Jennifer Egan, THE CANDY HOUSE: A Novel
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[2:30]Jennifer Egan is the author of The Candy House.
[2:32]Jennifer is also the author of six previous books of fiction, including Manhattan Beach,
[2:38]which was the winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, a visit
[2:42]from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
[2:47]By the way, this is like a sequel to that.
[2:50]The Keep, the Story Collection Emerald City.
[2:52]Look at me, which was a National Book Award finalist and the Invisible Circus.
[2:56]Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Grandma McSweeny's, and The
[3:00]New York Times Magazine.
[3:01]Welcome, Jennifer.
[3:02]Thanks so much for coming on mom's turn of time to read books to discuss The Candy House.
[3:07]Thank you for having me.
[3:09]This is such a thrill, I've been a fan for a long time, so anyway, delighted that you could
[3:13]come on.
[3:14]Okay, would you mind telling listeners a little bit about The Candy House and particularly
[3:20]how you carried books through from The Goon Squad, and when you knew that he would return?
[3:25]Well, so The Candy House is like a visit from The Goon Squad, which, by the way, is not
[3:30]a prerequisite in no way do you have need to have read Goon Squad.
[3:34]In fact, I think it actually might work better going the other way, starting with Candy
[3:39]House.
[3:40]If I had to choose, that's how I would probably advise people to do it.
[3:44]But like a visit from The Goon Squad for those who have read it, it's about a kind of loose
[3:49]grouping of people that are linked in various ways, and I follow them over time.
[3:55]In this case, the earliest story is 1965, and the latest is 2035, so the range has
[4:01]even greater than Goon Squad.
[4:04]And I guess you could say that the, in some ways, the through line of The Candy House
[4:10]is an invention created by a guy named Bix Bowden, who is a sort of tech wizard.
[4:17]This device allows people to externalize their memories and their consciousness is really
[4:24]onto sleek, beautiful, luscious cube for their own perusal and edification, because
[4:32]we know so much more than we know we know.
[4:36]But one ancillary possibility that exists with this device is that people can share it online
[4:42]into a kind of collective, which is their price of entry if they want to view the contents
[4:49]of other people's consciousnesses.
[4:51]So it's pretty much exactly analogous to something like Napster or DNA information.
[4:57]You know, if you enter into that conglomerate and want to know if you have siblings or
[5:03]whatever, you offer the same access to other people.
[5:07]So that's kind of a kind of spinal column, if you will, but the stories are wide-ranging
[5:14]and people have various different relationships to this technology, in some cases, no relationship
[5:19]at all.
[5:20]In terms of Bix, he, like many people in The Candy House, is such a small character in
[5:28]Goon Squad that a lot of people would not even remember him.
[5:31]That's true of a lot of the people in Candy House, in fact some of them are only mentioned
[5:35]by name in Goon Squad, but never actually appear.
[5:39]And in a way, you know, I was, I never really saw Goon Squad as being finished exactly.
[5:45]I mean, I reached a point where it felt like it was, it had an arc and it was sort of
[5:49]the best I could do at that point.
[5:51]But I never felt like I was done with any of that because the principle of the book is
[5:56]the following of my own curiosity from one, you know, kind of curious sighting through
[6:03]the corner of my eye to the next.
[6:06]And so it was natural that I was imagining beyond its borders even by the time it was published.
[6:12]And I just followed that same principle of curiosity into the new material.
[6:16]It's sort of like a Robert Altman film where, like, you take one character and then,
[6:21]like, you follow the next one off and the next one, you know what I'm talking about?
[6:24]Absolutely.
[6:25]I mean, I was fascinated by his work, you know, right away when I even first saw it.
[6:30]And I think because I was interested in using that kind of storytelling and fiction.
[6:35]Awesome.
[6:36]Jennifer, you have been writing and producing the most amazing fiction and stories for years.
[6:42]Tell me how you got started and when you knew you were a writer and did you see this out
[6:47]coming?
[6:48]Is this where you wanted to be with your writing?
[6:50]Tell me a little bit about that.
[6:51]Okay.
[6:52]It's a lot of questions.
[6:53]I'll start with the last one.
[6:55]I did not.
