WEBVTT - Read This: Kevin Wilson Is Wonderfully Weird 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:02.679 Hello again, es Daniel James, and I'm back to share 0:00:02.759 --> 0:00:06.840 another episode of Read This. Schwartzpeedy is weekly books podcast 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:10.840 hosted by editor of The Monthly Michael Williams. It features 0:00:10.880 --> 0:00:13.800 conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:17.079 and around the world. In this episode, Michael is chaining 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:22.960 with the American author Kevin Wilson. As always, Michael is 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:25.160 here to tell me a little bit more about the episode. 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:27.600 Hello Michael, Daniel, Hello again. 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:30.880 Okay, So first things first, the Kevin Wilson you are 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:34.760 speaking to in today's episode is not the Australian comedian 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:38.440 quote unquote Kevin Bloody Wilson, is it. 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:41.919 Yes, that's right. In start contrast, for the Australian comedian 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:44.680 Kevin Bloody Wilson, the Kevin Wilson I'm talking to is 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:48.960 actually funny. This Kevin Wilson is from Tennessee and he 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:53.040 is a New York Times bestselling author and genuinely amusing 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:54.800 at every possible level. 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:58.080 Michael. The title of this episode of Read This, Kevin 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:01.800 Wilson is Wonderfully Weird, suggests that weirdness can actually be 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:03.800 a bit of a superpower when it comes to writing 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:04.560 great stories. 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:08.280 Would you agree, Daniel, I would agree wholeheartedly, Like we 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:12.199 were weary calling the episode Kevin Wilson is wonderfully weird 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:15.160 because we were, Like weird is normally used as a pejorative. 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:18.240 There's this idea that we achieved some kind of normalcy 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:20.920 in life, and weird people to be shunned or to 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:23.680 be mocked, or to be taken differently. Certainly, in the 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:27.160 recent US election campaign we saw an example of the 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.279 Democrats repeating the mantra that the Republicans were weird. 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:30.640 JD. 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:34.720 Evans was weird. But for me, weird is a good thing. 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:39.319 It suggests kind of intellectually imaginatively independent, someone who zigs 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:42.760 when you expect a zag, someone who challenges orthodoxies and 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:46.440 does their own thing. Weirdness is only a good thing, 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:48.360 and particularly only a good thing when it comes to 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:51.320 kind of creative energy. You know, who's got time for 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:55.080 normalis frankly and Kevin Wilson's weird in just the right way. 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:57.280 Like he wrote this book called Nothing to See Here 0:01:57.640 --> 0:01:59.960 that sent it around these two kids who would spawn 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:04.800 taneously combust weird. He had another novel that was about 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:07.440 these kids who are kind of experimenting with finding their 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:10.680 artistic voice and printed these posters that led to their 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:13.240 small town believing that there was a kind of spate 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:16.680 of kidnapping or maybe even Satanism going on. And his 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:19.400 latest books called Rum for the Hills, and it follows 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:23.400 a heroine whose name is Madeline. She's known as mad Hill. 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:25.680 And one day a guy shows up. His name is Reuben, 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.840 and he says, I'm your long lost brother. You're missing 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:31.079 dad who ran off on you and your mum years ago, 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:34.079 had another family, And as they take a road trip 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.280 to go and find him, they find another family, and 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:38.720 another family, and another family, and have to contend with 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:42.720 their many discovered siblings. It's a cross country journey looking 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.720 for the truth, and it is true to film, wonderfully 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:48.200 weird and all the better for it. It was great 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:52.320 to chat to him. 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:54.400 Coming up in just a moment, Kevin Wilson is wonderfully weird. 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:03.320 When book like Run for the Hill's centers around an 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:07.000 absence or a mystery. I'm curious for you, how well 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:10.680 did you understand Charles Hill from the moment you started 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:13.000 the book or how much was it a process of 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:15.240 discovery or revelation? 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:16.040 Oh? 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:20.000 Absolutely, I didn't know him nearly as well when I started, 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:22.880 and you just have to hope, just like the kids, 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:26.680 that the closer you get, the more you'll understand. But 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:29.640 in my head as I started this book, I just thought, 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:35.480 a terrible dad makes these families, leaves them behind, and 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:37.600 these kids are gonna go beat him up, you know, 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:40.280 And I was like, and they should, they should totally 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:40.920 beat him up. 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:43.800 And it's just like anything I think. 