Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Ruby Jones. This week we're releasing our
Speaker 1: favorite episodes from our sister podcast Read This. It's the
Speaker 1: show where the editor of the monthly, Michael Williams, talks
Speaker 1: to some of the best and most respected writers from
Speaker 1: Australia and around the world. And today we're hearing from
Speaker 1: American author Rumin Alum and Michael Williams joins us.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Hello Michael. Hello, So Michael, can you tell me a
Speaker 1: bit about Rumin Alum.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Rumin Alums the author of four novels, and the
Speaker 2: one you're probably most likely to have heard of was
Speaker 2: the one that came out in twenty twenty. It was
Speaker 2: a New York Times bestseller and it was called Leave
Speaker 2: the World Behind. It was one of those kind of
Speaker 2: very zeitgeisty books about an apocalyptic event where a bunch
Speaker 2: of affluent New Yorkers are trapped in the Hamptons. It
Speaker 2: was made into a Netflix movie last year, starring Julia
Speaker 2: Roberts and Ethan Hawke from Memory, and that was a
Speaker 2: very good adaptation. But it was also a gripping book.
Speaker 2: Was really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a thriller, isn't it. But it also has
Speaker 1: these themes of class and race and privilege.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and those themes are really a through line through
Speaker 2: all four of his books, not least his latest novel,
Speaker 2: which is called Entrapment, which follows this single middle class
Speaker 2: woman called Brooke who's got a job as an assistant
Speaker 2: to this octogenarian billionaire and he's on this kick late
Speaker 2: in his life. He decidedly has to give away his
Speaker 2: vast fortune. So it's kind of her job to assist
Speaker 2: him in that. But proximity to that kind of wealth
Speaker 2: has a corrupting effect, and so she very quickly finds
Speaker 2: herself adopting his lifestyle without necessarily the funds to pay
Speaker 2: for it. So Entitlement is in that same vein as
Speaker 2: a kind of thriller, a cautionary tale. It's all about
Speaker 2: self delusion in a city that values money above everything else.
Speaker 2: It's really terrific and a lot of fun to talk
Speaker 2: to him. We talk about Richard Scarry books for some reason,
Speaker 2: so that tells you the conversation goes in unexpected.
Speaker 1: Directions, coming up in just a moment. Women alarm on class,
Speaker 1: desire and dread.
Speaker 2: Class is an element that's a play in all of
Speaker 2: Rumen's novels, but perhaps most acutely obvious in Entitlement, where
Speaker 2: the whole idea of social status and wealth becomes an
Speaker 2: obsession for its main character, Brook. I wanted to start
Speaker 2: by asking you about class in America and about how
Speaker 2: important classes in the kind of spectrum of identity, politics,
Speaker 2: in the spectrum of kind of sense of self in
Speaker 2: contemporary America.
Speaker 3: Well, with the covey up that I'm ill equipped to
Speaker 3: speak about, you know, the netion large, it does feel
Speaker 3: to me that class is a pretty significant factor in
Speaker 3: American cultural and life. You see it in the kind
Speaker 3: of I'm trying to think that sort of performance conducted
Speaker 3: by someone like Trump, who is of a certain class,
Speaker 3: a moneyed, urbane class, and is able via language and
Speaker 3: all of these other signifiers to address and sort of
Speaker 3: be glorified by a quite different class of Americans. So
Speaker 3: that kind of cross class thing I think we've seen.
Speaker 3: And Trump is hardly the only politician who does this,
Speaker 3: because the political lead in this country on both sides
Speaker 3: of the political spectrum tends to be moneyed, highly educated
Speaker 3: people who have gone to school in Cambridge or New York.
Speaker 3: But they're able to mobilize these sort of coalitions or
Speaker 3: camps of voters who are sort of nothing like them
Speaker 3: by appealing to them with some language that seems to
Speaker 3: be very rude in class. And I think it's discomforting
Speaker 3: to talk about, as complicated as it is to have
Speaker 3: a proper conversation in this country, and I'm sure in
Speaker 3: Australia as well about racial politics, class politics feel even
Speaker 3: more slippery because you are sort of reducing huge segments
Speaker 3: of the population to these sort of ridiculous types based
Speaker 3: on all of these external factors. And yet I think
Speaker 3: it's also something that people understand is present. It's present
Speaker 3: in what your accent sounds like, it's present in what
Speaker 3: your name is like, and it determines so much of
Speaker 3: your experience of contemporary life. I mean, as a middle
Speaker 3: class person, I guess maybe it's the middle class generally,
Speaker 3: or the coastal middle class or the New York City
Speaker 3: middle class has the least reason to talk about it.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's more, it's less salient to my experience
Speaker 3: of life, because I'm not beginning my life for trying
Speaker 3: to radically change the circumstances of my life based on
Speaker 3: what I've inherited from my parents, based on the class
Speaker 3: into which I was born.
