WEBVTT - Read This: The Real Rachel Khong 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:02.840 Hi there, It's Ruby Jones and welcome back to another 0:00:02.880 --> 0:00:07.440 episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast, hosted 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:11.039 by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features conversations 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:13.960 with some of the most talented writers from Australia and 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.160 around the world. In this episode, we're going to hear 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:21.480 from American author Rachel Kong, whose latest book is Real Americans. 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:25.400 It follows the lives of three generations of Chinese Americans 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:28.760 and explores themes of identity and what it means to 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:32.000 belong to a family, to a culture, and to a nation. 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:36.640 As always, I'm joined by Michael to tell me a 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.440 little bit more about the episode. Hi Michael, how are. 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:43.400 You, Ruby Jones? I am fine. Always a pleasure to 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:45.680 talk to you. Bet I think you would agree as 0:00:45.680 --> 0:00:49.760 someone who hosts a daily news podcast, the world has 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:52.920 gone to hell in a handbasket and it's a big grim. 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:55.200 It feels a bit funny doing a weekly podcast that 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:58.240 concerns itself with books, because you know, I don't see 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:01.760 good books as escapism. They engage with the world we're in. 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:04.520 But sometimes it's hard not to want to use a 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:07.440 book to kind of freeze time and push the political 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:10.960 situation to arm's length and not think about the various 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:13.400 ways in which the world is a bit terrifying. But 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:16.000 one of the ways in which it is bear with me, 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:19.280 fritick I promise this connects to this week's episode is 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.720 the way in which questions are belonging are being weaponized 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:25.679 at the moment across the Western world, in particular, the 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:30.160 ways in which citizenship, identity, these kind of elements become 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:33.600 tools with which to kind of alienate people and to 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:37.440 deny them basic rights. And it's in that context that 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:41.759 a phrase like real American seems incredibly charged. So it's 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:44.319 funny this week that we're talking about a book called 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:48.800 Real Americans that both engages with those ideas about who belongs, 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:51.720 about what a real American looks like, what it is, 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.440 but at the same time goes into other elements that 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:58.520 take it away from that kind of grounded context. There's 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:01.960 elements of magic or realism, elements of science fiction. It's 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:06.000 the latest book from American writer Rachel Kong, and growing 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:09.720 up as a Malaysian born American with Chinese parents, she's 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:12.640 acutely aware of how politically charged it is. It's a 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:15.880 funny tension, but kind of one that I've really enjoyed reading. 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:18.600 M Yeah, okay, Well tell me a bit more about 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:22.080 real Americans. What happens in the novel and why did 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:22.880 it resonate with you? 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:26.919 Yeah? So, Kong's a wonderful writer, as anyone who's read 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.639 her before would attest. But this new book looks at 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:33.600 three generations of Chinese Americans. There's Lily, who's the daughter 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:36.840 of parents who fled China during the Cultural Revolution, and 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:39.360 she finds unexpected love in New York at the turn 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:42.079 of the millennium. Then you have her son Nick, who 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:45.120 grows up in the Pacific Northwest, wondering about a father 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:49.520 he doesn't know. And finally May Lily's mother, a scientist 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:52.639 whose choices on behalf of her family threatened to tear 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:56.200 it apart. The whole thing spans five decades. It doesn't 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.240 happen in a linear order, and it's this exploration of 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.119 what makes us who we are, and you know, that's 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:04.640 what resonated with me. It's a challenge to some of 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:08.360 those really stubborn and corrosive myths that seem to underpin 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:11.240 the modern nation state. It's about the gap between how 0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:15.560 we see ourselves and how others see us. And look, frankly, 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:18.040 I'm a sucker for this kind of blending of genre too. 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:20.280 It's not heavy handed, but you know, there's a little 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:22.560 bit of what you could call science fiction, there's a 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:25.720 hint of what could be magic realism, and a deeply 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:30.160 romantic heart. It's lively, it's surprising, and it really embraces 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:32.560 the contradictions of who we are and how well we 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:34.880 know the people we love. I really love this one. 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:41.080 Rubit coming up in just a moment, the real Rachel Kong. 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:50.440 One of the driving forces in Real Americans is the 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:53.920 idea of luck. Who has it and what does it 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.160 mean for a person's life. So I began my conversation 0:03:57.320 --> 0:03:59.840 with Rachel asking what luck means to her. 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.080 That's an amazing question to start with. I mean, luck 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.400 is I think really at the core of this book 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:13.200 this question of what creates our lives? Essentially? Is it luck? 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:16.760 Is it chance? Is it the actions that we take? 