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:46.000 It's just like you know, in the ways in which 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:48.680 writing has helped me live in the real world, was 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:54.000 that that's a very viable, understandable thing. The dad is 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.720 a bad dad who left them. But the moment you 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:00.680 start to think more about it, and the more that 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:04.320 you try to understand what the motivations of this man 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.720 might be, it's not that you forgive him, and it's 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:11.080 not that he becomes like a likable, good person, but 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:14.480 you understand a little more. And that's all I want, 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:17.359 that's all the kids want. It can't you can't fix anything, 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:20.640 but maybe if you could just get a clearer sense 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:23.479 of why someone would do the things that they've done, 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.600 it can help you move on. So, yeah, I started 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:31.920 with him as this horrible dad and each kid as 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:34.520 they had different memories of them, and as we're getting 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:37.760 closer and closer to finding him, I didn't have it 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:42.200 in my heart to just let him be this standard 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:43.120 awful dad. 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:46.280 That thing of not having it in your heart. One 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.160 of the things that characterizes your work and all your work, 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:53.520 short stories, your novels is this deep tenderness towards your 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:57.200 characters and this deep sense of love that is there. 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.599 You're very reticent to kill a character, for example, You're 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:04.520 very reticent to kind of enact violence on the more 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:08.559 or pain that they can't move past. Do you find 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:11.039 it hard to write an irredeemable character? Do you think 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:12.960 you could write an irredeemable character? 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:16.719 I don't know if I could, only because the longer 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:20.640 I sit with anything, the more I start to find 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:24.839 maybe things that start to resonate with me, or ways 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:28.160 in which I'm connecting to them. And I don't know. 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:30.520 I mean, but you're right, like, my thing, really and 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.360 truly is if I can find a way to safely 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:37.320 convey these characters from point A to point B, I'm 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:41.040 gonna exhaust the possibilities. And I think what that means 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:44.400 for me is that if I finally come down on 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:48.080 the fact that like this cannot end. Well, I know 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:50.839 that that wasn't my first instinct, and I did everything 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:53.839 I could, and then it feels understandable to me. 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:57.960 But I don't know. Again, I'm not saying like being. 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:00.640 A writer is like the best way to be a 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:04.359 person in the real world. But again, it's that idea 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:08.159 of like, Okay, don't just go with your first instinct. 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:11.160 Try to find all the different ways to get from 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:14.960 here to there and will they work? And the imaginative 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:18.360 life lets you do that. When I was a teenager, 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:21.440 I wanted to read things that slightly disturbed me or 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:24.640 were difficult, because I wanted to feel like the things 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:28.000 in my head were not just for me and me alone, 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:31.240 and I was the weirdest person in the world. But 0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:34.479 the longer I live, the more I thought, I can 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:36.839 live with this, and I can figure this stuff out, 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:40.359 and I can work with pain and unhappiness. But this 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:43.760 is my imaginative space, So can I just try to 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.000 turn it a few degrees towards something that can can 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:49.800 help me keep going? Yeah, And it's just the way 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:50.520 I work Now. 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:55.159 I'm glad you came back to that idea of aloneness 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:59.000 and loneliness and the relationship between that and your writing, 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:01.960 because it seems to me, of all the traumas, of 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.120 all the griefs that you return to in your work 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:08.640 again and again, the fear of being alone, the fear 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:13.360 of not having connection, is perhaps the most pervasive, maybe 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:15.280 even the driving engine of your work. 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:18.080 Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think. 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:24.600 As much as my characters often are struggling with connecting 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:26.600 with the rest of the world, there are times where 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:29.280 they feel broken in ways that they're not sure how 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.600 they can actually be a meaningful part. 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:34.400 Of the world around them. 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:37.640 And I don't know, I feel that too, And then 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:41.440 what happens is, I think, what I realize is then 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:45.440 the instinct is to burrow in and to hide, and 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:48.640 then the longer you hide, the harder it is. And 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.320 so in so many of these stories, what I'm trying 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:53.480 to figure out is how can you turn those feelings 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:57.000 of isolation into a way in which you can hold 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.000 on to another person because you recognize that same set 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:03.640 in them. And you know, I want the books to 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.720 be light, and I want them to have these possible 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:10.320 moments of redemption. But the main thing I'm looking at 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:12.960 is how can I get these two people to hold 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:15.800 on to each other long enough to stay in the world. 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:21.440 And honestly, most of my stories are weird people living 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:26.440 in isolation finding just one thing that helps them hold 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:27.480 on to another person. 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.400 The idea of weirdness is also important and something I 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:35.920 think about a lot as a parent. I have two sons. 