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When I started working on Plant-Thinking in 2008, I had no idea that the project would turn out to be as broad as it did. In fact, a philosophy of plant life is a multivolume undertaking. Besides Plant-Thinking, it will include a book titled The Philosopher's Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium, slated for publication by Columbia University Press next year; a text on the ethics and politics of vegetal life, under the title Plant-Doing; and an attempt at imagining a phenomenology of and for plants, titled Phyto-phenomenology.

For the next book, I have been collaborating with a fantastic French artist, Mathilde Roussel. Mathilde is beautifully illustrating the "intellectual herbarium," which consists of chapters ranging from "Plato's Plane Tree" and "Augustine's Pears" to "Kant's Tulip" and "Heidegger's Apple Tree." The idea is to introduce the thinking of some key figures in Western philosophy through the prism of a particular plant they either mentioned in passing or focused on in their writings. Leafing through the pages of the intellectual herbarium, readers will learn about the theories of these thinkers, as well as their take on plant life. This ...

What is it that impels the phenomenon of the sidekick? In the comic book world in particular, since the 1950s mostly, when the United States was wrestling with communism and moral decadence as the '60s prepared to explode, every superhero had to have a tagalong, a smaller version of his or herself (though mostly his self) that was snappy with one liners, innocent, jejune, and ready to follow the leader. Of course on the surface, the reason behind boy wonder's entrance into mainstream comics culture isn't too complex. Sidekicks are a mainstay in literature, from Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to Samwise Gamgee and Frodo. Batman and Robin are only a modern reiteration of one of the oldest storytelling traditions on the planet. I assume that even major Babylonian gods had their personal number twos, naïve fall guys to take the blame when a volcano engulfed a small village or a virgin fell down a well.

One might argue that creating a sidekick is an attempt to bring a reader's deepest desires to the forefront. When it comes to comic books, anyway, I can assure you ...

Claire Messud's new novel, The Woman Upstairs, is fiercely intelligent and urgently intimate, written with precision, humor, and an incredible command of language. Nora Eldridge, an elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is living a life of quiet desperation after her mother's death when she meets the Shahids — Sirena, a successful and enchanting Italian artist; Skandar, a brilliant professor of the ethics of history; and their charming son, Reza, a child in Nora's class. Nora falls in love with them all, in varying ways, and these relationships bring her ecstasy, artistic freedom, and, eventually, shattering pain and fury.

In a starred review, Kirkus called The Woman Upstairs "an astonishing feat of creative imagination: at once self-lacerating and self-pitying, containing enough truth to induce squirms....Brilliant and terrifying," and in another starred review, Booklist raved, "Messud’s scorching social anatomy, red-hot psychology, galvanizing story, and incandescent language make for an all-circuits-firing novel about enthrallment, ambition, envy, and betrayal. A tour de force." The Woman Upstairs may be the renowned author's finest work yet.

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Jill Owens: What was the genesis of The Woman Upstairs?

Claire Messud: There were several, I think. If you'll bear with me, I can tell you a few.

One impetus was a feeling as a reader that I had all my life read and greatly appreciated the ranting voices of misfit, dissatisfied, or antihero men, but I didn't know of any female equivalents. So part of me wanted to write in the voice of a woman whose voice had not been heard.

Another aspect for me was the whole question of the interior life. I think that's something that is absolutely universal. In Chekhov's "The Lady with the Little Dog," the protagonist — who's had many affairs but who has for the first time fallen in love with his mistress — reflects on the fact that what is most important to him, only he knows. It's completely secret, and nobody around him is aware of the things that matter to him most. Then he has the apprehension that this is true for everybody, so that all around him, he doesn't actually know what's most important to all the people he thinks he knows.

My first attempt at writing a novel was done from a small, damp-walled apartment I was renting in Santiago, Chile, during the election of Michelle Bachelet. The country was abuzz with the prospect of electing its first female prime minister, a sensation that was hampered only briefly by a spat with Peru over maritime borders and occasional tirades by my alcoholic flatmate as he stumbled nightly across the living room floor in tears.

I'd come to the conclusion by that point in my life — the ripe old age of 23, it might be said — that I was going to make a serious go at becoming a novelist. I was abroad, anyway, and fashionably so, attempting to, like many who don't have something original to say but would like to, use my travels as a substitute for good content. The books I read and cherished over the years appeared so close to me, so easy to touch. Like most idiots, I saw the mountain from far away and said to myself, It doesn't look so high. I could get to the peak in 24 hours. But by the ...

Fear was my gateway to becoming interested in stories.

My nanny growing up, a Scottish expat named Jackie with a fox pelt of red hair and a manic Rottweiler named Jack o' Lantern, dragged me through my formative years kicking and screaming whenever my parents were away.

She was a good nanny. A damned good nanny. As protective and wily as she was crass and off the cuff, not to mention willing to take care of two American children whose parents couldn't seem to do it on their own.

