Novels, Nihilism, and Criticism Sandwiches: An Interview with Michael Chabon

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the latest
installment of Being Human, a series
devoted to exploring the humanities,
their connections to other
disciplines, and their value in the
public world.
I'm Dan Kubis, assistant director of
the Humanities Center at Pitt.
My guest today is writer and
University of Pittsburgh alum
Michael Chabon.
Chabon published his first novel,
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, in
1988.
Since then, he's published an
incredible array of fiction and
nonfiction, including novels,
children's books, screenplays,
short stories, and essays.
He's rightly viewed as one of our
country's most versatile writers and
has been recognized with some of our
most prestigious awards, including
the Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier and Clay in
2001.
But perhaps the thing that most sets
Chabon apart as a writer is the
passion that his work inspires in
those who read him.
Preparing for this interview, I
repeatedly encountered people who
expressed uncommon levels of
devotion to his work.
Readers who name one of his novels
as their favorite.
Writers who he inspired to pursue
their craft.
This enthusiastic reaction makes
sense, as so much of Chabon's work
is based on his own passion for
reading and writing.
Or, to put it in his words, on
being a fan.
My interview with Michael was
conducted publicly in front of more
than a thousand fans of his work.
It was a wonderful chance for all of
us, myself included, to share
our appreciation of his works with
him and with each other.
It was also a demonstration of the
enduring value of the arts and
humanities and their importance in
the public world.
So, Michael, thank you so much for
joining us.
I'm so happy to be here.
Hello. Hi, everyone.
Thanks for making it so unbearably
cool for me. I appreciate that.
It just brings it all back.
Is it okay if I start by asking you
one or two Pittsburgh questions?
Please.
All right. So you spend
when you're-- the most concentrated
period of time when you were in
Pittsburgh was when you were in
college, and that was the early
eighties.
Your first two books are set here.
When you look back
over your development as
a writer, where do those years,
and where does that time spent in
Pittsburgh fit?
That time was absolutely
crucial for me.
I mean, I think the reason
that I ended up getting
essentially two novels out of
a relatively brief period of time
that I lived here
year-round, four
years, essentially, is because
I was at that age
where you are so porous,
you're so open to so many
things. And you're at that stage of
life where you say yes to
almost everything, sometimes
unwisely,
and that
carried over, for me, into my
reading life.
And so,
both in the books that I was
introduced to by
teachers, by professors in
the English department here, in
other departments here, and by
friends of mine who
were also tended to
be sort of literary-minded people
and were into all different kinds of
authors.
I was just in this-- it was
the same with music and with books.
I bathed in them constantly.
And because I was so open
and so mentally,
in the mode of absorbing
everything-- I
am like a sponge,
more than its weight in water.
So when I left here, I was
just stuffed both with
experiences and with
influences and with
a soundtrack as well.
So
it lasted the
good long time. And it was crucial.
I mean, I think-- but the thing is,
I mean, everyone's sort of like
that at that age.
And if you go to college somewhere,
that same kind of thing can happen
to you. I do think there was
something that I
fell in love with Pittsburgh the
first time I saw it when my father
moved here when I was about
13. And
it's totally cliche, but it's that
thing of coming through the tunnel
from the airport and just
dramatic.
I'd never seen anything like that.
And they hadn't been here very
long.
You know how when you moved to
Pittsburgh or when you have a
newcomer to Pittsburgh, you kind of
quickly try to show them all the
remarkable things?
And there are a lot
of those like
quirky, unusual, odd things
from the telephone
jukeboxes that they used to have
in bars and the incline.
As
a little kid, I kind of just got hit
right away with this sort of
whirlwind tour of the of the
mysteries of Pittsburgh, like all
these things
that I had never seen anywhere else.
And even though I didn't live
here, every time I came back, it
seemed to add to a sense that there
was something special.
My father and stepmother
felt there was something special
about Pittsburgh, and so did I.
And so, then, when I got here
for university, I already had the
sense-- I mean, I was just walking
this evening down on
Forbes Avenue and just
looking at the Cathedral of Learning
and looking at this building from
the outside.
And just I can remember
looking that statue Bach
that's sitting out in front of it,
being as if when I first came here.
I don't know. It
was a magical spot for me.
Eventually, sometime during my
college years, I climbed up into
Bach's lap. And
I think my judgement was
somewhat impaired at that point.
I felt a kind
of love for this place from the
beginning. And I think if I had gone
to a different kind of place, it
wouldn't have been the same.
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting when
I think back, those years,
the early eighties in Pittsburgh are
really, in terms of
the numbers of unemployment and
things like that, that's the low
point of Pittsburgh's
post-industrial existence.
And that's one of the things, I
think, in Mysteries of Pittsburgh,
you're able to kind of take the city
at that moment really and turn it
into something that seems kind of
magical and wonderful.
Well, actually, when I first came
here in the mid-seventies, that was
when the mills were closing.
But also, it meant that
I did get to see
something about Pittsburgh.
Like I can remember the first couple
of times coming here at night, the
sky would glow orange
with this sort of flickering glow.
It was magical and weird
and somewhat disturbing too.
There
were industrial smells in the air
that I had just the tail end of
that Pittsburgh.
I think Pittsburgh is--
so much has changed.
I was talking to a friend of mine,
who is here tonight, about how
I was driving up, for example, and I
looked over, and I saw something,
and I was really upset because it's
supposed to be George Aikens.
And it's supposed to be white
and green.
And even though I've seen
that building where George Aikens
was, I don't know, so
many times since it left.
It still looks wrong
to me. So, I mean, things have
changed. But I feel that
Pittsburghers
seemed
always to have enough of a sense
that this was a special place that
they've done a better job
holding on to that than other
places.
Well, speaking of Pittsburghers,
I know one of the Pittsburghers
that meant a lot to you that you met
when you were in college was Jay
Dantry.
And Jay, he was the former owner of
Jay's Book Stall, which is a really
great bookstore, so close to here.
He passed away earlier this year,
and you wrote a really moving
tribute to him in the
Tribune-Review.
Could you say a few words about how
meaningful it was to know him?
Yeah, I would be happy to.
Yes. I mean, Jay was,
if you knew him, he was a presence.
He did not suffer fools gladly.
He was like a lot
of old-school booksellers.
He knew what was best
for you to read.
Yeah. Yeah.
Whether you did or not.
I can remember he had his
cash register up in the corner,
in the front, and up on the
raised platform so he can see the
whole store from
where he stood.
And if you were reaching for
a book on one of the tables that he
didn't approve of, he'd say, "No, no,
no. You don't want to read that.
If you think that's the kind of book
you're interested in, read this one
instead." So he
was imperious. He was a little
intimidating.
And I
used to go in and beg him for
a job pretty regularly because I was
working at the former
Atlantic Books chain that used
to be here. And it was not a happy
job situation for me
because it didn't seem
like anybody there really enjoyed
books or reading, right?
About
just stacking things into pyramids.
