Death Will Have Your Eyes Reading Group Guide

8/12/2019 Death Will Have Your Eyes Reading Group Guide

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READING GROUP GUIDE

DEDEATHATH WILLWILL

HHAVEAVE YYOOURUR

EEYEYESS

A NOVEL ABOUT SPIES

JJAMEAMESS SSALLIALLISS


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AA CC O NO N V E RV E R SS A T IA T I O NO N W IW I T HT H

JJ A M EA M E SS SS A L L IA L L I SS

What was the rst story you ever wrote, and what happened to it?

ere were of course early miscarriages, but the rst story I wrote

that felt like a story, walked like a story, and quacked like a story

was Kazoo. It was published inNew Worlds.Two others quickly

followed, one forF&SF,and one for Damon Knights Orbit,in-

culcating in me the absurd and sweetly naive notion that I could

make a living writing. From such moments are lives ruined.

When you sold your rst piece of writing, how did you celebrate?

I was twenty-one and impoverishedexcellent training for a

writer, by the way so I probably took my wife out for a ne

meal at Howard Johnsons.

Tell us about your process: Pen, paper, word processor, human blood

when the moon is full . . . how do you write?

As though in a pitch black room where I am trying to nd the

black door, stumbling over black furniture all the while. And Iswear that furniture keeps moving about.


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Mostly its all on computer nowadays, though each page, each

line, gets questioned, revised, rewritten, bued, trimmed and l-

leted hundreds of times.Heres what writing well feels like to me. I begin a story or a

novel and its as though I almost see movement over in the cor-

ner of the room. But when I look that way, theres nothing. As I

write on into the story I start to hear breathing over there; theres

more and more furtive movement; and as I go on, the breathing

gets louder, dened. at thing in the corner begins to take onshape....

Whats the biggest mistake youve made as a writer?

We could talk for quite a while about that word mistake, im-

plying as it does that, like characters in poorly written ction, we

have simplistic, monosyllabic motives, i.e., that we know what

the hell were doing and are in control of it.

Commercially, not sticking to one genre might be construed a

mistake. Who is this guy? Poet? PI novelist? Avant-garde weirdo?

Fish? Fowl?

e sole mistake to which Id admit without reserve: Not

writing enough. ough Im pretty sure laziness accounts for thatmore than does misdirection.

Which ctional character would you most like to have a drink with,

and why?

Molly Bloom. I wouldnt have to say a word, wouldnt even haveto bring along my satchel of punctuation.

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What kind of catharsis did you achieve from your latest work?

eres the very specic, almost physical pleasure of feeling astory or novel slip into form, become of a piece, a whole. A kind

of click, that stops your breath for a moment. eres the mo-

mentwithOthersthis was at the very start, before Id written

a word, when Jennys voice came to me as I walked down 16th

Street in Phoenixwhen you realize that youve fallen through

into another mind, come to inhabit another world. And in manycases theres the inability to read the nal pagesofSalt River,of

e Killer Is Dying,ofOtherswithout crying, when, with those

few touchstone pages, the whole of the experience oods back.

Where do you buy your books?

Truth to tell, I dont buy a lot. Because of my many years as re-

viewer for theWashington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe,

and others, I still receive dozens of books weekly from publishers.

Others are sent me directly by editors and by the writers them-

selves. And Gordon ate Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,

for whom I write a quarterly books column, keeps me out on the

dance oor with recent releases there. When I do purchase, lazi-ness (see above) slouches me towards the Bethlehem of Amazon.

How do you handle a bad review of your work?

We have specic tastes; we look to literature to provide dierent

things. A review is a sort of thinking aloud about ction, a con-versation about it. I would ask only that the reviewer is indeed

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thinking, and that he or she is in fact in a conversationwith

the reader, and with the heritage of the reviewed piecerather

than talking to him- or herself.

Whats the worst advice you hear authors give writers?

Write what you know. Hey, guys, this all about imagination!

Your latest novel,Others of My Kind,originally started out as ashort story, how many of your novels have started out as short stories?

Actually it began as a novel; the short story version that appeared

in Phoenix Noir was carved at Patricks request from the novel

while it was in revision.e Long-Legged Flybegan as a short story

but then wouldnt shut up. And though I recognizedDriveto be

a novel from inception, the short story version was a test drive to

see how roadworthy it might be. All the others, I believe, arrived

with book covers in hand.

e original version of this interview appeared on LitReactor, available from litreactor.com and Keith Rawson.

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QQ U EU E SS T IT I O NO N SS A N DA N D TT O P IO P I CC SS FF O RO R

D ID I SS CC UU SS S IS I O NO N

1. How does Davids life after the Cold War change when he is

reactivated as a spy?

2. In what ways does identity factor into the book?

3. David and Gabrielle have a close relationship, how does

Gabrielle help David adjust to life after being a spy?

4. What is the signicance of Davids profession after being an

elite spy?

5. How does the short chapter structure create a sense of pace inDeath Will Have Your Eyes?

6. Who is Michael and is he who he claims to be?

7. David enjoys the cat and mouse game of spying, why does he

seem so calm when being tracked?


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8. What is Planchats signicance in the end? Why was David

reactivated to nd him?

9. Why is traveling the roads of America important to the story?

10. Can the reader depend on David as a narrator?

READING GROUP GUIDE

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Death Will Have Your Eyes Reading Group Guide

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