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-Hello and welcome to "Book Lust."
I'm your host, Nancy Pearl.
My guest today is Seattle native Thomas Kohnstamm.
And we're going to be talking
about his brand new book, "Supersonic."
Thomas, thank you so much for coming on the show.
-Thank you so much for having me. It's a true honor.
-Your first novel, which was "Lake City," was --
could you say contained by the neighborhood?
A place where you grew up and you know intimately?
-I think there was one scene that took place in Green Lake,
if I remember correctly, but yes.
It was very grounded in that neighborhood
and also very contained,
it took place over the winter break from college.
So essentially the holidays
and it was kind of a claustrophobic fit,
where the protagonist was also isolated in many ways
from the outside world. It was set in the early 2000's.
He didn't have a cellphone, didn't really have a way
to communicate out beyond the neighborhood,
so it was all a very contained story, yes.
-Yeah.
And so, you might have had a touch of claustrophobia yourself
by the time the book was done.
Because in your second book, you widened the camera angle a lot.
Talk about that. What led to that?
-Well, I actually started this book --
My initial toe hold for "Supersonic"
was a smaller story about stay-at-home parents
and a power struggle in a PTA.
It started in this sort of smaller, comedic story,
and then it just started growing and mushrooming in my mind
and became more of an attempt
to write a creation myth about Seattle.
A wide-angled, new take on what, you know,
all the different components that went into --
cultural and historical components
that went into making this place,
and I just started adding one story after the next,
after the next, and then putting them all together.
And yeah, the book now takes place in the 1860's,
1890's, 1950's, 1970,'s and 2010's,
and covers four families over 150 years of Seattle history.
-Did you do a lot of research for this?
-I did.
And I did different types of research.
I did quite a bit of reading.
I was born and raised in Seattle and I'm actually --
my wife and I bought the house
that I grew up in off of my folks when they retired.
So this was where my brothers drum set was,
where I'm speaking to you from right now.
So I have a lot of lived experience,
but the really lucky
or fortunate scenario was that just with deep roots in Seattle,
I have a lot of friends, family friends, acquaintances,
who have lived experiences in other areas beyond my own.
So I was able to speak directly with people
who worked at Boeing during the Supersonic project in the '60s.
Other family friends
who were born in Japanese incarceration
in the Pacific Northwest,
and just had very direct access --
I spoke also with Duwamish Tribal Services,
who put me in contact
with a number of different people with expertise.
And so I just feel very fortunate
that I was able to do a lot of my research
from direct conversations with people with lived experience.
-Yeah, and I think the reader will see that in the book,
because these people -- one of the things for example
that I was really struck by --
I've read a lot of early Seattle history,
and the white settlers coming,
which you talk about in your book.
But the white settlers were referred to
by the Duwamish Tribe, for example, as the Bostons.
And I thought that was just fascinating.
Do you remember where that came from?
-I believe that I first saw that in a couple of books
that I was reading.
But then I also worked closely with David Buerge,
who is a historian.
You're probably familiar with him.
And he was very, very generous with his time
and he was actually referred to me
originally from Duwamish Tribal Services
as the unofficial/official historian of the tribe
and he really helped me to -- you know,
at many points I would ask him like,
"How would somebody refer to X?
How would somebody refer to Z?" And it was things like,
"How would you refer to these other people?"
But also, would the character say that was a few years ago?
Or is the character not thinking necessarily in yearly calendar?
-Right.
-And would that be four summers ago or four winters ago?
So there was a lot of just trying to understand
the world view and some of those details came out of that.
I do, though -- in writing the book,
also it being a novel
and being a novel with comedic element to it also,
I wanted to hold this vision of Seattle,
I wanted it to be accurate on one level,
but I also wanted to hold it at arm's length.
So I was thinking very much
while I was writing it in terms of like,
how New York was to "The Royal Tenenbaums."
It's this sort of spirit version of the place,
but it's also --
I didn't want to be completely beholden to, you know,
did this happen in May 1971, or December of 1971?
-Right.
