Poured Over: Anthony Marra on Mercury Pictures Presents

“There’s just so much rich material in Hollywood during the 1940s—which is where much of the book is set—there is just sort of an endless rabbit hole you can go down. And of course, one of the problems with writing a book about the movie industry is that sitting around watching movies technically counts as research.” We still think about Anthony Marra’s incredible debut,  A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, years after our first reading. His newest novel, Mercury Pictures Presents, is an epic story of family secrets, love and war, loyalty and reinvention that cuts between Hollywood and Mussolini’s Italy in the 1930s and 40s—and it’s the August B&N Book Club pick. Anthony joins us on the show to talk about mapping stories, the landscape of exile and imprisonment, the importance of humor, research and rewrites and snappy dialogue, his literary inspirations (including Zadie Smith and David Mitchell), and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book reviews from Marc and Becky.

Featured Books (episode):

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra

Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels

The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):

West of Sunset by Stewart O’Nan

A Touch of Stardust by Kate Alcott

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Full transcript for this episode:

B&N: I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Anthony Mara, Mercury Pictures Presents, it’s our August B&N Book Club pick. And if you know his earlier work, you know, Tony also won the Discover award for his first novel Constellation of Vital Phenomena, which takes place over five days in Chechnya in 2004, during their civil war, and there’s also a story collection called The Czar of Love and Techno which sort of tips into that world, and maybe we’ll get to the stories maybe won’t, we’re definitely gonna get to constellation. But let’s talk about Mercury Pictures Presents, because I hear you had a pretty significant bout of writer’s block. While this book was coming into the world.

Anthony Marra: I did well, first, thank you so much for for having me, Miwa. I am so grateful to Barnes and Noble for choosing Mercury as its August pick and for supporting my work so enthusiastically in the past. And I’m glad that there is finally work to support. I began working on it in 2014. And my first two books I had written fairly quickly, Constellation took around 18 months, The Czar of Love and Techno took maybe a little bit longer. So in my mind, I was going to be done with this book before Obama was out of office. And as you might have gathered, it didn’t quite go to plan. And it’s, it’s partially due to the fact that there’s just so much rich material in, in Hollywood during the 1940s, which is where much of the book is in set, there is just sort of like an endless rabbit hole you can go down. And of course, one of the problems with writing a book about the movie industry is that sitting around watching movies technically counts as research. So that could have been why it took me so long, but it finally kind of came together really, during the pandemic, actually. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was living with my wife in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we lived in a small one bedroom apartment. And the blank page was kind of my only means of escape. And I suddenly found myself in this position of having to create on the page, the kind of, of joy and levity and laughter and hope that felt so missing in my life at the time. And I hope that you know, given the state of the world through the pandemic, and today that it will similarly transport leaders who pick it up this month.

B&N: So Mercury Pictures Presents is an epic world war two story. I mean, we’re cutting between Mussolini’s Italy, and the United States, specifically Hollywood in the 1940s. So we’re getting a whole new world I haven’t seen a world war two novel like this before. So if that’s your thing, folks, you definitely definitely need to pick up Mercury Pictures Presents. I will say we are going to stay spoiler free in this conversation because Tony is doing his book club event with us in New York City at the Union Square store in September. So if you want the spoilers, you can come then the details will be on bn.com. But I’m going to ask you, Maria, Maria Lagana, who is a fantastic character, please tell me she’s the first person who showed up in the show.

AM: She definitely. Yeah, she is. She is one of my favorite characters that I’ve ever written she she is this irreverent? brash, ambitious Stryver. She works as an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, which is this B movie studio. That becomes a nexus for European refugees and exiles who came to Hollywood, for sanctuary and for employment during the 1930s and 40s. And she reminds me a little bit of Rosalind Russell’s character in His Girl Friday only a little more salty and a lot more Italian. And when we first meet her, she is having a bad day. She’s found out that her boss is under investigation by the US Senate. She has found out that the studio itself is in dire financial straits, sort of nothing in her personal or professional life is really going to plan and like so many characters in this novel. She has arrived to Hollywood while running from her past. She grew up in fascist Italy, and ended up fleeing to Los Angeles with her mother, after a childhood transgression led to her father’s arrest. So even though she has reinvented herself as this unflappable producer, she remains haunted by the role she played in her father’s state.

