Interview with James Tabor | Sound Authors Radio

December 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome to Sound Authors.  Today is September 5, 2008.  On this date in history Russia’s Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards in 1698.  Other interesting things happened; On The Road was published on this day.  George Bush nominated John Roberts for the Chief Justice and then what I find fascinating is my doctoral degree is in music; John Cage’s birthday is today.  He was born in 1912, John Milton Cage Junior.  He really revolutionized the classical music world with his music.  And another classical composer was born on September 5, 1735, that’s Johan Christian Bach.  Jessie James was born on this day so it’s really a packed day in history.  Of course the republican convention just finished and people are thinking a lot about politics.  On the show today I have four guests.  My first three are authors and my fourth as always is a musician.  The musician this week are called Old School Freight Train and they are an incredible singing group with a new album out and we’ll listen to them at the end of the show.  My other two guests on the show are James M. Tabor and his incredible book Forever on the Mountain.  It’s got amazing reviews and its award winning and we’ll talk to him in a minute.  Kelly Adair who went through the program Body For Life and she’s going to talk to us about that in the book Champions Body For Life.  So welcome to the show today, sound authors this is Dr. Kent.  I want to welcome my first guest James M. Tabor.  Are you there?

James Tabor:  I sure am Dr. Kent, thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent:  Forever on the Mountain by James M. Tabor was a Barnes & Noble great new writer’s selection, which is a big deal.  It was the winner of the 2007 national outdoor book award for history and biography, a winner of the 2007 band mountain festival book awards grand prize and many others.  A quote from Time Magazine says “A riveting account of a long ago mountaineering disaster.”  People compare it to Into Thin Air.  It’s had quite a few successes.  Tell me a little about the story Forever on the Mountain.

James Tabor:  Sure here’s the short version.  In 1967, 12 young men set out to climb Mount McKinley, which is North America’s highest peak.  Its one of the most dangerous mountains on earth.  Unfortunately seven of them perished in the attempt and there were only five survivors.  There were a number of mysterious things about this particular tragedy.  One of them was that none of those seven bodies were ever recovered so we have no diaries, journals, cameras, no evidence of what happened to them or why.

The other mysterious thing is that although they were trapped in a known location for ten days and nothing was done to try to affect a rescue for them.  You can imagine what would be happening today if we had seven guys trapped lets say near the summit of Mount Hood and nothing was done.  There would be a human cry around the world.  So there were several mysterious things about that and being an old mountaineer myself I learned about the story five years ago and was surprised that it hadn’t received more notoriety in the 40 years since then.

The biggest surprise was that I, despite being very well versed in what I had heard of it, I set out to do a little digging and without too much digging there was quite an untold story here so my book set out to answer a number of the unanswered questions that lingered in the aftermath of their seven deaths.

Dr. Kent:  How did you get into writing about this kind of disaster?  I know you have pretty extensive experience doing writing for Outside and Ski Magazines and things like that.  How did you get into writing this long of an account of this story?

James Tabor:  To be honest with you this is the first sort of disaster investigation that I had actually written certainly book length.  I was intrigued by it because I did find an Alaskan myself in the 1980s and had remained intrigued in the area since then.  I’m also a lifelong journalist and author and whenever a story with so much mystery and so much tragedy comes across your desk, I as an author just got hooked.  It wouldn’t let me sleep at night so that’s kind of what drew me into it and then the rescue and a lot of research interviewing the survivors, interviewing a lot of people that were onsite in 1967.  Maybe most importantly digging out of the government with a Freedom of Information action lots of documents of evidence that had not previously come to light.

Dr. Kent:  You have experienced being on Mount McKinley.  Tell us about that.

James Tabor:  I will tell you quite frankly that it just kicked my butt.  I attempted the mountain with a very experienced partner in 1981 and even though he was an averse we both substantially underestimated McKinley in both its size and its weather.  We only got to about 14,000 feet, which is as one person said like stubbing your toe on the mountain.  Then we turned around and fled back to base camp.  I learned in that attempt what an amazingly challenging mountain McKinley is.  I did go back some years later to climb other mountains in Alaska but never had the privilege of summiting McKinley.  But I learned an awful lot about it in the three weeks I was there I can tell you that.

Dr. Kent:  What is it like for the folks like me that haven’t been on a mountain?  I’ve seen so much footage of Everest and they talk about you have to get ready with certain altitudes and things like that.  What’s the difference with McKinley?

James Tabor:  It’s really interesting.  Everest is a very apt comparison because that’s kind of the gold standard that most people have for mountaineering accomplishments.  The fact is that McKinley is 35 degrees of latitude farther north than Everest, which puts it much closer to the Arctic Circle, which means that it has much, much worse weather all the time.  One guy who climbed both mountains multiple times said that he found Everest “tropical” by comparison.  It’s also true that to climb McKinley from base to summit you have to ascend 18,000 vertical feet.

On Everest a similar ascent from base to summit is 10,000 so it’s more than a mile and a half extra vertical to climb on Mount McKinley.  Finally, McKinley unfortunately holds a unique position east of the Bearing Sea and north of the Gulf of Alaska, which puts it squarely in the sights of some of the worst storm traps on earth.  So you have conspiring against you on Mount McKinley many things which make most mountaineers to consider it to be one of the premier challenges on earth for mountain climbing.

Dr. Kent:  Why did you get into in the first place writing about this kind of thing?  Were you into this outdoor experiences and that’s how you sort of gravitated towards writing about them?

James Tabor:  I would have to say from a very young age; my father was a life long outdoorsman.  He was a hiker, a horseman, a hunter, a fisherman, and he had me out in the woods by the time I was six years old.  I went to college in Vermont, where you’re surrounded by mountains and I think I fell in love with the outdoors at a very young age and a lot of my writing has been about outdoors and about adventure type things.  So I guess I’m lucky enough to be able to combine a love of the outdoors with the love of writing and to focus on those things.  As I said, when you have a tragedy like this with so many unanswered questions it was something a writer could not pass up.  So I feel very fortunate to be able to tell the rest of that story.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me about this tragedy.  These guys start climbing the mountain and again what did the media report?  What did people know from the outside?  What was the easy information to find out?

