Lydia Millet, DINOSAURS: A Novel

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[0:58]Lydia Millet is the author of Dinosaurs. Lydia has written more than a dozen novels and story collections.

[1:03]Her novel A Children's Bible was a New York Times best ten books of 2020, selection, and shortlisted for the National Book Award.

[1:11]In 2019, her story collection Fight No More received an award of merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

[1:18]And her collection Love and Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010.

[1:23]She writes essays, opinion pieces, book reviews, and other ephemera, and has worked as an editor and staff writer at the Center for Biological Diversity since 1999.

[1:32]She lives in the desert outside Tucson with her family.

[1:35]Welcome, Lydia. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read books to discuss dinosaurs and novel.

[1:40]Well, I'm happy to be here.

[1:42]And of course, dinosaurs is referring to the fact that we all, when we were growing up, people thought dinosaurs were gone extinct.

[1:49]And now, since then, we've realized that birds are a form of dinosaur, which I learned in science class with my kids.

[1:56]But which you obviously we've been through the book as well. So interesting way to pack it.

[2:03]Yeah, I feel I learned a pretty lighten life.

[2:06]Yeah, but you know what, that's okay. We can always learn.

[2:09]Right, right. We should never stop.

[2:11]Never stop.

[2:12]Yeah, exactly.

[2:14]So can you please tell listeners what dinosaurs is about?

[2:17]Oh, well, it's a pretty simple story. It's about a man who's quite lonely and heartbroken and moves across the country and then finds himself living next to a house with a big glass wall through which he can see his, his next door neighbors.

[2:33]And, you know, his life becomes sort of enmashed in their lives.

[2:38]And that's, that's it. That's basically it.

[2:41]That is not it. There's so much more than that.

[2:44]We can leave it at that. Well, first of all, it doesn't just move to the West Coast. He walks to the West Coast. Is this like something you've always wondered what that would be like or how did that had you started off like that?

[2:56]Well, it was sort of a, I'm first of all, it was sort of a theft from my boyfriend's life because he did this before he moved west to live with me from Brooklyn.

[3:05]He walked the Appalachian Trail, like the whole Appalachian Trail. And so, so I sort of, yeah, I sort of stole that fragment of his life and made it a little different fictionalized it a little bit because of course, Gil, who's the who's the protagonist in this novel doesn't walk in actual trail.

[3:22]He just walks across the country sort of adjacent to freeways and other large roads. And yeah, I don't spend a lot of pages on that.

[3:32]But I wanted to use it because yeah, because he he's a person for whom there was no cost really to anything because he he's rich and so he in this situation wanted to sort of pay for for this change in this life and the only way he could pay was with his time and and his body, I guess.

[3:55]Well, it's always one of those things where my kids were like, could you walk across here? How long would it take? Well, so anyway, I like that.

[4:01]It's just a device to get us into this book. And then of course, Gil ends up in a house that he has only seen online and doesn't realize that he's looking into somebody else's house.

[4:11]And I also loved how you had the neighbors come over and say like to call it out because I feel like so often. I mean, I've been looking into in my mom's apartment, the same house for like 40 plus years.

[4:24]Right. And you never say anything to those neighbors. And the fact that she's like, okay, I understand it's you can't help but look at me and and that's okay. And I'm aware that you're looking into like the rooms that whole thing that you're not supposed to sort of say up into conversation.

[4:38]Tell me, tell me about that and just like starting it off that way.

[4:42]Well, he just the people that he's next to happen to be this kind of lovely family and there's a very outgoing woman at the core of the family and she just sort of embraces him and yeah, and sort of.

[4:56]And I guess in a way sort of lures him into their sphere like very early on, which is which is highly fortunate for him as it turns out.

[5:06]But this like, you know, idea of I was trying to play with sort of the idea that we're all.

[5:11]Lawyers now in our lives that that there's so much way or isn't the culture now there's so much so much spectatorship of each other and display of ourselves.

[5:20]That it's almost as though voyeurism has disappeared as a taboo right it's not.

[5:26]It's not it's barely considered, you know, criminal or an infringement to to stare at other people because we do it all day long right these these little screens we have and big screens too but we're always looking and being looked at.

