00:08:17.600I've been thinking about this for months because I think about you all the time.
00:08:22.080And I was in a workout doing those. Let me set the scene. I was doing those stupid. You ever do like the ball throw on the wall? Like the heavy ball that you have to like throw up the wall. It's like a squat.
00:08:33.080Yeah, Katie's trying to gain mass.1.00
00:08:34.260Yeah, trying to compete with Hassan Piker for being swolest leftist on the internet. And I started thinking as I was doing these stupid things and how much I hate them and how much I was like wanting to slack off and I couldn't because the trainer was right there.
00:08:50.360And I was thinking about, I was like, Caroline was a Division I athlete for like four years.
00:08:58.700That is an incredibly intense and disciplined way to exist, particularly in college when people are like,
00:09:06.940mostly, I was just fucking around in college.
00:09:10.180Do you think that you understate or downplay your own work ethic subconsciously?
00:09:35.380Like, I mean, I have a very filled calendar right now, but usually my work day, like, we've joked about this, that, like, when you were doing Money with Katie with Morning Brew, like, your calendar would be, like, color-coded to the fucking hilt.
00:09:45.860And that's not really how my life works.
00:09:48.700It just never felt like I was type A, and I don't think I ever felt like I was doing it correctly.
00:09:55.580I'm like, am I realizing that I hate myself?
00:10:01.900This is why we need video, because I feel like as you were saying that answer, I was making the face where SpongeBob is like, do you like Krabby Patty, Squidward?
00:19:40.860You have told me before that writing fiction is very, like, pleasurable for you, that it feels
00:19:49.040very different from the other intellectual labor that you do, like, for this show. And I want to
00:19:56.480talk about what that feels like and when you first recognize that it felt that way because
00:20:02.760I feel like a theme that is kind of coming through is like you may have had other inclinations of
00:20:08.720like oh I saw a dolphin what if I was a marine biologist what if I could kiss it
00:20:12.820can I put my face up to this dolphin professionally
00:20:18.420we're like i'm gonna take the lsat and then never look at the score which is i'm sorry that's
00:20:28.820genuinely psychopathic i know it's mental illness it's a mental illness but so so it sounds like
00:20:36.420this was something though where you wrote two novels that didn't sell and you wrote a fucking
00:20:42.320third. So talk about thrust, talk about determination. Like what was different about
00:20:48.400writing fiction? Well, I think that's why I tried for so long is because I was like, there's nothing
00:20:52.980I've ever done in my life where I've been willing to work this long on it. And I think that gets
00:20:57.660into the work ethic thing. Like I don't, maybe part of my perspective of myself is that I'm not
00:21:02.020a person who can work on things they're not interested in. Hence me getting fired from
00:21:05.980freelance jobs all the time. Oh, I honestly feel like I'm the same way. So I would agree with that.
00:21:11.740Yeah. I mean, that's probably why we both ended up being entrepreneurs, basically. I kind of hate that word, but it's true. I think this is really corny, but I've been thinking about this lately, and I feel like my relationship to fiction is probably similar to other people's relationship to prayer, where it's like something I do usually in the morning. I have a lot of ritual around it. It's a little bit subconscious, and it's something that kind of just like squares my mind that I enjoy doing, but also just like makes the rest of my life
00:21:41.440pleasurable. On the days where I am in a writing schedule, it's not just that I'm enjoying writing
00:21:46.780and I like writing fiction. It's that everything else about the day feels better. And I feel like
00:21:51.940that's how people who have a relationship to religion that I admire talk about their relationship
00:21:56.980to religion, where it centers them. It helps me have a better relationship with my partner. It
00:22:01.420helps me feel more squared with diabolical lies. It's just like there's a rhythm to it that I think
00:22:07.100I became very addicted to when I was 22 or 23. And I also just think I was good at it. I always
00:22:13.260would fit in a class in high school and college. Like I didn't think of myself as a fiction writer,
00:22:18.220but I liked creative writing. And I always had like a baseline ability to do it, which is also
00:22:23.420fun. I think we tend to gravitate towards things that like we just have a knack for. And so I think
00:22:28.940I liked it. I think it was something that I received positive affirmation for. And it was
00:22:33.500something that just squared me in my life
00:22:36.560in a way that made being alive more bearable.
00:22:39.640And then I think I became so invested in it
00:22:41.620that it was like, no, this has to happen.
00:29:40.660Well, you said, I can't keep doing this. But you did.
