Landscape with Invisible Hand Author M.T. Anderson on National Identity, Juvenilia, and the Arts

B&N Teen: Do you remember the original impetus behind this dark invasion story?
Anderson: A lot of the idea was simply, “What would it be like if the Earth itself were a developing or third-world country in someone else’s economic empire?” Especially because, as Americans, we tend to think of that as being a thing that can only happen elsewhere, but of course there are elements of it already within our borders. Originally Amnesty International asked me to write a story about identity—government and identity. And they, it turned out, were thinking in a very different way; they were thinking sort of NSA, Edward Snowden, that kind of thing. I started to think instead about national identity and how that changes in a situation where you’ve been colonized. I was thinking about how, say, even the Irish, through the years of having been colonized by the English, they defined themselves through that. And certainly in any colonial situation that’s always true. I’ve traveled to Indonesia several times, and being there and realizing the intensity with which the arts are affected by simply that cultural relation. How do you define yourself as an individual when everything that you are is looked down upon by the ruling class?

I’m glad you mentioned art, because the arts are under threat in a way we could not have comprehended even a year ago. But I love how, even in the context of this satirical work, art is something about which you are not satirical at all. You’re not satirical about people’s love of art or people’s need to create. Can you speak to the importance of art in a time like now, that feels a little bit dystopian?
We tend to regard art—all the arts—as somehow peripheral, as somehow the dessert course. And obviously in some senses they are, because we do have to eat and sleep, and there are more central activities. But at the same time, if you just think of human life, human replication, generation to generation without anything produced, there’s really no purpose to it. If you don’t enjoy life along the way, then there’s no purpose to having lived. And the arts are one of the most profound ways we enjoy being here for the short time that we have. So in a sense, they are the thing that gives meaning to all of the other activity, where we’re simply keeping ourselves alive.
I think it’s interesting that even though oftentimes we in this country think of the arts as a marginal, cute activity, in nations that are under severe threat of one kind or another, art is often much more central to the culture. I just finished writing about the Soviets, for example, in the last book I had come out—Symphony for the City of the Dead—and the joke there that the poet Mandelstam told all the time is that, “No country cares more about poetry than Russia—it’s only here that you can be killed for it.”
Even when you’re writing these books that are very dark, you maintain this sense of hope. I’m wondering how you keep that balance.
It depends what you mean by hope. I believe the human race will continue, if that’s hopeful. This book has a happier ending than a lot of my others, but I think the process of connection with other people, connection with the world around us, those are very important things. But what I was going to say is that I am a naturally jolly misanthropist. I can’t help but feel like the more we dive into the world and find out about all the different ways there are to live and all the different paths life takes on this planet, the more thrilling and fascinating it becomes. That doesn’t change the fact that we are doing some profoundly stupid things that are going to endanger many of the ways that we live.
So the hope is that the world is a fascinating place. And kids know the world is a fascinating place. I love being there in that moment as they’re sort of peeking their heads out from childhood into adolescence. They’re peeking their heads out and seeing the vastness of the world and realizing it’s there. This is your inheiritance.

Do you remember moments as a young reader when you had that feeling?
Oh absolutely, yeah. I mean, The Great Gatsby, which I read at 12 or 13—that was a book I did not want to read ahead of time. Because it started as a classic, you think it’s going to be almost like classical statues. Just frozen in place, and they all look perfect and beautiful, and it’s dull. But instead I was like, “Oh, wow, it’s about actual people.” They really screw up, and there’s this kind of weird violence and glamour to it. And that was the moment where I realized, “maybe even adulthood is interesting.”
That’s like when I discovered Dickens was funny. I was like, “Oh, my god, this is the best kept secret.”
Right, exactly!
So, no spoilers, but did you have a sense going in—you already spoke about this being a lighter ending than Feed, so did you have a sense going of your ending, or did you run through other darker timelines?
No, because I originally wrote it as a short story for Amnesty International, but it was still way too long for their collection. So in the course of turning it from a short story into a novel, it became much less schematic than it had been—much less like an allegory of colonialism, and much more just a story about a family in a hard time. And in that moment, I turned it from a rather bleak, schematic ending to a much more hopeful one about this one family.
I thought the vuvv’s obsessions with 1950s culture was so perfect. How did you land on that slice of apple pie Americana as what an alien race would zero in on?
That’s when the UFO flap happened. So the late 1940s is sort of the beginning of the UFO flap, which lasted for ten or twelve years. I thought, “Oh, that’s when they showed up, and that’s what they would see.” Especially because that was also the golden age of science fiction.

