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American International School 47 Salmannsdorferstrasse 1190 Vienna, Austria
1. Which out of all the ordinary things makes you smile and does it become the most magical thing at this very moment?
When life smiles at you, or winks. A dog in front of you on the street leaps into the air for sheer joy. A man who’s had too much to drink starts singing suddenly and he’s got a damned good voice. A beautiful woman looks at you a moment too long when you pass each other on the street. As the architect Le Corbusier said, God is in the details. When those details are apparent, it makes me smile.
2. What kind of influence does death, a motif so often present in your novels, have on your personal life?
Very little, although in recent times two people I cared for very much died in the same week. I think about it when I am writing because I think death and human love are the only two topics worth telling stories about. The rest is trimming for the Christmas tree. The two big things that affect us all are the things we should spend at least some time thinking about and not ignore simply because they are disturbing or depressing. But in my every day, I don’t spend too much time dwelling over it. I’d rather walk the dog.
3. Writing is sometimes hard to stop. How do you know the right moment you have achieved the final form of the book?
Usually a book tells me when it is finished, not the other way around. Almost every time I have come to what I think is the end of a book, it tells me no, twenty more pages. Or it says you don’t need those extra twenty pages because it is finished now. Always the story is very insistent about its conclusion, and I am not being humorous now—when it says jump, I jump.
4. I associate your books with a line from a poem, which can be paraphrased as “everybody is alone in this earth, nailed with sunbeams”. We are solitary, what is your solitude like?
A friend of mine was approached on the street the other day by a Hare Krishna believer. But before the H.K. could begin his speech, my friend said loudly to him, “I’m lost, but I’m loving it!” The Hare Krishna guy didn’t know what to say and walked away. I like solitude, I like being by myself most of the time. Not because I’m such an interesting person, but because there are a lot of things to do and to think about in solitude which when you’re with others, you push away for various reasons. So I guess I could paraphrase my friend’s line by saying “I’m alone most of the time but I’m loving it!”
5. What does Jonathan Carroll as a person, not writer, believe?
God, fairness, forgiveness (tough to do, but I believe in it), hard work, women, dogs, teaching children well can change their lives for the better.
In one of the interviews you said that you would give one year of your life to be a woman for a day. Why would you do it and what is the most fascinating thing about women?
I could try to answer that question intelligently, but I’ll hand the stage over to the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom who wrote the following passage in one of my favorite novels, RITUALS: “Women, all women, were a means to come close to, to come within the orbit of, the secret of which they and not the men were guardians. Through men…you learn how the world is. Through women you learn what it is.”
As far as I am concerned, there is your answer said by a master.
6. What was the weirdest coincidence you’ve ever experienced and has it influenced your life in any way?
After I finished writing WHITE APPLES, I was surfing the Internet one day and suddenly saw a picture of Isabelle Neukor, one of the protagonists in my story.
Exactly the same woman I had envisioned when I wrote about her. Exactly. Even more spookily, the real woman’s name was Isabella. It gave me a chill all the way into my soul. But it was quite wonderful too for a lot of reasons.7. Apparently you only read your first book when you were 15?
12. I hated reading because I was a “tough guy” and tough guys don’t read. But I was going out on a date with the gorgeous Wendy Nelson, who was 13 and blond as any dream girl can be. I wanted to take her miniature golfing but had no money. My brother said I’ll give you a dollar if you read Steinbeck’s OF MICE AND MEN. I said okay and read it in an afternoon. When I finished, my ever-skeptical brother tested me on it but I passed. He gave me the dollar and asked what I thought of the book. I said “Terrific!” He asked if I wanted to read another. I said no.
8. Apparently you talk to animals?
Yes, I always talk to my dogs and the occasional crow when it’s in the neighbourhood because I’m sure they understand. They may not like people very much, but they understand. My dogs on the other hand are almost always dumb so you have to be patient with them, but eventually they get the point.
9. Have you ever been inspired to write by a newspaper photograph or headline?
No, the news usually either disgusts or amazes me at the way human beings behave towards each other. I can only watch it with a finger hovering over the button to turn the television off, or with my mouth dropped open in dismay at what we have managed to do to ourselves today. The only time a photo has inspired my writing was I once saw a turn of the century photo of a circus midway in Germany. The title of the picture was “Outside the Dog Museum.” At once I knew I wanted to steal that some day and use it for a book title. And I did.
10. Do you think that a place like Galen from The Land of Laughs could really exist?
The actual town of Galen was a combination of two towns in rural Missouri that I lived between for a year in the early 1970’s. They were dry dull places where you would drive through without looking or blinking an eye. When I wrote that book, I thought a town like that would be the perfect place for a soul like Marshall France to live, performing big magic right under the eyes of an indifferent world.
11. If you had the chance to live one day from you life again, which day would it be?
There are a lot of them. I’ve been blessed to have had a very good life. And I am aware of that every day that I live.
12. If you could play one of your characters in a film adaptation of your book, who would it be and why?
People who know me well say that I am very much like the character of McCabe in THE WOODEN SEA. I know that writing that book was relatively easy because whenever McCabe spoke, I spoke through him. So it would probably be easiest to play Frannie in a film because I would just be my obnoxious, wiseguy self and it wouldn’t be much of a stretch.
13. Have you ever been to a fun fair?
No, and I probably never will.
14. When I come to Vienna will you accept my invitation for coffee and croissant at 9 a.m.?
If you are beautiful and smart and love my books, absolutely.
15. Is there any question journalists have never asked you but you’d really like to answer?
What breaks your heart?
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