December 29, 2024 • 26 mins
Tom is an author, professor and traveler. He's traveled to 150 countries. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, Chicago Tribune, Die Zeit, ZYZZYVA, Exquisite Corpse, Salon.com, Black Clock, and other newspapers and literary venues, as well as in dozens of books and academic journals.
Read about Tom here: https://www.tomlutzwriter.com/about-tom/
Read about Tom here: https://www.tomlutzwriter.com/about-tom/
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Accord one. Yeah, yeah, I want to say it. Thank you.
Just think I couldn't hear.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Oh, the guest has a question.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yes, before we start, or we already started, We've already started.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
But hold on one. Everyone welcome to the writer's class.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeh absolutely, because because he's a writer, the guest is
a writer. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yeah, imagine that. Imagine that. I'm Jane and I have
a Jane here today. I know, y'all. I'm sorry. I've
been busy trying to make you know us great. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Jay started a new business, so she's making a lot
of things great.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I don't know if it's a US thing.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
No, I'm joking, it's US all that profit all.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
The things great.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
But anyway, we wrote books, and I thought the voce
was bad with other life lessons, and I thought being
grown up was easy if only.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I would me move on voice anytime you want.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
It was dead with those web and foreign coffee and
you can get those audio we can get those books
wherever audiobooks are sold.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
And by the way, that.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Is that's a lot. It's a lot. I think it's six,
but it might have been seven books.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Normally I count them off but like she did it today,
I blame you. Wow, going back and now you're blaming me.
I feel like that's what she wanted to be back
for y'all. But y'all want here to hear about us,
you're not.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
You can find out the rest of our books, by
the way at www dot And I thought ladies dot com,
you're not here to hear about her about a wonderful guess.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Wonderful guests? Would you like to introduce yourself?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Hi, I'm Tom Lutz Uh from the door Dome in France.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Oh you got to say from the door Dome and
in France, Like, I'm so can you guys remember this?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
But he was on a while ago and he was
in America.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, non American.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
You are an American.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I'm an American. I'm an American in France. I may
become French at some point.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Okay, Okay, who knows fluent in French?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Jippar come to American See there we go? Yeah, it
gets better every day, you know, I find myself I'm
starting to think in French, and I have some French
friends and just to be they all can speak English,
(02:21):
so that helps. But it's not fair to force them
to so I try to speak French when I'm with
them as much as I can. And uh, and of
course just going around town and go buying groceries and
going to the hardware store, it's you have to have
some French.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So so that emersion thing works apparently yourself grocery store
the other day, thinking about in a couple of weeks,
we'll be doing this in German and I was like,
dang it, I'm going to get lost in the grocery store.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
You know? And if you're an adventurous eater, it's okay.
You just buy it and figure out what it is
when you when you get home.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, it's into announced will with us the last time,
but it's okay.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
It's all right.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I thought I was getting a hamburger with something it
but hey, we lived with it.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
It was good. We lived with it. So what motivated
you to move to France? I mean, I have to
from La you know.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I don't know if you've noticed, but our country is, uh,
it's going a little nutty. And my my my wife
is as a historian of that, well, she's not a historian,
she's a she's a writer and a theater critic and journalist.
But she's writing a book about Hitler right now, and
(03:55):
she's also Jewish, and she thinks that, you know, if
a lot of Jews in Europe had watched what was
happening with Hitler and the way we're watching what's happening
with Trump, they would have gotten out a little bit sooner.
So that's not the real reason. The real reason is
that we just wanted a new chapter in our lives.
But there that.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Not exactly. If you can't why not. I I've agreed
with who doesn't Say, who doesn't go?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
You know what France sounds cool like even Jess to say,
I've done it for like three months. I've did it
three minds, okay, and I missed gay bag whatever, But
to do it is awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So as you are a writer.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Also, any good books coming down from this new adventure,
new chapter in your life.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I have invented a new chapter in my life. I've
I've finished two books that and uh and they're they're
both coming there. The one I was hoping was going
to come out this fall because it's a literary encyclopedia
of the year nineteen twenty five. So yeah, it's it's
(05:06):
a very strange book. It's a thousand pages. It's a
monster of a book, and it's but it's it's every
it's every chapter is like an encyclopedia entry. So there's
one about Ahmed Abdullah, who was a famous writer in
nineteen twenty five that none of us have ever heard of. Right,
(05:27):
you've never heard of Akmedadula. Nobody's ever heard of augmented Doula.
He's like completely forgotten. But at the time he was
big news. He had plays on Broadway, he had plays
on the West End in London. He had a whole
story about how he was descended from the Russian czar
(05:48):
on one side and from Afghan princess on the other side.
