Interview with Jon Clinch October's featured author of The Thief of Auschwitz

Please welcome to The Reading Frenzy our October featured author Jon Clinch whose poignant and not an easy read at times The Thief of Auschwitz we’ll be discussing the whole month and Jon will be joining in the conversation.

Here's Jon

Jon, welcome back to The Reading Frenzy, (to see our original interview click here) I’m excited to be sharing this novel with my readers in October and grateful that you’ve agreed to join in! Jon what led to your writing this novel?

One version of the truth is that the title came to me in a dream. Another version is that after I’d memorialized my parents’ generation in KINGS OF THE EARTH,. I wanted to honor that same generation on my wife’s side of the family.

Now that The Thief of Auschwitz has been out for a year now.  
Is there one thing that stands out to you about reader reactions to your novel?

I was delighted when the Jewish Daily Forward had kind things to say about it. The Forward was the literary home of Isaac Bashevis Singer, after all. And their stamp of approval suggested to me that I’d accomplished what I set out to do.

In your novel that we’ll all read together in October, which character besides Max spoke the loudest to you and why?

That’s a hard one. In many ways I think of the Rosen family as a single entity with many facets. Jacob’s steadfastness. Eidel’s grace and power. Poor lost Lydia. Among the minor characters, I guess I’d single out Gretel. Like me, she believes in the power of the written word to change the world and overcome evil.

If you had to pick one thing you want readers of this novel to come away with what would it be?

I’d like them to believe in a world suffused with parental love, even under the worst of circumstances.

What was the hardest part about writing this novel?

The hardest thing was creating a balance between showing the horrible truth and writing an engaging story.  A full accounting of the horrors of Auschwitz would have made the book just plain unreadable, and yet to discount those horrors would have been an act of bad faith to the people who endured them.

What are you working on now and when will it be out?

I’m about to finish up a science fiction novel under my pen name, Sam Winston. Sam’s first book, WHAT CAME AFTER, was a surprise Amazon bestseller last year. The sequel, INTO THE SILENT WORLD, should be out in a couple of months. After that, I’ll be finishing up a novel that’s been in progress for years now — THE INFINITE VARIETIES OF LOSS. It’s about my paternal grandfather, who was a bit of a troublemaker.

Jon many authors that I know are often crunching under deadlines, which places them in their own particular writing cave where the world around them disappears.
Does this happen to you too?

Not too much. I’ve been writing professionally for most of my life, first in advertising and now in fiction. So I tend to approach the whole business very dutifully.

Jon are you a full time author?

I sure am, although it’s getting harder and harder to make a dent in the world by means of what we call literary fiction. Hence Sam Winston and his post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Then again, I grew up reading that stuff.

Jon thanks for answering these questions. I’m sure there’ll be more to answer once the discussion starts.
See you on Monday October 7^th

^{Connect with Jon Website - Facebook - Twitter}

Week One October - 7-13 Book One
Week Two October 14-20 and
Week Three October 21-27 We'll discuss Book Two

^{My Review of The Theif of Auschwitz}

The Thief of Auschwitz
Jon Clinch
Unmediated Ink
ISBN13:9781479236664
258 pages

The story starts in 1942 when the Rosen family with no other alternative arrives at the train station to Auschwitz where for the next year through death, humiliation, degradation and torture their lives are documented. The story is told in excruciatingly painful words to read but also with all the humanness that makes this such an important novel. We’re introduced to all sorts of characters from the soldiers to the prisoners, from the truly cruel to those who’s cruelty resulted from the circumstances created by camp life.
And between the chapters of terror we learn of Max, the son who’s obviously made it through to an old age, who’s obviously followed in the footsteps of his artist mother, who suffers no fools, but has suffered greatly from the experience of monsters in the death camp known as Auschwitz.

There have been many stories written of the Holocaust; of the atrocities of the Nazis to the people they thought beneath them, who they thought less than human, most of who were Jews. I hope that trend continues especially now when we’re loosing the last of the victims, the heroes and all those who lived through WWII in one way or another.

