How to be the most interesting writer in Fiction | Amor Towles

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[00:01:11] I have to say this next guest has recently become one of my all time favorite writers.

[00:01:18] And he is a very different kind of style that I'm used to reading, but his, I started

[00:01:24] reading one of his books and it turned, well, it turned out to be the book that's just

[00:01:29] coming out table for two, which is some of the short fictions plus a novella called

[00:01:33] even Hollywood, which I didn't know at the time was the sequel to his first novel, Rules

[00:01:38] of Civility.

[00:01:39] And then he wrote another book, A Gentlemen in Moscow, which is one of the best books

[00:01:44] I've ever read.

[00:01:45] In fact, by the time this podcast comes out, it's going to be a TV series starring you

[00:01:50] and McGregor and looks amazing in the book.

[00:01:54] Again, all of his books are along the best fiction I've ever read.

[00:02:00] So I highly recommend Gentlemen in Moscow, Table for Two, Rules of Civility, The Lincoln

[00:02:07] Highway is another book of his, which actually I'm just reading right now post podcast.

[00:02:12] I hope I get a chance to talk to Emma or Tolls again because I have questions now about

[00:02:17] Lincoln Highway.

[00:02:18] And he was so open about his writing process and it's a really different writing process

[00:02:23] than I've, I've talked to, well, you guys know, I've talked to a lot of writers over

[00:02:26] the past 10 years and he has a very different process for his writing.

[00:02:32] He's very open about it.

[00:02:33] Such a pleasure to talk to.

[00:02:35] I always enjoy talking to writers but he, we really went into depth into his experiences

[00:02:40] and how he puts together his books and kind of the experiences in his books.

[00:02:46] I can't say enough about how much I admire this person.

[00:02:49] Emma Tolls, author of a Gentlemen in Moscow, author of the upcoming book of short fiction,

[00:02:54] Table for Two, which I highly recommend and of course, the TV series, check it out,

[00:03:00] Gentlemen in Moscow.

[00:03:05] This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host.

[00:03:10] This is the James Altiger Show.

[00:03:22] By the way, I wanted to tell you, the very first thing I read by you was your shorter

[00:03:29] fictions like this book Table for Two which is coming out.

[00:03:32] Oh no kidding.

[00:03:33] Yeah.

[00:03:34] And then so I read, you know, even Hollywood before rules of civility.

[00:03:39] So, and Eve struck me as this amazing character which I then recognized that type of character

[00:03:47] in your other novels.

[00:03:49] There's a certain nobility to the characters that I could tell you love the most.

[00:03:56] You're right.

[00:03:57] And like, you know, I know your most recent book coming out is a Table for Two, it's

[00:04:03] your short fictions but really I just also just love of course, a Gentlemen

[00:04:09] in Moscow which you could also arguably be promoting as well since the TV series starts

[00:04:13] March 29th.

[00:04:15] Yeah.

[00:04:16] So if you don't mind, maybe first we could talk about that book because I just, there's

[00:04:20] so many things I love about this book and it strikes me when reading this book, the

[00:04:28] characters or everything.

[00:04:30] It seems like you've focused almost for years on building these characters and then layered

[00:04:36] around them is the backdrop of history, the hotel, the other characters to give kind

[00:04:43] of this semblance of a moving plot as history moves forward.

[00:04:47] But it's really, it's just ways to bring about these amazing characters and particularly

[00:04:53] the count to give him more layers of his personality and that's the book is his evolution

[00:04:58] almost.

[00:04:59] Yeah.

[00:05:00] That's true.

[00:05:01] Absolutely.

[00:05:02] So constructing that, am I close and how you constructed something like that?

[00:05:09] So I'll start by saying I've written fiction since I was a kid, wrote it in high school,

[00:05:14] college, graduate school.

[00:05:16] It's really been the thing that I've always wanted to do the most but if you think about

[00:05:23] narrative, the novel, let's say comparing it to other classical art forms like landscape

[00:05:31] painting of the Hudson River School or the classical repertoire, the symphonies and

[00:05:36] conchertoes of the 19th century.

[00:05:38] A Hudson River School painting can when you see it across the room, you can have an immediate

[00:05:44] sense of time and place and mood like the minute you second you see it.

[00:05:48] I don't know, I don't mean like you know what hill you were standing on.

[00:05:51] I just mean the grander sense of nature, of possibility of the evening, of spring or

[00:05:57] all these various elements that speak to you as soon as you see it.

[00:06:01] And in music, music in a similar way can transmit an emotional state instantly.

[00:06:08] You know, a very capable cellist can make you happy or sad within three strokes of the

[00:06:15] bow of the boat, excuse me.

[00:06:17] And now a novel can do both of these things.

[00:06:21] It can give you a sense of time and place and mood.

[00:06:23] It can give you, put you into an emotional state of one kind or another, make you happy

[00:06:29] sad, angry, laughing.

[00:06:33] It is more cumbersome than these other two art forms in achieving these goals.

[00:06:38] Now what a novel can do that the other art forms cannot do is put you in the position

[00:06:43] of another human being because that's really what is unique I think to the novel.

[00:06:48] And that's why it's been such a persistent art form over several hundred years.

[00:06:55] I don't even think film can achieve it in the same degree, but when we read a well-written

[00:06:59] novel, we can become so tied to a character or individual characters that when something funny

[00:07:05] happens to them in the book, we laugh out loud in our living room.

[00:07:10] When something sad happens to them, we cry over the pages.

[00:07:13] We can get furious and indignant when they've been cheated.

[00:07:16] So this is great sense of bond that can occur between the reader and an individual that

[00:07:22] is well crafted on a novel.

[00:07:24] And the reader can start to see the world through their eyes.

[00:07:26] And this, of course, is why the novel has been many studies have shown that it is very

[00:07:33] powerful tool for developing empathy because it is by stepping into these other shoes

[00:07:39] and looking at the world through the eyes of this other individual and adopting some

[00:07:42] of their problems and challenges that we are more capable in doing that with a human being

[00:07:51] who is across, who we meet in the street to empathize with their situation.

[00:07:57] So it's a big intro, I understand.

[00:07:59] But I'm getting to your question, which is that given all I've just said, if you're interested

[00:08:06] in writing serious narrative, then focusing on the creation of three-dimensional characters

[00:08:14] really should be of major concern.

[00:08:17] You know, a primary objective, right?

[00:08:20] A novelist has to master setting, has to master dialogue, the communication of themes,

[00:08:27] the development of the poetics of the language, you know, has to master all kinds of elements

[00:08:32] of craft, but creating a three-dimensional individual or a series of them is really probably

[00:08:39] the most important.

[00:08:40] And that's why we look at, you know, it's not a coincidence that Huck Finn is at the center

[00:08:46] of Huck Finn and Anna Karenina is at the center of Anna Karenina, you know, that these individuals

[00:08:52] really are at the heart of those novels.

[00:08:55] Now there's a lot of literary art behind the story of Anna Karenina that Tolstoy has developed.

[00:09:02] There's a lot of literary art behind Twain's Huck Finn, but the individuals are in sharper

[00:09:09] leaf for the reader.

[00:09:10] So that's a big focus and that's what I've spent, you know, I don't know, since I was a kid,

[00:09:16] constantly experimenting and investigating how do you do this?

[00:09:19] How do you bring to life a different individual?

[00:09:22] You're probably, I really appreciate when a reader has read a book of mine then goes backwards

[00:09:26] right?

[00:09:27] And that's a great compliment when that happens.

[00:09:29] You are probably the only person on the planet who has read my short stories and work backwards.

[00:09:35] You know, because I mean, because you know, table for two there's only maybe 500 people

[00:09:38] who've read it in the country, right?

[00:09:40] So I love it that's where you started.

[00:09:42] Well, the short stories where I started, right?

[00:09:44] And we're most novelists start.

[00:09:46] And it's through the short story as a younger person but you practice this dynamic.

[00:09:51] You're constantly, each story is told from a different perspective.

[00:09:54] You know, so you, at least that's the way I did it, right?

[00:09:56] So I'm doing a short story and it's saying, okay, this is a young woman in Berkeley

[00:10:01] in the 1960s at the beginning of feminism or it's an old guy who repairs violins in Vienna

[00:10:07] in 1940 or you know, or 1910 or whatever.

[00:10:11] It's a young, you know, black American and the Jim Crow South, you know, who's lost his

[00:10:17] way home or whatever it is.

[00:10:20] You take that different person in the world who you are not and you start to try to imagine

[00:10:27] what is their situation?

[00:10:28] How do they see the world?

[00:10:29] What would they sound like?

[00:10:30] What would matter to them?

[00:10:32] What's their sensibility?

[00:10:34] And you start to, through the process of sort of the imaginative process,

[00:10:39] begin to construct this individual and what your goal is to make them

[00:10:44] as three-dimensional and intricate as a fellow human being.

[00:10:49] It's interesting because the way you're describing it, it's almost like,

[00:10:53] and I want to turn this into a question eventually, but there's craft in their psychology.

[00:10:58] So let's take a gentleman in Moscow for a second and then I want to look at

[00:11:04] even and some of these shorter stories.

[00:11:07] But you know, the count, the count in gentlemen in Moscow, you're given a person with

[00:11:16] a background, okay, this guy is a, you know, from the aristocracy he's not used to working

[00:11:22] hard labor and then you're given a context.

[00:11:25] It's this transition, this massive transition in the 20th century between kind of the

[00:11:31] Sars, Russia that he lived and grew up in and became an adult in.

[00:11:36] And it's immediately transitioning to this opposite, this Bolshevik revolution, the

[00:11:41] communist, and he stuck in the middle and literally stuck like he's exiled to live in

[00:11:46] this hotel the rest of his life.

[00:11:49] So it's you have this person with a lot of depth who's now put into a context with a

[00:11:53] lot of depth.

[00:11:54] And then from there we're given the benefits of history evolving and characters moving around

[00:12:03] him, and that creates the story he finds himself in.

[00:12:07] And I wonder, and you have to give him a lot of depth because he has to survive this

[00:12:12] transition.

[00:12:13] So even in the early chapters, he's going from being sentenced to what could be considered

[00:12:18] a horrible sentence by some, he realizes he has to survive this.

[00:12:22] So it'd be nice to people, he wasn't necessarily going to be nice to before and you know change

[00:12:26] certain habits and discover certain things and keep certain secrets.

[00:12:30] And from that the whole novel of ours.

[00:12:33] But I also sense, this is where the question comes in, there's a psychology here in that

[00:12:39] he's you, you're him a little bit.

[00:12:42] I will say from reading the little bit about your background, you know, your father was

[00:12:49] an investment banker at a very white shoe banking firm.

[00:12:52] You know, you went to Yale, you grew up among some of the finer things in life but also

[00:12:57] have seen the transition and several transitions in America.

[00:13:03] And how much do you infuse yourself into this character, particularly the main character?

[00:13:11] I would say very little.

[00:13:14] My wife would say very little, by the way.

[00:13:17] I mean, you know, she wishes I was the count.

[00:13:19] I wish I was the count.

[00:13:20] I wish I was the count by my own criticizing.

[00:13:22] No, I hear you.

[00:13:24] So me too.

[00:13:26] And of course any character you create there might be a thread of their behavior which is

[00:13:35] informed by some aspect of my own personality or experience.

[00:13:39] And that can be helpful in bringing that character to life.

[00:13:44] But you know, if you look at the breadth of my work, you know, rules of civility is a 25

[00:13:50] year old working class woman from New York and Lincoln Highway is an 18 year old kid and

[00:13:57] raised in a farm in Kansas in the 40s and 50s.

[00:14:01] So it is true that so there's a lot of variety there and never mind all the bit characters.

[00:14:07] And I'll bring up the rules of civility in a second because that's almost a mirror image

[00:14:11] of a gentleman in Moscow, but doesn't necessarily disagree with my point.

[00:14:16] Yeah.

[00:14:17] No, you're right.

[00:14:18] So let me give you a sense of the flavor of what happens.

[00:14:21] So for me as a writer is you start with this idea.

[00:14:24] Oh yeah.

[00:14:25] It's going to be a guy trapped in a hotel and then right away I was like, oh yeah, he

[00:14:28] could be in aristocrat.

[00:14:29] He could be in Russia.

[00:14:30] After the revolution he sentenced to house arrest in this fancy hotel across from the

[00:14:34] Kremlin called a Metropole and the book could be, you know, the entire span of, from the

[00:14:39] revolution to the Cold War, you know, all that is sort of in day one as I'm beginning

[00:14:43] to imagine the story.

[00:14:45] Now as you say, I immediately, I've got this guy who's in aristocrat and so now that

[00:14:50] you're right that my background gives me some insight into what that might mean.

[00:14:57] Now most of what I know about that is actually not from my own personal experience.

[00:15:01] It's from the fact that we've all read about the aristocracy in the 19th and 18th century

[00:15:07] whether we've studied history or we've read literature, you know, and you want to keep

[00:15:12] in mind that the aristocracy in England, France, Russia, Spain, Italy was all the same basically.

[00:15:18] Right?

[00:15:19] I mean they shared more in common with each other than they shared with their fellow countrymen.

[00:15:24] But now, but a portion of that heritage shows up in the United States in sort of the form

[00:15:31] of the gentlemen of, you know, say the founding fathers, Jefferson, Washington, Adams were

[00:15:37] absolutely, their ambition was to be, be gentleman.

[00:15:44] I mean to be gentleman in the traditional sense and that meant some combination of having

[00:15:50] manners, behaving well in society but more importantly being a person of integrity.

[00:15:55] And they saw those two things as really being bound at the hip.

[00:15:57] You know, so never lying, helping those who need fighting against the susceptibility to

[00:16:03] the sins, trying to bring out the greater virtues of the individual.

[00:16:09] These were part of the tradition of shivalry which ended up in the gentlemanly version

[00:16:15] of the aristocracy, terrible version of the aristocracy too, but the gentlemanly version was

[00:16:19] this.

[00:16:20] And that got inherited by the founding fathers who all studied the age of enlightenment and

[00:16:25] the Stoics and, you know, etc., etc.

[00:16:27] So yeah, growing up in Boston going to Yale, on the one hand you're studying the world

[00:16:37] to some degree when you're reading the 19th century novel or studying these historical

[00:16:43] figures.

