Searching for answers about Cunégonde
It has become something of a tradition on this website to interview novelists on the occasion of the release of a really interesting new book. Okay, well, mostly it is a tradition for me to interview myself when I myself have a new book come out. What can I say? I seem to be the only interviewer who asks the really hard-hitting and insightful questions.
ScottsMovies: Welcome back, Mr. Larson. It is a pleasure to see you again.
Scott R. Larson, author: Likewise, and there’s no need to be so formal. You can call me… Actually, come to think of it, Mr. Larson is just fine.
SM: Yes, well, Mr. Larson, I believe this is your fifth novel. That’s quite impressive.
SRL: Sure, it is. Go tell James Patterson or Stephen King that writing five novels is really impressive See what kind of reaction you get.
SM: Hey, no need to be sarky. I’m doing you a favor here.
SRL: You’re dead right. I guess I’m a little defensive. Thanks for interviewing me. Also, I really like the redesign on your web site. Looks really good, and it works a lot better on my phone than the old version did.
SM: Thanks. Would you like to hear more about how I wrote all the HTML code myself?
SRL: Hey, who’s getting their product promoted here? You or me?
SM: Sorry. Where were we? Oh yeah, you’ve written a fifth book. What’s this one about? I hope you’ve gotten past all that coming-of-age stuff that you put in your first novel. What was it called? Napoleon and Josephine Are Feeling Poorly?
SRL: Very funny. If you didn’t like the first book, then you probably won’t care for Searching for Cunégonde either. It’s about Dallas Green, the same character who was in Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead and Lautaro’s Spear. He’s older in this book, though. Not really more mature, but he’s older.
SM: Sorry to hear that. Searching for Cunégonde? What kind of title is that supposed to be anyway?
SRL: It’s a literary reference. Cunégonde is a character in an 18th-century novel by Voltaire. She’s the MacGuffin that sets off the hero in that book, Candide, on a long, wide-ranging quest.
SM: Nice use of a cinematic term. So does he find her?
SRL: Find who?
SM: Cunégonde. Does he find her?
SRL: Well, he’s not actually searching for Cunégonde. She’s just a fictional character in a book.
SM: Then why is he looking for her?
SRL: You do understand the title is a metaphor, right? It represents his own search.
SM: Okay, so who’s Dallas searching for?
SRL: A few different people, actually. If you have read the previous book, then you know he’s looking for his long-lost friend Antonio. As set up in Lautaro’s Spear, he goes to Chile in the year 1980 to see if he can track him down.
SM: So Antonio is Cunégonde?
SRL: No, not really. In the metaphor Cunégonde isn’t necessarily an actual person. She’s more of an romantic idea of what a young man with wanderlust thinks he wants. But having said that, there is a woman whom Dallas goes searching for in the story.
SM: So she’s Cunégonde.
SRL: Did you even hear what I just said? Yes, you could see her as Dallas’s Cunégonde, but I think the idea of a romantic idea of what a young man with wanderlust thinks he wants is a more interesting idea.
SM: Is there any sex in this book?
SRL: You mean, good sex? Yeah, there’s some sex, but it’s probably not the main reason to read the book.
SM: So what is the main reason to read the book?
SRL: Good question. Hopefully, it is an entertaining story. The reader gets to travel vicariously to Chile under the Pinochet regime and Argentina in the lead-up to the Falklands War, experience what some suburbanites in Marin County got up to in the 1980s, spend some time in Paris, attend a World Cup match in Spain, and visit rural Ireland in the 1990s. There’s also three different funerals and a really big explosion. Am I over-selling it?
SM: A bit. Sounds like it’s all over the place. Were you on drugs when you wrote it?
SRL: Just coffee, tequila and Malbec wine. Don’t forget, much of it was written during a pandemic. Did I mention we also get to see the fall of the Berlin Wall?
SM: Okay, we just have time for two final last questions. Here’s the first one. This book is really about yourself, right? I mean this is just you writing your own life story, but leaving out the really embarrassing bits.
SRL: Et tu, ScottsMovies? No, it’s a made-up story. And there are definitely embarrassing bits. Hardly anything in the book actually happened to me. Maybe to someone I knew, but hardly any of it happened to me, you know, I mean, directly. I don’t understand why some people assume Dallas and I are the same person. Sure he was born in the same month and and year that I was, but that’s missing the key point. He’s a Sagittarius, and I’m a Capricorn. What’s your final question?
SM: Is Searching for Cunégonde your last book?
SRL: My last book? No, why would you ask that? Maybe you looked at my book blog and read that this will be the last book narrated by Dallas, but I have ideas for other books. I have already started a sequel to The Curse of Septimus Bridge. It’s going to be really dark and with the entire universe at stake.
SM: So is that book based on your own life?
SRL: Sorry. You already asked your final question.
-S.L., 16 October 2020
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