Speaking of literary relatives, this fall may be the first time that identical twin novelists have books coming out at the same time.
In October, Robert Bausch follows up A Hole in the Earth—a New York Times Notable Book and Washington Post Book World Favorite Book of the Year—with a new novel, The Gypsy Man (Harcourt). A month later, HarperCollins will release Hello to the Cannibals, the 14th novel by his more prolific twin brother, Richard Bausch. But are the Bausch brothers competitive? Not when it comes to writing.
"I'll never forget when he sold his first novel to Dial Press (in 1980)," said Robert about Richard. "I'll never forget his voice. He said, 'They love the way we write.' And I joked that they didn't buy my novel." Two years later, St. Martin's Press made Robert a published author as well.
Although Richard was the first to win a contract, Robert was the first to try his hand at writing, at the age of eight, with a novel set during the Civil War. "I wrote 484 legal-pad pages," Robert recalled. "I'd dream about it all day in school." And while Robert might be too embarrassed to tell PW the title of that historical novel, Richard is happy to oblige. "It was called Hidden Glory," he said. "He carried the pages around in the trunk of the car for years, even when we were in the Air Force together." "We had a blast," said Richard, recalling that his decision to attend the Iowa Writers Workshop in his late 20s frightened him more than serving Stateside during the Vietnam War.
The Bausch brothers grew up in the Washington, D.C., area, in a small house with four siblings and their parents. "There were always stories going around the table," said Richard, while Robert remembered that their father's reading of Ernie Pyle's Brave Men inspired him to write. "That, to me, was the only place where language mattered—on the printed page," said Robert.
While the brothers occasionally swapped identities in high school, with Robert earning demerits on Richard's behalf, one thing the twins never do now is read each other's work before it is published. This time, their subject matter couldn't be farther apart. Hello to the Cannibals is about a 20th-century woman's investigation of the life of the British explorer and traveler Mary Kingsley (Forecasts, Sept. 19). Robert, meanwhile, based The Gypsy Man on a legend about a child-stealing phantom he heard more than 20 years ago (Forecasts, Sept. 2).
Both brothers will take time off from teaching (Richard at George Mason University, Robert at North Virginia Community College) to tour this fall and plan to hold a few joint readings. Perhaps they will show up wearing the same clothes and have a little fun with their audiences.
