Behind The Stack

Allison Epstein, Fagin The Thief

• Brett Benner • Season 2 • Episode 23

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In this episode Brett sits down with Allison Epstein to discuss her new book, Fagin The Thief. They talk about the reimagining of literary characters, her inspiration for taking on Fagin, and agree on a pretty awful song from the musical Oliver.

Allison's website: 

https://allisonepstein.com/

Allison's instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/rapscallison/


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Brett Benner:

Hello, everyone, and welcome or welcome back to another episode of Behind the Stack with me, Brett Benner. I hope you're all doing well. I was out last night a little late. I went to the Screen Actor Guild Awards last night, My business partner, Debbie and I got asked to go because of casting shrinking and the shrinking cast was up for best ensemble last night. which unfortunately they didn't win. They really should have, but it was really fun. Uh, I actually had too much fun. But I am definitely, uh, paying for it today. Anyway, a couple of new books coming out, including, uh, today's guest. So I just wanted to share some of these titles that sound particularly interesting to me. The first one is Curtis Sittenfeld's new book show don't tell, which is a collection of short stories, including, one of them, which is revisiting her characters from. Her book Prep. Then, The Strange Case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker. I actually, uh, I listened to this one already and really liked it. It's really interesting about, two shifty narratives between a, Psychologist and his patient, who is a young woman who seems to have these moments in her life when she disappears and completely checks out, um, and has no recollection of what happens during these times. So it's, it's really interesting and interesting. It's intriguing and yeah, it's great. And then the last book that I wanted to bring up, it's called The Boyhood of Cain by Michael Amherst, which I read and I really liked this. It's about a young, sensitive, Boy whose father loses his job and so the family moves to the countryside and in the English countryside, he starts at a new school and there's another new student who comes in as well. And they kind of forge a friendship and begin to take. Classes with an art teacher and what happens. It's beautifully written. It's not a very long novel, but it's really great. and as I was saying earlier, our guest today, her book also comes out today, she that I'm referring to is Alison Epstein and the book is Fagin the Thief. a little bit about Alison. She earned her MFA in fiction from Northwestern University and a BA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. A Michigan native, she now lives in Chicago where she enjoys good theater, bad puns, and fancy jackets. She's the author of historical novels including A Tip for the Hangman, Let Dead Bury the Dead, and now Feg and the Thief. So, enjoy this episode of Behind the Stack.

You

Brett Benner:

Good morning.

Allison Epstein:

Good morning. How are you?

Brett Benner:

I'm good. So first I just want to say your book, I loved it so much. I just think it's excellent. So I was really excited to sit down with you today. So thank you so much for being here.

Allison Epstein:

Thanks for having me on. I'm really excited about it.

Brett Benner:

so, for our, our listeners, our viewers, do you have an elevator pitch for the book?

Allison Epstein:

My elevator pitch for the book is very much the title of the book, which is nice. It kind of sells itself in that way. But, um, Fagin the Thief is the retelling of Dickens Oliver Twist from the point of view of the notorious villain Fagin. So it is very much what it says on the tin and I love that about it.

Brett Benner:

It does all the work for you. It

Allison Epstein:

really does. Yeah.

Brett Benner:

Okay. So like this whole idea of, of characters from another story, you know, we've seen this a lot with like, Louis Bayer did it with Tiny Tim and Mr. Timothy. Dan Simmons did it with Edwin Drood. Um, obviously the big ones right now are, um, because it's all in the zeitgeist, is, is the Wicked Witch, Gregory Maguire's Wicked. And, and of course most recently, James by Percival Everett, which, which, you know, Everett had said, this is not a reimagining really, but a character who's getting their due. Was that in many ways what you felt about Fagin when you started writing this?

Allison Epstein:

Yes and no, I think there's a lot of, my approach to this at first was frustration with the way that Dickens had originally written Fagin, which is, I mean, he's one of the most famous anti Semitic stereotypes in English literature. I think the only one he's fighting for that title is Shylock. So when you think of the terrible Jew in literature, you're like, Oh yeah, Fagin, the nasty old Jew. Of course, that's frustrating as a, as a reader, but part of the reason why I wanted to work with Fagin is because I do sort of love him as a character, even though he is, I mean, terribly offensive and two dimensional in the original, there's also still something in him that attracted me to him as a character, that I have been trying, I've been thinking about this now for years, like, why am I weirdly in love with this anti semitic caricature that's directly trying to make fun of me. But there's something in what Dickens started to do that's so interesting with Fagin. He started creating a character that I find really fascinating and then he just said, and also he's Jewish and he's the villain and I'm done now. And it was, it was sort of giving a character their due in that all the raw materials are there for something really interesting. I just wanted someone to do it. And if no one was going to do it, then I would do it myself.

