“When a comic book artist married to a Dante scholar writes a graphic novel, what better title than The Tenth Circle? Picoult's latest novel actually features artwork in a tale that parallels his real life, and readers are drawn into the mystery. What truths will be revealed? And who, ultimately, will find justice? Picoult had this reader up until the very end of this fast-paced tale.”
—Library Journal
A Conversation with Jodi about The Tenth Circle
Do you feel like The Tenth Circle was a departure from your previous work?
JP: Not really. Although, at first glance, it looks a little different…the truth is that this novel, like so many of my others, explore the connections between a parent and a child, and revisit the theme of whether we really ever know anyone as well as we think we do. I like to think of it as Picoult-Plus: in addition to giving book clubs and buddies plenty to debate, you get another venue through which to unravel those issues – the artwork.
Can you tell us a little about the research you did writing this novel?
JP: I started with Dante’s Inferno. I’d read it in college, and didn’t really like it, so I decided to give it another chance. Well, to be honest, I still don’t like it…but I’m mature enough now to appreciate some of his timeless themes – such as how the punishment fits the crime, and how you should be careful what you wish for…lest it come true. The worst thing you can do, according to Dante, is betray someone close to you – which fit very well with the story I was trying to tell in The Tenth Circle.
I went from reading Dante to reading comic books – because I knew my main character was going to be a comic book penciller. Having never been a 13-year-old boy, this genre was new to me…and not only did I immerse myself in actual comic, I also studied their history. The origin of modern comics traces back to two young Jewish men who couldn’t get newspaper jobs during the Depression. Schuster and Seigel instead imagined a world where the loser got the pretty girl and saved the world to boot – and their hero, Superman, greatly appealed to a country that desperately needed a hero. Superheroes evolved – all good guys in tights – until the 1960s when Marvel introduced Spiderman. He wasn’t a willing hero; he was moody and angry and resentful and lot like the teens who were reading him. Now, heroes have grown even more complex – Alan Moore’s and Neil Gaiman’s works spotlight heroes who don’t always win; who enjoy inflicting pain. I spent a great deal of time with my 12 year old son, Jake, our resident comic book expert, who immersed me in his favorite storylines. The more I learned, the more I realized that the epic poem and the comic book genre have a lot more in common than you’d think, since they both view a man’s life as the struggle between good and evil; they both address the vast gap between whom we pretend we are and whom we truly are.
I knew that Daniel’s struggle, in the book, was going to be precipitated by his daughter’s date rape…which led me to sit down a group of teenage girls and interview them, quite candidly, about sex and dating today. Now, I’ve done this before – for The Pact, for Salem Falls – but more than once during this conversation I found myself absolutely stunned. Instead of relationships, kids have random hookups, or friends with benefits – sexual experiences that they pretend never happened the next day. Oral sex isn’t considered sex. At parties, you’ll see games like Stoneface and Rainbow – which involve a boy with multiple sex partners, or a girl servicing several guys. The biggest reason to have sex in the first place is to get it over with; the pressure doesn’t come from boys, but from within the girl herself – you don’t want your girlfriends to find out you’re not doing the same things they are. And perhaps most upsetting – the girls told me that they feel empowered, because they’re the ones deciding whether or not to do these things. They pretend it doesn’t hurt when they’re not valued by the boys they “hook up” with; but then told me stories about cutting themselves with razor blades when the one night stand didn’t materialize into something more lasting. It was clear to me that we’re turning out a generation of kids who don’t know how to have a relationship with someone. We’re sending young men to college, who expect to get what they want when they want it (which supports the growing percentage of date rapes on campuses). We’re seeing high school girls who don’t even realize that what they’re “choosing” to do objectifies them, and strips them of any self-esteem. When I’ve gone to high schools to speak to students and I mention this research, the looks I get from the student audience are priceless – their jaws drop, because a) I know about it and b) I’m brave enough to tell them I know. Believe me, parents are not sitting around dinner tables talking about this – and this made me think of The Pact. Teen suicide, like teen sexuality, is an issue parents would rather not discuss with their kids, fearing that if they bring it up they might plant ideas in their child’s mind. But the sad truth is that it’s happening whether or not we want to talk to our kids about it…and based on my research for this book, it’s something we need to start talking about in earnest. Now.