B&N: And I wouldn’t necessarily describe a character that shows up from Italy as a friend but he’s definitely from our past. And we meet him first and his name is Nico and then we see him again. You know, Hollywood, and his name is Vincent. And we’re going to let people discover that particular transition for themselves, because it’s a really fun moment in the book. But they’re sort of push and pull. And their history and their present because Maria gets Vincent a job at the studio.

AM: Looking at autobiographies and memoirs and histories of this period, you find that so many of the exiles who came to Hollywood, always were looking over their shoulder. And they arrived to the US thinking that it would be, you know, the land of the free and found quite a different story upon their arrival here. And some of that has to do with the general prejudices of the time. And some of it also had to do with the fact that they all left some part of themselves back in Europe. And that is certainly the case for Maria, whose beloved father remains in Italy, in part due to her. And so when this character who largely goes by Vincent in the book, arrives with news of, of her father, which we won’t spoil, it becomes this moment where Maria for the first time really has to face her past. And as some of us may know, facing the past is not a comfortable experience. And they’re back and forth. They’re sort of antagonistic relationship is one of the central relationships in the novel.

B&N: And one of the things you’re writing about in mercury Pictures presents to is what you call the landscape of exile. And I think this is a really important point, because as much as Maria sort of raises an eyebrow, at Nikko, more Vincent excuse me more often than not, and he’s sort of looking at her going, Hey, wait a minute, I’m not. I’m not that person. Vincent ends up really becoming part of her day to day life in a way that I think neither of them would have expected. I mean, again, as I mentioned, she gets him a job. But he also becomes friends quite good friends with her boyfriend who’s called Eddie Liu, who’s Chinese American, and he’s an actor. And I’m coming to Eddie for a second and maybe a little earlier than I had planned, because one, he’s a great character. But to it’s the first time in a while I’ve seen any kind of Asian American in a World War ll story, who’s grappling with the reality of the internment camps and racism on the set, and all sorts of, and he’s a really great character. He’s a really good dude. So when did Eddie show up for you?

AM: He showed up fairly early on, I realized that I couldn’t write honestly about Los Angeles in this period without writing about Japanese American internment. And I also realized that that was a story that’s perhaps not the best person to tell. So I began thinking about how within the world of movies at that time, individuals were creating propaganda and these sorts of grotesque fantasies in order to justify the treatment of Japanese Americans in California during that era. And one, when I was reading into that, and sort of looking at these movies, one of the sort of bizarre and kind of grotesque little details that came out was that because Asian Americans had been so sort of excluded from cinematic representation. Throughout, you know, Hollywood history, there were essentially very few actors who could play Japanese villains in that time and time period. And so this resulted in a number of Chinese and Korean American actors who suddenly were given, by the standards of the time, relatively lucrative contracts, but the sort of Devil’s bargain that they were asked to enter into is to perpetuate these rather racist, horrible depictions of Japanese Americans and so Eddie Liu, his livelihood, is in conflict with his conscience. And at the same time, he’s determined after being marginalized for so long in this industry, to use this brief window where he has a little bit of leverage to get something for himself.

B&N: He’s a good dude. He’s a good dude and lots of interesting stuff happens.

AM: One of the things that I really love it’s his relationship with Maria, because they are both. They’re both outsiders in our area as a woman as an Italian immigrant, and Eddie Liu as a Chinese American man, and their experiences sort of what leads them to Mercury is vastly different. And yet, they can see each other so clearly, and there is this wonderful tenderness and intimacy between them. And I’ve always struggled with writing love stories, and I feel like this is by far and away sort of the most mature and honest love story that that I’ve come up with.

B&N: Oh, without a doubt, without a doubt. But Artie Feldman and his wife, Mildred, are different kinds of love story. Artie is Maria’s boss, and Mildred. She gets her husband. She understands what she signed up for. And he’s running the studio, which I had never heard the phrase Poverty Row studio. And as you describe it, it’s a B movie studio. But Poverty Row is like, oh, yeah, that is a phrase I’ve never heard. But Mildred. Mildred knows what’s going on. She knows who her husband is. He’s well intentioned, but he’s already. He just he wants to make a buck and have a life and do his thing and find his sister who has disappeared in Poland. And also battle with his twin brother, Ned. Lives on the East Coast. He’s in New York, let’s call him the finance guy. I guess finance guy?