[00:16:44] On the other hand you witness some version of it in, you know, Waspie Boston, let's say.

[00:16:49] So that might be a help, but at the end of the day I'm starting with a count.

[00:16:53] I have a sense of the aristocratic bearing from sort of the universal imprint, but then

[00:16:58] you got to figure out the individual.

[00:17:00] And so you start to imagine him.

[00:17:02] Where was his situation?

[00:17:03] You know, what was his childhood like?

[00:17:06] Where is parents?

[00:17:07] Who are his closest relatives?

[00:17:10] At no point really am I actually writing down what does he look like?

[00:17:13] I think I knew he was tall and then eventually I know he has a mustache, but that's kind

[00:17:16] of it.

[00:17:17] I don't care about that, you know.

[00:17:19] It's more trying to understand, begin to imagine what was his experience and that informs

[00:17:23] to some degree the kind of person he might be like.

[00:17:27] Now this is getting in the weeds here.

[00:17:30] But in...

[00:17:31] Go ahead.

[00:17:32] Okay, what I'll do is when I have an idea for a story, I do what it's called a design phase

[00:17:35] for me.

[00:17:36] I'll spend three, four, five years thinking about the book.

[00:17:40] And I'll fill notebooks by hand imagining everything that happens in the book, all the

[00:17:45] settings, all the characters, their backgrounds, their personalities, the key events and what

[00:17:50] they might mean, the tone of a work as a whole, some of the thematic elements, some

[00:17:56] of the poetic elements, some of the imagery.

[00:17:58] I'll do that for years by hand before I sit down and outline the book and begin chapter

[00:18:04] one.

[00:18:05] That's the design phase for me.

[00:18:06] Now during that, I'm beginning this process of building the individuals in my head.

[00:18:13] And this is pre maybe kind of establishing the vocabulary of the book.

[00:18:20] Yeah, that's right.

[00:18:21] And we'll begin to establish the vocabulary through this process because...

[00:18:25] And that's kind of my point.

[00:18:26] It's very for me and I think from many, it's very iterative.

[00:18:31] You know, people are listening but for you on screen, it's a spiral dynamic where

[00:18:37] so you start with this count, this figure, count where I stop and I say, okay, yeah,

[00:18:40] I think he's like this.

[00:18:42] I have a sense of him.

[00:18:44] And now I'm beginning to invent events that he's going to go through.

[00:18:48] So I'm imagining the events and I see him in the event and maybe there's an encounter

[00:18:53] and now while I'm beginning to think about the encounter, imagining it, even writing

[00:18:56] about it, what will happen is I'll say, wait a second, he wouldn't do that, he'd do this,

[00:19:02] right?

[00:19:03] And the important underlying concept here is that if you think of us as human beings,

[00:19:09] the people you know, occasionally there's a shy person, occasionally there's a mean

[00:19:14] person.

[00:19:15] But mostly we are all shy under some circumstance.

[00:19:19] We are bold under a different circumstance.

[00:19:21] We are mean under some circumstance.

[00:19:23] We are charitable under a different circumstance.

[00:19:25] We have the capacity to be all these things and different circumstances bring these traits,

[00:19:31] these human traits to the surface and it's all within the same personality, right?

[00:19:35] We have a lot of contradictory behavior in the expression of the individual and life

[00:19:42] in life.

[00:19:43] So as you're imagining, you start maybe with a relatively two-dimensional sense of a character.

[00:19:48] You start to imagine in an circumstance, your instincts say, wait a second, this guy

[00:19:52] wouldn't do A, he'd do B, which is kind of contradictory but that's right.

[00:19:58] And now I understand him better.

[00:20:00] So you say, okay let's go back to the beginning because now I have a richer sense of who

[00:20:02] he is.

[00:20:03] So let's start again.

[00:20:04] So this happens, okay, they none of this happens and he does that.

[00:20:07] And now he moves forward and now he's made this relationship in that relationship and

[00:20:11] another event occurs.

[00:20:12] Again, you go through a moment of discovery because when he's the this person, a new aspect

[00:20:18] of his personality expresses itself.

[00:20:20] So again, you got to go back to the beginning a little bit because now I have an even

[00:20:24] richer sense of who he is.

[00:20:26] And so you do this and each time I'm moving forward in the story, you're kind of rewinding

[00:20:31] and getting a more and more intricate sense, not only of him but of those he's encountering

[00:20:35] of the events, of what they might mean, of the settings.

[00:20:38] All of the elements are being revised through getting a keener and keener sense of what

[00:20:45] is happening in the moment, right?

[00:20:48] As through the imaginative process.

[00:20:50] And as a result of this, if you do it enough, suddenly you end up hopefully with a character

[00:20:55] who is more three-dimensional than if I wrote three character traits down on a piece

[00:20:59] of paper and said, that's the guy.

[00:21:02] And which would not really be, which would be a kind of flat individual at the end of

[00:21:06] the day.

[00:21:07] And so here's another thing which you pointed to which you may, which may interest you.

[00:21:11] But anyway, I do all this work, right?

[00:21:15] And I've even written some paragraphs, an opening paragraphs and some scenes or whatever.

[00:21:20] When I sit down to write the novel itself, that's when you really have to start to pin

[00:21:25] down what exactly is going to be the language.

[00:21:29] Now I may have versions of it in my mind.

[00:21:30] I may have already, you know, paragraphs that I've written that seem like they're on the

[00:21:33] right track.

[00:21:34] But once I'm writing the book, there's no more exploration.

[00:21:36] I got to start to commit to what it's going to sound like.

[00:21:40] And so in the writing of the first chapter, this has happened with me every book.

[00:21:45] What ends up happening after all these years of thought?

[00:21:48] Now that, you know, I'm writing chapter one, there will often be or tend to be a sentence

[00:21:56] or two where it comes finally into sharper focus for me.

[00:22:00] And I can tell you exactly what the sentences were in a gentleman, Moscow.

[00:22:04] Tell me.

[00:22:05] It opens with the trial, which is the transcript.

[00:22:09] He then gets marched on page one out of the trial, into the, cross the red square and

[00:22:14] into the hotel by two members of the red guard.

[00:22:18] And he's approaching the staircase in the lobby.

[00:22:22] And so I know all this is going to happen.

[00:22:24] I just haven't written it out yet.

[00:22:26] So he's approaching the staircase and he stops.

[00:22:30] Then he turns to the two red guards and he says, gentlemen, the lift are the stairs.

[00:22:36] And they don't know what to do.

[00:22:38] They're looking at each other.

[00:22:39] And he thinks to himself, how can you be expected to succeed on the field of battle if

[00:22:43] you can't make a decision between whether to take the lift or the stairs?

[00:22:47] So he chooses the stairs on their behalf.

[00:22:50] And then he takes the steps, two steps at a time.

[00:22:53] Two steps at a time as it has been, is have it since the academy?

[00:22:57] And I remember that little coming out really fast.

[00:23:00] And now in that little two or three sentences, I know so much now about the count and what

[00:23:07] this narrative is going to sound like.

[00:23:09] The concept that he would stop and ask his oppressors, which one are we going to do with

[00:23:14] the lift or the stairs?

[00:23:15] Sort of a sort of funny sort of gentlemanly sort of thing to do under the circumstances.

[00:23:21] The highfalutin sort of self-important thought he has.

[00:23:25] How can you succeed in the field of battle if you can't make a decision between the lift

[00:23:29] or the stairs?

[00:23:30] And then that thing, he takes the stairs two steps at a time as it had been, is have it

[00:23:35] since the academy.

[00:23:36] That's the guy, right?

[00:23:39] And so when I had a sentence like that, I had a period and I'm like, okay, that is suddenly

[00:23:45] I know it for what it is.

[00:23:46] It's like a pole star.

[00:23:48] He said, as I'm moving forward, this is the starting place of this individual.

[00:23:54] I know a lot about him.

[00:23:55] I know a lot's going to happen to him.

[00:23:56] I know what's happened to him in the past.

[00:23:58] But now I really beginning to hear what describing the world through his eyes it sounds

[00:24:03] like.

[00:24:04] And that then you're using that as the basis to start to unfold the story.

[00:24:10] Now, of course he's evolving, the world's evolving so that has to change too.

[00:24:14] The tone of the book changes, the sentiments that he's going to have change.

[00:24:19] But that's the powerful starting point for it.

[00:24:22] It's interesting because by that point when you write that sentence, you already know

[00:24:27] because of the years of work before it.

[00:24:29] You already know everything about him.

[00:24:33] He's an aristocrat, he's in this Bolshevik transition and so he's going to have to

[00:24:41] learn to deal with that.

[00:24:43] And obviously he will because the whole novel he survives, I mean, or at least he has to

[00:24:48] make a novel live for the whole several hundred pages.

[00:24:56] But what did you specifically learn about him once you write down and he says that sentence?

[00:25:02] It's not so much...

[00:25:05] Well, it's not so much that I'm learning something about his personality or his background

[00:25:09] or what's going to happen.

[00:25:10] It's more, I'm learning what writing about him should sound like.

[00:25:17] And so now, the gentleman Moscow is in the third person but it's not an omniscient third

[00:25:21] person.

[00:25:22] So it's not like a Henry James narrator who knows all what's happened in the past, what

[00:25:27] will happen in the future, what is the interior lives of all the characters.

[00:25:30] It's not that, right?

[00:25:31] The narrator of a gentleman Moscow, most of the book, is in third person but is clearly

[00:25:37] a close representation of the counts point of view.

[00:25:41] His sentiment, his sense of humor, his sense of what is important.

[00:25:46] It's influenced by his emotional past, it's his vocabulary and semantics.

[00:25:51] So that's a big challenge and if you're in a right like that, you have to begin to hear

[00:25:58] that.

[00:25:59] You have to hear in a narrator who is an expression of the counts inner life, his personality,

[00:26:05] his experiences, his vocabulary.

[00:26:07] What in fact would that sound like?

[00:26:09] Now if you're looking at a book of mine like The Lincoln Highway where there's eight different

[00:26:13] perspectives in that book, you have to do that eight different times because when you

[00:26:18] shift from hearing an Emmett chapter to a Duchess chapter or a Willie chapter, the language

[00:26:24] of those chapters is changing.

[00:26:26] The vocabulary is changing how poetic they are, how practical they are, how blunt they

[00:26:31] are.

[00:26:32] And there's a linguistic implication for all those aspects of personality.

[00:26:37] And you don't sit there and say he was blunt, what you do is in the way that you're describing

[00:26:43] the world through that character's eyes, there's a bluntness to that, to the language

[00:26:46] that you're using.

[00:27:01] When it comes to buying your first home, everyone has questions.

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[00:28:06] I think you never say something like he was blunt.

[00:28:11] You're always giving him blunt ways to say something or not.

[00:28:15] And not blunt ways to say something.

[00:28:17] I mean, I could almost open to any, happen to be open to one page right here just by

[00:28:22] coincidence, he's sowing with side by side with Marina who's one of those few characters

[00:28:30] who is blunt with him.

[00:28:33] And licking the thread and closing an eye just as Marina had taught him the count, thread

[00:28:40] of the needle faster than saints enter the gates of heaven, forming a double loop, tying

[00:28:46] off and not and snipping the thread from the pool.

[00:28:50] And on and on, there's very, you seem to know a lot of things.

[00:28:56] You know how to describe sowing and then metaphors to use so it's not just he's sowing fast.

[00:29:06] And then there was, here's a paragraph.

[00:29:10] He's putting eating a spoon of honey from his hometown basically.

[00:29:21] So dutifully the count put the spoon in his mouth and in an instant there was a familiar

[00:29:25] sweetness of fresh honey, sun like golden gay.

[00:29:29] Given the time of year the count was expecting this first impression we followed by a hint

[00:29:32] of lilacs from the Alexander Gardens or Chessie blossoms, Cherry blossoms from the golden

[00:29:38] ring.

[00:29:39] But as the Alexa dissolved in his tongue the count becomes aware of something else entirely

[00:29:43] rather than the flowering trees of central Moscow, the honey had a hint of grassy river bank

[00:29:48] and on and on until you get to the other stuff.

[00:29:52] And it's you seem to have a lot of knowledge about a lot of things that you bring into

[00:29:58] this character.

[00:30:00] Like just everything about the wines, music, the literature he's read.

[00:30:05] I think when you're describing the barber, the exact dances that the Cossacks did and using

[00:30:12] that to describe how his fingers are dancing over his head with the clippers.

[00:30:18] It's more than just research for this character somehow.

[00:30:22] And I'll say it bluntly like you're really smart somehow.

[00:30:27] And it shows up in these pages in the way you describe things.

[00:30:30] Or do you just research everything about the settings for this character?

[00:30:35] I'm not really a research driven writer so I don't tend to research my work.

[00:30:39] But what I do is I write about things that as you say, I feel very comfortable with

[00:30:46] a depth of knowledge already.

[00:30:48] So I had fallen in love with the Russian novel when I was 17 or 18 and I read Dostoyevsky

[00:30:56] or read Gogol and Turgendiev and Chekhov.

[00:30:59] And then I began to read the 20th century Russian figures before the revolution and then

[00:31:05] after the revolution.

[00:31:07] So by the time I was writing a gentleman Moscow, I had more than 30 years of being a fan

[00:31:14] as it were Russian culture and having immersed myself in narratives and by the different

[00:31:19] Russian masters and knowing something about the art and political landscape of Russia and

[00:31:25] how it changed.

[00:31:26] So I know that because I was a fan in a way and that's why I was willing to set the book

[00:31:31] in Russia.

[00:31:32] I could have told the exact same story in under the dictatorship in South America, let's

[00:31:36] say.

[00:31:37] I could do it in China to set it today in China where there are still artists under house

[00:31:41] arrest.

[00:31:43] But I wouldn't have done that because I don't have that decades of granular familiarity with

[00:31:50] those environments that I had with Russia.

[00:31:53] And so it was sort of a good place to draw from.

[00:31:58] My instincts are, as you're trying to find the right image or find the right reference

[00:32:06] to fit into an narrative like you're talking about, like the scissors being similar to

[00:32:11] the dancing of the massacre, what have you?

