In early 2013 Roland Merullo sat down with good friend and author Matthew Quick (Silver Linings Playbook) to talk about writing, spirituality and, in particular, Roland's recent book, Lunch With Buddha.
Matthew Quick— We’ve known each other for five or so years, during which we’ve discussed—at length—writing, publishing, spirituality, and life in general. Your fiction often explores the questions and concerns that are most important to you. What led you to write Lunch with Buddha?
Roland Merullo— From my earliest years, when I was a devout Catholic boy living in a world where the rules and traditions of Catholicism were the air we all breathed, I’ve been puzzling over what I’ll call, for lack of a better term, "the meaning of life." Why do people suffer? Why is the suffering spread around so unevenly? What are we doing here in the first place? What happens to a person’s spirit after he or she dies? In my twenties my eyes were opened to answers that came from places other than the Christian tradition. Rather than seeming like a challenge to that tradition, the wisdom of the East has always seemed to me like an expansion of it.
Buddhism, especially, but also Sufism, Hinduism, and Taoism made the story of Jesus more understandable and believable to me, not less. I tend to write about what I’m most focused on, in my interior life. I’ve had a daily meditation practice for 30-some years and still do a lot of reading across the spiritual spectrum. I love to drive and see new places, love to eat different kinds of food, love to see the humor in life and make people laugh. So it was natural that all these things would find their way into a novel. And it was surprisingly easy for me, after a seven-year hiatus, to get right back into the mindsets of these characters.
And, it’s funny, I feel like I’ve known you much longer than that. Those conversations have been a rich part of my life.
Matthew— Our talks have greatly enriched my life too. I understand that your family took a research road trip in preparation for the writing of this book. Can you tell us a little about that trip and how it inspired your writing? Did you visit all of the places mentioned in the novel? How did your wife and daughters color the research and writing?
Roland— The plain fact is that we did not have the money to make the trip . . . at first. Then one day I went to the mailbox—this is the unadorned truth—and found a letter there, addressed to me, no return address. Inside was a sheet of pale blue stationery folded in three, and inside that was a check. I saw the back of the check first, and assumed it was repayment of expenses from a recent reading on Cape Cod. Then I turned it over. It was a cashier’s check for $10,000, made out to me. No note, no explanation, nothing. It was Saturday. On Monday I took it to the bank and the bank manager in our little country town looked at it for 30 minutes, pressed his fingers into it, held it up to the light, called the bank it was drawn on, called his own security people. At last, he looked up at me and said, “I think it’s legit.” And it was.
I suspected a couple of well off friends but I asked and no, they laughed, they liked me well enough, sure, but they hadn’t just sent me a check for ten grand. I decided—and this, despite our bills, was an easy decision—that there was only one thing to do with this money: take the trip that would be the basis for Lunch with Buddha. So all four of us drove to NYC and caught a flight to Seattle, rented a car in just the way Otto does in the novel (same car, same foolish decision by Dad), and drove exactly the same route, across Idaho and Montana and into North Dakota.
The girls and Amanda love the open road as much as I do, and they were perfect travel companions, remarking on things they thought might be in the book, making suggestions. Amanda took 1,000 photos, and 30 pages of handwritten notes as I drove. We did everything that Otto and Rinpoche do—from the water slide to Old Faithful to Yellowstone’s Boiling River, from the hike at the Cave B Inn, to the Coulee Dam visit, to the pitchfork fondue at Medora. We ate at all the same places, usually, in my case, the very same meal that Otto eats in the book. We heard what they hear on the radio, saw the same road signs. The only parts that are truly made up are the conversations and some of the characters they meet along the road (Rundy, for instance, is imaginary; I didn’t pick up any hitchhikers with the girls in the car).
Someday I hope to be able to thank the angel who sent that kind of money to me, but obviously that person wishes to remain unknown. So here it is: THANK YOU!
Matthew— I’ve loved every Roland Merullo book I’ve read, and Lunch with Buddha may be my favorite yet. Why do you think that is?
Roland— I don’t know. I’m too close to the book right now to have any kind of perspective on it at all. But I know from your fine writing, and from our talks, that you have the same great curiosity about life that I have. You wonder why people behave the way they do. You try to bring some light into the world when you can. And you make up stories that contain both the puzzlement and curiosity, and your idea of an answer to the big questions. We are mining that same vein, or maybe similar veins in the same mine. I really believe that every soul is put on earth with a certain set of skills and interests, and a certain purpose or purposes. I think we’ve both found what we’re supposed to be doing here, and our job is simply to do it as well as we can, deal with whatever obstacles we face, and let the chips fall.
