Belle Yang is an author and painter whose honest words and vibrant illustrations tell stories about her Chinese heritage, the plight of immigrants in America, and the complex relationships between those we love.

Join our conversation as we talk about art, repression, writing for children, and the power of words.

*

When did you know you were an artist/writer? And talk to me about how you knew—a joy in creating, rebelling against something, a need to tell an important story, …?

In 1986 I left Los Angeles, where I’d been studying art, because of a lover turned violent. He followed me to my childhood home in Carmel where I had taken refuge. This monster broke into my parents’ house and stole just about everything meaningful to us—my father’s five hundred, original poems, written in his own calligraphy, photographs galore, paintings, letters, yearbooks. All our clothes, too.

The police bungled the initial investigation: fingerprinting wasn’t done correctly, nor did the photographs of the broken window develop. When I did not hear from the police after a month, I wrote a letter to the District Attorney and the Sheriff’s department to explain my situation. I wrote the letter using an old typewriter. It took four days and I lost nearly that many pounds in weight. Within days of sending out the letter, the Monterey County investigators came to my aid. In two months, the abuser/stalker was arrested and our belongings retrieved from Simi Valley.

THAT’S when I knew I was a writer. I could move people to act through my words. When I visit kids at schools, I tell them the importance of writing clearly, because your ability to communicate via a written letter may one day save your life. Spoken words can be effective, but they dissipate if not recorded. Nothing is more powerful than the written word. I felt I’d become a painter after returning from China in 1989 and had sold my first piece through a reputable gallery. But I’ve known I was a painter since I was a child.

What a violation. But also, what a discovery: the power of your words! I love that you pass this message on to children. What’s been their response?

I study their faces, which look serious. I get a sense that my story has seeped into their little noggins—at least a clutch of them. You never know, do you? When I was in fifth grade, a poet came and read a piece about a man who is drowning in the sea and he waves to a person at a distance, who he thinks to be onshore, for rescue. That other person merely waves back. At the end of the poem, we realize both beings are drowning, waving to one another for help.

THAT really STUCK with me. So perhaps a few will remember that writing once saved a writer who came to visit and writing may also save them in some unexpected way, physically and emotionally. Wouldn’t you just love to meet one of your little readers decades down the Yellow Brick Road and be told that writing liberated them in an unimagined way?

Yes! I was once a little reader saved by a poet, myself.

Something that strikes me about your children’s books is that they go deep—you’re willing to explore sorrow and anxiety and disappointment. You could have chosen to tell some of these stories as memoir or adult novels, but you didn’t.

I’ve explored these states of being in my adult books, and I believe I have one good graphic novel for adults still in me, where I will explore sorrow and anxiety. Yet sorrow and anxiety are best set against the light, so there will be humor and joy. Just as in a painting, the colors jumps out when set next to black and the black is inkier set against bright color. This book may have to wait until I am no longer somebody’s daughter. It would not be a dark book, even if the subject is hardly pretty. My Chinese name is “Forget Sorrow,” and I forget pain quickly compared to people like my father, who has—to his own burden—an incredible memory for pain suffered. I’m glad I have poor memory.

ALWAYS COME HOME TO ME

What makes you pick up the pen versus the paintbrush?

Writing and painting are nearly the same to me. With writing, I paint the images. With painting, I tell a story. In the “fine art” pieces I sell in galleries, there are always stories I write on the back of the painting to augment the image. The words are revealed in a cutout window, protected by Plexiglas. I switch tools when I feel a need to use a different part of my brain. It’s good to give one part of my brain a rest and employ the other. The part that’s being used is getting a good massage. In all my adult’s and children’s books, I have been privileged to include words and images. The adult nonfiction books by Harcourt [BABA: A RETURN TO CHINA UPON MY FATHER'S SHOULDERS and THE ODYSSEY OF A MANCHURIAN] were graced with 25 paintings. My picture books—like the brand new one coming out in February, FOO THE FLYING FROG OF WASHTUB POND with Candlewick Press—includes my own illustrations and words. I can’t wait to perform this story in front of kids.

My current project, FORGET SORROW, a graphic novel (adult, “literary” comic book) to be published by WW Norton in 2010 is the perfect balance of the image/words partnership. I believe this is the format I will be working with for the rest of my life.

When I’ve been asked to write book reviews for The Washington Post, they’ve allowed me to include an illustration.

Tell me more about this graphic novel. (Mesmerizing title!)

It is about the life and death of my Manchurian great grandfather, the patriarch of a wealthy multigenerational family. He was born before the fall of the last dynasty and lived through the turmoil of warlord battles, Japanese invasion and occupation, Soviet invasion, Chinese civil war. With the Communist takeover, he was swept out of his estate and wandered a beggar. His children were afraid to take him in, as he ws black-listed as a “Declining Capitalist.” In Forget Sorrow, I explore how fortune unmasks men. My father and I tell the story alternately. It’s a story within a story.

