← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Amor Towles' Short Stories In 'Table For Two'
00:24:07
Table For Two, a short story collection from best-selling author Amor Towles comes out in paperback next month.
Loading summary
Transcript66 lines
- [00:00]
Progressive Insurance
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name youe Price Tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match Limited by state law not available in all states.
- [00:24]
Amor Towles
Listener Supported WNYC Studios.
- [00:39]
Koosha Navadar
This is all.
- [00:40]
Alison Stewart
Of it on wnyc. I'm Koosha Navadar. I'm filling in for Alison Stewart. Amor Toles is the author of the novels Rules of Civility, A Gentleman in Moscow and the Lincoln Highway. Now his best selling short story collection Table for Two is about to be published in paperback. Table for Two in includes six short stories which Toles wrote in the last ten years. Almost all of them are set in New York except one that's set in LA and mostly take place around the turn of the millennium. And if you're a fan of Toles first novel, Rules of Civility, I've got some good news for you. This collection also includes a novella that follows Eve Ross, the mysterious and charismatic character who abruptly disappeared in the original story. The paperback edition of table for two is out Tuesday, April 8th Amor Towles joined me year to talk about the collection. I started off asking him what it was about the backdrop of the late 90s and early 2000s that interested him as a writer. Let's take a listen.
- [01:40]
Amor Towles
I tend to write my short stories in between the novels. I I really need to have a lot of dedicated time and open Runway to do a novel. So in between the novels, while I'm on tour, I'll slide in some stories and it just seems like a very natural format to study my own times. I don't. I've written a lot of books about seven different periods. I'm not against setting a novel in the current period, but it's been fun to use the short stories as a way of sort of picking at the New York that I've witnessed firsthand.
- [02:07]
Koosha Navadar
Oh, so it was the fact that for you firsthand means late 90s, early 2000s in that period, right?
- [02:13]
Amor Towles
Yes. I've lived in the city since the late 80s, so yeah, this is a part of the period in which I've lived. That's right.
- [02:19]
Koosha Navadar
And let's talk about short stories for a second because I love reading short stories and especially being able to see novelists and authors jump between the two. Have short stories always been a format that you've loved? Did you start writing fiction, short stories?
- [02:34]
Alison Stewart
How do they help you prepare for.
- [02:35]
Koosha Navadar
Like the longer novels?
- [02:36]
Amor Towles
Yes. I began writing fiction as a kid, and I think like many novelists, I started with the short story because it's a great vehicle in which to try to master various elements of craft because that from story to story to story, you can approach setting differently, you can approach the thematic quality differently, the poetics differently, the structure differently, the point of view differently. So the stories really provide you an opportunity to explore the different ways in which you are going to. The different tools you're going to use to tell stories in the longer form of the novel.
- [03:05]
Koosha Navadar
What about writing a short story is harder than a novel, though?
- [03:10]
Amor Towles
You know, I think the. The. I don't know if this is going to be harder, but I think the. A major difference between the novel and the short story, from my point of view, is that in the novel, consciously or unconsciously, an author has to do a lot to orient the reader. If you go back and look at the first 30 pages of any novel you like, there's a lot of information there about the time it's set in, the place it's set in, the characters and. And their backgrounds, all as a means of sort of laying the ground so that the reader can then go into the adventure of the novel on firm footing. And in a short story, you do not have the time for that kind of orientation. You drop right in. So, you know, and that's a pleasure for the writer to some degree, and it's a pleasure for the reader, I think, where suddenly there's a conversation between a husband and wife and you're like, wait, what happened? Wait, are they married? You know, somebody said something, Are they fighting? You know, what year is this? You know, are we in Chicago? Are we in Miami? Where are we? And so you're in the course of the story, you're piecing together where you are, and. But even as you're reading it and figuring that out, you realize you running out of space. There's only six pages left, there's only four pages left. So because you're only going to get a glimpse, and that's part of the pleasure of the short story, is that you're getting a glimpse into someone's life. You have to sort of launch yourself into it, look around as quickly as you can, interpret everything as best you can, and you. And you leave it, in essence, the feeling like a few minutes later, but with a sense that something important has happened in the lives of these individuals.
