Speaker 1: John Saffron has been a fixture in Australian media since
Speaker 1: his breakthrough in nineteen ninety seven with ABCTV's Race Around
Speaker 1: the World. That show, if you've never heard of it,
Speaker 1: was this kind of er reality TV format. A bunch
Speaker 1: of young, aspiring filmmakers were each given a camera and
Speaker 1: a travel budget and had to produce short docos each week.
Speaker 1: John didn't win the first series, but his outlandish, imaginative
Speaker 1: hair raising pranks gave him a reputation and a career.
Speaker 1: Whether it was streaking through the streets of Jerusalem or
Speaker 1: putting a voodoo curse on one of his exes on
Speaker 1: the Ivory Coast, his speciality was a kind of boundary
Speaker 1: pushing monstrousness that explored ideas about faith, race and culture.
Speaker 1: After several TV series of his own John Saffron's Music Jamboree,
Speaker 1: John Saffron Versus God and John Saffron's Race Relations, he
Speaker 1: made the shift to book length journalism, and it's safe
Speaker 1: to say that his appetite for provocation and curiosity about
Speaker 1: subjects more typically approached with caution and circumspection hasn't gone anywhere.
Speaker 1: I've known John for many years now. In his capacity
Speaker 1: to make any conversation awkward, somehow combative and genuinely batshit
Speaker 1: is without peer. And his latest book, well, actually I
Speaker 1: should let John introduce.
Speaker 2: Him for people who don't know I'm in Kanye, because
Speaker 2: Michael doesn't know how to set up an interview. I mean,
Speaker 2: so the book scored squat a week squatting at Kanye's mansion,
Speaker 2: and yeah, so I went into Kanye's mansion. I made
Speaker 2: my way in into legal expression, and I used it
Speaker 2: as a writer's retreat. I'd found out from neighbors that
Speaker 2: Kanye hadn't been seen there for months and months and
Speaker 2: months and months and months, so they suspected he wasn't there.
Speaker 2: And then also they told me and actually the security
Speaker 2: guys I saw they left a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2: So I was like, oh my god, this is like
Speaker 2: and it was probably because he hadn't paid them. That
Speaker 2: was my addiction or whatever. They're going back any further.
Speaker 2: You're very asking like why am I even do? Godam
Speaker 2: it's so defensive, John Saffron, But it's Kanye. He started it.
Speaker 2: Kanye West started it because the year he went right
Speaker 2: not a legal defense stuff. Yes, he went ragging on
Speaker 2: the Jews. So I thought I'd go there, and I
Speaker 2: darted around LA and New York and talk to people
Speaker 2: in each circle and also eccentric people who are interested
Speaker 2: in the whole Black American Jewish American situation, like rappers
Speaker 2: and preachers and people in religious sects and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: And I was there with another Australian writer and we're
Speaker 2: talking one night over seafood in a Malibu seafood restaurant,
Speaker 2: and it was like, yeah, why not for the writer's retreat, John,
Speaker 2: for your when you have to sit there and write
Speaker 2: the book. Why not you U see abandoned mansion? So
Speaker 2: does that make sense? See?
Speaker 1: The beauty of a podcast is because it's editable. There's
Speaker 1: going to be a good setup. John. I promise you.
Speaker 2: I'll be fine. I'm putting you at ease. It's fine, John.
Speaker 1: You just don't trust you just don't trust there's process.
Speaker 2: Okay. Sure? Anyway, that was that it's a good setup.
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 1: I'm Michael Williams and this is read. This a show
Speaker 1: about the books we love and the stories behind them.
