people. I feel my alienation every day. Surely the reason to write is to find out what we have in common with other people."
So that is the underlying reason – need, really – why I write in another culture’s voice. It’s very emotionally satisfying to convincingly pretend, for a little while at least, I am someone far from my own comfort zone – and explore the humanity I have in common with this soul from a far away place.
Did you do research for the book and are there scenes in the book that refer to specific places you’ve visited or lived?
Richard C. Morais: The book starts out in Mumbai and, as you pointed out, it was really rather impertinent of me because I had never even been to India when I started writing in an Indian’s voice. Eventually I did go to India for ten days, to do work on some Forbes stories, and on that trip I did some research for the book, such as visiting Mumbai’s Crawford Market. So I built my Mumbai out of that trip and various other experiences I have had over the years as a foreign correspondent reporting in developing nations.
The European locations were easier to recreate. I lived in London for 17 years, when I was working for Forbes, so that took care of the British scenes in the book. Lumière, meanwhile, was based on my childhood memories in Switzerland. We lived in Zurich but my family had a little weekend getaway, an apartment in an old farmhouse in Aegeri, a village in the mountains of Canton Zug. So I created The Hundred-Foot Journey’s Lumière from my memories of this idyllic village in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, where I spent almost every weekend of my childhood.
The last part of the book is set in Paris. When I was 28, I left Forbes for a year and my wife and I moved to the fifth arrondissement in Paris so that I could write an unauthorized biography about the French designer, Pierre Cardin. We lived on a picture-perfect cobblestone lane in the Latin Quarter, called Rue Rollin, which flows into Place de la Contrescarpe, and that is recreated as the key Parisian neighborhood of the latter part of my novel. Most of the Parisian section of the book is based on that perfect year my wife and I had living in Paris when we were young.
How did you come to write the cooking scenes in the book? What kind of research did you have to do?
Richard C. Morais: All the men in my family are excellent cooks. My father is a superb cook. We are self-taught, intuitive cooks, so we’re not, you know, professionally trained. But it’s that hands on experience in the kitchen that is the basis for most of the cooking scenes in the novel. Some of the meals in the book actually come from some foolish thing that I’ve done. Last summer, for example, I roasted a kid in my garden in Philadelphia, sewing lemons and oranges into the goat’s stomach before cooking it over hot coals. Naturally, that roast kid worked its way into the novel.
But I also immersed myself in the behind-the-scenes workings of top-rated restaurants around the world. I talked myself into the kitchen of Le Bernardin here in New York, for example; in London, I watched the chef at work at the Sugar Club; and in Mumbai, I spent a half-day in the kitchen of Khyber, a very fine Indian restaurant. So I did a lot of journalistic-type research to make up for the technical gaps in my knowledge.
And lastly, of course, I did a lot of reading. There’s a scene early on in the book, where Hassan and Bappu, his cook-mentor in Mumbai, go through Crawford Market. Hassan is a young boy and Bappu starts teaching him how to pick a fresh chicken. He tells Hassan to “always look for plump knees in a chicken” because that’s a sure sign they will be tasty. Most people think I made that up, but actually there’s a three-star French chef in London, Michel Roux, who wrote a memoir in which I found that detail. I just loved it and worked it into the novel. So the research for the cooking in The Hundred-Foot Journey comes from everywhere – my own experiences cooking, my travels, and technical research.
Who do you think will love The Hundred-Foot Journey?
Richard C. Morais: Anyone who loves a good yarn. What Forbes taught me, as a journalist, is that when you write an article, you want to trick the reader into turning the page. You never want to give them an excuse not to turn the page. And so I approach my fiction the same way. I want you, at every page to say, “and then what? And then what?” I want you to be almost forced to turn the page. As a result, the book is driven by a strong narrative. A plot. So I think The Hundred-Foot Journey will appeal to anyone who wants to disappear into a beautiful world full of life-affirming food, family and fun. There is a lot of light-hearted humor in this novel, driven by Hassan’s eccentric family.