- [04:29]
Koosha Navadar
Have you ever watched, done, experienced improv before?
- [04:33]
Amor Towles
Oh, well, I mean, we've all inherited sort of the tradition of improv through Saturday Night Live and all the other formats now. But yes, I have, because it's just.
- [04:41]
Koosha Navadar
Such an interesting comparison to that art form where there's long form and short form improv, like Whose Line is It Anyway? I think of as short form. And that one, it really teaches you the structure of story where you don't you. The economy of time, which I hear you talking about.
- [04:53]
Amor Towles
Exactly, right.
- [04:54]
Koosha Navadar
Yeah, exactly. Like, where are you, who are you to each other, et cetera, et cetera.
- [04:57]
Amor Towles
And I think, you know, one of the fun things about a short story is that if you think of a novel where you've got over 100,000 words, let's say in my novels, the last sentence might be beautiful, it might be important, it might be, you know, it might sort of hit the perfect ending, but it is sort of lost within the giant woods that is the novel. In a short story, a last sentence can sort of completely change the way that you've read the story. It can spin it around and so that you could be reading through the story and say, oh, yes, this is about the, the wife. And I can see what, what's happening to her and what she's thinking, whatever, as the husband sort of relates some event that. And in the final sentence you can suddenly stop and be like, wait a second, the story was about him, you know, and it changes everything that you've done. You know, and that's a fun thing about a short story too, is that you can shift very rapidly the orientation for the reader in terms of how they assume what the story's about, from what perspective it's being told. Whereas in the novel, you really, you don't have the freedom to do that.
- [05:52]
Koosha Navadar
Have you ever had a plan to do that and actually seen it executed, like from vision before you started writing? Or is that the kind of thing where really at the end you say, oh, this is a nice flourish that I can put on there.
- [06:02]
Amor Towles
I do tend to plan and it's help to kind of know where you're going for me in my work. And so I do design my novels over a multiple year time frame before I start to write them. The short story is the same kind of thing. It just is less time. I might be designing a short story over a year or a period of months so that I kind of know everything it's going. So I usually do know the final sentence, even if it is going to be a reversal of some kind.
- [06:23]
Koosha Navadar
And how much of the stories that you did over the past 10 years for this collection. Did you have to go back and re edit and relook at.
- [06:32]
Amor Towles
I did. I am always a reviser. And so some of these stories. Well, the biggest example that you're talking about is when I wrote the original Eve in Hollywood after Rules and Civility was done, which picks up, as you said, when Eve disappears in Rules of Civility. She's on a train headed home to the Midwest. She doesn't get off the train where her parents are waiting, and instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. And that's all we kind of know about what's happened to her in the story of Rules of Civility. So Eve in Hollywood picks up where she's on the train, and there's an old homicide detective, a retired homicide detective sitting with her, and he sees her extender ticket and he's fascinated by this. And that's kind of where even Holly begins with this observation. And that original piece was 60 pages. And when I finished the collecting the stories for Table for Two and handed it in, the minute I handed in, I was like, I gotta get it back. I'm not, you know, because I wasn't done with Eve yet. And there were. There was. I knew more about what was going to happen to her in Hollywood. So I took that 60 pages and in the, you know, a year before that book came out, I expanded it to about 220 pages. I actually flew to Los Angeles, moved into the Beverly Hills Hotel, which is where Eve lives, and. And began to sort of tell the story, do justice to her story in Hollywood.
- [07:46]
Koosha Navadar
And Amor, I want to dive into Eve a little bit. You said there was something nagging you about where you left that character. Can you put a point on that? What was nagging you?
