Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Today's show is part of our mini
Speaker 1: series on Power in Media Broadly. Here to discuss power
Speaker 1: in publishing and the capacity of editorial voices in shaping
Speaker 1: the direction of the world is Chris Jackson. Chris is
Speaker 1: the publisher and editor in chief of the One World
Speaker 1: imprint of Random House. Chris and One World publish some
Speaker 1: of the best known writers in the world today, Tanahasi Coates,
Speaker 1: Brian Stevenson, Jay z Eddie Wong, to name just a
Speaker 1: few of the most prominent. Chris has already played a
Speaker 1: major role in shaping the American literary landscape, in particular
Speaker 1: bringing diverse voices and the voices of black writers into
Speaker 1: a range of national conversations. Just last year, he won
Speaker 1: the Center for Fiction's Medal for Editorial Excellence, which in
Speaker 1: the world of publishing is a very big deal. In short,
Speaker 1: there's nobody I can think of better than Chris to
Speaker 1: talk about how the power of publishing can be deployed
Speaker 1: to achieve very concrete and specific, real world goals. Chris,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. For joining us. I want to
Speaker 1: start with some of what is the day to day
Speaker 1: building blocks of your industry. But I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't know about and this is based on
Speaker 1: my own experience, which is that until I published a book,
Speaker 1: I basically understood nothing about who the various people were
Speaker 1: involved in publishing books. And that made me realize that
Speaker 1: a lot of people just don't know. So you're both
Speaker 1: publisher and editor in chief of One World, which is
Speaker 1: an imprint of Random House, Right, you have a huge
Speaker 1: amount of power in the world in which you operate.
Speaker 1: Could you explain just at a basic level, what does
Speaker 1: it mean on a day to day basis that you're
Speaker 1: both publisher and editor in chief of your imprint. So
Speaker 1: to be the publisher of the imprint means that I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to oversee everything that happens with the books, you know,
Speaker 1: the way we market them, the way we solve them,
Speaker 1: the way we design them. So that's the publisher role.
Speaker 1: I'm also responsible for the financial performance of the imprint
Speaker 1: within the larger company as the publisher. As the editor
Speaker 1: in chief, I'm the one who has to prove our
Speaker 1: acquisitions and and then I work with with our editors
Speaker 1: on developing the books, as well as editing and acquiring
Speaker 1: a number of them myself. So it's sort of an
Speaker 1: editorial hat and a business hat. It's it's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's a lot, but I wouldn't I wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: have one without the other. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: really important as an editor that I also get to
Speaker 1: see what's going on in terms of the overall publication
Speaker 1: of the book. I think it's important, you know, just
Speaker 1: as a person, as a human being. The reason I
Speaker 1: got into the industry in the first place was to
Speaker 1: work with writers and to help, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: collaborate with them on developing their ideas and stories. So
Speaker 1: that's really essential to my identity as a as a worker.
Speaker 1: I want to know about how the situation that you're
Speaker 1: in right now evolved in the following sense. So I
Speaker 1: know that One World was originally founded back in the
Speaker 1: early nineties with a focus not exclusively on African American writers.
Speaker 1: But when you became the publisher and editor in chief
Speaker 1: of it just a few years ago, I guess almost
Speaker 1: five years ago, it had sort of I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: it had disappeared, but it had kind of declined from
Speaker 1: prominence right now. Oh, it literally didn't exist. It had
Speaker 1: stopped existing yet. Okay, so you revived it, as it were.
Speaker 1: I brought it back to life. And so when you
Speaker 1: did that, I guess you already knew that some of
Speaker 1: the famous successful writers whom you worked with were going
Speaker 1: to come with you to that imprint or did you
Speaker 1: not know that at all? I suspected that they would
Speaker 1: come with me. I mean, I think the editor writer
Speaker 1: relationship can be really important and really intimate and not
Speaker 1: something that can be easily exchanged. I think, particularly with
Speaker 1: the writers that I worked with, because I felt like
Speaker 1: I was working with writers who with whom I shared
Speaker 1: a sense of mission, and I was trying to create
Speaker 1: a publishing house that was devoted to that mission, and
Speaker 1: it was happening all within the same larger corporate entities.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't that difficult to pull them over into
Speaker 1: my list. I don't think I would have done it
Speaker 1: if I didn't know that I could bring For instance,
Speaker 1: Sanahasey Coats, who had originally worked with at the previous
Speaker 1: imprint I had worked with, which is a place called
Speaker 1: Spiegel and Grau. You know, I knew he was gonna
Speaker 1: come with me, and he was someone who I thought
Speaker 1: was sort of foundational to what I wanted to do
Speaker 1: as an editor and as a publisher. Other writers like
Speaker 1: Brian Stevenson, Trevor Noah, I was pretty confident they would
Speaker 1: also come with me, some of the bigger names, to
Speaker 1: help build this new thing. How much have you thought,
Speaker 1: I'm already working with extremely prominent African American public intellectuals
Speaker 1: and writers, and if we group ourselves as a word
Speaker 1: together under a single imprint, that will have a kind
Speaker 1: of doubly empowering effect on their voices, right, And how
Speaker 1: much of you thought, well, it's just an efficiency question.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm already working on these with these folks,
Speaker 1: or in some cases, I'm hoping to work with these folks,
Speaker 1: and so why not do it under this framework where
Speaker 1: I'll have more control over the process. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's probably some combination of those two things. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the important things to know about one world,
