All About THE PATH OF NAMES: Behind the Book, Q&A, & Giveaway!

Because I have the last name "Klein" and I live in New York City, a lot of people I meet here assume I'm Jewish -- an assumption that I'm fine with, even as I called myself the "imprint shiksa" for my first few years at Arthur A. Levine Books. So while it's entirely possible that Ari Goelman's agent sent me the manuscript for The Path of Names because she thought I might have a religious connection to the material, I fell in love with it for my own reasons:

• Some of the realest kid characters I've ever read in a novel, with dialogue that exactly captures the way kids can switch from snarkiness to sensitivity in a turn.
• With that, a terrific sense of humor and jokes that made me laugh out loud more than once.
• A 12-year-old heroine -- Dahlia Sherman -- who loves performance magic and math more than popularity and fashion, and who holds herself a little apart from her peers in part because of that lack of shared interests, and in part because she fears their rejection. (This was probably my real point of identification with the book, I do confess it.)
• A totally original combination of elements:  A contemporary Jewish summer camp story set in Pennsylvania and starring Dahlia, crossed with a story about a yeshiva student named David in the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1930s, both shot through with fantasy and mystery.
• This completely lives up to the definition of "new" I offered a couple weeks ago. 
• A terrific title. 
• A kind of magic I had never seen before in a fantasy novel -- and when you've read as many fantasy novels as I have, that's saying something. 

The challenge such books face in the publishing industry is that they'll often be regarded as "only for Jewish readers" -- just as books about girls are only for girls, or books about gay kids as only for gay kids, or books about Latinos are only for Latinos. If you aren't yourself Jewish, then you should read it and help us explode those stereotypes; and if you are Jewish -- and especially if you went to a Jewish camp as Ari Goelman did -- then you'll find even more to recognize and enjoy in the book. It is certainly the only book I've edited ever to be written up in The Times of Israel, as "A Jewish Harriet Potter." And it's also received a starred review from Booklist.

I'm delighted to welcome Ari Goelman to my blog for a Q&A.

What novels were the biggest influence on you when you were a young reader (ages 8-18)? As a middle-grade reader I loved the Susan Cooper ‘The Dark is Rising’ series, especially the novel The Dark Os Rising. I also loved the book The Silver Crown, and (as I got older) pretty much any high fantasy I could get my hands on, starting with The Lord of the Rings trilogy and ending with ... whatever the latest high fantasy was. As a slightly older teen reader I discovered Steven Brust and Roger Zelazny – especially loving Brust’s To Reign In Hell and Zelazny’s Lord of Light. Which, now that I think about it, were both pretty centrally concerned with magic and religion, albeit in a totally different way than The Path of Names.

There are so many interesting ideas packed into this book -- summer camp, Kabbala, magic (real-world and fantasy), mazes, Lower East Side history. . . . Where did it start for you? How did these other elements develop in it? I think it started with a summer camp story, and evolved from there. Once I decided to set the story in a Jewish summer camp, I thought, “Hmm. Jewish summer camp – Jewish magic. That seems to make sense.”

Then, once I started thinking about Jewish magic, that naturally led to Kabbala and the rest. I’ve always been interested in the somewhat forgotten elements of Jewish folklore. I was raised as a conservative Jew where the party line was, ‘We don’t believe in magic. Or the afterlife. Or demons. Or witches...’ I was a young adult before I started to come across references to all the Jewish superstitions that saturated the Jewish world for centuries before the Enlightenment.

Described in that way, it might make me seem a little smarter than I am. Here is the way it actually worked: I’d be in synagogue for a cousin’s bar mitzvah or such, and there’d be a mention of an anecdote in the Talmud about a rabbi hurling lightning at another rabbi. The lesson would supposedly be something about tolerance or arrogance. But I would sit there thinking, ‘A rabbi hurling lightning? That is so cool! I would love to read a fantasy story about that.’

As far as the parts set in the Lower East Side, my grandfather grew up in the 1930s Lower East Side, and I always loved the stories that he and my great uncles would tell about their boyhoods in the tenements. When I was older I discovered that he had visited the spot in rural Pennsylvania which ultimately became my summer camp some fifty years before I was a camper there. I loved the thought of somehow combining those two milieus.

