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World War II – Italian Front – Derek B. Miller (Author Interview, 2024)
220 Plays10 months ago
Ep 049 – Fiction. In August 1943, a fourteen-year-old is newly orphaned and flees Rome after surviving the American bombing raid that killed his parents. Author Derek B. Miller joins me to discuss his fascinating new #WWII novel, "The Curse of Pietro Houdini."
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Transcript
The Essence of Humanity in Conflict
00:00:00
Speaker
What I think every humanist writer who steps into war, who is not Hamas and Hezbollah and ISIS and Nazis and Stalinists, communists and the rest of it, are people who recognize that at base what survives and what is meant to survive is our humanity, is our shared humanity, our universal humanity. If there's anything truly worth fighting for, it's the assurance
00:00:30
Speaker
chance to persist so that we collectively can work throughout those differences.
Introduction to War Books Podcast with Derek B. Miller
00:00:43
Speaker
Hi, everyone. This is AJ Woodham's host of the War Books podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war related topics. Today, I am really excited to have on the show Derek B. Miller.
The Curse of Pietro Houdini and Derek's Literary Achievements
00:01:00
Speaker
for his new book, The Curse of Pietro Houdini. Derek is an international affairs expert and the author of six previous novels, Norwegian by Night, The Girl in Green, American by Day, Radio Life, Quiet Time, and How to Find Your Way in the Dark. His work has been shortlisted for many awards with Norwegian by Night winning the CWA John Creasy Dagger Award for best first crime novel. How to Find Your Way in the Dark was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and a New York Times Best Mystery
00:01:29
Speaker
of 2021. Derek, how are you doing today? I'm delighted to be here. It's an unexpected pleasure, so thanks for inviting me. No, thank you. And your book is right up my alley. The first question that I like authors to start off answering is, if in your own words, can you just tell me what is your book about?
Transformation Themes in Miller's Work
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's always, I mean, I anticipated you'd ask me that. And it's always a tricky question, right? Because there's the theme and there's the plot. And in some ways, I think the theme of the book is, it's about at the broadest, most abstract level, it's probably about transformations.
00:02:06
Speaker
about how we see things one way, that when experience becomes something else. And I was thinking about Ovid's Metamorphosis at the time, and how all of the art in this book that's mentioned is inspired by Titian or Titiano, was inspired by Ovid's Metamorphosis, and Metamorphosis, of course, is transformation. And each one of the paintings
00:02:36
Speaker
that's mentioned, captures a moment in time about transformation. And so there is something about catching that moment when we expected the world to be one way, but we pulled the curtain aside and found
00:02:52
Speaker
Something else entirely and in turn have to become something else entirely in order to attend to what we've discovered and it is something that happens more and more in adulthood when you find that
00:03:07
Speaker
what you thought was going to be forever isn't anymore or what you thought was true isn't when you have to question something or when the world just conspires against you and circumstances force you into another life that you weren't expecting. Death does that, divorce does that, all kinds of things can do that. War does that, obviously. Many things do.
00:03:33
Speaker
But I guess when it comes to plot, but that's not a sales point. Nobody wants to pick up and read a book about transformation unless you're in the market for office.
Historical Journey of a Young Protagonist in WWII
00:03:39
Speaker
So, it's about a 14-year-old child who flees the Allied bombing of Rome in 1943. Parents are killed, makes it south as far as Cassino, which is, you know, going down Italy into the Leary Valley.
00:04:00
Speaker
ends up getting beaten up near at the base of of Monte Cassino, which is where the Abbey of Monte Cassino is, which was built by Saint Benedict in 529 A.D. on the ruins of the Temple of Apollo. And it has a commanding valley of commanding view rather of the imposition of the Leary Valley, which in a very short time
00:04:27
Speaker
the the Allies are going to have to advance up and through in order to be able to make their way to Rome. And it is where the Germans are digging in in what is what is the effectively the winter line, which goes right across kind of the knee of Italy. And the Abbey of Monte Cassino is located right on that line and is the most commanding place on it. And it is a remarkable
00:04:57
Speaker
venue for a story that is ultimately an art heist, a coming-of-age story, a survival story, and a historical novel, and what may be a contradiction in terms, but I don't think so, is literary suspense. And so it is drama, and it is comedy, and drama, and tragedy, and the whole Kit and Kabuto life.
Miller’s Background in International Affairs and Historical Writing
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah. Part of what we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording is your background is not just fiction. You are an international affairs professional. Would you consider yourself a historian? No, I think historians is having a very particular training, particularly
00:05:54
Speaker
with an intellectual focus, with backgrounds in historiography, so they know what they're getting into and how they're approaching it, and dealing with various specific problems that the writing of history directs you to. I'm a political scientist, so I have a master's in national security. I have a second master's, I agree, in political science and a PhD in international relations.
00:06:20
Speaker
And in the course of doing all that, my expertise becomes in research design and wondering about a question of history or about international affairs, and then building out the research design to question, how would I investigate that? What would an answer to that look like? How do I study it? And historians have problems with political scientists. Political scientists have problems with historians.
