Warren Adler's Blog, page 11

Top Feature Stories/interviews from Warren Adler on Aging and Ageism Awareness

FORBES: “Now Almost 90, ‘War of the Roses’ Author Has Some Advice For Seniors, And It’s Not About Divorce”

“Like the tale he so hilariously and sensationally told of divorce through The War of the Roses, author Warren Adler has another story to tell nearly four decades later. He wants people–particularly seniors–to know that older adults are relevant, and as for him, his best work could still be yet to come. After all, the acclaimed author didn’t publish his first novel till he was 46…”

FORBES: ”War of the Roses’ Author, Now 89, Weighs in on 23 Myths and Stereotypes on Aging”

“…Adler has personally disproven many myths about aging already. He agreed to share some of them here for old and young alike:

That age almost always results in diminished memory and mental capacity.

That age results in diminished sexual fantasies. “Performance yes. Fantasies no,” he said…”

PBS Next Avenue: “How to Be a Writer at Any Age”

“I always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I was conscious, I felt that inexplicable pull to tell a story, to create a scene, to leave a reader wanting to know what would happen next. When life’s responsibilities came knocking, i.e. I had a family to support, my career as a published author was put on hold. However, I knew that nothing would block the path to my dream: to be a full-time writer in control of my career and destiny…”

Changingaging.org: “Lying About My Age”

“I am seriously thinking about lying about my age. Of course it’s impossible. The internet has my age engraved in perpetuity.

“I notice the difference immediately after my most casual face-to-face social revelation of the “number” – even if it is merely a reminder to my friends and my children. The change in expression is immediate, and the processing in the receiver’s brain, while subliminal, is obvious.”

Changingaging.org: “The Sunset Gang: A Tribute to the Elders Who Shaped Me”

“Late in life my parents retired to Florida. Somehow, after a life of hard economic knocks, they managed to scrape up enough money to buy a one-bedroom condominium for $13,000 in Century Village in West Palm Beach. My father had been a bookkeeper, mostly expendable and mostly unemployed throughout the great depression. Half our lives were spent in a small three-bedroom house in Brownsville, Brooklyn bought for my mother’s parents, my grandparents, by their sons who supported them. We moved in whenever we were thrown out of our apartment for not paying the rent. It was called being dispossessed…”

PFIZER’S GET OLD CAMPAIGN Interview: “The War of the Roses Author Declares War of Ageism”

“We survivors must persuade younger people that our wisdom and experience is to be treasured not rejected. We should be consulted, sought out, listened to…”

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Deb Caletti

I’ve always felt that being a writer is more about who you are than what you do. I’ve been a writer since the age of six or so, shortly after I fell in love with reading. Way back from the first grade, I’d write stories which would win school-wide contests, and I’d run to my room with ideas, and I’d gaze out the car window on hot, California drives, looking for ways to describe the way the tan, dry hills made me feel. There’s a secret recipe, I’m sure – take an intense childhood, add a dose of introversion and the need to understand stuff, shake in THE MAGIC OF BOOKS, and poof – writer. The key thing is likely that last shake – your initial discovery that the written word provides answers when you need answers, understanding when you need understanding, comfort when you need comfort. Between covers, you realize, there’s power when you’re powerless, and quiet when the world is too overwhelming. There is both refuge and adventure. More than anything, you feel suddenly and astonishingly known. I made this discovery when Mrs. Conway, my kindergarten teacher at Kennedy School in Modesto, first read Ramona the Pest aloud to us, and I’ve been making that discovery over and over ever since. Whether through reading or writing, the page is the place where I search for meaning. It’s become a rich and permanent pursuit.

http://debcaletti.com/

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Michael Halberstam’s ‘The Wanting of Levine’: An Uncanny 1970s Political Novel Worthy of Rejuvenation

Any serious novelist worth their salt fantasizes that their work will endure beyond their lifetime.  As both an earnest practitioner of the novelist’s art and a lifetime student of classic literature, I am always heartened when I learn about a novel written decades ago, long buried from public view, that suddenly pops into the public consciousness offering remarkably pertinent moral and psychological insights that eerily reflect contemporary events and concerns.