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:40.160 They are fifteen and thirteen, and they're just weird Conversationally, 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:42.960 they're weird the things that they're interested in, and I'm 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:46.600 so thrilled. Nothing horrifies me more than the idea of 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.400 not having a weird kid. If I can equip my 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:51.679 weird kid with the way to connect with other weird kids, 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:55.120 that's great. But there's a powder feeling slightly on the 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:56.199 outer I think. 0:08:56.640 --> 0:08:59.600 Yeah, well, it's so interesting because my kids are seventeen 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:03.240 and twelve. Well, my two boys and I use weird 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:05.200 as a catch off for everything. I think my editor 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:08.240 would say how lazy I am, because I've mainly mean 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.440 weird as like good I think a lot of times. 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:16.440 But my boys are distinctly strange in their own diverse 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:20.560 ways from each other, and so honestly, having kids was 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:24.080 so helpful for me to understand that like maybe I 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:26.880 was settling in on a single idea of what it 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:30.000 means to feel outside of the world because of my 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:34.079 own experiences, And then you have these kids who start 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:37.440 to develop their own obsessions and they start to burrow 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:40.400 into these other things, and I was like, oh, man, 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:44.000 it's just a multitude of ways in which you can 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:47.440 both love something and yet feel outside of the rest 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:49.560 of the world because of your love for this thing. 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:51.400 And I don't know. 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.520 Once I started to see that, it felt like narrative 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.600 possibilities opened up for me that oh my god, the 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:01.600 amount of ways in which weirdness can manifest. But also 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:06.160 how many people, no matter how normal they may seem, 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:10.400 do feel strange and do feel weird, and do harbor 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:15.880 these innate things that they can't quite articulate or talk about. 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:18.760 And I was like, oh, man, I can do this forever, Like, 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:22.040 as long as I can find a person that I 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:25.679 can allow myself to try to figure out, I'll discover 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:27.880 something that is kind of gloriously weird. 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:32.040 How much for that discovery for you personally ahead of 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:35.720 having kids, but how much of that way of coping, 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:38.280 that way of making sends, or at least making connection 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:42.840 of the weirdness scented around reading and being a raider. 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:45.720 Yeah, it was one hundred percent the way into it 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:47.560 when I was a kid. I mean, I grew up 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:52.959 in a very rural town in you know, the United 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:56.920 States and the Deep South, and it wasn't that I 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:00.800 felt like I was completely alone, but I also knew 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:03.240 that there was this larger world that I had no 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:04.080 access to. 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:05.720 You know, this is before the Internet. 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:08.960 It was just I knew there were things that I 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:11.920 wanted that I could not access, and one of the 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:18.600 ways that I could was reading. And strangely, you'd think, oh, 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.640 I'd read all these books about these mystical lands, but 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:26.120 it wasn't. Fantasy never pulled me in as much as 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:28.800 books that were set in the world that I lived 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:33.040 in but were slightly beyond what I could touch. Just 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:37.080 like anything, you read, this book written by somebody so 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:40.960 different from you and so far away, and yet there's 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:44.520 a moment in the book where you recognize yourself in 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:49.880 that scene, this sensation that you didn't know how to articulate. 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:53.400 And when I was a kid, those moments sustained me, 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:57.000 where I said, I know that feeling. I have felt 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:00.280 that too, and it really I think about it all 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:03.480 the time. It was almost like a signal from an 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:07.480 antenna had gone out into the unknown and somehow had 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:11.920 hit me and I could hear it. It was this 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.160 thing that made me feel like, oh, something found me 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:18.959 when I needed it. And those were books over and over. 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:24.560 Do you remember specific titles that early on introduced you 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:26.880 to that feeling that gave you that hunger to seek 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:27.400 it out again. 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:29.520 That's the thing that's so lovely. 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:32.439 I mean, I grew up like the library at my 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:36.959 school was a trailer, unair conditioned trailer in a outside 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:40.559 of the actual school, and my fifth and sixth grade 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:43.199 class were taught together by the same teacher, so she 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:45.520 would teach one grade, then turn and teach the other. 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:48.120 And if I did my work, I could go Often 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:51.960 I did yours, like sweep the floors or clean the bathrooms, 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:53.920 but I also could just go in the library and 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:58.760 hang out by myself. And that library was not extensive. 