Speaker 1: When I was making my last movie, Kajillionaire, I was
Speaker 1: pretty much done with that when I began to have
Speaker 1: all these ideas, these just questions. Even on the set
Speaker 1: of that movie, I was talking with Deborah Winger and
Speaker 1: my producer about aging in this very nervous, dumb way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, just fascinated slash horrified by what was to come.
Speaker 1: And so I was, you know, I wrote down things
Speaker 1: they said in my notes, you know, and I knew
Speaker 1: this isn't Kajillionaire. This is novel two, which is what
Speaker 1: the file was called for a long time.
Speaker 2: Novel two that's write a filmmaker and artist Miranda July.
Speaker 2: And novel two that's her latest book now, going by
Speaker 2: its proper name, All Fours. You almost certainly already know July.
Speaker 2: Her debut two thousand and seven collection of short stories,
Speaker 2: No One Belongs Here More Than You, was a publishing sensation.
Speaker 2: She has a voted even rabid following through her writing,
Speaker 2: her work on the screen, and her collaborative art projects.
Speaker 2: The unnamed female narrator in All Fours shares some biographical
Speaker 2: details with July. She's forty five, She's a semi famous
Speaker 2: artist and at the outset of the novel, she's contemplating
Speaker 2: her midlife with some dismay. She sets off on this
Speaker 2: cross country road trip from Los Angeles to New York,
Speaker 2: looking to find herself, but she doesn't make it very far.
Speaker 2: She drives for about thirty minutes before she pulls off
Speaker 2: the highway and holds up in a dingy motel. This
Speaker 2: is a book about intimacy and desire, about how we
Speaker 2: connect with others and how we make sense of ourselves.
Speaker 2: But it also goes deeper and broader, exploring an experience,
Speaker 2: specifically perimenopause, that has largely been left on the cutting
Speaker 2: room floor of literary fiction, and the result is brilliant.
Speaker 2: It's touching, and as always with Julyi's rye, I think
Speaker 2: extremely funny. I'm Michael Williams and this is read this
Speaker 2: the show about the books we love and the middle
Speaker 2: age behind me. I might kick things off at the
Speaker 2: very beginning, based on an Instagram post you had not
Speaker 2: that long ago, where you said that the very first
Speaker 2: sentence of the book experienced some rewrites over a single word,
Speaker 2: the choice of the word trouble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, originally it was sorry to bother you, and then
Speaker 1: you know, actually full disclosure. I think it was that
Speaker 1: the movie there's a movie called Sorry to Bother You.
Speaker 1: It came out, and it's like, this isn't really an issue,
Speaker 1: because that's a phrase in the world much more than
Speaker 1: it is just a movie. But it did make me
Speaker 1: think like, well, you know, I often try and take
Speaker 1: those things as like, is it an opportunity to actually
Speaker 1: look at this sentence you haven't looked at? And I
Speaker 1: was like, is there another thing people say? Well, sorry
Speaker 1: to trouble you? And yeah, And then the word trouble
Speaker 1: is such a great word to have in a first
Speaker 1: sentence of a book that's about kind of transition and
Speaker 1: crisis and upending. And you know that the waters are troubled,
Speaker 1: you know, throughout.
Speaker 2: The waters are troubled, and your protagonist is willfully troubled.
Speaker 2: You know, actually choosing to trouble things is one way
Speaker 2: of kind of saying her journey.
Speaker 1: I think right right to resist a kind of peace
Speaker 1: that has become dishonest.
Speaker 2: How often I mean, as a fan of your work
Speaker 2: in different media, how often is that impetus the desire
Speaker 2: not to settle, not to have an idea settled, the
Speaker 2: character settled, to find a way to trouble it. How
Speaker 2: often is that an engine for art for you? Hmm?
Speaker 1: It is true that there's a kind of unrest that
Speaker 1: you begin to realize is very valuable despite the discomfort
Speaker 1: of it. And it's certainly you know, there are major
Speaker 1: characters in this book that didn't start out that way,
Speaker 1: and I often would be like, well, why is this
Speaker 1: woman selling this quilt? Why is she still in here?
Speaker 1: Why is that scene even here? You know, and to
Speaker 1: live with that sort of unanswered question until she's either
Speaker 1: cut or in this case no, she becomes important. And
Speaker 1: then with myself, I mean, you know, with this book,
Speaker 1: I resisted the poll of having a good idea. You know,
Speaker 1: usually I'm just down on my knees looking up at
Speaker 1: the sky, being like, whenever you're ready, I'll take the
Speaker 1: lightning bolt of my next movie or book. And it comes.
