Akhil Sharma

TWENTY-TWO YEARS after his debut novel, An Obedient Father, first came out, Akhil Sharma published a revision of the book. The second edition is a study in craft. Its sophisticated prose boasts many technical little changes and a great control over the narrative material—as if Sharma had gone over the original with a brush, removing excess and creating room for the reader to tap into her own emotional and psychological recesses. In the intervening years, he wrote a short story collection, A Life of Adventure and Delight, and a closely autobiographical novel, Family Life. The narrator of Family Life, who immigrates from Delhi to Queens with his family, comes of age in the shadow of an accident that leaves his older brother brain-damaged. An Obedient Father, on the other hand, tells the caustic story of a government servant who raped his daughter when she was a child and while consumed by bottomless, complicated shame, cannot rid himself of his pathologies. Despite the difficult substance of Sharma’s fiction, it contains such a wealth of tender, affecting moments that it is hard to stop reading. 

 

Sharma received the PEN/Hemingway Award for An Obedient Father and the International Dublin Literary Award and Folio Prize for Family Life. His short stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and anthologised in Best American Short Stories. As in his writing, in conversation he is frequently disarming, matter-of-fact, and funny. “I have a deep desire to be smart,” he confessed during one of our chats. “It’s a fine balance because you both want to appear smart and actually wish to know things.” When presented with binaries, it appears Sharma is after something else, an emotional truth, or perhaps, as he’s put it, “a detailed impression of how a particular person sees the world.” When we first spoke, he had recently moved to a suburb near Durham, North Carolina, where he teaches creative writing at Duke University. He joked that it wasn’t “required by law” for the lawns in his new, largely white neighbourhood to be quite as large as they all were. Such casual but charged impressions of social and class difference steered our conversations.  

 

We spoke over the phone on several occasions in the summer of 2023, when Sharma’s daughter was just under two years old, always early in the day. On a morning stroll, he explained walking helped him clear his head and temper his anxiety, but since having a baby, he had felt guilty taking this time for himself. “It’s funny, like all these choices feel quite big.” He sounded amused by the smallness of this problem. Compared to what? Sharma was forthright about how his life has been shaped by far more serious matters of money and health, marriage and separation, parenthood and aging—just like anyone else’s, he supposed. Yet the clarity of his arguments betrayed the distinct impression these ordinary experiences leave on a writer’s body of work.

​

This transcript is an abridged version of the original interview.

 

Has this new setting changed your daily routine?

​

So many things have changed. The baby being the most important of them. Wherever you go now, it’s really the baby that you’re with. I was in New York last summer, and it wasn’t so much that I was in New York—I was with the baby and the baby was in New York. In terms of my writing practice, the only big project I’ve done for quite a while is rewriting the novel. I just didn’t have the bandwidth to do anything else. I wrote a couple of essays last year, but that’s about it.

​

Is this unusual for you?

​

Yes, I used to write every day. I would write every single day for five hours to the stopwatch. If a call came, I would stop the stopwatch. If it was an email, I stopped the stopwatch. And all it did was it led me to produce shit. Thousands and thousands of pages of garbage. It was sort of traumatic, so I don’t know how useful it is anymore. Certainly sitting before your computer is more likely to lead to a book. It’s just hard when you do the bulk of the childcare.

​

How has becoming a parent impacted your relationship to writing, including the nature of the work itself?

​

I don’t really know what the answer is yet. I don’t know if my sensibility has changed in some way. The level of love I feel has certainly changed. The change, this affection I feel, is partially because I am turning older. I feel the weight of mortality much more strongly. My baby will be graduating college when I am seventy-two. As you get older, your ambitions can change, or at least they have for me. I am much happier. My ambition is really that the child grows up okay versus I write a couple more books. There’s no comparison between that and the wellbeing of your child.

​

Robert Hass said in an interview that once he became a father, the only thing that mattered was to get through the day without closing the car door on his child’s fingers. Have you found any parallels between parenting and writing?

​

I don’t find it helpful to think in metaphors. It’s easy to think this way, but at the end of the day, they’re just metaphors. 

​

Were you part of a literary community when you were living in New York? 

