Dan Halpern

Interviewer: So, you know, this would be mostly this is like a conversation. I’m not like, you know, question, answer, that kind of thing. Okay. So I’ll just sort of was basically following my curiosity. I mean, I have some notes, but I wanted to start with just talking to you about your work as a poet. And when did you when did you fall in love with poetry? And where in your where in your in the curvature of your life did you start doing poetry? And was how was that relationship to your work as an editor and having the magazine and, you know, living in we can hear it.

Dan Halpern: Change here, right?

Interviewer: Yeah. So just curious, what is where is poetry sit in all that?

Dan Halpern: Well, as I mentioned, I went to school at San Francisco State for a year and I had a roommate who was one of the original surfer guys with blond hair, and he was a poet. And he would write poems and then go out to the women’s dorm next door and read the poems to his girlfriend at two in the morning, which she loved her roommates less so. But I thought that was a pretty cool way to to lead a life. So I started reading some pretty bad poetry and time went on and I was fortunate to meet Paul Bowles in in L.A. at Northridge. He was teaching there for four years for a semester. And he he told me about Morocco and suggested that I go there and spend some time in Tangier with him. So I did that after I finished college in Northridge, and I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. So I spent two years in a hospital working at Cedars of Lebanon in L.A. And then when I went to Morocco, I started writing poetry seriously. And Bowles said, Why don’t we start a literary magazine? We’ll call it Atlas, he wanted to call it. And I thought, that reminds me of Muscle Beach in Santa monica. We don’t want to Weightlifters magazine. So he decided to call it interest, which I didn’t know what that who he was, but it was a North African wrestler. So we started the magazine and I began my editing career there, and I spent two years in Morocco and then came to New York and got an MFA in poetry at Columbia. And Echo began right after that kind of as an offshoot of of of Antaeus.

Interviewer: So yeah. So tell me about you mentioned you mentioned that you were that you encountered Paul Bowles. What were your initial impressions of him? I mean, he’s such a legendary literary figure, this classic, very romanticized expatriate. And and there he was in Northridge. And. Was that by chance? Did you did you seek him out there? Was that sort of.

Dan Halpern: Just oh, it was so much by chance. It turns out that he was in Northridge, the least likely place for Paul Bowles, who was a true existentialist in a kind of traditional way for him to end up in Northridge, which was the opposite of Tangier. And he was there because a friend of his was a friend of Tennessee. Williams got him the job, and I think he needed money. So I met him at a party. My I had a poetry professor and he said, if you want to go to a party and meet somebody amazing, I will bring you as my guest. But you have to read The Sheltering Sky. So I went to a bookstore and got it and read it. And after about a half an hour at the party, I was talking with Bowles and he said, Do you have a car? And I said, We’re in L.A. Everybody’s got a car in L.A. He said, Well, could you drive me back to my hotel in Santa monica? I said, Sure. So on the drive back, he told me everything about Morocco and I was sold at that point.

Interviewer: What was it? I mean, when he was when he was speaking so passionately about Morocco, what got you? What was it?

Dan Halpern: You know, it was the music, the brotherhoods, their business, a Berber culture, more than Arabic. And he told me about the various brotherhoods, different sects of of the the Berbers had in the music that they danced to. And it was a trance dancing. They got me. He said that people go into a trance and they do things that you wouldn’t believe can be done, which I eventually saw for myself. But that’s that’s what initially got me there. And the idea of being in Tangiers seemed very exotic for a valley boy.

Interviewer: Yeah, for sure. So you were there for how how long were you in terms.

Dan Halpern: Of your two years.

Interviewer: To you?

Dan Halpern: I was there in 68 and 69.

Interviewer: There was a daily routine. What was your routine like living there? With what? We had to spend your time.

Dan Halpern: I would walk to the soccer Chico and have a mint tea and maybe I would do a little grocery shopping if I was going to cook that night. I learned to cook in Tangier and then I would visit with Paul in the afternoon. He got up late and we take usually a walk along the coast or the mountains over the Strait of Gibraltar, and then I go shopping with him and he would buy a chicken. He would make he used to make chicken tagine, which was a very typical Moroccan dish, which I had many times at his house. And then we would sit around and he would give me a book to read. It was basically my graduate school. He would say, Here’s a book by James Purdy and I had never heard of. James Purnell was not a good student. And I would read it overnight and then he would quiz me on it the next day. So it was a big learning curve for me.

