Stuff
Interview with Shira Nayman
Interview with Shira Nayman
A Conversation with Shira Nayman, author of The Listener
1. Recently your collection of stories, Awake in the Dark, was set to music. What type of music or sounds do you envision for The Listener? Do you often listen to music while you write?
The composer Ben Moore wrote a beautiful, aching piece of chamber music, “House on Kronenstrasse Suite” for a musical-theatrical performance associated with my first book, “Awake in the Dark” (performed at St. Francis College Theater, under the auspices of “The Brooklyn Historical Society,” and also showcased at The Lincoln Center Institute in New York). For the launch event of “The Listener,” I asked Ben if he might set three poems of the World War I poet, Wilfred Owen, to music.
Owen, who died in battle seven days before the end of WWI, is arguably the greatest English-language War poet; more than any writer I know of, he profoundly captures what he referred to as “the pity of War.” (My book goes into the same territory; all my characters have in some way been ravaged by War and continue to battle the psychological legacy of their Wartime experiences. One of my characters remarks “the War never ends;” sadly, we see that this is true today for many of our soldiers who have served, and continue to serve, in Afghanistan and Iraq.)
I imagine Owen’s poems set to grave, lyrical melodies, dramatic yet intimate, anguished but also touched with a celebratory sense of life. The melodies I hear in my mind’s ear have a haunting grandeur and also ephemerality, somehow capturing the strange, changeling quality of emotions, which are both fleeting and also a bedrock of human experience. I’m hoping Ben’s busy schedule will allow him to write the music; Owen’s poems mean a great deal to me, and were with me throughout the writing of this book.
I don’t listen to music when I write—I find the intrusion of another emotional realm distracting.
2. The novel is full of both light, bright moments and deep, dark themes. What was your favorite passage or section to write?
One of my favorite characters is Cuthbert, the generous, ironic, gregarious patient; to me, his quirky sense of reality offers insights that were rewarding to imagine. During the final readings of the manuscript, I found myself looking forward to the sections in which he appears, hoping to pick up new, illuminating meanings in his remarks—and to my delight, he didn’t let me down!
I also enjoyed writing the sections involving Dr. Ronald Fairbairn; he is an important psychoanalytic figure, who made a tremendous contribution to the understanding schizoid experience. Being transported to other realms is perhaps the most compelling aspect of fiction writing for me; time-travel is part of this, and being able to go back in time and see and experience people moving around the world is exhilarating. Plucking a character from real history and setting him up in my own imagined universe felt a bit mischievous and transgressive; I hope the late Dr. Fairbairn doesn’t mind!
3. Authors often remark that they put a little bit of themselves into their characters. How strongly do you identify with Dr. Harrison, Bertram or any of your other main characters? How are you different?
I think I identify a little with most of my characters, although not always in literal ways. Working in psychiatric hospitals, I was struck by the disconcerting inequalities of power—and also by the slippery nature of the operating categories: sanity and insanity, “appropriate” versus “inappropriate” behavior. I was keenly aware of the moral complexities and ambiguities and perhaps, most powerfully, of the ways in which the sense of our shared humanity seemed often set aside or obscured.
There was a temptation for some people on the “staff” side of things to feel immune to the kinds of terrible troubles that patients suffered—as if there were an invisible, impenetrable divide that kept us over here and them over there. The inspiration for the novel came from these perceptions and experiences, which I found both disturbing and intriguing. In imagining my characters into various complicated situations, I was able to explore various dimensions of the intriguing, human struggles I encountered and puzzled over throughout the time I worked in mental hospitals.
4. You have had success as a writer, as a clinical psychologist and as a marketing consultant. The book speaks of one’s professions defining oneself – which of those spheres do you identify with most?
I think I am pretty much the sum total of all my professional involvements; in a way, they feel all of a piece. My work both as a psychologist and as a consultant has taken me into many fascinating worlds, including working in politics at the national level. I feel as if all these adventures feed my literary imagination, and also allow me to contribute in certain worldly ways that feel nourishing and worthwhile.
