Adam Tooze

Adam Tooze is the director of the European Institute at Columbia University and author of the forthcoming book, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World.

From his May 2019 New Yorker Q&A with Isaac Chotiner:

[Chotiner:] It seems like the center left and center right keep falling away, even if individual economic conditions are O.K. I know that isn’t true in certain countries. In Austria, the center right did well, and—

[Tooze:] And Spain. Spain is another key country. Once the U.K. leaves, it is the fourth-largest country within the E.U. And in Spain we see a reassertion of the social democratic Socialist Party, and it even looks as if the [center-right] People’s Party is coming back. So it is a very motley picture. But, to your point of what is going on with the center left and center right, I think that is indeed the core question. Part of the problem is that the center right was tempted to move away from its positions. It moved either to the far right, in the case of the French Republicans—they basically adopted a nationalist agenda—or, as critics of Merkel would say, she turned the C.D.U. into something more like the S.P.D. In terms of the agenda Merkel’s government has pursued, it is actually quite close to a social democracy, and, indeed, even the Green Party on various points. So that adds up to an incredible blurring of the lines. Certainly what has happened is the ability to silo a particular social constituency, a particular set of cultural values, a particular set of economic programs, even regions of the country, and say, “This is S.P.D. territory,” or, “This is Christian Democratic territory”—that’s gone. And so what we have are lots of different parties fishing in what, in many ways, is a soup of agenda items.

And if you combine that with anger at the status quo, it doesn’t seem like a good recipe for traditional parties.

Exactly. There is a branding issue. The most striking...[read on]

Visit Adam Tooze's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nicola Moriarty

Nicola Moriarty's new novel is Paper Chains.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Paper Chains and for your characters Hannah and India?

A: The idea for Paper Chains grew out of a difficult time I was having in my own life, involving depression and anxiety. I realised that if I wrote about these issues, it could actually be quite cathartic for me.

I had these desires to run away from life and from my family (which filled me with incredible guilt, of course), and I discovered that if I wrote about two women, Hannah and India, who were running away from their lives, then I could live out these fantasies on the page without actually following through in real life. In the meantime, I was getting treatment for my depression so that I could enjoy my own story again!

Q: How was the novel's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

A: It was difficult to come up with the right title for this novel. Originally, I wanted to call it “Chasing India,” but it didn’t quite fit because it was about Hannah’s story too. In the end...[read on]

Visit Nicola Moriarty's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Fifth Letter.

The Page 69 Test: Those Other Women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lyz Lenz

Lyz Lenz's new book is God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America.

From her interview with Emma Green for The Atlantic:

Green: In your book, you seem ambivalent about something I think about a lot—this desire to understand and find empathy for people who theoretically stand across some kind of “divide” from us, as journalists or as readers. Clearly, you care about understanding people, because you spent two years researching this book, and you’ve stayed in Iowa instead of moving to the liberal cocoon of Brooklyn. On the other hand, you seem really angry—at these people, and at the fact that the national media fetishize nostalgic white cultures. How do you square that ambivalence?

Lenz: It’s just like being in a family. I grew up with seven brothers and sisters, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can love someone and be deeply angry at them at the same time. This is a key tension in America: You can love this place and still be pissed at it.

This is a very personal thing for me. I was married to somebody who voted and pushed for policies that I believed were hurting America. The people in my churches, who have loved me through some really difficult times, were also the people I heard saying very homophobic things and hurting others. I love this place where I live, but I also want it to be better.

Green: What you just articulated seems to be the opposite of so-called cancel culture. There’s a spirit right now, on both the right and the left, of total elimination of the enemy. Do you see yourself as countering that culture, or homeless in a world that’s driven by those impulses?

Lenz: I think I might disagree with the characterization.

Green: Hit back, Lyz!

Lenz: [Laughs] I think that game of both-siderism is really dangerous, and here’s why: The conversation should be about who has power and who is not being given a voice.