Speaker 1: it's not just African American writers, right to me, the
Speaker 1: idea is that it was an imprint that was going
Speaker 1: to have writers that represent the country as it actually is,
Speaker 1: rather than the sort of very monocultural narrow way that
Speaker 1: typically publishing has worked, which has excluded much of the country,
Speaker 1: particularly as the country develops and evolves demographically, but also
Speaker 1: in terms of sensibility and ideologies. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring together a group of writers who I thought represented
Speaker 1: what I saw as an emerging America or ignored or
Speaker 1: occluded America, and bring them together in one place so
Speaker 1: that we could not just publish these individual voices, but
Speaker 1: that I could think about audiences in a different way
Speaker 1: and think about how do we find audiences that are
Speaker 1: interested in these books, so that I could go back
Speaker 1: to them and say, well, you love to this, you'll
Speaker 1: love this other book as well, And also create a
Speaker 1: support network of writers that the writers who work within
Speaker 1: the imprint, we find ways to connect them so they
Speaker 1: can do events together and they can support each other
Speaker 1: in various ways. Because there is a loose sort of
Speaker 1: mission to all these books, even though I think there's
Speaker 1: some heterogeneity in terms of how the writers represent that mission,
Speaker 1: and certainly they don't agree with each other on everything
Speaker 1: even remotely, and a lot of them are actually in
Speaker 1: fierce disagreement with each other over some things. But there
Speaker 1: is a sense that they're all pushing in more or
Speaker 1: less the same direction and want to be in dialogue
Speaker 1: with each other or in conversation with each other, even
Speaker 1: when that conversation includes some disagreement. So that's what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. The idea of a publishing house has
Speaker 1: always been that it's a house. It's a place where
Speaker 1: a bunch of people will find their rooms, you know,
Speaker 1: but there's a sense of connection between them that they're
Speaker 1: all kind of after the same thing. I think, as
Speaker 1: an outsider or a semi outsider this industry, that you're
Speaker 1: doing something extremely original in conceiving a publishing house in
Speaker 1: that way, and conceiving the group of people with whom
Speaker 1: you work as in some ways mutually self supporting, even
Speaker 1: where they disagree with each other. I mean, maybe people
Speaker 1: talk that way maybe in the nineteen thirties, you know,
Speaker 1: or fifties, but I'm not even sure that they did.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the way they used cultural capital
Speaker 1: at the time was more maybe they would see each
Speaker 1: other at cocktail parties, and you know, maybe they were
Speaker 1: very very loosely associated with certain editors, But I don't
Speaker 1: think that even in its glory days, knob for for
Speaker 1: our Strauss thought of its writers as a house in
Speaker 1: the sense that you're describing, you know, I think when
Speaker 1: they use the word house, I mean use them this
Speaker 1: wonderfully metaphoric, rich way of where the writers were, the
Speaker 1: people who lived in the house. But I think they
Speaker 1: meant it historically when they said house, they meant like
Speaker 1: the merchant banks that called themselves house. Yeah, now you're right,
Speaker 1: bit of business house, So I think I've been that's usable.
Speaker 1: But it's not just I mean, it's not just home here.
Speaker 1: It's also extremely innovative from a publishing industry perspective, because
Speaker 1: you're describing something much more collaborative and collective and mutually
Speaker 1: self reinforcing. And I'm wondering, first of all, am I
Speaker 1: right that what you're doing is really pretty radically new?
Speaker 1: And second, where'd you get the idea for it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I would call it radically new. I
Speaker 1: think there is some version of this that happens in
Speaker 1: a lot of publishing companies. But when I first started
Speaker 1: in publishing, it was a long time ago, and one
Speaker 1: of the sort of publishing houses at the time was Vintage,
Speaker 1: which was being run by Sunni Meta, who would eventually
Speaker 1: run off Knap and was sort of a legend in
Speaker 1: the industry, eventually become a legend industry. And he had
Speaker 1: started this this this group of books, I think it
Speaker 1: was called Vintage Originals, and and in that list were
Speaker 1: a group of writers who in like the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: This is actually before I even got into publishing. It's
Speaker 1: like when I was becoming publishing aware, it was like
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, there were they published writers, you know,
Speaker 1: like Jay mcinarry and um, you know, sort of these
Speaker 1: young New York writers in these paperback originals that all
Speaker 1: were kind of designed the same and all sort of
Speaker 1: presented a kind of common vision of what it meant
Speaker 1: to be, you know, young and you know, disilutioned, preemptively disillusioned,
Speaker 1: and probably coke adduled lines of coke in the downstairs
Speaker 1: bathroom at exactly. That was precisely that you're not what
Speaker 1: it was. But to me, what was interesting about it
Speaker 1: was that it did present almost like a coherent vision
Speaker 1: that in its little way because of the kind of critical,
Speaker 1: massive writers that kind of came through that same list,
Speaker 1: and that people could read one and they read another,
Speaker 1: and there was a sort of series association with the books.
Speaker 1: It did shift our sense of what American culture was
Speaker 1: at that time, for better or for worse. It wasn't
Speaker 1: even necessarily it may have been a trivial shift in
Speaker 1: some ways, but you could see how one writer might
Speaker 1: not be able to do that. At five or ten
Speaker 1: writers working in succession and in some loose association with
Speaker 1: each other could have that kind of effect. And that
Speaker 1: was really intriguing to me, because, you know, someone who
Speaker 1: had studied African American literature and been even from as
Speaker 1: a child, was like sort of obsessed with African American literature.
Speaker 1: You know, African American literature is a history of movements.
Speaker 1: It's the Harlem Renaissance. It's black feminist writers in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, Tony Morrison and Alice Walker and Audrey Lord
Speaker 1: and people like that. It was the Black Arts movement
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. We had poets like Mary Baraka
Speaker 1: and Sonya Sanchez and Larry Neil and so forth that
Speaker 1: represented that moment in time. And each one of those
Speaker 1: literary movements, you know, the sort of communist affiliated then
Speaker 1: broke away from communist group of writers like Ellison and
Speaker 1: Richard Wright. So you have these moments, and again it's
Speaker 1: because of the connections between the writers. They were able
Speaker 1: to not just represent themselves, but to power a shift
Speaker 1: in the culture that was essential, and that was always
Speaker 1: very exciting to me. I didn't want to just be
Speaker 1: an editor who opportunitistally published whatever happened to be solving
Speaker 1: at the moment. I want to think about how do
Speaker 1: you create a shift in culture? And I think you
Speaker 1: can only do that by having some kind of cohesion
Speaker 1: around what you're doing. So yeah, that's why I thought
Speaker 1: it was an important idea, and I think it also
Speaker 1: obviously has a business outcome as well, you know, because
Speaker 1: you're able to identify audiences and build them. I think
Speaker 1: someone like Tanahassi in some ways helped people identify an
Speaker 1: audience that was hungry for new ways of thinking about
Speaker 1: sort of this basic American problem of racism. And I
Speaker 1: think it was an interesting project to think about, well,
Speaker 1: how do we fill in more gaps in that story
Speaker 1: for that reader, and how do we expand beyond the
Speaker 1: core reader who we think of as being like maybe
Speaker 1: a black person or being someone who's like a leftist
Speaker 1: who cares about these things, and making it into something
Speaker 1: even bigger how do we kind of expand at wedge
Speaker 1: that we start from one writer with the next, and
Speaker 1: the next and the next, until you actually have a
Speaker 1: culture defining group of writers. That aspiration is really exciting
Speaker 1: and it is really wonderfully ambitious. I want to ask
Speaker 1: you about the nature of the movement that you think
Speaker 1: is emerging now when you compare it to some of
Speaker 1: those other historical presidents, and they're all fascinating in their
Speaker 1: own rights, how would you characterize the literary intellectual social
Speaker 1: movement that you're trying to catalyze right now? I agree
Speaker 1: that Tanahassi Coats is essential to it and central to
Speaker 1: its public intellectual face. But as you pointed out, some
Speaker 1: of the people in this circle don't agree with him
Speaker 1: on a bunch of concrete propositions. Right well, I think so.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I do think there is some friction and some disagreement
Speaker 1: that I think has been productive in some ways. I
Speaker 1: think then there's a kind of unproductive friction that exists
Speaker 1: from other directions. But going back to Tanahassi again is
Speaker 1: being like sort of in some ways a model. And
Speaker 1: you know, even before Tanahasi network with Brian Stevenson, you
Speaker 1: know who's this lawyer Death Penalty, primarily lawyer who runs
Speaker 1: an organization called Eji in Alabama. And I did a
Speaker 1: book called Just Mercy with Brian, and I would say
Speaker 1: those two were probably like definitive to me of what's
Speaker 1: transpired since then, not just in publishing, but in I
Speaker 1: think a kind of reckoning that's happening in a larger
Speaker 1: way in this country. And I think what both of
Speaker 1: those books did, meaning Just Mercy and Between the World
Speaker 1: and Me, is that they combined kind of personal narrative
Speaker 1: with some kind of contemporary storytelling and reportage with a
Speaker 1: deep dive into history and the sort of historical antecedents
Speaker 1: for events that were happening right before us here in
Speaker 1: the present. And I think that's the thing that's most
Speaker 1: definitive of this moment is unlike you know, you look
Speaker 1: at the Black Arts movement, where it was about declaring
Speaker 1: like certain revolutionary ideas about black identity right or in
Speaker 1: you know, the case of like the Audrey Lord, Tony
Speaker 1: Morris and Alice Walker moment, it was about exploring ideas
Speaker 1: of black feminism but also looking at politics in this
Speaker 1: more intersectional way. I think what this moment is about
Speaker 1: is really a historical reckoning, a way of going back
Speaker 1: into history to trace the structural and systemic, you know,
Speaker 1: decisions that were made through policy over history and how
Speaker 1: they've shaped the tragedies of our contemporary situation around race
Speaker 1: and racism. And I think that historical reckoning has been
Speaker 1: has been the great superpower I think of this generation
Speaker 1: of writers, which is why you saw, like last year,
Speaker 1: even with the protest movements, you know, how much it
Speaker 1: was about pulling down statutes and pulling down monuments and
Speaker 1: thinking about the persistence of the heroism of the Civil War,
Speaker 1: you know, generals who are who are put up on
Speaker 1: these pedestals or even the founding fathers, and really actually
Speaker 1: not just saying, Okay, this thing happened to this one
Speaker 1: man by the police, but thinking about what are the police?
Speaker 1: You know, what are the policy decisions that brought us here?
Speaker 1: What is our national identity? You know, like really going
Speaker 1: to the route while also being completely clear eyed about
Speaker 1: what's right and one of us. I think I think
Speaker 1: that's the thing that distinguishes this group of writers in
Speaker 1: this moment. I think that was an extraordinary description of
Speaker 1: some family shared characteristics and how they're driving a public conversation.
Speaker 1: I want to ask about a difference of nuance, let's say,
Speaker 1: between Brian's approach and Tanassi Coats's approach. So, you know,
Speaker 1: in my world, which is the world of law schools,
Speaker 1: Brian is he's a god. I mean, I was going
Speaker 1: to say something close to a god, but that's not
Speaker 1: actually true. He is just a god. He was a saint,
Speaker 1: you know when I when I first met him, when
Speaker 1: I was a baby law professor, and then he ascended
Speaker 1: to that status. And part of it is, for sure
Speaker 1: the depth of his capacity to engage with concrete stories,
Speaker 1: which is a great lawyer, to lee tactic and skill,
Speaker 1: and to take into account the historical background. But it's
Speaker 1: also true that his vision, broadly speaking, is one of
Speaker 1: faith and trust in the capacity of justice, not always
Speaker 1: in the real world institutions of justice, which he spent
Speaker 1: a lot of his time showing or broken, but in
Speaker 1: the capacity of justice as a concept to get us
Speaker 1: where we would like to go, and also in the
Speaker 1: possibility of using the tools of the justice system, even
Speaker 1: when the system is broken, to try to reshape and
Speaker 1: rebuild that set of institutions in a better way to
Speaker 1: make it work. Well, right, I'm not saying that Brian
Speaker 1: Stevenson doesn't have a critical line going through his thought.
Speaker 1: For sure, he does. But he also very self consciously
Speaker 1: has identified himself as a person who is you know,
Speaker 1: he is a profit of the possibilities of improvement, right,
Speaker 1: and say he literally, not just metaphorically, he literally saves
Speaker 1: the lives of people who are you know, actually innocent
Speaker 1: or whom the system has condemned wrongfully and it works sometimes, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's central to why that book is
Speaker 1: so great, But it's also central to why his career
Speaker 1: is so powerful. Yeah. In contrast, Tanahaso, as a kind
Speaker 1: of self identified writer's writer and intellectual, often says, and
Speaker 1: I think I've even heard some conversations where you and
Speaker 1: he had talked about this, that he doesn't think his
Speaker 1: job really is to make it better, to provide solutions.
Speaker 1: His job is to tell you what it is, to
Speaker 1: tell it like it is, and to lay out the truth.
Speaker 1: And some of his critics, I think, some degree unfairly
Speaker 1: have tried to put him into the box of people
Speaker 1: who think it's just so broken it can't be fixed.
Speaker 1: And I don't think he ever goes quite that far,
Speaker 1: but he does have a powerful intellectual capacity to be
Speaker 1: skeptical of fixes that other people put forward. Let's say, So,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm wondering how you think about this nuance
Speaker 1: of difference between these two figures whom you're describing, I
Speaker 1: think correctly as as exemplary in this current intellectual movement,
Speaker 1: and both of whom are part of your movement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think that's an interesting distinction. It's one that
Speaker 1: I think people make a lot about, particularly in that
Speaker 1: critique of name critique, but like that sort of observation
Speaker 1: about Tana Hassi, and I think it goes to one
Speaker 1: of these things I think has been a bad thing
Speaker 1: that's happened over this period of time, which is this
Speaker 1: conflation of because an idea is presented in the form
Speaker 1: of a book, that all books are trying to do
Speaker 1: the same thing. And I think that Brian clearly has
Speaker 1: a certain kind of mission, specific mission that he is
Speaker 1: engaged in, a specific project that he's engaged and I
Speaker 1: could think as both a lawyer and as a communicator
Speaker 1: and as a leader, and I think Tana Hassei has
Speaker 1: a has a different one. You know, it reminds me
Speaker 1: like the books. Some of the books that I love
Speaker 1: the most when I was growing up were books that
Speaker 1: were that you could characterize as quote unquote negative, whether
Speaker 1: it was you know, Joseph Heller or Selene or whatever
Speaker 1: like it was. These are people who were writing about
Speaker 1: the horrors of particular historical moment, and they were writing
Speaker 1: with black humor. They were writing with no attempt to
Speaker 1: solve a problem, but merely to name it and to
Speaker 1: observe it. And that was very powerful and useful. And
Speaker 1: sometimes a reader needs to be devastated. They don't necessarily
Speaker 1: need to be hopeful. Thinking of a reader is being
Speaker 1: human being that has lots of points of input and
Speaker 1: a life that goes on beyond the book. There. I
Speaker 1: think we should give people the credit for being able
Speaker 1: to read a work of tragedy. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what Tanahassie in some cases is doing as a writer,
Speaker 1: as a literary figure, as an advocate, not as a
Speaker 1: politician certainly, but as someone who is as a writer
Speaker 1: feels like his job is to mind his own mind
Speaker 1: and feelings and to convey it in as powerful way
Speaker 1: as possible. That said, Tanahasi's the most famous nonliterary piece
Speaker 1: probably is his essay on reparations. And if there is
Speaker 1: anything more hopeful than the idea of presenting a case
Speaker 1: to reparations, I don't know what it is. He was
Speaker 1: not saying this is a hopeless situation. He laid out
Speaker 1: the historical roots of whether it's lining, and all the
Speaker 1: things that have created a system of segregation and wealth
Speaker 1: depletion and exploitation, and he said, but here's a possible
Speaker 1: solution if we're willing to do it. And I think
Speaker 1: Brian in his way, offers the same kind of hard choice,
Speaker 1: which is we've created this system of mass incarceration, disproportionate punishment,
Speaker 1: but here is a solution if we're willing to take it.
Speaker 1: And I think Brian rightfully, you know, he comes out
Speaker 1: of a different tradition. He comes out of the civil
Speaker 1: rights tradition in the South, and it certainly intellectually he
Speaker 1: comes out of that tradition, and so his goal is
Speaker 1: to inspire with that sense of hope and possibility. But
Speaker 1: I think they're basically in some ways saying the same thing,
Speaker 1: which is that we've created a dire situation that has
Speaker 1: cost us enormously as a society, and there's a solution
Speaker 1: if we're willing to take it, and it's hard. Both
Speaker 1: fiction and fiction can be important parts of historical reckoning
Speaker 1: of the kind that you're describing. And certainly the other
Speaker 1: African American literary movements that you've described all had some
Speaker 1: components of powerful nonfiction writers, essayists, memoirists, and also fiction writers. Right,
Speaker 1: how do you think of the balance? I mean, many
Speaker 1: of the writers you publish are primarily nonfiction writers, although
Speaker 1: in some cases I mean Tonahasi published a novel that
Speaker 1: was very well received recently. But how do you think
Speaker 1: about that balance of fiction nonfiction as you develop a
Speaker 1: group of writers who, as you've said, are not just
Speaker 1: you know, they're not You're not just trying to sell books.
Speaker 1: You're trying to shape and influence a way of engaging
Speaker 1: with the world. Yeah. Now, I think fiction's really important.
Speaker 1: I think poetry also is really important, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, screenwriting and playwriting are also very important. And
Speaker 1: this is something I believe also very deeply, which is
Speaker 1: that part of the political project is a project of
Speaker 1: imagination and can you can you fight for something that
Speaker 1: you can't see? You know? And sometimes we have to
Speaker 1: imagine the thing that we want. And I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of writers who can maybe get slotted in
Speaker 1: this kind of category of afrofuturism, that very sort of
Speaker 1: imaginative space. But I think that is very complementary to
Speaker 1: the nonfiction work because I think this is one of
Speaker 1: the great things in one of the real challenges of
Speaker 1: sort of African American history, but also history of a
Speaker 1: lot of other marginalized groups, which is that you wake up,
Speaker 1: you know, the first day of your consciousness, whether it's
Speaker 1: you know, as a child or where you get older,
Speaker 1: and you have like a moment of awakening to the
Speaker 1: world that you're in. And it can be depressing, it
Speaker 1: can be it can feel overwhelming, it can feel like
Speaker 1: there are problems that you need to understand, but there's
Speaker 1: also a world that you want to create. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the works that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: when they kind of go back into history and kind
Speaker 1: of untangle the roots of some of our present problems
Speaker 1: and tragedies, help explain that the sort of backwards looking part.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes it's our fiction that can help
Speaker 1: us explain, can help us see something that's not there yet.
Speaker 1: I also think that fiction is important. You know. I'm
Speaker 1: doing the sixteen nineteen Project book this fall, and that
Speaker 1: book is going to be a mix of nonfiction essays
Speaker 1: and fiction. So there's going to be a great deal
Speaker 1: of fiction in that book by really the best writers.
Speaker 1: Fiction and poetry from the best writers who are working today.
Speaker 1: And what they're doing is going back into history and
Speaker 1: trying to imagine the interior lives of the people who
Speaker 1: lived through the events that the essays are unpacking in
Speaker 1: a nonfiction way, in an argumentative nonfiction way. But what
Speaker 1: was it like to actually live it again? I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the powerful things that's happening. You know,
Speaker 1: I talked about what describes this moment makes it different
Speaker 1: from some of these other historical moments, is I think
Speaker 1: so much of it is in both imagining the future
Speaker 1: but also looking back and understanding how we got here.
Speaker 1: You look at the works of Colson Whitehead. Colton is
Speaker 1: someone who I've always loved, and in part it's because
Speaker 1: of the way that he kind of pointed our imaginations forward,
Speaker 1: right but his last the sort of cycle of novels
Speaker 1: that he's on right now, starting with The Underground Railroad
Speaker 1: and then with Nickel Boys, and then he has another
Speaker 1: one coming soon that go back into history are to
Speaker 1: help us see that past with a new clarity. And
Speaker 1: I think that's something that again is very indicative of
Speaker 1: this age that the fiction and nonfiction are working, I
Speaker 1: think hand in hand in that way, and in creating
Speaker 1: this reckoning. The idea that it's possible to have profound
Speaker 1: power over a culture and over imagination through curating a
Speaker 1: collection of writers is emerging to me as a powerful
Speaker 1: theme of our conversation. And I want to ask you
Speaker 1: about what must be one challenging part of it. To
Speaker 1: do this really well, you need a combination. You need
Speaker 1: the people, the public intellectuals who are at the top
Speaker 1: of their game, Tanhasi or Close and Whitehead. And yet
Speaker 1: you also must be looking for brand new voices. You
Speaker 1: must always be going through the manuscript's emissions and asking
Speaker 1: people and keeping your ear to to the ground to
Speaker 1: try to figure out who who are new exciting voices.
Speaker 1: What's the trick too, If there is a trick to
Speaker 1: trying to balance all those different components so that the
Speaker 1: curating process doesn't become closed, how is it possible for
Speaker 1: you to make sure that new voices, like you're always
Speaker 1: looking for make their way in, right. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think this is one of the useful things about having
Speaker 1: a sort of team that works with me, because you know,
Speaker 1: it is actually a lot to be you know, for instance,
Speaker 1: I said I was working on the sixty nineteen project book.
Speaker 1: You can only imagine how much attention, like every single
Speaker 1: piece of punctuation in that book I have to pay
Speaker 1: attention to because I know that one wrong sentence, one
Speaker 1: wrong comma, and the weight of you know, twenty five
Speaker 1: state legislature will land on us. So that's very preoccupying, right,
Speaker 1: And then I'm also trying to work with as you said,
Speaker 1: like some of these writers are are already very big
Speaker 1: writers who are coming back for subsequent books. But we
Speaker 1: have a great team of people who are who are
Speaker 1: really you know, looking for those new voices and new writers,
Speaker 1: you know, one of our like over the last three years,
Speaker 1: since we've really been up and running in this sort
Speaker 1: of relaunched version of the imprint, we've had a National
Speaker 1: Book Award finalist every single year. And what's interesting is
Speaker 1: it's the National Book Award finalists are not the Tanahassee's
Speaker 1: and the Abram Candy's and you know, Brian Stevenson's their
Speaker 1: first time writers almost in every case. There was Carlo
Speaker 1: Ville Vincentsio who wrote a book called The Endocumented Americans,
Speaker 1: which was a finalist last year. And Carla, you know,
Speaker 1: started this book just out of college as herself being
Speaker 1: an undocumented person. And then we had a book called
Speaker 1: Brothers Have Been Done by a writer named Marwan Hisham
Speaker 1: who was a citizen journalist in Syria writing about the
Speaker 1: war from the inside during Isis occupation, which was a finalist.