00:06:48
Speaker
I think the best political scientists appreciate. Is that right? Is there a tension between the two? Yeah, because the basic argument that historians will make, and they're not necessarily wrong, is that political scientists treat history as what they call a procrustean bed, right? So the story of Procrusteus from Greek mythology is if he had a rack
00:07:13
Speaker
And if you were too long, he'd lop off your feet. And if you were too short, he'd stretch you. So in other words, either way, you're going to fit. And the historian will complain about the political scientists that the political scientists will look at the world and will eventually fit the world to fit the model, fit the rack, because they come at the world with a certain perspective, a certain ideology, a certain interpretive framework.
00:07:37
Speaker
And as a result of that, they tend to not deal with the nuance because they're so interested in building theory.
00:07:45
Speaker
The political scientist in turn will say, I'm glad that you recorded all that, but what's the conclusion? What does it mean? What are you going to say? What are we going to learn from it? And they're like, and historian doesn't, we'll often find them timid and they'll find them, you know, this is, and I think both of these are wrong because the best people are drawing from each other. Simply the best people in any field are drawing from each other. But as a graduate student, it is necessary to work through those
00:08:13
Speaker
to understand what those tensions are and work through them, to understand that they do come from someplace and you don't want to be one of the people who's a lousy historian or a lousy political scientist, of which there are too many on all sides. Well, thank you for that distinction. My pleasure. And for all you historians out there, I hope you have not flipped off the episode and now knowing that- No, this is not an anti-history argument on the contrary.
00:08:41
Speaker
What I was getting at with my question, actually, even though we went down a little bit of a rabbit hole, is you have a lot of interests. You have a very varied background. Your last book, I believe, was a science fiction book. Is that correct?
Impact of COVID on Miller's Novel Releases
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah. Well, two books came out at the same time because of COVID. COVID was not good to writers. That's not to say that we got the worst, but we didn't get away with much.
00:09:07
Speaker
So two of my novels came out at the same time. One was Radio Life, which is an epic, sweeping, post-apocalyptic story about civilization rebuilding itself rather than its collapse. But that technically came out prior to How to Find Your Way in the Dark, which was
00:09:27
Speaker
historical fiction mystery set between 1937 and 47. It's a big coming of age story. That's the one that was shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award. I'm happy to talk about whatever you want. I wrote them all. I was just going to ask, why this book? Why did you choose to write this book? What was it that interested you about this particular moment in history? Pietro Houdini.
00:09:57
Speaker
came about, not all books come about in interesting ways.
Inspiration from A Canticle for Leibowitz
00:10:01
Speaker
Sometimes you just, anybody who does art knows that stuff comes from all over the place. But Pietro Houdini came about because I had, because of Radio Life, which was my science fiction novel, which sounds like a stretch, but bear with me a second. But wait, there's more. It goes like this.
00:10:23
Speaker
There was a novel written in 1959, or at least published in 1959, by Walter Miller Jr. called A Canticle for Leibowitz. A Canticle for Leibowitz won the Hugo Award and I think also the Nebula, but I'd have to check. These are some of the highest science fiction awards they give in English. And it was the only
00:10:47
Speaker
I believe it was the only novel he actually published in his lifetime or at least complete novel. There was something at the end, which was kind of a sequel, but this was it. He had written a couple of short stories and it was a huge seller's magnificent story, but it was very, very, very pessimistic. And the, in a word, in this post-apocalyptic environment after what he called the flame deluge,
00:11:13
Speaker
There's this Abbey that is somehow still clinging on. It's not even Catholic anymore. It's something. And it records whatever tiny little bits. This is pre-internet, pre-electronic era, as we know it today. Pre-digital, if you know what I mean. And so the libraries are gone. Everything's gone. The maps are gone.
00:11:36
Speaker
And they find tiny little scraps of things they find in the world, and they copy them for posterity, not knowing what they are, what they could mean, how they're connected. And this is the story of how that small act, in a way, ends up leading to the recreation of nuclear weapons, which end up blowing up the ad.
00:12:02
Speaker
It was published in 1959. I'm sorry for giving you away, but you had your time. OK, so. The thing is, Walter Miller, Jr. was was a was on the bombing runs during World War Two that destroyed the Abbey of Monte Cassino, which, as I mentioned earlier, was built or I think I mentioned earlier because I talked to you a moment before, was built in 529 A.D.
00:12:29
Speaker
So this is where all monastic life in Christendom began. Quite literally, I don't mean that in figurative sense. It started there with him and Benedictine, Benedict's rules. And to destroy something like that and then later to find out that 400 civilians were hiding there, not to mention the actual habit
00:12:58
Speaker
Gregory was there at the time as well, who somehow survived. More bombs were dropped on the Abbey of Monte Cassino than on any other single structure in all of World War II. And if you take a moment to consider just how much we wanted to bomb during World War II and how many bombs were dropped, I'm not talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki because it didn't target a particular
00:13:22
Speaker
sight, right? It picked an area, right? Not to be dismissive of the harm done, but I mean, it's not the same thing. They bombed a building to ash, let alone rubble. And he was one of the bombers on that. And I kept thinking about his, and the story of this thing, and he flew over 25 missions, which I'm sure everyone who listens to this part
00:13:48
Speaker
know what that means. It's your chance of dying. We're high. You weren't supposed to do that and the rest of it. And you take off to a slight unknown, you destroy everything about it and you fly back. It's linear or the equivalent of their back, their back, their back 25 times or more. And you obliterate things and you never see the consequences really of what you've done. You've never really seen the harm. This isn't like being an infantry soldier.