Speaker 1: It actually does. I think it's through a long process
Speaker 1: of sort of openness and soul searching and research, but
Speaker 1: eventually there is this kind of moment where the story
Speaker 1: rushes in. And with all fours, I had the sense
Speaker 1: that if I just put notes on what I was
Speaker 1: interested in into a file for as long as possible,
Speaker 1: and each time a story idea came knocking that could
Speaker 1: hold all these notes, and these notes were about gender, aging, femininity, marriage, sex, desire.
Speaker 1: You know, each time a story came knocking, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: too soon, too soon, This territory has to grow, it
Speaker 1: has to deepen. And I think the book reflects that.
Speaker 1: Like to me, I'm like, oh yeah, this book is
Speaker 1: wider and deeper and encompasses more voices and more other
Speaker 1: women than I could have done if I'd just happily
Speaker 1: gone into a story from the get go. So it
Speaker 1: is living with that sort of troubled, unsafe feeling.
Speaker 2: When does voice come in? When do you find your
Speaker 2: character as a discreet human being with their own voice
Speaker 2: and their own who is capable of surprising you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that can be a hard part. And I actually
Speaker 1: had sort of a cheat with this one because I
Speaker 1: wrote a story called The Metal Bowl that was in
Speaker 1: The New Yorker a little while before, and that was
Speaker 1: the difficult work of discovering a new voice. And it
Speaker 1: was a voice that was sort of embarrassingly normal in
Speaker 1: some ways, in the sense that like, she could be
Speaker 1: someone just like me. I could play her, you know,
Speaker 1: less distance between me and her than with my other characters,
Speaker 1: and this felt very like, I don't know, sort of
Speaker 1: short story ish in a normal way that I wasn't
Speaker 1: used to. But the effect that it had, you know,
Speaker 1: the conversations that I had after it with my women
Speaker 1: peers was so raw and interesting that I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: who cares? This is a great voice and if I
Speaker 1: could just keep going, so I had, you know, more
Speaker 1: or less, she's a little bit different than that character,
Speaker 1: but it's quite fun just talking about it now, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I want to keep going. I have. Actually, I was
Speaker 1: writing something the other day and I was like, is
Speaker 1: this just like all fours? Two? Is this all fives?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: When is this? Do you need to get out of
Speaker 1: this voice? But it's hard to kick her.
Speaker 2: Now you've got the name all fives. You really can't
Speaker 2: resist that either.
Speaker 1: It's literally the worst name that.
Speaker 2: Is your girl band version of the Fabulous. It's a
Speaker 2: kind of ludicrously fun. The Middle Ball is an amazing story,
Speaker 2: and there's a great line in it when the main
Speaker 2: character is reflecting on the piece of amateur pornography that
Speaker 2: she's shot, and she reflects that her payment is not
Speaker 2: for her beauty, it's not for any personal talents of
Speaker 2: any sort. It's for her naivety, and that's what they
Speaker 2: buying from her, is that innocence that she can sell once.
Speaker 2: And that relationship between kind of naivety and reflection after
Speaker 2: the event seems to me to run powerfully through all fours. Right.
Speaker 1: I really I'm glad you used that word naive, because
Speaker 1: I do often say that the character is a bit
Speaker 1: more naive than me. And that was because I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to have seen around the corner of a
Speaker 1: feeling to write about it, you know. And I changed
Speaker 1: over the course of writing the book. You know. I
Speaker 1: started when I was forty five. I'm fifty now, and
Speaker 1: there were things I really outgrew. But I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: it's so valuable. It's so valuable, like her kind of
Speaker 1: borderline misogyny, you know, in a moment like it's awful,
Speaker 1: and I you know, I I worry sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: people quote books a lot these days online and it's
Speaker 1: just some horrible thing that the narrator thought, and then
Speaker 1: it just says Miranda July. I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: don't think about that, obviously, you know, good writer would,
Speaker 1: But to let her be wrong, you know, because I
Speaker 1: think having like a woman talk about her real, honest
Speaker 1: feelings about aging and desire and her own body and
Speaker 1: all these things like, well, if you're not going to
Speaker 1: be honest, like what are you doing? What is the
Speaker 1: new ground that you're breaking here? And that was the
Speaker 1: project was to like write the book I couldn't find
Speaker 1: that I wanted and to have real kinship. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be shamed. I don't want to feel more
Speaker 1: vain than the writer, you know. I also want to
Speaker 1: feel like the writer grows, you know, and that there
Speaker 1: is more for me beyond anxiety.
