Just Outside the Window: Christopher Bollen and Ivy Pochoda in Conversation

Second books can be hard – not in the writing so much as in the publishing – which is one of the reasons why the Discover Great New Writers program isn’t limited to debut books. We loved Ivy Pochoda’s poignant second novel, Visitation Street, for the precision of her prose and her vibrant characters (for starters) and couldn’t wait to add her story of a missing teenager and a rapidly changing corner of Brooklyn to our 2013 list.

Orient is Christopher Bollen’s page-turning follow-up to his 2011 Discover pick, Lightning People. In both of his novels, his characters are driven by personal mythologies and the memories of past acts; the collision of those lives, and their assorted truths and lies, is unforgettable, thanks to Bollen’s incredible ear for dialogue and narrative pacing — skills he shares with Pochoda.

We’re terrifically pleased to present Christopher Bollen and Ivy Pochoda as the talk about getting the setting right (especially when writing about a real place), the pleasures of maneuvering through a large cast of characters, and the art of the literary mystery, among much more here on the Barnes & Noble Review. — Miwa Messer

Christopher Bollen: Ivy, what floored me about Visitation Street is how, with almost microscopic precision, you captured a living, breathing New York neighborhood. For Orient, I went a little farther outside of Manhattan than you did with my North Fork village, but we both set our books in very specific, very real settings. My question involves how much Red Hook itself framed your entire narrative; How much liberty did you give yourself to invent your own Red Hook and insert stores or streets or entire blocks or bridges that don’t exist? Many have asked me if I am worried about the wrath of native Orient residents. So I could use you as a guide: Did you hear from Red Hookians about your treatment of Red Hook? Any threats or complaints?

Ivy Pochoda: Well, Red Hook was the entire inspiration for my book. I was living the neighborhood when I began to write — not just in the ‘hood but on the very corner where the majority of my book takes place. My desk overlooked the street, and I simply started describing what was going on outside my window. From there I had to find my story. I really let the neighborhood lead the way. It took me a really long time to find a plot that satisfied the cast of characters I’d assembled in my earliest stabs at the book. But eventually I really listened to the neighborhood noise outside my window, and a story presented itself.

Red Hook is a tough little community and a proud and close-knit one. And I was incredibly anxious about “not getting it right” or incurring the wrath of the locals. So in my first draft I changed all the street names, swapped them around. I changed the name of the park and the pier, and I even called Red Hook “Dutch Basin,” which I thought was clever. I thought that this would give me the freedom to invent the neighborhood as I needed to and release me from the necessity of getting everything exactly as it is. When I sold the novel, my editor wondered at this decision. She reasoned that since the book was clearly about Red Hook, why not call it such. I switched everything back to the way it is in reality except for one street name: Visitation Street. There isn’t really a Visitation Street in Red Hook. There’s a Visitation Place parallel to Pioneer Street. I swapped the locations of Visitation and Pioneer. This is a tiny adjustment but one that really released me from the little voice in my head that told me people were going to be angry with the way I portrayed Red Hook. Basically what I was doing was signaling that this is Red Hook, but it’s also a place of my imagination.

And you know what? I didn’t have to worry. All the feedback I got from the locals was extremely positive. In many ways I worried about their reaction more than I did about the overall critical response. And it was such a relief to know that I’d honored the people and the place that inspired me.

How about the people in Orient? You have such an amazingly wide array of folks, from salt-of-the-earth locals to New York City artists. How did you control a story with so many characters, and how did you get inside the head of everyone from a local motel keeper to a ferocious art world gal.

CB: Well, that’s a relief! Maybe I will accept the invitation of a few friends in Orient to spend a weekend out there again this summer.

In terms of control, I wonder if a wide cast of characters indicates a certain claustrophobia on the part of the writer — or some sort of fidgety need to change perspectives and voices and approaches to keep your own momentum going. But I think, especially when you’re trying to get a particular place down in depth, using multiple sets of eyes is really useful. If I had just stuck with the Orient locals, the art world would have always been at a remove: comical or bizarre or intimidating but never real. And if I had only remained in the POV of an artist, Orient would have been a sort of clichéd Americana a few years past its expiration date. One of the things I liked about the physical location of Orient was that it’s so close to the city — so you can smuggle in these very urban characters — and yet it maintains this suburban or semi-rural detachment. (I purposely didn’t want to write a “New York” novel because my first book, Lightning People, took place almost entirely in Manhattan, and I felt the need to stretch my writer legs across a new terrain; but I think in many ways I still did write about New York — at least it casts a very large shadow over the residents by its proximity.) Maybe you also felt this way about multiple, contrasting viewpoints, too, because Visitation Street pulls from a rather sweeping demographic, but I enjoyed the juggle.