There is no easy explanation for a novel’s comeback.  If one looks closely at the historical record of once popular novels, as measured by the bestseller lists, one sees a startling lack of endurance. They enter with a shout and, for the most part, exit in barely a whisper. The trigger that signals a novel’s rejuvenation is mysterious, magical and unpredictable. I am reminded of Henri Beyle, a Frenchman writing under the nom de plume of Stendhal who dedicated his novel The Red and the Black to the ‘happy few’ as if divining in advance the lack of contemporary readers of this novel which deals with the universal themes of the addictive and often destructive nature of ambition and love. His not too subtle dedication was correct. What he could not predict was the endurance of his novel, which has become one of the great classics of French literature.

There are many such examples scattered throughout the world of literature and my attention was captured recently by Michael Halberstam’s sensationally revealing and brilliant political novel The Wanting of Levine, published in 1978, that centers around a real estate mogul, A.L. Levine, who has made his fame and fortune in land and property. Although he has never before run for office and has no political background, he decides to run for President on the Democratic ticket and is eventually elected. Upon his election, he tellingly comments ‘Politics is a kind of entertainment, and people want novelty in politics like they want it in anything else. Simultaneously, they want continuity.’ He is a married adulterer with a radical son and his past and present are meticulously autopsied. The novel was modestly received and quickly passed into oblivion. I came across a reference to it recently in the New York Sun, one of the many habitual digital outlets I read to keep abreast of the current ten ring political circus now performing in Washington.

Michael was a casual friend of mine in Washington. He was a Doctor with a large practice among the Washington political and social elite and we met socially during the years when my wife was editor-in-chief and owner with my son David of the Washington Dossier, a society magazine that covered the nation’s capital.

It was during the seventies and eighties and coincided with the beginning of my full-time novel-writing career. I would accompany my wife on her coverage rounds, cocktail parties, dinners and events in venues at embassies, private residences and ballrooms providing numerous interactions with diplomats, politicians, lobbyists, cabinet ministers, and high-level policy makers from every branch of government, and a vast array of experts, and professional and amateur gurus of every stripe and nationality. This milieu was peopled with a heady mix of power brokers and a priceless secretive social interaction for a disguised novelist whose antenna was forever circling the atmosphere for ideas, insights, information, plot lines, character studies, and mining scenarios that would one day surface as inspiration for numerous Washington-based novels.

I would calculate that more than three quarters of my fifty novels owe their germination to these social events and I would bet the barn that Michael Halberstam, who traveled in these circles as well, was soaking up material for his own secretive ambition to become a novelist, gaining insight and ideas as well from his medical practice among the high and mighty of the Washington crowd.  I enjoyed engaging with him, not knowing that we were probably doppelgangers on the same hunt for story material. It was beyond horrible when on returning from one of his social adventures his life was cut short by a man who shot him dead when Michael discovered him burgling his home.

The novel begins with a nod toward Dickens. ‘It was the worst of times, the worst of times, the worst of times. Everybody thought so, though no one exactly knew why.’ The story resonates with profoundly alarming accuracy and withering insight into the often absurd machinations of the American political process and strips bare the motives and weirdness of the characters who play in that arena. What makes the novel especially prescient is the way in which he touches most of the bases of political chicanery within the framework of a kind of dystopian fantasy. He lays bare all of the fault lines that have brought the country to what for him was its dire straits. States were no longer united. Each one was an enclave. Every aspect of American society eating away at our democracy: race, crime, poverty, inequality, discrimination, the whole menu of deadly sins gets Halberstam’s attention.  Politics is all window dressing, media promotion, dissimulation and media manipulation, nothing escapes Halberstam’s scalpel.

As one of the characters comments, ‘I dislike the whole nasty bunch…Politicians heaping up their own sand castles at the people’s expense and the press trying to get a name for itself by knocking the sand castles down. Revolting people. Non producers…’

If ever a novel cries out for rejuvenation, this one does, especially now. It is perhaps one of the best Washington novels I have ever come across and I hope The Wanting of Levine finds its way to popularity with the same degree of enthusiasm as the revival of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

In the tragic demise of my casual friend Michael Halberstam, we lost the mind, heart and wisdom of someone who had the brilliance and talent to create stories of masterly fiction. I cry for his loss.

