Interview: March 25, 2005
March 25, 2005
Bookreporter.com Co-Founder Carol Fitzgerald and contributing writer Shannon McKenna interviewed Philip Beard, author of DEAR ZOE. Beard explains how his stepdaughter (unbeknownst to her) helped create the character of Tess, the fifteen-year-old narrator of his debut novel, and the difficulties he encountered with the plot line in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. He also shares with readers the remarkable story of the book's publication and why he decided to leave a successful legal career to become a novelist.
Bookreporter.com: DEAR ZOE is narrated by fifteen-year-old Tess. As the father of three daughters, did that give you insight for creating Tess's voice? Would you have chosen to write in the voice of a teenage girl if you did not have the experience of being a father to daughters?
Philip Beard: Tess wouldn't exist without my stepdaughter Cali. It's a gift she never knew she was giving, and one I will never be able to properly thank her for. Watching Cali go through those middle teen years, listening to her with an ear that was part father, part student, learning from my mistakes with her and how I might better parent my younger daughters --- all of these things helped bring Tess to life. Beyond that, for some reason I have always been able to hear voices. Some writers have a talent for constructing intricate plots, creating a vivid sense of place, or manipulating prose as if it were poetry. Writers I admire --- Richard Russo, Ian McEwan, T.C. Boyle, Frederick Busch, Lewis Nordan, Kent Haruf, Susan Minot --- seem, miraculously, to be equally good at all three. So far, the only part of writing that comes naturally to me is voice. The more difficult part is finding one that's worth listening to, and Cali gave me that.
BRC: Tess's family is fractured, which gives you so many characters to interact with and shape her personality. None of the people know her entire life. They each know pieces. You are a stepfather to your oldest daughter and have mentioned that coming into her life at age four gives you a different contextual relationship with her that you might not have had you known her her entire life. Did you consciously want to examine that as you started the book, or was that something that evolved from the writing?
PB: As a writer I'm really a beginner, so maybe I'm being naïve about this. But I don't write to examine issues; I write to create people and to tell their stories. I don't even think of that issue as one that requires much study. Missing those early years of physical and emotional bonding with a child leads to a different kind of relationship. It's that simple. But that doesn't devalue what can develop between people who love each other. I mean, I missed the first 24 years of my wife's life, and we seem to be doing okay. Had I done all kinds of research, I might have burdened Tess with an overabundance of self-awareness on that issue. Instead, I just tried to listen to her, and in one of the early chapters, the first time she is talking about her relationship with David, she just says, It's not tragic or anything. It's just the way it is. And I remember thinking, Now why didn't I think of that ten years ago?
BRC: Why did the premise of one family's tragedy juxtaposed with the events of September 11th appeal to you as the basis of a novel?
PB: It didn't appeal to me so much as it imposed itself on me. I had already started thinking about Tess's voice, already knew that she had lost a sibling, when the September 11th attacks took place. For a long time, that day stifled my writing in the same way that it silenced Zoe's death for Tess. I couldn't figure out how to write about a tiny, personal tragedy in the face of that kind of horror. And even if I could get past that hurdle, I couldn't write from the point of view of a teenager living through September 11th without addressing it. Talk about trying to ignore the proverbial elephant sitting in the middle of the room. The more frustrated I got --- the more I felt as if that one day in human history threatened to block out or diminish everything else --- the more that frustration started to feel like part of Tess's story.
BRC: What is it about Tess's story that you think readers will respond to?
PB: I'm not trying to duck the question, but I think it's presumptuous to write with the idea that you can dictate or even guess at what a reader's response will be. So much depends on when you read a book, how you come to it. In that way, reading is no different from writing. If I had written this book five years ago, the 9/11 element would have been nonexistent, and Tess's story would have been much different as a result.
BRC: Why did you choose to write the novel in epistolary form?
PB: First, I don't think of the novel as being epistolary in the strictest sense of that word. For me, Tess doesn't necessarily have to be writing to Zoe. She could be talking, thinking, praying, anything. What's important is that we are not her audience, Zoe is. Second (and I'm being completely honest when I say this), it was Tess who chose her audience from the beginning. Why would she tell you or me any of this? She needed to speak to Zoe. And as soon as I started writing, that's what she started doing.
BRC: When you were seeking a publisher for DEAR ZOE, you re-structured the narrative at someone's advice. In hindsight, are you happy the road to publication took the twists and turns that it did? Otherwise readers would be experiencing a different book (and also with a different title).
PB: I was told that the epistolary format didn't work --- basically that it was a dinosaur and that the critics would murder me for it. I fought for it for months but eventually gave in and revised it to standard first-person. What did I know? I was an unpublished lawyer who had already had one novel rejected by nearly every major publisher in New York. I hated the revised version. To me, there was an intimacy in being able to eavesdrop on Tess and Zoe that was missing. The vast majority of the 28 editors who rejected the novel saw it in its revised, first-person form. So when I decided to self-publish DEAR ZOE, I went back to my original draft. That's the draft that eventually (I'm tempted to say magically) found its way to Clare Ferraro at Viking.
