Being is Action with Andrew Krivak

“In spare and lovely prose, Andrew Krivak folds the deep past and the far future into a remarkable fable about our inheritance as humanity makes a harmonic return to the spirit and animal worlds. This book follows you, like a river under ice.”

– Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master’s Son and Fortune Smiles

Being is Action with Andrew Krivak

Andrew Krivak is the author of three novels: The Signal Flame (2017), a Chautauqua Prize finalist, and The Sojourn (2011), a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Chautauqua Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction, and his latest novel, The Bear. In our conversation you hear of Andrew’s formation as a Jesuit, our dwelling in the depth dimension of now, how his novel The Bear relates to that dimension and is also a manifesto against interiority, and so much more. Friends, I read The Bear and found it to be an incredibly moving novel about place, presence, courage and strength in uncertain times. And let’s face it, all times are uncertain. I have bought, loaned, recommended The Bear to countless people. After this conversation you will understand why.

To learn more about Andrew Krivak visit andrewkrivak.com

Episode Show Notes

Books by Andrew Krivak

• The Bear
• The Signal Flame
• The Sojourn

Resources & People Mentioned

Drink Recommendation

• Irish Black Tea with a spot of milk. At day’s end, a rye whiskey.

Questions

• Where am I finding you today?
• You wrote me in response to my invitation to be on the podcast and this sentence stuck out, “I’ve been thinking a lot about the examined life these days, not just as a contemplative endeavor, but even more broadly as the pursuits we take on over the years that shape the imagination, especially literature, poetry, and philosophy.” Can you further unpack that, tell me about that shaping of the imagination and the examined life?
• When you hear the word “contemplative”, how does that moniker relate to you or your work?
• When a person new to your work asks you for a thumbnail sketch of your latest work, The Bear, how do you respond?
• The origin story of The Bear as I understand it is with bedtime stories with your children…it calls to mind to me the legacy of storytelling, to pass on history, wisdom, morals, and virtues across generations in the container of a story. How present is this idea in your shaping of The Bear?
• What writers inspired your stylistic choices in The Bear?
• The interiority of the characters is lacking in the text, but flourishes in the description of landscape and action. Can you speak to that choice? What were you hoping to communicate?
• I love this note to the reader on your website…”And if I were to imagine a specific reader for The Bear, it would be someone who, upon finishing it, sends the novel to her grown child with a note that says, “Always be this strong. I love you.” Right when I finished The Bear I thought of my five year-old daughter and couldn’t wait for her to read it when she is a bit older. That this type of relationship to reality–this type of belonging–requires a strength. Did any of your children read this version of The Bear? If so, what stood out for them?
• I love that we understand the girl to be the last human and yet we know her story. It creates a mythic quality to the story. I like to imagine that it is the trees who are communicating this story of the girl. Based on what we know about trees in the story they tell it slowly and only those creatures with a cultivated and sharpened attention to what is can hear it. How do you hold the mysterious space of the narrator?
• What project or relationship is on the horizon that is drawing you forward?
• If you were going to pair this conversation with a drink (anything from water to whiskey), what would it be?

photo by Contemplify