Book Lust with Nancy Pearl featuring Edmund de Waal

hello and welcome to book lust I'm Nancy pearl my guest today at university bookstore is author edmond de Waal whose book the hair with amber eyes a hidden inheritance has just been issued in paperback edmond thank you so much for coming across the Atlantic it really is a huge pleasure to be here well I can't tell you what a thrill it is because when I read your book last year when it came out and I thought I was just blown away by it well that's fantastic I mean I do know the thing is Nancy I I really kind of didn't expect anyone to read it at all something's completely bowled over by by by the by having readers at all really and then have really engaged readers has been wonderful it sort of makes not only the work that you did it in writing the book but also the whole family history and relationships set against the context of bigger events makes that much more meaningful - yes I mean I suppose when I when I set out just kind of to start the whole book in some ways it was just a such a personal conversation myself about who I was and and and with with the objects which I'd inherited but but then I really you know that that journey into that into the whole experience I I sort of didn't ever think about readers when I was writing it it was very much a conversation to myself and very intimate conversation wise and so and so in that sense you know the idea of anyone reading it has been quite odd if you start thinking about the readers in the process of writing the book then it might it I for me and my own writing it's easier to think I'm writing something that I want to read and not think about the readers because otherwise then I get paralyzed yeah and it was odd because people said you know did you set out to write a book which was cross I went but well no I just didn't think I'd run were at all because I was actually just trying to do to do what I wanted to do on my own terms so so in that sense you know that if you think about the readers too much it can become too generic which can be a problem particularly for the things to families let's talk about what the book is and what what brought you to yeah right in it yeah okay well I mean the book is the book begins really because I inherited an amazing collection it was a collection of two hundred and sixty four of these little things Japanese netsuke which 18th or 19th century wood carving wood carvings so this is three little rats with amber eyes tumbling Oh which which are lots of you know wonderful tales and um and they're wonderful things that kind of like people and animals mythological creatures some are erotic some some are very funny some very intimate they're very beautiful three-dimensional carvings you know they're for handling they were used as toggles from the cumin and inherited this vast collection from a wonderful very beloved great-uncle great uncle Iggy who's living in Tokyo he was a Jewish elderly Jewish gentleman who'd been living in Tokyo since the war who'd come from Vienna and he left this collection to me and in leaving me this collection he was kind of leaving me as a challenge this wonderful family collection but he's also he left me with his conundrum which was what what was he giving me he was giving this collection he was also giving me the beginnings of a story and so I I thought well I have this collection I got my children growing up I have to make sense of what this collection is and I knew that it was very involved in my family's history I need my family were very well-off Jewish family who had lost everything but but that was all I knew and so I decided to trace the history of these objects back sort of across in the 150 years to try and work out where they came from and the place they held in your family's history as well yeah I guess one of the things that really struck me about about your book was not only the writing which is just it's so deceptively easy you know that you know that you spent a long time getting that exact correct tone because that wouldn't come yeah well with voice isn't it I mean you know I it really is you see I mean the thing is it's not see that I really decided that if I was going to write this book it was going to be on my own terms and so it was going to be absolutely about what he used the workplace and that's the key word for the whole for the whole book the real places and and real people in real places so but but then the the absolute decision for me about in writing it in terms of the voice of it was not to tidy it all away to kind of to tell the story with all its sort of dead ends and false conclusions and the silences I found along the way and my exhilarations and my despairs of kind of which were part of this journey into into the family the family's story which was full of extraordinary moments of exhilaration and terrible terrible yes another of the things that I found so special about this book was that it takes in all sorts of people in places and times and bits of history and it talks about the the Japanese rate that the the French rage for everything Japanese and you know that period and then the years leading up to World War two banking history I mean it I couldn't imagine when I read this book that there would be really anyone who wouldn't enjoy it well I mean the period of time it covers I mean you know that the collection was was bought in Paris in 1870s by this man who absolutely grew to adore wonderful collector and a friend of artists and right including Proust to critically critically you know and Renoir you know so you know that's that that's it that's a pretty significant chunk of cultural history you know the temptation with that bit of Belle Epoque history you know Paris the impressionist Renoir on the staircase you know Proust coming round late at night to look at your paint he could be just cloyingly appallingly sort of he bristol ii you know precious precious yeah it could be beyond belief and just like one big name drop yeah so how do you write a story about someone you know who's a real person and how they look at things how they write about them and you know and what it's like to be this rich young man Jewish man on the edges of society becomes part of society and then it's complete the Cataclysm of the Dreyfus Affair suddenly revealed to be an outsider in the middle of this society you know and so it's about for me it was absolutely about some inhabiting someone's life right in a real way rather than just doing the kind of ante new money I mean when I was reading that book I remember getting to the part where they talk about this the this ancestor of yours the collector the original collector and they and and you say that he was you can see him and in whren Juarez luncheon of the boating party and I mean I just went you know immediately went to my computer and looked up an image of that and saw him and I think that that immediacy let alone the Proust connection and I'm just unbelievable but