The below courtesy of Penguin/Random House
A conversation with Geraldine Brooks, author of
THE SECRET CHORD
What interests you
most about King David? How did you decide to write a novel about him?
When my son was about nine years old, he made the unusual
decision to learn to play the harp. (I’d
been braced for drums, so I didn’t actually resist the choice.) Watching him, dwarfed by his teacher’s
gorgeous concert instrument, I began to think about that other long ago boy
harpist, the shepherd who became a king. He’s ubiquitous, after all: a cliché
in our language (how many contests are David and Goliath battles?); gorgeously
depicted throughout the history of Western art; the psalms attributed to him
sung in churches and synagogues across millennia. But who was this
warrior-poet-musician, this lover and killer, who experiences every human joy
and every human heartbreak? I went back
to the bible to look for him, and found that the best stories from his life are
the least told ones.
How did you research
and prepare to write THE SECRET CHORD?
I started with the period itself, the Second Iron Age, to
discover as much as I could about the context for a leader like David. How did tribal power work? What did people
eat? How did they fight? What would they
have known about the wider world? Archaeology
and ancient history answered many of these questions. Others had to be answered
experientially. What was it like to
herd sheep on a hot afternoon in the Judean hills? My younger son and I went and did it. We also
visited sites associated with David, going to places like the Valley of Elah
where he clashed with Goliath, Ein Gedi where he hid out from Shaul and
exploring the tunnels under Jerusalem where excavations are uncovering
buildings of the Davidian period. I talked with Israeli military experts about
some of the strategic issues David faced.
I consulted experts on early Hebrew music, trying to get a feel for the
sound of what David might have played.
As a journalist, you
covered the Middle East for the Wall
Street Journal. Did your experience with
the location and its history enhance your ability to write THE SECRET CHORD?
My first impulse is to say no, because in three thousand
years, too much has changed. The flora
and fauna are entirely different. The land is dense with millions of people
rather than the scattered thousands who lived there in that era. And yet on reflection, a number of experiences did
shape my thinking. Covering modern desert warfare, interviewing contemporary
despots and seeing how absolute power is wielded, living among people whose
lives are entirely shaped, and sometimes deformed, by absolute religious
conviction—all these things fed my imagination in some way.
David is a
complicated character—at once a warrior and despot, a lover and adulterer, a
poet and composer, a coarse yet refined man of fierce will and great appetites
who is also capable of baseness and treachery. In your opinion, what are
David’s biggest flaws? What are his greatest strengths?
Well, he’s a murderer, which is pretty hard to get past. He
abuses power. He’s also a criminally
indulgent parent. But he is paid out
heavily for these crimes and flaws.
Unlike many of our modern leaders, when he makes a mistake, he admits
it. He listens to criticism. I’m drawn
to his ardency, his huge capacity for love.
David has been
widely depicted in art, literature, and film. Did you consult other portrayals
while writing THE SECRET CHORD? Is there anything you feel previous depictions
get wrong about him?
I read everything I could find. I watched some truly execrable movies. I revisited favorite art works and discovered
masterpieces that were new to me. The Australian painter Arthur Boyd, for
example, has a poignant depiction of David and Shaul that taps into the
artist’s own pain as the son of a mentally unstable father. Many of the scholarly works (Robert Pinksy and
David Wolpe’s books being two notable exceptions) tend to be either/or, black/white,
twisting data to condemn or exonerate him. To me it was more interesting to
accept the contradictions in his nature, the multi-faceted complexity of it.
How did you decide
which stories and characters from David’s life to include in the novel, and
which to leave out?
I didn’t leave much out.
Perhaps I tended to dwell less on the military campaigns and more on the
domestic entanglements. I found myself most drawn to the women in the narrative,
the love stories—and, yes, hate stories—of his many relationships.
Which character did
you find easiest to write? Which was the most challenging?
I loved reimagining the story of Mikhal. Her love for David, the huge risk she takes
to save him from her father, the terrible retribution the king then exacts for
that betrayal, and all that follows—this powerful story is told in a handful of
lines in the Bible. Marvelous lines, to
be sure, but very few. Putting in the
missing passion, the rage, the bitterness—that was very satisfying. I think
David himself is always going to be the most challenging because he embodies so
many contradictions. My struggle was to bring balance to all his contrasting
traits, all the lights and shadows of his nature.
The novel is
primarily told through the eyes of Natan, the mysterious prophet who becomes
David’s direct connection to the divine, his lifelong companion and advisor, and
the moral conscience of the novel. Where did your inspiration for Natan come
from?
The inspiration was two references in the bible that I have used
here as epigraphs, each of which refers to the lost “book of Natan.” The bible
says Natan has given a full account of the lives of David and Solomon, all
their acts, “from first to last.” What
would such a man have seen? What would
he have known? How would his portrayal
differ from the accounts that we do have, in the two books of Samuel, in Kings
and in Chronicles? It’s tantalizing, and it took hold of my imagination. I’ve
always loved the Hebrew prophets, in any case.
These are men of huge moral force, pain-in–the-ass truth tellers who had
the guts to castigate their society and its rulers, often in the most
exquisitely crafted language. You can
feel their fierceness, their penetrating intelligence, their bravery.
You’ve written many
historical novels, but none set so far back in time as THE SECRET CHORD. Was it
challenging to capture the voice of the period?
I don’t think it’s possible to recapture the voice of a
period so distant from our own. What I
tried to avoid were the familiar flowery cadences of King James Bible English, striving
instead for something that evoked the bluntness and the austere beauty of the
biblical Hebrew.
Humanity’s
relationship with God is a major theme in your books. How would you describe
your own faith, and how does it drive your work?
I’m interested in believers, and in what faith does for us,
and to us. As a foreign correspondent in
the Mideast, I witnessed first-hand the excesses born out of fanatical belief,
and I draw on those experiences to imagine the past, where faith was often the
defining essence of day-to-day existence.
I’m drawn to the human quest for meaning. I like asking the questions. I haven’t found the answers.
What were the
biggest challenges you encountered in the writing of this novel?
David shimmers somewhere in the half-light between history
and myth. My challenge was to approach an emotional truth that seemed real and
recognizable without losing the sense of the supernatural, the slightly magical
aura that surrounds a man we’re told lived his life in the hand of the divine.
What can David’s
story teach readers today? Why is his legacy still important?
There are myriad facets of his life that reward
contemplation. He experiences
everything: triumph, celebrity, exile, repudiation. Love and hatred. Children
who tear apart his family and try to steal his position; a child who grows up
to become a byword for wisdom and good governance. He is famous for his art, he
is renowned as a fighter, he is celebrated as a nation-builder. He’s a descendant of the most important
Biblical figures and the antecedent of Jesus.
I think the question is, What do
you want to learn? If it involves
the experience of being human, you’ll find insight in the life of David.
