From Issue 15 (Nov 2011)<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSteven Amsterdam is a fucking nice guy\u201d, is how Mervyn Sloman, owner of The Book Lounge described him to me before my interview with him for the Open Book panel on Post-Apocalyptic fiction. He wasn\u2019t exaggerating. When I met Amsterdam for this interview, what was supposed to be a twenty minute chat over a cup of coffee turned into a two-and-a-half hour conversation about life in SA and Australia, politics, apartheid, acting, nursing, the multitude of jobs he\u2019s held and a little bit about his writing.<\/p>\n
Needless to say my interview was tons of fun. Mervyn was right, he is<\/em> a hell of a nice guy, and he\u2019s funny. When talking about writing, Amsterdam\u2019s eyes light up with the passion and excitement of a child in a candy store. That excitement is rivalled only by how much he enjoys his other job, that of being a palliative care nurse.<\/p>\nHe lives in Australia, but Amsterdam is a native New Yorker, and though he hasn\u2019t lost his New York accent, he\u2019s picked up the Australian inflection rise at the end of sentences. This makes him sound even cheekier, as every reply seems to come across as a question.<\/p>\n
We had a great time chatting for hours; I only hope that I managed to turn our conversation into a cohesive interview.<\/p>\n
We started out talking about Cape Town and, as one so often does with visitors to our shore, about the racial history of South Africa. After about forty minutes of him interviewing me I managed to ask him about his visit to Cape Town and what he\u2019s been up to.<\/p>\n
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Other than the Open Book Festival, what have you been up to since arriving?<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe Australian High Commission arranged for me to teach a class at the University of Western Cape and to do some workshops in one of the townships and that was fantastic. Due to some miscommunication, we arrived an hour late and instead of there being twenty eighteen-year-olds there were like forty ten-year-olds. I have these cards I use to get people thinking about story ideas, and I just held the postcards up and got the kids to tell stories. At first they wouldn\u2019t look me in the eye, but then they started to really jump to it.<\/p>\nDo you normally teach?<\/em><\/strong>
\nNo, but because the book is on the year 12 reading list I get called into schools, so it\u2019s not a regular<\/em> thing but I go and I do an hour about my book or I do an hour and a half writing workshops and that\u2019s really excellent. So I don\u2019t have a teaching qualification but it\u2019s more free form.<\/p>\nHow did your first novel end up as a school set work?<\/em><\/strong>
\nI have, in Australia, a fantastic publisher, they believed in the book. It was the first novel they published. They had been publishing anthologies before, and this is the big argument in favour of being with a small press – they just put [the book] forward for everything. It\u2019s worked out really well, and teacher friends have said they totally get why a teacher would want this on the reading list.<\/p>\nSo you\u2019re not a teacher but you\u2019ve worked as a travel editor, graphic designer, film crew… Do you have trouble holding down a job?<\/em><\/strong>
\n[laughs] The move to Australia was a good one for me, and I went there as a pastry cook, really thinking that was what was going to happen, and that I\u2019d end up owning a bakeshop in Melbourne. It turned out that their department of immigration is a lot stuffier than I\u2019d expected, and to work as a pastry chef I had to work at some place that hired a certain number of people and they had to prove that they couldn\u2019t find someone local and I had to be making a certain amount of money, so I ended up working in the sub-basement of a five-star hotel in Melbourne, which was great, [laughs] except that I got fired, because I wasn\u2019t fast enough for a five-star hotel. And then I had basically 28 days to figure out how I was going to stay in the country and my partner said, \u201cTake a writing course.\u201d I had<\/em> been writing my whole life, and I thought if I take a writing class in Melbourne no-one is going to see if it bombs. But I ended up getting a Masters, and still doing catering and some book-jacket design, but I still needed something that felt like a career, so I thought about social work. Except social workers get fired at a drop of a hat and it\u2019s a very frustrating job. I ended up knowing some nurses and I\u2019m good at science so I thought, \u201cLet\u2019s try a nursing degree too.\u201d<\/p>\nSo you just kind of backed into that career \u2013 for now, at least. How long have you been a nurse?<\/em><\/strong>