00:14:18
Speaker
And it is no surprise to me, I don't like pop psychology, but one can't help but sense the linearity, the destructiveness, the inevitability, the sense of impending doom, maybe even a touch of nihilism.
00:14:44
Speaker
but not complete nihilism because you wouldn't be harmed by the world if you didn't still care about it. I think people who are truly nihilistic are beyond the realm of sympathy and empathy. And this is a man who clearly was not by virtue of not only the beauty of his writing, but the pain that was in the story. So anyway,
00:15:07
Speaker
It's a good book. So I wrote, I See Another Way, I had another, I wanted to write a science fiction novel that was in a sense not an homage to that novel, not a sequel to that novel, because that's absurd, but a book that I felt would be in dialogue with that novel. Not because I wanted to take on the same story, but rather because
00:15:31
Speaker
I think there are other ways of getting through this. I'm not as gloomy, and he eventually did commit suicide as he is. I wouldn't call myself chipper, but I would still say that I saw the same observations that he
Monte Cassino: A Fascination Explored
00:15:49
Speaker
made in the world.
00:15:51
Speaker
as a professional who studies war and security and whatnot, but I saw another way out. And so I wanted to write a story that started from the same premise, but ended in a different place.
00:16:02
Speaker
But the thing is, is that even after writing Radio Life, I wasn't done. There was still something about, because the Abbey was just so beckoning as a venue and a location, and it was so mysterious. And I hadn't seen an Abbey in a novel that had captured anyone's attention really since the name of the rose.
00:16:27
Speaker
which don't quote me on this, but it's easy to look up. It's around 81 maybe or something. We can Google it later, but I'm not, I'm close enough for, you know, horseshoes. So, um, point is it's, it's been a while, not to say that the world every so often needs an Abbey at the center of a novel, but it just, it really captured my, my imagination and I wanted to visit it and,
00:16:51
Speaker
I think what happens with a lot of people who write historical fiction, and I know this happens with historians, and it happens with people who have an intellectual commitment to something, and they dive in, not knowing, as you reconnoiter, what you're going to find. And then you just find the coolest stuff, and you just can't believe how interesting it is. And you've had this conversation 49 times now. You know that every single time a historian dives into something.
00:17:20
Speaker
Right, 49. I could have been 50 if only you'd had a little patience. I'm kidding. But every historian will have a disturbance in the force. They know there's something in that archive, something in that story, and they dive down, and all of a sudden this universe of fascinating stuff comes out of it.
00:17:41
Speaker
And you know this is true, that what I'm saying is right, because you find historians with the most obscure passions, you know, the history of God, and they just want to grab you by the lapels and tell you how your life will never be complete until you understand the joy and nuance and richness of what they have encountered in their study of fish.
00:18:08
Speaker
or helicopters or internal combustion engines or whatever it is, they've got them all ramped up, which is why I think they're fun. I think they're, I mean, it's nerdy fun, but it's fun.
00:18:21
Speaker
And so this, when I started pressing on it, a universe of tragedy and possibility and mysticism and other things came out. And my job as a writer was to, it was fiction, right? Novelist.
00:18:39
Speaker
was not to become overwhelmed and swamped by what was unleashed by finding this sort of treasure trove of material, but rather to find a story within it that would become the vehicle for allowing me to bring in that which is interesting about it and create a moment of drama
00:19:03
Speaker
that would attract us attract me, because, you know, you can plow through this and you know, in 10 hours, I got to stick with the darn thing for 18 months, right or long. And so I mean, it has to it has to and it has to capture my attention for that long. And it absolutely did. And I needed a
Massimo's War-time Transformation
00:19:21
Speaker
I needed a story that could bring all that together. And it took me a while to find it, but then I think I did. But now is the big moment where somebody else has to read and tell me what they think. So here we go. Well, let's talk a little bit about your main characters in this book. First, Massimo. Could you just talk a little bit about Massimo? What kind of character is he? What kind of person is he? And what kind of role does he play in this story?
00:19:51
Speaker
Massimo is a 14-year-old Italian kid from Rome. In a story of transformation, Massimo has a secret identity, which whenever I say a secret identity, I can't help but think of the Incredibles.
00:20:12
Speaker
But in this case, Massimo has a secret identity. But Pietro Houdini has a secret identity because nobody in Italy is actually named Houdini because it's not an Italian word. It was made up by Harry Houdini whose name was also not Harry Houdini.
00:20:30
Speaker
And that's, I'll let that one go, but we can circle back if it amuses you. Massimo is, the story begins with this character unnamed, who's roughly 50 years old or so, an adult, a proper adult. And the story begins and ends with this person's narration of going into the story, recounting it and coming out of it. So obviously alive.