If somebody took this book out
and it messed up the pyramid, you
had to take this one and
move it here and move that one
there. Restore the pyramid. That was like
the sum total of my working
day
and also tidying up the mess in the
pornographic magazine section too.
That was it.
That's all I did.
So I used to go in there all the
time and
ask him to hire me, beg him to hire
me. And even though my dad was one
of his best customers, he still
resisted until
just about a year and a half before
I left Pittsburgh.
And then, I went to work for him,
and that was a perfect
bookstore. And they loved
books there. And
I mean, Jay supported me
in my very earliest
efforts to write.
He was encouraging, and
he was so interested in theater.
I grew much more conversant
with what was going on on Broadway
than I ever had been in my life
through him.
He was always playing Broadway
soundtracks and scores over
the P.A.
system.
And I think even most of all,
Jay and Harry Schwab
were together, for I don't know
how long, decades and decades and
decades.
By the time Jay died, I had known
other gay couples.
I had met with friends of my
mom's.
Power couples. But I had never seen
a gay marriage before.
Even though they weren't married,
they had already been together for
so long when I met them.
They stayed together for such a long
time after that.
And I
think I say in that piece like the
sight-- I remember if I was there
when the store was closing and Harry
would come by to pick up Jay.
He pulls up this door, and I would
start walking that way.
And the two of them would go off
towards the King Edward Apartments
where they lived.
And I just remember like just the
same, these two sort
of roly-poly cute
little guys, like walking away.
One with an umbrella.
And just it
was a very moving, powerful
thing to me just to see that.
We're talking in the early 1980s.
It was common
enough.
And in
hindsight, that was
a really important thing for me.
Yeah, you're right about the courage
that it took for him to be openly
gay and openly happy at the same
time. That's really moving.
And intimidating.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I want to ask you about
Moonglow, too, and let me
just start by saying that I think
Moonglow is really wonderful.
I think it deserves all of the
positive attention that it's
getting.
It's a really fantastic novel.
Congratulations, first of all.
The Book Jacket describes
Moonglow as "A
lie that tells the truth.
A work of fictional nonfiction.
An autobiography wrapped in a novel
disguised as a memoir."
That's kind of Book Jacket language.
But could you say a little bit about
what that language describes and how
the book works, and what that's
talking about?
Well, of all those
descriptions, I really do think it
is fair
to say it's an autobiography.
But is it wrapped in a novel
disguised as a memoir?
Because
the outermost layer of that is
memoir. And it pretends
to be a memoir. It reads like a
memoir.
The narrator is a first-person
narrator.
Anything he says about himself
in terms of his own biography
matches mine going
to UC Irvine.
Even the name of a professor
that I had at UC Irvine, the
narrator had at UC Irvine.
But it's not the narrator's
memoir. It's his grandfather's
memoir. The
grandson is trying
to-- it's really just listening as
his grandfather, who is in terminal
stages of bone cancer and
who is on palliative care now.
And he's on heavy painkillers
and on Dilaudid.
And under the influence of Dilaudid,
this very taciturn
man, who's
classic.
It's a well-known
type of Jewish man,
illustrated by a great
old joke about the little boy
who comes home from Hebrew school.
And he
says, "Mommy, Mommy,
I got cast in the class
play." And she goes, "Oh, that's
wonderful, honey. What is the play?"
He says, "It's
about a Jewish family.
And I'm playing the dad."
And mom says, "You
march right back there and make them
give you a speaking part."
And the grandfather in
this book is that style.
He's a tough
guy and
not, like a "he doesn't
come off as a tough guy." He
actually is tough.
He endures a lot of pain
and suffering in his life.
He's very stoically.
He doesn't
share his feelings.
He doesn't believe in sharing
one's feelings.
He thinks it's a waste of time.
He thinks talking
is kind of a waste of time, mostly
because people don't listen.
So
why bother?
Under these painkillers, his tongue
is loosened, and his memories
are jarred.
And he starts to,
in a somewhat associative way,
tell his
life story to his grandson.
And because his
memory-- because
of the way memory works, because
he's under the influence of these
drugs, the
story sort of flows
in and out of about five or six
different parts of his life
that kind of move forward,
interweaving with each other.
So that from one
chapter to the next, you might go
from late 80s
in a retirement community in
Florida, where he's living before he
is on his last illness, to an
officer's training school outside
of D.C. in 1942.
And it has that
loose kind of structure of memory.
So it's this grandson's
memoir of his grandfather, but it's
not my grandfather at all.
And in fact, my grandfather, for
example, was a very talkative
man. He has a different style
than he was.
He loved puns and wordplay, and
he was a storyteller.
And I heard lots of stories,
unlike the narrator in Moonglow.
I heard a lot of stories from my
grandfather over the years about his
childhood and my mom's childhood,
and so forth.
But when my grandfather was dying,
and he was on painkillers, and he
was narrating things to me.
His memory seemed to be jarring,
and he was telling me things I'd
never heard before.
And there seemed to be so
much in there, even this
man who did talk a lot,
had never shared with me.
I never forgot that experience
of just feeling like, what else is
in there that I haven't heard?
And of course, I mean, I knew the
answer to that because the things he
was telling me were--
there is nothing that
earth-shattering or even that
personal, really.
But what I didn't know about him,
which is also what I didn't know
about my grandmother,
his wife, or my other grandparents,
is anything about them
really. You don't tend
to know your grandparents that
way. I mean, it would almost
seem inappropriate if you had that
kind of access.
I mean, some parents are very free
in sharing their personal
experiences, their doubts, their
reservations, and all of that with
their children. Some are not.
But with grandparents, it's almost
unheard of.
And so sadly, though, as a result
of that, your grandparents--
and I love them, I love my
grandfather, in particular.
We were very close, but he never
really-- I
didn't really know him. There was so
much about him that he couldn't
or wouldn't ever share.
And this book is,
in part, motivated by that
because I didn't know anything.
I sort of make everything up.
So the memoir is a
fiction, and that's how
it's a novel disguised as
a memoir because it's really a
novel. It's
no more or less
invented, no more or less factual
than any of my other books, really.
I'm always drawing on my own
life. I'm always drawing on my own
experience and transforming it and
disguising it.
But then, there's the autobiography
part, and that was the part that
kind of surprised me because I knew
I was writing a fake memoir.
I wanted the reader
to feel like he or she was reading
my memoirs.
But I also didn't want to trick
anyone. So it's labeled a novel
because it is one.
But what
I didn't really know until
I was done writing, it was that
the grandfather is, in
some strange way, kind of a
self-portrait. And the marriage
in the book is a kind of
novelized, distorted
portrait of my marriage in some
ways. And the struggles
of both of the grandparents
in the novel reflect
and mirror, in a very heavily
fictionalized form - obviously,
because I'm not a 74-year-old
man in 1989 -
with my own experience
and my own life in ways that I
didn't know I was really doing until
I was almost done with the book.
So that is why it's an
autobiography wrapped in
a novel disguise as a memoir.
