Truth Be Told |
| Interview with Author Andrew Shaffer Posted: 01 Jun 2011 11:26 PM PDT  Hi Andrew! Thank you so much for joining us on Truth Be Told. I don't feature too many non-fiction books but your title, Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love, has caught my interest. To start off, why don't you tell us some fun facts about you in twitter style, 140 characters or less? Appeared on FOX News. Worked in library as teenager. Former wedding DJ. Went to "Passion of the Christ" once on worst first date in history. In your book, you say the idea for this title came to you during your honeymoon. Why did you decide to pursue the idea and actually write about failed love in philosophy? I had created a line of "Friedrich Nietzsche Valentine's Day" cards for my greeting card company, Order of St. Nick (www.orderofstnick.com). The cards featured some of Nietzsche's most pessimistic quotes on romantic love, and I hooked up with an agent who worked with me closely to develop the idea into a book proposal. We sold it to HarperCollins the week I got married, and I ended up researching and writing it while on my honeymoon. My wife was very forgiving about the whole situation.  Friedrich Nietzsche will always occupy a special place in my heart. How can you not love a guy who was fond of saying things like, "Ah, women – they make the highs higher and the lows more frequent"? The most surprising philosopher I researched, though, was Simone de Beauvoir. For years, she was seen as riding her sometimes-boyfriend Sartre's coat-tails. It's only recently that scholars and historians have begun to believe that he was the one riding her intellectual coat-tails. Their story – romantic, tragic, perverse – is told in fascinating detail in Hazel Rowley's 2005 book, Tête à Tête (French for "head to head"). How much research went into writing this book? Did any specific philosophers take longer than the others? There are 37 philosophers in Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love. I read one or more biographies for each 2-3 page profile (where biographies were available). I originally took some notes from Wikipedia, but the misinformation on that site – at least as it relates to the subjects I was researching – was very disconcerting. I really enjoyed reading the "In Their Own Words" section at the end of each "chapter," which quote, if you can narrow it down, was your favorite? I find Jean-Jacques Rousseau's confession on his flashing hobby painfully hilarious: "I haunted dark alleys and lonely spots where I could expose myself to women . . . . The more sensible pretended that they had seen nothing. Others started laughing." To admit you're some kind of sexual predator is one thing; to admit that women laugh at the site of your junk is something else entirely. Tell us (if you can) a little bit about some of your upcoming projects. I'm especially interested in The Hunger Games and Philosophy. I'm contributing an essay tentatively titled "Schadenfreude: The Joy of Watching Others Suffer" to The Hunger Games and Philosophy, which is part of the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series. Philosophers from Plato to Kant to Schopenhauer have believed that schadenfreude – taking pleasure in another person's pain – is among the worst traits of human nature. In the essay, I draw parallels between the Hunger Games and the Roman Colosseum, and try to answer the question, Could the Hunger Games happen today? Andrew, you don't only write, but you are also the creative director of Order of St. Nick, greeting cards for atheists and non-religious people. How did this project start up? As far back as high school, I created my own Christmas cards and sent them to friends and family. In 2007, I posted some of them online...and, to my surprise, complete strangers bought them! The atheist Christmas cards were supposed to be a joke at first – the concept should be an oxymoron, but it kind of works. If 15% of the US population is non-religious, agnostic, or atheist, and 98% of Americans celebrate Christmas, there's a huge secular holiday market out there. I never wanted to be a poster boy for atheism, but I did get a perverse thrill when Stephen Colbert (with tongue planted in cheek) called my cards "un-American." It was the highest possible compliment, and the pinnacle of my career. What kind of writing advice can you offer for aspiring authors of fiction and non-fiction? My advice: Don't try to be someone you're not. I tried, in vain, to break into publishing with short stories for 10 years before finally had any success. I was trying to write serious, Raymond Carver-esque stuff. It was painful to write, and probably quite painful to read. I had pretty much given up on writing by the time my greeting cards took off. That's when an epiphany hit me: Instead of trying to write what I thought some editor at Tinhouse or The New Yorker wanted to read, why not play to my own strengths? Why couldn't my writing be as irreverent and humorous as my greeting cards? You seem to be a huge promoter of social media. Do you have any advice for people looking to grow their popularity in social media?
Be yourself. And be patient. I started my first Twitter account (@andrewtshaffer) almost two years ago. It took a long time to A) find my own "voice," and B) find an audience that was receptive. I did not forget about Evil Wylie. Evil Wylie seems to be your alter ego, if I was to ask Evil Wylie to leave us with one lasting thought, some words of wisdom, what would he say? Evil Wylie is my villainous alter-ego. He says the things I would love to say, if only I had the balls. I wouldn't trust anything he says, especially anything under the guise of "words of wisdom." 
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