Matthew— Early in the novel you write: “Rinpoche seemed to live on the far side of some line that marked the boundary of ordinary American reality.” Is that where you want to live?
Roland— I’m a very down-to-earth kind of person. I like realistic fiction and films. I like people who can cook, or hammer a nail, or fix a bleeding wound, or comfort a crying child. But I’m also not completely convinced that our assumptions are always 100% accurate. A few centuries ago people tormented Galileo for daring to say that the earth moved around the sun. For how many centuries before that was the assumption incorrect? Einstein’s theories similarly challenged the prevailing “wisdom” of the day. So I think it’s wise to be a little skeptical about our laws and truths. Maybe, for instance, at least some of the psychics who claim to be in contact with the dead are actually in contact with the dead. I don’t know. I have very sensible friends whose late spouses “spoke” to them.
Surely there are a lot of phonies and scammers out there, a lot of people who “see” the end of the world, or speak in tongues, or have visions, but are simply fooling themselves or someone who is paying them. Still, I leave the door open just a bit to the idea that there’s more to life than the things we can measure and explain.
In Breakfast with Buddha, Otto starts out totally skeptical of Rinpoche’s interest in meditation and the interior life. By the end of the novel he’s been moved off that position a short ways. In Lunch with Buddha, though he doesn’t really want it to be so, he suspects that death is final, and he’ll never have any communication with his beloved wife again. By the end of the novel that assumption, too, has been shaken just a bit. It’s a tightrope walk. I’m a realist. I don’t want to write flaky books. But I am all about pushing the boundaries of the interior life—which is the heart and soul of Rinpoche’s talk in Spokane.
Matthew— “Destiny, I confess, was a word that had always given me trouble,” Otto says. Do you feel as though you were destined to be a fiction writer? Destined to write this book?
Roland— I had a great and memorable dream about thirty years ago, near the start of my writing life. My father—with whom I was very close, and who had recently died was arriving by train, coming from the East, from someplace closed and secret like the former USSR. I was waiting for him at a train station that might have been in Belarus or Poland or East or West Germany. When he stepped off the train, I went up and hugged him and I said, proudly, “Pa, I have come to claim my birthright and my destiny.” A VERY weird thing to say in a dream, but there it is.
I think he’d be proud of my books now, but for a long time he wanted a more practical career for me—like most fathers and mothers would. In our time and place there was no such thing as making a living writing. It was not on the radar screen. He wanted me to be a doctor or a diplomat or a professor. My mother had similar ideas. So for a long time, because I wanted to please them and to “repay” them for all they’d done for me, I was blind to what I really wanted to do with my working life. It wasn’t until I’d done other things—worked in the USSR for the US Government, served in the Peace Corps, collected tolls, loaded trucks, built swimming pools, finished and hated graduate school—that I was able to admit to myself that I wanted to write.
I still have a little trouble with the word destiny. It seems pompous, like I think I’m meant for great things. I don’t think that. Or, rather, I think we are all meant for great things, every one of us. I was a carpenter for a long time while writing my first novel, seven years, and I take a very workmanlike approach to writing now. I love it, but I don’t think it’s more special than carpentry or cab driving or nursing or teaching. It’s just the right thing for me. I’m in my place in the world. I’ve claimed my birthright, yeah, but that birthright is my freedom, in this great land, to figure out where I want to put my energies.
Matthew— “Why didn’t good prevail?” your character asks. It’s a question you and I have talked about many times. In most of your books, good usually does prevail, if only in some small way. Would you say that your fiction is a vehicle of hope? Is that why you write?”
Roland— Yes, a vehicle of hope. I think we both work that way, no? And, yes, that does reflect my view of life. I’m fascinated—and I think this shows itself in every single one of my books, even the golf books—with the way people deal with difficulty, hardship, pain, disappointment, tragedy and life’s seeming inequities. In Leaving Losapas the difficulty is a certain kind of post-war traumatic stress.
In A Russian Requiem it’s divorce and career dissatisfaction. In Revere Beach Boulevard it’s a gambling addiction. In A Little Love Story it’s cystic fibrosis. And in the last few books it’s been: how do people deal with the spiritual search, in the face of life’s hardships?