- [07:55]
Amor Towles
And I mean, your description of her earlier was I exactly right. She is sort of a vibrant, sort of charismatic character. She's also very willful. You know, you can tell she's a kid who would. Would have never done what was asked of her or expected of her. If you expect something of her, she'll do the reverse just to make a point, you know. And so I was. I really loved her as a character. And so when Rules was done, I really thought, okay, I've told you everything you should know about Katie. I've told you everything you should know about Tinker. But the two other main characters. But. But I kept thinking, what is going on with Eve? And so that's what prompted writing that inter 60 pages. But then I was still, as I was saying, not satisfied that I wanted to really let her have the reins for a while, as it were. She's the secondary character in Rules, and I wanted to put her in the driving position because I do think she's such a fascinating personality.
- [08:43]
Koosha Navadar
And so you checked yourself into the Beverly Hills Hotel, and that's part of where the story takes place. Tell me why. What is it about being in that space?
- [08:53]
Amor Towles
It's the sacrifice that we make for art. Know, it's. You know, it's lovely. It's a beautiful place. You know, it's partly because the change of temperature and, you know, just walking through the. The hotel, let's say out back, there's a. The. The. One of the stories opens at the pool of the hotel. Walking there and passing sort of. That's the smelling orange blossoms. It's such a crazy thing to be in California in the middle of what is our winter, and to smell very fragrant, beautiful orange blossoms. And so you're there partly just as a reminder of that. And then that kind of changes your mood, too. Living in a place where you're smelling orange blossoms in February, it's a different kind of thing than waking up to cold and rain. And so it sort of lets you tune in a little bit more to what the characters might be going through.
- [09:39]
Koosha Navadar
Another element of that story, I think, is the noir genre, which I'd love to dive into. Are you a fan of the noir genre?
- [09:45]
Amor Towles
I am. And, you know, I like to think of it as if you think of jazz, it is a uniquely American art form, you know, only could have been made really in America, but then was adopted or admired around the world, and has been sort of interpreted around the world, whether in Asia or France or what have you. And noir is another version of that. It's an art form that was really invented uniquely in the United States, is loved around the world, has been interpreted both in writing and film by great writers and filmmakers in across Europe, in Asia. So as someone who loves American narrative, of course I'm fascinated by noir and the way it's built, how it operates, what it sounds like. And as soon as I realized I was going to tell a story about eve in Hollywood in 38, I was like, oh, this is a perfect chance for me to sort of dip in and approach the noir genre from my angle and with a female heroine and that that would be sort of a fun way to sort of explore that tradition.
- [10:40]
Koosha Navadar
I love that you say that there is this great American tradition of jazz and noir, because, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like jazz is always in noir, the two kind of go hand in hand.
- [10:50]
Amor Towles
It's really interesting, it is true.
- [10:51]
Koosha Navadar
What are the other elements about noir that really get you as a writer?
- [10:55]
Amor Towles
You know, one of the things that I think we all sort of love is sort of the hard edged observation quality of noir. And you know, if you go back and read the novels of Hammett or Chandler or Ross MacDonald, their main heroes are people who are willing to sort of look at the world with a cold eye. They have low expectations for everybody, you know, they assume everybody's playing a double game. They assume that nothing is going to probably be fair, you know, and. But they're very shrewd observers at the same time and they can be sympathetic even though they have sort of this cold hearted view of the world, because they are the heroes of the detectives of the noir generation. Noir genre tend to be honorable people, but it's honorable around their own personal code. And so part of the font of noir is sort of beginning to understand what is same Spade's code, what is Philip Marlow's code and what are they going to abide by because they don't live in a lawless sort of mindset, even though they know everybody's cheating and lying, including potentially themselves. And so they sort of have all those kind of qualities that are fascinating from when you're trying to think about narration, you know, and from a point of view is how is that going to be infused into this world that Eve arrives in?
- [12:07]
Koosha Navadar
And how much of that process of finding a character's moral code comes from just writing and rewriting and digging in? And how adaptable do you have to be? Because it feels like that would define the entire character for the story.
