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The story of the forces at work behind this first novel could itself be the skeleton for a fictional account of the publishing world. A former trade division chief at Houghton Mifflin (Joseph Kanon) gives up his powerful job and pounds out a manuscript in under six months. His high-powered agent (Amanda "Binky" Urban at ICM) shops it around anonymously. The dashing editor-in-chief of the brand new publishing house Broadway Books, John Sterling, who until two years ago was chief editor at Houghton Mifflin under Kanon, reads the manuscript and, in the midst of the experience, guesses that the mysterious author is his old boss. He calls up Binky, with whom he used to work at ICM, and before long the North American Rights for "Los Alamos" are bought for $500,000, and the novel is slated to be the first fiction title of the publishing house. A touch more intrigue, a dash of romance (those names!) and perhaps a historical setting and you have all the ingredients for a fine little potboiler.
Instead, Kanon has produced a sturdy and capable thriller, set in the New Mexico desert in 1945, where work on the first atomic bomb is nearing completion. He opens with standard brio -- a widow comes across a corpse, the victim of an apparent sex crime. An investigator, Michael Connolly (a nod toward the popular author?), arrives on the scene. Sex, more murder, intrigue, red herrings and national security issues ensue. The mystery is solved amid great violence -- followed, of course, by even greater violence.
Kanon's Manhattan Project setting is rendered with a good deal of authenticity -- it reads with the authority of conspicuous research -- and this allows for major historical figures to take key fictional roles. The chain-smoking Robert Oppenheimer himself, a suspect and eventual confidante of Connolly's, sets the stage when he tells the investigator, "Officially I don't exist. None of us do. You're among ghosts now." The haunting air of paranoia, of a race to reach total world destruction, of an entire city living in secret directed toward some great and terrible end, is evoked so subtly that one forgets at times that this is all background to a routine thriller where a woman's hair will "sway lazily" and a body will burn "curling up like a secret message in an ashtray."
The very end of the book, with the mystery already tidily taken care of, is also the strongest passage, as our hero stands in the New Mexico desert watching the first test explosion of the nuclear bomb. After it goes off, "He could see the faint glimmer of dawn, shy behind the mountain, its old wonder reduced to background lighting." It would be unfair to suggest that the dawn might be a metaphor for genuine writers cowering from the power of a publishing executive who knocks off a commercially viable literary commodity in a few months. After all, publishing is not nuclear power, and writing isn't murder. -- Salon
On Thursday, July 10, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Joseph Kanon, author of LOS ALAMOS.
Joseph Kanon: Glad to be here.
Joseph Kanon:
Joseph Kanon: I began as a manuscript reader for The Atlantic magazine while I was still an undergraduate. One thing led to another. Eventually, I ended up as head of the Trade Division of Houghton Mifflin.
Joseph Kanon: Only up to a point. In one sense, all writing is autobiographical, but in no way is his story similar to mine. I did empathize with Oppenheimer's bureaucratic duties, having had similar ones myself. Otherwise, the people are themselves.
Joseph Kanon: I didn't know I would like the process so much. I had imagined it to be solitary and frustrating, so it was a surprise to discover how pleasurable it could be to live in one's imagination. As for the publishing process, it's obviously different on the other side of the desk, but I was lucky in my publishers, so it's been a wonderful experience.
Joseph Kanon: Yes. I'm about halfway through my next book --- similar format historical intrigue. It's a genre that works for me.
Joseph Kanon: Yes and no. Of course, in one sense everyone is unknowable, but I found him a fascinating character, so much so that my original plan for him in the book --- one speaking scene --- changed dramatically in the writing. I realize that a lot of my fascination with the Manhattan Project itself was really a fascination with him. I don't know how close my character is to the 'real' Oppenheimer, but I would love to think that I got him at least partly right. I have mixed feelings about using real characters in fiction --- I think we have an obligation to follow the historical record as closely as we can --- the rest is up to imagination and luck.
Joseph Kanon: It's a wonderful business but very slow in the starting, so you have to stick with it, especially when all your classmates are pulling down hefty starting salaries and you seem to have no money at all. In this sense, the business hasn't changed very much, alas.
Joseph Kanon: It was surprisingly --- and, I think, uncharacteristically --- quick. The first draft took about 6 months. Then a few more months rewriting and polishing, etc. The new book is taking longer, so I suspect most of the speed with Los Alamos was because it was so subject-driven I was fascinated by the Manhattan Project and what the place itself was like.
Joseph Kanon: I wish I knew (and so does everyone else in publishing). I suspect that for at least the foreseeable future, however, paper will be very much with us. It's cheap, it's portable, it's personal, and everyone's used to it. Still, who knows?
Joseph Kanon: Not to my knowledge. One of the things that motivated my writing this story, however, was the release, in the summer of '95, of the Venona Decrypts --- these were decoded Soviet communiqués intercepted during the last years of the war. What they revealed was a Soviet attempt to penetrate the Project that was much wider than I had ever suspected. The New York Times, covering the release, claimed that as many as 200 agents may have been assigned to the Project. Now, for all we know, most of them were bag couriers in Washington. But it was a liberating moment for a writer. We don't know who all of them were --- so perhaps one Might have been at Los Alamos itself. This was important to me, because I didn't want to write a roman a clef about Klaus Fuchs and the spies whose stories we already knew.