In Jon Clinch’s latest novel he gives us a unique perspective of Auschwitz, the most recognized death camp during the Nazi devastation of Europe. He follows one family, not necessarily religious Jews, a family of some influence who unfortunately with no where left to run, no where left to hide found themselves at the train station deceptively made to look inviting by the flower boxes and the trompe-l’oeil clock always set at half passed three. The mother a painter, the father a barber and the children a boy of 14 and a small girl with a cold.

As all of these stories whether true or fiction it wasn’t easy to read, it’s comprehension is somewhat unbelievable to those of us who can’t imagine such evil. But it’s none the less an important story and I’m fortunate for the opportunity to have read it.
I will definitely be reading more of Clinch’s work.

Review of The Thief of Auschwitz plus Q&A with author Jon Clinch

Q&A with Jon Clinch
The Thief of Auschwitz

Just one quick note to mention; Jon has agreed to be my featured author in October of 2013 when we’ll discuss as a group this wonderful novel.

Debbie - Jon, welcome to the B&N.com General Fiction forum.
Jon -Thanks so much for inviting me. As you can imagine, writing can seem like a one-way street, without the chance to be around readers now and again. So moments like this mean a lot.

Tell us about your newest release, The Thief of Auschwitz.
My last novel, Kings of the Earth, was in many ways a memorial to upstate New Yorkers of my parents’ generation—country people whose voices are dying out and whose stories are on the verge of vanishing forever. In The Thief of Auschwitz, I hope to have created a second memorial to that same generation, this time honoring those on my wife’s side of the family of man—the Jewish side—whose stories are likewise in danger of being lost.

Reading and rereading the first-person accounts of Wiesel and Frankl and Nyiszli over a period of a year or two, I had no plan to write a book. But along the way I discovered something within myself that disturbed me to no end: the more closely I studied the raw materials, the more repellent they became and the more difficulty I had in maintaining my focus on them. It was as if the facts themselves, horrible and numberless as they were, were conspiring to drive me away again and again, preventing me from connecting with the people behind them as fully as I needed to.

Supposing that other readers might face the same difficulty, and intent on the preservation of these voices and these stories, I wondered if fiction might provide an answer. I hope that it has, at least a little, by way of The Thief of Auschwitz.

All three of your novels are historical fiction. What draws you to write in this genre?
I think I like the remoteness of it, the possibility for myth-making, the chance to bring readers to a place they’ve never been before. In Finn, it was the American frontier of the 1840’s, a place and a time that have been romanticized in our popular culture. I wanted to deliver the dark underbelly of it, which Twain hoped to show in Huckleberry Finn but in the end couldn’t deliver, thanks to the expectations of his Victorian audience. Writing in a different age, I set out to give his world to my readers warts and all— “with the bark on,” as Twain might have said.

The setting of Kings of the Earth was personally familiar to me and the history was a whole lot more current, because the book takes place in and around my home town during a period ranging from my parents’ youth to my own. It’s a feat of memory and mime, really, in which I worked to bring back to life a whole group of people—a whole way of life—that may seem foreign to readers in whose minds the phenomena of bone-deep poverty and backbreaking labor are tied more to the South than to the North. But believe me, it’s all real.

The Thief of Auschwitz is a different beast. Like Finn it’s based on research, not experience. My intent, though, wasn’t to provide some kind of new truth about the Holocaust anyhow; the facts are well known and thoroughly documented. Instead, I wanted to use the tools of fiction—character, plot, pacing—to tell a story that would bring those facts to a new and different kind of life.

Can you tell us how you researched for this novel?
The first-person accounts were the most helpful and inspiring, of course. Elie Wiesel’s Night, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Miklós Nyiszli’s Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account. More recently, Laurence Rees’ work—particularly Auschwitz: A New History—has added tremendously to the literature and was invaluable to me. (Rees’ 6-part BBC documentary, Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, is unforgettable.)

One thing I didn’t do was travel to Auschwitz, and there’s actually a very good reason for that. I’ve learned over time that in the business of creating a narrative I’m easily overwhelmed and constrained by the details of place and setting, and I wanted to keep myself free to move characters around without too much restraint.