-So I wanted a little room for play and to try to --
while you know, at many points,
I'm dealing with very serious material,
I wanted is also to have a fun, engaging element
and be able to play with some of the advantages
of working in fiction. -Yeah.
And also working with such a big canvas of people.
I know from personal experience
that any novel is difficult to write.
But when I was reading "Supersonic,"
it just struck me again and again
how much fun you must have had spending time
with these characters.
Is that a fair assessment?
-It is a fair assessment.
I would be exaggerating if I said every moment
of writing a 400-page book was fun.
It's definitely rolling a boulder up a hill at points,
but I did really --
you know, I think I always try to aim to fall in love
with my characters or at least empathize with them.
You know, even the ones that are not intended to be likable.
You want to -- you know,
because we're also channeling something
from inside of ourselves in that process.
It's almost a performative process in writing the book.
And, yeah, I wanted to just explore different parts of,
you know, different emotional points.
It's kind of like being an actor a little bit,
an actor with no audience at the time.
You're just sitting there, you and your keyboard.
But, yeah, I enjoyed it.
And it's really,
I think, fulfilling to write characters
who aren't variations of me.
I think one of the big leaps between "Lake City"
and "Supersonic,"
while the protagonist of "Lake City" was in certain ways
kind of a shitty guy,
at least until he makes his turn at the end,
it started with some auto-fictional elements
and maybe my like worst insecurities about myself
taken to an extreme.
The very bad -- you know,
what if my life went in this direction?
Whereas in this book,
there's not character who is particularly Thomas-like,
and I think that empathetic process
of writing characters different from yourself is freeing.
It's not just fun,
but it's therapeutic in certain ways too,
just to start to explore further into the variety of ways
to live life and ways to be.
-Yeah, it's like a gift that novelists have,
because you do get to say, like, "What would my life have been
if I had opened the first pot shop in Seattle?"
Which one of your characters...
Which your character Bruce does.
I know that your first book was a travel book.
-Yeah, yeah.
-And I thought also, when I was reading "Supersonic,"
that in some ways, this is a travel guide, right?
-Yeah, that's a very good insight.
You know, I think --
I came up as a travel writer in my 20s.
I started actually writing phrase books.
I had a very kind of atypical path into writing fiction.
Where like an organic growth as a writer I started languages,
writing phrase books for the Lonely Planet
in the late 1990's, then I became a travel writer.
But I started to become frustrated as a travel writer,
feeling like I was being --
my first book was originally titled --
it was sold as "The Parachute Artist."
The name was changed and I don't like the new name,
but it changed during the publication process.
But "parachute artist" was an industry term for people
who are thrown into a situation and have the figure it out
and come up with some,
you know, polished copy at the end of that, if you will.
And so I started to become very frustrated
with this situation of, you know,
a person from North America or Western Europe or Australia
being sent to Venezuela for seven weeks
and coming back and saying,
"This is what Venezuela is like."
But I was still very interested in writing about place.
So as I shifted to fiction,
I found it really interesting to just dig deeper into place
in some -- you know, of course I still have shortcomings
in what I know about Seattle, but I have depth here
in a way that I feel comfortable venturing --
you know, I'm mixing metaphors here,
but some bigger swings and owning it.
And just trying to dig into --
you know, I don't think of places...
Seattle isn't the Space Needle or the Fremont Troll,
Seattle is -- or any city.
It's layers of micro- interactions between people.
It's the cultural elements that build the Space Needle.
Those are the flowers or the fruits of the --
you know, the roots that exist
in all these other cultural moments,
and so I tried to really
write this grand story of place
through a number of tighter domestic dramas,
in certain ways.
And there are different storylines in this book.
One's a love story, one's a status story,
one's kind of a conflict, land displacement story,
and it's between neighbors.
It all takes place in the same neighborhood,
all around this giant boulder that keeps cropping up,
with seagulls sitting on top of it.
But, yeah.
In the end, it is still a story of place
and a deeper dive,
multifaceted attempt to get my arms around,
where is this place that I was born, raised, and still live,
and a place that is always getting new waves of people
coming through and that I don't think necessarily has
a great sense of itself and its past.