I’d returned home after the Tiananmen Massacre, but the stalker ex-boy-fiend was still a threat, having stolen my parents’ garbage around the time of the massacre to see if I’d come home or to find any info leading to my address. And so, I was forced to stay indoors much of the time after returning to Carmel. As in The Decameron, my father entertained me with stories of old China until the human plague passed. Incidentally, after 3 years in China, I was much better able to bridge the cultural and age gap, which had existed between Pop and me.

I’m looking forward to reading it! What do you say to other authors who also have manuscripts that have taken many years to complete and many more years to sell (particularly when there are authors out there who seem to deliver a new book every year)?

Tough question, which I can’t really answer well. The one reason I’ve been able to publish slowly and fairly consistently is because I am a niche author by being a Chinese-American and an artist/illustrator. In order to get your work into the world, you have to offer what’s not already out there, something fairly rare. And you also need to be open to change. When I could not get FORGET SORROW out in the traditional prose format, when the opportunity came for the graphic novel medium, I changed. Change is always scary.

That’s one possibility, that you are a niche author. The other is that you’re a fabulous artist who connects to the heart of your readers and who is able to simplify complex emotions and relationships so children can understand what was otherwise confusing or frightening. But whatever the reason, I’m glad these books are here for us.

When you look through your paintings and your books, what are the themes you see again and again? What do your characters wrestle with? What do they desire?

Theme: To rescue the voices that have disappeared in the chaos of war without a complaint. When I first began to listen to my father’s stories about Chinese country folk in 1989 (after returning from China post Tiananmen Massacre), I felt incredibly sad for the men and women whose lives were so bountiful, so interesting, earthy, but who died without a murmur. Their peaceful existence was shattered, first by the Japanese who invaded Manchuria, then the Soviets, and finally the Nationalists Chinese and the Communists. The Communists continue to wage wars against their own people. Such a waste! My characters all wish to find a haven, whether geographical or emotional.

You have a real understanding of the gift of free expression. I think a lot of us who were born in America take that gift for granted. There’s a line I was reading in your book, HANNAH IS MY NAME, that made me tear up: “We don’t have to stay quiet and make ourselves small.” In another article, you said, “To swallow your voice, to keep stories buried deeply beneath layers and layers of silence is to live in a state of bondage. Stories are magic. Stories make us individuals. They make us free.” It seems like that haven you speak about has something to do with this.

The Tiananmen Massacre was bondage and silence on a societal level. I had lived with an abusive man who was violent to me on a personal level. My China experience only underscored my knowledge of the insidious Evil in society. How will Hamas and Israel stop fighting when women in a relatively liberal country like the U.S. (women of all class levels) are beaten in their own homes, just for speaking their own minds? China looks wealthy to the outside, but its citizens are beaten down every day for speaking up against pollution and corruption.

Isn’t it a bit ironic to you that I write kids’ book? The Evil of which I speak is kept from them as long as possible. We send our kids out entirely blind about the subtleties of power. In CHILI-CHILI-CHIN-CHIN, my first children’s book, it was a reaction against being ridden, used like horse or pack mule by others or by society as a whole. Someone very astute person once said, “Belle you give off a sense of brightness even when your life has had its darkness.” But you can’t know freedom of expression until you’ve been muffled.

Time to break out the exclamation points for two well-deserving guests of LitPark:

Tomorrow (Thursday, January 29th), the fabulous Jimmy Margulies will be on CNN’s American Morning program for a feature on cartoonists drawing Obama and Bush. It should air between 8:30 and 9am. And if you missed Jimmy’s interview or want to leave him a message, just click here.

Other big and wonderful news: Remember earlier this month when I was saying how much I loved Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book? Well, guess who just won the Newbery Medal? (Exclamation points, please!!) If you missed Neil’s interview, you can click on A Photo History of Neil Gaiman’s Hair. And since those comments are closed (because they’re on the old system), you can leave him your good wishes over at Twitter.

Nothing better than seeing good things happen to good people.

Be sure to stop by Monday for a new Question of the Month and a sneak peek at February’s guest!

Today I want to introduce you to a political cartoonist who has much to teach us about focus, stamina, creating on a deadline, and working in the arts during hard economic times.

Jimmy Margulies is the nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist for The Record. Through King Features, Margulies’ cartoons appear in The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Time, Time.com, Newsweek, Business Week, among many others. His cartoons on New Jersey issues are self-syndicated to newspapers and web sites all over the state.

