John Freeman, THE PENGUIN BOOK OF THE MODERN AMERICAN SHORT STORY
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[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:41]If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:47]Here's a little snippet by one of the authors from the anthology.
[0:51]Hi, my name is Amy Agresti, and I'm thrilled to have contributed to Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:56]My essay is called Can a Writer Be Too Emotional, Asking for a Friend.
[1:00]And what I really don't have time for is writing, sure, but also figuring out how to use my phone properly.
[1:07]This is the first voice memo I've ever made.
[1:09]How am I doing?
[1:10]Anyway, read this anthology.
[1:12]It's amazing.
[1:13]John Freeman is the author of the Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story.
[1:18]He's the editor of Freeman's, a literary annual of new writing, and executive editor at Alfred A. Knuff.
[1:25]His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing, as well as Tales of the Two Americas.
[1:31]An anthology about Income and Equality in America.
[1:33]And Tales of Two Planets, an anthology of new writing about inequality and the climate crisis globally.
[1:38]He is also the author of Two Poetry Collections, Maps and the Park.
[1:42]His work is translated into more than 20 languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times.
[1:48]The former editor of Grandpa, he teaches writing at New York University.
[1:51]Welcome, John.
[1:52]Thanks so much for coming on Momstone.
[1:54]I have time to read books.
[1:55]It's so great to be here.
[1:57]We have so much to discuss your literary career in, like, so excited to talk books and everything with you.
[2:03]The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story is your latest hardcover publication here, and then you have change coming out soon from Freeman's.
[2:12]How did you decide on which short stories to include in this collection?
[2:16]I know you're like master anthologist, and as like a budding anthologist myself, I'm looking for lots of tips for me.
[2:23]So how did you how did you pick?
[2:25]It was actually quite fun.
[2:26]In the beginning I had a list of stories I thought would go in, but then I decided it would be far better and more interesting to just go and read what was out there.
[2:36]And so I spent a year and a half reading a couple thousand stories from all the best Americans from 1970 upwards to the Henry collections to everything that had been shortlisted for a prize to stories people recommended the stories by noted short story writers.
[2:56]It was just a short story feast for, you know, almost two years.
[3:01]And that was quite interesting because people I had thought I was in love with sometimes paled in comparison to new discoveries.
[3:09]Interesting.
[3:10]Yeah, it's funny because I feel like in today's sort of market, the short story collections are often not given as much attention or they say they don't sell as well or they're not as commercial or blah, blah, not that it matters.
[3:25]But then when we think about literature over time, I mean, the short stories that's like what people read in school, like those are what have the lasting legacy.
[3:33]So I don't know maybe we're getting something wrong right now.
[3:36]Well, yeah, we are taught to read by reading short stories.
[3:39]And I think for some that has a lingering of medicinal aftertaste.
[3:44]So to avoid it.
[3:46]But when you catch a good story early, you know, whether it's, I don't know, Flannery O'Connor or Jack London or James Baldwin, you never forget it, you know, and my hope was to make a book full of stories that made the reader, even if they weren't familiar with the writer or the story, that would recapture that feeling, you know, that sort of magic that deeply memorable experience at a short story can can give you.
[4:13]And it was it was a high bar, but when a story meets it, it's just electric.
[4:18]Yes, I love that you have like Karen Russell and Lauren Groff and all these contemporary authors sort of mixed in with a grace, pale and seasoned saun tag.
[4:26]And I mean, they must have been so excited to be included, right.
[4:30]I mean, this is such to be in your canon of short stories as it were.
[4:34]I mean, that's pretty awesome.
[4:36]I mean, I've, I'm blown away consistently by both of those writer stories you just mentioned Karen Russell and Lauren Groff.
[4:45]And they came out early, very early, you know, if you read Lauren Groff's first collection, she has this long love story.
[4:52]I think it's based on tortoise and cressida, but it's sort of set in the 20th, early 20th century.