The last bit of research I did – and the most fun – involved going to the Alaskan bush in the middle of winter, so that I could see through Daniel’s eyes. The airline reservation clerk laughed when I told her where I wanted to go in January – ultimately, I had to take a cargo plane from Anchorage to Bethel, with a load of sled dogs. It was -40 degrees Fahrenheit when I arrived, and I wore everything in my luggage at once and still had to borrow clothes. First, I helped out at the K300, a sled dog race, just like Trixie (you know you’ve arrived in Alaska when a lady musher grabs your arm and asks you to hold up a feed bag so that she can drop trou and pee). Then I headed to a Yup’ik Eskimo village. The villages are north of Bethel, and the only way to get there in January is to take a snowmobile up the frozen river (which, in the winter, actually gets its own highway number). Akiak is a village of 300, with no running water. My host was a Yup’ik Eskimo named Moses Owen. As I walked into his house, I tripped over a moose hoof in the Arctic entryway. I brought him oranges; he gave me dried fish. There are, of course, no toilets – just “honeybuckets” – a misnomer if ever there was one. Moses’ wife had her grandchild on her knee, and he kept pointing at me and laughing. She explained that he’d never seen anyone with my color hair before. In fact, Moses said, when the first whites came to the Alaskan bush, they were so pale that the Eskimos thought they were ghosts.
Moses explained to me that in his world, there’s a fluidity between the animal world and the human one. At any moment, a person might turn into an animal, or vice-versa. They also believe that words have remarkable power and that thought is equally as important as action – just because a word isn’t said out loud doesn’t mean its intention isn’t received. For example, if you go hunting and you’re thinking of elk, you’ll never catch one…because it can hear you. You must think of anything but the elk. Likewise, it would be downright rude to change someone’s mind by putting your own words into it. So you might say to a friend, “Tomorrow’s a good day to hunt.” It will be up to your buddy to understand that you’re actually inviting him along. To a Yup’ik Eskimo, then, silence is an act. Words are a weapon. And you don’t have to speak a wish for it to come true. Imagine, then, a case of date rape. Legally it always comes down to whether or not the girl said no. But to someone who’d grown up among the Yup’ik Eskimos – like Daniel Stone -- it wouldn’t have mattered if Trixie said it…or merely thought it.
Readers tend to respond emotionally to your novels. Have any of the early reactions to The Tenth Circle surprised you? If so, how?
JP: A lot of people have been reevaluating the way they read a story, which I just love, because that’s part of the reason why I wrote the book. Some people want to absorb the art just where it is, mid-narrative. Some read the graphic novel first. Some save it for last. Most people are entranced by the way the art is just art until the narrative is added to it, almost as if there’s a chemical reaction…resulting in insight into Daniel’s character. Oh, and they seem to be having a good time searching for the hidden message in the art.
Parents who’ve read the book keep pulling me aside to desperately ask, “That teen sex stuff; the parties…that’s all fiction, right?” I think that peeling back the surface layer of what teenagers are really doing intimately with each other is startling for adults to blatantly see and hear – I anticipated that reaction. What took me by surprise, however, are the number of young women who’ve written to me to say that they were date raped, and never told anyone, because they were sure it was their fault in some way – they hadn’t expressed NO clearly enough. I think Trixie’s experience mirrors theirs, and validates their feelings – which allows them to open up about something they’ve hidden for years. Things like this are humbling -- when you write fiction you don’t expect to make a profound difference in someone’s real life.
Has researching and writing this book changed your opinions on parenting? Do you think what you’ve learned will affect your future decisions?
JP: I’d like to believe that I’m usually a better parent than any of my characters! However, a lot of The Tenth Circle grew out of watching my husband and my daughter, Sammy – they have a really special bond, because she’s the only girl, and she’s our youngest. Tim’s always said that he will continue to lift weights so that he can always carry her – and I’m sure he’s had his fantasies about not letting her date until she’s forty. Sammy’s only ten right now, but our oldest son, Kyle, is fourteen, and it’s interesting to see how much he’s changed in the past year. I think it’s always hard to watch your children take those fledgling steps into adulthood – in part because you know they’re going to stumble, and in part because you know they won’t want you to catch them when it happens (that’s the whole point of growing up). But does knowing all this make it any easier when it happens, for real? No way.
Each of your novels deals with a seemingly black-and-white issue, yet you manage to blur the lines and make the reader look at it differently. Do you find the process emotionally taxing? Is it difficult to show the different points of view equally?
JP: I have always said that I write books about questions that don’t have easy answers. If I had the answers, believe me, I’d be a lot richer and smarter. Since I don’t, I don’t think I have any right to tell a reader what’s the “right way” to think. To this end it’s really important to me to put all the different points of view of a situation into a book. Is it emotionally taxing? Sure – but second guessing oneself always is!
What made you decide to incorporate the graphic novel into the book? In what ways did you intend for the illustrations to serve the story? Was The Tenth Circle written before the graphic novel was? How did you choose an artist?
