Daniel A. Blum grew up in New York, attended Brandeis
University and currently lives outside of Boston with his family. His first novel Lisa33 was published by
Viking in 2003. He has been featured in Poets and Writers magazine, Publisher’s
Weekly and most recently, interviewed in Psychology Today.
Daniel writes a humor blog, The
Rotting Post, that has developed a loyal following.
His latest release is the literary
novel, The
Feet Say Run.
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About the Book:
At the
age of eighty-five, Hans Jaeger finds himself a castaway among a group of
survivors on a deserted island. What
is my particular crime? he asks. Why have I
been chosen for this fate? And s
It
would be an understatement to say he has lived a full life. He has grown up in Nazi Germany and falls in
love with Jewish girl. He fights for the
Germans on two continents, watches the Reich collapse spectacularly into
occupation and starvation, and marries his former governess. After the war he goes on wildflower
expeditions in the Alps, finds solace among prostitutes while his wife lay in a coma, and
marries a Brazilian chambermaid in order to receive a kidney from her.
By
turns sardonic and tragic and surreal, Hans’s story is the story of all of the
insanity, irony and horror of the modern world itself.
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Thanks for this interview, Dan. Can we begin by having you tell us about yourself
from a writer’s standpoint?
Perhaps the most interesting part of my background is that
my entire family – both parents and both siblings – are either psychiatrists or
psychologists. My father is a well-known
psychoalanalyst. This affected me in all
kinds of ways, although I hope I keep it all well-concealed in my fiction –
which I want to be fun and full of life, and free of self-reference,
over-analysis, and all the other the sins of contemprary literature.
I always get a smile when I read Nabokov’s many
anti-psychoanalytic comments. In the
preface to “King, Queen, Knave,” he wrote, “As usual…the Viennese has not been
invited.” I read that and think, “I’m
quite familiar with that delegation.”
In an interview, Nabokov once said, “I don't want an elderly gentleman
from Vienna with an umbrella
inflicting his dreams upon me.” I grew
up with that elderly gentleman. I get
it.
As for my fiction, I took one or two classes in creative
writing along the way, but I have to say I found them to be essentially
useless. I am still unsure, after two
published novels, what exactly, ‘show it, don’t say it’ even means. So I suppose I am essentially self-taught. My interests range from literary fiction to
humor and back again. Art and its
inverse, I suppose. My new novel, The Feet Say Run, is finally a synthesis
of the two – existing in some Limbo between comedy and tragedy, veering
perilously from one to the other.
When not writing, what do you like to do for relaxation
and/or fun?
I relax with family and friends. I play tennis and chess and do
crosswords. I like to travel when
possible. I write a humor blog, “The
Rotting Post,” which helps keep my inner artiste
in check.
Congratulations on your new book! Can you give us the very
first page of your book so that we can get a glimpse inside?
If there is an actual name to this island, it is unknown to
us. We have chosen to call it Illyria. We’re not exactly sure where the name comes
from. Some book perhaps. But it no longer matters. The name has become our own—mythic and
melodic-sounding. As though, if we keep
calling this place Illyria,
keep pretending it has some magical allure, people will want to come. Someone will come rescue us.
I am not complaining, particularly. Well, maybe I am. But I probably shouldn’t be. So far fate has proven a fair enough
agent. The beaches are sandy, the water
clear and turquoise, the reefs plentiful.
The island is wreathed in a soothing white foam. On shore there is the shade of palms and
palmettos and eucalyptus. At least we
think it is eucalyptus. We call it
eucalyptus. Maybe it is just some kind
of fancy magnolia though. Who the hell
knows?
There are fruits in relative abundance—though what they are,
we aren’t sure. Some are purple. Others are yellow. Some vaguely sweet, others sharp and abrasive
on the roof of the mouth. There is a
variety of coconut that grows in conjoined pairs to look like the buttocks of
an African woman. We call this
ass-fruit. When I offered some to
Conrad, he said to me, “I’m not into that shit.” As though I were suggesting something
perverse. As though fear of this fetish
object outweighed the need for sustenance.
“What shit are you not into?” I asked.
“Ass fruit,” he said.
“Ass.”
“It’s not real ass, Conrad,” I said.
“Well, it’s not a real fruit either,” he said.
“What do you think it is then?” I asked.
“A joke,” he said. “A
sick joke. Like the rest of this
place.”
God is playing a joke on us.
That is a common theme here. It was funny the first time someone said
it. Now it is just annoying, like a
child saying, “knock-knock” to you over and over, more and more emphatically,
as you refuse, just as emphatically, to ask, “Who’s there?”
