the kepler issue: louis bayard interview

What compels you to write on a daily basis?
Creditors, basically. A large mortgage. Two kids, draining the teat dry.

I'll only add that, since I spend so much time in the 19th century, writing for journals keeps me in touch
with modernity. (As do my kids.)

Your articles seem to be political or concerning political issues. Do you ever find political beliefs
guiding your fiction?
No, I find fiction an escape from politics. And living in Washington, D.C., I really need to escape.
Politics is an airborne virus here.

From where do you draw inspiration? Other writers? Music? Events or experiences?
All of the above. The influence of other writers is acknowledged very clearly-my last two books are
essentially new readings of older works. Sometimes, though, it's an image. Sometimes it's a line. Mr.
Timothy was born in the same moment as its opening sentence: "Not so tiny anymore."

Mr. Timothy tells the story of a grown-up Tim Cratchit. In The Pale Blue Eye, you fictionalize
Edgar Allen Poe's time spent at West Point. What about these notions first appealed to you?
Tiny Tim attracted me because, although I've always loved Dickens, I've always disliked Tiny Tim. I just
couldn't stand him, basically. And then I began to wonder if there were things Dickens wasn't telling us
about him. And out of that rose the impulse to turn Tim Cratchit inside out and scrape away all the crust
of sentiment and see what was left.

Writing about Poe was my way of repaying a debt-the same debt that every mystery writer owes Poe.
We're all walking in his footsteps.

Did you make certain decisions right up front to make Mr. Timothy a darker, yet reverent
sequel to A Christmas Carol? Did you, say, consider making "Uncle N" the miser he once was?
No, I thought it would be more interesting question to see how the characters were changed by the
original experience-even as their situation remained unchanged. The Cratchits, for instance, in my telling,
don't end up any better off for Scrooge's generosity. And Scrooge himself is forced to confront the limits
of philanthropy.

While Mr. Timothy is decidedly grittier than A Christmas Carol, there are elements that tie it
directly to Dickens, such as the ghostly appearance of Tim's father. Did you always have these
elements in mind? Were these elements necessary?
Oh, yes, there had to be ghosts. Absolutely. That was how I tied the book back to the original source.
The ghosts in Mr. Timothy though, are essentially mute. They don't bring any moral instruction, they just
inspire retrospection.

How hard is it to make real-life characters and those of pre-existing fictional worlds "yours"?
Well, it helps if the people in question are long-dead. They enter the public domain, and we have the
liberty to reimagine them. It's quite freeing, actually, to treat someone like Edgar Allan Poe as a fictional
character-especially since, in real life, he was already quasi-fictional.

Did you ever find that world of Mr. Timothy limiting to write for? Did you consider what
comparisons critics might draw between you and Dickens?
No, I loved the challenge of writing a Victorian genre novel. And I consciously avoided the comparisons
with Dickens by making my book as different from his as possible. It's gritty, as you said; it's explicit
about prostitution and white slavery; it's written in a kind of cynical present-tense … I was working
against the original's grain even as I was following the same arc of redemption.

One critic commented: "Bayard reinvigorates historical fiction, rendering the 19th century as if
he'd witnessed it firsthand." What are the personal challenges and creative perils of writing
Victorian-style literature today?
To me, the peril of writing any kind of historical fiction is making it a dumping ground for your research.
It's one of the reasons I don't like most historical novels. Every time some gratuitous fact rears its head
("Shall we go down to the Strand and see this newfangled technology they call the motion picture?"), I
feel myself drawing away by degrees. It's very hard but at some point I think you need to throw away
your research and write your story.

Most vestiges of 1860 London (Mr. Timothy) and West Point in 1830 (The Pale Blue Eye) are no
doubt gone. How much research did you conduct to evoke the settings of your novels? Did you
travel to the locales?
I went to both places, but of course, they're quite a bit different today. To find the past, you have to look
for it in books. In the case of The Pale Blue Eye, I found this delightful trio of British women-Fanny
Trollope, Harriet Martineau, and Fanny Kemble-who were traveling around America in the 1820s and
1830s and writing the most marvelous accounts of what they saw. The past really is a foreign country, so
foreigners are often the best guides.

For The Pale Blue Eye, did you want to paint a realistic portrait of young Poe, or did you let his
character evolve as you wrote the novel?
From reading about him and reading his work, I had a very clear sense of what he was like: very proud
and vainglorious but also vulnerable and morbidly sensitive. Of course, that's just my Poe. Someone
else's might be quite different. But, yes, the character is changed by the events of the story so he
becomes somebody new by the end. I think of it as Poe's coming-of-age story.

How would you describe your creative process?
For starters, I would never dignify it by calling it a "creative process." It's funny, I know of a writer who
lies down on a couch for something like half an hour with his hands pressed over his eyes, envisioning
what he's about to write. Then he staggers over to the computer and sits there with his hands poised
over the computer, in some kind of trance, and then slowly the words come dripping out. Oh, man, I
haven't got time for that. I haul my laptop over to the local coffee house, where the music's blasting, and
I get a big dose of caffeine and I just start typing. Nothing very mystical. I go until I'm done.

While you have a successful career as a novelist, you have also worked a speechwriter and a
congressional press secretary. How did you get into those fields?
The usual route: by being a failed journalist. I got a master's in journalism, with the expectation that I
would become a reporter, but no self-respecting newspaper would hire me. So I became a flack.

What were some of the challenges of those jobs?
If you have any kind of ego, you get tired of having all your words come out of someone else's mouth.
You start to itch for your own byline-even if nobody else cares what you have to say.

How much of your own life works its way into your fiction?
Bits and pieces, here and there. When I first started writing historical fiction, I assumed my life wouldn't
be relevant to something that happened 140 years ago. And then I wrote a speech for Bob Cratchit, in
which he complains about his commute, and this speech was, apart from the place names, the same
speech my dad used to make, driving home from work every night. It's been interesting to see what
pieces of my own story wind up creeping in--old childhood memories, neighbors, a passing image on the
street. Impossible to predict what will become grist for the mill.

How has the literary world changed since the publication of your first novel, Fool's Errand?
I hate to say this but not for the better. I think it's become tougher and tougher to get fiction
published-literary fiction in particular. And then we have to confront the fact that fewer and fewer
people are reading. We're now engaged in a minority art form, with all the marginalization that suggests.

While you've recently begun making a name for yourself with neo-Victorian literature, Fool's
Errand is a contemporary romantic comedy. Are there any other genres you'd like to play
around with?
I'd love to write a straight popular history someday, but I can't find an idea that jazzes anyone but me.
These days, thanks to the success of [Erik Larson's] Devil in the White City (which I really liked), you
pretty much need a serial killer if you want to sell a history book. That's overstating it, I know, but sex
and violence really do sell.

What are you currently working on?
A novel about a real-life figure named Eugène François Vidocq, a convict who became Paris' most
legendary police officer. He was the founder and chief of the Sûreté; he later became the world's first
private detective. Hugely famous in his day: the inspiration for Jean Valjean, Javert, Dupin, Holmes. The
first real criminologist. A master of disguise and surveillance. Quite the rogue. Altogether fascinating.