Sameer Pandya (Our Beautiful Boys) feat. Emma Donoghue, Guest Gay Reader

Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
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You Hello, and welcome to Gay'sReading.
I'm your host, Jason Blitman,and on today's episode, I have
author Sameer Pandya talking tome about his new book, our
Beautiful Boys.
And then my guest, gay reader ontoday's episode is Emma Donahue,

(00:49):
you know her as the author ofRoom and the Wonder, and both of
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Head on over to the uh,Instagram.
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There are so many books comingout today.
A couple that I wanna shout out.
the Prequel to Wicked, which ofcourse is the prequel to the

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Wizard of Oz, but the prequel toWicked by Gregory McGuire, uh,
is Elphie and I'm excited tocheck that out.
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Alright, enjoy my conversationwith Samir Pandia and Emma
Donahue.

Jason Blitman (03:39):
I'm obsessed with your shirt.

Sameer Pandya (03:42):
Oh thank you.
I was in India in December.
And one of the genuine pleasure.
So I'm from Gujarat originally,and, it's like this home of like
incredible textiles.
And my cousin took us textileshopping and I have this.
profound love of half sleeveshirts.

(04:05):
so we got all of these textilesand then went to basically the
nice tailor that my aunt hasbeen using for the last 50
years.
And this is my

Oh my god.
I am obsessed with that.

It's it is just so great and it is, and what's
just so amazing is we've, she'sused as Taylor for so long, so
that 20 years ago when I hadgone there, he opened up a
notebook and he's checked myname and he found me.
And of course you don't.
necessarily want to

What the

What

No you don't.
No you don't.

So it was anyway, it was just the greatest thing.
And so it is so yeah

not only am I complimenting your shirt, I'm
complimenting your one of a kindshirt.
Your shirt.

It's my shirt.
It is my signature shirt.
And, I don't know when it was,like, there was like a, um, in
some, so I lived in India inBombay until I was eight, where,
as you can imagine, it is veryhot a lot.
And men.
Of a certain age and like myfather, of course that was just
the uniform, right?

(05:18):
Which is, really nice halfsleeve shirt.
And years later, I found a kindof this photograph this postcard
of the Bengali filmmaker,Satyajit Ray, who was always,
sartorially spiffy.
And he he was wearing thisincredible half sleeve shirt.
And I'm like, all right, dude,we are, we, I have found my, I

(05:40):
have found my kind of the thingthat, I enjoy.
So here we are with my shirt.
I love talking shorts.

spiffy.
What a good phrase.

I, I think if you're going to use the word
sartorial, you have to undo itspretentiousness by by, by adding
spiffiness.
I think that's all I

Oh so professorial of you.

That's, I have a day job.
So

know, I read bios.

yeah.
And it's a day job.
It's a day job that I like.

That's good.

anyway, that's that, that, that's where all

Wait, now I Do you have a whole closet full of
shirts where you picked out thetextiles and they were made just
for you?
Oh my god, Samir, I'm sojealous.

yeah.

didn't even say yes, your face did.

Yeah, no I have some of the, and the thing is I
have a lot of half sleeve shirt.
It's funny because I, you know,I don't know if we wanna talk
about this.
I'm happy to

Bring it, on, this is Gay's Reading, we can
talk about anything.

so for a while I think my obsession started with
these Paul Smith half sleeveshirts, paul Smith is, he's that
kind of the English kind ofdesigner who, who go, my guess
is that like when the Beatleswere high in their Paisley era,
like they were wearing a lot ofPaul

Oh yeah.

and so I remember I just, and the thing is, those
shirts are so expensive.
And so I remember in the fiveyears.
We lived in New York, Barney'swould have it's like big sale
and I would like desperatelylook for the Paul Smith shirts
that were on serious remainder,and so I start, I that's where
all of this started and like theEnglish, like shirt makers, they

(07:30):
just a lot of times the.
American shirts tend to be this,right?
And I think it's a very specifickind of tailoring where you can
see with the Smiths they do thiskind of amazing stitching in the
back.
And in essence, I don't rememberwhat kind of shirt was that I
liked that I was wearing, butessentially what I did was I
just took it to the tailor.

(07:52):
And so he, Essentially tailoredit exactly, including this is
absurd, including this buttonhere, which I just love.
And there are a lot of halfsleeve shirts in my

Oh my god, I, I'm obsessed.
And India is very high on ourlist of places to visit.
This only makes it higher.

Yeah.
And, I think at some point Ihad, I have this.
I love orange and now I'm just acliche, but I'm a big fan of
orange and pink.
And I think at some point I hadseen a quote in Vogue or Elle
magazine where it said pink andorange are the navy blue of
India.

(08:31):
And which I

So you are a cliche.

I am a cliche, But thank God I live in
California.
So then

know like it's such a good California shirt.
Oh, my God.
Listen, as much as I want tolearn more about your shirts,
and frankly would not be madabout with a tour of the closet,
because now that textile is justso fantastic.
I have to see more of them.
But we're not here to talk aboutthat.
We're here to talk about yourbook, our beautiful boys.

and I want to show you that the new beautiful
hardback arrived yesterday.
And, you know, I have to saylike one, if one fetishizes
objects, I'm really happy tofetishize this one.

For our listeners, tell me, tell us,
tell everyone, what is yourelevator pitch for our beautiful
boys?

yeah, my elevator pitch is, um, at a party late
one Friday night four boys endup in a cave three of them, they
have an altercation, three ofthem come out and roughly 40
minutes later, the fourth onecomes out screaming and hurt.

(09:39):
And clearly has gotten into afight and in essence, the, the
driving plot of the story iswhat happened in the cave.
And because I'm a sampler, I amessentially sampling this from A
Passage to India, which is whichwas published 100 years ago last
year in June 2024.

(10:00):
And the driving question of thatgreat novel is what happened in
the cave.

Interesting.
Interesting.
Interesting.
Interesting.
I say that eight times Becausesomething I wanted to bring up
later is your use of a separatepiece in the book.
You talk about being a sampler.
I had never really thought aboutthat contextually before.

(10:25):
And I, a separate piece, I wantto be very clear, was not
assigned to me in high school.
So I, I didn't only not read itbecause I was being a bad
student, but I also didn't readit because it wasn't assigned to
me.
But I wasn't familiar with theplot.
And so I did a little researchand upon learning what a
separate piece is about, I waslike, Oh, this is very
intentional.

(10:47):
In terms of sampling, can youshare a little bit about your
choice of using a separate pieceas a text that comes up in the
context of your book?

