by Leah Bloomberg
STAFF WRITER
Josh Emmons is a busy man these days as Scribner has just published a second book by the author/professor. He is so busy in fact that I had to interview him via e-mail because he is out of town on a job interview. Even through the computer he conveys fabulous language and literary capabilities. Here is what he has to say about his second novel published by Scribner.
What is your newest book about?
My new novel, “For the Love of God,” is about a man who has an affair with the daughter of a new American religion called the PASE (an acronym for the Prescription for a Superior Existence), which borrows the Buddhist idea that desire is the source of all human suffering and forbids its followers from having sex. Our hero, Jack Smith, therefore, because of his relationship with Mary Shoale (the founder’s daughter), is seen as a threat and must do everything he can to stay alive. Seven or eight plot twists later, Jack has to choose between saving thousands of people’s souls and living for love.
Who publishes it?
The book will be published by Scribner, which also published my first novel, at the end of this year or the beginning of 2008, and it will be available everywhere (bookstores, Amazon, etc.).
Who is your favorite character in “For the Love of God”?
My favorite character in FLOG is its protagonist, Jack, because he, like most people, is trying to lead a positive, healthy life while encountering myriad reasons to lead its opposite.
How long did it take you to complete this book? Is it congruous with the time you generally spend on your novels?
I worked on it pretty steadily for about two and a half years: though in the middle of that period Hurricane Katrina forced me to evacuate New Orleans, where I was living at the time, and hole away in Seattle for a few disruptive months. My first book took me about the same length of time to write: 2 1/2 years: though I wouldn’t draw any conclusions from that. Some novels take 6 months to write (“As I Lay Dying”) while others require 16 years (“Finnegan’s Wake”). It’s all a combination of time, patience and inspiration.
What is your favorite novel?
George Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” the story of several people who live in a small English town in the 1830s. It’s about love, medical advances, Machiavellian civic politics, the soul’s recognition of itself and others, art, religion, industrialization, death, etc. In short, it’s about everything, brilliantly. One can learn more about the human experience from “Middlemarch” than from any other single book I can think of (with the possible exception of Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”).
As I said, Emmons is a busy man, currently out of town on the East Coast for a job interview at a small school in the middle of nowhere; probably Whitman’s equivalent but snowier and, well, on the East Coast.
Regarding his future and current experience at Whitman thus far, Emmons wrote, “My students are smart, energetic and curious (the greatest quality a student can possess), and I’m very grateful to be able to spend a year among them. In June I’m moving permanently to Philadelphia, so Walla Walla will be my last home in the west (I’ve spent most of my life in California). I’m already full of nostalgia.”