Interviewer: Yeah. So when you went back to the city, you went back to New York. And what were you thinking when you went back to school? What was what was why was that your next?

Dan Halpern: Because I was such a bad student. I had applied I wanted to study poetry. And I had heard about the Columbia program. There was a poet there. I wanted to study with Stanley Kunitz and also teaching. There was Mark Strand who ultimately became my best friend. And I thought if I got into Columbia, that would be a you know, my parents would be very proud of me after being such a fuck up and and as an undergraduate. So I wanted to do that and wanted to be in New York for a couple of years. I never thought I would stay there.

Interviewer: So they’re coming. So when you graduated from Columbia, what was your next move?

Dan Halpern: Well, I was editing Antaeus and the the goal was to find someone to back the magazine. And by chance, this woman wrote me and it had a pickle on the stationery. And it was Drew Hinds. And I thought that was a man. And I asked a friend and he said, That’s true. Heidi, she’s married to Jack Hines. If she wants to subscribe to the magazine, you need to meet her. So I wrote her back and I said, Well, I can’t fulfill your subscription when I don’t have a bank account. And too, I have no money for the second issue of the magazine. And she said, Well, why don’t you come and meet me? I’m having a little gathering. Come over and we’ll talk about the magazine. I’d be interested in backing it. So I went over there and it was not exactly a little gathering. It was on. It was across the River River Club. 1/52 Street. I think it was a very fancy building. When I went in, I thought it was for sure in the wrong place. I was going up the stairs and at the top was Governor Rockefeller and and Mayor Lindsay. I thought in black tie, I am definitely in the wrong place. So I went I sort of go back down. But there was a woman with a tray of drinks behind me, so I had to go up. And it was an amazing party. There was, you know, Truman Capote. He was asleep on Lillian, Lillian Hellman’s breast. There was just one star after that. Keith Richards was there. And the only person I knew was Renata Adler was pretty well-known writer at that point, and she was dating Warren Beatty, who I know you know. So I hung out with them, but I never met through that night. So the next day she sent down my driver a check to pay for the second issue of the magazine. But I had no bank account, so I had to figure out a way to open up a checking account. And in New York, which is hard if you’re coming from Morocco without any financial history at all. So the magazine she backed and she wanted to start a press. So she introduced me to the head of Viking, Tom Ginsburg, and he said he would distribute her books if I learned, you know, the publishing trade. So he gave me, you know, one of his managing editors who taught me. Something. And we began by reprinting Paul Bowles. It was one of the first books to be reprinted showing Sky, which had amazingly gone out of print. So we bought it for $150 term a copyright. You could do that in those days. Not so much now.

Interviewer: So was he. How how engaged was he with you when you were back in the States and doing this magazine?

Dan Halpern: We wrote at least once or twice a week. That was the only communication. And he always wrote the same kind of letters on onions, skin, beautiful stamps, exotic envelope. All exactly one page. And, you know, he usually complained about being victimized by the Moroccan government, which turned out not to be true. And we talked about manuscripts which he read and he suggested names of people. So.

Interviewer: And along the way, you’re continuing to write poetry and and make contributions to the magazine. And how is poetry in the midst of all of this, just starting to take on a magazine and.

Dan Halpern: It’s can I cross my legs? Is that going to throw off your can?

Interviewer: Do whatever. Yeah. Whatever makes you feel comfortable.

Dan Halpern: This is great.

Interviewer: Even have a sip of water if you’d like.

Dan Halpern: Thank you. I was always writing poetry at that point. And they didn’t conflict with each other. And I started teaching as well. I thought I ended up teaching sort of at the new school, teaching poetry and fiction. And then I taught at Princeton for a couple of years and then taught at Columbia in the MFA program, which I taught for 20 years there. So it was a nice balance of editing, writing, poetry and teaching. I loved the teaching, the students going through the graduate program there.

Interviewer: So we make sure that we see something here, too. So at what point? And his eco president is. At what point did eco press start to get involved with editing? You know, actually, you know, I think an interview is. I think maybe would be good even for the audience to say, do you understand? Was first published versus editing the role of the editor what it means to have at a company like Gingko Press versus a big publishing house. What is it really like? Could you just walk us through sort of the machinery of a writer, editor, publisher, publishing? What is the function of the editor? In the midst of all that? Can you just give us that for dummies? Yeah.

