Speaker 1: I'm a very clumsy person, and I always read the
Speaker 1: book I knock over. Welcome to the one you feed
Speaker 1: throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf h Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Will Schwabi, an author, entrepreneur, and journalist
Speaker 1: based in New York City. Will is the author of
Speaker 1: three books and was the former editor in chief of
Speaker 1: High Period Books. In two thousand and eight, he founded
Speaker 1: the recipe site Cookster, which was acquired by McMillan Publishing
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen, where he serves as executive vice
Speaker 1: president his latest work, Books for Living, consists of essays
Speaker 1: about twenty six different books that affected the author's life.
Speaker 1: Among the books described by Schwaby include Homer's The Odyssey,
Speaker 1: Herman Melville's Bartoby the Scrivener, EB White's Stewart Little, and
Speaker 1: Paula Hawkins The Girl on the Train. Carl Young once said,
Speaker 1: you are what you do, not what you say you'll do. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: at the end of a day or a week, I'll
Speaker 1: ask myself, based on my actions, what kind a person
Speaker 1: am I? If someone was to try and get a
Speaker 1: sense of who I am based on what I've done,
Speaker 1: what kind of person would they see? The truth is
Speaker 1: your actions are the portal to being the kind of
Speaker 1: person you want to be. So I'll pose the question
Speaker 1: to you for reflection. What actions have you taken to
Speaker 1: support the things you value in this world? If you
Speaker 1: value this show, if it has helped you to feel
Speaker 1: better on a dark day, to be a better parent
Speaker 1: or spouse, or a better friend, then please donate at
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash support. There you'll see
Speaker 1: many levels at which you can become a patron of
Speaker 1: the show. At ten dollars a month, will offer you
Speaker 1: additional exclusive content from our guests, as well as one
Speaker 1: mini episode per month, and plus there is no quicker
Speaker 1: way of feeling better than doing something good. And folks,
Speaker 1: we really need your financial support. That page again is
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash support. Thank you, and
Speaker 1: here's the interview with Will Schwalby. Hi, Will, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you, Eric, thank you for having me
Speaker 1: on the show. Your latest book is called Books for
Speaker 1: Living some thoughts on reading, reflecting and embracing life. And
Speaker 1: as I am a passionate reader, the minute I saw
Speaker 1: the book title, I was like, all right, this should
Speaker 1: be a great conversation. And the book is wonderful and
Speaker 1: we will get into it in a lot more detail
Speaker 1: here in just a second. But let's start like we
Speaker 1: usually do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking
Speaker 1: with this grandson. He says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery, love.
Speaker 1: The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. The grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second. He looks up and
Speaker 1: asks his grandfather. He says, well, grandfather, which one wins,
Speaker 1: and the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Well. Erica loved hearing that power well,
Speaker 1: And it wasn't a parable that I had heard, uh
Speaker 1: before I encountered your your podcast, But it spoke to
Speaker 1: me on a very deep level because my book is
Speaker 1: really a book about reading and about the importance of
Speaker 1: reading and stopping in our busy lives, stopping with all
Speaker 1: the texting and emailing and aggravating ourselves and just taking
Speaker 1: time to read thoughtfully and purposefully. And to me, every
Speaker 1: time I read, I'm feeding the good wolf. And and
Speaker 1: so reading, I think is just one of the most powerful,
Speaker 1: simple ways that we can feed the good wolf, that
Speaker 1: we can feed the part of ourselves which is about
Speaker 1: kindness and sensitivity and about listening. When we run around
Speaker 1: in this agitated state of greed and distraction, when we're
Speaker 1: on Twitter, when we watch endless amounts of CNN, then
Speaker 1: we're feeding the bad wolf. I will second that I
Speaker 1: have the same issue. So let's talk about reading for
Speaker 1: a minute. You've got a couple of great lines in
Speaker 1: the book that I'll read because I really, I really
Speaker 1: liked them. I think they just speak to reading in general.
Speaker 1: You say, I'm not the same reader when I finish
Speaker 1: a book as I was when I started. Brains are
Speaker 1: tangles of pathways, and reading creates new ones. Every book
Speaker 1: changes your life, So I like to ask, how is
Speaker 1: this book changing mind? I'm so glad that quote spoke
Speaker 1: to you. One of the things that I wanted to
Speaker 1: correct is the idea that reading is binary. So usually
Speaker 1: you say to someone can you read, and they say,
Speaker 1: of course I can read, or no, I can't read.
Speaker 1: It's something I'd like to learn if you encounter saying
Speaker 1: adult who hasn't received the benefit of an education that
Speaker 1: taught her aim how to read. But actually, reading isn't binary.
Speaker 1: Every time we read, we become better at reading, and
Speaker 1: every book teaches us to be a better reader every page.
