Harrison Scott Key, HOW TO STAY MARRIED: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told
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[1:03]For instance, Scott Key is the author of How to Stay Married, which if anyone who follows
[1:07]man Instagram knows, I have recommended this book like a hundred times, okay, well, I don't
[1:11]know, maybe like three times, but I loved it and have been shouting it from the rooftops
[1:15]in many different venues.
[1:17]Harrison Scott Key is the author of How to Stay Married, Congratulations, Who Are You Again?
[1:21]And the world's largest man, winner of the third prize for American humor.
[1:25]His first TEDx talk went viral among a certain demographic.
[1:28]If you'd like Harrison to speak at your event, he will probably do it in exchange
[1:31]for money.
[1:33]Harrison's humor and nonfiction have appeared in the Best American Travel Reading, Oxford
[1:37]American Outside, The New York Times, The Bitters Southerner, McSweeny's Internet Tendency,
[1:42]Town and Country, The Mockingbird Salon, Savannah Magazine, Reacher's Digest, Image, Southern
[1:47]Living Gulf Coast and Creative Nonfiction, as well as a number of magazines that don't pay
[1:50]you anything at all, not even a little, but it was cool because people who work at magazines
[1:54]are mostly poor and helping the poor as a priority for Harrison should he come under scrutiny.
[1:59]Harrison has lectured, talked, read, performed, et cetera, around the world and book festivals,
[2:03]bookstores, conferences for design, writing, religion, medicine, real estate and education,
[2:08]variety shows, radio shows and universities, as well as one retirement community whose
[2:13]members were perfectly courteous up until the end.
[2:15]He has also performed stand-up comedy at venues around the U.S. if you include three or four
[2:20]different cities to be around the U.S. He holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and a
[2:25]PhD in playwriting and has worked at SCAD for quite literally thousands of years where
[2:30]he's held appointments as chair of liberal arts, professor of English, professor of writing
[2:35]and executive dean.
[2:36]He lives in Savannah, Georgia with three children and one wife.
[2:40]Welcome Harrison.
[2:41]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss how to stay
[2:44]married the most insane love story ever told.
[2:47]Well, thanks for having me.
[2:49]We had a big book launch just last night, so I'm still recovering from that.
[2:54]Okay.
[2:55]I have to tell you this book was so amazing.
[2:59]I had to stop doing the things I was supposed to do in my life so I could read this.
[3:03]I was like, no, no, I know we're supposed to do these friends, but can we just any like
[3:07]20 minutes here?
[3:08]And I need 20 minutes there.
[3:09]I could not put it down.
[3:11]It's so good.
[3:12]I've never had anything like it from a male point of view about a relationship.
[3:17]It was so good.
[3:18]Congratulations.
[3:19]I loved it.
[3:20]And you're so funny.
[3:22]No, I mean, no one shows all those inside things about a marriage and you were so open
[3:29]and yet so funny.
[3:31]Anyway, I don't know, bravo.
[3:34]Why don't you tell listeners a little bit about your book?
[3:37]What it's about?
[3:38]The love story that you referenced and sort of how you decided to write it as a book and
[3:44]then even the chapter by your wife, which I thought was so interesting that you put in
[3:48]the end.
[3:49]Like it was so, this whole thing was so good.
[3:51]Okay.
[3:52]Tell me the whole story.
[3:53]So in 2017, my wife sat me down.
[3:59]She sent me an email one day at work and she said, can we talk when the girls get home?
[4:04]I mean, when the girls go to bed tonight, we have three daughters at the time.
[4:08]We'd been married about 14 years when she said when the girls go to sleep tonight, can
[4:12]we talk?
[4:13]And my wife never sends emails like that.
[4:16]I mean, it's the worst kind of email you can get because it's like, why is she emailing
[4:20]me?
[4:21]And it just felt so strange immediately.
[4:24]My heart's saying because like something is going on.
[4:26]And I was like, you know, emailed her back.
[4:28]I'm like, sure, like of course we can talk like, what do you want to talk about?
[4:32]Like, it could be anything could be she, you know, found a job somewhere, she may be
[4:37]something bad.
[4:38]Maybe she had one of the confessed that, you know, she had a pill addiction or she was
[4:42]an alcoholic or that she really wanted to move or whatever, it just, it was very heavy.