Your books recognize the fact that when kids are young, they’re reading kids’ books but they’re also reading the stuff they find on their parents’ shelves, plus the stuff they find at the library or wherever else—it’s not just the stuff that’s put in front of them. And I love that your books push the boundaries of what young adult literature is and can be. Are there other authors doing that right now that you follow, that you love?
John Green, who is obviously one of our most well-known, widely read authors, is also someone who very specifically has a thing about trying to inject his stuff with a specific kind of nerdy intelligence. So the characters are interested in stuff. It goes against a certain American presumption that teens will be uninterested in knowledge. Which I always think is weird, because if you meet actual teens, they aren’t at all uninterested. In fact, they will unload upon you all kinds of bizarre knowledge they have, almost without you being able to stem it. It’s an important age to be going on a cultural journey with them, because this is the time. Whatever you learn in those teenage years is more hardwired than merely software. It’s what you will remember twenty, thirty years later.
Did you as a young person have your own weird little info rabbit holes you’d find yourself going down?
Yeah, of course. The Crusades in the Middle Ages. I’d been a Dungeons and Dragons player as a young teen, and that kind of morphed as I moved into my mid-teens, into an actual interest in the Middle Ages. And I think because I was a very religious kid, the Crusades really fascinated me as this horrific time when Christianity was very powerful and did this incredible harm to millions of people. So that ended up being a thing I was fascinated by as a teenager.

I read Catherine, Called Birdy, and I definitely remember Catherine talking about Eleanor going on Crusade in her red boots. Kids love that stuff; that’s a piece of knowledge I picked up when I was probably in the fifth grade and it’s still what I think about when I think about the Crusades.
I think kids are always like that if you make a subject interesting. You know what I mean? Because of course they’re going to be interested in it. And there’s instead this assumption that they’re almost like startled deer in the woods—don’t do anything too sudden or they might retreat.
So what were your own bits of knowledge or images that served as entrance points into Octavian Nothing and that time period?
I had grown up in the area right around Boston that was the first set of towns to respond against the British, on the first day that the Revolutionary War was declared. So it’s a thing in that area of Boston to go to these re-creations every April 19, which is the day the war started. But it always seemed very personal because there you are in your own town, celebrating this national moment. And I was always fascinated, watching these reenactors marching toward each other, the Redcoats and the Minutemen, by the thought of, “If this had been 200, 225 years ago, it would be my dad who would be coming over that hill carrying that musket confronting his own army.”

Do you have any other historical periods you’re keen to write about?
The Middle Ages I would like to actually go back to. But also France in the 17th century really entertains me. It tends to be periods where there’s a strong tension between the brutality of the period and the elegance that they congratulate themselves for. I think that’s one of the things that tends to really get me. That’s true of Octavian Nothing, too, and the Enlightenment there. And it’s true of our own time, that we think of ourselves as a highly technocratic, sophisticated culture, and yet at the same time, for example, our government is being run by people who don’t believe in science.
As a young person, did you start writing early?
Yeah, as a kid, I was already writing stories.
Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
Yeah. It’s funny, my editor recently said that most of my books with her were about decline. And that’s actually true of the first story I remember writing, which was in kindergarten, which is about a bunch of kids who build a time machine. And they travel thousands of years into the future and they step out of the time machine and they see all these incredible things with spaceships going through the sky and robots, and walkways going up to buildings and all that kind of thing. And then they realize they’re like 2,000 years old, so they crumble into dust and die.
I can’t believe that’s your first story. That’s so perfect.
That was my first story. Unfortunately, I’ve kind of been telling the same story ever since.
Mine was probably about mermaids.
Oh, cute. What happened?

I think I spent so much time focusing on the gem tones of their eyes and hair, I didn’t get very far. What else did you read as a kid besides Gatsby? You said sci-fi and fantasy, what was your poison?
Well, within that, Ray Bradbury really stuck out as being someone who was very literary. I still very much like The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes. My books, I guess, also fall into a thing of using a science-fiction premise to explore the real world in a very symbolic or allegorical way. I guess his format kind of stuck with me as what I was supposed to be doing, somehow. For better or for worse; maybe that’s a limitation, but that’s the way I tend to naturally see my books coming out.
His canals with the red dust. That’s so strong an image to me, I almost feel like I’ve seen it. I’m so curious about your teen audience. Because your books are kind of different—I love them and I think they’re demanding in a way that young readers really respond to and are looking for. What are some of the best interactions or responses you’ve had from young people reading your books?
So the neat thing is I get a lot of letters from intellectually wacky teens, who are heading off into the realm of philosophy and who are just excited. There’s that wonderful feeling as a teenager when there are certain ideas that become stock ideas we all have, that you encounter for the first time and suddenly your mind is blown. I still remember all this, like the first time sitting on the hood of a friend’s car, looking up at the stars, a bunch of us, and talking about the fact that, “Wait, man, what if we’re all in a giant simulation? What if you’re the only person that exists?” And of course we tried to prank our friend to convince him he was the only person that existed, that we were all just figments. The first time you have those ideas, they’re mind-blowing. I love getting those letters where the kid is like, “Oh my god, this is just like this.”
What kind of a teenager were you?
Well, surprise, surprise, super geeky. I was painfully thin; I was very homely. I ranged between being incredibly bookish and kind of a class clown in a very spastic way, which I guess I still do.
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