Originally published on Interesting Literature here.

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Leslie Shimotakahara

During my childhood and early teens, I used to write stories in little notebooks that I would share with no one. When I began university, my attention got sucked away from creative writing and redirected toward the academic study of literature. After doing a Ph.D. at Brown in American Literary Modernism, I taught for a brief while at a liberal arts college in Nova Scotia, but it soon became apparent that the professorial life was not for me. A particularly rough year left me isolated, depressed and on the verge of breakdown. It was during this time that I returned to my childhood love of creative writing; those early sketches turned into the basis for my memoir The Reading List.  Some of the family secrets I unearthed through writing that first book provided inspiration for my debut novel After the Bloom, which delves deeper into the Japanese internment my ancestors experienced and its turbulent aftermath on subsequent generations.

Sometimes writing is a means of processing difficult events in my life.  Other times it’s a heady leap into the imagination. I don’t exactly know why I write. What I do know is that if I don’t do it, I feel terrible – physically, psychologically, emotionally.

http://leslieshimotakahara.com/

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Ben Greenman

I started writing because the world sometimes made no sense, and I wanted it to make sense. I didn’t understand why people said one thing and did another, or how history consistently injured those who were trapped inside it. I wanted to unravel that. I wasn’t sure at the time whether I wanted to write fiction or nonfiction or journalism or poetry or philosophy or satire, which is maybe why my career has tried to thread its way through all of those. I am also happy to report that the world still makes no sense, so there’s still writing to do.

bgreenman.com

 

 

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Heart of Gold

A new thriller from the critically acclaimed novelist Warren Adler, well known for his iconic novel turned box office hit, The War of the Roses, and many more notable titles including Random Hearts, Target Churchill and Mother Nile…

Milton Gold is a fringe operating “hustling lawyer,” barely making it in the cutthroat chaos of 1970s New York City. His world is suddenly turned inside out when he meets the mysterious and beautiful Karla Smith, a Polish-American woman, who approaches him with an assignment that will test his skills beyond anything he has ever experienced. Karla hires him to find what he thinks will lead to his biggest payout yet: her inheritance of one-hundred million dollars in gold coins hidden by her banker father from the Nazis during World War II.

Despite his skepticism he joins Karla in a fantastic, dangerous and adventurous trek through communist dominated Europe to Auschwitz where the treasure has been hidden in an unsuspecting place. Milton and Karla discover things along the way that profoundly change their relationship and ultimately test their moral view of the world and society. Balanced with humor and tragedy, Heart of Gold explores the brutality of life behind the iron curtain and the boundaries of morality during the darkest days of the Cold War.

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Debra Spark

Apparently an interviewer once asked Flannery O’Connor why she wrote, and she said, “Because I am good at it.” Embarrassingly enough, I first started writing, or started to think of myself as someone who wanted to write, simply because I was praised by my teachers for writing. And I really liked to read. And writing was prized in my family, which included lovers of literature and professionals who did some sort of writing. My mother had been a children’s librarian, and my siblings and I all read quite a bit from our early years. But mostly I wanted to do something I was good at. My parents once received a written comment from my high school gym teacher that read: “Debra lacks speed, strength, skill, and coordination, but she tries hard.” What sort of dope would try hard given that? Teachers suggested writing was something I could do. My family made it clear writing was valuable. So I dove in. Emotionally, and in the long run, writing has proven to be a struggle–the limits of my talents and imagination coming up against my ambition and the vagaries of the marketplace. I sometimes think of The Peter Principle, a book that argues that people rise to their level of incompetence and work there. Perhaps so, since fiction writing is such a struggle for me, and yet I cannot imagine doing anything else.

www.debraspark.com​

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Rufi Thorpe

I began writing out of a deep, almost mystical bafflement. I did not understand what story was. I swooned over the implicit confidence of directly narrated causation. The idea that an author had figured out that a character did x because of y which occurred because of z was entirely beyond me. I lived in a buzzing hive of multiple possible meanings. Whenever someone spoke, there were their words, but then thousands of possible subtexts, which made it difficult for me to be in the moment as a child. I spent most of my time alone, with books, or watching Golden Girls on TV, eating Snackwells low-fat cookies, swollen with imagining the full lives of these old women as they bantered. In short, I became a writer mostly because I was a ridiculous sort of person, wired up to be so sensitive that I found almost all social situations excruciating, and in books I found a pre-digested world that was less alarming to me.