Brett Benner:

Yeah, because that was my, that was my question. It's like, you know, what led you to do this initially? So, so how long were this kind of germinating for you?

Allison Epstein:

Um, there are two answers to that and one of them is I've been working on the book for about four years. I think this has been germinating for me since I was like seven years old, probably.

Brett Benner:

Wow.

Allison Epstein:

I first encountered Fagin in, I think a lot of us do, in the musical adaptation, Oliver! I was a theater kid from a theater family and stuff. So I like, saw a production of Oliver as a touring company when I was six or seven years old. And Fagin's the best character in that show, hands down, there's no question. His songs are the best, he's like, comic relief, but also kind of threatening, which is the best way to have a stage character. And so from then on, I was really in love with that incarnation of the character. And as I got older and, you know, wanted to read the source material for what was behind that, I picked up the book when I was probably 12 or 13 and it's a very different experience than that stage show. So reconciling those two things was quite a, quite a situation.

Brett Benner:

Yeah, first of all, there's so many great things that you talk about in the afterwards, which I'm going to be Pulling from some of that. And it's such a funny thing to say, like, there will be no spoilers, but for anybody who knows anything about the source material, it's kind of like, okay, it's a done deal. However, you know, you talked about the, the, the version that you are working from or consulting said the word Jew appears 326 times in the 1867 version, which is. Absurd. I can't imagine reading that as someone who was Jewish and that completely coming at me the same way that I couldn't imagine kind of a derogatory term for, homosexuality and reading it that much in a thing. So that had to be off putting to say the least.

Allison Epstein:

It, it was off putting. At a certain point, you just don't hear it anymore when you're reading the book. I just, my eyes just glaze over it at a certain point. I mean, it's 300 and. whatever times it is. At a certain point, there's so much anti Semitism in classic literature that if you're going to study books from the 17, 18, 1900s, I just like, it became a game to me in college. I was like, Oh, I wonder how many pages we're going to get until they say something weird about the Jews.

Brett Benner:

It's like a drinking game.

Allison Epstein:

It is. The best one is, uh, David Copperfield, which made it, that book is like 1200 pages long and Dickens made it 1150 pages before saying something weird about the Jews. Dang it, Dickens! You were so close!

Brett Benner:

Okay, I have no idea to the answer to this, so maybe you could speak to it. Was he anti Semitic?

Allison Epstein:

I mean, that's always a tricky question when you're talking about somebody from the past. Because our standards for I mean, even today, how, how do you define anti Semitism is a whole conversation that we can have on, I think, probably an entirely different podcast, but, um, Dickens relationship to Judaism is actually really interesting. And I talk about this a little bit in the afterward of the book because I don't think he realized while he was writing Oliver Twist. that he was really leaning into this common stereotype at the time of the wicked miserly child snatching Jew. I think he probably knew subconsciously, but it took a Jewish reader writing him a letter to say, did you know what you did with this character? Do you know how hurtful this was? And that, that reader wrote him the letter and it took him probably five, six, 10 years to sit with that. But eventually he did. write another Jewish character in a later book, Our Mutual Friend, which is often read to be his apology for doing such a terrible job with Sagan, and he writes this. nice, kind Jewish man who comes in to save the day. So I think he was, he was willing to hear that his representation was harmful. We can talk all day about whether Our Mutual Friend is a good book or not. Again, that's not the point of this conversation.

Brett Benner:

and by the way, I think that's the one Dickens book. I mean like, hello, who even read it? Except for people who are, uh, you know, completists or, scholarly but that's the, I'm like mutual friend, but yeah, I wonder if it's for him or it's kind of like today you'd say, you know, he's the, he's that typical person who'd be protesting. Well, you know, some of my best friends are Jewish, so, you know,

Allison Epstein:

they're so nice.