Though I suppose that being a “writer” feels most like “who I am”—though I think of this more as a condition that happens also to be an occupation, rather than as a career choice. Being a writer is how I think and feel and wonder, so in a sense, it’s not so much a sphere with which I identify but rather a truth about my nature.
5. What was your inspiration for this story? Why did you set the book in the place and time that you did?
I had the idea for the book towards the end of the time I was working as a psychologist in a psychiatric hospital, though the book ended up being somewhat different from how I originally conceived it. The world of the hospital was so vivid and alive, so pulsing with raw and interesting experience and emotion—on both sides of the divide, so to speak: both patients and staff were intriguing, and their interactions and dynamics even more so. Being there was like being in a fiction-writer’s paradise, a kind of tropical jungle of the soul.
The last hospital I worked in was fabulously elegant and moody—esthetically more like a series of old-world mansions designed for luxurious lives of ease; the hallways and offices were beautifully appointed, Persian rugs covered the floors and the walls were hung with interesting paintings. The hospital had a network of underground tunnels, much as I describe in the book; there was something wonderfully gothic about them—and symbolically over the top about the idea of subterranean passageways joining the buildings of a mental hospital. The fact that the tunnels were used to store old furniture from decades past made them even more perfect; I used to imagine the lives of all those countless, anonymous patients as I tip-toed past ancient bureaus and mattresses and towers of chairs, breathing in the dusty, dank air.
Those underground spaces also felt like an uncanny physical incarnation of the fictional imagination—journeying away from sparkling, conscious, daytime realities, into the murky, dimly lit realms of the subconscious where fiction springs to life. It was as if my characters were wandering down there, within, and I only had to creep down the stairs to find them.
6. You grew up in Australia but you live in Brooklyn now. How have the places where you have lived influenced your writing style and focus? What places in your life have shaped your writing the most?
I suppose my fiction is preoccupied with questions of national identity and cultural belonging—issues that are writ large in periods of wartime or other historical kinds of trauma (the book I’m now working on, set when Australia was an enormous penal colony, is another case in point).
Where I’m from and where I’ve lived lie at the heart of these themes; an Australian, whose parents immigrated from South Africa, whose grand-parents were Lithuanian, myself having lived in a number of countries. I suppose my personal history equips me to think about questions of national identity and how that plays into one’s psyche—how one thinks about oneself in relation to one’s country, what one is asked, or forced, to do in the name of one’s country, how these matters define who one is and how one experiences the world. Perhaps the fact that I seem to fling myself around the world on a fairly regular basis is part of my own preoccupation with the question of national/cultural identity, with feelings of homelessness, and the ways in which people search for and shape their own sense of “home.”
7. The book is told, compellingly, from Dr. Harrison’s point of view. As a female writer, did you find it difficult to capture his voice and feelings? What was the greatest challenge writing from the opposite gender?
I loved trying to climb into Dr. Harrison’s skin; for me, such challenges are what make writing fiction interesting and rewarding. I often think about something Tolstoy said: that a writer might walk past an army barracks and peer in through the window to see a soldier, sitting at his table—and that this moment may be enough to create a vivid, veridical novel about that very man, or a man like him.
Those glimpses usually have an almost vibrating intensity about them; it might be an internal glimpse, rather than an external one, some pulsing insight or uncanny recognition, but they kind of hit you in the gut and one doesn’t have a sense of choice about them.
So when I realized that Dr. Harrison was the true narrator of the book (I started out writing it from Matilda’s point of view), I just kind of hunkered down and did the best I could and hoped that Dr. Harrison would let me in enough to allow me to do justice to his struggles and joys and pains. The challenges I faced in bringing the book to fruition did not really feel related to the question of writing from the opposite gender, so much as getting inside the nuances and complexities of Dr. Harrison’s psychology.
