21 April 2015

Author Q&A Session #41: With Jonathan Papernick



Good morning Folks,
Today we are interviewing the author, Jonathan Papernick for his short stories and for his debut novel, The Book of Stone. Read along the review to know more about this amazing author.

Read the review of The Book of Stone






Me: Hello and welcome to my blog, Jonathan. Congratulations on your new novel, The Book of Stone. Can you please share with us the story behind, The Book of Stone?

Jonathan: I started writing The Book of Stone at the end of the summer of 2000. The novel has gone through many incarnations since then and many struggles and there were years when I felt that this story would never come together. After my first book of short stories came out which was set in Jerusalem and deals with religious extremists, I felt that I still had more to work out and I wanted to deal with it in America. The process of writing a novel is a long and frustrating one, based on hard work and faith and in the end everything will somehow fall into place.
 
Me: What was your source of inspiration for The Book of Stone?


Jonathan: That’s a good question. I don’t really know what inspired me specifically to write this story, but I do know that my father was trying to become a judge in Canada at the time and was not having any luck, and I think there was a part of me that wanted to show him that not all judges were good people, that in fact a judge could be a terrible, awful person. I guess that was the genesis of the character Walter Stone, and the novel pretty much flowed out of that and the not-yet-gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn in which I lived at the time. I really wanted place to play an important role in this story and all he had to do was look out the window at my neighborhood.

Me: The Book of Stone features the radical and many beliefs of Jews and their behavior towards it. How did you portray Jewish beliefs so vividly in your book? Well it's a work of fiction, but is it possible to create any repercussion among Jewish society with this book?

Jonathan: I was fascinated by a lot of the radicals that I came across when I lived in Jerusalem – this was such a different point of view for me, as I grew up as a secular lapsed Reform Jew in suburban Toronto. I didn’t know that such fire and brimstone people existed within my faith so I tried to understand what it was that made them tick. I always trying to enter into my characters and know them from the inside from a psychological point of view, and I try and treat them with respect as human beings so that they have the space to come alive on the page. I do believe that this book can create some waves in the Jewish community and in society at large as the book on the whole is really about extremism in general, not just Jewish extremism. We are in an age when extremists and radicals are really using violence in a major way to promote their views, so I think my book is very timely. I hope that the book triggers some vital conversations that need to be had.




Me: Tell us one trait of Matthew, that intrigues you the most.
Jonathan: I am fascinated by Matthew’s psychological downward spiral. He’s a troubled young man, and I wanted to enter into this character and really understand what it felt like to completely lose control. He doesn’t really fit specifically into anything in the DSM, but I do think all of his psychological pieces fit together to make the perfect character to drive this tragic story.
 

Me: What did you expect your readers to get away with after reading The Book of Stone?


Jonathan: I would hope that my readers are challenged to think and ask serious questions about what it is that makes a person want to kill and destroy,  as somebody who has no real ideological connection but ultimately is able to commit horrifying acts on behalf of a violent ideology. I think this is happening with a lot of the Europeans who are joining ISIS – lost souls, looking for adventure who are ultimately used as pawns by their keepers.

Me: How will you describe your journey so far as an author? Was it always your one true dream to be an author?

Jonathan: I have wanted to be an author since I was in the second grade, since I barely knew how to write. Even through high school, I was just an average writer, but yet I always wanted to write fiction. I have always loved books, and treasured them, and always seemed to have some sort of writing project going on through my formative years. The journey has been rewarding at times, but oftentimes lonely and frustrating and terrifying. Nothing feels better however, then when I am able to really sit down and write and make a world where a character comes alive in a vivid manner. That is a powerful act of creation, and nothing beats that feeling.
 

Me: What other passions do you have apart from writing?


Jonathan: I used to think I wasn’t good at anything else aside from writing, but I teach for a living, fiction writing, and I enjoy that is much as I enjoy the act of writing itself. I used to consider the two skills intertwined, but apparently that is not true. They just naturally go hand-in-hand for me. I also love listening to music even though I have no musical talent whatsoever.
 
Me: How will you describe your normal working schedule? And how do you get away from the stress of a long day's work?


Jonathan: I work in spurts, very sporadically. I can go months and months without writing a word, and then sit down in a month and write five short stories. I am not one of those writers of feels it is necessary to write every day, because it is also important to get out in the world and a lot of germinating goes on when you are away from your computer. I do wish I did write more often, but life gets in the way and I also need to take time to read which takes a lot of time for me since I’m a pretty slow reader. I also read and grade well over a hundred student stories every year.

I like to take long walks with my headphones on to unwind and get rid of stress. Sometimes when I’m feeling up to it I go for a run, but haven’t done that lately. Exercise is the best way to kill stress.
 
Me: What's next up on your writing sleeves? Please tell us briefly about it.


Jonathan: I have about sixty-five thousand words of a novel entitled the Sunday Synagogue Softball League but haven’t looked at it in a couple of years. As soon as the semester ends, I plan on getting back to work on that. It is about a community of men on a softball team dealing with the financial collapse of their synagogue and community and all that follows and comes with that. I expect the novel to be significantly less dark and have much more humor. It will also focus probably on four or five characters rather than the single point of view of The Book of Stone.
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Jonathan's Bio:



Jonathan Papernick's first collection of short stories The Ascent of Eli Israel was published by Arcade Publishing in 2002 and received a full-page review in the New York Times and a starred review in Publishers Weekly.

His second collection of short stories There is No Other was published by Exile Editions in the spring of 2010. Author Dara Horn wrote about There is No Other, "Every single story here delivers a knock-out punch that will leave you reeling long after you've put it down -- and revising your thinking on what life and love really mean."

His work has appeared in Night Train, Exile: The Literary Quarterly, Nerve, Folio, Failbetter, The Drum, Confrontation, Blunderbuss, The Reading Room and Post Road as well as numerous anthologies.

He is currently at work on his third collection of stories Gallery of the Disappeared Men and is working secretly on a couple of novels. In 2013 he released a limited-edition mini-collection of erotic stories entitled XYXX.

His novel The Book of Stone will be published by Fig Tree Books in 2015. He is Senior Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College in Boston. 

Visit him here


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