A.M. Homes, THE UNFOLDING: A Novel
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[0:58]AM Homes is the author of the unfolding a novel. This was guest hosted by Julianna Goldman of Mama Den
[1:05]AM Homes is the author of 13 books among them the best-selling memoir the mistresses daughter
[1:11]The novels this book will save your life the end of Alice and Jack
[1:15]Also the short story collections days of awe the safety of objects and things you should know
[1:20]She writes for film and television and teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton University
[1:25]All right, AM Homes author of the unfolding. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me
[1:31]So just to start off, please tell us what the unfolding is about. Oh, if only I could
[1:38]I would say it's a good question. It's it's about many things. It is a
[1:42]large-scale novel. It is a braided narrative that is on the one hand the story of a family that's kind of coming undone
[1:49]But as it comes undone it comes to know itself better
[1:53]So there's there are multiple sort of awakenings and kind of coming to consciousness
[1:57]And it's also the story about
[1:59]the American sort of political
[2:02]System and what happens in 77 days between
[2:06]Obama's election and Obama's inauguration
[2:09]When a group of men who are not happy that he won decide they would like to reclaim their version of America for democracy
[2:17]Yes
[2:19]So tell us how did you come up with this
[2:23]Concept and how long because it's it's out now, but it takes place
[2:29]As you said in in 2008 so why didn't
[2:34]Why didn't it take place in?
[2:36]You know election night 2016
[2:40]Why why is it important to go back to 2008?
[2:42]Well, because it didn't take place in election night 2016 because I had already started writing it before
[2:47]2016
[2:48]Yeah, I started writing it before Trump was even a candidate. So it took me a very long time
[2:53]I'm really the origin of it was the sense
[2:56]Quite a while ago
[2:57]And I had begun developing these ideas in a short story in my last book called days of all and the stories of prize for every player
[3:05]And it's about a family that goes shopping in a big box store and by the time they're done
[3:09]They're shopping the father's been nominated as a presidential candidate and you know the campaign managers printing flyers in the home office section
[3:16]And so on and what I really was feeling quite a long time ago was that the American political establishment both sides
[3:23]So not one side of together had lost touch with the average American voter and that politicians were
[3:30]Essentially running to represent themselves
[3:32]They weren't representing people or districts or any ideas anymore
[3:36]And that coincided with the influx of what we now called dark money
[3:39]But I'll call private funding
[3:41]Into the political process that
[3:44]Exponentially grew so in 2008 if you gave a candidate a hundred thousand dollars
[3:48]That bought you a lot of access
[3:50]But if you look at where we are now and the federalist society
[3:53]Letter Leo recently got 1.8 billion dollars
[3:56]So think how much that buys in terms of
[3:59]Media propaganda
[4:01]Information all you know all kinds of things that are very difficult to trace
[4:06]And so I was thinking a lot about that and noticing that that was starting to happen
[4:10]And I said to my editors, you know some things on my mind and they were like, but you don't write science fiction
[4:14]I said I know but there's something out there and then in 2016. They're like, where is it?
