Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I'm having to be
Speaker 1: extra selective at the moment when it comes to consuming
Speaker 1: news and current affairs. It's all such an unmitigated dumpster fire.
Speaker 1: The hate, the stupidity, the collective grief. The world feels
Speaker 1: particularly horrifying at the moment, all the more reason for
Speaker 1: freezing time and hiding inside the pages of a good book. Honestly,
Speaker 1: for me, there is no feeling more diametrically opposed to
Speaker 1: doom scrolling social media than sitting reading a good novel.
Speaker 1: So forgive me for a minute while I talk contemporary politics.
Speaker 1: But for me, one of the especially horrifying things about
Speaker 1: the emerging fascist state that is contemporary America is the
Speaker 1: weaponizing of notions of belonging and legitimacy of citizenship. Who
Speaker 1: you are, where you're from, and your right to see
Speaker 1: yourself as part of a national story become loaded questions
Speaker 1: for everyone, not just immigrants and the children of immigrants.
Speaker 1: Calling a novel real Americans, particularly as a Malaysian born
Speaker 1: America born to Chinese parents, feels like a direct challenge
Speaker 1: to this, and it's a challenge Rachel Kong is acutely
Speaker 1: aware of. She's very much an American. She moved there
Speaker 1: when she was only two, but her whole life growing
Speaker 1: up she faced reminders that real Americans looked a particular way.
Speaker 1: The gap between how we see ourselves and how others
Speaker 1: see us is central to her latest novel. The characters
Speaker 1: in real Americans are constantly being misunderstood because of how
Speaker 1: they appear. The book follows three generations of Chinese Americans. Lily,
Speaker 1: the daughter of parents who fled China during the Cultural Revolution,
Speaker 1: who finds unexpected love in New York at the turn
Speaker 1: of the millennium, her son Nick, who grows up in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest, wondering about the father he doesn't know,
Speaker 1: and May Lily's mother, a scientist whose choice is on
Speaker 1: behalf of her family threatened to tear it apart. Spanning
Speaker 1: five decades, the book is an exploration of what makes
Speaker 1: us who we are, challenge to some of the most
Speaker 1: stubborn and corrosive myths that underpin the modern nation state.
Speaker 1: A dollop of what you might characterize as science fiction,
Speaker 1: a hint of what could even be magic, and a
Speaker 1: romantic heart. This is a lively and surprising book that
Speaker 1: embraces the contradictions of who we are and how well
Speaker 1: we know the people we love. I'm Michael Williams, and
Speaker 1: this is Read This the show about the books we
Speaker 1: love and the stories behind them. One of the driving
Speaker 1: forces in real Americans is the idea of luck. Who
Speaker 1: has it? And what does it mean for a person's life.
Speaker 1: So I began my conversation with Rachel asking what luck
Speaker 1: means to her.
Speaker 2: That's an amazing question to start with. I mean, luck
Speaker 2: is I think really at the core of this book
Speaker 2: this question of what creates our lives? Essentially? Is it luck?
Speaker 2: Is it chance? Is it the actions that we take?
Speaker 2: Is it free will? Right? And that's that's just a
Speaker 2: question that I've thought about for all my life, I think,
Speaker 2: I think especially because I come from an immigrant family,
Speaker 2: and I've always had this question in my head of
Speaker 2: what if my life were different? What if my parents
Speaker 2: had not come to America from Malaysia? What if I
Speaker 2: hadn't had the childhood that I had. What would my
Speaker 2: life be like? Would I be a writer? Would I
Speaker 2: be someone completely different? I think throughout all our lives,
Speaker 2: you know, we're sort of touched very differently by luck,
Speaker 2: and some people we sort of think of as luckier
Speaker 2: than others. But I don't know. I think I was
Speaker 2: just interested in how different people sort of react to
Speaker 2: quote unquote luck, and how that luck shapes them and
Speaker 2: shapes who they are.