It's apparently all made up, but he would when he
gave interviews like this, I've been thinking, maybe I should
tell you that I'm descended from.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Like, okay, ancestry dot com obviously.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
So uh and and so, and it just goes through
like that, and and and a lot of it is
literary stuff. And the people that you would expect, you know,
Hemingway and Fitzgerald and gertrud Stein and the you know,
the all of the people from the twenties that are
the cannon. But it's the year that ln Locke published
(06:29):
The New Negro, which was the book that kind of
put the Harlem Renaissance on the on the national map. Uh.
It's the year that Josephine Baker moved to France.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And if you tell me you were doing the same
thing Josephine Baker did.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I am, I am, I am living. I'm living about
fifteen minutes from where she moved.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Oh my god, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
She bought a castle that's you know, just right in
this same area for the same reason because it's beautiful
and and and the food is great. But you know,
and that's where she raised her family of you know,
she adopted thirteen kids and I had this whole So
it's and the castle is amazing. It's you can visit it.
(07:17):
It's a museum to her in her life and she
you know, she was while she was here. She joined
the French Resistance and was a spy for the French
and all. That's a little after nineteen twenty five, but anyway,
it's just it's been. It was such a blast to
write this book and just follow the stories of men
(07:39):
Abdullah and Josephine Baker and gertrud Stein and you know
who else, of course was living in France at the time.
But and then there's you know, there's a chapter on
plastic because plastic was kind of like the word plastics
(07:59):
entered the English language in nineteen twenty five, and it
was a magazine for the plastic industry that was launched
in nineteen ty five. They called itself Plastics anyway, So
it's and television was invented, and the Grand Old Opry
started in Nashville, and you know, just kind of on
(08:21):
and on and on. So it's a it's a really
interesting book. I loved writing it. I did nothing else
for two years. I just would get up in the
morning and add an entry about something and just go
down rabbit hole after rabbit hole and read.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
You know, I doesn't want to go down the rabbit hole.
We all want to go down the rabbit.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Hole, right, What's what It's just like I want.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
To go down this rabbit hole.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I think what writing really is is just self education.
I don't know. And then we get to organize our
education in a way that's entertaining, and yes, write down
the voices in our yeah, and then you can put
them into different voices.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
But like, I think that's like one of the favorite
parts about writing. Everyone's like, oh the research, you know
or are some people absolutely hate the research. But research
is so much easier now, So like, yes, old fun
so now rabbit holes are absolutely wonderful. So we have
asked about your future and your new chapter. I want
to ask about your legacy because well, I'm I'm older now,
(09:24):
so you know, I get stuck in the path.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
You can't tell me you're older look at this.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
But you have done like this historical book that You've
done a lot of books talk that are very well
based in the fact and well presented, so continuousing your
legacy that way. But you also started like glarb and
like put us on to the fact that there's a
literally seen in la How did you feel leaving that
(09:58):
huge legacy to be like I'm going to France, y'all.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, you know, I always knew that I was going
to pass it off to the next generation at some point,
And you know, I thought from the start, I was
thinking ten years I would let I would let it go.
When I was when I was starting it, I was
looking at all the other magazines and the New York
Review of Books. You know, the editor was Robert Silver
(10:23):
forever and the average age of the readers of The
New York Review of Books when we started LARB was
sixty seven. The average age wo yeah, yeah, I mean
because they have to say, tell these things for their advertisers, right,
they have to give their DA data about their readership.
So and I thought, well, of course it is because
(10:45):
a lot of his readers started with him when he
started it, and they kind of just followed him, and
so it's and it was always his vision of what
the magazine should be, and so his his kind of
cohort just traveled with him.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Whoops, Okay, that's although I'm sorry that that was.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
That's little glitch there. Yeah, yeah, little glitch, A little glitch,
no problem.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Visit the contractor who's out the door.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Oh oh, I was afraid that was gonna happen to
me because because this kitchen job is in the middle
of everything, no problem one anyway.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
So you were pressing it all.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Should I should? I wait? No, just keep going. So
so I so and I thought, well, you know, that's
not what I want this to be. I don't want
LARB to be my vision. I want this to be
the literary communities place to meet and talk and and
and uh. I wanted to remain relevant and of its
(11:49):
time and uh and and the only way to do
that is to step away and let's let the next
generation take over.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Well, now that you have stepped away, there is no
better eyes so to look at things. And someone who's
either stepped away or can look behind.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
So what do you think of the American writing landscape
right now?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
American writing landscape is in flux. Obviously, it's always in flux.
I mean one of the things, one of the nice
things about being a historian is that you just see
that a lot of things happen over and over again.
In nineteen twenty five, there was there were everything was changing.
