Sam Sussman, BOY FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY: A Novel
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[0:45]Sam Sussman is the author of Boy from the North Country, a novel.
[0:48]Sam grew up in the Hudson Valley.
[0:50]He graduated with a BA from Swarthmore College and an M-Phil from the University of Oxford
[0:55]and has lived in Berlin and Jerusalem.
[0:58]His writing has been recognized by BAFTA and published in Harper's Magazine.
[1:02]Sam has taught writing seminars in India, Chile, and England and participated in the Penn
[1:07]World Voices Festival of International Literature.
[1:10]He lives in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan and his native Hudson Valley.
[1:14]Welcome Sam.
[1:15]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book to Zibi to talk about Boy from the North Country
[1:20]Congratulations.
[1:21]Thanks so much for having me.
[1:23]As you know, I'm obsessed with this book.
[1:25]It is one of my Zibi's book club picks and I love it so much.
[1:30]Could not put it down.
[1:31]Held it to my heart for like 10 minutes afterwards.
[1:33]I was like, this is ridiculous.
[1:34]I have more stuff I have to do now, but I can't like stop thinking about the book.
[1:38]Anyway, tell everybody what the book is about, please.
[1:41]Yeah, well, first thank you Zibi.
[1:43]I really appreciate those kind words.
[1:46]The book is about love and loss and grief and caretaking and it's about mothers and sons.
[1:54]I'll tell the story very briefly.
[1:57]The story is centered on a young man named Evan who grows up with his mother, June,
[2:02]in the Hudson Valley.
[2:04]And from an early age, she's not certain about the identity of his biological father.
[2:09]And strangers begin to tell Evan that he resembles uncannily.
[2:13]He looks like a writer and musician some people may have heard of Bob Dylan.
[2:18]And it slowly comes out that his mother earlier in her life had a romantic relationship
[2:23]with Dylan, which she will never talk to Evan Bao.
[2:26]And then slowly, there are a few breadcrumbs.
[2:28]She says, yes, I did have that relationship.
[2:31]Okay, maybe I was with him the year before you were born, but she won't say anything more.
[2:37]So Evan goes off to live his life.
[2:39]He leaves home.
[2:40]He gets as far away as he can.
[2:42]He goes.
[2:43]He starts at Oxford.
[2:44]He lives in Berlin.
[2:45]He lives in London in Jerusalem.
[2:46]And in his mid 20s, June becomes sick.
[2:49]She's diagnosed with cancer and she asks him to come home.
[2:52]And as they're spending this time, which Evan does not yet realize is the last month
[2:57]of his mother's life, she begins for the first time to open up about her life.
[3:02]This wild bohemian youth that she had as an actress and a painter in New York.
[3:07]And she's telling him about for the first time her relationship with Dylan.
[3:11]And Evan feels that he's being led toward the truth of his story, their relationship,
[3:17]closer to Dylan.
[3:18]But what we really come to see is that he's actually gaining a deeper and more profound
[3:23]appreciation of the mother who raised them.
[3:26]And by the end, Evan is going to realize that everything he values in himself, his goodness,
[3:32]also his artistic ambitions has desired to be a writer, everything that he's trying to become
[3:37]doesn't come from this celebrity artist who he's never met, rather it comes from the
[3:42]mother who has raised him.
[3:44]Wow.
[3:45]And where do you fit into the story yourself?
[3:49]Oh, you caught me.
[3:51]Well, I did, I did write an essay for Harper's magazine called on possibly being Bob Dylan's
[3:58]son.
[3:59]And yes, this is what people these days call auto fiction, a novel taken from life.
[4:05]For me, literature and life are deeply intertwined.
[4:08]I want to read great literature so that it makes me more alive to life, more sensitive,
[4:14]and more thoughtful.
[4:15]And I want to write from my life.
[4:18]And so this is my story, it is my mother's story.
[4:22]And Evan, it turns out, is my middle name.
[4:26]June, my mother's middle name was Juna.
[4:28]She was named for Juna Barnes.
[4:30]And so I've turned that into June here.
[4:34]And like anyone who writes a memoir or an auto fictional novel, it would be fiction to
[4:40]say that this is all, every detail is true.
