So did I get the “titles” right?

So this may take awhile. I’ll start at the beginning. I love the cover. Did you get to vet some, did you pick it or did you have any say in it.

Moving on to the epigraphs. Peter Sloterdijk. I love the sentiment, but he was a very controversial figure, in his time, especially with regard to his view on Eugenics.

And then the next which is more obscure in meaning. (Bernard Tschumi) How do concrete (no pun) structures tame our fears? He is controversial as well, especially his New Acropolis. Plus he used sexual intercourse as a characterizing analogy for architecture.

Ok. Enough with epigraphs.

You know, off the point, but after reading your interview with Kathleen Berry, I read Fateless, by Imre Kertész. And he feels that Schindler’s list is Kitsch which reminds me of Sloterdijk.

And his protagonist reminds me of Mr. Field.

And what is this idea that people are pleased with their own compassion especially when it is noted by its recipient?

So back to Mr. Field. It seems as if existentialism has been thrown out the window in modern literature. Have you bought it back?

I mean as in Sartre’s Nausea, where just the proximity of a tree and its roots cause physical pain to the protagonist, Mr. Field seems overwhelmed by the material world around him.

Sometimes he is scared.

Sometimes indolent.

Sometimes he goes out into the world and wanders, not knowing where he is or what he is doing.

How did you approach his obsessions both with Ms. Kallenbach and his little dog?

And when he crouches beneath the window listening to her conversations with her putative husband, what is he really thinking?

What about Mim?

Her notebook which is a litany of cliches about the sea.

A question you have been asked often-where did she go? Did he love her?

Do you think that there are a lot of people, mostly hidden from us, I imagine, that are like Mr. Field?

Chapters- the seasons.

And the sub-headings. Which telegraph in a clearly poetic fashion what happens within.

Peanut butter, peanut butter, peanut butter. Being John Malkovitch.

What is it about Chopin and also in his playing? George Sand, imagining her carriage turned over. “And his chest sank down with sympathy with his situation”.
I remember watching a 60 Minutes interview with Vladimir Horowitz by Mike Wallace and he talked about how he still remembered from his childhood the metronome ticking and still felt it as he played “now”.

I remember how Touw was describing a light well and Touw said it was not a hole but a light well. And it reminded me of how much Field wanted to be filled to have the void in the center of his being. Which reminded me of the protagonist in Fateless once again who also felt, eventually that he was just a hole that needed to be filled. Don’t we all have that feeling at times? I know I do. Or is it psychologically, something that is engrained in us by nature or nurture at the very beginning.

The painting above the two fat women. The fact that they are standing on sirloin steaks, third face “wonky and dislocated” What is going on in his head?

The waiter when he talks about his tender the squid is and Mr. Field describes the boats sailing in and out reminded me a little (I don’t know why) of The Old Man And The Sea. And is the waiter really talking to him like that.

Isn’t Mr. Field the most unreliable of narrators.

Another book it remind me of was Remembrance Of Things Past. So many little things, like the madeleines.

All the atoms in his body heated up but he is excited but not excited. He feels but doesn’t feel.

Authors love agapanthus.

Hannah gives the book its title—why? And it is in the solicitous sense.

“The sky was so welled up with color-orange, yellow, blue, green-that it made me want to vomit.”
How does all this compare to writing poetry.

Perhaps to head all of this, How is Mr. Field going to end up? Is he going to be OK?

Thanks so much. Talk a little bit about the bookshop.