James Tabor:  The easy information was in the aftermath, it was asserted by some government agencies and “McKinley experts” that the seven men who died really were incompetent, poorly equipped, ill conditioned and shouldn’t have been on the mountain and in a sense invited their own destruction.  One expert even used the word suicidal, that they committed suicide by getting in over their heads.  So for 40 years the seven guys who died, they and their family lived under this shadow of death by incompetence if you will.

Well I found out that those assertions were made especially by government agencies who had really failed miserably to locate and rescue them and were in a sense trying to deflect blame and responsibility from themselves onto those seven men.  In fact, the seven men were experienced, competent, very well equipped climbers who did everything right and unfortunately were caught by the worst storm in recorded Mount McKinley history up to that point.  One of the great fruits for me in writing the book was to be able to clear the names of seven men whose memories had suffered for 40 years under these unfair accusations.

To really point out the fact that while the intentions might have been good by the park service, the United States air force and other agencies; they just really didn’t do a really good job of fulfilling their responsibilities at that time.

Dr. Kent:  What’s interesting is now the entire political lens of the world is back on Alaska again.

James Tabor:  You’ve certainly got that right.  With Sarah Palin’s ascendancy we’re going to see a lot more scrutiny given to all things Alaskan.  I will tell you that in the aftermath of the tragedy the scrutiny placed on the park service, the air force and other agencies really produced dramatic change and so on McKinley today you have the best equipped, most experienced, most expertise search and rescue operation on earth.  Unfortunately there was not that in 1967 but it is that today and I think Alaskans and the national park service and all of us can be thankful for that.

Dr. Kent:  Have you had some contact with the surviving families and is that how you were able to piece together some of these stories?

James Tabor:  I had indeed.  The first people I met with were the five survivors themselves, the climbers who are now in their mid 60s, and they were all very generous.  They all shared their diaries, their logs, their pictures and most importantly their personal recollections.  I was able to contact some of the deceased fellows’ families and interview them but more important because they were not on site so more important really were the survivors and people in the immediate area of Mount McKinley; park service employees, the pilots and folks like that who volunteered their recollections.  Equally important were the records, its like radio tape, transcripts, and actual radio broadcasts and things like that allowed me to piece together things probably in a way that let me know more about what happened than anybody at that time or since then.  It was a lengthy research project, it took about two years.

Dr. Kent:  Going into it, when you first thought okay this will be a great book, have you uncovered things that you didn’t think you would uncover?

James Tabor:  I did indeed.  One of the major accusations that had been leveled in the wake of the tragedy was that the leader, a man named Joe Wilcox, who survived was one of the major agents of the tragedy by being a bad leader by just a number of bad judgments by him and he invited what happened.  That turned out not to be true at all.  He had for 40 years had been unfairly scapegoated so that was one thing.  Another thing was that and no one really knew about this but on the mountain at the same time in 67 there were five young Alaskan men who pretty much volunteered to become a defacto rescue attempt.

Government agencies weren’t going to do anything and these five young men performed heroically.  They didn’t save any lives but they risked their own trying to.  So being able to tell their story for the first time in 40 years.  I discovered that.  I don’t think anybody else knew about these five young, now older men, and telling their story for the first time was really rewarding.  It made me feel very good to be able to give them credit that they had never gotten before.

Dr. Kent:  This is such a fascinating thing.  Speaking to people that have done that kind of extreme rescue and extreme adventure.  I have some contact with some people that do those kinds of extreme sports and certainly you have.  What can you tell the listeners about those kind of extreme athletes, extreme rescuers?

James Tabor:  One thing is that they have levels of commitment and courage that are almost impossible to really understand.  I sat across the table from these fellows and said how could you do this day in and day out for five or six days in 40 below temperature, 100 mile an hour winds, and continue to pursue the goal of trying to help your fellow mountaineers?  And they looked at me and said well we never thought about doing anything different.  That’s just how mountaineers feel about each other.  So that was certainly one thing, the lengths.  They were like soldiers in combat, that’s what.

Dr. Kent:  I think we just lost James.  We’re going to try and get him back.  In the meantime, I’m going to play a quick commercial.  Be back in one minute.

[Commercial-ad]

Dr. Kent:  We’re back on the show with James Tabor.  Sorry about that.

James Tabor:  Me too doctor, its good to be back.

Dr. Kent:  Let’s talk about where folks can find this book.  I know its now out in paperback.

James Tabor:  That’s right.  It was issued in paperback in July.  Of course you can buy it at many of the popular online sites like Amazon.  All your independent bookshops will also be carrying it because it has been reviewed very well and popularly.  You can learn more about me if you like at my website at jamesmtabor.com.  So yeah, that’s where it can be found.

Dr. Kent:  What are you doing next?

James Tabor:  My next book I’ve been working on for about a year now and is actually about the search for the deepest cave on earth.  It’s the last great terrestrial discovery that was made in 2004.  It’s like climbing Mount Everest in reverse is the way one person put it.  It requires weeks and weeks underground, multiple camps, just an astonishing adventure that again to an outdoor reader who loves adventure this will be a great story.  It will be out by the end of the year.

Dr. Kent:  Is that something you’ve experienced also, cave diving?

James Tabor:  I have, I did a bit of caving back in the late 80s and early 90s.  Some very extreme caving in super deep caves.  Some diving; I am a master diver and it’s another world down there.  It’s like through the looking glass if you will.  It’s an incredible underground wonderland and I hope to be able to bring readers through the book down there so they can experience it themselves.

Dr. Kent:  Where did you get this bug and how does your family feel every time you go on these great adventures?

James Tabor:  That’s why I don’t do them anymore actually.  My family’s patience finally ran out but I guess there are some people who sort of biochemical need more stimulation than others just to feel comfortable and I think I might have been born with a brain like that.  I’ve always liked things like hang gliding and scuba diving, climbing, and those kinds of things.  As my children were born and began to grow older I really had to taper off those things so no, my life is a good bit tamer these days than it used to be.