- [12:19]
Amor Towles
Yeah, it's a great question because I think if I think about storytelling, for me, whether novels or short stories, figuring out what the story is gonna be about, where it's set, who's in it, when it takes place? That stuff that comes to me pretty quickly when I begin the process of imagining a story or a novel, the hardest decision, and in many ways the most interesting decision, is going to be the narrator. Is who is the narrator? And that is two parts. It's. Where is the, what's the point of view of the narrator? Is it an omniscient narrator? Is it the main character? Is it a sibling or a spouse? Is an observer who's a stranger who is watching these events unfold? So what is the point of view of that narrator? But then what is the tone? Because you could take that point of view that individual, that's spouse, let's say. And that spouse could be angry, the spouse could be deceitful, the spouse could be compassionate. There's an emotional content there, an intellectual content that will shape the tone. So all of those decisions have big influence on shaping the story that I'm going to end up writing and the story that you are going to end up reading. And so going. Going back to that sort of question. Yeah. Choosing in this, because in Eve in Hollywood, it's actually told from seven different perspectives. And each of the perspectives has its own tone, its own sort of point of view, its own perspective. So therefore, it has to have its own language, its own sort of tempo, its own sense of poetics, and its own sort of moral standing, you know, because each of those characters looks at the world slightly differently. And so that's part of the fun of it because you end up with this tapestry of points of view at that time.
- [13:57]
Koosha Navadar
Lots of great stories in here, Amor. I want to get to the first one, which is the line. The first story in this collection follows a peasant named Pushkin who comes to Moscow with his wife Irina, following the Bolshevik Revolution. And, you know, you read this story and you don't need to try too hard to see the connection to A Gentleman in Moscow. And I was wondering, both the Count from A Gentleman in Moscow and Pushkin in this short story, they ooze charisma off the page. And one thing that I really like in this writing is the sense of atmosphere and the sense of just charisma, of sitting with a character. This is going to be a tough question, but how do you write charisma into a character?
- [14:42]
Amor Towles
Yeah, that's an interesting question, because I do think that, and I think a lot about charisma in writing generally. So I think that sort of an underappreciated aspect of what. What makes a book great for us as readers is that it has to have an internal charisma. And the charisma can be in the personality of the characters. It can be in the language of the story as told in. By the writer. It can be through the imagery. It can be the sort of the thematic urgency. But there has to be something that makes it sort of stand out from all the millions of words that we are exposed to in a given year. And so with the individual characters, I think for me, one of the keys is I will spend a lot of time imagining that character before I start writing about the character. And that is sort of a loop where I imagine the character. I think I know Them, I have some idea of what they might be like. But then I start to imagine them in situations with the other characters, let's say, under some circumstance. And through that I realize, oh, wait a second. I thought I knew the character. I know these traits. I have a sense of their personality. But when I put them in that situation, I realized that they would do something different than I would have thought. And so then you're sort of like, oh, yeah, okay, I know them a little better. So then I kind of go back to the beginning of the story and start again and start to imagine the story. Now I have a richer sense of the character and eventually work up to another event that they're in. And then I learn something new and sort of they become. And then I go back to the beginning again and start imagining, because every time I get a little bit better sense of the character. The whole story has to change to some degree, as do its themes. And so slowly, through this sort of iterative process, I hope I create three dimensionality. And that, to some degree, helps bring the character alive. And I think that instills some charisma.
- [16:20]
Koosha Navadar
So that, to me, that process sounds like plot is. And this isn't pejorative, but plot is secondary. Like plot is the result of putting characters you've really thought about in memorable situations. Do you always start with character first, or is there a plot that, you know, sometimes you think, oh, this is a beat that I love. Let's send her something around that.