Speaker 2: You know. You talk about honesty. I think that's where
Speaker 2: the power of the book lies is that I think
Speaker 2: all your characters, I think, have this capacity for extraordinary
Speaker 2: honesty of the sort that you don't read very often.
Speaker 2: But it's not necessarily honesty with self knowledge. They're reflecting
Speaker 2: something You're one step ahead of them at all points,
Speaker 2: but they're kind of opening up to us. And I
Speaker 2: think that's an incredible trick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels really good at the time too, you know,
Speaker 1: to be writing and just to be unknowing, you know.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of openness to not try and be
Speaker 1: smart about everything, because that's not really how things are alive,
Speaker 1: like people are trying, you know, trying to figure stuff out.
Speaker 1: It's not like she's not trying, but kind of like
Speaker 1: the dumbness of us, you know, the dumb ways we
Speaker 1: try to connect or transform or those are interesting, right,
Speaker 1: like that that's very human.
Speaker 2: I think that's right. And I think getting that relationship
Speaker 2: right between allowing for uncertainty while at the same time
Speaker 2: not letting it be coupled with shame, like that that
Speaker 2: idea of getting past shame, or that sometimes the business
Speaker 2: of living or making choices or taking risks requires you
Speaker 2: not to be kind of motivated by shame, and that
Speaker 2: seems again one of those things that's really important in
Speaker 2: this book.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean I started out writing it frankly just
Speaker 1: kind of embarrassed to even have to show how old
Speaker 1: I was, like talk about shame. I really like, you
Speaker 1: just start where you start. And in the first few
Speaker 1: months I was like, is this really a good idea
Speaker 1: because then I can't sort of fudge my age for
Speaker 1: a long time as people do come. And then I
Speaker 1: was like, well, but really that's such a small reward,
Speaker 1: And what the book offers is a much richer life
Speaker 1: than this kind of. I mean, it is really what's
Speaker 1: offered to women past a certain age is really so
Speaker 1: little that risk taking it starts to feel less risky.
Speaker 1: It's like, what am I losing? You know, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be ignored less meanly if I don't do this.
Speaker 1: I mean, now in retrospect, I'm like, I kind of
Speaker 1: I think almost in every interview I sort of state
Speaker 1: my age, just because I'm trying to help people kind
Speaker 1: of orient themselves. And I also, you know, there's also
Speaker 1: quite a lot of young women reading this book, and
Speaker 1: that's part of the project too, is to allow young
Speaker 1: women to have something to connect the dots to in
Speaker 1: the future. You know, there's a cliff on the cover
Speaker 1: of the book that's sort of quite resonant, and I
Speaker 1: think part of the reason that this time of life
Speaker 1: like a sudden cliff, like you've suddenly entered a mapless place,
Speaker 1: is because it's so underdescribed, you know, because it's I
Speaker 1: guess implicitly humiliating or something that you have nothing to
Speaker 1: connect the dots too from younger ages, so you just
Speaker 1: come upon it very suddenly and you're like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I was assuming. I guess just more like
Speaker 1: more of this, more of my young self. But I
Speaker 1: just somehow it was all going to work out, and
Speaker 1: so that that emptiness, you know, just lack of kind
Speaker 1: of imagery and even basic information about your body, you know,
Speaker 1: your hormones and stuff, which literally just a few years ago,
Speaker 1: there was like endless information about your reproductive system, like
Speaker 1: everyone wanted to be involved. So it's it's actually quite
Speaker 1: useful to kind of peg these ages just to allow
Speaker 1: young women to have something to.
Speaker 2: Move towards in preparation for writing this book or and
Speaker 2: they'll laid up to it. Spoke to a whole lot
Speaker 2: of gynecologists. You wound up doing a kind of manipause
Speaker 2: deep dive. Yeah, tell me a bit about that process
Speaker 2: and its relationship to the writing of the book at the.
Speaker 1: Time, you know, in the time that I've written the book,
Speaker 1: things began to change. So for example, near the end
Speaker 1: of writing the book, there was a New York Times
Speaker 1: magazine cover article called Women have Been Misled about Menopause.
