[ Music ]
>> Sponsored by the
James Madison Council
and the National
Endowment for the Arts.
[ Music ]
>> Alexander Chee: Hello,
welcome to the 2021 Library
of Congress National
Book Festival.
I'm Alexander Chee, contributing
editor to "The New Republic."
And I'm here to talk to
Yiyun Li and Douglas Stuart
about their new novels.
And I do not, are
they in the room?
There they are.
>> Douglas Stuart: Here we are.
>> Alexander Chee:
What a relief.
>> Yiyun Li: Yes, we're here.
>> Alexander Chee: So it's
a little impossible to --
I was thinking of
how to set this up.
And I thought I would give you
each some of the same questions,
and you can take turns
answering as a format for this.
And the first one is
sort of a big picture,
philosophical creature, which
is, if all novels are written
out of a discontent of some kind
and are inherently a critique
of the world, what would you say
is under your eye in this book?
>> Yiyun Li: Douglas,
you go first.
That's such a good --
>> Douglas Stuart: Oh, that
was a dirty move, Yiyun.
[ Inaudible ]
You know, I think what
I was trying to do was
to write a post-industrial
novel and a novel
about society failing.
And not to center men in it,
not to center heterosexual men.
"Shuggie Bain" obviously stands
in a long literary tradition.
We think about Kelman and Welsh.
We even think about the
cinema of Ken Loach.
But of, not often enough do
they focus on the private lives
of women, the domestic lives
of women and their children,
and also certainly
queer characters.
So for me there was always an
enormous amount of strength
and resilience and love and
humor and hope in those voices
that you never heard,
but it was really wrapped
in a lot of silence.
>> Yiyun Li: Well --
>> Alexander Chee:
Beautiful answer.
>> Yiyun Li: For me I think --
that's a great answer, you know,
can I just borrow that?
I think for me it is about
taking a long look at life
and taking a long
look at history.
You know, for my book there's
this woman, she's 81 now,
and she's looking
back at her life.
And, you know, one key moment
was the loss of her child.
You know, there are different
ways to write about love.
But I think, when I was writing
the book, I really wanted
to have the character to
take a long look 40 years
after she lost her child.
I wanted her to come in from
that perspective
to look at life.
And to look at, you
know, American history.
So I just, I don't want
my characters to get stuck
in a traumatic or
dramatic moment.
I want to move the characters
past that moment for,
you know, into the future.
That's my, I guess,
that's my goal.
>> Alexander Chee:
Also beautiful.
The, so the next
question here is related
to an experience I've
had with my own books.
I'm assuming that it's a
somewhat common experience just
from, just anecdotally maybe.
Maybe this has never
happened to you.
But there's always some
point after the book comes
out where someone who has read
the book says something to you
that reveals to you something
that you didn't understand
that you had made but that
you can see within the book.
And I wondered if you have had
that experience with
this book yet?
And if so, if you would share?
>> Yiyun Li: Well, I'll go
first, Douglas, for one time.
>> Douglas Stuart: Please.
>> Yiyun Li: I, well, I think
that moment came actually
before the book was published.
I think just the first draft,
between the first
draft and final draft.
I think it's just my editor
reading it, and he said,
this woman has an entire, you
know, body in a cast without,
you know, any vulnerability.
And where is the [inaudible]?
Where's the, I just realized,
you know, when we write
about characters, and
especially I feel like for me,
is when we write about
characters with some, you know,
painful experience, my instinct
is to be protective and to,
not to show too much emotion,
to not to show too much,
you know, response.
And I think that one editor
points out, this woman is,
she's, you know,
in destructible,
which is probably true.
But, on the other
hand, even, you know,
most indestructible
character has a moment
of doubt and disbelief.
And those things I think that
really needed a character to,
I mean, sorry, they really do
need a reader to point out.
>> Alexander Chee: Douglas.
>> Douglas Stuart: Yeah.
