A Zibby Summer Reads pick! Teddy Wayne, THE WINNER
[0:02]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake.
[0:14]I've created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company,
[0:19]reading retreats, a bookstore, and more.
[0:21]Learn more at ZiviMedia.com or follow me on social at Zivi Owens or join the community at ZiviReaders.
[0:31]Teddy Wayne is the author of the winner, a novel.
[0:34]Teddy is the author of six novels, and the winner of a Whiting Writers Award.
[0:39]Also, winner of an NEA created writing fellowship and a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award,
[0:44]Penn Bingham Prize, and Dayton Literary Peace Prize, a former columnist for the New York Times and McSweenies,
[0:50]and a frequent contributor to the New Yorker.
[0:53]He has taught at Columbia University and Washington University in St. Louis.
[0:56]He has developed films and series from his novels with Columbia Pictures,
[1:00]HBO, MGM Television, and others.
[1:03]And the winner had a big announcement with it as well.
[1:07]He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the writer, Kate Greathead, and their children.
[1:11]Welcome, Teddy.
[1:12]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss the winner.
[1:16]Congrats.
[1:17]Thank you.
[1:18]I devoured this book.
[1:19]It's so good.
[1:20]It's, oh my gosh, it's going to be such a hit.
[1:23]I'm just calling it now in case you were unclear.
[1:26]That was going to happen.
[1:28]It's so great.
[1:29]Why don't you tell listeners what it's about?
[1:31]And we'll go from there.
[1:32]Sure.
[1:33]The winner is the story of Connor O'Toole, who's a young law school graduate,
[1:37]who finds himself unemployed in the summer of 2020 during the pandemic.
[1:41]To make money, he takes a job for the summer as a tennis pro,
[1:44]and an old money-wasp community near Cape Cod.
[1:48]While there, he starts giving lessons to a divorced woman about twice his age.
[1:52]He soon starts paying him for services that are off the court.
[1:56]I'll use euphemisms here.
[1:58]Soon after that, he begins a more age-appropriate relationship with a girl his own age.
[2:03]And complications ensue.
[2:05]And I won't get too far into it, but it gets very complicated for him.
[2:09]Yeah.
[2:10]I could not believe some of these twists and turns.
[2:12]And the first of all, the setting itself.
[2:15]I feel like I know exactly.
[2:18]I would be able to navigate around this whole codders neck.
[2:21]It's called right codders neck.
[2:23]Cudders neck.
[2:24]Cudders neck.
[2:25]Cudders.
[2:26]Right.
[2:27]And so, first of all, you put us in such a place.
[2:30]And then your characters are so incredibly real.
[2:34]And like, flawed, but so real.
[2:38]Like, how did you do that?
[2:39]Like, where did Connor come from?
[2:41]Where did the story come from?
[2:42]And what are the secrets to creating characters that are so vivid and real?
[2:48]Well, the setting was the easiest in that it's based geographically,
[2:53]almost identically on a place.
[2:55]My wife's family extended family has a summer place.
[2:58]And so there's community much like that.
[3:00]There's a quote unquote yacht club, which is a place where people swim.
[3:03]There are no actual yachts.
[3:04]There's a very extravagant mansion at the end of the point.
[3:08]It's called, which is what Catherine, the older woman's house is based off.
[3:12]So that part was easy.
[3:14]And we've been going there for years.
[3:16]And I always thought that would be a great setting and backdrop for a novel,
[3:19]but I never knew what the novel would tell.
[3:22]then the pandemic hit.
[3:24]And I thought this is a really good setting to explore socioeconomic inequality in America.
[3:31]The kind of paranoia and anxiety that the pandemic brought on,
[3:34]even though the pandemic is there and the novel.
[3:36]It's kind of in the background, but it's always lurking.
[3:39]And so that the setting was was the easy part.
[3:41]The characters were, you know, little tougher as they always are.