Speaker 1: Huge article, you know, very important. A lot of the
Speaker 1: information in that I knew not to not to toot
Speaker 1: my own horn, but I had also come to the
Speaker 1: same conclusion. But that article hadn't come out yet. So
Speaker 1: I did for a long time think that I needed
Speaker 1: to be the one to explain that women had been
Speaker 1: mislaid about menopause. And so I had the task of
Speaker 1: writing this very informational, educating book that was really hard.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you. Then, Actually what happened was a
Speaker 1: book called what fresh hell is this? A book about perimenopause,
Speaker 1: came out like during the pandemic. And it's a great book.
Speaker 1: It's relatable. It's the book I would want. I would
Speaker 1: not want Miranda July poorly educating me about it. And
Speaker 1: so and I actually hunted down that writer and I
Speaker 1: talked to her and she was like, how great that
Speaker 1: it's a novel. You know, you're free and I from
Speaker 1: that point on I took out an incredible amount of pages.
Speaker 1: And then I realized, like, oh, all these things that
Speaker 1: happened to our body are so shape shifty, you know.
Speaker 1: I Mean, the reason we get influenced by googling something
Speaker 1: online and whatever ailment is because like we really have
Speaker 1: no idea. It's just filtered through all our own needs
Speaker 1: and plans and is we can't see inside ourselves. We
Speaker 1: don't even really know where our organs are I don't,
Speaker 1: and so I let Perry amenopause be like that, and
Speaker 1: the information to be this kind of fun house mirror
Speaker 1: for the narrator, Like things loom huge at certain points
Speaker 1: and then they get smaller and shrink when you know
Speaker 1: she's shifted through a certain phase, and that has its
Speaker 1: own strange accuracy.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a minute. The kind of other
Speaker 2: parallel thing for your character and orforce. That's I think
Speaker 2: really important to the way she's experiencing perimenopause and and
Speaker 2: aging more generally, is she has experienced a difficult birth
Speaker 2: of her child years earlier.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The nature of that means her relationship to her own
Speaker 2: body and her relationship to mortality, I think is defined
Speaker 2: in very different terms. Was that always there in the story?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I did have in those early novel two notes
Speaker 1: stuff about how trauma stays in the body. First of all,
Speaker 1: like if this is a book about this woman's body
Speaker 1: and desire and dance and all these things, also it
Speaker 1: also holds this. It also holds this not just trauma,
Speaker 1: but like sense of mortality, where it's like death has
Speaker 1: entered your life at a certain point and it's not
Speaker 1: leaving you have to form a relationship with it. And
Speaker 1: maybe that's okay. You know, maybe that is leading you
Speaker 1: as much as lust to different relationships. It's tricky, you know,
Speaker 1: and a book about aging is going to have mortality
Speaker 1: in different ways. But I didn't. I'm not ready to
Speaker 1: face you know. I don't. I'm not thinking about my
Speaker 1: own mortality enough. And yet I think by this age,
Speaker 1: you've usually been through something where you kind of get it.
Speaker 1: You get you. You have a basic empathy for anyone
Speaker 1: who's been through a tragedy, like you've touched it, or
Speaker 1: you've come close, or you whatever, spent some time in hospitals,
Speaker 1: and so that seems so important because it's part of
Speaker 1: what's meaningful about getting older, too, is that you have
Speaker 1: that to connect with, even connecting with someone you know
Speaker 1: very unrelatable otherwise, you know, if you had that in common,
Speaker 1: that would be like a very spiritual joining.
Speaker 2: One of the ways it functions for your character, partly
Speaker 2: because it's tied with parenting, is the ways in which
Speaker 2: it locks her into a sense of responsibility as well.
Speaker 2: You know, when you know the agility of the people
Speaker 2: that you love, you feel the impossibility of letting them
Speaker 2: down or being away from them. And I think particularly
Speaker 2: I think you make the case in the novel in
Speaker 2: myriad ways, but particularly for women, that limiting of possibilities
Speaker 2: after a certain point, because of the ways in which
Speaker 2: life a cruise, a sense of responsibility to others is
Speaker 2: it makes for a beautiful dramatic tension in the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's sort of a constant crisis to be
Speaker 1: holding all of that. And and I guess I've I
Speaker 1: felt like maybe you could root for her to have
Speaker 1: some relief or some spaciousness and freedom, knowing that she
Speaker 1: was like holding death in one hand and like this
Speaker 1: precarious living child, you know, as all children are precarious
Speaker 1: like in the other And yeah, and then I didn't
Speaker 1: I want to just kind of rehash the never boring
Speaker 1: to me the plight of the modern working woman mother.
Speaker 1: But I guess, you know, you try and do it
Speaker 1: in your own way, and it's piercing. It's like not
Speaker 1: a there's nothing mundane about it for her.
