Susan Orlean, ON ANIMALS
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[2:04]Susan Earlyid is the author of Odd Animals.
[2:07]She has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992.
[2:10]And is the New York Times best selling author of seven books, including the library book,
[2:14]Rintington, Saturday Night, and the Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy award winning film adaptation.
[2:20]She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles and can be reached at Susan Earlyid.com and on Twitter at Susan Earlyid.
[2:27]This is her second appearance on my podcast, The First was for the library books.
[2:30]I go back and listen to that one too.
[2:32]Welcome, Susan.
[2:33]Thanks for coming back onto mom's end of time to read books for your latest on animals.
[2:39]Congratulations.
[2:40]Thank you.
[2:41]I'm so happy to be with you and it's such a pleasure to be back again.
[2:46]Uh-oh.
[2:47]I know last time we were in person, so it's not quite the same.
[2:50]But your your publicist sent me a copy, but I also subscribe to your little rottie box.
[2:55]I have to say.
[2:56]So I got it from that.
[2:57]I love it.
[2:58]I love your little rottie box.
[3:00]Thank you.
[3:01]Thank you.
[3:02]It's so much fun.
[3:03]And as you know, it's such a pleasure to turn the spotlight on, on different books.
[3:11]It's just a tree.
[3:12]Can you share like another one coming up?
[3:15]We just started Patty Clark Ha Ha by Rottie Doyle, amazing book.
[3:21]And it's a little older than some of the titles I've been choosing, but luckily that doesn't matter.
[3:29]And I feel like anybody who missed it for some round.
[3:33]This is a great chance to introduce them to this, you know, magnificent book.
[3:40]Amazing.
[3:41]Well, yes, anyone listening who loves Susan Arlene, which is probably most of you go to
[3:46]Little Rottie, and you can get a box of her picks every month, right?
[3:50]Every month?
[3:51]Yeah.
[3:52]Okay.
[3:53]Let's talk about on animals, which was, I mean, I mean, I did not realize you were this much
[3:58]of an animal person, animals of all shapes and sizes and types and everything.
[4:03]Tell me about why you wrote this collection.
[4:05]Why now all of it?
[4:06]Oh, this is an interesting experience.
[4:09]And I know many have already been written.
[4:12]I didn't mean to suggest you sat in.
[4:14]Oh, of course.
[4:15]And some of the material was newly written for the sake of doing a collection.
[4:22]Doing a collection is a wonderful pleasure.
[4:26]It's a privilege, really, to take work and that's been published in magazines and put
[4:35]them together, both because it's a different experience to have the material in a book.
[4:41]It makes it a sort of permanent document that's kind of wonderful.
[4:47]But if it's a thematic collection, as this one was, there is a bigger story that you're
[4:55]trying to tell.
[4:57]In this case, it's also came about, interestingly, as a result of COVID, I think many of
[5:04]us during this period of time have been looking back on our lives and being kind of reflective
[5:12]about what we've done, what we want to do, what matters, what doesn't matter, you
[5:19]know, the impulses that come from being in rather extreme circumstances.
[5:26]So I was looking back over my career and just thinking about what if I really addressed
[5:34]regularly, what are the things that have mattered to me coincidentally, I also did what
[5:41]a lot of people did during COVID, which is I got a puppy adding to my menagerie of a dog
[5:49]in a cat, I got a puppy, and so did just about everybody I know during COVID.
[5:55]I thought that was kind of interesting, why is it that we, so many of us, had the
[6:01]zimpaels during a time of great anxiety to get a pet.
[6:08]Well, that began kind of coalescing with this other idea of looking at my work and thinking,
[6:14]what if I addressed regularly in my stories and it emerged almost instantly that I've
[6:22]written many, many pieces about animals and those pieces kind of look at recurring themes
[6:33]about animals and about our living with animals, putting the stories together seemed to
[6:41]need to actually emphasize the sort of underlying themes about what is it like to coexist
[6:49]on a planet, but these other creatures, what is our responsibility to them since we are
[6:57]kind of the apex predator, what is our responsibility to the animals that we share the
[7:04]Earth with, what is the sort of, what are the questions that arise out of captivity?
[7:12]Do we do it right?
[7:13]Is it right to ever keep animals captive?
