Stephen Amidon says the truth isn’t pretty in ‘Human Capital’
By Sandy MacDonald Boston Globe FEBRUARY 07, 2015
Wellesley’s Stephen Amidon, 55, spent several years trying to write a film script for his acclaimed 2004 novel, “Human Capital,” about an ethical quandary entangling two suburban families — one white-knuckle middle-class, the other fabulously rich. No sooner had he given up (“It just died on the vine”) than he got a call from top Italian director Paolo Virzì. A year ago, Amidon found himself standing next to star Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (sister of Carla) on a red carpet in Rome.
“Il Capitale Umano” went on to win seven David di Donatello awards (Italy’s Oscars). It opens in the Boston area on Friday.
We tracked down Amidon in Turin, where, as storyteller-in-residence at the Scuola Holden (“Holden, for Caulfield”), he’s fine-tuning a serial play to debut at the Teatro Stabile later this month.
Q. Your career spans six novels, a short story collection, and two works of nonfiction — most recently, 2012’s “Something Like the Gods: A Cultural History of the Athlete From Achilles to LeBron,” dedicated to your son Alex, former wide receiver for Boston College. How did you get your start as a writer?
A. When I got out of college at Wake Forest, I got a job reviewing theater for a little weekly arts supplement. I moved to London a couple of years later, to be with my soon-to-be wife, Caryl Casson. I could either stay in Elizabethtown, N.C., and be a theater critic, or move to London with a beautiful redheaded actress who was going to look after me while I wrote in Notting Hill. Tough choice!
Q. And I gather you’re still married?
A. I think so! I mean, we talk all the time and I see her occasionally, but . . . yes! I’ve just spent so much time traveling recently that we don’t see each other as much as I’d like. Right now, she’s in Boston shoveling snow while I’m in Torino going to parties. She’s being a very good sport about it.
Q. As a tag-along to London, how did you get established there?
A. I’d done some book reviews back in America, and I sent them all over the place. The only person who responded was this eccentric, conservative Englishman with a little magazine called The Literary Review. Auberon Waugh invited me in, and we had a drink at like 11 in the morning. He was somebody that I didn’t have a lot in common with, but I will always treasure my relationship with him, because he gave me my first real job writing.
Q. Within a couple of years, you had a story published in a Bloomsbury Press anthology alongside Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Harold Pinter . . . Were you gobsmacked?
A. Those were heady days. And I went on soon to sell them my first novel. This was back before Harry Potter, so Bloomsbury was just starting out, too. I was very, very lucky.
Q. Then in 1999 you and your family — having expanded by four children — returned to America.
A. I told my wife, “The country is at peace. There’s a lot of prosperity. We have a sexy, saxophone-playing president. So let’s move back.” Two years later, she looked at me and said, “What have you done?”
Q. You were just in time for 9/11, the tech bubble, the crash. . .
A. Various crashes. “Human Capital” actually came out of a very specific event that was, again, very lucky — or, I guess, lucky for me. I was sitting in the lobby of Deerfield Academy and I overheard two fathers talking about something called a “hedge fund.” This was before it was a household word. They were being very secretive, very coy about it, and it sounded to me like they were about to steal a lot of money from people — that they were basically trying to figure out a way to cash in on 9/11.
Q. The novel reads today as quite prescient: Still to come were Madoff and the “1 percent.” Your book was very specific as to locale and era, yet Virzì and his fellow screenwriters, Francesco Bruni and Francesco Piccolo, managed to translate it seamlessly to present-day Italy.
A. He made a movie that, to me, really captures the essence of the story.
Q. I heard that there are plans to do it in several other countries?
A. Paolo sent me an e-mail from Cannes saying, “We just sold the movie to be remade in Korea and India.” So I wrote back: “Very funny.” But as it turns out, there’s this whole cottage industry where countries buy movies and reshoot them on a very small budget with local actors — look up “Harry Potter in India.” So I’m really looking forward to the Gujarati version of “Human Capital.”
Q. The defining moment in the book — the film starts with it — is a random hit-and-run that has devastating consequences not just for the victim, but for several families straddling the economic divide. No one responds especially well.
A. You hear criticisms about your work — hopefully not too many. Some of them, you’re like, “Fair enough,” and some of them really rankle you. People say my characters aren’t likable. If you want likable characters, go to a kindergarten teachers’ convention. I don’t write books to make friends. I write books to criticize the way we live now — to shine a light on our society.
Q. But you don’t hector. You point out discrepancies: how people lie to themselves and rationalize. . .
A. I’m interested in people who are at moral crossroads. That’s not a nice thing — that painful, potentially ugly, not consoling moment. It’s never pretty. I always start out writing about middle-aged white men and wind up writing about teenagers, because to me, they’re the interesting ones. They haven’t messed things up so badly yet: their moral choices are still ahead of them.
Q. The novelist John Gardner drew flak for insisting that the proper function of fiction is to examine morals.
A. I absolutely agree. I’m not a huge fan of Tom Wolfe’s politics, but I certainly think he’s right when he says that our obligation as novelists is to look at how we live now. And you don’t make satire and social criticism by showing people getting along. It’s about conflict; it’s about crisis. It’s about people making bad choices, then dealing with it. I guess my great theme is how money and power influence the truth — who controls the narrative. I can’t imagine writing any other way.
Interview was edited and condensed. Sandy MacDonald can be reached at[email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @SandyMacDonald.