[5:40]And so yeah yeah so this so so there's this very literal sort of translation of that sort of universal act of cultural voyeurism that we're engaged in now in this story.

[5:52]I feel like maybe this is a reach but I feel like you were also trying to say something with Gil attempting to give back and not knowing and being sort of stopped at every at every turn when he's looking for a meaningful way to get to engage with people who he can help in some way and even.

[6:09]From potentially being too good looking to help in a women shelter and just he keeps getting rebuffed when he tries so hard it's like you think it would be so easy just like let me help.

[6:18]Is there an tell me about even even that how sometimes wanting to help and actually helping there are a lot of obstacles you have to overcome.

[6:26]Yeah, I think it's really hard to sort of insert yourself into a community and know how to contribute for for all of us really not just for people in gills sort of privilege position but it's.

[6:39]It can be strangely hard to put do something right and there's this kind of membrane that exists between us and our personal lives and the vast world outside them and it's really hard to consider like push against it and not be able to.

[6:55]To cross over you know into that into that community it's just such a lonely place sometimes that the post modern world you know it's just a hard place to penetrate at times and.

[7:08]And Gill isn't satisfied by you know giving to charities he needs to feel that he's doing something more more real and more tactile almost I guess more tangible.

[7:22]And you do it all with this like great witty sense of humor.

[7:27]Now you're going to be a male escort and go like quietly looks around does nobody find this funny.

[7:32]And you wrote it much better than that but it's just I love I love it is like all these weeks to the to the reader and we're just like chuckling along with you it's great.

[7:41]Yeah that sort of rhinus of him was part of why I wrote the book it's kind of a you know character study of this this person and it just sort of I wanted to live with for a while this kind of kind kind and sometimes an effectual man.

[7:59]Just saying you also do such a nice job of developing a male friendship which I feel like it does not get written about at hardly ever.

[8:09]Not really not enough right because men have their own really beloved bonds and and and they're they can be formed in funnier ways and just by you know Gillan and his good friend LaFauver said he pronounce it you think.

[8:24]Oh, what is this God now I'm forgetting.

[8:27]No, he sees all these signs of him is as a man and how he curses all the time when he's like playing basketball and yet around his wife is like as sweet as an angel and you know what ends up happening with with them over time is really impactful and emotional so that was great can you talk a little bit about friendship and and how that plays out in later life.

[8:49]I've noticed that you know so many men have over a certain age have these sort of truncated social lives that are entirely dependent on their partners know especially sort of I'm going to say heterosexual man of a certain age you know seem to really be isolated and lonely for friendship and and so Gillan is a guess sort of a counter example to that where he has these.

[9:14]Just a couple right a couple of close friendships and you know I don't know I there have been times in my adult life where I felt.

[9:23]Quite bad for men because their social circles can be so constrained you know can be so.

[9:30]Determine by their jobs, I mean, as all of us are are to some degree right but like really constrained by their lives or girlfriends or other partners and their social circles and then their jobs and if they lose those things they're sort of often quite marooned.

[9:46]People actually has neither of those things in the beginning of the he doesn't have a partner right and he doesn't have a job and so like how do you find how do you find friendship is really just a sort of basic question of of his story.

[10:00]And how he relates to the kids too, what it means to like have found family and the big influence he ends up having on the next door neighbors kids and the bonds he makes with them, which is really wonderful.

[10:11]Yeah.

[10:12]So, Leah, how did you, I know you said you were interested in exploring new Gill is a man, but you've written many books at this point in your life and why like how did you start this what little German idea was got you started on this book and.

[10:28]So what was what kept you going what what was propelling you and tell me just more of the backstory of the book.

[10:34]Well, I just written this other book that was quite different children's Bible that was about anger and also sort of a righteous anger but also featured this large group of young people and sort of large for me cast of characters.

[10:48]And so I started out this book wanting as I usually do between books to do something entirely different from that.

[10:55]And just have a very small cast of characters or one thing that I could sort of get a handle on and where I could really differentiate the characters well because in a children's Bible there's this sort of amorphous mass of parents that is undifferentiated almost like a mob of parents.