[3:44]You want to start with individuals rather than types.
[3:49]So even though both Connor and Catherine, I think could be boiled down to a certain type.
[3:55]If you start with that with that universal type, you'll get a stereotype.
[3:59]If you start with individual characteristics of them, Connor is sort of a classic.
[4:05]Horatio Alger, pull yourself up by the bootstraps young guy who's raised by a single mom,
[4:11]his dad died when he was young.
[4:13]He discovered an aptitude for tennis when he was young and that enabled him to get scholarship to college and so on.
[4:18]But then think about other things about him that would distinguish him.
[4:22]Like, yes, he's a good tennis player, but he's not your classic lead over powering tennis player and not to get two in the weeds of tennis for this past jazz.
[4:29]But he's known as a pusher, a defensive specialist who hits the ball back safely.
[4:34]And that's maybe against the grain of what you'd expect for a novel bad guy who's who's good at a sport.
[4:39]You'd think there's there's be incredible.
[4:41]But in fact, he's not that good.
[4:43]He's just placed safe and steady and conservative and he wins through that.
[4:47]So that's this kind of example of I think a detail that I hope sets him apart from to stop the character.
[4:54]Same with Catherine, of course. There's other aspects of a personality that I hope set her apart.
[4:59]And sometimes it's, you know, certain lines that that people have said in real life that you remember and hang on to and that you put in the mouths of characters and sometimes they become that individual that you said that.
[5:10]Okay.
[5:12]Who said what let's just fill right now.
[5:14]I'm very, this is, this is not at all based on this one.
[5:17]But a woman, a very fond of who's older.
[5:20]Once when I was there in, in the real life, cutters neck last summer. In fact, I would, I got impromptu invited to a wine tasting.
[5:29]Sorry to sound so ritzy about it.
[5:31]I was dressed in like, you know, shorts in a t-shirt, but I was, I was invited along it's casual to casual place more so than cutters actually is.
[5:38]I was carrying a seltzer, a camera seltzer, and also wearing a baseball hat, you know, looked a little bit on camp.
[5:45]But again, it's a casual place.
[5:47]As we started to go in the, the woman she spent 70 said, maybe don't bring the seltzer, it's a little middle class.
[5:54]And I was thought that was a great and she apologized later and send me long text about it and it was very a bash about it.
[6:02]To say, call something a little middle class that that was a funny line that I put in the mouth of Catherine. Catherine is not at all based on this woman whom again, I'm very fine.
[6:10]I understand. I understand.
[6:11]That this, if this woman is listening, it's not you.
[6:15]How is this different than your world and you're, where you're from and your summers or whatever, like how did your wife's, how has that been? Like what was your story?
[6:25]I'm from New York and, you know, the main differences. I'm like secular Jew and just went to summer camp in the summers and, you know, have been around plenty of privilege people in my time, certainly.
[6:39]This feels like a different culture completely. This is old money wasps and it's, it's a very much a different set of customs. Again, I think that middle class line wouldn't come out in places I'm from necessarily.
[6:53]And, you know, from things like as, as basic as men wearing pink and then tuck it red shorts, which when I first saw when it came to this place and was sort of surprised by the seed men wearing light salmon, salmon pink shorts to the bigger issues of, you know, inherited money and knowing that your life is completely set out for you.
[7:17]And I think the, the complications that, that, that produces in some people, it leads to a kind of maybe slackerly laziness. They don't feel like they have to earn anything.
[7:28]And so others at least this kind of guilt that the girl he starts dating, I think feels and desire to make a men's for it and to prove herself in her own right. She's an aspiring writer.
[7:38]There are a number of differences from what I've encountered, even if, you know, I've been around spaces of privilege that are somewhat comparable, not quite comparable to this.
[7:49]Interesting. So do you have a law background all by the way, or like, because there is a lot of questions.
[7:57]The research was all both my sister-in-law as a lawyer, but then I asked a DA that I know a lot of criminal law questions. Again, without spoiling too much there.
