Sara Backer's Blog, page 19

Eric Paul Shaffer on Plot and Star-Gazing

Is there a plot in your novel?

The metaphor for the use of plot in traditional fiction is a train ride: start at this station, move along the tracks, sidings, and stations, and end at the destination station. The metaphor for the use of plot in Burn & Learn is star-gazing: there are multiple lights of differing magnitudes that appear in various places in the visible sky, and they make patterns based on the images you can see there or draw there or create there by joining those points together....

Eric Paul Shaffer Pushes Reality to Its Outer Limits

Let's talk more specifically about Burn & Learn. Are you serious when you claim on the title page of Burn & Learn that your novel is a "sequel" to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine?

Yes, I am. There are a number of internal character clues or cues that correspond with Wells' tale, of course, and I have essentially transported one aspect of one of Wells' main characters into one of mine. In my humble estimation, Burn & Learn is a "logical" end to Wells' novel. My text also answers a number of qu...

Burn & Learn with American Fuji

Eric, why would readers of American Fuji appreciate your novel Burn & Learn?

You and I share a belief that readers are the most important people in the novel. What I mean is that we both do our best to be clear about the story we are telling, and we try to make our novels clear and accessible.

And accurate.

Each of us uses our strengths. You are a plotter, and your plots are surprising and logical and satisfying to me. Plotting is not my strength, so I made a strength of focusing on the even...

Eric Paul Shaffer on Climbing Fuji

My blog followers know you and your wife Veronica climbed Mt. Fuji with me. How does that compare to other mountains you've climbed?

Mt. Fuji, for which I maintain a great affection, is a fairly simple "walk-up." The way to the peak is fundamentally an inclined path. Some of the climbers on the trail with us were sprightly folks of over sixty or seventy, and they were doing fine. My experience on Mt. Fuji was mainly one of irony. We left in the dark to climb through the night in order to...

Eric Paul Shaffer Reverses the Question

So, Eric, you lived in Okinawa the same years I lived in Shizuoka City, the setting for American Fuji. What did you find in American Fuji that corresponded with your life on the island?

The difficulties that Gaby and Alex, as gaijin, have in acquiring solid information were familiar to me. Many times I wondered why I was unable to get answers to what seemed to be basic and simple questions, such as how I should acquire a parking space at my apartment complex. I am very glad I didn't have to...

Eric Paul Shaffer's Favorite Japanese Novelists

Which Japanese novelists would you recommend to our readers?

Dazai (especially The Setting Sun and No Longer Human, both of which acknowledge a side of Japanese culture I glimpsed but that is often unacknowledged and for his stark lyricality) Öe (for the same reasons), Sōseki (for his crazy inventiveness, humor, and honest portrayal of Japanese culture), and Akutagawa (for Kappa, a charming novel). Oddly, I find the work of H. Murakami, the popular contemporary Japanese author, interesting bu...

Eric Paul Shaffer on Living in Okinawa

I noticed that living in Japan changed the way I related to my native English language. I spoke, wrote, read, and even thought differently. Did living in Japan change the way you wrote poetry and fiction?

Absolutely. Not only did living in Japan supply entirely new subject matter for my writing, but Japan provided me a completely different perspective as a writer. Because of my new location, I began reading more and more about the history of Japan and America, two nations whose histories ...

Interview with Eric Paul Shaffer

My next few posts will feature an interview with poet and novelist Eric Paul Shaffer. He's a good friend of mine who taught English at a national Japanese university on the tropical island of Okinawa the same years I taught in Shizuoka on mainland Japan.

Eric Paul Shaffer is the author of five books of poetry, including Lāhaina Noon; Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen; and (my favorite) Portable Planet. His poetry appears in Ploughshares, Slate, North American Review...

Obligation Chocolate

In American Fuji, I mentioned the ongoing "invisible obligation game" that Americans find baffling. To oversimplify, you owe every person who does you a favor or gives you a present. But paying back your social debt can be nerve-wrecking as it's nearly impossible to match an action or gift with the one you received. To be safe, you usually overdo it, which then puts the burden on the recipient to come back with another favor or gift, and the obligation ledger goes back and forth, adding an...

Year of the Tiger 2010

Here's a lovely tiger I photographed at Sengen Jinja Shrine in Shizuoka City. In Japan, the year of the Tiger began Feb. 4, but in China it starts Feb. 14 this year. The astrology is far more complex than assigning 12 animals to 12 personality types. Concurrent 5-year cycles of elements (earth, fire, water, wood, and metal) create 60 basic types, modified by the month, day, and hour of one's birth and all of their corresponding animals and elements. Your "lucky" element is the one you mos...