I felt at home writing about the artists. I’ve been covering the art world ever since I left college, and artists make up a very large portion of my friendship group in New York. So in many ways it felt very natural writing from the perspective of young, ambitious artists. There were all of these extreme personalities and situations that I’d been storing up over the years and was excited to have a chance to use them in a book. Or even just odd stray dialogue!

The longtime locals, or “year-rounders,” were actually more slippery for me. I didn’t want to turn Orient into another generic small town with conservative non-city values, so I really tried to inject independent life and struggles into the residents, separate from merely squabbling over newcomers — and, thus, hopefully, preventing the stock Puritan Scarlet Letter scenario. I think the trick is always in the specifics: get detailed. I never lived in Orient. But I did live in a small, tightly knit neighborhood in Cincinnati, so I probably imported some of those vibes I experienced in my childhood.

And then of course there’s Mills, the drifter. Everyone can agree to suspect the outsider, the stranger, just as everyone can find the unknown curious, enticing, and exotic. That kind of extreme strangeness that Mills inhabits seems like a third grouping — the real radical outsider far more than the successful Manhattan artists.

Here’s a question for you. Did you find yourself enjoying writing one particular character most? Were there any characters for which you thought, YES! I get to do another scene with this person, when you sat down to work? Because writers do have favorites.

IP: I really love books with a big cast of characters and multi-perspective novels in general. But I didn’t set out to write one, and if I’d known how difficult it would become, well, part of me believes I’d have taken a different tack. (Then again, I’m working on something multi-perspective now, so who learns from experience?)

When I started writing Visitation Street I was in grad school — a low-residency program for which I had to submit 20−30 pages a month. I was writing without a plan or even a rough outline. So to avoid writing my way into a corner or spinning my wheels on a particular character, I started changing perspective every month. For some reason it seemed easier and more appealing to change the point of view rather than hammer out a storyline. I might have pretended that there was some grand design at play, but really, I was switching perspective so often because I didn’t really have a sense of where the story was going.

But I learned that I loved writing that way. You asked if I preferred one voice over the others (and I’m guessing by extension if I struggled with one in particular). Sure, there were months when a certain story was working better than the others. And sometimes when nothing seemed to be working, I’d find bring a new voice into the mix. But overall what I enjoyed more than any particular voice was the ability to move on to another at the end of a chapter, which meant, at least for me, that the actual act of writing never felt stale. Switching between characters allowed me to discover things about my story that would have remained hidden had I stuck to a traditional narrative. I used my characters as guides to lead me into various parts of the neighborhood I might have left unexplored. So I was always excited to come to the end of a chapter because I knew that the next one would be completely different and unexpected. It was a relief in a way.

What wasn’t so relieving was when I had to take a step back and figure out how to weave all the stories together into a cohesive whole. But when I managed it, I realized that by having so many different voices I’d succeeded in my one goal in writing Visitation Street, which was giving the reader a panoramic portrayal of Red Hook.

Something else I didn’t really intend to do in Visitation Street was write anything resembling a mystery. I’m wondering what your intentions were in starting to write Orient. Did you envision it as a mystery, or did that part of the story evolve later?

CB: I envisioned Orient as a mystery from the outset. In fact, after I decided on setting a book in Orient — and by extension its title as “Orient,” which, for some reason, hooked me instantly — I knew I wanted to explore or at least borrow from the genre of the murder mystery. Mostly because I have a particular weakness/fondness for mysteries. Agatha Christies really were my only solid friend for a few years before puberty struck. And something about how the geography of Orient is shaped — basically a piece of land only connected to the rest of the island and to the country by a narrow causeway — reminded me of all those Christies where the characters are quite literally trapped into staying put for the duration of the story.

But I should say, this idea of the mystery was just a loose or vague calling. I never really saw myself as a mystery writer and I still don’t. I just knew that there would be a series of murders, and I also knew from the outset that I’d have to solve them or address the reason behind them by the end. (I often thought, Oh hell, what if I leave it unsolved? Would that be interesting or would readers feel cheated?) I’m guessing readers who want a short, slick whodunit (and I get it, I love those) might find Orient a bit of a slow burn or think, Why am I getting all this detail about the emotional landscape of Beth Shepherd when I really just need a clue? That’s a fair critique and a risk I took in venturing into the mystery genre. But another thing I like — and I feel like Visitation Street does this so well — is that a crime or a mystery winding through the narrative really engages the reader. They become active in the process of reading. They look for clues or signs or keep on high alert chapter by chapter for tells or insights or glimmers of the truth. I like that idea of the reader thinking along, fast and furious for what’s really going on. At least I hoped that would be the case with Orient.

