Read our interview with Michael Tucker, the author of LIVING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy.

You’re an actor who has appeared on television, in film and on the stage, but both your previous book, I Never Forget a Meal, and your new one, Living in a Foreign Language, deal with your passion for wonderful food.  Have you always been a foodie?  Did you ever think about becoming a chef?

I've been passionate about good food since the first time my parents took me out to a restaurant and I realized in a flash just how bad a cook my mother was.  Then, when I got to college and had my own kitchen, my self-education began in earnest.  I had thoughts of chucking the whole acting thing and going to culinary school until a friend of mine, a very successful chef and restaurateur, pointed out that cooking professionally would ruin the whole experience for me.  It would turn what was for me a relaxing, almost Zen-like experience into something filled with tension, anxiety and an obsession with the bottom line.

In the book, you touch on how Italian culture is different from American culture, particularly the slower laid-back lifestyle, as exemplified by those long, lazy meals. Did your experience there influence your attitude when you got back to the U.S.?

I have found it difficult to translate the Italian experience to our life here in the States—especially in New York.  It's not a life style one can maintain in a vacuum.  You need friends around who are moving at the same speed and, more important, a culture around you that supports the dolce far niente attitude of life.  I've found it better to live in the Italian manner when I'm in Italy and pick up the pace when the jet touches down at JFK.

A great deal of the book focuses on your wife, Jill, other members of your family and your friends. How did they feel about being included? Did you discuss it with them beforehand?

Jill saw every chapter as soon as it was finished, and we often discussed just how much of our personal life I should be revealing.  She, of course, is an actress and, as such, has a healthy exhibitionist streak.  Sometimes she pushed me to reveal more. I also showed chapters to friends who were depicted and got their permission before proceeding.  Also with our kids.  So far, no law suits.

The descriptions of the amazing Italian food are so richly and lovingly detailed. What was it like to recount those meals while you were writing the book? Are there any food writers or chefs that you look to for inspiration?

It was circular.  I wrote about Italian food, which made me hungry for more, which gave me new inspiration to write.  So I simultaneously produced a book and a new belt size.  The real epiphany was shopping and cooking on a daily basis over there.  Every meal, every menu came out of what was fresh and local that day—nostrano is the word for that.  It means "ours.” My favorite food writers are my favorite writers in general.  Topping the list are A.J. Liebling and Calvin Trillin.

Is there a single food-related memory that stands out from your time in Italy?

There are so many food memories—the first time I had the local pasta with truffles was big; grilling pork ribs over wood that needed only a little salt and pepper to be the best tasting ribs of my life; the first bite of a sausage from Norcia, the pork center of Italy; but the best memories were of sitting around a table for lunch with our wonderful friends, eating, drinking, talking for hours—and what we talked about mostly was what we would be having for dinner.

Read our interview with Nancy Verde Barr, the author of BACKSTAGE WITH JULIA: My Years with Julia Child

You’ve previously written cookbooks (We Called It Macaroni and Make It Italian) and a novel (Last Bite)—what prompted you to write a memoir about your time with Julia Child?

My agent, Jane Dystel, prompted me to write the memoir. I was just finishing my novel, Last Bite, which is a fictional story based on some of the events that occurred when I was working with Julia in television. Julia and I talked and laughed about what was in the book, but she died before I finished it. When she did, Jane asked me if I had thought about writing a nonfiction account of those wonderful memories. In the process of writing the novel, I realized that I enjoyed the break from writing cookbooks since it eliminated all those hours spent developing and testing recipes.  The idea of writing another book without recipes appealed to me, especially since Julia was the subject.

Backstage with Julia gives such a lovely sense of Julia Child as a friend and mentor.  Is there any particularly valuable lesson or piece of advice you learned from her?

Indeed there are! And I began to learn those lessons early. Shortly after I began to work with her, I realized that she had a remarkable and well-grounded sense of self-confidence. My sons were toddlers at the time, and I knew I wanted them to grow up feeling that way about themselves, so I asked Julia what made her like that. She told me that her mother always thought everything she did was terrific and told her so. I started that minute to emphasize everything that was positive in my boys. Today they have what Julia had, and I love it. I’ve always considered that her most valuable advice to me but the lessons I learned from her permeated many aspects of my personal and professional life. I can’t count the times that in the midst of some dilemma, I have asked myself, “What would Julia do?,” and come up with the right decision.  

It seems clear that Julia was a really warm, fun personality.  Would you share with us one of your no doubt numerous fond memories of your friendship with her?

