Eagle interview with Clinton Hill resident Nathan Englander on his new novel ‘Dinner at the Center of the Earth’
How much did I relish reading Nathan Englander’s new novel “Dinner at the Center of the Earth?” Let me tell you, my enemies should never enjoy such a book! Englander is a writer possessed of bountiful humanity and wisdom. His novels and short stories have a sweeping sense of the historical and the personal. In fact, for Englander, history is personal.
Englander himself overflows with ideas, conjectures, declarations. Listening to him riff on writing fiction, the current Trumpian moment, Israel and Palestine, the concept of Aliyah [the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to the Land of Israel], the fortunes of the University of Wisconsin football team — often all in the same sentence — is like listening to a great jazz group, say Benny Golson & Art Farmer’s Jazztet. There is the opening melody, then the frontline solos, then the rhythm section enters, then back to the melody. Englander’s free-associative musings at times had me feeling that I was at Birdland, not the Primrose Cafe in Clinton Hill.
Englander’s longtime (and only) literary agent Nicole Aragi tells me by email from London: “I signed Nathan because I was attracted to his voice. I love it when I can recognize who the writer is within a few seconds … Nathan’s originality, voice, even the rhythm of his sentences felt utterly original and compelling, like nothing else I had read. Nathan’s brain travels in circles and loops around and then around again, incorporating dozens of thoughts. Often, I have to say ‘Whoa, slow down. Hang on, say that again, you lost me. Love it, now compress that to a sentence, or a page, or 25 pages (depending on the situation). You need to give up caffeine!’”