00:29:48.820As a student of hustle culture podcasts, that is the pivot point in people's lives that I find so fascinating. When someone is like, that was your nader, right? As a writer, like you were at the bottom. You were completely broken down. You felt rejected. You were starting to have those big picture existential questions of like, this book being rejected doesn't just feel like this book being rejected. It feels like my career as a writer being rejected.
00:30:16.820And like, what is it going to look like if I am going to have to come to terms with that?
00:30:21.200Because to use your term, you just put all your eggs in one basket for the last decade.
00:30:25.940So even if you're 30 years old, 30 is young, sure.
00:30:28.400But 10 years is in absolute terms a long time to spend pursuing something that you are kind of time after time feeling like this just isn't going to work.
00:34:06.140I sent, like, probably 60 pages to my agent, and she was like, okay, this is going to sell.
00:34:11.120I didn't think it was going to sell the way that it did. I didn't think we were going to sell film rights. But very immediately, I could tell from her posture that it was like, okay, now we just have to position ourselves. I was introduced to a UK agent. And then we had foreign rights teams. And this was all like assembling while I was writing the book. And so that was like, oh, this is a very different feeling than the book I submitted before.
00:34:32.840And then there were a number of moments leading up to the auction where we basically, like, declined preempt offers where I was like, oh, this is going to sell and I'm going to quit my job.
00:35:18.220This was in may right before we went to auction and my agent again
00:35:21.580I will only give one piece of advice because I don't really think I don't really believe in advice
00:35:25.500But I will say having a good agent is like the most important thing in the world
00:35:29.300and the agent I have right now, like I would fucking die for. And she called me and did
00:35:33.560exactly what you said. She didn't ask me. She was like, I just got this preempt and turned it down.
00:35:38.660Do you want to know how much it was for? And I was like, yeah. And she told me, and it was again
00:35:43.560for like a multiple variable from what my annual salary was at the moment. And I was just like,
00:35:49.340are you sure you want to turn that? Like, are you sure we can't call them back? And she was like,
00:35:53.680yep, just trust me. We're going to turn that down. And so I went back and I was sitting with
00:35:58.720my friends and one I was with my very good friend Riley and with my very good friend's boyfriend
00:36:03.980who I was just meeting for the first time and I sit down at the table and I was like I just got
00:36:07.500an offer or just blurted it out and they were like I'm sure I'm sure he was like whoa weird
00:36:12.780chick we're visiting and of course Riley was like I think about Riley's position almost more than
00:36:18.200mine like he supported me for a decade believed in me for 10 years we basically gave up on the
00:36:23.080dream together. And then he was like, bet on the right fucking pony. And now, you know, so I think
00:36:28.660he was like more shocked than I was almost. Hey, at what point you've said before that there was a
00:36:33.720time when he kind of told you like, no, this is your Pollock in the warehouse moment. Yeah. What
00:36:40.340point in this timeline did he say that to you? In 2020, in addition to working on that second
00:36:46.940manuscript, which I think I knew at the time, I was with an agent who just wasn't interested in
00:36:51.260selling it. And so I was like, I've got to break up with this agent. That was another low moment.
00:36:55.960I started doing this thing called the cover stories where I wrote a fiction story a week
00:36:59.760and shared it online based off of music, a lot of which was Taylor Swift's. And I would, again,
00:37:04.620another moment where I would be like, what the fuck am I doing? I'm just humiliating myself
00:37:07.460online. Like, this is so pointless. And that was when he was like, this is your Pollock in a
00:37:11.460warehouse. Like you're, you're doing the repetition. And I think that that was what
00:37:14.920eventually helped me write yesteryear so quickly because I was writing stories once a week.
00:37:18.620so we are recording this the week before yesteryear comes out which makes this sort of a
00:37:28.160different experience from the katie episode that we did which was more of a retrospective of a big
00:37:32.640moment it was like looking back on the last five years and like okay and now what like what comes
00:37:38.400next whereas right now you're like kind of on the precipice of your big moment the thing that all of
00:37:44.980this has been leading up to. How are you psychologically stealing yourself for everything
00:37:50.300that is about to happen? Do you feel like you're bracing? For sure. Poorly. I'm bracing myself
00:37:56.900very poorly. It does not translate into the English language. I feel like I need to be like,
00:38:01.560use the language of like the aliens in Arrival to communicate how I'm feeling.
00:38:06.440That is a great movie. And great short story, Katie, Ted Chiang. Story of your life. You got
00:38:11.800to read it. Wait, what? Yeah, it was based on a short story by Ted Chiang. Oh my god, I didn't
00:38:15.960know that. It's unbelievable. One of the best short stories of all time. Being friends with you
00:38:20.600is sort of like getting an MFA for free. Yeah, honestly. You've exposed me to so much interesting
00:38:25.660stuff. Save the money, kids. Speaking of you exposing me to interesting things, you told me
00:38:32.060to read, although of course you end up becoming yourself, which is a book that involves a long
00:38:37.020form five-day road trip style interview with David Foster Wallace right at the end of his
00:38:42.280Infinite Jest book tour. It was supposed to be published in Rolling Stone. It never was.