I teach literature for a living.
And I tell my own origin storyabout the books that were
important to me um, if I'mtrying to be serious, or if I'm
trying to perform something,I'll say, Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man when I read itwas important to me.
And it was important to me.
As a senior in high school, thefirst big book we were asked to

(11:19):
read, which is incredible, whichis Crime and Punishment, right?
So all the big books, right?
But in fact, the book that Iread in high school that blew me
away, that has stuck with me,and I'm not going to tell you
when I graduated from highschool but now a long time ago
That book really stuck with meis because when you're so this

(11:39):
is this John Knowles novel Itwas not assigned to me a friend
of mine had read it was smarterthan me Who'd said hey you want
to read this book.
I think it's a reallyinteresting book and It is
essentially about Two boys at aprivate at a boarding school and
it's told, of course, inretrospect one of the boys at,
at this point, and I don't thinkit gives away the mystery has

(12:01):
died, and the older, wisernarrator is thinking back on
that moment and when I read thisbook in high school, I think, of
course, when you read books thatare important to you, you're
like, oh it's giving my ownattention.
Absurd, sad high school life,greater meaning, Our high school
lives, our adolescences arenever quite as interesting as we

(12:23):
would have liked them to be, oras they are in these books,
right?
But so much of, I think, what Iwas thinking about then, and I
think so much of what I'mthinking about with this book
is, how do we think aboutrelationships between teenagers,
teenage boys in particular, Andof course When I read it in high
school, and now I, I, right as Iwas beginning, I, the book has

(12:46):
stuck with me for so long, andso I did, I could not sadly
enough find the old copy that Ihad from high school which is,
of course, heartbreaking.
So I found, a reissue of it thatDavid Levitt wrote, writes the
introduction for, right?
And what's, of course,fascinating is that there are he
is, Essentially arguing, Ithink, in the introduction to

(13:09):
the book that the relationshipbetween the boys is not simply
platonic.
And it is so fascinating for me.
Reading it all of these yearslater with, a very different
consciousness in mind.
And thinking about what thatlooks like and how we understand
it.
I realized my writing is aboutthis kind of sampling and
rethinking.
So let me stop there.

(13:30):
You

Well, so I was gonna say, in reflecting what
the title of a separate piecemeans the sort of coming
together of these threedifferent boys to coexist, uh,
for lack of a better phrase, inpeace in a world where there
isn't peace and they are theirown little separate peace uh, I

(13:52):
found to be another element ofthis book beyond the what
happened in the cave question,you know, can these boys live
together in harmony, basicallyin a platonic way in, in the
context of your book.
I also want to say, this is verymuch a football book.

(14:14):
Are you are you a fan?
Are you, a quote unquote, aliteral question in the book is
someone saying, have you everwatched a football game?
For me, the answer is no,period.
I have never watched a footballgame.
Where did the love of footballfor you come from?

So maybe I can answer this, both, both your,
what you were saying about aseparate piece and then football
together, right?
Because what I realized, ofcourse, and so much of this book
is about the opposite of peace,which is violence right?
Which is the small violencesthat these young men or kind of
boys becoming young men inflictupon one another.

(14:52):
But of course, the, as thenarrator refers to in the book,
the most un Gandhian of Sports,which is American football,
right?
And so for me, football was thekind of the sport that best
helped me think through thisidea that, these boys are asked

(15:15):
to be violent on the field.
So to your question, absolutely.
I watched the game.
I have so much trouble with it.
I'm so disgusted by it.
I'm watching it.
Like that.
That is, I think the older Iget, I'm totally.
At peace with doing things thatare completely contradictory,
right?
I'm like, okay.
Okay.

(15:35):
Our lives are too short for meto not do that.
Right?
And so I love it.
But I think that what I wantedto think about was I went to a
couple of years before I evenstarted writing this book.
I was at a high school footballgame.
And at one point, I noticed thatthere was an ambulance parked.
And I asked somebody about itand they said, Oh yeah, that's a
part of the league rules.

(15:56):
And I'm like, we're playing agame where the rule is to have
an ambulance?
There's something reallyseriously wrong with this.
And there's that, Jason.
But then juxtapose with it isthat the crowds are going crazy.
And so I think that's what I'min some ways trying to figure
out, which is, I think theperformance of masculinity on a

(16:16):
football field is so over thetop and yet I think you and I
can, masculinity is just way toocomplicated to be
straightforward, right?
Like there are so many layers ofhow these young men are being
acculturated on this field.
And so those, that's the pieceof the football and.
The last sampling thing I'lltell you, which is, the two
books I loved in that context isDeLillo's End Zone, which I read

(16:40):
years ago about where he doesthis thing about nuclear war and
football and then Friday NightLights, right?
Buzz Bissinger's book isterrific.
And so in some ways, creativityis such a weird, unknowable
thing, but I think what happenswhen you take these two or three
books that have been importantthat have been buzzing in your
ear and you M them together

You get Our Beautiful Place.

You get what I tried to create?
Yeah.

I recently had R.
K.
Russell on the show, who was apro football player, and I was
saying to him I'd never seen agame.
However, I'm obsessed withFriday Night Lights, the TV
show.
It's not dissimilar from all ofthe juxtaposition that we're
talking about, I have nointerest in watching a game, I
don't think I have the patienceto watch a game, it is very, I

(17:27):
know there are lots of gaypeople who will who will tar and
feather me to say I love thegame, so don't, don't say gay
people can't watch the game, butI think there is, I'm a cliche
in that I'm a gay man whodoesn't like to watch football
and yet I couldn't, I'm notwatch Friday Night Lights.
I couldn't take my eyes off ofit.
I loved the characterdevelopment.
I loved everything that one willlove about our beautiful boys.

(17:52):
It's parallels in that way.
So that's what I was going toshare with you.

Yeah.
No, I mean, listen, I think weall want to coach like Kyle
Chandler.

Oh My god.
And a mom like Connie Britton,or a best friend like Connie
Britton.

Totally.
So that is a part of it.
And I have this kind of funnylittle joke in the book where.
The Indian American parents whoknow nothing about football
watch Friday Night Lights tofigure out what American
football is, right?
Because that's what it'screated.
I feel like, I, I know nothingabout what Texas football is but
that show did

Of not only is that a joke, that's what they
watch in order to understandwhat it's like.
For me, the joke is, we'll onlywatch the first episode.
And of course, as a huge fan ofthe TV show, know how the first
episode ends and those parentsare not going to be happy at the
end of that first Episode.

It's their absolute fear, right?
Like, that's That's the firstargument that they have about
when the kid wants to play ishe's going to break his neck.
And Kind of what happens in thefirst episode.

It's interesting that you segue this into the
conversation about the parents,because the book was secretly or
not so secretly about parenthoodand about parents and the parent
child relationship and theparent relationship both amongst
in couples, but also amongsteach other.
It reminded me.
A little bit again, talkingabout sampling.