Speaker 1: We're just not the same person. We're a better reader
Speaker 1: at the end of that page, and we're a better
Speaker 1: reader of that book, a better reader of that author,
Speaker 1: and just better reader in general. And there's obviously the
Speaker 1: great classical Greek saying that you can never step in
Speaker 1: the same river twice, you're not the same person and
Speaker 1: the river isn't the same And that's true reading, and
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that makes it such an
Speaker 1: extraordinary way to spend our time. It is one of
Speaker 1: my absolute favorite ways to spend time. You also say
Speaker 1: reading is one of the few things you do alone
Speaker 1: that can make you feel less alone. It's a solitary
Speaker 1: activity that connects you to others. Yes, And there's a
Speaker 1: quote that I love that really speaks of that. It's
Speaker 1: it's something I quote in Books for Living and it's
Speaker 1: James Baldwin, and James Baldwin said in an interview, you
Speaker 1: think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history
Speaker 1: of the world, and then you read. And what he
Speaker 1: was talking about is this idea that joining the human conversation.
Speaker 1: You do that through reading, and you find doat that
Speaker 1: all these things you're feeling and all these emotions and
Speaker 1: beliefs other people have had those two or had versions
Speaker 1: of them, and it connects you to people not just
Speaker 1: around the country, around the world, that connect you to
Speaker 1: people from hundreds or even thousands of years ago. And
Speaker 1: that's why I say, when you read, even though it's solitary,
Speaker 1: it makes you less alone, not more alone. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I feel like I've seen studies to this effect,
Speaker 1: But it feels like emotional intelligence to me is one
Speaker 1: of the big gifts that I've gotten from reading fiction.
Speaker 1: I just being able to be inside lots of different
Speaker 1: people's heads, I think, just naturally for me, suddenly allowed
Speaker 1: me to see the world in a lot of different
Speaker 1: ways and and help me to connect better to different
Speaker 1: people and to maybe understand people who were, at least
Speaker 1: on the surface different than me. And I love that
Speaker 1: Baldwin quote because he kind of goes on to say that, um,
Speaker 1: and I got it from you, um, that not only
Speaker 1: does the reading, you know, can actus to others. And
Speaker 1: he says, you know that it was books that taught
Speaker 1: me that the things that tormented me most were the
Speaker 1: very things that connected me with all the people who
Speaker 1: were alive or who had ever been alive. And I
Speaker 1: love that because not only is he feeling less alone,
Speaker 1: he's able to use books in reading to transform the
Speaker 1: very difficult activities that we all have in life or
Speaker 1: challenges that we have exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's such a
Speaker 1: remarkable quote. I come back to that again and again,
Speaker 1: and I'm also so glad you mentioned the e word empathy.
Speaker 1: I really believe that empathy is a muscle and it
Speaker 1: atrophies if you don't exercise it. And books or how
Speaker 1: I exercise my empathy muscle you also mentioned early in
Speaker 1: the book, and it just caught my attention because I
Speaker 1: just finished this book, which is the book called A
Speaker 1: Tale for the Time Being by Ruth is it Ozaki. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's an incredible book, that book. And mentioned it in
Speaker 1: a context of connecting with a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: who started as a pen pal years old, a woman
Speaker 1: a great music editor uh for film who lives in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. Their names Elsa blank Felt, and we talk
Speaker 1: all the time about books. And this is a novel
Speaker 1: about a young girl who's thinking of ending her life
Speaker 1: and her a hundred and four hundred and five year
Speaker 1: old Buddhist nun aunt who is the most extraordinary character.
Speaker 1: And I love I shared the book with Elsa, my
Speaker 1: year old friend, and she called me and she said
Speaker 1: that she'd fallen in love with the character of the
Speaker 1: aunt and she said, now I know who I want
Speaker 1: to be when I grow up. Yeah, it is a
Speaker 1: great book. I mean, I'm I'm so interested in Buddhist
Speaker 1: ideas that it was a natural thing to me. But
Speaker 1: it was just so well written in such a good novel.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't just like, oh, it's got some
Speaker 1: Buddhist ideas in it. It was just a very beautiful,
Speaker 1: well written novel. It always amazes me, like she's a
Speaker 1: I think she's a zen priest, and always amazes me
Speaker 1: when people can be like that good at multiple different things.
Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, ooh, it's incredible, isn't it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you've got Silicon Valley, and you've got contemporary Tokyo, and
Speaker 1: you've got Hostess Bars and she writes from the point
Speaker 1: of view of the sixteen year old girl and you're
Speaker 1: totally there with her, and you've got a Kama Kaze pilot.