[11:11]So I sort of wanted to write from the other side of that, you know, looking at people my age and how they might actually sometimes be more benevolent.

[11:22]The parents were in in a children's Bible, so that was part of it.

[11:27]And yeah, I wanted to I just was sort of entranced by the idea of a simple story that kind of opened up like a dollhouse does so that you can see.

[11:39]You know, the rooms and the sort of what do you call it when it's you know when you have those dollhouses and they open and then you've got this.

[11:49]Yeah, I remember too so sort of like a diorama as well, but what would it be like to have that kind of living a dollhouse that was sort of living to engage with you know.

[12:00]Yeah, I love that.

[12:02]How did you get started writing? How do you go from not writing to Pulitzer Prize? No, I mean all these things like nominations and accolades and new books and a whole lifetime of how did you get started and what's the secret to certain navigating life is working author.

[12:23]No, I just I think I just came to it from reading. I was just a voracious reader as a kid and so it was kind of a natural thing for me to end up doing because you as many writers have said you kind of write the stories that you want to read or that you haven't quite found and and want to inhabit for a while.

[12:43]Also, I have to admit that I at a certain juncture in my life in college discovered that I did not wish to be an opera singer which I had been trying to be sort of discovered that that was not a pursuit for which I was fit.

[12:58]And you know, I love the solitude of writing and I love the fact that at least in book writing no one really interferes with you or your process until you've already made something right and unlike say you know the collaborative world of making movies or TV or maybe other sorts of books to some degree that aren't.

[13:19]That aren't fiction you're just allowed to have perfect mental freedom and I love that and value that that sort of refuge of privacy of of making things up.

[13:30]And so it's always where I'm happiest I'm happiest when I'm writing sentences that no one else gets to weigh in on.

[13:39]It's like the ultimate control.

[13:41]Yeah, I do have I mean, I, and I do have I can't sort of write infinitely in a day, so I have a day job that is no it's about 30 hours a week and keeps me busy from like a 30 to 2 30 every day.

[13:54]And then I write like for an hour before that in the morning and I write for an hour and a half at night after it's done and that's all I want I don't think I could write for longer than that in a day that's like that is pretty much my quota.

[14:08]So I'm lucky now that I've sort of being able to fix up a schedule where I have these discrete pieces of time to write in.

[14:17]What is your day job can I ask my day job is yeah as an editor and writer at a nonprofit called the Center for biological diversity and we do lots of work on climate change and lots of work on on endangered species trying to stop critters and plants and trees from going extinct.

[14:34]And so I'm going to be suddenly mention climate change a few times in dinosaurs I feel like you're now I understand I'm not that it's not that it's unique to you obviously we're all concerned with climate change but you know how it how it sneaks in and I'm sure your work sort of bleeds over.

[14:49]I have in the background it was more foregrounded in the book before this but you can't always obsess over over these little main threats sometimes you have to sort of just step back into more meditative you know space around them.

[15:06]And so what do you like to do when you're not working and writing.

[15:12]I mean I'm mostly am working or writing it I like to walk I live in the desert and I like to hike I don't always get enough time for it but from my my house is kind of in this.

[15:23]Little enclave in a national park with lots of cacti and you know those tall saguaros that you see on Looney tunes so I can actually walk right out of my house and just walk into the national park and I love that and I love.

[15:38]As Gil does in the book watching the birds in my yard and the critters you know I used to be quite bored of birds when I was young and and now I'm not bored of them at all maybe.

[15:48]It's partly the pandemic also really made me appreciate the position of just watching wildlife outside in this kind of stillness and I still I still like to do that just.

[16:02]the critters through my window and yeah so that's something I don't know I like to drink wine with friends I guess.

[16:10]I like read all the time recently I read a lot of nonfiction because I've all of a sudden started to feel a few years two or three years ago or four maybe that I just would never know enough like I would never.

[16:24]never know even a small fraction of what there is to know and so I started reading much more nonfiction and I used to just in an attempt to I guess improve myself, so I do that.