I was recently talking with my pastor about this idea that...[read on]

Visit Lyz Lenz's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Daphne Kalotay

Daphne Kalotay is the author of Calamity and Other Stories, which was short listed for the 2005 Story Prize. Her debut novel, Russian Winter, won the 2011 Writers’ League of Texas Fiction Prize, made the long list for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, was nominated for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and has been published in twenty-three foreign editions. Her second novel, Sight Reading, was a Boston Globe bestseller, a finalist for the 2014 Paterson Fiction Prize, and winner of the 2014 New England Society Book Award in Fiction. She has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, MacDowell, and Yaddo. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Kalotay's new novel is Blue Hours.

From her Q&A with Caroline Leavitt:

I always think writers are somehow haunted into writing their books—what was haunting you?

At first, it was simply the ghost of New York City in the early 90’s—the struggles of that time (AIDS, the recession, the first Gulf War) along with the youthful energy and blithe naivete, which really does seem lost forever, swept away by the economic boom that put the city out of reach for young hopefuls and by, more broadly, 9/11 and our country’s wars in the Middle East. Then it was my dear friend Xavier, who works for the Red Cross, telling me his headquarters in Libya had been bombed; that was in 2012, less than a year before I heard on the news about an American serviceman being held by the Taliban. I started thinking about these two types of overseas work—military and humanitarian aid—and ideas for the book began to percolate.

What I loved so much about your book was how it zoomed from NYC to Afghanistan, from issues of race and class and how they impact our lives. This seems especially timely today.

I’m struck by the ways that...[read on]

Visit Daphne Kalotay's website.

The Page 69 Test: Sight Reading.

The Page 69 Test: Blue Hours.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monique Truong

Monique Truong's new novel is The Sweetest Fruits.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You note that "sugar and cornbread led me to Lafcadio Hearn." At what point did you decide to write a novel about him?

A: I first read about Hearn in a Southern foodways encyclopedia--I was fact-checking my second novel Bitter in the Mouth in which I wrote that traditionally Northerners added sugar to their cornbread recipes, while Southerners did not--and I saw an entry on Hearn that included a brief sketch of his life including his contribution to Southern food--he's credited with writing the first Creole cookbook in the U.S.--and almost instantaneously I decided to write about him.

The first hook for me was that he had written a cookbook. I think of food writers as a tribe apart and very much my tribe. I feel that we look at the world through a particular set of lenses, and by lenses I mean bowls, dishes, glasses.

The second hook for me was that Hearn was a consummate traveler and an immigrant twice over. As a former refugee and someone who now often writes far from home, I also consider migratory people to be part of my tribe. I was also intrigued that Hearn in 1890 had chosen East over West (Japan over the U.S.), the reverse of...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer Gunter

Jennifer Gunter is the author of The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine.

From her interview with NPR contributor and family physician Mara Gordon:

We doctors have had a strictly biomedical model for disease for a long time. It's a pretty recent development that we consider sex, relationships, stress and even sexism within our purview. Do you feel like your patients are eager for you to address those things?

I think that women appreciate knowing the forces that led us here. ... I want people to understand that the patriarchy has been everywhere. Medicine is part of everything. So of course medicine has patriarchy. ... I personally don't think that medicine is worse than anything else, but I do think that because medicine cares for people, we have the biggest duty to respond to it fast.

I think that a lot of women are really hungry for a woman physician to stand up and say, "Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. I know about women's bodies. That's not going to fly, because I know the physiology."

What is the most absurd vaginal product that you've come across in your research?

Ozone getting blown into your vagina. It's...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Marcy Dermansky

Marcy Dermansky's new novel is Very Nice.

From her interview with Caroline Leavitt:

I was so knocked out by Bad Marie, and Very Nice knocked me out even more. (Not to say that I didn’t also love The Red Car and Twins. I did.) Did you find that when you were writing Very Nice you used lessons you had learned from Bad Marie—or do you, like me, have writers’ amnesia, where everything is brand new every time?

Thank you! I think anyone who had read all of my novels should collect bonus points and they should add up to something special. A new car. I could send you a poodle card. I made a painting of Princess the poodle and it now a beautiful thank you card. This is a serious offer.

