Why do we re-read? with Michelle Cameron

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Adam Sockel:

You are listening to Passions & Prologues, a literary podcast. For each week, I interview an author about a thing they love and how it inspires their work. I'm your host, Adam Sockel, and today's guest is Michelle Cameron, author of Babylon, which is a novel of Jewish captivity.

It's a really, really phenomenal multi-generational biblical saga of Sarah and her family when they're exiled to Babylon and King Nebuchadnezzar conquers Judea and basically destroys their temple.

I find myself constantly fascinated by books that are set in the time of when the Bible was created. I am not a religious person, but I am interested in the historical aspects of that particular time period. And so, I really, really loved Babylon, and we had a wonderful conversation about her passion, which is rereading books, something that I find myself doing every single year.

We talked about the seasonal times that I reread books, but we also got into why she rereads them, both for enjoyment and nostalgia as well as doing specific work-related tasks. It was just a really interesting conversation.

We talked about how people tend to reread older/children's books more often than they do other types of stories as well. Again, really delightful conversation, I think you're really going to enjoy it. It was just a really, really fun and in-depth discussion.

And again, whether you are religious or not, whether you have experience of understanding the Old Testament or not, I highly recommend you check out Michelle's new book, Babylon, because it is just a delightful story.

And again, it's one of those multi-generational sagas where you get to know kind of people throughout the full breadth of their life. And these are stories that I really love. It reminds me always of Pachinko is like the best example I can ever think of by Min Jin Lee. So, if you're into that type of story, you're going to love Babylon.

And speaking of multi-generational family sagas, the book I want to recommend to you today is The Family Morfawitz by Daniel H. Turtel. This is another story of a Jewish family and it starts with the abandoned son, Hezekial, who is the narrator of the story. Basically, Hezekial, has been tasked with being sort of the chronicler of the family's life.

And so, they all get together during a high holiday. And basically, he chronicles all the things that this family has experienced from fleeing Nazis in Germany all the way to the dynasty that they started to spread in times of New York City when the family first came over.

It talks about how from the embers of World War II, they rose this very, very powerful and ruthless family. Just a really interesting story where all of the different aspects of the family are intertwined, and you get to learn about these relationships and the background for how they were formed.

It is kind of like a retelling of Ovid’s and Metamorphoses if you are into that type of story. But again, I love, love, love a family saga, and this is a really phenomenal one. That's the Family Morfawitz by Daniel H. Turtel.

So, between that and Michelle's book, Babylon, you've got a lot of family saga reading. You can catch yourself up on that, I think you're going to adore.

As always, if you want to get ahold of me, you can find me at [email protected] or on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram at Passions & Prologues. I share book recommendations. I do all sorts of quirky things and all the fun things that we all do on social media, and that's where you can find me.

That is enough housekeeping. I am going to transition smoothly to my discussion with Michelle Cameron, author of Babylon on Passions & Prologues.

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Michelle, what is something you are super passionate about that we're going to be discussing today?

Michelle Cameron:

Well, I'm a tremendous rereader, and I reread for a number of different reasons. And one is that when I'm writing a book, I'm always worried that I'm going end up borrowing, as it were, borrowing from someone else, especially someone else that I really admire how their writing is.

So, I have a set of books, largely childhood books. But not only, that I'll go back to time and again, particularly when I'm writing, but also as comfort reads when I feel like I need something that I know so well, and I can sort of just dive back in there. So, I think rereading is a big passion of mine.

Adam Sockel:

Right before we started recording, you told me this, and I got very inordinately excited because I know exactly what you mean. I love rereading, and we'll get into it a little bit later, but throughout specific times of the year, I have certain books that I always reread.

In fact, we're recording this near the end of September, so we're in that autumn mode. I have read the short story of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow probably every year since I was like 14 at this age.

But I also know what you mean about children's books. In fact, a long, long time ago, I interviewed Daniel Handler, who is better known as Lemony Snicket. And we talked about the fact that the books that we as human beings hold most dearly and most fondly tend to be children's books.

Because if you think about it, most novels that you read as an adult, if it's 3, 4 or 500 pages, you might not go back to that often. But when you're a kid, especially when you're sitting in your parents' lap and they're reading to you or it's bedtime, think about how those books you kind of reread over and over and over again.

