Irving: Source Shot

And below is one part of the final sketch.

A snippet to get your attention

My thanks to Towle for taking my suggestion. And I was enthused to find out from a Tweet tonight he will likely tackle the Peter Gabriel piece  again sometime down the road.

From the writer’s website, he shares some of his thoughts on the new book. Here’s a snippet:

“I always begin with a last sentence; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin. The last sentence I began with this time is as follows: He felt that the great adventure of his life was just beginning as his father must have felt, in the throes and dire circumstances of his last night in Twisted River. And theres the title, waiting for you at the end of the story Last Night in Twisted River.”

And for an even more enjoyment, here’s a clip of Irving discussing the book and his work in general, I’m particularly struck when he says “Don’t take the people you love for granted.” :

Irving is my favorite living novelist, and I am glad he is still living. Oh, and if you didn’t know, his new novel, Last Night in Twisted River, was released late last month. I cannot wait to read it.

Here’s the basic premise of the new novel:
“The turning of the wheel by the tilling of the wheat.

With these cryptic words, a conspiracy is set in motion. It threatens a new translation of the Bible ordered by King James I. The year is 1605. In Cambridge England one of the translators is savagely murdered. Deacon Marbury, charged with protecting the group, seeks outside help to find the murderer. But the people who offer to help are not who they claim to be and the man they send to Marbury–Brother Timon–has a secret past and blood on his hands. He is the agent of certain forces that hope to halt the translation itself. The killer continues his gruesome work; the body count rises. Brother Timon is torn between conflicting loyalties. He believes that an even greater crisis looms; ancient and alarming secrets are revealed. These secrets date to the earliest days of Christianity and threaten the most basic of its beliefs.”

Here’s just a snippet of DePoy’s biography: “Phillip DePoy is the EDGAR award winning playwright of EASY (New York’s vote for best mystery play in the country). He is also the author of 10 novels, 2 published plays, and 37 theatre pieces that have seen production throughout the United States. His play LAMB ON FIRE was produced in New York. His Dell mystery novels, featuring Atlanta character Flap Tucker, have been called the best regional detective fiction on the market today. … The author is currently director of theatre for Clayton State University. His play TURNED FUNNY recently received 3 SUZI awards (Atlanta’s Tony Awards). His newly commissioned CHRISTMAS AT SWEET APPLE sold out in 2007 at THEATRE IN THE SQUARE and was remounted for Christmas 2008.” There’s a great deal more to his bio, but you can follow the link, as his entire website is entertaining in and of itself. Of particular interest with the new novel, the site offers folks a chance to read an excerpt. Nothing better than free words, I tell ya. My thanks to DePoy for a really enjoyable and funny interview.

Tim O’Shea: Before getting into the novel, one question about your writing in general. You’ve won multiple awards for your play adaptation of Celestine Sibley’s autobiography, Turned Funny. Did you learn anything about writing or ways to improve your own writing from examining Sibley’s life?

Phillip DePoy: Celestine Sibley considered herself first and foremost a reporter. I think novelists can always learn from the precision of good journalism. I began my so-called writing career as a poet. Oddly, I think there may be more common ground between the two than might be immediately obvious. Both poets and reporters want to say as much as they can with as few words as possible. It was good for me to be reminded of that by reading Celestine’s work. Also, I knew Celestine very slightly. She did an article about a theatre group with which I was involved in 1965 or 66; and she did an article about my artistic directorship of Theatrical Outfit in 1995 or so. That connection reminded me of something that she believed: you don’t have to work hard at being a writer if life presents you with its own great material.

O’Shea: This may be an apples and oranges comparison, but do you think this new book will benefit from the increased interest in religion and conspiracy combined, thanks to the new Hanks’ film, Angels and Demons (based on Dan Brown‘s novel)?

DePoy: No, PLEASE compare me to Dan Brown. I would like very much for this to be true, at least sales-wise. The New York Times recently ran an article in which it was reported that 2009 might be the worst time to release a new novel in the past 100 years. I would like for ANYTHING to benefit book sales in general. Maybe Dan and I could strike a deal. I’ll do everything I can to sell his new book if he’ll just mention mine to his 5 billion readers. Actually THE KING JAMES CONSPIRACY was recently compared to NAME OF THE ROSE in a review from Booklist. THAT’s a nice comparison too. That’s a nice triangulation: Umberto Eco, Dan Brown, and me. Add John Fowles and Borges, and I’m done.

O’Shea: What motivated you to start researching the historical era that inspired this novel?

DePoy: Actually I’ve been interested in these ideas since I was eleven years old when I decided to be an Episcopal priest. I was very excited about the Dead Sea Scrolls; later about the Nag Hammadi find, the Gnostic gospels. Unfortunately the true impetus for THE KING JAMES CONSPIRACY may be found in a close call on the expressway. A guy in a pickup truck changed lanes right in front of me and almost killed me; everyone behind and around me slammed on brakes, asphalt chaos. And on his bumper was a sticker that said, “If it ain’t King James, it ain’t the Bible.” After I finished yelling about his driving, I wanted to pull the guy over and explain to him everything that was wrong with that concept. But he was long gone, so I had to write the book.

O’Shea: Given that you’re known for your two series, The Fever Devilin Series and The Flap Tucker Series — why do a novel outside of both series?

DePoy: This is a very interesting thing for me to think about. Both series allowed me to talk about philosophical and spiritual matters in a kind of tangential way. Mystery series in general help to develop plot skills in any writer. Something about the ideas in this book was overwhelming to me. Without getting all weird about it, I feel I was compelled to write this book.

O’Shea: When you give folks a story that mixes interpretations of the bible and a murder mystery, among other aspects, do you have any concern of riling up (some, nowhere close to all) Christian folks who might perceive it as blasphemous in their mind (or worse yet, judge the book without reading it)?

