How author Amor Towles built ‘The Lincoln Highway’
Amor Towles’ novels, including the bestseller “A Gentleman in Moscow” and his new “The Lincoln Highway,” are so distinctive that they read like the works of different writers. In a way, they are.
Towles resets each time he starts a new book. He always has several potential novels percolating and, when he begins writing, he enters fully into that world. It’s as if most of its elements were there all the time, waiting for him to get busy.
“Long before I write the book, I’ll have a pretty complete sense of where it takes place, when it takes place, how long its duration is,” said Towles via Zoom from his booklined study in New York. “When I had the idea of a guy who is trapped in a hotel (that’s ‘Gentleman’), it came with the idea that it was a 30ish-year span. So when I had the idea of kids hidden in the trunk of a car (‘Lincoln’), it came with the idea that it would last about 10 days.”
“The Lincoln Highway” counts down from Day 10 to Day 1. Its main characters are an eerily wise child named Billy and his teenage brother, Emmett. The latter returns from a year in juvenile detention as the book opens, only to discover escapee inmates Duchess and Woolly hid in his trunk during the trip home. Emmett and Billy, whose father recently died, agree to follow the titular highway from their Nebraska home to San Francisco, where their mother lives, but their trip is diverted by the stowaways, who involve them in adventures with Manhattan vaudevillians, authors and low-level gangsters.
All of his novels have
been historical fiction but Towles is much more interested in the “fiction” than the “historical” part. He likens the process of creating a setting that’s convincing, if not entirely faithful, to theatrical magic:
“If it’s ‘The Cherry Orchard,’ at the very back of the stage is a painted backdrop that is the orchard in the distance, painted in an impressionistic style or whatever, using
the tricks of Renaissance painters to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. In front of that are bookcases made out of plywood but painted to look like mahogany and, then, in front of that is an actual table and chairs, and an actual tea set on the table.”
In his book, history is that backdrop, which at least hints at reality. But it’s the stuff he puts in front of the backdrop — the sound a guy’s fist makes when he slams it on a wooden table, a woman’s gesture — that must feel real.
“If I can get the guy at the table right, drinking tea and having a conversation, you will have greater faith in the illusion behind it,” said Towles. “It’s like if the acting is going well, the fake stuff in back starts to blur in your perception. You think, ‘I’m there.’ ”
Even though he usually knows what he wants to do with his novels, surprises emerge. Like the highway in “Lincoln Highway.”
When Towles started writing, he’d never heard of the United States’ first transcontinental road. After completing a draft, he checked The New York Times to see what was happening during the time the book is set and discovered a couple things. There was a “national nuclear simulation,” in which cities went dead for 10 minutes; he incorporated that into the story.
And he learned of the title thoroughfare, which still exists. Not only was it an ideal route for his characters, since it ends in San Francisco, but it begins in Times Square, where several scenes in “Lincoln” already were set.
After the solitude of writing the book, compounded by the pandemic lockdown, the author is looking forward to meeting the bibliophiles and book groups that flock to his appearances.
“It’s nice to send the book out into the world and have a chance to share my thoughts about it and hear readers’ thoughts,” said Towles, who then chuckled. “Of course, if a book isn’t well received, they don’t want to send you anywhere, nobody wants you to come and you shouldn’t go. If a book isn’t well received, you should just go home and write your next book.”
That shouldn’t be a problem with the reception of “Lincoln Highway,” which has earned good early reviews. But whenever he does go home to write the next book, Towles knows he’ll have plenty of ideas waiting for him.