Speaker 2: Part of how from outside it appears to play out
Speaker 2: in an American context, which is something that's very present
Speaker 2: in all of your work, I think is around the
Speaker 2: idea of aspiration. You know. The thing that always staggers
Speaker 2: me as someone who's not an American is how often
Speaker 2: the political debate in your country people seem to vote
Speaker 2: against self interest. There is something about the idea that
Speaker 2: you might not be a millionaire, you might not be
Speaker 2: comfortably off, but one day you might get to be.
Speaker 2: In the American dream, it's possible that you are going
Speaker 2: to end up in this position of privilege, and as
Speaker 2: a consequence, you're going to vote with your aspirational self
Speaker 2: rather than your real self. That gap between what you
Speaker 2: want and what you're allowed to want seems pretty huge.
Speaker 2: Is that a reductive way of talking about your country?
Speaker 3: I don't think so, but you know, I'm not running
Speaker 3: for office. I think that you said it yourself, the
Speaker 3: American Dream. That sort of phrase is some of the
Speaker 3: most persuasive myth making we have in the culture. It's
Speaker 3: up there with just do it right. It's like that
Speaker 3: is the brand of this nation, that you can dream
Speaker 3: really big, and the way that that has been sort
Speaker 3: of bent for the electorate by people who I think
Speaker 3: are ultimately quite cynical. Is to appeal to this childish
Speaker 3: idea that you may be a millionaire someday and that
Speaker 3: you should not do anything that might cost your future
Speaker 3: self in sort of tax consequence or something which is
Speaker 3: obviously preposterous, and you know, but it's quite successful. People
Speaker 3: rail in this country perfectly reasonable. People rail against the
Speaker 3: idea of this state providing lunches to school children, you know,
Speaker 3: which is crazy. It's crazy. They rail against things like
Speaker 3: inheritance tax, not really comprehending that the inheritance tax on
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty American families could completely change the
Speaker 3: way the American economy functions, because they imagine that someday
Speaker 3: I'm going to leave this money to my child or
Speaker 3: you know, that will somehow affect me. But it's not
Speaker 3: going to affect you. It's going to affect the Walton
Speaker 3: family or Bill Gates, but it has nothing to do
Speaker 3: with me. You know.
Speaker 2: As a novelist, how useful is the idea of desire
Speaker 2: and want and aspiration as a novelistic engine. It seems
Speaker 2: to be one that you had drawn to. Is characters
Speaker 2: who hunger for things that are just out of reach
Speaker 2: or denied them one way or the other.
Speaker 3: That schema's efficacy, as like the engine of a novel,
Speaker 3: is ultimately that that judgment is in the hands of
Speaker 3: the reader. I would say that as the writer, you
Speaker 3: can't help returning to your hobby horses, and you just
Speaker 3: sort of find yourself back in this same territory over
Speaker 3: and over again. I thought of my third book, Leave
Speaker 3: the World Behind, as being really distinct from my first two.
Speaker 3: And while it is formally or in the sort of
Speaker 3: novelistic strategy, it is distinct thematically, it's not it's really
Speaker 3: the same territory. And I think that that's I think
Speaker 3: that that is something that happens to I was going
Speaker 3: to say writers, but I think it's sort of something
Speaker 3: you see across the board that artists have these particular
Speaker 3: preoccupations and desire. And in this case, I don't mean
Speaker 3: a kind of vaunted, spiritual or intellectual desire. I mean
Speaker 3: sort of like want of things, or status or or
Speaker 3: power or something is a pretty It's a pretty easy
Speaker 3: one for me to get my head into. And maybe
Speaker 3: that's because I'm American. That kind of desire is like,
Speaker 3: that's you're taught that from your I mean, that is
Speaker 3: inculcated in you from the very beginning, you know, like
Speaker 3: I think it's not just about American life, it's sort
Speaker 3: of contemporary life. But contemporary life is about possessions and
Speaker 3: it's about acquisition. And this is a message that you
Speaker 3: are hit with constantly. I have two children, and I
Speaker 3: remember when they first started taking the bus to school,
Speaker 3: and then they would take the bus to summer camp.
