Amy Kurzweil stops into the Damn Library, physically, to talk about the physical object of her new graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story, which largely concerns AI. We discuss capturing the details of her screens, the open question of the future, and what we keep from the past to get there. Plus, we delve into the many joys of Jason Lutes’ Berlin, a modern masterpiece, and the underlying prophetic nature of long projects.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

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What’d you buy?

Amy: The Hike by Alison Farrell

Christopher: Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino // The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland

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Recommendations:

Amy: This Country by Navied Mahdavian // God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O’Gieblyn

Christopher: Earth Angel by Madeline Cash

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From the episode:

Christopher: Something that I saw here that I feel like I don’t see in other comics, or other graphic novels, is these screens. Your screens are all over, and you’re actually transcribing emojis from the bank of emojis that they could have chosen. You’re showing the entire array.

Amy: Right. Like when someone’s texting and you see that they chose the crying face and then you see all the other options. I did spend a lot of time drawing screens in the digital world and doing it by hand and doing it over and over again. I didn’t want to copy and paste. I wanted to avoid copying and pasting any images in this book. I mean, there’s some moments where that had to happen, but I really wanted every page that you look at to have every line of ink as its own new line of ink.

Then when I started drawing screens I just realized how much information we are looking at all the time. That was a really interesting revelation in the process of this book. I thought “Oh, I’m just going to draw this website, you know, because I want people to see that I’m logging on to Instagram or whatever.” And the amount of detail in every single slide of Instagram that you’re looking at, the amount of dots and arrows and symbols and pictures and comments and hearts. There’s just so much information that we’re looking at all the time in the digital world. The process of recreating it was like, whoa. The amount of time that it takes you to sit and draw just something as simple as like what you see on your phone.

Christopher: Right.

Amy: That feels like a thesis of the book in a way. That the digital world has an overwhelming amount of information and I’m going to slow down and draw it. What is that going to do for me, and what is it going to do for the reader?

Christopher: Well, it’s also versus this lack of information because the chat bot with your grandfather is incomplete. There’s stuff that you want that isn’t there.

Amy: Mmhmm.

Christopher: Meanwhile, all of this information about you, your life, is fully available. Like you can know the exact moment you were at least sitting down and writing it, you know?

Amy: Yes, definitely. That’s another theme that’s emerging through this project is the idea of using my grandfather’s archives to get to know him. It’s very overwhelming, processing all the information we have saved of him. And yet it’s like probably .00001% of his life. And then, like, when you think about how much information of my life is preserved, it’s still probably like 1%, you know? But it’s enormous. Human life is enormous. Every moment of our experience is just full of information.

And so, the thesis that my father puts forth in the book is information is identity. Possibly one day in the future, we will be able to kind of resurrect identity through preserving and recreating information. When you appreciate how much information there is in a human life, that thesis becomes even more sort of overwhelming. Or even more just mystifying. How could we ever capture that? And yet we capture so much, and we used to capture nothing. So, like, when you think about the future, it really is like an open question whether or not that kind of capture and preservation is possible.

Christopher: One thing that really resonated with me was Fred’s despair. He’s had real trouble with his mental health. But also, I was thinking, too, of the times that I’ve journaled in times of great distress. You’re journaling. You’re already indulging this part of yourself. So you’re like, feeling all of your feelings and sometimes that’s enough to move on. So you get this picture of someone with a dark cloud hanging over their head. But it was only .1%, like you’re saying.

Amy: Right. I mean, a theme that comes up in the book is this question of what do you have preserved? And so then what is remembered of you? And I think especially in the digital world, so much of us have preserved our public self or our professional self. So a theme that comes up with my grandfather is just how much of his archives are this bureaucratic self. Why him as a Holocaust-fleeing Jewish person would be so meticulous about preserving his bureaucratic self?

But then there’s also his professional self, because he was very concerned about getting a job.

So the amount of cover letters in the book, in the archives, there’s just like cover letter, cover letter, cover letter, and they’re all very similar and then there’s all the rejections for the cover letter. It’s like just so much of that. And then there’s this tiny little piece which is his internal life, which are these journals that I find which are very cryptically written and require a lot of interpretation to transcribe. That’s documented in the book.

Christopher: That’s a really beautiful part. When you realize that you can read it, that you can see the letters in his scrawl.

Amy: Right, Right.

Christopher: No one else can.

Amy: Yeah. I mean, there’s what’s typed, there’s what’s handwritten. There’s what I can read that’s handwritten. There’s what I can’t read that’s handwritten. There’s all these levels of what’s interpretable. Then finding that piece of his internal life, which as you noted, is like very dark and full of despair. It’s kind of like the only piece of his internal life that I found. I mean, it was a relief for me to know that he that he had that. But then it’s like, well, how much despair was a part of him? Was it a normal amount? You know, there’s all these questions.

Christopher: But you were writing in his hand, drawing his hand. What was that like?

Amy: That goes back to the element of the book that the process of it was so important to me, especially because it took so long. I was like, I know I’m going to be with this for a long time, you know? So I want the process to be not only have some element of pleasure, but also be meaningful. It was important to me that the book be hand done, and it was important that I, like, spent time with the actual lines of his life.

My process was like, I took all these photos. I mean, there’s also all these levels of digitization and then back to analog and then into digitization again. There’s a lot of movement between those two different modes. I would take photos of his, for example, a letter he wrote, and then it would be in my computer and then I would take my computer to my studio. Because I lived in California and the archives were in Massachusetts. Then I would turn off the lights in my studio, hold up my Arches Hot Press Paper, this thick drawing paper, and trace my computer screen in pencil to get his hand. And then I turn the lights back on, and then I would ink over my own pencil. I did that over and over again for every part of the book that contains some sort of primary document. You trace and then you kind of have to fix the things that you didn’t get right where your hand was quivering. You have to edit a little bit.