8. Who is your ideal reader of the book? What do you hope they take away from your novel?
I would like to think that my book offers the kinds of pleasures I seek when I read; a good, suspenseful story that holds one’s interest, while also making the reader confront complex and challenging questions. I also like to learn something from the books I read—to find myself in interesting worlds or historical periods. I suppose, then, that I write for readers like myself.
9. To what other writers would you compare your writing style? Who do you enjoy to read? What books influenced you to become a writer?
The problem with this question is that my answer might sound grandiose, so let me preface it by quoting Hannah Arendt, who talked about writers, whether living or dead, as her closest allies and friends; she referred to Rahel Varnhagen, for example, who died more than seventy years before Arendt’s birth, as “my best friend.” My favorite writers feel like soul-mates for me, too, and by saying I compare myself to their style, I am only saying that I resonate with their voices and themes.
So...regarding contemporary writers: Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, John Banville, Charles Palliser, Pat Barker, Peter Carey, Rodney Hall. I realize in looking at this list that these writers are all British, Irish or Australian! I suppose this is not surprising, given that I am Australian—a commonwealth writer, after all. But then there’s also Toni Morrison, Steven Millhauser, and Paul Auster, to name a few Americans whose work I admire.
As for writers who are no longer living, I most love and have been influenced by Joseph Roth (German writer who died in 1939), Robert Musil (Austrian writer who died in 1942), James Joyce, George Eliot, Stendhal, Turgenev. I also want to mention John Williams (author of the brilliant novel, “Stoner”).
10. Do you have plans for your next book?
I have several projects going at present: a new adult novel with a working title “Beyond the Seven Seas,” which is set in the mid-1800’s in Australia and England, involving the penal colonies. I’m in the early stages of this project, though two other books are close to being finished. One is a young adult novel about a thirteen-year-old girl who catapults back in time and across many countries where she encounters her female forebears and accompanies them on pivotal adventures in her family’s history. The other is a novel set in the same time period as “The Listener” in three locations—a Long Island mansion, presided over by an Englishman with a mysterious past; post-World War II London, and also Shanghai.
1. Recently your collection of stories, Awake in the Dark, was set to music. What type of music or sounds do you envision for The Listener? Do you often listen to music while you write?
The composer Ben Moore wrote a beautiful, aching piece of chamber music, “House on Kronenstrasse Suite” for a musical-theatrical performance associated with my first book, “Awake in the Dark” (performed at St. Francis College Theater, under the auspices of “The Brooklyn Historical Society,” and also showcased at The Lincoln Center Institute in New York). For the launch event of “The Listener,” I asked Ben if he might set three poems of the World War I poet, Wilfred Owen, to music.
Owen, who died in battle seven days before the end of WWI, is arguably the greatest English-language War poet; more than any writer I know of, he profoundly captures what he referred to as “the pity of War.” (My book goes into the same territory; all my characters have in some way been ravaged by War and continue to battle the psychological legacy of their Wartime experiences. One of my characters remarks “the War never ends;” sadly, we see that this is true today for many of our soldiers who have served, and continue to serve, in Afghanistan and Iraq.)
I imagine Owen’s poems set to grave, lyrical melodies, dramatic yet intimate, anguished but also touched with a celebratory sense of life. The melodies I hear in my mind’s ear have a haunting grandeur and also ephemerality, somehow capturing the strange, changeling quality of emotions, which are both fleeting and also a bedrock of human experience. I’m hoping Ben’s busy schedule will allow him to write the music; Owen’s poems mean a great deal to me, and were with me throughout the writing of this book.
I don’t listen to music when I write—I find the intrusion of another emotional realm distracting.
2. The novel is full of both light, bright moments and deep, dark themes. What was your favorite passage or section to write?
One of my favorite characters is Cuthbert, the generous, ironic, gregarious patient; to me, his quirky sense of reality offers insights that were rewarding to imagine. During the final readings of the manuscript, I found myself looking forward to the sections in which he appears, hoping to pick up new, illuminating meanings in his remarks—and to my delight, he didn’t let me down!
