Interview with Steve Kluger

Ah, the pinnacle of Steve Kluger week, an interview with the man himself. Let’s get right to it:

The Bluestocking Society – The first thing I always want to know about an author is his writing routine. Do you write at a particular time of day? Do you have page or word goals? Do you write by hand or on a computer? Do you have any writing superstitions, like a Red Sox hat that must be worn during writing hours?

Steve Kluger – I have a routine only when I’m working on a book: eight hours a day, Monday through Friday. I always write sprawled out on the couch with a spiral UCLA notebook (the UCLA part may count as superstition). The left-hand page is for trying out ideas and developing the sequence I’m working on; the right-hand page is for the actual narrative. I do my revising-editing-cleanup at the end of the day while I’m typing the text onto my PC.

TBS – The next must-have inquiry relates to your reading. What are you reading right now? Which author or book is indispensable? Do you consider any authors to be particularly influential to your own work?

SK – The stack by my bed is 98% history and biography. There’s so much real-life stuff to learn about that I don’t have any time left for fiction. The only indispensable book I know of is The Southpaw, by Mark Harris. (Tom Sawyer is a close second.)

TBS – You use a number of different mediums to effectively and uniquely convey the story in your novels, including letters, newspaper articles, report cards, emails, interoffice memoranda, school assignments, text messages, etc. Why do you use this atypical form of storytelling?

SK – One of my three all-time favorite novels is Bel Kaufman’s Up the Down Staircase, which I discovered when I was 15. What impressed me most about it was Bel’s style in telling the story of a young schoolteacher caught up in the administrative red tape of New York’s inner-city school system. One chapter would consist of her students’ contributions to the classroom suggestion box; another would be comprised of inter-school memoranda sent back and forth amongst the characters; a third would be the teacher’s long narrative letters to her best friend, etc. It struck me as a high school sophomore that Ms. Kaufman had hit on the perfect way to tell a compelling story—a variety of first-person narratives—and when I began writing professionally, I took the same concept and expanded it. It’s most certainly more freeing in the writing process and helps to establish an intimacy and an immediacy that you just can’t get with traditional narrative. The only real challenge is coming up with the storytelling devices peculiar to that particular story and making sure that they cover all bases.

TBS – At least two of your novels – Last Days of Summer and My Most Excellent Year – are marketed primarily as YA novels. I’m no longer in the YA category, and I thoroughly enjoyed them both. When you start a new project, do you write to a particular audience?

SK – I always write for the same generic, non-age-specific audience. Last Days of Summer was written and published as an adult novel and made its way into the YA market on its own. My Most Excellent Year was also written as an adult novel; but with the surprising YA turn that Last Days had made, this one was marketed to both adult and YA readers.

TBS – The kids and teens in your books are very realistically and lovingly drawn. On your website, you describe yourself as “author, Red Sox fan, and uncle.” Do your nieces and nephews inspire your characters?

SK – 95% of all the characters in all of my novels are real people; most of the time, I even use their real names. For purposes of My Most Excellent Year, Hucky Harper is deaf version of my eight-year-old nephew Noah, right down to the hangaburs, his mad face, and his stuffed dog named Shut-the-Door (the purple balloon story happened to us when he was 3-1/2); my sister-in-law Lori (Noah’s mother) is Lori Mahoney, replete with her pathological refusal to sneak down to the empty expensive seats during a ball game; my sister-in-law Alejandra (who goes by “Alé”) always said that the one role she always wished she could have played was Lilli in Kiss Me, Kate (her audition song when she first moved to New York was “The Music and the Mirror”), Phyllis Bryant is one of my dearest friends; Lee Meyerhoff and I have known each other since we were in third grade; Augie is me when I was that age; T.C. is me when I became a Big Brother to an 11-year-old without a father; Ted is mostly my brother Garry (with a touch of my father, who built the planetarium and the state map for two of my school projects); and when I was 15 years old and wanted desperately so see the Tony Awards (which were sold out), I snuck out of boarding school in my school blazer and slacks, took the train into New York, tried without success to find a standing room ticket, and wound up pulling open the gold-painted stage door at the Shubert and telling the stage doorman that my mother–Carol Channing–had forgotten to leave my ticket at the box office. Two things worked in my favor: (1) I may have been 15, but I looked 12, which made it appear extremely unlikely that I was pulling a fast one; and (2) I was obviously telling the truth since it would have been so easy to prove that I was lying. “Miss Channing, is this your son?” “Why, no, dear. I’ve never seen this boy before in my life.” So he waved me in and told me where to find Mom’s dressing room. When he wasn’t looking, I took a detour up the stairs leading to the stage and watched the entire thing from the downstage left wing with Angela Lansbury and a handful of other celebrities. (Funny–that’s the only part of MMEY that people occasionally think is simply too over-the-top to be credible. But Angela Lansbury is my witness.) That’s why I always felt that this particular novel was more a matter of creative reporting than creative writing–though I get a big kick out of sharing the emotional by-line with the people I love.