(19:14):
I don't want to say sampling isa new term, but I've not talked
about it this much in aconversation before.
There were whiffs of the playGod of Carnage.
I don't know if you're familiarwith that or the movie Carnage.
Um,

What's so interesting is.
I do not know it, but I can'tremember who it was.
Somebody, when they first readthis book, they're like, this is
just like the God of carnage.
and and what's so interesting iswhen someone says that to me, I
am nervous to go.
Check it out because you justlike, okay, I'm going to stick

(19:51):
to what I'm doing here.
And now, of course, it's betweenthe covers.
So I'm done.
So I can go to it.
But, Interesting thing about theprocess of writing this book,
which was, I wanted to write astory about the adults.
And I wanted to, I think in someways, I'm interested in

(20:12):
domesticity and marriage and thecomplications that exist in
family, right?
And kind of in families that arenot at the beginning or at the
end, but rather in the middle,right?
Which is how do you managemiddleness as opposed to the
flush of excitement of earlinessand the exhaustion of later,

(20:32):
right?
And I began to write about theseteenagers, right?
And I think I will be totallyhonest.
I was nervous to write about it,right?
This because, You fear corninesswhen you're writing, right?
Which is if I am going to writethese boys I don't want to, I
don't want to sound like.
An old person writing young,young people, right?

(20:54):
And so I kept going back andforth and, the book is where it
is, where I've tried to balanceout both of these things.
But my kind of, the thing that Ikeep returning back to are these
three families, right?
And I don't think I sat down andsaid, I need an Indian family, I
need a white family, and I needa Latino family, right?

(21:14):
I had Veronica Cruz in my mind.
I had a thought of the books shehas written.
I had kind of Michael Berengerwho Perhaps drinks too much and
is having a rough go.
And then I had, there's a scenewhere the Geeta Shastri, who's

(21:35):
the mother tears down thesecupboards in her kitchen.
And so I had these three.
Ideas of these people, right?
And so you slowly build.
And the idea, of course, isthey're totally different.
But maybe if I do my job and Iknow this is that this is what
American families look like,that there are ways that this is

(21:58):
their ways in which they areradically different and their
ways in which they're dealingwith.
All of the things that all ofthese families are dealing with,
right?

And I think I say God of Carnage because, listen,
I saw the play on Broadway, Ithink in 2009.
So it's been a very long time.
I, I couldn't quote it to you.
I couldn't tell you the exactplot, but what I remember is a
vibe, is a feeling, is the ideaof, Kids are fighting at school
and it's the parents that cometogether to solve the problem

(22:26):
amongst themselves.
I think that's the sort of vibeI was feeling from this.
There was zero copying of anykind.
It's just that the parentstalking amongst themselves when
there's trouble with the kids.
That was, that's the onlyelement that, that it invoked in
me.
But it's interesting that parentstory that I saw many years ago
on Broadway I felt some specificway about it that then made me

(22:48):
feel some specific way readingabout that.
This, the idea of these parentsworking something out for their
kids because ultimately theywant what's best for their kids,
right?
And I feel Like that's auniversal belief.

Yeah.
But,

But at what, cost is my, Is my real question,

yeah and that, this phrase is interesting,
right?
To do what's best for the kids.
And I think what I've beentrying to think through is what
if, in fact, what's best for thekids is a displacement of what
it is you desire right?
That is And I'm not thiscynical, but is the achievement
that we want from these, thatthese parents want from their

(23:24):
kids, is it somehow equal to thedesire to vacation in the
Maldives, right?
That is.
Are we consuming our children'ssuccess in the way in which we
are consuming the other thingsthat we consume to show, look

(23:45):
how good this is, right?
Which is I'm gonna buy a$16 loafof sourdough and not worry about
the fact that's$16 for a loaf ofsourdough.
And so I think that's one of thethings that I've been.
Kind of curious about right,which is at some point Nita says
something about how you knowAbout why she's pushing her kid,

(24:06):
right and she's honest about it.
She said It's a reflection ofthe work that they have done,
right?
And I think that's that's what Iwas trying to think

yeah.
And you have kids.

I have kids.
Yeah, two of them.
Hey, two boys

you learned more about parenting, changed your
parenting style, thought in anew way post writing this book?

Yeah, I think First of all, I think writing
the book was an opportunity forme to visit the weird complexity
of my own adolescence, and I saythat Anyone that I like has a
weird complexity of

A hundred percent.
We all

Like I yeah, like I'm not sure the person who says
I had a really normaladolescence is someone I don't
really trust you know,

I would also like to talk to them.
I have a lot of

Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
What are you hiding?
So I think that on one level itwas a desire to figure that out,
right?
but it was I think on somethingelse, I am just, because this is
also a book about class, right?
None of these families arestruggling, right?

(25:23):
Even if, a few of them arestruggling with their work and
don't know where all the moneyis going to come from.
Right?
There are three well offfamilies.
And so that's what I wasthinking in my particular case,
right?
So I moved to this country whenI was eight, right?
And My parents were mellow aboutit, but I do think there was a

(25:45):
idea around this notion thatthey were moving for their own
sake, for their own sense ofchange and of adventure.
But also that, it's me and Ihave two older sisters that we
would have differentopportunities, especially that
my sisters where I suspect myyoungest son done in India would

(26:08):
have served me quite well rightthere.
It would not have been the samewith them.
And I think what it helped me,what this book helped me think
through is what is it that Iwant the kind of lives I want my
kids to live, right?

Yeah.

and when do I get out of the way?
When do I say, yeah, you do Ihave some ideas on what you
should be doing, but I think forthe most part, my parents got
out of my way, right?
Man, I'm not sure.
I studied literature and wroteshort fiction.
I write novels.
If they had gotten in my way, Iwould have been a lawyer and
I've been, I would have gone tobusiness school, but they said,

(26:46):
okay, it's what you want to do.
So give it a shot.
And so I, I have, I have beenthinking a lot about that, which
is particularly in the immigrantcontext.
What happens with the version ofme, right?
I've been here for 44 years,right?
Like I, I'm a Californian,right?
And so what does it mean to looklike me and raise Californian

(27:08):
children and what to say tothem?
And that's what I've been tryingto figure out.

This brings up a few questions that I had.
In reading the book, one, whichI'll talk about with you in a
minute, is about expectationsand the Gautam, the father
character in the book, he playsthis game the game of imagining
who he would be if he neverleft.
India do you play that game withyourself?
You just said you don't thinkyou would have had it too badly.

(27:34):
If you were because of youryoungest son, dumb staying in,
in India, what does that gamelook like to you?
And what in your fictionalizedversion of that world, what does
that look like

Yeah, no, it's, was it that Guadalupe Paltrow
movie?
Was it Sliding Doors,

sliding doors has come up on this podcast.
The last like six episodes and Iam both obsessed with it.
And also we all need tocollectively find a new
reference that is not slidingdoor.

Honestly, I don't even know if I've seen it.
That but all I'm

the concept of it.

I just get the concept, right?
And it's a really interestingquestion, right?
So when I was back, whatever, Ithink it was in December of
2023, What was interesting, forexample the last, the photograph
that is at the end of the bookis a photograph that my
grandfather took my grandfatherwas a portrait photographer and

(28:31):
In South Bombay, near the TajMahal Hotel, there's a photo
studio called Dave Brothers,okay, it is his name was Hiralal
Dave, and that is his photostudio, and we walked in there
and why I'm bringing this up iswhen you're from a place where

(28:51):
your parents or yourgrandparents have been, there's
a really interesting experienceyou have in South Bombay.
Okay.
Of being a part of a.
A series of generations, right?
And had I stayed, there wasplenty of that, Right?