He won the 2007 and 2008 Clarion Award for editorial cartoons from The Association for Women in Communications, as well as the 2005 Berryman Award for editorial cartoons from The National Press Foundation of Washington,DC. In 2003 and 2004, he placed third in the National Headliner Award. He received third place in the 2001 Ranan Lurie Political Cartoon Contest sponsored by the United Nations Foreign Correspondents Association. In 1996 he won both the National Headliner Award for editorial cartoons and The Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition. He was awarded second prize in the Berryman competition in 1993.

A 1973 graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design, he is proud to be on the blacklist of the National Rifle Association. He and his wife Martha, a teacher, have two children, Elana, a financial journalist, and David, a law student.

Please welcome Jimmy, and be sure to leave him a note in the comments section so he knows you were here.

*

What would you say is the goal of a political cartoon? How do you judge if it’s successful?

I would say it is to get to what I see as the heart of whatever issue is being addressed. I am trying to make the reader see things from my point of view, whether it be to say, “Isn’t this ridiculous?” or “This is a real injustice” or “What a tragedy this is.” For me it is not just making the point, but making the point in a way that stands out somehow. I am very strong in my feeling that as a creative individual, I should be trying to express my view in a way that shows imagination and insight that justifies my being in this position of having an audience. In other words, I should be able to consistently come up with ideas which are far more creative than what the average person might be able to do.

I want someone to look at my cartoon and say, “I wish I could say it that way.”

As far as judging whether a cartoon is successful, I have several standards upon which to measure that. One way is if the cartoon elicits a response from readers, where they might e-mail to say they liked it. Another way for me is that I do public, speaking on occasion, and show slides of cartoons, so I can get laughs or some audible response that way.

If some prestigious publication reprints one of my cartoons, I consider that a sign of success. Likewise, if a cartoon or portfolio of cartoons wins a journalism award.

Another is the refrigerator test. If someone tells me they cut out my cartoon and put it up on their refrigerator. I have had a couple of cases similar to that. About ten years ago, when Clinton first acknowledged the Monica Lewinsky affair, I did a cartoon which my sister told me she saw pasted on the cash register in Macy’s shortly after it appeared in the paper. And a few years ago, when the Medicare drug benefit program first began, I did a cartoon on how difficult it was to understand, which I saw cut out and taped onto the counter when I went to my local drug store.

Can I see one of your favorite cartoons?

[This is] the actual cartoon which I mentioned having seen scotch taped to the prescription counter at my local pharmacy a few years ago. Asking a cartoonist to choose a favorite cartoon is like being asked to pick your favorite child. But I do have ones I am most proud of, and this is one of them. It was reprinted in Newsweek, which is very hard to get into. And it also has another positive association… the day it first ran in 2005, I found out I had won a national award.

If I looked through your portfolio, what would I learn about your world view?

It would be pretty obvious that my core beliefs are definitely on the liberal side of the spectrum. Some of the things I feel most strongly about are fighting prejudice or bigotry of any kind, and being in opposition to the proliferation of guns in our society.

While I do use my forum to express my views on these and lots of other issues, I definitely resist being rigidly predictable or being categorized as an ideologue. There is definitely an entertainment component to what I do, so I like to be able to offer variety. Some days, a hard hitting cartoon, other days something lighter or on a less serious topic.

I like to try to find what is inherently ridiculous in any given situation, rather than respond according to some textbook version of ideology. So whether I produce it myself, or whether I admire it in the cartoons of my colleagues, being able to find the humor in something has great appeal to me.

And humor is what people remember when they see a cartoon. Plus it enables me to find a way of making my work appeal to even those readers who may not agree with my point of view.

How does a rough idea or a rough sketch become a final product?

After making a very rough sketch with a felt tip pen on letter size paper (this is what I show to my editor) once the idea gets the OK, I then use tracing paper to begin on the final version.

I tape a piece of tracing paper on my drawing table and do a pencil drawing of the cartoon. I work in a horizontal rectangular format, 9 inches high by 13 and 1/2 inches wide. Working in pencil on tracing paper allows me to make all the changes or adjustments in a way that avoids having to erase on the final version of the cartoon.

My drawing table is actually a light box (like what someone would use to view slides) on legs. So I flick on the flourescent lights housed below the glass surface, and lay a piece of illustration paper over the tracing paper. I draw the blinds, turn out the overhead lights in my office, and just have the light from the drawing table and I can see through the illustration paper to the pencil drawing on the tracing paper. Using a felt tip pen for the lettering, I do that first since it is more painstaking and precise. After the lettering, I then use a brush which I dip in a bottle of India ink to do the drawing, which is a looser and more active process than doing the lettering.

