My name is Arnon Grunberg. Ten years ago, I moved from Amsterdam to New York for love and papers. Both failed, but I'm still in New York. Since then, I have been making a living as an author, although I did work for a couple of months as a waiter at an Italian restaurant.
I contributed to several newspapers and magazines in Europe and the U.S., but I never wrote a blog. People familiair with the genre told me there is one law: keep it short. This seems to be good advice in general.
Back in 1998, when I was still striving to be an author--and a publisher, for that matter--I read an interview in a Dutch newspaper with an American author, Richard Kalich. He claimed to be unknown in his own country, but he had found a publishing house in the Netherlands for his novel The Nihilesthete. About a rather bizarre relationship between a social worker and handicapped man who knows how to paint. (In the U.S., it is published by The Permanent Press.)
I loved The Nihilesthete and for a while, Mr. Kalich was my hero. Finally, here was somebody who preferred literature over fame.
A couple of weeks ago, I finally met Mr. Kalich in a coffee shop on the Upper West Side.
I still hope that a major publishing house in the US is going to publish The Nihilesthete again, but authors are often a disappointment compared to their work.
The only exception to this rule is Jayne Anne Phillips, whom I met in 1998 at a festival in Adelaide, Australia. Over lunch, she explained to me in detail how she got married to her doctor. After dinner, she invited me to dance.
Out of sheer fear, I refused. Instead of dancing with Jayne Anne Phillips, I spent the night playing pinball with some colleagues from the UK.