AM: He’s the finance bro.

B&N: Yeah, he really, really is. And boy, Ned makes some choices. He makes some choices. But let’s talk about Artie for a second. Because Artie and Ned are different kinds of connection to the American dream, to the idea of Hollywood. I mean, essentially, discovers Maria and gives her a chance that not a lot of other folks would have done. I mean, if this if you were trying to write about universal, one of the big established studios, you wouldn’t necessarily find Maria doing what she was doing. And given the the rain to do it.

AM: Yeah, one of the really interesting things about these Poverty Row studios. So basically, the studio system was set up so you had a number of the the major studios, like MGM universal, Paramount. And then sort of on the periphery, there were these Poverty Row studios that made B movies and other very low budget pictures that sort of filled in the gaps. And one of the really fascinating things about these, these smaller studios was that there was a degree of creativity and artistic license that you simply couldn’t do if you were dealing with million dollar budgets. And so that does give someone like Maria the opportunity to, to maybe rise a little bit faster than she would at at one of these rivals, larger companies. And I really love the back and forth between her and rd rd is a character that I think he’s a type that appears in a lot of my work sort of a well meaning buffoon who is trying to do good within the strictures of his severe moral limitations. He and Maria have this kind of this almost like screwball comedy back and forth, kind of whenever they’re put together. There were two characters that I felt like I was channeling. You know, Billy Wilder every time that every time that I was writing them in a room together.

B&N: But in general, the dialogue in Mercury Pictures Presents is really sharp. It’s really smart. There were a couple of points to where outside of movie references. It felt a little bit like the Rules of Civility by a mortals that kind of snap where it’s that constant movement, and you’re always pushing the story forward through dialogue. It’s almost like you’re writing a screenplay, my friend.

AM: Almost cinematic, you might say.

B&N: But let’s talk about the structure. Let’s talk about the dial. I mean, how did you know when did you know I should say that you had the voices, right? Because it would be really easy to deliver a caricature, and sort of slide past the point you’re trying to make because you are like, this whole landscape of exile and war and trauma. There’s so many big ideas that you’re covering in this book. And yet, I never once felt like you were shaking your finger at me and saying, Okay, now, young lady, you need to read your cultural vegetables, you need to understand, you know, it’s not like you’ve given me homework. I was like, Well, what’s going to happen next?

AM: Yeah, well, thank you. I guess I was trying to trying to really think about what it was like to be in those rooms in the studios at the time that there are, obviously, these much larger sort of traumas that these characters are, you know, are experiencing, but I think that so often, when we look back in the past at these at these moments of trauma, we only see it as sort of this universal, sort of like dark cloud hanging over everything. And I think that when you’re actually living in the moment, you know, people aren’t necessarily thinking in these like big abstract terms about large questions of history and politics, you know, you’re cracking a joke with your friend as you’re watching something dismal on the news. You know, we’re living through a pretty grim time right now, but I don’t think that that has in any way, you know, reduce the ability to crack a joke every now and then. And I think that like so many of these characters, they, they find themselves in these in sort of the grips of absurdity. And I think that comedy is the most eloquent expression of absurdity that it is a way of trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. And so, a joke I think, functions not only as like a moment of levity, but as a way of like suddenly exposing all that to build a ring about about life.

B&N: Oh, Maria’s aunties are very funny. Maria’s mother is scathingly funny in ways that I wasn’t quite sure where Maria’s mother was gonna go, but she ends up having her own adventure.

AM: Can I tell you the secret?

B&N: Yes, please.

AM: So Maria’s great aunts are based on my own great aunts. Wawa and Pep who were these small little Italian American ladies, their late 90s. And we’re very much the basis, not just in name. Maria’s aunts who are who are just they’re so fatalistic and so dour and just wonderfully opinionated on just about everything in Maria’s life.

