Books on PAPERMAG: The Lazarus Project and Balthrop, Alabama's Reading List

FEATURED BOOK: The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead, May 2008)

So Bosnian-American Aleksandar Hemon is this crazy-rad brilliant writer whose work I first became acquainted with when I read his second collection of short stories, Nowhere Man, which, I must concede, contained passages that I had to read more than once. Hemon’s writing is dense but passionate-- there’s a sense of security in it, confident clarity, and yet it also feels as if words and meaning and sentences have been newly discovered, formed for the first time. His debut (and highly-anticipated) novel, The Lazarus Project, is about a young Chicago journalist (originally from Eastern Europe) in today’s world, who becomes fascinated by the death of an alleged anarchist in 1908 Eastern Europe.

For our first installment on our newly launched BOOKS on PAPERMAG, Hemon answered some questions for us via email.

Rebecca Carroll: You have such an interesting personal story -- I think it's probably difficult for most people or readers to fully grasp what it must have been like to not only learn to speak the English language, but to learn how to write the English language in such nuanced prose. Can you talk about that process a little?
Aleksandar Hemon: The process took place a long while ago. Early on in my time here, I realized I would have to write in English and gave myself a deadline (five years) by which I would be able to write a publishable story in English. I spoke English well enough to communicate -- I brought with me an Advanced Learner's Oxford Dictionary. The language for writing, I knew, would have to be acquired from books. So I read, a lot, all the time, writing down the words I did not know, some of them over and over again, and then I would look them up. It took me three years to write a publishible story in English -- I published it in The Question of Bruno. What happened in those three years, among other things, is that the English language entered and settled in my subconsciousness. I remember dreaming in English, and, more weirdly, I found myself remembering in English.

RC: Your novels deal consistently with war and themes of war -- are there different rules for writing about war than there are for writing about other things, like people, relationships, or the imagined life outside your window?
AH: There are no rules for writing anything. That's the whole point of writing literature or engaging with any kind of art -- you pursue a particular kind of individual freedom or, at least, autonomy. Moreover, war is all about people and relationships, their destruction.

RC: In your new novel The Lazarus Project, you write about a different era -- you get inside the mind of a Jewish immigrant living in 1908. Beyond basic research, how exactly do you do that?
AH: The mind always reflects the world it operates in. What I had to do was to imagine the world in which Lazarus lived and died. That world was in some ways entirely different from and exactly the same as ours.

RC: I found Nowhere Man to be thrilling and difficult and unique; I tend to read like a writer, though, and sometimes forget to just get lost in the beauty of the language. What are some of the books in recent history that thrill and inspire you? And how do you read -- as a writer or as a reader or just as you do?
AH: Define recent history. Lolita is recent history. In fact, Madame Bovary is recent history. Having said that, W. G. Sebald's books are beautiful and brilliant and necessary. I still have not reread them enough. I always read like a reader, a devout, passionate one. In fact, I write like a reader. I write books I would like to read.

RC: How do you feel about The Lazarus Project as a whole? If you were describing the story to yourself, Aleksandar Hemon the reader, what would you say?
AH: I love it. I love the people in it. I don't have to describe it to myself, because I created it. But if I absolutely had to describe it, I would say it's about love.

**WHO’S READING WHAT**

Balthrop, Alabama, folk-rock band

Pascal Balthrop (lead singer): As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

“A classic small-town story. I love how he uses different characters to tell the story from different perspectives. And I love how the slow kid's first experience with death is watching a fish die, so he thinks his dying mother is also a fish.”

Andrew Vladeck (banjo): The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

“A giant talking cat and Satan come to a fledgling USSR to throw their Annual Ball --along with the universal themes of apartment-hunting, insane asylums and side-trip to biblical Jerusalem. What more could you want?”

Chris Buckrdge (bass, alto sax): The Cat Inside by William S Burroughs

“I'm a huge Burroughs fan, from his writing to his methods to his philosophies and observations. This book, however, isn't his usual cut-up or homo-sex junky-athon -- it's the reflections of an old man who loves and needs and identifies with his cats. William Burroughs buying his cat’s food at the market... priceless. It's very sweet.”

Therese Cox (accordion): Catch-22 By Joseph Heller

“I was raised on M*A*S*H reruns and love the idea that a war story can be comic, dark and philosophical at the same time. This book is full of absurd wordplay and I love how Heller introduces the characters according to their quirks: ‘Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family.’ I'd like a version of that engraved on my tombstone.”

Lauren Balthrop (keyboard & vocals): Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

“The short-story and subsequent novel following the journey of Charlie Gordon brought tears to my eyes laying on the floor of my den in eighth grade. I figured anything that could stir such emotion must be good.”

Matt Moon (tenor sax): The Human Stain By Philip Roth

"I like it ’cause that's what Momma used to call me when I was little. She said ‘You're nothing but a stain on me. You're a dirty little stain and I wish I could wash you out of my life.’ I miss Momma. Also, I like boxing.”

You can buy Balthrop, Alabama’s latest record, Your Big Plans & Our Little Town, at www.balthropalabama.com.

Photo of Balthrop, Alabama by Bernie DeChant