DL: I think that when you write about a character over multiple books, you have to be careful not to repeat the same personal narratives over and over again. I don’t believe in resetting the clock.
I felt the character was done because the emotional muck I’d dragged them through must have consequences, and I could not realistically see them as continuing to have feelings for each other after everything that had come before. As for Weaver himself, I don’t need to write a certain number of novels with this character. I’ve gone back to him twice when I’ve had ideas for the character I wanted to work with and stories I wanted to tell. I have no plans to write another Weaver novel at this moment, but I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow. I do think that at some point I ought to write at least one more to put a kind of period on his narrative.
OS: The namesake of this novel is the East India Company, and its level of brutality and cynicism is often shocking. Yet at the same time, to a jaded reader from the early twenty-first century, it’s never unbelievable. How many of the company’s shenanigans did you take from real life?
DL: I did not set out to write a historical novel in which the East India Company is an allegory for the modern corporation. Rather, in my research, I was astonished to discover just how many modern corporate practices were already in play in the early eighteenth century. The main plot of murder and deception is, of course, fiction, but the business practices I portray are all historically accurate. If anything, corporations were much more brutal in the past than they are now because certain kinds of human life (non-British, the very poor, etc.) were held cheaply, and there was no one to prosecute abuses of what we today would call human rights.
OS: One of the many lively scenes occurs in Mother Clap’s, a boarding-house/club catering to homosexual men. Clearly, such an establishment was illegal in London at the time, yet Weaver and others know of its existence. How common were such places in eighteenth-century England, and how did they exist alongside the law?
DL: There were several such “molly houses” in eighteenth-century England, though Mother Clap’s is certainly the most famous. And yes, they were illegal, as was homosexuality, but there was no clear means of regulating such activity. Prostitution was illegal as well, but prostitutes operated nearly everywhere and in the open, and almost always without fear of the law. Eighteenth-century London was a society caught in the throes of a strengthening, unregulated capitalist system, while older, more ideological systems of regulation (a uniform, monolithic religious structure, the monarchy, the class system) were weakening. At this point, if something was making money, and not interfering with public order (or a more powerful entity’s ability to make money), it was generally left alone. The most seriously and consistently punished crimes in this period were crimes against property.
OS: The London you describe sounds in ways like a libertarian ideal, where the free market is untethered by government regulation—yet no one would call it utopia. In another of your novels,
All this is just to say that your books are rife with thought-provoking social observations and criticisms. Do you see this as a primary function of the novelist? (I ask this of a United Nations Artist for Integrity, remember.) And how much effect can novelists have in the video-and-Internet age?
DL: I think my primary function as a novelist is to entertain readers. Once we get too self-important and forget that very basic role, we produce far less effective novels. That said, I believe that if I am lucky enough to have readers, I ought to write something worth reading, and to that end, I do often write about issues I think are important. In other words, I see writing about important issues as my secondary function as a novelist.
Can we have much effect? Honestly, I don’t know. It’s the rare novel (I can think of
READING GROUP QUESTIONS
AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
___
At the beginning of
After Jerome Cobb first meets with Weaver and outlines the terms of his “plan” and demands Weaver’s cooperation, Weaver leaves thinking he has a choice, though he later realizes “I had no choice.” How does Cobb secure his control over Weaver? Consider the role and manipulation of choice and freedom in the novel.
Benjamin Weaver’s uncle, a fellow victim of Cobb’s machinations, suggests to Weaver, “You cannot fight him if you don’t know who he is or why he would work so diligently to render you toothless. In revealing to you what he has in mind, he may also reveal to you the secret of how to defeat him.” How does Weaver use this advice to his advantage and what does he discover to be the secret to unraveling Jerome Cobb?
Jerome Cobb’s nephew, Hammond, believes that “darkness holds far greater terrors than any monstrosity, no matter how terrible, revealed in the light.” Do you think this is true? Does Weaver? How is disguise used in the novel to engender fear and/or power?
How does Weaver gain entry into the East India Company “fortress” and Ambrose Ellershaw’s trust and confidence?
Does Benjamin Weaver have a weakness? Why can he not “content [himself] with a state of ignorance” as Cobb suggests?
How do the challenges facing the “Devil’s Company” and their competitors—greed, globalization, competition, capitalism, corruption, innovation—resonate today? How have these challenges evolved?
Ellershaw explains to Weaver that “no arsenal and no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.” Do you agree? Does Weaver? How is this statement ironic, given Ellershaw’s role in the East India Company and
Discuss the anti-Semitism Weaver is confronted with throughout the novel.
When Weaver inquires after the insurance policies taken out on his life, he is asked, “How can it be diabolical when it is the law?” Consider the “oceans of absurdity” that this question invokes for Benjamin Weaver.