B&N: Well, especially the whole when are you going to settle down and get married. And we’re gonna say like, I really don’t have time for that, like I’m building an empire what is going on. But that push and pull is really, it’s so wonderful to see. And actually one of the aunties marries a man. He’s a great character. So how much of this is based, though, in your own imagination? And how much of this there are? There’s some details in there that make me think there was a little bit of research that went in to Mercury Pictures Presents, and beyond the movie watching, because clearly the movie watching, but you do have to do a little bit of homework to get Los Angeles in this period.

AM: Yeah, absolutely. I and one of the reasons this, this took so long to write is because I felt like I was constantly I was constantly researching, I never stopped researching. And every time I found something particularly engaging, that really captured my imagination, I would have to shift the whole book to accommodate it. One of the excellent, many excellent sources I consulted was actually the WPA Guide to 1930s Los Angeles. And it is this absolutely brilliant kind of tourist guide to 30s LA. And so a lot of the you know, a lot of the details came from sources like that. But this was a book more so than any other that I’ve I’ve worked on that I also tried to, I tried to pull from my own family’s background, which feel feels very new and strange. In some respect, I think that when I’m 80 years old, maybe I’ll write a first person coming of age story, based on my life, like, I feel like I’m very slowly moving towards the more autobiographical, we’ll see how long that lasts. But yeah, this was a book that, you know, the very act of researching felt like this transported experience. And I really wanted to convey that sense of transported madness. On the page, I think that, you know, whenever I picked up a book, one of the things that that I’m looking for is that feeling as a reader of being taken somewhere far from your daily life that nonetheless speaks in a deep way to your daily life and the world you’re living in. And I think that there are a lot of those echoes between the 1940s, and today that the book, hopefully hints at without being too dramatic about.

B&N: Yeah, you have written a very timely book, you know, writer’s block, not withstanding.

AM: It’s never good when a novel that deals with fascism is timely.

B&N: You really, by accident, delivered a very, very timely historical novel, but I want to go back for a second to a Constellation for vital phenomenon, which is a book that I have loved for a very, very long time. And, you know, a lot of that same bleak humor is there it’s Chechnya, during the war in 2004, and has a really powerful opening. And I am going to encourage folks that if you haven’t read it yet, you really should. It’s five days in the middle of a war zone and it starts with a little girl whose father has disappeared, an eight year old whose father’s disappeared and and her neighbor takes her in. And it goes from there. And I heard years ago that you had done kind of a massive rewrite on constellation. And constellation is one of those debut novels that reads so cleanly. And it’s so propulsive and it’s really, it’s an extraordinary book, which is why we obviously chose it for our Discover program and gave it the Discovery award. But I like this idea of rewriting and stripping down to the studs. So can we talk about that for a second? Because I feel like that happened with Mercury Pictures Presents too?

AM: Yeah, yeah, it absolutely did. So when I was in graduate school, I took a class in novel writing seminar with the great Elizabeth McCracken and was just a genius. And I would highly recommend everybody read everything she’s ever written, because she is amazing. But I took this novel writing class, and I was working on a book actually set in Northern Ireland, it was very much the work of an apprentice, let’s say. And I turned it in. And, Elizabeth was very generous, perhaps, overly generous, let’s say, with her feedback. And at some point, later that semester, I showed her this short story that I had been working on which was set in the world of what would eventually become Constellation was maybe, 15 pages, and she read it, and she said, You should really, you know, put that other book to bed and work on this. And it was one of those moments that I’m so grateful for and that she could see within just this rough scaffolding of the short story that there was something there that the 400 pages of direct that you previously waited through, didn’t have that there was some magic in the characters of Achmed and Sonia, and an Abba and, that ended up becoming what inspired me to focus on the book that became Constellation.

B&N: You mentioned that you needed sort of the focus that came with the pandemic, to be able to really sit down and dig back into Mercury Pictures. But do you remember, when you understood that it had stalled and you had not had the thread because I remember being told this was gonna be a slightly different book more about a director than this entire neural that you created. And I’m delighted with the book that exists now. But like I said, I suspect you do this more than you don’t, you just strip everything down and restart a lot. So let’s talk about your process for a second, because it seems that it’s pretty consistent book to book, stories, long form fiction. It seems like you know, what you want? And if you’re not hitting it, yeah, put it aside.

