Ask the Author: Amanda Vaill
Answered Questions (21)
Amanda Vaill
Apologies for not responding promptly to your question -- I was dealing with the copy edited manuscript of my new book (about the Schuyler Sisters) and haven't been checking Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ.
Here's what I know: The Murphys did indeed meet and know both Sylvia Beach and Stein and Toklas, although I don't have any particularly telling anecdotes about their relationships with either. In 1927 the Murphys left their apartment on the Quai des Grands Augustins and moved to the rue Guynemer, just around the corner from the Stein/Toklas flat at 37, rue de Fleurus; so they were neighbors. And Esther Murphy, Gerald's sister, was quite close to Stein and Toklas as well. It was a small, small world.
Here's what I know: The Murphys did indeed meet and know both Sylvia Beach and Stein and Toklas, although I don't have any particularly telling anecdotes about their relationships with either. In 1927 the Murphys left their apartment on the Quai des Grands Augustins and moved to the rue Guynemer, just around the corner from the Stein/Toklas flat at 37, rue de Fleurus; so they were neighbors. And Esther Murphy, Gerald's sister, was quite close to Stein and Toklas as well. It was a small, small world.
Amanda Vaill
So sorry not to have received your email, which must indeed have gone into my Spam folder, and is now unretrievable, unfortunately. The email address is correct, so could you send it again? I'll be aware, and on the lookout. If you've emailed any of my publishers (I have different ones for different titles), they should also contact me. Thank you very much -- Amanda V.
Amanda Vaill
There are a number of mysteries in my family, with enough plots for a shelf of books; but I’m not going to reveal them here because I’m going to cover them in MY next book, a historical family memoir.
Amanda Vaill
Thanks so much for your kind words about EVERYBODY. I have a special place in my heart for that book. As for my background: There used to be a bio on my website, which is currently under reconstruction... but my book jackets all have the relevant info. I’m not sure what skill you think I can market, but believe me, I’m trying! I’m currently visible (and audible) in the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick Hemingway documentary, and (for readers of my Jerome Robbins bio) in WONDER OF WONDERS, a doc about the making of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. I’m working on a new book, entitled PRIDE AND PLEASURE: THE REVOLUTIONARY LIVES OF THE SCHUYLER SISTERS, which is also being developed as a television series. And I’ve done and am doing a number of podcasts as a guest: History Chicks, talking about the Schuylers, a couple related to Hemingway (because of the documentary), and others. So I’m keeping pretty busy. Hope this answers some of your questions � and thanks for being such a sympathetic reader!
Amanda Vaill
I wonder. When was this? Chardack might have emigrated to the US; but Taro’s biographer, Irma Schaber, interviewed him in East Germany in the 1980’s I think. She never indicated that he’d left. But she was pretty close-mouthed about her research, and the documentation in her book is not helpful about the location of archives or people she cites. Maybe he was here all along? An intriguing mystery. If I weren’t writing another book I’d chase after it... do you want to?
Amanda Vaill
Jason, my apologies for letting your question go unansweredâ€� 11 months ago I wasn’t checking my mail for Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ alerts, I was wondering if I was going to be dead from Covid. Not really kidding. The past year has been very difficult in terms of recalibrating expectations... among them estimates of when I’d be done with the Schuylers. And the pandemic, and the social and political turmoil of the past year, made me revise some of my ideas of how to write the Schuylersâ€� narrative. I’m happy to say I found what I THINK is the right voice for the book and am at last (after amassing a mountain of research) making real progress. I *hope* to complete the manuscript this summer. There’s so much more here than I thought, and it makes me very excited. Thanks for your question!
Amanda Vaill
You can email me at [email protected]
Thanks for thinking of me!
Thanks for thinking of me!
Amanda Vaill
Since we're now in book-report season, instead of that lovely anticipatory summer-reading-listmaking season, I hope I won't be required to submit a written roundup of what I read, or meant to read. Here's some of what was (and in some cases still is) on my radar: Colson Whitehead's THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, Roxana Robinson's DAWSON'S FALL, Erica Dunbar's NEVER CAUGHT, Salvatore Scibona's THE VOLUNTEER, Tana French's THE WYCH ELM, Mary Wollstonecraft's VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.
Amanda Vaill
Dear Mark Derby,
Thanks for your kind comment about "Hotel Florida." If you read the notes carefully you should find most of your questions answered: despite the narrative texture of the book, it's rigorously sourced, with details (including people's thoughts, place descriptions, even the weather) drawn from the accounts, or photographs, of those who were eyewitnesses. It helps that the people involved were mainly journalists and kept notes, or wrote dispatches or letters or memoirs (or took pictures) documenting their experience.