So, let's start with the children's books you mentioned. What are some of the ones that you go back to and why? I am really interested in that.

Michelle Cameron:

Absolutely. When I was in fourth grade, my Hanukkah present that year was the entire series of Anne of Green Gables and it actually wasn't the entire series because there's a couple of books that that Ellen Montgomery wrote after the Anne books that I only discovered when I was an adult and of course got those and read those.

But I would say a lot of the very traditional, what they tend to call girl books are on that list. The Betsy-Tacy series I love and there's one book again that isn't quite in that series that the author wrote, that's the book when I'm really depressed or upset, I just go and read that one.

But what's interesting too is there are also classics that I do reread not to get off the kids' books, but well, we'll talk about the classics in a minute. And I do find that in rereading these books as an adult, the kids' books as an adult, I have a very different perspective on them.

And even to the point where sometimes I'm like, “Did I really love this this much?” And I'm thinking, for example, some of the little women books, I'm like, “Okay, you're preaching at me, I don't like that.”

Adam Sockel:

It is so interesting as we become adults and as we become a little bit older adults, when you go back and you reread children's stories like how you take the side of other people, you tend to — this isn't a book, but I saw this thing about Ferris Bueller's Day Off recently, this video about Farris Bueller's Day Off, where the person was like, “And of course, the evil villain, the principal who's just trying to look out for the student who he cannot find,” I think about that same thing with children's books all the time.

So many of the “issues” that occur in children's books could be resolved by just telling a parent. And as an older person, you read it and you're like, “If anyone would've contacted any adult in this community,” which again, wouldn't make much of a story, admittedly, but yeah.

Michelle Cameron:

Absolutely not, and it would take all the fun out of it. But on the other hand, you're right, it would have solved things pretty quickly.

Adam Sockel:

You mentioned, there being specific books that you read when you're really down and I tend to reread seasonally, and I mentioned Legend of Sleepy Hollow this time of year. There is a book by Gregory Maguire, who is most well-known for the Wicked books.

But he wrote a book called Hidden Sea, which is about the nutcracker, and it's not even Christmassy at all, but it's this extremely interesting background, kind of the legend of the nutcracker. And I read that in December, so I'm very seasonal.

But for you, you mentioned also classic books. What are some of the classic books you reread and why? Are you a seasonal one or is it just when the mood strikes you?

Michelle Cameron:

I think a lot of it is when the mood strikes me, although there are some books I definitely gravitate toward at certain times of year, I'm a huge Jane Austen fan. And in fact, when I was researching one of my books, it was set during the Napoleonic era, and I said, “Oh, I can read all of Jane Austen again as research,” because it set in that time period, et cetera.

But one of my favorite memories of travel is we went to Bath in England, and of course their big Jane Knights there. And I actually got a shirt that said, “This is what a Jane Knight looks like,” right on the shirt.

So, yeah, no, I mean, Jane Austen, I will slug through middle March, I would say every two to three years, so definitely. I don't consider that a comfort read necessarily, but I did do it because she's such an amazing, amazing writer.

And when I think about … I write Jewish historical fiction, and so I'll go back to her Daniel Deronda many, many times just to see how she handled it as an outsider writing about the Jewish people. So, I also reread specifically for certain things as well.

Adam Sockel:

I'd like to dig a little deeper into that, because that's really fascinating. So, I am querying a novel right now, and its magical realism. It's a little bit of fantasy, I definitely know that I'm inspired by the authors that I read and cherish the most, like my favorite book ever is The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern which is basically a story about the importance of stories. And I love it so much. It's such a wonderful book, and she trusts the reader.

But I also am a big Neil Gaiman fan. But there's also this book that I reread at the end of every year called Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney. And listeners are probably rolling their eyes because I feel like I talk about it like once a month.

But it's just this beautiful book. And I found myself, when I was writing my manuscript, there were some times where I was like, “Is that a little too Erin Morgenstern?” I found myself thinking like, “Is that too on the nose or is it like an homage or is it that type of a thing?”