You know, Agnes Bain, as the
heroine of the novel is a very,
she's a very bright, glamorous,
generous, funny woman.
But she's also incredibly
damaged.
And we know that she starts
to dis integrate and turn
into alcoholism,
or turn towards it.
Bu I wanted to show Agnes
as complex as a character
as I could manage just
to have many facets.
So that in the book she
was never just a mother.
She was never these
children's mother.
She was, you know, she was
a friend, and she was a foe.
And she was a spurned wife.
She was many, many
different things.
But it's really funny because a
lot of the misogyny that happens
in the book happens
between women,
even though it was an
incredibly misogynistic time
and there was a patriarchy.
And what is always really, what
was really surprising to me --
and this is not a
condemnation --
is when people are
hard on Agnes.
Because I always think
that Agnes loses the
most in my novel.
You know, she loses
her future and her life
and her love and her children.
And yet people are very, readers
can be quite angry with her.
And it's usually
female readers, too,
which I think is
really fascinating.
Because they often
say things to me, wow,
she really didn't
love her children.
And I think to myself, actually,
I think she really
did love her children.
She might not love
herself very much.
And they're different things.
So that was something I
wasn't quite prepared for.
>> Alexander Chee:
That is fascinating,
especially given your stated
aim about, really to misogyny
with writing the novel.
>> Douglas Stuart: Yeah.
>> Alexander Chee: The, so all
of us, I think, write novels --
for those of us who
do write novels --
partly to try to
learn something.
Whether we've expressed
that to ourselves or not,
there's a curiosity
that drives us.
Something that we're
like, what is this like?
Or what is this like?
And so I'm wondering
what you found,
if it was what you
set out to find?
Or if you surprised yourself?
Or some mix of both?
>> Douglas Stuart: Yeah, can
I answer that first this time?
You know, "Shuggie Bain" is
absolutely a work of fiction.
It is not the narrative
of my childhood.
But I'm always really clear that
I am the son of a single mother
who also suffered with
addiction my entire childhood
and lost that struggle.
You know, I grew up
as poor as Shuggie.
I grew up as isolated
and as queer and just
as separate from the world.
But I think, when you're a
child of trauma, you know,
sometimes when you go to write
fiction, you center the child,
you center yourself
in that narrative.
And the thing that actually took
me 10 years to write was to try
and take the young boy out
of the heart of the story
because it was far too complex
of a time for everything
to be filtering through this
seven or eight year old.
And what I really needed to do
was to try and come to a point
of empathy with perhaps the
world and the people and the,
you know, the themes that were
causing all this hurt for,
both me in my personal
childhood,
and also for the
characters in the book.
And one of the things that
was, people often asked me
if writing the book was
cathartic, and it was.
But it wasn't cathartic
because I was giving away pain,
it was cathartic because I
came to understand the origins
of the pain and where
the hurt started.
And actually the truth became
that the hurt had no origin
because there was
just hurt everywhere.
You know, the men
were hurting women.
And the women were hurting,
and then they were
hurting the children.
And it was sort of
bouncing around like that.
And when I came to that
realization, it changed the book
for me, but it also
was something
that fundamentally altered me
as both a writer and a man.
>> Alexander Chee: Yiyun, have
you had a chance to reflect?
>> Yiyun Li: That's
a, you know --
[ Inaudible ]
-- it's a difficult question
to ask only because I think,
when we start a novel,
there's so many things
about characters we don't know.
And, you know, at the end of the
novel, end of writing the novel,
you feel that you have got
to know your characters a
little bit, a little bit better
than at the beginning.
But I think for me it goes
back to that time, you know,
I think I have said
this in the interview.
So, unfortunately, this
narrator, this Lilia,
who's the main character, the
mother character in the novel,
just by accident
my life, you know,
overlapped with her
life at one moment.
You know, I'd lost a child at
the age when I already wrote her
into the novel, already
wrote up her loss of a child.
So I think that actually
stopped me from writing
because I did not
want my experience
to overshadow the narrator or
the character's experience.
I don't want my life to bleed
into the character's life.
And I think in the end,
when I was able to continue,
it was more about finding
what could be different
for another mother who
had similar experience.
So my, I guess, my
curiosity is really, you know,
I was in the moment of loss,
writing about another woman
40 years after the loss.
So I think my curiosity is
how time passes for her.
How she lives her life
from that point on.
And by writing the novel I
would say I got a little bit
of an answer for that as,
you know, she went on to,
she had other children.
She had other parts of life.
She had a garden.
She cooked.
It was really just to make
sure, I guess, she just,
she was making sure every day
was filled with activities.
So that probably answered my
curiosity about years later,
that I haven't been there.
>> Alexander Chee:
So you are both
at very different
stages of your careers.
Douglas just starting out.
Yiyun you are definitely in
the, you are in the full middle.
>> Yiyun Li: Middle-aged.
>> Alexander Chee: Well, I
didn't want to put it that way,
but mid-career artist.
And so I wondered if, Douglas,
if you have a question
for Yiyun?
>> Douglas Stuart: Yeah, I think
that one of the questions is,
is how do you sustain a career?
What has been the most
important thing for you book
after book to continue going?
>> Yiyun Li: Right, right.
>> Douglas Stuart:
A big question.
>> Yiyun Li: Oh, my god,
that's a big question.
You know, it is surprising
just to realize I, you know, I,
sometimes I still feel
like a young writer.
Like I just started and all of a
sudden you have all these books.
I think patience may
be the thing I, well,
when I was working
on my first novel,
I remember there was a
moment I was thinking, oh,
I cannot wait to finish this.
I just, I'm dying for this book
to be done to be read instead
of just, you know, working
through this terrible
experience.
It's just that long
writing experience.
I think after a few
books that kind
of [inaudible] feeling is gone.
And it's becoming
part of just awareness
that whatever I'm working
on this moment will be read
in 5 years maybe, you know,
maybe even in 10 years.
And that is all right.
I don't know, I just feel,
once I realized that, oh,
life is becoming a little
easier for me as a writer.
>> Douglas Stuart:
Actually, maybe a part,
a second part to the question.
How do you process both praise
and criticism and stay true
to the thing that you're doing?
Or do you let it affect you?
>> Yiyun Li: Well, certainly
I think at the beginning,
I may have, you know,
heard both praise
and the criticism a
little more than I do now.
You know, I, you
know, I'm reading,
I'm leading a Tolstoy
reading group now
and also last year
just reading "War
and Peace" with many readers.
And one thing I learned is each
reader has a different reading
of the same book.
So I think a lot of readers or
criticisms, it's what they want.
I think, I guess they're reading
the book they want the book
to be, or they're not
reading the book I'm,
or author means the book to be.
So in any case, I think
criticism, I don't know,
I feel that, I think
it's actually a blessing
that we write a book and five
years later or, you know,
I don't know, Douglas.
How long have you been,
how long did you work
on your first novel?
It's a long time
before a book comes out.
And by then, I feel that my
creative energy and my creative,
you know, I think,
activity has moved on.
So, you know, praises
are all right.
Criticism are all right.
I learned that from my
mentor William Trevor.
He said, when he was young
writer, he would, every time,
you know, a book came out,
he would go to the pub,
order a double whiskey
and getting drunk
on all these terrible reviews.
And then he said he realized
that after a while, I mean,
he has had a long career.
He said, the praises don't
really help you write better,
and the criticism really
rarely helps you either.
So I think when he said that,
I found it really
encouraging and heartening.
>> Douglas Stuart: Thank you.
[ Multiple Speakers ]
>> Yiyun Li: How long did
you, I'm just curious.
Sorry, just curious how
long did you, right,
how long did you
work on the book?
>> Douglas Stuart: Yeah, it took
me 10 years to write the book.
I wrote the book
over a 10, oh, sorry.
I hope [inaudible].
[ Multiple Speakers ]
>> Alexander Chee: No, no, no.
I just wanted to be clear.
>> Douglas Stuart: Oh, it took
me 10 years to write the book.
But the strange thing about
"Shuggie Bain" is I
didn't have an MFA,
and I didn't have a
circle of writer friends.
So the 10 years was
truly spent in isolation.
The only person who
read it was my husband,
and he was enormously
helpful with the editing
and the encouragement and making
sure I ate at regular intervals.
But it was an incredibly
lonely place.
And because I'd come from a
different creative industry,
Yiyun, I actually came
from industrial design,
I loved the isolation.
Because then I was very sure
that what I was creating
was only for myself.
And as I advanced in my career,
I found myself longing
for that isolation.
I certainly longed for the,
you know, support of a circle
of writer friends and
the writing community,
but creatively I like to return
to that place where it's just me
in conversation with my work.
>> Alexander Chee:
Well, I was going to ask
if you had any questions for
Douglas, but also [inaudible].
[ Multiple Speakers ]
So you did that beautifully.
But I wondered also if, you
know, as the more senior writer,
shall we say, of the two of
you, if you have any questions
for someone who has
just debuted?
>> Yiyun Li: Right.
I wonder, well, for
someone, do you, okay,
this is such a nosey
question, Douglas.
You just have to forgive me.
Do you think writing a
second novel, you know,
has the reception for "Shuggie
Bain" or has, you know,
these PR, has it affected how
you approach your second novel?
I mean, I know it's done
now, so it's probably --
[ Multiple Speakers ]
>> Douglas Stuart: Yeah.
>> Yiyun Li: Were in the middle.
>> Douglas Stuart: So the
anxiety is [inaudible].
>> Yiyun Li: So just
give us -- that's right.
Just give us a sense of how
the second novel is like.
>> Douglas Stuart: Well, one
of the really strange things
about my career, I think,
is that actually my second
novel was finished before
"Shuggie Bain" was
published and also finished,
so edited before
I won the Booker.
So it will have that sort
of sense of it was something
that I wrote only for myself
without, with the comfort
of ignorance, let's call it.
Certainly right now going
on to write my third novel,
I definitely hear
a lot of voices
in the room, and
I feel pressure.
I feel the pressure less from
a prize point of view and more
from a, I want to make
sure the readers have
that same emotional
connection with the characters.
And am I taking the time and
patience, as said earlier,
to really build this world and
immerse the readers with people
that they can sort of
touch and really feel.
And so I'm finding that
a little bit harder,
but I'm in a strange situation
where I've been writing
for a long time.
I've just only been
publishing very recently.
>> Yiyun Li: That's
a good question.
[ Multiple Speakers ]
>> Douglas Stuart: I'm
grateful for it because it's,
because I haven't written
very much this past year.
So I'm so grateful that I
had that other book complete.
>> Alexander Chee: I love
that expression of it.
That's such an interesting
approach.
It's almost like you're doing a
surprise attack on publishing.
>> Douglas Stuart: We'll see.
I might --
[ Multiple Speakers ]
-- surprise attack, but
we'll just have to see.
>> Alexander Chee: It
reminds me of something that,
Deborah Eisenberg did
something like that.
Where she said that she had
written a great deal before she
finally started publishing,
and so it allowed her
to give off the impression of
like a certain momentum when,
in fact, like all these things
had been written much earlier.
Okay, so we are we have some
questions in from readers.
[inaudible] for those of who are
watching, who have not yet put
in a question, please do.
This first one is delightful.
Do you hide any secrets
in your books
that only a few people
will find?
And then my addition to
that question would be,
and what are they?
Or could you give us one?
>> Yiyun Li: Douglas.
>> Douglas Stuart: Yeah,
I'll let you go first, Yiyun.
>> Yiyun Li: Oh, I
do that all the time,
and mostly nobody would be
able to detect it but myself.
I think it's just part of the,
writing itself is
a long process,
but every day it's just,
maybe just putting daily life,
make marker of my daily
life in my writing.
But it's always very minor,
the most minor thing, you know.
For instance, a bird, you
know, a goose flies past.
So I may have the goose in that
day's writing, which, you know,
probably only matters to me.
And I did have a misreading
of a very good book.
It's called, it's a Rebecca
West novel, it's an essay
by Rebecca West called
the "Bitter Battlefield."
And somehow I was very sleepy,
I red it into the
buttercup battlefield.
And it baffled me so much, and
I loved it because it just,
it was mysterious, the
buttercup battlefield.
And it turned out it's not
buttercup battlefield, sorry,
it sounds look a tongue twister.
So I decided to take that
for my, for a story title.
Really just because of
my silly misreading,
I used to buttercup
battlefield for a story title.
>> Douglas Stuart: I like that.
>> Alexander Chee:
That's great, Douglas.
>> Douglas Stuart: I, yeah,
I think the only thing I've
been trying to do and hide
within it is, certainly
in "Shuggie Bain" there's a
character, when we meet Shuggie
at 15, he's working
for, he's called,
he's a supper market manager,
and I call him a
parsimonious bastard.
And his name is Mr.
Killfeathers.
And then, when we
go back in the book,
we realize that Shuggie's
grandmother has had some kind
of sexual affair with
another Mr. Killfeathers.
And so, you know, they don't
know this about each other,
obviously, but there is sort
of the connections there.
And I did that very
deliberately.
Because what I actually was
doing through "Shuggie Bain,"
in the hopes that I would
have other works published,
is send out these
connectors, these characters
that were almost holding
their hand out to join
with another character in a
next book or the book after.
Because I think of my work
much like a tapestry, you know.
My next novel is a very
different set of characters,
but it is the same milieu.
And so I wanted to really
create this landscape
where all these voices were
talking about the same sort
of time, and the books are in
conversation with each other
in very slight subtle
ways in that way.
>> Alexander Chee:
That's beautiful.
Douglas, when is this
next book coming?
When can we expect it?
>> Douglas Stuart: Yeah, it
publishes in English in April.
It's called "Young Mungo."
And Mungo or Saint Mungo is
the patron saint of Glasgow.
But my Mungo is a 15-year-old
young man who is fighting
for a territorial Protestant
gang and falls in love
with a Catholic boy
across the other divide.
And they're in all kinds of
situations of low expectations
and violence and what
it means to be a man.
And, yeah, as, after Shuggie I
was in such, I had such a desire
to write about sexual
desire and about first love
and about romantic desire,
because Shuggie's entire
love affair is his mother.
And so this was my
book to do that.
>> Alexander Chee: And, Yiyun,
you have quite modestly spoken
of your reading group.
But "Tolstoy Together" is sort
of, it's almost like a movement.
>> Yiyun Li: Thank you.
>> Alexander Chee: And there's
a book associated with it.
Do you want to talk a little bit
about that, it has
just appeared.
>> Yiyun Li: Yes.
So the book just
came out last week.
It's called "Tolstoy
Together; 85 days of War
and Peace with Yiyun Li."
So what happened was, at the
beginning of the pandemic,
I just worried that
everybody was lost.
And I read "War and Peace"
every year, so I just sent
out an invitation
to the wide world,
you know, through social media.
I wasn't on social media, so I
did this with a public space.
And I thought maybe there
would be ten people reading
"War and Peace" with me.
And it turned out about 3,000
people around the world,
you know, started
reading with me.
And we read the whole
book in 85 days.
My plan was after
reading "War and Peace,"
we would exit the pandemic.
That did not happen.
And so we collect
the reading journal
of last year's reading
published as a book.
So I started again
leading a second reading.
Hopefully this time truly
after 85 days we'll
be in a better place.
>> Alexander Chee: So a few more
questions here from readers.
Two of our readers have
asked about writer's block.
The first question is, do you
believe in writer's block?
And then the second being
what strategies do you use
to get past writer's block?
What do you do to clear your
mind and allow the flow?
>> Yiyun Li: Douglas.
>> Douglas Stuart: I
don't know how I feel
about writer's block
to be totally honest.
But I do certainly know that
I try to approach my work
with a discipline and hold
myself to producing something.
And then I know, when I'm
angry or when I'm tired
or when I'm distracted or when
I'm going to write something
that I'll ultimately
regret, and I allow myself
to step away from the desk.
And so I try to be
very aware of myself
and what it is I'm
going to produce.
And I also feel sometimes,
if you can't write for a week
or two or three weeks
even, that that is okay.
You have to almost
know yourself.
But you also have to, I
find I have to also know
when I'm just trying to cut
school and when I'm trying not
to do it, and then I have
to apply myself to the desk.
So it's, you know, sometimes I
think not writing is it actually
a really beneficial
thing for a writer.
I think we have to
do some walking.
We have to do some thinking.
We have to go out and actually
engage with the real world
and meet people and
listen to them.
And so that's really
all I can say about it.
I try to know myself and know
when I'm trying to go force it
as opposed to when it's
really not going to come.
>> Yiyun Li: Yeah, I very
much agree with Douglas.
I don't know if I believe in
writer's block, but I also,
I used to write every
day, but I don't anymore.
You know, life is, you have all
sorts of obligations in life.
And it doesn't, I think, you
know, what matters to me is,
if there's a reader, if I, I
have never had a reader's block,
but if I did I would
really worry.
I think reading is
probably more important,
reading every day
is more important
than writing every day.
But I agree with Douglas, is,
one is, both is the discipline.
I do, you know, sometimes I
don't think, I was talking
to a young writer, and she said,
I only have two hours
in the morning.
I don't have enough time.
I thought, well, two hours
sounds a long time for me.
Sometimes I --
>> Douglas Stuart: Yeah.
>> Yiyun Li: -- just
have half an hour.
I would just write one sentence.
I just want to write
one beautiful sentence,
and that's it.
So I think as long as I
can write one sentence,
that's sounds good.
It's not a block.
The other thing I do actually,
it's quite helpful for myself,
is I did have moments in my
life, I had difficulty writing.
So I would hand copy, just
happened I hand copy "War
and Peace," you know, passages
I liked from "War and Peace."
But I also hand copy
other books I love.
Just to have that eye-hand,
you know, coordination.
Just to keep the mind
going, keep the hands going.
And that is tremendously
helpful for me.
>> Alexander Chee: Wonderful.
We have just a minute left.
Can you each name a role model?
>> Yiyun Li: My role model is,
you know, that Charles Schultz
who did the "Peanuts" strip.
If I, you know, I, he's
really just my, I mean,
he does that every day.
He did it every day for so many
years and everything by himself.
So I would say he's really
one, my biggest role model.
>> Alexander Chee: Wow.
>> Douglas Stuart: I think my
role model has always been the
working, working-class
women that raised me
in the community around me.
When Yiyun was talking about
30 minutes, actually feels
like quite a lot of
time to write, I agree.
You know, I saw these women
having to do so many things
in a day, and they never
had time for anything.
And yet they could manifest
whatever they needed to do.
And, in fact, that, I think,
was just really strong.
There's such strength there.
>> Alexander Chee: Well,
thank you both so much.
Thank you everyone
who joined us today.
This was a wonderful,
wonderful conversation.
You did beautifully with
my sadistic questions.
And it was a delight
to speak with you.
Thank you so much.
>> Yiyun Li: Thank you, Alex.
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