{"id":20932,"date":"2013-05-09T15:12:43","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T21:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=20932"},"modified":"2013-05-09T15:17:14","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T21:17:14","slug":"one-fathers-apprehension-interview-with-memoirist-maximilian-werner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/one-fathers-apprehension-interview-with-memoirist-maximilian-werner\/","title":{"rendered":"ONE FATHER’S APPREHENSION: Interview with memoirist Maximilian Werner"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Maximilian Werner will read from and sign copies of his memoir Gravity Hill at the King\u2019s English Bookshop
\n<\/i>1511 S. 1500 E.
\n<\/i>Salt Lake City<\/i>
\nFriday May 10, 2013, 7 pm.<\/i>
\nMaximilian Werner\u2019s memoir Gravity Hill<\/i> contains stories nested inside other stories. In its framing tale, we meet Max about five years ago, a young professional and husband to Kim. Together they have two children: a three-year old boy named Wilder and Greer, an eleven-month old baby girl. Since the requisites for having children are merely biological, most parents find their preparation woefully inadequate, and our author is not exceptional in this. He struggles to find skills and worries about his responsibilities. Set within this universal story are his memories, flashbacks to the years of his emergence from his own childhood, learning to explore the world around him and master the life skills it requires. While the stories within Gravity Hill<\/i>\u2014about Max\u2019s miss-matched parents, influential siblings, and companions of both sexes who draw him into the world in different ways\u2014fill most of the book, many in his audience want to learn more about what came next. It\u2019s been five years since Maximilian Werner wrote the moving scene that opens Gravity Hill<\/i>, and in anticipation of its publication we sat down with him in hopes of answering some of their questions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

15B: Gravity Hill<\/i> eloquently dramatizes a young father\u2019s anxiety for his children\u2019s safety now, and their eventual welfare after he is gone from their lives. Readers have asked how that apprehensive parent, whose concerns feel so universal and inescapable, manages to come by the confidence to send them forth into a daunting world to find lives of their own. Other than the one suggested by the way your book ends, do you have any answers you can share, or might there be a sequel to Gravity Hill <\/i>where your story will continue?<\/b><\/p>\n

MW: How do I find the confidence to send them forth?\u00a0 The short answer is that I have no choice: life lives, after all.\u00a0 Over the last few years, I\u2019ve learned to get out of the way: my way, my kids\u2019 way, the universe\u2019s way.\u00a0 Just let it unfold, you know, and quit worrying so much about the what ifs.\u00a0 I know it\u2019s a luxury, this ability to be in one\u2019s own life and at the same time watch it go by, but it\u2019s what I\u2019ve got for now.\u00a0 At some point, tomorrow is going to be different.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d be missing a crucial part of the answer if I did not also mention my wife, Kim.\u00a0 She gives my kids confidence, and by doing so she gives me confidence.\u00a0 She\u2019s done an amazing job.\u00a0 She\u2019s given my children everything, but giving comes at cost, and that is especially true in cases where we give all.\u00a0 My book is about this cost as much as anything.<\/p>\n

15B: Your mother, whom we meet in Gravity Hill<\/i>, is still a major figure in your life. In fact, she edited several of your books. She\u2019s very proud of you, even if some of the material in your memoir pushes her boundaries. We\u2019re curious about your father, who is a remote-but-intriguing figure in your story. In fact, even when young Max is staying with him, it is his community, rather than the old man himself, who makes a vivid impression. Can you talk about him now? Have you come to know him better? Do you even want to? <\/b><\/p>\n

MW: Mothers and fathers are tricky things.\u00a0 I\u2019m no different and my parents are no different: They did the best they could with what they had.\u00a0 Do I think things could have been better, or that my parents could have made better decisions? Probably.\u00a0 But better relative to what?\u00a0 Their own parents?\u00a0 Not likely.\u00a0 And I also question the wisdom of lamenting what might have been, which is the same thing as lamenting what one thinks should have been, which, in the end, has nothing to do with it.\u00a0 Or if it does, it is only to the extent that one would prefer the ideal.\u00a0 But the ideal is unattainable, so I like to think about what is and about what has been on their own terms. If I do that, if I am unclouded and I see things clearly, I\u2019m confident I\u2019ll have a good chance of being a better parent, not than my parents were, but than I might have otherwise been.<\/p>\n