[6:56]I feel very lucky to even have a career doing this.
[7:00]And so in a way, I do feel like I've had the best luck I could possibly have.
[7:06]And I feel so grateful for that.
[7:09]I never assumed that I would have any success.
[7:12]I think sometimes people are moved to write because they read other people's work and
[7:16]they think, oh, I could do better.
[7:18]This isn't that great.
[7:20]I never thought that.
[7:21]I felt more in awe of the work that I read and thought like I can never do this.
[7:26]What really got me writing in the first place, I mean, I'd always enjoyed writing.
[7:31]I'd always enjoyed reading, but I was kind of a sciencey kid.
[7:34]I loved chemistry.
[7:36]I loved biology.
[7:38]I loved dissection.
[7:39]I really thought I would be a surgeon.
[7:42]My grandfather was a surgeon and I loved hearing him talk about his work and I loved his
[7:47]medical books, which I looked at in a pretty ghoulish way in retrospect.
[7:52]Like I was very interested in, you know, the body in the most ghoulish sense.
[7:58]I wanted to dig up dead people and see what they looked like.
[8:02]I was that kind of person.
[8:04]But interestingly, when I hit puberty, that totally changed.
[8:08]And I developed a kind of squeamishness about blood.
[8:11]So Dr. Freud can not have a good time figuring that out.
[8:16]The bottom line was suddenly medicine did not seem as appealing.
[8:20]Okay.
[8:21]Then I wanted to be an archaeologist.
[8:23]And that's actually what I thought I would do when I applied to college.
[8:27]So I applied, I wanted to go to UPenn in anthropology.
[8:31]They have an amazing anthropology department.
[8:33]But I took a gap year and during that gap year, the first thing I did was that I went
[8:38]on a little archaeological dig in Campsville, Illinois.
[8:41]Now, this was not as exotic as I had been hoping for.
[8:45]More limo lines of, you know, Africa, Greece, but it turned out that, you know, I couldn't
[8:53]be hired to go on a dig like that.
[8:55]I didn't have the knowledge to understand that people actually paid to go on digs.
[9:00]So I paid like 300 bucks to go to Campsville, Illinois, and dig for Mississippi and Indian
[9:05]remains, which was very interesting, but it showed me immediately that I was not
[9:11]as interested in archaeology as I had thought.
[9:13]Did you find anything?
[9:14]Oh, yeah.
[9:15]Oh, wow.
[9:16]They were looking for projectile points and what I had always called arrowheads and little
[9:22]pea and pottery.
[9:23]And it was everywhere because we were digging in a basically a garbage heap.
[9:27]But you know, I had imagined pulling big, beautiful pots out of the earth.
[9:32]And of course, that's not the state that they're in when they've been underground for,
[9:36]you know, tens and thousands of years.
[9:38]So I just realized that I had a fantasy of archaeology that in no way matched the reality,
[9:43]which was hot, somewhat dull.
[9:46]I thought very limited in scope.
[9:48]I had one square meter of earth.
[9:51]And it was just, you know, it was a, it was a wake up that I think so many people have
[9:55]when they confront their fantasy in a very tactile way.
[10:00]So anyway, what I ended up doing that year
[10:02]was mostly just working to earn money.
[10:04]And then I got a backpack and went to Europe
[10:06]where I had never been going up in California.
[10:09]It was a really long way away.
[10:11]And so I started traveling in Europe
[10:14]and I began having what I now realize were panic attacks
[10:19]but I had never heard that term.
[10:21]This was 1981,
[10:25]Summer of 1981.
[10:26]And all I knew was that I actually thought
[10:29]I was going crazy
[10:31]and it will tell you something about my high school years
[10:34]that I actually thought maybe these were drug flashbacks
[10:38]and that I had destroyed my brain
[10:40]through my bad behavior in high school.
[10:43]So I was kind of in that.
[10:45]I was scared to say that I wrecked
[10:47]but what I discovered through that adversity
[10:51]because it really ended up being a very hard trip
[10:53]and I ended up having to come home early
[10:55]which felt like a real failure at the time.
[10:58]But what I found was that writing was the thing
[11:01]that really tethered me to the world around me,
[11:05]whether I was having a great time or whether it was hard.