But of course, the older I got, the better I became at living, and now this kind of fevered confusion of multiple meanings is difficult for me to even vividly remember. Sometimes it just resurfaces for a moment, brought up by some sense memory, the smell of school rooms, construction paper, the coppery sweat of children. And then I will be placed back in that strange paralysis I often experienced as a child, where it is not clear to me who I am, or what I want, or what the word “chair” means, or why countries exist, or whether recording history is a viable pursuit, or whether people are mostly good or mostly evil, or whether time is real.

https://www.rufithorpe.com/

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Elizabeth Brundage

I started writing as a young child. I remember reading the Box Car Children and later The Outsiders and those stories got me writing. As a kid, I was always making up stories, wanting to fix the bad things I saw, the problems. I think you can be born with a voice for words like having an ear for music. I studied poetry in high school, read all the Russian poets, and then discovered e.e cummings – I was working the soda machine at Nathan’s and this other kid turned me onto him and suddenly language with all its grace and trickery became a passion. In college in the early 80s I discovered film, the great directors of the 60s and 70s, and wrote my first screenplay, and later, almost by default, wrote a short story. It was a revelation to me because I realized I could be a translator for people out there whose voices are never heard and all that was required was a pen and paper. This is a crazy, complicated and deceptive world and there is never any shortage of material. Most writers want to get the truth down on the page and that’s what I’ve always wanted to do. It’s not as simple as it sounds. You want to capture that authenticity in the work. Finally, I write because I have to. Writing is something I call a joyful affliction. You can’t shake it. You are compelled to write the world that you see.

http://elizabethbrundage.com/

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Our Exclusive Interview with Shawn Saavedra, the Audiobook Narrator of Torture Man

June is audiobook month and we are celebrating all month! Many talented voice actors have narrated Warren Adler’s repetoire of 50+ works of fiction, including Shawn Saavedra who narrated Torture Man, a psychological and political thriller.

Tell us a bit about your background. What inspired you to become an audiobook narrator? 

My first love is acting, and there is something magical about being able to sit alone in a booth and bring to life all sorts of places and people that will, like a movie or a text, live on indefinitely for countless people to enjoy. Audiobook narration is particularly appealing because we can take whatever time is necessary to develop and grow our characters, the tone of the book and so on, unlike the frenetic pace the film/commercial acting world tends to have.

What do you look for in a project? Is there a particular genre you gravitate towards? What initially drew you to Torture Man?

I naturally lean toward the otherworldly environments of sci-fi and fantasy tales (I love the escapism and ‘discovering’ fantastical environments). On the other hand, it also matters a great deal to me that the characters themselves be interesting, even charismatic, or otherwise compelling, as they definitely are in Torture Man. In addition, stories can just be fun to narrate because they have a quick pace or quirky characters. Torture Man was compelling because of the extremely polarizing, passionate characters who are absolutely married to their ideals, and because of the quick pace that is electric and exciting.

What were some of the joys and challenges of narrating Torture Man?

The challenges were voicing the intense emotions the characters experienced, without becoming a caricature or cartoonish. The joys were giving life to the two military colleagues and their tight bond with one another, as well as the time I found myself reflecting on the principles and philosophical challenges presented over the course of the story.

How did you prepare for Torture Man specifically? 

Torture Man stretched my abilities in terms of accents and characters. A New York Jewish family and New York military men made me practice and practice my accents and work to distinguish the characters while trying to avoid too-much cartoonish stereotyping. I pre-read to anticipate the characters’ changes throughout the story as well as to get a feel for the overall lightness or weightiness of the book, which dictates how the narrative voice will sound.

What kind of book would you consider Torture Man to be?

I consider Torture Man to be a thinking book. One that keeps your attention while also making you reflect on your instincts and the values you take for granted.