(12:34):
Modernism was had thrown all of the literary values up
in the air, and the people were rethinking everything in
a time like that. Now as well, it's never been
easier to get a book published than it is now.
It's never been harder to get a book noticed it
(12:57):
is now. So it's a it's that that's that's very interesting,
and it means that there's this amazing acundity. People are
people are writing, People are writing poetry. There's poetry slams
in every city and right every little town in America.
(13:19):
It's just it's an amazing time of creativity, and most
people don't know most of what's happening. Because we don't.
It doesn't come past us, right, and so it's not
clear to me, and it won't be clear to anyone
what the great creative minds of our day will turn
(13:45):
out to have been one hundred years from now.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
That's very true. I am very interested. I am one
of them.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, I have always thought that.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yes, I think it's literally like only one work that
we've ever done that, I think.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, And it was really funny other than that.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Actually, okay, so I'm going to break just a little bit.
So it was some one that actually read our book.
It was like the first one and they said, man,
this is gonna be so underrated.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
For like fifty years.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
And they're like, so, I hope you live long enough
for you to get you absolutely deserve He's like, cause
you deserve it, but no one's gonna get it.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
That's that's a beautiful thing. That's a beautiful it really is.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
That wasn't being a narcissist I was just following to
mother for and they were like.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well, it's very great because your children and your children's
children will will weep the benefits of all this hard
work that you're doing. I know, but I but I
want to be able to choose some salt food too.
You know, I'm gonna still gonna be a lave fifty
years from now. Just give me myself, giving my tenches,
which one doesn't matter, like finally get in my life.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yea, yeah, fifty years down the road doesn't help that much.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
But I.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Mean, from that moment on I started being heart healthy,
I'm going to live to see the greatness.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
I might forget it. I might have to mention at
that time, but I'm going to live to pay. Oh
my goodness.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, that is a very you know, along these lines
in the Ernest Hemingway's first book in nineteen twenty five,
nobody this little coterie of people around Gertrude's sign and
her friends. They noticed it. It was published by a
press in Paris that nobody had ever heard of. Just
(15:39):
a rich guy that decided to start publishing some people.
Rich kid who published some of his friends and Gertrude
Stein's making of Americans was published in twenty five and nobody.
Nobody reviewed it. Nobody, right, it was not in the
New York Times, it was not in the Atlantic. And
by the way, in nineteen twenty five, there were book
reviews everywhere. There were like a mid level, mid list novel. Again,
(16:06):
one of these novels that we've never heard of got
twenty reviews around the country and across the ocean. And yeah,
you do.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Some like looking up into nineteen twenty one, I chow books,
the hell you haven come out?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Okay, I'll send you a copy as soon as it arrives.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Oh my goodness, this is I've barely enjoyed the education
and the time war, the time jop back in twenty five,
I feel like.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
What we love interviewing. She's always You're like, wow, I
never would have thought of that. I'm so glad.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Thanks, But I didn't but didn't answer your question that well?
Right about the American literary scene right now?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
No, I.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Feel like we're in a nineteen twenty style renaissance. Now,
if you have more to say about it, I am
definitely all ears to hear about it.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, I think that it's that publishers because of because
of Amazon, right, and because of the kind of economics
of publishing now, Amazon squeezed all of the margins so
hard that you know, publishers have a tough time. Authors
(17:19):
have the hardest time. Agents have a tough time. You know, Publicists,
publicists have a good time because everybody's trying to get
noticed and so public publicists are doing better than anybody
else via you know, inneration to this this moment, and uh,
but that that I don't I don't think it's a
(17:41):
particularly sustainable model. You know, it's just it's not and
so we have to figure out what we're going to
do about that. And and you know, in France they
make if you buy your book from Amazon, they make
you pay a fee, an extra fee, so that it
doesn't undercut the bookstores and so there are still bookstores,
(18:06):
so they're not letting Amazon destroy the bookstore economy and
things like that. And of course the government, the French
government is a is a culture government. I don't know,
if you watch the Olympics opening ceremonies, different Yeah, well
(18:27):
it went on for hours and hours and hours, and
partly because they had stuff about books, they had stuff
about women, French women who had made a change in
their society. They had like cultural history moments. They had
you know, a whole thing about fraternity, about brotherhood, about sisterhood,
about about equality, liberty, difference, you know, sexual variety. It
(18:58):
was like just this, it was like all about culture,
about the way we live, about the right and and
it's because the French actually find that important, not just
you know kind of stories of heroic athletes who eat
cancer and got back in that that's not a good thing,
it's a great thing. But you know this is they
(19:19):
just have They really respect culture. They really like the
fact that they try to do what they what they
have to do to keep their literary culture vibrant. It's
a communal, state based effort. We have the National Endowment
for the Arts. It gets its funds cut a little
bit more every year by Congress. Right, so so we're
(19:43):
going in the wrong direction as a country to help.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
Fix and again everyone out there, and I mean that's
why publics is are having such a great time, right
because now everyone has to like try to yell and
be like the what's important?