Speaker 1: It is. It's a master work. Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that for a second, because you mentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got this pen pal and you guys
Speaker 1: talk about books. The book you wrote before this one,
Speaker 1: I think, was called The End of your Life book Club,
Speaker 1: which talks about how you and your mother, you know,
Speaker 1: shared a series of books that you were reading, you know,
Speaker 1: as she was dealing with cancer. You talk about other
Speaker 1: stories in the book where there's a grandmother who says,
Speaker 1: you know, when she talks to her grandson on the phone,
Speaker 1: how is everything. It's fine, it's fine. And then one
Speaker 1: day she asked him what he's reading, and she starts
Speaker 1: reading the books he is and now they have lots
Speaker 1: of conversations. So talk to me about this idea of
Speaker 1: books being away for us to connect to the people
Speaker 1: around us. Well, books are so democratic and egalitarian. There's
Speaker 1: a book that I wrote about in the End of
Speaker 1: Your Life book Club, which is called The Uncommon Reader
Speaker 1: by Alan Bennett, and it's a book about the Queen
Speaker 1: of England discovering books. Uh, and it has a marvelous
Speaker 1: passage in it which I'll paraphrase badly. But what the
Speaker 1: Queen of England realizes in this fantasy novella, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not really about the queen, or it's it's about
Speaker 1: the queen, but but it's not a true story. But
Speaker 1: what she realizes that all readers are equal. That when
Speaker 1: she's reading, she's not the Queen of England reading a book,
Speaker 1: She's just another reader. And and that grand mother that
Speaker 1: I talked about, she was able to connect with her
Speaker 1: grandson just by saying, what are you reading? Because he
Speaker 1: was reading The Hunger Games. And when they started talking
Speaker 1: about the Hunger Games, she was no longer a kind
Speaker 1: of grandmother pestering her grandchild with boring questions he didn't
Speaker 1: want to answer. They were just two readers who just
Speaker 1: couldn't wait to find doubt what happened next, and reading
Speaker 1: levels the playing field. When we talked to someone about
Speaker 1: a book that we both love, we're both literally on
Speaker 1: the same page. Yeah, it is a great way. I
Speaker 1: always feel like I love that idea, and yet I
Speaker 1: always feel like very difficult for me to remember or
Speaker 1: to articulate, like what it was I loved about a book,
Speaker 1: or I don't do that as well as I as
Speaker 1: I might. Like. My other thing is I can reread
Speaker 1: nearly any book, and um, it will be new to
Speaker 1: me because my memory is just terrible. I just forget
Speaker 1: so much of what happens, and it used to trouble me.
Speaker 1: And I'm finally at the age you know, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: that's just the way my brain works. I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm going to change that. Um, But yeah, I love
Speaker 1: too well. I do this thing. And Winston Churchill had
Speaker 1: a great phrase. He called it visiting your books. So
Speaker 1: I'll go to a book i've read, I'll pull it
Speaker 1: off the shelf and I'll just flip open to a
Speaker 1: page and read a page and then put it back,
Speaker 1: and books become kind of like magic eight balls. It's
Speaker 1: totally weird, but it's always the paragraph that I need
Speaker 1: to hear it, just the moment I need to hear it.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I am going to adopt that practice. That's
Speaker 1: a great because I look at these books all the
Speaker 1: time and my main thought is, well, I'd like to
Speaker 1: read that again. But I love that because one of
Speaker 1: the things that we talked about on this show and
Speaker 1: I coach people and all the time, is like, just
Speaker 1: instead of trying to do the huge thing, just take
Speaker 1: like a really small step. And that's like the book
Speaker 1: version of it. I don't have to wait till I
Speaker 1: can reread the whole book. I can bring it down
Speaker 1: and read one page. I love it. Yeah, just a page.
Speaker 1: And and I think especially if you ask your bookshelf
Speaker 1: a question and just let your hands settle on a book,
Speaker 1: you can see if the book and the page will
Speaker 1: answer the question you have. And as I said, it's
Speaker 1: uncanny how it does. I also have to share with you, Eric,
Speaker 1: one of my great techniques for finding which book to
Speaker 1: read next, and that's I'm a very clumsy person, and
Speaker 1: I always read the book I knock over. That's a
Speaker 1: good way to do it. If you've got them stacked precariously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have them. I can never remember if it's stillagmites
Speaker 1: or stillagtites. But whatever comes up from the floor is
Speaker 1: what we have all over our apartment. And I'm constantly
Speaker 1: looking over huge stacks of books and the first one
Speaker 1: I stumble over is the book I read next. Well,
Speaker 1: you are in the professional publishing industry in addition to
Speaker 1: being an author, right, yes I am. I um edit
Speaker 1: books and have been publishing for a couple of decades.