[4:21]So that that was the origin. Did you have to go back and rewrite portions after no
[4:28]Weirdly not you know the interesting thing too was that I also felt
[4:34]That Obama's election became in some ways
[4:38]a marker in time in terms of
[4:42]The ways in which many of us felt very hopeful there was like a new beginning a sense of
[4:46]Obviously a broader range of people being able to run for office being able to win office and feel represented
[4:51]And at the same time it did seem to trip off a
[4:55]Barely latent kind of both racism and sexism that has kind of been blossoming ever since and I look at even the rollback of
[5:03]Row and can sort of tie it to that and a very deep kind of fear
[5:08]Among some parts of our population of losing power and losing control over their version of America
[5:16]Fear and feeling threatened. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah
[5:20]And now you the central character one of the central characters is the big guy
[5:24]Yeah, you tell us a bit about the big guy and why he is the big guy never named
[5:29]Sure when other characters when everyone else is named sure so the big guy
[5:34]And I think his name secretly does come in like somewhere once, but it's yeah, you have to read to find out
[5:40]No, it's not really so yeah
[5:42]I think you know the big guy to me is the big guy because he is a
[5:46]Person who is like many other people and many people that I know and he is somebody who
[5:51]Occupies a lot of space feels super confident in his own
[5:54]Control of his world and believes that he knows best about how things should be done
[5:59]and
[6:00]Doesn't see the way that he affects others around him which to me that is that is a
[6:06]And again not to reduce people to seritos, but there is that
[6:09]That kind of person who lives among us and walks it walks among us and for me the interesting thing was to watch the big guy
[6:16]As those around him his his wife and child begin to kind of know more about themselves and how they feel in relation to the family the political
[6:25]Situation but also as he comes to know them better and himself. He also realizes what if I'm a jerk
[6:32]What if I'm not the good person? I think I am and so that was also very interesting to me about what happens to somebody
[6:38]If they begin to realize that the way they occupy space maybe is a little bit toxic
[6:44]I kept thinking whether or not the big guy and the forever men would have
[6:50]Done what they did
[6:52]Knowing that it would eventually lead to Donald Trump. I think that's a very interesting question and I think
[6:59]The truly philosophical answer would be along the lines of
[7:04]Yes and
[7:07]Because on the one hand I think many people could see Donald Trump as a step on the way towards something else
[7:13]So he's not really the definitive moment in time that anyone is aiming for and
[7:19]The philosophy that sort of drives the big guys group of friends known as the forever men
[7:25]About reclaiming these ideas. The first thing that people do when they want to reclaim a country is
[7:31]Disturb and just dropped and so their idea is to create
[7:36]You know in the way that you drop a pebble in the water it makes rings
[7:39]But you don't want those rings to be traceable back to you and so
[7:43]The fact and the ways in which the Republican establishment did ultimately get behind Donald Trump and stays by
[7:48]Donald Trump. I would say is he their kind of person? No, he's really not they are in many ways much more old school
[7:56]Grace fall
[7:56]I think they probably have a little bit more of a moral quarrel though
[8:00]I'm not entirely sure because what I see now happening
[8:03]Tells me that the Republican party right now is interested in powered any cost
[8:07]Which is really in a way what these guys are saying too and it's scary
[8:11]It is and you kind of wonder also had had John McCain been elected
[8:16]Yeah, and Barack Obama not
[8:19]Would you know we wouldn't have been set on this course?
[8:22]But at the same time remember the vice presidential candidate was Sarah Palin. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So where would that have taken us?
[8:31]Um, that's also I'm not I'm I'm just saying these are I love these kinds of quest like what
[8:36]It's fascinating to think about it
[8:38]I don't really know because you know it's interesting when we look at even McCain's concession speech
[8:42]So he gave a very graceful generous concession speech and and very decent and talked about how
[8:48]People needed to get behind Obama that they had many common goals and so on and so forth
[8:53]That was probably the last polite speech given
[8:56]You know, and so it is interesting
[8:58]But the other thing is you could look at okay. So John McCain
[9:01]You know ultimately
[9:03]Got ill had a brain tumor would Sarah Palin as their world in which Sarah Palin would have ended up as president
[9:08]Which to me is as scary as Donald Trump
[9:12]I mean, it's it's you know, it's the the also the ways in which
[9:16]Politics and the posturing and the performance aspect have been pushed out so far that they are
[9:22]Officially cartoonish which is interesting because historically if you look way back in history
[9:27]You know the posturing and performance of early political, you know, stump speech and so on is absolutely performative
[9:35]So you know are we full cycle sort of but the the stakes feel higher
[9:40]Because I think we're also aware that we are
[9:44]More of a global economy and more of a global society
[9:47]So it's not just what happens here
[9:49]What happens here goes everywhere and I also feel like the pressures on our democratic norms and institutions are very much
[9:59]strained
[10:00]at a breaking point, at a tipping point,
[10:02]however you wanna call it.
[10:03]Yeah.
[10:04]Well, how did you get inside the head
[10:06]of a conservative white male?
[10:08]Well, how did you do this?
[10:09]How did you do the research?
[10:11]I have special powers.