It usually takes me about an hour and a half for an average cartoon. Then I make a xerox reduction of the black and white art, and add color to the xerox using colored markers. The reduction in size allows it to fit on a scanner bed. That part is done by the technicians in my paper’s photolab.

Talk to me about having to be creative on a deadline. How do you continue to get good ideas? Do you tend to play with a number of ideas before you hit on one that has a spark? I’d just love to hear the whole process behind the scenes. And in particular, I’d love to hear how you continue to meet deadlines, whether you’re at the top of your game on any given week or not.

From an outsider’s perspective, I know that the concept of having to produce something creative every day sounds like a stress inducing situation. But I honestly do not attach any such negative views to that at all.

I basically see it as something I chose, and a daily challenge to meet, hoping I will be satisfied with the end result.

I start off by doing my homework, so to speak: reading The New York Times, as well as my paper, The Record, for the major news stories, and then glancing at the other sections like lifestyle, etc. I also listen to National Public Radio, a few different news web sites, and - very important - the evening news on CBS. At least before the Internet and cable TV, most people got their news from TV, so I always thought it was necessary to see which stories, images, etc., were being shown.

After I have digested what is going on, I have in mind one or more issues that interest me, and which I hope most people are familiar with. Sometimes, even when I am not specifically thinking about cartoons, an idea will pop into my head. Often these inspirations are better than what I would have arrived at by consciously thinking up ideas.

But this does not happen every day. So I usually sit down with a clipboard of blank white paper, and try to brainstorm. I try to come up with 5 or 6 ideas a day to show to my editor ( the editorial page editor). Sometimes they will all be on one topic, other times on a variety. Some days it is easier than others to be inspired, depending upon the issue or how I feel. But by aiming for a number of ideas, I hope that at least one will be stand out as the best.

As much as I don’t like to think that the first idea which comes to mind is the best, often it is. But for those times that the second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth idea gets the nod, I do try for muliple sketches.

Sometime if I provide a variety of topics, my editor will OK more than one. This is helpful, because it carries me for another day or two. I don’t like to get too far ahead, because I want to be very timely.

Another observation I can offer about having to be creative all the time is by comparing it to a car. If you have a car parked in your driveway that you use only once a week, it will be harder to start up when you need it. But if you drive it every day, it will start more easily. I feel that by having the discipline of making myself come up with a number of ideas every day, it is much easier to get into that frame of mind than if I had to do it only occasionally.

Did you start out wanting to be an editorial cartoonist? Tell me the story of making this career choice and how you ultimately ended up in your current job at The Record.

I always knew I would somehow make a living using my artistic ability, but it was not until I was in college that I discovered editorial cartoons and decided on that as my career choice.

I really took a liking to satire and political satire as soon as I was old enough to appreciate it. My teenage and young adult years took place in the nineteen sixties and early seventies, so I was definitely influenced by what was going on at the time.

Some of the early forms of satire I remember were a tremendously popular record album by Allan Sherman “My Son the Folksinger” which was basically changing the lyrics of well known songs to comment on various aspects of life. “Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda, Here I am at Camp Granada” was sort of a breakout hit that people may remember, set to the music of Dance of the Hours. There was also a very popular comedy album “The First Family” by Vaughn Meader, impersonating the Boston accent of JFK. And a TV show hosted by David Frost “That Was The Week That Was”

[Regarding this and the subsequent Barack Obama cartoons, Jimmy is showing the evolution of how he draws a character who is new on the scene.]

As I got into my teens, I started playing the guitar, and some of the songs I listened to and played were protest songs on the Vietnam War, civil rights, etc., by Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, and others. The idea of using some form of entertainment to make political statements was really exciting to me. And for a while I had the goal of becoming a folksinger. I did play at some campus coffeehouses and antiwar rallies at college during that time.

Long before I decided to become a cartoonist, I was an avid fan of cartoons in The New Yorker, which my parents subscribed to.

My college major was in graphic design, but somewhere in sophomore year I got turned onto editorial cartoons, and started trying to draw some of my own. I did a few that summer for an underground paper on Long Island, and then decided that becoming an editorial cartoonist was what I wanted to do when I graduated. I was also a big fan of underground comics like R. Crumb, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and others.

Another thing that dawned on me as I was formulating my career choice was that as an editorial cartoonist I would get to express my own views, whereas someone who is a graphic designer is really using their creative talent to sell someone else’s products, or communicating someone else’s ideas. Being very idealistic, I knew that if I had to use my creativity to do something that my heart was not in, I would feel that somehow I was compromising my integrity.

