{"id":21241,"date":"2016-05-19T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/?p=21241"},"modified":"2016-05-23T16:56:15","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T20:56:15","slug":"one-thing-leads-to-another-an-interview-with-m-t-anderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/2016\/05\/19\/one-thing-leads-to-another-an-interview-with-m-t-anderson\/","title":{"rendered":"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with M.T. Anderson"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are cultures, for example, where teens are not considered to be, first and foremost, consumers.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Check out previous interviews in the <\/em>One Thing Leads to Another series here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ll admit right up front to being horribly intimidated at the prospect of this interview. \u00a0I put off drafting questions by collecting\u00a0other interviews, reviews, and articles; by sifting through YouTube for conference appearances and even more interviews, by\u00a0reading and re-reading the essays and speeches on his\u00a0website…you get the idea. \u00a0But all that research and preparation just made it worse, actually. \u00a0So much worse. \u00a0M.T. Anderson’s reputation as one of the nicest and funniest (<\/em>Whales on Stilts, right?) authors around seems, from my limited experience (which mostly involves award speeches and receptions and secondhand stories from totally reputable sources), to be well founded and supported by evidence. \u00a0And I’ve seen with my own eyes (as an audience member etc.) how downright\u00a0goofy<\/a>\u00a0he can be so I know that’s true too. \u00a0And yet.<\/em><\/p>\n

And yet.<\/em><\/p>\n

You simply can’t read <\/em>Octavian Nothing, or <\/em>Feed, or (wow!) <\/em>Symphony for the City of the Dead without becoming a little overwhelmed at the incredible intellect and spirit behind the words. \u00a0And I think it’s impossible to not want to rise to the occasion, so to speak, but when I finally had to sit down and write this introduction (which of course I put off as long as I could) all I could do was sputter and gesture and shake my head because really, what can I say?\u00a0(Thankfully\u00a0I was alone.)<\/em><\/p>\n

So I guess I’ll just say thank you for the opportunity, for–as always–making me think, and for championing teens, intellectualism, and intellectual teens in a climate that routinely dismisses all three.<\/em><\/p>\n

Always Something There to Remind Me<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"MT_Anderson2011\"Please describe your teenage self.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thin to the point of mantis-like. Eager to explore the world in front of me. Already unhappy that someday I\u2019d have to die.<\/p>\n

What did you want to be when you grew up? Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A writer! I always had stories I wanted to tell. I spent a lot of time reading, and I was eager to become part of the ancient conversation of literature.<\/p>\n

What were your high school years like? <\/strong><\/p>\n

There was some fun. I was in plays and musicals. I made movies with my friends. I spent an extra high school year in in England, and that was incredible \u2013 full of those eccentricities we now would see as Hogwartsian (students wearing black robes, medieval courtyards, all the entertaining rigors of a British boarding school). That place really stepped up my intellectual and artistic game. We studied Anglo-Saxon history, read Lear, <\/em>sang Renaissance church music, and created a Cubist play about Picasso\u2019s youth on a stage made entirely of cabbages.<\/p>\n

What were some of your passions during that time? <\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was younger, I read mainly science fiction and fantasy. By the time I was in my later teens, I was reading a lot of British lit (favorites were Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, and Ronald Firbank). I loved music written before 1750. Some favorite movies from when I was a teen: The Time Bandits, Brazil, Monty Python and the Holy Grail <\/em>\u2026 wow, the Monty Python team seem to have had a big effect on me \u2026 Angel Heart, The Thing, True Stories, <\/em>and yes, The Breakfast Club.<\/em><\/p>\n

Would you be willing to share a difficult teen experience or challenge that you feel shaped the\u00a0adult you became?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not in the slightest.<\/p>\n

What about a positive experience or accomplishment that had an impact on your adult self?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For me, a big turning point was going to school in another country and realizing that there were places and cultures where it was actually not embarrassing to know things \u2013 that thinking wasn\u2019t discouraged everywhere as something like masturbation that probably everyone did at some point, but did on their own, ashamed, and tried to conceal. In American high schools at the time, there definitely seemed to be the sense that too much thinking was a kind of perversion. The idea of \u201cgeek chic,\u201d which saves so many kids now, was definitely not a movement in the 80s. It was so important to me to find other kids who were passionate about knowledge, about history, about joking our way through the echoing, statued halls of human civilization \u2026<\/p>\n

What advice, if any, would you give your teen self? Would your teen self have listened? <\/strong><\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need to be as homely as you are. A lot of it is frankly just attitude.<\/p>\n

No, I wouldn\u2019t have listened.<\/p>\n

Do you have any regrets about your teen years? Anything left undone or anything that might\u00a0have been better left undone?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are you kidding? Why do you think I became a writer for teens?<\/p>\n