The fantasy magic in the book is based in what I understand to be a very esoteric Jewish religious practice – the Kabbala – but the book isn’t religious at all. Dahlia and the other kids spend very little time contemplating God. You also have a provocative epigraph where you quote Bernie Cloud:  “Religion is just magic, but with more words.” How do your own relationships with religion and magic emerge in The Path of Names? I think I very much share the ambivalence towards Judaism (and organized religion in general) that is evidenced in The Path of Names. It was fun to write a story where all the Jewish magic works. The world would be so much simpler if you could verify religious belief systems with some sort of physical manifestation ... say, calling down lightning on your enemies. Religion aside, I find magic and the supernatural creeps into most everything I write. I’m not totally sure why this is. Like I mentioned before, I’ve always been an avid reader of fantasy literature. Maybe it comes from my general interest in ideas of power and resistance, especially when they’re operating in ways that are secret, or at least hard to see. I have this sense (which I think is pretty broadly shared in contemporary society) that power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few in ways that are hard for the rest of us to see, let alone to resist. Also -- let’s face it -- magic is fun. It would be fun to be a thirteen-year-old with the power to change things, even if the odds seemed stacked against you.  

What is your favorite part of the writing process (planning, drafting, revising, etc.) and why? Oh geez. That’s a hard one. On the one hand, writing the first draft is definitely the most difficult part for me. You’re staring at the blank page, and you have so far to go before it’s done, and it probably won’t be any good anyway, and shouldn’t you work on a new blog post, or maybe go start on dinner or something? Contrast that to revising, where you have a manuscript and you’re reading it and making it better. On some level, I’m scared of the blank page in a way that I’m not scared of revising. Now here’s the complicated part – difficult as it is for me, the mingled feeling of fear and distaste ... and excitement when I write that first draft is the reason I write. That feeling of creating something new is the best part. If I go a few days without writing something new, I start worrying that I’m never going to write anything again. I don’t like that feeling. 

A couple of reviews have praised the book for having the main character, Dahlia, be a smart girl who loves math. Did you envision the protagonist of the book as a girl from the beginning, or was that a deliberate choice later in the process? What challenges did you face, if any, in writing across gender, and how did you overcome them? I always saw the protagonist as a girl. When I wrote the short story that eventually grew into The Path of Names, I had this very clear memory of a girl at my summer camp complaining about how another girl wasn’t friends with her any more. I ended up making Dahlia far more independent than that girl, but there was never any question that the main character would be female. The challenges that I faced had to do with uniquely female things – for instance, how much would a thirteen-year-old girl notice the curviness or the lack of curviness of her peers? Being married to a former thirteen-year-old girl who is happy to answer these kinds of questions was invaluable in overcoming this obstacle.
 

You have a five-year-old and a set of very young twins at home. Plus you teach. How do you work in any writing time? Do you have a set schedule or process? The short answer is: it’s hard. Not just to work in writing time, but to make the most of the writing time I have, given the exhaustion of being a working parent with three small children. More often than not, one or more of our beautiful little people is sick or getting a tooth or just generally dissatisfied with their sleeping arrangements and would like to express their displeasure repeatedly at 1:00 a.m. 1:30 a.m., 2:30 a.m. and so on. I’ve discovered that I can do a pretty good job at some tasks when I’m tired, but writing a novel is not one of them. There’s too much to hold in your head, and too much concentration required. Having said all that, I do try to write to a set schedule, as I think the alternative is a ‘no writing’ schedule. I am still making progress in my ongoing writing projects, just not nearly as fast as I would like. 

What are you reading now?  I just finished reading Steven King’s The Wind at the Keyhole which I thought was great, especially the two stories-within-a-story. I have just started Seer of Shadows by Avi, but I’m still too early into it to have formed an opinion. I’m also reading Harry Potter to my five-year-old (who would probably like me to point out that she’s almost six), and I’m enjoying it through her eyes all over again. 

Please visit Ari's website.

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GIVEAWAY! Though The Path of Names is in stores now (hint hint hint & hint), you can win one of my three remaining copies of an ARC of the book by leaving a comment below with any of the following:  one thing that you've never seen in a fantasy before and you'd like to; your own provocative epigraph (or epitaph, if you prefer); or the identity that people mistake you for based on your name, if applicable.

See This: "Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective"

The Guggenheim Museum in New York right now has an extraordinary exhibit called "Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective." Ms. Dijkstra is a Dutch photographer who takes large-format pictures of human beings at moments of change and transition, and their humanity is so much on display, so rich and beautiful and specific and true, that these single images feel like entire character studies. She specializes in pictures of children and teenagers, like this one above. . . . The instability of the way this boy is standing, his slightness and off-centeredness; the vulnerability established by his near-nakedness and his size vs. the endless sea behind him; his watchful gaze, not fully trusting or warming to the photographer -- and rightly, as she's caught so much of him; and the promise of the man inside him, learning how to look strong, how much of himself he should give away:  I find this image (and nearly every other picture in the show) both wonderful and heartbreaking in its ability to see and capture all of that. I want to read novels about all of her people.