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:21.440 Is it free will? Right? And that's just a question 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:24.640 that I've thought about for all my life, I think, 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:28.600 I think especially because I come from an immigrant family 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:31.720 and I've always had this question in my head of 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:35.640 what if my life were different. What if my parents 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:39.760 had not come to America from Malaysia. What if I 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:42.159 hadn't had the childhood that I had. What would my 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:44.480 life be like? Would I be a writer? Would I 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:48.719 be someone completely different? I think throughout all our lives, 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:51.360 you know, we're sort of touched very differently by luck, 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:55.279 and some people we sort of think of as luckier 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:59.240 than others. But I don't know. I think I was 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:03.560 just interested in in how different people sort of react 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:06.760 to quote unquote luck and how that luck shapes them 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:07.840 and shaps who they are. 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:11.359 I think it's such a fascinating set of ideas and 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:14.440 the ways in which it intersects. I think you're right. 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.400 I think it's an essential part of immigrant stories and 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:21.000 immigrant storytelling, but also the ways in which it intersects 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:25.279 with ideas of entitlement and fairness and what we're owed 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:28.719 and what we have to make for ourselves. So often 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:33.159 in migrant stories, so often in the narrative around multiculturalism, 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:37.400 around assimilation, around those things, is this idea that gratitude 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.920 should play a past, that the good migrant is grateful 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:44.479 for the opportunities that have been afforded them, rather than 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:48.400 have worked for themselves, or that luck has played a part, 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:52.000 and the intersection of all those things I think is fascinating. 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.599 I think it's so interesting because the immigrant story and 0:05:56.240 --> 0:06:00.440 this sort of American story, those stories really interesting in 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:02.360 a lot of ways. And that's something that I wanted 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:05.279 to explore in the book. And I think one of 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:08.880 the ways in which they intersect is sort of in 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:12.800 this idea of like luck and agency. There is, of course, 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:16.520 what you've said, you know, immigrants, we have to feel grateful, right, 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:19.600 The grateful immigrant is sort of this trope, and for 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:22.200 a good reason, you know. I think that that was 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:24.159 a refrain that I sort of heard growing up to 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:26.000 you know, my parents would say, we made so many 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:30.520 sacrifices for you to be here. Therefore, like, you make 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:33.560 something of your life, do better than we did, and 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:36.279 and that's a lot of pressure. And I think in 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:42.200 the American story, there's this sort of belief that, you know, 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:46.800 despite your luck, you can make anything you want of 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:49.960 your own life. You know, there's this very like pull 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:53.520 yourself up by the bootstraps mentality in the sort of 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:57.080 American narrative and probably just the Western narrative to be 0:06:57.160 --> 0:06:59.799 quite honest, but it's this idea that it doesn't matter 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.719 who you were born, as you know, what your station 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:05.919 in life is, you can get out of that, you 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:09.840 can make something better of your circumstances. And I think 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:15.080 that's of course something that that gives hope, right, And 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:17.920 I'm glad that I was raised with like this sort 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:20.000 of idea that I that I could be anything, and 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.880 that I could, you know, even if I was unlucky 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:26.760 in certain ways, I could still create my life in 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:31.160 other ways. But I think also that sort of a 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:34.400 belief in like, uh, this like do it your selfness 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.840 to a degree that was a little bit I don't 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:39.960 know if toxic is the right word, but it almost 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:42.440 like dismisses the fact that we do come from different 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:47.520 places and stations and with you know, on very unequal footing, right, 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.680 and that we are not entirely responsible or to blame 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:54.800 for what we have made of ourselves or not made 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:55.520 of ourselves. 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:57.760 You know, I think that's sort of try. I think 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:00.480 it's something I thought about a lot writing this book, 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:03.640 is the ways in which notions of luck or fortune 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:08.840 are partly the imposition of a narrative on stuff that 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:12.200 we can't account for, you know, that, and that seems 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:16.000 to me particularly acute or one of the things about 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:19.560 this book is it follows three generations of the one family, 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:22.000 and one of the things you do so well in 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:25.560 it is capture that kind of incomprehension between the different 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:29.360 generations towards each other, that kind of failure to see 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:34.040 clearly the nature of the story that your parents, your 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:37.520 grandparents might have experienced for themselves. And we kind of 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:41.480 put a narrative of luck or fortune on things. It's 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:46.120 kind of retroactive thing that's imposed sometimes rather than organically 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:47.840 springing out of the lived experience. 