But there was this really close looking that happened over and over again with his handwriting and other artifacts from his life. And I just felt like that was a way that I was accessing a certain kind of knowledge that feels important to me. And I guess I would label that kind of knowledge “embodied knowledge.” Like my hand started to learn something about the way that his hand moved.

A big question of the book is like, what is the value out of humans in the future? That’s important to me. I’ve grown up with these ideas that AI is comin’ for us and, you know, there’s a lot of positivity in there that we can talk about, but it’s scary to think about what matters about humanity in a digital, artificially intelligent future. And for me, it was the way that we understand through our bodies. There’s a way in which computers, robots could simulate that kind of knowledge. You know, possibly.

But at least the kinds of machines and algorithms that we’re dealing with now, you know, like large language models and their way of knowing things and understanding things, doesn’t include the mark of the body in the way that the body holds information. It just felt really important to me that it was a part of the process and that that came through to the reader.

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Edan Lepucki visits the virtual Damn Library by the power of the internet to discuss her intergenerational time travel novel, Time’s Mouth. We get into all the fun stuff, like time travel mechanics, Reichian therapy, making fortresses, Santa Cruz, and how she’s seeing her career at this point. Plus, we talk about The Possibilities by Yael Goldstein-Love, a book that Edan helped name.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

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What’d you buy?

Edan: Birth Control: The Insidious Power of Men Over Motherhood by Alison Yarrow
Christopher: Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky // Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson

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Recommendations:

Edan: Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson // Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It by Greg Marshall
Christopher: The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass // Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead

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From the episode:

Christopher: I went to UC Santa Cruz, so I was very excited about how Santa Cruz-y this book was. I don’t feel like a lot of people try to tackle how sort of bizarre that city really is. What is it about California for you? I mean, this book could have been called California as well.

Edan: That title was already taken. I’m so glad that we have another Santa Cruz person. My best friend went to UC Santa Cruz, and she’s a year older than me. So I visited every year from high school until I was a junior when she left for college. And then every year after that, I would go once or twice a year to Santa Cruz. So I felt a little bit more familiar with it than I might have otherwise.

And I was always like, so in awe of this strange place. I’m sure there is a lot of fiction set in Santa Cruz, but I haven’t read any of it. It’s not one of those overly described places, but it kind of should be because of its, you know, just the natural landscape and the kind of sociological swath of different people there. It’s just a really weird place.

I do think there are places that I go to and I don’t know them very well, but immediately I know I want to write about them. I went to Ben Lomond, which is outside Santa Cruz, a few years ago. Near Ben Lomond, there’s this little loop hike that’s like a quarter of a mile flat where you can see redwood trees. A lot of people take their kids there because you can say you “hiked.” But you just were among nature and that was easy. I’ve been there a couple of times and my older kids were very young. As soon as I went to Ben Lomond, I just, you know, there’s like one funky general store. There’s just a… for lack of a better word, there’s just a vibe there that is just thick with some complicated feeling. And so, I always call it like, “The black cloud is coming for me,” when there is something that I have to write about whether I want to or not. And that was one of those landscapes.

I am from California. I was born and raised in L.A. and then I lived up north briefly in the Bay Area, and now I’m back down in L.A. again. And I don’t know, I mean, I think any place is interesting if you are looking closely about the specifics of it.

Some I have students are like, “Well, I’m from the suburbs of Connecticut. That’s not that interesting.” And I’m like, oh, no, no, no. Every place, you just peel it back and there’s just layers of compelling material. But I think California in particular, because it’s sort of world famous and has all these mythologies about it that are both at once true and not true, make it a particularly ripe subject for fiction. I can write characters who are of this place and too close to it to really understand its legacy while also being able to kind of comment on that legacy.

So the people in the story in Time’s Mouth seek out all these kind of alternative ways of being. And Ursa comes from Mystic, Connecticut, because she believes that California will have a time traveler, fellow time travelers. And then she gets mixed up in the counterculture. But then her son, who was raised on this all female commune outside of Santa Cruz, he doesn’t really recognize that he’s so steeped in like California lore, so when he’s an adult in L.A. seeking out his own kind of wackadoo therapy, it’s like he’s a California cliché, but not. Because he’s a unique individual. So that’s kind of fun to play with.

I just think it’s a beautiful place that has all kinds of fun stuff to describe. And Los Angeles in particular is like a place that people totally nail it in terms of elements that are true about it. You know, that it’s like beauty conscious, health conscious, maybe sometimes a little vapid. It forgets its history. And that’s also totally untrue. At the same time, like if you really come to this city and look at these particular neighborhoods, they’re not like that. Just like any place is its stereotype. It isn’t. So that’s fun for me.

Christopher: L.A. is a very strange place because of its island neighborhood, It gives a sort of feeling that you can be right about it. But you’re only right about 10%. Like you’re not seeing there’s still 90% that isn’t that.

Edan: I live in northeast L.A.. I live on like, a dead end canyon street that looks out on an undeveloped property. It’s private land that the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy is trying to buy. But right now, it’s just, you know, open land that somebody wants to build, like. 80 houses on. Right now it’s just a bunch of black walnut trees and raccoons and coyotes. And like, that’s not really the L.A. that other people don’t like. My house is on a septic tank, like, it’s almost like I live in the country. But then you drive down the hill and then you’re in, like L.A. vibes. So I just think it’s fun that I have this life, this kind of unknown Los Angeles life. And so that’s kind of what I’m trying to get out in my fiction.