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Peoples are important? Like I wrote this book and it's
actually an important book. Like I'm saying, mm hmm, like
that's where you have to be a little loud sometimes.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Recently, that's right.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah. Of course, reading.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
About about the movies, about the studio.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
System, why we don't have movie stars anymore, And as
I was reading it, all I could think about is
that's a publishing still to They're like, they'd have to
find a star, nurture star, like make a star, and
then it's bankable and then you get to bank on
the star. And I was like, well, publishing finds an author,
nurtures an author, publishes an author, and we cross the
(20:43):
finger that they're bankable. Yes, And the Hollywood is like, yeah,
we're not doing that anymore, like you're bankable, You're not, Like.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, Hollywood not Hollywood have tried this a number of
different times right there, Like in the in the sixties
and seventies or was an independent movie business, and then
the studios kind of gobble up the independence and then
the studios make blockbuster stuff and nobody likes it, and
(21:12):
so they they there's a new independent movie movement, and
then you know, it's just like in Gooes and Cycles
and the in a way, that's what we have in literature.
We have the independent movie, independent book movement. It's happening.
It's and the and the publishers because you know when
(21:37):
I'm sorry, but in nineteen twenty five, I'm gonna just
keep going back to nineteen and.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
You haven't so excited.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
You have an encyclopedia of knowledge been I'm here.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Boy, Okay. So in nineteen twenty five, Uh, you know,
Alfred A. Knop and Blanche Canop started Canop right right,
they started a year or two earlier, but it's a
and and uh they were publishing stuff that the big
publishers because they had all gobbled up other publishers. The
(22:09):
Double Day became Double Day Page, then Double Day Page World,
and Double Day. You know, it's just like got bigger
and bigger and bigger and lost. You know, it became
a corporation, a big corporation that had corporate motives. And
Blanche and Alfred Kannopp and Bony and Livewright and some
of these other small publishers they had a real love
(22:31):
of literature. They were they were into the right. And
so when when Carl van Vechten brings Langston use his
manuscripts to Alfred kannoppuh, he decides, you know, Van Vechten
hears him read his poem at a dinner, goes to
(22:53):
Alfred Knopp the next day, and Kannop sends Langston Use
a contract that same day for his first book. Right,
that's that because it was a guy who saw what
he saw like what he said, did it right? It didn't.
He didn't calculate how much am I going to make
from this book of poetry he made? He just did
(23:15):
it right. He published good stuff, and then they published
enough stuff to keep in business and lost money on
most of their books. And that was what all of
these small, individually run publishers were into doing in the
same way. That's what the small publishers are doing now, right,
And it's just that that now Kanop has become a
(23:38):
big publisher, for Arstrauss has become a big publisher. But
back then they were tiny and they were run by
individual people, and they didn't have a corporate mentality and
they didn't have to make money for their shareholders on
top of the right, because they were individually owned. So
you know, we're we're back in that in that time.
(23:58):
But the distribution system, which is now ninety five percent
ingram is is what kind of is the as another
bottleneck for but books getting recognized. So it's a you know,
it's a it's a great time artistically.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
It is.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
It's a great time artistically for music, for independent film.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
I mean, you can make a movie with an iPhone, yep,
exactly so much.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
With your phone, with your phone there, you go make
it with either one and because we did it with
an iPhone.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
But you can also have a book. And I think
a lot of people write a book.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
A lot of people that weren't going to ever get
hurt are now getting a little bit hurd at least
they have stuff out there for someone to find or
they're pushing it.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
It's always a good thing, but apparently it is parallel
to nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
I cannot wait to read this book now, Like I'm
super excited. If you wanted to know how the year
nineteen twenty five ended for the arts, you can either
do the research or just wait for mister Lutson's book.
You know, so people find out more about you, follow
all the great things and your legacy that you have
left behind.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
How can we find out more about you?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I'm Tom Let's writer, Tom letswriter dot com.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I love that that was so concise it was so easy.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
I think he's making it so concise because it's coming
up real close to red Wine time.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
People to hurry up and get up because we will never.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
It's actually past red Red.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Oh. I held you, thank you so much, so I'm
gonna just wake up quickly so you can find out
everything your ladies are doing on www. Dot And I thought,
ladies dot com, why you're there. Go to the middle
of the page. You see the charities that we probably support.