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:51.120 Yeah, and I think luck is so cultural also, right, 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:55.360 you know, something that one culture might consider lucky another 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:58.240 might not. I mean, certain things transcend that. I mean, 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.880 I think in most it's a good thing to have 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:05.640 more money than less money, or to have good health 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:09.520 and things like that. But I think that, Yeah, I 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:13.160 love what you just said there. The sort of disconnect 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:18.360 between generations was something that I was so interested in 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:22.360 that I'm still so interested in the fact that we 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:27.760 can try our best to understand what it might be 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:30.440 like to be a parent or our child, and yet 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.600 it's almost impossible right to sort of fully immerse yourself 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:37.840 into the perspective of another person. I think the novel 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:41.199 form is how we get the closest to that, right, 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:44.600 Like we're able to sort of place ourselves into these 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:48.760 different perspectives, these different bodies. But short of that, it's 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:51.880 you know, you could interview your parents for days and 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:55.080 still probably not understand what it means to have their 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:58.440 lived experience and what it means to have their exact perspective. 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.800 And I would understand my father less after interviewing him 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:06.439 for a couple of days before it. You know, Yeah, 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:08.840 I've read interviews with you where you're main clear that 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:11.000 you're not a big plan at going into your books, 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:14.600 and so I'm interested in the moments at which those 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:18.679 themes really started to come to the foreground. You began 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:20.080 with Lily in her story. 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:23.280 I did begin with Lily and her story, and I 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:26.199 wrote each of these characters in the order that they 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:28.000 appear in the book, which I think is a little 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:33.400 bit counterintuitive because it's not chronological necessarily. You know, we 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:37.760 get the oldest character story kind of in the very 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:42.040 last section. Yeah, the question of realness is such an 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:46.960 interesting one, and I think that it came from a 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:50.760 very personal place for me. Yeah, yeah, that question of 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:55.360 am I a real American? Has has come up, you know, 0:10:55.520 --> 0:11:00.439 at times in my past. And you know, I'm sort 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.920 of as an immigrant between these two places, right, Like 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:09.320 I feel more American than I feel like I'm anything else, honestly, 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:13.960 because culturally it's who I am. When I go back 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.120 to where my parents came from, which is Malaysia, I 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:20.960 feel like a complete outsider, right. I don't really belong 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:24.040 I don't speak the language. I can enjoy the food, 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:26.960 but I stick out like a sore thumb. I'm not 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:29.760 really like at home there, even if I enjoy it. 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:32.920 And I think just this feeling of being in between 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:37.960 these two places was really something that is very I 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:40.320 think deep within this book, I think each of the 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:44.600 characters struggles with belonging in one way or another and 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:48.160 struggles with this question of am I am I real enough? 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:54.000 Am I fitting into this category well enough? And it's 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:58.560 not even about necessarily wanting to I don't know, like 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:02.320 be part of a group necessarily, But it's more about 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:05.160 wanting to be part of a story, right and wanting 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:10.880 to be part of again, this sense of belonging a community. 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:13.640 And I think that's what a lot of the characters 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:14.800 are searching for. 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:21.440 What's the relationship for you between that kind of personal 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:26.440 exploration and becoming a writer, that kind of anxiety about 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:31.400 belonging and that desire to capture and articulate the world. 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:35.319 I have been thinking about this recently a lot. I 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:39.720 think I have been wondering why I write at all. 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:44.320 And I think there's a lot of reasons, but one 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:48.760 of the big ones I think is that writing is 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:53.480 where I get to have the deepest conversations I ever 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:55.960 get to have, you know. And I think I was 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:59.080 realizing this just the other day, because you know, when 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:02.319 you really love a book, it's it's a transformative experience. 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:06.480 It's it's this experience that has no language that you 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:08.800 could really say to express how much you know a 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:12.000 book means to you. So if I if I were 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:14.199 to love a book and then meet the author and 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.240 tell them I loved your book, like that would not 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:19.840 even begin to capture what it meant, right Like, it's 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:24.760 there's there's something that's just it's lost in the words themselves, 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.880 right Like, I feel like, yeah, the reading experience itself, 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.160 and the experience both for the writer and then for 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:36.360 the reader, Like that's where this really deep communication happens, 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:40.600 and that's where it's possible to, you know, say this 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:43.079 is what it's like for me, Is it like is 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:45.760 it like this for you? I think I actually became 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:50.920 a writer because I felt sort of afraid to like speak. Honestly, 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:54.120 I was a very shy kid, and because I had 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:56.800 learned English from my Malaysian parents, I had sort of 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:02.120 Malaysian uh you know, in flights and Malaysian ways of speaking. 