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Author Joseph Kanon Rob Holden: Joseph Kanon, welcome to ReadersRoom.com. Its a pleasure to have you with us here today! Joseph Kanon: My pleasure. Rob Holden: I would like to start this chat off with your latest novel, Alibi. Could you tell our readers a bit about it? Joseph Kanon: Alibi's an historical thriller (as reviewers call it) and a love story set in postwar Venice. Rob Holden: Could you tell us a bit about the plot? Joseph Kanon: Yes. A young American soldier, recently out of the Army (in Germany, where he'd been involved in war crimes investigations) comes to Venice to visit his expatriate socialite mother. Each in his way has come to forget the war (Venice being one of the few places where this was possible -- no bomb damage). But what he finds instead is a love affair with a Holocaust survivor for whom the war remains vivid, real, and present. The coming together of these two leads to a wholly different view of Venice and what had actually happened there during the seemingly placid war years. And events, spinning out of control, lead to murder. Rochelle Krich: I have to admit that I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but it sounds intriguing. I did read Los Alamos and loved it. Joseph Kanon: I hope so. It's not a conventional whodunit-- the reader will know who done it. What drives the story, instead, are different questions: Was it right? When is murder acceptable? When do we draw a line between murder as a crime, as justifiable revenge, even as a matter of public policy. It's the story of a person, and by extension a city, a whole society, who want to get away with murder, and all of whom have an alibi. But at a price. Rob Holden: Like your other novels, Alibi is sent in the past. Did you find the research for this book -- and particularly the painstaking detail you went into about Postwar Venice difficult to research?

Joseph Kanon: Not as difficult as The Good German, or for that matte, Los Alamos, both of which are about cities that essentially disappeared after 1945 (one because it was temporary, the other because it was destroyed). This meant having to recreate them in one's mind. Venice, of course, is still very much there, looking very much the way it did in 1945-6. What was difficult, however, was to find material about its life during the war, especially the German occupation. Few guidebooks even mentioned it and because Venice had no major military role in the war, it is often passed over in histories. What made the story come together for me, however, was visiting the ghetto in Venice, whose story becomes the real backstory for the novel.

Rob Holden: I would like to talk for a moment about the moral ambiguities you mentioned earlier. As an author, did you find the lines that your characters cross and re-cross through the novel difficult to define?

Joseph Kanon: Yes, of course, but that's what makes them so inherently intriguing (at least to me). Nothing is ever quite what it seems and the moral world these characters live in is a gray one-- not unlike our own.

Rob Holden: When we interviewed Jeffery Deaver last year at the release of his pre-WWII novel Garden of Beasts, one of the comments he made was that one of the most difficult parts about writing a novel of that period was making it fresh and new, since so much fiction is set in that time. Did you find that to be the case?

Joseph Kanon: Yes and no. It's true that much has been written about the period, but then there's still so much more to cover. What draws me to it, especially the immediate postwar period, is that it's a time when history foists upon people the necessity for making moral decisions, often in very compromised situations. In one way or another, we all have to do that, but never did it seem so immediate and dramatic.

Rochelle Krich: Joseph, what drew you to Venice in the first place? As you say, it didn't feature prominently in stories about the war.

Joseph Kanon: Well, of course, like almost everyone else, I've always found it beautiful and special. In one sense, it's an irresistible setting for any novel of intrigue-- the very geography of the place suggests secretiveness, blind alleys, wrong turnings, etc. But I'd never really been tempted to use it as a setting until I went there a few years ago in the winter. It becomes a different city, then, not only full of atmosphere, but a real place, with all the theme park qualities that inevitably come with mass tourism, put away for a few months. I was also interested in it as a kind of anti-Berlin. I had just finished a book about a city utterly devastated by the war (physically and morally) and I wondered what the experience had been like in one of the 'lucky' cities that had never been bombed, never attacked. But of course the stain of the war spread everywhere, even to Venice.

Rob Holden: I would like to move back a novel to The Good German -- now out in paperback. Could you tell our readers a bit about that?

Joseph Kanon: Yes. It's a novel about the American Occupation (a period little written about, it seemed to me). The engine that drives the narrative, initially, is the murder of an American soldier who's involved in the black market. But the book becomes (I hope) a mosaic about Berlin, about how its various people responded to the much larger crime that had been committed.

Rochelle Krich: My father, who was a Holocaust survivor, told us about the Americans who saved him. At the time my father wasn't able to move, and wasn't able to eat. One of the Nazi "nurses" told him: "Die, Jew." The American chaplain cried when he saw him...and, from what my father told us, ordered this "nurse" shot. No trial, just swift action. Do you find your characters grappling with similar emotions?

Joseph Kanon: Yes. The revelation of the Holocaust (as it was only later called) had a profound effect on the Americans who witnessed it first-hand. (It was Eisenhower, for instance, who ordered that films be made so that no one could ever deny what had happened.) But the complications that ensued -- the questions about the limits of guilt, who judges, where to draw the line, are among the most profound moral questions of our time. We are still trying to sort this out. But in 1945 it initially fell to an occupation force who wanted nothing more than to go home, but who were now in a position to be judge and jury for the world. How they dealt with this, the tangled complexities of the situation, seemed/seems to me one of the great stories.

