A Word on Words; 4220; Marisha Pessl

fb televisions stimulation celebrating all things literature and ideas for more than three decades but this is a word of worries with johnson and johnson of all welcome once again to award on workers' my guest today is mari sherpa four she began writing mysteries as a very young child a debut novel special topics in calamity physics was a new york times best seller named one of their top ten books of two thousand and six here they were her new novel nine film it follows the efforts of

a new york journalist scott mcgrath as he sets out to discover the truth about the apparent suicide of film director stardust last condo was twenty four year old bill richard the pleasure to have you here i'm delighted ned hill unknown i have i have pondered since i close that book where these wild chase that scott goes on with two colleagues usual picks up along the way they saw the legs themselves on him more than he owned them but i wondered where this is there a model for stanislav there certainly is he the origin of his character came from a lot of different places when i was touring for special topics i happened upon as stanley kubrick biography and i became quite immersed in it and i was fascinated by a big difference

between the methanol the rumors that surrounded him as a man in a filmmaker and how people talk that he was an eccentric in an egomaniac in he tortured those who worked with him and that story that was being told in the media contest in with his personal life and how he was a game warm family mandan fact and at countless of his friends say none of those ringers had any basis in reality whatsoever so that colors in between them if a supposedly genius art as a filmmaker and the reality of his home life certainly got my mind thinking in terms of european jews or did you record that you did not really to cordova phelps and in that dark side of this well and this is not about says he's regarded around the men in soul whose background is as mit and petrol industry

ah look at his films and it frightened lita ford i certainly didn't i mean you can just you can record over the character in the book is those are considered the most terrifying films ever made for when he does have an encounter with kubrick is this sort of colds idolatry this fan base that is so extreme that they really put the creator on to a godlike pinnacle in terms of what he can create and also i went to record release a film there was a level of anticipation and passionate people would wait outside in the rain for india's sikh be allowed into the theater so certainly all of that passion and drive and i've had for cordova is fan base as well because i think that kind of idolatry gives rise to a lot of questions about fans and and how much power someone might have like that has over a public you know it limited to do laundry

all when there's a mystery writer i find out the way the secret ministry at the end and i know whether scot and and i know whether they live on the region and back but i'm not until you get but i thought about it but i do want to know whether you knew at the outset that body there would not be a trial plus i certainly knew that there was a resolution and you don't write as six hundred kids got to leave readers with no sense of what the truth is i mean i did can see this book as a dark odyssey where we take characters increasingly dark place and pushed them farther and farther and farther so they lost concept of what of reality and they really left their ordinary lives in order to take on this journey i am but i as

a career didn't know specifically how it was all going to come about in contrast to my first book which i plotted out from the ends and they knew everything for each chapter a night film was much more of an exploration figuring out or allowing the book to organically tell me where i needed to go and then when i'd fasten onto a truth that's really go back and revise the novel but what i started writing a film i did not know it those final scenes video or don't throw it was explained to me i thought well naturally of a hitchcock rests upright nfl orson welles in some years it has only me is only a solo on the school than it is here why after a career that was highly successful and the grip the country with every release why

the reclusive this investment the rink where they come from well it is too over it a little bit in the sense that he had his a stay in england and that's really where he wanted to create and i think you know i don't know the answer i don't know the reason why i am orson welles did i've heard stories about how i think it is in some ways all artists are children exploring and when you have the level of success that inner child that allows you to follow your bliss and to create a that's helped him he deeply hurt by out a ravenous public to conceal arts and if you as the artist actually so begin to listen to all of those at the multitude of voices i think i can be really destructive to the artist so i would suspect that that had something to do with any kind of rich treats because there's a line in it so when a close associate of cordova is talking about how an artist

creates as he talks about the necessity of a dark room hands i and ability to find a place where no one is watching where you can keep exploring and have a level of freedom where you are jobs and we're not judging yourself to find the next worker aren't and give birth to it so i think the reclusive this comes out of that meaning to find that space again and defined that safe place in order to create scott mcgrath scott who isn't an investigator who in a sense on his own mission he's had his encounter early on and is living with it somehow he's haunted by the flow of gas and he hears about the death of his twenty four your daughter and you do get a

sense that he's immediately drawn to it is like a magnet the man's name his daughter's death everybody says suicide well maybe maybe not the act wrong and this is the creator of dark frightening film set people talk about wonder about maybe week about the answers a cry out about he's drawn like a magnet to get into this worst on growth come from answer is a k r his hacker hire i have got a nine am you can use your creation and i'm wondering about is used and threatens a fascinating young guy and and i never thought he would hook up with two colleagues mccain actually experienced colleagues and he has a he's a veteran and then annulled his way