And you mentioned reading things also for research and for other reasons. So, when you're reading for research, what does that entail? So, for your new book Babylon, what does reading for research entail for you and kind of break that down for me a little bit?

Michelle Cameron:

Sure. I mean, obviously I start with books clearly, but for the most part they're non-fiction books. They're books about the period; they're books specifically talking about the events that I'm going to want to cover in these books.

I mentioned that Beyond the Ghetto Gates is my Napoleonic novel, where he went and he demolished the ghetto gates throughout Italy when he was a young general on a military campaign through there.

You can drown in the number of books about Napoleon. There are just so many, and you do have to sort of pick and choose.

So, with Babylon, it was a little bit different. There's a lot of archeological research that can go into it. And actually, I mean, I'm astonished at the sudden, increased pace of archeological findings these days. It seems like every other day there's something else going on out there.

But also, a big part of it was we're talking about rereading, was rereading the Bible, because there are biblical prophets in the novel. And so, I had to go through and reread sort of the book of Daniel, the book of Ezra, what Jeremiah had to say. So, that too was an interesting experience in terms of, can that be considered research? Well, for me, it had to be, for me, it absolutely had to be.

Adam Sockel:

So, I was raised Roman Catholic, but my father's side of our family is Jewish. My dad was non-practicing, but we went to my grandma's house for all the high holidays and we went and sat Shiva when she passed away. And so, I'm familiar with the Judaism, basically the Old Testament for people who are listening, the first half of the Bible.

But I'm interested for you, I have always been fascinated by books and novels that take place in the non-religion, that time period and around both the church and the Jewish faith, but not necessarily the religious stories, just like books that are kind of set in those time periods. And about all of the societal aspects of that time period.

So, for you, like you said, doing this research in these holy texts, these basis’s for millions and millions of people's belief systems, how do you go about taking that and deciding, “Okay, I want to write a novel in here.”

I guess, how do you decide what you want to expand on using your own creativity and skills as a writer, as opposed to which parts are like, “Okay, I'm going to keep this very much grounded in the text.”

Michelle Cameron:

Yeah, no, that was a huge, huge challenge for me because I didn't want to set aside the fact that, as you say, millions and millions of people believe in this and I didn't want to disregard that, but I also didn't want to preach at people or say, “Yes. Okay. Let's give an example.”

There's a scene in the novel where the prophet Daniel has three friends who basically were brought to Babylonia with him, and they have a story of how they were told, “Okay, it's time to bow down to Marduk,” who was the big God in Babylon, and they refused and they were shut up in a furnace.

And basically, the way the Bible story goes is they walked around, they had a nice walk in this furnace talking to an angel. And then when they came out, everyone was so impressed that they weren't dead.

So, anyway, in the book, the way I handle it, is I have them retell this story, and then I have someone in the crowd say, “That couldn't possibly have happened. You're lying to us.” And I leave it unresolved.

And so, that way, I think what happens is that, again, the reader can say, “Oh, that's an unbeliever.” And the reader who does not have that religious background or desire can say, “Oh, somebody's pointing out that this is just a story.”

So, I tried to handle a lot of the biblical stories that way. I call it giving me plausible deniability in terms of these Bible stories that I did include.

Adam Sockel:

I love this so much because the way that I have always approached religious stories is like, it's about the meaning behind the story. It's about the lesson you're supposed to learn. It's less about did this thing happen or not? Because these books are thousands of years old and sometimes, they're told second and third hand.

So, it's like, okay, if you can remove the fantasy of some of these stories and be like, whether or not these things happen that doesn't diminish or strengthen the importance of the story and what it actually means for us as readers, I love that no one will see because this is a podcast, but we were both kind of laughing.

We were talking about they took a nice stroll around the furnace, which I really laugh. But it's so interesting and something else that I want to ask you about Babylon. So, it's a multi-generational saga, like you said, it's set in biblical times. And I adore books like this. I love long stories about multiple generations of a family.

But as someone who has experience now, writing a story where you get so attached to these characters, was it challenging for you or was it invigorating to know that you were going to write about all of these different characters as you're kind of moving through this story?

Like, was it hard for you to say “goodbye” to a character as you moved on? Or I guess, how did you approach that aspect of the story?