Christopher: Up in Santa Cruz, you’ve got this fortress that they live in. I mean, like there’s “fortress vibes” to it. And California had this big sort of dystopian fortress. I’m curious about your fascination with making castles for your characters.

Edan: I am really interested in domestic space. Like, I just like people in rooms talking. People ask, “What kind of movies do you like?” And I say I like people in rooms talking. So I like that in fiction as well. But I also really do like story and plot and things that happen. And for me, I am attracted to those kind of like stories of enclosed communities.

So in California, we have these people who, you know, don’t want to be found and have these spikes, and have made all kinds of crazy things. They’re like a kind of cult. In Time’s Mouth, I have this group of women led by Ursa who watch her time travel.

That’s another rule for the time travel. When someone time travels, the atmosphere in the present gets changed and you feel this euphoria, just witnessing time travel. So they watch her time travel. To be honest, now that I’m trying to write a new book, I want to try to remember those moments when you come up with ideas, because I think it’s kind of interesting, like, where did these things come from?

But I think there is some sort of strange mystical element to where just, you know, pop, something’s in your mind where it wasn’t before. I had always wanted to write about a Queen Anne Victorian house. I don’t even know why. I just love them. There’s a neighborhood in L.A. near Dodger Stadium that has a bunch of these Queen Anne Victorians. So I was like, I’m going to write about one of these and make it huge, you know, because I can do whatever I want. I have the biggest budget ever and, you know, just make it huge and see it kind of fall into disrepair and have it hidden in the woods.

I’m very interested in what happens when nobody’s watching. What kind of special language arises? What rules do people create? How do they bound themselves within this atmosphere? Because I think that’s really dramatic and you want to keep reading to know what happens. And at the same time, I get to describe this house and the the different rooms and the tower that Ursa doesn’t let anyone into, and she watches over the land. All that stuff was just really fun to write.

Christopher: Yeah, well, it’s fun to read too.

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From the Damn Bar:

Jennifer Baker steps into the physical reality of the Damn Library and thankfully brings along her infectious laugh and passion for books. We chat all about the long road of writing her new novel Forgive Me Not, her hopes for how it’s received, and how curiosity drives her fiction while anger can drive her nonfiction. Plus, she brought along Akwaeke Emezi’s incredible Pet. A perfect visit!

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

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What’d you buy?

Jennifer: Creep by Myriam Gurba // I’m from by Gary R. Gray Jr, Oge Mora
Christopher: Strange Houses by Cora Jarrett // Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart by GennaRose Nethercott

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Recommendations:

Jennifer: Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall
Christopher: Time’s Mouth by Edan Lepucki

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From the episode:

Christopher Hermelin: At the base of this book, there’s this tension between the idea of restorative justice that’s put up against like bureaucracy and government. Can government administer restorative justice? And it seems like you have an answer to that in your mind as you’re reading this, that the answer is like, “No, no, they can’t do it.” But that conflict seems like it’s simmering at the bottom of this. Is that simmering all the time for you as you’re in your life?

Jennifer Baker: I mean, more so now, especially as I’ve read more about abolition and stuff like that. So, I mean, when I started the book, I will be very frank that it was really the idea of what would things look like if victims were able to make a choice in this, and what dos forgiveness look like? Those were the two big questions for me as a novelist or what have you. 

And then it was the characters. But also understanding I wanted this book to be different because in young adult novels thus far, it’s not all of them, but thus far there’s a discussion about criminal justice that really isolates to the person. And so we’re kind of looking at the system. But kind of not, because people are so focused on the individual. And so you’re not always understanding how the system works. I think Monster is one of the ones that is a bit different. Or Kim Johnson’s Invisible Sun that came out earlier this summer. She talks a little bit about it, because you see the consequences for a kid who’s been accused of something that he didn’t do. So he has la kind of shackle to an extent, the monitor, the leg monitor. And so you you see that.

And at the same time, it’s just like, well, the system sucks and this person’s innocent, but I don’t want to explore innocence or guilt. I wanted to explore how we treat people when they have been put in this situation. From there you have to think about how did the system work in a real way.

CH: And she feels guilty.

JB: Yeah. Like she admitted it. She’s like, I did this. Absolutely. And to the extent some of the other women around her, they did. But all their circumstances are different, right? Like Serena, Petra, everyone’s circumstance is different and it’s not even heard what happened. Like none of them are saying, well… Eve is, right? She’s like, “Whatever. All I did was this. That’s what they said. I did. But the rest of them are like, “No, I did it. But there was a reason for what happened.”

But no one’s listening or cares about the reason. And, well, what do you do then? Then when you have Vince’s perspective, you see how the family’s being manipulated. Like, this is a fact of the system, right? We have great data. The stats are good. I can tell you, this is great. You know that, like mechanical kind of Politic.

CH: Yeah, And you made that into a character. There’s a very frustrating random guy who’s just there to administer his job.

JB: Yeah. There to do his job. And so you see that in a different way and you’re not just like, “oh, this kid is innocent.” So then the focus becomes their innocence. But are they thinking about how the system in its entirety works? Or in this instance, the system doesn’t work? Whereas in my book, the more I stuck with it and the more I was asking more questions, you unravel a lot more. We need to question the system. But I have to show you how it works and I have to show you how culpable people are to believe.

CH: Yes.

JB: And they still have to put people in enclosures. Yeah. You still have to label them in some way. They have to be marked and branded, like she is when she goes through one of her trials. And she notes, “It’s like I am branded basically.” You’re not changing. 