Speaker 1: And I mean had a collection of short stories called
Speaker 1: Sabrina and Koreana by another first time writer, nam Kali
Speaker 1: Fajardo and Stein, who was an indigenous Chicana who lived
Speaker 1: in Colorado and was very much outside of like the
Speaker 1: New York literary kind of seen. One of our younger
Speaker 1: editors found her work and championed it, and hopefully we're
Speaker 1: building her into another one of these writers who we
Speaker 1: can think of as being like the sort of New
Speaker 1: American Canadate of writers. Yeah, so we are absolutely still
Speaker 1: looking and we're trying to also find ways to to
Speaker 1: this has been very shrity process, but find ways to
Speaker 1: open our submissions process to nonagented writers. Try to find
Speaker 1: people who maybe can't get through that other layer of gatekeepers,
Speaker 1: which are the literary agents, which are you know, publishing
Speaker 1: has historically been very non diverse. The world of literary
Speaker 1: agents even is vastly less diverse even in the world
Speaker 1: of publishing houses. So so we're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: ways of maybe helping that situation out. Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Nicole Hannah Jones has agreed to come on the show
Speaker 1: a little bit later in the summer, so we're going
Speaker 1: to have an opportunity to really delve into the sixteen
Speaker 1: nineteen project even more. The sixteen nineteen project puts on
Speaker 1: the table something we haven't talked about yet, which is backlash.
Speaker 1: It's a sign in a way that a cultural movement
Speaker 1: or an intellectual literary movement is having an impact if
Speaker 1: some people are angry about it, or threatened by it,
Speaker 1: or disturbed by it. I'm wondering if, more broadly, you
Speaker 1: think about the kind of dynamic interplay between the movement
Speaker 1: you're helping to create and it's discontent out there in
Speaker 1: the world, largely in Trump world, but not only more
Speaker 1: broadly among some people in Middle America who are you know,
Speaker 1: often mischaracterizing and generally haven't read the things that they're criticizing,
Speaker 1: to be sure, but who nevertheless experience there being a
Speaker 1: kind of intellectual movement and they're not sure what it is,
Speaker 1: but they're pretty sure that they don't like it or
Speaker 1: that they're afraid of it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think this is completely predictable that there would be a backlash.
Speaker 1: There's always a backlash. What's only principle if you succeeded, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, literary movements that don't succeed don't don't produce backlash.
Speaker 1: It's a sign of exactly so as soon as you
Speaker 1: see the success, you know the backlash is coming. And
Speaker 1: it's funny because you know, you look at each one
Speaker 1: of these books, and it's true that the god like
Speaker 1: Brian Stevenson as the one person who has never gotten
Speaker 1: any kind of backlash, which I think I need to
Speaker 1: think about more, like, why is it that Brian is
Speaker 1: able to like Brian talks as much as anyone else
Speaker 1: about the about systemic racism, which is allegedly like the
Speaker 1: core problem people have with what that they're describing as
Speaker 1: critical race theory, that racism isn't just a matter of
Speaker 1: what's in your heart. It's a matter of systems and Brian,
Speaker 1: this is what his whole career has been about, but
Speaker 1: just mantling these systems. And yet somehow he has escaped
Speaker 1: this sort of backlash, which I think is really great
Speaker 1: and also really interesting. I need to think about why
Speaker 1: that it's But yes, it's totally predictable, and it's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that is, you know, its purposes to
Speaker 1: demoralize you. I mean, the thing that's demoralizing is that,
Speaker 1: as you said, I don't think these are people who
Speaker 1: have necessarily engaged in any kind of meaningful, good faith
Speaker 1: way with the work that they're not just criticizing but
Speaker 1: trying to outlaw. And that's frustrating and demoralizing, and it
Speaker 1: makes you want to defend in good faith the work
Speaker 1: that you're doing, but you're actually putting this good faith
Speaker 1: defense out against people who actually don't care about the
Speaker 1: good faith defense. Meanwhile, you know this as someone who's
Speaker 1: written books and is that you know, you get one
Speaker 1: bad review and it can dominate your mind in a
Speaker 1: way that ten good reviews don't. And the fact is
Speaker 1: that these writers have had an enormous effect on the
Speaker 1: way this country thinks about it's past, it's present, and
Speaker 1: it's possible future, and I would say an enormously positive
Speaker 1: effect on those things. And that's something I try to
Speaker 1: keep in mind, is that we're winning and the backlash
Speaker 1: is a sign that we're winning. This year we published
Speaker 1: Heather McGee's book, The Some of Us, which you know,
Speaker 1: was a best seller, and again kept pushing forward, I think,
Speaker 1: into the next stage of this idea, beyond or one
Speaker 1: oh one, into sort of like two oh one about well,
Speaker 1: you know, if this is what's you know, if our
Speaker 1: policies historically have been racist, like, how can we use
Speaker 1: that understanding to improve present policymaking. These ideas have been
Speaker 1: assimilated into mainstream democratic thinking, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we're on our way to having an anti racist majority
Speaker 1: in this country, which will be a real tipping point,
Speaker 1: even beyond the demographic changes. That's a tipping point that
Speaker 1: I think is coming and it's not and they won't
Speaker 1: be able to stop it. And if we can just
Speaker 1: figure out how to survive these occasional tempests, I think
Speaker 1: we'll keep pushing forward. We'll be right back. I have
Speaker 1: a question about economic power in its relationship to the
Speaker 1: Big Picture project that you're involved in. Publishing houses are
Speaker 1: almost all in the United States owned by a tiny
Speaker 1: number of big conglomerates. Right. Penguinandom is no different. But
Speaker 1: at one time, you know, let's say, the record industry
Speaker 1: was also in the hands of a small number of actors.