What, if anything, do you miss most about that time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The sense that the world lay before my classmates and me, ready to be explored \u2013 and we were the new generation poised to explore it. We didn\u2019t know enough to realize that the world wasn\u2019t our oyster.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Every Day I Write the Book<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"feed\"In a 2010 piece<\/a> you say that \u201cideology is always present, vibrating in the text, whether it\u2019s there consciously or\u00a0unconsciously,\u201d and you confess to being fascinated by the impulse to explore a particular\u00a0question without necessarily knowing the answer. In fact, you wonder,\u00a0might not the books that endure be those where \u201cthe author\u2019s ideological certainty and\u00a0ideological doubt both continue to inspire debate within readers…\u201d Could you give us an example of a book that embodies this tension? \u00a0What about your own work? Is there a book that you feel successfully explores a particular question while remaining honest\u00a0about your uncertainty?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Choose a book at random \u2026 Say, The Great Gatsby. <\/em>At once, there\u2019s a sly satire of a cheap, capitalist world taken in by glitter and illusion \u2013 and yet what\u2019s so powerful about that book is that, at the same time, the narrator (and the reader!) can\u2019t help to some extent be taken in by that glitter, charmed by that illusion, feel empathy for the charlatan Gatz.<\/p>\n

And, come to think of it, that\u2019s partially the way my novel Feed <\/em>worked out. I set out to write a furious assault on a blind, infantilizing consumer culture that I felt had made me miserable as a teenager \u2026 but also, as I wrote it, I thought a lot about how that culture had created <\/em>me, too \u2026 I was partially taken in by it. I found myself sympathizing not just with the dissident girl in the book, Violet, but with my irritating narrator, Titus, too, and I think it wouldn\u2019t have been as good a book if I hadn\u2019t found things in him that were dangerously close to dreams and desires I myself had.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeens,\u201d you said<\/a> in your 2009\u00a0Printz Honor acceptance speech, \u201care conspicuously the opposite of bland and blank: They\u00a0are incredibly eccentric, deeply impassioned about their interests, fantastically \u2013 even\u00a0exhaustingly \u2013 knowledgeable\u2026Their commitment to complexity of thought is, if anything,\u00a0fiercer than an adult\u2019s \u2013 because they have to fight so fiercely to defend it.\u201d You\u2019ve spoken\u00a0elsewhere<\/a>, and often<\/a>, about the sophistication and diversity of teen interests and capabilities, and\u00a0you\u2019ve urged<\/a> your fellow writers to help woo \u201creaders away from the anti-intellectualism and self-congratulation that imperil our nation,\u201d suggesting<\/a> that powerful\u00a0moments \u201cfor teens\u2026actually come about precisely because they’re reading things that are\u00a0complicated and sophisticated.\u201d There seems to be a disconnect between the popularity and\u00a0rabid consumption of so many elements of \u201cteen culture\u201d and the\u00a0popular\u00a0disdain for teen interests, abilities,\u00a0and certainly, their intellectual capacities. Could you talk a little about that disconnect, and\u00a0about the way you approach writing for teens?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to note that we all, grown and growing, seek out role models and try to match their skills, their attitudes, their excellences. Different cultures hold out different models, and we tend to allow certain parts of us to atrophy if we don\u2019t see them being positively reflected in the culture around us.<\/p>\n

There are cultures, for example, where teens are not considered to be, first and foremost, consumers. And here let me segue directly into your next question, which provides a perfect example of what I\u2019m talking about \u2026<\/p>\n

\"octavion1\" \"octavion2\"You\u2019re clearly inspired by history, not only by the events or people,\u00a0but by the construction of history itself. \u201cHistory isn\u2019t just sitting there under a tarp, waiting to\u00a0be discovered. It\u2019s assembled, each and every time we tell it,\u201d you said<\/a>\u00a0in a recent interview, in which you also talked about the importance of connecting the past to the present in ways that illuminate both. \u00a0\u201cWe assume that our life is our life and history is stuck in the past,\u201d you\u2019ve said<\/a>, \u201cAnd then there\u00a0are those terrifying moments where you realize, \u2018Oh, wait a second. My life is a part of\u00a0history.\u2019\u2026These things could happen to us.\u201d How does your fascination with\u00a0history and the empathy you bring to your research color the way you view the world today? Have you had that \u201cOh wait\u201d moment yourself?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I thought of one of those moments while answering the last question. When I was in college, I remember reading a Time <\/em>Magazine article about Chinese students gathering in Tiananmen Square to protest the oppressions of their government. I was stunned: Here were students conceived of as radicals, people my own age and just a few years older who were changing the course of their country\u2019s history, standing up for what they believed. I was sitting outside reading the article; I flagged down a friend and told him how incredible it was, these students risking everything.<\/p>\n