Speaker 1: You must have books coming out your ears then, um,
Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah. Well. One of the things I,
Speaker 1: you know, is a constant source of fun for me
Speaker 1: in this doing this show is that people are just
Speaker 1: sending me books. And uh, even when it's not really
Speaker 1: a book that I want or that I care about,
Speaker 1: it's still I love books so much. The very fact
Speaker 1: that they're just showing up it just you know, still
Speaker 1: tickles me. Now my problem is starting to become one
Speaker 1: of storage, where I'm like, I don't where do I
Speaker 1: put all these things? Um, I live in a pretty
Speaker 1: small apartment, so um, it's just fun that they just
Speaker 1: keep coming. I'm gonna say the storage problem is when
Speaker 1: I face and in books, for thing, I tell the
Speaker 1: story of a professor who was a great friend of mine,
Speaker 1: who had a vast library, and in the last decade
Speaker 1: of his life, he decided to give all of his
Speaker 1: books away except for one hundred books. And if he
Speaker 1: wanted to keep a book, he had to give one
Speaker 1: of the one hundred books away. And what happened was
Speaker 1: that when he died, Um, he left a hundred books
Speaker 1: that almost perfectly described his life. And it was such
Speaker 1: a marvelous gift to the rest of us. Of course,
Speaker 1: we miss him dreadfully. He was one of the most
Speaker 1: extraordinary people I'll ever meet. But to look at the
Speaker 1: books on Martinis, and the books on Tangier, and the
Speaker 1: books on the Foreign Legion, and and this was his
Speaker 1: autobiography and a hundred books. And someday I'm going to
Speaker 1: do that. I'm not ready for it yet, but someday, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that idea. I went through a thing a
Speaker 1: few years ago where I guess more than a few
Speaker 1: where I was like, all right, this book stuff needs
Speaker 1: to come to an end, and I'm going to become
Speaker 1: a library guy. Like I've always loved the library, but
Speaker 1: I was like, no more buying books. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to get them from the library that I'm going to
Speaker 1: take them back to the library because a I'm you know,
Speaker 1: every time I move, I've got like forty boxes to
Speaker 1: bring with me, and I only display a portion of
Speaker 1: them because I don't have the space, and it's a
Speaker 1: you know, it costs a small fortune. But then of
Speaker 1: course that lasts for a little bit and then I'm like,
Speaker 1: but I want to have that book, and so you know,
Speaker 1: but I have gotten better at at least saying I'm
Speaker 1: only going to have books by and large. Now again,
Speaker 1: a lot of them keep showing up. But the ones
Speaker 1: that I'm going to have and keep I've I've tried
Speaker 1: to get better at, like the ones that really matter
Speaker 1: to me. You know that that those are the ones
Speaker 1: that are around. Yeah. I love the idea of keeping
Speaker 1: on hand the books that really matter, but I also
Speaker 1: have to be surrounded by books that I haven't ready
Speaker 1: I love this line. You say, my primary emotion at
Speaker 1: the start of any book is hope, hope that it
Speaker 1: will teach me something. And I love that line, and
Speaker 1: I think that that describes better than anything I've done before,
Speaker 1: the way I feel in a library, like I love
Speaker 1: being in a library. But I don't know that I
Speaker 1: could have ever said what the emotion was, but I
Speaker 1: think that's what it is. You know, it's hope, and
Speaker 1: it's also curiosity. And so we started when we were
Speaker 1: talking by by talking about the idea that reading uh
Speaker 1: feeds feeds the good wolf, but I was thinking more
Speaker 1: about the parable, and I was also started to think
Speaker 1: that curiosity is a good wolf and prejudice is a
Speaker 1: bad wolf. So when I choose books because I'm curious
Speaker 1: about them, because it's something I don't know, an experience
Speaker 1: I haven't had, someone from a different place, your different culture,
Speaker 1: then I'm feeding the good curious wolf. But when I
Speaker 1: go to the library of the bookstore in my bookshelf
Speaker 1: and choose a book that just confirms some prejudice I
Speaker 1: already hold, or some deeply felt belief and just makes
Speaker 1: it more ingrained, I think then in those cases, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm I'm feeding the bad wolf even though I'm reading. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. I think it is hope and curiosity at
Speaker 1: the library and sort of a sense of unlimited potential,
Speaker 1: like like who knows what's going to happen? Yes, who knows.
Speaker 1: I love that there's millions of books out there for us.
Speaker 1: But the hope also is that this next book you
Speaker 1: read is going to chuse something so powerful that it
Speaker 1: will rock your world, that that this will be the
Speaker 1: book that changes your life, not in a subtle way,
Speaker 1: but in a kind of earth shattering way. Right, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about some specific books we've talked about reading
Speaker 1: in general. Let's talk first about a book that you
Speaker 1: reference throughout the book that you wrote, by a gentleman
Speaker 1: by the name of visit Leeu tang Lynu tang Linu
Speaker 1: tang to talk to me about that book. So this
Speaker 1: was one of those books that I was curious about. I,
Speaker 1: as a kid, having seen the movie Cabaret, became obsessed
Speaker 1: with Christopher Isherwood, who wrote the Berlin stories on which
Speaker 1: Cabarets based. Started reading all the issue what I could,
Speaker 1: started reading as much about the nineteen thirties as I could,
Speaker 1: and I kept coming across this name, len U Tang,
Speaker 1: and the title of a book, which was the Importance
Speaker 1: of Living, and the Importance of Living was a monster
Speaker 1: bestseller in the entire world. Was reading The Importance of Living,
Speaker 1: I was like Tuesdays with Mori on steroids at this point,
Speaker 1: though by a couple of decades ago, it had been
Speaker 1: completely forgotten. So when I was in publishing, I stumbled
Speaker 1: across this book and actually arranged for it to come
Speaker 1: back into print and reached out to Lynnu Tang's surviving
Speaker 1: two daughters. There's only one of them who's surviving now. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the book is just a revelation. It's a five
Speaker 1: hundred dense pages. It's charming, it's discursive, but it's really
Speaker 1: about what Lynn calls the noble art of leaving things undone,
Speaker 1: and it's about the Chinese philosophy of life. And he
Speaker 1: was trying to explain to everybody across the world this idea,
Speaker 1: and he phrased it so wonderfully. He said, if you've
Speaker 1: spent a perfectly useless afternoon doing absolutely nothing, then you've
Speaker 1: mastered the art of living. And I just fell in
Speaker 1: love with this book, and I think it's a book
Speaker 1: for our times. It's a book about relaxing, about looking
Speaker 1: at nature, about lying in bed, about reading poetry, spending
Speaker 1: time with friends. But but Erica is one more thing
Speaker 1: that I think, just it's so amazing about this book
Speaker 1: is when you start reading it, you think, oh, this
Speaker 1: is charming and delightful about napping and reading. But then
Speaker 1: as you get further into the book, you remember this
Speaker 1: thing was written in ninety seven, published in thirty eight,
Speaker 1: and Linnu Tang starts to mention Stalin and Hitler, and
Speaker 1: he starts to talk in this book about the culture
Speaker 1: of greed and power, and what he's really doing in
Speaker 1: this is positing humanism, conversation um as everything that's good
Speaker 1: and really the bulwark that we have against the kind
Speaker 1: of tyranny that he saw rising across Asia and Europe
Speaker 1: and that of course culminated in the great genocides and
Speaker 1: slaughters of our time. Yeah, you reference it throughout. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a fascinating book. And I love that, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you say it, or he says it, but
Speaker 1: you know, naps and reading are two of life's greatest pleasures. Yes,
Speaker 1: their life's greatest pleasures, or two of them, but they're also, uh,
Speaker 1: really a form of resistance. Uh that in a world
Speaker 1: mad with greed and ambition and power, to reaffirm what
Speaker 1: it means to be human, just simply to breathe, to
Speaker 1: be alive, to stroll in nature, to talk to our friends. Um,
Speaker 1: this is an act of resistance. Yeah. He talks about
Speaker 1: three American vices. I love that. So thout. The three
Speaker 1: American vices as I as I recall them are punctuality, efficiency.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember what they are, and you were coming.
Speaker 1: They've gone out of my mind. That is punctuality, for sure.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I haven't. And you know what, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I just took the quote three American vices out, But
Speaker 1: I don't know that I have the funny. I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't. I'm having I'm having a middle aged moment.
Speaker 1: Here they are actually here. They are so efficiency, punctuality,
Speaker 1: and the desire for achievement and success. There we go.
Speaker 1: And he he said in his book, and I quote
Speaker 1: it mine that all of Americans unhappiness can be traced
Speaker 1: to those three things. Yeah. It's very interesting because I
Speaker 1: am sort of by nature a doer. You know, I've
Speaker 1: got a lot of like go and and and do things.
Speaker 1: But I've realized over the last couple of years that um,
Speaker 1: I need to learn to spend a good idle and
Speaker 1: beautiful afternoon more often. Yes. And the question really to
Speaker 1: ask ourselves after reading lynn U Tang is do we
Speaker 1: live to work or do we work to live? And
Speaker 1: of course he would have us work to live. How
Speaker 1: do you, from your perspective, how does working to live
Speaker 1: tie with doing things that are deeply important to you?
Speaker 1: Like writing a book is working in a sense, but
Speaker 1: it's also you know, a deep passion. So how do
Speaker 1: you reconcile that sort of idea of you know, work
Speaker 1: and relaxation and is writing a book do you not
Speaker 1: work because it's something you love? Or what's you're thinking
Speaker 1: on that? Well? My thinking on that is that we
Speaker 1: all have to work to two different extents, depending on
Speaker 1: where we live and what our rent is and what
Speaker 1: our family obligations are. And it would be silly to
Speaker 1: pretend that most people have the option of not working.
Speaker 1: I really think of it more as a mindset. Uh.
Speaker 1: And for example, if you work twenty three hours a day,
Speaker 1: on that one precious hour you have off, are you
Speaker 1: checking your email or are you reading a book or
Speaker 1: talking with a friend or staring at the window. Um, really,
Speaker 1: what you do when you're not at work is determines
Speaker 1: a large part of it. And I do believe there's
Speaker 1: some work that is such a joy that it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like work. But I'm actually more of the belief
Speaker 1: that most of us know the difference between working and living,
Speaker 1: and no matter how much we love our work, it's
Speaker 1: probably still work. I had a friend, a great friend
Speaker 1: who I wrote about in this book I'm a friend
Speaker 1: who was killed in an accident, and whenever he heard
Speaker 1: anyone complained about their job, he used to say the
Speaker 1: same thing to them. He'd say, if it was so
Speaker 1: much darn fun, they wouldn't have to pay you. Yep,
Speaker 1: but you don't have to write books. Obviously, that is
Speaker 1: something that you're doing in addition to your your career, right,
Speaker 1: So you are you're taking on that additional work. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I do love that And for me, um, it's
Speaker 1: mostly not work, although there's certainly days when I feel
Speaker 1: like a school child in detention and all my friends
Speaker 1: are running out does see movies and outdoor and I'm
Speaker 1: chained to my computer. But yes, I do. I I
Speaker 1: enjoy it and I feel compelled to do it. So
Speaker 1: the books, happily for me are usually not work. There's
Speaker 1: something that brings me great joy. Yeah, I find that
Speaker 1: paradox there you're talking about of I sort of frame
Speaker 1: it up for myself in terms of, you know, what
Speaker 1: do I want to do versus what do I feel
Speaker 1: like doing? So something like writing the book or for
Speaker 1: me doing this show is something I want to do,
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a voluntary thing that I choose
Speaker 1: to do that I love to do. There are moments
Speaker 1: that I certainly don't feel like it, though, and so
Speaker 1: for me that helps me to sort of get back
Speaker 1: to like, Okay, I do want to and I am
Speaker 1: choosing to do this even if I don't feel like
Speaker 1: it in that moment, because otherwise it really it sucks
Speaker 1: to turn something you love into a chore. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: also wrote a chapter about for me a story that's
Speaker 1: a real touchstone, and that's Melville's bartleby the Scrivener, and
Speaker 1: bartleby the Scrivener is a wonderful story obviously author of
Speaker 1: Moby Dick, about a clerk who just quits. He just
Speaker 1: besides one day he'd prefer not to do this or that,
Speaker 1: and he just stops doing anything, and it's It's an
Speaker 1: iconic American short story. But one of the things I
Speaker 1: wanted to celebrate in books for living is quitters. I
Speaker 1: think we give quitters a bad name, and I think
Speaker 1: part of the joy that I get in writing a
Speaker 1: book is actually knowing I can stop at any time,
Speaker 1: that since I've given myself permission to quit, it never
Speaker 1: becomes too onerous because I never really have to do it.
Speaker 1: It's always something I want to do um And that's
Speaker 1: that's a big difference my day job. Yes I could
Speaker 1: quit it, but I don't know who would pay the rent. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that idea is so important in general, even
Speaker 1: with things like day jobs, because the minute I start
Speaker 1: feeling like I have to do something, I start to
Speaker 1: feel trapped and I and and even recognizing, like to
Speaker 1: your point, like I could quit the day job. Now
Speaker 1: that would mean X, Y, and Z, and I may
Speaker 1: not like those consequences, but the option is is there too.
Speaker 1: You know, I could just, you know, suddenly decide to
Speaker 1: quit and go go live in a shelter if I
Speaker 1: wanted to know. I don't want to, but that idea
Speaker 1: of knowing that I could really helps take a burden
Speaker 1: off my shoulders when I start to get into that
Speaker 1: I have to I have to I have to thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think as a culture, uh, we really set
Speaker 1: a dangerous precedent for ourselves when we denigrate quitters and
Speaker 1: when we make people feel badly because they try something
Speaker 1: and they stop it. Because I really think freedom to
Speaker 1: quit is really freedom to explore. Uh. If you start
Speaker 1: a book and you don't much care for it, stop
Speaker 1: reading it, but don't not start it because you won't
Speaker 1: quit it. Or if you want to throw pots and
Speaker 1: you've never thrown a pot before, try it. If you
Speaker 1: don't like it, quit The ability to quit really allows ourselves,
Speaker 1: I think, to be fully human in a way. Uh
Speaker 1: that adhere in step seeing everything through to the bitter end.
Speaker 1: Just doesn't Another line that I had pulled out. You say,
Speaker 1: when we denigrate mediocrity, we discourage ourselves and others from
Speaker 1: trying new things. It would be great to be a
Speaker 1: great painter, but it's also great just to paint or sing,
Speaker 1: or throw pots or knit scarves or play chess. And
Speaker 1: I love that idea of just being a to do
Speaker 1: something because I like doing it regardless of where it leads.
Speaker 1: And I think that goes a little bit back to
Speaker 1: the Lynn you tang some of the ideas of that
Speaker 1: not everything has to go somewhere or have a have
Speaker 1: a purpose beyond I enjoy doing it exactly. And one
Speaker 1: of the I think other big causes for unhappiness in
Speaker 1: my life and in my friends lives and in the
Speaker 1: lives of people around me is this idea that everything
Speaker 1: has to be great. And I write in the book
Speaker 1: about I'll be sitting around with a friend having a
Speaker 1: nice piece of pizza, cold beer, and granite village where
Speaker 1: I live, and I'll be enjoying the pizza and enjoying
Speaker 1: the beer, and my friend will say something like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this pizza is good, but you know, the very best
Speaker 1: pizza is that, And then he'll name some plays you know,
Speaker 1: across town or Naples, I don't know wherever. But the
Speaker 1: idea is, why can't I just enjoy my pizza? And
Speaker 1: I think that's a bit of a metaphor for life
Speaker 1: in general, is if we're always in search of mind
Speaker 1: blowingly great things, were really rob ourselves the ability to
Speaker 1: enjoy the good things that we have in our lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that idea of the paradox of choice they talk about,
Speaker 1: and that there's like two types of people. I think
Speaker 1: it's I may get this right, um, maximizers and satisficers. Right.
Speaker 1: Maximizers are that sort of like everything always has to
Speaker 1: be the best, like I'm going to spend eight hours
Speaker 1: on Yelp picking out the very best dinner restaurants. Satisficers
Speaker 1: are more able to just sort of go, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is good enough. Here we go and and then
Speaker 1: and they're just in and they're happy with it the
Speaker 1: way they are, and and uh, I have to watch
Speaker 1: my tendency to be a maximizer. It's the story I
Speaker 1: tell often is about music, Like I'm a I'm a
Speaker 1: guitar player, and I used to write songs and for
Speaker 1: a long time I sort of thought, well, maybe that's
Speaker 1: what I would do. And then it became clear that
Speaker 1: that was not going to happen. You know, that just
Speaker 1: wasn't in the cards. And it took me a while
Speaker 1: to be able to pick up the guitar and just
Speaker 1: play it just for fun, just because I like the
Speaker 1: way that chord sounds, or I like the way it
Speaker 1: feels without always being like I would start to hear
Speaker 1: a little partner, I'm like, oh, I need to write
Speaker 1: a song out of this, or I need to and
Speaker 1: it just took it just kind of ruined it for
Speaker 1: me for a while until I was really able to
Speaker 1: do what you said, like, I'm just a mediocre guitar player,
Speaker 1: but you know what I like. I like doing it,
Speaker 1: and so I'm gonna do it just for that reason.