Dr. Kent:  I hope the next book does really well.  Of course that’s the kind of adventure I’ve not seen on shelves and I hope it gets the same kind of exposure this one has.  It’s been a real honor speaking with James M. Tabor, author of Forever on the Mountain: The truth behind one of mountaineering’s most controversial disasters.  We can find him on the website at jamesmtabor.com.  There’s some good stuff on there.  Thank you so much for being on the show.

James Tabor:  The pleasure is mine Dr. Kent, take care.

Dr. Kent:  My next guest on the show is going to be Kelly Adair and she is a participant in a project called Champions Body for Life.  It’s become a bestselling book and we’re going to talk with her next about how her life has changed and about this book itself.  So come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Travel, History, Sports, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Dan Goldman | Singing & Strings

December 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment

 
icon for podpress  Interview with Dan Goldman: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Great tunes from Dan Goldman, and incredible string arrangements. It was a pleasure having him on the show. More about Dan from his website:

Luxury Pond is the songwriting project of Toronto-based musician Dan Goldman. In addition to writing and performing his own material, Dan plays regularly with Snowblink and Great Aunt Ida. He’s been a member in the Mia Sheard band, Justin Haynes’ John School, Tusks, Maps of the Night Sky, Breaking Sounds, and Kitchenmusik. He’s also created music for modern dance choreographers Jenn Goodwinn, Sara Doucet, Louis Laberge-Cote and Kathleen Rea as well as multi media producer/architect Filiz Klassen.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Experimental, Pop, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Interview with Elder Roche | Sound Authors Radio

December 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment

[Music]

Dr. Kent:  What was a beautiful song by Elder Roche.  A new album that he’s got out called Nobody Knows and that was the track called Dark Place.  Welcome to the show Elder Roche.

Elder Roche:  Hey, how are you doing?

Dr. Kent:  Wonderful.  Tell me a little about your style of music.  It’s a little bit Tom Waites, that’s what turned me on to you but it’s also a little bit Elliot Smith or something like that.  Where did you develop your style?

Elder Roche:  Well I was always into music from blues to basic jazz, traditional music and folk music but I was never into any one particular style over any other style if you understand what I mean.  So I think all the styles sort of led into this sort of style that I have gained.  It wasn’t a conscious development.

Dr. Kent:  You’re a live musician.  What was it like getting that sound into the studio?

Elder Roche:  It was really good.  I did my homework, found a really good producer, Don Haus and ### and they work with people like ###who were very well developed musicians.  So I was working with him and basically he just laid down some very good time tracks for me to play over, which means it was extremely easy for me to get that live feel in the studio.

Sally:  That was just such a beautiful song.  I noticed that you started playing the piano when you were 11.  Did you have the basic classic piano lessons like everybody else?  Did you start playing by ear?  How did you get started at the beginning in terms of your piano education?

Elder Roche:  Well, I always wanted to play the piano.  I used to disappear when I was young and my parents would panic wondering where I was and I always ended up in a neighbor’s house, hiding in the room with the piano.  Basically for five years I was looking to play the piano.  My aunt had one, it was an old piano that nobody played and she gave me one of them.  I was very lucky to play that one though it was broken; there were broken keys on it and keys that didn’t play.

I didn’t really care I just wanted to hear the sound of the piano.  And I was lucky enough to get into it when I was younger so I bought a piano and just went from there but I never really wrote songs on the piano until I was like 20.  I got a lesson for a year and I just gave it up and really started my own way of playing them.  And then I learned it in college again.

Sally:  Wow that’s wonderful!  You’re a real heart musician and I just appreciate what you do so much.  It was beautiful and I can’t wait to hear more of your albums.

Elder Roche:  Thank you so much.

Dr. Kent:  What are you working on now?

Elder Roche:  Well I’ve just literally come in the door from being out in California in a town called Mencino and I went over there to write.  I wanted to feel the genre that comes to people naturally around in that area which is quite beautiful, gruff and there’s a good strong folk feel to musicians there.  Their genre and style of playing just don’t match and come to people here and I wanted to incorporate it into my style of playing.  So I went over there and basically I’ve been writing for my second album and then I’m hoping to maybe make it over there to record it because I think it will be a little bit more organic if I recorded the songs I wrote in the same area.  So it’s been a very good time for me.

Sally:  I know this is probably going to sound silly but are you able to make your living from your music?  Just from playing, doing gigs, and traveling?

Elder Roche:  I try to but unfortunately not yet.  I do get odd jobs but everything falls behind music and I’m an independent musician so I have to pay for everything that I do.  Like music, I need to get it on the road as much as I possibly can and it will pay for itself, unfortunately it won’t pay for studio time or get organizations to help me with the recordings and such like.

Sally:  Elder thank you so much for being with us today.  Unfortunately we’re out of time and so it’s been such an honor speaking with you.  I’d really like to commend you for your beautiful, beautiful music and we can’t wait to hear more from you.

Elder Roche:  Thank you so much.

Sally:  We’d like to play one more cut from your album called Scream Inside a Bottle and we hope to have you back on the show soon.

Elder Roche:  That’s one of my personal favorites.

Sally:  It was an honor to co-host here today with Kent and this has been such a pleasure and I’ve had a great time on Sound Authors.

Elder Roche:  Thank you very much.

Dr. Kent:  Here’s a tune by Elder Roche Scream Inside a Bottle.

[Music]

Dr. Kent:  That was a beautiful tune from Elder Roche called Scream Inside a Bottle.  We’re not on the air anymore but it was a pleasure today to have a co-host Sally Shields and I hope we’ll do some co-hosting later on and thank you so much for chatting with me today.

Sally:  It was great Kent.  I had such a great time and meeting the wonderful guests on the show and can’t wait to do it again.

Dr. Kent:  Let’s talk a second since we’re both live.  I wasn’t sure if that would work.  Let’s talk for a second about the guests today.  What did you think of Christopher tenants Filthy Rich?

Sally:  I thought he was so funny.  His book is just spot on hilarity.  It’s just such a parody and such a reality at the same time so it was just amazing insight into that particular clan of filthy rich.  If you want a really good chuckle please pick up the book because it’s really hilarious.

Dr. Kent:  You were really into the natural author.  I’m definitely into nature foods but I got to say I like my French fries and my junk food.