….At the time I graduated [from Carnegie Mellon] in 1973, there were fewer than 200 jobs around the country for an editorial cartoonist at a newspaper. Openings would only occur infrequently when sometime retired, or moved to another paper. And I had to compete with people who had more experience.

So it took me a long time to succeed. But I really, really wanted to achieve my goal, so I did not give up.

[I had to trim the interview here, but I'll summarize what not giving up on his goal looked like: moving back in with his parents for several years (but winning a contest to help introduce Shout stain remover while he was there), applying for a grant, working wherever there was an opening in his field, even if that meant too few hours, little money, or the need for this Vietnam War protester to accept work at a military publication. It took over seven years to get his first job at Journal Newspapers, and another 3-1/2 to get a job at The Houston Post. In 1990, Jimmy landed his current job at The Record.]

That’s a long time to pursue a career. What kept you from giving up? And what do you think you did right to either find or open doors?

When I realized I wanted to become an editorial cartoonist, it was as though I had found my calling and this is what I was destined to do. Even though there were many years of struggle, I made the decision to pursue something where I could feel that I was not just working at a job to make money, but because I wanted to be passionate about what I was going to be spending five days a week doing.

As I was doing this, it dawned on me that I went through high school and some of college doing what I was supposed to do to please my teachers, but in sort of a robotic way, because I did it without necessarily feeling a great deal of attachment emotionally to completing my schoolwork. Once I discovered editorial cartooning, I felt as though I was doing what I really wanted to do. So having experienced that, it helped keep me motivated to hang in there until I reached my goal.

What I think I did right, in addition to remaining focused on my goal, was to become as informed as I could about my profession, as well as joining an editorial cartoonist organization to help me with networking to learn about what few job openings there were.

So the first two jobs I got were those where I was the one chosen for the position. The third job, the one I have now at The Record, was one where I got them to create a position for me, because I had gained enough experience to make myself attractive enough to hire.

Have you seen a decline in newspaper readers where you are, and if so, how has this impacted your job directly? And what’s your impression of the fate of newspapers in the age of the internet.

Like most if not all newspapers, The Record has lost circulation. And like many other newspapers, The Record has strived to emphasize that it is in a unique position to provide local coverage that readers cannot get from the web or cable. As a result of this focus, I have been required to do almost exclusively state and local cartoons. I try to do as many state cartoons as I can because this impacts more readers than a cartoon on just one town. Plus my state cartoons are self-syndicated around New Jersey.

There has been a tiny loosening of the restrictions on my work, but not to the extent I would like. During the presidential campaign, and due to the economic crisis, I have been permitted to occasionally do cartoons on these topics.

I don’t know whether to accept the predictions that newspapers, the print edition that is, will be defunct due to the Internet. Advertising dollars would have to migrate to the net in order to support the staff of a paper, and I don’t know if they are doing that sufficiently to make this transformation complete.

I know that I prefer to hold a newspaper in my hands and turn the pages, than to have to click and scroll to read a newspaper online. It is nice to have that option when it snows two feet and they don’t deliver the paper, but not every day. I think that others of my generation and older probably feel that way, too.

My other concern about the fate of newspapers is not simply about the industry, or by extension my job, but about what it says about our society. Will people be just as informed and engaged in knowing what is going in if newspapers continue to dwindle and disappear? Having one newspaper delivered to your home, or buying the same one at the newsstand becomes a routine. When you go online there is an unlimited choice, and to me that would be overwhelming and potentially confusing.

The other thing about the web is that legitimate news which is gathered and edited by professionals according to standards of quality, is on equal footing with information which may be nothing more than someone’s opinion who is creative in spreading it. This has the effect of somehow diminishing quality news’ standing as something to be respected, when it is just as easy to access an amateur’s blog.

The readers at LitPark know well how difficult it is to have a career in the creative arts. Is there anything you learned in your journey that you could pass along as advice?

I don’t know if I am going to say anything that is new or different , but I will say what I have found to be true.

Unless someone is wildly successful in their field, it is difficult to make a living doing just one narrow thing. So be open to using your talent in other ways beyond doing exactly what you love doing most. In my case, I am able to make some extra money over and above my day job in several ways. I already mentioned syndicating my work, as well as selling one time reprint rights. In addition to those, I on occasion sell the original art for my cartoons. Because of the nature of my job working on a newspaper, I have been able to parlay that into doing some public speaking at schools, libraries, senior citizen and community groups, etc.

I also do caricatures for parties and gifts, as well as occasional freelance illustration work. Since I am spending the bulk of my time doing exactly what I want to do, I do not mind sometimes doing something else just to make a little money. Happily, I do enjoy these other things as well.

