Jonathan Hull

How did you come up with the idea for The Distance from Normandy?

The book essentially sprung from a single inspiration: namely, that it might be interesting to take two of the more strikingly dissimilar members of the American family - an upright and aging World War Two vet and a drawer-drooping, despair - filled teenager - lock them in the same room and let them at each other. As the narrative took hold I realized I could bring together several subjects of interest: the experience and moral consequences of war; the sometimes lethal disaffection among today's youth, which at its worst has led to almost incomprehensible tragedies in our schools; and the unique and often intense affinity between grandparents and their grandchildren. Also, it seemed to me that our near-exhaustive efforts to adequately eulogize America's so-called "greatest generation" beg a crucial question; namely, how far from greatness have we since fallen? Put another way - and this explains in part how I came up with the title - how might one measure the distance from Normandy ?

In creating the character of Mead, I wanted a front-line witness to some of his generation's greatest trials - D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, the final conquest of Germany - only with a burden of guilt, complicating the notions of good and evil. For his grandson Andrew, I relied on a combination of my own memories of teenage turmoil - admittedly dated - as well as my experiences reporting on the topic of youth violence, which I'd covered extensively.

How long did it take you to write?

Less than nine months start to finish, which is quick for me. By comparison, Losing Julia took me over two years and I spent another two years on a manuscript that didn't go anywhere. Hopefully I'm learning. Or maybe I just got lucky.

The Distance from Normandy and Losing Julia both dwell on the issue of loss. Would you consider this one of your central themes as a writer?

And as a reader and husband and father and son as well. It seems to me that dealing with loss is the single greatest challenge we each face, whether it be lost youth or lost love or lost opportunity or what have you. So the great question becomes: how do we fully embrace life while at the same time preparing to one day let go of everything we hold dear, often under the most difficult and painful circumstances? I'm still working on the answer, but I'm convinced it involves a robust sense of humor.

I think this also explains why I'm so drawn to history, both as a reader and a writer. Somehow it strengthens me to feel a part of a much larger human struggle to make some sense of our place in the universe; to know that millions of others who have gone before have asked the same unanswerable questions as they stared in awe at the night sky. And it inspires me to see how others have managed to find meaning and dignity in their lives even under the most terrible conditions, reminding me of just how fortunate I am.

In Losing Julia, Patrick Delaney faces enormous hardships both as a young soldier in the trenches of World War One and later as an older man. Do you believe he is ultimately defeated by those hardships?

I leave that to the reader, but I'll certainly say he's been around the block a few times. Some readers have found his story quite uplifting and often humorous while others have closed the book with a sense of unremitting tragedy. I suppose that says as much about people as it does about the novel.

Both of your books are set against the backdrop of war. Why does the battlefield attract you as a writer?

Probably for many of the same reasons that it repels me so much. No other human experience so fully and graphically reveals the very worst - and yet also the very best - in us. Good and evil, love and death, courage and cowardice, faith and despair; it's all right there. And I think it's impossible to understand how we got where we are today without some appreciation of the two greatest cataclysms in modern history, which I believe still haunt us to this day - and rightly so. As a writer I think it's vitally important that we confront and examine and mourn our enormous capacity for violence and evil. That said, I cringe at the glorification of violence, so frequent in our media, where brutality and suffering take on an almost pornographic quality.

How did you go about your research?

I've always had an interest in military history, partly inherited from my father, who was something of a Revolutionary War scholar. Yet after my years as a reporter I made a deliberate decision not to go out and interview vets because I wanted to find the material in my imagination rather than my notebooks. Still, I was obviously concerned with getting the facts and atmosphere right and I read a great many diaries and letters and memoirs from soldiers of both wars.

During my research for Losing Julia I visited the battlefields of Verdun and the Somme, certainly two of the loneliest, most wretched places on earth, the landscape still violently churned like a stormy sea. I returned to France to gather material for The Distance from Normandy, this time seeking the sad harvest of a different generation. More than once as I walked among old bunkers and cemeteries it struck me that the combatants of the Second World War could literally take cover behind the innumerable headstones of their fathers who had fallen in the previous war. In some cases, the monuments and memorials to the Great War actually bear the scars of bullets and artillery shells fired in the Second World War, a desecration that makes those memorials - and the sacrifices of those they honor - all the sadder still.

You obviously have no firsthand experience with either old age or the wars you write about. Did that make the writing more challenging?

Perhaps, but in some ways I think it made it more refreshing as well. I've never subscribed to the writing school mantra write what you know. I think that puts writers on far too short a leash. What's the imagination for if we're all just going to rehash our childhoods, careers and marital traumas? I think I'd rather tell a young writer to write about any subject that profoundly moves and fascinates you, whether or not it's part of your personal experience. You have to be possessed by the subject matter to finish a book, and if the writer isn't possessed the reader sure won't be.