Sally:  Well I don’t hold that against you.  Since I had my kids it’s been a little hard to maintain my healthy regimen.  You know, when I’m making mac and cheese and that’s the only thing they’ll eat and I’m hungry and I take a bite of it.  So I can completely understand and I’ve fallen off, I’ve always been a vegetarian but I’ve fallen off the healthy vegetarian wagon.  I call myself a vegetarian that likes to eat ice cream.  So she was really inspiring you know telling us how we can create creamy delicious ice cream in a blender with mangos and low fat yogurt and ginger and cinnamon.

Dr. Kent:  And asparagus.

Sally:  Oh yeah.

Dr. Kent:  Actually as a kid I had when my parents were gone for a couple of weeks I told the woman I was staying with that I liked broccoli because I wanted punish myself.  Because my parents weren’t there I wanted to get that broccoli so that I would stay healthy and then when she bought it I didn’t eat it.  A couple weeks later she came by and gave me broccoli cookies.

Sally:  Oh that’s hilarious, broccoli cookies.

Dr. Kent:  But they weren’t green so I don’t think she really put broccoli in it.  Well today I really enjoyed the music of Elder Roche.  His music is really soothing and strange and of course listening to his Dublin accent, you can’t hate that.

Sally:  No, I thought it was very I guess what we would call heart music.  He just writes from the heart.  He said he only had one year of traditional training and the rest of it is self taught.  The fact that he is able to create this beautiful music just from being self taught is amazing and it was moving.  I loved it.

Dr. Kent:  You had read some of Warren Whitlock’s book marketing stuff in the past, right?

Sally:  Yeah, I’ve read his blogs I’ve heard some tele-seminars and he is a really knowledgeable guys and one of the top book marketers out there.  He really is one of the most fascinating people that I follow so I would really suggest to anybody who’s interested in marketing or getting your name out there, check out Twitter Revolution because that’s really on the cutting edge of what’s happening now.  Creating a group of people that will follow you, that loves you, this is part of that whole herd mentality because also what you want to do, is it doesn’t matter how big the size of your list is, you can have 200 people on your list but if they love you they’ll buy everything that you have to sell them.  And that’s worth gold, that is gold right there so he’s really into that whole herd mentality thing, getting followers, getting people on your mailing list, people that really love you and that’s what I appreciate about Warren Whitlock.

Dr. Kent:  And it was fun that today he sent his twitter followers in our direction.  Now you just started on twitter a little while ago as did I.  Have you gotten into the twitter thing?

Sally:  You know I’ve been tweeting and I’ve been asking I’ve been following people and clicking on people and people have been following me and I’ve been following them.  I don’t know all the ins and outs of it yet.  I sort of personally sent direct note messages to a couple of people to sort of dip my toe in the water on that one but I’m so fascinated to learn about what more one can do with twitter.  It seems like I’m utilizing maybe one percent of what could possibly be done.  I’m not sure, correct me if I’m wrong because it seems like you have more of a handle on twitter than I do at this point.

Dr. Kent:  It was funny that Warren Whitlock said that obsession was the wrong word because he said the only two things I’m obsessed with are food and sleep.

Sally:  No breathing and eating.

Dr. Kent:  Yeah, that’s what it was exactly, breathing and eating and for me I have a small obsession let’s say with twitter.  I think it’s an amazing thing.  It’s almost like Google meets social networking.  You can actually find out information from people and you can see their faces and see interesting stuff.  It was interesting that you brought up the topic of book marketing or anything else on twitter.  I’m one of those people that when I see that people are advertising too much I say wow, I’m not too interested.  But about half of the twitter users are really interested.  It’s just like anything else, its sort of figuring out its own rules.

Sally:  I love what he said about wanting to help people because that’s something else that I learned from all of this book marketing education that I’ve been delving into in the last couple of years.  Really the most important thing that an author can understand and learn is that to genuinely be able to want to be able to help people, to genuinely want to help people with their expertise and of course you know the money and everything else will follow.  But if you have a genuine caring and interest in helping others, this is really the most important thing that you can do as an expert on authors.  So I really appreciate that he brought that point out.

Dr. Kent:  Cool.  Well this has been fun and we are allowed to because its on blog talk radio, we’re allowed to say our opinions and I’m really happy that Barack Obama won this week and I’m interested to see what happens.  Hearing all my friends in New York City talk about how people were spilling into the streets and making tons of noise when Obama won, it’s pretty encouraging.

Sally:  I got chills Kent.  I’m feeling the same way, I feel like in the whole world somehow a cloud has been lifted and we have this new hope for a better future.  Myself personally having two small children, knowing that Barack Obama will be their first president I feel they could really be proud of and I’m really proud of, I’m just feeling so encouraged for such a bright future.  It makes me so happy.  The energy and electricity being here in New York City is just unmatched; it’s wonderful.

Dr. Kent:  Jon Stewart made a joke on his show.  He said you know there’s something really strange happening in New York City, people are making eye contact.  So it’s an amusing time where people are really starting to connect all across the country and seeing the outpouring all across the world of people interested in this country again and saying wow it wasn’t Americanism that we hated, it was what was happening.  So that’s fascinating to me and I’ll keep tuned into that.  It’s been an honor chatting with Sally Shields and her book is called The Daughter-In-Law Rules and she’s got a website dilrules.com and I hope we’ll do some co-hosting again in the future.

Sally:  That sounds great Kent.  It was so fun being here and I hope you have a fabulous day and I hope to speak to you soon.

Dr. Kent:  All right, have a good one.  Next week on the show we’re going to have four new guests and be safe and we’ll talk to you then.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Bluegrass, TRANSCRIPTS, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Interview with Nadeem Aslam | Sound Authors Radio

December 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome back to Sound Authors!  It’s my great honor to have on the show the award-winning author of The Wasted Vigil.  It’s a novel by Nadeem Aslam and welcome to the show.

Nadeem Aslam:  Thank you very much for inviting me.

Dr. Kent:  How are you doing this evening?

Nadeem Aslam:  I’m very well, yes.

Dr. Kent:  And are you speaking to us from?

Nadeem Aslam:  I am studying in London.

Dr. Kent:  So it is evening.