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:05.120 And in America, I was just all the kids, you know, 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:09.319 didn't know what I was saying necessarily or wanted to 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:11.360 make fun of me for the ways that I said 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.040 certain things. And so I think I found in writing 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:19.520 a way to communicate like the most perfectly, you know, 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:23.240 and sort of the most unassailably and you know, the 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.640 most perfectly. And I think that, of course that's not 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:29.800 totally true, right, there's still like miscommunication within writing itself. 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:31.760 But I think that that's where it began for me, 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:34.840 just this desire to like craft something and say, Okay, 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:36.960 this is what I mean to say, and here please 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:39.680 receive it. I mean, I find it so interesting that 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:42.840 you know, I've written the one book that I've written, 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:47.720 but when a reader reads it, they're creating a completely 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:52.120 different book, you know. I'm sort of enlisting their imagination, 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:58.200 enlisting their backgrounds, their perspectives, their questions, and it sort 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:02.040 of fuses into this like hybrid thing, and then it 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:04.800 becomes its own like creation. And I think that's so 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:07.160 interesting that it's not that I just have one book 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:09.600 that is out there, but there are so many books 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:12.640 that become created every time somebody reads the book that 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:13.200 I've written. 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:17.840 So then, how different was that experience of doing it 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.160 a second time around? You know, but with an actual 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:25.400 pre existing idea about who that Rada might be, that 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:30.320 platonic ideal of the rada, you admit them, You'd rapturous 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:36.320 reviews and awards and I'm sure endless fan mail from raders. 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:40.160 How does book two then feel different to sit down 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:40.840 and write. 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:44.280 I think that does make it a little bit scary, 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:49.480 because with the first book, it was very much a secret. 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:52.520 I didn't tell most of the people in my life 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:57.800 because I felt a sort of shame around it, around 0:15:57.840 --> 0:15:59.440 the fact that I was writing a novel at all. 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.200 With the With the second novel, there is a bit 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:05.040 more of an expectation. People know that you're a writer. 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:11.840 You've announced that to everybody, and so I think I 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:17.440 felt I wouldn't say stuck, but it just felt like 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:22.000 I often had the I don't know, I had these 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.400 like voices in my head that would I have these 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:27.200 voices already, right, the voices that tell you like, oh, 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:30.600 you're not good enough, that you're not that this book 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:32.560 is not up to par or whatever it is. And 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:35.480 I think that once, once you release writing into the world, 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:38.640 those voices become just like multiplied by a lot, and 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:41.880 it's a great effort to sort of come back to 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:45.880 yourself and to shut them out a little bit, to 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:48.920 go back to your question of realness. Actually, and something 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:51.360 that you've said reminded me that you know, I write 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:54.720 in part because I'm trying to figure out what I 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:59.440 actually care about, what I'm thinking about, what questions I 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:02.280 have I've said, and to sort of get to this 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:05.400 like genuine version of myself. But I think it's really 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:11.240 difficult to get there just living as we do, like 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:15.639 in the Internet age, right when we have emails constantly, 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:20.960 we have social media and the Internet and just lots 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:25.080 of people and companies vuying for our attention, telling us 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.399 what to buy, what to look at, what you read next, 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:30.840 whatever it is, right, there's just so many forces that 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:33.399 are sort of pulling at our attention, and it's a 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:36.280 real challenge to actually just sit with yourself and to 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:40.080 sort of be in that silence and to think, Okay, 0:17:40.200 --> 0:17:42.240 what do I actually care about? What do I want 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:46.920 to spend my hours doing? And it's deeply uncomfortable, honestly, 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:50.200 like I think writing people find it hard because it's 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:53.760 kind of unpleasant to sit with yourself. We find all 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:55.760 these ways to not have to do that, you know. 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:58.840 But I think that if you can move past the discomfort, 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.119 it's so rewarding and that's what I want to do 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:02.960 with my life. 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:10.120 When we return, Rachel reveals why magic and science might 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:13.240 just be one and the same, not just in a narrative, 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.680 but in the creation of a narrative. We'll be right back. 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.719 Each of the three characters in real Americans share a 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:36.600 common experience. Throughout the novel, Time stops freezes at different points, 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:40.320 and yet our three protagonists are able to move through 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:43.600 the stillness. It's an element of the narrative that raises 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:47.360 many many questions. Can these pauses be explained by science, 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:51.760 or is there something more mysterious at work here? As 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:55.840 a kind of extension of that question about luck and 0:18:55.960 --> 0:19:02.080 fortune versus circumstance, endeavor, whatever's another perhaps unhelpful binary, I 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:04.520 want you to help me unpick. And that's between science 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:08.680 and magic and the relationship between those two ideas. 