Rochelle Krich: I recently viewed a new documentary, Hollywood and Holocaust. Did you see that?

Joseph Kanon: No, alas, but I've been meaning to. What did you think?

Rochelle Krich: A fascinating documentary that details the insistency of individuals to tell the story, but are deterred by studios and others who don't want the story told. I was particularly impressed by the clips from Charlie Chaplin's film, and by his courage in braving criticism.

Rob Holden: While prepping for this chat, I learned that you were CEO of Putnam. Did you find the transition from one side of the publishing business to the other to be difficult?

Joseph Kanon: No, they're really very different. As a writer, you face the same blank piece of paper that anyone else does. When the book is actually published, of course, it's a slightly trickier time because I'm aware of how much can go wrong and often how little control one has over the reception of the book. By the way, Dutton, not Putnam. Then , later, Houghton Mifflin.

Rob Holden: What was it that caused you to shift careers?

Joseph Kanon: Getting the idea for Los Alamos. I hadn't really thought about becoming a writer-- I enjoyed publishing. But the idea took hold and I decided to give it a try-- luckily, a happy ending, which is why we're here chatting.

Rochelle Krich: Joseph, what kind of reaction, if any, have you received from European readers, in particular German and now, with the publication of Alibi, from Italian readers?

Joseph Kanon: European reaction ... I was extremely nervous about The Good German-- so much of it, after all, is a German story and I thought I'd be accused of being an auslander, with no right to tell it. But the opposite happened. I went to Berlin when the book was published and people would come up to me and say that it brought so many things back to them, that the period was correctly evoked (my deepest worry). They were eager to talk about it. The horrors of the war are still real in Germany, even for generations two or three times removed from it. Questions of guilt, collective and otherwise, are still important. In any case, the reception there was all any writer could have hoped for-- it remains for me an extraordinary experience. About Italy, I don't yet know.

Rob Holden: Speaking of moral ambiguities, I would like to touch on Los Alamos for a moment. Was that a difficult novel for you to write?

Joseph Kanon: No. Ironically enough, it was the easiest and the fastest to write of all my books. I'm not sure why this is so-- perhaps because no one knew I was doing it and therefore there were no expectations to meet. I had researched it for several months and then wrote the first draft in about six months-- something that now takes a year to a year and a half.

Rob Holden: Joseph, one of the questions our readers who are also writers like us to ask is about our guests' writing schedule. Can you tell us a bit about yours? Do you shoot for a set number of pages a day, do you keep regular hours?

Joseph Kanon: Mostly regular. I was used to going to work, to the office, as a matter of routine, and I've pretty much duplicated that. I get up, take the subway, and go to the library to write. No set page requirements -- however it comes. I find it difficult to work at home. When I'm in the library, no one can reach me, it's real 'work' time. By the way, since we're talking about the process, I write in longhand on yellow legal pads (for some reason, people always want to know this) and only later, when it's finished, put it into the computer.

Rochelle Krich: Since I began using a computer, I find it difficult to write in longhand.

Rob Holden: You share the yellow legal pads with Nelson DeMille, who told us that he has tried writing other ways, and that is the only way that works for him!

Joseph Kanon: I know what you mean, but I think longhand has the advantage of slowing you down, making you think as you write. At least it works this way for me. I find that I write too fast on a computer, it becomes a kind of e-mail.

Rob Holden: Before we wrap this up, I would like to thank Yolanda Carden at FSB associates for her help in setting this chat up. So what is next -- writing wise -- for Joseph Kanon?

Joseph Kanon: There's a new novel in the works-- once this process starts, it seems impossible to stop. I never say exactly what it is-- out of fear that I'll talk it out-- but I will say that it is once again set in the postwar period. I can't seem to leave the period, at least not yet. There's still so much more I want to know about it. I can only hope a few readers will too.

Rochelle Krich: I'm sure you won't have to worry about that.

Rob Holden: And is there someplace on the internet where readers can keep up with the new book's progress, as well as see the tour dates for Alibi?

Joseph Kanon: Yes, there's a website: www.joseph kanon.com.com . It includes an e-mail function: messages get passed on to me and I answer. It's been one of the unexpected delights of the tech revolution-- to have such immediate contact with readers.

Rob Holden: Finally Joseph, is there anything you would like to say to your fans who may read this chat at ReadersRoom.com?

Joseph Kanon: Well, a grateful thank you for listening. Meeting people at bookstore events is one of the joys of publishing a book-- there is still a wonderful one-on-one involved in the reading process. People feel they know you and, of course in a real sense, they do.

Rob Holden: Joseph Kanon, thank you for joining us here today, and best of luck with Alibi and all your future projects!

Rochelle Krich: Good luck! May you fill endless yellow pads.

Joseph Kanon: My pleasure and thanks to you.




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