Welcome to Inside the Author’s Studio, where we give you a peek into the minds of your favorite Workman authors.
Today we celebrate National Potato Chip Day (yes, really) and Albert Einstein’s birthday by—how else?—stepping inside the secret lab of Allen Kurzweil, who makes up one half of the father-son duo behind the deliciously fun Potato Chip Science.
Recent book you loved/learned from:
Power of One (horrible title, wonderful novel)
Favorite bookstore:
Favorite bookstores, like offspring, should never be ranked. Doing so only leads to discord among loved ones.
Hidden talent:
Able to stand on one toe without the aid of ballet slippers
(c) A. Kurzweil
Bookmark, dog-ear, or virtuality?:
Unrepentant marginalian
Book you are most ashamed never to have read:
Reject the presumption of the question. That said, I am a bit embarrassed to say I’ve never read the Old Testament.
Most frequent form of writerly procrastination:
Don’t have the luxury to procrastinate. Kept much too busy pointing cans of compressed air at keyboard and computer screen, inspecting contents of refrigerator, and searching Craig’s list for a left (driver’s) side view mirror that will fit a 1989 Dodge Neon.
Favorite childhood book:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Alternate ambition (best if secret, never before revealed):
Monologist
Your perfect meal:
Beef, tomato, and mayo between two (center) slices of toasted rustic durum round. Unless I’m visiting my mother-in-law. In that case, I’d opt for her foie gras frais.
Big dream:
The perfect meal (See question 9 above)
Super power of choice:
Hmm. Novelists are already provided a long list of superpowers. (One of the most compelling reasons to write fiction.) However, if you’re giving me a chance to receive your garden-variety SP, I’d like to have the abilities of Longshot, one of the more underappreciated X-men. Longshot gets to mess around with probability. He can make the unlikely possible. Isn’t that exactly the power one needs to be a writer, editor, or publisher?
Favorite potato chip flavor:
(See question 2 above.) The potato chips one eats, like the children one raises and the bookstores one patronizes, should never be ranked.
Once you pop, you just can’t stop. True or false?:
To quote The Power of One (see question 1 above): “Absodoodle!” For independent and unbiased confirmation of this fact, one need only consult p. 58 of Potato Chip Science to learn that the inverse relationship of volume and pressure (
) presupposes that a piece of potato introduced into a propulsion pipe will indeed pop! when the proper force is applied. Thank you Robert Boyle for your thoughtful inquiry into the physics of pneumatics.
What Workman book would you like to receive as compensation for your involvement?:
The check book. Please forward this request to the accounting department.
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Allen Kurzweil is the co-author (with his son, Max) of Potato Chip Science: Book & Stuff, and the sole author of the two books that inspired the kit—Leon and the Champion Chip and Leon and the Spitting Image.
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