Nadeem Aslam:  Yes.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me about this book.  It’s been such a success, were you expecting it to do so well?

Nadeem Aslam:  No I think as a writer you just try to expose your own life, your own consciousness, but I as a writer always begin with the firm belief that I am an ordinary human being, that I am one of the six billion people on the planet.  So if anything is true of me, it is possibly true of a lot of other people out there.  So that is how books become successful or unsuccessful I think.  So no, I was just trying to understand this more than political chaos that we, the world, seem to have found in the post 9/11 world.  In the Wasted Vigil I trace the origins and head back to Afghanistan and I wanted to tell Afghanistan’s story.

Also because I thought that it had been forgotten and this is going to sound like a strange statement because Afghanistan is in the news every single day, how can it be that it is forgotten when you see it in the news everyday?  But what it is doing to the rest of the world; so many American soldiers have died, so many Canadian soldiers have died, so many British soldiers have died.  But what the world is to Afghanistan over the last 30 years seems to have been forgotten as I’ve said.  It seems to be news to most people.

Never mind the involvement of the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia and the United States and Pakistan in the 1980s and early 90s.  Something as recent as the Taliban, which started 30 years ago; people read my book and then come to me and say we never realized the Taliban were that bad.  So I think it was important to document things because the past was slipping away from peoples minds.

Dr. Kent:  When you were writing this book, what goes into that process for you?  How much of yourself goes in there, how much research goes in?

Nadeem Aslam:  I often wonder if I do any research at all.  All in all they are simply that interesting, it is in my mind the most; that is what goes down my arm and into my fingers and then onto the page.  There are times that things I am interested in like jazz, painting, the making of perfumes, the natural world; I know them but I’m interested in the cycle of plants and things.  But there are times when interests have to be deepened for the purpose of the novel.  So in The Wasted Vigil, I wanted to go to Afghanistan and I know I would need a Visa.

So I began to talk to afghan refugees; I thought I would put their story together through their memories as it were.  I talked to about 200 afghan refugees and I would ask them specific questions like tell me about the house you grew up in or tell me about your family?  Also I had the idea and its something that’s very important to me being as I’m a writer.  And that was I would ask them if it’s April, what kinds of birds are there in the garden?  If it’s June, what kinds of flowers are there?  What is the color of the sky in September?  As a writer I need to know these things.

And of course, some of the stories these people told were horrifying because these were all refugees and you could see that parts of the vigil and some of the readers have said that.  The book is very beautiful and that it is very terrifying also; it’s distressing.  But you know, nothing in the book is made up and I would quote Tony Morrison who said “If they can live it, I can write it.”  And I would go one step further and say that “if they can live it, you can read it.”  I don’t see anything as a virtue that has to be extended in that innocence.  There was a time for innocence; now I am an adult and it is my duty to look at the world and to pinpoint what is wrong with it and celebrate what is right with it.

Dr. Kent:  Its such an honorable task to be able to write about the conflict that’s at the center of all of the news really, so central to the news in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Talk about the situation there and your feelings on it right now.

Nadeem Aslam:  I don’t have these rigid ideologies and what can be the consequence of rigid ideologies and we see them at play.  In the novel I have a character who is a war orphan in Afghanistan and who is in their 20s; who as a child was beaten and raped and who as a young teenager beat others and raped others.  These are very objectionable things but then we think what would you expect for someone who’s had that kind of life?  What did we think was going to be the result of all of that?  And of course there are other rigid ideologies in the novel that men should think women should have in the society.

On a wider scale, two of my characters are Americans staying in Palestine inside of town and they do have rigid ideologies about Americas place in the world and how America should maintain its position in the world.  The word vigil is a derivative of vigilant or vigilante and appears seven times in my novel and each time they are connected to one of the main characters.  Each of those vigils is wasted but we cannot look at the world these sort of pastime beliefs and not be able to bend.  In this book, I wanted to see what would happen if various people from various nationalities were forced to live together in a house for about a fortnight and I thought lets see what would happen.

How soon would our beliefs, and our nationalities, and our ideologies fall away and the common thing that we are under the clothes, which is a human being.  How soon would that become apparent?  And of course the other way around as well.  How soon would our common humanity be sidelined because ideologies are at stake?  So that is what I wanted to explore.  And lastly what is happening in Pakistan and Afghanistan and of course we just had the attack in Mumbai and the terrorists came from Pakistan.

The Pakistani government must bear the responsibility.  It’s not good enough for president Suhdai to say that Pakistan too is suffering at the hands of terrorists.  Until the Pakistani government, until the Pakistani military, until the Pakistani secret service and Pakistani society has proved that it can do, that it has done everything possible to eradicate the terrorists, until they have done that, they are not allowed to say that.  To say there is nothing, what can we do as a country?  You know?  I mean I was in Pakistan earlier this year and everybody there knows that one of these terrorist organizations ### Mohammed, who are responsible for these attacks in Mumbai, they are constructing a huge focus like Mandessa in the main town in Punjab, and this is an organization that has been banned.

Pakistan’s government says it has banned it and everyone knows.  Its in the newspapers, I saw it myself, I know there are terrorist training camps; I know and every person like me, without meaning to manage to talk to more than a dozen young men who had been to terrorist training camps.  How can the Pakistani government say we don’t know where their camps are?  Of course they know where the camps are and more should be done.

Dr. Kent:  And its such a difficult issue, I know I’ve spent time myself in Palestine and being in areas where people don’t feel good about an occupation or about the western world.  There’s so much of that in your writing, there’s so much pain and suffering.  How do you go about on a daily basis dealing with all of this material, putting it in your novel, and not internalizing it too much?

Nadeem Aslam:  Well I think in the Mosul, as I said I hope that the difficulties that we are facing in the world, they are in the novel counterbalanced by the beauty that exists in this world; love, friendship, family.  Something ordinary like going out for a drink with friends.  I was talking about the connection that we human beings make.  That is the message that I hope is revealed.  Right at the end Lara, who is one of the main characters, when she goes back to Russia from Afghanistan; she’s a Russian woman.