Speaker 3: It was especially with my older son. You know, parents
Speaker 3: often with their first born can be very vigilant about
Speaker 3: being the intermediary and their experience of reality. But then
Speaker 3: they slip out of your hands to go off to
Speaker 3: school to ride the bus, and they hear things like
Speaker 3: the radio. So this is a kid who had never
Speaker 3: seen the television, but would come home saying to me,
Speaker 3: I mean, he has said to me, this is like
Speaker 3: one of those stories that families love to tell. He
Speaker 3: said to me, like, what are we doing for Toyota
Speaker 3: than right, which is just a sales gimmick that he
Speaker 3: heard about on the radio on the way to summer camp.
Speaker 3: And so that kind of messaging about acquisition and buying
Speaker 3: is so persuasive even to a little a little baby
Speaker 3: who doesn't know what you're talking about, who isn't going
Speaker 3: to buy a car, you know. So I just think
Speaker 3: that's like part of the it's part of the culture.
Speaker 3: That's what we want.
Speaker 2: There's nothing quite like being a parent to get that
Speaker 2: stuff reflected back to you as well. And you're right,
Speaker 2: it's a funny thing as they get older where you
Speaker 2: go from if not controlling, at least being present for
Speaker 2: the entirety of their experience and the entirety of how
Speaker 2: they understand the world that they're in, to other influences
Speaker 2: coming in and completely kind of feeding in in different ways,
Speaker 2: which is such a confronting thing I think as a parent.
Speaker 3: And you know that's a but even if you sort
Speaker 3: of curate their experience of reality, you know, with which
Speaker 3: we did or we tried to do, as I think
Speaker 3: a lot of parents do. He read these books like
Speaker 3: you watch fifteen minutes of this show, you play with
Speaker 3: these organic wooden blocks. I remember when my older son
Speaker 3: was quite small, because it was before we had his brother,
Speaker 3: so he was three or less, and we saw a
Speaker 3: woman who lived across the street from us unloading sheets
Speaker 3: of drywall from the back of a van, and this
Speaker 3: little baby said, ladies can't do that, which is such
Speaker 3: a startling thing to hear from your kid's mouth, especially
Speaker 3: when you, you know, my husband and I are like, oh,
Speaker 3: we're raising these enlightened these are going to be like
Speaker 3: the great young men of the future. To hear him
Speaker 3: say this sort of startling thing. And my theory about
Speaker 3: that is that he was saying something he had seen
Speaker 3: in the pages of Richard Scary. Yeah, where those books
Speaker 3: you see the dads with the tool belts or you know,
Speaker 3: they're the butcher or whatever, and the and the moms
Speaker 3: the pigs or cows or whatever they are are wearing aprons
Speaker 3: and they're cooking, and so he kids are just trying
Speaker 3: to make sense of the world, and the world is
Speaker 3: trying to sheepe their understanding of that world. And it
Speaker 3: happens to you too. And as you're saying, I think
Speaker 3: when you when you see it happen to your kids,
Speaker 3: you realize the extent to which it has happened to you.
Speaker 2: I mean, Richard Scarry's a prime example. There's such kind
Speaker 2: of rigid gender norms, but he'll still let a pig
Speaker 2: be a butcher, which seems like a strange job choice
Speaker 2: for a pig. I don't want to be judgmental, but
Speaker 2: that seems unkind When did you know you wanted to
Speaker 2: be a writer, and what was the relationship between that
Speaker 2: moment and your experience as a reader.
Speaker 3: Adults can come to reading at any time, of course,
Speaker 3: but I think there are certain adults for whom it
Speaker 3: happens in childhood. It happens sort of like quickly and bindingly.
Speaker 3: The mythology in my own family, and who knows if
Speaker 3: it's true, is that I learned to read when I
Speaker 3: was four. I was taught by a babysitter, and like
Speaker 3: once that happened, I never supped. And that is certainly
Speaker 3: my memory. It's hard to know, you know, how reliable
Speaker 3: that is, but I remember so clearly reading a book.