Did you find the transition from journalist to novelist difficult?

Though I'd heard many cautionary accounts, I found the switch both painless and pleasurable. After years of being constrained by facts, quotes and the accessibility of sources, it was wonderfully liberating to toss aside my reporter's notebooks and plunge right into other people's hearts and heads, which of course is where all the really interesting stuff lies hidden. Fiction strikes me as far better equipped to get at the deeper and more compelling truths of our lives - our unspoken fears and hopes, our secret desires. I enjoy writing fiction for the same reason that I enjoying reading it: it's the best way I know of to experience the world through the eyes of others.

And best of all, I get to spend a lot more time with my family.

What are your writing habits?

Five or six hours a day, if I'm lucky. I write in a windowless room, accompanied by my dog and fortified by a constant stream of music, usually classical or acoustic with some soundtracks and a bit of bracing rock thrown in here and there. While much is made of creativity's exhausting toll, I can't wait to get to my keyboard each morning. A real nine-to-five job, now that's agony.

What are some of your all-time favorite books?

In no particular order I'd have to include:
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
Peter Camenzind, Erich Maria Remarque
The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker
Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves
Sophie's Choice, William Styron
Demian, Hermann Hesse
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory, William Manchester
Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

What are you working on now?

Too many things. I have a manuscript sitting on my desk that needs one final assault, another novel underway and I somehow got myself into the internet start-up business by launching a site called, WereYouThere.com. Oh, and then there are my two wonderful teenagers.

Tell me about the site.

It was inspired by readers. Over the years I've received lots of letters from people who were moved to share some of the unforgettable moments in their own lives, hopeful that someone might listen. Because what are stories without an audience? At heart, we're all storytellers, telling and retelling our stories to give structure and meaning to our lives. I started looking online for a place where these memories might come together in a meaningful way, and to my surprise I couldn't find one. So I put aside the book I was writing at the time and went to work.

It's sort of an historical archive for sharing memories?

Social memories. A lot of sites focus on personal memories. That's great for family and friends, but my wedding photos or family vacation to Lake Tahoe have limited appeal if you don't know me. (And maybe even if you do know me.) WereYouThere begins at the point where lives overlap. That's why social memories can forge instant bonds between strangers. Just put two people who both went to Woodstock into the same room and watch what happens.

They both shed about 40 years.

Exactly. I like to think of WereYouThere as a place to talk about the moments in life that really mattered, from the places you can't forget to the people, movements and events that shape our lives and history. Everyone has interesting stories to tell but most never find the audience they deserve. Instead they're stored away in scrapbooks or gathering dust in attics. WereYouThere is intended to bring these stories into the open and create a conversation about the defining experiences of our lives, be they inspiring or tragic. It's about where we've been, who we've met, what we've done and what we've seen. And it's designed to connect people through shared experience, reuniting old friends and connecting strangers whose paths once crossed.

Sounds ambitious.

It's just getting started but already the stories are incredible, from an eyewitness account of the attack on Pearl Harbor to a Pink Floyd concert flashback. Meanwhile, each member is a contributor to an ongoing digital history project, weaving their stories, photos and videos into a fascinating tapestry of our collective experience. Ultimately, I hope the site becomes a resource for students, historians and anyone interested in looking back at where we've been, which is the best place to look for clues about where we're headed.

Back to writing for one final question. Do you have any advice for writers?

I wrote down the following tips for a friend:

1. Don't wait for inspiration. It's much too fickle.
2. If you're really serious, quit your day job. You'll be so scared that inspiration won't be necessary.
3. Write the book you've always wanted to read, not the book you think others want to read.
4. You can't start unless you're sitting at your computer. So sit.
5. Don't wait for the perfect beginning. Just start piling up the words until you get traction. Eventually the beginning will become obvious.
6. If you try to write a bestseller, don't expect any help from your muse.
7. Remember: one page a day and you're done in a year. (With the first draft.)
8. When in despair, think of all the really awful books that somehow got published.
9. When you think you're done, put the manuscript aside for a month, then pick it back up and rewrite it.
10. After completing #9, give it to a few trusted readers. Listen carefully to what they say, but only ingest what rings true. Five readers might point you in five different directions.
11. If you try to please every reader, you'll embarrass yourself.
12. When you're not writing, saturate yourself with the words of writers you admire.
13. When in doubt, shorter is better. Even when not in doubt, shorter is still better.
14. As you write, follow the characters rather than your outline. If the characters are alive, they'll know where they're going even if you don't.
15. There will be days when you think it's horrible. Keep going. If you don't have these days, you should be worried.
16. Even the best books can only allude to the deepest truths. That's close enough.
17. Just because you can't get published doesn't mean your book isn't good. (Alas, the reverse is true as well.)
18. Thinking about writing is not the same as writing.
19. If you know it's good, that's good enough (unless you quit your day job).