00:20:59
Speaker
Massimo is the innocent through which this story is experienced and expressed. But it is not a young adult novel. Too many people these days think that if there's a teenager in there somehow, it's a young adult novel. I assure you it's not, though. Teenagers are welcome to read it. And tough, though, it can be for the young. So this is more of a 16 plus kind of situation. But in any event,
00:21:27
Speaker
Massimo's story is a survival story during war. So it is a, it is a, it is, there's a difference, a profound difference between running away from something and running towards something. And Massimo at the beginning of the book is running away from, from, from Rome.
00:21:51
Speaker
trying to get to Naples. And in the course of this, in the course of a series of personal transformations and revelations for us as readers, we come to understand what it means to survive in different strategies and ways of surviving in fascist Italy and then basically German occupied Italy, which historians will know that that's a complicated phrase, but work with me here, and then eventually allied
00:22:21
Speaker
either occupied or liberated Italy, depending on how you're going to look at it, right? So it's all a bit tricky there. So Massimo becomes is our eyes and ears and narrator of this giant adventure, in a sense, that takes a year to play out.
Pietro and Massimo: A Narrative of Partnership and Mystery
00:22:43
Speaker
Well, let's talk in a little bit about Pietro Houdini. Who is he and what's his role?
00:22:49
Speaker
Pietro is somebody who introduces himself as an art restorer and a confidant of the Vatican, who has been sent to the Abbey of Monte Cassino to help with the preservation of the Abbey's art and mosaics in a time of crisis. And Pietro is lying.
00:23:19
Speaker
but about what and why. And yet he is extraordinarily learned. He has very little interest in facts, but seems to have a profound dedication to the truth. And Pietro is trying to get to Naples, and we don't know why. And the only way to Naples
00:23:48
Speaker
is on the route, which is basically Route 6 through the Leary Valley, the only meaningful way that you can get there. But the problem, as I mentioned earlier, is the Allies are coming up, the Germans are digging in, and at some point the wave is going to break. And you know that the wave is going to break here. So the question is, can you get out through the breakwaters of the war
00:24:17
Speaker
because there really is no way to get around it. And so Pietro and Massimo form this strange little alliance. And this connection is magnetic, and it attracts these other characters, a monk, somebody who seems to be a nurse that has it in for the Germans, a woman who ran a cafe and restaurant,
00:24:48
Speaker
who has secrets of her own and turns the whole situation upside down. These two lovers, one of them is a woman's a flute player from the eastern coast and body, and her boyfriend was an Italian soldier who was forced to serve in Greece. And so, or Albania, and you have the
00:25:15
Speaker
this motley cast of characters, motley crew of characters, if you will, end up becoming attracted to this energy and life of Pietra Houdini, who is, as I said, some kind of larger-than-life character. There are people who are in negotiation with their times.
00:25:36
Speaker
The sentence is hackneyed and it's not exactly what we're talking about. There's the old line of great men aren't born, they're made, and the times create great leaders and all this sort of thing. But there's something more interesting than that underneath that sort of hackneyed observation, which is that
00:25:58
Speaker
Our it's more about how our metal is tested as individuals in in in crisis and it could be it could be It could be any kind of crisis. It could be it could be cancer. It could be war it could be the loss of a loved one it could be but it is crisis and it is and and we are and we become tested and when we become tested we are in we our character as it were is in negotiation with
00:26:29
Speaker
whatever these stresses of the world are around us. And that negotiated space changes us. I guess a space can't change it, but you know what I mean. It's a bad metaphor, but that doesn't undermine my point, which is that it is in that arena in which we become more than we were or less.
00:26:52
Speaker
It is we don't always rise to the occasion. I mean, there is also there are also cowardice and deception and and and all other kind of the whole range of human experience, but it's more brought to bear at moments of challenge, which is why. I think there's I think people who are attracted to to books about war, unless you're weird, aren't really attracted to the war part.
00:27:18
Speaker
I think there are a certain group of people who are and they're not my favorite people. What I find are the people who are most attracted to it are trying to understand the human condition under stress. And war is about as direct as it can get. And unlike
00:27:35
Speaker
You can see this from the disaster movies. It's not man against nature and man against himself. These are the gender issues notwithstanding. These are your three main themes. I think the one that's missing is man against God and we can credit George Bernard Shaw and this
00:28:02
Speaker
Casanova. But anyway, there's a there is those three or four themes are the big, big themes. But, you know, man against wave, man against giant rock, man against tornado, you know, it's not quite the same thing as what it means for us for conflicting ideas of the good to clash or good against evil to clash. It's more operatic.
00:28:29
Speaker
to and to see what that does to us. And so I think that people who are interested in war novels are very interested in what it means. I think they're interested in humanity, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. I think you're absolutely right. And something that comes up time and again on this show is, well, for one, for me,
00:28:55
Speaker
your books about war, stories about war, you're exactly right. It's often people who are just normal people who are put into extraordinary situations where they're forced to make choices that you or I would not be forced to make. I mean, we would if we were in that situation, but it's a test often of, especially in the context of World War II. It's a test of our humanity. It's a test of our courage and our morality.