Also, I have to admit, I needed a motor. I wanted an engine to maneuver through the landscape, and I felt mysteries do that so well. Like you were saying about starting a chapter with a new character and a fresh perspective, I sometimes found myself thinking at my desk, Okay, time to build the more mechanical part of the story, time for a death or a surprise or a turn of events. And I enjoyed that. It kept me on my toes. It kept me in motion.

I think of Orient as a literary mystery, which is trying to have it all. I have to confess when Visitation Street came out in 2013 I had just finished writing Orient and was extremely curious how the response to your book would be — not only because we both wrote novels set in very distinct neighborhoods but also because we blended a crime story with a literary ambition. I was delighted that your novel got such strong reviews — that critics took it seriously as a piece of literature, which it rightfully is. There is always the fear that it will show up on the pulp murder rack and everyone washes their hands of all the high hopes you had for the prose (and let me clarify: writing pulp murder is hard work, and I admire the writers who do it; constructing a fascinating, all-encompassing story is arguably more difficult than waxing lyrical about geese for ten pages). But the market claims you one way, and it’s very hard to reposition yourself another. So I suppose what I want to know is if you had any trepidation about genre typing or dipping your pen/keyboard into crime, and if you felt that idea of Visitation Street as an “urban thriller” swayed the perception of your book? Thriller. It’s such a weird word.

IP: Hmmm, I do think you can have it all. You certainly do in Orient. You succeed on so many levels — literary, mystery, lyric, suspense. I just think people aren’t always open to overstepping genre’s delicate boundaries, because when it works, as it does in your book, it works. And while you might not be able to please every reader — let me rephrase that, you will not be able to please every reader — you can certainly use a genre as a springboard into another genre. Why not, right?

But, yeah, thriller. That’s a loaded word and one that comes with a whole host of expectations. And it’s not necessarily a bad word — despite what some tried-and-true “literary” folks think. It’s just something that I wasn’t sure had anything to do with me. I certainly don’t mean this to be in any way disparaging to the mystery community at all. It’s a place that has been more than welcoming to me and a place where I’ve met some of the most talented folks writing today, women especially. Writing mysteries — good ones — requires as much talent as writing literary fiction. I mean, just think of how difficult you or I (or anyone) would find it to produce a well-crafted, well-written, well-plotted book once a year for ten to twenty years in a row. (Hello, Laura Lippman and James Lee Burke, to name a few.) And who’s to say that such a method is any less “literary” than spending ten years writing a single book? It’s certainly no less easy or no less worthwhile.

Yet to be perfectly honest, I did not set out to write mystery. As I mentioned earlier, I just wanted to paint a picture of Red Hook on my pages. I was lucky enough to stumble onto the idea of Val and June taking a ride out in the bay and one of them going missing. (I think there was something about the landscape of Red Hook that lent itself to mysterious doings.)

But it took me a while to realize that the missing girl was the backbone of my story or, as you so perfectly put it, the motor. And even when I did realize this, and this realization was inspired by two books, Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, which opens with a balloon accident that informs but does not drive the entire book, and Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants, which is a multi-perspective novel centered around an execution in China, I still didn’t think of my story as a mystery but rather as an examination of how a neighborhood reacts to a disaster.

So if you had told me that when I sent my book out into the world it would be classified as “crime” I would not have believed you. But many blessings come in disguises. And I’ll take the designation “urban thriller” any day. People gravitate to thrillers and mysteries, and even if I didn’t deliver on everyone’s expectations, I am so pleased that a simple classification opened my novel to a wider audience.

Of course, Dennis Lehane’s association with Visitation Street really changed the public’s perception of my novel. (For the record: Dennis does not consider it a mystery.) I know some readers were very disappointed and said my book was slow, overly atmospheric, and not really crime. And they are right. I can’t complain, because I loved taking my time examining the physical neighborhood and the minutiae of my characters’ worlds, both emotional and physical. These are the things that compel me. And I’m glad that some critics saw both elements in my book.

But I was rather unprepared when I found myself thrust into the mystery and thriller community. I still am surprised when I wind up on the crime panel at various book festivals. But I’ve come to embrace it. I guess at the end of the day, every book contains some degree of mystery, something that keeps us turning the pages. If that mystery involves a missing girl or a dead body, then you become a crime writer.