[00:32:13] If it doesn't come from a place of deeper knowledge or familiarity, it's not going to

[00:32:22] sound right.

[00:32:23] I mean, if I googled, what would be this and then plop it in, it's going to feel that

[00:32:29] way to the reader.

[00:32:30] It's something about it.

[00:32:31] It doesn't feel quite organic enough.

[00:32:34] And so I'm wary about, as part of the reason I'm wary about research is that it's hard

[00:32:39] once you're doing it to sense as the writer, where did I just put in something that's

[00:32:44] going to sound inorganic?

[00:32:48] Because it's right, but it may not sound organic to the reader in a way that,

[00:32:53] the genuine expression would.

[00:32:55] And so I do try to draw on stuff I know.

[00:32:59] Now, I think writers are like this.

[00:33:04] We read a lot.

[00:33:05] We're observing the world with intent.

[00:33:09] And so it doesn't mean that we're smarter than anybody, but we're taking in weird things.

[00:33:19] The kinds of language are very interesting to writers.

[00:33:23] And so you read a legal brief and you're like, oh, that's interesting.

[00:33:28] Why do they, that's how they construct sentences in the legal brief?

[00:33:32] That's the tone of it.

[00:33:34] That's the pace of it.

[00:33:35] That's the way they make a point.

[00:33:37] This is what's missing.

[00:33:38] What are all these things?

[00:33:39] Where are all that stuff?

[00:33:40] And then you see a politician in the south and you hear him talking.

[00:33:47] And you're like, oh, that's wow.

[00:33:48] That's to hear that southern oratory.

[00:33:52] That's its own thing.

[00:33:53] And then you hear a technical person.

[00:33:56] And you're like, oh, that's what technical language sounds like.

[00:33:59] So every time you hear that, you're absorbing a little bit of it.

[00:34:03] And if I had to write a southern political speech,

[00:34:07] those are the elements that would sort of be keynotes

[00:34:11] to help me start to craft something that made it seem authentic.

[00:34:16] But you can kind of, many Americans wouldn't

[00:34:19] necessarily remember it or think about it in those terms.

[00:34:21] But when you're a writer, that's what you are listening to and listening for.

[00:34:25] And that gives you a little bit more facility

[00:34:27] and using a different type of language

[00:34:30] that's not yours to bring to life a person who you are not.

[00:34:35] And I think there's two other things that are helping you

[00:34:39] with constructing the language in this.

[00:34:42] Is that A, you've spent all this time creating the story

[00:34:47] without thinking about language.

[00:34:48] And you've spent all this, you've spent all this

[00:34:50] on thinking about the character so that when you're finally writing

[00:34:52] the book, it's almost as if you've outsourced plot and

[00:34:56] character to your prior self from the past two, three years,

[00:35:01] whatever it was.

[00:35:02] And so you can focus on then layering in this language

[00:35:06] as opposed to like, and it's a legitimate thing

[00:35:08] like many writers write their first draft

[00:35:10] from beginning to end and then start working it out.

[00:35:13] But you can't really have the depth of language

[00:35:17] if you write in that linear fashion,

[00:35:19] you have to be a little maybe perhaps a little bit more cliffhanger

[00:35:22] focused like, yeah.

[00:35:23] Okay, I'm ending a chapter, what's the cliffhanger

[00:35:26] and then I drive into the next chapter.

[00:35:27] And there's nothing wrong with either approach

[00:35:29] but I just, I really appreciated it in your novels

[00:35:32] because you could see that now that you explain how you layered it,

[00:35:36] it makes sense like, because I was wondering

[00:35:39] how is he just weaving these,

[00:35:43] like each paragraph's like a poem the way

[00:35:45] you're writing these characters.

[00:35:47] It's really amazing.

[00:35:49] James, I really appreciate that question

[00:35:51] because you're absolutely right

[00:35:52] and it's one of things, I talk about planning and outlining

[00:35:57] and all these things and it may sound very,

[00:36:01] oh, you know, it's scientific or whatever

[00:36:03] but you're absolutely right.

[00:36:05] There's a counterintuitive aspect there

[00:36:06] which is that I do all that just as you describe

[00:36:10] so that when I get to the writing of a chapter,

[00:36:13] all the decisions are made and I can free up

[00:36:17] the most poetic part of myself

[00:36:19] to do the actual crafting of the sentences

[00:36:21] and the final imagining of imagery, et cetera.

[00:36:24] And to put it in technical, you know, modern science

[00:36:29] by planning, I'm trying to diminish the influence

[00:36:32] of the left side of my brain

[00:36:34] which is the decision making logical portion

[00:36:37] and to free up the right side of the brain

[00:36:39] which is subconscious and poetic and dream,

[00:36:41] you know, where that originates.

[00:36:42] And whereas as it just like you said,

[00:36:44] if I did not do the planning when I got to the chapter

[00:36:47] and you're sitting there having to say,

[00:36:48] okay, well what happens?

[00:36:49] And what does the room look like?

[00:36:50] And who's this guy comes through the door?

[00:36:52] What's his name?

[00:36:53] We know, what did he do yesterday?

[00:36:54] You know, what does he want?

[00:36:55] What are they saying to each other?

[00:36:57] That suddenly this decision making part of the mind

[00:37:01] which takes over and it can overwhelm the other side

[00:37:05] which is one you want to rule the day

[00:37:07] in the crafting of sentences.

[00:37:09] You want the poetic side to sort of surprise you

[00:37:12] with the word choice, surprise you with the image

[00:37:15] with come up with a parallel

[00:37:16] that you had never thought of before.

[00:37:18] And that can be, when the subconscious is really kicking

[00:37:23] it can be very powerful.

[00:37:25] You know, a good example I think in the general

[00:37:27] Moscow is when the count, there's a big turning point

[00:37:35] in the early part of the book.

[00:37:35] I needed something to happen

[00:37:37] which would make him really depressed

[00:37:39] or feel like his time was over basically.

[00:37:41] And after, during the design phase

[00:37:43] after trying many different things eventually

[00:37:45] I'm like, oh I know he's gonna go to dinner

[00:37:48] at the fancy restaurant and he's gonna ask for

[00:37:50] a fancy bottle of wine

[00:37:51] and they're gonna tell him that there's only red and white wine

[00:37:53] now and he's gonna be what?

[00:37:55] And they're gonna take him down the matriety's

[00:37:57] and take him down to the wine cellar

[00:37:58] and they'll have removed, the Bolsheviks will have removed

[00:38:00] all the wine labels from all the bottles

[00:38:03] arguing that this old sort of prestige type of wine drinking

[00:38:09] was really out of step with commoners.

[00:38:11] And of course it's the straw that breaks the candles

[00:38:16] back for him at that moment.

[00:38:18] And now I know this in the planning and stage

[00:38:21] I've figured this out and this design

[00:38:22] and I kind of even have this image

[00:38:24] that he's gonna arrive into the cellar

[00:38:25] with Andre, the matriety and he's gonna walk the aisles.

[00:38:29] And what he'll do is he'll go down into a, you know

[00:38:33] one of the rows of wine bottles

[00:38:35] and take one of the wine bottles in his hand

[00:38:38] like Hamlet holding the head of York, the skull of York

[00:38:41] and he'll say he'll reflect.

[00:38:44] And when I'm doing the design I'm like, oh yeah

[00:38:47] and he'll reflect, like I don't need to know

[00:38:49] at that point what he's gonna say.

[00:38:51] I'll figure that out later.

[00:38:53] So when I'm doing the actual writing

[00:38:56] and everything's planned and imagined in advance

[00:38:59] so that I'm now just doing the poetry of that scene

[00:39:01] when I got to that moment where he took the bottle in hand,

[00:39:06] everything that gets follows that came really fast

[00:39:09] in the moment as I was, I am imagining myself

[00:39:13] as the person I am not the count

[00:39:15] in a situation I have never been

[00:39:18] and the count suddenly takes over

[00:39:19] and he's like, his observation in that moment is

[00:39:25] that the wine is the perfect distillation of individuality.

[00:39:28] And we know that this is the way that wine works, right?

[00:39:31] That wine, the flavor of a wine is totally determined

[00:39:36] by the 50 square feet in which it's grown

[00:39:40] or 100 square feet because of the minerality of that soul,

[00:39:44] the slope of it, the altitude of it,

[00:39:46] its exposure to sun on average,

[00:39:49] its exposure to wind and cold,

[00:39:51] all those things are what define the flavor

[00:39:53] and that changes like every 10 yards

[00:39:57] to some degree.

[00:39:58] I was wondering even when you wrote that

[00:40:01] and I remember that it seemed perfectly well

[00:40:03] and there's a couple of interesting things about that scene

[00:40:07] but with that line that you specifically are referring to,

[00:40:12] how did you know that?

[00:40:13] Like I don't know anything about wine for instance

[00:40:15] so you must know about wine.

[00:40:17] And again, in this sort of catalog of writerly stuff

[00:40:20] so like someone at some point just you go to a vineyard

[00:40:24] in Napa Valley for the first time of your life

[00:40:26] and the guy says that and you're like,

[00:40:27] oh that's interesting, that gets stowed away deeply

[00:40:30] because it's sort of like,

[00:40:31] oh that's an intricate way in which nature works.

[00:40:34] Wow I didn't know that but you don't know.

[00:40:36] I didn't, when I learned that,

[00:40:38] I didn't think how am I gonna use that

[00:40:39] you know what I mean?

[00:40:40] It just got logged away

[00:40:42] and then so as you say in the subconscious

[00:40:43] it suddenly presents itself

[00:40:45] and you're like, oh yeah this is perfect

[00:40:46] it's a perfect sort of beautiful speech

[00:40:48] that the count is gonna give to himself

[00:40:51] about the tragedy of this,

[00:40:53] is that wine is this unique thing

[00:40:54] and when you remove all the labels

[00:40:56] it's as if it's such drops in the ocean.

[00:40:58] But the added thing was that as I was finishing

[00:41:02] the count speech and I hit the final period

[00:41:05] I was suddenly like, you know,

[00:41:06] I was like well done count

[00:41:07] that was a beautiful little observation.

[00:41:09] And then I also'm like wait a second

[00:41:12] the count's description of the wine

[00:41:16] and what's happened to it?

[00:41:17] You know that this unique individuality of the wine

[00:41:20] and then the removal of the labels

[00:41:21] which treats it as if it's a drop in the ocean.

[00:41:24] It's exactly what was happening

[00:41:25] in the Soviet experience to people, right?

[00:41:29] That's what happened in the Soviet experiment

[00:41:32] is that the individuality of humans was diminished

[00:41:35] in favor of some sort of universal idea

[00:41:38] and they had been,

[00:41:39] so then you're like at some deep subconscious level

[00:41:42] not only did my brain pull out this wine metaphor

[00:41:45] as you say,

[00:41:46] because it's a nice poetic moment for the count

[00:41:49] but it did it in a way that actually

[00:41:51] it resonates with the overall theme of a whole friggin' book.

[00:41:54] And I could never plan that,

[00:41:56] I could never plan that.

[00:41:57] Right and that was what was so beautiful

[00:41:58] comparing that to the client and individuality.

[00:42:02] Okay, so let's talk about the question.

[00:42:05] When it comes to buying your first home,

[00:42:09] everyone has questions.

[00:42:11] Can we even afford to buy a house right now?

[00:42:13] Well I need to negotiate.

[00:42:14] How do I even negotiate?

[00:42:16] Luckily a remax agent has answers.

[00:42:18] Hey Brian, those are really good questions.

[00:42:20] They are?

[00:42:21] Thanks.

[00:42:22] That's my first time buying.

[00:42:24] So I think it's time to go out and get some

[00:42:26] things ready for the next question.

[00:42:29] They are?

[00:42:30] Thanks.

[00:42:31] That's my first time buying.

[00:42:32] I work with first time buyers all the time.

[00:42:34] I got you.

[00:42:35] Remax agents have more experience than other real estate agents.

[00:42:38] Visit remax.com or download the remax app

[00:42:41] to find the right agent.

[00:42:42] The right agent can lead the way.

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[00:43:21] I don't wanna give away any spoilers for the book

[00:43:22] and also for the series coming up.

[00:43:24] So let me try to do this in a way

[00:43:26] that doesn't give away any spoilers.

[00:43:28] It's not really an spoiler anyway,

[00:43:29] but the person who first confronts him

[00:43:34] with the question of red or white

[00:43:37] and in such a way that it becomes confusing to the count

[00:43:40] because it doesn't have all this subtlety anymore.

[00:43:45] That's like the one character that count sees

[00:43:48] in almost a two-dimensional way.

[00:43:50] You refer to this as I'm third person,

[00:43:53] not third person I'm mission,

[00:43:54] but third person from the count's point of view.

[00:43:56] This is the one character we don't really get a sense

[00:44:00] maybe of who his parents were.

[00:44:02] Yeah, that's right.

[00:44:03] Did you do that on purpose?

[00:44:04] Because that's also how the count is seeing

[00:44:06] and whereas with everybody else,

[00:44:07] the count tries to bring out the best in people.

[00:44:09] Yeah, he's kind of a nemesis.

[00:44:11] And actually one of my favorite moments of the book,

[00:44:15] a favorite moment is, and again,

[00:44:17] no, we won't give anything away,

[00:44:18] but late in the very late in the book,

[00:44:21] like in the final 50 pages,

[00:44:23] the count and that figure have a confrontation.

[00:44:27] And for the first time,

[00:44:30] that figure describes in some detail how he sees the count

[00:44:35] and it's sort of the root of his animosity towards the count.

[00:44:40] And the count is taken aback

[00:44:42] and he's sort of like, oh my God, listen to that.

[00:44:47] Because I think you're right.

[00:44:49] I didn't think of it consciously but self-consciously

[00:44:53] I think you're right,

[00:44:54] that the limited description of that antagonistic figure

[00:44:59] was really an extension of the count

[00:45:01] being somewhat dismissive of him.

[00:45:03] And so what I like about this moment

[00:45:05] is that it's sort of like the count realizing,

[00:45:07] oh yeah, right, this guy's got this whole,

[00:45:11] he's got his own viewpoint, his own background

[00:45:13] and his own thing which is informed

[00:45:16] why he's been doing what he's doing.

