Cozy Cat Press Author Jacob M. Appel by Aliza Byrzinsky

Jacob Appel is an author, poet, bioethicist, and physician. He is best known for his collections of short stories and his work as a playwright, in addition to his writings on medical issues such as reproductive ethics. He is the author of the Rabbi Kappelmacher Mysteries under Cozy Cat’s publication. Knowing his many contributions to both the world of writing and the medical field, I was very thankful for the opportunity to send him the questions that I had. The full interview is as follows.

1. What is a book that really resonates with you?

One of my own books or someone else’s?  I’m always very wary of this question.  It feels like the literary equivalent of Sophie’s Choice (which, incidentally, is a book that resonates with me).  More broadly, my tastes are very canonical, and I very much enjoy dramas of manners (The Age of Innocence, The Forsyte Saga), as well as that nexus between modernism and post-modernism (e.g. John Fowles), but as I get older, both Virginia Woolf and Philip Larkin seem in increasingly more relevant.

2. Since you're a doctor, a lawyer, and have degrees in English and History, I'm curious- how did you get your start in writing?

I wish there had been some grand drama like that Joan Didion discovered me behind the soda fountain at Schwab's Pharmacy, but it was rather a gradual process.  First I hunted the squid and harvested the ink.  Then I felled the trees and milled the paper.  That being said, anyone who goes to law school starts thinking seriously about what else he can do with his life, so I suppose I started writing more seriously to escape the prospect of writing wills in my old age.

3. Where did you grow up and did it influence your writing at all?

I grew up in a bedroom suburb outside New York City.  In a bedroom, in fact.  John Cheever country, you might say.  (The suburb, that is – not the bedroom.  I never let John Cheever inside my bedroom.)   I recall watching the commuters disembark from the trains in the afternoon from their jobs in Midtown and on Wall Street, beleaguered and broken, and thinking, I never want to do that.  So writing seemed like a promising alternative.

4. What was your favorite class in school? Did any of your influences come out of your school years?

I believe it was Mark Twain who warned not to let schooling get in the way of education.  I actually had some amazing teachers in high school and college – I even keep up with the few who are still living – but probably the largest influence on my writing was a workshop in playwriting, taught by the brilliant Tina Howe, that I audited for many years (including during medical school).   Graduate school at NYU was also helpful, because it taught me that there are many writers far better than me out there.

5. What inspires you to write?

Fear of inadequacy.  Of course, I’m a psychiatrist, so you could have figured I might say that.

6. What's one thing about you that your readers would be surprised to know?

I’m actually Thomas Pynchon.

7. What one thing would you like to be known for?

Being Debra Winger’s husband.  Alas, I fear that ship has sailed....

8. Do you have any routines while writing? Do you need a specific space/items nearby?

I do much of my writing in the hospital.  I am not alone.  When you visit a relative in the hospital and you see all of those doctors and nursing typing way behind the nursing stations, you think they’re charting on patients—but they’re actually working on their novels.

9. What is your favorite piece that you've written?

Again with the Sophie’s Choice style questions!  I am probably best known for one particular short story, La Tristesse des Herissons, about a depressed hedgehog – but which is available in the collection, Einstein’s Beach House.  But my own favorites are my sadder pieces like “Paracosmos,” about a lonely woman who falls in love with the father of her daughter’s imaginary friend.

10. How did you get interested in bioethics?

I’ve always been interested in ethical issues, but when I studied at Brown, I took several classes with the late bioethics scholar, Edward Beiser, that hooked me forever.  It’s amazing what a difference a gifted teacher can make.  And how fortunate that I found a role model in bioethics.  If I’d studied under Socrates, I’d likely have overdosed on hemlock by now.

11. What is the easiest/hardest part of writing for you personally?

When I used to write with a quill pen, it was persuading the geese to yield their feathers.  I had less luck with swans and flamingos.  The age of the computer has made this process much easier.  Now I just look up obscure works by lesser known authors, change a few words, and publish them under my own name.  So much easier.

12. Do you find writing easier or harder than your other professions?

Being a physician is relatively easy.  There is never a shortage of sick people.   All one has to do is show up at the hospital.  But writing requires a miracle every time, some magical connection of synapses that activates before a blank page.  It’s rather terrifying, in a way, certainly much harder than applying a few mustard plasters and leeches.

If readers are interested in learning more about Jacob Appel, I highly recommend giving his website a visit, which can be found at the link below.

https://jacobmappel.com/

Jacob’s book with Cozy Cat Press is: WEDDING WIPEOUT