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.600 I will say I read lots of books from the 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:04.320 fifties about kids with polio. 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:06.120 It's just like so. 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:10.240 Many and I'd never read I didn't know what the classics, like, 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:13.199 nobody told me about Narnia or any of these books. 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:17.679 I just found what was in the library. And the 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:21.319 first book for me that touched me really was Marjorie 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:24.760 canand Rawling's book The Yearly, about a boy who takes 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:27.800 care of a deer and it's set in the swamps 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.800 of Florida, and it was the first book set in 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:35.600 the South about a kid. And it wasn't my life, 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:40.440 but I could feel some of the similarities in Landscape, 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:45.120 in the way in which the people spoke, and it 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:46.439 was one of the first moments where I. 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:48.400 Was like, oh, this is in a book. This is 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:49.000 in a book that. 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:52.439 Won the Pulitzer Prize, and it's about people that are 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:56.640 very similar to me, and that felt incredible. 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:58.880 Yeah, I mean it is shocking at the end of 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:01.959 that book when the dia gets that's very upsetting. 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:05.040 That I was prepared. 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:07.920 I mean, it's always like and I tell my kids, 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:09.560 I'm like, you don't know what it's like to like 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:13.440 not you can access almost any book that you want, 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:15.200 if you want it, you can find it. And I 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:17.880 was like, you know, you don't know what it's like 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:21.840 to try to find like a moment of connection in 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:24.000 a book about a kid with polio who's making a 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:25.400 Soapbox derby Car. 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:29.120 You know, I was like, but it touched me so much. 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:32.280 I think throughout your work one of the elements I 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:35.000 love about it. I love the absurdity. I love the 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:38.720 role that humor plays. But there's an element that I 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:42.160 would almost describe as folk laric in some of your 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:44.920 stories in particular, but also some of your novels, where 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:50.880 that either overtly magical elements or just that sense of possibility, 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:54.400 a kind of porousness at the edges of reality that 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:58.040 kind of supercharges what you do. I want to know, then, 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:01.560 with that description of you as a reader, what's the 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:05.760 transition from Kevin Wilson Rata to Kevin Wilson Ryder. At 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:08.480 some point did you decide you wanted to be a 0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:11.840 more active rita and create your own stories or were 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:13.280 they not quite as tethered as that. 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:15.000 No, they were tethered. 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:17.800 I loved reading so much, and I think it's just 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:21.240 like anything. If you love something enough, you want to 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:25.040 see if it's possible to make something not to be 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:28.360 better than or as good as, but to just feel 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:32.080 it touch up against the things that inspired you, and 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.680 you know, if you're worried about it being as good, 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:38.320 you'll never do it. But I wasn't worried about that 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:40.360 as much as I just thought, what would it feel 0:15:40.400 --> 0:15:44.680 like if reading these works were transformative? What would it 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:47.440 feel like to try to make it? And I felt 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:50.520 like that was the transition too, from childhood to adulthood, 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.280 was that there was a point where I was like, 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.880 these things are helping me in so many ways, these 0:15:56.920 --> 0:16:00.040 books and these stories, but is there a way in 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:03.160 which I can actually take them and allow it to 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:06.560 like that I could express myself in my own way. 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:11.640 And again, I was just going off of what I loved, 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:15.000 and what I loved mostly were comic books, and a 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:17.360 lot of the earliest writers that I loved were the 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:21.520 writers that were doing either the magical realists, guys in 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:25.800 South America, or just any kind of absurd writer, you know, 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:27.560 Gogle the Nose, you know. 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:28.520 When I read it, I. 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:31.160 Was like, oh, okay, I can see where you can 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.920 go with this. But all of those places that used 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:38.560 absurdity or used magical realism, they were using it because 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:41.800 it was so embedded in the world in which they 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:44.920 actually lived. And so one of the things I wanted 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:48.560 to figure out was to tell contemporary American stories. But 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:51.960 I could use that weirdness and that absurdity and that 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:55.440 magic to tell a story that then connected to the 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:57.360 way that I experienced the world. 0:16:58.720 --> 0:16:59.440 When we were a ton. 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:02.440 Kevin, here's the phrase that stayed with him for almost 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:05.639 thirty years and reveals by publishing it in a book, 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:09.520 feels like the whole point of our He'll be right back. 