Overview
"When I try to write make things up, my computer shuts off," is how Eric Lax describes his feelings about fiction. "After forty years of getting the quote exactly right …" He trails off reflectively, and I don't feel at all intimidated, sitting there with my notepad because I haven't worked out how to tape phone calls yet. Not one bit. Sure, I knew that I was impressed enough with his range of subjects — books on the running of a leukaemia ward and on the discovery of penicillin, on Woody Allen and on comedy, on Paul Newman, Humphrey Bogart and, mostly recently, on his own history of having and losing religious faith — but then comes that very distinct reminder of a pretty impressive career as a journalist. You know, The Atlantic, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire and the Los Angeles Times. Oh, and he was a conscientious objector and in the Peace Corps. On my list of achievements: I look better in yellow than most people do.
So why was I talking to an investigative writer and biographer about fiction? Because the more I spoke to him about his writing process the more it sounded a little bit that way — not by any means in terms of looseness with the facts, but in the really strong emphasis Lax puts on having characters you get attached to and "a beginning, a middle and an end". But while the characters make the story and provide a hook for him and the reader, a really weighty documentary basis exists for his books, and it's clear that he loves the research. For The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: the Story of the Penicillin Miracle he went through 350 boxes of Royal Society archives, with 100 files in each and up to 100 pages per file, as well as the journals of Norman Heatley, who he also spoke to extensively as the last living member of the team. He met Florey's children and was in the position of revealing "her version of the story" in a letter from Margaret Jennings (the scientist's colleague, mistress-in-fairly-open-secret and second wife) that dates their affair earlier than anyone knew.
"Life is not what you remember," he later says of going through the "bags and bags of letters" from his own life in the course of writing Faith, Interrupted. Subtitled 'a spiritual journey', this book follows his own experience with faith, from youthful devoutness through to questioning and loss, intertwined with those of his father, an Episcopal priest, and his college roommate Skip, who went to the War and into the ministry.
Lax's description of contemporary debates about religious belief is that there are two basic lines: either "you're crazy if you have it" or "you're crazy if you don't". His own experience is unusual in having experienced both belief and non-belief — by the sounds of it pretty sanely on both counts. Tracing his thoughts and reactions to what was happening in his world, these letters were a reminder, but they also brought about certain surprising re-evaluations of who their author is. He describes Faith, Interrupted as "a very satisfactory book to write", and, considering the way he works, it's easy to see why: his books are all about coming to know about a subject and its development, situating it historically and conveying it personally but with social resonance.
He likes the phrase "of the time" as a description of how primary sources function. "When I talk about Woody at forty," he says, "it is Woody at forty, it's what he was saying at that time." In testament to the success of this approach, Woody Allen: A Biography was both a bestseller and critically acclaimed. Interview transcripts and personal communications spanning 19 years are directly quoted and stand within the text rather than in support of it, as part of it rather than substantiating it.
This detail, the basis in the everyday being there, is thorough and fascinating and impressive, and framed in a writing style that manages to be efficient and digressive and atmospheric. Lax himself manages this too — I ended our phone call thinking that he'd answered way more than I'd asked, and really been the one keeping us on track even though I was asking the questions. I'm realising I was up against a level of conversationalist, let alone interviewer, that I'd really like to one day reach.
Eric Lax is appearing in a bunch of events at the Sydney Writers' Festival, giving readings and talking about Faith, Interrupted, the New York of Woody Allen and the PEN writers' association. I will also be at the festival, wearing a yellow volunteer shirt. Maybe I should go join the foreign legion or something?