Photo courtesy of the Savannah Book Festival
Written by Emilie Kefalas
Friday, Feb. 12, was a night full of many laughs, gasps and thunderous applause given not for a performer but for an author and a five-time New York Times best-selling writer at that.
Author Erik Larson addressed a packed crowd during the second night of the ninth annual Savannah Book Festival. Friday evening’s sold out Keynote Address at the Trustees Theater began with a warm welcome and introduction from Savannah Book Festival President, Ann Higbee.
Larson then took the stage and began his near hour-long discussion about his newest creative nonfiction piece, “Dead Wake,” with a story about his very first book signing for his first book, “The Naked Consumer.” According to Larson, nobody bought or read the book which discussed how companies spy on their consumers.
“I was living in Baltimore at the time, and I got a call to do my very first ever book event,” Larson explained. “It was at a bookstore in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I’ve since learned, by the way, that Sunday afternoon book signings are death, especially on the first warm day after a long, hard winter.”
Rather than asking Larson to sign her a copy of the book, the one woman who did approach him during his signing instead asked him the price for one of the cookies on a plate next to him.
Since that inaugural book signing, Larson’s books have received critical praise as riveting narratives. During the duration of the evening, the author shared other notable milestones and experiences throughout his career as both a journalist and as an author.
His latest book, “Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania,” was released last March. The story takes readers aboard the voyage of the ill-fated ship, the “Lusitania,” which was torpedoed in broad daylight on May 7, 1915.
In between discussing and describing his process in writing history-based stories, Larson treated his audience to a reading of a couple pages of “Dead Wake.”
“I have to be a little bit careful, because I really don’t want to give away the ending,” Larson said to which the crowd chuckled. “I would wager that unless you read my book, there aren’t many of you who know how [the sinking of the “Lusitania”] came about.”
One of the main points Larson continually emphasized throughout the evening was that his goal was not to fabricate or make up historical facts for the sake of story.
“First let me say I do not think of myself as a historian, and frankly there are a number of academic historians who don’t think I’m a historian either,” Larson said.
“I see myself as an animator of history — that’s not to say I’m making anything up. It’s not my goal to inform, as strange as that may sound, although if you’re out there working on a PHD and you want to cite my books… go wild.”
What is crucial for Larson when writing about history is finding an idea appealing to him as a write. That idea, in turn, must propel the reader’s interest, he explained.
“For an idea to work as a book it has to work on many levels. That’s why it’s so hard to find. First, it has to be interesting to me, that’s a no brainer. Something about the idea’s complex enough you can be pretty sure nobody else has thought about it.”
Larson first contemplated writing about the “Lusitania” five years prior to the book’s release. The British ship’s sinking and the stories surrounding it had always been on Larson’s list of things that captivated him due to his love of maritime history.
Rather than simply inform his audience, Larson aims to create as rich a historically immersive experience as possible.
“My goal is to have you sink into the past, and ideally emerge with a..sense of what that past situation was.”
Larson also mentioned he tends to steer away from including photographs in his novels, and all of his books have very little photographs or none at all. He feels every time the reader looks away from the book’s text, the narrative dream is broken.
“It is about finding the right bits and pieces that will light the reader’s imagination,” Larson explained.
“There’s a beautiful paradox here. It is the magic of the imagination, and that is that even though we may know the ending of the story, if you tell it properly, people will suspend their knowledge and allow them to fall back in time.”