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:14.480 So this book for many years was just about science. 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:20.040 There was a scientist character, and at the same time, 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:22.800 there was a strange thing that happened was happening with 0:19:22.880 --> 0:19:26.600 all three of the characters, where they experienced time in 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:30.520 a strange way. And I didn't know why that was 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:32.359 happening to all of the characters, but I knew that 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:34.200 it was. I mean, that was the very first page 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:36.399 that I that I wrote, was Lily wakes up and 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:39.640 for some reason, the time on the clock isn't changing. 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:45.080 And so I tried for many years to figure out 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:50.040 a scientific explanation for that, to figure out why this 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:56.320 thing was happening to all of these characters. And and 0:19:56.400 --> 0:19:58.760 I think writing is a little bit like magic too, right, 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:01.520 It's a very scientific thing, and that it comes from 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:05.080 your brain, and it's this like solid thing. We're not 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:08.200 solid but squishy, I guess it's a physical thing. There's 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:13.320 things that are actually happening. There's you know, electricity happening 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:17.080 in there. But writing can often feel like magic when 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:19.879 when you're doing it and you know, maybe our idea 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:24.760 comes out of somewhere, or you start with this thought 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:27.840 that maybe the characters have this time issue, and then 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:32.840 years later you realize it's because of something more magical 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:37.959 and not necessarily something scientific. For me, the scientific worldview 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:41.399 has so much to do with this Western worldview that 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:45.879 we can understand everything and that we can just given 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:49.000 enough time and resources and money or whatever, we can 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:51.720 figure everything out. I mean, there's a sort of hubrisk 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:55.199 to science today and to and to technology, right, Like 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:58.720 there's that that slogan like move fast and break things. 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:01.240 I don't remember which company, but you know that's a 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.920 tech slogan that we have because there's just this desire 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:10.639 to innovate and this perspective that these men in power 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:14.520 can solve everything, right, And I was really interested in 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:19.440 a different kind of perspective. There's this fundamental mystery to 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:23.880 the world itself, and I think that's something that I 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:31.040 was interested in just exploring. I guess, like the fundamental 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:34.399 mystery to what it means to be a human being, 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:36.760 and why are we all here? I have no idea, 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:39.320 to be quite honest. And that's that's a question that 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:40.720 I think I keep asking. 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:45.600 It's a question you ask in really wonderful and interesting 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.840 ways in real Americans, but also in ways it seemed 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:52.080 to me to mirror the creative process, the process of 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:55.720 writing a novel, you know, the questions about predeterminism, about 0:21:55.960 --> 0:21:59.520 how much kind of control we have over our own lives, 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:03.199 of the choices we make and the ripple effects that 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:08.960 come out of them, And when dealing with science or 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:13.600 magic in a book. They're both different ways of doing 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:16.600 the same thing, which is coming up with an explanation 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:19.640 for the circumstances that you've been able to weave through 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:22.960 the book. They're another form of imposing a narrative on 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:24.680 the inexplicable. 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:27.879 Yeah, I love that. I don't think anyone has ever 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:31.240 said that to me, but I love that framing of it. 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:34.159 And I think something that you've said earlier too has 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:36.920 stuck with me, just about the fact that a lot 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:41.840 of these narratives in the book are sort of imposed 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:44.440 after the fact, right. I think I think of that 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:48.439 for May in particular she's less I would say, like 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:51.359 in the muck of life. When she's recounting the story, 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:53.480 she's able to sort of shape the way that she 0:22:53.640 --> 0:22:59.560 is sharing her particular story. And it's an impulse that 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:02.040 I have always resisted, which I think is a little 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:04.359 bit weird for a writer to say. You know, writers 0:23:04.400 --> 0:23:06.800 are often the people that sit around the campfire and 0:23:07.320 --> 0:23:11.000 they're good at spinning long yarns and like making you know, 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:14.200 just like sort of engaging you. And I have never 0:23:15.200 --> 0:23:19.439 felt like that kind of personality, And to me, I 0:23:19.480 --> 0:23:22.320 think I've always just felt a little bit at a remove, 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:24.479 you know, when it comes to narratives, which is so 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:26.480 strange I think for a writer to say. And yet 0:23:26.520 --> 0:23:28.879 I think that's why I have written the books that 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:31.679 I've written, you know. I think there's a little bit 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:35.880 of this mistrust of narratives and wanting to poke at 0:23:35.880 --> 0:23:39.560 them a little bit and wanting to when they're employed, 0:23:39.600 --> 0:23:43.720 to sort of turn around and say, well, yeah, are 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:44.800 we going to keep going with this? 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:45.840 You know? 0:23:46.000 --> 0:23:49.399 Like I think I was interested in the introduction but 0:23:49.440 --> 0:23:52.520