[16:37]And I interviewed Neil deGrasse Tyson into the claim scientists and everything he was like I figured out how much time it would take for me to read all these folks to learn all these things and I realized I could never do that so I had to focus on this and like he took it apart as like how much learning how much nonfiction how much could he take in given the time he had and he made it into a whole equation which I just that was.

[16:58]Yeah, no, I couldn't like but like in the outfit right how much work can we learn and versus putting out into the world ourselves.

[17:06]Yeah, no it is because it is you do have to stop and actually make your own thing if you're a writer you can't just sort of endlessly read and also there's an exhaustion I think sometimes with with reading nonfiction at least for me even if it's really brilliant and good I just.

[17:21]It's like when you walked through a museum like an art museum or something and you just have this sort of overload and you just can't see anymore after a while and you just have to kind of wander back outside so I have that a bit with with nonfiction.

[17:35]Have you ever gotten to a point in a novel like halfway a third of the way or any you know and just been like this is just not working I have to abandon this project or starting over from scratch.

[17:47]Yeah, I think I've I've done whole books that I've virtually abandoned yeah I mean it's certainly like when I was young I did that there were many books that I wrote before my first one was published that are thankfully no longer in existence in any form.

[18:05]Now it's more like I just sort of start again if something is failing recently I had a book a manuscript I guess I should say because it's not published that I had written a few years ago no one really liked and I didn't understand why.

[18:20]So I put it aside for a few years and then I went back to it and I didn't like it either and I was like oh yeah.

[18:27]But I decided to do this kind of crazy thing where I would just write it again from scratch without looking at the original draft and see if I could write something sort of inspired similarly and with some similar benchmarks but but really without even looking.

[18:43]At the previous draft and I did I wasn't able to come up with something that I like to lot better it still hasn't seen a light of day by the way, so sometimes it's just a question of like I don't know reconceiving interesting.

[18:56]Are there topics that you're excited still to address that you haven't somehow managed to and in your work so far something that's sort of glimmering to you from afar.

[19:08]That's a really good question I don't know if there are topics as such it's more that there are new ways to approach old things you know that I think are sort of lurking out there that I hope to touch upon one day you know it's like new ways it's more new ways and new tones and new forms then new content if you know what I mean.

[19:36]interesting to turn dinosaurs into a play is that about that oh wow better you than me.

[19:42]I can't do that.

[19:46]I think it would be interesting to watch.

[19:48]Well it is kind of it is sort of like a you could see it sort of on the stage because it's such a there is a stage in the book right so there's and because there's not a lot of you know it's pretty.

[20:00]pared down in terms of there wouldn't have to be CGI, right?

[20:04]You know,

[20:07]this special effects required. So that's right. Exactly.

[20:11]So when people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Like what type of writer,

[20:16]what do you want them to say about you?

[20:18]Oh my god, I've never, this is like a job interview where you have to describe yourself in one

[20:23]word. I'm really sorry. I, you know, maybe it's my lack of sleep where I'm like asking all these

[20:28]these random questions. You can, I'm sorry. I apologize. No, it's not random. It's actually,

[20:33]it's a good question. I just don't know the answer. I think that I don't think in terms of what

[20:41]people should or could think about me. I just always think of it in terms of books and books of mine

[20:48]being read or read a certain way. I'd like to sort of, you know, ideally, I wouldn't really be

[20:55]present at all. You know, like he says why I recently I wrote a nonfiction book that's sort of

[21:03]like a hybrid of memoir and and meditation and maybe like prayer around sort of having children in

[21:11]this time and the age of extinction and climate and all that. And I found it incredibly hard

[21:18]because I had to be a character in it and I'm not used to writing that way much harder than

[21:25]fiction where I get to disappear. I mean, I think the great thing about writing fiction is that

[21:30]you get to disappear without disappearing. You know, so like it is you, it is of you, but you don't

[21:36]have to parade yourself through it, right? Because it's just intrinsically other. And I love that

[21:42]about fiction. You mentioned your boyfriend earlier and this is totally none of my business, but

[21:49]I had before I married my second husband. I was in my 40s saying like, this is my boyfriend,

[21:54]I felt so funny saying that, you know, like it's a full of boyfriend when you're like grown up.