He waved his hand in a vague, lofty, Cantabridgean flourish, and said, \u201cOh, yes \u2026 I think they all got shot yesterday or something \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

It was true. The Time <\/em>I was reading was a week out of date. The students had been massacred by their own government since that article came out. Tanks had driven straight into the crowds of protestors. These young men and women had given their life to stand up for what was right.<\/p>\n

That was one of the moments when I first realized how differently the idea of \u201cstudent\u201d plays out in different cultures. In ours \u2013 even more now than when I was in college \u2013 the student is first and foremost constructed as a consumer. We invite them to understand themselves in that way. They become thinkers despite <\/em>the role we groom them for. And that\u2019s a tragedy.<\/p>\n

Every American child should feel that the world of knowledge \u2013 the whole of human history and culture \u2013 belongs to them. It\u2019s just waiting for them to pick it up and use it.<\/p>\n

\"symphony\"Your latest book, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of\u00a0Leningrad<\/em>, has been described<\/a> as a story about how music and musicians can change the world,\u00a0and you\u2019ve spoken<\/a> yourself about the power of music, about how it can bolster the human spirit\u00a0and help people \u201cremember to be human,\u201d even in the darkest times. \u201cMusic has always been\u00a0really important to me,\u201d you\u2019ve said<\/a>, \u201cespecially classical music, [which]\u2026is intensely\u00a0emotional and intensely visceral.\u201d Could you talk a little about the impact classical music has on\u00a0your work?\u00a0 Where would you point a classical music novice who was interested in exploring new works and\u00a0composers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For me, music plays into how I write in all kinds of ways \u2013 though I don\u2019t actually listen to stuff while <\/em>I write! If I do, I get all moved and think, \u201cWow, this is incredible \u2026 I am ON FIRE today!\u201d And then read it the next day and realize that it\u2019s absolute crap and I was just moved by the music.<\/p>\n

As for learning about music, one of the best ways you can explore classical music \u2013 even without a streaming service \u2013 is YouTube. Find one piece you know about and love, and the margin suggests a bunch more from similar watch lists. I have found some incredible pieces and composers this way \u2013 stuff I never would have heard if there hadn\u2019t been algorithms saying, \u201cIf you liked that, you may like this \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Just Can’t Get Enough<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Question from Noelle Stevenson<\/a>: You\u2019re quite prolific in the\u00a0literary world, but my question is: if you were given a blank check to personally oversee an\u00a0adaption of any one of your books into another medium, no matter how far-fetched, obsolete, or\u00a0experimental, what book and medium would you choose? What role would you choose to play in\u00a0adapting it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Next year, my graphic novel Yvain, <\/em>an adaptation of Chr\u00e9tien de Troyes\u2019s 12th<\/sup>– century epic, will come out with illustrations by Andrea Offermann. It\u2019s already an illustrated version of a script of a medieval epic, so it has already changed form a few times already \u2013 and I think it\u2019s absolutely ripe to turn into a French Baroque opera. I\u2019ll bring the plumes!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

M.T. Anderson has contributed a question for the next author in the series, Francisco X. Stork<\/a>. Watch for an interview with him coming soon!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

M. T. Anderson is the author of <\/em>Feed, winner of the <\/em>Los Angeles Times Book Prize, as well as <\/em>The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party, winner of the National Book Award and a <\/em>New York Times bestseller, and its sequel, T<\/em>he Kingdom on the Waves, which was also a <\/em>New York Times bestseller. Both volumes were also named Michael L. Printz Honor Books. <\/em>Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad was a 2016 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Finalist. M. T. Anderson lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can visit\u00a0M.T. Anderson at his website<\/a>, or follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–Julie Bartel, currently reading\u00a0The Raven King<\/em> by Maggie Steifvater and (re-reading)\u00a0A Stranger Came Ashore<\/em> by Mollie Hunter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are cultures, for example, where teens are not considered to be, first and foremost, consumers. Check out previous interviews in the One Thing Leads to Another series here. I’ll admit right up front to being horribly intimidated at the prospect of this interview. \u00a0I put off drafting questions by collecting\u00a0other interviews, reviews, and articles; … Continue reading One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with M.T. Anderson<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[125],"tags":[671,3474],"class_list":["post-21241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-m-t-anderson","tag-one-thing-leads-to-another"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1ddKk-5wB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21241"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21362,"href":"https:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21241\/revisions\/21362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yalsa.ala.org\/thehub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}