I also enjoyed writing the sections involving Dr. Ronald Fairbairn; he is an important psychoanalytic figure, who made a tremendous contribution to the understanding schizoid experience. Being transported to other realms is perhaps the most compelling aspect of fiction writing for me; time-travel is part of this, and being able to go back in time and see and experience people moving around the world is exhilarating. Plucking a character from real history and setting him up in my own imagined universe felt a bit mischievous and transgressive; I hope the late Dr. Fairbairn doesn’t mind!
3. Authors often remark that they put a little bit of themselves into their characters. How strongly do you identify with Dr. Harrison, Bertram or any of your other main characters? How are you different?
I think I identify a little with most of my characters, although not always in literal ways. Working in psychiatric hospitals, I was struck by the disconcerting inequalities of power—and also by the slippery nature of the operating categories: sanity and insanity, “appropriate” versus “inappropriate” behavior. I was keenly aware of the moral complexities and ambiguities and perhaps, most powerfully, of the ways in which the sense of our shared humanity seemed often set aside or obscured.
There was a temptation for some people on the “staff” side of things to feel immune to the kinds of terrible troubles that patients suffered—as if there were an invisible, impenetrable divide that kept us over here and them over there. The inspiration for the novel came from these perceptions and experiences, which I found both disturbing and intriguing. In imagining my characters into various complicated situations, I was able to explore various dimensions of the intriguing, human struggles I encountered and puzzled over throughout the time I worked in mental hospitals.
4. You have had success as a writer, as a clinical psychologist and as a marketing consultant. The book speaks of one’s professions defining oneself – which of those spheres do you identify with most?
I think I am pretty much the sum total of all my professional involvements; in a way, they feel all of a piece. My work both as a psychologist and as a consultant has taken me into many fascinating worlds, including working in politics at the national level. I feel as if all these adventures feed my literary imagination, and also allow me to contribute in certain worldly ways that feel nourishing and worthwhile.
Though I suppose that being a “writer” feels most like “who I am”—though I think of this more as a condition that happens also to be an occupation, rather than as a career choice. Being a writer is how I think and feel and wonder, so in a sense, it’s not so much a sphere with which I identify but rather a truth about my nature.
5. What was your inspiration for this story? Why did you set the book in the place and time that you did?
I had the idea for the book towards the end of the time I was working as a psychologist in a psychiatric hospital, though the book ended up being somewhat different from how I originally conceived it. The world of the hospital was so vivid and alive, so pulsing with raw and interesting experience and emotion—on both sides of the divide, so to speak: both patients and staff were intriguing, and their interactions and dynamics even more so. Being there was like being in a fiction-writer’s paradise, a kind of tropical jungle of the soul.
The last hospital I worked in was fabulously elegant and moody—esthetically more like a series of old-world mansions designed for luxurious lives of ease; the hallways and offices were beautifully appointed, Persian rugs covered the floors and the walls were hung with interesting paintings. The hospital had a network of underground tunnels, much as I describe in the book; there was something wonderfully gothic about them—and symbolically over the top about the idea of subterranean passageways joining the buildings of a mental hospital. The fact that the tunnels were used to store old furniture from decades past made them even more perfect; I used to imagine the lives of all those countless, anonymous patients as I tip-toed past ancient bureaus and mattresses and towers of chairs, breathing in the dusty, dank air.
Those underground spaces also felt like an uncanny physical incarnation of the fictional imagination—journeying away from sparkling, conscious, daytime realities, into the murky, dimly lit realms of the subconscious where fiction springs to life. It was as if my characters were wandering down there, within, and I only had to creep down the stairs to find them.
6. You grew up in Australia but you live in Brooklyn now. How have the places where you have lived influenced your writing style and focus? What places in your life have shaped your writing the most?
I suppose my fiction is preoccupied with questions of national identity and cultural belonging—issues that are writ large in periods of wartime or other historical kinds of trauma (the book I’m now working on, set when Australia was an enormous penal colony, is another case in point).
