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In Conversation with Awesome Author Eric Arnold Part 1

Jacob Gaffney  in In Conversation ,

Welcome to the fourth edition of ‘InterWined in Conversation’ with our guest Eric Arnold, author of First Big Crush, nominated for the 2007 Andre Simon Book Awards.

Stay tuned, because, tonight, InterWined.com will be recording a special live interview with Eric at St. John’s in London to celebrate or commiserate the results.

Warning: the following interview contains offensive language unsuitable for anyone with any modicum of taste.

Further warning: the above warning is simply a ploy to get you to read the whole interview, which is pretty damn good.

Eric Arnold

InterWined is having a special night this evening. We are attending a food and drink book award ceremony with one of the nominated authors, the awesome Eric Arnold of First Big Crush fame, followed by an unusual dinner at St. John, the offal house. Eric is facing competition from three other books: The Wine and Food Lovers Guide to Portugal, by Charles Metcalfe and Kathryn McWhirter; To Cork or Not to Cork, by George Taber; Wine Behind the Label, by Philip Williamson and David Moore.

Will Eric win, or won’t he? As we said above, InterWined will get the results to you as quick as possible.

In the meantime, InterWined.com caught up with Eric right before his flight from New York to London to answer a few questions about working at a winery in New Zealand and his book about his experience. Both are very vivid and, at times, tastelessly candid.

InterWined: When did it hit you that taking a job in a New Zealand winery was worth writing a book about it? Was it one of those things where you have to write it in order to publish, or did you shop the idea around a bit?

Eric Arnold: Here was the plan from the get-go: Go work at a winery, write a book about it. I decided to focus on NZ, though, because I liked the wine. And also, who the hell needs another wine book about France or California? Zzzzzz.

I shopped the idea around a bit and got a few nibbles, but really nothing. I figured out pretty quickly that I just had to get it done, then try and sell a complete manuscript. I was clear with the winery and everyone else involved that this was all very much up in the air, but no one really seemed to mind — they all thought it was a pretty good idea. Of course, for the year during which I wrote the book and in the year after when I was trying to sell it, the question, “When does your book come out?” felt a little like a kick to the scrotum.

IW: Scrotum? In your wine book, wouldn’t you have used a word a bit more graphic? Wait, check that, is this even a wine book? It is a great book, don’t get us wrong, but it also reads very self-indulgent, you brag about peeing on the Oyster Bay sign, for example… but you don’t seem to have this all enshrining ego of many wine ‘experts’… is this a wine book for real? Or are we seeing a new hybrid of approachability in said genre?

EA: Um, yeah, it was Cloudy Bay. Thanks for your close, attentive reading. Anyway, that’s kind of an inside joke. Cloudy Bay has sort of an iconic label on its bottles, and the sign out in front of the winery looks the same, so every day there are tourists standing in the middle of a busy road, like morons, taking pictures of it. Then there’s also a bit of an unspoken, mostly friendly rivalry between Allan Scott, where I worked, and Cloudy Bay, which is directly across the street.

I guess you could call the book self-indulgent, but really what I was trying to do was capture the lifestyle I experienced. It was hard work, but when you live in the middle of farm country in the South Pacific, there’s not much to do other than drink excessively, then say and do stupid shit. That’s what happens in most wine regions, so far as I know.

But to answer the question, is it a wine book? I guess so, in as much as Kitchen Confidential was a food book. I probably learned more about cooking and how restaurant kitchens function from that book than I have from any other place. And a lot of people tell me that they learned more about how wine is made from my book than from any other place.

IW: Even InterWined? Ouch. There are also a few, OK many, times in your book where, um, you say things, that may or may not be sincere. Take the passage where you demand oral sex from anyone who thinks corks are necessary to maintain the romance of opening a bottle of wine… please tell me that is some sort of symbolism lost on us… or are you serious?

EA: Symbolism. Please, have you ever heard of anyone writing a book expressly for the purpose of getting a BJ? I mean, aside from Neill Strauss. To be honest, though, aside from making a point, throughout the book I did try to walk the line between funny and offensive. Every day I was in New Zealand I learned something extraordinary about wine, laughed my head off, and was mildly offended, by the way, Kiwis have very different boundaries on humor and actions than us Americans. I felt that if I could do those three things consistently throughout the book, the reader would get a much better sense of what my experience was truly like. In this particular case, I was able to use that formula to teach you something about wine that, clearly, you remembered: that the experience of drinking wine is romantic, not the opening of the bottle.

IW: Yeah, our wine show tried to do that, and on the second go round it failed miserably. So all things considered was there ever a time, while on the job or writing the book, where you thought, ‘this will never work?’ If there was, obviously you worked past it, so do you have some advice for other wine writers looking to get their names on a hardback?

EA: Um, about failure…every day. But when you’ve packed your life into two suitcases and moved halfway around the planet, you’re really committed. So giving up actually feels harder than pressing forward considering that to even get to that point, you have to convince a hell of a lot of people that you’re (a) worth their time and effort, and (b) not a moron. So the sage advice, I suppose, is to put yourself in a position where it’s easier to work hard and push yourself than it is to quit.

IW:Any other books on the horizon?

EA: Maybe. I need a good idea first though. I think the next one will be about living in your apartment for a year. I’ll be there tomorrow.

IW: That’s fine, as long as you only whip out your penis when you are alone in the bathroom. Deal?

EA: Deal.

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