Visit Book Soup at the LA Times Festival of Books!

Book Soup will be haunting Booth 88 at the LA Times Festival of Books at USC this weekend (Saturday, April 18, 10am - 6pm & Sunday, April 19, 10am - 5pm)! We'll be selling a selection of Penguin books, books about LA, tshirts, and other fabulous goodies, so be sure to stop by!

For more information, please visit: http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

On Fiction & Feminism with Author Elisa Albert

Elisa Albert [Photo: Elisa Albert]

1) Your book is fiction, but like your protagonist Ari you are also a mother in real life. How did your own experience of pregnancy/childbirth/motherhood shape the novel?

It plunged me into a world of which I'd previously had no concept, and opened my eyes. I needed an outlet for processing what I saw and felt and observed around me. Ari became my vehicle for thinking it through. It was like going to live in a foreign country. 

2) Ari is constantly struggling to incorporate her motherhood into her feminist politics. I think this belief has developed - even among feminists themselves - that birth and feminism are mutually exclusive, like you can't be a mother and also be a feminist. What do you think about that?

Feminism and motherhood have long been push/pull. There's a kind of stale understanding of both feminism and motherhood underlying that. As the poet/doula Carrie Murphy says: there's not enough birth in feminism and not enough feminism in birth. The two are in fact spectacularly intertwined, and can inform each other in fascinating ways. I recommend Adrienne Rich's "Of Woman Born" as an excellent place to start.

3) I'm sure you've heard the complaint that Ari is "too unlikeable" of a protagonist. I find this complaint interesting because - while it's true that there are some harsh elements of Ari's personality - I wouldn't say she goes as far as, say, a Bukowski or Henry Miller character, who are often glorified because they are so appalling. Do you think there's a double standard at play here?

A wild double standard, indeed. Regardless, debating the "likability" of fictional characters is a joke at this point. Bukowski and Miller and Nabokov and Roth write fucked up characters well, that's why we adore them. The writing is where it's at. What's actually unlikeable is turgid trite hesitant fearful prose, I'd venture. Written with wit and verve and lust and brains and tits and soul and heart, we can love absolutely anyone, and peek into the darkest reaches of human nature. That's what's awesome about literature. Anyway, usually the folks who cry "unlikeable" are those who just can't tolerate human frailty reflected back at themselves. 

4) Female friendships are a complex subject. Again, I think there's an incorrect assumption that all women naturally band together and are nurturing and loving to each other all of the time. There's also the opposite viewpoint - that women are judgmental, jealous, and spiteful when they're together. Where does Ari's and Mina's friendship land in all of this?

Ari and Mina have a rare and precious friendship that is absent competitiveness, insecurity, and passive-aggressive bullshit. It sucks that their kind of friendship is relatively rare, but it's also great, because it's so special. It's one of the first of its kind for Ari, so it's really vital and healing for her. 

5) I think there's been a recent movement by female artists to represent friendships between women in a more conscious and real way, like you do in your novel. Lena Dunham's "Girls" and Illana Glazer's and Abbi Jacobson's "Broad City" are two TV shows that come to mind. Can you suggest any other examples? 

I liked Hilary Mantel's "An Experiment in Love." Mary Gaitskill is good. "How Should a Person Be?" by Sheila Heti was good. Sex and the City? Laverne and Shirley? The Golden Girls? Representations of female friendship are often subplot, but they're very much there if you pay close attention. 

Elisa Albert will sign and discuss After Birth on Thursday, March 5 at 7pm. 

[Photo: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]

http://www.booksoup.com/elisa-albert-2015-revised

5 Questions with Paul Fischer

    Author Paul Fischer [Photo: Paul Fischer]   

1) For those of us who aren't familiar with Choi Eun-Hee and Shin Sang-Ok, can you give us the bite-sized version of what your book, A Kim-Jong-Il Production, is about?

Shin Sang-Ok was the biggest filmmaker, and Choi Eun-Hee the most famous actress, in 1970s South Korea. They had been married, had divorced, had had a very dramatic Richard Burton-and-Elizabeth Taylor kind of life when, in 1978, they were both kidnapped by Kim Jong-Il, who wanted them to make propaganda films for North Korea.

2) What initially interested you in this story?

Before I knew all the details I was just fascinated by the idea of the Faustian pact, of an artist given unlimited resources on the condition that their work support a tyrannical regime. When I looked into it more thoroughly, I became obsessed with the setting, the events, the people involved -- and what the story reveals about North Korea today. 

3) Your research took you to Pyongyang, a city few outsiders get a chance to visit. What was that like?

It's very surreal. Pyongyang is a city most North Koreans aren't allowed to enter: it's reserved for the elite but really built as a showpiece for foreigners. It's very clean, very quiet. There are very few cars, no businesses, no street names or numbers, no old people, no disabled people, no animals, no chaos. Loudspeakers play revolutionary songs all the time, everyone wears the exact same clothes. It feels very fake. It's as much of a real city as Disneyworld's Magic Kingdom is really a kingdom.

4) It's interesting that A Kim-Jong-Il Production was published shortly after the controversial release of the film The Interview. Was that planned? And are you at all concerned about retaliation from North Korea as a result of your book? 

No, it was a complete accident, and I think we had conflicting feeling about it -- whether it would make people interested in that whole world or whether it would create a certain confusion and fatigue by the time the book came out. Luckily it seems to have been the former.

As for retaliation, no, not really. The book portrays them as absurd but mostly it's about their dangerous, dark side -- which they're usually not unhappy to see talked about. It's being made fun of they have a problem with, really. When it comes to books they tend to just try and smear any Koreans involved, as in the case of Escape From Camp 14, for instance, where they didn't go after Blaine Harden but instead put a lot of effort into trying to discredit his subject. They've already tried to smear Shin and Choi, with little success. 

5) Any plans to turn your book into a film?

I'm having a few meetings while in LA! I think it's unlikely -- it would be an expensive film, with three Asian leads, and the possible threat of another Sony hack for whoever makes it -- but the possibilities are exciting, at least on paper. 

[Photo: Macmillian]

Paul Fischer will sign and discuss A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Director's Rise to Power on Wednesday, February 18 at 7pm. 

http://booksoup.com/paul-fischer-2015