Speaker 1: I think it's such a fascinating set of ideas, and
Speaker 1: the WI isn't me you into say, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think it's an essential part of immigrant stories and
Speaker 1: immigrant storytelling, but also the ways in which it intersects
Speaker 1: with ideas of entitlement and fairness and what we're owed
Speaker 1: and what we have to make for ourselves. So often
Speaker 1: in migrant stories, so often in the narrative around multiculturalism,
Speaker 1: around the simulation around those things. Is this idea that
Speaker 1: gratitude should play a past, that the good migrant is
Speaker 1: grateful for the opportunities that have been afforded them rather
Speaker 1: than have worked for themselves, or that luck has played
Speaker 1: a part. And the intersection of all those things I
Speaker 1: think is fascinating.
Speaker 2: I think it's so interesting because the immigrant story and
Speaker 2: this sort of American story, those stories really intersect in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, and that's something that I wanted
Speaker 2: to explore in the book. And I think one of
Speaker 2: the ways in which they intersect is sort of in
Speaker 2: this idea of luck and agency, there is a of course,
Speaker 2: what you've said, you know, immigrants, we have to feel grateful, right,
Speaker 2: The grateful immigrant is sort of this trope, and for
Speaker 2: a good reason, you know. I think that that was
Speaker 2: a refrain that I sort of heard growing up to
Speaker 2: you know, my parents would say, we made so many
Speaker 2: sacrifices for you to be here. Therefore, like, you make
Speaker 2: something of your life, do better than we did. And
Speaker 2: that's a lot of pressure. And I think in the
Speaker 2: American story, there's this sort of belief that, you know,
Speaker 2: despite your luck, you can make anything you want of
Speaker 2: your own life. You know, there's this very like pull
Speaker 2: yourself up by the bootstraps mentality in the sort of
Speaker 2: American narrative and probably just the Western narrative to be
Speaker 2: quite honest. But it's this idea that it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: who you were born, as you know, what your station
Speaker 2: in life is, you can get out of that. You
Speaker 2: can make something better of your circumstances. And I think
Speaker 2: that's of course something that that gives hope, right, And
Speaker 2: I'm glad that I was raised with like this sort
Speaker 2: of idea that I that I could be anything and
Speaker 2: that I could, you know, even if I was unlucky
Speaker 2: in certain ways, I could still create my life in
Speaker 2: other ways. But I think also that sort of a
Speaker 2: belief in like, uh, this like do it yourselfness to
Speaker 2: a degree that was a little bit I don't know
Speaker 2: if toxic is the right word, but it almost like
Speaker 2: dismisses the fact that we do come from different places
Speaker 2: and stations and with you know, on very unequal footing, right,
Speaker 2: and that we are not entirely responsible or to blame
Speaker 2: for what we have made of ourselves or not made
Speaker 2: of ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that's so true. I think it's
Speaker 1: something I've thought about a lot reading this book, is
Speaker 1: the ways in which notions of luck or fortune apparently
Speaker 1: the imposition of a narrative on stuff that we can't
Speaker 1: account for. Yeah, you know that, and that seems to
Speaker 1: make particularly acute or One of the things about this
Speaker 1: book is it follows three generations of the one family,
Speaker 1: and one of the things you do so well in
Speaker 1: it is capture that kind of incomprehension between the different
Speaker 1: generations towards each other, that kind of failure to see
Speaker 1: clearly the nature of the story that your parents your
Speaker 1: grandparents might have experienced for themselves, and we kind of
Speaker 1: put a narrative of luck or fortune on things. It's
Speaker 1: kind of retroactive thing that's imposed sometimes rather than organically
Speaker 1: springing out of the lived experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think luck is so cultural also, right,
Speaker 2: you know, something that one culture might consider lucky, another
Speaker 2: might not. I mean, certain things transcend that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think in most cultures it's a good thing to
Speaker 2: have more money than less money, or to have good
Speaker 2: health and things like that. But I think that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I love what you just said. There the sort of
Speaker 2: disconnect between generations with something that I was so interested
Speaker 2: in that I'm still so interested in the fact that
Speaker 2: we can try our best to understand what it might
Speaker 2: be like to be a parent or our child, and
Speaker 2: yet it's almost impossible, right to sort of fully immerse
Speaker 2: yourself into the perspective of another person. I think the
Speaker 2: novel form is how we get the closest to that, right,
Speaker 2: Like we're able to sort of place ourselves into these
Speaker 2: different perspectives, these different bodies. But short of that, it's
Speaker 2: you know, you could interview your parents for days and
Speaker 2: still probably not understand what it means to have their
Speaker 2: lived experience and what it means to have their exact perspective.