(29:12):
On the other hand, I was aterrible high school student,
right?
I, it's not that I didn't try.
I genuinely tried.
I sucked at it, right?
A terrible SAT is all of this,right?
I was You know, since we arehappy with cliches for this
conversation, it was a totallate bloomer when it came to

(29:33):
Writing and thinking and all ofthis stuff.
I don't know how well I wouldhave done there if that was the
case, right?
Where it is, I do think it'sbecause it's just simply based
on numbers, so many more people,right?
It is just such a very differentexperience, right?
But it is, it's like a, It'slike it's such a wacky thought

(29:55):
experiment, right?
It's because all of what I have,right?
Like I'm sitting in my office.
I, I'm, I have a sense of whatmy kids look like and where I
drive to and all of this, thetrying to imagine that alternate
life is just such a, mind

Mm hmm.

I like the idea of it, but It also, I think it
hurts Gita's feelings when Deltaobsesses, right?
She's but you would have nevermet

Sure.

And,

There's something so interesting about you talking
about the deep roots of a place.
because my Mom is from Skokie,Illinois.
My dad is from Long Island.
And Strangely, I went to schoolin Chicago, and I lived for many
years in New York City, so Ilived in the city version of the

(30:44):
suburb that they grew up livingin, and if they had never left
what am I trying to say?
There's something veryinteresting about, Legacy and
the fabric of who we've become.
And even though I never lived inSkokie and I never lived in Long
Island, but I did live semiversions of that.
I do, there is a part of me thatfeels like those places.

(31:06):
are also a part of me, right?
I was a Midwesterner and a NewYorker growing up living in
South Florida, even though, justbecause that was a part of my
fabric and my legacy, Sort ofwhat you're talking about in
terms of, The legacy existed foryou in India that you would have
not fallen in line with, becauseI don't mean to say it like that
there was a path.
You weren't reinventing thewheel of who you might become,

(31:28):
per se.

Yeah.
There is also this pleasure inbeing in a place Where that
legacy does not

Absolutely.

right?
Which is why we love Los Angelesand Palm Springs and California,
right?
Where, where you can feel like,okay, and that's a thing, right?
It's so fascinating to me that,everyone is, for all the
understandable reasons, obsessedwith Joan Didion and her
Californianess,

yeah,

she's so much about, like, where I was from.
And I think so, for so many ofus, California is a very
different place.
space, right?
It's a space of openness.
And that's what I enjoy, right?
I think that there is a way inwhich you can create yourself in
a very different kind of

absolutely.
And while you can do that,you're still creating it within
the context of the human thatyou have become, and that is
from that legacy, right?
So it's, you're able to forgeyour own path.
You're not following in someoneelse's footsteps, but you are,
you're doing so with theguidance of what you've learned

(32:33):
from your past, I guess is, Ithink an interesting

And that's a thing.
Yeah, that stuff you're just notgoing to leave

Right, Right, right, right.
leave it behind.

yeah, but it may be the thing, hopefully, that we
do, with enough time and enoughtherapy is recognize in your
case when Skokie is showing up.
Or when

Yes, yes, yes, yes, exactly.

And so just be like, okay, this is where this
is coming from, right?
And it is fascinating.
Still to this day, like justthings around, like, these
things that you learn whenyou're really young, right?
About, I don't know, shoes inthe house or what you, like a
backpack, like what do you dowith a backpack?
Do you Carefully put it down.
Do you throw it?

(33:15):
All of these things, thesedetails that you didn't think
were so important to you.
If you learn them when you werequite young, they stick with you
in different kinds of ways andshape the kinds of decisions
that you're

We're sitting here talking about forging our
own path, but having a hard timeletting go of our baggage, and
at the beginning of ourconversation, when you're
talking about shirts, you weretalking about being a cliché,
liking pink and orange.
It's like, okay, but that's, Butthat's the baggage.
Right?
Cause, cause you're not a clichéin California.

And if you're lucky, the baggage, it's like
nice baggage, right?
Like That's, yeah, it's

tailored baggage.

it helps, you know, like it could be, it can
be something totally different,

of course, of course.
Um, you know, You talking abouthad you stayed in India, you
were not a very good student,that wouldn't have necessarily
gone over very well.
it it comes back to theconversation that I wanted to
have about expectations, basedon our race, our gender, our
class, our sexuality, our sportof choice, our instrument that

(34:25):
we play, there are all of thesesocietal expectations.
That come, or expectations andprobably cliches that come with
all of these things, some ofthem are self imposed, some of
them are from outside forces,and this book, I think, breaks

(34:48):
the mold and makes you reassessWhat your own expectations are
of these people.
I was surprised that they wereall great students.
And I loved that

What, why is meaning that you were not,
because they were boys or just

because they were?
boys.
They were jocks because theywere about to graduate high
school.
You know, it's easy to.
Not only were they weren't justpassing.
They were exceptionally goodstudents.

You know what?
A couple of things about that.
So

Yeah.

am,

so glad you

I'm thinking, I'm trying to think through these

I

Because God knows we got to talk about it, right?
Because they are

Oh.

thinking about stuff, doing stuff, right?
This is in some ways, this isthe year of boys, right?
Where I think we need to thinkabout what they're listening to,
what they're engaged in, right?
The novel I wrote before thiswas first person, right?
What was genuinely frighteningabout writing this book was I
was like, I'm going to go frompoint of view to point of view.

(35:58):
And that is a scary thing to doas a writer is because readers,
I think, and I, as a reader haddone this I'm like, okay, I
can't go to, I can't flip tosomebody else.
So anyway, one hopes that onedoes the craft work well, where
there's enough signals andthings like that.
So I was trying to figure thatout.
And to go into their minds andto think about the ways in which

(36:19):
they are who we expect them tobe and not.
And maybe the one example thatwe can talk about is M.
J.
Berenger, who is the the senior,the quarterback of this team,
who, as this novel opens, hasbasically decided to no longer
wear shoes, right?
And it, right?

(36:41):
It just becomes his thing,right?
And in fact, and his father atsome point says, I think maybe
to him or his wife, says, thepeople that don't have shoes are
the ones who desperately wantshoes, right?
So this idea that he is this isthis kid, he is, essentially, a
golden boy, right?
Like this, he has this kind ofincredibly strong arm.

(37:02):
He's smart.
He's a little shy.
He is trying to work through allof this, right?
And I think a part of hisshyness is based on the fact
that he's handsome, right?
And there's a way of deflectingone's handsomeness through
pushing away, right?
And there's a different versionof it, which is the worst
version, right?
Where you become cocky andterrible.