00:38:46.840And then after he died by suicide, it was published as this book. In it, he spends a lot of time
00:38:53.220talking about how he feels all the attention that he is getting for his writing is actually
00:39:00.040dangerous to his writing. And he says, the more exposure I as a person get, the more it hurts me
00:39:06.780as a writer and it occurs to me as your friend who has seen you endure a lot of this up close
00:39:11.820that the amount of sudden attention that you have received is probably really overwhelming like on
00:39:18.460a human level on a nervous system level but do you think the exposure is something that makes
00:39:27.080you nervous about your writing in the future yeah I mean yes I think it's bad I don't think it's good
00:39:34.660for an artist. I would be curious to know what you think about this because you and I have both
00:39:37.520experiences with diabolical lies. The idea of feedback, the noise, even if it's positive,
00:39:43.160this is an objectively ridiculous way to start a career. I am at this very moment working on a
00:39:52.900second novel. It's very hard. It's very, very hard for me to separate myself and to just feel
00:40:00.340alone. And it's also just like putting aside the writing, I think it's just bad for people.
00:40:04.960I don't think that it's healthy for people to have like a direct water hose, like fire hose
00:40:12.300of other people's thoughts about them. Again, positive or negative, it's not productive.
00:40:17.660Erecting the guardrails that allow you to think has been like one of the biggest challenges of
00:40:23.080the last year. I think it would maybe surprise people to know that even the positive feedback
00:40:30.140can sometimes be challenging. Yeah. Will you say more about that?
00:40:36.400So it's not like it happens all the time. I'm not like pretending I'm Ariana Grande.
00:40:40.560I have still been reading my DMs and you don't read your DMs. And we've joked about that on the
00:40:45.640podcast before. I think that when people like shower so much positivity on you, you inevitably,
00:40:52.060I won't say you I have started to be like well I'm just waiting for them to stop liking me
00:40:56.800that's what it feels like it's like well I'm just waiting for you to actually decide that you hate
00:41:01.060the book when you read it or like oh there's so much anticipation for this book can't wait for
00:41:05.820like people to just tell me how disappointed they are or which is of course totally normal
00:41:10.220like it's a book that is something I can conceptualize when it's not my own life but
00:41:15.140like deifying someone is always going to lead to dehumanization it's always going to be a flip
00:41:19.940any stranger who deigns to say they really love someone they don't know is inevitably going to
00:41:24.860resent them. And so I think that I have been feeling for a while now as Diabolical Lies
00:41:30.940grows. Again, also like the fact that this podcast has grown in tandem with Yesteryear
00:41:35.780has been such a crazy thing where it's like two rocket ships going off at once and having them
00:41:41.220both basically break through the atmosphere at the exact same time. And that has been like,
00:41:47.640well I'm just waiting for someone to announce that I actually suck or you know what I mean
00:41:52.800you're waiting to get womaned I'm waiting to get womaned yeah and it's and then you end up in the
00:41:57.040situation where again it's all in my head and so I'm overthinking everything and I you know any
00:42:02.680one person who messages me certainly isn't thinking about all of that baggage but when
00:42:07.680you're receiving that all the time it's so easy to waste a day just overthinking what someone said
00:42:14.120Or, like, just feeling nervous, feeling like, oh, God, there's, like, a lot of people looking at me. There's so much expectation for this book. With expectation for any sort of quote-unquote big book comes the excitement to tear it down. I know that's going to happen. I know that's part of the game. And also, I know that plenty of people can and should not like it. It's a book. It's a novel. It's not a policy platform.
00:42:34.520I remember when I started at Morning Brew and felt very overexposed to the amount of people that were suddenly paying attention to what I was doing.
00:43:29.320I get a pit in my stomach every time I check the comments on an episode that I do.
00:43:33.700I have to psych myself up to look at the comments on diabolical lies, which is why some weeks I just don't, because some weeks I mentally don't feel that I have the capacity or am in the place to receive that information in a healthy manner and, like, metabolize it well and then move on, especially if I feel like there's a lot of other things that I need to get done.
00:43:58.020it kind of feels you have to keep your brain clean for like, okay, if I need to accomplish
00:44:02.880the things that I need to accomplish today, I actually like can't open that Pandora's box.
