Press Kit
In the Press
Today, Norm Goldman Publisher and Editor of Bookpleasures.com is excited to have as our guest, Herbert Lobsenz, author of Succession.
Herbert had previously authored in 1961 Vangel Griffin, which was picked out of the Harper Brothers slush pile. It won the Harper Prize and appeared on the Times best-seller list. It was also reprinted in paperback by NAL, in England by Secker & Warburg. His short fiction has appeared in Mademoiselle, Paris Review, Antioch Review and other magazines.
After nearly 30 years in business as CEO of Market Data Retrieval, he retired to go back to his original love, writing.
Good day Herb and thanks for participating our interview.
Norm:
I noticed it has been over 40 years since you authored your first novel. How easy or difficult was it to get back into the swing of things and write another novel? Why did it take you so long to write another novel?
Herb:
I started Market Data Retrieval in the late sixties and after a couple of years of struggle we began growing very fast. We wanted to be the best company in a relatively new industry and to accomplish that required long hours and lots of travel. From time to time I tried writing, but didn’t like what I wrote. At one point, de Tocqueville speaks of businessmen thinking wide and shallow, artists narrow and deep. I think that’s what happened to me. During thirty-three years in business and for a few years afterwards the stuff I wrote was too wide and shallow. It took time to learn to go narrow and deep again, think beneath the surface, stop shrinking from the personal and the intimate, and unleash my fictional rather than my business imagination. For most, those two imaginations may be the same, but not for me. By the time I’d written anything worth showing it was hard to get anyone to look at it. My editor at Harper’s had died; so had my agent; Harper Brothers had become Harper Collins. Nobody knew me. It was like Rip Van Winkle coming back to town but after forty years instead of twenty.
Norm:
How did you get the idea for Succession?
Herb:
Before Market Data Retrieval, I spent a few years in the office equipment business. The typewriter had revolutionized industry, spawned Remington Rand, Royal and Underwood, all leaders in the great wave of mechanical ingenuity that helped win World Wars I and II and make America the richest and most powerful country in history. Suddenly, they all disappeared—the companies, people, plants, knowledge and skills. I wanted to write about that from the inside, not blaming the bosses, banks, unions, government, but showing what really happened. In the beginning that business story was in the foreground, but as the book developed, Garrison, obsessed with preserving the memory of his father and grandfather by writing about them and by fathering their descendants pushed his way into the foreground. The story of the company became background for the story of the personal conflicts of Garrison, Diana, Garrison’s father and the other key characters.
Norm:
Could you briefly tell our readers something about Succession?
Herb
Garrison discovers that his father is dying and lacks the money to pay hospital bills. To make some money, he gives up writing his father’s memoir and returns to doing what he does best, restructuring/liquidating a sick company—in this case a typewriter company for Carnusty, a man he suspects is sleeping with his wife. Diana, an executive in a publishing company, claims to want children but is too busy with her job to get pregnant.
Garrison begins his due diligence review of the typewriter company. His father begs him not to let him die a lingering death. Diana suddenly announces that she’s pregnant. Certain he’s not the father, Garrison must decide how to deal justly with the needs of his father, those of the ten thousand employees who will lose their jobs in his restructuring, with Diana and her coming child, with America’s entry into Vietnam, the assassination of the president and the general tumult of 1963-4.
Norm:
Who are your characters based on and do any of your characters have an autobiographical component?
Herb:
Any writer who wants what he writes to be a true reflection of Nature is forced to be biographical and autobiographical. All you start with is your perceptions of what you’ve seen, but you don’t report them as they occurred, you turn them into a story.
For example, I never tried writing a memoir about my father, but I got him to write his own memoirs before he died. He served as a doctor during World War I, as did Garrison’s father. His ancestor was in the Army of the Potomac as was Garrison’s father’s father. The attitudes and actions of many of my characters, occasionally even characters themselves, are reflections of people I’ve known or met during thirty-three years in business and seventy-five years of wandering about the world. So Succession has autobiographical aspects, but the story itself is a fiction; it never occurred.
It’s biographical in another sense as well. Serious writers have at least one thing in common. “How shall summer’s honeyed breath hold out against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days when rocks impregnable are not so stout, nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?” Shakespeare asks in one of his sonnets. “Unless this miracle hold might,” he answers, “That in black ink my love may still shine bright.”
The power of black ink, not to stop the things and people they’ve seen from disappearing, but to make them disappear more slowly, motivates writers to write, painters to paint, sculptors to sculpt.