So, here’s my question. As we discussed earlier, writing a multiperspective novel has its joys and challenges — I kept wanting to add more voices into the mix in Visitation Street. Is there a character in Orient whom you are tempted to follow further, someone who has more story than made it on the page?

CB: You’re right about not being able to please every reader. I guess, every reader comes to a book with a set of expectations, and if you can simultaneously alter and meet those expectations, you’ve touched magic. But as everyone knows, buying a book is different from buying a spatula. A spatula either works the way you intend it to or it doesn’t; a book can and maybe should work in ways you don’t expect. Even in straight-up genre fiction, I like surprising textures or details or being driven to a place I had no anticipation of being taken.

It’s funny you ask if there were characters I could have spent more time on. Some of my own personal favorites in Orient only show up halfway through the novel — and I often wondered if I loved them so much simply because they remained infrequent. Luz Wilson, the half-black art world feminist you mentioned earlier, was a specific favorite because she allowed me to write biting dialogue. I enjoyed her scenes so much because I felt like she was a totally honest, believable character, and yet her mind was faster than even my own. (I know that might sound odd — can a character be smarter than its creator? I think, when characters start taking on real independent lives on the page, this can happen, just as characters can be better traveled or more world-weary or more suicidal than the author.) Luz always felt like a breath of fresh air for me — or maybe a cloud of cigarette smoke, since she’s an inveterate chain smoker. I could have done many more scenes with her, and I’m very thankful to my editor that he allowed me to keep a chapter near the end of the novel that tackles the art world and the rise of these art careers in depth. Because, if we were simply looking at the book from a murder-mystery point of view, certain sections were expendable. They didn’t have to be there. But that would not be the novel I wanted to create. So the book isn’t a spatula. It has an ornate handle, a corkscrew here, a switchblade there, and it probably doesn’t flip an egg as well as some other models. But it’s my design.

Okay, one last question for you. As we’re conducting this conversation, the French Open is going on. And I know that you and I are both tennis fans — maybe “tennis obsessives” might be the right designation. And this is the first time in my decades of tennis mania that my favorite players in men’s and women’s are both number one (that’s Novak Djovokic and Serena Williams, for the unacquainted). It’s strange to be cheering for the champions; I usually consider myself a firm supporter of the underdog. But my question is this: you were a professional squash player. Do any of the qualities that made you a superior athlete (and by extension an extreme fan of tennis) carry over into your writing? Do any of the victories or long hours of training feel similar? Do you finish a chapter you’re proud of and do a Serena fist pump? Confession: I have.

IP: Ha! That’s a funny question and one that I think about a lot. I have actually written quite a bit about the overlap of competitive sports and writing. For most of my professional squash career I was a struggling novelist, and the two endeavors really complemented each other. There are the obvious parallels: self-discipline, self-motivation, and living with the expectation of low remuneration. (Being a professional squash player might be even less lucrative than being a struggling novelist.) But there was a lovely give-and-take between my two “jobs.” Writing is a long game. The satisfaction of completing a novel (winning!) comes rarely. But squash, if played well, can deliver instant gratification. Hey, look, I had a great day on court and I won. Whereas when I wrote I had to tell myself, This is great, it’s all adding up, going somewhere, but I won’t see the fruits of my effort for years.

And here’s the thing, I was a pretty great domestic squash player, but I didn’t thrive on the international circuit. I did well, sure, but I was the underdog. And writing — novels. at least — is in many ways an underdog’s game. We don’t do it for the cash or glory. We do it because we love it. And this is the exact same reason I pursued squash: I loved it. I loved the feeling of training hard, playing a brutal match. I knew I wasn’t going to be famous (good lord, no) or even ranked in the world’s top ten. (I was thirty-eight.) But despite this, I had to push myself, every single day no matter what, or the endeavor wasn’t worth it. Ditto writing. When you start a novel you have no idea if anyone will like it, if you’ll get an agent, then an editor. If you’ll be published in a big house or a small independent press. Then if anyone will buy the book, like the book, and so forth. But you can’t worry about that. You have to focus on the daily exercise of writing simply because you love it and you have some sort of insane faith that it’s going to work out for you. And this is something I learned from squash — if I hit 500 forehands today, down the road, even if I can’t see it right now, these forehands are going to add up, compound, and help me to be better. But there’s no point in thinking about that future event now, the match that I might win, because I have to focus on my training (my daily writing exercise), and the only reason to do that is because I love it.