Juliana, Roland, and Alexandra Merullo, photo by Amanda Merullo
Roland Merullo has his own category here on Endless Knots because of my deep regard for his work and his talent. Author of ten books, with two more on the way, his range is astonishing--from his earliest Leaving Losapas about a dejected Vietnam Vet who takes shelter on a Micronesian island only to be haunted by his life back home in a working-class Boston suburb to The Italian Summer, coming next Spring, about time he spent in 2007 with his three loves--golf, food, and family--at Lake Como.
I've read and savored (speaking of food) all of Roland's books, the only author other than Edna O'Brien for whom this is true. Why? Because his writing is inventive and interesting, his understanding of human nature unusually enlightened, and he's very, very funny. I was lucky to land in a novel-writing class of Roland's nearly four years ago, which led to getting to know him and to being beneficiary of his counsel. I'd say I wish the same for every writer but I don't because then we wouldn't have Roland's prolific output.
Just out is American Savior: A Novel of Divine Politics, a daring book about a US
presidential election. Why daring? Because Jesus runs for the highest office--on the Divinity ticket--recruiting a bit of a ragtag team to promote him, while he surfboards, disappears from time to time, and chooses his Native American mother as his running mate. It's impossible to read this book and not think about our impending election as the crucial issues blast out of every page--religion (obviously), authenticity, duplicity, honesty, trust, cynicism, and, need I say, the role of the media. But, as you'll see in this interview, Roland also plays with some deeper issues around belief.
Rather than write yet another review, which, after all, would be just one woman's opinion, I decided to fire off some questions to Roland. Here are his responses. If this prompts any questions from you, I'll send those to him as well.
Q: American Savior is the third in a series [following Golfing with God, whereby a pro golfer finds himself dead, in heaven, and recruited by God to teach him--or her--it's hard to say, golf, and Breakfast with Buddha, whereby an agnostic New York food critic finds himself on a cross-country (and pan-spiritual journey of enlightenment) with something/one akin to Buddha--maybe or not quite]. Did you conceive of all three originally or did one evolve from the previous?
A: No, I definitely did not conceive of them as a group. I started with Golfing with God, which had a strange history. Originally it was a non-fiction account of a trip we took to get out of the worst winter of our lives (debt, cold, snow, and one of our daughters diagnosed with cystic fibrosis). But it did not work as non-fiction, and so I turned it, after a few years, into a novel. My editor at Algonquin, the wonderful Chuck Adams [excellent interview with Chuck by Jofie Ferrari-Adler in this month's Poets & Writers], said he wanted another book that was along the same lines--funny, "spiritual"--and I had always wanted to see North Dakota, and I love driving, so that's how Breakfast with Buddha came about. American Savior grew out of my twin fascinations--politics and religion--and my fairly obsessive following of developments very early in the presidential campaign.
Q: You've now made main characters of God, Buddha, and Jesus. Is Mohammed next? Or have the various literary dust-ups around portrayals of him precluded that?
A: I have been specifically warned away from writing about Mohammed, which I think is a shame. The truth is, though, that I don't have much knowledge about Mohammed, or any particular interest. I have a detailed proposal written for a next book along the same lines, but I don't want to say any more about it. For me, writing is a way of working out the things I think about anyway, and I have pondered our existential predicament endlessly every since I was a little guy. These books feel like a natural extension of all those thoughts.
Q: Your early books - Leaving Losapas, A Russian Requiem, and the trio, Revere Beach Boulevard, Revere Beach Elegy, and In Revere, In Those Days, were all quite serious but these recent ones are hilarious. What happened to you as a writer to release your inner comedian?
A: That's a good observation. I think there was a way that I had to take myself seriously at first. It was a kind of defense against some imagined criticism. And, like a lot of young writers, or aspiring writers, part of my motivation came from wanting to be like the famous writers I idolized, to have a life like their lives, to be spoken about that way, and they were all serious types, at least on the page. I have grown out of or away from most of that. Having children helped. There is a way in which the love a child gives you--and the love children bring out in us--can make you not have to prove things to yourself or others. Maybe a better way of saying it is that having children--which Amanda and I did at a later time than most people--had a great healing effect on me. I was always goofy-funny in person, especially after a couple of drinks. Somehow, after the girls were born, I let myself be that way in print.
Q: This book, American Savior, is biting satire, sending up everyone from Larry King to George Stephanopolous to the whole political process. Have you gotten any hate mail for this or for portraying Jesus as almost human?
A: Strangely, no. I did a radio interview recently that had people calling in. This was in Alabama. And a Baptist pastor called in and I thought, "Here we go; the guy is going to hate me." But that was my own prejudice talking. He understood the book in exactly the way I meant it to be understood, as a very reverent, if slightly offbeat look at the way we behave in America now, especially in big campaigns. I tried not to be too unkind in the depictions of well known commentators. I poked fun. There are a couple of them whom I felt really had it coming, so I tried to give it to them. The heart and soul of the book is the different ways different people react to a holy being. It's more about that than about Jesus. I have seen a few online reviews in which people take some mild offense, but I don't pay a lot of attention to reviews, on line or otherwise. There are always going to be people who dislike a book. No writer pleases everybody, and it is a mistake to try.
Q: American Savior is also prophetic. A "good" candidate who seems committed to kindness and helping everyone - a "transformational figure," as a certain current "one" has been called, runs for office and throws the others off their games. Was there a moment while writing this when you realized that you might be writing an allegory?
A: Late in the game, yes, when people started making Obama into a larger than life figure. But I started the book before I or almost anybody else knew who he was. And, while I admire him, I think there is still a fair distance between him and Jesus and I really did not write scenes in the book to correspond to his ideas or personality.
Q: What surprised you in writing this book, if anything?
A: The realization that the people around Jesus in the Bible were really pretty troubled and ordinary. I had always seen them as special, and in a way, of course, they were. But they were disloyal, competitive, vain, whiny, full of doubt and fear and confusion, and out for themselves in a lot of ways. Like the rest of us. Writing the book helped me understand that better. The other thing was that Jesus has become a figure a lot of people don't want anything to do with. They have had Jesus crammed down their throat, and they are tired of hearing about him from glassy-eyed, smiling, know it all types. Which is a shame, but perfectly understandable. Others don't want him messed with. They know exactly who he is, and how he would behave, and God forbid you challenge their idea of him. It would be funny if it didn't cause so much trouble. I talked to several of my Jewish friends, too, because I wanted to know how they thought of Jesus. What surprised me about that was that they all seemed to say he was not a big deal in their lives. No negative feelings, not many positive feeling, just not an issue.
Q: I understand that you don't outline your books. Do scenes come to you as the story unfolds or do scenes come whenever and then you find where they fit?
A: I outline a little bit, but usually only after I get going, and I change the outline about as often as I change shirts. It just doesn't work for me to set things out. It deadens the book, takes the surprise out of it for me. Scenes come to me as I go. I'm a good Virgo, and pretty orderly in some ways, so I simply can't write in anything other than a chronological order. Chapter four comes after chapter three. I just start with an imagined scene and sometimes a very general idea of where things might go, then I try to figure out what the characters would do next in real life, and to have those actions make sense, and give the book some kind of tension.
Thanks, Roland. As they say in the biz, moretocome, moretocome, moretocome...
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