[11:08]And so it just, I realized how essential it was
[11:11]and sort of closed the loop of my cycle of relation
[11:16]to the world around me.
[11:19]So I got to college really knowing that I wanted to write
[11:22]and I have to say honestly, I've never really wavered
[11:26]even though my success has been extremely incremental,
[11:32]partly because I was honestly not a very precocious talent.
[11:36]I mean, I was okay, but I was not anything special
[11:41]for a long time.
[11:42]And so although I felt like I was not being,
[11:46]I of course, one always thinks everyone else is getting
[11:50]all the good stuff and I'm not.
[11:52]I don't think I really deserved it.
[11:53]I think I didn't get any less than I deserved.
[11:56]And I'm really glad I didn't get more than I deserved,
[11:59]which a lot of people do is our culture works that way.
[12:03]We're looking for people to raise up.
[12:07]And if that happens too soon,
[12:09]it's very hard for the person who's been raised up
[12:12]because sometimes there's not as much to follow it up with.
[12:15]There's a kind of self-consciousness
[12:17]that comes with feeling like there are expectations
[12:20]that maybe one can't meet.
[12:22]All of those things can interrupt the natural
[12:25]and often kind of gradual evolution of one's own approach
[12:32]and voice.
[12:33]And because success was incremental for me,
[12:35]I felt like I was able to keep developing kind of slowly.
[12:39]I was lucky in that I was able to publish books, you know,
[12:43]but each one did a little better than the one before.
[12:47]But I was never one of those people
[12:49]who was kind of thrust into the public eye at a young age.
[12:53]And although in the moment,
[12:54]I was seething with envy for the people that did have that.
[12:58]In retrospect, if I think it's probably the thing
[13:00]I'm most grateful for, huh?
[13:03]I wonder, do you think that if you were your younger self
[13:07]like starting publishing today,
[13:09]if I just feel like there's so much pressure
[13:11]to have your first book do really well now?
[13:14]It even starts before that.
[13:15]There's pressure to have a huge sale
[13:17]because then you'll have the push
[13:19]that might result in the book doing really well.
[13:21]There's no difference.
[13:22]I even with social media and all the things
[13:25]that exist now that didn't exist when I started,
[13:27]that pressure was still there very much though.
[13:31]And I think it's, I mean, there are immediate rewards,
[13:34]but I think there's a big price to pay sometimes.
[13:37]And of course, we never see that in the moment.
[13:40]I mean, that's sort of what the candy house is all about, really.
[13:43]The allure of immediate satisfaction
[13:47]that it's just something deep about us humans,
[13:51]we almost never stop and say, well, wait a minute,
[13:54]what's the cost of this?
[13:56]It's just not how we're built.
[13:58]We run toward the candy house.
[14:00]That's true.
[14:01]So I think that fame is a candy house of sorts.
[14:04]And I'm guessing almost anyone,
[14:07]I mean, first of all, no writer is famous in the way
[14:10]that in the way that fame exists in other realms,
[14:14]in the American culture.
[14:16]But I think if you went to any movie star
[14:19]and I don't really know any and said,
[14:21]is there any downside to being so famous?
[14:24]I would be flabbergasted if any of them didn't say, oh yeah.
[14:31]I have interviewed a few authors
[14:33]who like hit it really big early in their 20s, right?
[14:37]And now they're in their 40s and things are right.
[14:39]There's always, and even with a big successful first book,
[14:43]the pressure of the second book,
[14:44]but then especially over time,
[14:46]I just heard about this movie that's being filmed.
[14:48]That's exactly about this,
[14:49]like a 25 year literary superstar
[14:51]and what happens in her 40s.
[14:52]I know, it's interesting.
[14:54]Right?
[14:55]Yeah, I think someone's making that.
[14:57]Yeah.
[14:57]That's really, that's very interesting to me.
[14:59]I mean, anything that makes people interested
[15:01]in literary production, I think is a good thing.
[15:05]So I'm really glad that's coming out.
[15:07]I want to keep people reading.
[15:08]Obviously, not even just for self-interested reasons.