The grandfather a lot-- some of what
we see-- a lot of what we see were
his experiences during World War II.
And I wonder, would you be willing
to read a passage from the novel?
Sure. I should say the grandfather
is recruited because he
has unusual gifts both for violence
and for ingenuity, and he's
very flexible when the situation
takes a turn.
He's ready for it.
He's
brave,
even foolhardy.
And all these traits are spotted.
And he's recruited by the OSS,
the predecessor of the CIA,
to work as part of this project
that came to be known as Operation
Paperclip.
It was not combat
actually during the war itself, but
the idea was the
war was clearly coming to an end,
and
it was very well known.
It was painfully well known that in
most respects, German technology
and German science and engineering
were way ahead of
anybody else's, including the United
States, in jet engines,
in bacterial warfare,
chemical warfare, and also in
more peacetime-oriented kinds of
plastics and so on that were being
used in the war effort by Germany.
But
we had peacetime applications as
well. And there is not simply
a desire to kind of get that stuff
for ourselves
and jumpstart our
somewhat lagging
technology in the United States.
But also maybe even more
urgently, at least this is how it
was sold, to prevent the Soviet
Union from getting it.
Since the Soviet Union was coming
this way, and the United States is
coming this way.
They were going to meet, and it was
a race, really, to see who could get
what first.
And then, one of the most biggest
prizes of all was
the V-2 rocket program,
and it was under the directorship of
Wernher von Braun.
And as I'm sure many people
know, ultimately, Wernher von
Braun was captured by the United
States. He was brought
to the United States.
He was completely rehabilitated
top to bottom. All of his
war crimes were not discussed
and officially forgotten.
And he became
the mind behind
a number of rocket programs, and the
most prominent among them the Apollo
program.
And there's absolutely no doubt
without Wernher von Braun there's
no moon landing.
There's no Neil Armstrong.
He made that happen.
He had the organizational capacity
and the technical understanding
to be able to spearhead something
like that. And he did.
And that was his lifelong dream.
It's also the grandfather's
lifelong dream to go to the moon.
And before
the grandfather actually kind of
fight-- he wants to capture Wernher
von Braun.
He wants to see a V-2 rocket because
he's obsessed with rockets and with
going to the moon.
And before he knows very much about
von Braun, he admires him.
And he does become
greatly disillusioned
as he finds more and more about how
the V-2 rockets were manufactured,
which is by slave
labor, by concentration camp
labor. And it was really
a horror show.
Nevertheless, this is before he
finds that out. He
meets
a German priest who has
already had decided the war is over,
even though technically it isn't.
And it turns out to be an amateur
astronomer, and they talk about
the stars. And then, the priest
decides to let him in on a secret.
And he takes them into a clearing
nearby.
"Of course, my grandfather knew
that, from the point of view of
German command, of
Allied command, of Hermann
Goering and General Eisenhower and
the people at whom it was to
have been launched, the rocket
was still - was only -
in the war.
The clearing had been cut by
soldiers, the rocket had
been transported here by soldiers.
Soldiers would have armed,
primed, aimed, and
fired it.
Like its fellows - around three
thousand, between September
1944 and March
1945 - it had
been fitted with a warhead that
contained
two thousand pounds of a highly explosive
form of TNT that would
detonate on impact.
Its manufacture had been ordained
and carried out not to bury
humankind to the doorstep
of the stars but to
atomize and terrorized civilians,
destroy their homes, shatter
their morale.
If some unknown mischance had
not intervened, this rocket would
have joined its fellows in racing
the sound of its own arrival
toward the city of Antwerp, where,
on December 16,
to take the worst example,
a V-2 had fallen on the Rex
Theater in the middle of a showing
of The Plainsman, killing
or injuring nearly a thousand
people.
None of that, however,
could be blamed on the rocket,
my grandfather thought,
or on the man, von Braun,
who had designed it.
The rocket was beautiful.
In conception it had been shaped by
an artist to break a
chain that had bound the human race
ever since we first gained
consciousness of earth's gravity
and all its analogs in
suffering, failure, and
pain.
It was at once a prayer sent
heavenward and the answer
to that prayer: Bear
me away from this awful
place.
To pack the thing with a ton
of amatol, to hobble
it so that instead of tearing
loose once and for all from the
mundane pull, it
only arced back to earth
and killed the people among whom
it fell, was to abuse
it.
It was like using a rake to whip
egg whites, a dagger
to pick your teeth.
It could be done, but to
do so was a perversion.
Furthermore, ineffective.
As a weapon, a tool of strategy,
it was clear to everyone by now that
the V-2 had failed.
Yes, four or five thousand
hapless Frenchmen, Belgians,
and Englishmen have been killed by
the rocket bombs.
Tens of thousands more have been
left wounded, homeless, or afraid.
But in the end, bombs
of the ordinary variety
had killed, maimed, and frightened
people in far more terrible
numbers.
And now here were the Allies,
deep into Germany, and the rockets
were impotent and no longer
felt.
My grandfather felt sorry
for Wernher von Braun, whom
he could not help envisioning as
shy, professorial,
wearing a cardigan.
His pity for and anger on
behalf of the imaginary von Braun
tapped the reservoir of his
sorrow over the loss of his best
friend, Alvin Aughenbaugh. Alvin Aughenbaugh,
with a hint of Paul Henreid.
That's how he pictured Wernher von Braun.
Poor bastard.
He had built a ship to loft
us to the very edge of heaven, and
they had used it as a messenger
of hell.
'Lieutenant?' Father Nickel
said.
He put a hand on my grandfather's
shoulder. My
grandfather averted his face.
Automatically, he moved to shrug off
the old priest's hand, but in the
end he left it where it was.
Between him and Father Johannes
Nickel, as between
two stars, lay
unbridgeable gulfs of space-time.
And yet across the sweep
of that desolation each
had swum, for a moment, into the
other's lens.
Poor von Braun! He
needed to know - my grandfather felt
he must find you and tell him -
that such a thing was possible.
Scattered in the void were
minds capable of understanding,
of reaching one another.
He would put his hand on von Braun's
shoulder the way the old priest's
gnarled paw now made
benedictive on his own.
He would transmit to von Braun
the only message lonely
slaves of gravity might
send: We see
you - we are here."
Thanks
a lot.
Of course. All
of that is just a setup
really for the ultimate disillusion
and disappointment in the
grandfather because von Braun turns
out to be nothing like that at
all, like he pictures.
Well, one other thing about the
grandfather that I was interested
in.
Throughout the novel, he resists the
idea that his experiences in war
add up to something meaningful.
He really doesn't like that idea.
And this, to me, it
seemed, in one way, to refer to
a human experience of war.
But I wonder if it also doesn't
refer more specifically to the
grandfather as a member of the
greatest generation, as we call it,
which is a generation
that we can easily tell stories
about good versus evil and America
fighting for freedom.
I think it's something more
fundamental than that from the
grandfather's point of view.
I think it's a fundamental-- he's
kind of a nihilist.