The show included five video installations that likewise focus on individuals, in locations ranging from a dance club to an art museum, against simple backgrounds, so their actions and words speak for themselves. This one, for instance, "Ruth Drawing Picasso," was nearly six minutes of a single shot of a girl making her own sketch of a Picasso painting (this visitor-shot excerpt is just 42 seconds):

And as boring as that may sound, the film kept me fascinated for all six minutes, simply because it felt so wonderfully rare and fresh to do nothing but look at another human being for a sustained period of time, as Ms. Dijkstra does. More than that, Ruth doesn't seem self-conscious about being watched, as many of the kids in the dance-club videos do (and as I always do on camera); she sighs, draws a line, scratches it out, gropes for a pencil, looks around at her friends, looks up at the painting and down at her paper again, draws another line. . . . It's such an honest portrait of the creative process, and of a human being in general, that I felt my heart warm toward Ruth for all of her particularities, including those I recognized in myself. Thus the exhibition did what the best art (to me) always does:  It made me love the world more, and the people in it, in all of our vulnerable, pained, ephemeral glory, and made me feel thankful we're all here together -- with Ms. Dijkstra and her camera to capture us.

At the Guggenheim, Fifth Avenue and 89th St., through October 8.

All-Blogging August (Plus Ask Me Anything)

This year has been a whirlwind where I've flown somewhere every single month, edited a bunch of books, ran a half-marathon, spoke at five writing conferences, attended three weddings, and started planning my own. It's been a lot of fun, but my dear and beloved blog has definitely been a casualty of this busyness, as I've barely been able to keep up with one post a month, much less the one a week I aim for. And that "dear and beloved" isn't sarcasm; I subscribe to E. M. Forster's doctrine that "I know what I think when I see what I say," and I've missed my opportunity to think out loud here.

But I am going to be home in New York for all of August! So I'm trying something slightly crazy for me:  posting every single day of the month. I want to catch up on writing about some great new books that came out this year, explain the specification experiment from June, talk about repetitions, do some Quote Files, recipes, and poetry, fulminate, ruminate, extrapolate. If you have any questions you'd like to see me answer about writing or publishing (or heck, anything else), please leave them in the comments or send them along via e-mail to chavela_que at yahoo dot com. . . . I can't promise I'll respond to everything, but I appreciate the prompts. 

Here is the best thing I saw today, just outside my building on my way to work:

A young man rides his bike on the sidewalk toward me and an older lady.
Older Lady: You should NOT ride your BIKE on the SIDEWALK! You're supposed to be on the STREET! Our traffic laws give you your own lanes -- on the STREET! 
Young Man, as he rides by: Okay, Officer!
Older Lady:  I'm not an officer, I'm a concerned citizen! SCOFFLAW!

In honor of this awesome lady with the admirable vocabulary, I challenge you to use "scofflaw" in a sentence.

A Walk Up Greene Street, with a Little SoHo History and Class Warfare Thrown In

Second in a series on the fascinations of wandering New York.

We had another lovely day here in New York on Sunday, so I decided to go back to Occupy Wall Street and donate some apples -- redistribution of income at work! I arrived right at lunchtime, and was impressed by the pasta and salad the protesters were serving to anyone who wanted a bite. It was just as nice a meal as those offered by the soup kitchen that my church runs (Sundays at 2 p.m. in the church basement, should you need a bite), and all prepared without a real kitchen, as far as I could tell. I also saw the library, full of books on all subjects for all ages:

I missed seeing Screwy Decimal, but she has a picture of the children's library sign specifically. 

A block north stands the Freedom Tower, also known as One World Trade Center. It will be the tallest building in the United States when it's completed, at 1,776 feet. I don't feel particularly enthusiastic about this, nor do most New Yorkers that I know (who are not Larry Silverstein). But Mr. Silverstein must needs be satisfied, and so up it goes:

 

From there I walked north to SoHo. "SoHo" is an abbreviation for "South of Houston Street" (the street is pronounced "How-ston," not "Hew-ston," for anyone who wishes to sound like a local), and roughly covers the area between Houston Street to the north, the Bowery to the east, Canal Street to the south, and the Avenue of the Americas to the west. It has been through many, many iterations as a neighborhood, beginning in the Victorian era, when most of its famous cast-iron buildings were constructed:

 

As manufacturing moved out throughout the twentieth century, artists moved in, spreading south from Greenwich Village and taking over the light-filled lofts for studio space and cooperatives (that link is worth reading if you're interested in nutty artists or New York history):