[15:12]Keeps people engaged and smart and empathetic.
[15:15]But yeah, I mean, I, you know,
[15:16]by the time I really had a hit,
[15:19]which was from the going squad,
[15:20]I was, I mean, I was pushing 50, you know?
[15:24]I was not a kid.
[15:25]I had published several books.
[15:27]I really had a sense of the literary landscape.
[15:30]By the time I won anything,
[15:32]and I had never won a raffle.
[15:34]But by the time I had won a prize,
[15:38]I had already judged a prize.
[15:41]And I understood so well
[15:43]that there is not, that is not a,
[15:46]it's not a judgment from on high.
[15:49]It's the best compromise five people
[15:53]or whatever they come up with.
[15:55]If you're lucky enough to be that compromise,
[15:58]you should just kiss the ground
[16:00]and, you know, hope that your good luck
[16:02]doesn't run out too fast.
[16:04]That's all it means.
[16:06]And yet it seems so iconic once it happens.
[16:09]So I knew all that.
[16:11]And I think it helped me to at least not get a big head,
[16:16]I hope, but it still was very hard to write another book,
[16:20]very hard.
[16:21]And so the difficulty I had,
[16:23]and it was seven years before I published another book,
[16:26]that difficulty tells me that a person in their 20s
[16:30]or let's just say what I would have gone through
[16:33]in my 20s, that might have been it.
[16:36]I'm not sure I actually would have had a career
[16:38]if I had had so much good luck early.
[16:40]I don't know.
[16:41]I guess it's a test of how strong I am.
[16:45]I don't know.
[16:46]Sometimes I don't think I'm actually,
[16:48]I think I just don't know if I would have had the inner rudder
[16:52]to guide myself through all of those external,
[16:56]all that external input and those expectations
[16:59]to continue to develop.
[17:02]And if you can't keep getting better,
[17:04]things start to plateau and then go down.
[17:07]You've got to keep getting better.
[17:09]And I'm really hard to do that.
[17:11]I was gonna say, like how do you,
[17:13]like you can identify yourself like a huge shift
[17:17]in quality perhaps?
[17:18]Like, I don't know if other people,
[17:21]we're always our own worst critics.
[17:23]So how do you go from where you begin
[17:26]to winning prizes if what do you do to get better?
[17:31]We can practice, you can take classes.
[17:33]Like, because some people don't necessarily get better.
[17:36]Like how do you make sure you keep improving?
[17:38]That's really my question.
[17:39]Oh, that's a great question.
[17:42]The answer is we can't make sure that we keep improving.
[17:46]But what I, the way I think of it is none of us
[17:50]really knows what we're capable of
[17:52]and we'll only ever know looking back.
[17:54]So the way I look at it is trying to create
[17:58]optimal circumstances to get as good as I can.
[18:03]And I don't know how good that is because we never know.
[18:06]So part of the challenge for anyone
[18:09]is identifying those optimal circumstances.
[18:12]Like, what do I need to do this work
[18:15]at the best possible level that I can?
[18:18]And it's so different for every writer.
[18:20]For me, you know, I mean, of course one thing
[18:23]that I think is true in any practice, you know,
[18:26]a sport or any other skill is just doing it again and again.
[18:31]So anyone gets better, you know, a lawyer, a doctor.
[18:34]The more times you do it, the better you get.
[18:37]So just continuing to produce.
[18:40]That's another reason that being stymied
[18:42]in the way that I was, after Guten Squad was so successful
[18:47]and the way I think I would have been even more so
[18:51]in my 20s, being stymied has a real cost.
[18:54]I mean, if 15 years pass and I'm not publishing
[18:57]because I'm stuck, those are maybe three books
[19:01]or four books that I would have produced
[19:03]that would have helped me to improve and learn more
[19:05]that I'm not actually creating.
[19:07]So then that's an immediate loss.
[19:10]Another way that I really try to get better
[19:13]is by not repeating myself.
[19:15]And some of this is just temperamental, like, you know,
[19:18]because I don't write out a fiction.
[19:20]In fact, the opposite, I am allergic to anything
[19:23]that smelled of me or my life.
[19:25]I feel bored immediately.