And I wanted to write, you know, again,
a wider-lens, engaging creation myth for Seattle.
-Yeah, that's certainly how I read it.
And I wondered,
sort of to maybe turn the conversation
a little bit to craft.
How did you keep --
did you write the stories --
how did you approach this?
So you have this Bruce,
Loose Bruce, who wants to open this pot shop in Seattle.
Wants to be the first person to open it.
Did you write -- or Sami Hasegawa,
who is the woman who opens the book,
really, that we get to know,
who wants her children's elementary school named
in honor of her grandmother, who was --
-I would say the seagulls actually open the book.
-Oh right. -That represent --
To me, the seagulls and the rock represent
time before humans were here. -Yeah.
-Because we have to remember
that most of the history of this land had no human beings on it.
-Right, right.
-But, yeah, so I started with that story,
I jumped back in time to the 1890's story,
and then I added the 1970's Ruth and Larry story,
which, that's the love story, I guess,
would be the easiest way to define that one.
It's Sami's -- Well, I'll just leave it.
It's Sami's mom and her suitor.
And I wrote them -- I did not write any one section in one go.
I would do, you know, two chapters from one timeline,
and they changed POV's, so you know,
a Ruth chapter, a Larry chapter, a Bruce chapter, a Sami chapter.
I'm sure there are advantages and disadvantages
to playing that in either direction,
but one thing -- you know, or to try and write that, you know,
either in pieces or as a whole.
But for me, it helped me to really kind of keep my energy up
and engagement with, okay,
I just finally got this Sami chapter done and like, okay,
now I'm on to Bruce, and I get to keep revisiting friends.
And that rejuvenated me to push through.
And unlike my other books,
having such a broad field of characters, it's like,
there's just so much material to work with.
I actually cut about 30,000 pages from this book.
I had a different 19th century timeline
that wasn't really working.
It was a little more slap-sticky
and it didn't really fit with the book.
So I did write myself into, you know, a few corners.
But overall, this was much more --
you know, they talk about writers being architects
or gardeners, or you know, a pantser or a planner.
You hear these different terms for, like, you know,
essentially, are you planning everything ahead of time,
or are you going with the flow and seeing what happens?
-Right.
-And this was definitely much more of an attempt for me
whereas I, you know,
used to have everything on 3x5 cards
and planned ahead as much.
I couldn't have conceived of all this story ahead of time.
So it was really about sitting in front of the keyboard
and trying to just channel ideas from somewhere beyond,
and some of them worked and some of them didn't work.
But it did lead me to a much more expansive novel in the end.
-So did you write the novel
that you wanted to read?
-Yeah, I mean, I think to a degree I always have to do that.
-Yes, I agree. -Yeah.
I'm fortunate, too,
in that I have my own writing studio
here in Seattle that...
I'm able to pay my mortgage that way,
and I work with different companies
and do animation and video
and anything you can apply a narrative to, essentially.
So I'm in a fortunate situation with my novels
and creative writing that,
you know, I can go for it in ways that I want to --
like, yeah, I don't know that anybody else in the world
was necessarily dying for a novel set in Lake City
that took place at the Fred Meyer Deli.
But it's just, to me,
it's something that I find engaging
and humorous and, yeah,
and just wanted to make an attempt at writing stuff
that I would really like to see.
Of course, as you become more and more of a professional,
you have to temper your pure vision for something with,
you know, what goes out in the world.
I'm not, you know...
I would like people to engage with the book, obviously,
and buy the book.
But, yeah, I'm trying to just have my interest,
taste, and humor come through,
and hopefully some other people will like that, too.
-Yeah, it definitely did come through,
and I felt like...
I got to know who you were through the characters,
through the innards of all the characters, you know,
a little bit of you may be here, a little bit of you.
Why did you decide to call it "Supersonic"?
Was that your original title for the book in your head?
-Since a very early stage, yes.
Ever since it made the leap from the --
I had some different titles
when it was a narrower, smaller story.
But as soon as it made the jump to this more expansive book,
I see Supersonic --
not the basketball team,
but the Supersonic transport
that the basketball team was named after,
as essential metaphor for the book.
