Interview With Author Stephen Asher
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am a graduate of UCLA, the University of Rochester School of Medicine, the University of California San Francisco and was a fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. I was a neurologist, often walking the fine line separating the mind from the brain, creating a vantage point molded by the scientific and rational but also shaped by the aesthetics of the senses. It is this unity of outlook that is a recurring theme in Ceremony of Innocence.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Ceremony of Innocence follows the maturation a principled but skeptical New England girl into a confident and worldly young woman, a transformation occurring within the sway of Modernist artists and thinkers. I spend several weeks each Autumn in the Provence and have come to see the liberating effects of this intellectual and sensual culture. The impetus for this yeasty and intellectual climate dates to the early 1900’s when western culture was being reformatted by Modernist views.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I think I share with many others the impression that my period of optimal cognitive clarity and creative flexibility is in the morning.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Dostoyevsky (The Gambler), Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, Edmund Wilson, Emma Smith (This is Shakespeare), Ishiguro (Remains of the Day; Klara and the Sun), Toni Morrison (Sula), EM Forster (Howards End).
What are you working on now?
I owned an English setter bird dog, one the greatest field trial performers in the 20th century. He is now recognized in the Field Trial Hall of Fame. I am writing an impressionistic biography of the dog, the people who were instrumental in the dog’s life, and the ambience of the old South during his campaigns there, often on the old plantations.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I am unsure.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I have always tried to conceive of anything I write as a story, even if it is just a thank you note. Most of us have stories; it is the way we provide for, and structure, our own continuity. Think about brief passions, such as a musical performance, a visit to an art gallery, a brief, intense love, a moment with a child, or an isolated accomplishment. These all link to the core of our being.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Write what you know. Learn what you don’t.
What are you reading now?
JF Powers Morte D’Urban
What’s next for you as a writer?
I am under a self-imposed time constraint to complete the impressionistic biography discussed above.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Virginia Woolf (any book), Janet Flanner’s Paris was Yesterday, Barbara Pym An Academic Question
Author Websites and Profiles
Stephen Asher’s Social Media Links
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