Brett Benner:

Yes, exactly. One of the things I love about the book so much, and it's the obvious thing we've already talked about, but the way that you've turned so much of this on its head in terms of all of these characters and the way we view them. And Fagin, he really does become incredibly sympathetic. And, you really feel for him. for all of them, except maybe Bill Sykes, but even Bill has his moments I wanted to talk a little bit about the relationship between Bill and Fagin, um, and, and your exploration of that. because I think it's fascinating, to see that with these, these two men, Fagan if not for his, uh, kind of financial standing and the fact that he lives like he does would probably be this, you know, almost as proper gentleman. Right. And he's, he's very kind of, uh, I don't want to say affected, but he's, he's much more kind of proper. Yes. But, you know, and, and Bill is completely tempestuous, completely no impulse control.

Allison Epstein:

Yeah, their relationship is one of my favorite things about this book. And I will say, I am, I'm a Bill Sykes apologist in this book. He's a problem, but he's my problem.

Brett Benner:

It's very fun. He's such a bad boy. He's such the guy that so many women and men would be like, Oh my god, I get it.

Allison Epstein:

Yeah, like, okay, there we go. Yeah, but you're absolutely right. They are, they're opposites in so many ways, but they're so tangled up in each other in this story. And I was starting to see parts of that in the original text as well. I mean, they've, in, in the Dickens novel, they've been together, you can tell, for years and years and years, and obviously there's something keeping them together. They, they are kind of always sniping at each other's throats, but they wouldn't still be working together if it wasn't useful in some way. And so what I wanted to find out when I was exploring both of those characters is, okay, I know where they end up, where did they start, what made them want to have a partnership in the first place, and what about that partnership was good in some way enough to have them stick together through all of these terrible things that we then see happen later on. There's sort of like, it's not a father son relationship between them, it's way too messed up to be that, but there, it's not not that either, there's a sense that Fagin feels this sense of responsibility to kind of guide Bill away from what he sees Bill as capable of becoming and whether that's because he thinks he can, he can fix him, he can save him, or if it's You know, that's a path that I could have been on myself and I don't want to be there. There's a lot of projection going on in their relationship for, for sure, but there's something there that just is so interesting to

Brett Benner:

me. Yeah. No, it's, it's, is it, you know, father son or, you know, it's, it's, it, they're, they're definitely the, uh, The odd couple, going back to, to Fagin as a, as a young boy and, and your kind of imagining of this is his relationship with his mother, Leah, and they're kind of the world to each other. And I loved this relationship as well. You talk about Fagin's father was, was a thief as well, correct? And who was caught and, and was put, to death. It just made me start to think that here you have this son who ends up in the same exact profession his father did. do you think we ever escape our origins?

Allison Epstein:

I think the more we try to, the less we do. I mean, this whole book is big and trying not to become his father. And by God, by the end of this, every single step that he's taken has taken him in that direction to become the one thing he didn't necessarily want to be. I think we're We're absolutely shaped by where we come from, but I think the other thing in this book that was interesting to me is we're shaped by who people think we're going to be. I don't know what else Fagin really could have become other than what his father was in this book. He wasn't really given a path to be anything other than a father. The thief that everybody already thought he was, the criminal they thought he was. What, was he going to go and get a job and become a medical doctor and set up practice? Absolutely not. It's not going to happen.

Brett Benner:

And when you also look at his, where he's growing up and his background and he falls in with this group of, of young boys, It made me think of so many neighborhoods and so many young people who are growing up and do you ever escape that life and what it is and how do you step up and out of it. It draws so many parallels with, things now. And that's what I felt about a lot of the book it feels very much of the time while also feeling very contemporary, one of those. Other things in terms of parallels is this whole idea. And I talk about this a lot in those podcasts, which is the idea of found family. Can you talk a little bit about this too? Because in terms of in this world and what Fagin creates, in the original Fagin is looking for boys to pluck off the street to help him. And in this, all of them come to him. He Is known and has a reputation, but all of these young boys show up on his doorstep.