[7:18]And then the question of what our relationship is with those animals that work for us, and
[7:26]that may sound like a funny phrase, but when you think about it, there are lots of animals
[7:31]that we have a kind of working relationship with, livestock, horses, donkeys, chickens,
[7:40]you know, these animals that we don't keep us pets exactly, but that we have a relationship
[7:47]with.
[7:48]And over the years, you know, I get to pick my own subject matter and I just keep
[7:54]gravitating to these stories about animals, so it became very natural to me to put them
[8:00]together.
[8:01]Interesting.
[8:02]I feel like when I talked to Danny Shapiro a while ago, you know, about inheritance,
[8:08]you're saying, you know, when she looks back so much of her work is about this like
[8:12]search for identity and father and whatever, and it all made sense later, do you have
[8:17]something like that makes it all make sense?
[8:20]Like yes, you've identified the theme of the work, but like, do you know deep down
[8:24]where it really all comes from or is there, you know, not that you're really related
[8:29]to a chicken or something, but do you know what I'm trying to say?
[8:33]Yes, absolutely.
[8:35]I think that the themes that I really return to regularly are about how we strive to have
[8:47]some sense of what our place is in the world.
[8:52]And you know, from the work and thief on, a lot of the things I've written about have
[8:57]been about trying, what is it that we do to make ourselves feel like we have a sense
[9:05]of where we fit into the chaos of existence, whether it's collecting every orchid species
[9:13]known to man, whether it's with the library book about preserving stories, there's something
[9:22]that we need in our lives to make us feel that they make sense.
[9:29]And what is it that we choose for that purpose?
[9:35]So interesting.
[9:37]Wow.
[9:38]I mean, I had never personally thought about my relationship with the animals this much,
[9:43]but when you shine a light on any area, right, I feel like when you get to a, when you
[9:49]start evaluating your own interests, like from the outside, it gets even more interesting.
[9:55]I feel like that's what you're doing, you know, like, yeah, I mean, I'm
[10:00]wrote that the opening and closing essays in the book
[10:05]are personal.
[10:06]They're first person about my long history with animals
[10:11]and then about my life on our farm in Hudson Valley
[10:16]when I had more animals than I've ever had in my life.
[10:21]And then the stories in the sort of body of the book
[10:25]are more journalistic where I was writing about stories
[10:31]that had emerged or scenarios that really
[10:35]interested me, that had an animal at the center of it.
[10:40]Many of these stories seem to be about animals.
[10:44]They're really all ultimately about people
[10:46]because the people around the animals are the ones
[10:51]that are revealed the most explicitly.
[10:55]So whether it's an animal biologist whose goal in life
[11:03]is to see the whale from the free Willy movies set free,
[11:08]or if you're the owner of a show dog and you're
[11:13]dreamless for this dog to achieve stardom,
[11:17]there's a way that these relationships give the life
[11:22]of that person, a certain order and meaning and purpose
[11:29]that I mean, I certainly can relate to that.
[11:32]I think there's no one who doesn't understand
[11:36]that fundamental need to feel that you have a goal,
[11:41]that you have some purpose in your life,
[11:44]that in the past for many people that purpose
[11:48]would have been religion or the raising of children.
[11:53]But beyond that, there's this bigger urge,
[11:58]which is what is my life mean and what matters to me
[12:03]in my life.
[12:05]And quite often, we find that meaning
[12:08]through a relationship with animals.
[12:12]That's very well said.
[12:14]Love that.
[12:15]And so when you mark it a book like this,
[12:19]you've been writing for so successfully for a while.
[12:23]And this is obviously very different from your last novel.
[12:26]When you go out on the road to sell a new book
[12:30]or think about what you're even going to do next,
[12:32]like what kinds of considerations come into your,
[12:36]like do you try to alternate or are you
[12:39]like what's going to come after this?
[12:40]Like is there an overarching strategy or is it what moves me
[12:44]or what am I feeling or I don't know?
[12:47]Well, it's interesting because collections
[12:50]are a completely different entity
[12:53]than a book that's a single story.
[12:58]And I happen to think they're kind of wonderful
[13:02]because you, they're bite-sized pieces
[13:06]as opposed to a commitment to a single topic.
[13:10]I wouldn't release.
[13:12]I don't think you want to release collections back to back.
[13:17]They almost serve as a kind of mid-course palette cleanser
[13:24]because they're just different.
