Matthew Pearl‘s novels have been international and New York Times bestsellers translated into more than 30 languages. His nonfiction writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, The Atavist Magazine, and Slate. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes that Matthew’s books are part of “the growing genre of novel being written nowadays — the learned, challenging kind that does not condescend.” Globe and Mail declares him “a writer of rare talents,” Library Journal calls Matthew “the reigning king of popular literary historical thrillers,” and the New York Daily News raves “if the past is indeed a foreign country, Matthew Pearl has your passport.” Matthew has been named one of The Next Big Things by Details Magazine and was chosen Best Author for Boston Magazine‘s 2013 Best of Boston. He received the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction.
Please explore Matthew’s books, get a signed copy, and check for upcoming events.
Five Questions
What is most difficult about writing?
Isn’t there a saying that getting started is the hardest part of writing? But I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Only speaking for myself, obviously, having the idea and getting started writing all come pretty painlessly. It’s actually when you start reading that writing becomes so terribly difficult. You become acutely aware of the endless choices you’re making, some consciously and many not, and that you have to continue to make. First person or third person? Is this your protagonist or that? Sure the choices seem obvious until they don’t. There are so many different directions you could take your material. Writing projects take different amounts of time, but I have never yet met a writing project, long or short, that isn’t difficult on multiple levels, and a big part of that difficulty stems from the endless choices. The worst part? There are no right answers.
I’d add that just maintaining faith in yourself can be one of the most difficult parts of the process, especially as you run into the roadblocks that will pop up. The longer the project, in duration and in pages, the more likely this crisis of faith seems to happen. Can you do this? Should this be done at all? Would a different topic or story be better, easier, more relevant, more important? Could someone else do this better than you? Of course they could, so why are you doing it? Should this have been nonfiction instead of fiction, a short story or play instead of a novel? Those kinds of questions. Not that any form of writing is easy, but I believe there are special anxieties fiction provokes. Maybe it’s just me, but when I’ve written narrative nonfiction, I don’t feel the kind of existential doubts that seem to come up with my fiction.
What is your philosophy of failure?
I’ve never thought too much about having a philosophy to employ when things don’t (or do) work. I guess part of what I try to do is set fairly consistent and modest goals. I used to say my goal with each book was to be able to write the next book. That was intentionally very open-ended, since there are so many ways to write a book (with or without support of a publisher, etc.). It’s actually sort of cheating now that I think about it as far as a philosophy, since technically in most scenarios nobody can be stopped from writing a book (one of the beauties of writing). I haven’t thought about that standard for a while, maybe nobody has asked me a question for a long time that made me think of it. Of course, all of the terms we use for outcomes in creative fields and other professions are simultaneously very loaded and very subjective. It’s nothing new to meet high achievers who don’t feel “successful,” and we all know people, especially in creative work, who have little or no interest at all in mainstream markers of success. Then it becomes harder to even define a failure or an achievement.
What is the biggest mistake you have made as a writer?
I guess there are mistakes in writing and mistakes in publishing. To discuss mistakes in writing would be opening a rabbit hole, I think. At least in my case, I’m almost always extremely harsh on my own writing to the point where I try to avoid even looking at my writing once it’s been finished/published because I’ll be disappointed in myself. Mistakes in publishing (or whatever we want to label the larger process of post-writing work) are a little cleaner to evaluate. On that front, what comes to mind are several times I made the mistake of trusting a journalist when I shouldn’t have done so. Three times that I can think of (which is a very small percentage of overall journalistic interactions, for the record). In those cases, the journalists, who were interviewing or (in one of these instances) photographing me, proved to be sleazy and dishonest. I know, it doesn’t seem like there’s much call for that in covering novels and novelists. It’s not worth going into the details. One of these people, by the way, was a college journalist! I emailed him afterwards challenging him to explain what he did and he didn’t write back, which you learn is typical of people who intentionally set out to deceive. They have no interest in defending themselves, no qualms about what they do. He turned out to be such a louse that I remembered his name for years, and I looked him up at some point and saw he became a lawyer. I was very, very tempted to write to the Bar association in his state, but I didn’t. I’ve forgotten his name at this point, though I’m sure I could look it up.
Of course, you could say the mistake was that I didn’t let it roll off my back. Take the college magazine example. How many people read that article, how many people read it carefully enough to even focus on what it said? Statistically speaking, none. The novel I’m working on now includes Alfred Tennyson as a character–and he really was a character. In any case, I’m reminded of him in talking about trust and in talking about being impacted by malicious people. Here was the most famous poet of his time, on a pedestal with Dickens as the most famous writer, period. Not only would he remember negative articles or reviews written about him, he would memorize them and recite them, many decades later. He would rant about them. Even other creative people, who I’m sure understood on some level, would be shocked when he’d do this. Tennyson recognized this was unhealthy and wished he had thicker skin. When asked why he minded what some writer even in a cheap newspaper would say, why it made him lose sleep, he answered “I mind what everybody says.”
What is the biggest mistake you have made as a person?
For my whole life I’ve probably kept too much to myself. Part of this is just personality, naturally falling a little on the shy side of the line. I really noticed this as detrimental late in college and after. I made great friends who are still my friends. It wasn’t that I was reclusive. But I was never a “joiner,” I never liked being part of an organization, for instance, and didn’t understand or particularly approve of socializing in ways that also explicitly served as networking. Then, after college, I saw how those networks of friends and acquaintances were activated, turned into opportunities in all kinds of worlds, personal and professional (including creative ones). Interestingly, even once I was aware of this as a problem, I tended to repeat it. Even where I live–Boston rather than New York or even Los Angeles–tends to remove me from larger circles of people who are in my field. I don’t mean to say it’s a mistake to live where I live, just that the pattern of isolating myself, even after I outgrew some of my shy tendencies, continues in some ways.
What is your best failure story?
Walmart. Early on after my first book came out, my publicist at my publishing house forwarded me information that Walmart was celebrating national literacy day at their locations all over the country by inviting local authors to read there. At that time, I assumed I should say “yes” to every invitation (note to authors and everyone else: do not say yes to everything). However, I vaguely recall that even then I read the invitation with skepticism at the amorphously described event. Still, who would say no to supporting literacy?Picture this. Fifty thousand square feet of warehouse space and extra wide shopping carts. Somewhere in that space was a very small whiteboard no bigger than a bread basket on which an employee had faintly written in dry erase marker something about national literacy day, maybe with my name scribbled at the bottom.
The employees had no more idea than I did about what was going on. I was handed a children’s book that I was apparently supposed to read aloud to all the children who were at Walmart gathering to celebrate National Literacy Day(!). I’ve tried to block out the details. I’m pretty sure there were no children around my metal folding chair. Or if there were, they just happened to be running by while they were playing, pausing to gape at me. Now that I know more about public reading and events, the whole concept was absurd. There is not a single scenario by which people would gather with their children at Walmart in order to celebrate literacy, even had there been billboards up for the event (rather than a completely confusing tiny sign hidden in the store). Sure, you could laugh about it later, but it was a very, very long drive home.
