Years in trenches pay off

By Pete Warzel, Special to the Rocky

Published February 1, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Eli Gottlieb is a lean, fit man of 51 who rode a borrowed bike to a lunch interview with the Rocky in Boulder. Given the amusing alligator head on the handlebars, we know he's not the self-conscious sort - a trait that serves him well, given the national attention focused on his new novel, Now You See Him. The book is receiving rave reviews. In addition, the movie rights were picked up before book publication, and he was on his way to a panel discussion at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Gottlieb is gregarious in person, something out of character in what he avows is a "very solitary vocation." He knows the history of his trade, quoting favorite authors throughout the interview. His career as a novelist followed a successful position as an editor at Elle magazine in New York, complete with personal driver. But he chose to make the break into fiction writing - working without a net.

It's been ten years since the publication of his last novel, The Boy Who Went Away, to critical acclaim. Gottlieb lives in Boulder with his wife and is a contributing editor for 5280 magazine.

You were a longtime New Yorker. How did the road lead you to Boulder four years ago?

To make a long story short, I fell in love. Hemingway said, "You don't have to be in love to write well, but it helps." And it's true. I'd known my wife Judy for years, but I saw her again while living in Rome and followed her back to Boulder with my heart on fire. I've never been happier.

What prompted the change from journalist to novelist?

I've had three or four careers in New York and have found that while I generally did well professionally, I would always get overwhelmed by the stimulation the city provided. In my 20s, I just drowned on social life. New York is happy to give you whatever you want, and what I wanted back then was to see and do everything. The burnout was inevitable.

But through it all, I kept working as a professional writer - on staff of various institutions, moving abroad and teaching in Italy, then coming back and eventually ending up at Elle . . . Then I got a fellowship to an art colony based on the beginnings of my first novel, and I was gone in a flash.

What was the difference in being a novelist?

Financial precariousness and the anxious, untested, compensatory feeling that maybe you're smarter than everybody else in having opted out of the career rat race. In the space of three years, I went from being an expense- accounted senior editor at Elle to someone forced to boil his own wardrobe for soup. I survived on grants, art colonies and the largesse of my friends.

Given the many layers of sensibility in Now You See Him, people are bound to disagree on what kind of book this is: mystery, thriller, general fiction. What's your take on its pedigree?

I don't have an easy answer for that, in part because I'm not a writer who writes with a clear sense of plot, or some overarching organizational principle. It's more an organic process of immersion, concentration and making a billion local connections . . . I'm a literary writer who happens to like the mechanics of narrative, and playing a little bit with readers' expectations. In this case, I enjoyed blowing some air up the skirts of my own seriousness and laying in some deliberate machinery of suspense.

In addition to your publishing contract, you struck a film deal. How do you look at film from a writer's perspective?

My initial thought, which is I think a pretty shared perception among writers, is that I should just cash the check and forget about the whole thing because it was going to be a disaster. But to my amazement, the producer, Jeff Sharp, is one of those rare birds in the film world who actually begins with the writer and wants his input. He converted me on the spot . . .

I'm a lifelong movie fan, and have often felt a kind of awe for how the gigantic 400-person collaborative moviemaking team could so powerfully and persuasively tell a story. When faced with the gigantism of film, the lone novelist can sometimes exit the theatre with a crashing inferiority complex. On the other hand, I was always grateful to films for shutting down my hyperactive brain for a few hours. It's like alcohol, but without the hangover.

Between your first book and this one 10 years passed. What were you up to?

There were two ghost- written books. There was the beginning of another novel which imploded over bad advice given me by my (former) agent. And there was a lot of time spent staring at the monuments of Rome. I moved to Boulder, got my house of cards in order, and wrote this book in two years.

And now you've started a new one. What are your mechanics of writing? Do you write in longhand, like so many of those you admire?

I am a self-hating computer user. I can't help it. Having been a journalist and a translator (I translated three books from Italian), I've found that computers are tailor- made for both of those, and that after spending so much time tapping on the keyboard, it was hard to go back to writing by hand. I have a whole crank theory about how the word processor has changed narrative prose for the worse. Without going into too much detail, the idea is that when you write longhand or with a typewriter you commit yourself to the act. You cannot take it back. . .

With a computer there's no risk at all. You can just hover over the text dropping editorial bombs on it, or writing those endlessly digressing sentences which I've heard New York editors complain about. But it's too late for me - I'm a keyboard junkie, for better or worse.

Pete Warzel's fiction, poetry and nonfiction has appeared in numerous publications. He lives in Denver.

Eli Gottlieb

* What: Appears at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., and at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Tattered Cover at Colfax Avenue and Elizabeth Street

* Cost: Free

* Information: 303-322-7727 (Tattered Cover); 303-447-2074 (Boulder Book Store)

Now You See Him

* Fiction. By Eli Gottlieb. William Morrow, $23.95. Grade: A

Book in a nutshell: It's difficult writing about this book without giving its secrets away. It's suspenseful - a murder-suicide occurs, and the unraveling of events makes for addictive reading. It's insightful - some of the best dialogue I have ever read on personal interaction. And, in the end, it's written beautifully - a literary work of significant breadth.

Nick Framingham narrates the story of his best friend's fall from grace and death. Suffering from a fading literary career, Rob Castor murders his writer- girlfriend as she begins to outshine his former success and then commits suicide. But it is, after all, Nick's story and not Rob's. His own marriage failing, his parents' role morally dubious in his life, Nick questions everyone's choices and then is faced with making one eventful choice of his own.

The layers of deceit and truth are deep and meaningful in this book. One decision informs another, one step leads, in hindsight, to an horrific realization for all. As Nick says, facing the details of his life as he knows them day to day, ". . . the truth had become as enemy."

The book, at its heart, is an elegant work of self-realization, of learning and growing and maturing, and is an epiphany for Nick, as he pieces together the real meaning of his life with Rob's death as the perfect catalyst.

Sample of prose: "I'm old. I wasn't supposed to be old, but it happened anyway. It's time to clear my debts. And one of my debts is to you, Mr. Nicholas Framingham."

Pros: The characters are quirky and alive, mostly due to Gottlieb's exceptional dialogue. There are scenes that will make you uneasy with the realization of conversations in your own lives, especially as Nick discusses his marriage with his ever- withdrawing wife.

Cons: Many great books have trouble ending and this one is no exception. The ending is too abrupt, too un-ending.

Final word: Finish the phrase of the title and you have the action of the book on several levels. Is it a mystery novel? Yes and no. It is much more.

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