[10:13]You know, I would say that for me,
[10:16]creating these characters whose backgrounds
[10:20]upbringing, philosophy is very different than my own,
[10:22]is always both the fun and beauty of writing.
[10:26]Because for me, part of it is
[10:28]I write to understand things.
[10:30]And I need to understand things that are not my experience.
[10:32]So, you know, there's so many teachers of writing
[10:35]and people say, write what you know.
[10:37]And I think, well, I've run out.
[10:39]I've written 13 books.
[10:40]Joyce Carlowx has written like 80 books.
[10:41]You know, I need to write to explore things.
[10:44]So I asked my characters lots of questions.
[10:46]I literally were asked, what's up with you?
[10:48]Why are you here?
[10:50]Why do you think this way?
[10:51]How did your thinking evolve?
[10:52]Was this always where it was?
[10:54]What makes you so nervous about someone like Barack Obama?
[10:58]What makes you so nervous about power
[11:00]being more equally distributed?
[11:02]And I will say there are oftentimes
[11:04]that a character can be very resistant.
[11:05]They're like, why should I tell you?
[11:07]Or who are you?
[11:09]And then there's other ways in which you
[11:10]flatter them to get information, what you know
[11:12]as a journalist.
[11:13]You're like, well, you know, that's so interesting.
[11:16]How did you come to be?
[11:17]What were you doing before?
[11:18]What does this mean to you?
[11:20]And so I really spend time trying
[11:22]to understand them from a psychological,
[11:25]an economic, a sociopolitical level.
[11:28]And then I think a lot about who are they hanging around with?
[11:32]What is their idea of a good time?
[11:33]What is their idea of family?
[11:34]What are they value?
[11:36]So it's interesting.
[11:39]It's definitely hard work.
[11:40]And then you have to kind of always be asking,
[11:42]is this true for this character?
[11:44]It's not an external application of what I think
[11:48]to a character.
[11:48]It has to come from within them.
[11:50]And again, that is the best magic of fiction.
[11:53]I love this, though, these conversations
[11:55]are they with people who are in,
[12:00]so like political figures or people steeped in politics?
[12:03]Or is it just like in your own head
[12:05]that you're kind of going back in?
[12:06]All I want you about, so all of the above.
[12:08]I mean, I often spend time with lots of different kinds
[12:11]of people.
[12:12]And I will ask real people in reality.
[12:14]Also reading, constantly reading everything,
[12:17]like John McCain's books, Ronald Reagan's books,
[12:21]written by their speech writers books,
[12:23]written by journalists, history of all kinds,
[12:27]realizing also that we do live in a world
[12:28]where history tends to be reported by the majority.
[12:32]So looking at histories, how do we knit it all together?
[12:35]And then a lot, just thinking, talking to the characters.
[12:37]I mean, literally asking them to reveal themselves to me,
[12:41]which again sounds like, whoo, whoo,
[12:43]but that is the magic of fiction.
[12:46]And that is for me, it is both the fun of it.
[12:49]And I would say in some ways, the hard work of it
[12:52]because you also need the character.
[12:55]And it sounds so funny to say to trust you enough
[12:57]that you're not going to sort of sell them out,
[12:59]that you're not going to sort of turn on them.
[13:04]So I always think too, I'm not there to make judgments
[13:07]about these people.
[13:08]I'm there to sort of provide an illustration
[13:11]and a juxtaposition of what's happening
[13:13]in their world, in the larger world,
[13:16]and allow the reader to actively participate
[13:19]in creating their own sense of how they feel
[13:21]about these people, a lot of times,
[13:24]this comes out so much lately.
[13:26]And it's a very modern idea.
[13:27]People say, I'm not supposed to like these people.
[13:30]And I'm like, you don't read crime and punishment.
[13:32]I think I love that guy.
[13:33]No one reads low lead and thinks, wow,
[13:35]that guy's a wonderful, he's a catch.
[13:37]I mean, the books that affect us over time
[13:42]are not about characters being likable.
[13:44]That is us sort of seeking some other kind of comfort
[13:49]that literature can provide,
[13:51]but it is not the dominant piece of it.