Speaker 3: I would take a bath. I would read in the bathtub,
Speaker 3: and I would finish the book, and then I would
Speaker 3: go back to the first page. I never it would
Speaker 3: sort of continue on. For me. One of the worst
Speaker 3: tragedies of my young life is when we were on
Speaker 3: vacation and I finished the two books I had brought
Speaker 3: like I finished them like at the airport, and I
Speaker 3: had to read my father's copy of The Hunt for
Speaker 3: Road October for the balance of my trip when I
Speaker 3: was like ten. So I think that it the kid
Speaker 3: who is a reader like that as I was. It's
Speaker 3: not a far walk from there to think like, I'm
Speaker 3: also going to be a writer. And I remember having
Speaker 3: this idea about myself, like pretty young, before I even
Speaker 3: started school, And it was always the kind of story
Speaker 3: I told about myself and to myself, and so feels
Speaker 3: like an inevitability. But of course that's so silly because
Speaker 3: I was a little kid. So what did I know?
Speaker 2: You were a little kid who would lie in the
Speaker 2: bath and write a book. I mean, you had a
Speaker 2: certain kind of daked and self knowledge there already clearly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a little princeling reading Judie Bloom in the bathtub
Speaker 3: at ten magic. But I do you know, I think
Speaker 3: that like that stuff. I mean, it just becomes the
Speaker 3: story you tell yourself, right, sort of makes sense of
Speaker 3: your own life. But that is the story that I tell.
Speaker 3: And I think it's true that that sort of deep
Speaker 3: passion for reading it was interconnection with an interest in
Speaker 3: writing or I desire to, you know, I just I
Speaker 3: couldn't believe it, Like I read as a kid, Judy Plume,
Speaker 3: I read Harriet the Spy, which is Louise fits you,
Speaker 3: And then as I got older, I read like I
Speaker 3: got the Christine and I just couldn't believe it. It
Speaker 3: was like this idea that these people somehow had the ability.
Speaker 3: It just felt like magic. Yeah, And to be honest
Speaker 3: with you, I mean, I'm forty seven now, and I
Speaker 3: still feel that way. You know, I still feel that way.
Speaker 3: I was reading Kazia a couple of weeks ago and
Speaker 3: I was like, this is crazy, Like what am I reading?
Speaker 3: What is he doing to me?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: How did this happen? How did this book from that
Speaker 3: he wrote thirty years ago come to me now? And
Speaker 3: you know, pick apart my brain. It's a very strange thing.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, it's sort of a life while I'm
Speaker 3: feeling about that.
Speaker 2: When we written, Ruman explains why The Genesis of Entitlement
Speaker 2: feels so singular and reveals how he manages his relationship
Speaker 2: with readers. We'll be right back. I'm curious about what
Speaker 2: that first spark when you know there's a new book
Speaker 2: on the horizon, whether it's more likely to be an
Speaker 2: idea or whether they come from character from story.
Speaker 3: So I have a very clear sense of how to
Speaker 3: answer this question with reect to my first book, and
Speaker 3: my second book, and even my third book. Somehow, this
Speaker 3: one entitlement it's genesis is a little hazy to me.