there's no sense of there's no sense in the book of hubris or what a wonderful family I had I mean it's a it's sort of not not an ordinary family but it's a family of a certain type and a who really got caught up in events bigger than they were yes and if you write the story of a Jewish family from 1870 to 1938 you know you've you're writing a story which is which is a story on any social level is the same story which is about where do you belong and how do you make sense of who you are you know incorrect in a in a turbulent turbulent time and so the palaces and the gilding the gilt ceilings and the kind of you know are absolutely part of the story but but the real story is something completely different Reza tories we have identity is it's about who are you you know and how do you make sense of who you are in this adopted City this place that you think you belong in Paris or Vienna and of course the Vienna's story is is is of course completely heartbreaking and in a way the Vienna part of the story in those relatives who stayed in Vienna is is the story of the you know through World War two and what happened and it's not like a detective story to find out what happened to the nets Kaiser anything like that but it does and because you because you make clear at the beginning you have them and you're holding them in fact some two of them right now but it is how they got to you and how they got through the war when it's just a magnificent story the strange thing is for me of course is that is that you know they survived you know they had this this they had they had their own life this collection intact through all this and they have this so they have this reality they have this space around them but for me the real real challenge was why should anyone mind and I think my feeling is that is that in some ways that that the inheritance was really was the objects but that your owners are absolutely about a story you know that's the inheritance you know and that's why family that's how families work you inherit stories or you don't inherit stories you know and that's kind of compelling you know pristine real care and you know as a conflagration or all their but actually you know what do you inherit from your parents or your grandparents in terms of storytelling that way you come from you know what's being left out what can you find what why do you not why are you not able to hear it or what are they not able to pass on to you and and that is really really compelling you know that's real stuff and thank you that kept you going and that kept me going yeah that kept me going yeah the house that your relatives lived in in Vienna yeah it's still there and it's on the Ringstrasse that Ringstrasse have you have you of course you what yeah square she went back to see did you take your children back to see this is an amazing moment for you to ask me this because the book has just come out in Austria and in the end of October I'm going to Vienna and with my children and with my father it's known as mid eighties and we are doing the book launch in the family house in the house in the house which is now a school earth no it's an office no it's okay and I I kind of I kind of made this pact that I would that if it was going to be transferred was going to come out in German and that I I was going to be in control of how it are bringing that story back to Vienna you know he's getting and so I asked first a banana is happening it'll be so emotional and so yeah and for your father to come too yes so do you think this is a particularly English story I did think it's English at all apart from my embarrassment the strange thing is for me of course is that is that it's a story also which is very much about books yeah but but the books that are thread their way through the Harry dimerize oh you know our French books Preston nope I saw and German writers you know Guetta and real currently and then and then contemporary German writers as well so in say Belt in particular so it's a it's a book which is very much about books as well but but I don't think it's very English in that sense I didn't I don't I didn't I wasn't reading all of English books when I was reading when I was writing it so all of this that the research that you did yeah can you tell us about that ages yes I mean in my utter innocence idiocy I thought that I could sort of sit down and did the research and write is in about six months and it took years I and the reason it took years was that you know for instance Charles in Paris you know I started reading his writings and then I had to get to the Louvre and then I was named there's libraries in Paris and then I was in art galleries and I kind of got lost and then I started reading the the kind of social papers from the 1870s or the racing reports to find out what his brothers were doing and so it kind of snow balled and that way but but because I kind of said to myself that this was a you know an on google book that I wasn't gonna sit and just just research it and you know from an from a computer I had to go there the real research the real real search was was physical was being in places where they had been yeah walking on the streets trying to find how long it takes to walk from you know my great-grandfather's house to his cafe to the bank and back again you know and do that ten times and see different times a day and just you know walk from you know from walk down the room also there from one cousin's house to another and and and that idea of actually being in a place and in how again inhabiting those spaces as a person that's the research that mattered to me in a way the book is about inhabiting your own life your own life I think because the research that you did I mean you knew that your uncle Iggy was Jewish yes but that's not how you were raised but you didn't know there was much you didn't know about the family and what made you who you are well to quote to borrow Emily Dickinson it was a loaded gun you know in that sense yes this inheritance because it was you know there was a there's an element of challenge in this inheritance you know what are you going to find out right I'm giving you this thing and when you give people things you can give them to make their lives easier you can give them very deliberately to make their lives more complicated and do you think that's what he did yeah I do I'm I I loved him I absolutely loved him I think he was a remarkable man and I think my thinking you exactly what he was doing well your day job my day job your day job is the head of ceramics at the Victorian Albert no no no my day job I made a huge installation of Posen my day job is in the studio making porcelain I make I sit at my wheel and I make porcelain oh my goodness I make group supports an installation maybe next time I come to England I can come early and so this love of art yes that and your decision to grow up and be an artist yeah um do you think that had anything to do with your background I mean