Dan Halpern: Well, I mean, Echo began from from nothing, so we had very little money to buy new books. So it meant that we mainly did reprints. So we would find books that had gone out of print, like The Sheltering Sky and do new editions and kind of get into publishing that way. And as an independent publisher, initially I was alone, and then we were independent for 30 years, and we published a lot of poetry because that can cost a lot. It was very hard to do nonfiction because nonfiction you’re buying proposals and people need to work for a year, three years, five years to write a biography. And that required a lot of money, much more than we had. We never paid more than $3,000 for a book. Those days are very much over. Had been what I sold. I sold I sold Echo to the HarperCollins in 1999. And that that moved us from being a small, independent press to a smaller imprint and a large publishing house.

Interviewer: So this is. This is. You can imagine like this, the equivalent would be, you know, here we are in a hotel like here at a hotel, a master brand that owns a whole other bunch of boutique hotels. It is similar in that you build a niche for HarperCollins of some sort.

Dan Halpern: Well, yeah, I hope so. I mean, we were never going to publish Stephen King. But, you know, we’ve done we’ve done well. We’ve had many really good years. We’ve had books that have been huge bestsellers. But the difference between independent press, where especially when you start out alone, you do everything yourself. So you learn the business, you do sales, you do the marketing and the publicity. You write the copy, you edit the books. And then as you get to a larger publishing house, there are people who really know how to do those things. So my specialty, what if I have one is, is, is reading manuscripts to figure out what to buy, how to edit the books, how to position them. And maybe my largest, biggest skill is, is hiring really good people who know a lot more about those things than I do. The marketing and sales and publicity part.

Interviewer: What was for you when you’re doing your independent era? What was the most satisfying thing during your independent years and what were your biggest challenges?

Dan Halpern: Money was always a problem. Although Drew Drew Hinds back the press for 20 years and that was very lucky. So I never had to to worry that we were going to pay the rent. But, I mean, we had a budget and it’s very hard to without marketing money. It’s very hard, for example, to deal with Barnes and Noble at that time. Borders to pay co-op advertising. We didn’t have those kinds of funds. So and also we were not publishing big books, but we had a lot of early successes with writers who went on to larger publishing houses. One of the sadnesses in doing a small press and if you discover someone and we published Tobias Wolfe’s first book of stories, and that did incredibly well, but he was immediately then bought by kind off at, you know, many more times than we could have afforded, which, you know, the first time it happens, it’s painful. But then you realize if you do this, this is what’s going to happen if you’re a small press. And it was it was fine. But for me, I loved publishing the poetry because we really had no competition. Nobody was worried about books that were going to sell a thousand copies. So we established, I think, a pretty good poetry list with some great poets. We published Robert Hass, who’s from here. Then, if you met him, do you know him?

Interviewer: No, but I know him. And you know, I was hearing in the mid eighties and used to go to the city lights and I’d see your magazine there. And that was always like the gold standard.

Dan Halpern: Well, thank you. It was fun editing that magazine. But we were we were lucky. We published Milos. And one day I got a call from from Milosh, and he said, I have very good news for you. What is that? Just love. He said, Well, I won the Nobel Prize. And I said, Well, that’s pretty good news for you, too. He was very funny. But it was it was, you know, a thrill to to publish him. And speaking of Herbert, another Polish poet, Robert Hass, Louise Glick. So I loved that poetry list. Yeah.

Interviewer: That’s great. Do you recall the first time you met him, Karen?

Dan Halpern: You know, I met her in passing at a couple of events, probably at Book Expo, B.A. events, but I didn’t really know her until she was shopping her book. And we had a meeting. She and Lou came in and we had, I thought, a really good meeting. And I love her work. And I thought, you know, this would be amazing if we could publish her. And she was where she was working on her new novel at the time. And we went out afterwards and had a glass of Malbec, which is kind of become our theme. Malbec. And it was loo and. And Amy and me. And. One of her dogs. I don’t know if it was Turks. Anyway. I think we hit it off.

