An Afternoon with Markus Zusak

by Mitchell Griffin

I don’t read books twice. I never have. The plots can’t captivate me a second time through, their surprises and twists and turns, no matter how captivating they are, lose their magic. Even books I consider my absolute favorites rarely get opened after I finish them. They are resigned to my bookshelf for the rest of eternity. 

Markus Zusak is one of the few authors to have written something so wonderful that I read it cover to cover more than once. The Book Thief, which I first discovered in the sixth grade, instantly captivated me. I had no intention of ever putting it down. I tore through its pages, desperate to find out what would happen next to Liesel, the thief herself. Even though I first read it when I was twelve, I still haven’t stopped recommending it to others. I can only hope there are other parts of me that have changed since 2011.  

I was anxious to see what Zusak was like in person. The two books of his I’ve actually finished were enough for me to be invested in wanting to like the persona he would show us. Luckily, afterward, I felt no reason to be disappointed. Speaking to us in the EPB’s Gerber Lounge to a room filled with fans, despite his mentioning of being nervous about what he could possibly say to a group of students from a college with Iowa’s literary reputation, Zusak had a cool confidence and light-heartedness that gripped my attention for every word. 

Zusak, him being a storyteller by trade, told us stories. One was a story from his childhood in Australia about the time he ruined Christmas for his family that filled the room with laughter, then proceeded to talk about the art of telling stories. He spoke of details that convince us that what we are hearing must be true, the way we remember stories, the way we take from our own lives in writing fiction, how he uses routines to guide his writing, how stories are what make up our lives.  

I got to ask Zusak himself how he felt about responses to The Book Thief’s film and the changes from novel to screen. He said it was heartbreaking to hear some of the negative reactions, but that he had to understand the movie was crafted for a different audience. He said it was made in a way to shed light on parts of life in Nazi Germany in a broad sense, not to perfectly replicate what happened in the novel. I was genuinely interested in his response because I was heartbroken by the movie in a different way. 

Everyone knows that, by virtue of universal law, that the book is always better than the movie. In accordance with this rule, the movie shattered my heart because it was so very different from the novel in so many vital ways that I felt I was robbed of the chance to have my favorite novel also be my favorite movie. I had no intention of asking my question just to scrounge for closure, but his response gave it to me anyway. 

Zusak also spoke about his struggles with confidence as a writer. I loved the openness with which he spoke about his battles of believing in his own work and the endless cutting and rewriting of novels until they find an acceptable resting place as they are. I know I am far from the first or last writer to have serious Imposter Syndrome as they write and struggle to believe that the words they put together are worth anything. Yet, there is always something reassuring in hearing far superior writers, whether they be classmates or international best-sellers, talk about going through the same pains.

He told us about a time early in his career of going to his publisher to ask for more time to work on his novel and running into an accomplished author. After yet another successful book, the author already had the confidence that his next book would be even better while Zusak said he was still struggling to believe what he endearingly referred to as his “pile of shit” story would ever make it. I know I won’t ever reach the accolades Zusak has, but when you meet an author who you’ve loved nearly half your life talk about combatting lack of confidence and embracing the chaos that is writing, it gives me a jolt of hope for my own little piles of shit.