Speaker 1: I'm confident I would understand my father lace after interviewing
Speaker 1: in for a couple of days before it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've read interviews with you where you bankly that
Speaker 1: you're not a big plan at going into books, and
Speaker 1: so I'm interested in the moments at which those things
Speaker 1: really started to come to the foreground. You began with
Speaker 1: Lily in her story.
Speaker 2: I did begin with Lily and her story, and I
Speaker 2: wrote each of these characters in the order that they
Speaker 2: appear in the book, which I think is a little
Speaker 2: bit counterintuitive because it's not chronological necessarily. You know, we
Speaker 2: get the oldest character story kind of in the very
Speaker 2: last section.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The question of realness is such an interesting one, and
Speaker 2: I think that it came from a very personal place
Speaker 2: for me. Yeah. Yeah, that question of am I a
Speaker 2: real Americans has come up, you know, at times in
Speaker 2: my past, and you know, I'm sort of as an
Speaker 2: immigrant between these two places, right Like, I feel more
Speaker 2: American than I feel like i'm anything else, honestly, because
Speaker 2: culturally it's who I am. When I go back to
Speaker 2: where my parents came from, which is Malaysia. I feel
Speaker 2: like a complete outsider, right. I don't really belong I
Speaker 2: don't speak the language. I can enjoy the food, but
Speaker 2: I stick out like a sore thumb. I'm not really
Speaker 2: like at home there, even if I enjoy it. And
Speaker 2: I think just this feeling of being in between these
Speaker 2: two places was really something that is very I think
Speaker 2: deep within this book. I think each of the characters
Speaker 2: struggles with belonging in one way or another and struggles
Speaker 2: with this question of am I am I real enough?
Speaker 2: I am I fitting into this category well enough? And
Speaker 2: it's not even about necessarily wanting to I don't know,
Speaker 2: like be part of a group necessarily. But it's more
Speaker 2: about wanting to be part of a story, right, and
Speaker 2: wanting to be part of again this sense of belonging
Speaker 2: a community. And I think that's what a lot of
Speaker 2: the characters are searching for.
Speaker 1: What's the relationship for you between that kind of personal
Speaker 1: exploration and becoming a writer, that kind of anxiety about
Speaker 1: belonging and that desire to capture and articulate the world.
Speaker 2: I have been thinking about this recently a lot. I
Speaker 2: think I have been wondering why I write at all?
Speaker 2: And I think there's a lot of reasons, but one
Speaker 2: of the big ones I think is that writing is
Speaker 2: where I get to have the deepest conversations I ever
Speaker 2: get to have, you know. And I think I was
Speaker 2: realizing this just the other day, because you know, when
Speaker 2: you really love a book, it's a transformative experience. It's
Speaker 2: this experience that has no language that you could really
Speaker 2: say to express how much you know a book means
Speaker 2: to you. So if I were to love book and
Speaker 2: then meet the author and tell them I loved your book,
Speaker 2: like that would not even begin to capture what it meant,
Speaker 2: right Like, it's there's there's something that's just it's lost
Speaker 2: in the words themselves, right Like. I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the reading experience itself, and the experience both for the
Speaker 2: writer and then for the reader, Like, that's where this
Speaker 2: really deep communication happens, and that's where it's possible to,
Speaker 2: you know, say this is what it's like for me,
Speaker 2: Is it like? Is it like this for you? I
Speaker 2: think I actually became a writer because I felt sort
Speaker 2: of afraid to like speak, Honestly, I was a very
Speaker 2: shy kid, and because I had learned English from my
Speaker 2: Malaysian parents, I had sort of Malaysian, you know, inflections
Speaker 2: and in Malaysian ways of speaking, and in America, I
Speaker 2: would just all the kids, you know, didn't know what
Speaker 2: I was saying necessarily or wanted to make fun of
Speaker 2: me for the ways that I said certain things. And
Speaker 2: so I think I found in writing a way to
Speaker 2: communicate like the most perfectly, you know, and sort of
Speaker 2: the most unassailably and you know, the most perfectly. And
Speaker 2: I think that, of course that's not totally true, right,
Speaker 2: there's still like miscommunication within writing itself, but I think
Speaker 2: that that's where it began for me, just this desire
Speaker 2: to like craft something and say, Okay, this is what
Speaker 2: I mean to say, and here, please receive it. I mean,
Speaker 2: I find it so interesting that, you know, I've written
Speaker 2: the one book that I've written, but when a reader
Speaker 2: reads it, they're creating a completely different book. You know.