They’re like, we changed the system and they’re like, no you didn’t. Right? They’re saying their system is less racist, it’s more cost effective. Isn’t it great? And it’s like, “No, it’s actually not. But we’ve gone with it because you told us this was good and it didn’t affect me until it did.” That’s how I feel like we are. I include myself in that. We’re all like, okay, well, this is how it is. And we do have our frustrations and we do what we can. And at the same time, there’s a big aspect of like, well, we kind of go along with it because we’re just trying to survive every day. That’s a very human thing.

CH: What are you hoping for the teens to take away? Have you thought about that as teens have the book in their hands?

JB: Yeah, hopefully! Schools in, so yeah!

CH: There’s a reader’s guide!

JB:  Yes let’s drop the educator’s guide! 

I want them to know they have agency and they have power. That was the biggest thing for me, that’s why it’s teens, because I was like, I know that I can give them something to fight for in themselves in the midst of everybody making these decisions for them, and thinking they know best and and all that.

I would love for them to question the systems in place, and I don’t know if this would radicalize them, but I want them to question the system and be critical of things that are in place. But also I want them to be like, “Wow, you know, even though she’s detained, she has power and she can make a choice for herself.” What that choice results in is what it results in. But she can make a choice.

CH: I mean, you feel for her this whole time, and that’s something that you’re so close to her. You really feel her guilt coming up against her annoyance at this system that goes beyond annoyance. Annoyance is a very polite way of putting it, but that’s where it starts, right?

JB: Annoyance and confusion.

CH: Yeah. She’s ready to do the work.She does think, like, maybe this will help me.

JB: Mm hmm.

CH: But…

JB: But. Dot dot dot.

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Mona Awad visits the Damn Library via the casual magic of web video for a third go round, this time for her be-deviling, garnet-bedazzled Rouge. She talks about putting her characters through the ringer, horror stories showing you a path, Tom Cruise, beauty cults, and more. Plus, both Mona and Christopher extol the many virtues of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, and how it came at exactly the right time.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

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What’d you buy?

Mona: The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis, Scottish Ginger Snaps

Christopher: The Forest Brims Over by Maru Ayase, transl. by Haydn Trowell; My Stupid Intentions by Bernardo Zannoni, transl. by Alex Andriesse

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Recommendations:

Mona: The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis, Duchess of Nothing by Heather McGowan


Christopher: Forgive Me Not by Jennifer Baker

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From the episode:

Christopher Hermelin: I read another book this year, Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang that also dealt in sort of a beauty cult. And they both ended up sort of complementing each other in in this interesting way. They were very, very different approaches. But what is it about cults and beauty that seem to fit? It’s like you can’t have one without the other. I feel like at the base of a lot of cults, there’s beauty or like a rejection of beauty. Like, “You don’t have to look beautiful.” Which is a different type of image obsession.

Mona Awad: I think that’s really important when you think about the other side of it, which is, of course, the beauty industry and the cult of beauty. I think it’s about enchantment. I think it’s about the power of the beauty industry. And the hold that it has over someone like me who is very vulnerable to the messaging. It’s all the language that’s shared, you know, and like “the glow.” The pursuit of the glow, right? The brightening, the journey. Everybody’s on a journey. Everybody’s on a skincare journey.

Even just that language, just calling it “a journey.” It just puts it into the realm of the spiritual. And maybe it is spiritual. Because I don’t think that it’s just about the surface. If it were just about the surface, it would not have such a powerful hold on us, the idea of beauty. There’s just real undeniable power and magic to it.

And I think that the other thing about it that makes it a cult is that there are certain people who I think are particularly vulnerable to the messaging, and those people tend to be more isolated and maybe not have as much support.

Like Belle, for example. She’s very alone. And so I think it would be very easy for her to sort of fall under the spell of, oh, I need to take care of my skin. It would seem like she was taking care of more than that, you know?

CH: You don’t have to go chasing this language. It’s out there.

MA: It’s out there. I didn’t have to make most things up. I mean, you know, all the connections between the beauty treatments and horror. They’re right there. They’re already there. The elaborate rituals. I mean, I didn’t have to exaggerate very much to do it. The relationship between beauty and the Gothic is really intertwined.

CH: Blood is right there. There’s always blood.

MA: There’s always blood

CH: You could be talking about beauty or horror. 

Tom Cruise makes a really fun cameo in this in this book, and your copy references Eyes Wide Shut, which I saw for the very first time this weekend. Did you actually have Eyes Wide Shut on your mind, or is this an invention of copy? Because it’s not Eyes Wide Shut Tom Cruise that is making no make an appearance here.

MA: It’s late eighties Tom Cruise. The best Tom Cruise. Although I think he’s wonderful in Eyes Wide Shut. But no, I think it is it’s very evocative of the book. The book actually draws a lot from Kubrick. From A Clockwork Orange, to just in terms of how the beauty treatments are performed. There’s a very kind of horrific nature to it. I won’t spoil anything to the way that the beauty treatments unfold for Belle. So Kubrick was on my mind, and Tom Cruise is in that film and there’s definitely a very lavish, over-the-top house that is also at the center, which felt very fitting, too. So, yeah, there are, there are some parallels for sure. I think it’s I think it’s an apt comparison.

CH: Yeah.

MA: As for Tom Cruise, I think it had to be late eighties Tom Cruise, because again, not to spoil anything, the book revisits Belle’s childhood in the eighties. So it had to be Tom Cruise at that age because that’s when he makes the appearance there.

CH: Right. Sort of.

MA: Sort of, you’re right. Sort of. We see him. We see him in other places. You are correct. Yeah. And that was very intentional by the way, I will say.

