Interviews
A Conversation with Adam Sternbergh, Author of Shovel Ready
Though you've been a writer for years (as the Culture Editor of the New York Times Magazine, and Editor-at-Large of New York Magazine) Shovel Ready is your first foray into fiction. When did you know you wanted to write a novel?
I've always loved fiction and have dabbled in writing it, off and on, since college, working on various secret projects on the side. It just took me a long time—twenty years, actually—to finally figure out what kind of novel I wanted to write. That process started by asking myself: What kind of novel do I most want to read? Weirdly, the answer was a dystopian-near-future-NYC-garbageman-turned-hitman novel.
In Shovel Ready, a dirty bomb decimates Times Square and the city's elites become obsessed with "tapping in." While their bodies atrophy in tricked-out hospital beds, their minds roam a sophisticated virtual reality called "the limnosphere" where anything—or almost anything—is possible. Where did you come up with the idea of "limning," and is it something that might ever happen in our lifetime?
The idea of a virtual reality into which we can escape, partially or wholly, has been floating around for a while now, of course—from William Gibson's Neuromancer and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash to the Holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation. But my own "aha" moment came during a reporting trip a few years back to the University of Illinois, where I entered a room called CUBE—a crude but entirely convincing 3D virtual environment I was actually able to experience firsthand. That made me realize just how close we are to something like the limnosphere. In fact, we seem to be getting ever closer to making something like that a reality—in forms as varied as the online game Second Life to the new Oculus Rift 3D gaming goggles that completely immerse you into a videogame.
Let's talk a bit about antiheroes. Yours, Spademan, is a garbage man-cum-hit man who turns a bon mot like Phillip Marlowe and kills with a box cutter. Did you ever worry that readers wouldn't like him?
I definitely hoped readers would warm up to him as the book rolls along—he may be a pitiless hitman, but he's a charming pitiless hitman. Plus, in many ways the book is all about how far Spademan has strayed from his humanity and what it takes to even begin to restore it. The antihero has a great tradition in American literature—from Sam Spade to Bud White in the James Ellroy novels to, yes, I'll say it, Wolverine—so there's a long history of people identifying with, and even rooting for, damaged characters who struggle with which moral lines they should, or shouldn't, cross.
Early reviews of Shovel Ready have name-checked such authors as Chuck Palahniuk, Don Winslow, Christopher Nolan, Warren Ellis, and Phillip K. Dick. Who are your heroes?
I'm definitely most well-versed in the world of hardboiled lit—writers like Ellroy, Chandler, Hammett, James Cain, and Donald Westlake's "Parker" novels, written as Richard Stark. I also love writers I think of as hardboiled, even if they don't write specifically about crime: From Joan Didion to Robert Stone to Kem Nunn to Cormac McCarthy to Graham Greene. As far as movies go, I think both Christopher Nolan, Alfonso Cuaron, and Rian Johnson are taking genre films to a new level of artistry—without sacrificing an ounce of what makes them so thrilling to begin with. That's a goal I definitely strive to emulate.
Shovel Ready is part mystery, part sci-fi, part noir, part dystopian thriller. That's a lot of things at once. When you tell people about the book, how do you describe it?
I usually say it's about a garbage man-turned-hit man in a near-future dystopian New York. If any of those things grab you, then we're definitely in business. One early reader described it to me as like a Parker novel, if Parker lived in the world of "Children of Men." That sounded about right too—and made me giddy, naturally.
What's next for Spademan?
I'm working on a second Spademan novel, which will be a true sequel to Shovel Ready, picking up the story about a year after Shovel Ready ends. Once you've read Shovel Ready, you'll know there are lots of situations and circumstances that are still to come to fruition, both miraculous and menacing—all of which will be tackled in book two.
Earlier this year, Shovel Ready was optioned for film. What can you tell us about this exciting news?
Warner Bros. stepped in very quickly to option the film rights, which was hugely gratifying for me—it's always nice, early in the process, to get that kind of vote of confidence. And from what I know, the project is proceeding very well—not least of which because Denzel Washington is now attached to star in the film. A two-time Oscar winner who also stars in great action films? You can't really ask for better than that.
Who have you discovered lately?
I really loved Megan Abbott's recent book Dare Me, which takes all the pleasures of classic noir and transposes them into a modern-day locker room full of viciously ambitious cheerleaders. Kelly Braffet's Save Yourself is also a great read: thoroughly unsettling while also being entirely thrilling. Lauren Beukes's The Shining Girls is getting all kinds of love, and rightly so. (And without trying at all, I just named three great female thriller writers—which is very satisfying in itself.) Thanks to a recommendation from Don Winslow—whose book Savages I really loved—I started reading Ken Bruen, an Irish crime writer whose books expertly straddle the line between crackling prose and heartbreaking poetry. I've had to pace myself so I don't rip through all his novels too quickly—I always want to know there's one more out there for me to read.
