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Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008
For 44-year-old Ken Kalfus, who has just published his first book, "Thirst," success was worth waiting for.
Jul 23, 1998 | "It's always a bit of a shock coming back from Moscow," Bronx-born writer -- and inveterate world traveler -- Ken Kalfus says. "My wife said to me, 'America's like one big amusement park.' And indeed it is." For Kalfus, who has also lived in Dublin, Paris and Yugoslavia during the past decade, the most recent homecoming was by far the sweetest: He was back to publicize his first book, a masterful collection of short stories titled "Thirst." Kalfus, who's 44, spoke with Salon not just about his fiction, but about such topics as the allure of baseball, why you shouldn't drink the milk in Moscow, why writing good journalism is harder than writing fiction -- and why success can be sweeter when it arrives later in life. It seems you've lived almost everywhere in the last decade -- what's the impetus to keep moving? I've lived a year in Paris, two years in Dublin, a year in Yugoslavia and now four years in Moscow. Adventure, the idea of adventure, is what keeps me moving. When you live abroad, even your ordinary daily life is very stimulating. I have a Yugoslav friend who says that when you're abroad, nothing's provincial. Just the idea of going out to get your milk and coffee is an adventure. You see everything fresh. It gives you a chance as an adult to see things in a more childlike way. Now that I have a child who is seeing things for the first time and remarking on them, I realize how much a child's point of view is similar to an artist's. If you're trying to be an artist, it helps to see things in the fresh light of living abroad. Your wife's a journalist. Is some of this travel for her work? We went to Yugoslavia and Russia in connection with her journalism. And in Ireland I worked on a current affairs magazine. I don't think of myself as a journalist, but I do try my hand at it occasionally. I see myself as a bit of a journalist manqué. I have never been great at it. I discovered after a while that the key thing about a journalist's craft is calling up people you don't know and asking them questions. And I found I didn't like it so much. I much preferred calling up people -- I discovered this when I was working for a science newspaper -- and telling them my opinions. That's really absurd, because they were scientists and I wasn't. Is journalism how you stayed alive as a fiction writer? Yeah. And like everyone else, I've done my stint in the taxicab, limousine and livery business here in Manhattan. I'm 44 years old. I drove a cab in 1976; I remember the Bicentennial was here, so it was 22 years ago. I did all those kind of silly things. Not silly things -- they were fun. I've done a certain amount of freelance, and written a lot of book reviews. Have you always known that writing fiction was what you wanted to do? Oh yes. I've been writing fiction since I was a little kid. At one point I thought that being a journalist was a way of getting into fiction. But I actually think now that to do good journalism is harder. I've always been writing fiction, and all these stories go back quite a number of years. What's the oldest story in "Thirst"? I can't tell you for sure. I'm always rewriting them. Even after they were published in magazines, I've rewritten them. Even when I'm reading them at some of these readings, I have a little urge to make a couple of changes here and there. Some of them go back more than 10 years. You're publishing your first book at a moderately late age; was it frustrating to have to wait so long? It weighed on me. We live in a society that celebrates success at an early age; the 25-year-olds have the field. Writers get discouraged these days if they're not famous by 25, which is absurd. It's this culture of success we're living in. I feel lucky to have had the chance to learn some skills. My first piece of fiction was published -- it isn't in "Thirst" -- in 1981, when I was in my late 20s.
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