did you think artists are born or made I guess I absolutely knew that I mean as a child I wanted to do this thing to work with clay and that's what I've done for 45 years whatever longer I I've always loved objects you know in that sense and and so I've always made objects so if they've always and so so the life of objects you know what's going on with an object bowl a vessel a jar or a nets game he's a real real thing for me and that really is is completely quarter Who I am the strange thing about about writing this book is that um I kind of thought of it as a an object I mean my journeys in the book and the shape of the book it's a series of places and the series of walks and sitters of chapters that's one of the things that struck me when I first read it that the for our Straus production of the book at least from my perspective was absolutely beautiful it was a beautiful object as well as a beautiful book though so that must have made you happy huge yeah yeah I mean I mean that's I mean you always want your yeah what you write to be taking the seriously but to have that kind of response to the shape of what you write was wonderful yeah but I know that you're a reader yes yeah so when you finished are you gonna do another book or do you think this is I actually am going to do another hour it's I I'm just working on how to do it I mean to the kind of voice and yeah but it's going to be a another journey Oh another journey it's a journey through porcelain through a thousand years oh we're back from where I am back to China along the Silk Road so yes that's right yes so five years I'm in the kill myself five years to do it so you hope that all that research will take you east yeah I'm going east so you have to read column through brron oh absolutely yeah cuz he has that whole book about the Silk Road he does I I know some of the people in the places that I kind of need to go go through and it's kind of tracing why why the color white how the color white travels from the east to the west so it's a kind of anyway we heard it here public that's great do you read memoirs is that what I read all the time I mean you know what I I when I was when I was writing the book I was absolutely right reading I was reading 90 19th and early 20th century fiction for the book completely and nonfiction for the book so I was i I was rereading Proust and Joseph Roth and I was in the literature of the moment and that's been out for a year I'm liberated all other kinds of literature I'm I'm just can't believe how lucky I am to be able to read whatever I want go wherever I want and same my memoirs tricky men was a tricky genre think about why should anyone be interested in you and I you know all your family yes you know discuss exactly I would say I've I hate a love-hate relationship with memoirs like I self-indulgence just drives me crazy yeah and sort of florid overwritten just prose makes me throw the book across the room well I mean the memoirs that matter are the ones which which which address you know the writing of them right you know where actually that so this it's not that sort of very patrician thing about giving you this life you know I'm assuming you want to read it right but kind of questioning that questioning what's going on it's a tricky tricky genre for me what always matters is the writing do you know what that's it yeah subject matter yes right yeah this is in what sensitive I mean it's absolutely about writing is name and it's and it's when you're reading something and you you you find a voice that you like it's so exciting and you just kind of you kind of want more and know you own a voice you trust as well all surprised by there's one of the books were actually which take you somewhere and and keep on changing your experience as you go through yes that's extraordinary yes wonderful and we were talking before the show about the the author Ali Smith was there but for yeah and and especially all the voices and it's told in four distinct voices but one of the voices is a young girl about ten and Brooke her name is and her voice I think just captured both absolutely I was blown away by that book absolutely no way but and it and and and how do you like the voice in the voice of it's so easy to be to use your word precious I'm great you know that the disastrous yes examples of that in fiction about writing within a child's experience and alia Smith I completely believed in that trial I did too and her better her parents that was just a just a complete joy to read and even another book we talked about Skippy dies all marine is another shot there is just another book where I was blown away by the adolescent the way he just inhabited that and Jonathan ko did it in the rotters Club I thought that's another favorite deal nothing like Bank on street just so regret more people haven't read no I think yes it's there but yeah it's but not perhaps not so much here no that's the thing that I think a lot about the difference between the two what makes it would be interesting to me to see the bestseller yes well I suspect the bestseller list would be pretty similar but the kind of well-regarded Guardian reviewed serious fiction and yeah I think I mean it's it's there's a I think there's a huge parallel that actually but I think I think it's in the nonfiction which is utterly diverse different really I mean yes I mean if you look at the the American nonfiction lists and the UK once I think they're utterly utterly different that's interesting yes I have to do that so what's the best book that you've read recently we've taken away goodness what I loved the last Peter Carey novel which was fantastic of course we we claim him as an American now since he's lived it for a decade or more he's the world's yeah don't take him away that was the I thought that was was was fantastic I've just finished that Julian Barnes novella called the sense of an ending I didn't if it's come out here yet which was a very very kind of powerful and tricky book I just trying to think of my bedside table and this question yes and I've just finished lives like ladies guns thinking about Emily Dickinson oh yeah yeah that was a wonderful bio which I think was fantastic and again was you know that the afterlife yeah you know Dickinson I didn't manuscripts a tremendous book about across time well Edmund I have to say after talking to you I did not reread the book for the interview because it was so clear in my mind still after a year but I are talking has made me now want to go home and reread the book because there's it's so wonderfully I'm such a pleasure to meet you and to be here and to talk books absolutely wonderful I'm so grateful oh well you're welcome thank you for bringing the nuts case to show us

Channel: Seattle Channel

Views: 7,079

Rating: 4.818182 out of 5

Keywords: book, nancy, pearl, edmund, de, waal, Books, Writing, author

Id: cVvxNeqNcuo

Length: 27min 54sec (1674 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 13 2011