[4:48]And that night after the girls went to sleep, she sat me down and she said, I want a divorce.
[4:54]And I said, okay, why?
[4:57]And she said, I'm in love with someone else.
[5:01]And I said, who?
[5:03]And she told me and this, the name that she told me was a friend of mine, one of our former
[5:09]next door neighbors.
[5:10]So in that moment, everything that I had known about my life changed, it had already
[5:16]changed.
[5:17]I didn't know that it had changed until that moment and everything exploded.
[5:21]And the way I describe it to people is this, it seems like a memoir about marriage or
[5:27]a memoir about my wife's affair, but what it really is is like a, it's really a detective
[5:32]novel.
[5:33]And there's a murder at the beginning, just like there is in a detective novel and what
[5:36]was murdered was my marriage.
[5:38]And so the entire book is me trying to figure out who killed this thing and is it dead yet?
[5:45]Can it be brought back to life?
[5:47]And so the whole action of the story is me trying to learn, okay, how did this happen?
[5:54]How did she fall in love with this guy?
[5:56]What were they keeping secret from me?
[5:58]What did I not see that was so obvious, just so obvious?
[6:03]And so it is, there's so many twists and turns as you know, it's like, it's like days
[6:08]of our lives, but written by Seinfeld and, you know, Larry David.
[6:13]It's this weird, so many twists and turns like a, this torrid love affair.
[6:17]I mean, the guy, the other man who in the book I call Chad, that's not his real name.
[6:22]He's really an off stage character.
[6:24]There's nothing salacious in this book.
[6:26]There are no like, he doesn't really figure into the action.
[6:30]He's always referenced off stage, almost like an, you know, Shakespeare.
[6:33]He's something that happens off stage.
[6:36]This is really about her and me.
[6:38]A lot of people have asked me, you know, like, you know, why would you write this book
[6:41]that's so candid about your wife's affair?
[6:43]And you're still married.
[6:45]But saying the book is about my wife's affair is sort of like saying the movie
[6:49]Jaws is about marine biology.
[6:51]It's not like that at all.
[6:53]It's really an investigation into how our marriage died, who killed it?
[6:59]Who's responsible?
[7:01]Is it hers at me as both of us?
[7:02]And it's answering all of those questions.
[7:05]And of course, there's a happy ending.
[7:07]It's, there's more than just one revelation in the book, as you know.
[7:12]And I won't give it away for listeners.
[7:14]But there's a happy ending in the sense of there's reconciliation.
[7:18]And there was a, I like to tell people it's sort of like Europe and World War One
[7:22]and World War Two.
[7:23]And, you know, I really thought I was England and my wife was Germany.
[7:27]You know, and I was, she's been this terrible thing and that she deserved,
[7:30]you know, punishment.
[7:31]And that's how it feels when you find out that you've been betrayed.
[7:35]And then I realized like, and there was a fragile piece, sort of like at the end of
[7:39]the First World War.
[7:41]But then some terrible things happened again.
[7:43]And there was a whole other World War, and that also is described in the book.
[7:47]And I realized that it wasn't that I was England and my wife was Germany.
[7:52]It's more that I was England and my ego was Germany.
[7:56]And my ego was the real enemy here.
[7:58]And my wife was, maybe my wife was France.
[8:01]I don't know.
[8:02]She was, she was a player in this.
[8:03]But it wasn't, this is not a book about her villainy.
[8:07]And I really needed help.
[8:08]And to extend this really weird metaphor, it's like our friends and family and community,
[8:14]our church, all were like America sort of coming in to help when I needed it most.
[8:20]And so that's the story of the book.
[8:23]Oh my gosh.
[8:24]Well, at the end of the book, you give just, and I'm not giving anything away.
[8:29]But like a little, almost like an essay you could like tear it out and stuff it in your
[8:32]back pocket of like, how to keep, you know, what to take away for your own marriage?
[8:36]You know, like, what should we remember here, which was useful?
[8:39]Because of course, after you do this deep dive into something that is like every relationship
[8:45]is a living, breathing thing, what it comes down to the most is sort of what we come into
[8:49]our relationships with, right?
[8:51]How can any, it's like a miracle, any relationship ever works to be honest, right?
[8:56]Isn't it?