Speaker 2: But there is also the flip side of it is
Speaker 2: there is also this incredible joy to release, to risk,
Speaker 2: to weirdness, to breaking frame that becomes this absolutely kind
Speaker 2: of joyous thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think any parent, certainly any mom knows
Speaker 1: that the sort of almost psychedelic feeling of like a
Speaker 1: childless you know, night or chapter. But the question is,
Speaker 1: like how much do you trust that, like if it
Speaker 1: contains some important part of you, you know, some part
Speaker 1: that you perhaps need to learn how to incorporate into
Speaker 1: your life. You know, this essentially like drug trip feeling, Well,
Speaker 1: how is that done? You know? And how is that
Speaker 1: done responsibly? And is that allowed? You know what? What
Speaker 1: are the examples of how you do that? How you
Speaker 1: you bring that free sense of yourself into this family structure?
Speaker 1: Does the structure have to change?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, not just letting go of shame,
Speaker 2: but letting go of guilt, trying to work out the
Speaker 2: role for selfishness in a family unit as well the
Speaker 2: ways in which, as you say, that structure might need
Speaker 2: to change to accommodate the various ways in which people
Speaker 2: grow and change.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it does to me still always seem staggering
Speaker 1: that we're doing marriage and the same the same way
Speaker 1: since it was invented. I mean, not going to cite
Speaker 1: a date there, I'm not sure that's yeah, in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, that's definitely wrong. But when you think about
Speaker 1: how different our lives look, especially as women, you think
Speaker 1: this is a funny thing to commit, like we're going
Speaker 1: to sleep in this bed together in the same house
Speaker 1: for the rest of our lives, because that is a
Speaker 1: core tenant of the marriage, you know. And it's like
Speaker 1: if you pull it one thing, if you're like, well,
Speaker 1: are we like is that best? Is that what everyone
Speaker 1: really wants? You know, then it's sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is up for grabs, like why are
Speaker 1: we doing this? What do we really like about it?
Speaker 1: And what is just stuff we felt we had to do?
Speaker 1: And I mean the honesty though that's that's required for that.
Speaker 1: It's not that my narrator and her husband are particularly
Speaker 1: up for the task, you know. That's the other thing.
Speaker 1: It's it's I love fiction compared to real life, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to these things, like to not have
Speaker 1: to write a single scene that took place in like
Speaker 1: couples therapy, but to get across nonetheless some of the
Speaker 1: some feelings, some truths from a changing marriage in a
Speaker 1: way that can could only happen through fiction, that could
Speaker 1: only happen in a scene that wasn't what happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can I ask you about dance and the ways
Speaker 2: in which dance is important to you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's kind of crept up on me.
Speaker 1: I'm often surprised to see like a really early work
Speaker 1: and realize like, oh, I'm dancing, or there's something very
Speaker 1: physical happening or wrestling, or it's odd because I think
Speaker 1: of myself so in my head just like these two
Speaker 1: eyes peering out of a brain, and this is just
Speaker 1: the thing I carry it around in. But I guess
Speaker 1: increasingly like the feeling of kind of having a brain
Speaker 1: all over your body, and that that the different parts
Speaker 1: of you might have different things to say and might
Speaker 1: be able to speak better. Yeah. And in writing the book,
Speaker 1: I often just stood up and danced, and it was
Speaker 1: it was like a very good way to give up.
Speaker 1: It was like saying, like, I don't give up on
Speaker 1: myself or my ability to feel joy, which often you
Speaker 1: feel when you get up from your desk or create
Speaker 1: joy or make meaning. I just don't know anymore with language,
Speaker 1: And I think I've had times in my life when
Speaker 1: dancing with other people has felt just exquisite, you know,
Speaker 1: like something kind of alien almost, you know, at least
Speaker 1: to my kind of brain where I'm like, what is
Speaker 1: what is this? What are we doing? It's not sex,
Speaker 1: it's maybe not even romantic, and yet it's beyond that.
Speaker 1: It's it is that. And then I think I also
Speaker 1: used dance in this book as a kind of stand
Speaker 1: in for all art, including writing, in the sense that
Speaker 1: art of maybe coming to midlife for me, Miranda July
Speaker 1: is realizing like, oh, I've dedicated my whole life to this,
Speaker 1: like to making things and to taking in the things
Speaker 1: other people have made, and what is it like? And
Speaker 1: can I now, at this age, have I earned the
Speaker 1: right to speak about it, to describe what it is
Speaker 1: for me and what it is that happens when we're
Speaker 1: together watching something and I in moments it is specifically
Speaker 1: about dance, and at moments you could swap out music
Speaker 1: or art or you know, like it's those moments are
Speaker 1: probably the least fiction y, you know, if people want
Speaker 1: to accuse me of writing for myself, I think it's
Speaker 1: really those moments more than anything about like marriage or anything.