We will thank you in advance for that. And just remember, y'all,
wisdom is all around you. You're open to finding it
an accepting. It's a piece of love you guys for injade.
(26:04):
Bye bye, oh yeah, thanks for listening.
Accord one. Yeah, yeah, I want to say it. Thank you.
Just think I couldn't hear.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Oh, the guest has a question.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yes, before we start, or we already started, We've already started.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
But hold on one. Everyone welcome to the writer's class.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeh absolutely, because because he's a writer, the guest is
a writer. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yeah, imagine that. Imagine that. I'm Jane and I have
a Jane here today. I know, y'all. I'm sorry. I've
been busy trying to make you know us great. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Jay started a new business, so she's making a lot
of things great.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I don't know if it's a US thing.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
No, I'm joking, it's US all that profit all.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
The things great.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
But anyway, we wrote books, and I thought the voce
was bad with other life lessons, and I thought being
grown up was easy if only.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I would me move on voice anytime you want.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
It was dead with those web and foreign coffee and
you can get those audio we can get those books
wherever audiobooks are sold.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
And by the way, that.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Is that's a lot. It's a lot. I think it's six,
but it might have been seven books.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Normally I count them off but like she did it today,
I blame you. Wow, going back and now you're blaming me.
I feel like that's what she wanted to be back
for y'all. But y'all want here to hear about us,
you're not.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
You can find out the rest of our books, by
the way at www dot And I thought ladies dot com,
you're not here to hear about her about a wonderful guess.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Wonderful guests? Would you like to introduce yourself?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Hi, I'm Tom Lutz Uh from the door Dome in France.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Oh you got to say from the door Dome and
in France, Like, I'm so can you guys remember this?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
But he was on a while ago and he was
in America.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, non American.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
You are an American.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I'm an American. I'm an American in France. I may
become French at some point.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Okay, Okay, who knows fluent in French?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Jippar come to American See there we go? Yeah, it
gets better every day, you know, I find myself I'm
starting to think in French, and I have some French
friends and just to be they all can speak English,
(02:21):
so that helps. But it's not fair to force them
to so I try to speak French when I'm with
them as much as I can. And uh, and of
course just going around town and go buying groceries and
going to the hardware store, it's you have to have
some French.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So so that emersion thing works apparently yourself grocery store
the other day, thinking about in a couple of weeks,
we'll be doing this in German and I was like,
dang it, I'm going to get lost in the grocery store.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
You know? And if you're an adventurous eater, it's okay.
You just buy it and figure out what it is
when you when you get home.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, it's into announced will with us the last time,
but it's okay.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
It's all right.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I thought I was getting a hamburger with something it
but hey, we lived with it.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
It was good. We lived with it. So what motivated
you to move to France? I mean, I have to
from La you know.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I don't know if you've noticed, but our country is, uh,
it's going a little nutty. And my my my wife
is as a historian of that, well, she's not a historian,
she's a she's a writer and a theater critic and journalist.
But she's writing a book about Hitler right now, and
(03:55):
she's also Jewish, and she thinks that, you know, if
a lot of Jews in Europe had watched what was
happening with Hitler and the way we're watching what's happening
with Trump, they would have gotten out a little bit sooner.
So that's not the real reason. The real reason is
that we just wanted a new chapter in our lives.
But there that.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Not exactly. If you can't why not. I I've agreed
with who doesn't Say, who doesn't go?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
You know what France sounds cool like even Jess to say,
I've done it for like three months. I've did it
three minds, okay, and I missed gay bag whatever, But
to do it is awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So as you are a writer.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Also, any good books coming down from this new adventure,
new chapter in your life.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I have invented a new chapter in my life. I've
I've finished two books that and uh and they're they're
both coming there. The one I was hoping was going
to come out this fall because it's a literary encyclopedia
of the year nineteen twenty five. So yeah, it's it's
(05:06):
a very strange book. It's a thousand pages. It's a
monster of a book, and it's but it's it's every
it's every chapter is like an encyclopedia entry. So there's
one about Ahmed Abdullah, who was a famous writer in
nineteen twenty five that none of us have ever heard of. Right,
(05:27):
you've never heard of Akmedadula. Nobody's ever heard of augmented Doula.
He's like completely forgotten. But at the time he was
big news. He had plays on Broadway, he had plays
on the West End in London. He had a whole
story about how he was descended from the Russian czar
(05:48):
on one side and from Afghan princess on the other side.