(37:23):
And I was trying to thinkthrough how to do MJ in that
context.
But I think he is in some waystrying to.
Figure out what does it mean toexist in this really wealthy
family that he lives in wherethere is, where there are these
paintings whose origins hedoesn't know that there's a, I
think one of the things I reallylove as a writer is to just

(37:43):
think about objects which iswhat does it mean for someone to
have a, for there to be a housewith a hundred year old sofa,
where the cover getsreupholstered over and over
again, the right idea that youinherit furniture as a marker of
wealth, as opposed to buyingfurniture as a marker of new

(38:05):
money.
And all of that stuff is, Ithink I was trying to work
through, but that is I do thinkthat what novels I want them to
do is to take these charactersthat both seem familiar, but
then to really defamiliarizethem.

them and also provide an opportunity for us to
really get to know someonerather than make assumptions.
Could you do it?
Could you not wear shoes for ayear?

Me?

Yeah.

I just, I like shoes too

Yeah.
Me too.

That's the thing is, I think, in a way I have
Shoes are so fun and you canreally lose a lot of your money
buying them, right?
Like I'm not just talking aboutthis whole sneaker obsession
that I'm just so sick of, right?
But just in general, right?
If you allow yourself theabsurdity of it, right?

(38:59):
It is endless.
So I just simply, And I thinkpersonally for me, I feel like
my own kind of, how I think ofmy brownness is as a kind of a
racial identity where I havedirectly or indirectly taught
myself to disappear.

(39:21):
To in the space that existsbetween blackness and whiteness.
I'm just like, I so what thatmeans is, and that's good and
bad, right?
I'm not saying it's laudable,nor is it the opposite, right?
It is just what I have, how Ihave socialized myself, right?
And in some ways, Not wearingthe shoes is the exact

Correct.

right?
MJ can do it because no one'sever going to question it,
right?
The thing is, if you are beingquestioned constantly in the
social spaces that you enter,What you do to manage it is to
upgrade as so profoundly aspossible so that no one will

right?
And not provide any opportunityfor someone to ask questions.

absolutely right.
You, the car is as clean aspossible, the shirts are as
pressed as

hmm.

But I also appreciate the fact that MJ is
thinking through this is allblood money I'm living in.

All right.
In a similar vein, I have to askthere is talk of, of all of the
uh, phases that a teenager goesthrough in the book.
There's the, someone goesthrough a mullet phase, the
mustache phase, the walkingeverywhere phase.
What was your embarrassingteenager phase?

(40:46):
The face you just made!

I will.
So can I tell you this?
And I can't believe I did this.
So this is quite a little bitbefore I was a teenager.
So when I arrived here, I washere for 3rd grade, 4th grade
and 5th grade.
Okay.
I moved to a different school.
For sixth grade, right?
It was it was like what and I, Isaid earlier that I was a

(41:09):
terrible student.
I was a terrible student, butwhatever.
I moved to what they in thosedays called a gifted classroom,
right?
So all of these different kidsshowed up and I will tell you
that year we put out a play andI played Romeo and I memorized
that entire thing.
I showed up to the first day ofclass.

(41:33):
Pretending I have a Britishaccent,

Wow.
I was not expecting you to saythat.

I wasn't either, and I was like, what am I doing?
And it was so weird, and I thinkin a way, part of it was that
there were just so many kids inthis classroom that seemed so
much smarter and so much hipperand so much more interesting.
I was like, I gotta findsomething.
I haven't been out of India forthat long, right?

(42:02):
And I think what's just soridiculous about it is that
eventually, of course, it justwent away, and I'm sure Some of
these kids were thinking like,what happened to that dude's
accent?
He like sounds Like he justsounds normal now.
Is that all it takes is like

Right.
Right.
Oh, this is assimilation!

yeah, exactly so So I think that was like a
weird.
Kind of sixth grade thing that Idid, I, I do think, so I think
and then high school was justweird and random.
After my freshman year incollege I took a trip to Europe
and I did not shave that entiresummer so that I can return back

(42:41):
and purchase beer from thisliquor store because I go here
and it worked.
And between my British accentand my beard might be my two
kind of phases

Wow.
Okay, your kids are not allowedto listen to this episode.

No.
It's so funny, I literallythought about it for a second.
I'm like, what are they gonnado?
But, whatever, it's they'll itall feels tame

seriously.
Thank you for sharing that.
Those are really great examplesof the question, and I think
it's It is not dissimilar fromthe shoes conversation, right?
I think it's very, it tells alot about who we are, the phases
that we go through.

Can I ask you like, so what do you think it
like.
these phases our desire to say,I want to try something else?
Or I think I'm wondering aboutyour question in terms of what
is it that we are doing when itis that we do all

that's, That is a very interesting question to the
question.
I hearing you ask that back, Ithink as a society we have an
issue or.
We incorrectly call it a phase,or we have an understanding of
what a phase means I thinkpeople see phases as a bridge,

(44:00):
from one piece of your life tothe next, and I don't think
that's fair, because thatimplies that it's not real, or
it's not really who you are, orthat it will eventually end,
right?
And I The idea of wanting togrow out the beard to appear

(44:27):
older so that you could buyliquor from the liquor store.
That is that's actually smart.
That wasn't a beard phase, thatwas just a good idea.

was mature.
That was

right, exactly.
The, the British Accent thing,again, this is me, therapizing
you, but I, it is an element ofstanding out, of showing your
individuality, and I imaginepart of letting that go was A,
realizing that you don't needthat to be individual, and B,

(45:05):
leaning into other things thatmake you individual.
So the root of it doesn'tactually go away, but the rest
of it does.
It fades away.

Yeah.
In some ways, part of what thisbook is about and particularly
the case with the narrativestrand of Veronica Cruz is what
this idea of performance means,Right?
And that when I think aboutperformance so my, my, my turn

(45:37):
as Romeo in the sixth grade is aperformance, right?
And we think about it as I wason stage and then I returned
back, right?
But we do these series ofperformances, right?
And in some ways, part of whatI've been trying to figure out
with this book and these teenageboys is they are simply enacting
these performances, right?

But, so are the

God, that, that's the thing, right?
This is the thing, which is theparents aren't done with it,
right?
I don't know.
I don't know if our beautifulboys are in fact the fathers in
this book, right?
And the mothers who are allbasically carrying them on their
shoulders, right?

I mean, they have their issues too.

A course, and all of them

Yeah,

And they're rough and surely her elbows are sharp,
and she uses those sharp elbows,but I think that's a thing which
is, what is the performance thatMichael is engaged in if his
office is empty, and he's beengoing to an empty office, right?

Before I let you go, I have the most important
question of the day to ask you.

No, boy.

Where did butt darts come from?

you know, For those who are going to hopefully
read the

Uh huh.