[13:53]So I don't think are they likable?
[13:55]I think, did I tell their story well?
[13:57]Did I represent them well?
[13:59]You know, would they disagree with how I've described them?
[14:03]Anybody?
[14:04]Yeah, this is amazing.
[14:05]I wanna, I just wanna talk about this all day.
[14:08]For this book, did you develop the Big Man first?
[14:12]Did you develop Meghan, Charlotte?
[14:15]Or do you develop them all together
[14:18]so that they are based on the relationships
[14:22]way they have other characters?
[14:24]So it's all of that.
[14:26]So both, I mean, there's not one singular answer.
[14:30]I would say, you know, definitely the big guy,
[14:33]Charlotte and Meghan come first in a way,
[14:36]Charlotte was an easier character
[14:38]because she, her sort of pain or the difficulty
[14:43]of being a woman of a certain age who grew up being asked not,
[14:46]what do you wanna be, but what kind of man do you wanna marry?
[14:49]And her alcoholism was something I could relate to
[14:53]and it's interesting, I have absolutely no experience
[14:55]without alcoholism or that, but I felt it was an interesting
[15:00]way of her dealing with her suffering.
[15:02]And then I also look at, you know, historical precedent.
[15:05]So Martha Mitchell, the wife of former attorney general,
[15:08]John Mitchell, Pat Nixon, Betty Ford herself,
[15:11]you know, all there is, it is difficult to be a political wife.
[15:14]And although this woman is not a political wife
[15:17]in the sense of being related to the candidate,
[15:19]she lives a life where there's a lot of pressure
[15:23]and in its way, a certain kind of isolation.
[15:25]So she, you know, came quickly,
[15:28]Meghan to me is interesting because Meghan is a young girl
[15:31]and at first I would say Meghan to me
[15:32]is the kind of girl that you might meet.
[15:34]You know, when you go to a friend's house
[15:36]and that's the daughter is there.
[15:37]And she's a little vague and a little blurry
[15:40]and you think, I'm not sure there's anyone in there.
[15:43]You know, and that's a kind of young woman.
[15:45]And then the question is, when does she wake up?
[15:47]How, when does she begin to realize
[15:49]what's happening in the world around her
[15:51]and that she needs to define herself,
[15:53]not just in relation to her family
[15:55]and do I agree or disagree, but in relation
[15:57]to the larger world.
[15:59]So that's always a moment to her as a writer going,
[16:01]God, I hope she wakes up
[16:03]because we all know people who are 30
[16:04]and still are like, well, Daddy, what should I do?
[16:08]I love this scene in the beginning
[16:12]where it's election night
[16:14]and Meghan's mother is taking her around like the buffet.
[16:17]First of all, I don't want to give it anything away.
[16:20]I will never eat communal nuts ever again.
[16:23]That has come up so much on book, really, come over the nuts.
[16:29]I mean, there's so many, the nuts, maybe we could say,
[16:33]the nutty nuts, but yeah, no, I like,
[16:36]I really loved how you painted that picture
[16:38]and I kept thinking of like this called the unfolding
[16:42]but and you said this in the beginning,
[16:43]but it also is like the awakening
[16:46]and sort of the, you know, with her,
[16:49]like her eligible to vote, the world that she is now
[16:53]brought into.
[16:54]Yeah, and I felt like, you know,
[16:55]I also really, there's so many sort of weaves
[16:58]to this story because on the one hand,
[17:00]Meghan and her father, the big guy, Cheryl love of history
[17:03]and that's the thing that they kind of bond on.
[17:05]And obviously the big guy loves the political process
[17:09]and so it's a big deal to him that Meghan is voting
[17:11]for the first time.
[17:13]So that's sort of their sort of thread
[17:15]but I also wanted to look at Charlotte and Meghan
[17:17]in terms of a multi-generational story about women's lives
[17:20]and empowerment were lack thereof.
[17:23]And so that was also a piece of it
[17:25]that had to sort of be woven through.