Norm:
Do you have any favorite characters in Succession and if so, why?
Herb:
Thinking about your question makes me see that another reason I write so slowly is that I start with characters that interest me and let the plots develop from what they say and do. Therefore, I never write about characters that don’t interest me. In that sense I’m predisposed to like them all. I do try to see their self-justifications for what they do and say and do try to imagine the world and the action of the novel from each of their points of view.
The writers I admire most do that. Shakespeare must have liked Enobarbus as much or more than Antony, Iago as much as Othello. In War and Peace an old peasant, even a dog becomes the center of the book while on stage.
Also, when an author is unfair to a character and twists a character’s true self to make a political or moral point, readers sense the falsehood and their belief in what they’re reading is damaged.
But which are my favorites? Garrison and Wolf for their strength. Emerson and Simone for their purity of soul. Berk and Hammerschmidt for their stubborn determination.
Norm:
Did you work from an outline when writing Succession?
Herb:
As you can tell from my answer to your last question, I didn’t start from an outline. I may try it with my next book, though. It might make the writing easier. There are many writers I admire who did write from outlines. Oedipus Rex is the most perfect of all works. The plot and character are an absolute unity. Jane Austen’s books are as organized and symmetrical as minuets and yet full of strong characters.
Norm:
What's the most difficult thing for you about writing Succession?
Herb:
The most difficult part was taking the business story out of the foreground and pushing it into the background. It meant cutting many scenes and characters I would have preferred to leave in.
Norm:
What do you hope readers will carry away from Succession?
Herb:
I hope they’ll admire the way Garrison, his father, Wolf, Emerson and Simone face the tragic nature of life with courage, grace and honor. I hope they’ll enjoy the contrast between the nobler characters and people like Berk, Carnusty, Thuringer who have convinced themselves that life is not tragic and that you can beat it by collecting things, money, women. I hope they’ll see the humor in the different ways the characters face life.
Norm:
Do you agree that to have good drama there must be an emotional charge that usually comes from the individual squaring off against antagonists either out in the world or within himself or herself? If so, please elaborate and how does it fit into you novel?
Herb:
I agree. Conflict is the soul of a good novel.
How conflict fits into Succession? Garrison is at odds with himself and the world. He’s failed at everything he hoped to do: follow family military tradition by fighting first in Korea and then in the Hungarian revolution. He’s failed at preserving the memory of his father and grandfather in a book, failed at marrying happily, failed at preserving the family name by fathering children. And he despises what he’s done successfully--saving wounded companies by amputating their non-performing parts as coldly as his father saved wounded soldiers by amputating gangrenous arms and legs.
But even though his marriage is unhappy, though he suspects his wife is unfaithful, that the baby she’s carrying is not his, he won’t abandon her. He sees that the only way to save Kensington is to close its plants and branches and lay off the very people who’ve struggled to restore it. He doesn’t want to do that anymore than he wants to administer the drops to help his father die with dignity. He’d prefer not to do any of the things his sense of duty demands, but refuses to become a man who fails to do his duty.
Norm:
Who are the predominant influences on your writing?
Herb:
I love reading sentences like “In the second century of the Christian aera, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.”
When it comes to writing though, I turn to the King James Bible, Abraham Lincoln and Ernest Hemingway—complex thoughts clearly expressed in one and two syllable words.
“There be just men unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous.”
“…until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword…”
“The stream kept on. In the dark I could not see where it came from the canvas overhead. I tried to move sideways so it did not fall on me. Where it had run down under my shirt it was warm and sticky…. After a while the stream from the stretcher above lessened and started to drip again and I heard and felt the canvas above move as the man on the stretcher above settled more comfortably.”
When it comes to characters, I try to respect and understand them in the way I imagine Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dickens understood and respected the characters they wrote about.
Norm:
What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing and what tools do you feel are must-haves for writers?
Herb:
The most important element is to bring characters to life and preserve them in black ink so that people who never met them can see, hear, understand—possibly even admire, love and hate them; characters worth preserving, seen as the world sees them, as they see themselves and as they truly are.
Norm:
Are you working on any books/projects that you would like to share with us? (We would love to hear all about them!)
Herb:
I’m working on a series of stories/articles called The Way Things Used To Be which describe the world as it was in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. It will end with the Korean War and, I hope, evolve into a novel.
Norm:
Where can our readers find out more about you?
Herb:
I’ve started a website called http://www.oldtimewriter.com and am posting Way Things Used To Be stories there along with excerpts from novels, short stories and more information about me than anyone will wish to know.
Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.