CH: He is the perfect movie star for for this book, because he has such a strange dichotomy of the darkness to him and mystery to who he is at all, and what his intentions are on this Planet Earth of ours. So I’m unsettled by him already. So when I saw him on the page, I was like, “Oh, yeah, of course, of course. Tom’s here.”

MA: Yes. I mean, I will say, you know, it’s also like a tribute to my own childhood crush because I had a crush on Tom Cruise when I was a kid. And I do think he’s very mesmerizing. Tom Cruise has got some power. It’s a different kind of power than outward.

CH: He has such magnetism.

MA: Especially in those films. I mean, I think he still has it on the screen. It felt very important because he was such a symbol of of beauty and stardom and purity and back in the back in the late eighties. It really felt like the perfect choice. Again, another just intuitive choice that turned out to be absolutely right.

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From the Damn Bar:

Stacey Mei Yan Fong drops into the Damn Library for a slice of pie and a pie-inspired cocktail and lots of impassioned talk of pie and souvenir strategy and some of the stories behind the pictures in her cookbook 50 Pies 50 States. Plus, behind the scenes of morning shows! And Stacey introduces Christopher to the joys of John Waters through his memoir Carsick. Have a slice!

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

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What’d you buy?

Stacey: a cool vintage cartoon volcano shaped pitcher, 2 Linda Ronstadt records, 2 Johnny Cash, a Dolly Parton greatest hits, The Chicks – Wide Open Spaces

Christopher: Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go by Cleo Qian, Lush Lives by J Vanessa Lyon

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Recommendations:

Stacey: Sierra Ferrell’s In Dreams, Ryan Duggan’s work like this dog poster

Christopher: Carly Rae Jepsen’s Psychadelic Switch, There is No Anti-Memetics Division by QNTM

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From the episode:

Christopher: Talk to me a little bit about recipe testing when when you were becoming a home baker. Did you ever make things that you were like, “Whoa. That did not work.”

Stacey: 100%. There were lots of pies that were disgusting. So before I started the project, I actually baked my way through the Four and Twenty Blackbirds Cookbook. I was, you know, 25 in New York, which is kind of a terrible age to be in New York. But I had gone through a rough spot and my best friend Patrick bought me the Four and Twenty Blackbirds Cookbook. And so I decided to Julie and Julia and bake my way through it.

But before I could do that, I had to learn how to make pie crust, which I know is a thing that’s, like, very intimidating for a lot of people. And there was a lot of bad pie crust where I was like, Oh, this is so tough. Ooh, this is disgusting. Once I got that mastered, like, everything else felt more achievable. And there was definitely some weird flavor pairings where I was like, Oh, this is not going to work. And things that changed from the original project to the cookbook. But yeah, at the end of the day, like, even bad pie is still good. You can just heat it up and put some ice cream on it and a lot of your sins are covered.

Christopher: I was thinking about how I tried to do a Julie and Julia as well with The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Birnbaum. And it starts with pie crust. Like you make a bunch. It’s like the Mr. Miyagi, wax on, wax off. It’s like, if you want to make a pie, you’re not going to do anything without making good crust first, Which is. You know, of course. Like, that’s not quite insight.

Stacey: But I feel like in the cookbook, I also say it’s totally fine to use store bought, because it’s one of those things where, if it really stresses you out, don’t do it. Like, why are you bringing more stress into your life over pie? Do you know what I mean? Like, that’s so, so silly. And Sandra Lee made an entire career out of making things semi-homemade. You’re allowed to use a store bought pie crust.

Christopher: I love that. Yeah, I think that’s a nice energy to be bringing to the space, because people get very serious about just shortening or just butter, all of those things.

Stacey: Yeah. Do what you want, like the police aren’t going to come and get you. You know what I mean? Like, you do whatever you want, it’s your kitchen and it’s like, that’s how I kind of felt when doing the pies for each state. Some people might not agree with what I did, but this is like, my journey. If you don’t agree, I’d love to know what you would have done instead.

Christopher: It’s been out for a bit now. Have people been sending you pictures of their pies? Have you been seeing them?

Stacey: Yeah, that’s the part that’s been the most like… I feel like the perfect word is “tender.” Like, it’s so it’s so wild to have been making this thing in a vacuum. And it was already really crazy to see all the pies being made at the shoot for the cookbook. But then now that, like, actual people are making it, it’s so, so special. 

Like this bookstore in Nashville, they had their cookbook club, and it was based on my cookbook cookbook. 12 people, or however many ladies that were in the cookbook club, each made a pie. They each picked a state from the from the book and cooked it. And seeing all of them all together. On the table. That made me very emotional, you know? 

I mean, it’s so cool that people like this. That sounds so lame. “People like this.” But people are like, “I want to try making that.” Like one of the ladies made the Cheerwine Pulled Pork Pie with the Fried Hushpuppies for North Carolina. And like she wrote me later, “This Cheerwine barbecue sauce is going to be in my wheelhouse, like, forever.” Because you might not make the whole pie again, right? But if you take one element of it that you found cool, that maybe you’ll use in a different way, that’s also very special. It’s all been very wholesome.

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From the Damn Bar:

Henry Hoke makes a visit to the physical space of the Damn Library to talk his novel Open Throat, and allowing P-22 to become “me-22,” as well as the rest of his work, plus the novella Potted Meat by Steven Dunn and the power of short weird books in general.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

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What’d you buy?