Michelle Cameron:

That's a really interesting question. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I wrote this book very unintentionally. And what I mean by that is this was my second novel and I used what I called the snippet approach. But most people would call the cancer approach, where I would envision a scene and I would sit down and write by the seat of my pants.

Generally, with my novels, I have at least a timeline that I have to adhere to, because again, I like historical fiction. But with this one, I was taking a scene here and a scene here and a scene here, and then eventually piecing it all together.

So, in terms of saying goodbye to characters, sometimes it just happened and I was able to sort of move on. And there's one major character and I won't give any spoilers but there's one major character who happens to die, and there's still a quarter of the book to go.

And that was a sad moment, but it was a necessary moment, if you know what I mean. I mean, another one of the things that I teach when I teach creative writing is that you have to be mean to your characters.

Because again, it's like what you said before, if they go and find a parent and solve the problem, what's the point of the book? If you're kind and nice to your characters all the way through, what's the point of the book?

Adam Sockel:

So, I want to get into the teaching aspect. So, for long time listeners Judith Lindbergh, who was on a while ago, was one of the founders of the Writer's Circle, which Michelle also has been working at for a very long time and teaching.

And I want to get into the creative writing aspect. Because you're right, it's something where, for me, I love books with characters that you genuinely like, and they seem like genuinely good people. I talk all the time about if a book is just full of horrible characters, I just don't want to read.

I understand that some are integral to plots moving forward. Because if no one is bad, nothing happens. But if it's just a book full of awful people being awful to each other, I'm like, “Ugh, this is rough.”

So, the book that I wrote, it was very challenging for me to come up with how can I make these characters awful or make challenging decisions that I hate but have to move the plot forward. It's like it kill your darlings is kind of like the phrase.

So, when you're teaching, how do you keep these people who, whether they're adults or children excited about the writing process and these characters that you want them to fall in love with because you want them to spend so much time with them, but also being like, you're also going to have to make bad things happen to them. How do you approach that with students?

Michelle Cameron:

Yeah. No, it's a difficult problem because so many writers are such nice people. So, we don't want bad things to happen to our characters. But I have to tell you, I've never seen a class as excited as one of my teen classes when I said, “Today we're going to write about villains.” And they got so excited about that.

And then I said, “Okay, but hang on. We need to find what it is that motivates the character, what moved this character into the dark side,” because nobody, and this is an argument I have with my husband all the time, when someone does something awful, he's like, “How can they look at themselves in the mirror?” And I'm like, “They have no problem doing that because they don't recognize what they're doing is evil.”

I honestly don't believe that people consider themselves evil. And so, what's the rationale? What's the motivation behind those characters, the really bad ones? And then for the really good ones, the ones that you obviously like to write about-

Adam Sockel:

I do.

Michelle Cameron:

What are their weaknesses? What is it that makes them a fully fleshed character so that when you do challenge them, when you put them in the middle of a conflict, what choices are they going to make?

One of my favorite, favorite exercises with both kids and adults, but the kids love this one, is I say, “Alright, let's take a character. She's a mother and she has two characteristics that you know about. She loves her toddler son, but she is deathly afraid of it's either lions or tigers.” I switch it up. So, where are you putting them in order to create conflict?

And they think for a moment they go, “Ah, we're going to the zoo.” So, they go to the zoo, and of course, what happens next is the toddler somehow finds his way into the animal’s cage. And then I'm saying, knowing these two characteristics, what choices does the mother make? And then what are the consequences of those choices?

And again, the adults generally come up with three choices. You're paralyzed with fear. You go into the tiger's cage anyway, or you call for help. The kids of course come up with much wilder solutions to this problem. So, it's great to see that.

And then of course, you walk through the consequences of if the child dies, it's a short-term consequence, but then there's that long-term searing guilt that the mother has to carry for the rest of her life.

So, it's a whole exercise that just sort of shows that once you create a character, you have to follow through on both strengths and weaknesses in order to have them react when you, the writer, put them in really terrible situations.

Adam Sockel:

I think that's why so many … before I had written manuscripts, I would have these authors all the time explain to me that they built out these whole character studies, they would have notebooks full of details and background about these characters. And I used to be like, “Oh my God, that sounds like so much work. That sounds so exhausting,” but now I understand.