[4:57]And I almost included that story because it was just such a beautiful love story.
[5:02]Then I thought, God, I can't include a story from the very first year she was publishing.
[5:06]And, you know, the Florida is full of fantastic stories.
[5:10]There was three of them I could have included.
[5:13]And I find that there are certain writers.
[5:15]Russell is another one where her imagination is just it's its own.
[5:21]And she's so good at the short story.
[5:23]I could have chosen a few by her.
[5:25]And the same was true of Raymond Carver, you know, he was taught a lot.
[5:29]And I think he created a lot of imitators.
[5:31]But you go back to me.
[5:32]And the car for his stories.
[5:34]Wow.
[5:35]I mean, they just feel completely skinless.
[5:39]You know, there's these alive things.
[5:41]You know, they don't feel old at all.
[5:43]And the same is true of Tony K.
[5:44]Bambara, you know, the first story that kicks off the book.
[5:48]The lesson is something I think is taught very frequently in schools.
[5:51]But she was one of those writers where the appreciation of her wasn't transcending the early educational uses of her work.
[5:59]And I hope this book will be taught in schools.
[6:01]But I hope it would just be enjoyed by people who want a good story.
[6:04]And I really wanted to kick off with her because I think she's one of the maestro's of the 20th century short story.
[6:11]I mean, just absolutely pitch perfect control of voice and irony.
[6:17]And in this story, these children on a school trip into Manhattan to go to.
[6:23]But I think it's FAO Schwartz who are, you know, the school teacher thinks she's teaching them about the value of.
[6:30]beautiful accumulation of wealth.
[6:33]And instead she's, she's teaching them about shame and poverty.
[6:38]And the kids already know that lesson.
[6:40]And so the story has so many circles within it so many layers.
[6:46]And she does all this in a couple thousand words.
[6:49]And she does it again and again in her career as a short story writer.
[6:52]So part of this book is celebrating people who really dedicated their career,
[6:57]writing stories, you know, and grow off and paid.
[7:00]Are and no bar among them.
[7:03]I feel like, did you have jump a little here?
[7:05]Oh, yeah, you did have jump a little here.
[7:06]I was going to say she's like the quintessential like short story writer in my mind where you jump right into the story.
[7:13]And like you never forget the characters.
[7:15]And it just like seers into your brain.
[7:17]Anyway, so I'm glad you included her.
[7:19]She's a beautiful writer.
[7:20]And you write the stories by her are just the characters feel like they were,
[7:25]they're world and they're, they're being exists beyond the story.
[7:30]And to me, that's what seems like a hallmark of a great character in a story is this feeling that you might finish the story.
[7:37]And they have a whole other existence beyond the story, you know, whereas with a novel you finish,
[7:43]unless there's a strong sense of a sequel, you think, okay, that's their world.
[7:47]You know, I've seen it, you know, especially a bigger novel.
[7:50]And it's roomy and has lingers and, you know, the enchanting pleasures of interior life.
[7:58]But with a short story, you feel like you're only going to slice of someone's very deep life.
[8:05]Yeah, left wanting more kind of like a movie trailer.
[8:08]Yeah, right.
[8:10]Where's the rest of it?
[8:11]Will you be publishing short stories that you're your new imprint?
[8:14]I don't know.
[8:15]So Lee knew many who I co-founded Zippy Books with has her own collection of short stories coming out in April.
[8:20]Fabulous.
[8:21]And she, yeah, she's amazing.
[8:23]So we have talked about that, but we haven't made, we haven't ruled anything out.
[8:27]We have a memoir and essays coming out.
[8:29]So I feel like that's kind of the flip side, right?
[8:32]Short stories to collection of essays.
[8:34]So yeah, we're not ruling anything out at this point.
[8:36]But we don't have, we haven't acquired one yet, but I know she's a, she always talks about her passion for short stories.
[8:43]So I wouldn't be surprised.