Interviewer: For it before then being, you know, immersed in the literary world. Have you read Joy Luck Club when it was published and what were your impressions of her? At a time when you weren’t entertaining public, like where did you see her sitting in the you know, in the world of the literary world. What did you think of her work?

Dan Halpern: Well, the Joy Luck Club was was so massive when it came on. I mean, everybody loved it. It was it was a book that cut across, you know, all different kinds of tastes, different kind of orientations and of literature. Uh. It was just a magical book to appear. There was nothing like it. And people talked about it. And she she was and has remained a star.

Interviewer: Yeah. You think? At the time, you know, as I’m as I’m getting to know her and I’m working on this project, it’s amazing. I mean, it’s such a there’s so many there’s so many aspects to her life in her work. It’s almost overwhelming. And I think about that book. The origins and how it started out as a series of stories. And then the stories sort of came together and it ultimately became this novel wasn’t necessarily her initial intent to understand. So you work with a lot of writers. I mean, you’ve probably published a number of first time writers as an independent, so. I just wondered about your observations about, you know, when writers hit so big on the first book. I mean, I’ve often thought, you know, same thing with music or even even filmmakers, you know, it’s it’s, of course, a wonderful thing and indicative of talent. But at the same time, it’s sort of there’s some I think it creates some potential obstacles as well, you know, making that big of a splash right at the gates. Did you did you over time come to us like, you know, you have such experience working with so many different writers as an editor, or were you in a position where you were helping people work through these things, that this isn’t about writing, it’s about your life and how are you going to go about this? How do you deal with the emotional aspects of this and the psychological aspects of right handling that kind of experience?

Dan Halpern: Well, I mean, everybody is so every writer is so different. I mean, some writers give you a draft, first draft of the book. That’s nearly perfect. Very little editing to do. It’s been thought out. It’s just the way they work. Other writers are much different and the manuscripts can be less focused and, you know, you know, requiring some editorial work and the psychological aspect of that is massive because you’re dealing with all these different personalities and some are taking criticism easily. Others are defensive, protective of what they’ve written. And I think. Well, we can talk about Amy in a second, because for me, that was. One of the most interesting experiences that I’ve had as an editor is working with her and watching her. How do I phrase this? She’s very sensitive. She, at the end of the day, wants the best possible book and will do anything to get there. And that once you know that, you can do anything and it gives you as the editor, courage to move forward. But I think you decide early on if you’re going to be an editor that your job is to is to catch everything before the reviewers catch it and to say whatever it is you think. Then the writer can reject it or take it, whatever. But it’s your job. And that’s what I tell all the editors who work for me. Your job is to to put on the page everything you think is problematic about the book, the narrative, the pacing, the characterization, everything that goes into a good novel proportion and the line by line. If you have a paragraph that doesn’t sound as good as a paragraph before it, fix it. You know, make it better. And once you establish that as an editor, I think you’re. You’re comfortable to talk with anybody. Some writers are very difficult. You mentioned something and they’re back at you and not necessarily in a positive way. But Amy working on her novel was fascinating, the way she would.

Interviewer: Tell me the name of the novel. And it’s a great start to.

Dan Halpern: My memory of the title’s proper nouns of the first to go. Valley of amazement. We need to check that.

Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. Just come out. Yeah. When I started to work on Down Here With You.

Dan Halpern: So when I started to work at Valley, the Valley of Amazement, there were a lot of things that were not exactly right. And she knew it. But but at a certain point, you have to give the manuscript over. And then there was a lot of back and forth and notes and working out different scenes. She was. You know, I mean, there are certain writers who are able to fix problems in their novels and others who, because they’re so wedded to what they’ve already written, are hesitant about changing anything. And the trouble in a novel is you change one thing. You’ve got to be careful that it doesn’t affect something that happened 50 pages later, 50 pages later. And she was amazing at that. I mean, she just kept going back into it, back into it, bringing certain characters out, fixing, you know, slower parts of the narrative. She was very good about cutting out whole passages that were not necessarily repetitive or just flat. And I think the book that she finally wrote is is amazing.

Interviewer: It is. I loved it. And by the way, I loved it. It just seems like there’s this endless if never, you know, having now read, the only book I haven’t read yet is Saving Fish from Drowning. But it seems like her portrayal I mean, you talk about mothers and daughters and women. It seems like an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Like there’s it’s expressing values. It was like. Right. The dynamics are so sharp.