- [16:40]
Amor Towles
I mean, I think you're kind of building. Or I'm building the place, the pot, the plot, the themes, the characters, simultaneously. But you're right that the character's at the center of the whole thing. Much in the way that I think if we think about our own friendships, our own relationships or romantic relationships, we know events that have occurred in our life with that friend or that family member. But that's not the way that we start. Right. We start by saying, that's my brother, you know, and. And this is the relationship I have with him. And by the way, when we were 16, he stole my bike, you know, whatever, you know, like, you know, that's because that's plot. But, you know, that comes much later than in sort of in the way that we think about that individual or the way we would describe the individual we start with, who is this person? And so I think it's very natural in storytelling to put that in the forefront too.
- [17:22]
Koosha Navadar
Absolutely. Whenever I'm interviewing somebody, the first thing that I'm always asking myself is, who Am I talking to? And then what have they done? Which I think is an interesting corollary there. How do you think about combing your own life for writing inspiration? I mean, we talked about. A lot of this is set in New York, and you've lived here since the 80s. How much of it is autobiographical?
- [17:40]
Amor Towles
Very little. And most of my writing, any of my novels, there's no real characters, none of it. Very little of it's drawn from my personal life. But occasionally something will percolate up, you know, percolate up, and I'll get fascinated by something and weave it in. I'm certainly like the music I like, the food I like the art I like. The novels I like are constantly be. Woven. Woven in, but for the most part, it is imagined. It's imagined creations rather than personal ones.
- [18:05]
Koosha Navadar
Yeah, and I think this is a pertinent question, especially given your story and your way into writing, because. And I'll ask you to say this so you can tell it in your own words, but your first, you know, breakout novel, mid-30s, you were doing something way different before that, right? Can you share that a little bit?
- [18:23]
Amor Towles
Yeah. Well, I began writing as fiction as a kid, and I wrote it in high school and in college and graduate school. When I moved to New York at the age of 25 in the late 80s, I joined a friend of mine who had an investment. Had started an investment firm. And 20 years later, we were still working side by side. And so I. I had a divergence from what was really my primary ambition, my love of writing, and had this terrific, wonderful career with great colleagues and great clients and a great practice, and we had. Was a lot of fun. But slowly I began to realize, man, if I don't write a book, you know, by the time I'm 50, I'm gonna end up, you know, bitter and a drinker, you know, because it was my dream. And so along the way, I began writing fiction on the weekends, and I wrote a book over seven years I didn't like and then set that aside. And then I wrote Rules of Civility. And when that became a bestseller, I retired from the firm.
- [19:10]
Koosha Navadar
And how old are you when that happened?
- [19:11]
Amor Towles
I was in my 40s.
- [19:12]
Koosha Navadar
You're in 40s? Yeah. You know, one thing that really resonates me about your story now is how you decided to pursue your craft and the dedication it must have taken. And it resonates with me specifically because you're catching me right on the other end of a similar jump, actually.
- [19:25]
Amor Towles
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [19:26]
Koosha Navadar
You know, I'm in my mid-30s. And, you know, Wall street for you, I think, is the tech industry for somebody my age.
- [19:32]
Amor Towles
Right, okay. Yeah, Right.
- [19:33]
Koosha Navadar
And for me, it was going from the tech industry into what I've always had my eye on and worked on on the weekend since I was 10, which is basically hosting, which is this. Terrific.
- [19:41]
Amor Towles
Well, congratulations.
- [19:41]
Koosha Navadar
Thanks, I appreciate it.
- [19:43]
Amor Towles
Right. It feels good on the other side.
- [19:44]
Koosha Navadar
I mean, there's so much doubt. There's so much like, what am I doing? But it feels like there's dedication in it too. And when I hear your story, it really resonates with me. I'm sure it resonates with a lot of people out there, no matter what part of life they're in, specifically because as you get older, and this is somebody in their mid-30s, so you might have more experience than I do, but it feels like the opportunity cost to make a shift gets bigger and big, and it requires a lot of grit and it requires a lot of passion for you. How did you keep that alive?