[8:57]You know, in some ways like a, you know, I'm not the first person to say this, but
[9:01]I really believe that you marry the wrong person, everybody marries the wrong person
[9:05]because even if you're soulmates at the beginning and most people feel that way, that's
[9:10]why they get married.
[9:11]You feel like you found your soulmate, but as a wiser man once my wife has been married
[9:17]to five people and they're all me because you're doing so much.
[9:22]And, you know, I liken it to sort of, when you get married, it's a little bit like buying
[9:27]a car.
[9:29]It's a new car.
[9:30]It's so beautiful.
[9:31]Nothing ever will go wrong with it, but it's a lemon.
[9:34]It's always a lemon because there are things under the hood and not only for them, but
[9:38]for you, you're their car.
[9:40]You're their brand new car and there's things under your hood that are so effed up and
[9:45]nobody knows and you can't even find out what they are until you're married.
[9:49]It's like the marriage is how you discover what's really inside you.
[9:54]The trauma, the biases, the way, like I eat.
[10:00]You know, the way that your brain is messed up,
[10:02]the way the expectation you have that aren't right,
[10:05]all the really weird habits you bring into marriage
[10:09]because of how you saw your parents be married,
[10:12]all that stuff, it only comes out when you're married
[10:15]and it comes out over time and you change and you evolve.
[10:18]So yeah, it's a shock that, you know,
[10:20]everybody says, oh, you know,
[10:21]it's crazy that 50% of marriages end in divorce
[10:24]and I'm shocked that 50% of marriages don't.
[10:28]You know, like that's the real shock to me
[10:30]and when you really think about it.
[10:32]I was really interested in your whole childhood
[10:35]and how your parents, which you also sort of look into
[10:38]and debate if they're well suited
[10:40]and how their relationship came to be,
[10:41]they seem so different and how you were this bookish kid
[10:44]and with all these lofty literary goals,
[10:47]sort of like a fish out of water
[10:49]where you had grown up and how you say this
[10:51]in a much more funny or tequila way, of course,
[10:53]but which I really enjoyed reading.
[10:55]But how you take sort of even how you grow up
[10:58]and the training you have
[10:59]and how you feel about your interests.
[11:02]Like how do you think you got yourself
[11:04]like onto the writing path?
[11:06]Because at times reading your story,
[11:08]it feels very unlikely that this is where it would end up.
[11:11]And when you say this is where it would end up,
[11:12]what do you mean?
[11:14]But with you becoming like a really successful author.
[11:16]I'm right.
[11:18]Well, in some ways, so that's really the whole story
[11:21]of my second book, which came out about five years ago.
[11:25]It's called Congratulations Who Were You Again?
[11:27]And it's about sort of the American dream
[11:29]and how do you find out what you're good at
[11:31]and who you are and what you're calling is?
[11:34]I never really, I mean, the short answer is
[11:37]I was always a writer,
[11:40]even when I didn't think that I was.
[11:42]I was writing and telling stories from a very young age.
[11:46]I'm from the South, I'm from Mississippi
[11:49]and storytelling and just sitting on the front porch
[11:52]and sitting at the dinner table
[11:53]and telling hunting stories and fishing stories
[11:57]about this person and that person.
[11:58]It's just such a part of that culture.
[12:00]And so I grew up with that.
[12:02]And I also grew up reading.
[12:05]We had nothing to do out in the country.
[12:07]Nothing.
[12:07]We had no cable.
[12:09]We had three channels.
[12:11]We lived 15 miles from the nearest grocery store.
[12:14]I mean, we were out in the middle of nowhere.
[12:17]And so books were for me.
[12:18]That was my, that was the original mobile technology.
[12:21]That was the thing that you could have
[12:23]and take anywhere sort of like a portal
[12:26]to any dimension, any place and time.
[12:29]So I just fell in love with stories
[12:31]and I started writing from a young age.
[12:32]I wrote letters, I mean, like summer camp,
[12:35]I would fall in love with 15 different girls
[12:38]at summer camp and I would write letters to all of them.
[12:42]And I would continue writing letters after summer camp.
[12:45]Every year, I wrote letters, which is this is really odd.
[12:48]I mean, my brother was, my older brother was,
[12:50]you know, football player, big hunter.
[12:52]My dad was a big sportsman.