[8:45]It is, I mean, sadly the exception to the exception.
[8:49]That sells in the short story form.
[8:51]I mean, several people in this book.
[8:53]Jump over here, you do know Diaz.
[8:55]I'm to read Carver over time, a little more on graph.
[8:59]You know, there are people that that really sell in serious numbers as short story writers.
[9:04]But that's, it's rare.
[9:06]And I don't know.
[9:07]I think it's in America.
[9:08]It's sometimes it feels a little bit like selling air.
[9:11]because short stories are everywhere.
[9:12]They're in magazines.
[9:13]Sometimes they're even newspapers.
[9:15]You're taught them, you know, they're on podcasts.
[9:19]You can download them depending on how long your subway trip is.
[9:23]It's sort of a unit of pleasure that that doesn't necessarily need a book or if not a book then like a single book by a single author.
[9:31]And for that reason, I sometimes wonder if people's attitude towards it is.
[9:36]You know, even more akin to how people treat albums and music right now.
[9:41]They just sort of pick one song from iTunes and download it versus, you know, get the whole album.
[9:47]True.
[9:48]Although I think the great thing about anthologies and short story collections and essay collections is that no matter how tired you are, you can just read one and feel like you've accomplished something.
[9:58]Great leg.
[10:00]I got, I did the beginning, middle, and end of this thing. And that's what I did today. And now I have
[10:04]something good that I can, you know, cross off the list. So I think for today's.
[10:09]Don't you love like, um, by as fiction for that? I mean, that there's a couple stories in here
[10:14]that are very, very short. George Saunders and Alice Walker's stories are two, 300 words.
[10:20]Yeah. Thank you for that. That was, I would felt accomplished very early in the night.
[10:26]with us. That's why I've actually found with all this reading, like, I, I'm also sort of newly in
[10:34]love with poetry, which again was sort of in the realm of school for me for a while. Like,
[10:40]and now we have something like, oh, poetry, I could read that faster. I'm sort of back into enjoying
[10:45]that. And it has the same thing. It's like this immediacy and like this, it's a new, it's a different
[10:51]art form. I'm sounding ridiculous. But anyway, I have this like new found appreciation for
[10:56]sort of coming back around from my time as like fiction memoir thriller, all that stuff. So I shouldn't
[11:01]say thrill. I don't really like thrillers. Well, I shouldn't say that either. You're like,
[11:04]you're doing some dogs. The bar. Oh, my, my dog might jump up and join the frick.
[11:11]No worries. I feel like probably one out of 10 podcasts. There is a dog barking. So that's fine.
[11:17]So John, how did you get to hear, like, how did you become the executive editor of Canop
[11:23]and like, right, you know, all the work that you've done, like, where did you know this is like,
[11:28]what did you want to do when you started out? Like, did you always want to be a writer or were you
[11:32]like, how did you, what happened with from college to hear the short version?
[11:36]Yeah, if you had told me when I was 21 and graduating from university that
[11:41]in 25 years, I would be a editor at Canop. I think I would have fallen over and happiness
[11:48]because I knew I wanted to be involved in books, but I didn't know how, you know, and
[11:53]I went to a very small Quaker college swarthmore that didn't have a pipeline. You know, we had,
[11:59]we had Jonathan Franzen, you know, who was when I was graduating, you know, still wandering the
[12:04]heat of discovering, you know, what kind of novelcy was long before corrections. And there weren't
[12:10]a lot of people in publishing and magazines, but I got a job because Random House was recruiting
[12:15]from universities directly then. And I got hired into a program at Bantam double day Dell in 1996
[12:23]and moved to New York and got a job as an assistant to the late Marjorie Brainman, who was a
[12:29]mass market editor. I have so, I was so green, the phone rang, she was standing over me,
[12:33]and I just picked it up and said, it's for you.
[12:35]The guy that's the way he was still in publishing in Asia now, he just went, and he took me to
[12:41]the, we're gonna have to teach you a few things. I didn't know what it meant to be an assistant.