- [20:12]
Amor Towles
Well, I mean, what ended up happening actually is I had a mentor name who was a great American, both novelist and nonfiction writer named Peter Matheson. And he took me on as a student, you know, when I was 19 or 20, and was. Became a friend and a mentor throughout my 20s. He was very disappointed in me when I ended up going to work on Wall street. And. And one night at dinner he said, listen, amore, I got to tell you, I've. I've watched generations of artists who go and work on Wall street. And I got to tell you, there's something about that industry that it's interesting enough or demanding enough or pays enough that when an art, they never come back. All the artists I've known have gone. They've never come back. So I think you should consider your life as a writer over. And. And it was. It just. It was like. That was like my moment of, you know, Peter was my Jacob Marley shaking his chains, you know, and sort of saying, this is, you know, you are going to end up, you know, you will fail to fulfill your passion, your talent, you know, on the way things are going. And so that really got me. That's what got me writing on the weekends again, you know, was really that the threat of that he had outlined.
- [21:23]
Koosha Navadar
I think another element of that was how many different paths it is. Is possible to take. Right. I mean, for you yourself, there are so many smart people out in the world doing so many different things. And I wonder for you, do you. If you could go back and know you Were going to be as successful as you are now, would you change being on Wall street and just go into writing as quickly as possible, or has that experience helped you in. In many ways that maybe you could point to or can't even say right now.
- [21:51]
Amor Towles
It's so hard to go back and rewrite everything and to think, oh, yeah, you know, if I had only done this, what, starting publishing my first novel or having my first novel published in my 40s. What I. And having this career, it means that I've written fewer books than I would have liked, let's say, compared to one of my. Some of my peers or what have you. What the advantage it gave me is that by the time I sat down to write Rules of Civility, most of my friends in New York didn't even know that I wrote fiction at that point. You know, it had been kind of all forgotten. My parents no longer were thinking about it. You know, nobody who was writing, you know, well known in my generation writing fiction at that time knew who I was, you know, that's for sure, you know, so there was no. And I wasn't doing it to make a living. I wasn't doing it to formulate my identity. What that meant was that when I wrote Rules of Civility, I could just do it for myself. And. And that would have been, I think, harder to have that kind of freedom at the age of 25, when I was getting married, needed to, you know, pay the bills, needed to impress my friends, needed to satisfy my father, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all those other things. Having it, putting it off really allowed me to do it in full. Freedom.
- [22:58]
Koosha Navadar
Yeah. And you mentioned, for me at least, like, financial footing is definitely part of it too. Pursuing this is difficult, like the arts in general. And I think that there is this kindness of looking back on oneself and being able to say at any point there is creativity, there's possibility there for sure.
- [23:16]
Amor Towles
And, you know, I've been a publisher novelist for 13 years, you know, so a little bit more than a decade. It's amazing what can happen in a decade, right? So as you say, well, you know, it's gonna be harder at 40 than it was at 30, or maybe it's harder at 50 than it was at 40. But each time you've got a decade in front of you, one of those decisions, you can have no ability to understand how much your life could change for or how much you could accomplish in just 10 years with, you know, an applied focus. And so you get to sort of look back and say, wow, you know, thank God I made the shift, you know, because that was a well spent decade.
- [23:52]
Koosha Navadar
Yeah. Planting the trees and the.
- [23:54]
Amor Towles
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
- [23:56]
Koosha Navadar
And you know, so you spent a decade developing these stories for the short story collection now. And fans of yours listening right now will probably protest if I do not ask. Looking at the years ahead, not to put on any pressure, but is there a new Immortals novel in development?
- [24:12]
Amor Towles
Yeah, I'm at work at a novel that I was designing over a period of years, but I'm into it now. And that novel opens in Cairo at the end of the Second World War and goes all the way to New York in 1999. But that's about all I'll tell you about that.
- [24:27]
Alison Stewart
That was part of my conversation with author Amor Toles. The paperback edition of table for two.
- [24:32]
Koosha Navadar
Is out Tuesday, April 8th.
- [24:36]
Ira Flatow
This is Ira Flaydo, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.