And it's the same thing with — I work for a tech company, I do marketing and one of the things we do is we create personas and the reason we create a persona of the people that we're talking to, and we get all the way into … we don't just say like a sales leader, we say, “Carl is a 47-year-old, upper middle class, blah, blah, blah from New Jersey.” And the reason we do that is so that when we're writing, we know how to approach any single scenario.

And it's the same thing for authors. Like you said, you have to really think through what they would do in these situations that may not even come up in your novel, but you need to be prepared to say, “Okay, but this is how they … to keep to stay true to the character, and not just make — you have to do the hard work at the beginning to do all this character study so that when you are approaching a difficult decision, they have to make you don't just take it easy.

Michelle Cameron:

And I think what's wonderful about doing all that early work, well, there are two things. First of all, I mean, one of the novels that I wrote I really tried to shortchange all that work, and I was like, recognizing, “Well, what would Morel do in this situation?” And then I realized I had to go back and think this through.

But the really marvelous thing about when you've done all that work is then you can let the characters take over. The characters can then just sort of lead you and you're just typing at that point, you're just letting them tell you what they do.

And that's because they really entered into sort of your subconscious and they're in control. Those are my best days of writing when I don't even have to think about it because I've done that hard work.

Adam Sockel:

Did you do that sort of character work for Babylon? Because like I said, there's Sarah and there's Nebuchadnezzar and there's these characters that people who, whether or not they're familiar with the biblical stories, these characters are very fleshed out throughout history. Did you do that type of work or did you sort of rely on the things that already existed about these types of characters?

Michelle Cameron:

Well, so there are a couple of things, all of my historical fiction, is based around truly fictional characters that are thrust into this sort of historical moment. So, Sarah, who you mentioned is the matriarch of this … she raises her children, she raises her grandchildren in Babylon.

A character like Nebuchadnezzar, of course, is historically based but then you just sort of think about how would someone who is in control of such an enormous empire, and honestly Babylon was the center of the world at this point.

How would they approach life? How would they react at the beginning of the novel, if he learns that his three children are all vying for his throne and using dreams to do that? So, part of it is simply what did these characters do in history and how did they feel while they were doing it? How did they approach these issues?

Of course, with my fictionalized characters, I have a lot more leeway. And that's, I think, where the harder work comes in because you do have to figure out, alright, if one of these characters is faced with this particular problem, you need to know enough about them.

Adam Sockel:

So, what made you want to write a novel in this specific time period? You mentioned Napoleon and some of your passions like the different authors you love and all these different things, what made you want to go back to this specific timeframe and these specific stories and build out your own novel during this time?

Michelle Cameron:

So, this really snapped into being, when I was writing my first historical novel, which was The Fruit of Her Hands. And The Fruit of Her Hands, actually that inspiration was from my 13th century Rabbi ancestor who what really experienced the rise of antisemitism in medieval Europe.

And there was an episode in the novel where the King of France, basically having been told that the Talmud is a terrible, terrible book, rounded up every volume of the Talmud that he can find, and loaded 24 cartloads of them and brought them into a Paris market square and burn them.

And so, my heroine, who is the rabbi's wife, again, fictionalized because in medieval times you did not have — I'm sorry about the beeping. In fictional times, there's no records of women unless they were queens or very notable. So, again, I have a lot of leeway there.

She's watching this happen. Hang on, I'm sorry. I'm just going to let it go. She's watching this happen and she suddenly thinks about the psalm by the rivers of Babylon, and she recollects how in these exiles, and of course the Jews in medieval Europe were exiled, she thinks about how they were able to thrive there.

And that started me thinking about that a lot, and it started me thinking about, this is an amazing period of time, let me go learn a little bit about it. This is how a lot of my novels start, let me go learn a little bit about it.

And so, with Babylon, one of the themes that I really explore in a lot of my fiction is the tug of war between assimilating into a society or maintaining a religious tradition. And I could see that happening in Babylon so much, the Jews were exiled there, they were thrust into this society.

And so, in terms of Sarah's children, for example, one of them really drank the Kool-Aid. And she married a Babylonian and at one scene she marches her children in to bow down to all of these idols while her mother's watching this, horrifying.