Speaker 2: I'm sort of enlisting their imagination, enlisting their backgrounds, their perspectives,
Speaker 2: their questions, and it sort of fuses into this like
Speaker 2: hybrid thing and then it becomes its own like creation.
Speaker 2: And I think that's so interesting that it's not that
Speaker 2: I just have one book that is out there, but
Speaker 2: there are so many books that become created every time
Speaker 2: somebody reads the book I've written.
Speaker 1: So then, how different was that experience of doing it
Speaker 1: a second time around? You know, but with an actual
Speaker 1: pre existing idea about who that rada might be, that
Speaker 1: platonic ideal of the rada. You'd met them, you'd rapturous
Speaker 1: reviews and awards, and I'm sure endless fan mail from raiders.
Speaker 1: How does book two then feel different to sit down
Speaker 1: and write.
Speaker 2: I think that does make it a little bit scary,
Speaker 2: because with the first book it was very much a
Speaker 2: secret I didn't tell most of the people in my
Speaker 2: life because I felt a sort of shame around it,
Speaker 2: around the fact that I was writing a novel at all.
Speaker 2: And with the second novel, there is a bit more
Speaker 2: of an expectation. People know that you're a writer. You've
Speaker 2: announced that to everybody, and so I think I felt
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say stuck, but it just felt like I
Speaker 2: often had the I don't know, I had these like
Speaker 2: voices in my head that would I have these voices already, right,
Speaker 2: the voices that tell you like, oh, you're not good enough,
Speaker 2: that you're not this book is not up to par
Speaker 2: or whatever it is, and I think that once, once
Speaker 2: you release writing into the world, those voices become just
Speaker 2: like multiplied by a lot, and it's a great effort
Speaker 2: to sort of come back to yourself and to shut
Speaker 2: them out a little bit, to go back to your
Speaker 2: question of realness. Actually, and something that you've said reminded
Speaker 2: me that you know, I write in part because I'm
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what I actually care about, what
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about, what questions I have, as I've said,
Speaker 2: and to sort of get to this like genuine version
Speaker 2: of myself. But I think it's really difficult to get
Speaker 2: there just living as we do, like in the Internet age,
Speaker 2: right when we have emails constantly, we have social media
Speaker 2: and the Internet and just lots of people and companies
Speaker 2: vuying for our attention, telling us what to buy, what
Speaker 2: to look at, what you read next, whatever it is. Right,
Speaker 2: there's just so many forces that are sort of pulling
Speaker 2: at our attention, and it's a real challenge to actually
Speaker 2: just sit with yourself and to sort of be in
Speaker 2: that silence and to think, Okay, what do I actually
Speaker 2: care about, what do I want to spend my hours doing?
Speaker 2: And it's deeply uncomfortable honestly, like I think writing people
Speaker 2: find it hard because it's kind of unpleasant to sit
Speaker 2: with yourself. We find all these ways to not have
Speaker 2: to do that, you know. But I think that if
Speaker 2: you can move past the discomfort, it's so rewarding. And
Speaker 2: that's that's what I want to do with my life.