[00:45:17] It's not just a jerk,

[00:45:20] that there's this other thing behind it.

[00:45:23] And I would say that,

[00:45:25] so I think in the case of it,

[00:45:26] and that's the bishop as the character,

[00:45:28] I think that that's what happened there.

[00:45:30] But this kind of brings up an interesting bigger point

[00:45:32] which is that I'll write a first draft

[00:45:35] and then the revision process is quite active for me.

[00:45:39] So the second draft, I will change,

[00:45:44] there's not a page in the second draft

[00:45:46] that has not been changed

[00:45:47] but there may be as much as a quarter of the book

[00:45:50] that I remove and an additional 25%

[00:45:53] that I'm putting back in that's brand new, right?

[00:45:56] And the removal is about economy.

[00:45:59] I'm taking the first draft and I'm saying, okay,

[00:46:02] this chapter goes on too long,

[00:46:04] this paragraph is redundant,

[00:46:05] this character, this scene is a replay of the other scene,

[00:46:10] it should be one scene

[00:46:11] and we'll combine the two concepts.

[00:46:13] Well, you're constantly sort of looking for better economy

[00:46:16] and shrinking the text to make it,

[00:46:20] the same amount of energy and thematic power in it

[00:46:24] but with fewer and fewer words in essence.

[00:46:26] And sometimes that means there's a whole removal

[00:46:28] of a chapter, the removal of an entire character,

[00:46:31] the removal of the first 40 pages.

[00:46:33] Mostly challenging for you

[00:46:34] because you probably have to kill

[00:46:36] as they say many darlings because the pros is beautiful.

[00:46:40] I don't, yeah, right.

[00:46:42] And so like that phrase kind of drives me crazy

[00:46:45] so I'm not trying to say it about you.

[00:46:47] But like I said, right,

[00:46:48] so you gotta be willing to kill your darlings.

[00:46:50] Well, that's kind of true

[00:46:51] but I could general and maskeh would not succeed

[00:46:53] if it didn't have my darlings on every page.

[00:46:56] So you're killing a few.

[00:46:58] But yes, you have to get used to as an editor

[00:47:01] being objective and cold-hearted and being triad.

[00:47:04] Kill it and see now take a step back, read it fresh

[00:47:08] and be like oh yeah, you know what?

[00:47:09] It works better if I just throw all that out.

[00:47:12] And it's a better experience for the reader.

[00:47:13] I was explaining too much to the reader.

[00:47:15] I was giving them too much information.

[00:47:17] The reader, which diminishes,

[00:47:19] that's a paradox of writing,

[00:47:21] the more I describe the character or the situation,

[00:47:24] the less alive it's becoming, right?

[00:47:26] So you gotta pair that down to its bare bones

[00:47:29] where the electricity is and then for the reader

[00:47:31] it's got a, you know, it feels a lot, right?

[00:47:34] So that's the first part of the editing

[00:47:36] of the first draft.

[00:47:37] Take it down.

[00:47:38] Then you start to say wouldn't it be interesting

[00:47:39] actually if this element was added?

[00:47:41] If this was added.

[00:47:42] Now one of the big things that gets added in draft two,

[00:47:46] is that in draft one,

[00:47:50] I have over described the three or four principal characters.

[00:47:55] There's too much about them,

[00:47:57] about what they think, what they feel,

[00:47:59] what they've done, what's happened to them,

[00:48:00] what's gonna happen to them?

[00:48:01] You know, and the secondary characters

[00:48:04] are not as fully realized as they should be.

[00:48:06] So through the economy thing,

[00:48:08] I'm shrinking the amount of material

[00:48:10] dedicated to those four leading characters,

[00:48:13] but they're actually becoming more brightly

[00:48:15] and sharply drawn that frees up space.

[00:48:19] And I can use that to start doing justice

[00:48:21] to these secondary characters.

[00:48:23] And where we're, you know,

[00:48:24] and it's almost a nagging thing like,

[00:48:26] you know, they'll say, oh yeah, I'll say,

[00:48:28] you know, like Marina in the first draft,

[00:48:31] Marina, the seamstress,

[00:48:32] plays a smaller role,

[00:48:34] much smaller role than the second draft.

[00:48:35] And I love her and I love her personality.

[00:48:38] And she, as you said,

[00:48:39] she's the one who's blunt to the count.

[00:48:41] And so that's a very powerful thing

[00:48:44] to bring into the story.

[00:48:45] And so like, from draft one to draft two,

[00:48:48] probably the word count for Marina double

[00:48:51] or something like that.

[00:48:52] You know?

[00:48:52] So you have this kind of thing where on the one hand,

[00:48:54] you're going on the draft,

[00:48:55] you're diminishing the amount of language

[00:48:56] to these characters to make them better rendered

[00:48:59] and you're adding, you know, words to these other characters

[00:49:03] to bring them into better life.

[00:49:04] And so, and you're right,

[00:49:07] the bishop is kind of a funny case

[00:49:08] because of the counts prejudices towards him

[00:49:12] that I never really give him what he's do

[00:49:15] until that sort of that final confrontation.

[00:49:17] And even then, he sort of gets short-changed.

[00:49:20] Well, well, but it's interesting.

[00:49:22] And I know we're spending a lot of time

[00:49:24] on gentlemen in Moscow.

[00:49:26] I want to talk about the rules of civility

[00:49:27] and of course table for two, which is being released.

[00:49:30] But look, gentlemen in Moscow again

[00:49:31] is going to be a Netflix series in a few days.

[00:49:33] So, not Netflix.

[00:49:35] Not Netflix.

[00:49:36] Oh, not Netflix.

[00:49:37] Paramot Flux.

[00:49:38] Sure, I know that.

[00:49:39] I've seen the trailer on YouTube

[00:49:40] but I didn't know what network was on.

[00:49:47] You know, one thing I was curious about

[00:49:50] was the character of Mishka.

[00:49:54] You know, you mentioned this is again,

[00:49:55] third person in the point of view of the count.

[00:50:00] But there is one point when I was just curious about this,

[00:50:05] there is one point where it seems like it's actually Mishka's

[00:50:08] point of view for the only time in the novel.

[00:50:10] And I wondered if you did that intentionally.

[00:50:13] Yes, so...

[00:50:15] And there's only one page.

[00:50:16] Yeah, like 90% of the book, as I say,

[00:50:18] is from this counts perspective.

[00:50:21] But what you...

[00:50:22] There's a secondary narrator who plays a major role

[00:50:26] in the overall experience of the book.

[00:50:28] And that narrator appears initially in footnotes,

[00:50:32] sort of stepping in and making observations.

[00:50:35] Then that narrator often opens major chapters to orient you.

[00:50:39] What's happened during the Second World War?

[00:50:41] What's happened during the Purges?

[00:50:43] There are addendums at the end of chapters

[00:50:46] where you leave the hotel

[00:50:48] and you follow Nina into the countryside

[00:50:50] or Andre home to where his son has died

[00:50:53] during the Second World War.

[00:50:54] And it's sort of those are being given by this other narrator.

[00:50:59] And as you say, one of them is Mishka

[00:51:01] walking on the way to the hotel after doing time

[00:51:06] and sort of beginning to see Russia

[00:51:09] from his new sort of jaded, hard-hearted point of view.

[00:51:14] And so, yes, so there's these sort of...

[00:51:18] So it's not...

[00:51:19] It's that other 10%.

[00:51:20] And this is again, it's one of those things like...

[00:51:22] Without that 10% it would be a vastly weaker book.

[00:51:27] The 10% punches way over its weight

[00:51:29] because it gives you this counterbalance

[00:51:33] to the counts optimism,

[00:51:34] to the limitations of what he sees,

[00:51:36] to his natural good nature towards others,

[00:51:41] to the centric quality of the story from his point of view.

[00:51:45] These sort of are beginning to show you

[00:51:47] what's going on outside the hotel.

[00:51:48] What are the challenges people are facing?

[00:51:51] What is the other kind of version

[00:51:53] of witnessing those events, either darkly or sarcastically

[00:51:57] or cynically through an experience of disappointment?

[00:52:01] And so you get this kind of thing.

[00:52:03] And with Mishka we see it when he goes

[00:52:07] and fights with his editor over the check-up story.

[00:52:10] We kind of follow him into this meeting

[00:52:12] where he has a confrontation.

[00:52:14] And so...

[00:52:15] I don't...

[00:52:17] There is no...

[00:52:19] You know, like I feel like...

[00:52:23] Part of the pleasures of reading over time

[00:52:25] is you realize that it would be very easy for an instructor

[00:52:29] to say, oh well when you've chosen the narrator

[00:52:31] that should be the narrator.

[00:52:32] And if it's from the count, the count wasn't there,

[00:52:34] then we shouldn't see that.

[00:52:35] How can we suddenly shift and hear it

[00:52:37] from somebody else's point of view for one page without...

[00:52:40] But when we read books for that happens

[00:52:42] you're like, oh, you can do that.

[00:52:44] If you do it well, you could do it.

[00:52:48] Every rule I guess is made to be broken.

[00:52:50] You just have to be careful because it's a risk.

[00:52:53] Yeah, you have to be judicious about when

[00:52:56] and how you do it.

[00:52:57] And again, I've kind of said it has to be the kind of thing

[00:53:00] where the break allows this one page

[00:53:04] to have big emotional or intellectual impact

[00:53:08] for the reader, you know, where it's not just random.

[00:53:13] It really is something that...

[00:53:16] It deserves to be told in that different way at that moment.

[00:53:19] It's so interesting because now that you describe it this way,

[00:53:22] again like you mentioned the footnotes,

[00:53:24] the footnotes were a great way

[00:53:26] to make it almost a third person omniscient

[00:53:30] because the footnotes are very passive.

[00:53:32] It's like the footnotes of any book.

[00:53:35] It's just like, oh by the way we have a little more explanation here.

[00:53:38] Here it is.

[00:53:39] Don't worry about it.

[00:53:40] You just, you know, here's some facts that fill in the context.

[00:53:43] So it's almost a little more passive than the passionate point of view of the count.

[00:53:48] And then that's why it struck me that it was outside of the footnotes,

[00:53:51] the Mishka aspect.

[00:53:53] But at the same time Mishka is almost this weird counterpoint to the count.

[00:53:58] Like they're almost intertwined as two sides of one character in a weird way.

[00:54:02] Although Mishka plays a much smaller role.

[00:54:04] But that's why maybe you felt, okay I could take the risk with this compact

[00:54:09] with the reader because Mishka is the count in some way.

[00:54:14] Yeah and we deserve, because you're right.

[00:54:17] And you think about it thematically or historically actually.

[00:54:23] The revolution was there were many intellectuals

[00:54:29] and sort of members of the aristocracy or related to the other who were in favor of the revolution.

[00:54:35] Because like it's like many revolutions, it starts with the intelligentsia.

[00:54:39] It doesn't start with the peasants.

[00:54:41] It's a group of people who have been schooled, who have had access to things

[00:54:45] who are become morally outraged and who are writing the manifestos

[00:54:48] and begin printing out the leaflets.

[00:54:51] And so it wasn't uncommon for at that early stage

[00:54:57] to have two people who were basically had a very similar upbringing

[00:55:01] and may have been friends and quite close who were suddenly on opposite sides of history.

[00:55:08] And so Mishka is, you know, absolutely right, he's sort of a personification of that branch.

[00:55:14] Now that branch in Russian history as in many revolutionary histories

[00:55:21] walked in full of optimism, full of vision, full of confidence

[00:55:28] and ended up very disperited, disappointed, disillusioned.

[00:55:33] Because the revolution did not fulfill its promise in the way that they imagined it at the beginning.

[00:55:40] And so I wanted to have someone who was like that part of the Russian experience,

[00:55:46] that part of the experience in a moment of historical transition.

[00:55:51] And so you do get, it does become important to leave the count for a minute

[00:55:56] to sort of taste in a way the bitterness, the sense deep disappointment

[00:56:02] from the person who's like we're going to change the world and feel like it's going to happen

[00:56:07] in the first part of the book.

[00:56:09] And the second part of the book begins to get disillusioned.

[00:56:12] And finally, you know, is just completely broken by the disappointment

[00:56:19] Russia did not become what it could have become.

[00:56:22] And so it's important to have that as a separate thread, you know.

[00:56:26] And like Nina, who's a young girl and the count meets her,

[00:56:31] is again, it's like a different personification of an aspect of Russian history

[00:56:35] or revolutionary history anywhere, which is that she was born at the time

[00:56:38] of the revolution or basically shortly before us.

[00:56:41] She's like today's Gen Zs.

[00:56:43] Yes. She grew up with the internet.

[00:56:45] Yes, right. So everything's second nature to her.

[00:56:48] Of course we, you know, communism is great.

[00:56:53] Of course it's great.

[00:56:54] And of course it's the only way to be.

[00:56:55] Because that's what she's been schooled in.

[00:56:57] And so she has a different kind of optimism than the Mishka,

[00:57:01] who's the intelligentsia from the 19th century looking into the future.

[00:57:05] She's the one who's bought it, Huckline and Sinker,

[00:57:08] because she's a communist youth.

[00:57:11] But she's going to have a different, you know,

[00:57:13] they get disappointed in a different way.

[00:57:16] And may never completely.

[00:57:18] And even though they may be disappointed with the outcome,

[00:57:21] they may never turn their back on the party.

[00:57:24] You know, that kind of person, right?

[00:57:26] Who says, you know, my husband's doing time.

[00:57:29] But it's important for the revolution to make certain sacrifices

[00:57:33] towards this mission we're on.

[00:57:36] And that happened, right?

[00:57:37] These young people who adopted the mission so deeply,

[00:57:42] you know, there were the kids who turned in their parents

[00:57:44] and in Russia when things got hot.

[00:57:46] You know, and did it proudly, you know, it's crazy stuff.

[00:57:48] But so you're kind of...

[00:57:50] And so again, it becomes important to not only meet Nina,

[00:57:53] see her evolution, but then get a glimpse of her

[00:57:56] as she leaves the hotel and goes into adulthood

[00:57:58] and has to face kind of confront the realities of the Russia

[00:58:03] that she has admired since childhood.