AM: Yeah, I do feel like, I think I remember seeing an interview with Colson Whitehead once and he said that if the words were coming Sunday, he’ll go catch up that day with the other weirdos, and I always kind of thought that that was really sensible that he made advice and with Mercury, I, unfortunately, in the early years, I think that I just had difficulty finding the right container to these characters in that one of the things that I love doing in fiction is creating these very large cast of characters with sort of intertwining narratives. I kind of love the idea of writing books, where you reach the end, and you see how everything comes together. And suddenly, there’s just this feeling of, and it just took me a long time to figure out what that particular container was. And I think in part, it’s due to the research process where I am mostly, I know that writers often talk about research using the language of archaeology that they’re excavating this or unearthing that, for me, I’ve always seen it more as mapmaking where you are creating a map, and every little interesting tidbit, every little anecdote or story becomes coordinated on your map, and you’re trying to figure out how to move from point to point until we finally reach the end. And so, figuring out a sort of scale of the map that is wide enough to accommodate your various research interests, becomes the reason that you often or I shouldn’t say you, I often have to kind of tear everything down and start from scratch again.

B&N: Because I mean, honestly, if it gets too big, then everyone just gets lost.

AM: We could name names, but we won’t.

B&N: There’s the book for everyone.

AM: There we go. That is a very diplomatic way, you must be a bookseller.

B&N: There is a book for everyone. And actually, I honestly believe that when I have people tell me that they don’t like to read, I just kind of look at them strangely and say, Well, you just haven’t met your book yet. You know, because I’m a big believer if a book isn’t working for me, I do not force myself to finish. I’ve never forced myself outside of school to finish something.

AM: What’s your batting average in terms of of how many books you begin that you actually finish?

B&N: I honestly don’t know. Because I don’t know how many books I read in a year. I mean, we produce two to three episodes of the show. Plus, I’m reading for pleasure. Plus, I’m reading for other bits of work, and whatnot. So I can’t, I honestly don’t know. I mean, I can tell you that I have multiple books going at any given moment. And there are times where I’ve repurchased things, because I don’t know where the original copy is. That’s slightly embarrassing. I mean, it’s good for writers, it’s good for us. But, I’m one of those people where I’m like, I don’t know where that or I possibly gave it to some I’m sort of very liberal with the here ticket, I can always get another copy, which, unfortunately, is not always the it’s a little easier in this day and age. But there are times where I’m like, oh man. And I’m also pretty sure that I once bought back a used copy of something that the marginalia looks suspiciously like marginalia and my handwriting and I knew the odds, the odds are significantly very low. But I was looking at it going, I think, Okay, this is weird, but I think it’s mine. So I mean, the the thing that I appreciate that, especially historical fiction, obviously, is having a moment. And it’s the idea that you’ve created this entirely new landscape. I know very little about Italy, in I mean, I have an uncle who lives outside of Milan, but you know, I, that’s sort of my experience of, I’ve never been to Rome, all this and so to have, you say, Oh, we’re gonna go to Italy instead, like we’ve seen the German landscape, we’ve seen the French landscape, their tropes for a reason. I mean, I get that you’re pulling from your family’s story. But still, there had to been something else that was driving that.

AM: Well, yeah. So I would say that, um, when, when I first first first started considering this book, I was sort of trying to decide between two books and one was set in Hollywood, amid the community of, of European exiles who were living there. And the other book was very amorphous, but something generally set in southern Italy. And I for a number of months, was sort of ping ponging back and forth between the two of those ideas. And at one point, I ended up going to on vacation to to Lipari, which is a island off the coast of Sicily, that my great grandmother’s family is from, and it’s absolutely gorgeous, you know, sundrenched, sort of like what you think of if you know, from Il Postino or something like that, which in fact, was was filmed there. And while I was there, I noticed this, this memorial to the anti fascists and artists and intellectuals who had been sentenced to internal exile by Mussolini’s regime on this island. And it just seemed so surreal that this island paradise to which I could phrase my own roots had been, had been Mussolini’s Alcatraz. And I remembered in that moment that that the German exiles in LA would often refer to Los Angeles as sunny Siberia. And it occurred to me that the Italian exiles who had been sent to libre might have also used that exact same term to describe this island that they were exiled within. And it occurred to me that this novel would perhaps be the story of two sunny Siberia’s and one family divided between them. So that was kind of how I was able to finally draw together the Italy sections and the Los Angeles sections.