It's
not just war that he thinks-- his
experience of war that he thinks
didn't add up to anything.
He doesn't think anything adds up to
anything.
And there's a
certain gentle
banter, teasing back and forth
between him and his grandson.
The grandson is a budding novelist
who makes his living trying to make
sense of things, trying to make
things make sense.
And the grandfather
teases him a little bit about that.
At some point, he's going, "You're
going to take all this random
nonsense that I'm telling you.
These painful stories
that don't add up to anything.
And you go ahead, take them, and you
just put a lot of pretty metaphors
in there and make it all add up,
and it's all going to make sense."
And by saying that, he
is contemptuous of that enterprise.
Whereas for the grandson, that's
the whole point.
And the grandson might be willing to
grant that - as I think a lot of
us would grant that -
on some level, nothing really does
mean-- nothing inherently
means anything.
The only thing-- the only meaning
comes from us.
We impose meaning and
randomness.
And you can either think
that's foolish,
then you can just say-- it just like
when people see the face of Elvis
in a tortilla, right?
Or you can think it's beautiful
or noble or
else just the only hedge you have
against committing suicide.
So I think
it's more deeply wired in the
grandfather to just deny
that anything has meaning.
He's such an empiricist.
He has such a rational kind of mind
that he just doesn't buy it.
Yeah. Well, what I
want to ask you also about one of
the other characters that maybe the
second most important character in
the novel is the grandmother.
She is interesting.
I heard you talk about the
development of that character.
And you talked about wanting
to create the character as an
enigma. But when you were writing
drafts of the novel, your readers
kept saying, "We want more of this
character. We want more of this
character." So can you say a little
bit more about how she developed?
Yeah. Well, I mean, the grandmother
is-- I
knew from the start that she
suffered from a form of mental
illness, that she was tormented,
that she undergoes some kind of
terrible experience during the war
related to the Holocaust.
I think you need to maybe move your
mic closer to the--
Have you guys just been not hearing
me this whole time?
It's so polite.
If this was New York, it would be louder.
Yeah.
Is that better?
What was I saying? Oh, yeah.
So. But I had this idea
because I knew the grandmother's--
the truth about
the grandmother
and what happened to her during the
war was the mystery and was
an enigma. And she herself was an
enigma. She's enigmatic.
So that's
what I told myself while I was
writing this novel.
Any time I actually felt like I
probably should say something about
the grandmother and let go.
I had made this decision not
to enter her point of view.
That now is the way I was going
to sort of
create this enigma,
which was by if we don't ever--
we're never privy to her thoughts,
then she's enigmatic,
just like all of us.
Right? Because none of us is privy
to anyone else's thoughts.
So.
But what that turned out to be was
just an excuse, on my part, to
not do a good enough job writing
because,
I mean, I got to the
end of what I felt was a solid,
complete draft of the book and
close to being finished.
And I gave it to a couple of
readers, including my wife
and my editor and a
very close reader that I always
asked to read my stuff.
And they all said, "More grandmother."
So
then, I was like, "No, she's
enigmatic."
Right. You don't get it.
You're supposed to feel that. But what I didn't
know because--
I didn't know her because I had
never stopped to think about her.
She was enigmatic, so
I didn't have to.
But at that point,
I had been working on this book for
almost three years.
Yeah, for a little over three years.
And when I
sat down to
try to do this, I very quickly
realized two things.
One, that the place I had failed
was that it's fine
to have her be enigmatic.
It's fine to have the people around
her not know her,
not know the truth, or not be
able to really understand the form
her insanity takes and so on.
But then I have to do a really
good job of writing about what it's
like to be the husband of someone
like that, what it's like to be
the daughter of someone like that,
what it's like to be the grandson
of someone like that.
And I had little parts
in the book already where I had sort
of addressed this, looking
at the grandmother from the
grandfather's point of view, looking
at the grandmother from the mother's
point of view, from her daughter's
point of view, but not enough.
And I hadn't really thought through
just really, what is this family
like? What is this household like
because of this sort of warping,
powerful field?
And she's a very
attractive, appealing,
lively person with a sense
of mischief and fun.
And she's theatrical, and she's
fun to be around, except when
she's not. And when she's not, she's
frightening and depressed and
melancholy and
ill and emotional and tempestuous.
And so when
you have someone who is
unpredictable-- living with
an unpredictable person affects
the people who live with an
unpredictable person in predictable
ways. And that's what I
hadn't really gotten at.
And the thing I really hadn't done
yet was
written about the grandmother from
the grandson's point of view.
And I had this narrator here, and
I had been sort of very faithful to
this idea that the narrator was just
simply, in a sense, reporting what
he heard from his grandfather about
his grandfather's life.
And he's reporting what he sees
when he's sitting next
to his grandfather in the bed.
But I never really went into the
narrator's life at all.
And I decided, okay,
one way I'm going to solve this
problem is by writing some
scenes of memories of the
grandfather on the part of the-- of
the grandmother on the part of the
narrator.
And what I discovered
as soon as I did that
was I knew so much
about her that I didn't know
that I knew. And she actually-- it
was a really magical experience
writing these last-- it was the last
six weeks I spent working on the
book, and the grandmother
just came alive.
And it turned out I
knew everything I needed to know
about her, and I knew just
how it felt to be her grandson.
And
all of that stuff, to me, completely
transformed the book.
And it's sometimes a little
terrifying to contemplate, like,
what would have happened if I
hadn't.
If I just either hadn't consulted
all the readers I did or if I had
just sort of said, "You know what?
I'm done with it. Just go ahead and
publish it." Which I feel sometimes
seems to happen with certain books
where you feel like the
author probably could have taken
another six weeks at it but probably
didn't feel like it.
So this
book was a mysterious book to me.
It arose mysteriously.
I didn't plan to write it.
I thought I was going to be writing
another book.
I started telling the story that
opens the novel about the
grandfather losing his job being
fired to make room on the payroll
for Alger Hiss after Alger Hiss gets
out of prison, which is based
on an actual family anecdote.
Or so I thought, until somebody told
me that wasn't the case.
But that's how stories go
in families.
It doesn't really matter.
In any case, and it just went
from there. And then, when it was
time to work the grandmother into
the story, she was there for me in
the same kind of mysterious way.
She's an absolutely wonderful
character. I wonder if you'd read
another passage in the book that
focuses on her and maybe
set it up a little bit.
This is a play that she performs.
Yeah. I mean,
it's tricky to set up in a way.
This chapter is written
from the mother's point of view.
In other words, my
mother, when she's a girl
and her mother has been
institutionalized and
is now being released.
And they go to pick her up,
and they have to wait because
she's been involved in this amateur
theatrical at this
mental hospital. It's Greystone
in New Jersey, and
the daughter kind of just walks in
and sees this show in
a sense. And she really has
no idea what's happening.
So if you have no idea what's
happening, that's intentional.
It's enigmatic.
Yeah.
The lights come up on a field
of clover.