00:29:26
Speaker
So you're absolutely right about that, I think. I'm curious, you know, we've been talking about transformation and I'm curious
Personal and Character Transformations During Writing
00:29:40
Speaker
when you're writing characters who are put in these situations where, you know, you've got to make very difficult choices or you're operating in a moral gray zone and you're writing about those characters
00:29:54
Speaker
I'm curious how you personally might have changed as a person from when you started this story to when you ended this story. It's an interesting question. I don't remember who said that every time a writer, every time a novel is published, it's like one step closer to death. It is a brutal process.
00:30:22
Speaker
There's a lot of ways in answering that. And in the interest of time, I guess I have to pick one. But one way to answer that is, as a writer, as a novelist, each of my projects is different. This is true for most people. Well, that's not true. I don't think it's true for Lee Child. I think he knows what he's doing. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He said nice things about me. God bless him and Jack Reacher, obviously.
00:30:50
Speaker
But I think when I think when he writes a novel, it's it's going to be pretty similar to his last novel. And he knows kind of what he's getting into. Whereas when Ian McEwen or or or Kate Atkinson or gosh, I don't know. Jonathan Franzen or Michael Shabon.
00:31:11
Speaker
You know, I think Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, when these people are writing books, Ishiguru, I don't think they have any idea what, I haven't asked each of them in turn, but each of their books is very different from their other books. Their voices are the same, their philosophies, their consciousness, their character, their skills, all of that, all of that appears on the page. So, you know, one, one Margaret Atwood book will feel like another Margaret Atwood book, but
00:31:39
Speaker
These are people who pick very, very different themes, right? You know, Wonder Boys is not the same thing as the Yiddish policemen's union, right? It's just, it's a different thing, right? Ian McEwen Saturday is just not the same book as On Chisel Beach or, or, or whatever, if I'm, you know, and Isha Guru is another one, you know, I mean, you know, anyway, go on. But the point is each of these more, more sort of,
00:32:07
Speaker
top shelf literary writers, which is as pretentious as that sounds. You know, I'm in that general category, or at least that they're beating me with a stick and forcing me into that category. Each of the books is different. And so what happens is, is that it's very unfamiliar ground every single time. You don't know what you're getting into.
00:32:29
Speaker
Different novels have different time. This is getting into the nuts and bolts. This is like musicians talk more like this than writers. But for those of you who are still here, you know, one book might have a four day time span, right?
00:32:44
Speaker
Aristotle says that's about how long a thriller should be. He didn't use the word thriller, obviously, but he pretty much says, if you want to hold the reader's attention, that's pretty much what you're talking about, three or four days. I believe that I think he got that from the Iliad, which, though it talks about 10 years, is set only over three or four days. Most adventure, most, your basic, your basic, what Jason Bourne adventure is gonna be set over, you know, or, you know, if you remember,
00:33:14
Speaker
what the TV show 24. You're old enough to remember that, but that was 24. Well, I believe the creator of that wrote the Vince Flynn thriller series books. I could be mixing this up, but the creator of that was actually a very successful author.
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah, well, it was good storytelling. It was a lot of fun. But, you know, you're either four days or it could be a year. How to Find Your Way in Dark was set over 10 years, which changed me. This book was where a book like The Girl in Green ended up being very cathartic.
00:33:52
Speaker
This book was an unexpected encounter with things that I really thought I should have known, but I didn't. So I was listening to one of your shows and it was with your former teacher at your MFA. And one thing that he said, this is for those interested, this was episode 34, okay? He was talking about his novel, Out of Mesopotamia.
00:34:16
Speaker
And one thing that he said beautifully, and to make sure that I quoted him, because I couldn't agree with him more, and this is more true for the girl in green for me, but was clearly true for him here. And I think both of us have the same, because I worked for the United Nations for 10 years. I've been in conflict zones and other things. I haven't had the same life he's had, obviously. But I've been to, you know, I've been to Yemen and Sierra Leone, and I've been around the block. And he said at one point, because you were, you didn't ask him this exactly, but this is basically what you asked him, which is, why are you writing this as fiction?
00:34:46
Speaker
I'm paraphrasing, but his quote was, I couldn't fit that insanity into the straitjacket of nonfiction. And that's exactly right. I mean, there's too much absurdity, even comedy, which he explicitly talked about, in the craziness of this crucible of war, that trying to get the breadth of that
00:35:11
Speaker
out through merely non-fiction. I know that sounds crazy, but was impossible. And he needed, and I'm basically repeating what he said, so I don't need to put words in his mouth, but you were there, is he needed that larger palette, that larger space in order to, and the possible range, the possible dramatic range, in order to be able to experience that. It's exactly how I felt. That's definitely how I felt with The Girl in Green, and it's definitely how I felt with another war book.