In the case of Irene Goldin I benefited from the resourcefulness of the documentary filmmaker Trisha Ziff, whose wonderful film "The Mexican Suitcase" was my source for Goldin's testimony ().
You can email me at [email protected] if you want to have an extended conversation about Goldin or Taro or anything else. Thanks so much for your interest --
Amanda Vaill
Thanks for your kind comment about "Hotel Florida." If you read the notes carefully you should find most of your questions answered: despite the narrative texture of the book, it's rigorously sourced, with details (including people's thoughts, place descriptions, even the weather) drawn from the accounts, or photographs, of those who were eyewitnesses. It helps that the people involved were mainly journalists and kept notes, or wrote dispatches or letters or memoirs (or took pictures) documenting their experience.
In the case of Irene Goldin I benefited from the resourcefulness of the documentary filmmaker Trisha Ziff, whose wonderful film "The Mexican Suitcase" was my source for Goldin's testimony ().
You can email me at [email protected] if you want to have an extended conversation about Goldin or Taro or anything else. Thanks so much for your interest --
Amanda Vaill
Amanda Vaill
I'm so sorry not to have answered this earlier; I've been working on a new book and I guess I fell further down the rabbit hole than I thought! In response to your question, since I wasn't looking closely at material after 1940, I didn't poke around very much in the HUAC or FBI records. I never found that he was troubled by HUAC, though, and I must say I found this puzzling, as, apparently, did Hemingway himself, who feared they might make an issue of his "premature antifascism" or his agreement to act as an agent (code-named ARGO) of the NKVD. Nicholas Reynolds has written a book about Hemingway's "intelligence" career that might be of interest to you; but Reynolds never got a hit on HUAC either. Curious.
Amanda Vaill
Thank you for this flattering message! I'm sorry to have been unresponsive -- I've been off GoodReads and researching a new book. If it's not too late, send me an email at [email protected] and we can set up a time to talk.
Amanda Vaill
Dear Katelyn,
I'm so sorry not to have seen this message until now. I've just revisited GoodReads after months away, doing research for a new book. Clearly I'm too late! My regrets,
Amanda
I'm so sorry not to have seen this message until now. I've just revisited GoodReads after months away, doing research for a new book. Clearly I'm too late! My regrets,
Amanda
Amanda Vaill
Apparently I can't write just a short answer (like "yes") on GoodReads because readers want longer answers. So... without having my old AD files with me to check (I'm in an office at the library where I'm researching a new book), I THINK i wrote that piece. If my name is on it, I did. I was a Contributing Writer there, when they still had contributing writers.
Amanda Vaill
Sorry to have been out of communication -- I'm working on a new book and haven't logged on to this page in MONTHS! Love the sound of these letters, not to mention the one-toothed vendor. My advice on agents (because mine isn't taking on new clients) is to read the acknowledgments of every book you think has points of comparison with what you want to do and find the name of that book's author's agent. (They almost always get thanked -- if they don't, that's a story in itself.) Then write that person, and say you're sending your manuscript, or a portion thereof, because you so admire BOOK TITLE TK. In your cover letter you should mention whatever publication experience you have, and describe the book briefly � including, in this case especially, the circumstances behind its composition. That flea market is an attention-getter. Good luck!!!!!
Amanda Vaill
Thank YOU, Tim, for this lovely message. I loved writing this book because it allowed me to spend time with these alluring people; and it makes me so happy to think that you felt the same way about reading it.
Amanda Vaill
I finally caught up with Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton about 6 years ago, when I was in the middle of writing HOTEL FLORIDA (and looking for some relief from the history of the 1930's). I thought Hamilton's wife, and her sister, seemed fascinating characters, and unexplored, and said to myself, "Someone should write a biography of them." It wasn't until I finished HOTEL FLORIDA and was looking for a new subject that I realized that someone could be me!
Amanda Vaill
I find my inspiration in an intriguing subject � one who (or that) asks questions I don't know the answer to.
Amanda Vaill
I've just started work on a dual biography of the Schuyler sisters: Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, staunchly loyal wife of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and a notable philanthropist and social activist in her own right, and her sister Angelica Schuyler Church, international political flirt and muse (or more) to her famous brother-in-law. If you've listened to the Grammy-winning cast album of Lin-Manuel Miranda's HAMILTON you already know something about them.
Amanda Vaill
Make sure you have something to say, and that you absolutely have to say it. And that no one else has said it the way you want to.
Amanda Vaill
You get to fall down a rabbit hole into another world.
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