Trefoil hands, faces uplifted
toward a shiny sun that
hangs above their spiky pink
and white heads.
A swarm of fat-bottomed bees
careen in and out among the flowers.
Wordlessly, they quarrel
with the flowers.
They dip into the flowers' faces
with the bowls of big wooden spoons.
George Washington appears, dressed
in knee britches, a powdered
wig, a greatcoat, hatchet
slung from his belt.
He stomps around abusing the
flowers and exhorting the bees to
molest them for their nectar.
This is not George Washington, it
turns out, but a herdsman
of bees.
The purpose or significance of the
hatchet, apparently not intended
for the chopping down of a cherry
tree, remains unclear.
The bee herder watches contentedly
as his bees fly back and forth
with their ladles full of nectar
from the looted flowers to their
unseen hive.
All of this is routine for
the bee herder.
He lounges on a hummock and fights
to stay awake.
The sun with its metallic
glow goes down.
Evening hoists
a silvery moon into the heavens.
A pair of bears, unseen
by the bee herder, shamble
on from stage left.
They swing their heads in unison
from side to side as they advance.
They are shabby-looking bears,
a couple of ruffians with patchy
coats.
They observe the traffic
in nectar.
When the bee herder's back is
turned, they accost he plumpest
of his bees.
They threaten it with violence and
confiscate its wooden spoon.
With bearish ardor, they
guzzle up every drop.
At last the cries of the
assaulted bee attract the attention
of the drowsing bee herder.
He leaps to his feet and throws his
silver hatchet at the bears.
But instead of striking
them, it just keeps rising,
all the way to the moon overhead,
where it lodges with a soft
thump like a dictionary falling
onto a pillow.
The bee herder studies the problem.
He fidgets with his wig.
Then he remembers his rope.
He makes a lariat, swings
it over his head with an audible
whirr, and then launches the loop
toward the hatchet with its handle
protruding from the moon.
The loop misses the handle and the
rope falls back to earth.
He windmills it and launches it
moonward again.
This time the eye of the rope snags
the wooden handle.
He gives it a tug and then starts to
pull himself up the rope hand
over hand.
Bees, bears,
and flowers raise their heads
and gawp in amazement.
The bee herder climbs unamazed.
Darkness falls over the field of
clover, dawn breaks
on the moon.
Jagged moon mountains
glow cool and silvery
blue in the background as the bee
herder, hatchet restored,
strolls along unfazed by
his new surroundings. He
passes silver moon trees
like the skeletons of cacti.
He picks a bouquet of
silver moonflowers.
As he turns, he notices
a small silver ball rolling
toward his feet.
A woman comes running in after it
but stops when she sees him.
She wears a silver gown and
a silver crown.
A large pair of silver wings
rise up behind her, a moth's
wings, billowing gently
in a lunar breeze.
He picks up the ball, and for
a moment they regard each other.
Then he crosses her the ball,
and she catches it.
What befalls the bee herder
and the Queen of the Moon after
this first encounter - how
the pantomime is meant to end -
will remain forever
unknown by my mother.
The mountains of the moon glowing
under the light of a blue gel at
the back of the stage were
tinfoil balls, massed
and squashed into cake-frosting
peaks.
The moon trees were a couple
of branching coat racks wrapped
in more foil -
'silver paper,' my grandmother
always called it.
The moonflowers were
clusters of eggbeaters, whisks,
and serving spoons planted
in cake pans.
It was all so ridiculous and sad.
It was pathetic.
And yet the foil
shown in the subaqueous light.
The coat racks raising their
jubilant arms and the bouquets
of kitchen implements had the
incongruous dignity of
homely things. Looking
into the radiant mouth of the
stage, my mother felt a
strong sense of recognition,
as if she had visited this world
in a dream. As
if, when she was a child,
the fog of her mother's dreams
had rolled through the house every
night and left this sparkling
residue on her memory.
There was no way the baffling
history of a spacefaring
bee herder and his visit
to the moon could have
been written by anyone
else.
The Queen of the Moon entered,
chasing the little ball of foil,
in her tinfoil dress and crown,
and her wobbling wings made
from nylons stretched over coat
hangers and glued with sequins.
This was not the moon at
all.
It was some other world - some
other mother - uncharted
and hitherto unknown.
'It was just the most beautiful
thing,' my mother told me.
Then the bright glints seemed to
startle from her the tinfoil
crown and swarm
the air between her mother and her,
jigging and fluttering,
until they all flew away and left
her in the dark."
Thanks a lot. That's a great passage.
That's--
So she passed out. She's so shocked
to see her mother-- the queen of the
moon is her mother. She passed
out. She's about 14.
I love that passage.
And one of the things I like
so much about it is it's something I
see other times
in your fiction, which is this
juxtaposition of this moment of
magic or enchantment, and then next
to that, something that seems so
dull and unenchanted.
And in this case, egg beaters and
coat racks and what seem like these
magic mountains.
I think of, for example, Joe
Kavalier in his novel when he's
performing as a magician.
Sometimes he's bound up in
uncomfortable spaces, and he can't
breathe. But that's the show.
That's what magic is.
So I wonder if this idea is
something, in general, that's
interesting to you, this
juxtaposition of kind of moments of
enchantment with struggle or
difficulty that kind exist at the
same time?
Sure. I mean, and I'm always-- I
mean, disenchantment can
be weirdly pleasurable, even
as an experience.
Otherwise, why would we watch these,
like, the bonus
material on the end of
Blu-ray discs where they show
you that really there was no
one hanging from a helicopter.
It was all done with greenscreen.
And there's something
enjoyable about being disillusioned,
strangely.
So
that experience,
I think, is interesting-- can be
interesting to write about.
I mean, this is almost that
I felt like I had to do it in this
in these circumstances because I was
trying to convey
a lot. But one thing I was trying to
convey was just the strangeness
of just this moment
where this young teenage
girl realizes just how strange her
mother really is. Like, it's one
thing to think your mom is
crazy and she needs a doctor.
She had to go to a hospital.
You're trying to make sense of all
these things when you're a kid.
And you watch things on television
and
maybe also about the crazy
people and how they supposedly act.
And there's a part of you that
live with your mother, your
parent, whoever it is, your
whole life.
In a sense, you don't know any
better, and you don't really-- you
get to a certain age before you even
realize there's
something different about the way
this person sees the world than
everyone else's mother or father
sees the world. Whatever that might
be.
And because her mother's been gone
for so long,
seeing her kind of for the first
time, in a sense, of with
a greater
understanding of an older child now,
it's more than she can handle.
She sort of gets overwhelmed by the
experience of-- first, sort of the
strangeness of this scene with
the bees and the bears and
trying to figure out what's happening
and
why it seems weirdly familiar
to her in some way, too.
And then, to
have that strangeness be explained
all of a sudden and
think, "Oh, this is my mom.
And this is really the way she sees
things." I think it's just-- I felt
like I had to do it that way.
To make it strange and then unveil
it in that way because that's what
she's experiencing.
