"..but it was as nothing compared to the noise of planes landing..."
—Alan Furst
While Alan Furst's current novel is 'Midnight in Europe,' at this point in his career, you can't really talk about a single novel. Make no mistake. You can read 'Midnight in Europe' by itself, having never read anything else by the man, cold, and it will knock you out. It's a superb novel. But Furst is working on a unique literary form, a multi-volume version of a story in the style of a huge Russian novel.
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In conversation about his latest, I definitely wanted to open it up, to explore how Furst builds this detailed world, novel by novel. He told me some very interesting secrets that took me back to my time as a child, reading the Compton's Encyclopedia. In retrospect, it seems that the hardbound encyclopedia has much more worth than one might presume, as it captures the world in a moment. It may give you some valuable information about the world, to be sure, but is certain to offer invaluable and un-reproducible information about the moment.
We've lost that now. We erase our history as fast as we write it. We tell ourselves that we're making it more accurate, but we're losing the ineffable and difficult to re-create worldviews that inform our mistakes of the moment. There's something very good to be said about the bias of the times, as it tells you how it feels to live in those times.
That's what Furst does so well in his novels. He captures not just the action and the history, but the feel of the times. Anyone, no matter what it is you think you know or want to know, can learn from Alan Furst. Listening to him is like watching a master painter. Chances are your next napkin art will be improved by the proximity.
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