[12:45]I just knew that I love books and I love reading and probably wanted to write, but I didn't
[12:51]know any which way to go about it. So I spent two years as an assistant in a variety of jobs
[12:57]of which I was, I quit one was fired from one and the third I was sort of, I just kind of
[13:03]phased out because partly it was such a different time. You know, it was the idea of the author
[13:10]tour gigantic advances. I worked my third jobs at Hyperion and they were doing books by standard
[13:16]comedians. I just, I didn't know what I wanted to do and so I left and had a kind of
[13:23]couple of years. I worked at an investment bank. I did no way. I made newsletters for HMOs,
[13:29]you know, that they would send out to like how to use your primary care physician. And around
[13:34]this, in the middle of this period, I sent some college era newspaper clips to publishers weekly
[13:40]and they let me review a book and I use that clip to send to the Boston Phoenix, which is
[13:46]an now defunct alternative weekly. And I started reviewing books very slowly, but I got lucky in
[13:52]that my first assignment was for Birds of America by Laurie Moore. And my second assignment was
[13:57]to ours by Michael Cunningham. My third assignment was for the relief of unbearable urges by Nathan
[14:03]Englander. I thought, wow, god, reviewing is great. You just get to read really fantastic books and
[14:09]try to make sense of them. And eventually I started to get books. I was less fond of, but it was a
[14:15]great time. 1999, I found and putting together this anthology, I could have chosen six or seven
[14:21]stories from 1999, because Jumbleahiri was in full flow that then Nathan Englander, you know,
[14:27]Diaz, Laurie Moore, this is where I'm writing great stories in that period. I mean, it was just,
[14:32]there was a whole new kind of short story that was being written. There was a pleasure in it,
[14:37]and the humor was less tart and kind of clubby, you know, and there were also just a number of
[14:44]new voices that were coming to the four that were people from communities that did not see
[14:49]themselves at the center of America. You know, Nathan Englander grew up in a Orthodox Jewish community
[14:54]in Ohio, and a lot of the stories feel like babble or singer stories, at least the early ones.
[14:59]So anyway, I reviewed books for a while, eventually it lost a day job and just reviewed full time
[15:05]for almost 10 years. And then I got a job in New York, and I did edit a guide to children's books
[15:11]and abridged children's versions of Tarzan. It would be good. It was just a, I had a really,
[15:17]I had about 30 jobs. It felt like until I finally ended up with a full-time job, which was
[15:22]not until I really got hired to work at granted. You know, I've been reviewing books for about 12
[15:28]years and interviewing people, and I went to the party for the 2003 best of young American
[15:35]novelist list. I think that was about the year. Yeah, no, sorry, it was 2007. And I met the owners
[15:41]and they went for an editor, and I applied, didn't get the job, but then a year later they hired me
[15:45]to come back and edit. And that started a five year relationship with the magazine,
[15:49]eventually became editor. And then in my relationship to reading became very different because it was
[15:54]publishing for someone. Review it as a reviewer, you're sort of inculcoots with the reader,
[16:00]but you're not providing the text, you're saying, uh, take a pass on this one or, you know,
[16:05]this is really, really great. You should read it or you may not read this, but you should really
[16:09]know about it. It's exceptional. And, you know, it sounds very consumer-oriented, but I reviewed
[16:14]mostly for newspapers. And so I felt like as much as I wanted to write art as a review when you have
[16:21]700 words and you're talking to someone who you don't have a lot of shared assumptions about.
[16:26]So one of them I felt like had to be, should you read this, you know, should you buy it?
[16:29]Should you spend $25 on it? And I love that, but as a publisher, it's, you've got subscribers,
[16:36]and you're trying to provide them with a consistent level of enjoyment, but with different things.