Yeah. Well, I want to ask you one
other question, and then we can get
to some Q&A.
And this kind of maybe goes back
to the first passage that we read
in the end of it when talking about
the "we see you, we are here" and
making those connections.
This is a passage from
the first essay in your collection
of essays, Maps and Legends, and
you're arguing on behalf of
entertaining fiction, which I know
you will not object to us calling.
No, I'm good with that.
Yeah.
I hope so.
You write that "The best response
to those who would cheapen and
exploit it is not to disparage
or repudiate, but to reclaim
entertainment as a job fit for
artists and for audiences.
A two-way exchange of attention,
experience, and the universal
hunger for connection." And so, I
just wanted to ask you,
when you finished Moonglow and you
cast it out into the world, is that
what you're hoping to contribute to?
Of course. Of course. I mean, and
while you're writing-- while I'm
writing, you're imagining--
it's an act of faith.
You're imagining
that you're in dialogue with
somebody that you don't know.
Maybe,
even if you're lucky, like a few
somebodies that you don't know.
And you're always wondering
how is this going to go over. Is this clear
enough? Is this funny?
Is this moving?
Did I take too long,
or have I not taken enough time?
And I'm always gauging it not so
much by my own taste as by sort
of what I hope will happen
when it gets into the hands of a
reader finally.
And then, from the other side, as a
reader, it's
another kind of act of faith
that you are--
first of all, you put your trust in
the writer. And you
do this
incredibly vulnerable thing
of giving your consent
to being lied to.
And that's
the only way lying can
ever be done,
can be good, is with the
consent, with the permission,
with encouragement.
Please tell me a good one.
I want to hear a story.
And
to put yourself in that vulnerable
position and then feel
on your end as a reader that you're
in connection with someone who's not
there. And if you're reading
something that was written
a hundred years ago or more,
you're in connection with a mind
that no longer exists in any
corporeal form at all.
It's this disembodied person, but
you are intimately connected with
that other mind as
if he or she lived around the corner
for you. That's entertainment.
That's what I mean by entertainment.
You
think about that word entertainment,
and it has been so cheapened.
But we entertain guests.
Right? We entertain ideas.
We entertain
crazy notions.
There is an idea of exchange or
transfer, and
it's such a-- with reading and
writing,
it's such an unlikely one.
There's nobody on the other end,
actually or physically.
There's no one on the other end.
But when it works, you feel
as if you're in some kind of
dialogue or conversation.
Well, I know I can say, for me,
it definitely worked with this novel
and with so many others of yours.
So I want to thank you for that.
Thank you.
Do you want to take some questions?
Yeah.
All right. So there's a stack here
of questions that have been sent in
and will also come, I think,
from the end of aisles maybe to get
others.
Questions "R" Us.
I think we'll do that. But you have
these already. So whether or not--
Oh, look at these. They're all taped
up. How did this work?
Well, yeah. So you read through, and
we'll see if
there are others coming.
That would be great. But if not, we
have these. And see what you like.
Okay, let's see.
Let's just take the first one
right off the top here.
"A famous definition of genre
fiction is that it is like
pornography.
Certain events are expected by the
reader, and those expectations are
met by the author.
A recent review of a mystery novel
was dismissed in a New York Times
review as being, as all genre
fiction, without ambiguity.
Do you think these observations are
accurate? Do you think of them as
legitimate criticisms of genre
quality? And how can we genre fans
defend ourselves against the disdain
of our enemies disguised
as friends and family?"
That's question one.
So that's just the first one.
That's a great question. I mean,
there's--
I'd break it down in a few pieces.
One piece is that
it's true.
I mean, the starting place
is honesty.
So it's true that
at least much,
if not most, of
what's called genre fiction
is fairly
cut and dry and is trying to
obey a lot of strict
conventions. And
there is a certain amount of
expectation on the reader's part
that has to be met, and so on and so
forth. That's unquestionably true.
But the second thing that we have to
state is that that's also true
with so-called literary
fiction,
whatever you want to call it--
mainstream fiction.
You might characterize that as a
genre, or you might break it down
into subgenres within that.
And there are conventions, and
there are rules
like unified point of view,
for example, that most writers
are taught to follow
that must be followed, or else the
work starts to feel like it's not
what the reader is looking for.
I think the important difference
between-- there's only really
one important distinction that's
between well-written
fiction and poorly written fiction
or incredibly well-written
fiction, well-written fiction,
possibly well-written fiction, and
terribly written fiction.
And that is true
across all supposed
genre boundaries.
I mean, a beautifully
written science fiction novel, say,
like Octavia Butler or
Ursula K. Le Guin,
is just pound
for pound. You can match it up
against any other work of
well-written and well-imagined
fiction.
It's "ninety percent of everything
is crud," is what?
Theodore?
Sturgeon's law, it's called.
And it's true across the board.
And that's what you have to bear in
mind.
I think
the disadvantage a lot of
writers who work in genres are at
is that they, and this has been true
for a century.
They have to write really quickly.
In
the old days, if you're writing for
pulp magazines, you
got paid a penny a word or a penny
and a half. Maybe you made three or
four penny cents a word.
And the more you wrote, the more
you got paid. And the more stories
you got published, the more you got
paid. And they had to crank
it out.
And that's still true.
Not at that incredibly
inhumane pace anymore, but
a lot of people are under
contract to write two mystery novels
a year.
And so you got to go fast.
And it's really, I think, it's the
luxury of leisure,
of being able to take time to go
over your sentences, to
work, to make your characters
feel more real, feel better
developed. I mean, that is
a luxury that all writers
need. And I think it's more likely
that writers of so-called mainstream
fiction get that than
people who are trying to make it,
especially people who are trying to
make a living as a genre fiction
writer.
The other thing about genre, too,
and I think this is true of your
work, is that it can also be
enabling. And you can play with
boundaries as much-- they can be
constricting, but they can also be
something that allows you to be-- I
think you do that a lot.
Yeah. I mean, well, that's-- even
some of the-- I mean, no sooner did
Agatha Christie basically--
and she didn't invent the whodunit,
certainly. But no
sooner did she master it than she
began messing with it.
Right?
And like, oh, I'm going to have a
mystery where everyone did it, and
I'm going to have one where nobody
did it and play that aspect
of play.
It's often solidly
at the center of genre writing
too. It doesn't necessarily
guarantee that you're going to break
out in some way.
But I mean, the longer genres
are around, the more you tend to see
the conventions getting messed
with.
I'm just going to keep answering till
you tell me to stop.
Oh, yeah. That's exactly--
Okay, let's go.
"What are you reading?
And do you have any book
recommendations to share?" Yes,
happily. When I'm on
a book tour is one of the times I
get the most reading done
because, at home, I work at night.
And
as my wife settles in for
2 hours of enjoying the
delicious experience of reading a
book in bed, I'm going off to work.
And thereby,
I ought to read
in the daytime, but I just can't.
I have too much else to do.
I can't. I feel like I'm cheating if
I take 2 hours in the middle of the
day, sit down, and read.