And another becomes a serious obsessively adherent to the religion. And another one finds sort of the middle way; he becomes a scribe of a lot of the biblical stories. But he also marries the Babylonian wife.

So, a big part of how Babylon sort of came to being was again, my trying to approach the whole issue of do we just sort of give up on religion and assimilate or do we keep the culture? Do we try and sustain that because it enriches us?

Adam Sockel:

So, for people who are going to read Babylon, whether they're familiar with not only the biblical stories, but the historical — I always talk about in my family, like I said, my father is non-practicing, but I would absolutely describe him culturally as Jewish. Like, people who are culturally Jewish or know people of that era, they know what I mean.

And I live in a place, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, which is extremely Jewish. And we have our Jewish delis and every Sabbath you see people walking to temple and it's very much both cultural and religious and I love it.

But for people who will read this, who maybe either know or don’t know the stories, what do you want them to take away from reading Babylon?

Michelle Cameron:

So, I really tend to write about periods of Jewish history that nobody knows, nobody really knows about the rise of antisemitism during the Middle Ages. They don’t know a lot about Napoleon's opinions of the Jews and how he did that. And they really don't know a lot about the Babylonian exile.

So, one of the things I want them to take away is a greater sense of history, Jewish or not that these things happened. In terms of Babylon, a lot of what happened there really affected the Jewish religion as we know it today.

I mean, what happened was, Nebuchadnezzar's troops raised Jerusalem to the ground, they burned the temple. And in ancient times, if you lost your temple and somebody else's Gods vanquished yours, they were said to be stronger. So, for the most part you would just take them.

But in Babylon what happened is instead of doing that, a good segment of the Judeans found different ways to worship. They didn't have a temple, they couldn't sacrifice, so they turned to prayer and they turned to, as I said, writing down these stories that end up in the Bible so they can keep a record of their people.

And I think that to a large extent, this is one of the reasons why the Jewish people survived and so many ancient peoples didn't, was because of this. And yet, when you think about Jewish history, you don't automatically think of the Babylonian exile, you think of Passover with Moses, you think of the Romans sometimes casting the Jews out, obviously you think of the Holocaust. And then you think about the state of Israel.

So, these are sort of the touch points that everybody knows, but there's so much more to the history. I mean, the history's amazing. So, that's kind of what I want people to take away.

Adam Sockel:

I love that. I love that so much. I've one more question for you. I always end with having the author who has come on give a recommendation of any kind. It can be a book, it can be a TV show. I always joke I had somebody say that you should go for more walks. It can be anything you want to recommend. What is just something that you think more people should be aware of?

Michelle Cameron:

That's such a good question and I'm scrambling for an answer. I'll give you one, one book that I read recently, which is absolutely exquisite is the … God, I just glanced at this morning. It's about a man who worked as a guard in the Metropolitan Museum for 10 years. And I’m really trying to figure out what the name of it is. Something about beauty-

Adam Sockel:

Is it All the Beauty in the World?

Michelle Cameron:

All the Beauty in the World. And if you love art and if you love the fact that people sort of embrace art, that's a tremendous book. I mean, we go to the Metropolitan Museum a lot. So, it spoke very personally to me because I could picture myself in the exact spot that he's standing in for hours on end, but his approach to it was beautiful.

And it's a lovely memoir and I'm not usually a fan of memoir, but he ties it into the death of his brother. And it's a beautiful book. I really highly recommend it.

Adam Sockel:

I'm absolutely going to check that out. Just for everyone listening, I did not know that off the top of my head, I did the magic of Google while Michelle was describing it.

Well, I was so excited to get to talk to you and when you reached out, you had no way of knowing, like I said, my family history and how closely this book kind of connects to the history, like I said, of my family. And I'm so excited to dive into it.

This conversation was so fascinating. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Michelle Cameron:

Oh, an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

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Adam Sockel:

Passions & Prologues is proud to be an Evergreen Podcast and was created by Adam Sockel. It was produced by Adam Sockel and Sean Rule-Hoffman. And if you are interested in this podcast and any other Evergreen Podcasts, you can go to evergreenpodcasts.com to discover all the different stories we have to tell.