B&N: And everything really flows. And I mean, okay, let’s we know you had a stop and a start and a stop and a start and all of that. But once you were into what becomes Mercury Pictures Presents, let’s talk about the structure for a second because you’re bouncing back and forth between time and place, and character POV and there’s some minor character. There’s a cop in San Lorenzo married to a madam which I thought was a nice touch. But how are you again and I know you will go back to this map idea. you’ve mapped out all of these pieces in places. But again, process. Are you sitting down? Are you writing in a linear fashion? Are you riding around the characters in the moments that you need to ride around? And then figuring out how everything essentially fits together like a puzzle?

AM: Oh, I can’t even write a paragraph in a linear fashion. No, I tend to jump around quite a lot. And partially, it’s because I’m easily distractible. And partially, I think it’s simply how my mind operates. I’ve tried so many times over the years to write a sensible, linear novel with a single POV and it for whatever reason, it, I just can’t seem to do it in a way that feels, you know, vital and alive to me. And I think part of it is, you mentioned, the presence of minor characters. And I feel like one of the things that, that I’ve always really felt was important in my work is to try to write books without minor characters, I love the idea of giving every character their sentence in the spotlight. I feel like it really opens up the world of a book and you begin to see how, how these individuals who are thrown together, you know, interact and influence each other in these very subtle but meaningful ways. That I think yeah, as as a reader, I love it. You know, when you come to those moments in a bucket, and I certainly tried to recreate that that experience in this.

B&N: It’s really satisfying. It is really, really satisfying. I do want to talk about literary influences for a second. I mean, you talked about, like, great piece of advice from Colson Whitehead. But you’ve also in the past talked about how Edward P. Jones, The Known World is an influence and The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje is classic. But let’s talk about some of the other influences. I mean, you’ve done your MFA at Iowa. You were a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, I mean, the Guggenheim fellowship there. There are many many accolades that follow behind your name and many awards as well. But let’s talk about the writers that have helped make you Anthony Marra.

AM: I’d say Zadie Smith, I would put her very high on the list, particularly On Beauty and White Teeth. I feel like she both has that very capacious worldview, in which she is able to introduce all sorts of wonderfully eccentric side characters. But also I feel like does use humor in a way that I’ve tried to really emulate in my own work. David Mitchell, for similar reasons, has always been at the top of the list in terms of personal influences. In terms of thinking of this book. Specifically, I would say that Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann and Nifty Still by sun. Were both books that I thought about a lot in terms of like the Devil’s bargains that individual artists make with the politics of of their era.

B&N: Did anything surprise you? Or Did anyone surprise you in Mercury Pictures? I mean, there are so many moments where I can think oh, that must have been fun for you getting that on the page. But I mean, again, and you’re you’re wrestling with a not insignificant cast and big ideas and a lot of time and a lot of space and an ocean. But there had to been something that made you say, hey, wait a minute. This is pretty cool. I can’t wait for the world to see this bit.

AM: Yeah. There were quite a few little little instances. We’re not giving away spoilers, so I won’t get into a couple of my favorite surprising events. But one one sort of small little, little nugget that really set me on my heels was the fact that in the early 1940s, Hollywood set designers collaborated with local Los Angeles aviation plants in order to create these camouflages. There was worry at the time that the LA’s big aviation plants locking, Lockheed Martin and Douglas Aircraft would be targeted by enemy bombers. And so in order to disguise these plants from aerial view, these Hollywood set designers created these suburbs on top of these airplane hangars. And you can see photos of them online if you Google it, they’re absolutely wild. From you know, even a couple stories up you can’t really tell where the airplane hangers end and where the rest of this suburban neighborhood begins. And one of the things that I found so interesting about it is this idea that this peaceful suburbia that in fact was inhabited by actors. There were actors who were pretending to live in these houses and walk the dogs and mow the lawn, that this was kind of the only place in LA that was seemingly untouched by war. That they live in this sort of classic residential suburban life up there while beneath their feet, weapons of war, were coming off the assembly line. So that was one of those moments where I was just like, This is crazy. And, yeah, there are many such moments in the book.

