Anthony Doerr is the acclaimed author of many books, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “All the Light We Cannot See,” and the expansive, playful “Cloud Cuckoo Land.” Another cool thing about him? He’s a Boisean, and loves living here! We’re revisiting this conversation with him from the City Cast Boise podcast, where he shares about inspiration, censorship, and the social dynamics of population growth.
Q: Why did you decide to set part of your most recent novel, “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” in Idaho?
A: I thought, “I'm going to set this in Idaho, in a place where growth is really challenging our ideas about stewardship.” Because, why do those of us who have been here a little longer have any more right to live in these mountains than somebody who just moved here this year? And so I invented two characters that live in the present day, Zeno and this boy Seymour, who's really attached to the forest behind his house, and try to start asking questions about the disruption that new technologies can bring in the present day as well [as in the past].
Q: And in the novel, there’s a town called Lakeport, which is basically McCall, right?
A: Yeah, I named the town Lakeport, which was an original idea for the name of McCall … the library in t was very much kind of a prototype for this library, this little humble rural library that plays a big important role in the novel. I've got this grand virtual library in the future, I’ve got these old libraries that are crumbling away in Constantinople, and I really wanted to remind the reader of the power of this tiny rural library and what these libraries mean to people. You know, a library doesn't have to look ultra grand on the outside to play this really important community role.
Q: How does it feel to be a writer right now, with all these attacks on ideas and books?
A: It's an immense privilege to be a writer with readers … For me, writing is play, so I need to get myself in a playful, non-anxious state to be able to create … So often, if I get too mired down in the moment-by-moment, needle-flipping oscillating thing that is contemporary news, I find it's really paralyzing as an artist.