Allison Epstein:

Yeah, it's funny. I hadn't thought about it as found family until my publisher described it as a found family story. And then I was like, Oh, oh gosh, it is. I didn't, I didn't realize, but yeah. And I think that's part of the energy of the original Oliver Twist that I think drawn, drew me into it. It's that sense of none of these boys have anywhere else to go, but they have this and they have this sort of, joy is the wrong word, but there's joy in it that they, they make for each other. And I think a lot of adaptations play up the found family and the joy and the delight of these kids kind of making their way in the world. And they, they play down the, the social realism that Dickens was leading into. But I do think there's, there's room for, for both of those. There can be something weirdly beautiful in we're making a group of ourselves against the world even though the world doesn't want us here. It was important to me to think about how Fagin's found family comes to him. And it was a deliberate choice to have him not be, you know, prowling through the streets looking for kids. Not only is that, like, creepy. Yes! Like, it's really hard to make your character even remotely sympathetic if that's happening. But, it was also, like, interesting to me to have that. Because For two reasons. One, that is something that happens in these times. There were professional thief trainers who were like really great in the profession and then once they got older or wanted to kind of transition out of that work, they would then kind of set up shop and people could come and learn the trade from them, which I just loved as a career move.

Brett Benner:

So. And everything down to like who they, who they take their items to, to resell them, all of that, they have a whole network and, and as you say in the, in the story, it's effectively what was done to him, you know, with this character who takes him under his wing and kind of teaches him how to do this. So it is kind of, weirdly, uh, passing on kind of an expertise or a job skill as it were, even if it's illegal.

Allison Epstein:

It is, but it's also how can I pass this on in the way that it wasn't given to me? Can I do this better than how I was left? Can I set up these kids better than they set me up to succeed?

Brett Benner:

You have some changes, the book kind of follows its own line and then comes into the track of the Oliver's story that many people know. Um, did some of those things reveal themselves to you as you went through and thought, okay, well, I would like to do this, or, did you kind of break it all down in terms of an outline and knew exactly where everybody was going to be headed?

Allison Epstein:

Um, I knew. three quarters of where I was headed. The last, quarter of the book did kind of surprise me in the drafting of it. I knew what I didn't want to happen. I knew I wasn't exactly married to the ending of Oliver Twist, but I sort of needed to work my way through, okay, well then how does it end? But I did have a sense of where I wanted to intersect with the original book and what parts of the original book I wasn't particularly interested in including in the story. There's a whole subplot that every single time I read it in Oliver Twist, I'm just turning pages like, can we get back to the stuff that I care about? So I left that one out for, for the obvious reasons, the whole like rich grandfather of Oliver. I don't, I don't know anybody who's like, that's my favorite part of that book.

Brett Benner:

I love that Oliver is almost an afterthought. I mean, we see him, but it's, it's, it's, you know, it's almost like in billing, it would say special appearance by Oliver. Exactly. Yeah. This is another thing, a testament to your writing and to the book itself is I found myself furiously getting through the last 40 pages like it was a thriller, despite the fact, you know how this ends. And that's why I love what you did, because it's not exactly the same thing. And to be honest, I like your version better. And speaking of characters where, you know, it's going to end and I loved so much is Nancy. I, I loved her. I loved her. Like I don't always, I'm a casting director. I don't always read books and think, God, who could I see for this role? But it was just going through my head. I've thought so many great actresses that would tear this thing up, but. I just fell in love with her. I loved her relationship with Fagin, and of course, her very complicated relationship with Bill.

Allison Epstein:

Yeah, she's great. She's a trip. Thank you. I love her. And she was honestly, she was one of the other characters I wanted to have to give her her due in Percival Everett's terms. I think very often she's, she's flattened out of what is recognizable to me as, you know, as a woman in a relationship that is. slowly killing you by inches. That is, I think, something that Dickens wanted to express in a way that felt true to him, but it never rings true to me when I read her in that book. It's so much more complicated and messy and beautiful than what he shows us, which is just, she'll follow him to the ends of the earth for, for no reason. And I worked through this a lot with my editor, actually, because it was really important to me to show at some point. Bill and Nancy's relationship was good. It had to be. She wouldn't stay with him if it wasn't, at one point, there was something there that she was getting from him that was valuable and worth it to her. And I think that's the real tragedy of, of her, is that you can see when we meet her, you, you should not be in this, but she can't see it because it used to be something else. And that's what she's looking at.

