Jessica Strand, host of the New York Public Library’s ‘Books at Noon’ program, knows her subjects
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Nothing against author interviews, but typically the least riveting aspect of the exercise is when plot and characters are being dissected.
Unless, I suppose, you’ve already read the book. Unfortunately, I hadn’t read Dana Spiotta’s new novel “Innocents and Others.” Ms. Spiotta, the author of several previous books, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and a creative-writing professor at Syracuse University, last Wednesday kicked off 2016’s New York Public Library “Books at Noon” series.
She was interviewed by Jessica Strand, who originated the series in 2014. It runs through June 1.
The half-hour interviews take place under the arch in the library’s Astor Hall (also known as the lobby), the crowd an eclectic group ranging from fans of the author to people on their lunch break, library employees and puzzled tourists.
Ms. Strand, who kept the interview moving at a fast, though by no means hectic pace, seems perfectly suited to the assignment. Before joining the library she played a similar role at the Strand Bookstore, where she interviewed authors as part of the East 12th Street landmark’s “Upstairs at the Strand” series.
But Ms. Strand’s qualifications go much deeper than that. She grew up in the business, so to speak: Her father was the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Strand.
Ms. Strand recalls vacations as a child—“People would offer homes and we’d go”—spent with literary giants such as Mexican poet and diplomat Octavio Paz,American poet Elizabeth Bishop and Russian Noble Prize poet Joseph Brodsky. “I was 10, sitting next to Shirley Hazzard,” the Australian author. “We’d go to Philip Roth’s home, and [Mark Strand] knew a lot of painters, too.”
She counts Martin Amis among her more challenging, yet satisfying “Books at Noon” interviews, even though she said noon isn’t the author’s favorite time of day. “He likes to be interviewed at night,” she explained. “He’s shy and blossoms at night.”
Also, the photographer Sally Mann. “She’s so literary,” Ms. Strand said. “Her visual take is so mixed with literature.”
But one of her more compelling interviews occurred with her own father, six weeks before his death of cancer in 2014. “He said he was influenced when he was young by ‘As I Lay Dying,’” William Faulkner’s pioneering stream-of-consciousness novel.
His daughter had no idea. The novel, she said, “changed my whole idea of literature when I was 14. Suddenly, turning to my father, knowing he was dying,” and apparently more because time was running out than the timeliness of the subject matter, “I said, ‘Really! We have to talk about this later.’”
There may initially have been doubts about holding “Books at Noon” in Astor Hall, just because of the distractions. But Ms. Strand was all for it. “I said we’re a public institution. We should have the most public program in the most public place.”
She seems well-versed in her subject’s work. (Upcoming authors range from novelist and memoirist Edmund White to former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan, and model, actress, cookbook author and TV host Padma Lakshmi.)
“I’ll read what I have to read of them and then read any interview I can get my hands on,” Ms. Strand said. “I live with them for a week and also watch as much tape as I can. I have to know how nervous they are and what makes them relax and verbal and want to speak.”
She and Ms. Spiotta seemed to hit it off quickly. And when the novelist, whose spare prose has been compared with that of Don DeLillo andJoan Didion, talked about her literary influences, you almost felt as if you were eavesdropping on a private conversation.
“I was reading ‘Dubliners’ and started weeping over how moving it was that this person could get me to this place, said Ms. Spiotta. “James Joyce is my hero.”
Discussing the creative process, the author confided, “the self seems to subside. It makes you feel part of something bigger.”
Ms. Spiotta revealed that she reads the obituaries for fun and that her own writing has become more austere with age. “As you get older you like adverbs less,” she said. “They wear you out.”