[17:28]And it's interesting because it part of why a book
[17:31]like this took so long is there is a lot of going back
[17:35]and a kind of digging deeper and making sure
[17:37]that those threads are pulled all the way through
[17:40]in terms of how they experience each other
[17:43]and how it moves over time?
[17:45]And they become, I mean, to me, I'm smiling
[17:47]because it become very, very real and very dimensional.
[17:51]When you're writing and you are so in it,
[17:54]how do you take yourself out of it?
[17:57]You know, how do you live the life of the writer
[18:00]and the person outside of her?
[18:04]Yeah, and the teacher and the parent,
[18:06]and the board member and all those things
[18:08]out of it, you know, as everyone knows
[18:12]who's doing more than one thing.
[18:14]You know, it's always hard at the beginning of a book
[18:17]because that's the part where you really need
[18:19]to be deep in it in your head.
[18:21]And then at a certain point,
[18:22]it does begin to gather kind of momentum
[18:24]so it's easier to kind of transition in now.
[18:27]But I always feel like it's like, you know,
[18:29]that sound on the highway
[18:30]when there's a giant truck behind you
[18:31]and you hear it shifting gears to like go up a hill.
[18:34]If that's what it feels like coming in and out of writing
[18:37]feels like, God, I hope the gear doesn't slip
[18:39]or I hope I can do this.
[18:41]And it's really difficult.
[18:43]I mean, it is difficult to make those transitions
[18:45]and there's no getting around it.
[18:46]Do you have to like set a very rigid schedule for yourself
[18:51]where you're like, okay, this is the period of the day
[18:53]where I'm going to be writing?
[18:54]And then I like, I'm gonna try and turn off
[18:58]or like start the process of
[19:00]and most faculty.
[19:01]We're at that easy as we all know, yeah.
[19:04]Every day, I mean, I think, you know,
[19:06]start early, that's how it's a good start,
[19:08]but you know, the dogs have to go out the kid,
[19:10]has to go to school that, you know,
[19:12]the sink is broke.
[19:13]I mean, there's all the things that happen in life.
[19:15]And I do teach and I do sit on a lot of boards
[19:17]and I do also work in TV and it's a lot.
[19:21]But I mean, I try to write every day,
[19:26]but I will say right now, since the book came out
[19:28]and I'm on tour and teaching, I'm not writing.
[19:30]And I totally feel it.
[19:31]And I think, oh my God, I'm falling behind.
[19:33]You know, I need to have another thing going.
[19:36]I think having a practice,
[19:39]I mean, I say this to my students all the time
[19:41]is very important.
[19:42]And sometimes it doesn't matter what you do with that time.
[19:45]You know, the bad thing of being a writer
[19:47]is if your schedule has a blank on it
[19:49]and it's like, oh, look, Wednesday, I have nothing.
[19:52]Ineffably instead of thinking, oh, Wednesday,
[19:53]I'm writing, you go, oh, I can go to the dentist
[19:55]so I can get my hair cut.
[19:56]Oh, I can do all the things I haven't done for six months.
[20:00]holding that space is difficult.
[20:02]And I will say, I think if a person can know what time of day,
[20:07]they might be able to grab that time,
[20:10]trying as best you can to protect it is really important.
[20:13]And then going away if you can.
[20:15]That's what I was going to ask.
[20:17]I imagine that a lot of this was written
[20:20]during the pandemic, right?
[20:22]I mean, you had been writing it for a while,
[20:24]but I certainly finished it during that.
[20:26]I mean, you know, the pandemic was hard.
[20:29]It was difficult because on the one hand,
[20:31]it also meant the kid was out of school, at home,
[20:35]and I was still teaching, zoom teaching, and had COVID,
[20:39]and all the things.
[20:40]So the upside of the pandemic as a writer
[20:44]was everything else stopping.
[20:46]All of the social things stopping,
[20:49]the commuting to things stopping, that was really good.
[20:53]And, you know, certainly allowed for an interior time,
[20:57]but I will also say, as that's happening,
[21:00]our political situation was also getting
[21:02]weirder and weirder in this country.
[21:04]And so the demand to bear witness
[21:06]and to be watching TV all the time was very high.
