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A superstar author visits Tulsa.
Thanks to the BOK Center, superstars are coming to Tulsa: Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Elton John, Celine Dion. Literary rock stars are coming, too. Joseph O’Neill, whose novel, “Netherland,” was praised as the best fiction in 2008, appeared at Central Library in September.
If you missed O’Neill in person, read his PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel. It is an unforgettable story about immigrants in New York City, the sport of cricket, the aftermath of 9/11, the fragility of marriage and many more layers to peel. If you are disinclined to cricket, New York City or its immigrants, you can easily transfer the book’s themes to Tulsa, Hispanic immigrants and baseball. O’Neill’s ideas are universal signs of our times.
O’Neill, a world citizen, was born in Ireland in 1964 to his Turkish mother and Scottish father, who moved him from Mozambique to India, finally settling in The Hague when he was 12 years old. He earned a law degree and practiced in England. He married Sally Singer, a Vogue editor, and the couple moved to New York City, as did his protagonist, Hans van den Broek, with a fictional wife and baby son.
All fiction is autobiographical to some degree, but in “Netherland,” the lines get blurred. During his Tulsa talk, O’Neill read a humorous passage about getting a driver’s license in NYC and indicated the experience was true to his life.
O’Neill talked about the sales boost his book received when President Barack Obama revealed in an interview last spring that he was reading “Netherland.” This book, narrated from the “other” point of view, seems likely to appeal to Obama‘s sympathies. The “others” in “Netherland” are not limited to the narrator, but they include South Asians and West Indies immigrants whom the narrator befriends in search of the perfect cricket game. Netherland — neither here nor there, yet we have all been there.
Book Smart Tulsa sponsored O’Neill’s trip. Jeff Martin (also a TulsaPeople columnist) and Mary Beth Babcock have created a book lovers’ movement that brings out-of-town authors here for locals to meet and offers a “not your mother’s” book club — called Book Pub — that meets monthly. (Visit www.booksmarttulsa.com for future gatherings.)
O’Neill, in response to a Tulsan’s question, revealed that a movie is in the works, with Chris Hampton writing the screenplay. If so, O’Neill should play the leading man, for he is as handsome and beguiling as any movie star. Complemented by a charming accent and intelligent repartee, O’Neill made his evening in Tulsa one worthy of any cosmopolitan city.
