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Aftrlifer,
Carl-Uno Manros, has filed reports of his attendance at the Vegas Valley
Book Festival and a chat he had with Tom, who was a keynote speaker
and panelist at the Nov 1, 2002 event.
(Click to go to Day 2 report)
Hi,
I managed to meet Tom at the event in Las Vegas this evening and also
attended his keynote speech/question and answer session later. He a
great guy, quite approachable and natural.
First a little about my private
chat with Tom. He was very relaxed and was open to talk to people who
had questions etc.
I know there has been speculations
about his Japan trip on the DL so I first
asked him about that. It turns out that he was part of a group making
a promotional tour for American literature organized by the US State
Department, so that takes care
of that mystery.
On the more general question
about his interest for Japan, he revealed that
the new 2003 novel will play partly in Japan. Apparently a couple of
his books are already translated to Japanese, but I failed to get which
book titles. He thinks that the new book will probably be translated
to Japanese also, as it partly touches on life in Japan. I asked him
if he didn't want to settle in Las Vegas joining stars like Celine Dion
and Michael Jackson, but he claimed he likes the rain in Seattle...
During the open presentation and Question/Answer session later, Tom
made a
lot of witty remarks which I will not be able to repeat.
However, a few things that he touched on:
1) He compared his book writing to an Iron Chef event (hope you know
what I talk about), which means that you get to know about some of the
less important ingredients in advance, but you don't get to know the
main ingredient until the show starts. I remember one of the programs
in which it turned out that the main cooking ingredient was a 4 feet
live shark.
Once he starts writing at about
a speed of 200 words a day by long hand, he works on each sentence until
he feels it is right, he virtually never goes back to rewrite a sentence
once it is done. He also claimed that he doesn't read his own books
once they are finished, and he never reads review pieces about his books,
or pay any attention to DLs such as ours.
2) He talked at one stage about
the translation issue. He used the example of Kennedy's famous speech
in Berlin, in which he claimed "Ich bin ein Berliner". What
Kennedy obviously didn't know, is that most Germans would first associate
the term with a glased donut. (My own comment is that we should be happy
that Kennedy didn't say "Ich bin ein Berliner Weisse" (white
Berliner), which is a popular summer drink consisting of half beer and
half raspberry lemonade.)
3) Tom talked about the two
most important subjects in his novels as religion/spirituality and sex.
He claimed that the two are very close and spans all layers of society,
independent of status and income.
Last, but not least, I attach
two photos taken tonight. In one Tom wears
dark glasses (Pic 1), which he had on
most of the time, the other is without said
glasses.Pic 2
Tomorrow Saturday is book signing and a panel discussion involving Tom.
Enjoy,
Carl-Uno
Hi,
During the second day of Tom's visit I went to his book signing and
also attended a discussion featuring Tom and John Irving on how to convert
literature to film.
I asked Tom to sign the oldest of his novels that I still have. This
turned
out to be a 1981 version of Yet Another Roadside Attraction. Tom first
thought it wasn't really his book, because it has a UK cover that Tom
had
never seen before. I enclose his greeting as attachment.(Pic
3)
During the panel discussion, there were a couple of statements from
Tom that
I found worth reporting:
1) On the subject of the film version of Cowgirls, Tom admitted that
it was
a major flop and that he was never happy with it. He felt that the main
problem was that the director tried to use too much dialogue straight
from
the book. Tom said that many sentences that read OK in a book sound
unnatural when you have an actress or actor trying to use them verbatim
in a
film. Tom had apparently offered to write a filmscript, but that had
been
declined by the director. Tom also told us that several of his other
novels
had been optioned for films, but the suits in Hollywood had always backed
out and the options expired. Tom had even written a full filmscript
for
Woodpecker at one stage, but nothing came out of that project either.
2) Another subject discussed was on how much the author knows about
the
ending of a book when they start writing. John Irwing stated that he
always
knew what the ending would be before he really started writing on a
book.
Tom does it the opposite way. He stated that he just starts writing
and
don't really know where he is going when he begins on a new book. Tom
claimed that he is about 2/3 through the book until he knows how to
end it,
and sometimes even 3/4. He also said that he tends to paint himself
in a
corner and he then has to figure out how he can get out of that corner
(compare this with his statement from yesterday that he very seldom
changes
a sentense once it is written). Tom also said that if he knew the ending
of
a book when he started writing it, it would be no challenge and he would
probably not write the book at all.
I also got one more picture of Tom today doing book signing, attached.(Pic
4)
End of Las Vegas report.
Carl-Uno
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