Dan Halpern: Well, she’s got the thing about one of the things about Amy is that she’s got all of the autobiographical information, the relationships, all the women in her family and well, I mean, it’s in her memoir, all of that that she has to work with and then she’s able to fictionalize whatever parts of that she wants to. So the autobiographical never goes away, and it’s always with you in very intense way, especially for Amy was, you know, so involved with family and and what it means to her in her past and in her present and future. So she’s able to take that. It’s always there for her and then moving to fiction. So I think that. There’s no shortage. I mean, I would love it if you read another five novels in the next short period of time. She’s not the fastest writer, and you don’t push her because it makes her nervous. But we still want the books. All our readers want the books. I want the books. She wants the books.

Interviewer: What was it? There was a gap between. Was it 2005 to 2013 or was it. There was the biggest gap with Valley Amazement came after her longest spell, right? Yeah.

Dan Halpern: I think that’s right.

Interviewer: Do you know what was going on at that point in time? What? Why? Why eight years or five years, whatever it was?

Dan Halpern: Um, I think it was a number of things. I think health was one thing. Um, she had a bout with Lyme disease. It’s alright to say that she is incredibly tough and resilient, but that that was it went after her Lyme disease is. So that set her back and she lost her her her editor when she was so committed to Faith Hill who was one of the, you know, one of the finest editors that that I’ve known in my whatever number of years I’ve been doing this. And she died young. And Amy was just devoted to her. And they were like sisters, I think. So that that was difficult as well.

Interviewer: Did you know Faith?

Dan Halpern: I did.

Interviewer: I did her a little bit. Tell us a little bit about things.

Dan Halpern: She was already for me. She was already a well-known editor when I got to know her, and she was doing amazing books, not the least of which was was Amy’s. But but her range was great. And she was smart. She was serious, but fun to be with. Just. Just a really interesting woman. And I think her her dying. Was very painful to Amy. And Amy is an incredible friend. I mean, she helped faith. I don’t know if if Amy talks about that, but I know that she did a lot for her at the end of her life. I mean, Amy’s got. So many, so many friends in so many different areas science, art, literature, obviously. And people love her because she’s loyal. She’s always interesting. You never know what she’s going to say or do, which will suddenly be swimming with sharks. Or somebody looking for, you know, dinosaur bones in Montana with one of her friends. She’s very active.

Interviewer: Case Back to the experience of your first meeting with Amy and if you can mention her by name and how you felt about that meeting going into it with her and what were your what were your initial impressions when you were talking about her book proposal that she was this something that she was commissioned to do? Did she have a you know, could you just get a little bit more deeply into your first meeting with her and what you guys talked about and and and what your impressions were? And it sort of mentioned her name a few times in that process because now I get into editing and then I have to dig it up falsely for her despite this.

Dan Halpern: All right. Well, when when when Amy came into my office, it was a little intimidating. I mean, she was very famous and she was certainly an author that we wanted to publish. And we had. I don’t remember exactly what I had read at some, you know, probably chapters and an outline for the rest of the book. And I was struck by how. Relaxed and forthcoming and easy to talk to. Amy was. She was. The energy is just vibrating there when when you meet her. And I said, I met her and passed away. I never was alone with her or had a conversation that had that particular kind of meaning, which is to say we’re trying to find a way to buy her book and to convince her that Echo was the best place for her to be. And, uh, the thing about Amy is that she’s. She is. So incredibly focused on what’s in front of her, and then she will keep it there as the focal point and then talk around it in such interesting ways. And the kind of tangential references and ways of describing things are completely unexpected. Unpredictable. And she is unpredictable in life, as I’ve gotten to know, we’ve become, for me anyway, a very, very good friend. And I love it when I get an Amy email and to her emails. In the memoir, I think it’s clear how many emails are going back and forth, and she accuses me of being very brief, like one or two words I am, but I’m not a novelist. I write poetry so I’m brief. She can expand and go deeper, which she does. And her emails really are landscapes of of huge canvases, life or novels.

Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah, I was really you know, that was one of the more unique features about where the past begins. Is this inclusion of your correspondence, I thought was really interesting.