Speaker 1: When we returned, Rachel reveals why magic and science might
Speaker 1: just be one on the same, not just narrative, but
Speaker 1: in the creation of a narrative. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Each of the three characters in real Americans share a
Speaker 1: common experience throughout the novel, Time stops freezes at different points,
Speaker 1: and yet our three protagonists are able to move through
Speaker 1: the stillness. It's an element of the narrative that raises
Speaker 1: many many questions. Can these pauses be explained by science
Speaker 1: or is there something more mysterious at work here? As
Speaker 1: a kind of extension of that question about luck and
Speaker 1: fortune versus circumstance, endeavor, whatever, there's another, perhaps unhelpful binary
Speaker 1: I want you to help me unpick, and that's between
Speaker 1: science and magic and the relationship between those two ideas.
Speaker 2: So this book, for many years was just about science.
Speaker 2: There was a scientist character and at the same time,
Speaker 2: there was a strange thing that happened was happening with
Speaker 2: all three of the characters, where they experienced time in
Speaker 2: a strange way. And I didn't know why that was
Speaker 2: happening to all of the characters, but I knew that
Speaker 2: it was. I mean, that was the very first page
Speaker 2: that I that I wrote, was Lily wakes up and
Speaker 2: for some reason, the time on the clock isn't changing.
Speaker 2: And so I tried for many years to figure out
Speaker 2: a scientific explanation for that, to figure out why this
Speaker 2: thing was happening to all of these characters. And and
Speaker 2: I think writing is a little bit like magic too, right.
Speaker 2: It's a very scientific thing, and that it comes from
Speaker 2: your brain, and it's this like solid thing. We're not
Speaker 2: solid but squishy. I guess it's a physical thing. There's
Speaker 2: things that are actually happening. There's you know, tricity happening
Speaker 2: in there. But writing can often feel like magic when
Speaker 2: when you're doing it and you know, maybe our idea
Speaker 2: comes out of somewhere, or you start with this thought
Speaker 2: that maybe the characters have this time issue, and then
Speaker 2: years later you realize it's because of something more magical
Speaker 2: and not necessarily something scientific. For me, the scientific worldview
Speaker 2: has so much to do with this Western worldview that
Speaker 2: we can understand everything and that we can just given
Speaker 2: enough time and resources and money or whatever, we can
Speaker 2: figure everything out. I mean, there's a sort of hubrisk
Speaker 2: to science today and to and to technology, right, Like
Speaker 2: there's that that slogan like move fast and break things.
Speaker 2: I don't remember which company, but you know, that's that's
Speaker 2: a tech slogan that we have because there's just this
Speaker 2: desire to innovate and and this perspective that these men
Speaker 2: in power can solve everything, right, And I was really
Speaker 2: interested in a different kind of perspective. There's this fundamental
Speaker 2: mystery to the world itself, and I think that's something
Speaker 2: that I was interested in just exploring. I guess, like
Speaker 2: the fundamental mystery to what it means to be a
Speaker 2: human being and why are we all here? I have
Speaker 2: no idea, to be quite honest. And that's a question
Speaker 2: that I think I keep asking.
Speaker 1: It's a question you're asking really wonderful and interesting ways
Speaker 1: in real Americans, but also in ways it seemed to
Speaker 1: me to mirror the creative process, the process of writing
Speaker 1: a novel. You know, the questions about predeterminism, about how
Speaker 1: much kind of control we have over our own lives,
Speaker 1: of the choices we make and the ripple effects that
Speaker 1: come out of them, And when dealing with science or
Speaker 1: magic in a book, they're both different way of doing
Speaker 1: the same thing, which is coming up with an explanation
Speaker 1: for the circumstances that you've been able to wave through
Speaker 1: the book. They're another form of imposing a narrative on
Speaker 1: the inexplicable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. I don't think anyone has ever
Speaker 2: said that to me, but I love that framing of it.