When I'm on book tour, I'm generally
not driving to work, and I'm
traveling a lot.
So I've read so far two books
on this tour, and they are both
wonderful. One is called Beetle Bone
by an Irish writer named Kevin
Barry.
Barry.
B-A-R-R-Y.
And it's
a wonderful book. It's a very
beautifully written,
imaginary
week in the life of John Lennon
in 1978. So two
years before his death, which we
just observed the
anniversary of. And
I guess-- I don't know how much of
it's true. Apparently,
John Lennon, while he was still a
Beatle in 1969, bought
an island off the coast of Ireland,
a little island in this chain of
islands.
And this part,
I'm not sure if it's true or not.
The premise of the novel is that he
goes looking for it like ten
years later when his life has
changed completely, and the Beatles
are no more. And his marriage with
Yoko Ono has been troubled.
And now, he has his little son, and
he's become overwhelmed by it.
And he's clean and sober, and he's
struggling with that.
And he just goes
off on a runner
and goes to Ireland to try to find
this island. And he takes up with
this driver, who's an Irishman from
County Mayo, because that's where
the island is.
It's really funny.
And he writes in the point of view
of John Lennon. You totally
believe-- you buy it completely.
I loved it.
And then the second book
was SPQR by Mary Beard,
which is a history of the Roman
Empire. And even though it's a
history of the Roman Empire, it's
still not that long.
And she's such a wonderful writer.
She's so pithy and
so knowledgeable. And you feel like
you're taking the most fantastic
university class from the
greatest Cambridge
don ever.
It's
engaging. She does it through
retelling stories and incidents, but
she's super skeptical to it.
She challenges a lot of the
conventional wisdom about how we
think about Rome and the Romans.
Anyway,
I loved it.
So that's
that. Let's
see.
Oh, no, he skipped my question.
Oh, I like this one because it's so
nerdy.
"I've always been fascinated by the
descriptions of how Henry Kuttner
and C.L. Moore would
work on the same stories so
seamlessly." You
all know who those two are, right?
No, just kidding.
Because they're sadly
forgotten, wonderful science fiction
writers who were husband
and wife and did work on each
other's work, apparently, really
indiscriminately with-- sometimes
he would write more of something,
and her name would go on.
And sometimes, she would write
more of something, and his name
would go on it.
I don't know if they ever-- yes,
they did publish something together
under both their names, too.
But the question is, "As a spouse
of a fellow author, how did
the two of you work together, and
have you contemplated any true
collaborations?"
I mean, apart from our four
children.
Those are entirely collaborative
efforts.
Yeah, I
mean, but
we've always collaborated
since she started writing,
which she started out as-- when I
first met her, she was just
graduated from Harvard Law School
in the same class as our
sadly outgoing president.
Remarkably, I discovered this in
2008 when we were working very
hard on that first Obama campaign,
and I met
a lot of that class from Harvard
Law School.
By some strange chance, my wife
appears to have been the only person
who is not Barack Obama's best
friend in law school.
In any case, she was a federal
public defender for
almost four years, and then she
started writing in. From that
moment, we
collaborated in every
way except actually writing
together.
And this continues to be true from
the moment one or the other starts
to think about what
we might be writing next.
We use each other as sounding
boards, bouncing the idea off,
giving each other encouragement,
trying to create space for the
other to work, not just during
our normal work periods.
She works in the morning. I work at
night. But encouraging
each other to go off
to borrow someone's -
we have friends who have
borrowable cabins in various
beautiful places - and go to one of
those. Or even check into
a hotel room. I've done that.
I don't know if she's ever done
that. Or a residency
program like the MacDowell Colony,
trying to help create space to
get the work done.
Reading each other's drafts, editing
each other's drafts,
reading and editing subsequent
drafts, up all the way through that
whole process.
So that by the end of a book, each
of us probably has read the other's
book six,
seven, eight times.
And then holding hands through the
publication process, which
can be so terrifying.
And that's
been the nature of our
collaboration. But, in the past
few years, we've actually started
directly collaborating, and it's
been with TV projects.
We worked on this series that we
hoped would go to HBO
that did not go called Hobgoblin,
and we wrote that together.
And now, we're working on another TV
project at Netflix.
And we've
evolved this method that seems to
work really well for us in that
regard, which is that we outline
together.
They call it beating
out the story. We
figure out what should happen and in
what order. And we try to get as
detailed as we can about that
together. And then she
takes the outline and writes the
first draft, and then I take
that draft and rewrite it.
It's good method. It seems to work
well.
There's a lot of feeling
and passion in our marriage, and
that frequently comes out in the
form of arguments.
And there's arguments and yelling
that take place when we're not
collaborating that are of an
entirely different character than
the arguments that take place when
we are collaborating. And we argue
just as much when we're
collaborating as we do when we're
not.
But it's
strange how-- it must be
that there doesn't feel like there's
something deep and fundamental, some
kind of like
early childhood shame at
stake or something.
Because we will argue and argue and
argue and argue.
And then, we're like, okay, great.
That's it. Like that, and just
keep writing and go on with it.
It doesn't ever get personal at all.
But I think it can be terrifying
because there was a brief period
when we were collaborating with
a third person on a musical.
We were writing the book for
this musical.
I think it still might be happening,
but we're no longer involved with
it.
And he was
so afraid when
we started fighting.
He's younger, a good
20 years younger than us.
And he was like, "Mom and dad are
fighting." And he was so--
he would get really quiet and stuff,
and then he got used to it.
And, actually, by the end, he was
right in there.
I actually really appreciated
the comments you made.
You published a few chapters from
Fountain City, which was your
unfinished novel in McSweeney's, and
you kind of wrote about what you
took from not finishing.
And your main-- your final
conclusion was that you didn't have
someone like your wife to read it.
Yeah, it actually wasn't someone
like my wife. It was my wife.
Yeah.
Because there's nobody like my wife.
So if that was-- if I was
trying to find another one, I would
be in trouble.
Yeah. I mean,
you need someone.
Every writer needs at least
one person who will be completely
honest with them about the
work.
A reader who is less than completely
honest is utterly useless.
And so, you need someone who's not
afraid to say,
"This doesn't work," or "This part's
not working," or
"You need to start again."
I mean, sometimes you have to
say really hard things
because that's how it goes.
And many things need to be started
again
or need complete retooling or
need overhauling.
And it's
initially almost impossible for
that person to be the writer, him
or herself.
There's a part of you that knows it,
that knows that this is not working,
that part's not working, or this
isn't working, or whatever it is.
There is a part of you that knows
that and needs to hear it
from someone else.
And as soon as you do hear it, you
have that sense of like you might--
there's going to be the initial,
like, you're just an idiot.
That's why you--
but then, it
doesn't take very long before you're
saying, "Oh my god, you're right.
What do I do?
I have to start over."
And
I'm fortunate, and I think Ayelet is
fortunate too, from her point of
view, that we are each capable of
being that person for the other one.