It's a game that appears to go back to our God of
Carnage conversation when theparents have gathered to
basically drink and figure outwhat their kids are not telling
them.
And Michael Berenger, who is awho is, the kind of charming

(47:24):
lively guy who has alwaysuncorked a really nice bottle of
wine before you've finished yourglass, right?
That is his affect, right?
And we know

know those people.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

know that guy, right?
And so he is wonderful and Iwill just whatever.
I'll let people

what butt darts

looks like.
It includes a quarter.
A quarter is the important asopposed to a football, you need
a quarter.
And it was in fact a familyfriend of ours who I thank in my
book because I am not going totake responsibility for knowing
this game and pretending like Ifigured it out or whatever.
I am sure there is a great Essayto be written about the origins

(48:08):
of butt guards, which is anessay that poor veronica may
have to write at some point, butI I don't know where but a
friend of mine I was at a partyand it was being played and I
was just looking and I was like,I cannot believe these are
respectable

Did you play?

this.
Of course I

Did you, were you good?

it took me a while.
It takes, it takes a lot of goodcore work.

I'm sure

It's and other, if your hamstrings are a little
tight, it makes it

Yeah

but I have, look, here's the thing with this game
which is you cannot introduce ittoo early.
With a group of people you donot know.
Because then you're taking

You are.

just go, it may just go off the rails.

is I read about it And I need to try it.

you have

I'm very excited.

just have to.
And it's just a question of whenin the party it occurs.
And it has to be before dessertis my sense that it's in the
lull after dinner is over andpeople are wondering if they
should be leaving.
That

That butt darts comes out.

that butt darts comes out.
Yeah.
I am when you were leading up tothat, I thought I was going to
get a, there are all sorts ofdifferent questions that I
thought I was going to getasked.
And I'm really glad that's aquestion that we

Yeah.
When I just produced a bookfestival, there was an author
who talked about how we are allvillains, because we have all
done something that made someonefeel not great.
And that really stuck with me.
And it reading this book, andagain, not to give anything
away, but it had me thinkingtoo, about those times in my

(49:48):
life when maybe I was a villainand didn't mean to be, or didn't
like that I was, or tried topush out of my mind and I think
really helps make us think aboutthe people who we are, the
people who we become, the peoplewho we were, how we can all just
live in our own little separatepiece.

Yeah, no, it is.
And how we think about ourfuture based on all this, right?
Because so much of our living ismoving towards that, right?
And how do you do to use whatyou just said is, right?
How do you make peace withwhatever has come before as you

(50:25):
step into this future

Yeah.
Samir, congratulations.
Our beautiful boys.

Thank you so much.
This is a really amazing

My pleasure.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
Emma Donoghue, I am so thrilledto have you here as my guest gay
reader on Gays Reading.
You are tremendously prolific.

Emma Donoghue (50:46):
seem to stop.
You know, it just spills out ofme.
And I think my career, I thinkI'd have a much cooler
reputation if I was slower, if Iwas like, wait, making 10 years
for a book, people would think Iwas deep.
But unfortunately it's like thepace you speak out.
You can't really help us.
You know, if you're.
You're someone with verbaldiarrhea, that's how you are.

Yeah, that's fair.
Listen, it keeps you in thezeitgeist, versus the people
that sort of shut away for awhile to

I suppose so, yeah, but I don't know.
I don't know.
Anyway, it stops me from gettingbored, which is the main thing.

Listen, that's all that matters, when I was
looking at the list of booksthat you've published, I was
like, oh my god, this is 17?
Is that what it is?

not quite sure of the number.
I don't know, I'd have to check.
They all start to blur,

I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure it's 17.

I'll take your word for it.
It's like my mother.
My mother had eight children,right?
So her memories of us were alittle blurred towards the end.
I'd say like, did that happenwhen I was a baby?
And she'd say, well, you onlyreally remember the first baby.
After that, it's just a crowd.

Do you think this is what you're doing?
Are you replicating yourchildhood by just producing more
and more of your

just to create a festive atmosphere and also it
spreads your risk because you'relike any one baby might be a
dud, so produce lots of babies.

That's so clever.
Emma, as my guest gay readertoday, I have to know, what are
you reading?
What's on your shelf?
What's on your

Um, well, this is going to sound very, um, Lazy of
me, but I'm in the middle of theJanuary 13th, um, issue of the
New Yorker because you see Isave them up for traveling.
I like to travel super light.
I always go on book tour.
I am about to do a 15 city tour.
I'll bring one carry on.
Okay.
And so I can't afford to bebringing paper books.

(52:30):
So I bring, Paper copies of TheNew Yorker, maybe two months
worth, and then I just throwthem away as I go, as I finish.
So, um, right now I will bereading a cartoon from The New
Yorker about writing, which isvery comforting to me.
and then, what else am Ireading?
I'm always reading something,uh, for, for a project that I'm
working on.
So I'm reading a book calledFighting Proud, The Untold Story

(52:53):
of the Gay Man Who Served in TwoWorld Wars.
So, yeah, that's for a World WarI project I have, and I need to
know about the, the covert gayaction, basically, in World War
I.
Um,

interesting.

my own book, because you have to, because by
the time you go on a book tour,you've forgotten it.
You're thinking of your nextbook.
And so you can be asked aquestion in an interview, and
you can go blank on the name ofyour main character, which is
very embarrassing.

I think you're in the minority here because so
many people, well, so manypeople that I'll interview at
their in person author events orsomething, I will ask them
questions from the book andthey're like, did I write that?
I haven't read the book in so

That's the thing.
I mean, you don't want to giveyour audience the impression
that you're like bored with itor anything.
So, so yeah, I always reread andI mark up.
You know, I attached littlesticky labels marking up which
passages might be good to readfrom because I love giving
readings.
Um, and not all authors enjoythat, but I really like to do
all the different voices and hamit up.

(53:53):
You know, I find that great fun.
as well as the Q& As, which are,I think, what readers like best
nowadays when they're meetingauthors.
They love to be able to ask youhighly specific questions.
So yeah, I have to mark up whichare good

At the beginning of this conversation, we talked
about conversations and howbeautifully segwayed they can
be, and you just beautifullysegwayed me into talking about
your new book, but I don't wantto talk about that

Fine, fine.
Well,

Because I I, I wanna take me, I wanna take us
back to the January 13th, NewYorker, because I am recently a
New York Magazine subscriber,and the first time I got my
physical copy, I was so excited,I didn't read it cover to cover,
but I like, did a pretty goodjob at covering most of the,

(54:40):
issue.
But now I have a bit of abacklog, and I'm regretting
getting the physical copies, butbringing them while traveling

it really is.
And um, it means also whenyou're traveling, you're in a
slightly more ruthless frame ofmind anyway.
You're just, you know, you're,you're killing time.
So I think the trick with anymagazine is to let yourself skip
any article that's not ringingyour bell.
Do not feel you have to read itcover to cover, because then you
won't.
And then you'll associate themagazine with nothing but guilt,

(55:10):
and that would be a shame.
So, you know, I mean, The NewYorker is so well written that I
have often found I'm fascinatedby a 10 page article about,
like, apple harvesting orsomething that I had no prior
interest in.
But equally, if there's, ifthey're going very deep dive on
American politics at the stateor city level, And if we're
halfway into thiscongressperson, you know, and if

(55:31):
it's not doing it for me, I justmove on five pages to the next
thing.
So, so let yourself, read themvery much in a spirit of
pleasure, pleasure and whim andcuriosity.
You know, there's, there's nopoint making them into a, a rod
for your own back

I appreciate this.
I didn't know how PSA and, andmoment of su of support.
Yes.
Thank you.
Okay, you gave me a beautifulsegue.
I'm gonna go back to saidbeautiful segue.
You, you are re reading your ownbook as you prepare to go on
tour.
That would be The Paris Expressby Emma Donoghue.