[4:44]When we tell a story, when we write a novel, we compress, we don't have the time or
[4:49]space to explain everything that happened in our lives.
[4:53]There are large chunks of my life that are not in this book, but the heart of the story,
[5:00]the truth of this particular young man's journey is from my life.
[5:06]And why not write a memoir?
[5:08]Did you think about writing a memoir?
[5:09]And did you also work on a novel for seven years, the way that Evan did, and then abandoned
[5:14]it to write this one?
[5:15]I did.
[5:16]I wrote two novels before this, over seven years.
[5:20]I had a long and winding road as a writer, you know, they say if you want to be a novelist,
[5:26]do an MFA or come to New York City.
[5:29]And I didn't do either of those things.
[5:31]The writers that I admired the most were out in the world, writing from their life and
[5:36]experience.
[5:37]So I spent my 20s living in all the places that Evan lives, Oxford, London, Jerusalem,
[5:42]Berlin.
[5:43]And that was also a reaction to growing up in the woods, in the Hudson Valley.
[5:48]And wanting to go out and explore the world and discover myself and part of what I discovered
[5:52]and writing this book is that actually the deepest parts of myself that I value the most
[5:59]really are rooted in those woods in the Hudson Valley where I grew up with my mother,
[6:04]who gave me such a deep love of literature and art and my earliest memories of her reading
[6:10]to me.
[6:12]So you asked why I didn't write a memoir and I'll try to explain it this way.
[6:17]Samuel Beckett has a great line where he says, as a writer, you have to find the form
[6:21]that fits the mess or that fits the mess.
[6:26]So for me at the center of this story is my growth and my growth into a depth of appreciation
[6:35]for the mother, who raised me and a desire not to be defined by any other feature or
[6:42]possible feature of myself.
[6:45]And so I chose a form, the novel, which says I'm not going to tell you what's true or
[6:51]what's not true.
[6:53]Thanks a lot.
[6:55]That is the form that fits the mess of my life.
[7:00]And I knew that if I wrote a memoir, just to put it in slightly more concrete terms,
[7:04]I knew that if I wrote a memoir that it would be much harder to establish my voice and
[7:11]my mother's story outside of the shadow that a figure of as cultural significance, as
[7:18]cultural significance, as Dylan that he would cast.
[7:21]So this for me was an act of freedom of saying, I'm going to write this story on my
[7:27]terms in my way and it helps that happen to be a novelist.
[7:31]Yes.
[7:32]Well, I feel like there are almost two parallel novels within your book, two stories that
[7:37]you have intertwining the whole time in a really beautiful, sort of braided way, which
[7:43]is the contemporary timeline where you, okay, where Evan is helping June through chemotherapy
[7:51]and her illness and learning about that and helping her with that and all the physicality
[7:57]of illness.
[7:59]And I haven't actually, I haven't had anyone go through chemo where I was the main
[8:05]caretaker.
[8:06]I've had friends, but I wasn't like the one, the way that you were for, the way that
[8:10]Evan was for June.
[8:11]So that storyline alone would have made a compelling sort of gut wrenching story, but
[8:18]the fact that then she tells the story of her coming of age story herself is Emma's like
[8:25]another one on top of it.
[8:26]So it's really like a two for one special in the book.
[8:29]I'm so glad that you enjoyed both of those storylines and put it that way.
[8:35]And I think it was so important for me to tell my mother's story in as close to her words
[8:41]as I could.
[8:42]And so as you say, the way the book is structured is that I or Evan are home with my mother,
[8:49]June.
[8:50]And then every time we go into New York City for her chemotherapy treatment, she draws
[8:54]us back to the 1970s and she's describing this youth that she had.
[9:00]And that in life, she had almost never talked to me about and was really opening up about
[9:04]that period of her life.
[9:05]And it just so happened that the hospital where she was treated was around the corner
[9:09]where she had lived in New Yorkville in the Upper East Side, just actually the apartment
[9:13]that I'm in now that I currently live in.
[9:16]And it was there that she first began this relationship with Dylan in the mid 1970s.