The other common theme here is that none of it is real. We all died when the boat went down. And this is all just a dream. Conrad suggests this a couple of times a day,
each time choosing a different angle, a different inflection, in a vain attempt
to keep the joke fresh. If you suggest,
gently, that this joke no longer strikes you as uproarious, Conrad will
immediately jump into a long denial that he is joking. “I’m not fucking kidding,” he will
tell you. “I really mean it. I think
this is all a dream.”
Perhaps Conrad is right.
Because honestly, I did not believe, until my current predicament, that
deserted islands still existed. I
thought these islands were all owned by former tennis pros and former tyrants,
or inhabited by caricatures of primitive tribes who sell carved bamboo flutes
to flabby tourists in checkered shorts.
If it is a dream, if this is my Land of Oz and I am soon to
wake up, then it is curious how, from time to time, little bits of Kansas
wash up upon our shores. Whenever we
wander further down the beach, away from our settlement, we find Styrofoam
packing peanuts, Styrofoam bowls, #3 plastic take-out containers with their
familiar, triangular recycle symbols (apparently the previous owners of
these containers ignored this particular environmental imperative).
The restaurant take-out containers are the most
distressing. More mockery from The
Almighty. More of his levity. Ha ha.
We bring them back to our camp and wonder what twenty-first century
foods they once held. Pad Thai or Kung
Pao Chicken or Shrimp Korma. From some
restaurant from the other world. Thank
you, God, for delivering us this practical joke. Ha ha.
You’re fucking hi-lar-ious.
Would you say it’s been a rocky road for you in regards to
getting your book written and published or pretty much smooth sailing? Can you tell us about your journey?
My previous novel, Lisa33 was an avante-garde sex comedy
set on the internet. I had received a
large advance for it, but in the end the publishing experience was quite
disastrous. So I wanted to get as far
away from it as possible. A harrowing
war story set in Nazi Germany was surely about as far from an internet sex
farce as one could get.
Of course, there is more to it
than that. I had grown increasingly
interested in the idea of literary fiction that also made for a gripping
page-turner. And I was drawn to the idea
of telling a big, epic tale of human comedy and tragedy, of cruelty and
compassion and blindess and brilliance, through a single, long life. Gradually, from these disparate threads and
ideas, the book began to take shape. I
honestly never had a moment where I decided, “I am going to write another
novel.” I just began poking around. And then I was in too deep, immersed, and –
to borrow a war metaphor – there was no retreating. The only way out was forward.
As fas as finding a publisher,
that is itself rather interesting. I had
lost most of my supposed connections in the publishing world. And of course, with a book to my name that
had received a large advance and few sales, I represented something rather
awkward, something not to be mentioned.
I was a mistake, a failed experiment.
Worse than an unknown. So I had
to more or less start over.
As it turned out, my new publisher
found me. I had posted a few poems on a
public website, and the publisher had admired them and commented. This started an email exchange and my
forwarding, The Feet Say Run. I have to believe I am one of the few writers
who was “discovered”, then entirely forgotten, then once again “discovered” for
something new, with no awareness that I was already a published novelist.
If you had to summarize your book in one sentence, what
would that be?
All of the greatness and tragedy and comedy and foibles of mankind, in a single, long, war-weary, extraordinary life.
What makes your book stand out from the rest?
I feel strongly that too much serious fiction is just too
slow, too ponderous. It fails the basic
artistic test, “Did this novel draw in the reader at the start, and hold the
reader until the end?” The Feet Say Run is a serious novel that
is taut and suspenseful, that is emotionally gripping and difficult to put
down. This was what I wanted to create
because it is what I most love to read.
I’m already seeing many readers really excited about it in the way I had
most dearly hoped.
If your book was put in the holiday section of the store,
what holiday would that be and why?
Well, at it’s heart is a war story, and a rather harrowing
one, so I suppose it would be Memorial Day.
Although…I am not aware of any great book-buying surrounding Memorial
Day, so this is not a serious recommendation.
Would you consider turning your book into a series or has
that already been done?
I always want to be experimenting and doing something
new. I never want to write the same sort
of book twice. So I do not see a series
here. What’s more, the story is complete
as it is - unless characters miraculously come back from the dead.
On the other hand, I do have someone looking at film rights
for it, and here I could easily see that it could be a mini-series of
sorts.
What’s next for you?
I have a couple of things nearing completion – one serious
and one much lighter. I’m unsure which I
will want to publisher first – or which my publisher would prefer. So we’ll have to see.
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