The Elegant Variation: THE RETURN OF THE THREE MINUTE INTERVIEW (3MI): DAVID FRANCIS

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May 12, 2005

THE RETURN OF THE THREE MINUTE INTERVIEW (3MI): DAVID FRANCIS

We're delighted to revive our much-hyped but little-delivered feature the Three Minute Interview (3MI)*. We have a shockingly interesting lineup of future participants but we're especially pleased to get things rolling with L.A. novelist David Francis, who will be reading from his first novel The Great Inland Sea (MacAdam/Cage) tomorrow night at Skylight Books in Los Feliz at 7:30 p.m. (Click here for event details.)

David was born in Victoria, Australia. He grew up on his family farm near Tooradin in Gippsland and has competed successfully as a show-jumping and eventing rider throughout world. He attended Monash University to study arts and law and in 1983 joined the law firm of Arthur Robinson & Hedderwicks in Melbourne. In 1984 he left Australia to compete internationally with horses in Europe and went on to ride on the United States show-jumping circuit based outside New York. In 1986, he moved to California to work for an American law firm and to pursue show-jumping in California. From 1992 until 1999 he also sang with the oldest black gospel choir in Los Angeles. In 1996 David began writing. Instead of leaving his law office at lunchtimes to school jumping horses near Griffith Park, he spent them writing long-hand in the Hollywood Cemetery. The Great Inland Sea (published internationally as Agapanthus Tango) is his first novel. In 2002, David received the Australia Literature Fund Fellowship to the Keesing Studio in Paris. He is still based in Los Angeles, where he works with the law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P., but spends part of each year with his family in Australia and also at the Cité International des Arts in Paris. He is currently working on his second novel.

1) TEV: Not unlike Sam Lipsyte's Home Land, The Great Inland Sea had a previous life overseas before landing happily with MacAdam/Cage. To what, if anything, do you attribute this irritating American delay in literary decision making and how, if at all, do you think the book's reception in the US might differ from its reception abroad?

DF: The book originally sold as "Agapanthus Tango" in the U.K. It took only a week from the date it was received by my London agent to a little bidding war between Picador and Fourth Estate. It was then published by Harper Collins in Australia, then in translation in Italy, Holland, Germany and France by imprints of big houses - Rizzoli/Bompiani, Random House/Goldmann, Editions du Seuil. It was then very close here with editors at Knopf and elsewhere here in the U.S. but, sadly, the marketing people put the kibosh on it. No one knew what an Agapanthus was even though it grows here like a weed. It was like trying to get distribution for a foreign film that had an unusual and not particularly American sensibility, even though half the novel happens on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and elsewhere in the U.S. Janet Fitch, the White Oleander woman and a friend here in L.A. counseled me that a book like mine would take its own good time to find the right U.S. home. And she was right. At the Salon du Livre in Paris last year my French editor introduced me to David Poindexter who runs MacAdam/Cage. As soon as I met him I thought: "This guy might like my book." He talked about how the publishing world was becoming controlled by multinational corporations that had a primary emphasis on making a buck instead of publishing great books and that he published books for their quality instead of their profit potential. "Quality over quantity." When I got back to California he invited me up to San Francisco, took me to lunch and made me an offer. Fortunately it wasn't for sex.

2) TEV: You recently spent some time in Paris working on your new novel. Regular TEV readers know of our passion for all things Parisian ... Tell us what it's like to be a novelist at work in Paris.

DF: In Paris I feel like I'm a writer. I went there originally on a fellowship from the Literature Fund of the Australia Counsel to a studio at the Cite Internationale des Arts in The Marais. The fellowship entitles me to go back there for at least a month a year (how cool is that). I come from a country that supports "The Yartz." In Paris I get to write without the distractions of my L.A. life. I have wonderful friends there who are writers or translators and I'm very close to my French editor and to Penelope and Jobic Le Masson who own the Red Wheelbarrow Bookstore in The Marais. I do readings there and used to have my own key and write there late at night. Agapanthus Tango was their biggest seller one summer. It's amazing what it does to have a bookseller love your book and recommend it. Also, in Paris I have places where I go and write, longhand in the cemetery at Pere Lachaise and other secret spots. The whole thing is a total cliché but it works for me. Then I come back to the real world, to the bowels of Hollywood where I have a place here. It's especially fun this time to return to Agapanthus Tango suddenly becoming Great Inland Sea and being released in the U.S. My book in stores where I actually live!

3) TEV: You were seen out and about quite a bit at the recent LA Times Festival of Books ... What's your best festival story?

I met Jane Smiley in Australia. We did a panel together at the Sydney Writers' Festival and we were going to have lunch in LA after her "A talk with Jane Smiley" or whatever her session was called at the LA Times Festival. I've just come from a function at the Australian Consul-General's residence in Bel Air (where they have Astroturf by the pool which made me feel homesick), and so I'm in a suit and now armed with a copy of "The Great Inland Sea" inscribed to Jane because she blurbed it. I walk in late to her session and she'd chatting about horses in heaven or Dickens or Greenlanders and there aren't seats except up in the front. Jane stops mid-sentence and decides to introduce me to her audience as I fumble for somewhere to be. She starts talking about my new book and its U.S. release and blahdy blah. Then she asks me what I have in my hand and of course it's the book. I felt so cheap. So contrived. But I was innocent. So, I'll stop. I think I've dropped all the names I know. At least locally.

4) TEV: Who's the best author we've never heard of?

DF: Herta Muller (with ".." above the "u") who wrote "The Land of Green Plums." Romanian writer who now lives in Germany. Very spare and beautiful. Love her. Anne Michaels (Canadian) who wrote Fugitive Pieces, but she's famous elsewhere, maybe even here in some quarters. **

5) TEV: Ask yourself any question you like - but be sure to answer it!

DF: "Would I write a novel if I knew there was no possibility it would ever be published?" I'd love to deliver a deinitive yes, that I write because I write, which is almost totally true, but I can hear a part of me that would nonetheless yearn for a chance, however miniscule, to be read. Writing is lonely enough as it is. I'm probably as deperate as the next person scratching away for some scrap of approval or a pretense of same........

If you're in the neighborhood, do stop by for tomorrow's reading - TEV rates it Worth Your While, and we'll be in the audience and drinking to excess afterwards ...

* For those who have forgotten the rules, questions four and five are the same for all participants.

** Yep, and we're fans of the excellent Fugitive Pieces.

Posted at 12:05 AM in Interviews | Permalink

Comments

The vermin will be there!

Posted by: Jim Ruland | May 12, 2005 at 09:43 AM

I really like this feature. Interesting life this man leads. Love the quote about his writer's life in Paris being cliche.

I lived in a Gypsy barrio of Seville Spain and wrote daily and in poverty. When I came back to L.A. someone accused me of living a cliche. Like your subject, I told them the cliche, which amounts to romantic and geographically fed writing, suited me fine.

the highway scribe

Posted by: the highway scribe | May 13, 2005 at 10:35 AM

With the usual caveat of Friday afternoon LA traffic, I hope to be there!

Posted by: josh lucas | May 13, 2005 at 05:01 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

May 12, 2005

THE RETURN OF THE THREE MINUTE INTERVIEW (3MI): DAVID FRANCIS

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

May 12, 2005

THE RETURN OF THE THREE MINUTE INTERVIEW (3MI): DAVID FRANCIS

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism