Speaker 1: As a reader, I have pretty consistent tastes and preferences,
Speaker 1: I think, and just to be clear, I reserve the
Speaker 1: right to completely abandon this theory. But I think that
Speaker 1: my primary passion is for story. I'm a suckophe narrative.
Speaker 1: I'll favor a novel over a work of nonfiction nine
Speaker 1: times out of ten. And when I think about my
Speaker 1: great reading satisfactions, there's something about being gripped by a
Speaker 1: plot and dragged along compulsively that is irresistible. I think
Speaker 1: it's why I'm partial to a good crime novel or thriller,
Speaker 1: where the writers deliberately manipulating their readers with how they
Speaker 1: spin the story out, rewarding with surprise and revelation and big,
Speaker 1: juicy plotty goodness. But then, sometimes, just sometimes, there's an
Speaker 1: indulgence to abandoning that, to giving over to words on
Speaker 1: a line, wallowing in the imaginative and creative meanderings of
Speaker 1: a talented writer. World building, an atmospherics, vibe, and character.
Speaker 1: These are all their own singular place measure for a reader,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they're enough, weightless without stakes, a book without incident.
Speaker 1: One such book is the novel The Anthropologists. It's by
Speaker 1: Paris based Turkish born author Aishagil Savage. I won't say
Speaker 1: nothing happens in this novel, but it's pretty close. It's
Speaker 1: the story of a relationship a couple, Asia and Manu,
Speaker 1: who are hunting for a new apartment to buy. It's
Speaker 1: beautifully written, very human, very rich in detail, and almost
Speaker 1: entirely without incident, and on this occasion that works beautifully.
Speaker 1: The novel sprang from a short story that Aishagel had
Speaker 1: published in The New Yorker back in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: called Future Selves. I remember when I read it, We're
Speaker 1: in the middle of COVID lockdowns here in Melbourne, and
Speaker 1: there was something about the specificity of it, these details
Speaker 1: of a mundane existence in a big city, characters sitting
Speaker 1: in cafes, wandering the streets and parks more than five
Speaker 1: kilometers from their front door. The whole thing was a
Speaker 1: glorious treat, heart pounding fantasy translated into a novel. Her
Speaker 1: attention to detail, her meticulous and tender chronicling of the
Speaker 1: beats of everyday life is, if anything, even more accomplished.
Speaker 1: The city Asia and Manu live in is never named.
Speaker 1: Their status as outsiders, as foreigners is the canvas on
Speaker 1: which the story is told, but in many ways the
Speaker 1: book actively resists, even rejects, the more dramatic plotty implications
Speaker 1: of that the pair of building a life, making a home,
Speaker 1: and a sense of identity out of their dynamic with
Speaker 1: one another. It's a story about youth, about those years
Speaker 1: in your twenties when you're technically an adult but as
Speaker 1: yet relatively unencumbered by responsibility by kids and mortgages and
Speaker 1: aging parents. It's a time ripe for nostalgia where the
Speaker 1: point of things is not about plot, it's not about fordmament,
Speaker 1: but instead it's about surrendering to what's on the page
Speaker 1: in front of you, the small, the immediate, the every day.
Speaker 1: That's what Asha gol Savage is inviting us to give
Speaker 1: over to, and it's delicious. I'm Michael Williams, and this
Speaker 1: is read this the show about the books we love
Speaker 1: and embracing the absence of story behind. Tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about the moment when it became clear to
Speaker 1: you that Future Selves, which is such a wonderful story
Speaker 1: but is in many ways the genesis of this novel.
Speaker 1: What was the moment when you've got a sense that
Speaker 1: future Selves could be expanded outwards or could kind of
Speaker 1: encompass a different, broader set of concerns.
Speaker 2: I wrote future Selves during the pandemic, and that you know,
Speaker 2: the way that people's lives were going in so many
Speaker 2: any extreme directions, and you could really see disparity when
Speaker 2: people had to be confined, had to go to work
Speaker 2: or had to stop work, were completely alone, or weren't community.
Speaker 2: Those extremes became so apparent. And that's when I wrote
Speaker 2: the story about a couple who is looking for an
Speaker 2: apartment to buy and a young boy who has a
Speaker 2: tragic ending. And when the story was published, I was
Speaker 2: a little bit surprised by the feedback I got by
Speaker 2: how many people had connected to it, and I thought, oh, like,
Speaker 2: maybe there is something here, and I was quite heartened.
Speaker 2: And I also thought there is something so liberating about
Speaker 2: the framework of looking for an apartment to buy. I
Speaker 2: could sort of continue writing this for a really long time,
Speaker 2: the story of the boy and the tragedy that befalls him.
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, it's too finite, it's too soon,
Speaker 2: and that can't really find the novel, or that it
Speaker 2: will not lead the story further. So I had to
Speaker 2: get rid of it, and so I was left with
Speaker 2: just this apartment hunt and I started expanding from there.
Speaker 2: And also something else that happened at the same time,
Speaker 2: which was because we weren't going out, and because we
Speaker 2: weren't seeing friends or eating in restaurants, daily life started
Speaker 2: appearing as something very exotic, and it's you know, some
Speaker 2: people ask like, oh, it's so courageous that you wrote
Speaker 2: about daily life, or you know, you can see it
Speaker 2: so crisply, but actually I wasn't. I was removed from it,
Speaker 2: and that's why I was able to write it. And
Speaker 2: I thought, wouldn't it be so fun to write a
Speaker 2: book in which characters are going to cafes and hanging
Speaker 2: out and having drinks.
Speaker 1: That does make a lot of sense, that it's wild
Speaker 1: fantasy that they could experience these basic, mandane things that
Speaker 1: we take for granted. Yeah, the rest of the time. Yes,
Speaker 1: in Asia a manner, you have possibly one of the
Speaker 1: happier couples committed to the literary page in a long time.
Speaker 1: And I want to know, is that kind of wish
Speaker 1: fulfillment as well? Is that just kind of was that
Speaker 1: a deliberate choice to have them be so harmonious?
Speaker 2: It really was, and this was the number one greatest
Speaker 2: challenge and obstacle for the book. When I knew what
Speaker 2: the structure was and that what the novel was going
Speaker 2: to be, I said, Okay, this is a book about
Speaker 2: a couple who love one another, and that's sort of it.
Speaker 2: And again, you know this, it's within the framework of
Speaker 2: early youths, so they don't have that many reasons for arguments.
Speaker 2: I'm sure Manu and Asia when they have children or
Speaker 2: when their parents get sick, they will start getting into arguments,
Speaker 2: but it's this time in their life that's totally idyllic.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, for some reason, you are
Speaker 2: not allowed happy couples in literally, even though it's the thing.
Speaker 2: I know people who are happy. I know lots of
Speaker 2: young couples who love one another and that's sort of it,
Speaker 2: and they have silly arguments but nothing existential. And I thought,
Speaker 2: why can't that be the basis of the book. And
Speaker 2: it kept on becoming a problem with editors who wanted drama,
Speaker 2: who wanted who said, like, oh, you know, how nice
Speaker 2: that this is the background, but surely now we need
Speaker 2: some big plot development. And they get separated and then
Speaker 2: they come back together and I say, but no that
Speaker 2: you know, life doesn't always work that way, and people
Speaker 2: can continue peacefully loving one another and seeing these apartments.
Speaker 2: And the thing is that they don't have that much
Speaker 2: at stake with the apartments, Hunt. I think that's why
Speaker 2: they're not arguing. They're like, ah, well, we can still
Speaker 2: continue living in our rented place. And they really are children.
Speaker 1: You say, not that much at stake, But seriously, if
Speaker 1: you put in a chapter where they go to Ikia
Speaker 1: get some furniture, then they'd be broken up by the
Speaker 1: end of the book. It's very strong.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're not buying furniture. They you know, they buy
Speaker 2: things from the flea markets, so it's probably very cheap
Speaker 2: and they don't have to assemble it. And again, it
Speaker 2: doesn't feel like a big commitment when they buy it
Speaker 2: from the free market, so there are no arguments.
Speaker 1: You're quite right. The introduction of an alan key would
Speaker 1: just main kind of conflict, so it avoid it. I am.
Speaker 1: I do think there's something too in the point you
Speaker 1: make about how old they are. You know, part of
Speaker 1: this period in their life. Part of what you're capturing
Speaker 1: is that period where adult capacity has arrived, but adult
Speaker 1: responsibility is just around the corner that it's a period
Speaker 1: where you're kind of in a bit of a bubble.
Speaker 2: Right, and it's it's such a short period, and it's
Speaker 2: it's so it's full of freedom and joy and hypothetical
Speaker 2: conversations and getting drunk and you know, smoking joints. And
Speaker 2: I thought, what a fun time to try and capture.
Speaker 2: And I guess I was also writing it at a
Speaker 2: time when I was about to cross to the other
Speaker 2: side of real adult responsibility, and that time of being
Speaker 2: youthful adults started feeling quite exotic to me as well.
Speaker 1: It is funny because the book resists nostalgia about family tradition,
Speaker 1: that resists nostalgia about homelands or about whatever those concepts mean.
Speaker 1: But it is an intensely nostalgic book for the period
Speaker 1: that it describes, for the lifestyle that it kind of
Speaker 1: demonstrates is possible. And I think that gives it a
Speaker 1: kind of lovely, almost a note of melancholy to my mind.
Speaker 1: But maybe that's what happens when you read it in
Speaker 1: your forty six and this kind of freedom is far
Speaker 1: behind you. But it did seem to me to be
Speaker 1: a kind of captule of a particular kind of hope.
Speaker 1: You know, the idea of having a day where you
Speaker 1: wrote together is such a kind of beautiful concept.
Speaker 2: I think, yes, And it's only in that phase and
Speaker 2: it sort of vanishes forever and perhaps then comes back
Speaker 2: when you're when you're quite old and have abandoned certain
Speaker 2: worldly responsibilities once again. You know, within that space of
Speaker 2: freedom or hope or possibility, there's also this constant anxiety, right,
Speaker 2: And when you're in the period of rotting and hanging out,
Speaker 2: you're also asking yourself, oh, should I be acting a
Speaker 2: bit more adults? Should I be looking into mortgages, or
Speaker 2: you know, not drinking as much and going out for
Speaker 2: a run in the morning, all of these things. And
Speaker 2: this is some of a question I get asked a
Speaker 2: lot by young people during readings, what would you suggest
Speaker 2: we do in this time of our lives, because we
Speaker 2: also think we should be committing and figure furing out
Speaker 2: what to do. And I tell them just enjoy it,
Speaker 2: just relax. You know, you are going to have responsibility
Speaker 2: so soon. You don't even have to decide or like,
Speaker 2: go take that path. I love the rotting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh no, The only thing to do is do nothing,
Speaker 1: embrace it, be in it. Then how does that connect
Speaker 1: with user's work as a documentary filmmaker? How does the
Speaker 1: person who is the observer, who is the chronicler, who
Speaker 1: is the anthropologist? Are they ever truly in the moment?
Speaker 1: I mean, she feels like she is, but how much
Speaker 1: is there a necessary arms length from a person who's
Speaker 1: studying everything that happens around them us?
Speaker 2: He is a pretty anxious person. So as much as
Speaker 2: she feels nostalgic for that period of rotting and nostalgic
Speaker 2: or very warmly towards this moment of youth, she is
Speaker 2: also very anxious, and she is an observer, and she's
Speaker 2: always going to be distancing herself or taking a step
Speaker 2: back from these moments of pure pleasure and saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: what are we doing here? And what does it mean?
Speaker 2: And I think it's with that type of anxiety that
Speaker 2: she embarks on the documentary project because she's very curious
Speaker 2: about how other people live and you know, what are
Speaker 2: what are things that they do that that maybe she
Speaker 2: and Manu aren't doing? And what how do people give
Speaker 2: shape and meaning to their daily lives? And I think
Speaker 2: the documentary sort of mimics her quest in life to
Speaker 2: you know, to give shape, to give meaning, to have
Speaker 2: some sort of a reason to account for the hours
Speaker 2: of rotting or going to the park or or taking
Speaker 2: a walk.
Speaker 1: You also capture the ways in which in a relationship
Speaker 1: we all become anthropologists. That the thing about the two
Speaker 1: of them is great rehashes of the things that go
Speaker 1: on in their lives. That they not only go and
Speaker 1: look at these apartments, but then they will sit in
Speaker 1: a cafe afterwards endlessly kind of rehearsing the stories that
Speaker 1: they're going to tell about it. That part of what
Speaker 1: makes any partnership, any relationship really, but a romantic union
Speaker 1: in particular, is that business of post mortems on everyone
Speaker 1: and everything around you at all times.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's their form of intimacy. I think that's
Speaker 2: sort of their own private ritual and culture. Also, I
Speaker 2: think rehashing is especially important for us Yan Mono because
Speaker 2: there are so few symbolic or invisible structures that are
Speaker 2: keeping them together. No religion, you know, no ceremonies. So
Speaker 2: the rehashing is a ceremony of its own. It's a
Speaker 2: way of repeat and therefore making solid the narratives that
Speaker 2: they come up with.
Speaker 1: When we return Aishigel shares the approach behind writing the Anthropologists,
Speaker 1: what she calls a fragmentary style, and she explains why
Speaker 1: she wants to make foreignness the status quo in her right,
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. You show extraordinary deptness in this
Speaker 1: novel as a kind of miniaturist of creating these really
Speaker 1: small moments that absolutely sing that their smallness and their
Speaker 1: clarity is kind of the point. That conflict between characters
Speaker 1: would overshadow that, and geographical detail would overshadow that, and
Speaker 1: by stripping all of that away, the very small seems
Speaker 1: to be your project here.
Speaker 2: Yes, And the fragmentary approach started because because I wanted
Speaker 2: to get away from the short story and rewire my brain.
Speaker 2: So I wasn't thinking in the tone of the story.
Speaker 2: But as I kept breaking it down and giving titles
Speaker 2: to each of the episodes, I thought, oh, well, this
Speaker 2: is actually you know, this is the point of the book.
Speaker 2: It's a point about daily life, and daily life does happen.
Speaker 2: It is about the small. And you know, you can't
Speaker 2: write about daily life in an epic structure or as
Speaker 2: a family saga, because it would become a farce. You know,
Speaker 2: if I created a traditional novel arc around having coffee
Speaker 2: and meeting up with friends. It just wouldn't work. So
Speaker 2: the episodic also rescued me because it showed me a
Speaker 2: way to write about daily life and to honor daily life,
Speaker 2: you know, without maybe tiring the reader or trying their patience.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in the disease, not to ground the anthropologists
Speaker 1: in a specific physical place or a specific cultural tradition.
Speaker 1: You know, the city goes un named, Your characters' backgrounds
Speaker 1: referred to elliptically rather than with any specificity. How important
Speaker 1: was it to you that there was that distance from
Speaker 1: the grounded in that level of the narrative.
Speaker 2: I thought so much about this, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 2: it is an autobiographical book. It's most more autobiographical than
Speaker 2: anything I've written. Why not sort of own up to
Speaker 2: its inspirations. Why not say it's a Turk living in
Speaker 2: Paris and she's married to a Latvian and I would
Speaker 2: try it out and it would be okay. But there
Speaker 2: was something lost which I couldn't quite name, but instinctively
Speaker 2: I knew that that's not what I wanted to do
Speaker 2: in the book. And I think what was lost was
Speaker 2: a universality, this of a foreign experience or a sense
Speaker 2: of youthful estrangement that I was trying to get to
Speaker 2: that exists everywhere. And it's not just you know, expats
Speaker 2: who feel it. It's also people you know who move
Speaker 2: from one city to another in their own countries, or
Speaker 2: maybe it's people in their own cities who feel a stranger,
Speaker 2: who feel foreign just because they're a little quirky. And
Speaker 2: I thought the book is more about that than it
Speaker 2: is about the specific life of a Turk living in Paris,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, that comes with a lot of history,
Speaker 2: it comes with a certain you know, it comes with stereotypes,
Speaker 2: that comes with different expectations, and I didn't want to
Speaker 2: be writing that, but it's something I do quite often
Speaker 2: actually in my stories in my previous book as well,
Speaker 2: that I'll try to blur the lines of geographical settings
Speaker 2: and people's backgrounds. And I think, again, this might be
Speaker 2: my autobiographical instinct, that I don't define myself simply as
Speaker 2: a Turk, or simply as a Turk living in France,
Speaker 2: or simply as a Turk who's also bilingual. There are
Speaker 2: so many aspects to my identity. But I think to
Speaker 2: everyone's identity that it feels restricting to have to pick
Speaker 2: geography and then to write within the prejudices or the
Speaker 2: expectations of that geography.
Speaker 1: I think you write about foreignness and the experience of
Speaker 1: being a foreigner in ways that are different to any
Speaker 1: that I remember reading before. And I would love it
Speaker 1: if you would reflect on what the concept of the
Speaker 1: foreign means to you.
Speaker 2: I have a short story collection coming out in a
Speaker 2: few months and I was doing an interview for it,
Speaker 2: and the interviewer asked me, are there anything things that
Speaker 2: surprised you about the themes in this book? And you know,
Speaker 2: it's so interesting that, you know, I write about people
Speaker 2: in foreign places all the time, and then when I
Speaker 2: put the collection together, I thought, oh, everyone is a foreigner.
Speaker 2: How interesting that I gep Born using this trophe. And
Speaker 2: I almost think that it comes to me. You know,
Speaker 2: if you're a writer who always writes about characters in
Speaker 2: their homeland, it's sort of like the neutral state. No
Speaker 2: one will question you, you know, no one will say, oh,
Speaker 2: you keep writing about Americans. It's just, you know, that's
Speaker 2: sort of the basis is the foundation. And I think
Speaker 2: for me, foreignness is almost like a form of belonging
Speaker 2: and it's probably through that, you know, that's my neutral state,
Speaker 2: and that's where I start from, and you know, obviously
Speaker 2: from my autobiography, because I grew up in so many
Speaker 2: different places and I belong to different linguistic traditions, and
Speaker 2: possibly in my writing, I'm trying to make foreigness something
Speaker 2: that is the status quo.
Speaker 1: I think you do it so effectively, and I'm glad
Speaker 1: you made that point about foreignness as a state of belonging,
Speaker 1: because I think that's where for me, the great difference
Speaker 1: in the way you approach it presents itself that instead
Speaker 1: of this idea of alienation of the other or distancing,
Speaker 1: your characters are characters who define themselves by their foreignness
Speaker 1: rather than in opposition.
Speaker 2: To it, right exactly. And I think you know, when
Speaker 2: I was growing up and a child in the nineties,
Speaker 2: we there was so much emphasis on understanding cultural differences,
Speaker 2: you know, appreciating cultural differences and noticing the ways different
Speaker 2: people do things. And I think as I lived in
Speaker 2: different places that became actually quite strange to me that
Speaker 2: we would remark on so many sort of regular daily
Speaker 2: things as like something to appreciate and mark differences, rather
Speaker 2: than find some sort of a tribe among people who
Speaker 2: are comfortable in that state of not quite belonging.
Speaker 1: Given that, I mean, it seems interesting to me that
Speaker 1: Asia is so committed to the idea of having a
Speaker 1: native friend in the city that they find themselves, that
Speaker 1: the idea of having someone who does have deeper links
Speaker 1: to the place where they are is something that matters
Speaker 1: to her.