[16:42]And that's what I loved about working at Granton is that the people that subscribed to and read it,
[16:47]they wanted to be excited and challenged. And one of the reasons why it sort of needed a new editor
[16:54]at the time I was coming in was it has started to provide some of the same things over and over,
[16:59]which is what happens with success. You know, people, it becomes easy to do what you've done before
[17:04]as a publication. So that's, that's sort of how I ended up with all that work and, you know,
[17:10]between working at Granton and now is, I guess, almost another eight years. And I eventually
[17:16]quit that job because I felt like it was deforming personally. You can't be the editor of a big,
[17:22]literary magazine without people, you know, treating you like an editor of a big literary magazine.
[17:26]And I don't know. I wanted to write books and do other things too. And so I, I quit the job and
[17:31]came back to New York. And first thing I noticed was the gap between the rich and the poor. And so
[17:35]I commissioned an anthology about inequality in New York City, which turned into three
[17:40]mon about the America at large. And then one about the planet and the gap between, you know,
[17:46]not just North and South, but countries, which are late to some of the effects of the
[17:51]climate crisis and those which have been paying early. And, and the course of making that,
[17:56]I also hope start up lit hub and work there for about five years and put about, I don't know,
[18:02]1500 stories into, into there. And so I, I was doing a lot of editing. And I also started
[18:08]my own journal Freeman's, which is going into its eighth edition this fall with change. And
[18:13]I love finding new things and hearing about new writers and then experiencing reality through
[18:19]their work in a new way. It feels like a way to make life feel endless when it is very much
[18:25]on. It's very, very, and I wanted to say end for it. Very much at the end. And so I, and of course,
[18:32]of putting those together, some of the pieces turned into books, Larry Lewis,
[18:37]what an essay about volunteering to interpret for Spanish speaking minors who would come
[18:43]undocumented into the US and their court dates to verify that they were eligible for asylum and
[18:48]that turned into a really powerful book called Tell Me How It Ends, which is a book length essay
[18:54]using this as it's spine, the questionnaire that these minors are faced with, which is an English
[18:59]and which they need interpreters like her for. And she was showing how the questions created
[19:04]a distorted reality and that reality is then used to talk about and think about migration. And
[19:10]it was just such a powerful piece. And I knew from the second that she turned it in at that
[19:14]length that it was a book. And over the course of editing Freeman's, I just thought this should be
[19:19]really quite a bit of fun to work with authors beyond their pieces. And so I did a little bit of
[19:27]that. I grow Jaime Cortez as a short story collection out called Gordo, which I ran two of
[19:33]in the journal. And I'm not to forn it has an essay collection. It also came out this year that I
[19:39]edited for growth. But at a certain point, I sort of burnt out of the internet. So I quit my job at
[19:45]Littub. It seems to be a five year plan for me. And as a result, I was going to, as you can tell,
[19:51]from the background noise, walk dogs. I had no other plans besides dog hockey. And then
[19:57]did the very next day, Reagan Arthur.
[20:00]emailed me and said, hey, I want to talk to you about something. I don't know what I thought.
[20:04]But when I when I called her, I was really surprised. And since then, it's been just an absolute
[20:08]treat. You know, it's been really fun, you know, editing books by
[20:23]I feel like I've found a job and a group of people that is glorious to work with.
[20:29]Yeah. So I'm sorry, that's a little wrong, but it's a random.
[20:32]No, I found that so fascinating because as you're going through it, careers like often don't make
[20:40]any sense, like the totally linear career, especially in this world, because there is no clear
[20:45]path, right? So everybody has to do all sorts of different things to getting to where they are
[20:50]in the literary world, if you will. So no, I found it so fascinating. And actually, it's so funny
[20:55]because I feel like I had there are a lot of like parallels with the with this little tiny ecosystem
[21:01]that I'm building here a little bit, right? Mom's down to town to write is now our personal essay
[21:06]site. And I have now for Zigbee books, like a couple of those authors are writing books for us.
