Q & A With Eric Zencey

SEVEN DAYS: You’ve been teaching in the history department at Goddard for a dozen years — a long time in academia. How did you come up with a novel like Panama?

ERIC ZENCEY: I had just finished doing my dissertation, and I wanted to write something without footnotes. I gradually conceived the idea of a project — a novel.

SD: Was the real historical figure of Henry Adams there from the very beginning?

EZ: No. I had it in mind to write a political novel…that would be moved along by some suspense. And then I read David McCullough’s The Path Between the Seas, and it has an excellent account of the French experience in Panama. It seemed the perfect historical milieu through which to thread a story. And I thought, this is perfect. I was familiar with Henry Adams’ work from my dissertation. He seemed a pretty excellent choice for a protagonist.

SD: Did the fact that you’re a historian, studying real people and real events, make you more comfortable with using a real figure like Henry Adams as your protagonist?

EZ: No, actually it made me uncomfortable. For a while I thought, gee, I should have footnotes explaining what’s historically accurate and what’s made up. The historical novelist who ransacks history for what is useful, the mindset of that is fairly distant from the historian who is very concerned about the historical accuracy of materials.

SD: Was there any time you felt you had to push your Henry Adams to do something he might not have done in real life?

EZ: I don’t think I lead him into anything he wouldn’t have done. The actions of Adams in this story are consistent with the actions of Adams who’s available to us through biography. But there are some inaccuracies.

SD: Do you feel that you have the ability to change history a little bit to enhance the fictive world?

EZ: Yeah, but it’s tricky business. The conventions and criteria by which literature is measured are different than those by which history is measured — history being the writing of accounts of previous activities. And I think, yes, when you are producing a work of literature, you are in service to the criteria relevant to that. And the work must be judged according to that. When you’re writing history, a different set of criteria apply.

SD: Do you have another novel in progress?

EZ: Yes, I do. I don’t want to say a whole lot about it. It, too, will be carried forward by some essential mystery.

SD: Will it be grounded in history, like Panama?

EZ: I don’t think so. I think it’ll be set in contemporary times.

SD: Will you be using real figures in the next book?

EZ: I don’t think so.

SD: Is the process different then, when you’re creating your characters from scratch?

EZ: Yeah, it is. There were times inventing the characters of Henry Adams [and others] when I was struggling with the details of character, simple stuff like how they looked. And I had this minor moment of enlightenment when I realized, wait a second. I don’t have to make this up. I can go look for pictures.

SD: You worked on Panama for nine years, which is just slightly less time than it took the Americans to finally dig the canal. Do you feel, now that you’re established, that you’re going to have that kind of luxury with your next novel? Or you feel a little pushed to produce?

EZ: Well, I feel the nine years that this took were not exactly a luxury. Let me tell you the other stuff I was doing: I was starting a family, being a husband, working at Goddard, where it seems only recently that the words “financially strapped” are not part of the official title of the college. I also have been writing one essay a year for North American Review, and then I’ve also been taking papers to academic conferences. So the reason it took nine years was, in part, because I crammed it into the little interstices left over from other things.

SD: So do you think you’ll finish the next one sooner?

EZ: Oh, I think it won’t take nine years but I’d hesitate to say how long. Pride goeth before a fall.

SD: You’ve been very successful with Panama. It’s your first novel, but you’re getting a lot of notice, your publisher is putting a lot of energy into it. It’s a Book of-the-Month-Club Selection. The paperback rights are up for auction with a starting price of $300,000. Does all this success make you feel that you’ve got to produce the next novel quicker?

EZ: It doesn’t make me feel that I need to. But it will enable me to. I’m taking the next year off from teaching responsibilities. I’m going to read and think and write, which is just marvelous. And that’s part of the reason why I think the next one won’t take nine years.

SD: You live in a place where there seems to be an inordinate number of writers — Howard Norman, David Mamet, Louise Glück. Is it something in the water? Is where you live an important part of the creative process for you?

EZ: Well, I’m sure. There’s no strict mechanical cause-and-effect relationship.

SD: So why are there so many writers there?

EZ: I have theories. One is that Goddard College has been an enormous influence on the culture of this region. If you made a list of all the writers and artists and practicing craftspeople in the area, quite a high percentage of them were drawn by the college. So why did they stay? I think there’s something about the challenge of living in a place where the winters are long and cold. There’s something about that challenge that encourages habits of discipline and perseverance, which are necessary, I think, for success in any artistic enterprise. And winter is a time for moving one’s psyche indoors and buckling down.

SD: Are you friends with any of your fellow writers in the area?

EZ: Some of them. It’s not like we all get together and have social writing sessions. Howard [Mosher] and I have the same editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

SD: How did you shop your first novel around? Did you find an editor?

EZ: I was certain that I wanted an agent. Because, it’s like this…If you were to spend all your spare moments for seven, eight, nine years building a house, and the moment it was done you were sitting on the roof just sort of admiring it, and someone walked by and said, “Wow! There’s a house!” And you wanted so much to be a builder that you would sell it for whatever that first person offered, even if it were only three or four thousand dollars, that would be a little bit like the dynamics of entering the book industry without an agent. Much better to get yourself a realtor and see what the market price is.

SD: So how did you do that from the wilds of Vermont?

EZ: I tried several agents whose names were given to me by an editor here, a writing friend there. Two agents turned it down and the third agent got very excited…she made things start happening very quickly.