[9:21]So when I'm writing these scenes of my mother and Dylan having this affair, which is creatively
[9:27]intense and it was happening in this apartment where I was writing and there was deep
[9:32]magic to me of transporting myself back to that period of time and imagining what these
[9:39]two people would have been like at that moment.
[9:42]And I had a great deal to go on because my mother talked to me about that period.
[9:47]And I'll say that for those who are drawn to the Dylan element of the story, this is
[9:51]the time when he was writing blood on the tracks.
[9:53]And he was in this moment of deep artistic crisis and through the book we see him.
[10:00]turn out of that period and come into this riveting moment where he's able to write as he wants
[10:07]to write again and what comes out of that is blood on the tracks and my mother had a view and
[10:13]intimate view of that process for him and so much of this book for me is about what it means for an
[10:20]artist to become his or her fullest self and that's what my mother was trying to do. It's what
[10:26]Dylan was trying to do and it's what I have been trying to do through this book. Wow it's
[10:32]just so neat how it all came together though. I mean it sounds like we can take it apart but the
[10:36]end result is like so seamless which is really amazing so I just to really double down on Bob Dylan
[10:43]to immerse myself in this book. I watched the great unknown like in the middle of it and so this
[10:48]actually this is way past that it's after that movie ends and sort of a coda to that for anybody
[10:55]left that movie and it's like well then what happened so this is like post motorcycle accident
[11:01]into the time where he was sort of you know drawn into himself and then how your mom played a role
[11:08]of his sort of coming out and writing again and I feel like having watched the movie and read
[11:14]the books or simultaneously this sort of manic element to Dylan's writing and the middle of the
[11:21]night scribbling and the notes everywhere and the popping in to the in the movie it was the same
[11:27]kind of setup with the apartment and the compilation of women I feel like you capture that so well
[11:33]like what is it like and how do you interact with somebody who can be you know artistically gifted yet
[11:40]erratic in there sort of day-to-day behavior in a way that's not even particularly socially acceptable
[11:46]like what do you make of all that? Yeah well I was the reason my mother broke up with him because
[11:54]he I mean I think you can't know about Dylan as an artist without referring the depth of his
[12:02]commitment to his work and yet you know listening to my mother it was clear the personal cost
[12:10]that that came out for him the work was the son and moon and you know she would describe and
[12:17]so just to back up for a moment when they met as you say after a complete unknown which ends in the
[12:22]mid-60s Dylan is at the height of celebrity he's in his mid-late 20s and he then he wants to get
[12:30]away from it all he goes to Woodstock he thinks that if he has time alone he can get back to the
[12:37]artistic work that really matters to him but what happens is that through his late 20s and early 30s
[12:42]he does not write the work that he has satisfied with now plenty of other people love the
[12:47]albums that came out in the late 60s and early 70s but when my mother met him in the early 70s
[12:53]he was deeply unsatisfied with his work and he had come to New York City because he'd heard
[12:58]of this painter named Norman Raven who was the youngest child of Shole in the late come the great
[13:04]19th century Yiddish short story writer and my mother meets Dylan in Raven's class and Raven
[13:11]is this enormous figure for Dylan Dylan later credits him with turning himself around creatively
[13:18]and so you know my book is sort of doing for Dylan of the 70s what a complete unknown is
[13:23]doing for Dylan of the 60s now you ask what I sort of how do I relate to that great intensity
[13:31]admiration but of course it's also a cautionary tale because like what my mother took from their
[13:38]relationship is that she wanted a fuller life than you can have as an artist who's committed to
[13:43]nothing but your own work and in one of the reasons that she ended their relationship was that she
[13:50]she wanted more for herself she wanted family she wanted to help other people as she later did
[13:56]as a holistic health practitioner and those are the things that I've tried to take from her to learn
[14:03]that you can be committed to your work I work very hard on this novel novel I was ruthless with myself
[14:09]in trying to get us close tell the best story write the best story that I could and at the same time
[14:17]I have a lot of love and friendship and people in my life that are disconnected from my identity as
[14:22]an artist and I think that's something my mother really emphasized to me well your mother is so
[14:29]amazing and I'm so sorry for your loss the world's loss of her I feel like I know her which
[14:36]is of course the magic of writing and reading is that we can sort of conjure up the souls of
[14:42]those we've lost in such a powerful way it's really unbelievable and this is such a prime example
[14:47]of that but she went through so much which the reader finds out along the way of like some of the
[14:53]things that have happened in her past her relationship with men yes Dylan is one of them but you know
[14:59]all of her relationships have defined her and despite what happens her commitment to love itself
[15:07]overwhelms overpowers everything else and she keeps sort of trying to teach you that like literally
[15:13]saying it to you but also showing it to you to the last second that's what she wanted you to hold