You have a very eclectic background. Does this influence your writing?
On my father’s side I come from people who work with their hands, and on my mother’s side I come from people who work with their brains. As a result I tend not to shy away from either kind of work, and I see the grace and the honor in both kinds. This background has suited me for what’s been essentially a lifetime of entrepreneurship, mainly in advertising (my wife and I ran our own agency for about twenty years) and more recently as a novelist.

The first rule of writing is to sit down in front of the keyboard every day. The hours are long and the rewards are few, distant, and uncertain—so it helps to be self-motivated and unafraid of the long slog. It also pays to have a thick skin, which is something you can’t help but develop over a career as an advertising creative. My experience in advertising has also proven extremely valuable in my efforts to micropublish The Thief of Auschwitz instead of selling it to a major publishing house.

That’s the long answer. The short answer, of course, is that everything you do influences your writing—as long as you’ve been paying attention to the world around you!

Are you a reader?
Non-stop.

Do you enjoy fiction or non-fiction?
I grew up on fiction, and I still read a lot of it, but to tell the whole truth I’ve been reading a ton of non-fiction these days.

Who are your favorite authors?
How much space do you have? Starting with fiction, let’s say Larry Brown, Raymond Chandler, Flannery O’Connor, Mark Helprin, David Foster Wallace, and Thomas Pynchon. On the non-fiction side, the list includes Robert Caro, David Quammen, John McPhee, and the late Paul Fussell. Start anywhere with any of them. You won’t go wrong.

How does this release day compare to the first?
It’s pretty quiet, but then again they’re always quiet. The trigger gets pulled on release day, but the bullet never seems to leave the gun until a week or two later. There’s plenty of build-up and a lot of advance work, and then there’s a lag until the reviews start arriving and readers start finding the book and talking about it. That’s when the traction kicks in.

Plus, up here in Vermont where I live, there’s not a lot of action of any sort. It’s pretty much snow, moose, and maple syrup.

Your award list for your previous titles is impressive. Is there one that stands out for you?
Without question, the biggest moment was when the American Library Association named Finn a Notable Book. To have had the nation’s librarians decide that my work wasn’t just worth stocking on their shelves but deserved to be singled out as exceptional—worthy of becoming a core part of many library collections—was just beyond thrilling for me.

Do you have any Barnes & Noble signings or events planned?
Not yet, but I’ll keep you posted.

Jon, thank you for taking time out to chat with us.  Good luck with your novel.
My pleasure. And thank you.

My Review of The Thief of Auschwitz

The Thief of Auschwitz
Jon Clinch
Unmediated Ink
ISBN13:9781479236664
258 pages

The story starts in 1942 when the Rosen family with no other alternative arrives at the train station to Auschwitz where for the next year through death, humiliation, degradation and torture their lives are documented. The story is told in excruciatingly painful words to read but also with all the humanness that makes this such an important novel. We’re introduced to all sorts of characters from the soldiers to the prisoners, from the truly cruel to those who’s cruelty resulted from the circumstances created by camp life.
And between the chapters of terror we learn of Max, the son who’s obviously made it through to an old age, who’s obviously followed in the footsteps of his artist mother, who suffers no fools, but has suffered greatly from the experience of monsters in the death camp known as Auschwitz.

There have been many stories written of the Holocaust; of the atrocities of the Nazis to the people they thought beneath them, who they thought less than human, most of who were Jews. I hope that trend continues especially now when we’re loosing the last of the victims, the heroes and all those who lived through WWII in one way or another.

In Jon Clinch’s latest novel he gives us a unique perspective of Auschwitz, the most recognized death camp during the Nazi devastation of Europe. He follows one family, not necessarily religious Jews, a family of some influence who unfortunately with no where left to run, no where left to hide found themselves at the train station deceptively made to look inviting by the flower boxes and the trompe-l’oeil clock always set at half passed three. The mother a painter, the father a barber and the children a boy of 14 and a small girl with a cold.

As all of these stories whether true or fiction it wasn’t easy to read, it’s comprehension is somewhat unbelievable to those of us who can’t imagine such evil. But it’s none the less an important story and I’m fortunate for the opportunity to have read it.
I will definitely be reading more of Clinch’s work.

