The Continuity of Kevin Haworth

By PAUL ZAKRZEWSKI

This past June, Kevin Haworth was awarded the eighth annual Samuel Goldberg & Sons Foundation Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers for her debut novel, The Discontinuity of Small Things. Set in Copenhagen, Denmark, the novel charts the course of the 1943 German occupation as daily annoyances like propaganda pamphlets give way to the much darker vision of kidnappings, deportations, and impending extermination. Haworth expertly traces these events through the lives of three very different characters, linking each to different factions of the Copenhagen resistance.

Born in 1971, Kevin Haworth earned an MFA in Fiction Writing from Arizona State University and currently teaches at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Sponsored by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Goldberg Prize has been awarded annually since 1998 to an American writer for a first or second work of fiction. Previous winners have included Nathan Englander, Lara Vapnyar, and Gary Shteyngart.


It sounds as if this novel took a long time to write—eight years by some accounts—during which time you and your wife (a rabbi) had two kids. Was it daunting to keep at this book for such a long stretch—especially considering this was your first novel?

The demands of daily life are certainly part of the reason the book took so long to complete. Part of it is just me. I write slowly, and revise like a person working out an obsession. Looking back, it helped that I had chosen such a “big” story for my first novel.  Because of that, I allowed myself the time to work it out – I never thought it could be done quickly.  It was very difficult at times. At several points I thought I might be writing this book for the rest of my life.

How did you carve out the time to write? What does a writer need in order to juggle it all?

I had three periods of intense productivity. In both 1999 and 2001, I spent a month in residency at the Vermont Studio Center.  I actually pinned my whole novel on the walls of my studio there. In between, my wife and I spent four months in Jerusalem as part of her rabbinical schooling. Our sublet apartment had books in seven languages and overlooked Dormition Abbey and the Arab village of Silwan. During that time, I was surrounded by rabbis studying Torah. It makes a person focus.

Critics have noted how emotionally resonant many of the small details in the novel are. How did you go about doing the research for this story?

I compiled a vast collection of photographs, both period and contemporary.  After three years of writing, I traveled to Denmark and Sweden for about a month.  It was the right time: I had to know what I didn’t know, if that makes sense. I also read a great deal, but as a fiction writer there’s only so much knowledge you can use.  At some point you have to venture out on your own.  There are parts of the book that I learned and parts that I invented, often in the same sentence.

One of the tremendous strengths of your book is the portrayal of the morality among ordinary people. There’s the remarkable heroism on the part of the (non-Jewish) characters, such as the doctors who participate in the resistance or the fisherman and his wife who take the Danish Jews to Sweden, and yet they are not idealized. What was the process by which you came to understand these characters and their sense of morality?

My approach to this issue is heavily influenced by my time in Israel. There, history has been made on every street corner. The man serving you falafel could have fought in the Sinai, or in the Golan. When I lived on kibbutz in 1992, I was friendly with an old Polish bookbinder who had spent 1947 hiding from the British authorities in a cave. He was a wanted man back then, for smuggling weapons or some such. The sense I got was, extraordinary times happen to ordinary people. Then you see how they react.

One of the striking things about this novel is that you picked a topic (i.e. the Holocaust) that could easily have slid into cliché, and also one about which so much has already been written. Were you concerned about these risks when you were writing the book? Were there other artistic/literary challenges you faced while writing?

There is, I agree, a great responsibility that comes with writing about the Holocaust. The French writer Marcel Cohn said: “Having never been in the camps, I am in the position of one who can neither speak nor remain silent.” That statement is both a cautionary tale and a call to action.It’s no accident that the Holocaust has prompted some of the most complex and original literary responses of the last few decades. I’m thinking of books like See Under: Love by David Grossman and Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. And there are more examples. More than with any other kind of literature, we depend on our fellow writers to show us what to do and what not to do.

Was it apparent to you from the start how these otherwise ordinary characters would act under extraordinary circumstances?

When you’re working with history, as many people have noted, the history gets in the way.  It’s just so weighty.  If you’re not careful, it makes all the decisions for you.  And those decisions are not necessarily the ones that will animate your story. This book really became interesting once I moved away from the big events and focused on the day-to-day decisions that come with living under occupation. It’s a slow grinding. Each person reacts differently. The job of the fiction writer is to put a character under pressure, then see what he or she does. I wake up every day and look forward to drinking my coffee with a heavy dollop of cream. What if there’s no cream? Then no coffee? What if there’s a German soldier posted outside your house?

It’s striking that a small independent press in California, Quality Words in Print (QWIP), published your book. How did your book find its way to this press?

The old-fashioned way: through the mail. It’s a regular over-the-transom story.  I sent the first four chapters (about 25 pages) to Quality Words in Print. What I knew about the press (which wasn’t much) suggested a strong visual sense, professionalism, and an interest in literary fiction. Holly Gruber, the editor and publisher, responded with what every writer wants to hear: send more. That paralyzed me for about three weeks—too much good news, I suppose. Then I sealed the envelope. She picked my book because she liked the sentences. What more could a person want?

It’s important to remember that the odds are against everyone. Holly told me that she received 800 submissions in the year that she chose my book. Of that, she published two. Some good writing must have gotten lost in that pile. It’s too easy to say that good writing always finds a home. It doesn’t. I’ve been very fortunate to find an editor who believes in this book and has the ability to present it to the world.

What are you working on next?

I put aside many of my short stories to finish the novel. Since its publication, I’ve gone back to some of them and some of them have found their way into print. I’m also working – slowly, once again – on a new novel. I’m reluctant to say too much about it, except that it involves a pregnant teenager, some thoughts on Utopian societies, and a bungalow colony.