Speaker 3: A long time ago, my husband said to me about
Speaker 3: a friend of ours, an acquaintance really He said, you know,
Speaker 3: she's kind of like a chronically single woman at a
Speaker 3: time approaching life. And he said, you know, I think
Speaker 3: at a certain point you should be allowed to marry
Speaker 3: yourself and throw a big party and everyone has to
Speaker 3: give you a gift and sort of treat it the
Speaker 3: same way that they would treat it if you were
Speaker 3: getting married to another person. A not cruel joke, but
Speaker 3: kind of like a funny observation, and that really stayed
Speaker 3: with me. I remembered that moment, and at some point
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it is down to the
Speaker 3: pandemic that this sort of this book was sort of
Speaker 3: born in this period that I think was hazy for
Speaker 3: a lot of people. I had this idea about a
Speaker 3: woman choosing to marry an apartment. We were looking for
Speaker 3: a home in New York City at the time, so
Speaker 3: we were kind of had we kind of had like
Speaker 3: real estate on the brain. I do think that part
Speaker 3: of being a middle class person in your forties in
Speaker 3: New York City is that you think about real estate
Speaker 3: a lot. There was something very arresting in that idea
Speaker 3: to me of a woman saying I'm going to marry
Speaker 3: this apartment instead of this man or this woman entitlement
Speaker 3: all simiately. The shape that it took strays pretty far
Speaker 3: from that. I remember at some point it was also
Speaker 3: very interested in the not for profit sector in particular
Speaker 3: these and there are there are quite a few of them,
Speaker 3: these sort of family operations where somebody who has acquired
Speaker 3: a fortune or someone who has inherited a fortune works
Speaker 3: with a lawyer and a couple of other people to
Speaker 3: disburse this particular fortune. I know somebody who is involved
Speaker 3: in this particular business, and the person for whom she
Speaker 3: works is quite extraordinarily wealthy and has extremely specific priorities
Speaker 3: in terms of their giving their philanthropy. They're interested in
Speaker 3: very very specific causes, and the family foundation is an
Speaker 3: extremely small group of people. I think it's this guy
Speaker 3: and his attorney and a friend of mine. And that
Speaker 3: was interesting to me, because you are able to really
Speaker 3: do something to really affect something, but you also are
Speaker 3: just some guy with a checkbook. And for the most part,
Speaker 3: I think that these sort of investments are going to
Speaker 3: things that we can all agree are generally good. To
Speaker 3: micro finance, to researching breast cancer, whatever, these are good causes.
Speaker 3: But there is something very peculiar about the fact that
Speaker 3: just because this guy who did not make this money
Speaker 3: he inherited it is able to channel a pretty significant
Speaker 3: fortune according to his whim. Again, not like a bad thing,
Speaker 3: but an interesting thing, very interesting to me. And I
Speaker 3: think since Empire of Pain and that particular book, that
Speaker 3: particular set of research into the Sacklers and how they
Speaker 3: may have, I think it's hard to sort of understand,
Speaker 3: but that perhaps some desire on the part of people
Speaker 3: who have acquired fortune are built of fortune in ways
Speaker 3: that they understand to be slightly less than ethical, that
Speaker 3: they can use philanthropic giving to kind of burnish the
Speaker 3: family reputation or burnish their name. That was also of
Speaker 3: interest to me. So I think what happens for me
Speaker 3: is that I have ideas that I'm interested in and
Speaker 3: I need something to make them start happening. And I
Speaker 3: think with this particular book with entitlement. It was really
Speaker 3: situated in the character that I had these two characters
Speaker 3: who sort of embodied these ideas, the idea of a
Speaker 3: young contemporary woman who wanted to sort of issue traditional
Speaker 3: romantic and familial attachments and sort of wanted an apartment,
Speaker 3: and an older wealthy man who was interested in the
Speaker 3: kind of ego flex of giving, of generosity.
Speaker 2: And I love that you described that philanthropic impulse is
Speaker 2: interesting but not bad, because I think part of what
Speaker 2: you do so beautifully and entitlement is exactly that idea.
Speaker 2: You know, there is a I think a natural impulse
Speaker 2: in our culture, even if not in our politics, to
Speaker 2: assume that an octogenarian billionaire is going to somehow be
Speaker 2: a dastardly figure or be motivated by things that are
Speaker 2: somehow render the philanthropy unworthy or render him suspect. And
Speaker 2: I think the way you've built the character of Asha
Speaker 2: Jaffey in this book is really interesting because you go
Speaker 2: with interesting but not bad. I think could be a mantra.
Speaker 3: Right, He's not a bond villain, you know, I mean
Speaker 3: there is we have and we actually have those billionaires
Speaker 3: in this country, right, these bond villain billionaires who want
Speaker 3: to go to space or live forever, or whatever preposterous
Speaker 3: endeavor they have. I think of Asher. I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: very fond of Asher'll be more fond of him than
Speaker 3: any person I've ever made up on the page. He's
Speaker 3: like a nice guy. He feels like someone who's sort
Speaker 3: of lucked his way into having billions of dollars, and
Speaker 3: he seems on some level aware of the limits of
Speaker 3: his own intelligence. But I also think that when you
Speaker 3: are costeded by great wealth, you begin to think you
Speaker 3: are great, you know, a little bit immortal, a little
Speaker 3: bit unfalliable, right, And I think that this sort of
Speaker 3: gets into your head. But yeah, I think that I
Speaker 3: didn't want the book to rely on this schema in
Speaker 3: which the old white guy is evil. You know, it
Speaker 3: doesn't seem that interesting to be He's not great, I
Speaker 3: mean he does some his behavior is more complex, and
Speaker 3: I think that's true of most people, right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: people are more complex than that, you know.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you mentioned his degree of self awareness, because
Speaker 2: I do think for both him and for Brook, they
Speaker 2: have a kind of key protagonist in the book that
Speaker 2: question about how aware they are of their own motivation
Speaker 2: of the impact of their own behavior and thinking back
Speaker 2: to your earlier books, how fun is it to write
Speaker 2: characters who are less self aware than you are as
Speaker 2: the authorial voice.