00:44:07.460I don't love, again, even when it is all positive, I don't love the way that I can feel that little
00:44:14.360like flare of euphoria in my brain. Like it will put me in a really good mood in a way that kind
00:44:20.360of scares me too. I actually think that in that movie, he eludes this in the end of the tour,
00:44:25.420he talks about this, that there is a certain self-consciousness that it introduces that wasn't
00:44:30.900there before. And I think that that was something that I felt where like in the very beginning of
00:44:36.100my career, I wasn't really thinking very hard about what I was writing or how I was doing it
00:44:41.000or what I was putting out there. It felt very like fun and generative and simple. As it has become
00:44:46.340capital M, capital C, my career, I find that the process of doing anything actually feels way more
00:44:53.320freighted with like self-consciousness the writing process itself sometimes feels more
00:44:59.960fraught yeah because the specter of the audience is always right there and so I think that that's
00:45:06.900where like the exposure to the people that are going to read it and like it or hate it I think
00:45:11.460only serves to make that self-consciousness worse and self-consciousness is really bad for
00:45:16.540the work like you're not going to say anything new or interesting if you're thinking constantly
00:45:21.520while you're writing it about how it's going to be received yeah I mean I think yesteryear is a
00:45:25.380great example of this like that is a very unselfconscious book I did not write that book
00:45:29.120planning for everyone to like it like like when you think about the idea of trying to be everything
00:45:34.040for everyone and you end up being essentially nothing for anyone like yesteryear was and again
00:45:39.420I think that's also why I wrote it quickly because I was like I can't look this in the eye
00:45:42.720and I can't overthink it but like I'm frankly surprised that it's gotten the support that it
00:45:47.720has. It's an absurd book. It's very specific. It's very mouthy. It's like, there is so much
00:45:53.160about it that is not designed, I think, to be palatable for a large audience. And all of my
00:46:01.340favorite books are like that. And I would also say, like, I believe very strongly in like the
00:46:06.540covenant of reading a book and not having to think about the author. And I have a very complicated
00:46:11.240relationship with being someone who has a social presence. And as a book, I relate to Sally Rooney
00:46:16.560more and more every day where I'm like I totally understand the idea of being like I cannot be
00:46:21.000constantly talking about myself and thinking about my process and also doing the work I'm almost
00:46:26.760afraid of analyzing it too much and I do feel like a really torn thing about being someone who is
00:46:33.380like quote-unquote perceived as an influencer who's also a novelist because I'm like you shouldn't have
00:46:38.460to know anything about me the podcast at least is like an opt-in thing all of my favorite books I
00:46:43.540don't know shit about the guy who wrote Cold Mountain. And I like it that way. I want Yesteryear
00:46:48.460to stand on its own. I don't want people to think of me and my personality as being one-to-one with
00:46:54.660Yesteryear because it's not. And so that is also something that I think gets into the layers of
00:46:58.760performance and self-awareness and all of that exhaustion.
00:47:03.720Does it feel like you're channeling something from somewhere else?
00:47:06.860Yeah. That's why when I say it feels like prayer, it's not conscious. Writing fiction is not a
00:47:12.700thing. There's a Cormac McCarthy interview where he basically talked about the argument that like
00:47:18.460fiction is basically the bridge between the subconscious and the conscious. The subconscious
00:47:22.300mind is a far older tool and far more sophisticated than the conscious mind, let alone, you know,
00:47:27.960language is very recent in terms of human evolution. So I wasn't totally in control.
00:47:32.700When you edit, you have a little more control. But no, it's all it's not even it's like a base
00:47:38.100instinct that you are not thinking about in advance of the sentence coming out. So I feel
00:47:43.860kind of fraudulent when someone asks me and then I like kind of have to come up with something that
00:47:47.620sounds pretty smart about how something happened. And I'm like, honestly, just like Cheez-Its and
00:47:52.580a latte. I don't really have anything else for you. I'm like, what size are the ice cubes?