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:22.359 Long time listeners to read this might recall that in 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:25.040 the past with our some guests about a thing we 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:29.040 call their life sentences. It's an idea that springs from 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:32.879 my conviction that we all have these phrases, maybe advertising 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:36.760 jingles or profound quotes or bits of advice, whatever, but 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:39.280 we have these sentences that play on a loop in 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:43.200 our heads anywhere between a personal mantra and an unthinking 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:46.879 mental screensaver mode. I have a few, but for me, 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:49.960 one from my childhood that plays on a mental loop 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:54.639 is from an old episode of The Simpsons de Lisia 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:56.919 needs braces. 0:17:57.000 --> 0:18:00.000 Lisia needs braces. 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:04.600 It needs nonsense, and almost thirty year old nonsense at 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:07.760 this point, but sitting at traffic lights looking out gormlessly, 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:11.800 it often springs to mind unbidden. I bring it up 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:14.800 here because repeated Phrases on a loop are an affliction 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:18.359 that plagued Kevin Wilson more than most, and not just 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:21.520 as an idle brainworm. The more we spoke about his 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:25.119 approach to writing, the clearer became that these loops and 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:29.640 phrases play a significant role in his creative process. It's 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:32.320 an undercurrent that came to the Foe in his previous 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:35.200 novel Now is Not the Time to Panic, where one 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:38.520 particular sentence of Kevin's own inner life became a key 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:40.240 plot point for his characters. 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:41.080 Yeah. 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:43.760 I mean as an adult, I was diagnosed with Tourette's 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:46.400 and Grolman. I have tics, and I have, but it's 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:50.840 more that I have repetitive imagery and phrases that just 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:54.880 run like a carousel in my head, oftentimes not happily. 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:56.920 You know, I don't want it, but it's going to come, 0:18:57.040 --> 0:19:00.040 and you have to learn how to eventually just accept that. 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:03.560 But phrases are big for me, and they have no 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:07.000 real rhyme or reason. But one is no tie leather 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:11.119 jacket cool, which was just in this movie Primary Colors, 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:14.520 not a good movie, but one character says, no tie 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:17.439 leather jacket cool, And for whatever reason, when I was 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:20.400 like twenty one years old and I heard it. 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.639 I just kept saying it over and over and over again, with. 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:28.359 No real regard for why. But the main one was 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:31.439 this line from when I was in college, and it 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:35.159 was the edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:38.080 We are fugitives and the law is skinny with hunger 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:41.119 for us. And it was a line that my friend wrote, 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:45.400 my friend Eric, and it meant nothing. We just were 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:49.560 kind of messing around trying to say odd phrases, and 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:52.320 I don't think a day goes by where I don't 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:54.840 say it at least once or twice. It's just and 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:58.960 a lot of times the way phrases the loveliness is 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:01.639 the edge is a shanty town filled with gold seekers, 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:03.040 And there's this sense of like. 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:03.840 Where are we? 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:05.480 We're all the way out on the edge, and I 0:20:05.520 --> 0:20:09.919 feel a little scared, and I know that there's something 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:12.959 ominous about that. And then I say we are fugitives 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:16.119 and the law is skinny with hunger for us, and 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:19.439 I feel calm again because I know that they're not 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:22.919 going to catch me. They're skinny with hunger for me, 0:20:23.600 --> 0:20:26.800 and I'll always be able to get away. And there's 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:31.080 just something that my brain hardwired a kind of code 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:34.600 that if I could just say that, it would work, 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:36.440 So I just say it. 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:39.159 It seems to me there's a connection between your relationship 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:41.439 with those phrases and the looping and your writing, and 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:45.480 a connection that you made explicit in Now is not 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.119 the Time to Panic. Where you took that phrase that 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:51.760 you and your friend Eric had embedded in your life 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:54.040 and your brain, and you decided to share it with 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:56.800 your raiders in a really comprehensive way, even though that 0:20:56.880 --> 0:21:00.439 the pidin Family Fang earlier. You kind of at the 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:04.240 center of this lighter novel, And I'm curious about that 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:07.320 act of taking something that's so internal and so personal 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:12.120 and relinquishing it, handing it over to your raiders, who 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:13.960 now a legion in the world. 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:18.160 For me, there's something transformative when something that has been 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:21.280 so deeply held inside of you for so long touches 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:25.360 the open air. And that's like the whole point for 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:28.040 me of art is what happens when I take the 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:31.600 thing that I have held onto so tightly, sometimes unknowingly, 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:35.879 and just what happens when it actually touches the air. 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:39.640 What happens when somebody else sees it and it can 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:42.919 be scary, and it could be like terrible. You know, 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:45.520 you always run the risk of people saying this is 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:50.960 freakish or weird or disturbing or more likely boring. But 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:54.720