Brett Benner:

Well, and I think you make a very, there is a moment in the book and I won't, you know, obviously not gonna give anything away, but there's a very distinct turning point when The pieces on the chessboard for perceptibly all of them. And because I do think that she has a way with Bill in terms of tempering him and bringing out something in him that before her that we haven't seen. And that's what's, so beautiful and also so heartbreaking about the whole thing. And I have to be completely honest with you. Like so many, so many times as I'm reading through sections, all I could hear is that stupid song. As long as he needs me, which of

Allison Epstein:

course,

Brett Benner:

well, and of course it's good. It's speaking to exactly what you're talking about, which is more of this, like, you know, this pathetic woman, like I just need my man and everything will be okay.

Allison Epstein:

That's not what she is, and I hate that song. It's a beautiful song, but I hate that song.

Brett Benner:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I have to ask you about Jacob Fagan, who you've named, has these visions of his father that periodically come up through the book. What were those for you?

Allison Epstein:

To me the ghost of, of Fagin's father is the past that he's afraid of and the future that he can't escape. So he's kind of being haunted in a sense by what the world thinks he's going to be. And that is the one thing I think that terrifies him as a character more than anything. Is this what I'm going to be? Am I going to be this future past ghost of my father who couldn't escape this life? Who wasn't good enough? Who died before the age of 30? Is that me? Is that all I'm good for? And it's that fear of, I will never be anything other than that, that kind of follows him through the story, and I, I love a good ghost story, I felt like Dickens wouldn't mind adding a little ghost in there, but the sense of being haunted by your own past and your own future simultaneously is where I was,

Brett Benner:

There are a few things in the book that I don't know that were intentional that are almost callbacks to the original. Oliver losing his mother when he was very young and the same thing happening to Fagin. There's a, almost a callback to Nancy's death, Fagin's vision, and the haunting that Fagin has after Nancy passes, and the original Bill scene, this kind of same vision. I don't know if all that was intentional. I almost felt like I was discovering this Easter egg.

Allison Epstein:

It's fun because that happens to me too, when I go back through it and I'm like, Oh, I didn't realize I did that. This is just what happens when you read Oliver Twist 17 times in a year.

Brett Benner:

Is that how many times did you roughly read it again as you were going through?

Allison Epstein:

Oh, I was exaggerating a little, but it was certainly at least five or six. And every single time I put it down and go. Jesus, Charles Dickens, positive, yes, I did

Brett Benner:

find when I was just looking through some research of this, and I'm sure you've seen it too. There was a graphic novel that was done called Fagin, the Jew, which made me burst out laughing first of all, because I'm like, are you really escaping the thing that you were trying to work against when you wrote this by calling the book that, which again, I was glad it was like, Alison was much smarter.

Allison Epstein:

I don't, yeah. I'm like, okay, we, we do all know that already. That's the one thing we know.

Brett Benner:

Exactly. You really could have just said Fagin and everybody'd be like, Oh, I know who that is. You know what I mean? So I mean, it's so hilarious. One of the things I wanted to ask you about just speculatively, I couldn't help wonder if there were seeds of it in here without anything being explored. What do you think his sexuality is?

Allison Epstein:

Oh, yes, that is or how do you perceive it? I've thought about that one a lot. I think about Fagin as No one's ever asked me this question and I'm so glad you did because I have an entire backstory for him.

Brett Benner:

I love this. He

Allison Epstein:

is a biromantic asexual in my head and I feel that very strongly.

Brett Benner:

Yeah.

Allison Epstein:

Yeah. I don't think, I had a conversation with my publisher about this actually. They were curious in the beginning when I was early drafting, why don't you add a romantic plot line to this book that could be interesting? Is that something you've thought about? And I said immediately, no. This is, to me, this is an asexual character and it's important to me to. honor that. That's just how he feels to me. I do think His relationships throughout the book have weird, messy, romantic changes to them, but he doesn't know how to, how to comprehend that. And I think he starts to feel those feelings and immediately closes the box on them and says, I do not have time to unpack all of that right now.

