M.T. Anderson is the author of Feed, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, as well as The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, which won the National Book Award. Whether it’s crafting a dystopian future, writing vampire fiction, or, in the case of his latest book, Symphony for the City of the Dead, chronicling the life of the composer Dmitri Shostakovitch, his books are meticulously researched and vividly told.
I first met Tobin (his middle name) when he came over with my friend Peter this past September to watch the eclipse…or the SUPER Moon. The three of us sat and talked in my front yard in an old wicker couch until it collapsed, and the conversation carried on horizontally from there. We talked about astronomy, about words we hate (slacks, homemade) and what we were like in high school. It was the kind of voracious conversation you have with a brand new friend.
We got together recently at my house to talk about his new book Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. We also talked about….other things. His writing habits, God, demonic possession, and middle age. A little something for everyone.
Welcome.
Credits:
Music by Noveller, of the Free Music Archive
Thanks to Tally Abecassis for her thoughts on this show. If you haven’t listened to her podcast, First Day Back, I recommend you check it out. Cuz it’s great. Also thanks to Colin Dickerman.
Links to Tobin’s work and articles about his illustrious career:
Click here for Symphony for the City of the Dead
Click here for Feed
Click here for The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing
Profile in The Washington Post
Interview about Feed in Boing Boing
Thank you so much for doing this interview Erica. I was at Tobin’s combined reading/discussion/string quartet performance presented with Bear Pond Books, last night, and it was amazing, thought provoking, and humbling. Too shy to ask questions I thought might be obvious to others afterward, I am happy to have this podcast to listen to more than once, as it answers a number of them.
We must keep telling the truth. We must keep telling what we know of history, we must keep creating art in the face of destruction, listening to promote compassion, and thinking about the fates of others.
Mighty thanks to Tobin for listening to himself across the years and writing back to, in a sense, the self he was, and in doing so speaking to the rest of us now.
This is another great conversation, translated so expertly by Erica into a great listen. As Rumble Strip so often does, this piece makes me want to hang out with Tobin and of course read more of his writing. Erica, I’m so glad you included your little song (“you’re part of a story that’s going on today!”), because I sometimes think about how : (1) we humans are keenly aware of (because we remember, with nostalgia and/or mortification) ourselves when we were part of a story that’s going on today and we were not self-conscious about that; and (2) we sometimes wonder, am I part of a story that’s going on today? Like, when I do something, am I just a person doing that thing, or should I maybe not being doing that thing, because I’m too young or too old, or the thing isn’t “serious” enough, or it’s too “serious”, etc….