Speaker 1: You decide to go and use Kanye's abandoned mansion as
Speaker 1: a writer's retreat, but at that point, you don't even
Speaker 1: know the book you're writing. You're not in there because
Speaker 1: you know you want to necessarily explore Kanye, explore Andy, Semitism,
Speaker 1: explore you. Just you've got a vibe and total. That's
Speaker 1: what I want to ask you about today, is because
Speaker 1: for you, you sent to me to be the most
Speaker 1: counterintuitive mix between intuition on the one hand, and the
Speaker 1: way that you approach your work and then a real
Speaker 1: kind of deliberateness and a real sincerity which I think
Speaker 1: surprises people about you. And that's that's what I want
Speaker 1: to get to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I follow things that feel emotionally true to me
Speaker 2: and just the energy in the universe. And that might
Speaker 2: sound pretendial, but it's not because I'm like, I like
Speaker 2: leave the house. And so when you leave the house,
Speaker 2: if you're like walking around the streets of LA and
Speaker 2: you're sort of you're following things and reaching for things, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you just you get vibes. And probably because it's my
Speaker 2: fourth book, I reckon, I would have been more nervous.
Speaker 2: If it was my first book. I would have gone, Okay,
Speaker 2: it can be a chapter of me going into Kanye's mansion.
Speaker 2: But I felt it I felt like, if this book
Speaker 2: is basically set up my whole week inside this mansion, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with that. And it just seemed,
Speaker 2: even though I couldn't quite explain it, it just seemed
Speaker 2: it seemed unusual enough and a bit you know, not
Speaker 2: the same old, same old. So, for instance, if the
Speaker 2: book was me chasing Kanye and then hanging with Kanye
Speaker 2: like that, of course that could have been really good
Speaker 2: in some other way or whatever. But I felt, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, like I'm old, and I thought, is that
Speaker 2: like a bit cringe, you know, chasing up? Whilst I
Speaker 2: felt there were all the pieces of like making my
Speaker 2: way into Kanye's mansion and spending a week there as
Speaker 2: the writer's retreat just had enough stuff that it made
Speaker 2: it kind of you know, interesting and tense and everything
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Tense and also quite exposed, like it is a story
Speaker 1: about a kind of week long descent into a kind
Speaker 1: of madness in your own head. As you get more
Speaker 1: and more spooked by the weirdness of your surrounds, you
Speaker 1: have moments of lucidity where you realize how crazy the
Speaker 1: thing you're doing is, and then you know, also the
Speaker 1: overlay of that is some of the questions that you're
Speaker 1: asking about Kanye as a figure. I want to maybe
Speaker 1: go back to that for a second, because while you're
Speaker 1: a huge hip hop fan, you weren't a hardcore Kanye
Speaker 1: devotee necessarily.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it was Kanye coming out in support of
Speaker 2: Hitler that was just so fascinating to me because he
Speaker 2: was a mainstream celebrity. Also, it was like eclectic his
Speaker 2: anti Semitism, like it like, it wasn't like just this
Speaker 2: general like I'm pissed off as the Jews, where you
Speaker 2: could kind of, you know, just some generic kind of
Speaker 2: thing where it could have been Asians or Muslims or whatever. Like,
Speaker 2: he was reaching into things like the Protocols of the
Speaker 2: Elders Learned Elders of Zion. So yeah, so it was
Speaker 2: just like fascinating that this mainstream figure was spreading that
Speaker 2: to a totally new generation who had no context of
Speaker 2: it of what it meant. And then also the fact
Speaker 2: that you know, he wasn't a white American, who was
Speaker 2: a Black American. That made it interesting because you know,
Speaker 2: I got to look into the history of Black Americans
Speaker 2: and Jewish Americans and how they were allies over things
Speaker 2: like civil sometimes, but there was a there's a prickly
Speaker 2: relationship to sometimes and you know, even looking at the
Speaker 2: threads in the founding of hip hop and there's the
Speaker 2: Jewish record producers but also Jewish artists and stuff, and
Speaker 2: like are they taking that music? And and yeah, so
Speaker 2: it just it like ticked a lot of boxes, a
Speaker 2: lot of awkward boxes.