00:35:40
Speaker
which is this, which is the Curse of Pietro Houdin. And because, weirdly, this stuff can be very, very funny. And I know that sound, now some of it's obviously very dark humor, but it isn't black humor, it isn't making fun of death, it isn't making fun of pain, it isn't making fun of suffering. It is recognizing that there is a
00:36:07
Speaker
I don't know if you've ever experienced something like this, but just to end the answer to this question in the only way that I can. I have often heard people saying that they experience God during moments of crisis, and I feel that that's not what happens with me. I feel that when I'm in a moment of crisis, I'm alone, and I'm dealing with it alone, and I'm going to deal with it alone. If I get through it, it's going to be alone.
00:36:34
Speaker
It's during moments of absurdity. That's when my eyes roll up to heaven because I can't believe I'm the only one seeing this. That's when I need a second witness. That's when I feel that God is most necessary.
Absurdity, Crisis, and the Need for a Divine Witness
00:36:52
Speaker
If only to be, so I am not the only witness to insanity. Surely somebody else is getting this.
00:37:00
Speaker
And that kind of, that feeling, even if you don't have to agree with it, understand, believe in this or that, I'm not converting anybody into anything, it's, but that impetus to be like, you know, where you want, you look at the dog and the dog looks back at you because you're the only two intelligent things here. I mean, right, this with the, you know, and the camera, I mean, I feel like this is the essence of Jewish comedy right here because, you know, which I trace back as a Jew,
00:37:30
Speaker
to Abraham having the conversation with God who's about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And I just kind of picture it. It's very Mel Brooks-y, but, you know, sitting there going, you know, God's saying, Gomorrah. And Abraham going, yeah, what a mess. And God goes, yeah, I think I'm just going to wipe it out. And Abraham going, yeah, wait, wait, you're what?
00:37:55
Speaker
You know, I mean, which has got to be the first recorded double take, right? You know, but what if there's 100 good people? Well, all right, if there's 100 good people, what about 50? You know, working your way down, eventually God loses his patience at 10, apparently. So there's that story. Well, you're so right about, and it's so interesting you bring up Solar, who really one of my favorite war writers,
00:38:24
Speaker
that knowing that you want to say something about just a really trying time in human history, but trying to figure out how is that, how is, how is what I want to say about that moment in history? How is that best told? That's work for you. Yeah. And for you, it's through fiction, Solaris through fiction. I interviewed an author named Phil Clay and
00:38:48
Speaker
He's written both nonfiction and fiction or writing. He has tremendous books about war that have really moved me in a lot of ways. In his most recent book, we had this discussion like, well, why? Because he wrote a nonfiction book, but the book before that was fiction. I was like, why nonfiction? And he's like, that's just what the story needed. It needed a nonfiction lens.
00:39:15
Speaker
through which to tell this story. So that's really interesting that you feel the same way. And I'm glad that brought that up. Fiction and nonfiction are each different kinds of instruments. And where I find that there's, and I don't want to make a grand sweeping theory about this, but as a first pass, anyway, something worth discussing, is that any nonfiction book
00:39:41
Speaker
or most nonfiction books in any event done well are in a sense building towards an argument, right? That doesn't mean that they have started with an argument. It means that in the course, a good historian, a good thinker isn't doing the Pecrustian bed, but they come to an understanding of something which is either, generally speaking, fills a gap in our knowledge or corrects an error in
00:40:06
Speaker
Right and truly great people can do both or possibly create an entirely new way of seeing But in the end though, you still want to take a reader in non-fiction from a place of of not knowing or understanding To a place of knowing or understanding and ideally believing right you've made your case as it were and it could be about anything Well, what do you think? But I just want to say that but in fiction you don't have to do that
00:40:33
Speaker
In fiction, you have an opportunity to not necessarily conclude, wrap up, synthesize, and ensure that the argument has been made. Rather, you can indwell, as it were. You can dwell inside a universe, and you can bring people into that and recognize that if you can come out of that richer, more, or, again, there's a Jewish
00:41:01
Speaker
saying, which is that questions unite us and answers divide us. If you can come out of fiction with a better question, let alone an answer, then you've achieved something, both as a writer and as a reader. That's a journey worth making. Yeah. Well, what do you think your book specifically says about war? Try to avoid it.
00:41:28
Speaker
It sucks. It's, you know, try, you know, what am I saying about war? I mean, it's, I don't, I don't know if I'm saying, again, it's not, it's not thesis driven. It is, you know, there's, there's a, there was a, for a very long time, there was this in international affairs, there was the thesis that states make wars. Okay. It's an observation, not a thesis, but states make wars. But then there's the, also there's, there's the, there's the antithesis, which is not, which is really not
00:41:59
Speaker
Arguing with the first point but is rounding out the reality of it, which is that and war makes states right war makes nations war makes countries, right and We are changed inevitably irrevocably by by war and those things that we hold most dear and are at times prepared to to fight for and potentially even risk our lives for or give our lives for in some cases and
00:42:28
Speaker
are also things that may be gone tomorrow. There is no pressure. It's gone, right? There is no Roman Empire. There is no Holy Roman Empire. There is no Gaul. There is no, you know, there is no Babylon. There is no, it's gone. They are gone.