It's apparently all made up, but he would when he
gave interviews like this, I've been thinking, maybe I should
tell you that I'm descended from.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Like, okay, ancestry dot com obviously.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
So uh and and so, and it just goes through
like that, and and and a lot of it is
literary stuff. And the people that you would expect, you know,
Hemingway and Fitzgerald and gertrud Stein and the you know,
the all of the people from the twenties that are
the cannon. But it's the year that ln Locke published
(06:29):
The New Negro, which was the book that kind of
put the Harlem Renaissance on the on the national map. Uh.
It's the year that Josephine Baker moved to France.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And if you tell me you were doing the same
thing Josephine Baker did.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I am, I am, I am living. I'm living about
fifteen minutes from where she moved.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Oh my god, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
She bought a castle that's you know, just right in
this same area for the same reason because it's beautiful
and and and the food is great. But you know,
and that's where she raised her family of you know,
she adopted thirteen kids and I had this whole So
it's and the castle is amazing. It's you can visit it.
(07:17):
It's a museum to her in her life and she
you know, she was while she was here. She joined
the French Resistance and was a spy for the French
and all. That's a little after nineteen twenty five, but anyway,
it's just it's been. It was such a blast to
write this book and just follow the stories of men
(07:39):
Abdullah and Josephine Baker and gertrud Stein and you know
who else, of course was living in France at the time.
But and then there's you know, there's a chapter on
plastic because plastic was kind of like the word plastics
(07:59):
entered the English language in nineteen twenty five, and it
was a magazine for the plastic industry that was launched
in nineteen ty five. They called itself Plastics anyway, So
it's and television was invented, and the Grand Old Opry
started in Nashville, and you know, just kind of on
(08:21):
and on and on. So it's a it's a really
interesting book. I loved writing it. I did nothing else
for two years. I just would get up in the
morning and add an entry about something and just go
down rabbit hole after rabbit hole and read.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
You know, I doesn't want to go down the rabbit hole.
We all want to go down the rabbit.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Hole, right, What's what It's just like I want.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
To go down this rabbit hole.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I think what writing really is is just self education.
I don't know. And then we get to organize our
education in a way that's entertaining, and yes, write down
the voices in our yeah, and then you can put
them into different voices.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
But like, I think that's like one of the favorite
parts about writing. Everyone's like, oh the research, you know
or are some people absolutely hate the research. But research
is so much easier now, So like, yes, old fun
so now rabbit holes are absolutely wonderful. So we have
asked about your future and your new chapter. I want
to ask about your legacy because well, I'm I'm older now,
(09:24):
so you know, I get stuck in the path.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
You can't tell me you're older look at this.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
But you have done like this historical book that You've
done a lot of books talk that are very well
based in the fact and well presented, so continuousing your
legacy that way. But you also started like glarb and
like put us on to the fact that there's a
literally seen in la How did you feel leaving that
(09:58):
huge legacy to be like I'm going to France, y'all.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, you know, I always knew that I was going
to pass it off to the next generation at some point,
And you know, I thought from the start, I was
thinking ten years I would let I would let it go.
When I was when I was starting it, I was
looking at all the other magazines and the New York
Review of Books. You know, the editor was Robert Silver
(10:23):
forever and the average age of the readers of The
New York Review of Books when we started LARB was
sixty seven. The average age wo yeah, yeah, I mean
because they have to say, tell these things for their advertisers, right,
they have to give their DA data about their readership.
So and I thought, well, of course it is because
(10:45):
a lot of his readers started with him when he
started it, and they kind of just followed him, and
so it's and it was always his vision of what
the magazine should be, and so his his kind of
cohort just traveled with him.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Whoops, Okay, that's although I'm sorry that that was.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
That's little glitch there. Yeah, yeah, little glitch, A little glitch,
no problem.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Visit the contractor who's out the door.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Oh oh, I was afraid that was gonna happen to
me because because this kitchen job is in the middle
of everything, no problem one anyway.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
So you were pressing it all.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Should I should? I wait? No, just keep going. So
so I so and I thought, well, you know, that's
not what I want this to be. I don't want
LARB to be my vision. I want this to be
the literary communities place to meet and talk and and
and uh. I wanted to remain relevant and of its
(11:49):
time and uh and and the only way to do
that is to step away and let's let the next
generation take over.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Well, now that you have stepped away, there is no
better eyes so to look at things. And someone who's
either stepped away or can look behind.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
So what do you think of the American writing landscape
right now?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
American writing landscape is in flux. Obviously, it's always in flux.
I mean one of the things, one of the nice
things about being a historian is that you just see
that a lot of things happen over and over again.
In nineteen twenty five, there was there were everything was changing.
(12:34):
Modernism was had thrown all of the literary values up
in the air, and the people were rethinking everything in
a time like that. Now as well, it's never been
easier to get a book published than it is now.