Where I’m from and where I’ve lived lie at the heart of these themes; an Australian, whose parents immigrated from South Africa, whose grand-parents were Lithuanian, myself having lived in a number of countries. I suppose my personal history equips me to think about questions of national identity and how that plays into one’s psyche—how one thinks about oneself in relation to one’s country, what one is asked, or forced, to do in the name of one’s country, how these matters define who one is and how one experiences the world. Perhaps the fact that I seem to fling myself around the world on a fairly regular basis is part of my own preoccupation with the question of national/cultural identity, with feelings of homelessness, and the ways in which people search for and shape their own sense of “home.”
7. The book is told, compellingly, from Dr. Harrison’s point of view. As a female writer, did you find it difficult to capture his voice and feelings? What was the greatest challenge writing from the opposite gender?
I loved trying to climb into Dr. Harrison’s skin; for me, such challenges are what make writing fiction interesting and rewarding. I often think about something Tolstoy said: that a writer might walk past an army barracks and peer in through the window to see a soldier, sitting at his table—and that this moment may be enough to create a vivid, veridical novel about that very man, or a man like him.
Those glimpses usually have an almost vibrating intensity about them; it might be an internal glimpse, rather than an external one, some pulsing insight or uncanny recognition, but they kind of hit you in the gut and one doesn’t have a sense of choice about them.
So when I realized that Dr. Harrison was the true narrator of the book (I started out writing it from Matilda’s point of view), I just kind of hunkered down and did the best I could and hoped that Dr. Harrison would let me in enough to allow me to do justice to his struggles and joys and pains. The challenges I faced in bringing the book to fruition did not really feel related to the question of writing from the opposite gender, so much as getting inside the nuances and complexities of Dr. Harrison’s psychology.
8. Who is your ideal reader of the book? What do you hope they take away from your novel?
I would like to think that my book offers the kinds of pleasures I seek when I read; a good, suspenseful story that holds one’s interest, while also making the reader confront complex and challenging questions. I also like to learn something from the books I read—to find myself in interesting worlds or historical periods. I suppose, then, that I write for readers like myself.
9. To what other writers would you compare your writing style? Who do you enjoy to read? What books influenced you to become a writer?
The problem with this question is that my answer might sound grandiose, so let me preface it by quoting Hannah Arendt, who talked about writers, whether living or dead, as her closest allies and friends; she referred to Rahel Varnhagen, for example, who died more than seventy years before Arendt’s birth, as “my best friend.” My favorite writers feel like soul-mates for me, too, and by saying I compare myself to their style, I am only saying that I resonate with their voices and themes.
So...regarding contemporary writers: Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, John Banville, Charles Palliser, Pat Barker, Peter Carey, Rodney Hall. I realize in looking at this list that these writers are all British, Irish or Australian! I suppose this is not surprising, given that I am Australian—a commonwealth writer, after all. But then there’s also Toni Morrison, Steven Millhauser, and Paul Auster, to name a few Americans whose work I admire.
As for writers who are no longer living, I most love and have been influenced by Joseph Roth (German writer who died in 1939), Robert Musil (Austrian writer who died in 1942), James Joyce, George Eliot, Stendhal, Turgenev. I also want to mention John Williams (author of the brilliant novel, “Stoner”).
10. Do you have plans for your next book?
I have several projects going at present: a new adult novel with a working title “Beyond the Seven Seas,” which is set in the mid-1800’s in Australia and England, involving the penal colonies. I’m in the early stages of this project, though two other books are close to being finished. One is a young adult novel about a thirteen-year-old girl who catapults back in time and across many countries where she encounters her female forebears and accompanies them on pivotal adventures in her family’s history. The other is a novel set in the same time period as “The Listener” in three locations—a Long Island mansion, presided over by an Englishman with a mysterious past; post-World War II London, and also Shanghai.
