In 'Manhattan Beach ' Jennifer Egan Dives Deep Into WWII New York City
Jennifer Egan Jennifer
In 2011   Jennifer Egan  won the Pulitzer Prize for  her  novel  A Visit From The Goon Squad. Years before that book came out   Egan  had begun researching the 1930s and '40s in New York City.  Her  new novel  Manhattan Beach  is the result of that research. It follows a father  his daughter and a gangster whose lives intersect in New York around World War II.
The daughter  Anna  becomes the first woman to work as a deep-sea diver at the Brooklyn Navy Yard  which presented a particular kind of challenge for  Egan : In reality  there were no women divers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
In 2011  the novelist  Jennifer Egan  won the Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Visit From The Goon Squad." Years before it came out   Egan  began researching New York City in the 1930s and '40s. And that research wound up in her new novel  "Manhattan Beach." The book is about a father  his daughter and a gangster whose lives intersect in New York City around World War II.
"Manhattan Beach" was just long-listed for the National Book Award.  Egan  sat down to talk about it with my co-host Ari Shapiro.
 JENNIFER EGAN : She was extremely helpful to me in understanding the difficulty of being a female diver. I mean diving is a very physical undertaking  and so she was very articulate about the challenges of doing that as a woman and especially the prejudice that she encountered. Men did not want her there  and they made that very clear. There were certain exceptions. But she ultimately had a sad feeling about her diving career in that she felt that she would have liked to continue with it but that it was uncomfortable because she was a woman.
 EGAN : What I found was that every single time I tried to leap out of the present into the future  which was a technique I used a lot in a "Visit From The Goon Squad" - every time I did it in this book  it was worse than bad. It was actually annoying.
 EGAN : So I had to recognize that I was telling a story that could not live in a tricky structural form. It really required a total immersion in continuity.
SHAPIRO: It's kind of a relief to hear that  even Jennifer Egan  writes things that are terrible sometimes.
 EGAN : I would go so far as to say that I mostly write terrible things. I mean my first drafts are so appalling. I think there's no way I can possibly get there. With this book more than any other  I thought very seriously about abandoning it.
SHAPIRO:  Jennifer Egan 's new novel is called "Manhattan Beach." Thank you so much for talking with us about it.
In 2011   Jennifer Egan  won the Pulitzer Prize for  her  novel  A Visit From The Goon Squad. Years before that book came out   Egan  had begun researching the 1930s and '40s in New York City.  Her  new novel  Manhattan Beach  is the result of that research. It follows a father  his daughter and a gangster whose lives intersect in New York around World War II.
The daughter  Anna  becomes the first woman to work as a deep-sea diver at the Brooklyn Navy Yard  which presented a particular kind of challenge for  Egan : In reality  there were no women divers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
In 2011  the novelist  Jennifer Egan  won the Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Visit From The Goon Squad." Years before it came out   Egan  began researching New York City in the 1930s and '40s. And that research wound up in her new novel  "Manhattan Beach." The book is about a father  his daughter and a gangster whose lives intersect in New York City around World War II.
"Manhattan Beach" was just long-listed for the National Book Award.  Egan  sat down to talk about it with my co-host Ari Shapiro.
 JENNIFER EGAN : She was extremely helpful to me in understanding the difficulty of being a female diver. I mean diving is a very physical undertaking  and so she was very articulate about the challenges of doing that as a woman and especially the prejudice that she encountered. Men did not want her there  and they made that very clear. There were certain exceptions. But she ultimately had a sad feeling about her diving career in that she felt that she would have liked to continue with it but that it was uncomfortable because she was a woman.
 EGAN : What I found was that every single time I tried to leap out of the present into the future  which was a technique I used a lot in a "Visit From The Goon Squad" - every time I did it in this book  it was worse than bad. It was actually annoying.
 EGAN : So I had to recognize that I was telling a story that could not live in a tricky structural form. It really required a total immersion in continuity.
SHAPIRO: It's kind of a relief to hear that  even Jennifer Egan  writes things that are terrible sometimes.
 EGAN : I would go so far as to say that I mostly write terrible things. I mean my first drafts are so appalling. I think there's no way I can possibly get there. With this book more than any other  I thought very seriously about abandoning it.
SHAPIRO:  Jennifer Egan 's new novel is called "Manhattan Beach." Thank you so much for talking with us about it.