Bibliofreakblog

Guest Post: David Schmahmann

Thanks for the invitation to write a piece for your blog. I think I understand the concept; to be pithy, skillfully to work in what a great novel I’ve just published, and then to leave the subtle impression that I’m somehow cool. Or really cool.

I’m not, I’m afraid. I am this, or these: Someone who’s wanted to be a novelist his whole life, who went to law school to earn a living as a temporizing, feeding-myself measure, and who remained a lawyer for far, far too long. I have a lot of pent up feelings about that, not only the wasted time but also being witness to idiocy, avarice, and illogic.

I wrote Empire Settings, my first novel, at night, mostly. It deals with the kind of subject I always wanted to write about: in this instance first love, interracial love when it was illegal under apartheid in South Africa, separation, longing, nostalgia, and reunion. It was a bear to get the novel published, though once it was published all the publishers who turned it down tried to buy it back. Long story. No story arc. No happy ending.

Nibble & Kuhn is my law firm novel, and it just burst out of my years immersed in this wasteland of a profession. I’m fairly sure it’ll be my only law firm novel. I didn’t start out to write a funny book, but I’ve been told it’s funny. When you look at big law firms really close up, even the pixels squirm. Or something.

Not surprisingly, I’ve received dozens of letters from lawyers, many of whom I don’t know, expressing the view that Nibble captures their experiences exactly. A few of them: “Brilliantly captures both the silliness and the people. I guffawed silently.” Or: “While others have been calling it a satire, I actually think it may be closer to non-fiction.” Most welcome of all: “You magnificent bastard, I just finished your book. You nailed it!! I have not laughed so hard reading a book since Christopher Buckley’s Thank You For Smoking. ”

I was never a good soldier, though I pretended to be when I had to. Like many writers, though, I never feel as if I’ve fully processed an experience until I’ve written about it. As I worked at law in the day and on my novel set in South Africa at night, what I didn’t anticipate was that my day job would repay me further with a storehouse of quirky grievances and a desire to rationalize them, and thus a novel that almost wrote itself. (I would do well at Frank Costanza’s Festivus.)

My new novel, Ivory from Paradise, comes out a year from now, in January, 2011, and I’m working on editing it now. It’s about memory, how strongly memory drives people, and how inaccurate memory often is. It’s again set in South Africa, where they’re very busy changing street names and bumping off traditions by the day. Some of them had to go. Some changes I’m not so sure are an improvement.

It’s not funny.

Visit David Schmahmann at his website here.

Visit Academy Chicago Publishers at their website here.