[15:18]on to and it's so powerful most parents don't necessarily have like a thesis or something that they're
[15:24]like no no this is it this is the point of it all how do you take that like how do you take that
[15:29]into your life and I know you write about your own relationships here but it almost feels like a
[15:34]little bit of extra pressure right what does that mean to devote a life to love it's an extraordinarily
[15:40]high standard of how to live and you know she would say to me nothing is whole later than love and
[15:48]you know I think for me something that I've tried to take from her life is the many forms
[15:54]that love can take and when she died she had a dog named Lucy who then came to me and lived with me
[16:02]for six and a half years Lucy taught me enormously about love my mother had many clients who
[16:09]she worked with and part of her work there was focused on taking her own traumas and trying to
[16:15]help other women who had been victims of similar sorts of abuse and that was a deep and profound
[16:21]form of love and her life and part of what I'm trying to do with this book is offer love to
[16:28]people who have gone through grief we're living a culture that often struggles to be imaginative
[16:35]with how to relate to loss and grief and I really felt after my mother died how hard it was
[16:42]to talk about what that experience was like and in my mother used to say we're here to take the
[16:48]pieces of the universe that we have been given burnish them with love and return them in better
[16:54]condition than we received and what I'm trying to do with this book is take this agonizing pieces
[17:00]of the universe that I've been given and burnish them with love and return them to other people
[17:06]in better condition than I received and I hope that if there are people struggling with grief or
[17:13]loss that they can read this book and find someone else who went through that experience and
[17:18]I made a rule with myself that I was going to be completely vulnerable emotionally in how I
[17:23]talked about this loss and this grief in the book and I hope that stories at the best can be a
[17:30]place where we find that love really oh my gosh have you reached out to Bob Dylan I know it's
[17:36]only one piece of this whole book right but does he know do you know if he knows are you going to
[17:42]send him the book have you thought about it do care did you need permission like what's the short
[17:47]answer there I used to feel that I needed permission endorsement inspiration I used to feel that
[17:55]I needed him I used to look at his photograph when I was a teenager and look between his
[18:01]photograph and my reflection and feel that I needed him and when I was young my mother would say to
[18:07]me you are loved you are protected you are free and I didn't understand what she was saying
[18:16]and now at this point in my life I feel it so deeply every day I feel her love I feel the love of
[18:23]other people in my life I'm loved I'm protected I'm free I didn't write the book for Bob Dylan
[18:30]there are great sections about his creative life for those who will want to hear that story and I
[18:37]hope that they'll enjoy it it's the most intimate portrait of Dylan writing thought on the tracks
[18:41]they will ever be published but personally for me I thought about my mother and how she would
[18:47]respond to this book every day that I wrote it and I asked myself every day and I putting her on
[18:54]the page with the complexity and love that she deserves because that was the hardest part of writing
[19:00]this book for me people are more complex than any character but personally for him listen if I
[19:06]had an hour with him I would just ask him about her it's amazing well you also do such a good job
[19:14]of setting us in like from a technical standpoint setting us in a place I feel this book
[19:22]literally picks me up and plunks me down in nature you can see what you're eating what you're
[19:29]smelling it's just like being surrounded by the woods that one moment you said the two of you
[19:36]had been outside and you were like was that a dream but you could see like a slight depression
[19:40]in the leaves I mean these details are so outstanding and then you say that you wrote the book
[19:48]there a lot of it too is that is and and just being surrounded by all of that talk a little bit
[19:54]about how you get how you brought the outside in and even Lucy too I mean
[20:00]All the licks and the times you mentioned her and there there was one time I was like wait
[20:04]What about the dog and then you were like and then I called so and so to watch Lucy and I'm like thank God
[20:15]Right well as you mentioned so I should say I grew up with my mother in this beautiful place in the woods in
[20:21]Hudson Valley near Goshin in a valley looking out mountains and hills and my mother loved
[20:27]Nature and two of the great loves that she gave me in life were nature and
[20:33]literature and I'm bringing those two things together in this book and you know after she passed away
[20:39]I stayed in that house and I which is a very important place for me to feel connected to her and to
[20:46]Grieve and I ended up writing this book in the two places where it takes place just that house in
[20:53]Upstate New York and this apartment in the city and when I was stuck writing or when I was struggling
[20:59]There was a lot of struggle in this book because it was just so painfully from my life
[21:04]Lucy and I would just go for a walk in nature and I would look at the trees
[21:09]I would look onto the mountains sometimes I would really just lie in the grass for 15 or 20 minutes and look at the clouds and think about
[21:17]What is the narrative problem I'm dealing with? Why can't I get around it?