00:47:58.400They're big. That was what I wanted to talk to you about at the jump. I had an ice latte with
00:48:01.640big ice cubes. They don't melt as quickly. Oh my God. Are you interested? Am I being
00:48:07.260interesting i feel like i have no sense anymore caroline there is literally no one on planet
00:48:16.060earth who is more interesting to me than you never second guess that ever again oh my god
00:48:26.560that was a perfect segue though genuinely because you're talking about kind of the the wanting this
00:48:32.840book to stand on its own wanting people to receive it as a novel for what it is and not have like the
00:48:37.180baggage of your personhood attached to it, positive or negative, right? Sally Rooney,
00:48:41.400one of the best millennial novelists, she doesn't have any social media presence. She is very
00:48:45.560private. She doesn't even attend her own book parties, as I understand it, because she doesn't0.88
00:48:49.860want the focus to be on her. I think that there is a gendered element to this, and I'm sure you
00:48:56.140could talk about this for a long time. But young women who write things, we are very interested
00:49:03.220in the women. I've read recently that, like, typically with women novelists, there's always
00:49:09.300an assumption that it must on some level be autofiction. Like, there's no way they could
00:49:13.440have just written something that, like, wasn't in some way biographical or autobiographical.1.00
00:49:18.120Women don't have creative powers. Yeah.1.00
00:49:20.420Right. And the other day, you sent me a Vulture article that asked,
00:49:24.280how should a white woman writer be? And it analyzed the political implications of two0.99
00:49:31.020recent buzzy, zillennial novelists, Madeline Cash, who wrote Lost Lambs, and Honor Levy.
00:49:54.840Am I comfortable? None. I'm not comfortable at all. I have an awareness that people will.
00:49:59.160But my politics have changed. Even in the last two years, my politics are changing all throughout this project. Not in terms of should women be able to get abortions, but my interest in what I'm interested in as it pertains to politics. What does politics mean to me? Am I interested in talking about the next midterm or am I interested in talking about how people are and how they behave and why they behave?
00:50:21.440This book is very political, and it's very about modern American politics. So I'm not trying to be like, meh, like, people are going to make assumptions. Like, I think that's inevitable, and that's fine. But it's not something that I look forward to, and it's not something that I enjoy.
00:50:37.440It just seems like something that if I'm lucky enough and if I am able to write more books, my hope is that it will eventually become something that's like an amalgam, as opposed to someone being like, yesteryear is a political manifesto. I'm like, it's not. It's a book. It's a novel. I hope you like it. But like, it's not my treaty. It's not a treatise. It's just a book.
00:51:00.120What do you think yesteryear says about your politics?1.00
00:51:02.140I would say the average person will probably view this as like a Handmaid's Tale, Gone Girl-esque book about angry women in a patriarchal system. Maybe they'll get the hints of Marxism, maybe they won't. But that would be my guess. Even with the comps, that's where it's being placed, is like in the women's political fiction.1.00
00:51:26.840which is, again, I mean, those are incredible books. That's like an honor. I think those are
00:51:30.580amazing books. But yeah, that would be my guess. We're about to transition to talking about the
00:51:36.820book, but something that— Yeah, like, did you read it? Did you like it? Will you tell me? My
00:51:41.780God. Something that I was actually very struck by was I feel like a lot of the preliminary,
00:51:51.660the ambient concern around the book, whether that's coming from you or the people who are
00:51:56.660marketing it is like, oh my God, is this going to end up on like, is she going to get like lit up on
00:52:02.560Fox News for this? And when I read it, I was like, I actually think she's embodying the conservative
00:52:11.260critique of liberal womanhood in an incredibly compelling and interesting way. And when I,
00:52:17.680who was it that I spoke to? One of those dozen people that I lent the book to after I read it
00:52:22.540and said you need to read this was like, I don't think conservatives are necessarily going to hate
00:52:27.140this. I didn't either, to be honest. And yeah, she's actually like covering a lot of the ground
00:52:32.140that they're frequently talking about. I hope that that's true. Like I actually that was I mean,
00:52:38.060I think that if the book is as successful as we want it to be, I think that like someone will
00:52:43.080eventually pick it up just because it's a talking point and like they won't have read it. And it's
00:52:46.780not like Fox News hosts read. I appreciate you saying that. And I do feel that way. And I have
00:52:52.080had friends who are conservative and family members who are conservative read it and get a
00:52:56.380totally different statement away from it I don't think that it represents my politics but I think
00:53:01.220I wrote it and so like everything that's in my subconscious is of course the book is the result
00:53:06.440of that and I grew up conservative you know what I mean like so there is an element where it's like
00:53:11.780it's not like I am I think I feel pretty like not a part of any political party in America I think
00:53:17.660you and I have like consistent beliefs that pertain to leftism but like I don't feel aligned
00:53:23.060with any with either of the two political parties and I think that that was my experience in writing
00:53:28.780the book I don't know if that'll be anyone's experience reading it I think that it's kind of
00:53:33.980a Rorschach test in that way like I think that different people will receive completely different
00:53:39.760messages from it and I think that it actually takes quite a talented writer to create something
00:53:46.720that depending on what angle you're looking at it from, it means something completely different.