[21:10]And a friend of mine came over one night and stayed.
[21:13]And, you know, we were watching it,
[21:15]we watched the news all the time.
[21:17]And the friend said, do you do this every day?
[21:19]And we're like, yeah, yeah, we do this every day.
[21:21]She's like, oh my God, I would kill myself.
[21:23]I'm like, we can change a channel and not a problem, you know?
[21:26]But so that was also interesting to realize
[21:28]that not everybody felt as fixated on things.
[21:32]You know, it reminds me when I was in it every day
[21:36]covering the White House, and I would take vacation.
[21:39]I would go away for a week.
[21:41]I would purposefully go off, Twitter, any social media.
[21:45]I would like go on a news diet, completely.
[21:48]So that when I came back, I would see what did I actually miss.
[21:53]And I found that rarely did I miss anything.
[21:58]Right. Yeah, of consequence.
[22:00]Right. But see, that's also to me super interesting
[22:03]because I think one of the difficulties is the news cycle
[22:09]is so accelerated.
[22:12]And by that, I don't even think it's not even the news cycle.
[22:15]It is just the desire for constant breaking information
[22:20]and the fact that, you know, newspapers used to be published
[22:22]twice a day, once a day.
[22:24]But now the stories too are published all during the day
[22:27]and updated all during the day.
[22:28]So if we are thinking we're doing our job,
[22:32]we are watching that all the time.
[22:33]And you're right, when you take a break from it,
[22:36]nothing happens, but it's very difficult
[22:38]because there's also times where I felt obligated
[22:41]to attend to it.
[22:43]Yeah, I love a quote on your website.
[22:45]You said, people should pay more attention,
[22:48]everyone wants attention, but no one wants to give attention.
[22:51]Yeah, I think that's kind of true, right?
[22:54]Is that kind of your, just sort of the,
[22:57]how you always think about writing
[22:59]and what you're going to be like the subjects
[23:03]that you're going to be tackling?
[23:04]I think I always, and it's interesting,
[23:08]I would say, you know, in this book kind of clarified,
[23:10]on the one hand, this book is the most sort of overtly
[23:12]political and also the most overtly historical.
[23:15]And that was a lot of fun and a lot of research,
[23:17]but I think my subject matter has always been America,
[23:20]World War II to the present, you know, like a course.
[23:23]And I definitely in this book, you know,
[23:25]look at the ways in which the end of World War II
[23:29]and the Eisenhower administration and that speech
[23:31]about the rise of the military and industrial complex
[23:34]has absolutely affected us,
[23:36]socially, politically, economically, from then to now.
[23:40]And so I'm always writing, and I guess the fact is,
[23:43]I'm reading American society and culture.
[23:45]That is what I do.
[23:47]And that I feel like I use the tools of fiction
[23:50]to witness it, to chart it, to talk about it in ways
[23:56]that hopefully prompt a conversation.
[23:58]You know, I never would say, oh, I know what to think
[24:00]about this, but I definitely think I want people
[24:04]to be talking about these things.
[24:05]I mean, and, you know, it's a little bit uncanny
[24:07]because obviously this book sort of predicts events
[24:11]along the lines of what happened on January 6th,
[24:13]which, you know, I had hoped for the book
[24:15]to come out just before the last election.
[24:18]And, you know, publishing takes a year
[24:20]to get a book through the cycle.
[24:22]And, you know, another book music for torching,
[24:24]which ends horribly in a school shooting
[24:27]came out the day of Columbine,
[24:29]which was our first, you know, large scale,
[24:31]thing like that.
[24:32]So I think it's a lot about reading what's happening
[24:35]and trying to put the pieces together in a way
[24:39]that let us see things if not differently
[24:42]than to see them refracted in some ways
[24:44]that gives us a little bit more insight, hopefully.
[24:48]Well, what is your crystal ball telling us now?
[24:50]My crystal ball is so anxious right now.
[24:52]Oh, no.
[24:53]Maybe we need to end it right here and crack it.
[24:56]You know, I am anxious.