Henry: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt and Post-Traumatic by Chantal Johnson

Christopher: Tiger, Tiger by Lynne Reid Banks and Les Pizzlys by Jérémie Moreau

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Recommendations:

Henry: Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto, transl. by Don Knotting (out Jan. 2024)

Christopher: The Art Thief by Michael Finkel and What We Fed to the Manticore by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri

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From the episode:

Christopher: The book is full of these mishearings that the mountain lion hears, like “the youngest slaughter” for their youngest daughter. I love that sort of stuff. But it also seems like it might be something that maybe you had to cut a few. And you’ve been talking about fun having fun. What was the most fun part of this book for you? Is there a day or section that you’re like, “Boy, that was that was a fun day?”

Henry: In a way. Every day was a fun day, you know, fun in the sense of, I felt like I was really embodying something. You know, I felt aligned with this creature, which is a special thing. Like, I felt like I was a witch. I felt like I had I had sort of gone inside of a whole other experience, which is what I guess magical fiction writing can do. 

But yeah, right. The mishearings I tried to use. Yeah, I did shave some off. I also, like, sharpened some. There’s only really like four or five that are like, become pivotal. Like “scare city” instead of scarcity, which is like, Hecate hears that as like maybe a place. Like we’re living in Scare City. So is it L.A., it’s Hollywood, but it’s also Scare City. Like, that’s the city we live in. And so that was perfect for me because that really represented like however one’s feeling, you know, that we live in scarcity like everyone, no matter what, has a level of scarcity in their mentality or in their actual lived experience, if they’re experiencing homelessness or whatever, like there’s so many elements that that sparked. 

I guess I wasn’t having necessarily fun with… I guess I’m always having fun with language because that’s the whole ballgame, right? But I was having a lot of fun with getting to an expression that I felt crystallized something I’d always been wanting to feel or say. And getting through it by like talking about a mountain lion, like eating a deer and eating its heart first or something. I was just like, yeah, I had to go through this to crystallize my own thinking and my own feeling. Like so much of like the queer desire in it, like the gender affirmation. Like, “if you’re feeling alone in this world, find someone to worship you,” these little morsels that I would land on.

That’s what I’ve been trying to feel, you know, something I could never tweet, you know what I mean? Something that’s so beautiful and deep for me, that I can’t ever tweet it. And I’m letting it emerge as the mindset of this big cat. I thought that was beyond fun. It was like, affirming. It was life affirming. And like, what’s happening with the book is obviously amazing, but actually just writing it and creating it was a very, very pleasurable experience. I don’t know if I’ll ever have as much fun writing a book, sadly.

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From the Damn Bar:

Into the Damn Library Christine Grillo zooms, and what do we talk about? Her inventive, touching, hopefully not too prescient Hestia Strikes a Match, plus all that went into it, like parents and politics and fireplace decor. Plus, she brings along the archly funny and itself harrowing Good Behaviour by Molly Keane. Books, you better believe it!

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

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What’d you buy?

Christine: Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, gardening gloves that go above the elbow, gardening sheers, gardening knife

Christopher: The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea by Debra Magpie Earling

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Recommendations:

Christine: Letters from an American, a newsletter by Heather Cox Richardson, Liberation Day by George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders, We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman, The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

Christopher: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

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From the episode:

Christopher: Something that I loved is that Hestia is working at a retirement village. She has left her job as a reporter and taken a job at this retirement village. And there were these voices that you created, and sometimes got to write within that were so distinct, and lovely, and a great source of comedy in particular. I’d love to hear about creating them, and when the retirement village came into the picture.

Christine: Yeah, well, in the novel, you know, when the war starts, Hestia’s beat changes, or her editors want different stories from her. And she doesn’t want to write the war stories because it’s too depressing. And so she finds this job in a retirement village thinking, “It’s got to be pretty safe.” And they have a really good surveillance system, so it feels like a safe place for her to work. There are five elderly characters that we hear from. One of them is Mildred, who is her best friend. I just loved creating all of them. I love that old people, not all of them, but so many of them lose their filter. That is just my favorite thing about old people, they get to say the things that everybody wants to say. I do a lot of interviewing for my job, which is working as a science writer, so I interview a lot of academics and scientists, and I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with academics and scientists, but they are not… They don’t give great quotes. And they tend to sound like robots when they talk, except for when they’re about over 70. Once they hit that threshold, then the filter is gone and they just say what they mean. They’re not going to hurt or improve their careers at that point. One of the reviewers referred to them as the Greek chorus. And I’m like, “Oh yeah, that’s that’s what I meant all along. Greek chorus.” And so they start off in the book explaining how we got here and how the Civil War started and what’s going on with it. But as we go throughout the book, they talk more and more about just life, about love and marriage and spirituality and the ego and pain and happiness. I think it’s sort of a fantasy of mine. I would just love to have five really smart, no filter 80 somethings tell me how to live. Just give me the guidebook.

Christopher: I love that. This is like a closely held fantasy. Like this is something that you actually want for yourself. I thought it was so brilliant to have these writing prompts that Hestia is giving them and then you include what they said to the writing prompt. I just think it was a great form to get these quick shots. Truly, it almost reminded me of, The Onion, when they have those Man on the Street features (that they’ve used since the beginning of time) that I would get to hear about, you know, their idea of love or their idea of loss or whatever. I just thought that was great.

Christine: Yeah, well, and I don’t know if you remember, but sort of around 2018 or so when I started writing it, all of a sudden I was seeing a lot of ads for, “Don’t know what to get your mom and dad? Get them this living history kit!” It would involve a lot of prompts that they could then like speak into a recorder, or write down their answers to the prompts. The commercials were very much centered on these kind of like heteronormative fantasies, I think. And so when I was writing, when I was first creating these characters, I didn’t know that I wanted it to be an oral history project, per se. But then when I started looking up some of these prompts, I just felt like, “Oh, God, these are the worst,” you know? Like, tell me, tell me the happiest moment in your marriage, and tell us what you loved most about being a parent. And I just thought there are people who don’t have those stories to tell. And so I really tried to have that Greek chorus reflect back on, you know, some of us hated our spouses.