[21:20]I would look at Lucy and I would say well, what do you think here and
[21:25]Lucy was my great great
[21:27]Artistic assistant. She was nine pounds. So she sat in my lap almost every moment that I wrote this book and
[21:35]You know when I was working too hard
[21:37]She would look at me like, you know, don't wait. It isn't it time for our afternoon walk
[21:41]I'd say okay, let me see and sometimes I would wake up in the morning with such a passion intensity to write
[21:47]I would have an idea and I would want to go to my desk as soon as possible and Lucy would remind me that we had to begin our day with a walk
[21:54]so for me part of the
[21:57]ambition of this book is to integrate all of these elements of life that I love that my mother loved
[22:05]into a work of literature
[22:07]that reflects the beauty of her life and her loves and
[22:12]Her legacies and the legacy of that nature of Lucy all of that house. They were all
[22:19]With me and I will say I could not have written the book without that legacy of love
[22:25]I could not have written that book without
[22:28]Lucy and the house and my memories of my mother. I needed all of those things to sit down and write every day
[22:35]By the way, my artistic ambition is laying down here with her legs like, you know
[22:40]My own dog is I totally get it. She comes with me everywhere
[22:44]And she was actually my husband my husband's late mother's dog who we
[22:49]Well, so right around the same time she we've had her for five years now
[22:53]But anyway, when you wrote about the interaction essentially of
[22:58]genes and environment and
[23:01]What we inherit and the way we can influence but not necessarily completely redirect. I feel like
[23:09]It's an allegory if you will of life itself, right? What we are given
[23:15]We can only do so much to change. We have the bodies we have
[23:20]We are all going to die not to be totally depressing today
[23:23]But it's true right and we can live healthy in all the ways your mother did and I was like
[23:29]Oh my gosh, I'll be taking notes for all the things
[23:31]Like I'm not doing any of this thing
[23:33]When you said you went to the hospital cafeteria and you're like
[23:36]I guess like the most food like says sustenance is this
[23:40]Bar that I have to eat with like 48 grams of sugar. I'm like, oh my gosh, five of our it's like a good day
[23:47]But I will try to eat clean and model myself after your mom in the book
[23:52]But maybe just talk a little bit about that and and where that leaves you at the end
[23:58]No, we each inherit
[24:01]Love and complexity and difficulty and the things that our parents have
[24:06]struggled with and there's um my mom was very conscious of
[24:11]What she had passed me what she had given and by the end of her life
[24:15]I feel that she knew that I understood the depth of love that she had given me
[24:20]And she also worried about what she hadn't given me and she would often say to me
[24:26]No, I never modeled a full lifelong romantic relationship for you
[24:30]But don't let that make you feel that you can't have that in your life
[24:35]And she in the novel as she did in life
[24:37]She quotes from Pearke a vote the ethics of the father where she says it is not upon you to finish the work
[24:46]But neither are you free to desist from it
[24:50]And that's how I think about
[24:52]parental inheritance that we're given so much
[24:58]And all of us are given something even in the most difficult situations and our project in our lives is to make the most of that
[25:06]And try to pass on something more and also to
[25:12]Not feel that we are free to desist
[25:15]From what we were from pursuing what we were not given or what was not perfect for us
[25:20]Do you ever listen to Danny Shapiro's
[25:22]uh podcast family secrets
[25:24]Do you know that good podcast if you were not scheduled to go on there?
