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IFOA: Nicole Krauss
Nicole Krauss weaves a tangled yet breathtakingly beautiful web in the History of Love. Her second novel tells the story of precocious 14-year old Alma Singer, busily trying to cope with the loss of her father and her mother’s depression. Across town there’s Leo Gursky, a Holocaust survivor, writer and man desperately afraid to die alone. Their lives are brought together by a book that miraculously survived war and genocide. The end product is a moving exploration of loss and the heavy toll it has on our hearts and souls.
Torontoist chatted with Krauss over e-mail about literary fame, turning her book into a film and can’t get two words about her next novel.
Your novel The History of Love is being turned into a film, how has that process been for you? How does it feel to give over a novel, something that’s been so personal, to another artist?
I’ve always been a fan of the director, Alfonso Cuaron. When I met him I also quickly realized that he was an extraordinary reader. Also a very good listener. And extremely kind and funny, and full of contagious energy. All of these things seemed to bode well. I’m flattered that he wants to make the book into a movie, and I like his very imaginative ideas about how to do it. Of course it will be different–it has to be. But the book as I wrote it still exists, should anyone wish to read it. And it’s nice to watch it take on its own life, one that doesn’t have much anymore to do with me.
Many, many writers find fame extremely distracting. In your case it must be doubly so [ed. note Krauss is married to Jonathan Safran Foer]. How do you cope with it?
There isn’t much to cope with. Fame for a writer, in as far as I’ve had any experience with it, is a very abstract thing. You could win the Nobel Prize and still no one would recognize you on the street or care what you did from day to day. Sure, you have to do interviews and things like that, and so you become more protective of your time. And it’s true that an awareness of other people’s expectations is probably the most damaging thing to a writer, who has to feel confident to exercise her freedom in what feel like risky ways. But in that regard I am my own worst enemy, since I am often savagely self-critical of my work.
You started your writing career as a poet but found overwhelming success as a novelist, do you think you’ll ever go back to poetry?
Maybe. I’d like to say yes. But I like writing novels. Starting one is a bit like looking down into an abyss. I like the fact that every novel is an effort to give definition to a formless form.
In many interviews you’ve talked about your broad range of influences, Rilke, Borges, Brodsky, etc. Are there any younger writers that you’ve been impressed with or who may have even had an influence on your work?
I recently discovered a young German writer that I like a lot, Jenny Erpenbeck. I liked Helen DeWitt’s book, The Last Samurai, enormously. There’s Roberto Bolano, who died a few years ago at the youngish age of fifty–he’s had a strong influence on me during the last few years, although like all great writers he is inimitable.
Your first novel was about an amnesiac, your second was about a long lost love can you give us a hint about what your next novel will be about?
No.
Nicole Krauss reads with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Deborah Eisenberg and Edward P. Jones Saturday, 4pm. She also sits in on a roundtable with Michael Cox, Deborah Eisenberg and Colson Whitehead, Sunday, 3pm. Call 416-973-4000 for tickets or go to the IFOA site for more info.