00:42:45
Speaker
Etc, etc, etc, you know and to read to read something like the Iliad where 10 years they're on the beach Trying to take back Troy and Troy is trying to defend itself against this onslaught Which is just never ending and there's never a moment of peace and it all comes to a head You know and these places are now we literally can't find them on a map
00:43:12
Speaker
Right. And yet the story of that, the pain of that, I mean, leaving, you know, the historians of this time period will say, yes, but it might be an amalgamation of this. And if it wasn't written by Homer, it was written by another guy named Homer. I know all this. But the larger point being that is that.
00:43:31
Speaker
There isn't a thesis about war to be made, but it is a recognition that what we hold most important in one moment can suddenly be gone the next. But what I think every humanist writer who steps into war, who is not,
00:43:49
Speaker
Hezbollah and ISIS and Nazis and Stalinists, communists, and the rest of it, are people who recognize that at base what survives and what is meant to survive is our humanity, is our shared humanity, our universal humanity. If there's anything truly worth fighting for, it's the assured
00:44:13
Speaker
chance to persist so that we collectively can work throughout those differences, some of which may be long-lasting, some of them may be permanent and may even be irrevocable on an ontological level, but might still be able to be met with tolerance and plurality and an understanding and going back really to the root
00:44:36
Speaker
of what tolerance means, which took Protestants and Catholics a little while to figure out, which is that sins against God don't justify sins against man. And until we grasp that, until that becomes truth, the universal truth, we don't stand a chance.
00:44:57
Speaker
Well, I want to pivot real quick to a question about history. So you write at the end of the book in your acknowledgement section, you break down what was history and what was fiction. And it seemed like you really went out of your way to do that. Why is it important to you? Why is making that acknowledgement important?
Acknowledging Historical Fact vs Fiction
00:45:19
Speaker
I think there's a lot of reasons. One of them is
00:45:26
Speaker
One of them is a personal commitment. I'm an academic by training. I believe in clarity and making sure that if people are learning from me,
00:45:45
Speaker
they know what to believe and what not to, what to trust and what not to, where I source my material. Not to make it sound like the book is boring, but we're talking about the acknowledgement section, which I am breaking records on making a little bit longer than the usual one. It's not like thanks to my parents and my dog and my wife and God. I think because it's fascinating, some of the stuff I learned and I want you to know it too, but footnotes don't work in fiction.
00:46:17
Speaker
There's a Jewish thing, which is coming from basically a footnoting tradition, you know, said Rabbi so and so, said Rabbi so and so. And so it is not, which is not where we're standing on other people's shoulders is an act of honor rather than trying to say, no, no, no, I made that up myself. I like crediting people who have better thoughts than me or from whom I learned on whose shoulders I can now stand in order to say something else.
00:46:48
Speaker
I like that. I like the continuity. I like the lines. I like knowing where things come from. Well, I'm curious about your thoughts when it comes to contemporary World War II fiction and specifically talking about what's true and what's not. I wonder if you think that authors are stretching the truth maybe too much in contemporary World War II fiction and if you think it's problematic.
00:47:14
Speaker
Well, in some ways it is, and I don't want to name names and get into this sort of author spat.
00:47:22
Speaker
There's, to preface, preface my answer, I'll tell you a quick, quick story, because I also write in crime fiction as well. And I went to this crime fiction event because I was invited and it's fun to go to these things. And they're really, really nice people who write in crime fiction. I don't know why, but they're some of the least petty, most open hearted, happy to help kind of people I've ever met. So I'm going there, I'm listening to two bigwigs talking about crime fiction, of which like I'm not one of them. I know about this stuff. I don't really know about that stuff.
00:47:52
Speaker
And one question from the audience to, because I was just in the audience, was how do you know all this stuff? How do you know about all these investigative techniques, forensic techniques, file the whatever report in order to, okay. And the guy said, can we make it up? We make it up. We just, we make the stuff up. And I really, I thought that was very, very interesting.
00:48:23
Speaker
He has no pretense. That's like his fiction. It's fiction. I'm having fun. It's like Pixar. There are no talking toys Relax. Okay, you know, um, you know, it's like Guardians of the Galaxy. I don't know I don't think that gravity thing would have worked. It's like it's a talking tree It's a talking tree. They established that in the credits It's talking tree if you're in and you're in if you're out you're out, that's fine. But talking trees what's for dinner? Okay, and so but I think the problem is that
00:48:52
Speaker
And I think with crime fiction, it's not a big deal because what are you not learning? What are you learning incorrectly? Police procedure? Who cares? But when you watch a movie like Amistad, or Schindler's List, or Munich, or you're watching a contemporary thing, like all the light you can't see, all light you cannot see, et cetera,
The Role of Fiction in Shaping Historical Understanding
00:49:21
Speaker
We know it is we do not need to buy any more vowels. We know that people are getting most of their history from drama. What is my commitment? My commitment is the stuff serious. The stuff is very, very, very serious. I mean, I'm not going to get into modern politics, but there's a war going on right now, you know, launched by Hamas, fought by Israel, the whole thing is going back and forth.