Speaker 1: That the awkward boxes one hundred percent on brand for
Speaker 1: you is that there's a friction here in a set
Speaker 1: of contradictions, and lots of people would be like it
Speaker 1: was a bit uncomfortable. I'd rather look away, and you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to just keep picking up that scab.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lots of writers would have liked that if it
Speaker 2: was Mack or Moore. Why did it have to be
Speaker 2: a Black American rapper? Why couldn't it have been Vanilla Ice. Well,
Speaker 2: I couldn't have been post Malone.
Speaker 1: It still could be.
Speaker 2: They're very capable. Yes, So yeah, And it's just I'm
Speaker 2: really interested in cultural fault lines, and I think I'm
Speaker 2: just interested in it generally. But also so if I
Speaker 2: never got into what I got into as my occupation,
Speaker 2: I'd still be interested or whatever. But like in my work,
Speaker 2: it just seems to be the gift that keeps on giving.
Speaker 2: I'm one of the first things. One of the earlier
Speaker 2: things I did on a TV show called John Saffran
Speaker 2: Versus God is I try to join the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 2: And I'm acting all fou naive lately, you know, like
Speaker 2: I find out their history and about how or one
Speaker 2: point they didn't allow Catholics in, but now you know,
Speaker 2: they're allowing Catholics in. So I went there through want
Speaker 2: the bunkers of one of the chapters of the Ku
Speaker 2: Klux Klan. They didn't know what's Jewish before I got there.
Speaker 2: But then during the interview, I'm asking who can join
Speaker 2: the Klan, who can't or whatever, like can women join
Speaker 2: the clan? And yeah, of course non American, Yeah yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: Catholic yeah yeah. And I said, what happens if you're
Speaker 2: you know, you're brought up Jewish, but you don't anything
Speaker 2: Jewish anymore, because That's where I'm at. And then he's
Speaker 2: sort of what is like, is your mother? He goes, yes,
Speaker 2: and she were Jews are from their father the Devil,
Speaker 2: They're from the Synagogue of Satan. And I'm like phone
Speaker 2: naively pitching back to him, going, yeah, but I don't
Speaker 2: do anything Jewish, you know, I drive on the Sabbath,
Speaker 2: I mix milk and meat. And he says, going, yeah,
Speaker 2: but we think it's a race, not just a religion
Speaker 2: or whatever. And then I said, yeah, but look, I'm
Speaker 2: whiter than Hitler. He had brown hair and brown eyes.
Speaker 2: I have blonde hair and blue eyes. If I went
Speaker 2: to school with Hitler, I'd be the one beating him
Speaker 2: up for being a wog. And so when I did
Speaker 2: that at the time, I didn't like overly think about it,
Speaker 2: like the whole kind of arbitrary nature of like identity
Speaker 2: and race and how it's so important, but like exactly
Speaker 2: that I'm whiter than you know, like and I think
Speaker 2: that taps in with a lot of people, especially a
Speaker 2: lot of people in Australia who have like their Australian
Speaker 2: but they've got something else as well. And I think
Speaker 2: this kind of vibration I have in my head of
Speaker 2: like where do you stand and you're one thing but
Speaker 2: you're the other. I think a lot of people feel that,
Speaker 2: even though I express it in the silliest outrageous way
Speaker 2: or whatever. Yeah, it's just interesting because I identity, it's
Speaker 2: so important obviously, and yet yet it's so kind of arbitrary.
Speaker 1: It's so important and important to your work. But you
Speaker 1: mentioned in the Klan example, Yeah, the phone naivety thing.
Speaker 1: You know, there is an element of performance there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ever since Race around the World when you clocked that
Speaker 1: actually your instincts were good about what people wanted here,
Speaker 1: and the sweet spot was putting yourself in situations of
Speaker 1: mild to severe peril in the interests of kind of
Speaker 1: teasing out these uncomfortable ideas. But there is there is
Speaker 1: a kind of performance there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: How does that performance make the shift when you become
Speaker 1: John's writer of books?