Buy the book here visit the author's website here

  

Thank You Jon Clinch

Please use this post to thank Jon Clinch for his gracious presence
during our read of his most amazing novel
The Thief of Auschwitz 

Jon I'm especially indebted to you for your guidance through some of the minefields of the novel. For bringing such a beautiful piece of work on on of the most ugly circumstances the world has ever known

and to all my readers those who actively participated and silently so
thank you too!

October Line Up Interviews-Reviews-Monthly Book Club Feature

Welcome to the October Schedule of The Reading Frenzy

This is my favorite time of year, not the prelude to winter, brrrr, no; but that first crisp cool morning after the long hot summer. The first leaf that falls and the remainder on the trees that change to the most exquisite colors.

I Welcome you to my October line-up for The Reading Frenzy

First I'm pleased to announce that my October featured book club read is ON!!! Yay, thanks to the wonderful author Jon Clinch and of course all my loyal readers. So without further ado let me show you my Ocober Line-Up and my monthly featured read.

I'm so pleased that Jon will be with us in October as we read his poignant and heartbreaking novel about the Rosen Family.
We'll do this a little differently since the novel is told in two parts book one and book two we'll be reading book one for week one and book two we'll discuss the next two weeks. The reading schedule is:
Week One October - 7-13 Book One
Week Two October 14-20 and
Week Three October 21-27 We'll discuss Book Two
I hope you'll put this on your calendar Jon is excited to chat with us about this, his previous novels and what's next.

Wednesday October 2nd
I'll be interviewing and have a GIVEAWAY with Susan Klaus

Thursday October 3rd
I'm pleased to bring to you a dear friend and wonderful storyteller Marilyn Brant. Those who are fervent followers will know Marilyn intimately as we've discussed her two previous award winning novels Friday Mornings at Nine and A Summer in Europe. So check in for our tete a tete.

Friday October 4th
I bring to you an interview with author Jeff High who'll be talking about his new novel the debut in a new series.

Tuesday October 8th
I'm honored to bring you an interview with #1NYT, USA Today and International Bestseller Lori Foster chatting with me about Getting Rowdy.

Wednesday October 9th
I'm interviewing award winning Brit Victoria Lamb, you say her name sounds familiar well check out our interview and learn all about her.

Thursday October 10th
Is my stop on the Partners In Crime Blog Tour for The Joshua Stone. I'll be presenting an interview with James Barney.

Tuesday October 15th
I'm pleased to bring you an interview with Diane Hammond about her new novel Friday's Harbor. Did you know that Diane was the spokesperson for Keiko the Killer Whale star of Free Willie? I didn't either to be sure and check out my interview with this amazing woman.

Wednesday October 16th
Is my stop on the Partners In Crime blog tour for Murder Has Consequences find out why author Giacomo Giammatteo lives in what amounts to a zoo in our exclusive interview.

Friday October 25th
I'm so honored to interview not only this amazing #1NYT and USA today bestseller but one of my all time personal favorites too. Please join me when Susan talks about her latest Lakeside Chronical a tender Christmas tale and you'll really want to read this one because it stars Daisy Bellamy's ex!

Tuesday October 29th
It is my absolute pleasure to bring you an interview plus my review from RT magazine of this wonderful novel written by a romance series diva and friend from across the pond Sara Morgan who's stories are impossible to put down and forget long after they're finished.

Wednesday October 30th
It's my pleasure to bring you another friend and past visitor to the blog and to my B&N forum when we read her last titillating novel Saving Max. This one is just as nerve-wrecking only in a much different way and a much different premise. 

I'm honored to once again be able to bring you an interview by Nelson DeMille, the date is TBD and could even happen in September so this is a great reason to keep your eyes on my blog.

I'm expecting to get confirmation any day that these two favorites will agree to an interview.
Fingers crossed.

                                  

Well folks that's my line-up so far for October, the one thing you can count on is that it will change there will always be add-ons so check everyday.

HAVE A SPOOKTACULAR OCTOBER