[19:28]And I really like to write as a kind of escape, you know,
[19:31]I'm looking for another world to live in
[19:34]in addition to my life, not my life twice, you know.
[19:40]So in a way, for me, the feeling of freshness and novelty
[19:45]is key because if I feel like I'm doing something
[19:48]I've done before, that is sort of like writing about myself.
[19:52]Again, I just have this sense of dullness.
[19:55]But, you know, so just trying to kind of challenge oneself
[19:59]to do new things.
[20:00]things. I think it's another way of getting better. If you just keep doing the same thing,
[20:03]I mean, you couldn't argue that you're getting better and better at doing that thing.
[20:07]And this just may be one of those temperamental differences. I think the other thing is,
[20:12]for me, listening to feedback is very crucial. And I don't mean reading reviews necessarily,
[20:20]because that's, in a way, I don't know, I don't look to reviews to tell me how to become a better
[20:27]but I try to do a huge amount of due diligence before I ever have a book in the hands and
[20:35]a reviewer. And I just use layers of readers, are part of my entire process, starting with a writing
[20:42]group, which I dedicated the candidates for that. So they're hearing stuff very early, sometimes
[20:50]before I even know what I'm doing, just to kind of hear it as they hear it and we only read aloud,
[20:55]see whether it feels like it has a voice, if it feels alive. I mean, it's a basic question. And then
[21:02]they, you know, they all read my books, what made a much later phase when I actually have a whole
[21:09]manuscript that I've been through several times and it has reached it. I then I've sort of taken
[21:13]as far as I can. They read it. And then I have additional readers, quite a few who read things
[21:20]at different phases. So for me, finding out how what I'm doing is landing, whether it's working,
[21:27]honestly, is crucial. But again, I would never say you have to do that because I know other writers
[21:33]who really don't and they keep getting better. So it really does come down to identifying the
[21:39]circumstances that lead us to do our best work and give us the greatest chance of getting better at
[21:46]it. And that's all we can do. I like this idea of showing lots of readers. It's like launching a
[21:52]product like a new perfume without anybody smelling it, right? Like you, you want to, you want to
[21:58]make sure before you invest all this effort and time and everything to market the product that
[22:02]you have the best product you can possibly have. And yet because I mean, I think people are
[22:07]protective over over their work. Yes, for sure. But sometimes that's appropriate because some, for
[22:14]some people, it would be the wrong move. It would be fusing or confusing. For me, I know what
[22:24]I'm trying to do. What I don't know is whether I'm doing it. And so it's critical for me to find out
[22:33]whether I am doing that and where it where I am not doing that. So I cannot imagine publishing
[22:42]books without many, many readers. But I also know people who do not work that way, which is so
[22:48]fascinating. And in their case, there may be other conditions that lead them to their best work that
[22:53]and they need to make sure to honor those conditions. That's one of the big challenges is just finding
[22:59]out what one's own process is. I think I can apply to many things in life.
[23:06]What are the best? How do you set yourself up for success? I don't know. Exactly. Exactly.
[23:11]Were there any parts of the candy has that materially changed because of your reader feedback?
[23:16]Oh, my God. Absolutely. Yes. I mean, and I don't just mean the kind of due diligence of this
[23:24]is someone who knows more about X, Y, or Z than I do, which I have to do a lot because I've never
[23:30]read about myself. So just to give a tiny example, and this was this, I did kind of late. But you
[23:37]I start with this conversation of a bunch of academics. Well, I am not an academic, and I've never
[23:45]really sat in a conversation like that truth be told. So at a certain point, I showed that chapter
[23:51]to a friend of mine who's a tenured art history professor. And she immediately said,
[23:56]there's some stuff here that is not the way people would talk. And she gave me tips. And I do that
[24:02]all the time. And I never do it enough. I mean, there will be things. Like for example, with Manhattan
[24:07]Beach, which has a lot of technicalities in it about deep sea diving and merchant sailing and the
[24:13]Brooklyn Navy are, I was all over that stuff. But there were all kinds of things that were wrong
[24:18]about Catholicism. I mean, I'm allegedly a Catholic, but it was a measure of how non-active a Catholic
[24:27]I am that there were just certain basic things that I had wrong. So I had to keep making
[24:31]changes once the book came out. And that may happen with this too. So there's due diligence. But then
[24:37]but that's in a way not what I'm talking about because that's something that's like anyone should
[24:41]check it out. But it's more like for example, there were there were some areas where I thought that
[24:50]by saying very little, I was suggesting a great deal. But one of my readers pointed out that what
[24:59]the way it actually was reading was that that there was no feeling at all around this thing
[25:05]that by saying very little, I was just glossing over something and suggesting that it was meaningless.