Speaker 2: I just yeah, I kind of float around to see
Speaker 2: what's working. So yeah. Yeah. Once an American saw one
Speaker 2: of my shows and they said, oh, it's very confusing
Speaker 2: to watch because if you compare it to like some
Speaker 2: Sasha Baron Cohen thing, like there's a consistent reality. So,
Speaker 2: for instance, a voiceover by Sasha Baron Cohen on a
Speaker 2: Borat thing is the same character as Borat, but he's
Speaker 2: going It's so confusing because you can have one one
Speaker 2: segment on your show where you're kind of phoue naive
Speaker 2: and then on top of that, the voiceover is you
Speaker 2: being sincere, but then the next segment is you just
Speaker 2: being more Louis thuruy more just normal you and you're
Speaker 2: going to a Hindu temple or whatever. But you're just
Speaker 2: you and you're there and you're very curious and you're
Speaker 2: normal and whatever, and then the next segment is like
Speaker 2: a scripted song parody or something like that. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's definitely left me with a kind of a CV
Speaker 2: that's kind of which where I'm like all over the place.
Speaker 1: I do think, like, notwithstanding that eclecticism, like the through
Speaker 1: line from your earliest media work to this book is
Speaker 1: a pretty clear one. Yeah, on the question of sincerity,
Speaker 1: how since his cany like, how much is this useful
Speaker 1: stuff to pass or unpack and how much of it
Speaker 1: is part of hyper performance or frankly just unwellness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when it comes to is it a performance
Speaker 2: or does he actually believe these neo Nazi things? I
Speaker 2: look into that in the book where I have a
Speaker 2: conversation with, of course a problematic person, Gavin McGinnis, who's
Speaker 2: the founder of the Proud Boys, because we were discussing
Speaker 2: about how well David Bowe had a period where he
Speaker 2: leant into like fascist iconography, including the swastika, and I
Speaker 2: think that's part of his thin white duke period. So
Speaker 2: it became well, artists allowed to lean into dangerous things.
Speaker 2: And I mean the other one is Sid Vicious from
Speaker 2: the Sex Pistols, the nineteen seventies punk band, and you know,
Speaker 2: he had a swastika, and it's like people kind of
Speaker 2: come to these things with their own little reasons and
Speaker 2: and ill thought out reasons, and Kanye maybe like just
Speaker 2: you know, that's part of it. You know, like David Bowie,
Speaker 2: like Sid Vicious was just feeling this is the ultimate
Speaker 2: transgression and I should put this out there that people
Speaker 2: have said to me, and it's a very good point.
Speaker 2: They go, yeah, John, it's the laziest transgression. It's like,
Speaker 2: if you were really a good transgressive artist, you just
Speaker 2: come up with something less corny than using neo Nazi iconography.
Speaker 2: And he's probably a bit like me, not fully thinking
Speaker 2: through everything and just like chasing these kind of like impulses.
Speaker 1: I like that you reference the whole concept of trolling
Speaker 1: because it is so much part of that provocation for
Speaker 1: provocation sake. Oh, there's this orthodoxy that is therefore the
Speaker 1: safe way to be. If I want to be an
Speaker 1: artist or an agitator or whatever, then it's my job
Speaker 1: to push to that uncomfortable place, which strikes me as
Speaker 1: a position that you would personally have a huge amount
Speaker 1: of sympathy for.
Speaker 2: I would. But the thing where I'm different to Kanye
Speaker 2: is the only thing the only thing where I'm and
Speaker 2: also some other people. I really think literal politics kurdles art.
Speaker 2: But I guess when you're in this transgressive space where
Speaker 2: you're sort of trolling and everything like that, I do
Speaker 2: think the energy in your work is partially relying on
Speaker 2: the ambiguity of things. You know, Like I don't know
Speaker 2: why he ruins his work by kind of hanging out
Speaker 2: with political figures and taking out the ambiguity in things.
