Review_NONFICTION
56 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ OCTOBER 14, 2019
Review_NONFICTION
better come to terms with their compli-
cated relationship (she “is my other ear...
always listening for something simple and
sweet,” yet she would also beat him). He
focuses on Bach himself, offering insight
into his approach to composing, suggesting
he went to “great lengths to subvert our
efforts to comprehend the formal structure
of the variations.” Kennicott does not
skimp on details, causing the narrative to
feel more like a scholarly thesis devoted to
the composer than an account of his own
personal experiences, which tend to take a
distant backseat and disappear. About the
Goldberg Variations, Kennicot admits, “I
had no illusions that I would ever master
them well enough to be satisfied by my
performance,” yet he realizes that life
will never be perfect, though one can
still find purpose and peace. While the
memoir elements get lost here, aficionados
of music theory and Bach will take
delight in this raw and cultured narrative.
(Feb.)Here for It: Or, How to Save Your
Soul in America
R. Eric Thomas. Ballantine, $26 (288p)
ISBN 978-0-525-62103-4
With humor, candor, and some self-
deprecation, Thomas, a playwright and
Elle columnist, delivers a debut essay
collection that explores his search for self,
love, and stable employment. Growing
up in a “broken-down” Baltimore neigh-
borhood while attending a majority-white
private school, Thomas, an African-
American, learned that living in a bubble
isn’t all that bad—his parents economized
and worked tirelessly to insulate him from
the world’s injustices. Throughout, he
deals with imposter syndrome, as when
his college acceptance letters include invi-
tations to events for students of color,
causing him to ask himself, “Was I the
black they were looking for?” Upon
beginning at Columbia, he tentatively
enters the gay dating scene; questions his
Baptist upbringing, in which “being gay
was such a sin it wasn’t even spoken of”;
and falls in love with postcolonial litera-
ture. After college and several jobs, his life
changes when a Facebook post in which
he “publicly thirsts” after President
Obama goes viral, landing him his Elle
dream job. Whether dealing with love,
breakups, or other setbacks, Thomas is anWhy did the world need another book
on the Titanic?
There are some fantastic studies about
the sinking of the Titanic, but I was
really interested in looking at it as a
symbol of a diminishing era, to shift
the context to make the ship a product
of its time. That book had not been
written, and I thought I could produce
something useful on that topic.Why did you believe that
you could write this book?
I’d always had a connection
to the Titanic from having
been born in Belfast. My
great-grandparents had
told me stories of its
building, and of the
building of its sister ships,
rising above the skyline. I
felt I could marry my
skills as an adult historian
to what I had learned as a child. I
knew I had to sieve through the
research, because this was not going to
be froth—it had to have heft.What role do the ship’s blueprints
play in your writing?
A great deal. With the blueprints
from Linen Hall Library here in
Belfast, I could magically resurrect
the Titanic. I could navigate myself
through the ship, say, from the grand
staircase to the squash court. Having
the physical blueprints meant that I
could deal with “eyewitness” accounts
that were colored by trauma and hys-
teria. I could see that cabin C-37 was
very close to the stairwell and guess
that the Countess of Rothes may have
changed her room from C-37 to C-77because she assumed 37 would be
noisier.Which of your characters did you
most closely identify with?
Of the six I focused on, there were none
I disliked, though I found the actress
Dorothy Gibson frustrating. But there
is indeed such a thing as a “literary
Stockholm syndrome”—that is, iden-
tifying with a particular character. For
me, it is Lucy Noëlle
Martha Leslie, the Countess
of Rothes. I experienced a
wonderful learning curve
piecing together her life as
a suffragette and nurse. I
found inspiring her desire
and commitment to give
back to society what she
had been given.You describe the Titanic’s
impact with the iceberg as barely a
nudge that some people slept
through. How did you decide how
to write that moment?
I did not want to detail the crew and
the bridge and the boiler—that’s been
done. I kept the moment of impact
just to what the six people saw. I
deliberately did not seek survivors’
memories, massaged for newspapers. I
stayed with the actual accounts rather
than the hyperbolic. That made it
easier to shy away from the temptation
of bombast. I wanted to underplay
that moment, not to be constrained by
stories but to restrain myself to what
furthered the angle of the book. In
many ways, that challenge was more
thrilling to me as a writer.
—Martha K. Baker[Q&A]
PW Talks with Gareth Russell
A Diminishing Era
In The Ship of Dreams (Atria, Dec.; reviewed on p. 62), historian Russell
illuminates the Edwardian world and the tragedy of the Titanic.©^
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