Q&A: Novelist Kirsten Menger-Anderson talks Wiki editing, time travel & anti-intellectualism
'The Expert of Subtle Revisions' is her debut novel
“Why shouldn’t I be the one who writes the story? Why shouldn’t I decide my own fate?… I am an expert of subtle revisions. Line by line, each word a choice: ‘she accepted’ or ‘she chose,’ ‘they parted ways’ or ‘their ways were parted,’ he wrote a letter or ‘the letter was received.’”
I always love a story that has “everything.” Give me romance, mystery, family, friendship, murder, suspense and, yes, maybe an element of fantasy or science fiction. Bonus points for some sort of academic setting. The Expert of Subtle Revisions by Kirsten Menger-Anderson, out on March 18, has all of these.
The story follows, broadly, two timelines. The first begins in 2016 California and is narrated primarily by a girl named Hase, who is raised by a mysterious, off-the-grid mathematician who, at the novel’s start, has gone missing. The second, told by two characters affiliated with the University of Vienna, takes place in 1933 and revolves around the Engelhardt Circle, a group of intellectuals facing increased scrutiny as fascism rises.
I gulped this book down over the course of a few days, coming to the final pages in a dimly lit bar in Newport, RI and promptly turning my gaze to the middle distance like a protagonist awaiting a voiceover of their thoughts, which were at the time about my students, my friends, the headlines buzzing on the phone in my pocket. All of these had coalesced while reading.
In trying to pin down what sucked me in, I’m torn between the span of the novel (complicated relationships between academics and mentors, daughters and their mysterious fathers, strained courting, time travel!) and the poignant reflection it holds up to our current political moment.
Inter-character dramatic intrigue aside (missing parents! jealousy! romantic obsession!), much of the story takes place against the backdrop of the rise of fascism in Austria between the world wars, wherein professors are ordered to inject religious philosophy into their teaching, to promise allegiance to political leaders, and must worry that petty disagreements with colleagues and students may swell into accusations of disloyalty, termination, even violence.
Menger-Anderson chatted with Talk Vomit about all of these things — the novel’s cross-genre scope, her personal connection to the Engelhardt Circle, and the poignance of the story’s politics. Enjoy her insight, and don’t forget to pre-order!
Big picture, The Expert of Subtle Revisions is a multi-POV historical fiction mystery sci-fi novel. (Feel free to disagree!) That's a mouthful! When you set out to write this —your debut novel — when did you realize all that this story would contain? All these pieces, people, places, timelines?
It’s a mouthful, but your description is good! I knew many of the big pieces of the novel right from the start—the three voices, the time periods, the time travel, as well as many of the people, places, and historical elements (such as the murder and court case). Other elements came later— the threads with Wikipedia, and Hase’s voice. Hase replaced a different female POV-character from earlier drafts. Some early elements, such as a historical chapter set in Istanbul, fell out of the work as I revised as well.
Did one timeline come to you first? If so, what was that like?
The idea for the novel came to me as three voices. That said, I didn’t know how to tell those stories immediately, and they evolved as I revised. The ship played a much larger role at one point, for example. Anton Moritz arrived in Vienna in 1927 in early drafts. At one point, I removed the contemporary voice entirely and tried telling the story in just the historical period. In the next draft, however, I created Hase because I understood that the book needed her voice.
A really interesting throughline in this novel is Wikipedia editing, which the main character avidly does (along with her father). What drew you to this subculture? (I am now looking at the edit histories of the Wiki pages I read, since reading this book.)
I love that you are looking at page histories! Wikipedia is fascinating. I’ve written a few essays about it: one on noteworthiness and mathematics (specifically the Erdős number—a measure of collaborative distance from mathematician Paul Erdős—and whether that should be considered evidence of notability) and one on the gender imbalance in cited sources. My real-world interest in Wikipedia (and especially the representation and erasure of women) bled into the novel.
Dare I ask, do you edit Wikipedia pages?
I’ve spent countless hours reading papers about Wikipedia and combing through pages and page histories, and far less time editing them. I last edited several years ago, when I made several small contributions (line edits and a few new articles) to the poetry pages. I may not be like Hase and her father, but some Wikipedia editors do make thousands (even millions) of edits.
There is a time travel piece here that I don't want to skip over, either. Time travel has fascinated readers and our imaginations for ages. What did your research look like for that piece, whether scientifically or in other literature?
I read both fiction and nonfiction, though I sometimes felt paralyzed by the complexities of both. Unexpectedly, one of the most helpful resources was a webpage dedicated to the rules of the Marvel multiverse, which listed every rule of the multiverse, as well as how every one of those rules has been broken. I found that oddly comforting. I enjoy narratives that play with time. A few I’ve read and enjoyed recently include Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow, Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, Rebecca Anne Nguyen’s The 23rd Hero, Dexter Palmer’s Version Control, and Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility.
I read that you have some personal ties to the historical timeline. Would you mind sharing what that connection looks like?
I started Expert not long after I read my grandfather’s memoir Reminiscences of the Vienna Circle and the Mathematical Colloquium, which was published posthumously. Like my character Anton Moritz, my grandfather was a mathematician and a professor at the University of Vienna between the world wars. Many of the events in the historical sections of Expert were directly inspired by his recollections: the murder of Moritz Schlick (who was the head of the Vienna Circle, which inspired the Engelhardt Circle in my book); the political turmoil of that time and its impact on the university; and the rich intellectual and cultural scene in Vienna.
The historical timeline in Expert takes places in 1930s Vienna. The characters in that timeline are affiliated with the local university, which is caught up in the rise of Austrian fascism. There are some pretty ... uncomfortable... throughlines connecting that timeline to what's going on in the U.S. right now, arguably globally. Did you anticipate that kind of relevance when you were writing?
Expert has two POVs set in the 1930s, Anton Moritz and Josef Zedlacher. Early on, several readers advised that I eliminate Josef’s point of view (I started the novel in 2013), but I felt strongly that he was important and also that his sections needed to be in the present tense. Did I anticipate the stark increase in bookbans and censorship, the rise in intolerance and hostility towards people perceived as “outsiders,” the anti-intellectualism, and the right-wing leaders of this moment? I did not imagine a time frame, but I was keenly aware of the political polarization in the United States, and the always present danger of an authoritarian resurgence.
To that end, how do you hope this story lands in the hearts of readers (if you think about that)?
I hope readers find the love story compelling, and that they reflect on how language is used to describe both history and current events. I hope that reflecting on the historical sections can help readers think about the world today, and that they will be excited by the brighter side of the city my grandfather once loved. Most of all, I hope readers enjoy the story!