“I think there is a tried-and-true formula in the family to success, which is to go into the paper,” Anders says. “It was not a formula he wanted to accept.”
Golden is presently immersed in writing his second novel, which tells the story of a man in Amsterdam in the 1840s who comes to the U.S. in the 1860s and becomes a successful meat packer in Chicago.
“I wanted to write about a business,” he says. “I settled on meat packing because it’s so difficult to dress it up and make it anything but what it is—it’s so raw. In this period was a great revolution in meat packing that works with the character that I imagine.”
Golden has declined requests for a sequel to Memoirs, despite the interest shown.
“The freshness and originality of the first book cannot be replicated,” Golden says. “And I wouldn’t have as much fun writing it.”
—Staff writer Ella A. Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@fas.harvard.edu.