[00:58:06] But what's great is she and many other characters

[00:58:10] exemplify this aspect of the story takes place in the hotel.

[00:58:17] It's like a painting of the hotel,

[00:58:20] but you get this sense that painting goes off.

[00:58:23] Like, you know, some paintings are just a portrait.

[00:58:26] You think that's the entire universe.

[00:58:28] It's just the portrait inside the painting.

[00:58:30] But some paintings, you know, Sunday in the park with George.

[00:58:32] There's things happening outside of the scene we're seeing.

[00:58:35] You just don't see them, the painting focus on this part.

[00:58:38] And so this is a painting in the Metropole,

[00:58:40] but Nina and other characters exemplify

[00:58:42] that there are things going on outside the Metropole.

[00:58:45] Sometimes we might find out what they are.

[00:58:47] Sometimes we'll never find out what they are.

[00:58:49] That's right.

[00:58:50] And that's part of the beauty of the book as well.

[00:58:51] And sometimes it's foreshadowed and sometimes it isn't.

[00:59:32] I'm the right agent.

[00:59:33] The right agent can lead the way.

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[01:00:11] This bridges me to the rules of civility,

[01:00:14] which is you're another,

[01:00:16] that was your first published novel.

[01:00:19] And it's like a mirror image of a gentleman in Moscow.

[01:00:24] It's about...

[01:00:27] By the way, I went into a thinking he was going to be about Eve.

[01:00:30] All about Eve because I had read even Hollywood first

[01:00:33] and I was like, oh my gosh,

[01:00:34] I'm going to read about where Eve came from.

[01:00:37] But it's this young lady who's rising up

[01:00:41] and wants to fit in in upper class Manhattan,

[01:00:47] wants to meet the love of her life in that class

[01:00:52] and have a dream life.

[01:00:55] But you get this sense in both books

[01:00:57] that one of the things you're really talking about

[01:01:00] is not only these kind of transitions

[01:01:03] and different stratus of society,

[01:01:06] but also the kind of roles we have to play.

[01:01:10] And this is very clear in both books.

[01:01:12] Like in Moscow, you have to pretend.

[01:01:16] Are you going to be the proletariat worker,

[01:01:19] Bolshevik administrator, or are you going to pretend

[01:01:22] to be someone who could fit into this class of society

[01:01:26] or are you going to be the actress

[01:01:28] who has to whine and die and pretend to be this

[01:01:31] in order to move from silent to talky.

[01:01:34] And everybody's playing like a role

[01:01:37] and in rules of civility too, very clearly,

[01:01:40] everyone is kind of not themselves.

[01:01:43] They're all playing roles.

[01:01:45] And this is what's true in real life too.

[01:01:47] We're all just playing roles most of the time.

[01:01:49] It's hard to really even know who you are,

[01:01:51] let alone be who you are.

[01:01:53] And I just wonder how conscious you were

[01:01:54] during writing the rules of civility of this aspect?

[01:01:59] I think generally you're right that appears often in my work

[01:02:03] because I find it very interesting,

[01:02:04] just in the way you describe it.

[01:02:06] I find it very interesting.

[01:02:10] In the United States there is in an upper class,

[01:02:13] a middle class, a lower class,

[01:02:14] or a working class, or whatever you want to say.

[01:02:16] There's like 70 classes.

[01:02:19] And that's true everywhere you go.

[01:02:21] There's incredible gradations between in the experience

[01:02:25] of life in this complicated society of America.

[01:02:31] And some of that is influenced by wealth

[01:02:34] and some of it by upbringing and some of it by race

[01:02:38] and some of it by gender and by job.

[01:02:40] All these things are affecting how we're seen by others,

[01:02:45] how we present ourselves,

[01:02:48] and there's aspects of integrity and self-deceit

[01:02:51] which are bound in that and that are choices

[01:02:53] or either made actively or passively.

[01:02:56] And so I find that, you know,

[01:02:58] that's an infinitely interesting set of circumstances for me.

[01:03:02] And so the rules of civility,

[01:03:04] which is only this year in the life of this of Katie in 1938

[01:03:08] and as you say it's the year she's 25,

[01:03:10] she's beginning to understand or see how she might advance

[01:03:14] both socially and professionally in Manhattan.

[01:03:18] And you don't get to see the completion of it,

[01:03:21] you just begin to see how okay,

[01:03:23] this is how this town works.

[01:03:24] And these are my opportunities for presenting themselves.

[01:03:27] But as she's navigating that,

[01:03:31] we're getting to sort of see,

[01:03:33] she's bumping into different of these tears

[01:03:36] and beginning to understand the nuances between them

[01:03:39] and the pluses and minuses around the choices

[01:03:43] that are made in order to participate

[01:03:45] or in order to win in that particular corner of New York life.

[01:03:50] So I do find that fun and interesting

[01:03:54] and timeless too.

[01:03:56] And then you see what the other characters like,

[01:03:59] okay, Tinker, who I can't say it sometimes is hard

[01:04:03] to talk about novels on a podcast

[01:04:05] because you really don't want,

[01:04:06] like a nonfiction book we could talk about everything.

[01:04:08] Yeah.

[01:04:09] Fiction obviously you can't.

[01:04:10] But this aspect of really how hard different people try

[01:04:14] to fit into different roles.

[01:04:16] And I can't give her even away the secret of the title.

[01:04:21] But then there's even the more conventional people in there.

[01:04:26] I'm forgetting the name of the guy.

[01:04:28] She dated for a short time who was younger.

[01:04:30] Dickie Van Awel.

[01:04:31] Yeah, yeah.

[01:04:32] Where you could clearly see he's playing his role.

[01:04:35] Even though it fits more naturally to him,

[01:04:37] he was born and grew up that way.

[01:04:39] But it's still a role for him.

[01:04:41] And he has to live up to it

[01:04:42] and whether he's good or not depends on his success

[01:04:45] at fitting into that role.

[01:04:47] Yeah.

[01:04:48] And it was, you know, rules of civility,

[01:04:51] I don't know if you made this comparison at all

[01:04:53] and for me this is a compliment.

[01:04:55] But it reminds me of Valley of the Dolls a little bit.

[01:04:58] Did you ever read Valley of the Dolls?

[01:04:59] I haven't known.

[01:05:00] So the 1960s novel, of course, was sold

[01:05:03] tens of millions of copies.

[01:05:04] Yeah.

[01:05:05] And it reminded me of that too,

[01:05:07] just kind of this array of young,

[01:05:10] for first starting with young women,

[01:05:12] but then array of the people they meet in New York

[01:05:14] as they're climbing in their 20s

[01:05:16] and what happens to them.

[01:05:17] And it's, again, beautiful in the same way

[01:05:22] that gentlemen in Moscow is just really going in depth

[01:05:25] and nobody's a cartoon.

[01:05:27] Even Dickie.

[01:05:29] At first I thought, is this going to be a cartoon

[01:05:31] and we're never going to see this guy again?

[01:05:33] But then you realize, OK, it goes more and more.

[01:05:35] And I'm avoiding talking about Tinker

[01:05:37] to talk about him, but it's the same thing.

[01:05:41] Yeah.

[01:05:42] And I love one of my favorite,

[01:05:43] I'll tell you two things about Tiki Vanderwyl,

[01:05:46] which I think you'll enjoy if you,

[01:05:48] not aware of it, but there's a scene there where,

[01:05:52] Dickie is romantic that he's very interested

[01:05:56] in the narrator, Katie.

[01:05:57] He's the love of her.

[01:05:59] And there's this other relationship

[01:06:01] that she's been interested in or whatever

[01:06:03] and they end up having a moment

[01:06:05] where he's been avoiding him

[01:06:07] and Tiki goes and finds her

[01:06:09] and they're sitting on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral

[01:06:11] in New York City.

[01:06:12] And he says, hey, what's going on?

[01:06:15] You know, you have an essence

[01:06:17] having an answer in my calls.

[01:06:18] So she confesses well,

[01:06:20] this is what's happened between me and this other man

[01:06:22] and where I was disappointed

[01:06:24] and in his behavior.

[01:06:26] And Dickie, what he should do at that moment

[01:06:31] is say, oh, what a cat,

[01:06:33] what a terrible behavior of that gentleman.

[01:06:36] Come back to my place.

[01:06:38] We'll have a glass of whiskey

[01:06:39] and let's put it behind us

[01:06:40] and we'll have a good time.

[01:06:41] That's what he should do.

[01:06:43] And I remember writing this.

[01:06:45] And I wasn't, as I was writing it,

[01:06:48] he was changing the course of what he was going to say.

[01:06:52] Because suddenly you're like, you know what?

[01:06:54] That's not he would never do that.

[01:06:56] And so instead, what he says is,

[01:06:58] who? You know, that's a tough one

[01:07:00] because that thing that you said about him

[01:07:02] actually I'm kind of impressed by that.

[01:07:04] And the other thing you say,

[01:07:05] why aren't we all kind of like that?

[01:07:06] So he kind of totally against his own interests

[01:07:10] kind of takes the side of the other guy.

[01:07:12] And it's a moment where I like it

[01:07:15] in the book because of what you're describing

[01:07:17] which is that as unique him,

[01:07:18] he's very carefree and devil-made-care.

[01:07:20] He doesn't seem to take anything seriously.

[01:07:22] And she even kind of likes that about him, you know?

[01:07:25] And he seems like a lightweight,

[01:07:27] a little, you know, to some degree.

[01:07:29] And this is a moment where he kind of turns the tables on her

[01:07:32] and you realize no, he's just like everybody else.

[01:07:34] He's more sophisticated than she's giving him credit for.

[01:07:37] And he's hit a made in observation

[01:07:40] which really, she has not been willing to accept.

[01:07:45] And it completely changes the way she sees the situation

[01:07:49] and you know, and I love that sort of this tender-hearted

[01:07:52] but revealing moment of Dickey.

[01:07:54] Well so here's the other thing I want to tell you.

[01:07:55] So then she says, you know,

[01:07:57] at some point we learned that Dickey ended up,

[01:08:00] all right, he kind of grows, you know,

[01:08:02] later on he's going to grow up in all right.

[01:08:03] Well do you know he appears in a gentleman Moscow, right?

[01:08:07] You know that?

[01:08:08] Oh my god.

[01:08:09] He's Richard Van der Wad.

[01:08:11] Oh my god.

[01:08:12] Right because Dickey is...

[01:08:14] He's Dickey in his 20s,

[01:08:16] but by then he's after the Second World War.

[01:08:18] That's almost like the American version of...

[01:08:21] You know, he's counterpoint to the count almost.

[01:08:24] Yes, but from America.

[01:08:26] And he has all the old personality traits.

[01:08:28] He's sitting in the bar, he's taking a dog in the bar tender,

[01:08:30] he's having a good time.

[01:08:31] But again, he in that book, he does the same thing.

[01:08:34] There's a moment which the count is very low

[01:08:36] and Dickey weighs in in this really interesting and thoughtful way.

[01:08:40] In a way that the count might do.

[01:08:42] Yeah, yeah exactly.

[01:08:43] Sonya so that's the same character.

[01:08:44] Yeah that's the same character.

[01:08:45] That is fascinating.

[01:08:47] I wanted to say one other thing about this sort of topic,

[01:08:49] which is that I was just with...

[01:08:52] Friends with Michael Lewis,

[01:08:54] he was just interviewing me at the New Orleans Book Festival last weekend.

[01:08:57] And well you know he spent a year following around Sam Bankman Fried

[01:09:04] with the intention of writing a book.

[01:09:07] And then just as he was about to begin writing,

[01:09:09] you know, S.B.F's entire thing world blows up, right?

[01:09:14] Crypto collapse, accusations of fraud.

[01:09:18] Well the thing I was going to point out is that what's interesting about it

[01:09:21] is that like seeing for those of you who are listeners who know S.B.F

[01:09:26] I'm sure you do just from the press.

[01:09:28] His whole thing of,

[01:09:30] I don't comb my hair or get it cut.

[01:09:32] I wear sweatpants.

[01:09:34] That's just as sort of targeted a costume

[01:09:40] as you know, Dickie Van der Waal in a tuxedo.

[01:09:43] Right?

[01:09:44] It's the same thing, right?

[01:09:45] He had his own version of it.

[01:09:47] And Michael's book and if you hear Michael speak about S.B.F.

[01:09:51] or if you read his, you know, terrific profile into the affinity book

[01:09:55] his last work of nonfiction,

[01:10:00] Sam I don't know him but S.B.F is kind of somewhere on the spectrum

[01:10:05] and he is not very good at reading emotional cues or giving emotional cues.

[01:10:10] And so as he's kind of rising,

[01:10:12] he's getting more and more success,

[01:10:14] he sort of thought, you know,

[01:10:16] I'm in his trade stuff in a dark room by myself

[01:10:19] and maybe I'll get rich but you know,

[01:10:21] I don't have to deal with people.

[01:10:23] But suddenly he becomes this public figure for cryptocurrency.

[01:10:28] He's worth more than $10 billion.

[01:10:31] People are seeking him out, investors, sovereigns, politicians.

[01:10:35] He starts donating money.

[01:10:37] So there's suddenly a public life is required of him

[01:10:40] that he has no training in and that he actually has avoided his entire life.

[01:10:45] And so what Michael talks about is that he starts to teach himself

[01:10:50] how to act in public.

[01:10:53] So he doesn't understand jokes,

[01:10:55] they doesn't find them funny,

[01:10:57] but he starts teaching himself to smile when someone tells a joke

[01:11:00] or to pretend to laugh.

[01:11:02] And he develops all these techniques, you know,

[01:11:05] to sort of not an interest or to be worried about the young woman who's working for him

[01:11:09] where he doesn't care at all, you know?

[01:11:11] But because it's not in his nature to emote in that way

[01:11:15] but it became essential to his behavior.

[01:11:17] So you have that and then, you know,

[01:11:19] then suddenly the guy gets arrested,

[01:11:21] loses all the money, gets arrested

[01:11:23] and now he's in a suit with his haircut, right?

[01:11:26] So we've gone into a new costume, right?

[01:11:28] Because if you were the sweats with the crazy hair, you know, to court,

[01:11:31] then he might be judged badly.

[01:11:33] So now he's got a whole nother...