  

Where artists go, galleries open; where galleries open, rich people come; and where rich people come, luxury shops follow. And as a result, forty years after Fluxhouse closed, Soho is one of the best neighborhoods in New York to shop for European clothes and modern furniture design -- if you're in the 1%, as the good stuff doesn't come cheap. I loved these coffee-cup sculptures, each one bigger than my head, at Adriani & Rossi (a mere $250 each):

  

Across the street was a doubled reminder of the neighborhood's origins:  a sign over the receiving door of the long-gone Baker Brush Company, presumably from when brushes were manufactured in SoHo; and a piece of fascinating street art over it -- a totem-like collage face: 

 

At the corner at 89 Grand Street stood Ingo Maurer, a lovely lighting design store. Wouldn't it be fun to have this exploding-dishes chandelier over your table at a dinner party? It would make your guests feel like anything could happen.

 

More street art on the next block:

 

And in an alcove in front of an empty storefront:  a carefully arranged pile of plastic and some sheets, meaning that this is probably someone's bed.

That someone sleeps on the sidewalk on the same street as a $250 coffee cup sculpture, or this Gaga-worthy fur coat at Isabel Marant, is the same kind of injustice that has led the Occupy Wall Street protests to exist.

 

At the same time, I confess I love the goofiness of this coat (and the chandelier, and the coffee cups) -- not as something I'd wear or need to own myself, but as a beautiful thing that gives delight. So I don't really want all these things to go away. . . . Only for that sleeper on the sidewalk, and everyone, to have proper housing, and a job, and regular meals, and medical care, before a woman actually spends over a thousand dollars on a coat that makes her resemble a yak.

How to solve this problem equitably, I do not know.

So. More haunting graffiti, on the base of a lamppost:

 

And just like Crosby Street, Greene Street is paved mostly in brick:

Right across the street from Isabel Marant is one of my favorite places to window shop:  SICIS Next Art, an Italian furniture maker that is frankly, joyously crazy -- the interior-design equivalent of Agatha Ruiz de la Prada.

 

My favorite thing I've ever seen there was a mosaic bathtub shaped like a high heel, where the bather sat in the toe and water poured down the arch.

At 107 Greene is another favorite place to browse -- the Taschen bookstore. Taschen makes gloriously nutso, beautiful, and huge art books. (Also art-porn collections, should that be your thing.) I go there to marvel at the specs of their books -- the size of the bindings, the quality of the paper, how no expense is spared in foil or glossiness or embossing. The shop functions almost like a book museum, as you can see:

Magda Sayeg likes to wrap things in knitting. You can see her work right now outside the Apple Store (currently undergoing renovation) at the corner of Prince & Greene. 

There's also a knitted bicycle at the base of Greene Street, outside the ACNE clothing store. (Yes, that's the brand's real name; it stands for Ambition to Create Novel Expression, and it's a Swedish line. Presumably they didn't know what it meant in English.)

If you look up from the tricycle, you can see another wonderful piece of art, the marvelous trompe-l'oeil ironwork at 112 Prince Street:

And here's the view back down Greene St. from Houston -- which you all know how to pronounce now, yes? Yes.

I really enjoyed doing this -- the walk, the pictures, the sheer pleasure of looking for and at beautiful and interesting things, all on a sunny, crisp autumn afternoon. Thank you for sharing my stroll!

A Visit to Occupy Wall Street (Plus a Small Ramble on Economics)

We had crazy beautiful weather in New York today, so I went into Manhattan and visited Occupy Wall Street, the protest/live-in at Zuccotti Park (at the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street). It seems to be a combination of an extremely uncomfortable but good-humored slumber party and a mass Speakers' Corner for all kinds of liberal causes, including:

• Wall Street reform
• Corporate reform
• Electoral reform
• Constitutional reform
• Ending the Federal Reserve
• Globalization (the link is about Steve Jobs, but it ties in)
• Stopping fracking in upstate New York
• Bringing an end to nuclear power
• Freeing Leonard Peltier
• The environmental movement in general
• Marxism (with a table handing out The Internationalist)
• Anarchism 
• Fox News (a sign:  "Fox News:  I Don't Care About You Either")
• Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.

I saw a man holding a sign that said "I'm 48 and this is my first protest," and many, many young people who could probably say the same. But the overall mood was cheerful, not angry or violent. A group sang "We Shall Not Be Moved." A drum circle inspired dancing. People shared their cookies, literally. And I came away really admiring the people who are there, bearing witness to their causes and their belief that what they're doing makes a difference. It reminded me most of the Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington at more or less this time last fall -- that same sense of humor and even pleasure among the protesters, enjoying a beautiful day and the presence of like-minded people; but also with an underlying edge, not yet at but perhaps approaching desperation, in everyone's sense that the systems are broken, in the deep-seeded desire for change. . . .