​

Not really. When I was in New York, I saw some writers, but not regularly, maybe once every six weeks. I never saw publishers. I saw my agent once a year for the Christmas party he had. But that was it. I mean, if I had the chance to move back to New York, I would. Coleridge at some point got a job offer to go to London and he did not. And he said that he regretted it, because all of culture was in London. Obviously, he formed his own pathway. But I think it is better for writers to live in big cities. But to live in New York with a family and a child? I would need to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I don’t earn that sort of money.

​

When did you understand that life as a writer was possible for you?

 

In certain basic ways, it is still not possible. I can’t support myself as a writer. I support myself as a teacher. It only became possible when I was forty-eight or so, in terms of being able to afford basic living. I couldn’t afford a family before that. If I made $80,000 teaching in New York, I couldn’t afford to rent an apartment. I remember talking to Kiran Desai when she had just written The Inheritance of Loss. She had roommates at the time, and she said, well, I’ll just keep living with roommates and keep trying to write. Then the novel won the Booker and she was able to afford a middle-class life. You really need luck as a writer to be able to survive financially. The point of success is really to get a job, so you can have health insurance. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Why should we be exempt from these parts of ordinary life? This is how almost everyone lives.

​

That’s not the typical romantic view, where money isn’t just a practicality but puts strain on the art and the artist. Did you always have this attitude toward the writing life?

​

When I first started writing, and even after my first book, I didn’t understand how the economics of writing worked. I just had no idea that books, even successful books, don’t sell many copies. My first novel sold seven thousand copies in the US, and I just had no idea that the total earnings from that book would be just around $21,000 after years of work. I just didn’t know that. I somehow thought that if you write a book and it’s a strong book, you will be able to have an ordinary life. That might have been true at some point, but it’s certainly not true anymore.

​

Has living a certain kind of class life shaped the way you write, your taste and language as a writer?

​

The class that I write out of hasn’t changed. Novels by definition are a middle-class art form because they presume such shared experience. In my short story collection, there’s a story called “The Well” about this young man growing up. When people visit, his family moves the gallon-size milk to the front of the refrigerator so it looks full. That’s sort of how I grew up. The way I experienced class was that you have to be very careful and you have to be very careful that you have enough. We wanted to make sure we could afford to pay for all the stuff my brother needed. We needed to make sure we didn’t want. We wanted to look like we were okay. 

​

The truth is everybody’s on their own. In fact, if people see you in very dire straits, they’ll flinch. That’s the reality of life—the amount of help one needs, nobody is willing to give. I write from that experience, from having grown up like that. 

​

I recognise these observations about the material conditions of daily life in your work, particularly in your short stories, even though they seem less autobiographical than Family Life.

​

The one thing I’ll say is I write because I believe books are good. They’re virtuous. They’re morally good. They radiate goodness into the world in the same way that people do when they go to a temple or do a good deed. It’s independent of me. I don’t do it for an economic reason. I do it because this is how I live a good life, a moral life. Money is…you need to be able to support yourself, but what matters is trying to live a moral life, otherwise you’re failing. 

​

Was it your education that shaped this way of thinking? What pointed you to the idea that this was what would make for a moral life?

​

I think it comes from my childhood. Growing up after my brother’s accident, because I was glad that it was my brother and not me, because I was relieved that it wasn’t me, I didn’t view myself as a good person, and because I didn’t view myself as a good person, I began questioning my motives. It wasn’t that my motives were bad, but they were complicated. 

​

I began writing mostly to get attention, and then at a certain point, I went to law school. I became an investment banker because I wanted to make a living. I wanted to be able to live a middle-class life, to be able to go to a dentist. I wanted to have a family. That’s what I really wanted. My family was so challenging that I wanted to have one of my own. But the thing that most comforted me throughout was writing. It helped my sense of guilt because I felt like I was doing something virtuous, something beyond myself. 

​

How did you develop your particular perspective as a writer?

​

A lot of it has simply been about trying to relate. I always compare things to how I would experience them. 

​

So it’s an exercise in empathy?

​

I think so.

​

Is there a question that you are trying to think through when you write?