[01:11:34] Anyway, so like I say, this is eternal stuff,

[01:11:37] you know, these ways in which we present ourselves

[01:11:41] and both in clothes, in behavior

[01:11:44] and in facial expressions,

[01:11:45] though the language we use,

[01:11:47] and it is loaded, it's targeted,

[01:11:51] it's both conscious and subconscious, and it shifts.

[01:11:55] But what's interesting though is I'm really aware of it in your books.

[01:12:00] I'm not necessarily aware of it in every novel I read,

[01:12:04] but perhaps because maybe in part your books are about this

[01:12:09] and the changing shifts of the roles, you know,

[01:12:12] the changing roles we play and how they shift and so on

[01:12:15] because that's part of what your books are about.

[01:12:17] I feel very aware of it.

[01:12:19] Like, you know, you ever watch a James Bond movie

[01:12:22] and you get out of the theater

[01:12:24] and you feel like you're James Bond.

[01:12:26] Yeah, okay.

[01:12:27] You know what I do?

[01:12:28] Absolutely.

[01:12:29] Like literally I would read a gentleman in Moscow

[01:12:32] and I swear to God my past...

[01:12:34] People would comment on my posture as I've gone into the next room.

[01:12:37] Like, oh, you're standing up much straighter

[01:12:39] and I felt like I had a better vocabulary.

[01:12:42] I felt much more at ease with the world.

[01:12:44] Like so your books like, you know,

[01:12:48] put the reader into these roles

[01:12:51] very, very well and that's part of what I enjoyed about them.

[01:12:54] And even look, this is a good segue into Even Hollywood

[01:12:57] which is kind of this spin-off novella, you know,

[01:13:00] so your book table for two is coming out.

[01:13:03] It's a bunch of short stories and in novella,

[01:13:06] the novella is almost as sequel to Rules of Civility.

[01:13:10] Not quite as sequel, I don't want to say that

[01:13:12] because again, for me, Rules of Civility

[01:13:14] was like the prequel to Even Hollywood.

[01:13:16] But Even Hollywood is Eve herself.

[01:13:20] And now I see it having read afterwards

[01:13:23] where she comes from.

[01:13:25] It's almost like she gets into Hollywood

[01:13:27] and everybody else is playing a role,

[01:13:30] but she's not really.

[01:13:32] She's really feels...

[01:13:34] I feel like she's herself.

[01:13:36] She's got this integrity that's beyond the role.

[01:13:38] People can't even understand her

[01:13:40] because she's beyond the roles of what happens in Hollywood.

[01:13:44] And I loved that about her character

[01:13:47] and following her...

[01:13:49] Like she makes decisions

[01:13:50] that the average person would not make

[01:13:52] throughout the novella.

[01:13:55] And it's an interesting way to see then Hollywood

[01:13:58] through her perspective,

[01:13:59] in your own perspective, like, oh my gosh,

[01:14:02] maybe I would have taken the money there.

[01:14:04] I would have taken this opportunity there

[01:14:05] and she doesn't because she's playing this higher role.

[01:14:09] Which I guess she learns

[01:14:11] in the hidden pages of roles of civility.

[01:14:14] Yeah, you know,

[01:14:16] this isn't early in roles of civility,

[01:14:19] Eve is going to car accident.

[01:14:21] So it's not a big spoiler,

[01:14:23] but it's early in the book.

[01:14:25] And she's always very smart.

[01:14:27] She's always sparkling about everybody.

[01:14:29] And she's always kind of a willful

[01:14:31] and independent and spunky and attractive.

[01:14:34] But what happens is...

[01:14:36] And I kind of remember going back

[01:14:38] to this sort of imaginative cycles.

[01:14:40] And imagining roles of civility,

[01:14:42] I knew her as this sort of great midwestern,

[01:14:45] spunky beauty who is independent

[01:14:47] and won't be ruled by her parents

[01:14:49] or by anybody else.

[01:14:51] And then she sort of imagined,

[01:14:53] well, what if you take that person

[01:14:55] and you're thrown through a windshield?

[01:14:57] Which is kind of what happens to her.

[01:14:59] And her beauty is damaged.

[01:15:02] She loses some use of her leg, whatever.

[01:15:05] What...

[01:15:06] I suddenly sort of asked myself,

[01:15:08] what is a steely version,

[01:15:10] you know, a hardened version

[01:15:12] of that person that we've come to know?

[01:15:15] Like as if the glass of the windshield

[01:15:19] is a wall and she...

[01:15:21] It's like the looking glass for her out.

[01:15:23] She goes through it

[01:15:24] and you carry with it all these personality traits

[01:15:27] but it's suddenly a hardened version of it.

[01:15:30] Because in a way,

[01:15:31] the accident was life cheating her

[01:15:34] in some weird way

[01:15:36] and her, you know, resending it.

[01:15:39] And but also having to toughen herself up

[01:15:41] to now go on.

[01:15:44] And so what comes out is this sort of as your right.

[01:15:48] You know, she becomes a person who survived that kind of thing

[01:15:52] is no longer gives a shit about the little stuff.

[01:15:55] You know what I mean?

[01:15:56] Like, she's moving forward

[01:15:58] at her own pace with her own mind

[01:16:00] and does not care about, you know,

[01:16:03] the expectations of others

[01:16:05] about the polite thing to do,

[01:16:07] you know, she should not crash.

[01:16:09] But it's a freeing thing for her.

[01:16:12] You know, she becomes a more independent person

[01:16:15] by virtue of having survived this accident, you know?

[01:16:19] And so then I can tell you...

[01:16:21] She could have also become...

[01:16:22] And perhaps in the rural civility,

[01:16:24] a little of this happened,

[01:16:26] she could also have become bitter and grasping

[01:16:28] because if she doesn't grasp for it now,

[01:16:30] she'll always lose it.

[01:16:31] Yeah, that's right.

[01:16:32] Because it was happened to her.

[01:16:33] Yeah, so she has a choice in that sense.

[01:16:35] And part of rural civility is her grappling

[01:16:38] with who is she going to be in the aftermath of this accident?

[01:16:41] And she kind of goes through some transitions.

[01:16:44] But then, you know, part of the fun of writing

[01:16:46] even Hollywood is because even Hollywood,

[01:16:51] you're right, it's not a sequel,

[01:16:52] but it does kind of, in essence, begin the day after

[01:16:56] rural civility, after Eve, or Eve.

[01:16:59] And so you get to take this personality of imagined

[01:17:03] and this sort of unique sort of combination of traits

[01:17:07] which makes her both independent and willful

[01:17:09] and charismatic too,

[01:17:11] and drop her into Hollywood, like what would happen?

[01:17:15] You know, that's kind of what...

[01:17:17] That's why I wrote it, right?

[01:17:18] It was kind of bugging me.

[01:17:20] Like, you know, we know she goes to California,

[01:17:22] but like I was like,

[01:17:23] what happens when you take her personality and drop it

[01:17:26] in late 30s Hollywood?

[01:17:28] And then you get to kind of a...

[01:17:30] You know, that spent years imagining

[01:17:32] all the things that would happen to her

[01:17:33] and then eventually got around to writing it.

[01:17:36] And why did you make that a novella,

[01:17:39] I mean, instead of a full novel?

[01:17:41] And that's sort of a naive question

[01:17:42] because you could do whatever you want with it.

[01:17:44] There's no expectation it could be a novel.

[01:17:46] But you could have maybe turned that into a full novel.

[01:17:50] It's a good question.

[01:17:51] It's great as it is.

[01:17:52] I'm not saying you should have.

[01:17:53] Thank you.

[01:17:54] So, you know...

[01:17:55] And I think the answer is that...

[01:17:58] It's clearly written in to some degree

[01:18:03] in the noir tradition.

[01:18:05] You know, it is overlapping

[01:18:08] with the noir genre

[01:18:12] and in a variety of ways.

[01:18:15] And something about it...

[01:18:17] I love it.

[01:18:18] But it felt...

[01:18:20] In writing it,

[01:18:22] the ambition of how that story,

[01:18:24] the story that it should be,

[01:18:25] was not going to be quite as intricate and layered

[01:18:30] and nuanced as a gentleman Moscow

[01:18:34] or Lincoln Highway

[01:18:35] or even Wollsa civility.

[01:18:36] I knew that.

[01:18:37] I knew it was going to be

[01:18:39] you know, a little faster moving

[01:18:41] and a little more interested in...

[01:18:44] A little bit more impressionistic.

[01:18:47] We meet these people.

[01:18:48] We meet Prentice.

[01:18:49] We meet, you know,

[01:18:50] Litzky, the photographer.

[01:18:52] We meet, you know,

[01:18:53] Wendell, the Weasel.

[01:18:54] And you're going to kind of see them

[01:18:56] in this...

[01:18:57] sort of...

[01:18:58] So, in essence,

[01:18:59] criminal events unfold.

[01:19:00] And at a rapid pace are resolved.

[01:19:03] And so, all that made me feel like

[01:19:05] I didn't want to take that

[01:19:07] and say, well, let's add 200 pages

[01:19:09] of other stuff, you know?

[01:19:11] Which felt like it would be...

[01:19:14] It would maybe push it towards the complexity of a novel

[01:19:17] that I aim for.

[01:19:19] But on the other hand,

[01:19:20] it would kind of undo a lot of what was there

[01:19:23] and the elegance of what's there

[01:19:25] and the...

[01:19:26] sort of the freshness of what's there.

[01:19:28] So, yeah.

[01:19:29] So, I ended up, you know, saying, you know what?

[01:19:32] It's going to be 200 pages.

[01:19:34] It's going to go through to its end.

[01:19:35] Which by the way,

[01:19:36] is a full novel length anyway.

[01:19:37] I don't know why I'm calling it a Bella.

[01:19:39] No, no, no, you're right.

[01:19:40] I call it that.

[01:19:41] I mean, because you're right.

[01:19:42] So, 10 to be 400, 500 pages.

[01:19:44] So, my novelist or, you know, something like that.

[01:19:46] So, it is shorter for me, you know?

[01:19:50] But here's what's interesting then.

[01:19:51] In the shorter fictions, again,

[01:19:54] I read those firsts and then I read the larger ones.

[01:19:56] But now looking back,

[01:19:58] did you feel constrained by the short story format?

[01:20:02] Like maybe you wouldn't be able to get as much characterization

[01:20:04] out of some of these characters

[01:20:06] or where you...

[01:20:07] You know, I don't know what you wrote first, honestly.

[01:20:09] The short stories are the...

[01:20:11] Those short stories were all written in the last 10 years.

[01:20:14] And...

[01:20:15] But I've been writing short stories, as I say, for, you know, 40 years or whatever.

[01:20:19] And a little bit more than that.

[01:20:22] I think you've got a sense in this and me.

[01:20:24] First of all, my short stories

[01:20:26] are a little longer than the average published short stories.

[01:20:30] Because the short length that you would find in the New Yorker

[01:20:34] or a Paris reviewer or whatever

[01:20:36] is not long enough for me to do what I like to do.

[01:20:38] And so they might run a little bit longer.

[01:20:41] But I think what they represent for the reader

[01:20:44] or for if someone's a fan of my work,

[01:20:46] you'll enjoy them even if you don't know my work.

[01:20:48] But if you're a fan of my work,

[01:20:49] what they do is they provide you a glimpse of an essence

[01:20:51] how I start things, right?

[01:20:53] Which is that...

[01:20:54] Because the nature of the short story is it is a glimpse.

[01:20:57] You know, it might have a...

[01:21:00] You know, a small narrative but compared to a novel.

[01:21:02] But it's a glimpse of something.

[01:21:03] A glimpse of a person, a glimpse of a series of events

[01:21:06] rather than this full drawn out picture.

[01:21:09] And but that's a perfect place for me to experiment

[01:21:12] with some of these things we've talked about.

[01:21:14] What's the setting?

[01:21:15] What's the tone?

[01:21:16] What's the tone of voice?

[01:21:17] What's the psychology of the narrator?

[01:21:19] What's the perspective in this historian?

[01:21:22] And how do we bring to life the people

[01:21:24] that the narrator bumps into?

[01:21:25] And how do we do it and with efficiency and economy?

[01:21:28] And so the short story is a great place

[01:21:31] to experiment with those things.

[01:21:34] And so, you know, those six stories that are set in New York,

[01:21:37] they have a...

[01:21:38] The tone is shifting.

[01:21:39] The narrator...

[01:21:41] It's just type of narrator shifting.

[01:21:42] It starts with omniscient, you know?

[01:21:44] And then it's kind of a series of stories

[01:21:45] where someone's observing somebody else.

[01:21:47] And then finally its story about something that's happening

[01:21:49] to the narrator.

[01:21:50] And so you have to make your choices about...

[01:21:54] I have an idea for a story.

[01:21:56] What is the best perspective from which to tell it?

[01:21:59] You know, which is a...

[01:22:00] And there is...

[01:22:01] Am I in it?

[01:22:02] Am I watching it?

[01:22:03] Am I watching anything about it?

[01:22:04] And what's the tone?

[01:22:05] Which is different, right?

[01:22:07] The perspective or point of view is kind of

[01:22:09] how I'm situated at the events.

[01:22:10] What do I know about them?

[01:22:12] How close do I am to them?

[01:22:14] Whereas the tone might be...

[01:22:16] Am I a sarcastic person?

[01:22:18] Or an omniscient narrator with sarcasm?

[01:22:20] Am I a generous one?

[01:22:22] Am I an impatient narrator?

[01:22:24] You know, am I whatever?

[01:22:26] Because...

[01:22:27] Am I someone who, you know, an narrator

[01:22:29] who never finishes what he's trying to say?

[01:22:31] You know, so those are choices that you're making

[01:22:34] in advance.

[01:22:36] And you're trying to feel out...

[01:22:37] I know what the story is about.

[01:22:38] I'm beginning to understand the characters and the events.

[01:22:40] But now the big question is...

[01:22:42] How am I going to tell this?

[01:22:43] From what angle?

[01:22:44] With what tone?

[01:22:45] And you start to experiment with different things.

[01:22:47] And you may rewrite the first couple of pages a number of times

[01:22:50] until you can kind of hear that voice.

[01:22:53] So as I say these...

[01:22:54] These stories really provide,

[01:22:56] I think, the reader...

