{"id":127825,"date":"2018-07-24T11:00:12","date_gmt":"2018-07-24T15:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=127825"},"modified":"2018-07-24T15:23:52","modified_gmt":"2018-07-24T19:23:52","slug":"the-vocabulary-of-tourism-an-interview-with-laura-van-den-berg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/07\/24\/the-vocabulary-of-tourism-an-interview-with-laura-van-den-berg\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vocabulary of Tourism: An Interview with Laura van den Berg"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In <\/em>The Third Hotel, Laura van den Berg\u2019s phantasmagoric fourth book, a recently widowed woman named Clare travels alone to Havana to attend the Festival of New Latin American Cinema. There, she sees her deceased husband Richard and everything she knew\u2014or thought she knew\u2014about their marriage is thrown into turmoil. It\u2019s the perfect premise for a novel that, in van den Berg\u2019s hands, is both emotionally nuanced and philosophically profound.<\/em><\/p>\n

Part of the book\u2019s appeal is the way van den Berg shines a light on the casual misogyny of some of our once-revered artists. \u201cTorture the women, Hitchcock was reported to have said when a young director asked him for advice,\u201d she writes. And, \u201cIf you leave a woman, though, you probably ought to shoot her, Hemingway had once written in a letter.\u201d The novel\u2019s clear-eyed scrutiny of the treatment of women in horror films made me rethink a lot of my own viewing habits as a kid.<\/em><\/p>\n

Though I\u2019ve admired van den Berg\u2019s fiction for about a decade now, we first met in 2015, when we were on a panel together at the Brooklyn Book Festival. This interview was conducted via email, this spring.<\/em><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

How did you begin to write this novel? What questions did you seek to raise or what did you want to know more about?<\/p>\n

VAN DEN BERG<\/p>\n

Ah, so many things were on the brain!\u00a0Ghosts. Death. Accidents. Violence. Sick parents. Marriage. Florida. Tourism. Planes. Hotels. Cameras. Horror films. Misogyny. Secrets.<\/p>\n

More specifically, I wrote much of the first draft while living on the campus of Bard College, in a house that I\u2019m fairly sure was haunted. I was only at Bard for a semester. I had been bouncing around between various campuses for a few years and that winter I was on the road a lot because I had just put out my first book and my husband and I were spending too much time apart and my father was ill\u2014life felt so transient, as if everything was moving too quickly for me to absorb anything. So the book sprung from a tangle of chaotic feelings\u2014plus an attic ceiling that would unfold itself in the middle of the night. I would come out of my bedroom in the morning and the stairs would be out and waiting like an invitation.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a line from John Berger\u2019s\u00a0Ways of Seeing\u00a0<\/em>that goes, \u201cThe relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.\u201d I was born and raised in Orlando, where the economy and culture has been powerfully shaped by tourism, and so I\u2019ve long been interested in how we narrate the places we visit, how the gap between what we see and what we know manifests when we\u2019re traveling. And, of course, the gap between what we see and what we know has much resonance for horror films too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

How did you decide to set it in Cuba? I couldn\u2019t imagine this novel taking place anywhere else.<\/p>\n

VAN DEN BERG<\/p>\n

To start, I am interested in the travel novel as a form, even as I understand it to be a form that comes with baggage, especially the subset featuring the American abroad. I love so many books that might be considered travel or abroad novels in one way or another\u2014Katie Kitamura’s\u00a0A Separation,<\/em>\u00a0Damon Galgut’s\u00a0In a Strange Room,\u00a0<\/em>Chris Kraus\u2019s\u00a0Torpor,<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Alan Warner’s\u00a0Morvern Callar,<\/em>\u00a0Cristina\u00a0Garc\u00eda’s\u00a0Here in Berlin,\u00a0<\/em>Adolfo Bioy Casares’s\u00a0The Invention of Morel\u2014<\/em>if we’re categorizing loosely. For a while, I had a kind of constellation of narrative elements that I felt were conversant with contemporary Havana, but it took me a while to understand the\u00a0how\u00a0<\/em>and the\u00a0why.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The film-within-the-book,\u00a0Revoluci\u00f3n Zombi<\/em>, is based loosely on a real film,\u00a0Juan de los Muertos,\u00a0<\/em>directed by Alejandro Brugu\u00e9s and regarded by many as Cuba\u2019s first non-animated horror film. This offered an early link between the theme of horror and place.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What is your own relationship to Cuba?<\/p>\n

VAN DEN BERG<\/p>\n

The Third Hotel<\/em> is set in 2015, a year that saw a major influx in American tourists. I thought quite a lot about the vocabulary of tourism, the kinds of desires that vocabulary seems designed to ignite, and the promises made, and how those promises change or vanish altogether depending on who you are. Perhaps the language caught my eye in part because I’m from a place that has been powerfully molded by tourism and is often marketed in a way that flattens complexity. Havana and Orlando are of course wildly different contexts, but this was an open door, so to speak.\u00a0And then,\u00a0at a certain point in my research, I realized that some theoretical work on tourism used language very similar to that of cinematic scholarship\u2014the idea of the lens, for example\u2014that discovery allowed for increased synergy between the various elements, between subject and place.<\/p>\n

