FEATURED WRITER OF THE MONTH
Interview with: JOSEPH O'NEILL
In his career as a novelist, the third time was the charm for Joseph O’Neill. In 2008, he published NETHERLAND, which THE ATLANTIC dubbed “The Great Irish-Dutch-American Novel.” It appeared on virtually every top-ten list at the year’s end, garnering comparisons to THE GREAT GATSBY and winding up on the bedside table of President Obama. O’Neill went on to win the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for NETHERLAND, entering the company of former recipients such as Philip Roth, Richard Ford, and John Edgar Wideman.
We reviewed NETHERLAND this summer, but wanted to find out more about the man behind the masterpiece. We intended to probe his influences, his approach to writing, and his upcoming projects when we spoke to him by phone on September 11, 2009.
THE OXFORD AMERICAN: Why do you write?
Joseph O’Neill: I think that it’s obviously psychologically compulsory. If it were optional, anyone in their right mind would take the non-writing option.
THE OA: What is the hardest thing about writing for you?
JO: It’s all hard.
THE OA: So there’s nothing you’d identify as an easier aspect?
JO: Well, I’m talking about writing fiction—writing journalism, or writing an e-mail, obviously that’s not quite as hard. Trying to write something, you know, interesting, of artistic merit: it’s very difficult.
THE OA: So do you find the pieces you write for THE ATLANTIC easier than writing fiction?
JO: Yes, journalism is always easier than fiction. No comparison.
THE OA: You’ve said that your training and experience as a barrister in the UK helped you as a writer in the sense that you are able to craft logical, cohesive plotlines. What other qualities or personality traits do you have that you feel contribute to your writing?
JO: I think that, inevitably, everything contributes to your writing. And your writing tries to be reflective of something about yourself and about your particular powers of apprehension. So that you’re not writing out of a specific compartment of your personality; I don’t think it works that way.
THE OA: NETHERLAND is often compared (favorably) to THE GREAT GATSBY. Besides Fitzgerald, which other writers or particular titles have influenced you?
JO: Ooooh, so many. I think everything you read influences you. I think Saul Bellow’s more sprawling novels have certainly influenced me. Joseph Conrad, obviously. John Updike, Ralph Ellison, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, the list goes on. I think I was essentially influenced as a teenager. I think what flows into you during those years is what stays with you.
THE OA: What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
JO: I’ve never received writing advice. I’ve received advice about specific bits of writing, but no one has ever advised me as far as how to become a writer, or how to succeed, you know, in the writing game—partly because, in Europe, certainly, you don’t have the same kind of mentorship structure that some of your writers in the United States have as a result of attending creative writing school. My mentors have all been invisible; or their mentorship has been mediated through their work.
THE OA: Can you tell us about your two previous novels and what you learned from writing them?
JO: Well, they’re two black comedies, I suppose, and, you know, I learned a lot from writing them—a lot about craft. You also learn something about your own capacities, not always happily. In other words you learn that you have the capacity to write novels, but also that you have the capacity not to write the sort of novels you want to be writing.
THE OA: Despite its being a novel very much about New York, why can readers outside New York appreciate NETHERLAND? What is its universal appeal?
JO: I just—I don’t know. I mean, I’m certainly not going to write a novel that’s going to be read only by New Yorkers, or by people who know New York. I’m not sure how you would do that. To the extent that people have liked this book, I’m not completely surprised that it’s not geographically confined to people in the New York area. I would have been surprised if that had been the case.
THE OA: Why did NETHERLAND take seven years to write?
JO: Oh, it’s just so hard, I mean, it was…. I’m a very slow writer to start with, then the subject matter of the book emerged from ongoing current events, and I think that certainly made the whole thing go very slowly.
THE OA: This wasn’t originally intended, but because today is September 11, I imagine it’s a day that carries a lot of weight for you…. Have there been strong reactions on both sides to your depiction of post-9/11 New York? Do people tend to agree with your depiction of the state of the city at that time—how has that been?
JO: First of all, I don’t in all honesty attach a lot of significance to the anniversaries of 9/11. I do attach significance to other things connected to that tag—but not anniversaries. I completely understand why those who were directly affected are forced to relive that whole day, and to reckon with their sorrows. But I’m not one of those—I don’t have any personal claim to sorrow on the anniversary of 9/11. To the extent that people have talked to me about this book at all, they don’t really dwell on the question of 9/11. You see, everyone has their own 9/11 story; everyone remembers where they were. So it hasn’t been a major theme of people’s reactions to this book—readers’ reactions.
THE OA: What are you working on at the moment?
JO: I’m now working on my next novel.
THE OA: Can you tell us anything about it?
JO: Not really. It’s sort of—brewing.
THE OA: We recently conducted a poll of the Best Southern Literature for our print magazine and website. You described Flannery O'Connor as “wickedly good” in a recent book review for THE ATLANTIC. Would you like to weigh in by telling us your favorite works of Southern fiction or nonfiction?
JO: Um, oh yes. I most certainly do. I love THE MOVIEGOER, by Walker Percy. Which, now that I mention it, was a significant influence on NETHERLAND. Isn’t Richard Ford from the South?
THE OA: Yes, he’s from Mississippi.
JO: Well, I’m a great admirer of Ford’s work. Of course, Faulkner. And INVISIBLE MAN, certainly the first part of it is set in the South.
THE OA: Yes, we would claim that as our own.
JO: And rightly so. It’s a magnificent novel. Certain sections of it are extraordinary. And I grew up reading Richard Wright as well, and now that I think about it, yes, I’m a consumer of all that great stuff. I was too unschooled in literary things to consider it Southern, or too regionalist. I thought Carson McCullers was just Carson McCullers.
THE OA: Much has been made of the fact that President Obama enjoyed NETHERLAND. If you had to choose another "dream fan" or reader, who would it be?
JO: I don’t know—I think that’s a little much. Well let me just answer this way: I’m grateful whenever any reader picks it up.
THE OA TEN: questions we ask of every interviewee.
1. What superstitions do you have?
None.
2. What would you like to change about yourself?
Oh God…. Just write down that I said, “Oh God.”
3. What are you still trying to accomplish in your professional career?
Well, I’m still trying to write something of value.
4. Do you have a hidden talent?
Yes, I do. Some would say that my talent is entirely hidden.
5. What subject causes you to rant?
I’m going to start ranting—just thinking about my answer to that question makes me feel like ranting. The American right. But I do my best to resist ranting about them, because it’s their ranting that makes me want to rant.
6. What is the biggest mistake you ever made in your professional life?
Oh God, I’m not going to tell you that.
7. What is one thing that you used to dislike but that you now like?
Well, I used to really dislike mushroom soup.
THE OA: And you now like it?
I’m now on reasonable terms with it.
8. What profoundly underrated book, album, or movie would you like to champion for us?
I think BURN AFTER READING is an underrated movie. I think it’s a fantastically accurate satire of the unbelievable brainlessness of the previous administration, and the general culture that sustained this.
9. What is your favorite line from a song?
“We all live in a yellow submarine.”
10. What was your favorite childhood toy?
I used to like wooden forts; playing cowboys and Indians.
[Author photo by Lisa Ackerman]