Christopher: I mean, I love that they hate the prompt sometimes.

Christine: And they’re like, let us start our own.

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Rebecca Makkai drops into the Damn Library a few months after her newest smash novel I Have Some Questions For You hit the shelves, chatting about critiquing and celebrating the podcast world, how podcasters are the new detectives, writing a campus novel when you live on campus, and so much more, including just how it feels to be where she’s at in her career at this point. Plus, we delve into her 84 Books Project and Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Christopher: Now that you’ve had the novel out for a couple of months, have you had any surprising, or welcome, early reactions to the book?

Rebecca: Yeah, I mean—I’ve been really thrilled that it’s been taken seriously. I’ll say that I think I’m risking on two levels, because I’m writing adult literary fiction. The risk there is, number one, I am writing about someone looking back on adolescence, and people could—especially when you’re a woman—people are more likely to kind of pat you on the head.

So I’m writing about adolescence, and then I’m also writing what is definitely not a traditional murder mystery. But we do have a murder that, you know, might have been wrongly solved. And by the end of the book, we know who did it.

When people get a whiff of that genre (which this isn’t but, you know, it’s adjacent to that) they can be very condescending about that. And so I did worry going in like, okay, I’m writing about someone looking back on their teenage years and I’m writing what people might call a murder mystery. I don’t know if people are going to kind of dismiss this. So I’ve been thrilled that people have taken it seriously. I couldn’t wish for a better reaction or better support from bookstores. It’s been great.

I tried to write a book wherein if you do figure it out, if you do think you know who did this midway through, you won’t feel disappointed at the end, you’ll feel vindicated. Right? I’ve had maybe a couple of people say like, I thought that, but I didn’t know how, but I thought it was…

But most people come up and say, I really thought it was this other person. I really thought, you know, I fell for kind of a red herring and was very surprised by the outcome. That’s been gratifying because I kind of want to trick people a little bit.

Christopher: There are definitely some really fun red herrings throughout. And another thing that I think is working here is that you’re also critiquing the true crime podcast industry, as well as depicting the making of a very good one. Can you talk about having it both ways? I thought it was fantastic.

Rebecca: Well, I mean, I think true crime media goes both ways, right? I think there’s good and bad, sometimes side by side. And it’s good and bad for the consumer where like, this could really mess you up. But also for some people, it’s stress relief. Then you look at the actual cases being discussed. There are some gross lurid retellings of like, why do we need to hear about Jeffrey Dahmer again? We’re not learning anything here. And I don’t mean—I haven’t watched the new series. It might be wonderful. I just mean like, why are we doing that?

But at the same time, there are cases getting solved. There are cold cases getting reopened. There’s national attention on things, people are identifying Jane Doe’s online, or like the Murdoch thing in South Carolina. I don’t think we would have gotten justice there if that had stayed local. Right? That was podcasting and outside media before that was hitting home in South Carolina.

So it is a contradictory thing, and I’m putting all that in there. The book is not coming down on, this is all good or this is all bad. And, within the book, the student podcast makes things happen. We also have this really kind of icky guy with a YouTube channel who’s obsessed with the case.

Here’s the thing. I’m not writing true crime. I’m writing fictional crime, about true crime.  So it’s having it both ways, in part because I don’t have this moral dilemma of, oh, but am I harming people by writing this? Am I revictimizing? Because these people only live in my head. If I were writing about a real case, I think I’d have a lot more ethical hoops to jump through, questions for myself. But I’m only hurting myself.

Christopher:This is capital “E” Entertainment at the end of the day. And it’s wonderful in that way.

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What’d you buy?

Rebecca: Plug Outlet Extender

Christopher: Owlish by Dorothy Tse, What We Fed to the Manticore by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, A Place in the World Called Paris, forward by Susan Sontag

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Recommendations:

Rebecca: The Door by Magda Szabó, Beef (Netflix), naps

Christopher: Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

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Brendan Slocumb has a seat in the hyperspace universe of the Zoom Damn Library to talk his new historical musical thriller Symphony of Secrets, and of course some Violin Conspiracy, getting into creating a world of historical music, how his violin discipline helps him as a writer, and more. Plus, he gets to talk up his debut panel friend Eli Cranor’s Ozark Dogs, and how the literary world has welcomed him.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

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From the episode:

Christopher: In Symphony of Secrets, I felt like that there was a sort of ode to archives, an ode to research. Bern’s project where he’s transcribing Red, is that a real world sort of project? Can you talk about this archive world of music that part of Symphony of Secrets is based in?

Brendan: Yes. Bern being a musicologist first, when when I decided to make him a musicologist, I was really concerned because I don’t know a great deal about musicology. And actually, when I was touring for the Violin Conspiracy, I met a musicologist and she was like, “I’m so excited that your next book is about a musicologist. You have no idea.” And I am like, “Oh my gosh, I got to make sure that this is right. I have to be accurate with this.”

So, I mean, I did research. I did a lot of research on what musicologists do, and their field is so vast they can cover so many different areas of music. And with Bern’s opportunity to authenticate the score. Yeah. It’s when I checked with my friend Kate, who is a musicologist, she’s like, Yeah, you nailed it. This is exactly what we do. Well, thank you. Okay. All right. Disaster avoided.