Speaker 2: And I think something that you said earlier too has
Speaker 2: stuck with me, just about the fact that a lot
Speaker 2: of these narratives in the book are sort of imposed
Speaker 2: after the fact, right, I think I think of that.
Speaker 2: For May in particular, she's less, I would say, like
Speaker 2: in the Muck of Life. When she's recounting the story,
Speaker 2: she's able to sort of shape the way that she
Speaker 2: is sharing her particular story, And it's an impulse that
Speaker 2: I have always resisted, which I think is a little
Speaker 2: bit weird for a writer to say. You know, writers
Speaker 2: are often the people that sit around the campfire and
Speaker 2: they're good at spinning long yarns and like making you know,
Speaker 2: just like sort of engaging you. And I have never
Speaker 2: felt like that kind of personality, And to me, I
Speaker 2: think I've always just felt a little bit at a remove,
Speaker 2: you know when it comes to narratives, which is so
Speaker 2: strange I think for a writer to say. And yet
Speaker 2: I think that's why I have written the books that
Speaker 2: I've written, you know. I think there's a little bit
Speaker 2: of this mistrust of narratives and wanting to poke at
Speaker 2: them a little bit and wanting to when they're employed,
Speaker 2: to sort of turn around and say, well, yeah, are
Speaker 2: we going to keep going with this? You know? Like
Speaker 2: I think I was interested in the introduction but also
Speaker 2: disruption of these narratives that we all know.
Speaker 1: Part of the thing that so defines that constructed narrative,
Speaker 1: that is, the concept of americanness is about the nature
Speaker 1: of want and the expression of wants, you know, the
Speaker 1: things that you can aspire to, the things that you
Speaker 1: can reasonably expect for yourself, the things you strive for.
Speaker 1: And it's a kind of fact that it's really acutely
Speaker 1: illustrated through the cross generational thing and the ways in
Speaker 1: which three generations in the one family might want different
Speaker 1: things for themselves, or I have different ideas about what
Speaker 1: belonging and satisfaction might look like.
Speaker 2: I love what you said there that the characters they
Speaker 2: want different things. I think depending on who they are,
Speaker 2: they feel permitted to want different things. Right, they're sort
Speaker 2: of a self well not necessarily self imposed, but there
Speaker 2: are limits on what these characters desire for themselves. And
Speaker 2: I'm reminded of what we were talking about in terms
Speaker 2: of the immigrant story and the American story intersecting. And
Speaker 2: I think May is a character in the book who
Speaker 2: has almost like boundless want. She has really deep ambitions.
Speaker 2: She wants a lot of things, and it's almost out
Speaker 2: of place, you know, in the country that she grew
Speaker 2: up in. It's only in America that she gets to
Speaker 2: really pursue those dreams. Although you know she comes against limitations,
Speaker 2: you know, in this place that alleges to be about
Speaker 2: opportunities for everybody and a place where you can do anything.
Speaker 2: I think she her ambition is well placed there, and
Speaker 2: yet she comes up against these limits that are imposed
Speaker 2: on her.
Speaker 1: Lastly, from the way you describe it, the strange familial
Speaker 1: trait of being able to stop time is an idea
Speaker 1: that came to you before the reasons why all the
Speaker 1: resonances of it became clear to you. And I'm curious
Speaker 1: is that you know, like I'm a parent of smalllish
Speaker 1: children who like nothing more than like, which super power
Speaker 1: would you want? How would you you know? What magic?
Speaker 3: Would you?
Speaker 1: Why? Time? Why is there something beguiling and interesting to
Speaker 1: you about the idea of being able to manipulate it
Speaker 1: or play with time?
Speaker 2: Time is something that I also think of, something that's
Speaker 2: so like the sort of time scarcity is such an
Speaker 2: American belief that I've been raised in, or maybe it's
Speaker 2: just capitalist, I guess like this like sort of capitalist
Speaker 2: belief in this need to make good use of your time,
Speaker 2: not to waste time, to spend it wisely, things like that.
Speaker 2: I mean, we even talk about it in these terms.