(56:06):
The 17th book.
Crazy.
tell us, what is your, do youhave a logline for the book yet?
An elevator pitch?

I would say it's the true story of a disaster.
That happened in Paris in 1895,and it was a disaster of speed,
a train came into Paris too fastand couldn't stop.
So that makes it right there, alittle parable of runaway
capitalism, a little parable ofour misguided faith in progress

(56:36):
and tech, and our ruthlesspursuit of the comfort and
convenience of the rich.
over the, you know, the workersgetting, you know, severed and
smashed along the way.
Um, so the Paris Express is, isvery factual in that it's about
a very real crash and the story,you know, starts as the train
takes off and ends when thetrain stops.

(56:58):
Um, but within that There's a,a, a huge cast because I decided
that Paris in the 1890s was sucha hub, it was like, I don't
know, New York City in the 80sor something, it was, it, it
drew people who were, you know,scientists and inventors and
troublemakers and anarchists andqueers and feminists and
foreigners.

(57:19):
Um, so, so it was this amazingkind of magnet.
And so I decided I'm going toput these real people in the
book because I don't knoweverybody who was on the train,
but these people could have beenon the train.
So I, I literally just Googledwho was around in, in, in Paris
in the 1890s and then chose thepeople who would be the most
interesting for my purposes.

(57:39):
And I didn't always know in, inadvance whether they were the
right people because sometimes Iwould research them thoroughly
and I'd write a few scenes andthen I'd be like, I'm sorry
you're not earning your placebecause you may have a great
backstory, but on thisparticular day you're just
sitting there on the traineating peanuts, aren't you?

Is there someone that you miss?

Uh, you know, I did some scenes from the point
of view of the dancer, LoieFuller, the one who danced in
amazing silks and gauzes, butunfortunately on my train she
wasn't dancing, so she

Uh, right, of

to entertain me, you know?

dancer is just sitting, are they really a
dancer?

exactly.

have said that you have, uh, you write, uh, I
don't want to put words in yourmouth, but something about how
you write where people are insome kind of peril.
That's your, your go to.
Um, world right now, where we'relike always in peril, I feel
like it's a good thing and a badthing that you all, you have so

(58:36):
much to choose from.

That's true, but you know, a book offers the
comforting sense, the comfortingillusion.
That there's a pattern thatmakes sense, you know, you, you
drop a hint and then it paysoff, you open a possibility and
then you resolve that storyline,you know, you know, life is so
messy and random and bad thingshappen to good people, but in

(58:58):
books, you can make it morethat, you know, plot often does
emerge out of character.
I mean, okay, some random badthings happen.
Um, somebody who dies in thisbook, totally not.
their fault, but equally at the,at the level of subplot, you can
see individual moments thatarise out of character.
So for instance, one thing Icould tell from, from
researching this, this traincrash is that it happened

(59:21):
because some rich guy basicallyasked for a special stop.
He said, you know, you're, thetrain is only stopping four
places.
I want you to stop in my countryvillage and let's hitch on my
private carriage.
And this added 10 minutes to thejourney, which you might think
was not a big deal, but the crewwere under.
Such pressure from the railwaycompany to, uh, get to Paris on

(59:41):
time every day for theconvenience of, of the guests.
That, um, they, they basicallytook a risk in order to try and
make up those 10 minutes.
So, I would say the whole thingreally does grow out of the
Asshole Rich Guy character.
Which, you know, again is a verymodern theme, you know.
Rich assholes who have broughton disaster on us all.
We can all think of a few namesthere.

Jason Blitman (01:00:04):
the very beginning of, of you describing
this, you said, uh, that novelsprovide a comforting sense, and
then you corrected yourself andsaid comforting illusion.

Emma Donoghue (01:00:17):
That's right, they're far

you know what, you know what Emma, that's not
very comforting!

They are, they are I don't know, comforting is
the wrong word maybe.
It gives us a sense of order andpattern, you know, the pattern
is sometimes rich assholes aredestroying the world.
They shape things, you know,because what stresses out a lot
of us nowadays is the sheernumber of headlines.
We see the sheer number ofthings we hear about in all

(01:00:44):
those different countries.
You know, and I sometimes think,oh, two centuries ago, I
wouldn't have been worried aboutthat.
You know, civil war breaking outfar, far away because I wouldn't
have known about it or at leastnot in time to worry about it.
So many of us are, are frazzledand overstimulated and freaked
out and we don't know how toread the headlines and then turn
back to our day.

(01:01:04):
We don't know how to divide ourenergies between the far away
things or the future thingsthat, you know, recessions not
yet here, um, and the pastthings.
Um, so, so a novel is, is bettershaped than life.
So, yeah, you can put a lot ofscary and messy things in there
and this novel is, you know,features, for instance, an
anarchist who basically thinksthe entire society is, is evil

(01:01:27):
and that they have to literallyburn it all down and restart.
So, you know, it's a novel withplenty of social protest in it,
but it is, it is shaped andthere's a certain maybe
aesthetic comfort to that.
You know, it's not quite asmessy as real life.

not only that though, but I do think there is
a comfort.
for me at least, that, uh,history tends to repeat itself.
And, and that can be for betteror for worse.
I think it's just comforting toknow that we have, as a society,
made it through, right?
You know, so,

You know, during during COVID, I was working, I
was just finishing up a novelset in a previous pandemic, the
flu of 18, 1918.
And I found it very comfortingthat people had got through
worse before.
And that the same, the samethings tend to happen, you know,
like, you know, governmentsblaming poor people for their,
for their dirty, overcrowdedliving conditions.
But, you know, you all getthrough in the end.