[12:53]He was a football coach.
[12:55]And I played sports and I did all that stuff.
[12:57]But I was so drawn to, to literature and to reading.
[13:01]I wrote letters to my grandmother.
[13:03]Like she lived about three hours away.
[13:05]I wrote letters to her, she wrote letters to me.
[13:07]And I just didn't think anything about it.
[13:09]It was just how I expressed myself
[13:11]and how, and I just love spending time that way.
[13:13]And so when I got to college, it was very strange.
[13:16]I did not major in English.
[13:17]You would, you would assume that I would,
[13:20]but in my experience, English majors
[13:23]were all girls who liked Jane Austen.
[13:25]That was it.
[13:27]And I didn't, that just wasn't my vibe.
[13:29]And so philosophy is, is like English majors for boys.
[13:33]That's what philosophy is.
[13:34]So I was like, well, I'll major in philosophy
[13:35]because you're all, you're doing the same thing.
[13:37]You're reading lots of old stuff
[13:39]and they're talking about it and writing about it.
[13:42]And so I studied philosophy.
[13:43]I thought I was an actor with the grad school for that.
[13:46]And I did stand up for a little while.
[13:48]And the way I got back into writing was,
[13:51]this was before the internet
[13:52]where you could just find monologues,
[13:54]all the monologues you wanted for auditions up and down
[13:57]all day long.
[13:58]But back then you had to write your own monologues
[14:01]or find them in books.
[14:03]And so I started writing my own audition monologues
[14:05]and I found that that was so much fun.
[14:09]It just felt so natural to write and perform my own stuff.
[14:13]And so in a sense, I'm still doing that now
[14:17]because I'm writing, you know, I'm writing stuff
[14:19]and then I go on tour and I perform it.
[14:21]And so it's really strange how that all worked out.
[14:24]But I had a very circuitous route to writing a book.
[14:27]It took me 10 years to write my first book
[14:29]in a sense of learning.
[14:31]I mean, I have a PhD in playwriting.
[14:34]And I knew Jack squat about writing
[14:36]after I finished that degree.
[14:38]Because, you know, it's very theoretical.
[14:39]It's just about argument and reading
[14:42]and it just, it hadn't sunk in.
[14:45]And I got married when I was 27.
[14:47]And I left academia, I left teaching.
[14:51]And I was like, you know what, I wanna write.
[14:52]A novel, a memoir, I wanna write something.
[14:55]And it took me five years to learn how to write
[14:59]as funny as I was in real life.
[15:02]You know, like, I'm a naturally funny person.
[15:04]If I'm no matter where I am, what I'm doing,
[15:06]I'm gonna make jokes.
[15:08]I'm gonna find a funny thing to say.
[15:10]And, but getting that onto the page
[15:14]and making it feel like me, that took forever.
[15:16]That took five years of getting up every day
[15:19]at five a.m. and writing for three hours before work.
[15:22]And then once I figured out how to do it,
[15:25]then I had to have something to say.
[15:26]I had to like, well, what am I talking of?
[15:28]Like my writing about my writing silly short stories.
[15:30]Am I writing the great American novel?
[15:33]And so it took five more years to realize
[15:35]that I needed to write about that fish out of water experience
[15:38]of my childhood and write about my dad.
[15:41]And once I got that, once I had the comedy voice down
[15:44]and once I knew, once I had a topic and a subject,
[15:48]and I think those two things form what you call
[15:50]the writer's voice, what are you talking about
[15:52]and how are you saying?
[15:53]And once I had those two things,
[15:54]my career really took off from there.
[15:57]Oh my gosh, amazing.
[15:58]Well, I obviously have to go back now and read that book.
[16:00]I'm like, now a lifelong fan.
[16:02]Has this been, has this book been optioned?
[16:05]By the way, I think it would be a good movie.
[16:07]It has not been optioned yet.
[16:09]I've had conversations with three or four producers.
[16:13]There's a challenge, is it a TV show, is it a film?
[16:16]I think it's a TV show just because it feels so episodic.
[16:21]Feels like maybe it's three seasons
[16:24]because the story has three distinct parts,
[16:27]an act one and a two and a three.
[16:29]So I'm playing with that.
[16:31]I mean, because of my background and script writing,
[16:34]I did write a screenplay for my first memoir.
[16:37]I've thought about doing that,
[16:38]but I really wanna write a novel.
[16:40]So I'm really torn right now.
[16:42]Do I work with one of these producers to adapt this
[16:46]into a show, or do I just write the next book?
[16:50]And because I'm a working dad,
[16:52]I've got a full-time job at a university
[16:54]and I don't have time to just do both.
[16:57]I know writers who, that's all they do
[16:58]and they can do both, but I can't.
[17:00]So I have to choose very wisely.
[17:02]You'd also have someone else adapted.
[17:03]Yeah, I mean, I think once the book,
[17:06]I mean, obviously it comes out this month in June
[17:09]and technically we're recording this on a Monday,
[17:12]the book comes out tomorrow on a Tuesday.
[17:14]So I think I'm expecting option offers
[17:17]over the next month or two,
[17:19]but I definitely want, if it does get option,
[17:21]I would like to be a part of the writing team
[17:23]just because I obviously love to write
[17:25]and not at all afraid of that medium.
[17:28]Amazing.
[17:29]Well, my husband has a production company
[17:31]and I was like, you have to option this.
[17:32]So I'll try to figure out if it's option.
[17:35]Anyway, I mean, not that it's hard to figure out,
[17:37]but can I read a couple things?
[17:38]I thought we're so funny.
[17:40]Like I have all these dog ears,
[17:42]so I'll just randomly pick a few passages.
[17:46]I hear, I'll just read a couple things,
[17:47]which I don't know if these are what I even thought was funny
[17:49]to begin with, but I'll read them anyway.
[17:50]At its best, comedy provides a check on power and pride,
[17:53]keeps you realistic about how good you don't look
[17:55]in those jeans.
[17:56]And I do believe that our shared love of laughter
[17:58]kept us both humble, but man, funny people,
[18:01]sure can make a marriage lonesome.
[18:03]I began to worry that my wife and I
[18:04]were just ordinary assholes doing 25 to life
[18:07]for crimes of the heart.
[18:09]I avoided her in the house, little eye contact,
[18:11]zero touching, so obvious was her disgust
[18:14]while she chose to share news in her aneurysms with others,
[18:16]anybody who'd listen and not always mock.
[18:19]Chad, for example, he was out there, a text away.
[18:22]I think most of horses are merely a failure of imagination.
[18:25]You lose the capacity to conceive of a happy future.
[18:28]The two of you are like a wet pair of matches,
[18:31]hardly able to get the fire back.
[18:32]Why keep trying?
[18:33]The world is full of dry matches.
[18:35]All you need is a new one.
[18:37]Tell me about that passage, what you're thinking, writing.
[18:41]How you feel about it.
[18:43]You know, marriage, it's so hard.
[18:47]You know, it's like what we were saying that, you know,
[18:50]I mean, if you're what makes a marriage, a marriage
[18:53]is the promise to stay married, the bow that you take
[18:57]at the altar or, you know, under the beautiful oak tree
[19:02]in the outdoor wedding, wherever you do it,
[19:04]that you take a vow, if marriage was about feelings
[19:08]and if marriage was easy, you wouldn't have to vow.
[19:11]You don't have to take vows of some things easy.
[19:14]Like you don't have to vow to eat all the popcorn
[19:17]at the movie theater.
[19:18]You don't have to put the vow to eat the chocolate
[19:20]that you got for Halloween.
[19:23]You take vows because whatever you're promising to do
[19:27]is gonna be hard.
[19:28]And so you make a promise in front of your people.
[19:30]And you're like, I know this is gonna be hard
[19:32]and I promise all of you people.
[19:34]I just want you to have, even if you're getting married
[19:36]by just the piece, you gotta have a witness.
[19:39]Somebody who's like, all right, I'm hearing you
[19:41]and the witness is usually somebody that you know
[19:43]and love and care about.
[19:45]You take vows because things are hard.
[19:47]And, you know, we know this in theory,
[19:50]but when you get married, you don't always like your spouse
[19:53]and you can think of it and like,
[19:55]your spouse becomes your greatest enemy
[19:57]because you, you know.
[20:00]everything terrible about them.
[20:01]You see them at their worst.
[20:02]You see them metaphorically and literally naked,
[20:06]and you see all their faults metaphorically and literally.
[20:09]And so it, but then all these other beautiful people
[20:12]walking around, you haven't seen their faults.
[20:15]They look beautiful, they look nice, they look perfect.
[20:18]Whereas you're looking at your spouse
[20:19]and you've seen everything.
[20:20]So it's the difference between, you know,
[20:21]it's like you to use the car, you know, analogy.
[20:24]You've been driving this crappy car now for 10 or 15
[20:27]20 years, and you know that it's a terrible car.
[20:30]And you know all its weird sounds and what it doesn't do, right?
[20:34]But then every other car that passes you on the street
[20:36]just looks so nice.
[20:37]And you're like, man, if I had that car,
[20:38]my life would be so much better.
[20:40]And so, you know, that passage that you read,
[20:43]the whole idea of like, you know, we were two wet matches.
[20:46]And all you need to light a wet match is a dry one.
[20:50]And all these other people out there, you know,
[20:53]that my wife had this affair in part because, you know,
[20:56]she worked from home and this man worked from home.
[20:59]She was a stay-at-home mom and he had a business
[21:02]where he worked from home most of the time
[21:04]and our houses were right next door to one another.
[21:07]And so in a sense, he was like her work husband.
[21:10]You know, everybody, if you work in an office,
[21:11]you've got like your work spouse, your work wife,
[21:14]you flirt, you talk, and it's so electrifying
[21:18]because you don't have any negative history with that person.
[21:22]You haven't had to pack for vacations with that person.
[21:26]You've not had to grocery shop with that person.
[21:28]They're so likable because you don't know jack squat about them.
[21:33]And that's what this man was for my wife at some point.
[21:36]When things got bad for us and every marriage has its ebbs
[21:40]and flows, you have good years and bad years,
[21:42]you have really bad years and really great years.
[21:45]And during the really bad years,
[21:48]here was this man who she was friends with,
[21:50]they got along, they laughed together, you know, again,
[21:52]you know, her work husband in a sense.
[21:55]And he looked like happiness.
[21:59]He looked like joy.
[22:01]Well, she can get the fire with him because he's a new guy.
[22:03]She couldn't get it with me and it takes work
[22:05]to do it with your spouse, to get that fire back,
[22:08]to fall in love again.
[22:10]Man, it takes so much work like it's continual,
[22:14]whether it's therapy or just intimacy, time spent together
[22:17]going on a walk, trying to learn their love languages.
[22:21]It's exhausting.
[22:22]So yeah, it's, it was hard.
[22:25]It feels impossible.
[22:27]You know what I said, it's a failure of imagination.
[22:30]You really just, I tell, I say in the book,
[22:32]you have to imagine wanting to divorce your spouse.
[22:36]Like do it now.
[22:37]Imagine hating something about them.
[22:40]And then imagine trying to stay married anyway.
[22:45]Imagine trying to find what you love about them.
[22:48]And for me, the secret to fall in love again with my wife.
[22:52]And I think for her to fall in love with me
[22:54]was to look in the mirror and see how broken and awful I was.
[23:00]It's so easy to point the finger when you get betrayed.
[23:03]Like I've done a lot of bad things,
[23:04]but I have never done that.
[23:06]I felt so self-righteous when I found out about the betrayal.
[23:10]And that self-righteousness was poison
[23:14]because it made me hate my wife.
[23:16]It made me elevate myself to this morally superior status.
[23:21]And one of my good buddies said, you know,
[23:23]in cases like he's a therapist,
[23:25]he said in cases like this,
[23:27]if a marriage is ever going to reconcile,
[23:30]then both spouses have to own their part in it.
[23:34]And he wasn't saying I caused the affair.
[23:36]But he was saying it might be useful to look in the mirror
[23:39]and just see what it might be like to be married to me.
[23:42]Think about what it's like to be married to you Harrison.
[23:45]And I thought about it.
[23:46]I made a long, long list as you saw in the book
[23:48]or whole chapter about it.
[23:50]And it was not pleasant.
[23:51]There was some humor in it,
[23:52]but it was not, I say it's like looking in one of,
[23:55]not just like one of those nice mirrors
[23:57]at the luxury boutique,
[23:59]but it was more like looking in one of those mirrors
[24:01]at Walmart that don't lie about what you look like,
[24:04]the terrible lighting.