Speaker 2: I think for her that is more exotic than you
Speaker 2: know what I was saying about, remarking on differences that
Speaker 2: someone could still be living in their town of birth
Speaker 2: and they know, you know Waiters by name. That to
Speaker 2: her is very very special, and there is something there
Speaker 2: is something embarrassing about being a foreigner somewhere and not
Speaker 2: being integrated to its native culture. And yet that sort
Speaker 2: of is the reality of most of expatriate life. You
Speaker 2: become friends with other foreigners. It's important for her to
Speaker 2: have Lena as this exotic friend, exotic native friend. And
Speaker 2: then you find out that Lena actually also is playing
Speaker 2: on the idea of the native and that she is
Speaker 2: exoticizing herself in ways that Asia thinks a native should be.
Speaker 2: And her background is different, that she grew up in
Speaker 2: the suburbs and she's not this cool and chic urbanite
Speaker 2: as she portrays well.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things about foreigners, about living
Speaker 1: in a place that is new to you one way
Speaker 1: or the other, is the capacity for ray invention. And
Speaker 1: part of what's so lovely in the Anthropologist is that,
Speaker 1: in many ways it's a story about the way a relationship,
Speaker 1: a couple, a unit can reinvent themselves towards one another
Speaker 1: rather than distinctly.
Speaker 2: I think also when because they're so free in their
Speaker 2: lack of roots, it's not just that they're reinventing themselves,
Speaker 2: it's also they are deciding on their own culture, they're
Speaker 2: deciding on their ways of life, and they can really say, okay, well,
Speaker 2: what are our traditions going to be? What are our
Speaker 2: rituals going to be? And they can create all of
Speaker 2: that from scratch, and that's quite a joyful experience. That's
Speaker 2: also another way of thinking of foreignness as not a
Speaker 2: state that's constantly lacking or defined by a sort of absence,
Speaker 2: but a state that has a lot of possibility and
Speaker 2: freedom and creativity to it because of what it allows
Speaker 2: you to recreate or decide on your own.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for the gift that you've given
Speaker 1: us with not just this book, but all your books,
Speaker 1: and for being on the.
Speaker 2: Show today, Michael, this was such a pleasure. Thank you
Speaker 2: for having me.
Speaker 1: Aishagl Savage's novel The Anthropologists is available at all Good
Speaker 1: bookstores now, and do keep an eye out for her
Speaker 1: forthcoming collection of short stories. It's called Long Distance and
Speaker 1: it'll hit the shelves this July. Before we go, I
Speaker 1: wanted to tell you what I've been reading this week.
Speaker 1: And when you're someone who works in publishing and books
Speaker 1: one way or the other, you have a sense of
Speaker 1: dread when friends or people you know or colleagues tell
Speaker 1: you that they've written a book. Melbourne writers Sophy Quick
Speaker 1: has just brought out her debut novel. It's called The
Speaker 1: Confidence Woman and it is I used to work with
Speaker 1: Sophie a few years ago and she was always smart
Speaker 1: and funny, but she was also always working on a
Speaker 1: novel that never seemed likely to see the light of day.
Speaker 1: It has and it's a funny, gripping read, incredibly talented.
Speaker 1: I laughed out loud repeatedly and send her an unsolicited
Speaker 1: message telling her I loved it. I do recommend you
Speaker 1: read it. That's The Confidence Woman by Sophie Quick. You
Speaker 1: can find it and all the others we mentioned at
Speaker 1: your favorite independent bookstore. That's it for this week's show.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends and rate
Speaker 1: and review us. It helps a lot. Next week I
Speaker 1: read this. Join me as I sit down for a
Speaker 1: conversation with Irish novelist Niall Williams.
Speaker 3: I make more sense to the world by being a writer.
Speaker 3: I'm a better person when I'm rating, I understand the
Speaker 3: world better when I'm rating, and I can live better
Speaker 3: as a writing as a writer. In writing sam as
Speaker 3: in reading, I think is a way to conquer loneliness.
Speaker 1: Read this is a Schwartz Media production, made possible by
Speaker 1: the generous support of the IRA Group. The show is
Speaker 1: produced and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing by Travis
Speaker 1: Evans and original compositions by Zalton Fetcher. Our transcripts are
Speaker 1: edited by Posey mcacky. Thanks for listening, See you next week.