But I also think any good book should be like daily conversation. What I mean is, there are moments when our conversation in the course of the day is light and frothy, but other times, it’s appropriate for us to be deep and serious. All day long our conversation is moving back and forth among these various levels of “depth.” So that’s what I have done in my novel. There are moments that are light and fun, but there are also some scenes that try to tackle some of the big stuff. The stuff of life: Why were you put on this earth? What is your calling? How do you find your calling when it’s at odds with your culture?
These are things that all of us deal with and my intent was to weave in some of these serious notes into what is essentially good fun.
One of those serious questions that arises in your book is, Where is home? Like Hassan who spends most of his life living away from his homeland, you have lived all over the world, spending more time abroad than in the U.S. What do nationality and homeland mean to you?
Richard C. Morais: Ah. Nationality and homeland. That’s one of the great questions of the 21st century because so many of us are of mixed race and mobile. My mother’s family is from New York; my father is a Canadian citizen, but he is of Portuguese descent. I’m an American but you already know about my various moves across the globe.
The Portuguese have a terrific word – saudade. Saudade expresses a kind of intense yearning to get back home, a nostalgia to recover something that has been lost. I think a lot of us have that. But as I get older, I’ve come to the point where I think that home is anywhere where you are at that moment at peace with the world. For me, that is no longer so attached to a physical place, it is really a state of being. And for me, being in my garden in Philadelphia and sitting at a long table with friends and family and having a good meal, that’s as close to home as I’ll ever get.
<< Previous Interview
Hi Richard. Thank you for being here today. Your novel is about an Indian chef who becomes a three-star French chef in Paris. The protagonist, a Muslim Indian named Hassan Haji, tells the story of his “journey” and how he got to this elevated position. We hear you had never even been to India when you began writing The Hundred-Foot Journey. Can you tell us why you wrote in an Indian’s voice?
Richard C. Morais: The main reason was practical. I was inspired to write this book by my late friend, Ismail Merchant, the colorful film producer behind Merchant Ivory Productions (“Room With A View,” “Remains Of the Day.”) We became friends over the years when I was Forbes’s European Bureau Chief in London, and we bonded over our mutual love of good food. So my intent was to write a book that would marry Ismail’s love of the kitchen with his love of filmmaking. I was trying to make a literary property that ultimately could be developed into a film, which I was secretly hoping he would produce. Sadly, Ismail died before I completed my novel.
But that sounds like there was another, less-practical reason?
Richard C. Morais: There was. I am an American who was born to American expat parents in Portugal. When I was ten months old we moved to Switzerland, where I was raised. At the age of 16, I finally moved to the U.S., to attend Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. It was the first time I had ever lived in America. It was a difficult time. I did not feel like I belonged anywhere. I was not really American but neither was I really European.
But that’s when I took a fiction class with the great New York writer, Grace Paley. Grace was from and steeped in Jewish Brooklyn; that's where all her stories were located. One day Grace walked into our class and said, "The reason we write is to show how we are different from other people."
I was just 19 at the time, and Grace was a great literary figure, but I could not let her comment pass. With a shaking voice, I said, "Grace, that is the most irresponsible comment I have ever heard a teacher say. I know why I am different from other people. I feel my alienation every day. Surely the reason to write is to find out what we have in common with other people."
So that is the underlying reason – need, really – why I write in another culture’s voice. It’s very emotionally satisfying to convincingly pretend, for a little while at least, I am someone far from my own comfort zone – and explore the humanity I have in common with this soul from a far away place.
Did you do research for the book and are there scenes in the book that refer to specific places you’ve visited or lived?
Richard C. Morais: The book starts out in Mumbai and, as you pointed out, it was really rather impertinent of me because I had never even been to India when I started writing in an Indian’s voice. Eventually I did go to India for ten days, to do work on some Forbes stories, and on that trip I did some research for the book, such as visiting Mumbai’s Crawford Market. So I built my Mumbai out of that trip and various other experiences I have had over the years as a foreign correspondent reporting in developing nations.
The European locations were easier to recreate. I lived in London for 17 years, when I was working for Forbes, so that took care of the British scenes in the book. Lumière, meanwhile, was based on my childhood memories in Switzerland. We lived in Zurich but my family had a little weekend getaway, an apartment in an old farmhouse in Aegeri, a village in the mountains of Canton Zug. So I created The Hundred-Foot Journey’s Lumière from my memories of this idyllic village in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, where I spent almost every weekend of my childhood.