I know my parents fairly well.\u00a0 Lately the question for me has been what do I do with that knowledge?\u00a0 What does it mean?\u00a0 Depends on where we\u2019re coming from, doesn\u2019t?\u00a0 When we were kids, my father always told us that blood was stronger than anything.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t tell that to my own kids because I don\u2019t think it\u2019s true.\u00a0 We go through phases in life, and sometimes those phases are people, including our own family members.\u00a0 Although I will say that in general fathers tend to be more distant than mothers.\u00a0 When it comes to carrying a pregnancy to term, and to giving birth, men are clearly ignorant.\u00a0 Would anyone argue that?\u00a0 If not, then why should it be so surprising if in general men are more remote from their offspring?\u00a0 Fathers and mothers are both parents, but their experiences of parenthood are night and day much of the time.\u00a0 Both can be constructive forces in a child\u2019s life, depending on how broadly one defines \u201cconstructive.\u201d\u00a0 The concept of family is fascinating, but only because it doesn\u2019t really resemble societal depictions of it, or at least it doesn\u2019t for me.<\/p>\n

15B: Gravity Hill<\/i> opens on a tense scene in which we quickly meet you, your wife, and your children. Have any of them expressed concern for their privacy, as so many artists\u2019 families have done? How do you answer such questions, theirs or your own? And do you think you may write more about this part of your life in the future?<\/b><\/p>\n

MW: When I was writing the book, I didn\u2019t think about how the book would affect the other people who are mentioned in it.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t in that space.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t thinking about other people.\u00a0 I was thinking about me and about the trouble I was in with my life.\u00a0 I was thinking about how to get out of that trouble, and I guess part of how I did that was by telling other people\u2019s stories, which were also my stories in a sense.\u00a0 It\u2019s also true that I hadn\u2019t heard from most of the people in the book for many years (even my wife felt remote), and when that much time passes, people aren\u2019t people so much as they are memories of people, or ideas of them, and memories and ideas are not flesh and blood, and they do not have feelings.\u00a0 Memories and ideas are fallible and malleable and mine, so I did with them as I pleased.\u00a0 It was very selfish of me, and maybe I shouldn\u2019t have done it, but then I\u2019ve already shared my feelings about talk of what should be.<\/p>\n

<\/i>15B: Some readers are fascinated by the glimpse you give of a place other than Utah. At perhaps the most socially alert, sensitive time in anyone’s life\u2014his teenage years\u2014Max is dropped, without a lot of guidance or supervision, onto New York’s Fire Island, where his dad enjoys a bohemian lifestyle. Are there reasons\u2014technical, personal, whatever\u2014why you limit this part of your story, or can you (will you) say more about it?<\/b><\/p>\n

MW: The reason is practical: I wrote what I remembered, and although what I remember is fragmented, it is precisely that fragmentation that makes the scene so memorable, at least to me.\u00a0 The whole book is a collection of such fragments, which are like shards of a broken mirror: they are partly reflective (you can\u2019t see your whole body in them), they are sharp, and they can cut.<\/p>\n

My father wrote an as-of-yet unpublished book of fiction about his time on the island, so at some point some of that material may find its way into one of my books (my father gave me his permission), but other than that I have no plans to write any more about the island.<\/p>\n

Read the full review of <\/i>Gravity Hill by Geoff Wichert here<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maximilian Werner will read from and sign copies of his memoir Gravity Hill at the King\u2019s English Bookshop 1511 S. 1500 E. Salt Lake City Friday May 10, 2013, 7 pm. Maximilian Werner\u2019s memoir Gravity Hill contains stories nested inside other stories. In its framing tale, we meet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":3776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,38,35],"tags":[321],"class_list":["post-20932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bytes","category-happenings","category-literary-arts","tag-maximilian-werner"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/MaximilianSlideshow1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 14:49:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20932"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20935,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20932\/revisions\/20935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}