[24:57]I would say one of the things that you said early on too
[25:00]is that so much has changed in the sense
[25:04]that things that were norms that we assumed behaviors
[25:09]that our elected officials would do,
[25:13]the ways they would give documents back,
[25:15]the way they would leave office.
[25:16]There were all of these different things
[25:18]have now been shown to be not things that one could assume.
[25:22]So there is no assumption of the best intentions.
[25:26]And there is no assumption of shared desires.
[25:29]And the deeper parts that are darker
[25:32]is there is no sense of what truth is.
[25:36]When Kelly and Conway started talking about alternate facts,
[25:39]the game changed and that is really scary.
[25:43]And the ways in which because of the speed of media,
[25:48]the social aspect of it
[25:51]and the narrowing of where people get information
[25:54]and the way it's even delivered to them
[25:56]puts us in a really complicated spot
[25:59]where anything could happen
[26:01]and really anything could happen.
[26:03]You know.
[26:04]Yeah, is there anything that you're reading that is giving
[26:07]you an optimistic view of the future?
[26:11]I mean, that's why Megan is there, right?
[26:14]Because if I just look at the older people
[26:18]and I feel like we're also at a generational divide
[26:21]and the young people kind of need to hurry up and get here
[26:23]because I think my sense is that they can do more.
[26:28]The generational divide is such that I'm worried
[26:31]because the ways in which the Republican party
[26:34]doesn't seem to care anymore.
[26:37]It really is powered any cost.
[26:38]And that is very dangerous.
[26:41]So that worries me.
[26:42]I feel like Megan is there as an idea
[26:44]that there could be another kind of new beginning.
[26:47]But I feel like we're in for some hard times
[26:49]before we might get to that.
[26:50]So perhaps a sequel with Megan?
[26:53]Well, that is a lot more material about Megan.
[26:57]And I think it is interesting to think about what happens
[27:00]sort of when the old guy and that generation fully fades.
[27:04]And that is a generation that is truly,
[27:08]I mean, if this was 2008 and he was what like 60 something
[27:11]probably, I mean, he's old now the big guy if he's still alive.
[27:15]And so that that is a possibility.
[27:16]I was in the UK when Margaret,
[27:19]I did the launch of the testaments and did a big event there.
[27:22]And she's an icon to me.
[27:25]And that it's interesting to think about.
[27:27]But Megan, if I was to write about her,
[27:30]it wouldn't be 2024 and it might not even be 2026.
[27:34]I mean, that's the part I'm really nervous about.
[27:36]I'm nervous about 2024.
[27:38]I'm nervous about next month.
[27:41]I would love to see Megan in 2030 and what that world looks like.
[27:44]I think I would.
[27:45]Yeah.
[27:46]We don't know because the other thing is we don't know
[27:48]what will happen between now and then.
[27:50]Yeah, I know.
[27:50]It's interesting.
[27:51]It is interesting to think about.
[27:53]Well, for all those who want to be thinking about it and thinking
[27:57]about the what ifs and the way of looking to the future.
[28:00]We'll also laughing and chuckling their way with a flat.
[28:05]Just also Megan folding.
[28:07]Yeah.
[28:08]The humor part is essential.
[28:09]We didn't even talk about that.
[28:10]But you know, it is, it is, I mean, it is filled with humor.
[28:14]I feel like there's a street.
[28:16]But the important piece about humor is it allows us to cut
[28:19]more deeply and to talk about things that would otherwise
[28:21]be difficult to talk about.
[28:22]So I'm sorry, I stopped on it.
[28:23]No, no, no.
[28:24]I was good at humor and finding, like finding the humor in life
[28:29]is so important even in the darkest of time.
[28:33]So thank you for giving us a thumbs up.
[28:37]A.M. Holmes author of The Unfolding.
[28:39]Thank you.
[28:40]Thanks so much.
[28:42]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[28:44]to Read Books.
[28:45]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at the Be Owens
[28:48]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[28:51]Also sign up for my newsletter at www.zebeowens.com
[28:53]and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors
[28:56]on Zoom every other week.
[28:57]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[29:00]for the Sound Editing.
[29:01]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[29:03]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.