(01:02:21):
Um, so, so yeah, the, the longperspective historically is very
comforting, especially on, say,issues of social justice, you
know?
Like, there's a moment in mynovel where, um, you know,
Dreyfus had, had, had just beenUm, sent off to an island as a
spy, and everybody in Francethought he was an evil spy.
We now know with the longperspective that he was a victim

(01:02:42):
of anti semitic framing, and hewas completely innocent.
They didn't, and somebodymentions his case as an example
of where, you know, onejournalist she knows thinks
Dreyfus may be innocent, butit's going to take so long to
try and prove that to anyone.
So, equally, there's, there'sanother moment when, um,
somebody notices a woman iswearing earrings made of

(01:03:03):
hummingbird heads.
And he's aware of the kind ofanti, anti bird exploitation
campaign.
And again, in those days, itwould have seemed impossible to
ever persuade women to stopwearing birds as decoration.
Um, so, you know, little, littlemoments like that where you
glimpse the, the exhaustingsocial justice causes of the
past.
It definitely gives you a littlebit more, um, you know, gas in

(01:03:26):
the tank to keep going today.

mean, you have also called yourself a
compulsive time traveller.
Uh, of keep dipping back intohistorical fiction for comfort?
Or what do you think brings

It's more,

to these

yeah, it's more like what makes you travel.
It's not exactly comfort.
It's certainly not coziness, butit's, it's, it's a trip.
It's wild.
It's, it's different.
It stops you from feeling juststuck in the routine or, or
stuck in the.
confines and limits of your ownparticular life.
I mean, I've got a really happylife, but like most happy lives,
it's relatively samey, right?

(01:04:01):
Extremely happy 31 yearrelationship.
You know, that does not producemuch narrative, you know?
So then my books, I want a lotmore to be happening.
So, for me to do something likewrite a novel about, um, you
know, early medieval monkslanding on an island and trying
to survive there, you know, it,it literally gets me out of my
own life and it helps me toempathize with people who are

(01:04:24):
utterly different from me.
You know, and it's, it worksyour heart, you know, it,
because when I write a page fromthe point of view of someone,
even if he's a, you know, a mad,zealous, patriarchal monk,
who's, who's, who's trying topunish the other monks by making
them stand up to the neck incold water, you know, for that
page, for the length of time I'mwriting that page.

(01:04:45):
I see things from his point ofview and I think that's a,
that's an exercise we should allgo through, you know, uh, to,
to, to understand and sympathizewith, or at least, at least
laugh at the, the sheerdifferences of others.

of, any characters like that that are so
different from you ever changedthe way you see something?

Yeah, I, in one of my previous novels, The
Sealed Letter, um, one of thethree point of view characters
is a husband who was an admiraland he was very like, You know,
stiff and judgy, and hebasically hauled his wife into
court to prove that she wascheating on him, and he cast her
off so she'd never see her kidsagain.
So, you know, I knew I wasn'tgoing to like him as much as the
wife or the wife's girlfriend,but when I was writing his

(01:05:27):
passages, I got totally into hispoint of view.
For instance, he was super tall,so when he served on a ship, um,
he had to, like, You know, lightcurled up and at a certain point
he, he made a little sort ofaperture in the wall to put his
head in, so I, I was living inhis very tall body, um, and I
was thinking about men'sclothes, for instance, and they,
they're starched collars thatliterally And I remember

(01:05:52):
thinking gender is a prison, youknow, whether you're, whether
you're the boss or theundervalued one, you know,
these, these arbitrary rules,like men have to wear pointy
collars are limiting toeveryone.
Um, so, so yeah, I, I, for me,it's been hugely.
educational and it opens my mindto write from people's point of

(01:06:13):
view who aren't me.
And in this novel, The PowersExpress, I've adopted as many
different points of view aswould fit really, because I, I
really loved the, themultiplicity of it.

Thank you for sharing.
You know, it's, I think, peopleoften talk about, uh, quote
unquote, walking in someoneelse's shoes gives you empathy,
but I think for you to, just,just to share that little
anecdote, um, and just say like,oh, maybe he was a little bit of
an asshole because, you know,his, his pokey that day.
Like, there's, it's, You know,it really does give you a tiny

(01:06:47):
bit of empathy even when someoneis being terrible.
Um, Are you, I know you loveliving in the world of theater.
Are you working on anything inthe theater right now?

Well, actually you asked me about my reading.
So one of the things I'd bereading is I'm reading a play
because I'm a bit of a stagemom.
My daughter is a young actor, soshe lets me do things like
choose her monologues forauditions and stuff.
Um, so

Okay, Mama Rose.

exactly.
you you sense how easy, howeasily I could, you know, go to
the bad side here.
So she's got a callback comingup.
So I'm like reading through theplay and marking passages and so
on.
So it's great fun to have thiskind of sideline, which is
literary, but yes, um, I, um.
I have a play coming on thissummer, which is my first

(01:07:32):
musical.
It's a folk musical, meaningwe're using traditional Irish
songs to help tell the story.
So it's at the Blyth Festivalhere in Canada this summer, and
it's basically about Irish1840s.
But I'm using those traditionalsongs to tell the story, and I'm
having such fun with it.
It's probably one of the easiestthings I've ever written.
It's just, it's just coming.

Oh wow, that's so exciting, congrats, um, okay, as
my guest gay reader, I have toknow, do you have any grievances
you need to air?
Anything

I've no grievances but I'm reading, um,
a wonderful book by somebody I'mdoing an event with in, um,
Virginia.
A champagne and cake themedevent, which again is a first
for me, you know.
I'm not sure there's been anycake at any of my events and
certainly no champagne.
So this is delicious andsouthern hospitality at its
best, I think.
So this is The Wilds by LouisBayard.

(01:08:24):
And he's new to me, but I'm nowordering everything he's written
before because this one is justfabulous.

Okay, well my petty grievance is that I've
never had cake at a book eventI've ever done, and I need to
change that.
I'm, I'm sending a note toeveryone who I'm coming up
working with to say we must

this is how great social justice campaigns begin.
You know, they start with apetty grievance and then
everyone else is like, yeah, metoo, man.

See, you've never had one and you've done so many
book events.
How is this possible?
Your odds have been

always associate, you know, a delicious thing with
whatever new habit you're tryingto inculcate.
So anytime I've brought my kidsto the theater, I've like bought
them expensive chocolates oranything they like at the
interval.
If there are two intervals, Ibuy them two things.
So of course they associateperformance with, with delicious
deliciousness.
So it should be like that withcake.

(01:09:13):
There should be at least asampling tray as we enter a
bookstore, shouldn't there?

Oh, you are so Pavlovian with your children.
How funny! They have some, somedelicious chocolate And they
expect to see some Noel

then they end up wanting to go into theater.
This is what I've brought onmyself.

I know, I know.
This is a blessing and a

Hey, who am I to say that you shouldn't pursue a
life in the arts?
You know, it happened to workfor me.

Well, no, of course, as a person with a
degree in theater who nowrandomly hosts a book podcast,
it could take you on a very longand wonderful and winding
journey, much like a train ride.

everything's like a train ride.
when you're writing a book abouta train.
You know, it's just becomes theomnipresent metaphor.

Emma, thank you so much for being here.

It's been just lovely.
Thank you so much.

a pleasure chatting.
Have a great rest of your day.
Samir, Emma, thank you both somuch for being here.
Everyone, thanks for listening.
Don't forget to tune in nextweek for the very first episode
of Spill the Tea, featuringElder Ator, and I will see you
then.
Have a great rest of your week.
Bye.

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