So, you know, I'll just give a very quick version,
but the Supersonic transport,
JFK originally talked about it in the '60s,
and it was going to be the American Concorde.
It was in the post-war era, an American technology.
We were going to invent our way out -- into the end of history.
It was going to change our relationship
with time and space.
We were going to be flying to Tokyo for the evening,
coming back the next day by lunch.
And you know what? It didn't work out that way.
And when the federal government canceled the funding in 1971,
we were the biggest company town in America at that point.
It cratered the local economy for a generation.
That led to the infamous last person out of Seattle,
turn out the lights.
And however, arguably, the engineering culture
that was created around that
laid the groundwork for the tech industry,
which obviously changed everything.
And so this central metaphor of, you know,
reaching high, trying to do things differently,
falling on your face, dusting yourself off,
trying again, and maybe not getting what you wanted,
but perhaps getting what you needed,
I saw it as working --
you know, that is very much a story of Seattle
and Seattle's boom-bust cycles
and thinking that we can do things differently,
whether it's operating systems or coffee
or, you know, e-commerce --
things that we didn't necessarily invent,
but just trying to put our own spin on stuff.
And I tried to arc that as the book,
and then each character within the book
follows a similar path too.
So there is a Supersonic at the core there for you.
-When you're not working on a book
or you're not doing your other work, what do you read?
What kind of books --
what's a good book for us to read that you enjoyed?
And let me ask it this way.
If we loved "Supersonic," what should we read?
-Okay, if you love "Supersonic," what should...?
Well, I've been -- so...
Originally, when I started writing,
I was much more interested in auto-fiction,
but I have been increasingly interested in braided novels
with multiple timelines.
Since writing "Supersonic" I was very inspired by
"Same Bed Different Dreams" by Ed Park,
which was a runner up for the Pulitzer last year.
It is at one level a history of Korea,
but -- North and South,
but it's also about the creation
of Tim Horton's donut shop in Canada,
the history of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team,
Oddjob, the bad guy from James Bond movies who threw his hat,
the filming of the movie "Friday the 13th."
There's a lot of stuff going on there.
It just really inspired me again on like what the novel can be
and why the novel is so resilient in a time
with so much other -- you know,
so many other forms of entertainment
that are often easier to digest.
I found that really inspirational.
Other similar books to that, a big influence --
Jonathan Evison, a Pacific Northwest writer,
is my good friend and also my mentor.
His books, "West of Here" and "Small World."
"West of Here" was a massive influence
a number of years back when I read it
and is a fictional version of Port Angeles
and the creation of that place.
Jennifer Eagan,
"Here Comes the Goon Squad" or "Welcome" --
I always just refer to it as "Goon Squad."
But that was multimodal, and you know,
different POV's, timelines.
Inspiring book.
"Cloud Atlas," David Mitchell.
And then I just read --
I botched the title on this one, too --
Alvaro Enrigue, "You Dreamed of Empires," which is a...
-Oh, right.
-...you know, an alt-history of the taking of Tenochtitlan,
the arrival of the Spanish, and, you know,
Moctezuma's welcoming of them.
And it's just -- I have a Master's
in Latin American history,
or Latin American studies, I should say,
within which I studied a lot of Latin American history.
And it was an intriguing spin on sort of the standard story
that you get in studying,
you know, your down the middle take on history.
I'm interested in people doing things differently.
I think anybody making an attempt
at doing things differently in a fresh way,
I'm just -- I don't know,
I'm impressed by anyone who writes a novel, period.
-Yeah. Right, indeed.
Well, Thomas, we're impressed, too,
by people who write novels,
and I want to just really thank you for coming on the show.
Thank you for your new book, "Supersonic,"
which I thoroughly enjoyed.
And I look forward to your next work.
-Well, thank you so much, and, again,
it's an honor to be on the show,
and thank you for all that you,
you know, have done for books in Seattle and beyond.
Maybe I should have written a Nancy Pearl storyline
in the story of Seattle.
Maybe there will be an iconic librarian in the next one.
We'll see what happens.
-I hope so. Okay. Thank you so much. Bye.
-Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.
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