Julia loved to tease and be teased, and it was fun to tease her because she always got it, and her eyes would sparkle with the most delightful twinkle. She usually came right back with an immediate, quick-witted retort. If the teasing was shocking or suggestive—all the better. She particularly liked bantering with my late husband, Roy Bailey, who was as naughty as she was. One night we were having dinner at a restaurant where the tabletop was somewhat overcrowded with glasses, flowers, and tall candleholders that did little to illuminate our surroundings. Julia was describing an event to us and gesturing so enthusiastically that she accidentally hit one of the candleholders, which fell over knocking her glass of ice water directly into Roy’s lap. Roy immediately responded in a falsetto voice, “Whoa! You got me where the sun doesn’t shine.” Julia gave out her great hoot of a laugh and then, not to be outdone, told Roy that the candleholders were as useful as “tits on a boar hog.”

Cooking for TV segments must have presented all sorts of timing issues not found in other settings.  What did you find was the most difficult part of getting everything done smoothly?

When we worked on the shows for Good Morning America, we always did one live show and then taped four or five segments. Because the shows were only two to four minutes long, each segment had multiple setups called swaps from one pan or bowl to another. Keeping track of the equipment and what food was needed for each swap was always a challenge. Julia outlined her scripts carefully to assure that we didn’t forget something but if we wound up having to do more takes that we anticipated we had to scramble to cook something again—and maybe again, and….

Both food and writing are obviously important parts of your life; do you have any favorite food writers or cookbooks? 

A.J. Liebling’s book, Between Meals, made me fall in love with food writing. I read it anew every few years and am delighted all over again. I love reading any of Julia’s cookbooks because she is there, talking to me on every page. Cookbooks should all be that personal.

Read our interview with Michael Weinreb , the author of GAME OF KINGS: A YEAR AMONG THE ODDBALLS AND GENIUSES WHO MAKE UP AMERICA’S TOP HIGH SCHOOL CHESS TEAM.

Q:  Where did you get the idea to write this book?
 
As so often happens, I stumbled upon this story entirely by accident. I was working as a sportswriter at Newsday, a New York City newspaper, back in the spring of 2004, and I came across an odd and compelling and well-constructed press release issued by the coach of the Edward R. Murrow High School chess team, trumpeting his team’s most recent national championship. I wasn’t sure what to do with this information—I wasn’t even sure where Murrow High School was located, since it had no athletic teams, and I wasn’t sure why he’d faxed this information to the sports department—but I held onto it for several months. In the fall, when school started up again, I called the coach, a man named Eliot Weiss, and I began hanging out at practices and tournaments, and I began to wonder whether there might be more here than I could have imagined. I had written a book of short fiction and was struggling to get going on a novel I had no desire to write, and my mind had turned toward non-fiction. So I told Jane Dystel about it, just mumbled a single sentence about a nationally regarded high-school chess team in Brooklyn. It must have been the right pitch, because by the next day, I was putting together a proposal, and a couple of months later, to my eternal surprise, Gotham Books had bought it.

Q:  Did you play chess yourself before starting to work on this?  If so, did you find your game improving while you were surrounded by so many skilled players?  If not, were you inspired to learn?
 
I understood how the pieces moved, and this was pretty much the extent of my knowledge. I do not have a brain that is predisposed toward chess. I have absolutely no sense of spatial relations, which explains why I regularly get lost in parking garages, shopping mall food courts, walk-in closets, etc. So I spent most of my time at chess tournaments trying to figure out what the hell was going on. And yet even when I asked what the hell was going on, and even what I was told what the hell was going on, I still didn’t know what the hell was going on. Learning chess, I’ve heard, is like learning a new language, which is why a young brain can absorb it more readily. So I tried. I fought against my nature. I read books and played video games and studied openings and became obsessed with beating down an unnecessarily rude computer chess engine. In the end, I understood just enough to get by as a spectator (and as a writer, I hope), but not nearly enough to play the game even passably well. I take solace in the fact that, unlike the computer chess engine (I currently trail in our ongoing series of matches, 284.5-0.5), I have free will. So there.

Q:  As a sportswriter, what are your thoughts on chess as a game versus chess as a sport?
 