My battles with my own demons and troubles, with illness and (a long time ago, pre-meditation) some periods of depression and despair, with my failures and flaws—that’s really the center of my existence. In The Talk-Funny Girl I deal with that directly: how does Marjorie overcome her horrible childhood and be a decent mother? My childhood was far from horrible, but we all have our pains and challenges, and I’m—well, obsessed wouldn’t be too strong a word—with how we deal with that. And I want to pass on to my children as little of that as I can. Some people indulge their pain and pass it on. Some fight it to a draw. And some people transcend. My goal—reflected in many of my characters—is to transcend. Not there yet.
Matthew— Your novels have a tendency to make me hungry. Your characters eat many wonderful meals, usually described in mouthwatering detail. Is this an Italian American writing thing?
Roland— (Smiling here). Partly. I had the great good fortune to live upstairs from and next door to a tremendously spiritual, wonderfully warm and loving grandmother who also happened to be a world-class cook. It wasn’t fancy. It was what I think of as “southern Italian peasant food”, but, man, every meal, no matter how simple, was a delight. It’s a hard way to begin, because the world is always going to disappoint you—and not just at the table.
So now I’m very much like Otto. It’s not that I need fancy gourmet food; it’s just that, like most of the Italians we’ve met in our travels there, I feel like what you put into your mouth matters. They use fresh food and prepare it carefully and usually eat it slowly. Like Otto’s kids, my kids sometimes joke with me about the pasta being overcooked in a restaurant—a particular sore spot. Luckily, Amanda is a great cook and I like to do the dishes, so it works out.
Matthew— Please talk a little more about the “egotism of the intellect.”
Roland— I like the Biblical idea of false gods. And I think it’s easy, in our society, to make a false god of the intellect. It’s better to be smart than stupid, yes, and it’s particularly important to have the country run by intelligent, thoughtful people. But, as friends down the road said to me recently—and they’ve raised two marvelous children—“we care more about raising our kids to be kind than raising them to be geniuses.”
There’s so much societal emphasis on education and achievement (both good things) and on status and possessions (maybe not so good) because those things are measurable. Thanks to my parents, I had a very good education. I want my children to be well educated. But, first, I want them to be happy, and I want them to be kind and compassionate.
I spent ten years in academia, and some of my closest friends are academics. They are fine people. But among some academics there is this “egotism of the intellect”, as if the most important thing in life is to be smart, or smart-er. They don’t care how badly they treat other people; what they care about is who’s smarter. It’s a false god. When I was a kid in Revere, the most important thing for a boy was to be tough, a good fighter. Another false god. They’re everywhere, the little bastards.
Matthew— Otto says, “Whole libraries of subjects were off limits now, at least in my circles.” Many of the ideas in Lunch with Buddha are “off limits” to so many people here in America, and yet, your work seems to provide a much needed bridge. Why does America need Buddha and Eastern thought?
Roland— As to the first part: he’s speaking to the way conversations about certain subjects have become stultified in this society. The national discussion has turned into two camps ridiculing each other. Bigotry on the one hand, political correctness on the other. Thank God we still have comedians.
To make a bad generalization, I think Eastern thought is primarily inner-focused. The pejorative term is “navel gazing.” Well, I think we could use a bit more navel gazing in our society. We do so many wonderful things in the external world—photos from Mars, medicines for AIDS and other illnesses, remarkable surgeries, incredible technological gizmos. But when Steve Jobs (I may be wrong, but I believe he had a Buddhist practice) was dying he is reputed to have said, “Oh, wow!” As if he saw something. I somehow doubt that what he saw was the next generation of the iPad. I think it was some interior experience, some wider understanding of the miracle of life.
Except in its mystical tradition—which is vast and of long standing but largely ignored in this society—Christianity is outer-focused. It’s too often all about behavior and sin and loud prayer. Okay. But what Rinpoche does for Otto is to take that foundation of good behavior and show him that it is a starting point, not an end point. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” Jesus said that, not Buddha. But it’s the Easterners who pursue it more avidly, and I think we would benefit from that pursuit.
Matthew— Please tell me there will be a "Dinner with Buddha"and that I will be able to read it relatively soon.
Roland— Well, first, thank you for these superb questions, and for your friendship and your books. As for Dinner, well, I have laid the groundwork for that at the end of Lunch. Just need to come up with another route, a part of the country we haven’t covered. I’ve been to 49 states, which leaves only Alaska, but I somehow don’t see an Alaskan road trip in our future. Maybe I’ll take the whole cast of characters overseas. I’m open to suggestion.
In early 2013 Roland Merullo sat down with good friend and author Matthew Quick (