[13:27]They're, you know, it's previously published work.
[13:30]None of the stories go at, I mean,
[13:33]these pieces are all very long by the standards
[13:37]of a magazine piece.
[13:39]But people, I don't think you want to publish
[13:43]collection after collection.
[13:45]So I had just published the library book,
[13:49]which was, you know, a single topic
[13:52]that got a full 300 page treatment.
[13:56]And I'm working now on a memoir.
[13:59]Oh, no.
[14:00]And I'm wondering if what was nice was to put together
[14:03]a collection to come out between those two.
[14:07]And, you know, it's almost, I mean,
[14:10]it's like, yeah, a little bit, yeah.
[14:14]I mean, collections are a lot more work
[14:16]than they would appear.
[14:18]It's funny because you think, oh, easy.
[14:21]You just take all your clips and put them together
[14:25]between covers and there you have your book.
[14:28]But it's not like that.
[14:29]It really is a lot of work and a lot of thought
[14:34]that goes into putting them together.
[14:36]But it is nice as particularly for me
[14:41]because I really think of myself equally
[14:46]as a magazine writer and a book writer.
[14:49]So this represents that range, that a magazine gives you.
[14:57]You can spend a certain amount of time on a story
[15:01]and then move on to the next one and the next one.
[15:03]So this, I love the way that a collection kind of informs you
[15:10]of that big range of subjects.
[15:14]But I think people overall really love a book
[15:18]that digs into one subject deeply.
[15:21]I think, you know, people sit down with a book
[15:26]and want that deep dive into a single topic.
[15:33]So, you know, putting out collection after collection,
[15:36]I don't think would be a good.
[15:38]It would be hard to market that
[15:41]if we just want to talk purely commercially.
[15:43]I think overall, single subject books
[15:48]just sell much more than collections.
[15:53]And tell me about the memoir.
[15:55]I'm so excited to hear your writing one.
[15:57]Oh, thank you.
[15:58]Well, I have a lot of, it's funny because I've made
[16:03]an entire professional life about writing about other people's lives.
[16:07]And I've always felt a little shy about writing about my own life
[16:14]and feeling like, oh, who cares about my life?
[16:16]You know, I don't have such extraordinary life.
[16:20]And yet, when I think about what I've done in my experiences,
[16:27]I really have had a very interesting life.
[16:32]I mean, not everybody gets to do what I get to do.
[16:36]And so this has been a process of persuading myself
[16:43]to not undervalue the stories that I have to tell.
[16:49]I mean, even telling people the backstory of the pieces that I've written,
[16:58]I realize is quite interesting.
[17:03]And it's not like the life that everybody leads.
[17:06]Or, you know, I'm so often asked about the backstory
[17:12]behind the orchid thief and the resulting film adaptation.
[17:18]And it's a very funny story.
[17:19]It's a very interesting journey to have been on.
[17:25]I think having grown up in an era of memoirs,
[17:29]I have a little bit of a resistance feeling like, well,
[17:33]not everybody's life is that interesting.
[17:35]And not every memoir really needs to be written.
[17:40]And so I've been very resistant to this idea
[17:44]until finally I thought I think I'm being a little overly resistant
[17:50]that these stories really are interesting.
[17:53]And I haven't had an unusual life.
[17:57]I'm very excited to read it.
[17:58]I love memoir and I know the little snippets
[18:01]that you revealed about your mom and everything in the library book.
[18:04]I don't know, I can't wait to.
[18:06]They get do you have a title yet?
[18:08]You know, that's been the tricky thing.
[18:10]We've been calling it provisionally true story,
[18:14]but I'm not sure if we'll end up with that title.
[18:17]And to be honest with you, every book I've ever written
[18:20]had the title change.
[18:23]Between the time that we conceived of it
[18:26]and the time it's been published.
[18:28]And in this case, it's not, it's useful
[18:31]to have a provisional title,
[18:33]but I would be surprised if we stayed with that.
[18:37]I mean, there's nothing wrong with it, but I don't love it.
[18:41]I have, I think it's cute, but I haven't been more coming out
[18:43]in July.
[18:44]I'm like super excited about it a little bit.
[18:46]Oh, yeah.
[18:47]I'm really excited.
[18:48]But I changed the title like a million times, a million.
[18:51]Now it's called Bookends, a memoir of love, loss,
[18:53]and literature.