​

A book has to claim why it is deserving to be read. And that claim will be challenged by readers, so it has to be completely solid. 

​

Is this how you read too?

​

I am very, very aware of style when I read. I am very aware of what a sentence is doing or failing to do. I am very aware of what the work needs in order to convince people it’s good. There are many books which people think are good which are, in my opinion, junk.

​

What is the distinction for you? 

​

As more and more art forms have come into existence, it is no longer sufficient for books to do minor things well and the core things not so much. The core thing has to be done incredibly well. It’s wonderful to see the minor things, to see the language, scenes being set up, but the core thing, which is the character, real people living a real life, is often not done well.

​

When you say that, are you talking about realism?

​

Not really. In a good book, there are some questions that need to be answered. Whatever claim you’re making—the way you’re trying to claim importance for the reader—ultimately, you need to justify it.

​

And the core doesn’t have to do with language?

​

It does, but it also does not. For instance, there’s a lot of Russian writers who are in many ways “bad writers.” But there’s a value to a certain type of bad writing. For example, for a long time, the idea in clothing was that it should fit you. Good clothing matched your body. It wasn’t too big, it wasn’t too small, but then we began to discover all sorts of silhouettes, right? Language can be that way. With a lot of 19th-century writers, the language is slightly too big. It’s a certain type of “bad writing,” but it’s doing the important thing, which is holding the reader’s attention and allowing for emotions.

​

What is a good sentence to you?

 

All sentences have different aims. It depends on the relationship the writer is trying to form with the reader. The Ambassadors by Henry James—it’s torture reading it. It’s like he puts a drop on one end of a slightly slanted surface, and that drop, as it goes through the clauses of the sentence, begins to make clear how an emotion is being processed. What that sentence requires is a reader who is committed. That’s one type of sentence that is very good, even though the experience of a book of such writing can be torturous. There are other books with other joys. When you read somebody like Nabokov, the sentence suddenly does something amazing. It’s like it’s caught you. You don’t know how it’s doing it. A good test for a sentence is to see if you get a significant experience once you accept the rules the writer is applying.

​

Does reading serve a function for you?

​

It comforts me. I find that nothing else comforts me in the same deep way. When I watch movies or TV, they take me away from myself, but they’re only distracting me on a surface level. When I am reading a book, I feel really uprooted, really removed from myself.

​

Does writing also offer comfort? What does it bring you?

​

It does offer relief. Partially it feels like I am making a scratch on the world, you know? I think if the world has scratched me up, let me scratch the world back.

​

Do you see a screen between your personal and creative lives when you write? 

​

I am writing from my own life almost always. There’s always a portion of it that’s my life. Usually a significant portion, like 20% or so. I wrote a story called “Cosmopolitan” that came from the fact that when I was young, I didn’t know how to be somebody who would be likable. It’s why I used to read women’s magazines. I was always looking for advice on how to be normal. I was often overwhelmed with emotions. I didn’t know how to be, and so I just wanted people to explain to me, what am I feeling? What should I be? That’s basically what it was like for me. All the shame and confusion I experienced as a child, it’s still present and feeding into the writing. But as you change, your material, or at least your relationship to your material, changes.

​

Has writing allowed you to process these feelings?

​

What’s allowed me to process them is time and money. Having time away from my family allows me to not have that thinking crushed. And not being impoverished. Being able to fill a gas tank. Being able to buy Claritin when I have allergies.

​

When you are writing about those close to you, are you concerned?

​

Not really. My dad has never read anything by me. They don’t care. They care what other people think. I don’t wish to cause anyone pain, but I also feel like, look, we all behave badly. The fact is when we want to be loved, we want the person who loves us to also love parts of us that are terrible. We most need love when we’re feeling pain. I don’t feel that presenting somebody behaving poorly is an unloving thing.

​

How does that play into how you represent yourself in fiction?

​

You spend so many years writing something. It turns around and around so much that at a certain point, the I is both you and not you, because you’ve spent more years thinking about that I than you’ve spent thinking about yourself, the real you.

​

You mentioned you’re at work on a new novel along with a couple short stories. Can you tell me more about them? 

​

I could tell you about them, but it makes working on them annoying.