By Sandy MacDonald Boston Globe FEBRUARY 07, 2015
Wellesley’s Stephen Amidon, 55, spent several years trying to write a film script for his acclaimed 2004 novel, “Human Capital,” about an ethical quandary entangling two suburban families — one white-knuckle middle-class, the other fabulously rich. No sooner had he given up (“It just died on the vine”) than he got a call from top Italian director Paolo Virzì. A year ago, Amidon found himself standing next to star Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (sister of Carla) on a red carpet in Rome.
“Il Capitale Umano” went on to win seven David di Donatello awards (Italy’s Oscars). It opens in the Boston area on Friday.
We tracked down Amidon in Turin, where, as storyteller-in-residence at the Scuola Holden (“Holden, for Caulfield”), he’s fine-tuning a serial play to debut at the Teatro Stabile later this month.
Q. Your career spans six novels, a short story collection, and two works of nonfiction — most recently, 2012’s “Something Like the Gods: A Cultural History of the Athlete From Achilles to LeBron,” dedicated to your son Alex, former wide receiver for Boston College. How did you get your start as a writer?
A. When I got out of college at Wake Forest, I got a job reviewing theater for a little weekly arts supplement. I moved to London a couple of years later, to be with my soon-to-be wife, Caryl Casson. I could either stay in Elizabethtown, N.C., and be a theater critic, or move to London with a beautiful redheaded actress who was going to look after me while I wrote in Notting Hill. Tough choice!
Q. And I gather you’re still married?
A. I think so! I mean, we talk all the time and I see her occasionally, but . . . yes! I’ve just spent so much time traveling recently that we don’t see each other as much as I’d like. Right now, she’s in Boston shoveling snow while I’m in Torino going to parties. She’s being a very good sport about it.
Q. As a tag-along to London, how did you get established there?
A. I’d done some book reviews back in America, and I sent them all over the place. The only person who responded was this eccentric, conservative Englishman with a little magazine called The Literary Review. Auberon Waugh invited me in, and we had a drink at like 11 in the morning. He was somebody that I didn’t have a lot in common with, but I will always treasure my relationship with him, because he gave me my first real job writing.
Q. Within a couple of years, you had a story published in a Bloomsbury Press anthology alongside Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Harold Pinter . . . Were you gobsmacked?
A. Those were heady days. And I went on soon to sell them my first novel. This was back before Harry Potter, so Bloomsbury was just starting out, too. I was very, very lucky.
Q. Then in 1999 you and your family — having expanded by four children — returned to America.
A. I told my wife, “The country is at peace. There’s a lot of prosperity. We have a sexy, saxophone-playing president. So let’s move back.” Two years later, she looked at me and said, “What have you done?”
Q. You were just in time for 9/11, the tech bubble, the crash. . .
A. Various crashes. “Human Capital” actually came out of a very specific event that was, again, very lucky — or, I guess, lucky for me. I was sitting in the lobby of Deerfield Academy and I overheard two fathers talking about something called a “hedge fund.” This was before it was a household word. They were being very secretive, very coy about it, and it sounded to me like they were about to steal a lot of money from people — that they were basically trying to figure out a way to cash in on 9/11.
Q. The novel reads today as quite prescient: Still to come were Madoff and the “1 percent.” Your book was very specific as to locale and era, yet Virzì and his fellow screenwriters, Francesco Bruni and Francesco Piccolo, managed to translate it seamlessly to present-day Italy.
A. He made a movie that, to me, really captures the essence of the story.
Q. I heard that there are plans to do it in several other countries?
A. Paolo sent me an e-mail from Cannes saying, “We just sold the movie to be remade in Korea and India.” So I wrote back: “Very funny.” But as it turns out, there’s this whole cottage industry where countries buy movies and reshoot them on a very small budget with local actors — look up “Harry Potter in India.” So I’m really looking forward to the Gujarati version of “Human Capital.”
Q. The defining moment in the book — the film starts with it — is a random hit-and-run that has devastating consequences not just for the victim, but for several families straddling the economic divide. No one responds especially well.
A. You hear criticisms about your work — hopefully not too many. Some of them, you’re like, “Fair enough,” and some of them really rankle you. People say my characters aren’t likable. If you want likable characters, go to a kindergarten teachers’ convention. I don’t write books to make friends. I write books to criticize the way we live now — to shine a light on our society.
Q. But you don’t hector. You point out discrepancies: how people lie to themselves and rationalize. . .
A. I’m interested in people who are at moral crossroads. That’s not a nice thing — that painful, potentially ugly, not consoling moment. It’s never pretty. I always start out writing about middle-aged white men and wind up writing about teenagers, because to me, they’re the interesting ones. They haven’t messed things up so badly yet: their moral choices are still ahead of them.
Q. The novelist John Gardner drew flak for insisting that the proper function of fiction is to examine morals.
A. I absolutely agree. I’m not a huge fan of Tom Wolfe’s politics, but I certainly think he’s right when he says that our obligation as novelists is to look at how we live now. And you don’t make satire and social criticism by showing people getting along. It’s about conflict; it’s about crisis. It’s about people making bad choices, then dealing with it. I guess my great theme is how money and power influence the truth — who controls the narrative. I can’t imagine writing any other way.
Interview was edited and condensed. Sandy MacDonald can be reached at[email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @SandyMacDonald.