When she goes back she takes away from the house fragments from one of a picture that has fallen off of the wall.  The fragment that she takes away is where the skin, the bodies of the two lovers come together.  That small piece is what we have to hold on to and as I said there are difficulties in the world that we human beings seem to be facing at the moment but intelligently, patiently we have to look at them and we have to analyze them and try to eradicate them.  One of the things that we must make sure is we cannot confuse all Muslims as terrorists, that is the mistake I think we have to avoid because if you study the statements that someone like Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda #2 ### has put out way since the beginning, and if you study them sequentially, and you can go to the internet and have a look at them.

Nowadays there are a number of very good books which collect all the statements of these people.  You’ll see that these people are in torment over the fact that the world has for better or worse managed to make a decision that it’s all Muslims and Islamists.  What they wanted was that the whole world to stand up and say that every Muslim and Islamic on this planet is a troublemaker, but that hasn’t happened.  I don’t agree with many things that President Bush has done during his time at the White House, but one of the good things that he did was immediately after 9/11 he took off his shoes and he went off and he went into that Mosque in Washington DC because it sent a clear message not only to the bigots in America, because if you remember, in the days following 9/11 a number of dark skinned gentlemen with long beards had been shot dead for retaliation as it were.

So that sent a message to the bigots in America saying that we understand that the people who flew those planes into those office buildings have nothing to do with people who come into this mosque.  But it also sent a message to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda that we understand that you are separate from these people, that we are actually going to stand side by side with these people and try to eradicate you.

Dr. Kent:  There’s two things that brings to mind; one is Cat Stevens, one of my favorite singers who Yusef Islam who has come out with many albums and they’re all about peace and my experience with people of Islam say we’re the religion of peace and its such a shame that the world thinks of even the worlds Jihad the struggle as being a violent awful thing.  How does that find its way into your work?

Nadeem Aslam:  But this violence came to exist in the novel.  For example, my book is set in this house in Afghanistan and when Lara the Russian woman enters in the house and the house is owned by an Englishman who had many years ago married an Afghanistan woman and it was their home.  During the Taliban regime Marcus the Englishman and his wife had gone to fight in the Taliban, who said that only one book was allowed to exist in the world and that was the Koran.  So nothing else was allowed to exist; from Homer to Makita to the Bible or John Updike, so Marcus’ wife moved her library to the ceiling so that every book in the house is nailed to the ceiling.

So when Lara comes into this strange house she sees that all the ceiling is covered with books and there is this gentle terrain as it was because there these books up there.  But as I said, we cannot deny that a violent interpretation of Islam is possible and at the moment it seems to be the most visible one because the people that are doing this are the ones who have the weapons and the people who don’t are afraid of them.  What would happen and it does happen in Pakistan when a newspaper writer is going against what the Taliban are doing.  But the editor and the columnist need police protection so there is intimidation.

But as I said slowly and patiently, we mustn’t lose heart and in the meantime, one of my favorite poets is ###, the great English poet who won the Nobel Prize some years ago was his point about Stalin, who when Stalin had ### murdered, he wrote a poem.  Saying you who wronged a simple man drew laughter at the crime.  Get a pack of food around you to mix good with evil to blur the lines.  Do not feel safe, the poet remembers.  You can kill one, but another is born.  The word will come down; the deed, the date.  So I think as a writer I see that as my responsibility.  To write down the word, the deeds, and the dates and have that as a reminder, a memorial.

Dr. Kent:  You are from Pakistan and you have written two novels.  Your first two novels were about Pakistan.  Did you see a big difference between setting a novel in Pakistan as say one set in Afghanistan?

Nadeem Aslam:  No I think they were ###.  We talk about human beings and throughout this interview I’ve been saying that one of my deepest beliefs is that underneath it all we’re all the same and that is that.  It is political, ideological and a different social matrix that we draw.  That is what bends our lives and our character and even our bodies differently, but ultimately we are all the same.  In my first novel, I was writing about mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends; and in the second novel too and also in the third novel.

We are all human beings.  You could say that the cast in the Wasted Vigil is like international; I have Americans, I have afghans, I have an Englishman and I have a Russian, but I was able to write them because I believe that there is a great deal of similarity.  By that I don’t mean that here we have this bourgeois individual that thinks he can go into anyone’s history, any country’s history, and country’s story and say I am able to make anything I can with it, no?  If I want to write about a Russian character I have to enter Russian history from a place of great humility.  I have to try to understand it, I have to understand how our stories and our ideas form and how deeply connected we are with them.  So I enter everyone’s story with great humbleness and if I make a mistake I apologize, and that goes to everyone.  From Saudi Arabians, to Russians, to Americans.

Dr. Kent:  One of the most powerful things in a society that is sort of split in any different way is to tell stories.  Living in Palestine and in the middle east for some time, the stories I tell people are of sitting down to tea and staying with three or four hours with total strangers.  Something that wouldn’t exist now where I live in New York and hospitality that people could never imagine and all you see on the news is violence or poverty and things like that.  What’s so beautiful about your novels is that it brings people into that world.

Nadeem Aslam:  Thank you very much.  One of the things, I think at one point in the novel The Wasted Vigil, Marcus says stories are how we judge our actions before committing them.  So I think stories can be a warning as well.  I wanted to explore in the Wasted Vigil whether it was possible for us to show power, for us to go into another country and play its political games and expect there not to be any consequences.  And I’m talking about what happened in the 1980s when first the Soviet Union went into Afghanistan and then the United States with the help of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia decided that they were going to defeat the Soviet Union.

Once the Soviet Union was defeated in 1989, once they withdrew, the United States withdrew its gaze as it were.  It looked away but billions of dollars of work had gone into that country and there had to be consequences and those consequences were apparent for the afghan people immediately because a civil war began in 1990.  Straight away the war lords began to fight for the spoils as it were but it took another 11 years until 9/11 happened for those consequences to become apparent to the rest of the world.  So yes, now here we are in Iraq.  The United States is in Iraq.

Dr. Kent:  Its such a complicated web; just looking at the works of Michael Moore and other honest journalists alike, a lot of European journalists that have honest reporting that talk about that web between Russia and Afghanistan and Iraq and the political ties to the united states and all of this.  Most people in this country are quite naïve because it’s not reported here.