Another thing I think is important is to be as well informed about your particular field as you can. Whether that be through magazines, whatever is available on the web, and through joining professional organizations. You want to be able to take advantage of whatever opportunities you can, or make your own. While you can get a lot online, meeting people face to face is really important, and makes a bigger impact.

Speaking of online, nowadays everyone expects to find what they need with the click of a mouse. Having a presence on the web is absolutely essential - your own site, or part of a popular site devoted to your field. It is your own billboard to the wider world. I can specifically point to two lucrative freelance gigs which I got simply because my work was shown on a cartoon web site when someone was looking for a cartoonist.

Developing one’s talent is important, but that is only half the battle. In the creative arts there is so much competition that anyone who is serious about success needs to be a great salesperson, publicist, and marketer of themselves. While creative people don’t often like to think of themselves as business oriented, it really is necessary. You have to be as creative in pursuing your career as you are in producing your art form.

I can think of a few people in my field who are more successful as a result of their ability to promote themselves than they are simply because of their abilities. And this gets back to being knowledgeable about your field - from knowing what the situation is you can figure out a plan to make it work for you.

*

Thanks, Jimmy! There’s an NPR story that talks about how the trouble in the world of publishing and media is impacting editorial cartoonists here. (Thank you, Daryl, for the link!) Just something to know because I think it’s important for us all to be aware of the pressures on artists and to remember to support each other.

Welcome to Part 2 of my interview with the incomparable Dan Conaway, a literary agent with Writers House, and more importantly, my confidence-building, book-saving, wicked genius agent. Today we’re going to focus on his background as an editor; his period of anonymous blogging; and his understanding of what writers go through when they write, edit, and try to sell their books. I hope you’ll leave comments because it’s good for agents and writers to hear from each other! (And if you missed Part 1 of my interview, just click here.)

Don’t forget: Dan is not seeking new clients at this time, so please don’t send him your manuscripts. Simply use the information he’s so generously sharing, and chat with him in the comments section, if you like.

~

You’ve been both an agent and an editor (working for Putnam, HarperCollins, Polygram, HBO, etc). I imagine that gives you a unique perspective on the business.

Hmmm…I’m not sure. I’m not great with grand theories and such, to be honest—in fact, in some ways I think I consciously try not to think too much about “The Business” in broad prognosticating strokes, because if I did I might be discouraged. Since I don’t, I’m not discouraged—I keep my head down and work with writers I love and hope that, over time, the cream will rise. But cream never rises untended, and that’s I guess what I’ve always felt was my real strength, as an editor and as agent—that I’ll stump hard for mine. I’m a good advocate; I try like hell to do the little things, on the theory that, sometimes, they really do add up. Do they really? Is that BookSense nomination, for instance, really worth the energy it took to write personal letters to 35 booksellers, and to get those booksellers to read the book, and to remind them of the nomination deadline, and so on? (Especially when, in my experience—which has included more BookSense nominations than I can begin to count—it probably sells an extra 12 copies?) I honestly can’t say whether, in the aggregate, that sort of thing pays off—but what’s the alternative? If you really love your books and your writers, it makes doing the necessary spadework palatable. (If you don’t, that work will never get done.) So we do it, and with distinction—and sometimes lightning strikes.

But did lightning strike because of the extra effort? Yeah—maybe—who the hell knows? Cuz far more typically you put in the same crazy effort, you do everything right, you get great blurbs and a great package and you have a congenial and photogenic author and a fantastic book and a real marketing push, there’s no detail that goes unattended, but in the end lightning doesn’t strike. So I guess that’s the one thing I can say for sure about this business: who the hell knows?

Let’s hear a memorable story from your editing days.

The first book I ever acquired—the first time I ever went to an editor-in-chief and came away with clearance to offer actual money to an actual writer—was a novella & stories by Agnes Rossi called THE QUICK. Agnes had won the NYU Prize in Fiction, judged by Susan Minot, for a story collection called ATHLETES AND ARTISTS, and I’d written to her asking to see whatever she might be working on next. We struck up a correspondence, I read some of her work in progress, time passed. Finally she emerged from a hard time in her life to tell me she’d written a novella. When I describe it as a breathtaking book, I mean it literally, because when I read it for the first time I felt like I was holding my breath the whole time. So beautiful, so moving—Rick Bass later gave it a blurb, he said the book “had to have been written by an angel,” and that’s the reaction everyone has when they read it. And that’s how I felt…. I’d never met anyone remotely like her. I had feelings for her from the start, but I was all stupid emotionally—anyway, long story, we were in bound galleys when I officially acknowledged what she’d known a long time, that I had a crush on her. That was in the parking lot of a Portugese restaurant in Newark, after hearing Philip Roth read from Patrimony at the Newark Public Library. We were engaged about six weeks later, and have been married now for 16 years. We have four kids—triplet 12-year old daughters and a six-year old son—and she teaches ESL to political refugees at Catholic Charities in Newark. She absolutely loves Newark—she’s spoken seriously about our moving there when the kids are grown. She also loves—loves—Barack Obama. If Obama wins Pennsylvania, we’ll have Agnes Rossi to thank for it.