Speaker 1: When we return, as unlikely as it seems, John shairs
Speaker 1: the emotional truth behind the squat, We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: The thing about most of John Saffron's work is even
Speaker 1: the first time you watch it, you've got your hands
Speaker 1: over your eyes, you're kind of cringing with the sheer,
Speaker 1: excruciating audacity of it. So it seems unthinkable to me
Speaker 1: over a career that his work is something he would
Speaker 1: return to, so I had to ask, does he rewatch
Speaker 1: his earlier work.
Speaker 2: The only thing I've watched several times is when I
Speaker 2: got exercised by an evangelical Christian exorcist in America or whatever.
Speaker 2: I've watched that several times. That's like half hour long
Speaker 2: of just me being for some reason, I can watch that.
Speaker 2: Everything else I don't really watch. But then when I
Speaker 2: do watch some of that back I kind of go
Speaker 2: when I was fourteen or sixteen, if I watched this stuff,
Speaker 2: I would have gone, Oh, it's pretty cool or whatever.
Speaker 2: I feel better about it. And I also think it's
Speaker 2: interesting how the backdrop to the world changes and things
Speaker 2: are a different context. It's kind of interesting and it
Speaker 2: kind of explains that different reactions explain to the changing backdrop.
Speaker 1: Given what you say about the ambivalence about rewatching, say
Speaker 1: race relations, part of it is having done it, you're
Speaker 1: happy to relinquish it to the people who watch it.
Speaker 1: Is that different for your books, like your four books
Speaker 1: in that And I do think there is a discernible
Speaker 1: difference in the kind of storytelling you're doing on the
Speaker 1: page the stuff that you're doing on the screen. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious about how much you get in your own
Speaker 1: head about it as a physical artifact that is unchanging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely like and it's never like one thing
Speaker 2: or the over arching thing in my mind or whatever.
Speaker 2: But I do like things like you're not meant to do,
Speaker 2: but not in a bad way. Like I like how
Speaker 2: this story about Kanye should be a series of tiktoks
Speaker 2: or whatever, but it's not. Like there is something kind
Speaker 2: of fun about how it's this old school book. There's
Speaker 2: already a bit of that online even though the book's
Speaker 2: just been released on like this hip Hop America hip
Speaker 2: hop subreddit where they've already picked it up, or they're
Speaker 2: just confused, like why is this a book? Like why
Speaker 2: are you allowed to do a book like this?
Speaker 1: And also it means that you do play with the
Speaker 1: book form as well. Some of the chapters are super short.
Speaker 1: The chapter that shares its name with the book, Squat,
Speaker 1: is just about you going to the toilet in there,
Speaker 1: and that's a very short chapter but necessary because you know,
Speaker 1: a pastor points out to you that Jesus' story isn't
Speaker 1: meaningful if you don't cover him defecating on the cross,
Speaker 1: So you have to do the same for yourself.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I feel like this book I reckon. My
Speaker 2: first book is way more I'm shooting my documentary, but
Speaker 2: I just happened to my first book should almost be
Speaker 2: open on a wide shot of it, and by this book,
Speaker 2: I've kind of got a bit more casual and cruisy,
Speaker 2: and it's yeah, I think it's more of a book book,
Speaker 2: even though it is like short chapters. Like for instance,
Speaker 2: like that's sort of like bumble around at the start
Speaker 2: of when I'm trying to figure out in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: like what I'm doing or whatever. I reckon. Earlier on
Speaker 2: in my writing career, I would have been like really
Speaker 2: nervous that I've got to explain to the reader, like
Speaker 2: almost like in a documentary it's or a TV show,
Speaker 2: it's like coming up, you know, like you know, everything
Speaker 2: has to be on the first place, like I can't
Speaker 2: lose anyone or whatever like that.
Speaker 1: Like going into a podcast and insisting you have to
Speaker 1: set up the book at yes, totally the start of
Speaker 1: the podcast rather than just giving over to it.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, very similar.