JP: When I started this book, I was thinking of all the different ways we can tell stories – particularly the ones we tell ourselves, when we don’t want to admit the truth. I was also thinking of Dante’s Inferno, and that theme of being careful what you wish for. And I was intrigued by the thought of a main character who wasn’t good with words – an enigma you’d have to learn about through some other means. I began to wonder if there was a way to tell a story with different layers – so that they’d stand on their own, but when read together, would make each of the stories richer. There are, of course, hundreds of artistic forms for storytelling - opera, ballet, film, photography – but something about Dante kept pulling me back to the idea of a graphic novel. His levels of Hell seemed perfect for the genre. And conversely, a man who was struggling to deal with the emotional aftermath of his daughter’s rape might easily invent a character who was, metaphorically, doing the same thing. That’s how Wildclaw was born – the alter-ego of a man whose daughter is kidnapped by the Devil, so that her father, Duncan, literally has to go through Hell to get her back. I think as you read the graphic novel – particularly the circles where you see adulterers, and the Devil – you understand the psyche of its “creator” – Daniel. You see the same lake of ice he grew up with in the Alaskan bush represented, now, in art form to freeze the Devil up to his waist. You see the shapeshifting between human and animal form, like the Yup’ik Eskimos believe. Duncan’s fear that the animal parts of him will eclipse the human side mirror Daniel’s unspoken worry that the man he becomes in the aftermath of Trixie’s rape will be someone she does not recognize.
I didn’t feel like I was doing anything remarkably different – after all, all fiction used to be illustrated. And we know that graphic novels have enjoyed critical and commercial success recently. It’s just that I had the right story in which to bring them together with narrative fiction.
Unfortunately, I can’t draw comic books. Fortunately, I knew someone who could. When I was at Princeton, the guy who lived across the hall from me used to spend hours at his drafting table doing just that – and now, Jim Lee is one of the most famous artists in the industry. I got in touch with Jim, told him what I wanted to do, and asked him if he’d be able to find me an artist. He put me in touch with a young man named Dustin Weaver, who was an intern at Jim’s company. When Dustin agreed to help me out, we embarked on a collaboration that was really unlike anything I’d ever done. The narrative novel and the graphic novel were produced simultaneously. I would write him the script for the comic book – on screenwriting software – and then I’d get a few drawn pages back via email. Every now and then Dustin would ask me if I had any thoughts about what a character should look like – (for example, the Devil…I said he should think of Jack Nicholson, and I’ll be damned if the art didn’t turn out just that way). I also admit to falling just a little bit in love with the character of Duncan. Luckily, my husband doesn’t find pen-and-ink men a real threat.
Daniel and Trixie tell us their picks in the novel, but if you could have any superhero power, what would it be? Why?
JP: We had a discussion about this in the car on the way to school today, because it’s such a good question. My daughter chose flight. My oldest son wants the ability to make anything out of thin air – like a million bucks, no doubt. My middle son, the comic book aficionado, said he’d rather have the power to take on other people’s powers, like Rogue. Me, well, I’m torn. As fabulous as teleportation would be (a la Nightcrawler) particularly during a book tour, I’d probably rather have a combination of telempathy and mind control – the ability to change people’s thoughts and feelings. But, of course, I don’t have superpowers…so instead I write novels and try to do that the old fashioned way.
Are you in a book club yourself? If so, how is it for you as an author hearing the discussion? Have you ever been part of a book club discussing one of your books?
JP: I’m not; I don’t have nearly enough time to read something with anything approximating regularity. However, I have gone to multiple book clubs or done phone chats with those who are discussing my books. It’s always really nice – I mean, there are a lot of books in the world, and they chose mine! For the most part, people are very complimentary – although I’m not quite sure if that’s because my books are really good, or because no one has the heart to tell me when I’m sitting right there that they’re not. I am always impressed by those people who are brave enough to say to my face, “I really didn’t like this part.” The good thing, though, is that I get to have the last word, and explain why I wrote it that way!
You’ve been quoted as saying that being a writer is the best job in the world. Is there a part of the process that you like most?
JP: The best part of being a writer is meeting my fans. It never fails to amaze me that the people reading my books are no longer just friends of my mother or related to me distantly! I love knowing that I keep you up late at night and that you don’t get your housework done and that you hide my books behind your school textbooks because you can’t stop reading. I like meeting fans by stealth too – like yesterday, when a girl pulled one of my novels out of her purse at a restaurant, and I went over to ask her if she liked it…and then admitted that I’d written it (of course, if she’d hated the book, I would never have taken credit!)