Dan Halpern: Because that made me nervous, including the emails, but we put a lot of stuff in there, which was a little funny maybe, but but it was very in keeping with the relationship in writing that book. Yeah, that was a tough book for her to write. Very different than writing a novel because it was autobiographical and she was committed to remembering it clearly and accurately. And it was a tough life, as you as you know from reading it.

Interviewer: Yes. Yes. I mean, you know, I’m really interested in, you know, if all the writers who were coming to me, the thing that compels me is that, you know, how how some people can take such difficult experiences and it becomes they’re like alchemists, you know, they can take something. You know, very heavy and unpleasant and create something beautiful out of it. Seems like she has that amazing ability to take these things and. Three sets. Extraordinary, you know, powerful stories and and ultimately kind of life affirming, you know, in spite of all this tragedy. Right. Suffering.

Dan Halpern: She’s able it’s a little bit like you take the the heart of an idea or an experience or a memory. And and some writers will take that and slowly expand it and work work within it to clarify it and to make it into a kind of larger narrative. But, Amy, I, in my mind, takes that nugget and spins it like a centrifuge, and it goes everywhere, but it never gets away from the outside boundary. It’s always there for her to bring back in to the story. So you get these. The the range is so great in her in her narratives, whether they’re autobiographical or fictional. Yeah. But but the autobiography presented, I think, different issues for her to deal with. One, when you’re writing a memoir, you’re reliving it as you write it. And a lot of people who write a memoir for the first time don’t realize that. And it’s very painful. And I think it was very painful for for Amy to to relive some of the experiences that she lived as a child. And they’re very beautiful the way she she goes at them, whether it’s about the music, whether it’s that car drive with her mother who was opening the door and putting her foot down on the freeway. I mean, terrifying scenes that that she is able to write though in a very effortless to us as a reader that to her as a writer but makes it. Feel like you’re in that back seat with those kids watching this mother terrify the family.

Interviewer: So true. I mean that to me. You just you just know in my mind the difference between the opposite of fame and and where the past begins. Because there was more passages in which you inhabited those experiences through her, through the way she wrote about them, rather than it being sort of like more of it. It’s just a history. You know, obviously, Kate struck me more, as was very helpful for me. Research was you write. But, you know, again, it’s funny you mention that passage because one of the things I’m working with is how to enliven her writing for the screen. You know, it’s of working with some animated sequences. And I’ve done an animated sequence on that. But because, you know, there’s something about going through that and she talks about the advantages of fictionalizing it really allows you to get the in some ways the audience closer to the real experience. Right. It’s just amazing. So is that something that was. Did you see that coming at that quality in the end where the cast begins with that? Was that evident right at the start, or is that something that you nursed?

Dan Halpern: Yeah, I think writing this book was very different. I mean, I only have the experience of these two books. So the novel was completely different. She submitted the whole book and she didn’t want to show it to anybody until she had it in a certain place with the memoir. It was very different because she was having that trouble writing it. It was. It was a lot to be reliving this material. And so we decided that it wasn’t really going anywhere for a long time. So I said, Look, why don’t you just send me 15 pages? They don’t have to be a chapter. And I think we said we’re not going to call them chapters. We’re not going to we’re not going to talk about final chapters. We’re not going to talk about delivery dates. We’re not going to talk about anything that makes you nervous. We’re just going to get 15 pages a day, a week. And so she would send them dutifully. They would come in. And of course, they were amazing. And they were more or less chapters, but they were maybe parts of chapters if they were going to be longer chapters. And the idea was that I would not edit them. At that point, I read them and made my own notes, but I didn’t show them to her. And I would then print out. The pages. And put them on my desk. And I had the time. We had the title. We got the title, I think. Somewhere. You know, a few months in. It was a perfect, perfect title for her book. And so that was.

Interviewer: The title comes from We Can Talk about.

Dan Halpern: It. It came from her. It’s a passage from from the book. And I don’t remember exactly who hit on. I don’t remember, but it seemed right to her. Let’s see. Write to me. And I think it was the right title. So I had that on on the top. And then the page of the table of Contents as the chapters were coming in. And it slowly builds up on my desk and I would take photographs of the manuscript so she could see that it was actually. Happening. And one day it was finished. And that, I think, probably made her more nervous than any of the previous. Parts of the process.

