Interview with Ben Winters, Author of Android Karenina and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

Inquiring readers: Ben H. Winters bravely left a comment on my in-depth analysis of his new steam punk mashup, Android Karenina. I was verklempt. Imagine, a famous author visiting my humble blog! I am still waiting, but in the meantime, Ben was kind enough to answer a few questions.

Hi Ben: Thank you for agreeing to participate in this Q&A. I must say that you made a fan out of me when you left that gracious comment on my blog.

Even though I was unable to complete more than one paragraph in the first Chapter of Android Karenina, I thought that you managed to capture an amazing amount of angst and subtext in the opening lines. Did you want readers to learn anything from your book?

Well, yes and no. First and foremost, it’s a work of popular entertainment, so the goal is for readers to have a good time -- to laugh, to be drawn in by the characters and pulled along by the story.

At the same time, there is some food for thought to be had here, if a reader is up for it. For example, Tolstoy’s original is full of anxiety about how technologies like the steam engine and the telegraph are transforming society. By vastly accelerating the pace of that technological change, and deepening the violence that surrounds it, I’ve juiced that anxiety, and (potentially) asked the reader to consider how rapid technological innovation is changing our contemporary society.

You should try reading it again. The second paragraph is amazing.

Yes, er, *cough.* What did you do before you began to write mashups?

Punk rock bass player, record-store clerk, ice cream scooper, transcriptionist, essayist, movie concession stand guy, small businessman, journalist, playwright, lyricist/librettist, cat-sitter. Although I was such a bad cat-sitter that I ended up in small claims court. Long story.

Quirk Books covers are fantastic, as are the pen and ink drawings inside their books. Do you have any say over the artists?

Zero, but I’m totally smitten with their work. Both Doogie Horner, who designs the books, and Eugene Smith, who does the illustrations, are total geniuses. As a rule, authors are disappointed with the art of their books -- I am the enthusiastic exception to that rule.

Did you develop those incredibly inventive reader's discussion guide questions or did it take a village?

No, that’s me (and thanks!). With both Sea Monsters and Android, the “discussion guide” was the last thing I wrote, and it was so much fun. Also quite liberating to write in my own voice, after a few hundred pages of trying to channel someone else.

When Android Karenina makes the Oprah book club, how do you think you will handle all that fame and mulah?

My plan will be to tell Oprah some outrageous lie, like I was raised by a family of crack-addicted wombats or whatever, so that I can later go back on the show and beg her forgiveness, thereby doubling my national television exposure.

Now, let's turn to Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. How DARE you transform Colonel Brandon's handsome visage into a Regency version of calamari sushi? *Stamps foot*

I have to say, the vast majority of Jane Austen fans have been enthusiastic about Sea Monsters -- but if there’s one thing that causes you folks to get your complicated 18th-century undergarments in a bunch, it’s Brandon’s face.

For the record, it was Austen who made the poor guy rheumatic and awkward and so terribly, terribly old (“on the wrong side of five-and-thirty”) All so Marianne can learn an important lesson about true love; all I did was put a fine point on that lesson. A fine, writhing, squishy, tentacled point.

Well, Ben, I must admit that was a pretty lame answer, but nevertheless I think you have charmed a host of Jane Austen fans. Thanks for being such a good sport. May you be able to purchase many Class I and Class II robots with the sales of your mashups.

Thank you! I think people like me write books like this for the same reason you take the time and energy to write a blog like yours: Because we take joy in literature.

Yes, we do have that joy in common! One last question. Do you have any interest in dating my niece? She makes Cameron Diaz look ordinary.

Sounds great. Let me just run it by my wife.

More on the topic:

• Order Android Karenina at this Quirk Books link
• Jane Austen's World review of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
• Ben's humble abode (and cute kid)

Android Karenina: A Tolstoy Steam Punk Mash Up and Book Give Away

Don't rub your eyes in disbelief. You read the title right - Ben H. Winters and Leo Tolstoy combined their talents to produce the latest Quirk Books mashup, Android Karenina. I tried reading the book, yes I did.

This is how far I got: Chapter 1, Page 1 -

Functioning robots are all alike; every malfunctioning robot malfunctions in its own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonsky's house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with the French girl who had been a mecanicienne in their family, charged with the maintenance of the household's Class I and II robots..."

And? .... I could not continue. I will leave it up to author Ben H. Winters (who also wrote Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters) to explain why he wrote the book. Even he admits that Leo Tolstoy lovers will hate this effort:

So would he have embraced my new book, which takes his masterpiece and adds talking robots and lizard-aliens from the sky? Which sends Anna and Vronsky not to Italy for their adulterous quasi-honeymoon, but to a colony on the moon? Which replaces the train, the symbolic keystone of the whole story, with the Moscow-St. Petersburg High Speed Antigravitational Massive Transport?

Absolutely not. Leo Tolstoy would have loathed this book.

To which I say, with all due respect to my esteemed pretend-collaborator, tough noogies.

- Anna Karinena Out Today: What Would Tolstoy Say?

Ben goes on to say that he loved Anna Karenina. Well, I didn't. While I found Tolstoy's original a powerful book, I can't exactly say that I loved reading it, though it did lead the way to my reading a number of other Russian authors, notably Turgenev. Back to Android Karenina. Here's what Quirk Book's press release said:

When these copper-plated machines begin to revolt against their human masters, our characters must fight back using state-of-the-art 19th-century technology -and a sleek new model of ultra-human cyborgs like nothing the world has ever seen."

Such absurdity might elicit laughs (and a serious influx of cash into Quirk Books' coffers), but this is not my kind of humor.

In The New Yorker, perplexed critic Elif Batuman, unsure about the book that plopped on her desk, decided to seriously critique it. She wrote: "The thing is that Tolstoy’s characters already lived in a “world of robotic butlers, clumsy automatons, and rudimentary mechanical devices...Tolstoy didn’t know about steampunk or cyborgs, but he did know about the nightmarishness of steam power, unruly machines, and the creepy half-human status of the Russian peasant classes."

Um, ok. To each his own.

If you are eager to read 538 pages about robot love (with 9 illustrations and a reader discussion guide), then perhaps you will be intrigued enough to leave a comment on this humble blog. Who knows, you might even win a free copy of Android Karenina! If anything, it makes a great doorstop! Only those who live in the U.S. or Canada are eligible. (So sorry.)

If you would like an opportunity to win this book, please leave a comment by completing a statement begun by Ben H. Winters:

"Bottom line, I didn't write Anroid Karenina for Tolstoy, I wrote it for ..."

Contest ends on midnight EST USA next Wednesday, June 15. Winner announced. Contest closed. Congratulations Courtney!

Posted by Vic

Author Ben Winters on Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

Well, at least he is having fun with the concept.