Ask the Author: Emily Barton
Answered Questions (4)
Emily Barton
Being a fiction writer is one of the last places where you can be a generalist. Or rather, you can become a specialist in any field of knowledge or human endeavor—or at least, enough of a specialist to write convincingly about that topic. You just have to dedicate yourself to research, ask the right questions. That's what I love most about writing—that I can study anything my imagination can encompass, and with luck and hard work, help readers to envision and experience it.
Emily Barton
I tend to think "writer's block" is a misnomer, an agglomeration of difficulties that may best be left disaggregated. I talked about this in an interview with Advice to Writers; in case it's of interest, here's the link: http://www.advicetowriters.com/interv...
Emily Barton
Both BROOKLAND and YVES GUNDRON participate in the project of alternate history; they glance on questions of Jewish identity (Ruth Blum is Jewish; so is Tem Winship's spurned suitor) without preoccupying themselves with it. You're right that focusing on Jewish identity is new subject matter here. It's been on my mind for a while; I was writing another novel (I took a break from it to write this one) that approaches such questions from a different angle. Perhaps now is a good time in my life to start to pose such questions. I light candles on Friday nights, belong to a vibrant synagogue, have two kids in Hebrew school . . . "doing Jewish" is an integrated part of my family, social, and intellectual life. That sense of integration hasn't always been there.
At the same time, BOOK OF ESTHER is still puzzling through some of the big questions that motivate the earlier two novels -- what does technology mean? How does our relationship to it affect our relationship with the eternal? -- so I know that, having posed some questions about Jewish identity (and how that might be different now if history had gone otherwise at various points of divergence) is more like opening a conversation on those issues than like having solved them. I'm looking forward to that conversation.
Thank you so much for writing, William. I'm glad you've enjoyed the books!
At the same time, BOOK OF ESTHER is still puzzling through some of the big questions that motivate the earlier two novels -- what does technology mean? How does our relationship to it affect our relationship with the eternal? -- so I know that, having posed some questions about Jewish identity (and how that might be different now if history had gone otherwise at various points of divergence) is more like opening a conversation on those issues than like having solved them. I'm looking forward to that conversation.
Thank you so much for writing, William. I'm glad you've enjoyed the books!
Emily Barton
Thank you so much!
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