Joseph Kanon: Oddly enough, the thing that surprised me most (and perhaps it shouldn't have) was how young everyone was. The average age at L.A. was 27. Oppenheimer himself was only in his mid-thirties at the time. It was a young man's town (and young woman's), complete with all the energy and idealism (and baby boom) one associates with the age.
Joseph Kanon: Yes. Having been an editor myself, I take editing seriously. If your editor says a line sounds off, then it IS off, at least to him, and one better look at it. And, of course, in this particular case, when historical accuracy is involved, you're grateful for a sharp editorial eye. You want things to be accurate. I asked my English editor to pay particular attention to Emma's dialogue (an English woman). She said, but it was 50 years ago, people talked differently. Well, imagine your mother talking, then, I said.
Joseph Kanon: Yes, but not specifically to do the research. I'd been to Los Alamos before, as an interested tourist, and found myself there again in the summer of '95, which is when the idea for the book came to me. The city now is completely modern --- nothing of Los Alamos 1945 remains (except for one building, now the historical museum) --- so you have to imagine it. When I was on tour for the book, I went to Santa Fe and spoke to an audience almost all of whom were from Los Alamos --- something I'd been dreading, because I was sure they were going to tell me I had the streets going in the wrong direction and such, but they were generous and very kind about the book.
Joseph Kanon: Thanks. Well, many are optioned, but few are made. If all goes without a hitch, it could be Fall 98, but between now and then are the usual million things that could go wrong. I'd love to see a film version, however, so here's hoping.
Joseph Kanon: I suppose the most difficult thing is simply getting people's attention --- there are so many demands from so many different sources. And the fact is, nobody really knows what makes a book sell --- we all know in hindsight, or think we do, but one is never a preparation for the next. It's always been my opinion, however, that hype is ephemeral and what really matters is word of mouth. Unfortunately for publishers, but luckily for readers, this can't be manufactured. The audience still controls the process.
Joseph Kanon: No. Certain genre writers lost an immediate 'enemy' and certainly the world doesn't divide itself as neatly into good guys v. bad guys, but that's always been true. It has had one unexpected effect, however, which is to make one wonder what all the chest-beating was about. In some odd way, it diminishes our recent history, or perhaps I should say our fictional treatment of it.
Joseph Kanon: I'm not an historian --- I had always intended to write a novel. And in this particular case, a definitive book already exists Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb. No one, I think, will ever top that. But it never occurred to me to try. I was much more interested in what it was like there in 1945, what the scientists thought about what they were doing, how people lived day to day. I read many scientific memoirs, but what I really wanted to know was how did you do laundry? What was the rent? How did people spend their days? And, of course, most importantly, how did they sort through the conflicted feelings --- the excitement of discovery on the one hand, and the appalling legacy that was created on the other.
Joseph Kanon:
Joseph Kanon: No. I can't speak for all writers, but my strong hunch is that essentially you write for yourself and hope that someone else likes what you do. I began the book as a conventional 'thriller,' partly because I like to read them myself, partly because they give a beginning writer a good story architecture, and partly because the subject lent itself to the form. But it soon became --- I hope --- something else. What I wanted to do was write a story with the entertainment value of a 40s movie, but which would also be "about" something; ask some questions, etc. I suppose if there were a model for this it would be close to what Graham Greene used to do --- a story that had the underpinnings of moral issues. Anyway, that's what I hope people will take from it.
Joseph Kanon:
Joseph Kanon: Thank you --- the best sort of compliment.
Joseph Kanon: Wow.
Anonymous
Posted July 21, 2008
A very human drama plays out against the backdrop of the one of the most important projects in human history. The lives of a small group of people affect millions across the globe.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted July 1, 2004
Very Slow. Story dragged on forever. Couldn't wait for it to end. The hero didn't solve anything. Everything just fell into his lap.
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Posted January 31, 2003
Fact+Fiction = one of the best novels that I have read in a long time. This is truly one of those stories that draw you in right from the start and holds you to the very last page. Kanon could write a series of novels on this main character--Mike Connolly. Go out and buy this book. You will LOVE it.
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Posted January 19, 2000
Kanon took one of the most interesting and fascinating event in modern american history and put a mystery in it, and then put a love story in that (which was probably the weakest sub-plot of the book). but i'd say it was more of an espionage story. kanon did an excellent job.
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Posted July 10, 2011
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Posted October 11, 2010
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Posted November 18, 2011
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Overview
In a dusty, remote community of secretly constructed buildings and awesome possibility, the world's most brilliant minds have come together. Their mission: to split an atom and end a war. But among those who have come to Robert Oppenheimer's "enchanted campus" of foreign-born scientists, baffled guards, and restless wives is a simple man, an unraveler of human secrets—a man in search of a killer.It is the spring of 1945. And Michael Connolly has been sent to Los Alamos to investigate the murder of a security officer on the Manhattan Project. But amid the glimmering cocktail parties and the staggering genius, Connolly will find more than he bargained ...