I had the pleasure of speaking with author Charles Baxter this week to discuss his new novel, The Soul Thief. I did so for my company’s new endeavor, CorridorBUZZ.com, an online arts & entertainment magazine for the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City area.

The piece I wrote previews a reading he will do tonight at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City. Despite the limitless nature of the web, there was plenty from our discussion that I had to leave out. Not wanting to waste it, I thought I would offer it here as either an addendum or a teaser, depending on which direction you’re traveling on the old info superhighway.

The book, Baxter’s ninth and his fifth novel, tells of Nathaniel Mason’s time as a graduate student in Buffalo, N.Y., where he, according to Baxter's web site, "is drawn into a tangle of relationships with people who seem to hover just beyond his grasp. As love interests there is the alluring Theresa and the lesbian artist Jamie. Jerome Coolberg is the strangest, a young man who openly flaunts that nothing he says seems to be his own, and who tells Nathaniel soon after meeting him that he knows everything about him. He appropriates parts of Nathaniel's past, a practice that leads to Nathaniel's breakdown. The story returns 30 years later to find Nathaniel having reconstructed his life in a world of normalcy, a situation that is threatened by the return of Jerome, now a radio talk show host.

It's a daring, challenging book that didn't always satisfy me as a reader, but which has stayed with me much longer than most thanks to the twists and turns of Baxter's plot and prose.

TIRBD: You leave a lot of clues in this book as to what is really going on, and the more reviews I read written by people much better versed in literature than me, the more I grew to appreciate what you had done..

CB: You certainly don’t have to come to my book with a Ph.D in your hand. If you’ve read some of the other literature of doubles or identity switching, you may be prepared for what happens in this book. I hope it’s a good yarn. If you have read, say Conrad, or Dostoyevsky or Patricia Highsmith -- who wrote thrillers with doubles in them – you might notice some things.

You use Highsmith’s name, and others, incidentally in the book…

That’s not an inside joke. I needed some names at this point and thought that since Patricia Highsmith had written books about doubles that it was fitting.

Not everything is as we thought it is. It’s not meant as a trick.

What is the role of music in your work? I was particularly moved by your description of your characters listening to the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows,” which, on most days, is my favorite song.

Mine too. I don’t listen to music when I’m actually writing. I have a writing studio that’s about two miles away from here, and I listen to music when I’m walking down there and after I’m done, when I’m walking back. Who was it that said, “Life would be unbearable without music”? I believe that. It’s a great stimulus and solace.

You’re especially successful integrating music into your prose. Many times it seems like a lazy way for a writer to tell us something about their character – he listens to Springsteen, so he’s a contemplative working man, for example. How do you make it work?

When it doesn’t work, it feels like you’ve brought it in as a kind of brand name.

Those characters (in The Soul Thief)are listening to “God Only Knows” when they’re heading back from Niagara Falls… it’s about losing your soul.

How did the film of Feast of Love change things for you?

The film didn’t do very well, so it didn’t expand my audience very much. There were honorable people involved in the film, but there were so many stories in that novel, when they tried to get them all into an hour and a half movie, all of the relationships started to seem superficial.

A lot has been made in past weeks about free digital distribution of books. What do you think, as an author who has weathered numerous changes in the publishing industry, of such plans?

My own feeling as a writer who hopes to make some income from my work, it’s not OK with me if anyone can download my book at any time. I work for years on these, and I hope that people will be willing to shell out a little bit of cash for what I’ve done. I like books as objects. I like them better than screens. I like going to bookstores and buying books. Certainly there has been a change during my lifetime about it… I don’t know if it’s for the better.

Labels: books