What was the most unexpected thing about narrating audiobooks that you didn’t foresee going in?

The amount of time involved in precisely cleaning up the recording and properly processing all the audio after the recording itself is finished (which is far more time than the recording itself).

Is there anything you learned about yourself or life in general after completing production of Torture Man?

After having finished Torture Man, I realized I would not go as far in trying to establish my idea of justice, shall we say, as I thought I might before. And that, if I were in Sarah’s position, I might be entirely mistaken.

What are the top three pieces of advice you would give to an aspiring voice-over artist?

Immediately start to do work for others, whether recording audiobooks or auditioning for other work. Don’t wait.
Be willing to pay to consult with a successful professional who can advise you on next steps, standards you should be reaching for, etc.
Don’t waste a lot of time doing unprofitable work, or you will not make the demands on yourself that are necessary to actually become professional financially.

Tell us about your work routine. Do you work from home or do you commute to a studio?

I work from home and have generally recorded overnight, though that is very disruptive to sleep and normal daily activities. I’m hoping, with an upgraded booth, to be able to regularly record during the day.

You bring such nuance and breadth to the characters. It must be hard to articulate, but can you tell us about your process? How do you become these characters?

I first try to simply voice a character as it comes to me instinctively when I come across the dialogue. Then, as I am reading through the book or even as I am recording the voice, I have to feel whether the voice actually sounds true to that character or might be too jarring to the book’s overall tone, or not dynamic enough to bring out the actual breadth of emotion the character is experiencing. Occasionally I have to go through and adjust the character’s voice or change it entirely to better suit the book or that character’s true nature.

What inspires you?

That in spite of all of our own fears, pain, and failings, and in spite of all the evil in the world that seems so permanent, the truth of God’s creation and design for us will absolutely triumph in the end.

What do you think makes audiobooks so appealing? What does an audiobook offer that a book cannot?

Audiobooks can bring text to life in a way that reading text typically does not. Often when reading books, I “see” the environment very richly in my imagination, but I don’t hear the characters “in their own voices” nearly so much as when I hear a well-narrated book. Hearing a character “speak for himself” so to speak, is a terrific experience when the character is compelling and fun (or even challenging and vile).

How would you compare narrating an audiobook to acting?

Narrating an audiobook is very similar to stage acting, yet dissimilar to film acting, in that in the booth we can be very expressive and emotive, as we would on stage, whereas film actors are taught to be very physically restrained so that the observer will project his emotions and expectations on the actor. Narration is very freeing in that way – we can have a lot of fun and rarely do we have to “reign it in” since our physicality contributes to the authenticity in our voice.

Do you have any rituals you practice while you’re recording an audiobook? Certain foods you’ll eat or stay away from? How do you take care of your voice?

I have to stay away from spicy foods and such, and I can’t allow myself to get too hungry or my stomach will have half the dialogue in my recordings. I sometimes have to fill myself up with carbs which prevent rumblings.

My pre-recording ritual is to brush my teeth, use a nasal wash called Alkalol, and then have a bottle of water and a bottle of diluted pineapple juice in the booth, both of which I sip from throughout the recording.

How often do you listen to audiobooks?

I listen to audiobooks quite a lot, and began listening years before I ever began narrating. (Sometimes the narration of an audiobook can make an ordinary book terrific and sometimes it can make an excellent book unendurable.) It’s also just a little bit satisfying to hear some of the greatest luminaries among audiobook narrators having made some of the same mistakes I get so frustrated at myself for overlooking.

 Do you think audiobooks will one day replace reading?

I don’t imagine that’s possible, given the advantages of physical reading: taking time to reflect, reviewing previous text, flipping back and forth physically, the convenience of maps and charts… Some people just don’t like audiobooks, of course, but even among those who do like them, there are so many occasions in which the audiobook narration isn’t what a listener would like (dual narrators, a boring or overexcited narrator, pacing too slow, etc.) so fundamentally the audiobook is one more option but not a replacement.

What’s next for you? Do you have a project you’re itching to work on?

I am currently working on a terrific epic fantasy trilogy and I might be working on a New York cop story.

 

Listen to Shawn narrate Torture Man here.

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