It's never been harder to get a book noticed it
(12:57):
is now. So it's a it's that that's that's very interesting,
and it means that there's this amazing acundity. People are
people are writing, People are writing poetry. There's poetry slams
in every city and right every little town in America.
(13:19):
It's just it's an amazing time of creativity, and most
people don't know most of what's happening. Because we don't.
It doesn't come past us, right, and so it's not
clear to me, and it won't be clear to anyone
what the great creative minds of our day will turn
(13:45):
out to have been one hundred years from now.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
That's very true. I am very interested. I am one
of them.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, I have always thought that.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yes, I think it's literally like only one work that
we've ever done that, I think.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, And it was really funny other than that.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Actually, okay, so I'm going to break just a little bit.
So it was some one that actually read our book.
It was like the first one and they said, man,
this is gonna be so underrated.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
For like fifty years.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
And they're like, so, I hope you live long enough
for you to get you absolutely deserve He's like, cause
you deserve it, but no one's gonna get it.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
That's that's a beautiful thing. That's a beautiful it really is.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
That wasn't being a narcissist I was just following to
mother for and they were like.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well, it's very great because your children and your children's
children will will weep the benefits of all this hard
work that you're doing. I know, but I but I
want to be able to choose some salt food too.
You know, I'm gonna still gonna be a lave fifty
years from now. Just give me myself, giving my tenches,
which one doesn't matter, like finally get in my life.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yea, yeah, fifty years down the road doesn't help that much.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
But I.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Mean, from that moment on I started being heart healthy,
I'm going to live to see the greatness.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
I might forget it. I might have to mention at
that time, but I'm going to live to pay. Oh
my goodness.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, that is a very you know, along these lines
in the Ernest Hemingway's first book in nineteen twenty five,
nobody this little coterie of people around Gertrude's sign and
her friends. They noticed it. It was published by a
press in Paris that nobody had ever heard of. Just
(15:39):
a rich guy that decided to start publishing some people.
Rich kid who published some of his friends and Gertrude
Stein's making of Americans was published in twenty five and nobody.
Nobody reviewed it. Nobody, right, it was not in the
New York Times, it was not in the Atlantic. And
by the way, in nineteen twenty five, there were book
reviews everywhere. There were like a mid level, mid list novel. Again,
(16:06):
one of these novels that we've never heard of got
twenty reviews around the country and across the ocean. And yeah,
you do.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Some like looking up into nineteen twenty one, I chow books,
the hell you haven come out?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Okay, I'll send you a copy as soon as it arrives.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Oh my goodness, this is I've barely enjoyed the education
and the time war, the time jop back in twenty five,
I feel like.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
What we love interviewing. She's always You're like, wow, I
never would have thought of that. I'm so glad.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Thanks, But I didn't but didn't answer your question that well?
Right about the American literary scene right now?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
No, I.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Feel like we're in a nineteen twenty style renaissance. Now,
if you have more to say about it, I am
definitely all ears to hear about it.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, I think that it's that publishers because of because
of Amazon, right, and because of the kind of economics
of publishing now, Amazon squeezed all of the margins so
hard that you know, publishers have a tough time. Authors
(17:19):
have the hardest time. Agents have a tough time. You know, Publicists,
publicists have a good time because everybody's trying to get
noticed and so public publicists are doing better than anybody
else via you know, inneration to this this moment, and uh,
but that that I don't I don't think it's a
(17:41):
particularly sustainable model. You know, it's just it's not and
so we have to figure out what we're going to
do about that. And and you know, in France they
make if you buy your book from Amazon, they make
you pay a fee, an extra fee, so that it
doesn't undercut the bookstores and so there are still bookstores,
(18:06):
so they're not letting Amazon destroy the bookstore economy and
things like that. And of course the government, the French
government is a is a culture government. I don't know,
if you watch the Olympics opening ceremonies, different Yeah, well
(18:27):
it went on for hours and hours and hours, and
partly because they had stuff about books, they had stuff
about women, French women who had made a change in
their society. They had like cultural history moments. They had
you know, a whole thing about fraternity, about brotherhood, about sisterhood,
about about equality, liberty, difference, you know, sexual variety. It
(18:58):
was like just this, it was like all about culture,
about the way we live, about the right and and
it's because the French actually find that important, not just
you know kind of stories of heroic athletes who eat
cancer and got back in that that's not a good thing,
it's a great thing. But you know this is they
(19:19):
just have They really respect culture. They really like the
fact that they try to do what they what they
have to do to keep their literary culture vibrant. It's
a communal, state based effort. We have the National Endowment
for the Arts. It gets its funds cut a little
bit more every year by Congress. Right, so so we're
(19:43):
going in the wrong direction as a country to help.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
Fix and again everyone out there, and I mean that's
why publics is are having such a great time, right
because now everyone has to like try to yell and
be like the what's important?