\nThree years.<\/p>\nAnd what\u2019s the longest you\u2019ve held a position?<\/em><\/strong>
\nEight years in travel publishing.<\/p>\nOkay, so you\u2019ve got five years before you need to find another career.<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe writing feels like it\u2019s set and the nursing also feels like it\u2019s set. I\u2019ve been incredibly fortunate to be able to do all of these and really fortunate with my nursing gig now because it\u2019s community nursing so I can say, \u201cLook, I\u2019ve got to go to a literary festival in another country,\u201d and so they treat me like a special guest, basically [laughs]. I\u2019ll go back and start working straight away, and do two or three shifts a week and then two or three days doing the writing and that\u2019s my more regular life. And yes, I do have trouble holding down a job, but fortunately the writing is a job that changes. Honestly, it would be different if the school gig hadn\u2019t come along, because my book would have gone quietly down, but now that generations of kids are reading it, possibly for as many as four of five years, that\u2019s actually a meal-ticket, that\u2019s a salary.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s very difficult, because the more I interview writers the more I realise…<\/em><\/strong>
\n\u2026there\u2019s no money in it? [laughs]<\/p>\nYeah. You mentioned nursing\u2026 what is a palliative care nurse?<\/em><\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s a great thing. My role is in the community, so let\u2019s say someone is given a terminal diagnosis but they\u2019re well enough to carry on living a roughly normal life [at home]. What I do is basically go and have cups of tea [with them] once a week or once a day depending on what\u2019s going on; sometimes there\u2019s a dressing that needs to be done or there\u2019s a medication or injection that we need to give them on a regular basis. But mostly it\u2019s making sure that they, or their caregivers, know what\u2019s going on. We\u2019re there as sort of the eyes and ears of the treating team to say, \u201cUm…she\u2019s looking yellow, you might need to test.\u201d Or if somebody says, \u201cI\u2019ve been vomiting blood for two days, should I go to the hospital?\u201d \u201cYes!\u201d Economically, for every cup of tea that costs the government this much money, the patients and families feel looked after – and we prevent trips to the emergency department, which are so much more expensive for the system, and miserable for the patient. So if we can come in the middle of the night and give you an injection and get you past whatever pain threshold you\u2019ve got going on right now, we can sort things out in the morning so you\u2019re not waiting on a trolley for five hours just to get<\/em> the pain medication.<\/p>\nAnd you\u2019re one person instead of an entire hospital and ambulance and…<\/em><\/strong>
\nRight, we\u2019re a small service, we serve a large group of suburbs so they know us. They know our names and we know their situation and we\u2019re in their homes, which is so much better. So that\u2019s what this kind of palliative care nurse does. On a ward, if somebody gets too sick, or if their family can\u2019t manage, they come into the hospice that we\u2019re connected to and then get round-the-clock nursing. But mostly what we see is families coping incredibly well and actually taking care of someone who is dying, which is what has happened for millennia, and that\u2019s what you do with grandma and your father and so on, and it\u2019s really impressive. A lot of what we do is patient or caregiver education and kind of teaching them that it\u2019s okay to die.<\/p>\nIt sounds like an incredibly harrowing kind of job, but the way you talk about it is so positive.<\/em><\/strong>
\nOh, it\u2019s sacred, it\u2019s necessary. I\u2019ve done this for a couple of years now and I thought I would understand death better, but I don\u2019t and I keep waiting for it to become clearer. I just still feel like all I\u2019m watching is a lot of behaviour, and the behaviour is amazing but I sort of want to unlock the secret of death.<\/p>\nYou say it\u2019s sacred.<\/em><\/strong>
