An Interview with Jen Michalski
Quick note about author Jen Michalski: She’s basically the sweetest person to interview ever. I called after reading her debut novel The Tide King, talked for over half-an-hour, then realized my audio recording crapped out after 10 minutes. She then re-answered all my questions over email (it’s cheap, but it’s foolproof), which is what you’re seeing written here.
Her kindness shouldn’t be too much of surprise; The Tide King is a novel that shows compassion and detail to even the grossest of characters and situations. The story starts with Stanley, a Polish young man, awkward enough before heading to the Second World War. There’s Calvin Johnson, his fellow soldier and the only friend he’s had in his life. When Johnson is hurt, on the verge of death, Stanley gives his friend a mysterious herb, after which, Johnson cannot die. He loses his leg at Normandy; it grows back. He suffers burns over his entire body before drowning in a lake; he awakes. He gets shot in the gut; the wound closes.
Johnson isn’t the only character that’s tasted the herb. Ela, a 9-year-old girl living with her mother in 19th century Poland, ingests a piece before being shot by soldiers. She survives this, later survives Nazis, and outlives everyone she knows.
It’s a story about loneliness, about the blessings and the curses of immortality and the struggle to fit in with the rest of the world. It’s less magical realism than plain-straight history with one change to the set of rules. Here’s a closer look, thanks to Jen:
What kind of research did you do for the novel? For instance, how did you write so realistically, even graphically, about Normandy Beach? How many events that you refer to in the story actually happened?
Well, once I had the sense of the principal players (Ela, in Poland, Stanley and Calvin in the European theater of World War II, Cindy and her journey to becoming a country music star), I was able to begin research. For Stanley and Calvin, I started out watching the miniseries Ken Burns’ “The War,” and then I tracked through his source material, reading memoirs from some of the veterans he interviewed (like Eugene Sledge’s In With the Old Breed, although he was part of the Pacific theater campaign). I read a lot of Stephen Ambrose’s books on World War II, and I did a lot of research on the Internet, finding out, for instance, how dead bodies and their personal effects were shipped home. For Ela, I used the Internet and also, strangely, James Michener’s Poland. The latter gave me a good sense of the politics of the partition era (and there really was a town, Reszel, in which the old Bishop’s castle burned). I also read The Girl in the Green Sweater for Ela because at one point I had her in hiding during the Holocaust (which she still does, but not in the sewage system, as the family in the memoir The Girl in the Green Sweater does). For Cindy, I read a lot about the country music sister-sister-brother trio, The Browns. One of the Brown girls wrote a memoir, Looking Back to See, and I also read a fictionalized account of the Browns called Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass. Finally, the fire Calvin helps to battle in Montana really happened, and it’s immortalized in Norman McLean’s nonfiction masterpiece Young Men and Fire.
So, in short, I did a lot of research for the book, much of which never made it into the story. I wound up writing 600 pages of very historical events, and only 300 I wound up using. But sometimes I’d find something out, like there had been a flood in the town in which the scene I was writing was taking place, and it would entirely alter the story, sometimes in a good, and sometimes in a not-so-good way. There’s 50 pages of backstory I cut how about how the herb literally came to America with Stanley’s mother, which ship, where they wound up in Baltimore, etc (it’s currently online as a four-part excerpt at Apt Journal). But I knew I wanted the book to be as historically accurate as possible because, in my mind, I was not writing a piece of magical realism in which the rules constantly changed at my whim.
In the novel, you make reference to another tale of the beautifully immortal (“The Picture of Dorian Gray”). What do you think the current trend of fantasy literature (I’m mainly talking Twilight Saga here) is doing to art like yours and Wilde’s – do you see it as belittling or just as a separate type of work?
I wasn’t really thinking about vampires or zombies or any of that when I was writing the book–I just wanted to explore the consequences of living forever, and the curse it would be. Thematically, I was interested in loneliness. As you mentioned, many of the characters are on the periphery, outside looking in, and ironically the only one who goes on to achieve any type of fame is Cindy the country music star, who is a midget. But, when I was speaking to a class at American, it hit me that Ela is some ways–a grown-up girl in a nine-year-old’s body–is very much like Claudia in Interview with a Vampire. She becomes an adult mentally but is never able to experience puberty or the joys–and sorrows–of becoming a woman. So I think my reading of Anne Rice in college must have informed the story a little bit, at least subconsciously.
Michalski and her puppy
What’s the story behind the title?
It’s based on King Cnut, whom Johnson’s love interest, Kate, is writing a paper on in school when they meet. Cnut was the king of England from 1016-1035, and there is a story about how he set up his throne on the shore and ordered the tide to halt before his feet. When it didn’t, he was recorded as saying “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name.” So he is, in effect, The Tide King, and so is Johnson, because he has this great power of immortality that is completely useless. I think it’s a theme that resonates with me in this day and age because we’re a society obsessed with being young, living forever, and I wanted to literally examine the consequences of that. Those who live forever in The Tide King are kind of ghosts on earth, living in the shadows, never aging, watching their friends and lovers die. There’s no closure.
You asked me about the ending, and whether I wanted the reader to view it as sad or hopeful. I think the ending is sad, but I also think it’s hopeful. Because, mortal or immortal, all we really have is our hope to move us forward, whether it’s hope that we’ll find a cure for immortality, in Calvin and Ela’s case, or whether we’ll fall in love, or whether we’ll be happy. So I tried to end on the character’s hopes, no matter how slim those hopes were. It seemed the most realistic ending in what I felt was a very realistic book.
Finally, can you tell me more about the Baltimore lit scene? Why do you choose to live/write there?
I was born in Baltimore and always thought I would leave, but I wound up here many years ago after school and am still here, and, no longer to my surprise, I might die here, too. The scene is not too big and insular like New York; it’s just right. There are a lot of writers here, and they’re very supportive of each other. It’s not as cutthroat or isolated. We’re a very social group that run reading series and play together on softball teams, and you’ll find many of us at dinner on the weekends. Many of us teach at local colleges. Baltimore is the best little town in America, by the water, with steamed crabs and snowballs, and no one I know who comes here ever leaves. It’s like flypaper.