[18:54]So I'm very excited about where we ended up,
[18:55]but it was called The Book Messenger.
[18:57]It was called Booked, and it was called, I don't even know.
[18:59]We just kept, I just couldn't be happy with it
[19:02]until now I'm finally happy with it.
[19:04]Oh, I love that.
[19:05]Thank you.
[19:06]You know, title in the memoir is tricky
[19:08]because there are, I mean, part of my problem
[19:12]with the title true story is I feel like
[19:16]there probably have been a million books called True Story.
[19:21]Or it sounds like there have been a million books.
[19:24]It doesn't feel distinctive.
[19:27]And it's hard, you know, the range of possible titles
[19:31]for memoir feels fairly constrained.
[19:34]So everybody, a lot of them sound a little bit alike.
[19:39]And I do think book titles matter, I really do.
[19:43]I think book titles matter, book jackets matter,
[19:47]and you wanna get it right.
[19:50]Yes, very true.
[19:52]There was just a really interesting article about that.
[19:53]I think it lit up about the importance of book covers.
[19:56]And anyway, I mean, obviously they are very important.
[20:00]think, you know, the nature of the creation of a book. I mean, it's interesting because
[20:08]you write the book and you do as good a job as you can possibly do. And then there's the
[20:14]entire physical presentation of the book that is what readers interact with first. They interact
[20:24]first with the cover with the title, with the feel of the, you know, the dust jacket. And when you
[20:32]write a book, you sometimes forget how important that is and how that makes a difference between
[20:40]whether someone may pick up a book or not or remember it or not. And I've been very lucky, I feel like
[20:47]I've had fantastic packages for all of my books. And I'm very, I'm very involved in it and
[20:57]and feel also like the people, the designers have been fantastic. Writing coming up with a title
[21:06]is a really tricky thing. And being good at writing a 3000 word piece doesn't necessarily mean
[21:13]you're good at coming up with a book title. It's a different, you know, it's this little telegraphic
[21:21]bit of information that if you're used to writing long, lovely sentences, you may not have
[21:28]the talent for picking out two or three words that really convey what a book is about. I'm
[21:36]lucky because my publisher is an incredible writer of titles. When I wrote The Orchid Thief,
[21:44]I had a different title for the book that I was bound and determined to use because I thought
[21:50]amazing. The title that I had, that I thought was amazing, was The Millionaire's Hot House.
[21:59]And I was convinced that this was the best title ever. My publisher got the book,
[22:07]told me he loved the book, said he had one issue, he didn't love the title. And I was just shocked
[22:15]and I thought, well, what do you mean, you know, like, it's the best title in the world? He said,
[22:20]well, what about this? The Orchid Thief. And I said, well, that's just horrible. That's
[22:27]an horrible title. And he said, well, why don't you just sleep on it? And I went to a bunch of
[22:36]friends and I said, which title do you think is better? The Orchid Thief or The Millionaire's Hot House?
[22:44]All of them said The Orchid Thief. And at that point, I was worn down. I mean, you know, I just
[22:52]felt like, well, obviously people are missing the obvious, which is that this is a terrible title.
[22:59]Of course, I've been told a million times by people, oh, my God, that's the best title ever.
[23:06]And I always say, well, thank you. You know, it was hard to come up with.
[23:12]I love that story. I mean, it's funny because it's an art form and it's not necessarily one that
[23:22]comes along with the art form of writing a long story. It's short. It has to have a different
[23:31]quality to it. And I don't think I'm very good at it. Well, good thing there are great editors today.
[23:39]Oh, God, I'm going to knock on what is worth saying.
[23:43]Well, Susan, thank you so much. Thanks for coming back on my podcast. And I hope one of these
[23:48]times our pads will connect on the West Coast. And we've had bad time. I know that will change
[23:56]because now we're kind of here full time. Okay. And it's always such a pleasure to talk to you.
[24:04]I love it so much. You're so wonderful.
[24:07]Oh, support books the way you do. And it's just a real treat to see you.
[24:12]Thank you. You too. You feel the same way.
[24:15]All right. Great talking to you. Have a great day.
[24:17]You feel better. Feel better. Okay. Bye.
[24:23]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:26]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[24:31]Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[24:36]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact,
[24:40]texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[24:45]this fantastic intro and outro music.