Nadeem Aslam:  Absolutely!  I mean I think sometimes of July in Washington when it was said the spokes of this wheel that’s the sore spot of the earth.  The United States is very intimately involved, has been over the past 30, 40, 50 years and have been interfering with their governments but I come from a country, Pakistan, where you can’t not be aware of politics because politics is visceral there.

I was in Washington DC earlier this year and I used to go walk around the capital building and the White House and I would think how in the 1980s, certain decisions, certain boring, quiet decisions made in those places, that we must defeat Iraq and Iran, the soviet union and enter Pakistan and get help from Saudi Arabia and what have you.  How these decisions, which not many in America knew and when those decisions went to Pakistan, went to my part of the world, it became physical things like fists and hammers, who broke the bones of the bodies of people who were protesting against the regime there.

So in the west and in America perhaps, it is possible for human beings to live quite a good and decent life if he or she decides that he wants nothing to do with politics.  But in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, we don’t have that luxury.  We have to get involved with politics.

Dr. Kent:  So is there hope in Afghanistan and Pakistan of new hope with Barack Obama being elected.

Nadeem Aslam:  I think that remains to be seen.  Nobody out there is innocent; I really think that the Pakistani government needs to do more.  In the Pakistani Press, which I read every day on the net, President Obama isn’t very popular because he’s made statements which people are not happy with.

Dr. Kent:  Right, he made the statement about crossing into Pakistan without Pakistan’s authorization.

Nadeem Aslam:  Yes, indeed, yes but this whole thing I’m sure Pakistan’s government knows; they take care of raids every week.  Houses are being destroyed and people are being killed.  Some of them are Al Qaeda and Taliban but other people are dying throughout the region and they are drones who are firing missiles into the Kabul area.  So as I said these people are actually damaging Pakistan as well.  So a way has to be found out of this what I said earlier, this modern, political chaos that Pakistan is in, but patiently it has to be done.  We mustn’t lose hope, there’s always hope.

Dr. Kent:  You said you read the Pakistani Press everyday.  Do you read it in Urdu?

Nadeem Aslam:  I read it in Urdu every day, yes.

Dr. Kent:  Wow, so you’re able to keep it up.

Nadeem Aslam:  Yes, well I mean I was in Pakistan for the first 14 years of my life and really writing about Afghanistan was for me inevitable because it is so linked with my past life in that when the soviet union invaded Afghanistan and the united states went in, the CIA went in and began to pull weapons into Pakistan, there were people who were warning against the consequences.  What would happen once the Soviet Union was gone?  They were saying and these people were writers, poets, journalists and some of them were from my family.  So things were getting hard for us and in 1982 we had to leave.

My father had to flee the country so actually I wouldn’t be here in England if it wasn’t for Afghanistan.  So it’s that feeling of dealing with my life and once again not to go back and say that politics isn’t something gory, it is so deeply linked with our day to life, it shapes our life so I follow it.  Whenever we think of the problems facing the world, the political dimension is always there in our understanding of the world as it were.

Dr. Kent:  As a child on Wikipedia it says you published your first short story at 13.  When did you start thinking as a writer?  Were your parents writers?

Nadeem Aslam:  My father was a poet and as a young man he wrote poetry, but being from the continent Americans have arranged for him and the children came very quickly and he had to go out and find a job.  There has always been a kind of wound in my father, that he thinks that his real life didn’t happen; because of me I suppose.  I was his son and he had to earn a living when he should have been writing I suppose, I don’t know.  He goes under the name Ramik Saleem and in the universe of my novels, the great Pakistani poet is called Ramik Saleem and he appears in all three of my novels and he will make a small appearance in every single one of my future books as well.  So I’ve done it for him for real in the world of my books what he couldn’t do in real life because of me.

Dr. Kent:  Are you working on a new novel now?

Nadeem Aslam:  Yes, I’m working on a novel centered in Pakistan so I will be dealing with these things that we’ve been talking about.  These things seem relevant only because of what has happened over the last seven or eight years but 9/11 was a visual and spectacular manifestation of what was going on within the Islamic world anyway.  The fight between military and the Muslims as it were.  My first novel, which was published ten or eleven years before Al Qaeda became a word, and Jihad and before 9/11 happened.  It was about these issues so I would still be writing the books that I’m writing if 9/11 hadn’t happened as it were.  There are any number of writers who said that on the morning of 9/11 they looked at the TV and said the book I’m working on is worthless, that it really seems unimportant now.  At that time, I was writing a novel called The Lost Lovers and I remember looking at the screen and thinking there is my novel on the screen.

Dr. Kent:  Right, and having been in the middle east before it happened, it’s a horrible thing just because we’ve seen these images of the airplanes but the numbers coming out of Iraq that maybe more than 100,000 people have died.

Nadeem Aslam:  No, you are absolutely; as I said, this thing has gotten worse over the past seven years.  Of course I don’t deny that.  Of course, but as a writer as I said I begin as only a human being and I don’t know why we went into Iraq.  I don’t have access to the classified documents over there at the Pentagon and at the White House and what have you.  So I can only articulate what my confusion and my grief.  Absolutely you’re right; this thing has got worse over the past seven years, yes.

Dr. Kent:  Well your writing certainly has not gotten worse over the past years.  I can’t wait to see the next novel come out.  This is a beautiful book called The Wasted Vigil.  It’s by Nadeem Aslam and I can’t wait to continue reading your things.  This has been a wonderful discussion; it certainly has made my week.

Nadeem Aslam:  Thank you very much for having me.

Dr. Kent:  And my next guest on the show is a world famous bluegrass musician, Del McCoury.  We recorded it earlier today and I’ll play that in its entirety starting right after this little break.  Come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Religion, TRANSCRIPTS, History, Politics, Fiction, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, Poetry, PODCAST 

Interview with Christopher Tennant | Sound Authors Radio

December 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome back to Sound Authors!  There’s a lot of talk these days about the rich and the poor, Wall Street, the scoundrels and the elite and all sorts of things.  There are some television shows on all about the lives of the rich and famous; Gossip Girl is out there for kids and the author of The Official Filthy Rich Handbook is Christopher Tennant and he’s on the show with us today.  Welcome to the show.