Speaker 1: One of the most stressful things in this book, and
Speaker 1: there are many stressful things in this book, but is
Speaker 1: that you only had a single pair of socks that
Speaker 1: were wet on the way in. Like that seems like
Speaker 1: a useful metaphor for lack of forethought on your part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you're validating my process where this book, I
Speaker 2: just wrote things that just felt right, and I didn't
Speaker 2: like this. I had some emotional truth. I did not overthink,
Speaker 2: like I've never thought of what you just said then,
Speaker 2: but it's true, and so now I'm like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: why I must have put in the book. But subconsciously,
Speaker 2: I think there's connection of all these scenes that are
Speaker 2: like emotionally true, and some are more kind of focused
Speaker 2: and on point with some kind of thesis about identity
Speaker 2: and anti Semitism, and some or less. I feel like,
Speaker 2: because they're all emotionally true and I'm at the center
Speaker 2: of them, it somehow makes sense. I feel like lots
Speaker 2: of my stuff makes sense until I have to explain it.
Speaker 2: And I guess that is because this is an art
Speaker 2: project as opposed to old school thorough getting all sides
Speaker 2: of things journalism, so you can kind of hold things
Speaker 2: together through emotional truth.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting to me because I'm curious about the
Speaker 1: extent which the book reads like an exploration, like you
Speaker 1: genuinely don't know how you feel about this stuff, and
Speaker 1: you're teasing it out and you're playing it out. But
Speaker 1: how much is the emotional truth for you in grappling
Speaker 1: with this identity stuff infused with grief or fear or
Speaker 1: you know, because some of these are pretty weighty concerns,
Speaker 1: particularly at the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. When I went there, I didn't know what
Speaker 2: I was going to entirely use Kanye's outburst in service of, Like,
Speaker 2: for instance, I was thinking, perhaps it can be about
Speaker 2: the history of artists and their uneasy relationship with benefactors,
Speaker 2: and so I'd go back to Michaelangelo and the church
Speaker 2: and see how that all the way up to Taylor
Speaker 2: Swift and having fights with Apple Music over royalties and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. So I thought like that might be it.
Speaker 2: And in Australia, because I did a little bit of
Speaker 2: research beforehand, and then also in LA when I was
Speaker 2: talking to people that I was still kind of feeling
Speaker 2: away whether that was going to be the idea. The
Speaker 2: other possible idea was going to be about artists who
Speaker 2: go too far and how we kind of want to
Speaker 2: we want artists to be transgressive and go into worlds
Speaker 2: that we're too scared to go to, and it's all
Speaker 2: fun and games until it isn't. And there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of that in the book. But like, that's how well.
Speaker 2: I didn't actually know it was going to be so
Speaker 2: focused on using Jewish Americans and Black Americans as some
Speaker 2: illustration of you know, identity and how precarious identity is
Speaker 2: and all these weird cultural fault lines or whatever. But
Speaker 2: the conversations I had, just because they were so much
Speaker 2: more meaningful to me intellectually. I could write a piece
Speaker 2: about Taylor Swift and Spotify, but I don't think people
Speaker 2: would have felt it. I've always like talked about things
Speaker 2: like about my grandparents. But I realized I didn't do
Speaker 2: this on purpose. But really I've always let myself and
Speaker 2: the reader off the hook. So for instance, in puff Piece,
Speaker 2: my book about Philip Morris the cigarette company getting into
Speaker 2: e cigarettes, there is a bit of a motive of
Speaker 2: like eight million people die a year from cigarettes, and
Speaker 2: that's a holocaust and a half or whatever, and so
Speaker 2: what is it about that we just allowing this to happen?
Speaker 2: And da da dah. And because of that, you know,
Speaker 2: I told this story which I think is quite powerful
Speaker 2: about my grandfather and him, you know, escaping Germany. But
Speaker 2: then it wasn't the Nazis who killed him, it was cigarettes.