DePoy: Lenny Bruce was the first person I heard say this: if you want to sell a book, the best thing you can to was get it banned by the Catholic church. Instant publicity. Years later I wrote music for the regional premiere of ANGELS IN AMERICA. The play was scheduled to go to Alabama after our production at the Alliance Theatre, and there was a huge protest movement in Alabama objecting to the content of the play—and it was coming from people who had never seen the play. Before anyone could think what to do to help quell the fires of opposition in our sister state, we found out that their production was sold out and the theatre was thinking of extending the run. I think this is the artists’ version of “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” All that being said, I think that if anyone reads the book they’ll understand that I have tremendous respect for the translators of the King James version. And, PS, nearly everything in the book is true. The truth is a complete defense in the law, right?

O’Shea: The book is set in 1605 and features a cast of real-life characters. How did you go about choosing the real-life characters you included and were there others that you wished to include but had to leave out, in deference to pacing and other narrative concerns?

DePoy: The book is set in Cambridge with one of six groups of translators chosen by King James (two each at Cambridge, Oxford, and Westminster). The historical characters, then, chose themselves—they were the translators themselves. I picked this group because its director died quite early in the process under mysterious circumstances, so his death was also historically accurate. Present at the time was Francis Marbury, whose position I altered only slightly, and his daughter Anne, who later emigrated to Jamestown and became America’s first feminist (in the 17th century!). The only wholly fictional character is Brother Timon, the central figure, and he is based on Giordano Bruno, a Catholic saint who was executed by the Inquisition. In THE KING JAMES CONSPIRACY his execution was staged and he was given the new identity of Brother Timon so that he could—but why spoil the plot. One of the translators of this Cambridge group was no used in the novel for exactly the reasons you’ve mentioned: pace and narrative.

O’Shea: When you set a novel in an era like 1605, how do you get an ear for dialogue in a period from so long ago?

DePoy: Aside from Shakespeare, there are plenty of clues as to how men and women in 16th and 17th century London spoke. The most exciting example for me is a book called DEMONOLOGY that King James wrote himself. Most of the things he says in the novel are take from that book—some are direct quotes. There are also essays, reviews; letters–all of which educated me. I think it may be interesting to note that when my editor got an early draft of the first 50 pages or so, his thought was that the dialogue was too accurate, that it was less accessible to a contemporary audience. I believe he said something like, “tone down the Shakespeare. Damn.”

O’Shea: Brother Timon is a fictional character amongst the real-life ones, was he inspired by some characters grounded in reality?

DePoy: As mentioned above, Brother Timon is based on Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). A word about him. Bruno’s expertise in the art of memory brought him to the attention of patrons, and he traveled to Rome to demonstrate his abilities to the Pope. He invented a new memory system, based on the work of the medieval scholar, Ramon Llull, using circular memory wheels. He was able to memorize thousands of pages of text with perfect accuracy. He lived for a time in England and may have worked for Philip Spencer; was certainly at Oxford University. The Inquisition eventually arrested him; for eight years he was kept imprisoned and interrogated periodically. In 1600 he was burned at the stake with his tongue nailed to his jaw, a black bag over his head, and a sack of gunpowder tied around his neck. The specific charges for which he was executed are lost, and his body was so destroyed by the explosion of the gunpowder that it could not be satisfactorily identified with any certainty. The specifics of his memory science are lost to history.

O’Shea: In terms of researching for the book, how long were you at work on the research and were there certain aspects of the research that were more daunting than others?

DePoy: Seriously, I started thinking about these ideas in 1961. The specific research for this book really began in 2001. The most daunting aspect of the entire process was falling in love with the research. Once that happens it’s really hard to know what to keep in and what to leave out. It was all interesting to me. That a blue doublet with white piping would have cost a certain number of crowns that was the same as rent on a cheap room for a year. That turnips were used to flavor ale. That the Thames froze so hard a winter carnival was set up on it with vendors, rides—fires. That a good occupation for a man who had lost a leg in a war was roof-thatcher because he could stand up straight on a slanted roof. I mean I have about a thousand paragraphs of stuff like that and MAN was it hard to cut it out.

O’Shea: When David Pitt compared your writing to Umberto Eco’s, were you more flattered or more concerned that your work was being placed on a pedestal or on an intellectually intimidating level?

DePoy: Excellent, we get to compare me to Umberto Eco again. I’m more flattered than anyone on earth could possibly imagine. I would like to see what things look like from a pedestal. I understand the air’s very clean up there.

O’Shea: Years ago, I read John Irving’s Son of the Circus, a novel that got temporarily derailed by Irving’s realization that he had another story to tell of the same name, but as a screenplay. Have you ever had a novel concept that shifted to a play project for you (or vice versa)?

DePoy: For me it all comes from the same place. The impetus to write a poem or a play or a song or a novel all comes from the same wellspring of—whatever it is. I will say that I genuinely enjoyed turning my first novel EASY into a play, called EASY, especially since it won the Edgar Award in New York that year. I did once have a series of poems that turned out to be a novel, but in the final analysis, they were pretty good poems and one really really sorry novel. So.

O’Shea: Given your theater background, I was not surprised to see you’ve utilized YouTube to market the novel–how else are you using your array of talents to draw attention to the book?

DePoy: The tango. Because I really consider myself a dancer. Not a good dancer. In fact, if anyone saw me dancing, I think they would beg me to stop. And then I would say, “What’s it worth to you?” And they would say, “Anything, just stop dancing for the love of God.” And I’d say, “Okay, buy 500 copies of THE KING JAMES CONSPIRACY” and they would do it in a heartbeat. That’s my marketing strategy: more tango.