Scott Spencer follows trails of Dostoevsky and Graham Greene to 'Man in the Woods'
Twice nominated for the prestigious National Book Award (Endless Love and A Ship Made of Paper), acclaimed author hit the road in 2010 to promote the hardcover publication of his tenth novel, Man In The Woods--now out in trade paperback (Ecco; September, 2011)--beginning with the proverbial advanced reader's copy signing at BookExpo America to kick-off his tour. Weeks after the initial hardcover release, Spencer appeared at the 2010 National Book Festival where he contemplated the cultural landscape of his fictional small town of Leyden, New York, the setting for several of his novels. Reflecting on his writing process of discovery, Scott then read a passage from the novel depicting an LA bookie on the run carefully planning suicide. Spencer then read a passage where the novel's Dostoevskyian anti-hero Paul Phillips walks his dog as normal, while tormented by the murder he has committed. Spencer wraps his presentation by revealing the methodology of how he gets to the core of his characters, including the dog that figures in the novel, Shep, which is, coincidentally, the name of Spencer's own real life dog, before taking questions from the audience on how and where he finds his story ideas; his review of his most widely read novel, Endless Love, and its disastrous movie adaptation; and the modest publisher's advance ($10,000) for the rights to Endless Love, which now has over 2,000,000 copies in print. Six weeks later, Spencer appeared at the 2010 Miami Book Fair International with bestselling authors Sue Miller (The Lake Shore Limited) and Aimee Bender (The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake), where he offered a detailed autobiographical sketch of his life from childhood to his first novel (The Last Night at the Brain Thieves Ball), and cited Man in the Wood's Dostoevsky and Graham Greene influences before reading two passages from the book illustrating its techniques and themes.
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Scott Spencer follows trails of Dostoevsky and Graham Greene to 'Man in the Woods'