The best witness to this need is perhaps the Tumblr associated with the protests, We Are the 99 Percent. If you have any measure of human sympathy in your soul, the stories there will hurt your heart -- and you perhaps have one of your own to add.

Naomi Klein gave this speech at the protests yesterday. It is powerful, and you should read it.

At the same time, I fear the movement's insistence on remaining leaderless and specific-demandless will end up undermining it in a media world that demands stories, meaning characters and plots. (Which may also just be human nature.) Nicholas Kristof's excellent column last week spelled out what the Occupy Wall Streeters should be asking for.

I work for a corporation. I believe in capitalism, because it seems like the best method yet devised to channel human beings' inherent self-interest into an economic system, and because all the communist experiments we've seen up to this point in history seem to have run aground on that self-interest, and then often crashed right over the rocks into repression and horror. I also believe in strong government regulation of capitalism and corporations; a social safety net; single-payer health care; public education; and paying taxes to support all of these programs. And globalization lets me have cheap electronics, clothes, shoes, and mangoes, and I love mangoes.

But I -- we -- have to look at the consequences of all of these things; and we also have to remember that change begins with our own desires, and to regulate those desires, as little as we like to do so. I often think about this quotation from Confucius, which appeared in a July Quote File on government:

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.

If we could all want only what we need, and not more; if we could recognize that we shouldn't have mangoes, honestly, because getting them here is pretty terrible for the environment; if corporations across the board could agree that demonstrating growth every quarter isn't the most important thing, and instead value being a good corporate citizen and supporter of its workers; if there were some way to make American manufacturing costs the same as Chinese ones, without sacrificing environmental regulations or worker rights; if I spent less time on Twitter or playing Scrabble, or even "virtuous" activities like reading or writing, and more time volunteering or working for social change; if I could be willing to do what's best for all (environmentally, economically, altruistically) instead of what's just best for me at any moment . . . In a lot of ways, if we could not be America, and I could not be an American, with our historic, almost inborn emphasis on individual liberty and free will -- our genius and our curse.

It's easy to blame the 1%, and God knows they deserve a lot of the blame for the current economic mess and should be called to account. Things can and should be more fair. But 100% of us are responsible for how we spend our money and our time. I admire the protesters on Wall Street for providing a model that runs so idealistically against the grain of our present American life, and I hope their protests continue. Because however debased our president's carrying-out of his ideals may be at the moment, these words remain true:  We are the change we have been waiting for.

A Walk Up Crosby Street

When it comes to subways in New York, I've always been an orange line commuter: the F for the eight years I lived in Park Slope, and the B for the last 2.75 years in Prospect Heights. But this summer, I've discovered the pleasures of the big yellow Q train from Brooklyn to Manhattan. First I get to cross the Manhattan Bridge on the southern tracks, allowing a much better view of the Brooklyn Bridge:


(image stolen from this nice blog here, as I failed to take such a picture this morning)

And then, after I get off at Canal Street, the first stop in Manhattan, I get to walk up Crosby Street, one block over from Broadway, and I never fail to see something interesting. For instance:

The window of De Vera Objects at 1 Crosby, featuring a small statue wearing a gorgeous dress made out of paper:


Across the street, above Jil Sander, some watchful mannequins:


A glimpse into the garden and windows of Imperial Number Nine.

Just outside the Vespa shop at 13 Crosby, provoking dreams of Roman Holidays:


The Saturdays NYC Surf Shop and Espresso Bar (not kidding) at number 31:

A view of the brick street itself, many times patched, which makes me think about all the years and vehicles and changes those bricks have seen:


At the corner of Broome and Crosby, the multilevel parking platforms that I never fail to find fascinating, especially if I’m lucky enough to be there when they’re taking a car down; not to mention a very New York skyscraper, billboard, and water tower:


Some wonderful artistic graffiti by New Yorkers who walk at night:


The window at All Saints, a UK clothing chain at 512 Broadway, filled with Singer sewing machines:


In the lobby of the very posh Crosby Street Hotel, a giant head made of joined letters (which is what my head feels like some days). They do a glorious afternoon tea here, though I find it a little too posh and formal to be cozy.

And then I turn left at the corner of Prince St. and walk over to Broadway and go to work, inspired by the diversity and energy of the city and all its beautiful things.