Speaker 1: That's so great. I love the start, I love the
Speaker 1: idea of that. And I also believe too, when you
Speaker 1: say mediocre guitar player, it's really just a frame of reference. Uh.
Speaker 1: I like to talk about for example, the most mediocre
Speaker 1: baseball player on say the New York Yankees is one
Speaker 1: of the best baseball players in the world. Yea, in
Speaker 1: the world just depends on your frame of reference. Um,
Speaker 1: So to see yourself as proudly mediocre is really just
Speaker 1: to admit that whatever it is you're doing, there's probably
Speaker 1: someone who does it better than you, and to take
Speaker 1: satisfaction in the way you do it and to admire
Speaker 1: the way they do it. And I catch myself this
Speaker 1: all the time. There's a wonderful phrase A publishing friend
Speaker 1: told me, he said, you write the books you need.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons I wrote books for living
Speaker 1: is it was it was the book I needed, because
Speaker 1: I catched myself doing this all the time. I was
Speaker 1: in Bufort, South Carolina. I was having something that was
Speaker 1: the most delicious boiled thing with sausage and shrimp and
Speaker 1: potatoes and a little restaurant I stumbled across, and I
Speaker 1: was enjoying it so much. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, Oh, I had my iPhone here,
Speaker 1: I'll google what's the best version of this in Bufort?
Speaker 1: And I was just about to do that. I thought,
Speaker 1: why are you doing that? You're just trying to make
Speaker 1: yourself unhappy with what you're loving. And who cares what
Speaker 1: the best is? This is really good, right, And and
Speaker 1: that is where you actually happen to be, not at
Speaker 1: the other place. Yes, I'm there, I'm not at the
Speaker 1: other place. I'm leaving in a couple of hours. I'm
Speaker 1: never going to make it back or you know, not
Speaker 1: for years. So why do we do that to ourselves?
Speaker 1: Why do we we insist on making ourselves so unhappy?
Speaker 1: And actually, I think these little electronic devices we carry everywhere,
Speaker 1: uh aid in our making ourselves unhappy. And a chapter
Speaker 1: that I really had fun writing was a chapter about
Speaker 1: George Orwell, And what I had to say about that
Speaker 1: was or Well imagined a world where there were telescreens
Speaker 1: watching everything we did, everything we said, everything we ate,
Speaker 1: But he never could have imagined that we would carry
Speaker 1: the telescreens in our own pockets and spy on ourselves. Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing that you mentioned about our our devices
Speaker 1: is how they allow us to rob ourselves of silence.
Speaker 1: And I think that is really that is a big one.
Speaker 1: I think that is underappreciated. Boy, it is true. Just
Speaker 1: this sort of backstory to our talking right now. Um,
Speaker 1: you sent out some wonderful instructions about how to how
Speaker 1: to maximize the experience, and you said you make sure
Speaker 1: that the bones and are turned off and the ringers
Speaker 1: and buzzers and notifications. And it took me about fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes of running around the apartment before I had actually
Speaker 1: turned off every buzzer, tone, ring And it made me
Speaker 1: so happy once I've done it, and I thought, you know, thanks, Eric,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to turn them back on. Yeah, why
Speaker 1: I have all these buzzers and beeps and notifications. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I'll look at the thing. When I look at the thing,
Speaker 1: I have become a big fan of the do not
Speaker 1: disturb feature on my phone, such to the point that
Speaker 1: I forget to turn it off and then I miss
Speaker 1: like eight calls. But I just love the idea. Like
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't want to I don't want to
Speaker 1: deal with it, whatever it is. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: flip this switch and and I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: othered except for like if somebody calls me three times
Speaker 1: in a row, so like if my son is in
Speaker 1: North Carolina college is in trouble, I'll get the call.
Speaker 1: But otherwise you know what I you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I just don't need to do it. It also saves
Speaker 1: me when I do that. It saves me the guilt
Speaker 1: of seeing somebody call, knowing I don't want to talk,
Speaker 1: and screening it and then feeling like I'm screening that
Speaker 1: person's call. This is just sort of across the board,
Speaker 1: like everybody, you know, give me some give me some space,
Speaker 1: give me some space. And when I read, I do
Speaker 1: go into a zone. Um that's when I have my
Speaker 1: reading for me is a form of meditation. Uh, because
Speaker 1: I know that my heart rate settles my blood pressure. Uh.