\nTo be a part of the family\u2019s life at that point, you\u2019re part of that conversation and often you can facilitate really important conversations.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s incredible. When my child was born my partner asked me, \u201cWhy does it have to be so hard?\u201d and without thinking about it I answered, \u201cIt has to be hard. You\u2019re creating life, it shouldn\u2019t be easy.\u201d And I guess on the other side of it, the other side of life, you\u2019re extinguishing life.<\/em><\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s not going to be easy, yeah. I think there is a very similar quantity of fear around birth. And some of it is real and some of it is not.<\/p>\nBut back to your book. I really found it beautiful and hopeful. It frightened me in the sense of how long forty years actually is and how much can happen in that time frame. We don\u2019t really think that everything we know can change within our lifetime.<\/em><\/strong>
\nBut it already has.<\/p>\nYeah, but you don\u2019t notice it. <\/em><\/strong>
\nYou just don\u2019t perceive it, and then suddenly there are ATM cards and that\u2019s okay.<\/p>\nThis is your first novel. How did it come about? It sounds as if you\u2019ve been writing as a hobby for a long time.<\/em><\/strong>
\nWriting has always been in the back of my mind. I\u2019ve been writing a little short story here or there, or writing for a small local paper that paid nothing, or writing reviews in exchange for tickets or review copies and things like that. I did get to a point in my early thirties where I was feeling bad for not writing fiction, and I thought, \u201cWhy feel bad? Do it or don\u2019t do it, but nobody is waiting for your next book.\u201d Feeling bad about it is just stupid, so I actually just stopped writing fiction for about ten years and did other things. That\u2019s when I was working in publishing and graphic design and pastry and all that, and then slowly I kind of worked my way back into it. It turned out that the somewhat accidental decision to do a creative writing degree led to me to actually doing some creative writing and taking it more seriously. There\u2019s a type of writer known as the ambivalent writer, and that very much fits my profile. It\u2019s a little bit of a defensive measure like, \u201cIf I don\u2019t try too hard I can\u2019t fail too hard.\u201d So I wrote one story that came from a very small item in a newspaper, about an elderly couple living out in the bush and getting a bit of dementia. The governing body decided that they shouldn\u2019t have their driver\u2019s licenses any more so they took them away. The couple responded by doing this completely movie thing and they got in a car and drove as far as they could, which struck me as a beautiful start of a story.<\/p>\nLike Thelma and Louise – The Geriatric Years.<\/em><\/strong>
\nWith kind of a similar ending. And so I kept that in my mind as a start for a story. At the same time there was an American election on and American elections get very, very nasty, and very polarised. I had the thought, what if they just had a barricade between the country people and the city people and that would sort things out, then the country people could have their president and the city people could have their president. And I took this idea of the barricade and applied it to the couple, because from a story standpoint, that would increase the dramatic tension.<\/p>\nOnce I had those two elements together, I realised I was writing in a speculative framework so I could add to it in whatever way I wanted. So I made it that there was a medication that could help with the dementia, and only one of the couple had the dementia, so that the other was a caretaker, which makes for an interesting relationship. And then the last bit was, \u201cWho\u2019s going to tell this story?\u201d I knew it was going to be a grandson because I was close to all my grandparents. If I could have helped them make a getaway from old age I would have, and so I put an alter ego of myself in the back seat. But I didn\u2019t want him to be a passive narrator, so I made him a bit of a thief – so that as soon as they got through the barricade he could help them get by.<\/p>\n
I thought that the story I had to tell was about grandparents with this cute little grandson, and literally when I got to the last line I thought, \u201cOoh, I think there\u2019s more here,\u201d so I started writing the next story… and the novel grew from there.<\/p>\n
I think one of the hardest things for a writer to do is to introduce a new environment. Not only are you dealing with things like: \u201cWhat does the world within the novel look like? Who is your narrator?\u201d, and: \u201cWhat\u2019s happening?\u201d, but you need to bring all that in seamlessly, without turning into Basil Exposition. You chose to do that nine times, for each chapter.<\/em><\/strong>