Interviewer: Fascinating. What do you. What do you. You’ve sort of talked about this already, but it could reframe it, could you? What do you see as having known Amy now, and I’m sure you’ve touched she’s talked to you, you guys have talked a lot about her experiences as a novelist and a writer over the years. Do you have a sense for what she considers to be her biggest challenge?

Dan Halpern: Her biggest challenge? You know, I think. Actual writing is not a challenge because she’s so fluid and so good at getting done what she knows she needs to get down and she’s got such a good ear for language. She was a linguist, so she she hears the language in a way that a poet hears it. I think the biggest challenge is like for most writers, a psychological one that is writing. Not the writing. It’s just writing. I think she would agree with that. But you never know. I wouldn’t want to presume that she would agree with it with. Anything I might say. Yeah, because we tend to go back and forth.

Interviewer: To talk a little bit about the psychology of writing you we’ve seen so much over the years. You know. And has it changed at all? I mean, the world of the writer has changed so much even in my lifetime. It’s it’s kind of. You know, when you say writing, you should just. What is it? Could you elaborate on that a little bit?

Dan Halpern: Just the actual the the act of writing. For a lot of people is when you need to sit down, you need to to do it. And for a lot of people, you know, they. How can I explain this clearly? Um. For some writers, it was a feeling that they have nothing more to say and that the last book is the last book. And to start with a new blank page, a new novel, and even the poets to have the same thing finished a book of poetry. Do I have anything more to say? Poetry is a very different act. Of writing. But I think people just feel insecure that they’re not going to do as well. And one of the things for Amy, which is critical in understanding her work, I think, is that early success was so huge that she had to feel well. Now, how do you follow that? And of course, if you’re a writer of her stature, you do follow it with different kinds of books, which she’s done. I think writing the memoir was really important for her. Very different act, different part of the brain that was put into that book. And I think it freed her in a lot of ways. Again, I don’t know if she would agree with that, but it seems to me when that book was done, she was nervous about it because it was very personal and Amy’s very private. But I think she got it out of her system. She clarified probably a lot of her past to herself, but it was public. And I think that’s that’s a real issue, especially for someone like Amy, but for most writers when they write a memoir.

Interviewer: Yeah, you have. It was interesting. I don’t know if you remember, but there was this very interesting interview with Jeffrey Brown on PBS. And towards the end of it, she she basically said she was almost like saying, I can barely talk. It’s it’s so raw. You know, she sort of made this observation that, you know, it was that it was very raw and was it, you know, and yet at the same time, I’ve now seen her in two different settings where she’s speaking publicly. She then she strikes me as I’m usually good in public, like think of all the writers I’ve seen speak in public, including someone like, you know, David Sedaris who’s, you know, it’s like, Kitty, they’re right. Oh, she’s probably the best one I’ve ever seen. You know? So it’s an interesting tension between being private and yet. Wow, you know, and how much do you as a publisher and editor. How important is her persona and her ability to do that? In today’s world of publishing. It must be a real asset to have an author. That’s.

Dan Halpern: It’s huge. You know, it’s huge. Yeah. I mean, many authors many authors are not good at that. I mean.

Interviewer: So many authors are not good at what.

Dan Halpern: So many authors are are not very good at presenting their work to the public. I mean, it’s very private act writing. You’re alone. You’re just you in the page. And that’s what they do. That’s that’s who they are. They’re not performers, most of them. Amy I wouldn’t call her a performer, but she is when you listen to her. I think what makes her so magical in front of a group of people is there’s no barrier. You’re you’re getting it straight from her. It’s it’s not a act. You feel that if you’re sitting across from her at a dinner table, you’ll be hearing the same sort of delivery, the same kind of honesty. And also, as she’s talking, you feel that she’s discovering things. It’s not set. It’s always like it’s in motion and it’s happening in front of you. And she’s what are the things that that maybe is surprising to some people given her books is how funny she is. She is remarkably funny. She once gave a toast. I was getting some award, and she gave a toast, and it was. It was terrifying. And my my daughter was there and it wasn’t clear where Amy was going because I don’t think Amy knew exactly where she was going. And it was getting really out there to that boundary we were talking about. But she pulled it back. But after whatever I said, boy, we were really nervous for it because it was not we. You were not going to look so good if you had continued on that tangent. But that’s what I think it is. I think it’s that you are you’re allowed in to who Amy Tan really is. And whenever she speaks, that’s the way it is.