My father is famous within our family for responding to every hardship by quoting CANDIDE: "Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds." I have tried over the years to convince him that Voltaire was using a device known to the rest of us as "irony," but the problem is, my father always turns out to be right.
BRC: The road to publication has been an interesting one for you. Can you share the story?
PB: Honestly, I'm not sure anyone reading this interview will want to sit still long enough for this one. Even the abridged version is a two-beer conversation. Basically, after the first-person version had completed its cycle of rejection (it was titled simply "Z"), I decided to self-publish the novel in its original form. I treated it as my full-time job for the better part of six months, formed my own publishing company (Van Buren Books), hired a cover designer, a publicist, convinced a national distributor to take it on (no small feat for literary fiction), learned the printing/production side and compared competing bids from small presses, even acquired my own ISBN numbers, bar codes and CIP data for the copyright page. It was really liberating to feel in control of my career again, even if there was no guarantee I'd sell books to anyone beyond my Christmas card list.
In the meantime, I had given the manuscript to a bookseller friend, John Towle, who runs the Aspinwall Bookshop in my neighborhood. John told me that his Penguin sales rep, Jason Gobble, was coming to town, and that Jason was a guy who had some credibility with the editors there. So John gave the manuscript to Jason, and I never thought about it again. Six months (and many of my kids' college fund dollars) later, I was emailing back and forth with my cover and interior designer, authorizing her to send the final mechanicals to our printer so that they could go to press with the 5,000 copies I had ordered. That same morning, I had emailed my publicist to authorize her to start sending out some of the 100 Advance Review Copies we had printed to solicit reviews. As I was corresponding with these people, a message appeared on my screen from the receptionist at my law firm, asking me to return a call from Clare Ferraro, president of Viking. Somehow, during the six months that I had been obsessing over my self-pub project, my manuscript had made its way from the Aspinwall Bookshop to Jason Gobble and, eventually, to Clare Ferraro, who was calling me with an offer.
Readers of yours who are gluttons for unedited autobiographical punishment can go to the "Backstory" section of my website. They can also see my original jacket cover there (which I still love): http://www.philipbeard.net/backstory.html
BRC: What made you decide to leave a successful legal career for the unpredictable life of a novelist?
PB: I practiced full-time for eleven years, mostly because it took me that long to work up the courage to leave. I wasn't a bad lawyer, but I never felt comfortable in that skin. My father and my brother are lawyers, and they both practice as if they were born to do it. My brother is four years younger than I am, and one of the real turning points for me was when he had been practicing at our firm for less than five years and I suddenly realized that he was already a better lawyer than I was. That's when I began thinking seriously about a change. Right around that time, my wife and I were out one evening, finishing our meals at a favorite Chinese restaurant, and she was trying, I think, not to go glassy-eyed as I started my usual lament about the lack of creativity in my life. We opened our fortune cookies, and (I swear) this is what mine said: You are a lover of words. Someday you will write a book. After a stunned silence, we started scratching out budgets on the backs of napkins right there in the restaurant, as if that little slip of paper could really tell us what to do. That fortune has been taped to our fridge ever since. So yeah. That's what made me leave the law: my precocious brother and a fortune cookie.
BRC: Has your background in law been an asset to you in your writing life?
PB: No question. First, from a practical standpoint, it gave me a certain measure of financial stability. I think one of the reasons I resisted earlier temptations to write was that I knew I'd make a crummy bohemian. I have great respect for writers who remain dedicated to their craft at the expense of everything else. For better or worse, the Responsibility Gene runs deep in our family. Most writers I talk to say that the morning is their most productive time, but I can't write a word until I've seen the kids off to school, walked the dog, answered all my emails, returned phone calls from the few clients I still have, you name it. I can't write until everything else is in order. So it's not surprising it took me 11 years to get here. But I spent those 11 years reading and writing. That's what lawyers do. And although the end-product is certainly different, the skill sets of both crafts are entirely consistent. In both genres, you define your conflicts early, let them play out against one another, and then hope that you have made your case convincingly or eloquently enough to convince your audience. Whether as a lawyer or novelist, I'm trying to make someone believe in a reality I have created, to care about it enough to stay with me until the end, and, if I'm really lucky, to make them remember it.
BRC: DEAR ZOE is actually the second novel you wrote, but the first to be published. Are there any plans to release that first novel?
PB: Yes. Viking just recently acquired the rights. We're looking at a release in late '06 or early '07.
BRC: What are you working on now?
PB: I haven't written that book yet that every writer is entitled to --- the one that ticks off every member of your family. I've only been taking notes for 20 years, so I think it might be time. But first I need to save up enough money to move to The Keys.