Speaker 1: And one of the innovations that we saw in the
Speaker 1: nineties and the odds was the starting of music industry entities,
Speaker 1: as it were, houses some of which were black owned
Speaker 1: or a majority black owned, that contributed to a transformation
Speaker 1: in that industry. Not total, but a meaningful transformation. Right.
Speaker 1: Is that doable in publishing? I mean, could we imagine
Speaker 1: that there could be a publisher doing the kind of
Speaker 1: work that you're doing that was genuinely a black owned,
Speaker 1: independent publishing house rather than part of a global conglomerate. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: this is something I think about quite a lot, because, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is like a certain amount of tension, of course
Speaker 1: in doing the work we do within this giant conglomerate.
Speaker 1: There's also you know, there are these sort of models
Speaker 1: for how it's been done in the past. There are
Speaker 1: independent black houses that are out there still. I just
Speaker 1: did an event the other day with Hockey Amunt of
Speaker 1: Booty who run Third World Press, which has been around
Speaker 1: for forty years and has published some very important writers
Speaker 1: over that time. And I think, you know, this is
Speaker 1: a time when publishing in general again consolidations in some
Speaker 1: ways of response to weakness, not to strength, and the
Speaker 1: weakness is that there are now lots of independent or
Speaker 1: VC funded entities. They're trying to remake the business in
Speaker 1: various ways. And you can even see things like substack
Speaker 1: as being sort of encroaching a little bit on book
Speaker 1: publishing traditional territory of being the place where you know,
Speaker 1: a writer could have an independent voice and could control
Speaker 1: their own content. And now you know, other people are
Speaker 1: finding other ways of doing that. So I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting open We're kind of, I think
Speaker 1: a transitional moment and a somewhat open moment in terms
Speaker 1: of where this industry is going to go, and I
Speaker 1: do think there are opportunities for that. That again, that said,
Speaker 1: one world is and I think this is really important,
Speaker 1: is that it's not we're not just publishing black books, right,
Speaker 1: We're publishing books from all kinds of people. We're trying
Speaker 1: to publish it out of a certain tradition and sensibility
Speaker 1: though that's different from the sort of I would call
Speaker 1: the mainstream publishing world's tradition and sensibility. I do think
Speaker 1: there's a place for an independent publisher right now, maybe
Speaker 1: more than ever, because a lot of the traditional advantages
Speaker 1: of a large publisher don't exist as in the way
Speaker 1: that they historically did. You know, the physical distribution and
Speaker 1: warehousing and all that is not as important as it
Speaker 1: was fifty years ago because basically everyone's solving to one
Speaker 1: customer for one thing that runs so much of the business,
Speaker 1: and a lot of what's being sold is digital in
Speaker 1: audio and ebooks forms. So we'll watch that space and
Speaker 1: see whether see whether that emerges. As a last question,
Speaker 1: I just want to ask you a little bit about
Speaker 1: your own biography and what brought you to where you are.
Speaker 1: I read that you went to a Hunter College high school.
Speaker 1: How was that educational experience important to what ultimately led
Speaker 1: you to where you were, and how did going to
Speaker 1: school there relate to the rest of your childhood and upbringing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I grew up in Harlem in you know, the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and eighties. Harlem was definitely pre gentrification. I
Speaker 1: grew up in the Grant housing projects which are on
Speaker 1: the west side of Harlem. And then I and I
Speaker 1: went to a public school there, initially PS thirty six,
Speaker 1: and it was it was not a good public school,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of chaos, not a lot
Speaker 1: of resources. It was a time when Harlem and a
Speaker 1: lot of uh, you know what we're called, I guess
Speaker 1: inner cities around the country were really in a state
Speaker 1: of complete neglect and implosion. And it was a very
Speaker 1: chaotic situation. But there were teachers there and principles there
Speaker 1: who definitely had come out of civil rights movement right
Speaker 1: and more radical movements that followed, and who who really
Speaker 1: believed that they were still in it exactly and we're
Speaker 1: still in it. It was still going on, right, and
Speaker 1: so they barely come out of it, if they come
Speaker 1: out of it at all. And they saw, you know,
Speaker 1: they really wanted to give me an opportunity, and so
Speaker 1: there was a school that you could get into just
Speaker 1: by passing a test. There was no other qualification. And
Speaker 1: it did change my life to be able to go
Speaker 1: into that school. I mean was being raised at the
Speaker 1: time by a single mother in the housing projects, and
Speaker 1: then I was suddenly put into this environment where I
Speaker 1: was surrounded by kids from all over the city and
Speaker 1: in a situation where I could I could just learn
Speaker 1: and it was free, which I think is also really important.