The last part of the book is set in Paris. When I was 28, I left Forbes for a year and my wife and I moved to the fifth arrondissement in Paris so that I could write an unauthorized biography about the French designer, Pierre Cardin. We lived on a picture-perfect cobblestone lane in the Latin Quarter, called Rue Rollin, which flows into Place de la Contrescarpe, and that is recreated as the key Parisian neighborhood of the latter part of my novel. Most of the Parisian section of the book is based on that perfect year my wife and I had living in Paris when we were young.
How did you come to write the cooking scenes in the book? What kind of research did you have to do?
Richard C. Morais: All the men in my family are excellent cooks. My father is a superb cook. We are self-taught, intuitive cooks, so we’re not, you know, professionally trained. But it’s that hands on experience in the kitchen that is the basis for most of the cooking scenes in the novel. Some of the meals in the book actually come from some foolish thing that I’ve done. Last summer, for example, I roasted a kid in my garden in Philadelphia, sewing lemons and oranges into the goat’s stomach before cooking it over hot coals. Naturally, that roast kid worked its way into the novel.
But I also immersed myself in the behind-the-scenes workings of top-rated restaurants around the world. I talked myself into the kitchen of Le Bernardin here in New York, for example; in London, I watched the chef at work at the Sugar Club; and in Mumbai, I spent a half-day in the kitchen of Khyber, a very fine Indian restaurant. So I did a lot of journalistic-type research to make up for the technical gaps in my knowledge.
And lastly, of course, I did a lot of reading. There’s a scene early on in the book, where Hassan and Bappu, his cook-mentor in Mumbai, go through Crawford Market. Hassan is a young boy and Bappu starts teaching him how to pick a fresh chicken. He tells Hassan to “always look for plump knees in a chicken” because that’s a sure sign they will be tasty. Most people think I made that up, but actually there’s a three-star French chef in London, Michel Roux, who wrote a memoir in which I found that detail. I just loved it and worked it into the novel. So the research for the cooking in The Hundred-Foot Journey comes from everywhere – my own experiences cooking, my travels, and technical research.
Who do you think will love The Hundred-Foot Journey?
Richard C. Morais: Anyone who loves a good yarn. What Forbes taught me, as a journalist, is that when you write an article, you want to trick the reader into turning the page. You never want to give them an excuse not to turn the page. And so I approach my fiction the same way. I want you, at every page to say, “and then what? And then what?” I want you to be almost forced to turn the page. As a result, the book is driven by a strong narrative. A plot. So I think The Hundred-Foot Journey will appeal to anyone who wants to disappear into a beautiful world full of life-affirming food, family and fun. There is a lot of light-hearted humor in this novel, driven by Hassan’s eccentric family.
But I also think any good book should be like daily conversation. What I mean is, there are moments when our conversation in the course of the day is light and frothy, but other times, it’s appropriate for us to be deep and serious. All day long our conversation is moving back and forth among these various levels of “depth.” So that’s what I have done in my novel. There are moments that are light and fun, but there are also some scenes that try to tackle some of the big stuff. The stuff of life: Why were you put on this earth? What is your calling? How do you find your calling when it’s at odds with your culture?
These are things that all of us deal with and my intent was to weave in some of these serious notes into what is essentially good fun.
One of those serious questions that arises in your book is, Where is home? Like Hassan who spends most of his life living away from his homeland, you have lived all over the world, spending more time abroad than in the U.S. What do nationality and homeland mean to you?
Richard C. Morais: Ah. Nationality and homeland. That’s one of the great questions of the 21st century because so many of us are of mixed race and mobile. My mother’s family is from New York; my father is a Canadian citizen, but he is of Portuguese descent. I’m an American but you already know about my various moves across the globe.
The Portuguese have a terrific word – saudade. Saudade expresses a kind of intense yearning to get back home, a nostalgia to recover something that has been lost. I think a lot of us have that. But as I get older, I’ve come to the point where I think that home is anywhere where you are at that moment at peace with the world. For me, that is no longer so attached to a physical place, it is really a state of being. And for me, being in my garden in Philadelphia and sitting at a long table with friends and family and having a good meal, that’s as close to home as I’ll ever get.