\nI completely credit that to working with a writing workshop because it was so common that I would bring it in and they would say, \u201cWhat the fuck is going on here?\u201d Or they would say, \u201cOkay, pull back on the description, we get it, you don\u2019t need a crowd scene to tell us there was a pandemic\u201d. It\u2019s always about picking the right details and I think people responded to that. There is a lot in the way the book is written that trusts the reader, and people like that; it forces a close reading because there aren\u2019t too many words, so you actually have to keep reading to find out where you\u2019re at and what\u2019s happened.<\/p>\nI found myself dreading the end of every chapter.<\/em><\/strong>
\n[With a wry smile] Why? They\u2019re all so hopeful!<\/p>\nYes they are, but no matter how good things are right now, you know you\u2019re going to pick up on him a little later and things are going to be shit again.<\/em><\/strong>
\nSo you started with the second chapter and that, for me, is really where the book takes off. The first chapter is great…<\/em><\/strong>
\nBut it does a very different thing.<\/p>\nYeah, but it\u2019s a set-up. You kind of go, \u201cOkay, cool, this is what we\u2019re reading, family, kid, blah blah blah, we\u2019re getting there.\u201d And then the second chapter is like, \u201cOkay… something\u2019s wrong here.\u201d Is that when you decided to write the whole book that way?<\/em><\/strong>
\nActually, the chapter I wrote after the second chapter was the last chapter, and those two stories were published in an anthology by my publisher a year apart from each other. It was the last chapter of the book that led a book buyer at one of the bookstores in Melbourne to call the publisher and say, \u201cSee if this guy\u2019s got more stuff, he might have a book in him.\u201d Then they contacted me. The buyer told me later that he was reading the whole book because he loved both those stories. Then suddenly he gets to that last chapter and he\u2019s like, \u201cOh my God, this is what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d He said it was really just thrilling to be led back to the place and see how it fits in.<\/p>\nSlowly I developed an arc. I think of the book as having kind of three acts, with Margo being the middle act. I don\u2019t think it has a strictly novelistic feel, but that\u2019s one thing I struggle with when I read a novel – there\u2019re these hills and valleys that get very tiresome to me and I feel like one of my projects is to try and figure out how to keep people interested and feel satisfied at the end without<\/em> those same hills and valleys, like \u201cOh, here is where everything gets much worse, here\u2019s the bittersweet ending.\u201d And that\u2019s a challenge, because we\u2019re brainwashed with these structures.<\/p>\nSo the book was kind of like a puzzle for you.<\/em><\/strong>
\nYeah, and written completely out of order. The first chapter [in the book] was the last chapter written and that was really there to temper everything that follows it.<\/p>\nThe narrator becomes so used to the solitude of the years that even when he is surrounded by people and his life seems to be perfect, he seems incredibly introspective and withdrawn. Was that a conscious decision?<\/em><\/strong>
\nThat wasn\u2019t so much a conscious decision. What was<\/em> conscious was that I wanted him to have his emotional life be a little bit at odds with the world around him, and that really came from the third story because… You know in movies, when it rains, something bad has happened?<\/p>\nYeah, so actors can cry.<\/em><\/strong>
\nWell, they don\u2019t have<\/em> to cry because they can look out the window and tears will roll down the glass. I just think it\u2019s the cheapest fucking trick and there\u2019s a name for it in literary terms – it\u2019s called a \u201cpathetic fallacy\u201d, with \u2018pathetic\u2019 meaning \u2018pathos\u2019, so it\u2019s a false relation of something to the emotions<\/em>. So when I started to write that chapter I knew I wanted to write something that was all about rain, but I wanted to have everybody be as cold and calculating as possible. No emotions. Everybody is just out to use everybody else, but they gave me a reason to give him this inner life that is kind of at odds with what\u2019s going on. At heart he wants love, and you see that in that chapter, but circumstances are forcing him to kind of conduct himself in this way. So from then on I was really conscious that when he\u2019s got plenty he\u2019s actually quite alone, and I always wanted that to be who he is. I think his being a loner, but needing people at the same time, is something that happened more accidentally.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a phenomenally structured story. How much of that is thanks to the writing group?<\/em><\/strong>