Speaker 1: It's that I just decided that was interesting enough.
Speaker 2: You know, the other thing that strikes me about dance
Speaker 2: is about that idea of release, Like professional dances, skilled dances.
Speaker 2: Obviously there's incredible control, there's incredible kind of but dance
Speaker 2: as a space that goes beyond the eyes in the
Speaker 2: front of the brain is just about letting go and
Speaker 2: not not being controlled. Seems very singular to me.
Speaker 1: I know, right, and I do feel like like so
Speaker 1: for me anyways, the way I dance, it's it's always
Speaker 1: improv right. I mean, I probably couldn't do the same
Speaker 1: thing twice if I had to, which no one's asking
Speaker 1: me to. And for me, the best of writing is
Speaker 1: that too. Like when people comment on like the humor
Speaker 1: or something, I always want to trainlan like, well, it's
Speaker 1: improv right, I mean, it's only funny because it came
Speaker 1: to me in the moment it was improv and then
Speaker 1: it whatever, you rewrite it and whatever, but it still
Speaker 1: remains keeps the energy of the sort of live thing
Speaker 1: that is funny, and dance is always like that, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe not funny, but it's always new like this kind
Speaker 1: of like carving and endlessly.
Speaker 2: You've been creative in the public sphere for a long
Speaker 2: time now, and so when thinking about questions of aging
Speaker 2: when writing this book, how do you feel about having
Speaker 2: creatively aged? Do you engage with your earlier work. Do
Speaker 2: you look at it and think, I would never write
Speaker 2: that the same way now, or do you look at
Speaker 2: it with a sense of kind of wonder at who
Speaker 2: you were when you produce that earlier work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what a nice question. I don't look back much,
Speaker 1: to be honest, but if there's an occasion that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, one of my early short stories, I need
Speaker 1: to look at it. I think, for one thing, with
Speaker 1: those stories in particular, I kind of marvel that I
Speaker 1: just wrote them. They were the kind of easy, like
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that it could be hard. I did them pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: you know, not to say I wasn't rewriting and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, but the initial first drafts, and that will
Speaker 1: always be kind of special to me to know that, like, well,
Speaker 1: only could happen like that for a little while, but
Speaker 1: you got it, and it's here in a book. And
Speaker 1: I've never made a perfect thing, so I'm always very
Speaker 1: aware of the like sort of percentage of what's right
Speaker 1: to wrong. I don't really watch my movies ever again
Speaker 1: after they've premiered, because who can bear it? But I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just so happy that I've gotten to keep doing it.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was all I wanted. So I think
Speaker 1: looking back is often just a feeling of that of like, ah,
Speaker 1: like some road behind you indicates like you got what
Speaker 1: you want it. Yeah, to keep going.
Speaker 2: Miranda Julia's new novel All Fours is available wherever you
Speaker 2: buy your books. Her short stories have appeared widely, including
Speaker 2: in The New Yorker, and are also worth checking out.
Speaker 2: And that New York Times piece you mentioned, women have
Speaker 2: been Misled about Menopause. That was by Susan Dominus. There's
Speaker 2: a link to it in the show notes. Before we go,
Speaker 2: I wanted to tell you what I've been reading this week,
Speaker 2: and it has been an unmitigated delight to sink into column.
Speaker 2: Toybin's new novel, Long Island. It's a sequel to his
Speaker 2: beloved two thousand and nine novel Brooklyn, and returns to
Speaker 2: his heroine Eilish Lacey decades later. It is every bit
Speaker 2: as beautiful as its predecessor. And while we're talking Toybin,
Speaker 2: if you've never read his early novel The Heather Blazing,
Speaker 2: do so immediately. It's a personal favorite. He's so good.
Speaker 2: You can find these books and all the others we
Speaker 2: mentioned at your favorite independent bookstore. That's it for this
Speaker 2: week's show. If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends
Speaker 2: and rate and review us. Next week, I'm Read This
Speaker 2: I chat with Bruce Pasco about his new novel and
Speaker 2: the Vagaries of History. Read This is produced and edited
Speaker 2: by Clara Ames, mixing and original compositions by Zalton Fetcho.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, See you next week