00:53:53.180We've come to the critical moment of truth because I feel like I'd be remiss not to ask
00:53:57.700you this in an episode about your art and you as the artist. But should we separate
00:54:04.560the art from the artist? Yes, we should. I think that the main reason I think that beyond my
00:54:11.840ethical beliefs about what we should take from our experiences with other people, I think people
00:54:17.580really misunderstand how fiction works. And I think that they really misunderstand the point of
00:54:23.000it. And I think that the whole thrust of whether or not you should care about the artist who wrote
00:54:29.200the book is to decide whether or not the artist is a good or a bad person. We have referenced,
00:54:34.980this is actually perfect, we've referenced David Foster Wallace, who abused his girlfriend,
00:54:38.780physical abuser, and Cormac McCarthy, who after his death was found to have had
00:54:43.160an illicit relationship, potentially predatory relationship with a 16-year-old.
00:54:47.660There are people who would say, well, you shouldn't read any David Foster Wallace anymore
00:54:52.340because he was an abuser. You shouldn't read Cormac McCarthy. Alice Monroe has come under
00:54:57.180this context, and I just couldn't disagree with it more. I think first and foremost,
00:55:01.140the idea that only people who are pure should write fiction or create art is something I think
00:55:07.800is worth interrogating. Like for what? For what cause? What is the point of art? What is the
00:55:12.160point of fiction? Is it to teach us how to be better people? Who are the right people? I think
00:55:17.260that when you get into that, you start to play a game of like, well, we used to think that people
00:55:21.260who were queer were perverted. Are they allowed to create art? If someone hurts someone else,
00:55:26.220are they an inherently flawed person? Or are they someone who exists inside of a system and
00:55:30.420have all kinds of predispositions and are still capable of making something that impacts another
00:55:35.300person. I just think that it gets into this implication of what the function of art is and
00:55:41.360also how people are that I disagree with entirely. And some of my favorite works of art have been
00:55:47.980written by people who have hurt other people, people who have been deeply imperfect. And that
00:55:54.240doesn't change the fact that their art has changed my life and been a lifeline for me at certain
00:55:58.500points in my own life. Whether or not it has made me a better person is, I think, kind of beside the
00:56:02.240point. Also, I hit Katie, so if you like Yesteryear. That is, whenever anyone says they're
00:56:11.800uncomfortable with the fact that we both like Taylor Swift, I'm just going to get that sound
00:56:15.640bite on a loop. Yeah, get used to it. There's a lot of things about me that you'll probably
00:56:20.320be uncomfortable with if you learn them. It occurs to me that that case for separating the art from
00:56:27.200the artist could feel like it runs contradictory to something that we talk about a lot on this show
00:56:32.600which is basically like okay take the epstein episode take the kennedy episode we were both
00:56:37.400basically making critiques that if you are a man who hurts a woman it's not going to be disqualifying
00:56:43.640it won't matter granted we're talking in many cases about people that are making policy and
00:56:49.680that is a different thing than creating art but that feels like a contradiction to me does it
00:56:56.140feel like a contradiction to you no i think when we talk about people being properly punished or
00:57:02.300receiving appropriate justice for what they do to one another that is the matter of the legal system
00:57:06.680it's my personal opinion that someone who behaves like epstein does should go to jail or you know i
00:57:12.660guess i shouldn't be carceral so like should i don't know be like shot in the head or whatever
00:57:16.720i don't really know what we would do but if he wrote a good novel we i want to actually say like
00:57:22.480I think people should be able to make art. Even if society decides that they're irredeemable,
00:57:28.480there are actually a lot of programs that work in prison systems, both for men and for women,
00:57:33.400that introduce them to art. They have book clubs. I've been looking into attending them.
00:57:38.540There's a program that Julia Fox started at Rikers where there's a women's book club and
00:57:43.680they do creative writing and they have authors come and visit. And I found out about it and I
00:57:47.100was like, I want to be a part of that. I want to donate to that. I want to support that. If one of
00:57:51.420those women was convicted of child abuse or convicted of grand larceny or convicted of any
00:57:57.760number of crimes and then went on to write an incredible short story, I would be fighting for
00:58:02.280that to be published in The New Yorker. I think that we think that people who behave in irredeemable
00:58:07.940ways consist of such a small percentage of the population that we won't lose anything by casting
00:58:13.440them aside. And I think that that is like, again, a woeful misunderstanding of how people are. I
00:58:19.340think most humans do something in their lives if not many things that are if they were to be found
00:58:24.600out perceived as irredeemable and that's like actually like a fundamental element of being a
00:58:29.960human people should make art and people are usually also irredeemable in some way again if
00:58:36.600epstein had been properly convicted of his crimes in 2002 do i think he would have been a good
00:58:42.260fiction writer no but would i have been okay with him writing fiction yes so is it that you think
00:58:48.520art has a redeeming quality or that these are totally separate conversations entirely?
00:58:54.720I think that art is the most basic expression of humans being humans. And I think you can get
00:59:02.780into the whole game of monetization and like commercialization and how people are paid and
00:59:06.940all of that. But art is people trying to communicate in a way that basically goes
00:59:11.380beyond language, even if it is in language. And the idea of cutting that practice off to the people
00:59:18.020that you whoever the proverbial you is decide are the right people then I think that you are like
00:59:24.500limiting your own experience with other people and so to me it's like that art is worth so much
00:59:30.560more than the person the one person who made it all right let's talk about yours I feel like I'm
00:59:39.080getting like arrested at the end of this episode or something to make this to make this metaphor
00:59:43.640really check out. I would recommend if you have not read Yesteryear yet and you intend to read
00:59:50.600it, which you should, you should pause this episode here and you should wait to listen to
00:59:54.840this part until you've read it because I don't want to give anything away. Cards on the table,
00:59:59.940I'm a little nervous to talk to you about it. What? Because first of all, the experience of
01:00:06.320reading it was so surreal. Yeah, you were waiting for a long time. But that's what was so terrifying
01:00:10.560to me too is that freaked me out that you had anticipation of something well but just to read
01:00:16.580this book knowing that it came like out of your brain i respect you and admire you on a level that
01:00:23.820i we've we've covered it's actually confusing for me at times and to read to read yesteryear
01:00:30.600knowing that you invented it from thin air was just like i don't know how she did this it's like
01:00:38.540watching someone do magic that I'm like, I don't want her to think that, like, I didn't get
01:00:43.080something. No, please talk about it. I'm so tired of, I am certain at this point in my life that
01:00:49.180everything I say is the stupidest thing I've ever said. So, like, please, for the love of God,
01:00:53.340tell me how you feel about it. Yeah, I thought it was incredible. I thought it was absolutely
01:00:58.520incredible. And before I get into my, like, plot and character-specific questions, have you gone
01:01:03.960through periods of feeling absolutely sick of the book since finishing the first draft two years
01:01:08.640ago. No, I love the book. You do? Okay, that's so interesting to me. I feel like the duration that
01:01:14.820you have to care about the same story, like, I feel like I would get bored. I feel like I'd be
01:01:20.760like, oh, I'm so tired of talking about this. The press is a different thing, but, like, the book,
01:01:26.620I love Yesteryear. And I also, like, I have a healthy relationship, like, not all the time.
01:01:31.080Sometimes you're working on something and you're like, this is shit. What am I doing? Like, this is awful. That happens like, you know, every other day. But by and large, I think Yes Year is the best thing I've ever written. And I think it was like the biggest swing of my life. I'm so proud of myself.
01:01:44.380i wrote a book for me was like the most ambitious thing i had ever done in a vacuum without having
01:01:52.280to think about the world i'm like i did that that's crazy i'm so proud of myself so it's when
01:01:57.980i have to take in every other person's perspectives because that doesn't mean like oh i'm the shit
01:02:03.240it's just i've been writing for so long and i love writing and so to feel a moment where it's like
01:02:09.300oh I just got better that was like a just such an exciting feeling okay then my first question is
01:02:15.840what gives you the right who is Natalie and why do I like her so much oh my god that was okay so
01:02:24.440of like the very few things you said to me when you were reading you were like am I supposed to
01:02:28.380not like Natalie I'm like kind of lover yeah Natalie's the protagonist of the novel Natalie
01:02:35.160Heller Mills. I like to think of her as an antihero because that's what we call men who are
01:02:40.340nightmarish, but still the main character. I think the term that other people use is like
01:02:44.960unlikable or a villain. I went into it expecting not to like her because that was really all I had
01:02:50.720heard. And like 50 pages in, I'm like, Natalie kind of fucks. I'm like, why is everyone bagging
01:02:57.500on Natalie? Yeah, I obviously feel the same way. I love Natalie. I mean, I think she behaves in
01:06:29.540at one point when he like wants to be a kindergarten teacher
01:06:33.040and she's like no she's like pushing him into the manosphere in a way and that was something that I
01:06:40.420thought was so I was like oh my god she's a fucking genius like what a fun way to complicate
01:06:46.080yeah it's like very clean and tidy narrative and it was just not at all how I thought we were
01:06:54.540gonna get the husband character in this book he surprised me on such a deep level yeah where did
01:07:00.940Caleb come from okay so that's an interesting question because that that was a little bit
01:07:05.420conscious because as I was writing Caleb um Caleb was kind of like almost a shadow figure in the
01:07:11.940first draft he was like a husband but like I really just wrote it was almost like a skeleton
01:07:15.440thing to get to the end and I was still trying to figure him out like he was kind of hard because
01:07:20.020Natalie is such an intense character and so like having someone balance her and so I think it was
01:07:24.580as I was realizing that like oh Natalie is such a broken caricature of a gender norm in her own head
01:07:30.820And so the idea of her marrying a man who is also just not up to the task of fitting the gender stereotype. And I just became obsessed with him being like a little plush bitch. And he's also like a little bit anti-capitalist in a way. Like, he's like, we have money. Why do I have to work? And like, there's a rationality to that.
