Entertaining Interview with Alan Furst
June 15, 2010 at 2:15 pm Lori Shontz 1 comment
I came late to Twitter, but I’ve come to rely on it and—dare I say?—enjoy it. Why? Because of days like Monday, when author Susan Orlean, whom I follow, alerted me to an NPR interview with Alan Furst ’67g, who has a new book, Spies of the Balkans, coming out today.
The original tweet came from a book critic at The New York Times, Dwight Garner, who wrote: “Alan Furst, charming as hell on Morning Edition. Made me want to pack a few of his novels for the weekend.” Orlean, who re-tweeted Garner’s post, agreed. I dug up the interview (which you can listen to here), and I, too, was charmed.
A couple of highlights from Furst, whom we profiled in our May/June 2008 issue:
—Agreeing with host Steve Inskeep that his favorite characters are the morally ambiguous ones: “Absolutely because those are the readers of the book; those are the people who are going to say, well, what would I do—and no kidding, what would I do? What would I really do? It’s always nice to think that you would be a hero. On the other hand, that might have something to do with what’s going to happen to your wife, what’s going to happen to your children, what’s going to happen to your parents. It’s not a clean business.”
—On why he continually returns to the early years of World War II and the period just before it: “You know, the human spirit was at its worst and at its best. Don’t ask me why. It just was. And this period, 1933 to 1942, I’ve begun to think of it as an enormous room with a thousand corners. There are so many stories and so many places, all of them so different. So it’s always up to me to find another great story.”
And this morning, I found this NPR review of the new book, which says Furst is “working at the top of his powers.”
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Entry filed under: College of the Liberal Arts, Famous Penn Staters. Tags: Alan Furst, Dwight Garner, Morning Edition, NPR, Spies of Warsaw, Steve Inskeep, Susan Orlean, World War II.
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1. Laurie | June 15, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Didn’t know Alan Furst was an alum. Polish Officer was good; others have been only so-so. Great at the details; not nearly as good at evocation as David Downing.