Every wicked edge of Jackie's demeanor was somehow mitigated by measured bits of wisdom and control. Her dog, for example, while a drooling psychotic, was contained by a series of terrifying commands, all of which instructed the beast to maim and/or kill, but only when she sanctioned it so. She was kind of like Ygritte on Game of Thrones, in retrospect, or the female version of that guy from The Beastmaster, and she seemed to view childhood as preparation for the hellish pain of adulthood as opposed to a precious time of innocence .

One night, on a particularly long stint of ...

A critical feature of League of Somebodies is the prevalence of outlandish tests of manhood, feats of intellectual and physical strength that hinder the main character, Lenard Sikophsky, and his future son, Nemo, as they strive to realize their potential. This potential, it should be said, infects their natures with a thoughtful brand of banality. There's something very "Sisyphus" about a hero's quest, anyway. Especially in a lazy story arc where the central goal is the attainment of physical strength.

As a child, I was a victim of precisely such a structure. When your father is a James Gandolfini-gaited Silverback at the head of his band with a chip on his shoulder and a dwindling hairline, you quickly learn what it is the average man views as top-notch. Stand up for yourself; learn to fight for what you want; don't give up; never take no for an answer. From what I observed growing up, it seemed as if most men viewed courage much in the way pyromaniacs do crates of dynamite. A person who exercises his passions in a dangerous fashion is considered brave, you see. But ...

Despite modern sensitivities, experience tells me most sons are still birthed solely to be thrown into a lifelong cage fight with their fathers.

Blame it on nature if you will, this exercise in testosterone management, this cruel Darwinian doctrine impelling one generation of angry, imperfect males to give birth to another generation of angrier, even more imperfect males. Considering Oedipal tradition, I happen to believe all this happens to keep the entire globe from going up in flames on a biweekly basis. My father in particular — largely by fault of the modern day Sparta referred to by most Americans as Massachusetts — was never able to integrate his bellicose New England credos* into suburban Colorado, where he and my mother had decided to make their home. But me, on the other hand, that was another story. I was fair game. Even though I never competed in sports, the man had named me after a Patriots Running Back. For all that is sacred, I didn't stand a chance.

In a land of conservative, happily Protestant plebes that stretched on as such until the late '90s, few prairie dwellers ...

To the left of my desk, there is a closet the previous owner used as a photo studio. I call it the Dark Room.

I have hung a pull-up bar from the door frame. Every now and then I get up from my desk, pace around, stare out the window, and crank out a set of 10 pull-ups. The other day my wife came downstairs and heard me grunting and panting and said, "What are you doing in there?"

The tiny wooden desk tucked into the Dark Room? My grandfather cut and sanded and stained and hammered it together for me as a kid. There I would scribble in coloring books. My son used it for a while and then my daughter, and now it's too small for them both, so I keep it purely for sentimental reasons.

Hanging from the back wall is a giant tackboard. It has always been my habit to keep a corkboard near my desk and pin to it articles ripped from magazines, conversations overheard at bars, images encountered on hikes or long drives — a repository for story ideas. Since moving in to this house a year ago, I haven't hung one, so I'll probably put this one to use soon enough. Right now it carries the U.K. cover of my new novel, Red Moon — a Game of Thrones calendar (yes, I am that nerdy) — a cross-stitchy thing my son gave me — a postcard of men eating — and a pin that says, "Beer is my life."

Every day after I brew my coffee, pack lunches, and send my kids off to school, I say to my wife, "I'm headed down to the dungeon."

Later, I might sneak upstairs for more coffee, some toast slathered with marmalade, maybe lunch, but there's a good chance she won't see me again for seven or eight hours.

This is what surrounds me during that time.

The laptop is a wheezy HP Pavilion I bought three years ago. At the time, I coveted Macs. But my computer died when I was traveling — and I needed one immediately — so I swung by Costco on the way to the airport and chose the HP from their limited stock. I love how monstrous the screen is — good for streaming Netflix and for the long hours I spend staring at my stories — but it's clumsy to carry around. Lately, it's been making a sound like an old man endlessly exhaling. I'm guessing this is the death rattle. So maybe I'll finally get that MacBook Pro.

The amber-shaded lamp sat on my grandfather's ...

I had been teaching at the Nebraska Writers Conference all week, and on my way back to Ames, Iowa (where I lived and worked at the time), my buddy (and former colleague) Dean Bakopoulos called, said he needed my help moving something, and asked me to drop by the university on my way home.

There I discovered my office door cracked open, with light and music falling through the crack. And then my wife's laughter when I found her inside.

While I was away, my wife had enlisted the grad students and arranged an office makeover. The walls had been painted a storm-cloud gray. My pictures were framed and hung. Wooden bookshelves, arranged by author and genre, ran along one wall. A wine-red chair sat in the corner with a matching ottoman. Next to it was the desk.

At the university I used whatever Nixon-era model came with the office — metal framed, plastic topped — and at home I used a crumbling composite wood desk bought for $40 off Craigslist.

This was solid wood, maple the color of caramel, Ethan Allen. I felt sick with gratitude, and weirdly grown-up. For ...