Words by Suzi Feay
Writer and former professional basketball player Benjamin Markovits was brought up in Texas, London and Berlin; the author of ‘The Sidekick’, ‘Christmas in Austin’, ‘Playing Days’ and a trilogy of novels about Byron, he joined us in the Lady Violet Room to talk about his latest novel, ‘The Rest of Our Lives’, which features an accidental road trip across America. The narrator, Tom Layward, has stewed for 12 years over his wife Amy’s brief affair. He makes a deal with himself: he will wait until his youngest child goes to college before considering a separation. After dropping his daughter off in Pittsburgh, he just keeps on driving.
Club president John Walsh asked the questions, and we were delighted to have two surprise guests on top table: Markovits’ parents, Inge and Richard, who had flown in from Austin, Texas. Growing up, the author revealed, there were regular family road trips, which fed into the novel. ‘You have to get off the highway,’ he maintained, to see the real America. But to avoid the novel being merely a series of episodes, the character was given a worsening health condition shared by the author. ‘By the time of the first draft, I was going through chemotherapy.’
A timely aspect of the book is the fear of being cancelled. One character has been accused of creating a workplace environment that’s hostile to women and minorities. The novel’s working title was ‘Angry White Male’ – although mild-mannered Tom protests that he never loses his temper! Sport is another narrative strand, specifically ‘pick up basketball’ (the concept had to be explained to us Brits). ‘It’s really hard, basketball!’ Markovits joked. ‘Writing is much easier.’ As to whether Tom’s marriage ultimately survives: ‘I wanted the book to be a love story,’ he explains. ‘Writing a short story or a poem is a bit like having an affair, whereas writing a novel is like a marriage. You hope it gets better as it goes on.’