[24:06]You really have to look at yourself and decide,
[24:08]wow, I am kind of a jackass.
[24:10]And I believe every human being on earth
[24:11]is a jackass of one form or another.
[24:14]And once you realize your fault and how hard it is
[24:17]to be married to you, it's much easier to forgive.
[24:22]I was so much easier to look at my wife
[24:24]and be like, damn, like I see why our marriage
[24:27]might be something she would want to escape.
[24:31]Even, I didn't abuse my wife.
[24:32]I didn't emotionally physically.
[24:35]I wasn't an addict.
[24:36]I'm not an alcoholic, but I have so many frailties
[24:39]and so many cracks and imperfections.
[24:42]And I made it, I made our marriage.
[24:44]I contributed to making our marriage
[24:47]a burning building that somebody might want to get out of.
[24:50]I mean, even the ability to take stock
[24:52]the way that you did in the book
[24:53]and the whole book is sort of a taking stock,
[24:55]right, deep dive analysis.
[24:57]Like so many people are not capable of doing that.
[25:00]They're like, especially for any narcissists at there,
[25:03]like you're physically, not physically,
[25:06]but emotionally incapable of seeing any wrong
[25:10]or even it's just so, it can be so damaging
[25:12]to your sense of self, to dive as deep as you did
[25:16]and to who you are, how you contributed
[25:19]and yet look at the outcome.
[25:20]Like I feel like this is such an advertisement for you,
[25:24]just laying it all out there, the good, bad,
[25:27]and the ugly.
[25:28]So you enter wove all of your faith in here
[25:32]and you had that one just so such a brilliant chapter,
[25:36]where you write as if you're writing the Bible.
[25:38]And like in the Lord, whatever, oh, it's so funny.
[25:41]But it wasn't just that.
[25:42]It's that you founded a church and played the drums
[25:47]and include faith really in every story.
[25:50]It's a critical sort of part of the book,
[25:53]which I just would love to hear your thoughts on.
[25:56]I mean, you don't, and this is another way
[25:59]I feel like the book is unique and that there isn't often
[26:02]this, you know, another storyline,
[26:04]which sort of follows, which always interweaves the faith.
[26:07]I'm sorry, I cannot make a sense this morning.
[26:09]But anyway, I think you know what I'm talking about.
[26:10]Yeah.
[26:12]Well, when, I mean, I've always wanted to write,
[26:15]man, I grew up in the church.
[26:16]I'm a Christian, I'm terrible at it.
[26:18]I'm terrible at every kind of Christianity.
[26:21]Terrible at the really sweet gentle,
[26:24]like Jesus is a kitten that you hold in your palm of your hand
[26:28]and he loves you and you love him.
[26:29]I'm terrible at that kind of Christianity.
[26:31]I'm terrible at the righteous, you know,
[26:34]right wing Christianity where Jesus carries a flame
[26:36]to throw or like, I don't fit anywhere.
[26:38]I'm terrible at it.
[26:40]But I've grown up with a group
[26:41]and a very conservative Southern church
[26:45]and have bounced around, I mean, I studied some theology
[26:49]in college, actually was enrolled in seminary
[26:52]for about a week before I decided to study playwriting.
[26:55]And I'm just, you know, because theology and religion
[27:00]are just, it's one more form of human curiosity.
[27:04]Why are we here?
[27:05]Did something make us, if so, why do they make us?
[27:08]What are we supposed to be like?
[27:10]What is a good life?
[27:11]I mean, those are all the questions
[27:12]that anybody's asking in a TED talk
[27:15]and anybody's asking in a sermon
[27:16]and every spiritual religious book
[27:18]from the Tao Taeqing to the old and new Testament,
[27:22]they're all asking those same questions.
[27:23]Like life is after what are you gonna do about it?
[27:28]Why is it after and what are you gonna do?
[27:31]And so when anything blows up in your life,
[27:35]you're gonna ask big questions.
[27:37]What am I to do now?
[27:39]And you're going to look around for wisdom everywhere.
[27:42]You're gonna Google, you're gonna look for wisdom
[27:45]on the internet, you're gonna look for wisdom in Instagram,
[27:47]you're gonna look for wisdom when you talk to your friends,
[27:50]you're gonna desperately need wisdom.
[27:52]And so for me, this experience compelled me to be like,
[27:56]okay, it was like, imagine religion,
[28:00]I mean, I was like, we have this thing,
[28:02]like some churches have this thing called Bible Bowl
[28:04]where you're like, it's like Bible trivia,
[28:06]like Jeopardy for Christian nerd kids.
[28:10]And I did all that, I have a trophy,
[28:11]I have a Bible Bowl trophy from like sixth grade.
[28:15]Cause I mean, I love to read and like,
[28:18]that was the coolest thing about church is like,
[28:20]we're reading like, you know, like Middle English poetry
[28:23]in the King James Bible and talking about,
[28:25]I mean, it was like English class.
[28:26]We were talking about what these interesting stories meant
[28:31]and what do you think's going on here?
[28:32]I mean, it's all you do in English class,
[28:34]you're reading really old poetry and talking about it.
[28:36]And most of it's weird and confusing.
[28:38]That's exactly what Sunday school was.
[28:40]So I was fascinated by that as a boy.
[28:43]And, you know, I like in faith to like a shed
[28:48]in your backyard where, you know,
[28:51]you've got all these two interesting weird tools
[28:54]and you're not quite sure what they're for,
[28:56]but they're really old and interesting and cool.
[28:59]And I'd studied all these religious ideas all my life
[29:02]in church and school and college at books that I read,
[29:06]but when my wife blew up and I was looking for wisdom,
[29:10]I was like, well, let's see what the fucking Bible has to say
[29:13]about this shit.
[29:14]I mean, I was at the end of my road.
[29:16]And so I was like, you know what?
[29:18]I want the King James Bible.
[29:19]I want the good stuff.
[29:20]I don't want any of these modern translations.
[29:22]I went straight to it.
[29:24]And rereading the Bible from cover to cover
[29:27]in the midst of sort of the explosion of my marriage
[29:31]was very insightful.
[29:33]And I read it with completely different eyes,
[29:35]not the eyes of a dogmatist or, you know,
[29:37]when somebody's preaching from the Bible,
[29:39]they have a lot at stake
[29:41]and they're trying to prove something.
[29:44]But I, there was nothing left for me to prove
[29:46]or be proven to.
[29:47]I was just reading and trying to decide like,
[29:50]why does this book exist?
[29:52]It's existed for so long.
[29:53]It's got to have some wisdom in it.
[29:55]And it was like I had wandered into this,
[29:57]my backyard, my house is falling apart.
[30:00]And I wandered into my backyard and I find this shed full of tools and I was like,
[30:04]wait, tools, do something.
[30:06]I can do something with these tools.
[30:08]Grace, forgiveness, love, wisdom.
[30:11]Like, do I hurt this man?
[30:13]I felt such an urge to vengeance.
[30:15]Do I do that?
[30:17]Do I love him?
[30:18]It says love your enemies.
[30:19]Do I have to love this guy?
[30:21]Like, how do I do that?
[30:22]That seems insane.
[30:25]And so I was like, you know what?
[30:27]I'll give it a shot.
[30:29]And so I read and as you saw in the book, it's, I make a lot of fun of what you find in the
[30:35]Bible and yet try to divine some wisdom from this story.
[30:40]Not specific, do this, don't do that, but more of a sort of 40,000 foot transcendent wisdom
[30:46]of how, what is anyone's duty in this life?
[30:51]What is your duty?
[30:52]And that was really helpful to me.
[30:54]Amazing.
[30:56]Thank you so much.
[30:57]I had a million other passages that were so funny that I want to like,
[31:00]I don't know, post on my bulletin board or something, but thank you for the conversation.
[31:04]Good luck with your launch tomorrow.
[31:06]I'll be cheering for you.
[31:07]This book is so good.
[31:09]And I want to shout it from their tops.
[31:10]So congratulations.
[31:12]You are so sweet.
[31:13]Thank you so much for having me on.
[31:14]Bye, pleasure.
[31:15]Take care.
[31:16]Bye-bye.
[31:16]All right, see you.
[31:18]Bye.
[31:20]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[31:23]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebiowens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[31:28]Books.
[31:28]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[31:33]of authors on Zoom every other week.
[31:35]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[31:39]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.