[01:22:58] A kind of a window on the bigger process that's at play in the novel.

[01:23:03] And I'll say one other thing about it.

[01:23:05] I've been thinking a lot about this...

[01:23:07] I didn't used to think about it,

[01:23:08] but I've been thinking about it since I finished it.

[01:23:10] And so if you think about the novel as an art form,

[01:23:13] for the reader or for the writer,

[01:23:16] orientation is a very big component of it.

[01:23:19] So when you take any novel, you know, you love.

[01:23:23] And go and back and read the first ten pages.

[01:23:25] And I guarantee you there's enormous amounts of information in those ten pages

[01:23:29] that you may not even be conscious of.

[01:23:31] But they tell you, you know, the where of it.

[01:23:34] Okay, okay, okay.

[01:23:35] So this is Michigan in the 50s or whatever it is.

[01:23:38] Okay, it's Paris in the 20s.

[01:23:40] It tells you some of the main characters.

[01:23:42] It gives you a glimpse of their backgrounds, of their personalities.

[01:23:45] It can make you a sense of the stakes that are about to follow.

[01:23:48] Dad is sick, you know, or whatever the thing is.

[01:23:50] And they're on their way to the funeral.

[01:23:52] You know, I don't know.

[01:23:53] But the point being that there's a lot of that is going on very early in a novel.

[01:23:57] And that's basically about orientation.

[01:23:59] It's so that the reader who's about to go into this extended journey,

[01:24:04] knows where they're starting.

[01:24:06] Right?

[01:24:07] And so because if you go into it,

[01:24:09] if a reader goes into a book where it seems uncertain of where it is or who they are

[01:24:13] or where we're going,

[01:24:14] you only go on for so long before that becomes frustrated.

[01:24:18] Right? And so you want to lay some of that down

[01:24:21] so the reader feels confident that they know where they are.

[01:24:23] And then they can start to see how things unfold.

[01:24:26] And the way that novels build meaning is very much in a relationship

[01:24:31] to setting the reader comfortable in a situation

[01:24:35] and then shifting and providing more insight and deeper knowledge.

[01:24:39] But again, orientation is necessary to experience that unfolding

[01:24:44] that becomes the accumulation of meaning for the reader when taking in a novel.

[01:24:50] The emotional outcome, let's say or whatever it is.

[01:24:53] Well short stories, it's not that, right?

[01:24:57] You do not have the time to provide that orientation

[01:25:00] or to do this to stretch out the culmination of events

[01:25:03] or the shifting emotions or the shifting whatever.

[01:25:06] It has to all come very fast.

[01:25:09] And so what happens as a result I think is that short story is very much

[01:25:14] one of the pleasures of the short story is that it's very much more...

[01:25:17] It's the opposite of orientation. It's about surprise.

[01:25:20] It's not about having groundwork laid for me so I know where I am

[01:25:24] and now I can go on the journey.

[01:25:26] It's like, oh my god, wait, where are we?

[01:25:28] What did he say? Who is that? Who just said that?

[01:25:31] Where are they going?

[01:25:33] It starts kind of in the middle of things very strong way

[01:25:37] and you have to kind of catch up

[01:25:39] and then you're only going to get the glimpse.

[01:25:41] You're not going to see it all unfold.

[01:25:43] You're going to see everything in this half an hour of this person's life

[01:25:47] or in this three-day period

[01:25:49] and you're going to try to kind of get a feel for

[01:25:52] where is this all headed in the long run?

[01:25:54] Where I only have this little bit of information

[01:25:57] at my fingertips to gain a sense of that insight.

[01:26:02] But I think that's a different type of reading experience.

[01:26:06] But it's one that I think can be very enjoyable.

[01:26:09] Yeah, and it's interesting seeing how you describe your process with the novels

[01:26:14] and then seeing how you do it in the short stories.

[01:26:17] It's almost like you have to pick and choose in the short stories.

[01:26:21] Okay, am I going to go deep into the ideas?

[01:26:23] Am I going to go deep into the character?

[01:26:25] Like, you're not given the full rainbow

[01:26:27] so you're kind of trying to pick what colors you're going to use for each story.

[01:26:31] Where's Jettelma and Moscow?

[01:26:33] You know, I take that as the classic example.

[01:26:36] You've got this full Russian novel here from beginning to end.

[01:26:41] And yes, let's say the way it, you know, like with a short story,

[01:26:47] the way it ends might be a surprise but it's...

[01:26:51] The surprise doesn't have to be a sharp.

[01:26:54] It doesn't have to be as harsh.

[01:26:56] Like, a short story is going to most likely end in a harsh way

[01:27:00] because it's like a magic trick.

[01:27:02] Like, you built up the short story

[01:27:04] and then the rabbit's no longer in the hat.

[01:27:07] Where is it?

[01:27:08] And you don't know the short story is over.

[01:27:11] You know, I'm thinking...

[01:27:14] By the way, I never would bookmark fiction.

[01:27:17] I have your bookmarks all over your novels and short stories.

[01:27:21] But like, I love the ballad of Timothy Tushae.

[01:27:26] For one thing, I like how you are confronting issues in your own life

[01:27:33] in this short story.

[01:27:35] So, like for instance, we talked at the very beginning how...

[01:27:39] You came from a...

[01:27:41] Let's say, upper middle class to upper class family.

[01:27:44] You went to the great schools.

[01:27:45] You spent 20 years working in the finance business.

[01:27:49] And you see this character, Timothy,

[01:27:54] who wants to be a novelist from a very early age,

[01:27:56] he's asking himself, oh, he wishes his parents were alcoholics

[01:28:00] or got divorced at least, or something.

[01:28:02] Or something to write about.

[01:28:05] Instead, everything's gone well for him.

[01:28:08] But then this is the only time I've seen you refer to yourself.

[01:28:12] You know, you say...

[01:28:15] You take about three or four hundred words here

[01:28:18] to say perhaps this assessment is too cynical.

[01:28:21] It all likelihooded as influenced by the author's own experiences

[01:28:24] with compromise and his unself-conscious desire

[01:28:27] because choices seem inevitable and so on.

[01:28:30] You really go into yourself a little bit for a few paragraphs

[01:28:33] which you can argue for the sake of this story wasn't necessary,

[01:28:37] but you decided it included anyway.

[01:28:39] Like you say short stories about being a little bit more...

[01:28:44] I don't know how to say the words, I'll say it different word.

[01:28:47] A little more minimal.

[01:28:49] So, you could fit in the pages of a journal or whatever.

[01:28:52] But you allowed yourself to spend some words here

[01:28:56] on your own dealing with this issue of not having...

[01:29:03] maybe the conflicting background.

[01:29:06] Yeah, and I find that fun.

[01:29:12] In technical terms, it's the fourth wall kind of thing.

[01:29:18] Suddenly as a writer you're addressing the audience

[01:29:22] as the guy writing us by the way.

[01:29:25] I believed in when he said it too, whatever the version is.

[01:29:29] I've always enjoyed that when I encounter it in drama

[01:29:33] or we see it in television or whatever.

[01:29:37] But that disorienting shift,

[01:29:40] we know the rules of the story.

[01:29:43] We're going to hear from the narrator and this is going to happen.

[01:29:46] Suddenly, I was like, no, no, I want to talk about myself for a second.

[01:29:49] It adds a little strange energy to it.

[01:29:52] Now my English editor, my primary editor is of course in America

[01:29:56] where I'm primary published.

[01:29:58] But my English editor may weigh in and say, oh, you know, about the mainstream.

[01:30:03] And she wanted to remove that.

[01:30:05] And I was like, what? Remove it!

[01:30:07] Are you kidding?

[01:30:08] But I could say why...

[01:30:10] The only reason I could see why she wanted to remove it

[01:30:13] is because I wondered out loud.

[01:30:17] I had to take a step back and ask, was this good or bad?

[01:30:21] Not in a critical way.

[01:30:23] But because you have to ask with a short story, it needs to have...

[01:30:27] Like if I'm editing it, I'm thinking of what to cut.

[01:30:31] And this clearly was extra.

[01:30:33] So if I were your editor, I would have to give you permission to have extra in it.

[01:30:38] But okay, I didn't really decide if this is your choice.

[01:30:44] But I thought it was a good thing because finally I get to see as the reader

[01:30:49] and you've written a lot of words, this is an issue you're dealing with.

[01:30:53] The issue that Timidys did.

[01:30:55] And the issue that all writers deal with is am I interesting enough?

[01:30:58] Look, Jack Kerwack probably didn't think he was interesting enough.

[01:31:01] So he had to hitchhike across the country

[01:31:03] and pick up someone who was interesting enough.

[01:31:05] Dean Moriety.

[01:31:06] So every writer you can see deals with this issue.

[01:31:10] Marcel Proust had to pretend to be in high society to get stories.

[01:31:16] A Truman Capote had to interview murderers to get stories.

[01:31:19] Like writers go through this.

[01:31:21] So this was seeing your glimpse into that.

[01:31:24] Yeah, well that's right.

[01:31:26] And then of course I also...

[01:31:29] There was something else in here which is more subtly about you

[01:31:32] and about the process of writing, which is okay, he's...

[01:31:37] How do I do this without?

[01:31:39] So he writes signatures of famous authors.

[01:31:44] Let's put it at that.

[01:31:46] And we don't know whether they're good or bad,

[01:31:48] we're kind of taking the word for it from one character.

[01:31:50] And then there's another character who has a different

[01:31:53] maybe more impressive take on whether they're good or bad.

[01:31:56] And it's interesting to see these perspectives

[01:31:58] are not Timidys abilities a writer,

[01:32:01] but literally Timidys ability to mimic a writer's signature,

[01:32:05] which is perhaps metaphor for writing.

[01:32:09] And I thought that was a very interesting way to do that metaphor.

[01:32:13] Yeah, thank you.

[01:32:15] And I want...

[01:32:18] With short stories, you got to be much more careful than novels

[01:32:21] about getting stories.

[01:32:22] It's true.

[01:32:23] I just enjoy it all of them.

[01:32:26] Like I will survive the bootlegger

[01:32:28] and I can see these are a little bit more you,

[01:32:31] particularly they're in New York, they're around now,

[01:32:34] they're happening.

[01:32:35] And by the way, I read the stories before I read Eve in Hollywood.

[01:32:39] I wasn't quite sure if I was at home,

[01:32:42] am I in for the 200 pay?

[01:32:44] I'm just reading short stories.

[01:32:45] You're now going to read a 200 page, you know,

[01:32:47] quote unquote, navel.

[01:32:48] But I did and that led me to your other books.

[01:32:50] And it was so pleasurable.

[01:32:52] So very, very listening.

[01:32:54] Table for two is a must read.

[01:32:57] Of course, the other books are as well.

[01:32:59] How do you feel about...

[01:33:01] I saw the trailer just a few minutes ago

[01:33:03] about a gentleman in Moscow.

[01:33:05] How do you feel about their translation into TV?

[01:33:08] I think they did a terrific job.

[01:33:10] And you know, there...

[01:33:13] In a minute, I mean, you write a gentleman in Moscow

[01:33:17] is in a way no longer mine.

[01:33:19] It's now in the possession of readers.

[01:33:21] And one of the great things about the serious gentleman in Moscow

[01:33:26] is that the writer, the director,

[01:33:28] the head of costume,

[01:33:29] the head of set design,

[01:33:30] you and McGregor, the star,

[01:33:32] Mary Elizabeth Winstead,

[01:33:33] who's the lead actress and you and wife,

[01:33:36] they were all very conscious of the fact

[01:33:40] that the expectations they had to meet were the readers.

[01:33:44] Not mine, not paramots.

[01:33:47] But the question was...

[01:33:49] They read the book very carefully multiple times

[01:33:51] and carved it up and marked it up themselves

[01:33:54] from each angle of their craft.

[01:33:56] What does the hotel look like?

[01:33:57] What are people wearing?

[01:33:59] What are the thematics that we're trying to express?

[01:34:02] And they really did a beautiful job.

[01:34:05] So it's really an incredible visual experience

[01:34:09] to see it realized by them.

[01:34:12] And you know, you and his amazing.

[01:34:14] And the series...

[01:34:16] You and his...

[01:34:17] Because he's in almost every scene,

[01:34:19] it's an eight-hour series

[01:34:20] and he's in almost every scene.

[01:34:22] He ages 30 years.

[01:34:23] He goes through a wide range of emotions and experiences

[01:34:25] and he is unbelievable.

[01:34:27] It's terrific.

[01:34:28] But I'll tell you a funny thing about it

[01:34:31] to give you a flavor for how much he thinks about it.

[01:34:36] We spent...

[01:34:37] He reached out before they were going into production

[01:34:40] and said, you know, could you have an hour to do a Zoom with me?

[01:34:43] Because I want to know everything about the count

[01:34:46] and the hotel and the story that is not in the book.

[01:34:48] I've read the book many times.

[01:34:50] I want to know what's not there that could help me.

[01:34:53] And so in the course of this Zoom,

[01:34:56] we talked about different aspects

[01:34:58] and he asked questions.

[01:34:59] And I offered up different things that are not in the book

[01:35:01] that I thought would be of interest to him.

[01:35:03] And eventually we got to, he said, you know,

[01:35:06] how does it begin?

[01:35:08] Like, how does...

[01:35:09] And he...

[01:35:10] Sort of like you were asking earlier.

[01:35:11] And so I walked him through kind of the process

[01:35:12] of inventing the character

[01:35:13] and where I started

[01:35:14] and sort of the iterative cycle

[01:35:16] of getting a richer and richer sense.

[01:35:18] And then I talked about the few sentences

[01:35:21] at the beginning of, you know,

[01:35:23] the book where I really sort of knew the count

[01:35:26] in a more sharper.

[01:35:28] Well, last week was the premiere New York City.

[01:35:33] And so after the premiere, you know,

[01:35:37] he and I were talking at the after party.

[01:35:40] And he came up and he said, hey,

[01:35:42] we were talking about one of the opening scenes.

[01:35:45] Sorry, one of the scenes in the first hour.

[01:35:48] And as Rambi said, hey, did you notice?

[01:35:50] You notice that when Halekki calls me to his office?

[01:35:53] Did you notice?