Christopher: So it really exists. There are people that are, like, trying to piece together these old pieces, archaeologically.

Brendan: Right. Like, there could be a piece of music that was “discovered.” And one musicologist would say, “I think this is a piece written by Haydn.” And so you would find a musicologist or an expert who specializes in Haydn. They would, you know, analyze the the pen strokes. They would analyze the composition itself, you know, the paper that it was written on, just everything, every aspect of it, they would have to authenticate it before they could say, yes, absolutely. This is a piece written by Joseph Haydn.

Christopher: That was one of my absolute favorite moments in the book, actually. It’s early on when Bern is just getting his first chance to be around the manuscript for the first time. He’s just so giddily excited about it, and I was completely there with him.

Another thing that I can’t stop thinking about since I read it was the alternative musical notation that Josephine Reed uses, and it made me think about all sorts of ways that people must have had musical notation before they there was a standard, or if they don’t know how to use the standard at all. Can you talk about creating her system and what it looks like in your head?

Brendan: Absolutely. This is one of those things that’s not my area of expertise as well. So I contacted one of my violin professors. I contacted her husband, who is a genius. And he sent me pages and pages and pages of annotations that different composers would use. And it was mind blowing, I mean, I saw things that looked like mistakes, you know, just scribbles on a page, to really intricate designs, to things that looked like a fourth grade project, just anything that you could possibly imagine.

And knowing that to these composers, it makes perfect sense. It’s a true example ofone size does not fit all. Not everything can be done the same way, but it all comes out beautifully. I just thought that that was fascinating. And with Josephine, because she could hear and see so many sounds and colors and everything in everyday life, you know, a bird singing or footsteps down the sidewalk, a horn blowing, a water hose squirting, just everything. So she would need a really intricate system to manage all of these tones and sounds and everything. It was great to be able to just create an entirely different way of her composing everything. And, you know, it’s how she sees the world and it doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but her. So that was actually a lot of fun to do.

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What’d you buy?

Brendan: Cyclops (from X-MEN) Statue

Christopher: We Are Too Many by Hannah Pittard, Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter, The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel

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Recommendations:

Brendan: City of Orange by David Yoon, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Haydn’s Symphones 99-104, Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 & Serenade for Strings

Christopher: FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven

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Ling Ling Huang stops by the universe of the Zoom Damn Library the day after her book, Natural Beauty, graces shelves. She talks about writing the book in her Notes app, living the classical music life, how she surprised her parents with her book deal, getting shots in her butt for her beauty industry employer, and so much more. Plus, she brought along the Korean bestseller I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, so of course we have to talk about therapy, and how this book surprises you with its ending.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

What’d you buy?

Ling Ling: Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer
Christopher: The Weeds by Katy Simpson Smith, Assasin of Reality by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

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Recommendations:

Ling Ling: Extraordinary Attorney Woo (Netflix) and The Last of Us (HBO), Succession (HBO), Yellowjackets (Showtime), Unstable (Netflix)
Christopher: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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From the episode:

Christopher: When did you add a writing practice in with your violin practice? Like, how did the writing come into it? When did you decide it was time to try your hand, and secretly write a novel, and not tell your parents?

Ling Ling: Well, I’ve always read a lot. I mean, you wouldn’t know it from our conversation, but whenever I was in a practice room and even when I was, you know, like in fourth grade, I was always with a book because it was my favorite practice break. And so I really think of music and writing as kind of translating between the two.

So I first started writing when I wanted to invite a lot of my English class friends to a recital I was giving. So I was already in conservatory. I didn’t want to write the normal program notes. We’re required to write program notes, which just give you the historical content of the pieces. And I don’t know, I find a lot of them to be really dry, and a lot of these friends were kind of intimidated by going to a classical music concert because they, you know, it wasn’t something they were super familiar with.

So I wanted to cater to them and not in a way that would dumb anything down because they’re extremely intelligent, complex people. I tried to, you know, do something in their language. So for the four different pieces I wrote a poem. I wrote a Russian short story and just two other pieces to go with the music I was playing. And that was so fun.

And it opened up something, where every time I listen to music, because there are no words in classical music, for the most part, my mind is just free to put words in, or to think of any image. And so I started writing in that way. And on these commutes where I was writing in my notes app, I was often listening to classical music. And so that’s how the music elements snuck in there. And so then it just accumulated and became this thing.

I think I was afraid to write a novel, but I moved to New York. I wouldn’t even have said this aloud to myself, but I was wanting really badly to be a writer and to try writing a novel. So I feel like I had to kind of scurry and do it on notes and all these things for me to not be intimidated by it. And then putting it all in in a Word document, it was fine because it was already done for the most part.

Christopher: And so, now you’ve got these views of like, the clean beauty world, and the classical music world. Do you feel like you’ve got a view of the publishing world now, and how do those stack up?

Ling Ling: Yeah, the publishing world has been so wild. I think there’s just so much I don’t know. A really popular question for me to everyone on any one of my teams is: “Is there an industry standard for, like, how to say thank you? Like, should I get flowers for people? How do we feel about cookies?” I’m so grateful for this journey and to be in this field that I, I’m constantly afraid of losing it or messing up somehow, especially since I feel like there’s so much I don’t know.

Even in the classical music world, if you put your stuff in the wrong place, in front of where someone usually unpacks their cello or something, it can cause a whole kerfuffle for the whole orchestra and people will hate you. Like, there are just such little things, or so maybe it’s PTSD from that, that I’m taking into the publishing industry, which is healthy.

But for the most part, it’s been a dream. I feel like, you know, I have nothing to compare it to. But I feel really lucky with with how I’ve landed.

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