[21:12]And it's the same thing. I just want to hear more. And that's how I started doing
[21:15]anthologies is from the podcast. And I just like wanted to hear more from authors. So it's the same
[21:21]it comes from the same place, right? Just interest curiosity leads to commissioning and hearing
[21:27]more that way. It's great having that opportunity too, because many people in the field that
[21:34]we're in are good storytellers in person, you know, and listening to people talk and tell stories,
[21:39]you sometimes hear a bigger story. And that's always been a commissioning angle for me. I don't
[21:45]sit down hoping to do that. I'm not sitting there with a like a little clicker saying, uh-huh,
[21:51]here it is. Here's the goal. But occasionally people just tell stories and you think that you
[21:56]should write that as an essay. And it's very fun to be able to say not just you should write that
[22:01]as an essay, but I would like to publish that as an essay if you can write that. Yeah, it's so cool.
[22:05]You know, and that's now it's like you should write a book. And I'm like, this is so awesome.
[22:11]Now it's going to be a book. It's like magic. I mean, for any book lovers, this is this is magic.
[22:17]It's like, you know, it's one thing to discover a book that means a lot, but it's another to
[22:22]just hear something and think, wow, this is if you could get all this on the page, this is going to
[22:27]like really help other people. And here it's just like floating around. So now you just have to
[22:31]grab it like this balloon kind of like, you know, it's just like tie it to something.
[22:35]Collaboration is one of the greatest joys of working and publishing. You know, as you know,
[22:41]you're putting together a book. There's just 50 people involved from the copy editors, the fact
[22:46]checkers, the jacket designers, the photographer for the author, to the obviously the author,
[22:53]him or her, their selves, you know, it's the center of it. And it's not quite the case with
[22:59]every other art, you know, maybe a painter has an assistant or and they have a galleries and there's
[23:05]people who help hang the paintings and ship them and et cetera, but it's not quite as a collaborative
[23:10]as they say movies, but I love that participating in that, you know, and I don't know that I could
[23:16]write myself without this form of collaboration, being a big part of my life as an editor,
[23:21]as an anthologist. And I feel a tiny bit because I've written nonfiction books and poetry.
[23:29]I hope I will not ask an author to do something. I wouldn't ask myself to do, you know, and I
[23:34]think that's a key part of, you know, just preserving spaces of care within an industry which is
[23:40]very competitive. It's quite stressful, you know, selling a book is very difficult and it's
[23:47]overjoying when it can happen. And then then begins the process of trying to make it and
[23:52]get it out there and get people to know about it. And I think being part of that can be very
[23:57]rewarding, but especially if you're working with people who have a similar attitude of
[24:03]of hope, fullness, you know, the publishing jokes are often cynical and dark, but all the great
[24:09]publishers I've known, even if they dress all in black, they're secretly hopeful because you can't,
[24:16]you can't convince an audience with cynicism and any teacher, any good teacher knows this too,
[24:22]you can't go into a classroom, although it's a trope in films, you can't go into a classroom and
[24:27]when the students over with your stylized cynicism, you know, you have to, it doesn't mean you
[24:33]have to be pie in the sky, hopeful. It doesn't mean that you have to overlook terrible things
[24:38]or fractured issues of say what it means to be an American in a country that is like the country
[24:46]we're in now that we've been in for centuries. And yet you still have to, I think, try to find
[24:53]points of if not hoped in like some kind of light, you know, some kind of pleasure is a big thing,
[24:59]I think, you know, the idea of a book is is an instrument of education and light and argument,
[25:07]but it's also primarily hopefully pleasure, it should be pleasurable to read, even if it's arguing
[25:12]with you, it should be a pleasure to read it, it should be stimulating. And, you know, that's a
[25:17]really fun task to be involved in is providing pleasure for others in that high-minded way. And
[25:23]it doesn't have to be literary, but it has to reach the person. Yes, I love how you said that,
[25:29]totally agree, 100%.