\nThey never saw it all in one piece. In fact, my publisher saw it all in one piece before I did. I said, \u201cLook, these are the stories, I haven\u2019t sorted them out yet but I think they\u2019re like this.\u201d So that was… there\u2019s this term I\u2019m working on developing, called the \u2018fortunate unconscious\u2019.<\/p>\nYou leave large gaps between the chapters, do you know what happens in those gaps?<\/strong>
\n[With a naughty smile] To some degree\u2026<\/p>\nI think for me the biggest jump is from the first chapter to the second; from the second chapter on, I get it. But how he gets from that New Year\u2019s Eve to living with his grandparents is a jump.<\/em><\/strong>
\nTo me, what happens in the middle of those two [chapters] is something like September 11th. We all expected Y2K to be a big deal and it wasn\u2019t, and then the thing we didn\u2019t see coming<\/em> came, and then that actually did<\/em> change life. So to me what happens between the chapters is\u2026 something<\/em>.<\/p>\nThank you, that\u2019s very helpful.<\/em><\/strong>
\n[laughs]<\/p>\nWhy did you choose to start a post-apocalyptic piece in the past? It\u2019s very unusual.<\/em><\/strong>
\nSomebody told me, and this is not my answer, that it\u2019s a compassionate thing to do because on one level it\u2019s anchoring things. Maybe it\u2019s an alternate [world], but it\u2019s also flagging for people this disaster that didn\u2019t happen. I mean that chapter on its own is a very strange thing in the book because there\u2019s nothing that\u2019s happened. It\u2019s about a boy and his bi-polar dad. It\u2019s not about any sort of destruction of the world, it\u2019s about panic. That\u2019s the most panicked chapter and nothing has actually happened. So I wanted to put that point into readers\u2019 minds: that sometimes disasters don\u2019t happen.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s next for you?<\/em><\/strong>
\nI have a book coming out called What The Family Needed<\/em>, and it\u2019s kind of evolved in a similar way: I printed two stories about people that suddenly discovered they had powers, special powers, and I decided they were related. Then I decided that everyone<\/em> in this family gets a special power. This was a much more intentional book. This one I actually thought might see the light of day, whereas the other one I thought I might be able to print these all separately. This one I had to have an organising principle: Okay, why did they get these powers and why now<\/em>? Who\u2019s the lynchpin? So far the response has been really good. And that comes out in November. But I don\u2019t know if it comes out [in SA] then.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s what the internet is for.<\/em><\/strong>
\nIt comes out in Australia in November \u2013 there\u2019ll be an eBook version. I\u2019m scared of what\u2019s next. I feel a little duty-bound\u2026 some of my editors have gently said to me, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you grow up and write a book?\u201d<\/p>\nBut it is daunting. Practically all artists have their entire life to create their first product, and once it\u2019s successful they have a year to eighteen months to create the next one. That\u2019s what second album syndrome is about.<\/em><\/strong>
\nIn some ways I feel like What The Family Needed<\/em> is my first book, and now I\u2019m about to have second album syndrome. I\u2019m a little bit behind. With literary fiction they don\u2019t expect you to be out in eighteen months. If it were genre<\/em> they would want the next thing quick, but if, you know, five years go by, I think that would be a bad thing.<\/p>\nThough technically, your work <\/em><\/strong>is genre to a certain degree: super-powers and post-apocalypse.<\/em><\/strong>
\nSpeculative, but all writing is speculative and I really feel, as with dystopia and super-powers, it\u2019s all metaphor for me. All of this stuff works for me as a metaphor and I think the blessing of being a writer is that you can do all this stuff, you can have all these special effects, you can have magic, you can have the future. You don\u2019t have to hire anybody; you don\u2019t have to check with your producer to see if you\u2019ve gone over budget. So it\u2019s a freedom that writers have and part of me feels like I should just go hard-realist and another part of me feels like, no, this is a very interesting way to tell a story, so those are the stories that stick with me. Like District 9<\/strong>, I thought, \u201cWow, that\u2019s<\/em> a metaphor.\u201d I suspect I\u2019m going to stay in this alternative realm, to some degree.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/caticon-stalking.jpg\" "\\"caticon-stalking\\"")
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