Speaker 3: Well, it's great fun because I get to exercise full control.
Speaker 3: I think that the challenge then, I mean challenge isn't
Speaker 3: quite the word, but the particular risk is that then
Speaker 3: it's a question for the reader. The reader has to
Speaker 3: have her own perspective on the degree to which these
Speaker 3: characters are honest or trustworthy, or likable or real, you
Speaker 3: know whatever. But people, That is how I think how
Speaker 3: people are. I think if you're again, if you're waiting
Speaker 3: a story for children or sort of like a you know,
Speaker 3: then it's or fairy tale or something. It's easy to understand,
Speaker 3: sort of like black and white, good and evil, you know,
Speaker 3: but the truth of reality is like a little more complicated.
Speaker 3: You know. Asher is a very smart man who made
Speaker 3: billions of dollars in his lifetime, so he has to
Speaker 3: possess some sense of what he's doing. But also I
Speaker 3: think that when you get to a certain point, or
Speaker 3: when you are he's of a very specific generation, it's
Speaker 3: possible to be slightly unaware of what you're doing or
Speaker 3: unaware of the ways in which you are exerting control
Speaker 3: over others. And I think the same is true for Brooks.
Speaker 3: She's not Asher's victim, certainly if the book sees her
Speaker 3: undergo an unraveling or you know, if her fate is
Speaker 3: less than ideal. I also think it's true that she's
Speaker 3: driven herself to that feet for.
Speaker 2: The fourth time. Now you've written a book that is
Speaker 2: utterly compelling and kind of a wonderful read that is
Speaker 2: going to stay with me for some time. I did
Speaker 2: have a moment reading Entitlement, where I thought, oh, there's
Speaker 2: no one quite like Ruman for creating in me a
Speaker 2: sense of slowly ratcheting dread through the course of a book.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of reading brook and just thinking, oh, no,
Speaker 2: don't don't do that.
Speaker 3: Why the highest, the highest praise. I will acknowledge my
Speaker 3: particular debt in this particular instance to Sylvia Plath, because
Speaker 3: I did reread the Beljar. Of course, her posthumous legacy
Speaker 3: is a poet is really intact. But I sort of
Speaker 3: marveled at that novel on rereading, app that it was
Speaker 3: the product of someone who was so very young, and
Speaker 3: we only have that book and it's full of dread.
Speaker 3: That atmosphere is very potent, and my sense of that
Speaker 3: book is that Plath is using that atmosphere to sort
Speaker 3: of depict the water in which she was swimming mentally
Speaker 3: and psychically, but also those were the terms of life
Speaker 3: for a woman at mid century. And when I reread
Speaker 3: the book, I was like, God, I feel like oppressed
Speaker 3: just reading this book like this. The atmosphere of this
Speaker 3: book is so powerful, and that was something I really
Speaker 3: wanted Entitlement to hold. And so I'm thrilled that you
Speaker 3: felt that way. But what I hope is that you
Speaker 3: are able to walk with that realization to reality itself.
Speaker 3: What happens to Brook. It's a book, it's a novel,
Speaker 3: it's pretend, but the particular situation in which she finds
Speaker 3: herself is the situation in which we all kind of exist.
Speaker 3: Money sort of is the mitigating factor of all things
Speaker 3: in contemporary life. And that realization is so unsettling that
Speaker 3: I think once you have it, you either look away
Speaker 3: from it or you go crazy.
Speaker 2: Rumin Alam's latest novel, Entitlement, is out now.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to another special episode
Speaker 1: of Read This. You can hear all of read this
Speaker 1: by searching for it wherever you listen, and we'll be
Speaker 1: back next week with some of Australia's best writers and
Speaker 1: thinkers on their long form essays from the Monthly