TBS – You’re known as being somewhat of an activist, particularly with respect to Fenway Park and the Manzanar baseball diamonds. Why those particular causes and are there any others you feel passionate about?

SK – I’m involved in anything that has to do with civil rights (the Japanese American internment was the most flagrant violation), and preserving historical traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation and are always threatened by progress (Fenway Park). My most consistent passion is protecting our kids, nurturing them, and keeping their environment (particularly schools) safe and bully-free.

TBS – On a related note, baseball appears as an almost-character in several of your works. Has baseball been a lifelong obsession? How far does the obsession go?

SK – Sunday, June 18, 1978. Dodgers vs. Expos. I’d been dragged to Dodger Stadium against my will to watch Don Sutton go head-to-head with Wayne Twitchell (and to be aided in the late innings by Bobby Welch making his first appearance in the bigs). For fifteen outs I was bored to tears. And then, at the bottom of the third, Davey Lopes began to rattle Twitchell but good in his repeated attempts to steal second. For over five minutes it was a tug of wills, each one defying the other to make a move–and I was absolutely mesmerized. So much was going on, and with so few moving parts involved, I began to see the entire contest in terms of the thousands of tiny decisions we’re required to make every day of our lives, and the risks that are inherent in each one of them. It wasn’t so much an epiphany as it was a permanent shift in the two hemispheres of my brain.

Irrevocably hooked on something brand new and indefinable, I sneaked into the ballpark on my own the following Thursday afternoon to watch Joe Niekro and his Astros squeak by Doug Rau, 4-3–and I knew before it was over that I was never going to be the same again. In fact, I absorbed the 150-year history of the game so voraciously that, by late September, people were asking for my opinion before they placed their bets in playoff and World Series pools. No metaphor invokes the human comedy better than baseball does. In fact, far from being merely a game, it’s an indicator that lets us know what’s just around the corner in our own lives. The 1919 Chicago Black Sox and the resulting collapse of baseball’s prestige and accountability presaged the break-all-the-rules 1920s and the resulting stock market crash of ’29. Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey anticipated Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus system by eight years; and the 1977 Yankees warned us about the corporate greed that’s since homogenized every American city into the same generic mall, bleached sports of its unique personality (“U.S. Cellular Field”, my ass), and sparked the globalization that’s gotten us into real trouble overseas. Baseball reflects our culture and our society the same way a rearview mirror lets you know what’s sneaking up behind you. What we haven’t learned how to do yet is change lanes before it’s too late.

TBS – Another almost-character in your books is the theatre. How did you become so enamored with the stage? Did meeting Lucile Ball have anything to do with it? What is your favorite play?

SK – My mother brought me up on original cast recordings, so I already knew the drill by the time I was 8. I also spent all of my high school weekends hanging out on Broadway, seeing musicals, and going backstage afterwards to meet the stars. This was pretty easy to maneuver: I had a form letter that I adapted for each musical/star. “Dear _______: I am a ___-year-old boy, and I have been waiting for months to see “[name of show].” Then I’d go on to add either that I was planning on going into the theatre when I grew up (which was true) or that I was a reporter for the school paper (which wasn’t), and that I’d love to come backstage after the show for (a) some advice; or (b) an interview. Excepting only Ethel Merman, Pearl Bailey, and Lauren Bacall (who sent me an autographed photo as a consolation prize), it never failed. I must have met every musical comedy star who played Broadway between 1966 and 1970.

(Lucy was a lucky accident–I didn’t even plan that one. I was at the New York World’s Fair when I was 12 on what happened to have been designated “Lucy Day” at the Fair. She made appearances all over the fairgrounds throughout the day, and I got to shake her hand at the start of the parade that kicked off the entire event. All I remember was being amazed that in real life she was in color and not in black and white.)

And my all-time favorite musical is Gypsy. Nothing else comes close.

TBS – Boston, according to you, is the only city in the world. In the unlikely event that Boston suddenly disappears, what would you consider the next best city?

SK – Brooklyn, New York.

TBS – And we can’t leave without asking, what projects are you working on now? Can we expect another book anytime soon?

SK – “Soon” is relative. It only takes me four months two write these things, then at least a year to sell them, and at least a year and a half before they’re published. But yes–there’s a new novel in the works.

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I don’t know about you, but I’m really excited about the new novel in the works!

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s giveaway and check out the rest of Steve Kluger week:
Monday – Review of My Most Excellent Year
Tuesday – Review of Almost Like Being in Love
Wednesday – Review of Last Days of Summer
Thursday – Interview with Steve Kluger
Friday – Steve Kluger Giveaway

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Tagged as: Interviews