00:49:44
Speaker
We have no idea how many people are dying, but surely it's thousands and thousands and thousands, because we know Hamas lies. On the other hand, Israel is bombing the hell out of them. Whatever it is, it's awful. Whether it's necessary or not, we can discuss all day, but it's clearly awful.
00:50:01
Speaker
And we know, we can watch the way that people are arguing, you know, about anything, anything that involves the word, you know, Jew in it or anything. And then we see what's going on. But with Palestine, Palestinians, with Hamas, with Hezbollah, with everything else, without getting in again into the politics, you can see the source material of the arguments that are being made if you take a moment to sort of trace it back.
00:50:28
Speaker
And a lot of it is coming from storytelling out there. And so it is a cautious world where at the most basic level, if I was going to be quoted, it would go like this. You have a choice as a writer to either stay the plague or spread it. So who are you going to be? What is your role going to be?
00:50:52
Speaker
in sharing or creating knowledge in this world? And what responsibility do you feel that you have in doing so?
00:51:01
Speaker
And so I believe that I have done my level best, and I think Salar, I haven't met Salar, obviously, he's your friend of mine. But it sounded to me like he has a similar commitment to I have, which is that he dwells in that universe of material. He knows much of it firsthand, but much of it as a scholar as well. And then when he enters drama, forget the nonfiction stuff, but when he enters into writing drama,
00:51:25
Speaker
He uses that universe to anchor you in the story because somehow the truth is compelling. The truth is already nuts. The truth is already dramatic. The truth is already beyond what we need to create. It's like when people say to me, you know, why don't you write crime fiction where, you know, whatever somebody's.
00:51:44
Speaker
The head's been cut off and they're wearing nothing but pink socks and whatever. It's like, listen, I know what human beings, I've studied them. I know what human beings do to each other. Whatever your diseased mind is trying to concoct as a horrible thing that you're going to use as an anchor for your crime novel, it's already been done.
00:52:05
Speaker
It's already been done and I'm just not interested in using that as a tool for mere entertainment. Rather, I want to take the range of these challenges from war and conflict and peace and history and whatnot and use that as a domain.
00:52:30
Speaker
in which to make something visible that was previously invisible, audible that was previously inaudible, explicable, or if I'm in the mood, problematize something that you have been taking for granted this whole time. And at the end of that, we are going to end up transformed. And so I think if to go back to one of your earlier questions, I think I'm at an age
00:52:59
Speaker
I'm 53, so I'm starting to look at things that I could have been are no longer available, right? I'm not going to be an Olympic athlete. I'm not going to be a good violin player, right? You know, the guitars and I'm never going to get a proper bar chord on my 12 string at a certain fret. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. So I'm going to just mess around with what I can. And when you begin to understand that in a certain phase of your life,
00:53:27
Speaker
then you begin to you start looking backwards on those moments that where you were changed and they are surprisingly visible from from older age and there are fewer than you think.
00:53:42
Speaker
and you see those moments more clearly and you remember them. So all the all the sex that you thought didn't matter, turns out it did. All the girlfriends or boyfriends or whatnot that you don't think left an impression on you, they might have. That choice that you made, you can you can trace it back now to a certain moment.
00:54:01
Speaker
And those things are, they're important. And if you believe that the individual life is worth exploring, if events are worth recording, if you believe that it's not scripted and that we can potentially learn from each other, and that because we only have one life to live, that reading and other people's stories are the only way to live more than the one life that we have,
00:54:28
Speaker
then you have to decide as a writer what your commitment is going to be in making a contribution into that because ultimately the results of your work, the books, are your legacy. But I think that your commitment as an individual becomes part of your legacy because sometimes we fail. But knowing what we tried to do is worthy.
00:54:58
Speaker
It's a worthy of life. Well, Derek, a very profound thing for us to end on today. This has been a really terrific interview. If people want to- You did a great job. That's why. Thank you. You did a great job. Now, if people want to stay in touch with you, where can they check out your work? Are you on social media? I think they should contact you directly, and then you can send me into them.
00:55:27
Speaker
I'm easy to read. I'm not popular.
Connecting with Derek B. Miller
00:55:29
Speaker
Nobody knows who I am. I mean, it's, you know, Derek B. Miller at Gmail, you know, I'm hiding there. You know, I'm on Twitter, though I shouldn't be. And I know, but you know, it's because it's because you know, can you it is it is the
00:55:48
Speaker
It's the Colosseum. It's the Rome's Colosseum. And, and the difference is all the lions and tigers are sitting in the theater watching the people slaughter each other down below. And it's like, you know, just keep watching because you just, it's like a train wreck. How do you take your eyes off? Anyway, no, I mean, I, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm where,
00:56:13
Speaker
where better books, by which I mean mine, are sold. So all the usual places, I'm on Twitter, send me a note. I think I forgot to pay for my website, so I think they take it down. Well, Derek V. Miller, The Curse of Pietro Houdini, go buy a copy, go check it out from your library.
00:56:38
Speaker
a really interesting story here. And Derek, thank you so much for your time today. It was a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me, AJ, really. Thank you.