Speaker 1: That it had all of the advantages of any private school,
Speaker 1: but it was free. It just kills me because I
Speaker 1: knew And this is one of the great lessons of
Speaker 1: that moment for me, that I was leaving kids who
Speaker 1: were just as smart as the kids I was coming to,
Speaker 1: but who for various reasons, because of disorganization at home
Speaker 1: or because of other just simple things like you know,
Speaker 1: every every kid in my class was on public assistance
Speaker 1: of some kind. But these were clearly intelligent kids, but
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily have some other elements that allowed me to leave.
Speaker 1: And I think that made a big difference going to
Speaker 1: a public school, being sort of divided between these two worlds,
Speaker 1: the world of home and the world of the school
Speaker 1: on the Upper East Side. It really I did shape
Speaker 1: my sonse of certainly injustice, but also that the injustice
Speaker 1: wasn't fair. And I think this is really so cool
Speaker 1: to like a lot of these books that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: very few of the writers woke up and we're like,
Speaker 1: I want to fight for racial justice. A lot of
Speaker 1: them woke up and we're with a question, which is,
Speaker 1: why is it like this? Why is it that I
Speaker 1: live like this and ten blocks away as in my case,
Speaker 1: you know, or twenty blocks away people live in an
Speaker 1: entirely different way. My school was on Park Avenue on
Speaker 1: the Upper east Side, and it was like, okay, so
Speaker 1: there are these two radically different worlds. Why is that?
Speaker 1: And once you start asking that question, you can't stop.
Speaker 1: It's not out of some desire to create division or
Speaker 1: to grift your way into some hustle. It's like, I
Speaker 1: want to know why the world is the way it is.
Speaker 1: And that kind of bifurcation of my childhood is what
Speaker 1: is what made that question so acute for me. There's
Speaker 1: very few things in life more generative than realizing that
Speaker 1: nothing makes sense right. And it can be very or
Speaker 1: hard as a kid to be put in that situation.
Speaker 1: But if you make it through that initial wonder, you
Speaker 1: have a lifelong question about how things work right. And
Speaker 1: what a great question like not to feel like I understand,
Speaker 1: but that I wonder and then to see where that
Speaker 1: wondering takes me. And I think if you'll read between
Speaker 1: the world to me by Tanahas. If you read How
Speaker 1: to Be an Anti Racist by Abraham Kendy, these your
Speaker 1: books that start, if you read the sixteen nineteen project,
Speaker 1: they all start with a question like why is this
Speaker 1: clearly unfair situation? Why does it exist? This has been
Speaker 1: for me one of the most enlivening and fascinating conversations
Speaker 1: that I've had since starting the podcast. I would just
Speaker 1: want to express my gratitude Chris for the conversation, but
Speaker 1: also really for the work that you're doing for the
Speaker 1: construction of the thought world and the curation and the
Speaker 1: organization of a movement. I think it's powerful. I think
Speaker 1: it's profound, and it's having an enormous impact. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you. I really appreciate listening to Chris. I was
Speaker 1: blown away by the importance of the vision that he
Speaker 1: has and how far he has already come to accomplishing it.
Speaker 1: Instead of just looking at a publishing house as a
Speaker 1: for profit business, or even as a list of titles
Speaker 1: that might work together to one degree or another, he's
Speaker 1: reconceiving the idea of an imprint of a publishing house
Speaker 1: as a kind of metaphorical group house or community in
Speaker 1: which intellectuals, writers, creators can come together to be a movement,
Speaker 1: not just a set of books or authors or ideas.
Speaker 1: And Chris isn't just talking the talk. He's actually done
Speaker 1: it already. He has published and edited a large number
Speaker 1: of the writers who are contributing to our current moment
Speaker 1: of historical reckoning with the legacy of racism in America
Speaker 1: and with the crucial question of what we need to
Speaker 1: do next to improve it. That's explicitly the project of
Speaker 1: Tanahasi Coats, it's explicitly the project of Brian Stevenson, and
Speaker 1: it's also the project of a large number of other
Speaker 1: writers who are part of the literary group whom Chris
Speaker 1: is publishing. I was also very struck by Chris's thoughtful
Speaker 1: observations on the way that we need not only nonfiction
Speaker 1: but also fiction to make sense of our past and
Speaker 1: of our present. He's really bringing together both of those
Speaker 1: genres of writing within his publishing empire and its growth.
Speaker 1: And it's surely appropriate, given his interest in history, that
Speaker 1: he is deeply aware of how earlier historical movements in
Speaker 1: African American literary and social thought have themselves shaped our
Speaker 1: national conversation, going all the way back to the Harlem
Speaker 1: Renaissance and up through our contemporary world. Sometimes on Deep Background,
Speaker 1: when we get behind the stories, what we find is disorder, illogic, difficulty,
Speaker 1: and contradiction. That was not my experience of the conversation
Speaker 1: with Chris. To the contrary, getting behind the story of
Speaker 1: how his publishing house has put together its remarkable list
Speaker 1: of books and its remarkable community of writers, I actually
Speaker 1: discovered a coherent, thoughtful, historically sophisticated plan for what he
Speaker 1: intends to do and which he is already effectuating. If
Speaker 1: only all conversations about what's going on behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of power were so inspiring. Until the next time I
Speaker 1: speak to you, be well, think deep thoughts, and have
Speaker 1: a little fun. Deep Background is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Mola Board, our engineer is
Speaker 1: Ben Tolliday, and our showrunner is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Editorial
Speaker 1: support from noahm Osband. Theme music by Luis Gara at Pushkin.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton, Lydia, Jean Coott, Heather Faine,
Speaker 1: Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. I
Speaker 1: also write a column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can
Speaker 1: find at bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: original stlative podcasts, go to Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts,
Speaker 1: and if you like what you heard today, please write
Speaker 1: a review or tell a friend. This is deep background