Thank you, Agnes, for your work in Pennsylvania. It mattered.

(And if Dan Conaway and Rick Bass are that wowed by somebody’s writing, you know I’m ditching my poor interview subject until I can at least read an excerpt. And you can, too, if you click right here. All I can say is, Breathtaking is right! I just ordered THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF SHORT FICTION because I see the story “Morpheus” is in it!)

I want to talk to you about the anonymous blogging you did while you were an executive editor. Busy as you must have been, what made you start that blog? 

What’s interesting about BookAngst 101 is that I didn’t start it to have a conversation with writers—it was a conversation with people like me, in publishing, that I was looking for. I was working at HarperCollins, where I had a fantastic list of authors—Kevin Baker, Peter Nichols, Kim Ponders, Richard Bausch, Michael Gruber—and had some quite terrific successes there; yet I never felt like any publication had ever gone as well as it could have. I was always disappointed, always felt like more could and should have been done. Was it that I didn’t personally have enough institutional muscle to leverage the full array of marketing resources on behalf of my authors? Was it that I had higher expectations for my books than my employer did? Was it that I fundamentally misunderstood the way the publishing engine works? Could it be that I was just stupid, or insufficiently experienced—that there might be other tricks that I hadn’t learned yet?

So BookAngst started out as a way to have that conversation with other editors, other publishing types. And some of those editors and agents and other insiders participated, to a degree, but it was naïve of me to imagine that there’d be any sharing of tradecraft. I did try to offer up some “research” of sorts, but everybody (myself included) knew that being too forthcoming about specific practices and outcomes could put them in professional jeopardy. What emerged instead was a more general dialogue about the book trade.

What did you discover from the people who left comments on your blog?

The biggest surprise for me personally was how Mad Max Perkins emerged as a kind of emissary to the world of writers on behalf of the world of editors, cuz that absolutely wasn’t my intention. But I’d be lying to suggest that I didn’t cotton to the role. I was just a hardworking editor, and the way people responded to me as Mad Max, the way they seemed to appreciate how I worked, what I cared about, what my frustrations were—well, I got a lot of love, and it was deeply reassuring. Profoundly so. Reminded me that what I was doing mattered.

More broadly, my sense is that the writers (published and not) who read BookAngst 101 realized that publishing is populated (at least partly) by people who give a shit, who love good writing, who want to champion authors. Obviously some people focused on the negative, on the gloomy and dispiriting details that emerged on the blog, because there’s plenty about the business that’s hard, and we talked about those things a lot. But I’d guess that an equal number came away encouraged by it, came away with a sense that, despite the lamented corporatization of the business, there’s still heart and passion at the core. That the people who work in it still believe in—and are motivated by—discovery.

One problem with being an anonymous blogger, I suppose, is that you might be invited to speak on a panel at a prestigious conference. Tell me a story about going in costume to BEA. (And I’m talking a good story, like where you got dressed, and what the reception was like, and any close calls.)

Shortly after I launched, I was approached by a reporter at Crain’s New York who said he was working on a piece about BookAngst 101 and would I be willing to speak with him. He said he’d respect my anonymity but that he wanted to know why I was doing it. I started imagining all kinds of ways a reporter might have to identify a caller, that I’d be outed, or say something monumentally stupid, and I’d get fired—the usual paranoid crap. I finally ran across the street from my office and called him from a payphone—it’s silly in retrospect, what I was doing was no big deal, but at the time it didn’t seem that way. Or maybe I just wanted to imagine myself as a character in All the President’s Men. He was very nice, and of course I was so careful not to say anything controversial that I failed to say anything interesting either.

BEA:

M.J. Rose asked me to be on the BEA panel, along with Michael Cader and Robert Gray. I agreed, then forgot about it, then left HarperCollins for a new job at Putnam. Ironically the BEA appearance was on the second or third day after starting my new job; by then enough people knew who I was that I decided I’d better come clean with my new boss, Ivan Held. He was amused… Anyway, I showed up at the Javitz Center, then went into the bathroom and changed into an elaborate costume I’d rented. But I’d miscalculated where the panel was held, so I emerge from the bathroom wearing this ridiculous old-man-Merlin outfit, a full mask, robe, pointy dunce-cap, a cane for effect… and then had to walk the entire length of the Javitz Center, feeling as silly as can be. People were laughing and pointing—they probably figured it was some sort of Harry Potter promotion. I got into character, hobbling along on my cane, greeting people in a high, nasally witch’s cackle—”Hello, my Pretty! Enjoying the fair?” It was fun.