Speaker 2: And I think time is one of those American narratives
Speaker 2: that I was raised with, right, that there's a correct
Speaker 2: usage of time and that you shouldn't you shouldn't be
Speaker 2: wasting it. And I think it was a pressure that
Speaker 2: I felt as I was writing the book itself, right, like, oh,
Speaker 2: this should be going faster. I need to be writing faster.
Speaker 2: And I think that That's why that emerged for me
Speaker 2: as this this thing that kept happening to the characters.
Speaker 2: It was something sort of you know, that was beyond
Speaker 2: my own like conscious understanding, but it was something that
Speaker 2: was there because it's been there sort of throughout my upbringing.
Speaker 2: And I think in writing this book, I realized that, yeah,
Speaker 2: writing isn't about speed, you know, like the point isn't
Speaker 2: to write a book as fast as I can possibly
Speaker 2: write it. The point is deepening thoughts and coming back
Speaker 2: to a text day over day, in part because you
Speaker 2: come to it as a different person each time. You know,
Speaker 2: you're slightly changed, and the person that I am, you
Speaker 2: know now sitting here with you, is so different from
Speaker 2: the person that I was when I began the book.
Speaker 2: And I think a novel, especially for me as the writer,
Speaker 2: it helps me sort of work through thoughts that I have,
Speaker 2: questions that I have, and then it sort of documents
Speaker 2: my evolving views. It helps me figure out what I'm
Speaker 2: even thinking or what my answers to certain questions are,
Speaker 2: even though they might shift. I guess writing a novel
Speaker 2: is a deeply inefficient use of one's time. You know,
Speaker 2: often I would I would write a page out and
Speaker 2: then the next day I would sit down and realize, oh,
Speaker 2: this is all actually terrible and I need to delete
Speaker 2: it all. It's one of the most inefficient things you
Speaker 2: could do with your time, and within capitalism, it's not
Speaker 2: something that you know is logical or productive or any
Speaker 2: of those things. And so I think because of that,
Speaker 2: I think it's it's a good thing to do, like
Speaker 2: we should all, you know, find ways to sort of
Speaker 2: resist that that sort of imposition on us that we
Speaker 2: just need to be cogs in this capitalist machine. I
Speaker 2: think it matters that we waste time and we think
Speaker 2: about things for a long time.
Speaker 1: Well, I for one, I'm colossively grateful that you've given
Speaker 1: over to those inefficiencies and amogical ways to spend your
Speaker 1: time and look forward to you continuing to do so
Speaker 1: for many years to come. Many thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. This is such a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Rachel Kong's Real Americans is available at all Good bookstores.
Speaker 1: Before we go, I wanted to tell you what I've
Speaker 1: been reading this week, and if like me, you're very
Speaker 1: much missing the HBO TV show Succession, there's a new
Speaker 1: Australian novel out that might just Scratch that Itch. It's
Speaker 1: the third novel from Melbourne writer Robert Luken's and it's
Speaker 1: called Somebody Down There Likes Me. It's about a wealthy
Speaker 1: family in turmoil. You know exactly what that means. If
Speaker 1: you're a Succession fan and the novel is a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, you can find it and all the other
Speaker 1: books we've mentioned today at your favorite independent bookstore. That's
Speaker 1: it for this week's show. If you enjoyed it, please
Speaker 1: tell your friends and rate and review us. It helps
Speaker 1: a lot. Next week. I'm read this so I sit
Speaker 1: down with Australian literary heavyweight, two time Miles Franklin winner
Speaker 1: Alex Miller to discuss his latest novel, The Deal.
Speaker 3: The reason I wrote The Deal was to bring a
Speaker 3: couple of things into perspective. One was the fact of
Speaker 3: my father as the good man before the war and
Speaker 3: his gift to me, of the simplicity of art in
Speaker 3: that innocence of art as it can be, and the
Speaker 3: corruption of art.
Speaker 1: Read This is produced and edited by Clara Ames. The
Speaker 1: show is mixed by Travis Evans with original compositions by
Speaker 1: Zalton Fetcher. Thanks for listening, See you next week.