Interview With Oscar-Winning Filmmaker, Acclaimed Journalist, & Award-Winning Author Mark Jonathan Harris About his Newest Book, Misfits (stories)

 

1. What inspired you to write Misfits?  

Misfits draws on my long experience as a journalist and documentary filmmaker. I write fiction to discover truths I failed to see or understand at the time I was filming or experiencing them. For example, “Mute,” the second story in the book, is about a family coming to grips with a son who has autism. I spent five years producing a video-intensive website on autism—www.interactingwithautism.com—but felt there was still more I wanted to explore about this subject. “Tikkun Olam” grew out of the four years I spent writing and directing Foster, an HBO documentary about the foster care system in Los Angeles. As a filmmaker, I believe in Jean Luc Godard's dictum that a good film is the answer to questions properly posed.  The questions that haunted me after I after finished my documentaries, the ones that kept me awake at night, required a different medium to answer. So I turned to fiction. As Don DeLillo has remarked, a writer “learns to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.” 

2. What exactly is it about and who is it written for?

The stories in this book depict fraught encounters between young and old, people from different races, backgrounds, and ethnicities. A depressed accountant stumbles on a teenaged eco-terrorist in a parking garage. An illegal Salvadoran immigrant tries to keep the embittered old woman she is working for from starving herself to death. A middle-aged psychiatrist buys a drink for a seductive young artist during a flight delay. An out-of-work journalist recruits Chicano gangbangers to help a desperate tennis partner.  A troubled biologist runs into J. Robert Oppenheimer in a Santa Fe hotel. A well-intentioned white lawyer tries to aid a delinquent Black foster youth who doesn't trust her. All these charged situations have unexpected and startling consequences. Most of the stories take place in Los Angeles, a city where I’ve lived for the last 50 years and that I regard as the Ellis Island of the 21st century, a microcosm of multicultural America. The issues my characters are coping with—climate change, inequality, uncertainty, and personal pain—are ones many of us are grappling with at this moment in our very divided country. 

3. What do you hope readers will get out of reading your book? 

We're all looking for connection and meaning in our lives. I hope that readers will identify and empathize with the characters in this book as they struggle to find their place in an unpredictable and rapidly changing world. The situations in these stories may be unusual, but I believe readers will relate to most of these protagonists. Although the conflicts they face are often grave, the people in these stories find surprising answers. I hope readers will too. 

4. How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design?

Misfits is the title of one of the stories in the book, but it also describes how many of my protagonists feel about themselves—they're out of place and adrift in a precarious world.  The great design team at Atmosphere Press designed the bold cover, a reference to another story in the collection, "The Cactus," in which an unlucky Hollywood stunt man steals a succulent in an attempt to change his fortune. The lone cactus on the book's cover conveys the sense of isolation of many of my characters, but also their prickly beauty. 

5. Were there experiences in your personal life or career that came in handy when writing this book? 

Every story in the book reflects some element of my personal experience, but "Trail's End" is 

more autobiographical than the others.  I, too, was sent away to summer camp as a seven-year-old, dumped there by my parents when they went to Europe, and bullied by other campers. A compassionate counselor took me under his wing and taught me how to fight back against my tormentors. 

6. How would you describe your writing style? Which writers or books is your writing similar to?

There are many writers I admire. Raymond Carver is one of them. His spare, precise style has certainly influenced me.  I find less is more. I try to avoid using two words when one right one will do. But I've also been influenced by the Nobel Prize-winning writer Alice Munro, particularly in the deft way she connects the past with the present in her stories. 

7. What challenges did you overcome in the writing of this book?

The greatest challenge I had in writing Misfits was finding the time and attention to devote to the stories that they deserved. I also wanted to ensure that there was enough wit and humor and surprise to keep the reader engaged. I wrote these stories over a period of several years, in between my filmmaking.  During Covid, when it was difficult to make documentaries, I had more time to write.  Eventually, I found I had enough stories to fill a book.  

8. You have a pretty unique background -- an Oscar-winning documentarian, a Harvard grad, an award-winning children's book writer, and a journalist published by the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, and TV Guide. How did you come to writing adult novels?

My documentaries have focused on critical social, political and historical issues.  Once asked to describe my films, my son said, "If it's genocide, call my dad."  I've made films about the Holocaust, slavery, and the humanitarian crisis in Sudan; I’ve dealt with child labor, child poverty, child abuse, child neglect, and teenage murderers.  I’ve also documented revolution and war in Ukraine and the complicity of doctors and psychologists in torture in Iraq and our military prisons. “Doctors of the Dark Side” is the title of Martha Davis’s documentary that I wrote, and you might say that most of my films deal with the dark side of human nature— cruelty, hate, exploitation, oppression.  But in my films, I always looked for hope, resilience, the possibility of reform and redemption.  It’s probably why I also wrote five novels for children. Despite all the horrors I’ve documented, I still believe we can build a better world for future generations. My children's books also explore difficult subjects like divorce and homelessness.  Although children don't create any of these problems, they have to cope with their wrenching consequences. In the past I've told these stories from a child's point of view.  At this point in my life, I wanted to examine some of these critical and formative experiences from an adult perspective.  Misfits is a natural outgrowth of all the documentaries and children's books that came before. 

9. If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours?

I think Misfits speaks to the precarious world we live in today, the many problems we confront, the search for connection and belonging we all seek. My stories offer insight, humor, and empathy for these struggles. I hope people will be engaged and moved in reading them. 

About The Author: Jonathan Harris is a Los Angeles writer/filmmaker who has published essays, award-winning children’s novels, and non-fiction books. He has also written, directed, and produced numerous documentary films, including three which won Oscars.  Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, one of the Academy Award-winning documentaries he wrote and directed, was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for permanent preservation in the National Film Registry.  An Emeritus Distinguished Professor at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, he led the documentary program for many years. Misfits, his first collection of short stories, extends his exploration of many of the themes of his prize-winning films and children’s novels. For more information, please see: www.mjharriswrites.com

 

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Brian Feinblum should be followed on www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2024. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent.  This award-winning blog has generated over 3.6 million pageviews. With 4,800+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” For the past three decades, including 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and director of publicity positions at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler. He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.