around the street smart he's got all the skills and a good investigator and that's in illinois nevada like i love i mean i think that as the new well as you live your life you come into contact with certain people and i was drawn to this character because he was an epp at the outset of the nominees at a moment in his life where he's watched start his career isn't strides he has no personal life to speak of life is gone his wife has left him for a much sour richman he's on the outs he's on the road he's owned over some toast leo yes andy he's not a model father here he's struggling he's a struggling as as much as one can end and i thought that it was interesting to have him so much on the ropes that when something happens and he finds out about ashley's staff that becomes the rope that he can hold on to an end holding on for drew

going to try to climb moments in our life like that where out of the blue something comes in it's like that ability to grab hold of that group is our hope and when something like that happens and he's certainly are capable of teaming up with this or with a makeshift family or you can collaborate and take into the fold care people that you know would necessarily in your normal a firm team up with but when you're lonely when when your life as i've gone as it well when these people could walk into your life i think that it's an interesting conceit is to lose but as you describe him but that explains to me how it was that that these young people vote on drilling and he needed knee and he ended it made him as much as he needs them and i think with forming a makeshift family when you're at sea and you will cling to those who come into his home about two years or

younger oh yes oh i say young girl in and you described scott so ultimately they quote is an abuse or she may be two young brits got a long way to help some of the back of my mind i'm gonna be an encounter where in it she tries to get him in a sack or he makes the same long it was there no errors and no surprise but with natural you know oh she still wrings a third party into reporters' gm from harper well that's nora hopper i took from my own experience the events in new york when i was a generic answering from northwest right answer to barnard and i wanted a lot of all fall from a theater and in the course of doing theater in these fleeing bag downtown black box theaters and aware when we had a performance there is an audience of

five i encountered so many different characters from the entire country the people who wash up to new york city with nothing but a drain no money and no family to speak of and all of those stories stayed with me and certainly in your and hopper came out of some of these amazing people that i met you live on their hopes and dreams and and try to create a life for themselves in new york city so hardware is there another roughly and then i didn't like your he's a bit of a character who is on the outskirts and all of them of course have some tie to this dead woman ashley and i like the idea of a band of outsiders are a group of vive people plus the periphery of society for coming together for him it's a family unit then they do sort of strange triumvirate come together and no but they're not always together and in bar hoppers perfectly capable of being a

second story men who i go up to the window raise a temporary break in scott's got enough though to him out and gretel is going on last couple of a full moon about scott is built at high because the cars on one thing the pursuit of status laws and they and the silly answers what me because the orders that is pulling him in one direction the book on the other side he is a family man and he had fallen he knows he's not really good father but he had seemed to me as trying to be its title and the best he can to reach out to her to hold her to make her feel not deserted by a mother who as you say are very very rich fat right dr lebeau of world religions

you're one of originally conceived night film i thought of it as not a story in another filmmaker or story about stories within stories that a story about family his hands the balance between work and art and that drive to create and scott's concepts it's not due ride to go after truth and when he really likes into a story nothing will deviate it came from that path in that pursuit almost to the exclusion of all else and in parallel of that there is as of course stands last cordova use this filmmaker driven to create and there's really no division between his art and his life and the more you figure will use mr clifford and zach and one step removed there is a trace of orson welles had an ally after eating the book by chance i ran across the third man li na the third man so wanted an abortion well it's a classic

and at the ending you know so frustrating image of the huffington getter in that wonderful singer he just walks right up and you believe in that light viennese waltz i know i mean you know an exit harriet line ducked into the doorway certainly is this like ferguson who are in those shoes were shown now you're just joining us we go i'm talking with the marriage a puzzle about a book might fail it is let's talk about let's talk about the pursued at least three people know call our that you take us on a un is some choice we've i'm a everybody there who had any contact with withstand assaults at some point in his life last ex wives ex lover as a woman who works it is loses the

front right hand woman that's right and when it did he has to chase down these people that investigated what the relationship was about how is it going with us father and daughter have it what you know about the vessel is there something more there and what we see i mean it's just the constant an end you know you bounce him from pillar to post and backed heller her eyes and you've got me hooked and the imf it out everything in the world there is to know about some saw scored over without ever meeting him and then an end and i would say if i'm eating and if i meet him at the end and i don't recognize him from ryan is over but any one of these people or their their develops about him is you as you follow the three of them chasing him down