B&N: You know it’s wild to me, people always think of Hollywood first when it comes to Los Angeles. And I’m like, No, we have other stuff happening. It’s okay. Like, a lot of aviation is one of those things. And, you know, beyond obviously, the war effort and everything else, there’s a lot happening in Los Angeles that doesn’t actually involve movies and television. It’s just kind of the most fun to play with. Yeah, I mean, there are times where I watch a movie set in Atlanta, like, you can’t actually know, with that know what? I mean, it’s true for New York, too. When you’re like, No, you really can’t get from Queens to Lower Eastside in 20 minutes, but little things like that. But when you’re reading, and this may shift when you’re writing to, when you’re reading, what are you looking for first in a novel?

AM: That’s a great question. I think that as a reader, I want characters that deal rich and complex. know one of the things I kind of, I kind of hate is when people compliment Well, rounded characters, I feel like we live in a in, there’s this curse of well roundedness that I always find rather frustrating, but that’s neither here nor there. I want oddly shaped characters that feel as kind of as troubled and an idiosyncratic and individual, as you know, as I think we all are. So I’d say that I’m first and foremost drawn to characters, I’d say that humor is another thing that is really important. If a book doesn’t engage with humor, I find it difficult to feel like that’s just a signal that I may just share a different worldview from the the author. And I guess lastly, I would just say that, that sense of being taken out of your out of your life, you know, one of the real joys of fiction, I think, is that you can walk around in somebody else’s head for a while. And that’s just a genuinely magical experience. I think when when it really works. And that’s something I feel like every time I open a book, I feel like we’re all optimists you know, every time you open a book you’re you’re going into it with good faith with and I feel like when when that when that optimism when that that that good faith pays off. It’s just the best isn’t it?

B&N: Totally. Totally. There is nothing like reading a book for the first time and realizing it’s the one Yeah, it’s exactly what you were hoping for at exactly the amount I mean, there are times where I’ve gone back to things I am attempting Middlemarch yet again. Yes, there was a pandemic, I could have read it during the act of lockdown and I’ve had so many people I respect say no, no really Middlemarch trying. I even bought a new copy with a better jacket because sometimes that helps. We’ll see. I am always an optimist when I sit down with anybody I really am and sometimes that just pays off and it’s aces and then there are times where you’re like, Huh, okay, not for me. Yeah. Okay, but what’s next for you? I realize you just finished this and you’re gonna have to tour and everything else but seriously, what’s next?

AM: You know, I’ve got a couple ideas kicking around we’ll see. We’ll see what happens with them. I will say that one thing I really liked with constellation in czar in sort of this idea of of two books that are somewhat in conversation with with each other. And so I would say that perhaps contemplating something that in one degree or another is in conversation with.

B&N: You know, and Russian oligarchy is a thing. I mean, I’m just thinking of a couple of characters that could pop up from SAR specifically. But, you know, let’s get Mercury Pictures Presents out into the world. Let’s let people meet Maria, and Vincent and Artie, these characters are really, really terrific. And there’s a moment with Bela Lugosi that I’m not going to spoil here, but I was laughing pretty hard. Just something where you’re like, huh, I can totally believe that would have happened. I haven’t No idea if it’s based in fact or not neither, I really don’t care because it’s such a nice moment in the book. You know what I’m talking about? We’ll probably talk about it in September. Anthony Marra, thank you so much for joining. Mercury Pictures Presents is out now. It is the August Barnes and Noble Book Club pick and really come hang out with us in September we are going to broadcast the book club discussion on the internet. Hopefully it will be live at the tech holds. If not, we’ll just broadcast it later. But it’s gonna be a fun night. So you should come especially if you’re in New York, but thank you again, Anthony. It was really, really good to see you.

AM: Thank you so much. This was such a treat