Christopher Tennant:  Hi how ya doing?  Thanks for being here.  Thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me about the lifestyles of the filthy rich in a nutshell here.

Christopher Tennant:  Let’s see, it’s the .001 percent of Americans who as you might have read made a ton of money in the last decade basically.  There’s always been the rich, but never this sort of filthy rich, which are people with more than well 30 million in liquid assets.  And they’ve never had a book; they’ve never had a guidebook in like every exclusive club.  Every exclusive club I’ve been to I didn’t see one so I decided to write a book for that.  It’s a hysterical tongue in cheek book that is really a cradle to grave guide of how to fit in with the filthy rich.

Sally:  This is so funny Christopher.  I was reading your website last night and right now I’m actually looking at the heiress and can you tell us a little more about how you came up with the whole idea for how you’re labeling her earrings and her dress.  Did you have any sort of models or guides for this particular photograph and picture?

Christopher Tennant:  Yeah, basically from my end I’ve been a journalist in New York for about ten years working at page 6 of the New York Post, and a bunch of different New York magazines; New York Magazine and a newspaper called the New York Observer and ran into all of these people.  I started thinking there’s a lot of, it’s a subculture like any other subculture.  They have their own kind of ways of speaking and dressing and their own social rules that guide how they all behave.

And the official preppy handbook you might remember came out in 1980 and basically the publisher I ended up going with actually published the preppy handbook in 1980 so I got to work with the same designer.  The preppy handbook was kind of a first satirical guide and that was about the declining species of the 80s, which was certainly the pop color, glossy, New England preppy.  So the format kind of worked for it.

Dr. Kent:  The book is amazing.  It pops on every page and I’ve got to say I sat there for about an hour just reading page after page when I first picked up the book.  It’s fantastically put together.  There’s so much information in there, this must have taken you for ever.

Christopher Tennant:  It took about a year and a half.  It started out being late so I kind of when I was finally done I looked back on it and said oh my god, how did you do that?  It was really kind of, I worked at 100 percent true and I wanted it to be 100 percent funny but I settled for 90/80 to be charitable.  Yeah, it was just tons and tons of research.  All of the information is kind of out there and I did a lot of interviews with a lot of very over privileged people in different parts of the country.

Dr. Kent:  This week is a big week in politics along with just the Wall Street stuff and I got to say I’ve been hearing about a lot of really rich folks scrambling a little bit because they know their taxes are going to be going up.

Christopher Tennant:  Yeah, they’re just, they seem, the filthy rich are just suffering the same kind of lack of awareness as everyone else.  It just seems like the country as a whole everyone is kind of pulling back in anticipation of something really bad happening, which I think is going to be a self fulfilling prophecy.  I’ve heard of people canceling their job charters in St. Bart’s over Christmas and all that.  It’s those tough decisions but it seems like nobody really knows what’s going to happen so they’re saying oh, maybe its not a good idea to you know go on a three week golf excursion in Scotland this year.  Everyone has this wait and see approach.  So their obviously doing fine, they’re going to be just fine.

Sally:  I’d love to know in terms of you working with your publisher and editor, how much input did you have and how much editorial control did you have to give up?  Were you involved in picking the photographs of the models?  Were you involved with a lot of it?

Christopher Tennant:  I actually did, yes.  The design was really a collaborative effort and I was involved in every step.  I recluded people for the photo shoots and it was really a back and forth effort.  Because there are so many pieces in it, I think there’s over 300 little pieces of independent boxes or little charts or whatever so I would kind of map out what the chapter would look like and the designer would go into it and we’d go back and forth.

Sally:  It’s just a great job.  As somebody that did my own book I just want to say it’s great.

Christopher Tennant:  Thanks, they really wanted to kill me by the end of it.  They gave me a lot of rope because it was this sort of seminal book for me.  I always wanted to write a book like that and I think its pitch perfect satire so that was kind of hanging over me.  I wanted to produce something that was at least as good as that so I was really, we didn’t speak for a few weeks after the book was done, they were like okay crazy person go away.

Dr. Kent:  Were these models or were they people playing the part?

Christopher Tennant:  Half of them are friends of mine and the other half are people that work in publishing companies.

Dr. Kent:  How about you?  Did you model the filthy rich on yourself?

Christopher Tennant:  No, not at all.  For better or for worse, no.

Dr. Kent:  Is that your goal with this book and all the rest to become on of these filthy rich?

Christopher Tennant:  It’s got to sell an awful lot of copies because it’s only $11.95.  So 100 million copies might put me up there.  If I had known what I was getting into from the beginning because it really took from cradle to grave to cover everything.  So I would go around and talk to people at parties or read something and go wait we have to mention that.  There would always be something.  Or ooh, there’s this picnic boat, this boat made by Hinckley and its 36 feet long and costs $750,000 and John Kerry has one and all these people have one.  And it was like no, I didn’t know about the Hinckley boat.  So then all these little kind of bits of information was tossed at me from different research excursions and I would add it in.  I really did want to be all inclusive.

Dr. Kent:  The book is called The Official Filthy Rich Handbook.  It’s really something that all Americans, especially middle class Americans have to read.  It’s about the lives of the filthy rich and how to get there by Christopher Tennant.  It’s a beautiful tongue in cheek satire, I love it, we both love it.  Thanks so much for being on the show.

Christopher Tennant:  Well thank you, so much.  It’s at Barnes, Borders and Amazon and I have a website filthyrichhandbook.com.

Sally:  By the way congratulations for being number three today in the sociology class at Amazon.  I’m very impressed with your ranking so good job.

Christopher Tennant:  Thanks, yeah I was worried about the total economic implosion but we’re hanging on.  But its still fun to read even if you’re hurting for cash.

Dr. Kent:  Thanks so much and have a wonderful day.

Christopher Tennant:  You too man.

Dr. Kent:  Right after the break we’re going to have book marketing strategist Warren Whitlock, legendary book marketing fellow and he’s going to be twittering at the same time as he’s talking with us on the show and I’m twittering here as well.  Come on back for Warren Whitlock.

Posted by admin | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, Comics, Entertainment, Hollywood, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

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