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Peoples are important? Like I wrote this book and it's
actually an important book. Like I'm saying, mm hmm, like
that's where you have to be a little loud sometimes.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Recently, that's right.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah. Of course, reading.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
About about the movies, about the studio.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
System, why we don't have movie stars anymore, And as
I was reading it, all I could think about is
that's a publishing still to They're like, they'd have to
find a star, nurture star, like make a star, and
then it's bankable and then you get to bank on
the star. And I was like, well, publishing finds an author,
nurtures an author, publishes an author, and we cross the
(20:43):
finger that they're bankable. Yes, And the Hollywood is like, yeah,
we're not doing that anymore, like you're bankable, You're not, Like.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, Hollywood not Hollywood have tried this a number of
different times right there, Like in the in the sixties
and seventies or was an independent movie business, and then
the studios kind of gobble up the independence and then
the studios make blockbuster stuff and nobody likes it, and
(21:12):
so they they there's a new independent movie movement, and
then you know, it's just like in Gooes and Cycles
and the in a way, that's what we have in literature.
We have the independent movie, independent book movement. It's happening.
It's and the and the publishers because you know when
(21:37):
I'm sorry, but in nineteen twenty five, I'm gonna just
keep going back to nineteen and.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
You haven't so excited.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
You have an encyclopedia of knowledge been I'm here.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Boy, Okay. So in nineteen twenty five, Uh, you know,
Alfred A. Knop and Blanche Canop started Canop right right,
they started a year or two earlier, but it's a
and and uh they were publishing stuff that the big
publishers because they had all gobbled up other publishers. The
(22:09):
Double Day became Double Day Page, then Double Day Page World,
and Double Day. You know, it's just like got bigger
and bigger and bigger and lost. You know, it became
a corporation, a big corporation that had corporate motives. And
Blanche and Alfred Kannopp and Bony and Livewright and some
of these other small publishers they had a real love
(22:31):
of literature. They were they were into the right. And
so when when Carl van Vechten brings Langston use his
manuscripts to Alfred kannoppuh, he decides, you know, Van Vechten
hears him read his poem at a dinner, goes to
(22:53):
Alfred Knopp the next day, and Kannop sends Langston Use
a contract that same day for his first book. Right,
that's that because it was a guy who saw what
he saw like what he said, did it right? It didn't.
He didn't calculate how much am I going to make
from this book of poetry he made? He just did
(23:15):
it right. He published good stuff, and then they published
enough stuff to keep in business and lost money on
most of their books. And that was what all of
these small, individually run publishers were into doing in the
same way. That's what the small publishers are doing now, right,
And it's just that that now Kanop has become a
(23:38):
big publisher, for Arstrauss has become a big publisher. But
back then they were tiny and they were run by
individual people, and they didn't have a corporate mentality and
they didn't have to make money for their shareholders on
top of the right, because they were individually owned. So
you know, we're we're back in that in that time.
(23:58):
But the distribution system, which is now ninety five percent
ingram is is what kind of is the as another
bottleneck for but books getting recognized. So it's a you know,
it's a it's a great time artistically.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
It is.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
It's a great time artistically for music, for independent film.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
I mean, you can make a movie with an iPhone, yep,
exactly so much.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
With your phone, with your phone there, you go make
it with either one and because we did it with
an iPhone.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
But you can also have a book. And I think
a lot of people write a book.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
A lot of people that weren't going to ever get
hurt are now getting a little bit hurd at least
they have stuff out there for someone to find or
they're pushing it.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
It's always a good thing, but apparently it is parallel
to nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
I cannot wait to read this book now, Like I'm
super excited. If you wanted to know how the year
nineteen twenty five ended for the arts, you can either
do the research or just wait for mister Lutson's book.
You know, so people find out more about you, follow
all the great things and your legacy that you have
left behind.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
How can we find out more about you?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I'm Tom Let's writer, Tom letswriter dot com.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I love that that was so concise it was so easy.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
I think he's making it so concise because it's coming
up real close to red Wine time.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
People to hurry up and get up because we will never.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
It's actually past red Red.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Oh. I held you, thank you so much, so I'm
gonna just wake up quickly so you can find out
everything your ladies are doing on www. Dot And I thought,
ladies dot com, why you're there. Go to the middle
of the page. You see the charities that we probably support.
We will thank you in advance for that. And just remember, y'all,
wisdom is all around you. You're open to finding it
an accepting. It's a piece of love you guys for injade.
(26:04):
Bye bye, oh yeah, thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.