[21:59]I know I struggle with that all the time. Sometimes I say partner. I just, I don't know,

[22:04]but that always sounds kind of corporate to me also. So I'm just there's no good word. I feel

[22:10]it's a problem. It's kind of a problem of language, right? Yeah. So what do you, what did you,

[22:15]so now you can say husband, which is easier. It is. Yeah, that's why I did it. I just didn't want to

[22:20]keep calling him a boyfriend. So I said, we just should get married.

[22:23]It's not like sometimes I, if I'm talking to like someone in a service transaction or something

[22:29]like that, I'll just say husband or because I feel then they will give me more credit

[22:35]or him or I won't have to like qualify the boyfriend thing or be or the partner thing or whatever

[22:43]word I choose to use. Sometimes it's just easier to say husband for sure.

[22:47]Even if it's a lie, right? Who cares? I don't think they'll never see me again, you know.

[22:54]I agree. Yeah. Well, when you come up with the right word, let me know. Likewise, please, please,

[23:00]I'm the one who needs it. I'm that you don't need it anymore. But still, it'll be nice to throw it

[23:05]out to the universe. Yeah. Yes. Okay. So what's the next book that's going to come out from you?

[23:10]Are you going to publish the one about the memoir? Yeah, I hope so. I think I'm not not quite sure

[23:16]because I have a book of short stories that's almost done as well. And so I'm not sure which

[23:22]will come out first. That's to some degree up to my publisher Norton. But I love writing short stories

[23:29]and I always do it to sort of entertain myself kind of between longer projects. And so I have that

[23:37]and then I have this nonfiction thing and then I have a novel too that I'm working on because I

[23:42]have that because I love novels so much, you know. So we'll see that's, yeah, that is not yet known

[23:48]to me. Still, a lot of exciting things. So what is it? What is your advice for aspiring authors?

[23:55]Well, first, it's always, I mean, this is boring, but it's always just to read. It's to read a lot,

[24:01]you know, and read like beyond your comfort zone. Read things that you haven't read before.

[24:07]I think that really helped me. Like in my early, in my early 20s, after I got out of, you know,

[24:12]I finished college and stuff, I started reading books that weren't canonical and or that were,

[24:19]but they were outside my like range of experience or whatever. And they could be tough to start

[24:24]with. But when I just soldered on, they gave me a lot. And, you know, they expanded my conception

[24:33]of what good writing was and what I wanted to do with writing and all that. So I would always

[24:38]just say read and then, and I guess I would just say make sure you love what you're doing when

[24:45]you write, you know, never do something because you think you should always do what you love.

[24:50]Excellent advice. That's for life in general. Yes, if possible. Yeah, exactly.

[24:56]Well, thank you so much. It was so nice to chat with you today. Thanks for chatting early in the

[25:00]morning about dinosaurs. And it was just really nice to get to know you. Yeah, you too. It was

[25:06]truly a pleasure. I hope we get to raise a glass one day. Nice. My mom actually lives in Arizona.

[25:12]So I'm there quite a bit. Really? Where? She lives outside Scottsdale. Okay. Yeah. So it's probably

[25:17]like an hour and a half from where I am. Something like that. I will be there in May. I'm speaking at

[25:21]the mom 2.0 conference. Do you know about that? Oh, cool. No. You should know. Tell me about it.

[25:26]You should speak. Really? So close. Yes. I'm going to put you in touch. Well, I was going to say

[25:33]I'll put you in touch. But yeah, that sounds really fun actually. Yeah, it's I think May 10th,

[25:40]eighth through 10th, May through 10th. Yeah, I'll be around then. That's before we go to

[25:44]May and for the summer. So yeah, I'll totally be around. So do. Yeah, I'm going to put you in touch.

[25:49]Okay. Okay. Yeah, that'd be cool. All right. Have a great day. Bye.

[25:55]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms. Don't have time to read books.

[26:00]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at moms. Don't have time to read books.

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[26:10]of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan. Heck, texture sound for the

[26:15]sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and