Interviewer: It’s amazing. So yeah you talked about that covered that I think he was speaking more of it largely. I think I’d love to hear more from from your point of view. In the opposite of fate. She devoted a considerable amount of time to talking about the pressures of being an Asian American. Was she an Asian-American writer? Was she American writer with an Asian-American background? Was she, you know, that sort of. Obviously, her life experience and her family genealogy legacy that, you know, part part of her story in her writing. But at the same time, she seems to talk a lot in the opposite field about some of the burdens of that and some of the things that she doesn’t like about. Identity politics mixed into red. I would imagine that you have had to wrestle with this issue many times over in terms of who gets to write what story. What your responsibility is as a writer. You know, and this seems to be particularly heightened these days.

Dan Halpern: For sure, these days.

Interviewer: So I wondered if you could talk about, like, you know, identity politics and writing over the years and bring us into the current environment. You know, does that make sense to you?

Dan Halpern: Yeah, it makes sense for me because I’m not Asian-American. For me, she’s just a great American writer. And the books, of course, the subject matter involves China and and Chinese-Americans. And but I don’t feel that’s something that I need or should address. I’m more concerned with the story and the writing and then the publicity people and the marketing people go out with it. And certainly that’s an audience that has been huge for her. We were out to dinner the other night in San Francisco, and as we were walking out, this young woman came up and said, Are you Amy Tan? And Amy said, Yes. Amy is always approachable. And she said, I just want you to know how much you have meant to me as a as an Asian-American, what your books have meant to me and guided me in my life. And I thought, wow, see, that’s I can’t I don’t know that. And I can’t pitch it like that. But her books do it for her. And yeah, that’s a huge part of the audience. But it’s a fine line because does anyone want to be considered, you know, in one category? She wants to be known for the writing period.

Interviewer: Right. Right. Yeah. It seems to be the opposite of Paige. She talks about I think what she’s getting at is the ego in academic circles is the idea that, you know, I think she’s without being specific, I think in some ways she may have been responding to what she perceived as her criticism, too, like, oh, you know, you don’t do justice to Chinese men or Asian-American men or men in general or or oh, you know, you don’t portray this in a positive light. You know, all these weird things that and and how writers, whether it’s Amy or anyone else, you know. There’s still ongoing battle and it seems to happen so often, which is and it certainly happens in film, just tension between people who write about work and what what their desires and wants are like. I can’t speak about this. Can’t tell you how many times in a Q&A someone raises a question. And my answer is, that sounds like a really good movie. Have you thought about making it right?

Dan Halpern: Right.

Interviewer: You know, it’s and it’s a similar thing, I would imagine, with writing. It’s like sometimes you hear these comments or these observations and you’re like, we’re just talking about a different a different book. But I think, you know, as you’re, you know, these days. You know, being able to source or or, you know, this idea of cultural appropriation. And I mean, Aimee’s obviously in safe territory because she has her she has great story. It’s personal moments and all that. Have you have you been mindful with people submitting manuscripts here in today’s world? Have you evolved to have a certain. Not a rule book, but in a sense as to, you know, if you have a writer who who writes from a certain you writes about a certain culture, certain that they’ll have any personal connection to. How would you feel about that? How do you work with that?

Dan Halpern: Yeah, well, I mean, it’s certainly well, this is sort of the MeToo movement since that started. Everybody is looking at manuscripts, looking at conversations and looking at actions in a very different way. And it’s it’s good. Obviously, it’s a good thing. I mean, Amy. Again to go back to. At the end of the day, you’re not going to please everybody. So for a non-Asian American reader, they want they want a good number. They’re not going to be as aware of. Are the men treated in a particular way in Amy Tan’s novels? And that’s not something that I can address, because it’s not anything that I know about. But I know if the characters are good characters and they make sense within the context of the story. But when you move out to two different kinds of readerships. You’re going to please some and not others. And as you said, write your own book if that’s what you want to do. If you want to focus on Asian men, write that novel. That’s not what Amy does. I mean, she is very involved with the women in her family, and that’s what she writes about. And nobody writes about that better than she does.