July 31–August 7, 1997

20 questions

Jon Berson (John Feffer)

By Jim Gladstone

In recent years, Jon Berson, a 33-year-old Haverford College graduate and on-and-off resident of Philadelphia for the past decade, has been published by small, prestigious academic presses: a volume on Soviet foreign policy, a portrait-through-interviews of contemporary Eastern Europe and a collection of essays about the Clinton administration. Now his first book from a major commercial publisher has been released. And — surprise, surprise! — it's a fast-paced, easy-reading mystery called Foamers. "Foamers" is AMTRAK slang for railroad buffs, said to be so train-crazed that they froth at the mouth when they step on a train. Berson, in person, is as mild-mannered as he is multifaceted; the only foam in our recent conversation at the 1521 Cafe Gallery was floating on top of the cappuccino.

First things first. According to the small print on the copyright page of your book, the author of Foamers is someone named John Feffer. What's up?

Yeah, Jon Berson's a pseudonym. My publisher was not at all happy about it. The way that book marketing works these days is that they want to sell the author as much as they want to sell the book. So the idea of a young debut novelist wanting a degree of anonymity really displeased them at first. They've lightened up, though. When I first brought it up, they assumed I didn't want to do any promotion, that I wanted a severe cloak of secrecy.

While I'm not at all interested in the celebrity aspects of being an author, my real reason for the pseudonym is that I already have a bit of a problem getting my nonfiction taken seriously because it deals with subjects like foreign policy and politics and I only have a bachelor's degree. So I wanted to be a little cautious and not throw "mystery writer" onto the same resume I use to gain credibility in those fields. By the way, about 10 years ago, John Feffer wrote articles for the City Paper!

Given the sort of serious-minded self-consciousness that went into your decision to use a pen name, one might expect your fiction debut to be a typically serious-minded, self-conscious autobiographical first novel. Why a railroad thriller?

I keep my life and my fiction pretty separate. I wouldn't say that there's no traffic between the two worlds at all — I have an unpublished manuscript that's sort of Freudian sci-fi and my father is a psychologist, so that's there — but on the whole the two are fairly distinct. Maybe in 20 years I'll write a novel about my family or about relationships I've had in the past. I certainly won't be writing about my current relationship; my girlfriend is quite clear on that! I may never go the autobiographical route, though. I mean, my life is sufficiently interesting to live, but I'm not at all sure it's interesting enough to read about.

But your interest in trains was a jumping off point for Foamers, right?

I wasn't particularly interested in trains before I started this project. But I didn't have to be — and neither do readers of my book. I overheard a conversation about train crashes and my mind started going. I'm always interested in learning about a new subject and I think that fiction readers are, too. Sometimes, there's a pleasure in learning about something new, anything! I mean, I don't think Tom Clancy's average reader had a deep desire to learn the details of submarine life before picking up The Hunt for Red October, but that stuff can get engrossing rather quickly. Readers want something brand new and something comfortably familiar all at once. That's why, in the mystery field, series are so popular

So Foamers is the start of a series? What's next, Murder On The Paoli Local?

Well, if I keep writing train mysteries, there are about seven bibliophile-foamers out there who will love me to death. But mainly, I think I'll starve. So what I'm going to do instead is pick up the FBI agent, Jennifer Szczymanski, and have the series focus on her. Female detectives are really popular these days. In the next book, which I'm working on now, she gets involved with a Nazi hunter, who's based on a man I actually met in the lobby of the Ritz movie theater here a few years ago. Larry McBryde, the train fanatic, will definitely make an appearance, though.

In Foamers, and, from what I understand, in the real world, train hobbyists are a much-maligned bunch. Why are railroad fans ridiculed more than sports nuts or collectors?

Since a lot of interest in trains begins with childhood model railroads, many people assume that serious train lovers have some sort of arrested development problem, as if being into trains is the equivalent of fetishizing building blocks or teething rings. In fact, lots of train buffs end up with a more sophisticated understanding of very adult issues like history and economy than most people have. When you study the railroad business and when you travel by train, you're exposed to the belly-flopped industrial underbelly of this country. When you roll by the shuttered factories and abandoned freight yards, you're put in touch with a reality you never find in the view from an airplane seat.

Looking out of your own mental window, what do you see as your greatest aspiration?

I don't really have a big picture. My goal is not to become famous. My goal is to be able keep writing books that I feel good about and to be able to make a decent living at it. I really enjoy the process of writing. I recently finished writing a novel — not sold yet — about financial scandals in Eastern Europe; something really clicked and the whole thing came out in about four months. Maybe I'm naive about my energy and stamina, but I'd like to write two books a year. And I'd like to write books in a variety of genres. I once read an article about Martin Amis that talked about how each of his books seems to be the next piece of a complete fictional universe he's building. And there are these stories about how when Da Vinci was painting a mural he'd do a little piece here and then another bit way across the room, but, eventually, they all came together perfectly.

I'm definitely not an Amis or a Da Vinci. I don't have a singular vision. I want to go down as many different avenues as possible.

Jon Berson will speak and read from Foamers at the recently refurbished Faber Books in 30th Street Station on Friday, Aug. 1 at 4:30 p.m.