[8:07]There's no law parts of this novel and then a, a New York police detective. I also asked a lot of questions of.
[8:15]Well, I am, you know, I don't want to give anything away either, but I feel like you're going to, I, you know, I don't want to say anything, but I was going to make some joke about you don't, but I'm not going to.
[8:29]No, no, no, I was going to make a joke just about like how you could cover your tracks in such a way, you know, I wonder like all the things that you've secretly done, you know, in your life, you know, it seems very thought, thought out and I wouldn't want to be, you know,
[8:45]I now have a better idea of how to do it. I just thought about cell phones and what cell phones keep track of for you. And in fact, again, without spoiling anything, the DA spoke to gave me the idea for pretty much the files was the novel.
[9:01]And the, and the detective has confirmed that that works and he in fact texted me a couple of weeks ago about a real life case of them doing the same sort of thing.
[9:11]So that's, you know, that's, I guess, another example of how you make it's not about character. It's a plot idea, but we're talking to people who really know these things inside out and the DA said that not many people even know about this thing. Certainly civilians don't not even all cops, I think know about this twist that occurs.
[9:30]Interesting. Well, to your point also about the societal class culture, you know, inherited wealth thing, you know, you have a scene where a bunch of the children and grandchildren, you know, the younger generation, they're all like sitting around, you know, talking about how they're getting out of work and their internships and, you know, just totally messing around and whatever.
[9:51]And, you know, Connor is just sitting there being like, I cannot believe this, you know, just one of many moments where like, why does their.
[10:00]why do they get to just like slack off when here I am literally like hitting a tennis ball against
[10:05]a wall and in doing everything in my power to try to change my station in life whereas they've
[10:11]been handed this and they're not even working hard. Tell me, I love it about that.
[10:15]Yeah, I mean, again, the real life inspirations are not nearly as bad as the characters in the book,
[10:20]so it would be made that clear. But I think class is a very important subject that seems to get
[10:27]underwritten about in contemporary literature. Think about a hundred years ago, it was written
[10:32]about much more when America was kind of discovering itself, getting a lot of money. People started
[10:36]realizing social classes, a sort of new thing we kind of reckon with and a lot of novels from
[10:44]1890 to 1930 or even 1940 to hell with it. What I really think is the case is that because so many
[10:51]authors and editors and people in the book industry at large are kind of from like an upper
[10:58]middle class white background. If not strictly financially then in social signifiers, everyone who
[11:05]writes a book now or edits a book or post has a book probably reads the New York Times and listen
[11:11]to NPR and so on. I could run through the list of things there. And so that's fine. That's what
[11:17]I do too. But we shouldn't treat it as the default. I think we should interrogate that and interrogate
[11:24]what it means to not have all that much money or what it means to come to a novel set in a
[11:31]ritzy summer place like this and not treated like it's standard to have this kind of summer
[11:37]house. But therefore through the eyes of the character for whom this is all novel, it would
[11:42]those kind of differences would be most obvious and stark. I think when you see his own contemporaries,
[11:48]people are on his age who have their lives laid out for him. I think ultimately, you know,
[11:53]you don't want to his his mentor when he's younger tells him you don't want to be
[11:58]ranked one number one in the world. You don't want to be the top of the ranking. You want to be
[12:04]just below it and be satisfied with that. Be satisfied with what you have. That's real happiness,
[12:10]that's real stability, that's real security. Because the people on top are always actually
[12:14]wanting more and more and more because they are afraid of losing their perch. And so you want to
[12:19]be ranked in tennis terms ranked fifth in the world. But be kind of satisfied with being fifth.
[12:25]It's still a great place to be, but you're not going to kill yourself and be ruined with anxiety that
[12:31]you're not number one. Nor will you fear that everyone's gunning for you. So that's really one of
[12:36]of the the bigger issues Connor grapples with her in the summer is he starts getting a little
[12:41]corrupted and wanting to become that number one slot. I mean, do we really think that the number
[12:46]five slot? Like who is it now? Like Medvedev or something? I think he's really happy about that.
[12:52]You know, I think sports, I think they do always want to be number one. I think in American
[12:59]class terms, maybe it's okay to be, you know, 96th percent of income. I think it's a pretty good
[13:07]life. And if you're happy with it and don't feel like you need to get to the 99th percentile,
[13:12]you might be happier than someone who's always on top working themselves to death and afraid that
[13:17]they'll lose it all someday because it's all premised upon just this sort of insane degree of
[13:24]wealth and it's hard to keep up. So I've always thought, you know, even in non-monetary terms,
[13:31]it's good to be ambitious because it does drive you, but to be too ambitious is its own type of poison.
[13:36]So what does that say about your own ambition? I've tempered some of that too young kids.
[13:43]I got a long way. One of them, my five-year-old son Angus is another room nice homesick from school.
[13:49]Yeah, he's fine. But when you have to start thinking about other people and can't just think about
[13:55]your own life and own career and own success, it goes a long way towards changing your ambitions
[14:03]from, I want to write the number one ranking novel, which is never going to happen anyway.
[14:08]Two, I want to be the number one dad. And I got a coffee mug that says number one, that,
[14:13]you know, you want to be, you start caring more about other things beyond financial or
[14:20]reputational success. That is very sweet. Well, I hope Angus stocks your cabinet with lots of
[14:25]never one dad mugs. What is your relationship like with tennis? Are you a big tennis player?
[14:32]I played as a kid a lot. I was on the high school team. I peaked at about age 15. I think I was
[14:39]the number one rank on my 9th grade JV team. And then by 10th grade, everyone had shot past me.
[14:45]Something had been that summer. I don't know what it was. So I played a lot of his kid. I still
[14:49]play occasionally now just really in the summers. And like, well, I don't really watch it anymore.
[14:54]I used to be a fan of the sport too. I've come stop watching most sports at this point.
[14:59]But I have always enjoyed it as a sort of, there's a literary poetic field to it.
[15:05]There's something very beautiful about literally that the aesthetic background of a tennis
[15:10]court is usually something nice visually about it. But the game itself of the slices, the spins,
[15:15]the angles. I've always been closer to to Connor more of a pusher, but really more of like a,
[15:21]I don't know what you'd call me sort of like a junk baller in baseball with these terms
[15:26]when we get by with like weird spins and slices that confuse that are your opponent rather than
[15:32]actually being good at the sport. But that there's something fun about that more of a tactical
[15:38]approach and figuring out how to win at the margins rather than winning through playing well.
[15:43]There's a book we have read. I think when I was younger, our tennis coach in high school
[15:48]love this book called winning ugly by Brad Gilbert and I adapted various strategies.
[15:54]Brad Gilbert was Andre Agassi's coach, wasn't he?
[15:56]Was and he kind of changed his game. And things from that book showed up in the winter,
[16:01]like how to play, you should play aggressively when you're, when you're down 40 love in a game
[16:07]and you're. Typically you think I should play safely because I'm, if I have to win three points
[16:13]around, but he says play aggressively, you know, you might as well give a shot at this point.
[16:18]You're already down a lot. So little things like that. There's a, there's a, one of the epigraphs
[16:23]is a not Brad Gilbert, but a different tennis book that talks about pushers or dinkers as they
[16:30]call it an epigraph. And it kind of Connor's tennis strategy has become his life strategy of playing
[16:37]slow and steady and conservatively not making mistakes, but that's also the thing that undergoes
[16:43]a transformation over the summer. Yeah. And yet he ends up the winner. So to speak, maybe, maybe
[16:51]to be determined. Well, I love that. And even how you're quoting David Foster Wallace's and his essays
[16:58]like bringing them in and Emily's giving him copies of that. That was, that was great.
[17:03]Yeah. I love tennis in books. And I love tennis. And I tried to write a novel called 40 love,
[17:09]but it didn't sell, but that's okay. Was it also pun on age? Was it 40 years ago? Yes.
[17:16]It was falling in love again at 40. And you, if I can turn the tables, you were married to a former
[17:22]tennis pro, right? I am. Yes. I know. It's like, I won't even go there, but yes, I am. I am married to a
[17:27]former tennis pro turned producer. So yes, I think about, and I played, I was like you, though,
[17:33]my, like, JV tennis team here in New York City. It's like, not exactly sweeping the planet,
[17:38]but my husband grew up in Florida, you know, playing a military and blah, blah, blah, blah,
[17:42]some. Yes. That whole scene. And you kind of had to, I mean, I think there's a reason
[17:49]the best players are from Florida and California. They're just, they have more access to
[17:53]ports there. They can play all year round. Yeah. Exactly. Also, my innate skill would not even be
[18:00]if I were to have grown up in Florida. You know, yeah, that's funny. So this is going to be a
[18:05]movie. I read that, right? So what is the plan for that? Congratulations. Thank you. It's in development.
[18:09]I'm adapting myself for Columbia Pictures. And we are in it's a very slow process. I finished the
[18:16]script or at least so far, but they are trying to get a director now. And these things take
[18:22]interminably long times to come to fruition. So exciting. Do you have casting preferences?
[18:29]We have an actor who I can mention publicly who's board, but, you know, again, these things
[18:36]perhaps will drop out who knows, but we've got someone. Yes. Exciting. I'm picture. Well, maybe not.
[18:42]I was going to say I'm sort of picturing like a young toe for grace or somebody like that,
[18:45]you know, but maybe you're not far off physically. It kind of do look alike. Yeah. It's very close.
[18:51]Okay. Good. Excellent. Can you talk a little bit about how you got to this point in your
[18:55]career and like how you became a writer and all of that? What happened after your tennis
[19:00]career in high school? I'm a tennis player. I've always wanted to be a fiction writer.
[19:06]I also wanted to be a screenwriter in college, but fiction was always my love. And didn't really
[19:12]start taking seriously until I was about 24. I wrote a mediocre novel that did not sell, but fortunately
[19:19]because it's around the same age. How about that? And aren't you glad it didn't get published?
[19:24]And you don't have to have that caring, toning around with you. Yes. But I got me an agent and
[19:29]it got me into graduate school for writing. And then in grad school, I started writing my first
[19:33]novel called Capital and then that did sell eventually might publish to my early 30s and
[19:39]have been writing ever since. And, you know, that they're doing other things at a time for the
[19:44]first few years of being a copy editor, being a tutor, doing other odd jobs here and there.
[19:49]But now I'm a full-time novelist and screenwriter. So exciting. It's so cool.
[19:54]What are you working on now aside from the script? Do you have a new novel in the works or no?
[19:58]I am writing a month.
[20:00]middle grade novel, which is new for me. And who knows how it is. I've not really gotten much
[20:05]feedback on it yet. So it could be disastrous. But I'm trying my hand at one. I kind of
[20:10]want to write something that my kids could read, because they can certainly not read the
[20:14]winner now. No, never. And I'm, you know, working on more screenplays and a desk or two
[20:21]adapter people's work. My wife, her name is Kate Greathead is also a novelist. Her second
[20:27]comes out of October. So we're, we sometimes collaborate on shorter things, or we are
[20:32]a thing that collaborate in this middle grade novel, maybe not. But there's always various
[20:36]projects in this do. Let me give you some advice, not advice, but I have tried to write a middle
[20:42]grade novel recently and took it out on submission with my daughter, who is 10, which I think has
[20:48]a great premise. It's called the diary hoppers about a group of girls who can jump back into their
[20:52]mom's diaries. I don't know. I thought that was great. Yeah. Thank you. I think it's really fun. And
[20:56]we did a good job. But the middle grade market is not great. Apparently, as people often say,
[21:01]and we are currently now adapting it into a graphic novel. Interesting. I, I, okay,
[21:07]that's good to know and, and discouraging to know. But I, I hope it works out with the graphic novel
[21:13]at least. Do you know how to draw or do you? No, we hired an illustrator, or we are in, I mean,
[21:18]he has started. We have a deal to hire. I mean, I haven't actually paid him everything. I mean,
[21:22]I will. I promise. We have, we have, we're in, I don't know, we can talk in contact. Anyway,
[21:30]an illustrator is working on it. And we are, but adapting it has been kind of fun because it's
[21:35]so much easier. You just need really the dialogue and maybe like one little line for the graphic
[21:39]novel and my kids are obsessed with graphic novels. So they're like, even if we finish this middle
[21:44]grade novel, we won't want to read it anyway. I'm like, well, I'm only doing it for you. Like,
[21:48]I don't need to write graphic novels for me. You know, so, so that's actually been quite fun.
[21:52]But anyway, and it's fun to adapt your own work into another medium, right? It's a challenge.
[21:57]It's a challenge. Well, it is challenge, but it's not too challenging, isn't it?
[22:00]No, no. Yeah. No, that's what I'm saying. It's sort of easier. Like, it's just, you just need the words,
[22:05]like, and they're already there. It's like, yeah, that's so, so that's been kind of fun. But
[22:11]yeah, I'm sure you'll have much better luck than me with your middle grade, but that was,
[22:16]that's been our, that's been our journey to date. I might be too, too dark, I think, for
[22:21]10 or 11 year olds, but we'll see. Got it. Okay. Maybe older middle grade. What advice do you have
[22:27]for aspiring novelists? Oh, boy, I mean, there's plenty of things to say, but I think the obvious
[22:32]one is just to read widely, to read beyond as much as you can beyond your, your instinctive tastes.
[22:39]I think we all gravitate to certain kinds of books. And while you should get better at writing,
[22:45]the, the, or reading the books you want to write, it helps to read and stretch yourself.
[22:50]But ultimately, to write the thing that you would want to see in a bookshelf, I think is the best
[22:54]advice to the book that does not exist. That only you could write will not to worry about
[22:59]market demands or what reviewers would like or even what your, your, your spouse or, or mom
[23:06]or best friend would like. But what would you like and want to see? And that will always be
[23:10]the best thing you produce. Amazing. Is there anyone you're embarrassed to like show all these
[23:14]sex scenes too or anything? Like, did your mom read it? She is not ready yet. Not really looking
[23:19]forward to her. I've, I've, I've, I've written some crazy things in the past that, that, that I've
[23:25]gotten through. It's sort of like watching, you know, a movie with your parents and a sex scene comes
[23:30]on. You don't want to be there. But at this age, I'm, I'm kind of okay with it. You're like,
[23:35]I'm a grown-up, Debbie. What are you talking about? My wife's extended family when they read it will,
[23:40]will be a different matter. Just because it is a dissection of their culture. I'm certainly not
[23:46]Connor, but I'm closer to Connor than, than any other character in the book and, and their closer
[23:52]to the other characters. So we'll see how that goes. If, if I could have it, them all not read it,
[23:58]I would want that. But I think they will very much want to read it. Well, you wouldn't be the
[24:02]first author to sort of blow up their summer community for the, for the sake of, of a great book.
[24:09]So maybe it all, it all works out in the end. Well, thanks for coming on. I really, really loved
[24:15]this book. It was just really fun and delicious and just kept turning and I don't know. You did a really
[24:22]good job. It's really good. Thank you so much to be. Yeah, I really loved it. All right. Have a great day.
[24:26]Take care.
[24:29]Thanks for listening to moms. Don't have time to read books. If you love it, please leave a review.
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