Nell Zink Couldn't Have Written a Book Had She Stayed in the U.S.

New York Times

20-03-2025

In an email interview, the author of 'Mislaid' and 'Avalon' celebrated Jonathan Franzen, public radio in Europe and a book that 'raises blisters.' SCOTT HELLER
What books are on your night stand?
I keep a cot in the hallway just for sleeping. There's no reading lamp. In related news, I sleep like a marmot.
Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
It would be some amusing literary magazine, not necessarily a new issue, on an empty train next to a winding river, with an occasional glance at the scenery.
What's the last great book you read?
'Wie eine Träne im Ozean' ('Like a Tear in the Ocean'), by Manès Sperber. It's a trilogy in one volume about post-Austro-Hungarian communist intellectuals trapped between Hitler and Stalin, first published in a French translation starting in 1949. It rocked my world.
What's your favorite book no one else has heard of?
Stef Stauffer, a Bernese schoolteacher who vacations way up in the Alps, collected oral histories from her older neighbors and put them out in 2012 as 'Steile Welt' ('Steep World'). It's a record of grinding, gratuitous deprivation — especially for women and girls — in the tradition of 'Christ Stopped at Eboli' or 'Land Without Bread.'
What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?
The New York Times would be an odd choice of venue to air my conscious shortcomings, especially in writing. Newspaper editors treasure the indiscretions their journalists coax out of me on the phone or over coffee, but you can't expect me to do it to myself. …
Can a great book be badly written? What other criteria can overcome bad prose?
Ideally, non-writers with stories to tell would all have their personal Svetlana Alexieviches — eloquent ghostwriters who take their side — but of course many don't. If I keep reading something despite an annoying style, it must have documentary value of some kind.
What do you read when you're working on a book? And what kind of reading do you avoid while writing?
I avoid sloppy English with diction errors. I mean, I always avoid it, but when I'm working on a project, I want my input to be especially articulate and concise. I tend not to read fiction when I'm composing a novel, because I'd rather stay wrapped up in my own characters.
Jonathan Franzen has been a champion of your work. Why do so many people rag on him?
Nobody wants to punch down, and he's the best. Q.E.D.! — Just kidding. He speaks his mind and takes flak for it. It's not like he suffers in silence; he writes pointed essays and gives hair-raising interviews. It only seems one-sided because he's not on social media, where the ragging takes place.
'Sister Europe' is the story of a party that doesn't stop. Do you have a favorite party scene?
Williamsburg, Va., in the 1980s.
You once edited an indie rock fanzine. What do you read now to learn about new music?
I listen to the radio. Nearly every household in Europe is required to support public radio and TV. It's a regressive tax, but it keeps us in interesting new recordings, along with theater gossip and three-hour specials contrasting the aesthetics of Primo Levi and Jean Améry or whatever. There was a famous case in 2006, when a kidnapped Viennese girl named Natascha Kampusch gave an interview to public TV within two weeks of escaping from the basement where she'd spent ages 10 to 18. People were like, Wait, why does an unschooled victim of unspeakable abuse speak in paragraphs and seem better educated than my own children? And she was like, I had a radio!
How would your work be different if you lived in the United States?
It probably wouldn't exist. When I lived stateside, I had to work full time for health insurance and to make rent, and I turned out a two-page story every three months. At that rate, a novel would take 25 years.
Tell me about a German writer who deserves to be better known.
Helena Adler was Austrian — she died recently, at 40, of cancer — and her book against death, 'Miserere,' raises blisters. It would be hard to translate, but doable. She was known for portrayals of backward mountain hamlets that make 'Hillbilly Elegy' look like 'Eloise.'
You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
Emily Brontë and Lord Byron, with Jessi Jezewska Stevens — a younger writer I happen to know — as a fellow beneficiary and witness, since obviously I won't be seeing Brontë or Byron again. If Byron storms out after five minutes because we don't walk in beauty like the night, no big deal. Brontë built 'Wuthering Heights' around a Byronic hero, so I'm sure she'd get a kick out of meeting him. Plus they were both native speakers of modern English who died young enough to be resurrected hot and hungry.