[25:10]So in a way, the impression I was making was precisely the opposite of the one I thought I was making.
[25:18]Those are the kinds of things where I really want to know. One thing also like I just want to know
[25:23]where is your attention captured? Where is the where is the heat? And where is it cold? I mean,
[25:32]those basic questions are really helpful to know what feels repetitive and what feels exciting.
[25:39]I don't really need people to tell me how to solve problems. I just need them to tell me where
[25:44]they're having problems. Sometimes people do also tell me how to solve them. And sometimes I mean,
[25:52]the whole process I should add is agony. I never want to hear that anything is wrong ever.
[26:00]So this is this is kind of a self-induced period of suffering that I undergo to achieve a result.
[26:08]It is awful because every single time I hear that anything is wrong, my first thought is I can't
[26:15]fix it. It's over and this book sucks. So you know, it's I don't mean to make it sound like
[26:22]this is just a marvelous fun process. It's not. It's very uncomfortable, but I do it. It's like
[26:30]going to the doctor, you know, no one wants to go. It takes a lot of time. It's unpleasant. You
[26:37]don't want to hear a lot of what you're going to hear. You have to do it to be healthy. So it's
[26:43]I want my book to be healthy. And I have to take it to the doctor, repeatedly, all different kinds
[26:48]of doctors. Specialist. Specialist. Yes. Oh my gosh. Now you need insurance. Your insurance
[26:56]are like, you know, the support group for the day. So funny. I love that. And of course,
[27:02]you can't you don't want to choose the opposite. Right. Like writing, not writing is not an option
[27:06]for tense like for you, like not to do the whole process. I mean, if that's the best option,
[27:12]then it's then it's time to start thinking about a different career. I mean, I could imagine that
[27:17]I would reach a point maybe where I would just think, I can't do this anymore. I'm nowhere near
[27:23]there. I want to do it very much. But for me, not to engage in that kind of rigorous feedback
[27:32]process would be tantamount to saying, I, I don't think I can do this anymore because it's really
[27:41]an inherent part of the process for me. Wow. Amazing. Do you think if somebody were starting out
[27:46]today, you would suggest that they do this or is it only if they have complete strong commitment to
[27:52]it? Like what would you say to someone starting out? You mean, right? Right. Yeah, to write
[27:57]fiction. Someone who's 25 years old today. And I know we keep talking. If you're 25 and listening
[28:02]to this, we've been talking about you the whole time. No, I'm kidding. But this person's starting
[28:06]out. I mean, it's hard. It's agony and yet the search for the passages that are alive. Like
[28:11]even when you talk about it, your whole face lights up, like finding the heat and what's alive.
[28:15]And what's this? You know, you get so excited. Like how do you what would you say to someone who's
[28:20]starting? How how to how to get it and how to keep it going and should they even try?
[28:26]You know, sometimes I think that a sign of having found one's vocation. And by that, I can I could
[28:32]I mean, a job that really is enriching and would be worth spending one's life getting better at.