​

So let's talk about how the two forms interact. I am wondering what it feels like to shift your attention from one to the other.

​

It’s helpful because it makes you take things less seriously. You begin to realize this is not the book that you’re writing, just a book. This is not the short story. Just a story.

​

What do you do in the space between projects?   

​

Stories come all the time. There’s lots of stories that I have begun and then abandoned, but I can always go back to them. There’s always more stories to write. You sit down for a couple of hours and some fantastic idea will come to you. Writing…it’s like beautiful lines—there’s endless amounts of beautiful lines, so endless stories. You just have to remember that not every story you’re going to write will be the best story you’ve ever written, so you write it and you move on.

​

Where does this trust in the abundance of inspiration come from?

 

I didn’t always have that. I developed it over time.

​

How? 

​

The thing that helps with abandoning stories is to begin another one. And then you become excited about that one. It’s a little bit like relationships. If you go from one relationship to another, you are never lonely. You never have to deal with your shit.

 

But how do you decide what to pay attention to?

​

I begin a story based on a line or an idea, and then I just try to see if I follow it, whether it’ll do anything. If it does, then I keep going. If it doesn’t, I stop. 

​

How do you work through a longer project?

​

I am basically never not working on a novel. There’s always a novel that’s on the computer that I look at now and then. I turn away from it when it’s not working or when I am beginning to feel depressed by it. Then I’ll try to see if I can write a short story instead. If that story or essay is working, I’ll try to finish that before I go back to the novel. The reality is if you’re able to write a novel, you should do it. There’s immense pleasure and satisfaction in writing a short story. They are their own valid art form. But financially, in terms of taking care of your family, bringing up a child, you need it. You need to publish books.

​

Are these financial and artistic interests not at odds?

​

No, because they both engage with something that’s deeply important. I love kissing my baby, but sometimes I need to put her shoes on so we can leave.

​

What do you do with the things you abandon? 

​

Nothing. It’s crazy to think that you can go back and you’ll have a different perspective and then it’ll work. It seems very unhealthy.

​

It’s funny you say that since you went back to An Obedient Father and did find something new there. How was that different? 

​

I was going through my divorce then and I wasn’t really able to do any new work. And so I did that. There’s such satisfaction and comfort in working that you want to return to it, and when you can’t do it in the way you did in the past, you have to do it in a different way.

​

What did revising that book teach you?

​

Right now, I am working on a new project and I find that I am moving from moment to moment, plot point to plot point. Or at least what seems like a plot point to me—the way that literary fiction is plotted, very quiet and without a lot of explanations. It’s made up of interstitial things. In the first version [of An Obedient Father], there had been this enormous commenting intelligence, which created a feeling of claustrophobia. It’s one type of style, but at a certain point the reader isn’t investing as much into the story. What I find helpful when I write now is just going from plot point to plot point with the idea that the reader doesn’t need an explanation.

​

In reality, oftentimes the reader does need explanation. Most readers cannot fill in the gaps because our actions and behaviors are so idiosyncratic. So what I was doing before is justifiable, but it doesn’t really work as an experience. Part of the reason for having that amount of explanation is to make the psychology very tight. The character’s consciousness is present on the page, and that means even slight twitches can have great meaning, can propel behavior. It’s a way of magnifying the plot. I was trying to figure out how to do it in a slightly different way.

​

Was it your intention to create a reading experience that feels claustrophobic?

​

The first time I wrote it, it was intentional. I just couldn’t agree with that perspective anymore. It wasn’t like I did it accidentally. I did it very deliberately.

 

What was different about the second process?

​

For starters, I knew what was going to happen. It was two thousand hours of work, but I knew what was going to happen, so I didn’t have to focus on a lot of things.

​

Has your style as a writer changed with time?

​

Yes. Over time, your anxieties change. The things that you need, that you’re trying to express change. The longing changes.

​

Has teaching made it easier for you to articulate these forces in your work?

​

The thing is I can articulate all sorts of stuff. If it’s what I am feeling today, I’ll come up with a theory explaining it, and it’ll seem like a very convincing theory.

​

Sure.

​

But that doesn’t mean it is actually true.

​