My experience of the panel itself was probably a lot the way newly-published writers feel when they arrive at their very first reading. I don’t know what I expected, but it turns out that the world wasn’t remotely excited about witnessing the one public appearance of Max the Mighty Mouse. There were about seven people there, a couple of whom were simply waiting around from the previous session while the batteries in their motorized wheelchairs finished recharging.

Why, by the way, did you feel you had to blog anonymously? And why did you stop blogging?

The official reason I blogged anonymously was because I was afraid I’d get fired if I didn’t… and ultimately my anonymity allowed me (and some of the people who contributed “data” to the site) to be more honest without fear of repercussions. But also, I had no idea what I was doing, I decided to do it, named it, launched it all in the span of a couple of hours, totally impulsively, and there was a pretty good chance that I was going to sound like a complete idiot. Either outcome—getting fired, or revealing the emptiness of my head publicly—seemed a bad career move. So it made sense to have a little cover. And anonymity allowed me to invent Mad Max Perkins. And—let’s be honest—could there be a cooler moniker for a publishing guy?

So why did you make the move from editor to agent? 

I made the switch principally because I have four kids, and I needed to be certain that I wasn’t vulnerable to the corporate axe as I skulked into my 50s. The calculus was simply this: for a long time I’d had this paranoia that I’d get sacked when I turned 52, 53—no way of knowing whether it would have happened, and at Putnam I had a good run of success, some bestsellers and so on—so who knows? But I never saw myself as publisher material, as an editor-in-chief—I’m a really slow reader, for one thing—and since I have triplet daughters who might all be heading off to college when I’m 52 (an age that had been long highlighted on my career calendar), I realized that would be a shitty year to get fired. I had a close relationship with Simon Lipskar and the folks at Writers House—Simon and I always joked that I’d come work for him when I eventually got fired… Then I started thinking differently about the joke itself, and realized, why wait? My fundamental affinities have always been with my authors anyway, and watching how Simon worked with his made me confident that my skill set would translate nicely. And it has. I loved being an editor, but the truth is I’m still an editor, fundamentally. I just don’t write the flap copy anymore.

Seems like, with the various hats you’ve worn (agent, editor, blogger), you have a real appreciation for the difficulties writers go through in searching for an agent, editing a manuscript, and finding a publisher.

I do. Some writers I’ve encountered along the way may disagree, of course—but if you were to ask me why I do what I do, I’d say it’s principally because of the writers themselves. To sit in a room by yourself and make shit up out of nothing, I can’t think of anything harder, especially when you consider how many hours, days, months a writer must sit in that room, alone, without any way of knowing for certain that the work is coming together in the way it must. To work, day after day, in the face of so much uncertainty—I’m talking now just about the creative process; add to that the nightmarish vulnerability that most writers experience on the business front, the difficulties of building a sustainable career as a writer—it’s miraculous that anybody can ever finish anything. I really can’t think of a harder job, because you can go months, even years without the sort of ordinary affirmations that a working joe like me encounters as a matter of course. As an editor, as an agent, hell, even when I was the King of Junk Mail for W.W. Norton, creating direct mail advertising for college textbooks, if you’re any good at your work, generally there are lots of ways in which you’ll be reminded, on a daily basis, that you are, indeed, good at your work. And that makes it quite a bit easier to keep putting one foot in front of another, you know?

Anything you’d you like writers to understand about agents’ struggles?

The thing I struggle the most with is not being able to give my clients the feedback they want as quickly as they want it. It’s not that their wanting it is unreasonable—but I have a lot of clients, and work does seem to land in big clumps, and sometimes there’s no way around the fact that it’s going to take time for me to get to it. For the most part I manage it by being as clear as I possibly can about the amount of work on my plate at a particular time, and how long it’s likely to be before I’m going to be able to begin the work. If I can’t even start reading your manuscript for two weeks, and you know that, then (theoretically, anyway) your anxiety level for those first two weeks of silence might be lower, since the only thing (in that case) that silence means is that I haven’t started reading yet.

And tell me why you’re in this line of work.

Writers tend to be pretty interesting people. Thoughtful, generous (except when they’re not), and fucked up in all the best ways. And not stingy in expressing their appreciation, either—when I do good work, my authors tell me so, and with great conviction. And the things they make, these books—well, I’ve been blessed, because I get to participate in making them, participate sometimes in really substantial ways. And so at the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of my life, there will be shelves and shelves of books I had a hand in bringing into this world. What could be better than that?