Brett Benner:

I'm thinking about it specifically because there were moments, and I think it's maybe with Nancy, there's a scene when they go to the theater, they go to the opera, I believe. And just the touching of the hands, just the physical proximity, I think is something that, piqued up something in me. So, but I'm actually really glad to hear you assess it the way you have. Because. I think if you said, well, for sure, he's gay, I would have felt like what we were saying earlier, it would almost have felt predatory in a way, but I, but I agree with you. I think that he wouldn't those kinds of relationships or something. I don't even know what he would, would do in those relationships. You say something early on. Which the line stuck out with me so much, I have to, I've marked it, where he's with all his original boyhood friends, and, um, one of the boys, his name is Sam, punches him, and it says, The punch Sam lands on his shoulder feels better than any embrace. And that to me was such a crystallization of who this guy is. And like any kind of physical contact, I just feel like he would, um, whatever it is, whether it's a hug or whether it's a, and, and, and it's a way of expressing himself that I think he's completely, uh, uncomfortable. And like you said, close the box. Don't want to really get into all that.

Allison Epstein:

Yeah, he wants to be accepted so bad, but he's so afraid of anybody actually getting There's a, there's a barrier around him that no one can get inside. And I think he's created it on purpose and it's also constantly driving him away from everybody around him. So, it's a tricky thing. He's created it for himself, I think.

Brett Benner:

One of the other things, I want to read this because you say this in your afterwards, and I thought it was really beautiful, and it was talking about, for you, um, kind of the approach to writing this novel. And it just became a bigger thing to me about writing in general, but also I, I think it resonates as a reader and as for readers, you said, I don't know whether, as Dickens says, there are quote, some insensible and callous natures that do become utterly and incurably bad. But if writing fiction is an exercise in imaginative empathy, I think we at least have to ask why. I thought that was so fantastic and that alone, it almost bookends because it made so much sense of, of approaching this and why to approach this. But also it, again, We all know that, reading makes people more empathetic, which is why it's such a disaster what's happening again in this country with everything. Burn it all down. But I just think that's such a beautiful sentiment so I just want to say, I loved that.

Allison Epstein:

Thank you. No, I, I really appreciate that. And it, it was really what was guiding me through this entire project. I don't think of this book as an attempt to redeem Fagin. I don't think this is making him necessarily a hero or a positive character. I think he's still a dirtbag at the end of my book and I didn't want to change that because that would not be honest to the character. That's not who he is. This is not a redemption arc for Bill Sykes. This is not a redemption for Fagin. This is asking the question, who are these people actually? and what happened in their world and in their lives to make them like that. It doesn't excuse what they do. It's still, you know, besides being against the law, there are things in this book that I don't condone. I don't think are good things for a person to do, but I do think it, you can make sense of it. If you ask, how did you get here? Why are these the options that you have? And that helps you understand somebody without having to say, this person is. Good and I support them or this person is bad and I don't support them. You can say this person is complicated. This person is human. This person has done things that are bad. But this is still a person.

Brett Benner:

Before we, before we go, I do have to ask you on a completely separate note. so I know you're a theater fan. What have you seen that you've loved lately? Are you a musical person? Are you a, you are okay. Have you seen anything great lately?

Allison Epstein:

Uh, the best thing I saw lately was, uh, Chicago area production of Natasha Pierre and the great comet of 1812, which is. One of my favorite shows of all time and my biggest regret was not making it to New York to see it before it suddenly closed. So I've been haunting that one for years and it finally came to like within 25 minutes of where I live. So I, oh, I had the best night at the theater for that show. That was fantastic.

Brett Benner:

You were, you were just through and through a history person, aren't you?

Allison Epstein:

Yes, I, I am the worst history nerd your parents were.

Brett Benner:

That's hilarious. Natasha and Pierre, well, there'll always be a good history, musical. I'm sure that's going to be there for you. It'll be coming up.

Allison Epstein:

I did a trip actually to New York two years ago to see the revival of Oliver and the revival of Sweeney Todd. That was my Victorian dirtbag theater weekends. Both of those were great. Right.

Brett Benner:

And then you just went into the subway looking for rats.

Allison Epstein:

Exactly. I was like, okay, I don't, I will not accept food from any strangers after these plays.

Brett Benner:

That's exactly right. No meat pies, nothing. Well, this has been wonderful. If you're watching or listening to this on February 25th, the book is out today, so please go get it. Um, buy Independent if you can, but it's, it's really fantastic. So congratulations. And I've been so happy to sit with you today.

Allison Epstein:

Thank you so much for having me on. This was a great conversation.