In terms of approach, I went to Havana three times while working on the book, once to visit the Festival of New Latin American Cinema, the same festival that Clare travels to in the novel. Havana is a uniquely complicated city, and contains a great many histories. I knew it would be a monumental challenge to set much of the story there\u2014especially given that I\u2019ve never been anything but a visitor, and thus my eye on the place is always going to be incomplete, comprised. So my strategy was to focus on a few small ecosystems within the larger landscape of Havana, areas where I could locate a point of entry\u2014the film festival and the world of hotels, for example.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Your novel displays an encyclopedic knowledge of film and film theory. For someone like me, with very little knowledge of that medium, it was exhilarating to learn so much during Clare\u2019s adventure. Would you please tell me a little bit about your other cinematic influences here? What are a few more films that would appeal to readers of The Third Hotel<\/em>?<\/p>\n

VAN DEN BERG<\/p>\n

Film is central to the novel\u2019s plot, and I also become interested in the vocabulary of film\u2014how the language of film gave Clare a means to express things she might not be able to otherwise, and how that language could offer a frame for how to read what\u2019s unfolding. In terms of specific cinematic influences, certainly I\u2019d recommend\u00a0Juan de los Muertos<\/em>, and I also really love this French zombie movie\u00a0Les Revenants<\/em>\u2014where the dead reanimate for no apparent reason.\u00a0Les Revenants\u00a0<\/em>is a bloodless zombie movie, and somehow all the more unsettling for it.\u00a0REC<\/em>\u00a0is innovative for its use of space. I also revisited many older horror films, from the monstrous Hitchcock\u2014Psycho, Rear Window<\/em>\u2014to De Palma\u2019s\u00a0Carrie\u00a0<\/em>to Carpenter\u2019s original\u00a0Halloween,\u00a0<\/em>which I found surprisingly frightening\u2014that methodical, inevitable stalking, and the claustrophobia of a tight network of spaces.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In terms of craft, what was the most difficult part of writing this novel?<\/p>\n

VAN DEN BERG<\/p>\n

Holy cow\u2014everything\u00a0<\/em>about writing a novel is hard for me. It was as true for\u00a0The Third Hotel<\/em> as it was for my first novel. I need to hold a lot more mental space in order to work seriously on a novel, and that can be hard to do alongside a full-time job, life, etc. In the case of The Third Hotel<\/em>, I was lucky to have a fellowship for a chunk of the time I was writing the book. But I think at the end an intimacy exists between myself and the characters and the fictive world. At this point, it feels like Clare and I have been through a lot together, and she\u2019ll be with me for a long time. I find this closeness to be very rewarding.<\/p>\n

In terms of craft, the distribution of information took a long time to figure out\u2014what does Clare know and when does she know it and how will that material be unfurled.\u00a0There is also always material I am avoiding, but I don\u2019t know that going in and so I have a kind of silent, invisible argument with myself for several years. The subplot concerning Clare\u2019s father would be one such example. The father was like a grain of sand in the corner of my eye for a long time\u2014I tried to ignore it until I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Your book contains a fictional zombie film. What will be your own strategy for surviving the inevitable zombie uprising?<\/p>\n

VAN DEN BERG<\/p>\n

Zombies have nothing to lose, which makes them formidable adversaries. Destruction is their only plan. Ideally I\u2019d come across an eccentric with a secure underground bunker where we could ride out the disaster with Netflix and tinned fish. Otherwise, I would plan to stay away from other people, find myself a baseball bat, and keep moving at night. I\u2019ve been boxing for the last eight months, which is not all that useful for self-defense\u2014you don\u2019t want to get too close! But it means I have decent physical stamina, which would be helpful if these are the kinds of zombies that please the zombie purists\u2014i.e., the lurching kind. Though zombies are like death itself\u2014you can only outrun them for so long.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Andrew Ervin is the author of the novella collection\u00a0<\/em>Extraordinary Renditions\u00a0and the novel\u00a0<\/em>Burning Down George Orwell\u2019s House. His latest book is\u00a0<\/em>Bit by Bit: How Video Games Transformed Our World. He lives in Philadelphia.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  In The Third Hotel, Laura van den Berg\u2019s phantasmagoric fourth book, a recently widowed woman named Clare travels alone to Havana to attend the Festival of New Latin American Cinema. There, she sees her deceased husband Richard and everything she knew\u2014or thought she knew\u2014about their marriage is thrown into turmoil. It\u2019s the perfect premise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[34404,34795,34798,17033,8960,34796,566,1047,573,34797,22295,34799,4975],"class_list":["post-127825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-adolfo-bioy-casares","tag-alan-warner","tag-alejandro-brugues","tag-barfing","tag-chris-kraus","tag-christina-garcia","tag-cuba","tag-damon-galgut","tag-john-berger","tag-juan-de-los-muertos","tag-katie-kitamura","tag-les-revenants","tag-ways-of-seeing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Vocabulary of Tourism: An Interview with Laura van den Berg<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ghosts. Death. Accidents. Violence. Sick parents. Marriage. Florida. Tourism. Planes. Hotels. Cameras. Horror films. Misogyny. 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