[25:31]The market stories, isn't it? Because one of the things I thought about is when I was putting
[25:35]together that anthology is I wanted there to be different forms of pleasure, you know, scary stories,
[25:41]stories that were really, really dark and unusual.
[25:44]No, I was like, Stephen King, I can't. I can't. I'm going to be a fall night. I'm like,
[25:48]I got a fast forward through this one.
[25:50]Yeah, I had a longer story by him called the Man of the Black Suit, which is fantastic,
[25:54]the New Yorker, ran it in the late 90s. And it won in a Henry Prize, I think. And it's about
[25:59]this kid who sees the devil down by a river. And he's like, of course, runs on. I was like,
[26:05]oh my God, I saw the devil, this dad comes back out. And you'd think that the devil won't
[26:10]appear, but I think he does. And it's just, it's so scary. And the story that I ended running
[26:16]called the Dune is similarly spooky, but it has the, it has a different cast to it. It reminds
[26:22]me more. This will date me, but there used to be a series on television called Amazing Stories.
[26:28]But I think Stephen Spielberg may be produced. And it was, they're kind of stories about
[26:32]just weird things that happen. You know, like someone on a plane and they see someone on the
[26:37]wing of the plane. And every time they point to the person on the wing of the plane, the person
[26:41]next to them, turns to look and the person isn't out there. He's like, there's a person on the plane.
[26:46]That's a whole. And this is the Dune. I feel like is like one of those stories. And King is,
[26:51]he is so protean as a short story writer. He's got billions of examples of this, you know, where
[26:57]something uncanny happens. And then the story starts this little engine of escalation. Like, like,
[27:02]what happens when no one sees it? What happens when no one else sees it? You know, my, my other favorite
[27:08]story of his is that story, Quitters, Inc. Very, this guy is in an airport bar and the guy sitting next
[27:15]has just quit smoking. And it says, hey, try this. It will really work. He phones the number goes in
[27:20]to midtown. And it's this bland office and they have this questionnaire. He fills it out.
[27:26]It does the whole thing. And the person there says, you know, you have to stick by this or else and
[27:33]doesn't really specify what's going to happen. I forget what happens, but basically the guy
[27:38]instantly, you know, sneaks the cigarette. And the next day someone comes by like cuts off his hand
[27:44]or they do something really terrible and violent. And it just sort of escalates from there.
[27:49]And that, that was somehow it was just a little bit too brutal.
[27:53]I was like watching the golden girls. I'm not like, I cannot take any stress in my TV watching
[27:58]like golden girls, funky rooster. I'm good. It was like, you know, only rooster. We must be
[28:04]exactly the same age. I watched that. I'm 45. I'm 46. Yeah. So, oh, there you go. Yeah. I'm so
[28:11]fine. I think I mean, I think I keep rooster. I told I wanted to be her. I thought she was like
[28:18]the be all and all. I remember looking at Swarthmore, by the way, because I got completely lost.
[28:23]My mother took my two friends from high school and made the look at colleges. And I remember,
[28:28]you know, we had like the AAA trip ticks. Do you remember what those were when like,
[28:32]anyway, she got us like completely lost in his snowstorm looking for Swarthmore and kept like calling
[28:36]and screaming at the admissions office. And it was so embarrassing. Her, like, complete breakdown
[28:41]that I was like, okay, I can't apply here. Like, that's it. I cannot apply to the school.
[28:45]I just decided from the gods that maybe this, this isn't meant for you.
[28:52]Yeah. No. I ended up applying to pen, not that I went there either.
[28:57]I went to Yale. And were you happy there? I was. Yeah. I loved it. I really loved it. To be honest,
[29:04]I wanted to go to Brown, but I was waitlisted there. So I went to Yale.
[29:07]And they have a very storied English department, don't they? Or they did in the 90s?