But it's hard to work out
the right way to do it.
And
you don't want to waste time.
You don't want to waste the writer's
time, and you don't want to waste
your own time. So there's a
temptation to be direct and be
just kind of disposed with the
amenities and just get right down to
it. That's not a good idea.
You always
have to start with the-- you
have to do the phrase sandwich.
I know the phrase sandwich.
You start with a phrase.
And genuinely, but like sincerely. You can't blow sunshine
up the other person's ass.
You have to say things you really
do-- and if there's not that much,
just do what you can
and start with that.
Then, you get into the criticism,
and then don't forget to go back and
say "but."
We always joke that that's like an
insult sandwich, though, because the
praise is on the outside.
Right? I mean, it's like being the
praises--
You're right. It's a criticism
sandwich. I never noticed that.
A praise sandwich would be useless.
Insult, praise, insult
would be that.
Right, right.
That's a Primantis praise
sandwich.
"What's the worst thing you ever
wrote?"
There are so many candidates.
There's so many realms.
Well, this actually is a Pittsburgh
story.
When I was a freshman at
Carnegie Mellon University, I
wrote poetry.
I wrote poetry at Pitt, too, but it
got a little better.
I had wonderful teachers like
Ed
Ochester and Eve Shelnutt, who
helped me make my poetry a little
less bad.
But at Carnegie Mellon, I
was on my own.
And not only was I writing poetry,
but it was love poetry
to the girl
that I loved. And
it was,
I mean,
I hate to even think about it.
And
I was influenced by,
I don't know, like Henry Miller
and Donovan.
And I submitted this poetry
in a red Duo Tang
folder to
the Carnegie Mellon Literary
Quarterly, which I don't remember
its name.
Anyone?
Anyway, no CMU literators here
tonight.
And I never heard anything.
And one night,
toward the end of my freshman year,
I was with a friend who had a radio
slot on WRCT.
A really late
3:00 in the morning kind of slot,
and nobody was around
the building and the radio station.
I don't know if that's still the
case, but at the time, it was in the
same building as the offices of
the literary magazine.
And somehow or other,
I obtained a key
to the door of the
literary magazine office.
And I broke in
with a key, though I didn't break
anything.
I don't think that's a legal
defense, though.
And I
went into the file cabinet.
And I found my file, and
it was in the reject
section, which already was
not a good thing.
And then I opened it up and
went, "Maybe I'll get some helpful
criticism and some words of
encouragement. And I'm sure they
were just playing." And whoever had
reviewed it for publication have
just been merciless
with like cartoons
of someone vomiting and
just--
Not even words.
Oh, no, I
stopped reading here.
I mean, like the worst, most naked--
because they didn't plan on showing
it to me. So they could be
completely honest.
Like I'm saying, it's so fortunate.
And I was just so
shamed and humiliated, and then
I carefully just, like, put it back
in.
And I backed out of there
and locked the door and
never, ever wanted
to look at anyone's--
I never repeated that experiment
ever again because it was such a
traumatic experience. But I think
those poems were-- I'd like to think
that was probably the worst thing I
ever wrote.
All right. Well, we have, I think--
do you want to do one more really
short one?
Sure.
And then, we'll wrap up so you can
go sign books and things
like that. All right.
There haven't been any hostile
ones yet.
You're kind of disappointed.
In New York, there were hostile
ones.
I'm just saying.
Okay. Let me try to answer this one.
"In this day and age of great
division socially,
how would you advise people who
do not agree to have
a meaningful conversation
that does not turn sour?"
Short. Short. It's gotta be short.
Yes, short.
It's on you
to remember that you're wrong
too.
And that being
right, even if you're right about
this particular thing, there's
something else you're wrong about.
Or you have been wrong about in the
past at least once.
And that
being right
doesn't get you anything.
When
you're in that situation where you
can't come to terms-- when
you think your point of view is the
right one and the other person
thinks their point of view is the
right one.
I think what I try to do is
put myself in the other person's
shoes and try to imagine
why it-- not to justify
it, not to excuse it, not to
agree with it, or even accept
it, but to at least try to see
what kind of underlying thing
there might be and possibly
try to shift the topic
onto that in a way that's not
embarrassing, though.
Like in a way that's, maybe we
can talk, or we could drop the
political facade here.
And let me ask you what happened
to you and maybe get them
to tell you a story.
Something like that. I mean,
sometimes, when I'm in that
sometimes awkward, uncomfortable
situation, I have two impulses.
And one is to just sort of
get really quiet and
not-- when I hear someone starting
to say something that I'm worrying
the way the direction of the
conversation is going,
sometimes I have the impulse to just
kind of clam up and turn into
an equivalent of a Scotch tape
dispenser.
Just sitting there minding his own
business. But other times, I'll
have the impulse to just try to get
him off what I feel
like I'm hearing, which is a bunch
of what other people have said
that's being regurgitated.
Not personal questions like
embarrassing personal questions, but
tell me about your father
or something like that.
Like, tell me something about your
life that you could express
this, maybe in a way, it's
not so nasty
or not so freighted or just not
you regurgitating what you've
heard elsewhere on TV
networks whose name is a kind
of small predator animal.
Well, also an enigma.
[crosstalk] Who knows what that means.
Yes, the enigma of all time.
Well, thank you, Michael Chabon. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you.
You've been listening to an interview
with Michael Chabon, recorded live
at the Carnegie Music Hall in
Pittsburgh on December 9th.
This event was made possible by
generous contributions from the
Pennsylvania Humanities Council, the
Dietrich School of Arts and
Sciences, the Department of English,
and the Humanities Center at Pitt,
as well as the Provost Year of
Humanities in the University.
Stay tuned for next time when our
guest will be George Gopen,
Professor Emeritus of the Practice
of Rhetoric at Duke University.
Thanks so much for listening.

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Being Human Podcast Recordings

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Title
Novels, Nihilism, and Criticism Sandwiches: An Interview with Michael Chabon
Contributor
University of Pittsburgh (depositor)
Chabon, Michael (interviewee)
Kubis, Dan (interviewer)
Date
January 6, 2017
Identifier
20230127-beinghuman-0015
Description
An interview with Michael Chabon, University of Pittsburgh alum and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh", "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay", and "Telegraph Avenue". Chabon was in Pittsburgh as part of a book tour for his new novel Moonglow, which the Wall Street Journal recently named the best novel of 2016. The interview focuses on Chabon's work and features readings from his new novel.
Extent
75 minutes
Publisher
University of Pittsburgh. Department of English
Type
sound recording-nonmusical
Genre
interviews
Subject
Authors
Creative writing
Fiction--Authorship
Source
Being Human
Language
eng
Collection
Being Human Podcast Recordings
Contributor
University of Pittsburgh
Rights Information
In Copyright. This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).. Rights Holder: University of Pittsburgh
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Rights Holder
University of Pittsburgh

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Novels, Nihilism, and Criticism Sandwiches: An Interview with Michael Chabon

In collections