[01:35:54] And I'm like, no, you didn't notice what?

[01:35:56] And he goes, I took the stairs two steps at a time

[01:36:00] as it been my habit since the Academy.

[01:36:03] You know, so he had logged this

[01:36:06] from our conversation which was two years before.

[01:36:09] And much as I, you know, used as a way

[01:36:12] as an orientation for myself in inventing the narrative,

[01:36:16] when I had told him that story,

[01:36:18] he was like, yep, I get it, you know,

[01:36:20] and he used it.

[01:36:23] And he then said, you know, I said, took me a while.

[01:36:25] I had to train myself to take the steps two at a time.

[01:36:28] And he said, but he says, you'll notice that later in the series,

[01:36:31] when I age, I start taking him one step at a time.

[01:36:34] You know, when I've lost that thing.

[01:36:36] And the book says, I think it was 1946.

[01:36:39] Yeah.

[01:36:40] It's 1946.

[01:36:41] It says he starts taking them one step at a time

[01:36:43] and that's your way of saying he views himself as older,

[01:36:46] which I thought it was much better than him just thinking to himself,

[01:36:49] oh, I'm older now.

[01:36:50] Yeah.

[01:36:51] So you can see, it's not like just a payday for you and you know,

[01:36:56] or whatever, it is that he has internalized his best he can,

[01:37:01] both the experience of the character,

[01:37:03] personality and the language of the book as a way of trying to

[01:37:07] through acting, you know, realize the character.

[01:37:11] You know, it's interesting because a gentleman in Moscow,

[01:37:14] one of the attractive things about it,

[01:37:16] is it's a weirdly aspirational kind of book in that all people

[01:37:22] have this feeling that they would like to be,

[01:37:24] I don't want to say aristocratic in a boring way,

[01:37:28] but people want to move up in wealth and class

[01:37:32] and be able to enjoy fine things in life.

[01:37:37] So it's aspirational in the sense that here's somebody who,

[01:37:40] regardless of how you strip them of title and home and whatever,

[01:37:44] he has this quality to him, this personality to him,

[01:37:48] but also this idea of living in a hotel is very aspirational.

[01:37:54] I'll tell you when I first moved to New York City as an adult,

[01:37:58] after a year or so and I finally was making a little bit better living,

[01:38:03] I moved into the Chelsea hotel and stayed there for many years.

[01:38:07] Yeah.

[01:38:08] So I lived in a hotel for a long time and I kind of know that feeling

[01:38:12] of knowing the people who work in the restaurant for years,

[01:38:16] knowing the people who work behind the bell hop and so on,

[01:38:20] knowing all the bell hops and knowing the maids

[01:38:22] and knowing about half the people lived at that time in the 90s,

[01:38:26] about half the people lived in the Chelsea hotel

[01:38:28] and half the people were vacationing into the hotel,

[01:38:32] they were staying as hotel guests.

[01:38:34] And so there's a weird dynamic when that happens

[01:38:36] of shifting characters and stories.

[01:38:38] And so I got that feeling when I was reading through this,

[01:38:41] that it felt like that feeling that I once felt.

[01:38:44] So which for me is an aspirational kind of feeling

[01:38:47] because I always loved the idea of living in a hotel.

[01:38:49] No, I'm jealous of your experience.

[01:38:51] I would have loved to live to the hotel Chelsea for a while.

[01:38:54] It was fascinating particularly you're just a few years older than me

[01:38:59] so it was a very good time in the 90s to live there.

[01:39:03] No, no, I remember it.

[01:39:05] I remember it.

[01:39:06] And you know, I've one smaller question that's kind of a final question.

[01:39:13] But there's a lot of patience in your books.

[01:39:16] And obviously as you described the way you write it,

[01:39:19] I mean some novelist write a book a year.

[01:39:23] Like a lot of thriller writers write a book a year.

[01:39:26] And it's not a criticism.

[01:39:28] Their books are great. It's no criticism.

[01:39:30] Your process is a little different.

[01:39:31] You said you'd take like two, three, four years maybe

[01:39:34] to set the characters and then to start figuring out the plots

[01:39:38] and what's happening.

[01:39:39] And then you sit down and it takes you a year, a year and a half

[01:39:42] to write the book.

[01:39:44] So there's a lot of patience.

[01:39:45] And the books themselves like again a gentleman in Moscow

[01:39:49] it takes place over a period of many decades.

[01:39:53] And so you have to, there's certain patience with the reader kind of dives

[01:39:58] into this world knowing he's going to be in there for many decades.

[01:40:02] And this is an odd question.

[01:40:05] But before you were writing these novels,

[01:40:08] you worked for a financial asset management firm.

[01:40:13] And I took the liberty of looking at the portfolio of that firm

[01:40:17] in the 13 F filings.

[01:40:19] You're stocks.

[01:40:20] I'm not yours okay.

[01:40:21] And you're not involved with the company anymore.

[01:40:23] And I don't know you haven't been for ten years.

[01:40:25] But the portfolio picks are very patient.

[01:40:29] Instead of being in the hottest new AI company,

[01:40:32] you're biggest and again it's not yours.

[01:40:35] The firm exists without you.

[01:40:37] It's grown.

[01:40:38] But it's a construction company.

[01:40:40] It's the largest pick in the portfolio.

[01:40:42] Like it's really like there's a patience to that portfolio.

[01:40:46] It's not the average portfolio.

[01:40:48] And is this like a reflection of your personality a little bit?

[01:40:52] The patience throughout all these activities.

[01:40:55] Well that's an interesting question.

[01:40:57] I mean in the investment arena,

[01:41:00] we were very interested in essence.

[01:41:03] We had a research driven process and value bias.

[01:41:07] We focused on higher quality businesses.

[01:41:09] But if you summed it up,

[01:41:11] we were interested in arbitraging the short term fluctuation

[01:41:18] in perception against the long term excellence of a company.

[01:41:21] So, you know, the stocks in a company can go up and down.

[01:41:26] For all kinds of reasons.

[01:41:27] And they're not always necessary to be related to the long term

[01:41:31] process of the company.

[01:41:33] They may not even be related to the short term process

[01:41:36] of the company.

[01:41:37] They would relate to a shift in attitude or change in the economy

[01:41:39] and all these things.

[01:41:40] So, that's the beauty of the stock market.

[01:41:42] It's constantly changing in the short term the valuation

[01:41:45] of a business which over the long term shouldn't vary that much.

[01:41:49] You know from words it's heavy.

[01:41:51] If it's a business that you can understand into the future.

[01:41:55] So, that, you know, that's,

[01:41:58] patience is rewarded if you have the discipline to choose

[01:42:02] selectively in the investment business.

[01:42:05] And that's the way that we approached the art.

[01:42:08] You know, in my writing I never really thought about it as sort of the Canadian.

[01:42:12] But you're right.

[01:42:13] I think that,

[01:42:15] I don't think I learned this from the investment business into my writing.

[01:42:19] But it is the nature of writing.

[01:42:21] If you think about it in your life,

[01:42:23] like if you have children,

[01:42:25] you know, you'd grow out dealing with your siblings,

[01:42:28] dealing with financial decisions in your life, whatever else.

[01:42:32] If you push to side everything

[01:42:35] and you gave yourself like lots of time

[01:42:38] to how you're going to raise your kids

[01:42:42] or how you're going to respond to your mother

[01:42:44] or how you're going to deal with this situation that's surface

[01:42:47] with your sibling or whatever the issues are.

[01:42:51] You would take that time and sort of think it all out

[01:42:54] and to prepare,

[01:42:56] and to be judicious,

[01:42:57] and to find the right attitude

[01:42:58] and say the right things.

[01:42:59] And, you know,

[01:43:00] and you'd be, you know, a perfect person.

[01:43:03] But life's not like that, right?

[01:43:05] It happens at a pace where

[01:43:07] your best instincts

[01:43:09] and your best intentions are often overwhelmed by,

[01:43:12] you know, the sudden surge of the emotion

[01:43:15] or the mishearing or the,

[01:43:18] you know, whatever,

[01:43:19] the battle of the conversation.

[01:43:20] What are all these things that lead you

[01:43:24] or you're exhausted

[01:43:26] or you're exasperated

[01:43:27] or whatever the difference?

[01:43:29] So, well, writing

[01:43:31] is a world in which it's all slowed down.

[01:43:35] Right? There is no,

[01:43:37] in the way that I approach you.

[01:43:38] Right? I don't have to publish a book every year.

[01:43:40] So, I don't have that.

[01:43:41] I can spend four years,

[01:43:43] I can spend five years.

[01:43:44] I have nobody who's asking me what's happening in it.

[01:43:47] Nobody knows what's happening in it.

[01:43:48] It's all to me.

[01:43:49] I don't share it with anybody.

[01:43:51] And what that allows,

[01:43:52] I have to have a certain amount of patience and endurance

[01:43:55] because I'm going to spend four years writing it.

[01:43:57] No one's going to see it.

[01:43:58] And I'm not going to know what they think about it.

[01:44:00] And if you know,

[01:44:02] I don't know what's going to be successful.

[01:44:04] But that's fine.

[01:44:05] What I gain is that

[01:44:07] I can get myself down to,

[01:44:10] in a way,

[01:44:11] I could be my best self,

[01:44:12] you know, as a human being.

[01:44:14] Which is that as I'm listening to the characters,

[01:44:16] as I'm drafting the character,

[01:44:17] presenting the characters,

[01:44:19] as I'm creating this world,

[01:44:21] I don't have to fall on my,

[01:44:24] on any sense of urgency or impatience

[01:44:27] or frustration or whatever.

[01:44:29] I can build it all on,

[01:44:31] you know,

[01:44:32] the pursuit of understanding reality and human nature

[01:44:36] in its finest form

[01:44:38] and then to try to relay it in a fashion

[01:44:41] which is at its finest level.

[01:44:44] And so,

[01:44:45] so yes, the, you know,

[01:44:47] the freedom of time in the writing process

[01:44:50] allows me to,

[01:44:52] I think, to achieve a better outcome.

[01:44:56] There's the freedom of time.

[01:44:59] I'm just curious though,

[01:45:00] there's psychology of it.

[01:45:02] Like many people don't have,

[01:45:04] don't want the patience

[01:45:06] because they want the book to get out

[01:45:08] so they could know if people are going to like it.

[01:45:10] You're right, you're right.

[01:45:12] And that's, you have to,

[01:45:14] I don't tell people what my books are about

[01:45:16] because they give you a dopamine

[01:45:19] that is,

[01:45:21] it's kind of productive.

[01:45:23] Like if I have a great idea for a novel

[01:45:25] and I'm working on it

[01:45:26] and I went out to dinner

[01:45:27] and I said, yeah, this is what I'm working on.

[01:45:29] And I rattling off the story

[01:45:30] and they're like, oh, that's great.

[01:45:31] Dope means surge

[01:45:32] and I'm like, yeah, there we go.

[01:45:33] Manel, somebody happy with that.

[01:45:35] You do that 50 times

[01:45:36] and you're like,

[01:45:37] I'm not interested in the story anymore.

[01:45:39] So you have to kind of reverse it.

[01:45:40] You have to say, okay,

[01:45:41] I'm going to get a big dopamine hit

[01:45:44] when this lands

[01:45:45] and I am going to preserve

[01:45:47] a sense of internal urgency

[01:45:49] by deferring the smallest window

[01:45:53] of pleasure

[01:45:54] from this task

[01:45:56] until the last minute.

[01:45:57] And you just keep

[01:45:59] the discipline of deferring

[01:46:02] the potential for pleasure

[01:46:04] or eventually someone reading the story

[01:46:06] until I'm absolutely done.

[01:46:09] And that's very,

[01:46:10] that didn't,

[01:46:11] looking forward to that moment

[01:46:14] helps me in a way

[01:46:16] survive the four years in silence.

[01:46:18] Well, thank you for being patient

[01:46:21] with all my questions.

[01:46:23] I really appreciate it.

[01:46:25] I mean, it's a pleasure

[01:46:27] to talk to an author like you

[01:46:29] and indulge myself

[01:46:31] in learning the process.

[01:46:33] Plus, I just absolutely love

[01:46:35] the books.

[01:46:36] I did not expect to.

[01:46:37] I'm, I really love

[01:46:39] minimalist writers.

[01:46:41] I mean, I hate categorizing

[01:46:42] writers at all.

[01:46:43] Some are,

[01:46:44] you could be minimalist,

[01:46:45] you could be maximalist,

[01:46:46] it doesn't matter.

[01:46:47] But I really tend towards

[01:46:50] like let's say,

[01:46:52] I don't know if you follow

[01:46:53] like a Dennis Johnson type of

[01:46:54] short story writer

[01:46:56] or I can name a dozen others.

[01:46:59] But I absolutely loved

[01:47:01] every word in your novels.

[01:47:03] I've read them out loud

[01:47:04] to my wife.

[01:47:05] She really appreciated the scene

[01:47:07] when he first meets

[01:47:09] you know, his lady friend

[01:47:12] and the dogs.

[01:47:13] Yes, yeah.

[01:47:14] She thinks that's how

[01:47:17] parents mess up with kids.

[01:47:19] It's not treating their dogs like that.

[01:47:21] So she's like,

[01:47:22] really, she's a tell him

[01:47:23] when you talk to him,

[01:47:24] I said that about that scene.

[01:47:25] So I'm telling you.

[01:47:26] Thank you.

[01:47:28] James has been a pleasure.

[01:47:29] You were,

[01:47:30] it was really,

[01:47:31] I appreciate all the,

[01:47:32] the,

[01:47:33] the thoroughness that you've read my work.

[01:47:35] I appreciate what you've had to say about

[01:47:36] and appreciate the nuances of your questions.

[01:47:39] Yeah, thank you.

[01:47:40] And good luck with both

[01:47:41] the release of Table for Two.

[01:47:43] Good luck with the launch of the show

[01:47:45] and please, when your next book comes out,

[01:47:47] come on the podcast again.

[01:47:48] I'd love to chat.

[01:47:49] Thanks.

[01:47:50] Be my pleasure.

[01:48:00] When it comes to buying your first home,

[01:48:05] everyone has questions.

[01:48:06] Can we even afford to buy a house right now?

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