A chance discovery in a used bookstore led the novelist Lily King to a biography of Margaret Mead, the anthropologist whose controversial 1928 work Coming of Age in Samoa would help prepare the way for the sexual revolution decades later. In its pages, she says, she found the outlines of a love triangle in the jungles of New Guinea, one that drew Mead and two fellow anthropologists into a dynamic so compelling that, through the composition of her own award-winning novel Father of the Rain, it tugged at King’s imagination as if begging to be transmuted into fiction. Now that episode of literary obsession has yielded, a re-imagining of the weeks spent by Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson circling one another in an ever-tighter orbit, even as they lived among and studied the tribespeople of an isolated tropical jungle. It’s an appropriately feverish story in which three scientists quickly discover that their ability to apply an intellectual framework to their experience is soon overwhelmed by the intensity and unpredictability of their own needs. And despite their reliance on mastery of the languages of their subjects, as one writes, “words aren’t always the most reliable thing.” Lily King spoke with me just before the publication of Euphoria about the genesis of the novel, and how its gripping inventions relate to the lives of the woman and men who inspired the book. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation. — Bill Tipper The Barnes & Noble Review: This book is a real departure for you in terms of subject matter.
Euphoria [Lily King]. A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award A Best Book of the Year for: New York Times Book Review Interesting. Jun 08, 2014 Lily King’s novel “Euphoria,” inspired by the life of Margaret Mead, is about a love triangle in New Guinea.
Lily King: It sure is. BNR: What was that experience like, approaching a book that has a specific historical setting and is connected to the real lives of rather famous people? LK: Well, it wasn’t just a departure of subject matter. It was a departure of place. It was a departure of time. Saints Row The Third Download Pc Completo En more.
It was a departure of narrator. And then the whole historical research piece of it was an additional, unfamiliar challenge. Sometimes you get these ideas for books or for stories, and you think, “Mmm, I can do that.” This one, I was like, “Oh, no. I can’t do that. That’s a great idea. Can’t do it.” BNR: So what was it that changed that from, “I can’t do this” to “I’m doing this”?
LK: It was completely my own curiosity. I wasn’t looking for a novel — I already was writing. But I inadvertently got a biography of Margaret Mead, and I read this one chapter when she was in New Guinea with her second husband, and they were doing fieldwork, and I saw how she met Gregory Bateson BNR: Who became her third husband after. LK: Yes, and she fell madly in love with him, and they worked together up the Sepik River for five months, the three of them, and just had this really wild romantic triangle. I was so interested in her I couldn’t believe I didn’t know that, even though I hardly knew anything really about Margaret Mead, except for a few books that she wrote, and that she was quite outspoken, and one of the first feminists really to get a lot of attention in America. But I had no idea about her love life and particularly about that crazy moment. I just thought=; that would be an amazing idea for a novel.
So then I put it aside, but I kept on going back to it. I got a biography of Bateson — I wanted to see what that person’s version of that moment was. I would just get these books and kind of paw through them. Then I started taking notes. I got a green notebook, I remember, and I just started taking it more seriously. Then the minute I started taking notes, I started getting ideas for what a novel could look like and what might happen.
It was very much all working to inspire me, and giving me fictional ideas. Although I was thinking, “OK, I’m just going to tell the story. Driver Audio Windows 7 32 Bit on this page. I’m going to call her ‘Margaret’ and he’s going to be called ‘Gregory’ and he’s going to be called ‘Reo.’ “ BNR: But that’s not what you wound up doing. LK: That’s not what happened. So I started writing it, years later, and immediately realized that I had a completely different story on my hands, and they would have to be very much their own people.