Author Erik Larson discusses 'Lusitania' with Daily Herald book club
Author Erik Larson, who has written five New York Times best-sellers, including “The Devil in the White City,” will talk about his latest work and field questions from the audience during an appearance at the College of DuPage's McAninch Arts Center in Glen Ellyn.
Larson's appearance, scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10, with a preshow discussion at 6 p.m., will be presented by the MAC in collaboration with the Daily Herald Author's Circle Book Club and the College Lecture Series. He'll be focusing on his new book, “Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.”
A master of narrative nonfiction, Larson tells the story of the 1915 sinking of the luxury ocean liner during World War I by a German U-boat. “Lusitania” switches between the ocean liner and the U-boat that stalks her, leading to one of the great maritime disasters of all time and America's entry into the war.
“We are so pleased to be partnering with the McAninch Arts Center and the College of DuPage to present the Author's Circle Book Club,” said M. Eileen Brown, the Daily Herald's assistant vice president of strategic marketing. “Erik Larson is the perfect selection, taking historical events and making them accessible and relevant to readers. We are really looking forward to this discussion.”
Readers can join the Author's Circle Book Club for free at events.dailyherald.com. Members get a 20 percent discount on tickets to all Author's Circle events and a chance to win VIP tickets to meet the authors. Tickets start at $38.
The Daily Herald recently asked Larson about his work and his new book. Here's what he had to say:
Q. What lessons does the sinking of the Lusitania have for us in the 21st century?
A. None, really — other than this: One reason all 1,200 passengers boarded the ship that day was because they were confident it was too big and too fast ever to be caught by a German submarine, and further believed that no submarine commander would ever be so inhumane as to even attempt to sink it. We've lulled ourselves into the same delusion with regard to nuclear weapons — this strange idea that no one will ever dare to use them. A happy thought, but a delusion.
Q. How do you decide what historical topics to pursue?
A. It's a long, angst-ridden process that consists mainly of me stumbling around in the metaphoric dark until a little light comes on somewhere in the distance — a glimmer of an idea. Often it's a question that suddenly seems very important to answer: What was it like? Fill in the blank … For example, what was it like, what was it really like, to have been aboard the Lusitania on that last voyage?
Q. How do you think your journalistic background has helped shape the way you write?
A. My work in journalism, particularly at The Wall Street Journal and when I wrote freelance pieces for magazines like The Atlantic and Harper's, helped me develop expertise in nonfiction storytelling, specifically how to craft a story that would hold the attention of readers — something that academic histories, sadly, all too often disregard. It also gave me an eye for bits of detail that are capable of lighting the imagination.
Q. Who was your biggest influence in terms of your writing?
A. The writers of clean, elegant, spare prose — Hemingway, Chandler, Hammett, Steinbeck. Especially Hemingway. He's lost a lot of cachet, personally, but if you read him closely — especially his Nick Adams stories from the collection “In Our Time” — you can learn a lot about how to use words to maximum effect. He was a master at the art of not saying.
Q. Have you ever considered writing fiction?
A. I have indeed. I've got four complete novels sitting in my office, unpublished. Mercifully unpublished. I don't think I have a novelist's sensibility. Having said that, at some point I may give it another try.
Q. Your books are so meticulously researched. What's your process?
A. If I laid out the whole process, I would bore you to death, so I'll boil it down to this: You just get out there and go the distance. Collect everything you possibly can, from every archive possible. Always go to the scene of the crime, as it were. Amass 100 percent more material than you'll need. And only then start writing.
Q. What do you most enjoy when meeting with fans of your work?
A. What I most love is when a reader comes up to me and tells me that he or she was, for a brief time, transported into the past. That's my goal as a writer — to create as rich a historical experience as I possibly can, in hopes the reader will sink into the past and emerge with a visceral sense of what that past was really like.
Q. What's next?
A. No idea. I just killed a book proposal that I'd worked on for six months. Something about it just didn't work. And when I killed it, I felt nothing — except relief. A good sign.