[28:40]I feel like one sign that you may have found that is that the the drudgery and the discomfort,
[28:48]which is part of every job at one point or another. And even the discouragement, which is also part
[28:54]of every job is is a spur rather than a hindrance. If that is happening, if if being discouraged,
[29:03]if being uncomfortable makes you want to just try harder and overcome that, to me, that's a sign
[29:12]that this is the right path. So if if getting feedback is agony and misery and is making life worse,
[29:21]that might be a sign that this isn't the right realm. I think that it's just, you know,
[29:26]there's no right answer for everyone. It's hard enough to find the right answer for anyone
[29:32]for anyone to find their own right answer. So we think and in a way, the only way to really find
[29:37]out is to give it a try. You know, there's a lot of discouragement early on. And in and in
[29:42]something like rating fiction, you know, even achieving the highest level of success is not going
[29:49]to bring the money, the fame, or the cultural currency that a lot of other realms might,
[29:56]you've got to do it because you love it. I mean, it's just
[30:00]you know, for example, I was rereading James Baldwin's novel, another country recently,
[30:04]and I was laughing because there's a point where this guy starts writing a novel just to make money,
[30:10]you know, trying to sell out, really. He's just going to go ahead and write a novel, and it's like,
[30:16]oh my god, this is when he uses the 1960s when that book was written that is not really a surefire
[30:23]way to increase your income. So, but I think there are so many great reasons to write fiction.
[30:30]If you love it, it is the best escape in the world. And it also, while it does not have the
[30:37]cultural currency that it had, even in the 1960s, much less than 19th century when fiction writers were
[30:43]like rock stars and movie stars combined, it does something that nothing else can do. And that is,
[30:50]it gives us access to the interior lives of other people. And nothing that is image-based
[30:58]is doing that. You know, if you are looking at a picture, you are not experiencing someone's internal
[31:03]life. You're experiencing their simulation of their internal life. And I include streamers playing
[31:11]video games. The fun of watching that is the simulacrum of being inside someone's consciousness,
[31:18]but it's performative. Action actually puts us there. That's what it does. There are no pictures.
[31:26]So it is specific and it is unique. And I think as long as nothing else can do that, as long as
[31:32]no one actually invents on your unconscious, when, you know, we are doing something that's kind of
[31:39]cool and provides a sort of escape and a sort of transport out of one's own life that nothing
[31:47]else really can. But I will say it's a muscle that requires exercise to really be strong. So
[31:54]people who don't generally read long form fiction, who pick up a book and start expecting to be
[32:02]to achieve transport of liftoff, it's not going to happen right away. You have to become a good
[32:08]reader. It doesn't take that long, but it's a little more work than looking at a picture. But
[32:14]the reward, in my opinion, is a lot greater. I totally agree. That was very well said. I
[32:21]cannot agree more the power of books to escape, especially when things in the real world are very
[32:26]frightening, which they have been over the last couple of years in particular is the bomb.
[32:32]We feel like it's so hard to concentrate and it can be. But I think one thing the last two years
[32:39]have really shown us is human beings are incredibly adaptable. We will embrace and do our best to
[32:45]thrive in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. And all of that is to say that it is amazing
[32:52]how quickly if you put your phone in another room and sit down with a physical book,
[33:00]it is amazing how quickly checking that phone does not feel essential. And I say this is someone
[33:05]who can be completely phone addicted. Some of it is just training ourselves. We are like seals
[33:12]to be trained. We have to get the fish out and give ourselves a fish at the right time and move away
[33:20]the distractions. It's not as hard as we think. It's true. And I was reading this weekend.
[33:26]And my husband kept being like, well, let's watch this or let's do this. And I was like,
[33:29]you don't understand where I am right now. This is so intense. Hold on. I got
[33:35]finished this before I can do this. I know. And that feeling of just being so lost.
[33:43]So very narrative. Without requiring a machine is just a really to me, it feels like a kind of
[33:50]independence and a kind of self-sufficiency that I don't ever have when I'm relying on a device
[33:57]for my entertainment. True. Yes. My TV never works. I'm like, it's right. I can never. It's
[34:03]forget it. If I can ever decide what to watch. Too many clickers. That's right. I just cannot
[34:08]get it. Now I don't even want to know. So books are much easier. I agree. You open and shut.
[34:14]Thank you so much. Thank you for all your time today and for chatting with me and sharing your
[34:19]love. I have everything I need. It's all good. Yes. Thank you. It's such a pleasure. It really is.
[34:27]All right. Well, thank you again. And we will see you around. I'll do that.
[34:34]Next time in person. Okay. Perfect. All right. All right.
[34:41]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[34:45]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at ZB Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[34:50]Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[34:55]of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan. In fact,
[34:59]texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[35:03]this fantastic intro and outroom music.