I used to cover professional golf for a newspaper in Ohio, and I would have this debate with myself and my colleagues all the time. In the late 1990s, a young golfer with a rare circulatory disorder in his leg sued the PGA Tour to earn the right to use a cart while competing. The Tour argued that “walking” was part of what made golf a sport. It seemed like a ridiculous argument to me then, and it still seems ridiculous now. However, if you believe golf is a sport, than so is chess, for the same reasons: there is a remarkable amount of mental endurance required in order to compete at a high-level tournament, in order to remain focused on sixty-four squares for hours at a time. And chess players sweat (after spending many hours in poorly ventilated rooms with adolescents fighting through puberty, I have experienced enough olfactory trauma to attest to this fact). So I would argue that physical conditioning is as important in chess as it is in golf. And, last I checked, golf was being covered on the sports pages. Not to mention, chess players don’t wear knickers.

Q:  Did you find it hard to strike a balance between personal involvement and journalistic distance while researching and writing?

Absolutely. We (my editor, Brendan Cahill, his assistant, Patrick Mulligan, and I) made a conscious decision not to insert the authorial “I” into the book, basically to keep me out of the way in order to tell the story of the kids. But I think you’d have to be cyborg (or a computer chess engine, I suppose) to fall into a situation like this and not develop a certain amount of empathy for the characters you’re trying to depict. (See H.G. Bissinger’s “Friday Night Lights,” or Darcy Frey’s “The Last Shot,” or Adrian Wojnarowski’s “The Miracle of St. Anthony,” or any other great narrative nonfiction story, for that matter. At the risk of sounding horribly pretentious, it’s like method acting: You have to absorb yourself into the story into order to write about it effectively.) So of course I found myself rooting for them, and of course I tried to help them in little ways (giving them rides to McDonald’s, proofreading their college essays, etc.), but I didn’t see anything wrong with that. I mean, I’m the stranger here. In a sense, in a way they didn’t understand (they all had trouble believing anyone would want to read a book about them), they gave their lives over to me. For me to remain completely detached would be dishonest.

Q:  Was there any particular thing you were most surprised by in the year you spent with the team?

I had forgotten how much horrendously awful food I was able to put away at the age of fifteen, with little or no consequences. Also, despite their ethnic differences, despite their varied backgrounds and the way they would complain about each other when speaking to me, the game seemed to unite them in a way nothing else could. This never ceased to surprise me.

Read our interview with Jacqueline Carey , the author of KUSHIEL'S SCION .

Q: You have an amazing group of fans who send you their artwork based on your books, have Kushiel tattoos, and even name their kittens after your characters! Does input from your fans ever come through in your writing—by which I mean, does the practice of writing seem less insular now that you have six novels out and at least two more on the way?

Kittens and kids, too!  I know of at least one Phèdre and one Imriel.  My fans are great, but I can’t say they have an impact on my writing itself.  For me, the process is a very intimate one – I come from the Fortress of Solitude school of writing.  It’s when I step away from it that I think about my readers and how they’re going to react, whether it’s “Oh, they’re gonna love this scene,” or “Yikes, they’re gonna hate me for killing off so-and-so.”

Q: Did you know, as you wrote the first Kushiel trilogy, that you wanted to do a follow-up series about Imriel?
Yes, I did.  From the moment I conceived of the overall arc of the first trilogy, I knew Imriel’s character was full of dramatic potential.  So much baggage, so much angst!  It’s been great exploring how his story plays out as he matures. 

Q: After spending so much time writing Phedre no Delaunay, was it difficult to step away from her partway? Did having her as a secondary character make the new series any easier or harder to write?

It was very difficult.  That’s one of the reasons I did a completely different project in between the two trilogies.  I needed to gain some objective distance.  Initially, it was hard having her as a secondary character.  I’d spent so much time in Phèdre’s head, it felt odd and voyeuristic to look at her through a different set of eyes.  As I became thoroughly immersed in Imriel’s viewpoint, that changed and I was glad to have her there. 

Q: Do you have plans for new projects after the final book in the latest trilogy? Will we get to visit Terre d’Ange again?

At this point, I don’t have any definitive plans, but I think it’s safe to say that I’ll return to Terre d’Ange some day.  It’s such a rich milieu, and there’s so much of the world yet to explore.

Q: Are there particular authors or books that inspire you? How critical is reading the work of others to the process of writing?

I’m an avid, eclectic reader.  For me, it’s an important way of keeping the creative well filled.  The books that inspire me the most are often books that enchanted me when I was young.  Mary Renault’s historical novels, Patricia McKillip’s lyrical fantasy.  “Little, Big,” by John Crowley.  “Watership Down” and “Shardik” by Richard Adams.  But I continue to read across the board and draw inspiration from anywhere and everywhere, whether it’s a powerful portrait of nihilism and despair in a Dennis Lehane mystery or a delicate depiction of redemption in one of Ann Patchett’s literary novels.  And of course there’s always research, research, research!