Unfortunately, I don’t feel like I have learned anything from one novel to the next. I must have writers’ amnesia, just like you. Because beginning is always the most daunting part to me. And what you wrote in one book is meaningless in the next. I am also at my happiest when I am in the middle of a novel, typing typing typing.

I always want to know what was haunting a writer into writing a particular book. What was haunting you?

Very Nice started as a short story, what is now the first chapter of the novel. A student who seduces her professor. I have always been interested in this subject -- it’s icky and strange, the power dynamic and I think it happens all the time. Or used to. So...[read on]

Visit Marcy Dermansky's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marjan Kamali

Marjan Kamali's new novel is The Stationery Shop.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Stationery Shop, and for your character Roya?

A: I’ve always loved poking around in stationery shops and looking at all the different pens, paper, and notebooks.

My dad told me about a stationery shop in Tehran that sold books from all over the world. He said high school kids would hide love notes in between the pages of books and have the stationery shop owner pass on their messages to their beloveds in this way. I was intrigued by this gesture and kept it at the back of my mind.

Then I did a book event for my first novel, Together Tea, at an assisted living center. After the reading, we all sat down to a wonderful Persian lunch organized by the center (there is a lot of food in both my books!).

An elderly man in a wheelchair at our table kept saying how he’d met the prince of Spain and traveled with Charles De Gaulle. Others weren’t interested in hearing his repetitions. But before I left, I asked what his name was and was surprised that it was an Iranian name.

Weeks later when I visited my parents, I told them about this elderly man. When I said his name, my father said, “He was one of our most decorated foreign dignitaries. He met the prince of Spain. He traveled with Charles de Gaulle.”

I was stunned. That night I...[read on]

Visit Marjan Kamali's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tope Folarin

Tope Folarin is a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington, DC. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2013 and was shortlisted once again in 2016. He was also recently named to the Africa39 list of the most promising African writers under 40. He was educated at Morehouse College and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Masters degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of A Particular Kind of Black Man.

From the transcript of his NPR interview with Michel Martin:

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: When we last heard from our next guest, Tope Folarin, he'd recently won the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing for a short story the prize committee called exquisitely observed and utterly compelling. Now Folarin is out with his first novel. It's called "A Particular Kind Of Black Man." It's a unique coming-of-age story following the life of Tunde, a Nigerian American boy growing up in Utah who's trying to figure out who he is amid complicated family and racial dynamics. I started my conversation with Tope Folarin by asking him about the overlap between his story and the main characters.

TOPE FOLARIN: Part of it was initially, I started writing, and I thought, well, maybe I'll write a story about my life. And so that's actually how I started writing this. And as I continued to write, I discovered that - when writers used to talk about this, I thought it was mystical mumbo-jumbo when they talk about characters kind of doing their own thing. That began to happen to me. And so I said, well, this feels like a Tunde, and Tunde I started doing all kinds of things that I didn't do and I wouldn't do. And so it kind of developed as a novel.

MARTIN: So it has some elements that are autobiographical.

FOLARIN: Absolutely.

MARTIN: I mean, the fact is, you were...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

David Wallace-Wells

David Wallace-Wells is the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.

From his Q&A with Ian Tucker for the Guardian:

Millennials are expressing doubts about having children because of the environmental crisis – they are concerned that their grandchildren and possibly their own children will be living in an inhospitable and volatile world. You have recently had a child…

My intuition is that we need to fight to make the world the one we want to live in rather than giving up hope before the fight is really over. The world is going to get warmer. Almost inevitably, there will be a lot more pain and suffering in it than we have now. But how much is really up to us.

At what point should panic set in? It’s plausible there’ll be four degrees of warming by the end of the century, which would mean mass migration from areas such as the Middle East and Asia to newly temperate areas such as Siberia and Greenland. That’s not a very smooth transition for human civilisation.

It seems hard to imagine. Yet we’re already seeing some fair amount of panic. The significant amount of human migration we’re seeing in the US coming from Central America, for example.

I am personally horrified by the way our politics are beginning to adjust to them. We need to be much more open-hearted and attentive to...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue