WEBVTT 00:00.500 --> 00:10.160 align:start [ Music ] 00:10.160 --> 00:14.510 align:start >> Poetry and Prose is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. 00:14.510 --> 00:58.350 align:start [ Music ] 00:58.350 --> 01:01.350 align:start >> Welcome to the 2020 National Book Festival. 01:01.350 --> 01:06.760 align:start My name is Colleen Shogan and I'm the Vice Chair of the Women's Suffrage Centennial Commission. 01:06.760 --> 01:10.900 align:start I'm honored to moderate this session entitled The Examined Self, 01:10.900 --> 01:14.950 align:start which is part of the festival's Fearless Women programming. 01:14.950 --> 01:18.210 align:start We have two remarkable authors with us this discussion. 01:18.210 --> 01:23.160 align:start Before we begin, let me tell you briefly about each of them. 01:23.160 --> 01:28.180 align:start Elizabeth Tallent is the author of the memoir scratched, which we will be discussing today. 01:28.180 --> 01:34.240 align:start She is also the author of the novel Museum Pieces and four collections of short stories. 01:34.240 --> 01:40.090 align:start Her stories have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, 01:40.090 --> 01:44.540 align:start Grand Street, The Paris Review, and The Threepenny Review. 01:44.540 --> 01:49.730 align:start Her teaching has been honored with Stanford's Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award 01:49.730 --> 01:55.140 align:start and the Northern California Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa's Excellence in Teaching Award. 01:55.140 --> 02:00.740 align:start In 2009, she received the Stanford University Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching. 02:00.740 --> 02:06.470 align:start She has been a finalist for the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award. 02:06.470 --> 02:11.770 align:start Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House 02:11.770 --> 02:15.540 align:start and the short story collection Her Body and other Parties. 02:15.540 --> 02:20.840 align:start She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, 02:20.840 --> 02:28.350 align:start the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Non-Fiction, 02:28.350 --> 02:32.840 align:start the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, 02:32.840 --> 02:36.940 align:start and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. 02:36.940 --> 02:41.400 align:start She is the writer-in-residence at the University of Pennsylvania. 02:41.400 --> 02:46.090 align:start Welcome Carmen and Elizabeth to the 20th Annual National Book Festival. 02:46.090 --> 02:48.490 align:start >> Nice to be here. 02:48.490 --> 02:50.450 align:start >> Yeah, thanks for having me. 02:50.450 --> 02:50.620 align:start >> Yes. 02:50.620 --> 02:52.030 align:start >> Absolutely. 02:52.030 --> 02:56.860 align:start So I've interviewed other authors who have written memoirs for the National Book Festival 02:56.860 --> 03:03.420 align:start and I always start out with some variation of this question: Why did you decide 03:03.420 --> 03:07.620 align:start to write a memoir and why did you decide to reveal some 03:07.620 --> 03:13.690 align:start of your most personal experiences and thoughts in this format? 03:13.690 --> 03:18.460 align:start Carmen, maybe -- do you want to start us out? 03:18.460 --> 03:20.140 align:start >> Oh, sure, yeah. 03:20.140 --> 03:29.010 align:start I mean, I guess the short answer is I didn't know what else to do. 03:29.010 --> 03:34.330 align:start I sort of described -- I feel like on my book tour for this book, which I got kind of in 03:34.330 --> 03:41.720 align:start under the wire before COVID, a lot of people were asking me about if it felt cathartic 03:41.720 --> 03:44.840 align:start to write this book or if it was necessary for me to write this book, and for me, 03:44.840 --> 03:50.940 align:start it felt something closer to passing a kidney stone, like it was terrible and I had to do it 03:50.940 --> 03:55.510 align:start because I had other things I needed to get done and other books I wanted to write, 03:55.510 --> 04:04.820 align:start and this felt -- it felt like it was in my way and I had to sort of get it out of my body, 04:04.820 --> 04:06.850 align:start which I wouldn't call "catharsis." 04:06.850 --> 04:11.970 align:start I think it's like an entirely different sort of process, but yeah, 04:11.970 --> 04:17.180 align:start it certainly wasn't because it was fun. 04:17.180 --> 04:21.290 align:start >> Elizabeth, can you tell us why you decided to write the book? 04:21.290 --> 04:29.550 align:start >> I think for me it was kind of as if this book haunted with a narrative or my thinking 04:29.550 --> 04:38.450 align:start about perfectionism haunted so much else that I was writing that I began to feel that need 04:38.450 --> 04:45.040 align:start to really -- to write it, to really write it and see where that would go. 04:45.040 --> 04:53.440 align:start So I really resisted it because of the -- because of the questions of disclosure, 04:53.440 --> 04:57.240 align:start but then it -- there's a paradox because it seems to me 04:57.240 --> 05:03.780 align:start that every sentence a writer writes is sort of helplessly self-disclosing, 05:03.780 --> 05:08.420 align:start that we are always sort of like -- Virginia Woolf in Orlando says something like, 05:08.420 --> 05:10.750 align:start "Why do we need biographies of writers?" 05:10.750 --> 05:15.090 align:start A writer is telling you who she is in every single paragraph. 05:15.090 --> 05:19.980 align:start You always know that mind that you're in contact with. 05:19.980 --> 05:26.790 align:start So it was kind of trying to just map it on to the page instead of keeping all my thinking 05:26.790 --> 05:32.030 align:start about perfectionism inside my head. 05:32.030 --> 05:35.600 align:start >> Can you talk to us about the titles of your respective books, 05:35.600 --> 05:37.410 align:start Scratched and In the Dream House? 05:37.410 --> 05:41.730 align:start When I thought about both of your books, I thought of how unique these titles were, 05:41.730 --> 05:46.490 align:start but after I had read the books, I understood why you had selected those titles, 05:46.490 --> 05:50.560 align:start but perhaps you could talk about why you selected those words 05:50.560 --> 05:52.110 align:start and why they were meaningful to you. 05:52.110 --> 05:53.690 align:start Elizabeth, to start us off. 05:53.690 --> 05:58.330 align:start >> Yeah, I liked that it was physical. 05:58.330 --> 06:03.740 align:start I wanted to get at the embodied quality of the trauma of -- and embody -- 06:03.740 --> 06:11.050 align:start I like that it was past tense because it seemed like in the past tense of Scratched, 06:11.050 --> 06:19.290 align:start the damage had already been inscribed, and so you could either find ways of living with it 06:19.290 --> 06:25.480 align:start and writing with it, or you could yield to it and let it dominate in that kind of -- 06:25.480 --> 06:28.380 align:start seemed to me it's a lot to make out of a single-word title, 06:28.380 --> 06:34.130 align:start but it gave me what I needed to go on with the book. 06:34.130 --> 06:41.610 align:start >> I similarly found my title -- the process of arriving at my title to be kind 06:41.610 --> 06:44.730 align:start of an essential part of the project, so when I sold it, 06:44.730 --> 06:46.660 align:start it actually had a completely different title. 06:46.660 --> 06:51.190 align:start Part of the book is set in Indiana and the title I had come up with was House 06:51.190 --> 06:53.750 align:start in Indiana, which was just a placeholder. 06:53.750 --> 06:58.420 align:start I never liked it, but it was -- because -- and the whole sort of structure of the book, 06:58.420 --> 07:06.700 align:start each chapter is house in Indiana as blank, so I knew I wanted a title that could sort of serve 07:06.700 --> 07:11.200 align:start as both the title for the book and also as this sort of -- 07:11.200 --> 07:14.540 align:start these sort of subtitles that use the different sort of tropes 07:14.540 --> 07:17.290 align:start in genre the book uses to sort of articulate that. 07:17.290 --> 07:23.130 align:start So it had a lot of heavy lifting to do, but I knew that the House in Indiana was not going 07:23.130 --> 07:27.370 align:start to work, so -- and I just ignored the problem for months and years, 07:27.370 --> 07:34.720 align:start and then as I was finishing up, my editor and my agent were like, "So we really need you to, 07:34.720 --> 07:37.960 align:start like, pick a title, like we're beginning the part of the process where you have 07:37.960 --> 07:44.120 align:start to know what the title actually is going to be," and I was like, "Okay, give me, like, two days. 07:44.120 --> 07:48.850 align:start I'm going to just, like, focus all my creative energy on figuring out the title." 07:48.850 --> 07:56.150 align:start And I just began to -- I mean, I knew "house" had to be part of it, like houses are a big part 07:56.150 --> 08:00.550 align:start of the book, and so I began to just do things like write down every title -- 08:00.550 --> 08:05.820 align:start every title I could think of, existing art that had the word "house" in it, like every painting 08:05.820 --> 08:10.960 align:start and every movie and every other book and I wrote down all the house idioms I could think of 08:10.960 --> 08:14.180 align:start and I just began, like, scrambling words. 08:14.180 --> 08:18.100 align:start It was like this weird exercise that was -- I used to do copyrighting, 08:18.100 --> 08:23.080 align:start so it was sort of similar to that, I feel, like very pleasurable, and I actually -- 08:23.080 --> 08:27.470 align:start so I came up -- and I liked "dream house" sort of kind of popped out at me 08:27.470 --> 08:31.800 align:start and I ran it past my editor and they were like, "How about In the Dream House?" 08:31.800 --> 08:35.640 align:start And I was like, "Okay, that works," but it actually ended up working out really beautifully 08:35.640 --> 08:40.510 align:start because once I -- like once I started sort of, you know, put that as the title, 08:40.510 --> 08:46.850 align:start I realized that a seam of dreams actually came up a lot in the book and dreaming both 08:46.850 --> 08:51.420 align:start as fantasy and as a place where like your body is one place and your mind is another. 08:51.420 --> 08:56.550 align:start It actually all kind of worked out, and also a dream house is like this idyllic place, like, 08:56.550 --> 09:00.560 align:start I don't know, the word ended up doing a lot of sort of weight-bearing in this way 09:00.560 --> 09:03.770 align:start that I actually found very fruitful to sort of finish the book out. 09:03.770 --> 09:10.110 align:start So it actually worked out really well in its own way. 09:10.110 --> 09:14.840 align:start >> Elizabeth, you write about perfectionism and you write in the book 09:14.840 --> 09:19.470 align:start that perfectionism is a strange affliction because a lot 09:19.470 --> 09:22.410 align:start of people actually view it as a strength. 09:22.410 --> 09:26.670 align:start So how did you approach writing about a crippling condition 09:26.670 --> 09:30.180 align:start that some people consider a virtue? 09:30.180 --> 09:39.730 align:start >> I think I directly kind of contested that notion of the description of perfectionism 09:39.730 --> 09:44.430 align:start and sometimes as like -- it's a description that's acknowledging 09:44.430 --> 09:51.780 align:start that the person has these impossibly high standards and they have phenomenal drive 09:51.780 --> 09:57.680 align:start to reach these standards and goals, and so it's even supposed to be something that you say 09:57.680 --> 10:02.100 align:start in a job interview if you're asked what your biggest flaw is and you say, 10:02.100 --> 10:08.520 align:start "I'm a perfectionist," and that's supposed to be sort of like that's a positive attribute. 10:08.520 --> 10:14.450 align:start So I tried to contest it directly because my definition of perfectionism would be 10:14.450 --> 10:21.330 align:start that there is this very abusive internal discourse, so it's the abusiveness 10:21.330 --> 10:27.760 align:start and the relentlessness that I was characterizing and kind of taking it in that direction 10:27.760 --> 10:36.280 align:start as an experience of the internal censoriousness, which is highly inhibiting 10:36.280 --> 10:44.570 align:start and which is an ongoing force and it's disrupting the tolerance that you need in order 10:44.570 --> 10:47.240 align:start to make something, that if you want to make something, you -- 10:47.240 --> 10:54.790 align:start it seems to me you need an appetite for flaws and failures and a willingness to bear 10:54.790 --> 11:00.010 align:start with your own shortcomings that is ruled out by the kind 11:00.010 --> 11:04.510 align:start of perfectionism that I'm writing about. 11:04.510 --> 11:09.390 align:start >> And Carmen, your memoir focuses on an abusive relationship you had 11:09.390 --> 11:12.680 align:start with a woman over several years. 11:12.680 --> 11:16.390 align:start I think some people probably misconstrue domestic abuse 11:16.390 --> 11:19.740 align:start as a predominantly heterosexual problem. 11:19.740 --> 11:23.910 align:start What do you think the impact will be of In the Dream House? 11:23.910 --> 11:29.730 align:start What will it have -- what impact will it have on broadening awareness about psychological 11:29.730 --> 11:34.930 align:start and domestic abuse amongst non-heterosexual communities? 11:34.930 --> 11:42.940 align:start >> Well, I suppose that one of the most wonderful and terrible things 11:42.940 --> 11:46.950 align:start about being a writer is that one does not know, I think, 11:46.950 --> 11:51.280 align:start what the impact of one's work will be in any real measure. 11:51.280 --> 11:56.210 align:start I mean, I feel like you get a small sense of it when you're in the world, but, I mean, 11:56.210 --> 12:01.390 align:start one of the things that I find so interesting about writing is its ability to reach, you know, 12:01.390 --> 12:08.030 align:start across national boundaries and languages and time, like I can have a conversation 12:08.030 --> 12:11.270 align:start with a writer who died long before I was born and there's no way 12:11.270 --> 12:15.300 align:start that person could possibly have imagined me or know that I would be reading their book 12:15.300 --> 12:19.520 align:start and having whatever reaction I am having to it, and so I don't know. 12:19.520 --> 12:24.300 align:start I mean, I hope -- I hope it's helpful and useful. 12:24.300 --> 12:27.040 align:start I feel like I've done the thing that I knew what to -- 12:27.040 --> 12:34.760 align:start that I knew how to do, which was write a book, and beyond that, it's sort of hard to say. 12:34.760 --> 12:40.980 align:start I mean, I hope it opens -- I think my biggest hope is that it opens a door for sort 12:40.980 --> 12:45.110 align:start of other writers who want to write about this or similar topics, because, you know, 12:45.110 --> 12:50.180 align:start I'm only writing -- yes, I'm writing a story of, like, domestic violence in a queer relationship, 12:50.180 --> 12:55.010 align:start but I'm, like, one person with, like, one very specific sort of intersection of identities. 12:55.010 --> 12:59.080 align:start I know lots of other people who have had their own experiences and I think there's just, 12:59.080 --> 13:02.930 align:start I don't know, like a lot of ways -- a lot of ways to have that conversation 13:02.930 --> 13:10.540 align:start and I just really hope that that space feels a little more open for other people, and I also -- 13:10.540 --> 13:14.370 align:start actually, I don't know, that's the end of my thought. 13:14.370 --> 13:21.220 align:start >> I think a lot of our listeners and readers and viewers, they love to hear about the process 13:21.220 --> 13:24.440 align:start of writing from our National Book Festival authors. 13:24.440 --> 13:30.490 align:start So can you talk a little bit about, each of you, about how you approached writing a memoir? 13:30.490 --> 13:33.150 align:start Writing a memoir is very different than writing a novel 13:33.150 --> 13:36.490 align:start or writing a short story or an interpretive essay. 13:36.490 --> 13:40.820 align:start How did you ensure that as a writer, you were telling your stories 13:40.820 --> 13:43.770 align:start in a way that you wanted them to be told? 13:43.770 --> 13:49.160 align:start >> Oh, that's the whole ball game. 13:49.160 --> 13:58.780 align:start That's -- that is the work that you're doing, is trying to figure out where it feels to you 13:58.780 --> 14:04.260 align:start as if it really carves through the way you are seeing it and -- 14:04.260 --> 14:11.030 align:start but I knew from writing fiction since I was in my 20s that my -- 14:11.030 --> 14:19.250 align:start so much of my brain is devoted to my literary inheritance, so it is full of these templates, 14:19.250 --> 14:25.440 align:start and one of the templates is that there's a hero's journey or that it would be -- 14:25.440 --> 14:31.380 align:start I have a notion that reading about an affliction, reading about a disorder 14:31.380 --> 14:35.750 align:start like perfectionism would be really unbearable if there was no arc, 14:35.750 --> 14:44.000 align:start if there was no hero's journey, but I didn't feel myself to be heroic, so it was a decision 14:44.000 --> 14:50.700 align:start to kind of keep that in mind, that tension between the way that part 14:50.700 --> 14:56.270 align:start of my brain thinks it ought to go and the way it honestly feels to me, but, see, 14:56.270 --> 14:59.980 align:start that didn't feel different to me from writing fiction, 14:59.980 --> 15:02.640 align:start because if you're writing a fictional character, you're -- I think you're -- 15:02.640 --> 15:08.990 align:start you have to do the same work of trying to get to their emotional reality, 15:08.990 --> 15:14.570 align:start and it also means discarding a lot of bullshit that you've got in your head, 15:14.570 --> 15:18.550 align:start a lot of ways that this story should be told, ways that it has been told, 15:18.550 --> 15:25.570 align:start and so there's this -- there's a lot of the -- a lot of those tensions, 15:25.570 --> 15:32.730 align:start a lot of that work felt familiar to me from writing stories, from writing fiction. 15:32.730 --> 15:40.700 align:start >> I found the process for me to be very different than writing fiction. 15:40.700 --> 15:41.550 align:start It's so funny. 15:41.550 --> 15:48.570 align:start I did an event once with Jennifer Egan and we got into this really interesting discussion 15:48.570 --> 15:53.670 align:start about whether we write fiction to get closer to ourselves or further away from ourselves 15:53.670 --> 15:57.650 align:start and I said, "Oh, I get -- I write to get closer to myself," and she was like, "Oh, no, 15:57.650 --> 16:02.410 align:start I write fiction to get, like, far, far away from myself," which I thought was really interesting, 16:02.410 --> 16:07.530 align:start but even though for me both, you know, both fiction and non-fiction is a way 16:07.530 --> 16:10.410 align:start of sort of excavating personal material. 16:10.410 --> 16:14.950 align:start You know, non-fiction felt -- I mean, in a way, it's like I had a hand tied behind my back 16:14.950 --> 16:17.880 align:start because I was, you know, with fiction, if something's not working, yeah, 16:17.880 --> 16:22.040 align:start I can throw it away, I can start over, I can, like, you know, I'm like, oh, 16:22.040 --> 16:24.810 align:start I'll make this happen or I'll add a new character or I'll do this, but, like, 16:24.810 --> 16:27.400 align:start I don't have that option in a memoir. 16:27.400 --> 16:30.850 align:start And also, I was writing a book that wasn't just a memoir. 16:30.850 --> 16:33.190 align:start It also had criticism and essays and pop -- 16:33.190 --> 16:35.890 align:start you know, there was a lot of other stuff going on in the book. 16:35.890 --> 16:40.570 align:start So I mean, for me, it was actually about, like, kind of getting out -- 16:40.570 --> 16:45.830 align:start I call it like the "wet baby giraffe," like the wet baby giraffe of the actual events 16:45.830 --> 16:51.310 align:start of the relationship kind of fell out of me, and then it sort of had the potential for the rest 16:51.310 --> 16:56.090 align:start of the book, and then I began to, like, do a bunch of research and look up other sources and, 16:56.090 --> 17:00.070 align:start like, read legal papers, and then kind of building the rest of my sort 17:00.070 --> 17:01.850 align:start of argument or the rest of the book. 17:01.850 --> 17:06.480 align:start But for me, it felt really different and it was much harder, I should add. 17:06.480 --> 17:08.730 align:start Like, I will write fiction any day. 17:08.730 --> 17:09.810 align:start I love writing fiction. 17:09.810 --> 17:10.620 align:start It relaxes me. 17:10.620 --> 17:11.650 align:start It makes me happy. 17:11.650 --> 17:15.670 align:start I'm like, I'm so good, this is so great, what a great writing day I've had, 17:15.670 --> 17:18.300 align:start and with the memoir, it was just a mess. 17:18.300 --> 17:25.700 align:start I mean, I was a complete mess from beginning to end, so it was really different for me. 17:25.700 --> 17:32.220 align:start >> Both of your books have been described by critics and by others as uncomfortable reads 17:32.220 --> 17:38.890 align:start because they grapple with difficult subjects such as affliction or domestic abuse. 17:38.890 --> 17:44.220 align:start How does someone who writes a memoir or interpretive essays 17:44.220 --> 17:47.740 align:start as you have entice the reader to keep going, 17:47.740 --> 17:51.640 align:start to forging ahead with you while considering such discomfort? 17:51.640 --> 17:56.420 align:start I know there were times when I read both of your books when I said, "I enjoy this, 17:56.420 --> 18:01.420 align:start but I need to take a break from this book so that I can come back and then fully engage 18:01.420 --> 18:04.170 align:start with the subject matter that she's dealing with." 18:04.170 --> 18:09.890 align:start So talk a little bit about how you're able as a writer to keep the reader along with you 18:09.890 --> 18:14.630 align:start when you're dealing with the subjects that you have dealt with in your books. 18:14.630 --> 18:19.080 align:start >> Well, I loved what Carmen said earlier about, you know -- 18:19.080 --> 18:23.180 align:start Carmen, tell me if I'm paraphrasing you wrong, but it was like -- 18:23.180 --> 18:26.600 align:start it's kind of part of the pleasure and part of the -- 18:26.600 --> 18:31.210 align:start part of the pleasure of writing is that you don't have to know what the reader is going 18:31.210 --> 18:43.840 align:start to make of it, but you -- I guess I feel a lot of trust that it's going to work for some minds. 18:43.840 --> 18:50.860 align:start Some readers' minds it's going to work for, and I've never thought I was writing for everybody. 18:50.860 --> 18:57.150 align:start So I guess I feel like I talk to people the way I would talk 18:57.150 --> 18:59.550 align:start on the page or the way I would think. 18:59.550 --> 19:07.080 align:start It's kind of transcending the page and trying to go to the mind -- 19:07.080 --> 19:13.620 align:start to mind that could bear with me, that could be interested and could find it compelling 19:13.620 --> 19:20.820 align:start and to -- I'm kind of -- when I teach, I advocate against slanting things 19:20.820 --> 19:26.200 align:start for an imagined reader who's sort of less than, who's kind of less than. 19:26.200 --> 19:32.950 align:start I think you want to write for the person who can really get every nuance, 19:32.950 --> 19:36.000 align:start go with you every twist and turn that there is. 19:36.000 --> 19:43.190 align:start For me, there's optimism in imagining that there's this readerly willingness to bear 19:43.190 --> 19:49.390 align:start with you when you could say the hardest things that you're capable of saying in the most sort 19:49.390 --> 19:51.530 align:start of -- in the most sort of nuanced way. 19:51.530 --> 19:58.260 align:start That feels like optimism to me and trust and good stuff like that. 19:58.260 --> 20:00.420 align:start >> I love that and I agree. 20:00.420 --> 20:05.730 align:start I mean, I feel like the fastest way to sort of make yourself crazy as a writer is to try 20:05.730 --> 20:08.900 align:start to write for everyone because it's literally impossible. 20:08.900 --> 20:10.420 align:start There's no way to do it. 20:10.420 --> 20:13.250 align:start You will just turn yourself in circles and then never -- 20:13.250 --> 20:18.060 align:start and be exhausted and never finish what you're doing. 20:18.060 --> 20:21.790 align:start You know, I knew when I was writing this book, like I knew also that the subject 20:21.790 --> 20:28.020 align:start that I was writing was fairly niche, I knew that the material was very grim, 20:28.020 --> 20:33.840 align:start and I knew that there was a levity I had to create with a kind of frothiness to sort 20:33.840 --> 20:37.640 align:start of get a little energy into the -- because, you know, if it was just this happened, 20:37.640 --> 20:40.310 align:start then this happened, then this happened, this happened, it would be unreadable 20:40.310 --> 20:45.600 align:start because it would be so grim and so sad you'd be like, "Why am I reading this terrible thing?" 20:45.600 --> 20:52.260 align:start But I also feel like even my imagined -- like, this is why you can't imagine your readers, 20:52.260 --> 20:58.120 align:start like, you know, I wrote it thinking this is a book for queer folks who have been 20:58.120 --> 21:01.620 align:start in an abusive relationship or, like, know somebody who have and, like, 21:01.620 --> 21:07.490 align:start looking to find some sort of -- something to reflect their experience or to, like, 21:07.490 --> 21:11.450 align:start engage with, and even before the book came out, like when there were sort 21:11.450 --> 21:15.490 align:start of pre-publication copies in the world, I got emails from people 21:15.490 --> 21:17.210 align:start who I never imagined the book would speak to. 21:17.210 --> 21:21.250 align:start I got emails from people being like, "I've never been in an abusive relationship, but, like, 21:21.250 --> 21:24.720 align:start my relationship with my parent is very fraught in ways that I recognize in this book," 21:24.720 --> 21:28.530 align:start and I had somebody else say, like, "I'm not gay, but, like, I'm a woman and, like, 21:28.530 --> 21:32.640 align:start I've just never seen verbal abuse talked about in this way," and I had another person be like, 21:32.640 --> 21:34.940 align:start "I'm a man and I was never with an abusive woman 21:34.940 --> 21:38.470 align:start and I have never seen an abusive woman portrayed in a memoir before." 21:38.470 --> 21:42.550 align:start So like, you know, my book hadn't even come out and already people were showing me that, like, 21:42.550 --> 21:47.020 align:start the readers that I had theoretically kind of envisioned was just 21:47.020 --> 21:51.500 align:start like such a tiny percentage of, like, the people for whom the book meant something. 21:51.500 --> 21:57.070 align:start So yeah, so I knew -- which is like, okay, you know, I guess I don't know anything. 21:57.070 --> 22:01.570 align:start So yeah, I feel like for me it was just about like sort of, you know, writing into the unknown 22:01.570 --> 22:07.580 align:start and also trying to think about ways to sort of break up some of the intensity of the book 22:07.580 --> 22:12.170 align:start with other things was sort of my process. 22:12.170 --> 22:17.850 align:start >> Can you tell us a little bit about, both of you, what you're working on these days, 22:17.850 --> 22:23.280 align:start and talk to us a little bit about your writing during a pandemic. 22:23.280 --> 22:28.940 align:start We're certainly in different circumstances than we were six months ago or a year ago. 22:28.940 --> 22:33.690 align:start Has the isolation of a pandemic, has it affected your writing? 22:33.690 --> 22:37.600 align:start Do you think it's made you more productive, less productive? 22:37.600 --> 22:38.350 align:start How has it affected you? 22:38.350 --> 22:39.870 align:start And also, you're both teachers. 22:39.870 --> 22:42.740 align:start You both work at universities. 22:42.740 --> 22:44.790 align:start You both interact with students. 22:44.790 --> 22:46.330 align:start How do you think that will affect you 22:46.330 --> 22:56.460 align:start as the fall semester begins in your respective positions? 22:56.460 --> 23:01.630 align:start >> I would say for writing that is -- 23:01.630 --> 23:08.060 align:start it's difficult because you're aware of the context, right? 23:08.060 --> 23:17.590 align:start You are aware and might -- my daughter-in-law is -- she's been an ICU nurse throughout this 23:17.590 --> 23:25.270 align:start and having inadequate PPE, having one mask that she's supposed to wear from the beginning 23:25.270 --> 23:33.180 align:start of her 12-hour shift to the end of her 12-hour shift, and having that awareness, 23:33.180 --> 23:37.570 align:start which is just a familial connection, but having also the sense that the -- 23:37.570 --> 23:47.060 align:start the context is pretty dire, and so within that, to say that, listen, I'm a mad, 23:47.060 --> 23:54.620 align:start insane introvert, I think introverts probably have an edge in adapting to this, 23:54.620 --> 24:01.280 align:start and I love being with my wife, I love being with our dogs all the time, and I love being able 24:01.280 --> 24:10.980 align:start to read and to write all the time, so there's a kind of bind there between that sort of -- 24:10.980 --> 24:20.470 align:start I don't know if I can be more articulate about it than that, that I feel a lot of dismay, 24:20.470 --> 24:25.280 align:start consciously, socially, politically, you know, phenomenal anxiety and dismay, 24:25.280 --> 24:34.100 align:start and it's sort of like, hey, I'm at home and it's sort of been instructive about how much 24:34.100 --> 24:40.760 align:start of capital -- a working life in late capitalism is involved with like being away from your home, 24:40.760 --> 24:48.520 align:start being apart from your family, and I adore teaching and I love nothing better 24:48.520 --> 24:53.770 align:start than a seminar table with people who want to talk about their -- what they've just read. 24:53.770 --> 24:55.490 align:start It's like heaven to me. 24:55.490 --> 25:01.640 align:start So there's some deprivation in doing it on the screen, but I'll take it, right? 25:01.640 --> 25:07.750 align:start I still get to see their faces, I still get to be in conversation with their beautiful minds, 25:07.750 --> 25:12.300 align:start they're still out there, they want to talk about what they're meeting, 25:12.300 --> 25:20.060 align:start they want to talk about what they're -- they want to write, and so it's very touching to be 25:20.060 --> 25:23.490 align:start in that teaching conversation with them and it's -- 25:23.490 --> 25:28.320 align:start if I could say it without sounding woogy-woogy, it's, you know, it's one of the -- 25:28.320 --> 25:36.130 align:start it's a great thing to be able to feel like you can try and nurture something in a time 25:36.130 --> 25:42.230 align:start when our story is a story of pandemic and illness, a separation within illness, 25:42.230 --> 25:46.290 align:start people dying alone, to have your -- to have the work that you do 25:46.290 --> 25:49.870 align:start for a paycheck be about connecting with people. 25:49.870 --> 25:53.790 align:start It's just a privilege, it's fortunate. 25:53.790 --> 25:59.350 align:start >> Yeah, that was beautifully articulated. 25:59.350 --> 26:03.770 align:start I mean, I have not been very productive on my personal work. 26:03.770 --> 26:06.630 align:start I am a hypochondriac. 26:06.630 --> 26:09.560 align:start I am an extravert. 26:09.560 --> 26:14.730 align:start I have been really struggling with being at home 24 hours a day, 26:14.730 --> 26:18.870 align:start and to sort of make things worse, I recently had -- or a few months ago I had surgery, 26:18.870 --> 26:24.970 align:start so I can't even do all the things that I normally do to relieve my stress, like cleaning 26:24.970 --> 26:32.390 align:start and cooking, so I've been a real mess for a while now, and I have managed to do sort 26:32.390 --> 26:36.670 align:start of paid assignments, which is great, and then I'm also like extremely lucky, 26:36.670 --> 26:42.450 align:start like I have a beautiful home, my wife can work from home, we have a wonderful dog, 26:42.450 --> 26:46.880 align:start like we don't have to put our lives on the line every single day, like an essential worker, 26:46.880 --> 26:53.190 align:start and so, like, I understand how lucky I am, but, yeah, you know, it's been difficult 26:53.190 --> 26:56.270 align:start to get work done just because, yeah, it's not a normal time. 26:56.270 --> 27:02.310 align:start It's not -- my brain is not in a normal place, like, yeah, and also, 27:02.310 --> 27:04.610 align:start I actually also haven't been teaching this year 27:04.610 --> 27:09.650 align:start because I had coincidentally taken the year off prior to all this, 27:09.650 --> 27:12.810 align:start so I don't know what teaching is going to look like when I come back. 27:12.810 --> 27:16.170 align:start I'm just going to go back in the spring and I'm sort of assuming we'll still be online. 27:16.170 --> 27:22.700 align:start I'm assuming it's not going to be over for a while, so I'm just sort of preparing myself, 27:22.700 --> 27:27.150 align:start but even though I do kind of hate -- I hate online stuff, I hate Zoom, I hate video chat. 27:27.150 --> 27:31.310 align:start I find it very stressful, and I also love, like, a seminar room full of undergrads, 27:31.310 --> 27:35.250 align:start like just talking and being really excited, but I also recognize that, like, 27:35.250 --> 27:38.060 align:start if that's the way we got to do it to keep everybody safe, like, that's what we have 27:38.060 --> 27:42.180 align:start to do, and, like, we'll figure it out. 27:42.180 --> 27:46.620 align:start But yeah, I don't know. 27:46.620 --> 27:51.470 align:start >> Well, I want to thank both Elizabeth and Carmen for such a fascinating discussion 27:51.470 --> 27:57.480 align:start about women's lives, about writing, about the challenges of teaching 27:57.480 --> 28:03.550 align:start and instruction during this very difficult time, so thank you very much for joining us 28:03.550 --> 28:10.290 align:start for the 2020 National Book Festival, the 20th National Book Festival, and thank you for all 28:10.290 --> 28:13.510 align:start of our viewers and listeners who have joined us for the program. 28:13.510 --> 28:54.120 align:start [ Music ]