their develops it a portrait of that's in your own mind again you can almost see the way looks then you wonder about the way he treats his art writes he seems to be because he does it again again again he seemed perfectly happy shocking new frightening you to death with a phone and then let me worry about it and as he goes on to create another so move through exactly was that come from well i think in terms of cordova i was certainly interested in howl the art is very much between the creator and what he's doing and then there's a sort of release to it and he moves on to the next thing salesperson modi then he discovered he can reach while they can reach and zach i have a government streams a mention of working together three yes i was certainly interested in absence and

how the stories that we tell about an absent person allows that person to come in such extreme focus that if the person were actually they're using wooden have as clear of a portrait of order in terms of the science that if you look directly at the sun you can't see it but when you look at why the light is reflecting upon then you begin to understand what that entity is all of the properties of the side so i thought in terms of actually his daughters usually the century piece because it's through her experience that we are totally come to have a three sixty degree portrait of her father and so i always thought in terms of that absence and how powerful the stories about that absent person will make that character in the end the chase last throughout those search there a moment scott is really frustrated

but he did never seems to drag him down he's always ready to push on the next door opens he walks through ip seeking another person who has some information about what made this man was about and you sort of sense of governance since then another way in iran seen her rise of an attack on the magnum is the word fat content escaping you can't shake in fact that connection and anyone who has had to pull a very you'd actually recessed and fight and yet be drawn to the same time you know what the only in my head scott certainly i know investigative reporters and i talk to queer future the scuff the process of reporting and so much of it is a lot of conversation like this sitting down with the

person allowing them to feel calm durable allowing them to have the space to talk and to talk and to connect and to tell a story is such a powerful thing people do it with very little input or sex or three i think i was also influenced very much in the book by my grandmother and she passed away in the course of my writing night film and anne she had been a huge fan of special topics and she went into assisted living for the last four months of her life and i was stuck so much about her need at the end of her life to tell the stories of her life but also all the people that were in this community how much day one is tell me about a literal stranger their stories as well and so nato is very much about telling stories connecting through stories and also giving rise to history through stories and allowing people outside to come to light

book the remain in helmand from benin in the hours with stuff on a rich is how went in through the window with a genuine yeah i felt more of a question right which are a really good human my millions and producer news but i now i do a lot of thinking before i did before i started the ratings agency to cordova and all of his family history is and his fellows prior to write a side street rating like any nine to five job monday through friday i sold at my desk even though it even in the days that i don't feel like i'm always there for my characters because i think the narrative word world the fictitious world as narnia la and that if you don't exercise that pathway to that fictitious world that path will close to you need to go there

you need to go the narnia constantly and he needs a hand mixer that passage to that fictitious world remains clears even get their easily ends and if you take a few days off of writing on this and of course speaking from my own experience is just that much harder to get back to that magical world are times when you're sitting there regularly almost routinely and some of them use is not on your show room whispering in your ear some typical of writer's block and i don't have writers like andrews is live daily news and i actually put my father side and mike allow the stream to stop but there will be time as when i don't know where to take the characters and when i reached that kind of block or that kind of sense of not knowing where to go i don't get out when the characters get away from wanting to take you where you didn't plan to go

here's amy taking them to a place that they don't want a gallon it turns out they were right when there were a few undecided stories tonight phelps or a few other characters that they came from my own personal life that i grafted into the novel and the characters didn't really want to go there in that in that case they were absolutely right so i think when the offer forces something like not a personal vendetta that something that doesn't work you obviously have to edit that out that once the characters are fully realized they know where they're going to do it much i do know i rewrite as i go along and then i did i think writing is rewriting and tossing out and cutting and it's you know like a constant drilling of the jungle i can't i think the pain and joy and even winds flowing sometimes and go

as long i think it is you're right it's a pain and joy but it's the most fulfilling kind of work so it's so worth it and now i'm in whatever the highs are whenever the lows are it's so rewarding because you're putting something into the world for people to interact live and lose themselves in and it's so worth it and it's a gift to be able to do how about working with the publisher and the us has a son have an advisor to your editor i dont know she is an absolutely incredible finale of course we sometimes don't see isaiah eye on everything but a great editor does her opinion and walks you through what she thinks and then you as the offer listen with an open mind and a lot of different voices give me feedback and men degrading and out of being a novelist is that you live and die by aaron sort there's no one else really wheezing that fate

except you so that's there were doing so leave their idea what's the next move and sunni but this one is and that's a canyon if it's the night there isn't well the annual rock is that they're doing that merritt yes i visited him on to my next mountain night phone line now in the soaring states i get to talk to readers but for me creatively i've moved on to next now girls if they make it to the top of the list you get so we've we've got sent it down so you just say hello out as a whole well thank you so much for the tank says lenders almost a year at the sky owner thank all of you for watching and johnson evolve forward own words it's been

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