[25:28]I would like to introduce you because I feel like you need to talk to her and she wrote a whole book
[25:32]I don't know if you've read it called inheritance which is so amazing
[25:35]Yes, yes, you have been in conversation with me. I love that. Thank you to be I would love that
[25:40]Actually, she's coming to that live event
[25:41]But I don't know if it's the same day. Let me see. Maybe I could do something where you talk there
[25:46]All right, let me let me my wheels are turning. I would love that. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you Zebi. Great
[25:51]Where do you go from here Sam? You spill your life out as Evan
[25:56]There are no there seem to be no secrets. We are it's hard to not root for you
[26:00]Right? You are rooting for the Evan so much like the fact that then there's a book is so exciting
[26:06]Because we're rooting for you as a character, but also as an author
[26:09]Where do you go from here?
[26:10]Well, thanks for rooting for me. That's much appreciated a novelist spends many many hours alone in the room at the
[26:16]desk so to feel that there are others
[26:19]Rooting for me is a powerful feeling when I finished this novel I was very conscious
[26:24]How can I possibly write something that's going to feel as significant I'm dealing with
[26:31]Death love mother's father's paternity and when I finished the book
[26:37]I
[26:38]Remember there was a day where I closed the laptop and I walked around the woods behind my mother's house
[26:42]And I thought to myself the only thing larger than everything I've just written is love and that would be the subject of my next book
[26:51]and that is also the
[26:53]Act of pursuit of my life now and as I was saying before something that I learned from
[27:00]My mother's relationship with Dylan is that actualizing as an artist is not the totality of one's life
[27:06]And that has been the great project of my life since my mother's death to write this book to make meaning of her death
[27:13]And now it's time to
[27:16]Recuriate the forms of love that I was lucky enough to experience with her
[27:21]With other people and to move forward and to have my own life and my own family and to make that love the center of my next work
[27:29]I love that
[27:31]Sam
[27:32]Congratulations. This book is so good. It's so powerful. Like even when you talk about the woods
[27:37]I'm like seeing everything. I feel like I have been to your house
[27:40]And your apartment
[27:42]I'm just gonna move in at this point. So anyway
[27:44]Well, you're welcome to visit. You're welcome to visit any time as if you have a standing invitation
[27:49]Thank you
[27:51]Thank you. Well, I'm looking forward to meeting you in person. Thank you for this
[27:55]I'm so excited for other people to read it last quick question
[27:58]Why this title boy from the north country? I mean, I know it comes from I know where it came from and I saw in the book
[28:04]Where you referenced it, but you are we talking about you? Are we talking about him? Are we talking about both of you?
[28:09]We're talking about my mother and we're talking about me
[28:13]and we're also talking about
[28:16]All the other boys from the north country that are in this novel. There are descriptions of Mark Shagal
[28:23]And under cone and emeralds as and this book is really a tribute to a certain form of
[28:29]Especially Jewish literary artistic tradition and it's a tribute to artists who
[28:36]Come from the north country from places nobody has heard of and seek to
[28:43]actualize themselves and
[28:45]You know the last thing I says there's um a boshow collection the narrow road to the deep north and
[28:52]The deep north the north country. It's the place that we're all going
[28:56]It's the place that we're from. It's the story that we tell about our origins and what we're trying to wear
[29:03]We're trying to go. It's it's the the way that we understand ourselves. That's what the north country is
[29:09]Amazing. I love it. Congrats. Thank you. Okay. All right. Take care to be continued
[29:16]All right, thank you so much. Bye. Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi
[29:22]Formerly momstone have time to read books. If you loved the show tell a friend leave a review
[29:28]Follow me on instagram at zibi Owens and spread the word. Thanks so much. Go and buy the books