Speaker 2: And in fact, he had this operation where the Nazis
Speaker 2: saved him because they used to have this health system
Speaker 2: there where you know, even if you're Jewish, you've got
Speaker 2: the best blah blah blah. And it was like, so
Speaker 2: it was really interesting and I'm like telling saying this
Speaker 2: real interesting thing about how my grandfather on my father's
Speaker 2: side was saved by the night. So it's really like
Speaker 2: pokey stuff. But then because it was like embedded in
Speaker 2: this book about Philip Morris or whatever, it meant, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's kind of interesting how he's writing a book about
Speaker 2: Philip Morris, but he's got this personal thing. But you
Speaker 2: could just kind of like move on, and in this
Speaker 2: book I just felt all this kind of painful stuff
Speaker 2: about the history of Jewish people in killing my family
Speaker 2: escaping the Nazi, I was like, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: allow myself. And it was a risk, I guess, because
Speaker 2: I could could have just come across as whiny or
Speaker 2: something or I don't know what, but I'm not going
Speaker 2: to let myself or the reader off the hook. So
Speaker 2: part of me being in this mansion for one week
Speaker 2: is just going to be exploring all these painful things
Speaker 2: in Jewish history, in cly my family history. And people
Speaker 2: have told me they go, oh, John, this book is
Speaker 2: like weird because at the end you sound angry and
Speaker 2: I've never seen that side of you before, and I'm like, oh, cool,
Speaker 2: And I think that is because I like, for better
Speaker 2: or worse, this book just doesn't let me or the
Speaker 2: reader off the hook.
Speaker 1: You mentioned puff Piece, so there is a reminder late
Speaker 1: in this book of the fact that in the writing
Speaker 1: of puff Piece you put your own health at risk.
Speaker 1: You decided that you couldn't write about addiction to these
Speaker 1: cigarettes without actually taking them up yourself, at the expense
Speaker 1: of your own health. To what extent in squat did
Speaker 1: that come at the expense of your own health? Because
Speaker 1: you seem angry at the end, but you're also seeing
Speaker 1: like you seem troubled by the end. I was worried
Speaker 1: about you, John.
Speaker 2: I wanted to give you a hut Ah. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I probably wouldn't have done any of that
Speaker 2: stuff if I didn't think it creatively vibrated. If you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, Like, I have things in my
Speaker 2: life I just do not talk about, but not because
Speaker 2: it's like a creative decision. Basically, there stakes higher than
Speaker 2: me being scared and being troubled in his mansion. And
Speaker 2: the other thing is that I've got this job to
Speaker 2: do and it's like I don't have a plan B.
Speaker 2: I would not squat at Kanye's if it wasn't for
Speaker 2: this sort of project, you know, for creative reasons or whatever.
Speaker 2: So I have to go against all my kind of feelings.
Speaker 2: And but it's just what I have to do because
Speaker 2: I like creating stories and it's very narrow what I'm
Speaker 2: good at. So yeah, this is my loss life.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty good laugh. Yet, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your time, John Saffron, No, thank you. John Saffron's
Speaker 1: new book Squat is available at all Good bookstores now.
Speaker 1: Before we go, I wanted to tell you what I've
Speaker 1: been reading this week. And I'm a huge fan of
Speaker 1: the books of British writer Alie Smith and her new
Speaker 1: book Glyph is fantastic. Gliff is the first of two
Speaker 1: new interconnected novels about dystopian fiction about climate stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: very curious to see the second half and how it
Speaker 1: relates to this first one. But it is a compelling
Speaker 1: and brilliant novel in its own right, as you'd come
Speaker 1: to expect from someone like Alie Smith. You can find
Speaker 1: it and all of her backlist and all of John
Speaker 1: Saffron's backlist at Favorite in the vendem bookstore. That's it
Speaker 1: for this week's show. If you've enjoyed it, please tell
Speaker 1: your friends about us and rate and review us. It
Speaker 1: helps a lot. Read this as a Schwartz Media production,
Speaker 1: made possible by the generous support of Ara Group. The
Speaker 1: show is produced and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing
Speaker 1: by Travis Evans and original compositions by Zolton Fetcho. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. We'll see you next week.