[29:12]They did. And I thought I wanted to be an English major, because I had started writing for 17
[29:17]magazine. I am like the total, I'm like embarrassed talking to you're so like,
[29:21]I'm minded literary. And I'm so. I was at a bank working on spreadsheets, calculating the
[29:27]beta of, you know, of entertainment stocks. So yeah, I went to business school. I learned how
[29:34]to do you've done analysis, not that I've used it once, you know, but actually I did use it once,
[29:39]and I completely messed up my whole like business model. So I decided I should not go back to doing
[29:43]that. Yeah. No, anyway, I thought I went to be an English major, but you had to take so many
[29:48]the prerequisites and all the classes. I'm like, I cannot. I can't. I don't want to take any of these
[29:53]classes. Like, I took a prose writing class, which I loved, I wish I could remember my teacher,
[29:58]but then I ended up majoring in psychology because-
[30:00]because I wanted to take every single one of those classes.
[30:02]I found them so fascinating.
[30:03]So that's what I ended up doing.
[30:05]I'm sure you were in English major.
[30:06]I was, but I also measured in political science
[30:09]and I had this sort of side thing on public policy,
[30:11]but I failed statistics,
[30:13]so I ended up just English and political science.
[30:17]I actually did okay in statistics, crazy enough.
[30:19]Well, I mean, you should,
[30:20]you'll be a good publisher,
[30:21]because I actually recalculate a bit now.
[30:24]No, you don't want our P&Ls.
[30:26]It's like, what is the M&Ms book?
[30:28]Yes, I've been looking at P&I,
[30:30]I have been looking at P&Ls again and I'm like,
[30:32]huh, this is what I'm saying.
[30:34]How like, it's so crazy how every experience ends up making this worse.
[30:39]We're right from my time like filing author contracts
[30:42]in my internship, Vanity Fair, where I'm like,
[30:44]wait, how do I become the author?
[30:46]I don't want to be filing the contract.
[30:48]I found that fascinating.
[30:49]I worked in some rights at for Australia
[30:51]and I would file the contracts.
[30:53]No, their contracts were, I mean,
[30:55]it was like Jack Kerwack for Big Sur, you know?
[30:58]Yeah, no, these were like big deal contracts.
[31:00]I was like, oh my God.
[31:02]Meanwhile, I'm totally late for my next podcast here,
[31:04]so I better go.
[31:05]Thank you for this.
[31:06]Thank you so much.
[31:07]It was so fun.
[31:07]You too.
[31:08]We should do this more often or continue.
[31:10]I'm sorry about the interruptus,
[31:12]Douglas, you know, it's just...
[31:13]No worries.
[31:14]No worries.
[31:16]You're keeping us all safe.
[31:17]Yeah, I hope you have the best of luck with your list.
[31:20]It sounds like a really fun project
[31:23]and I'm excited actually.
[31:25]Jenny Jackson, who I adore.
[31:27]She's the one who introduced me to Anne Misetti,
[31:29]who's now our consulting publisher.
[31:30]Well, that's fantastic.
[31:31]Yeah.
[31:32]I'm very excited to read Jenny's first novel,
[31:35]which should be coming around pretty soon, I would think.
[31:38]Oh my gosh, I can't wait.
[31:39]I'm so excited.
[31:41]I'll have to have her on the podcast.
[31:42]Well, thank you for having me on.
[31:44]It's a real pleasure and, you know,
[31:46]if I can ever introduce you to anyone else
[31:48]or talk to you about EBITDA, you know?
[31:51]Thank you.
[31:52]You'll be my first call when I'm struggling in Excel.
[31:55]All right, take care, Zippy.
[31:58]All right, YouTube.
[31:59]Bye-bye.
[32:00]Have a great day.
[32:01]Yeah.
[32:02]Thanks for listening to this episode
[32:04]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:06]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens
[32:09]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:11]Also sign up for my newsletter at zippyowens.com
[32:13]and sign up for my virtual book club
[32:15]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[32:18]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound
[32:20]for the sound editing.
[32:21]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[32:23]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.