Writer Unboxed

We’re pleased to bring you the last of a two-part interview with New York Times bestselling author Michael Gruber, a pioneer in literate suspense. If you missed part one of our interview, click HERE, then come back. Today we continue our chat about Michael’s latest novel, The Forgery of Venus, discuss risk-taking in genre and literary fiction, and receive surprising advice for aspiring novelists. Enjoy!

Part 2: Interview with Michael Gruber

Q: The protagonist of Venus, Chaz Wilmot, mentions fairly early on that talent isn’t enough to be a great artist: you must also take risks. Do you think this is true for writing as well? What, for you, are the keys to great writing? What are your personal goals for each novel?

MG: It depends on what you mean by risk. In commercial fiction risks are limited because most readers of commercial fiction want the familiar. That’s why they call it commercial. In genre, moreover, not only do they want the familiar, they want the same. Is the private eye going to stumble on a murder, and will the cops mishandle it, and will there be a corrupt force behind it, and will he or she have to talk to 12 people, each of whom have a piece of the real story, and will he or she be attacked and escape with the help of his or her colorful sidekick, and will he or she catch the killer in the end and will there be a final chapter in which all the loose ends are tied up? Yes.

Real literature, on the other hand, is by its nature challenging. It confronts the reader with life; in its highest form it’s life itself. Hamlet and Raskolnikov are in a sense more real than the people we see every day. Writers on this level risk everything, because it’s them on the page, their deepest hearts revealed to anyone with the price of a book or a library card. Rejection can thus be a complete obliteration of the psyche.

My personal goal for each novel is to sell enough copies to keep me fed and at the same time not insult the intelligence of the reader. I also have some ideas I think are interesting and I want to get them into circulation.

Q: Do you think it’s possible for genre fiction to transcend expectation? What, if any, genre fiction novels have you appreciated that have done so?

MG:True genre fiction can’t exceed expectation or it is not, by definition, genre. Genre is based on expectation. With respect to my books, genre is a marketing category rather than a set of conventions, which results in strange situations regarding some wonderful writers. Gene Wolfe and Ursula Le Guin are two of the best writers in America, but no one gives their work serious attention because they’re both in the SF genre ghetto. You could say Hamlet is an example of the revenge tragedy genre and Crime and Punishment is a detective story, and Pride and Prejudice is a romance novel, but you’d be wrong. The mere plot is trivial in these cases compared to the exploration of the human condition, which is why we still read these works.

Q: Were any of your earlier works rejected? Did you draw any conclusions about the market based on your experiences?

MG:Witch’s Boy, a YA novel I wrote, was rejected by fourteen agents. Tropic of Night was rejected by three. My conclusion about the market is that, with a few exceptions that prove the rule, every single publishable book gets published. For a book not to find a publisher it has to be really, really bad: incomprehensible, or plotless, or completely devoid of even the low standard of literary talent exhibited by any number of best-sellers.

Q: What do you look for in an excellent work of fiction? Whose work do you most admire?

MG: I like simplicity of style and intensity of feeling. I prefer moral fiction. I am not fond of gorgeous writing or experimentation for the sake of novelty or pizzazz. The writers I most admire include Rudyard Kipling, J. M. Coetzee, Pat Barker, Penelope Fitzgerald, Alice Munro, Anthony Burgess, Margaret Drabble, A. S. Byatt, Graham Greene, and Naguib Mahfouz. In genre, I like Alan Furst, Michael Dibdin, Nicolas Freeling, Connie Willis and Iain Banks.

Q: What is your personal history with art, and how much art research was needed for The Forgery of Venus?

MG: I’m married to a painter so we talk about art a lot and look at pictures a lot. Forgery took a good deal of research, on Velazquez, of course, and on art crime and forgery generally. I also read a good deal of art criticism. The research took about as much time as the actual writing.

Q: What was your research approach, overall, for this novel?

MG: I read just about every major book ever published on the life and work of Velazquez. I used the Internet extensively and libraries not at all. I bought about two dozen books.

Q: Did any part of the story give you trouble (or has any part, historically)? What was your approach to get through it?

MG: Some parts of Velazquez’s life are obscure. We don’t know for sure where or when, the key painting in the novel, the Rokeby Venus, was painted, and the artist left little record of his personal life. So I had to make all that up, but in a way that would not violate what’s actually known about his personality and history.

Q: What advice do you have for aspiring writers? What advice do you have for published novelists who’d like to reach the next level?

MG: If you can’t tell a coherent story in five hundred words you should look for other work. Every editor and agent reading queries knows that there are aspiring writers who can’t in fact do this, although they supposedly have written whole novels.

Also, writing fiction, even if you are a success, is a fairly unhappy life, and shorter, statistically, than the average. If you can possibly do something else, do it instead. If not, then prepare to be extremely miserable until you sell your first book. You will be happy for a week. Then you will be miserable while the book is prepared for publication, because the publisher will never give it the attention it deserves. When it is published, you will be happy for a week. Then you will be miserable unless the book becomes a best-seller. Then you will be happy for a week. Then you will be miserable unless the book hits the NYT Bestseller list. You will be happy for a week. Then you will be miserable if your book drops off the list. Then you will be miserable writing your next book because your next book may not reach the heights of your first book. Now repeat every couple of years until you slip, as I noted, into a somewhat earlier grave than if you’d given the whole thing up and found honest labor.

Q: Yet you have a full resume of your own, having been a former marine biologist, restaurant cook, federal government official, and political speechwriter. Why write? What draws you to this work?

MG:Every job I’ve ever had was writing, in one form or another, except for cooking, which was a job I took to pay my way through grad school.
I write because I can do it for money and everybody has to do something. I was well along in years before I realized that I was only happy when I was sitting at a keyboard writing something. As for what draws me to the work: it pays well, the commute is very short, it’s indoor work with no heavy lifting, and you never have to go to meetings.

Q: Any other advice?

MG:If you want to reach the next level, steal from better writers than those you’ve been stealing from already.

Q: Who did you steal from when you first started writing? And how long do you think it took for you to move from stealee to someone worth stealing from?

MG: Grahame Greene was one. Nicolas Freeling. A.S. Byatt. Raymond Chandler. It depends on whom I’ve been reading. The best way to improve one’s writing is to read a lot of the best stuff you can understand, and to try to work out why that writing is successful, why you like reading it. Then write stuff that you like reading yourself. This will invariably involve some level of theft. Everyone who writes does this–it’s impossible not to. As for how long–I really couldn’t say. I’ve been publishing novels since 1985.

Thanks so much, Michael Gruber, for a fascinating interview, and best of luck with your next works.

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