Speaker 1: I just relax because I don't have any responsibility when
Speaker 1: I'm reading other than simply to absorb the words on
Speaker 1: the page. The writer in the book don't care what
Speaker 1: of them. Um. I can comment, but not in any
Speaker 1: way that they can hear me. Uh. And so it's
Speaker 1: just a kind of time of bliss. Uh. One of
Speaker 1: the other books I had great fun writing about is
Speaker 1: Zen and the art of archery. Ah, and I that
Speaker 1: book sort of got me thinking that that reading is
Speaker 1: an art. Uh. And it comes back to that quote
Speaker 1: that you mentioned before. Uh. But when I read, I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm practicing this art. And anytime there's a
Speaker 1: battle or ring or buzzer. Um, I resented bitterly what
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought to do until you said that as
Speaker 1: wonderful instructions to simply turn all that stuff off. You've
Speaker 1: got somewhere in the book where you describe the um
Speaker 1: you give somebody the can't you tell I'm reading face?
Speaker 1: And that just made me last because when I get
Speaker 1: deep deep into a book, it's like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be unpleasant if you interrupt me. But boy, I'm
Speaker 1: just so deep in that it's very difficult for me
Speaker 1: to change gears at that point. And so I was like,
Speaker 1: I think I've given plenty people that look before. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I really have that look down, back down cold. I
Speaker 1: think that was in a chapter I was writing about
Speaker 1: an extraordinary novel by Hanya Yanagahara called A Little Life,
Speaker 1: and I actually was so obsessed with that book. I
Speaker 1: was near the end and I wasn't finished, and I
Speaker 1: called in sick to work. Yeah, I've been there. I
Speaker 1: have done that sort of thing before. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: wrap up here in in just a moment. But you
Speaker 1: you say at one point, if you could have only
Speaker 1: ten books, Song of Solomon by Tony Morrison would be
Speaker 1: one of them, which made me very happy because I've
Speaker 1: not read that book, so it sounds like I have
Speaker 1: a treat ahead of me. Um. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you as for more recently, what's the what's the
Speaker 1: best novel you've read? Or or maybe not even best,
Speaker 1: but what are you know? What's a couple of favorite
Speaker 1: novels you've read recently that we're also written recently? So
Speaker 1: one of them a book I read recently that was
Speaker 1: written recently is a historical novel called Pachinko and it's
Speaker 1: by Minin Lee. And this book was a finalist for
Speaker 1: the National Book Award, and it is a story about
Speaker 1: a Korean family in Japan over the course of several generations. UH.
Speaker 1: And it is one of those novels that absolutely sweeps
Speaker 1: you up in it. I guarantee if you start this book,
Speaker 1: you will give people. Anyone who dares disturb you, you
Speaker 1: will give them that. Can't you see I'm reading Glower.
Speaker 1: So that's a book that that I loved recently. I
Speaker 1: also really uh fell in love with a book called
Speaker 1: The News of the World by Paulette Giles. And in
Speaker 1: this book, um, it's about someone traveling the West who
Speaker 1: reads the news to UH, to communities where they have
Speaker 1: no newspaper. He's absorbed the newspapers and he brings them
Speaker 1: around and he reads them, and he's given custody of
Speaker 1: a little girl who has to reunite with her family.
Speaker 1: And it's an absolutely marvelous book. But I'm constantly finding things,
Speaker 1: and I read a lot of young adult books. Um.
Speaker 1: I read The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas, which
Speaker 1: is a young adult book that has a kind of
Speaker 1: extraordinary story. But a young African American woman and a
Speaker 1: friend of hers who's killed by the police and and
Speaker 1: everything that follows that, and her awakening, uh, and her
Speaker 1: attempts to awaken others, And that's an incredible book. But
Speaker 1: I'm constantly, uh constantly devouring things. Um. Here Comes the
Speaker 1: Sun is another book Nicole Dennis span And this is
Speaker 1: a book that's set in contemporary Jamaica and it's it's
Speaker 1: a marvelous novel and the pros is just electric. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the end of the year because all the
Speaker 1: end of the year book lists come out and I
Speaker 1: have just a field day reading them all. And then
Speaker 1: I go to the library and I walk out, you know,
Speaker 1: embarrassed because I've got sixty books with me, and of
Speaker 1: course I only read like one or two of them
Speaker 1: before the time is up. But it's just I just
Speaker 1: love that time of year. And so I think I
Speaker 1: actually have Pachinko sitting in the other room that I
Speaker 1: that I got from the library. Um. And so that's
Speaker 1: another encouragement to pick it up. And I will put
Speaker 1: links in the show notes to the books you've mentioned
Speaker 1: a as a service to our readers and be as
Speaker 1: a service to myself. Listeners, if you decide you want
Speaker 1: to buy them, just click that link, because then we
Speaker 1: will you know, it'll be the ongoing support of the
Speaker 1: show plea that I have. But I'll definitely put him
Speaker 1: there mainly so people can find them. Will thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking the time. I've got a whole
Speaker 1: lot more notes. We will have an after conversation posted
Speaker 1: so so, uh, listeners, if you are interested in that,
Speaker 1: you can become a supporter of the show and get
Speaker 1: this conversation with Will and and lots and lots of
Speaker 1: other ones, because we're gonna go on and talk about
Speaker 1: at least the Little Prince if nothing else. Great. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Eric, I really I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I've loved talking with you today. Yeah, it's been a
Speaker 1: real pleasure. Okay, take care, Thanks bye bye. If what
Speaker 1: you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making
Speaker 1: a donation to The One You Feed podcast. Head over
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