01:07:49.560There are redeeming qualities about him at the beginning, and I feel like if he had married someone else, he could have just been, like, a nice, lazy guy who, like, hangs up with the kids and, like, plays video games but, like, really doesn't hurt anyone.
01:08:01.400I just loved the idea of pairing Natalie's ambition and acidic nature with someone who's just so sweet and pliable.
01:08:12.140There is obviously a character who's more of like a traditional patriarch, but I didn't want him to be the immediate villain, and I wanted to complicate the idea of her being entirely controlled by a husband.
01:08:24.300Oftentimes, in these stories of trad wives and traditional womanhood and gender norms, women are the victims.0.94
01:08:31.420They're helpless. They have no agency. They need to be saved. They're being oppressed by these men.1.00
01:08:36.660And in a way, you get the kind of Epsteinification of the male figure in these stories where it's
01:08:43.240like we make him kind of larger than life and powerful and domineering, and he has all the
01:08:49.220agency. I think it's interesting to push back on that in such a way and go, well, no, what if she
01:08:56.500really is terrible? Especially with the way the book was marketed and the way it's been positioned
01:09:00.620to be immediately legible to people that are familiar with this narrative, not to draw such
01:09:05.980an explicit comparison, but, like, you and I have talked a lot about the Sunday Times profile of
01:09:10.960Ballerina Farm and how Daniel Nealman kind of comes across like a monster in this. And it's so
01:09:16.520easy to cast the husband in that light. Like, I think we were all very, like, ready and willing
01:09:20.880to be like, yep, checks out. And in many of these marriages, the men, the men are monsters,
01:09:25.320but it was kind of fun to get a trad wife story where the woman was the monster. As the story
01:09:31.360goes on he's not so sweet and innocent and pliable by the end right but he certainly doesn't start
01:09:37.120that way and he's not the engine that drives her down that path he's not so redeemable that he like
01:09:44.420helps steer her out of it like he's pretty stupid but yeah I mean I think something that we do talk
01:09:50.460about in the show a lot is like there are plenty of women who are foot soldiers for the patriarchy
01:09:54.100Phyllis Schlafly style very intentionally and very effectively shaping American history towards
01:10:02.220a version that subjugates women and so it wasn't necessarily intentional it was just that when I
01:10:07.500found Natalie's voice I was like well this is a woman who has to be at least partially in control
01:10:12.080and so I think the debate over how much she is in control I will just speak for myself was
01:10:16.640something that I grappled with the whole time because there are a number of forces that
01:10:19.740conspire around her the more I got to know her the more I was like dude a husband is not gonna
01:10:24.780like easily wrangle her this is someone who is in charge but who has to kind of hide it
01:10:30.240and it just became more interesting for me as a writer too yeah I think maybe the word that I
01:10:34.760would use is like it felt transgressive in a way to like the genre and I really enjoyed that yeah
01:10:39.820the scene where Caleb is in his little she shed watching his little right wing streamer
01:10:47.120and they um they find natalie's instagram and they talk about her and then her her following
01:10:54.760explodes yeah and she's like watching the stream and they're like this is a classic american woman
01:11:00.280and what's so funny about it is she's obviously living the life that they are dissecting
01:11:05.500and they're like oh my god look at this traditional woman she bakes all their own
01:11:09.160bread and she's like i don't bake our bread like she's like actually really bad at baking bread1.00
01:12:18.840It was also just something where I was like, I realized I needed a little bit more to be happening between him and Shannon.
01:12:24.700And so that was something that I feel like I was trying to tease out where it was like, okay, instead of them just having a brief foray with this world, let's have him become more involved.
01:12:35.420on the Shannon of it all. The book was actually more sexually charged than I expected it to be.
01:12:42.820And you play with power dynamics a lot, both human and spiritual. And like at one point...
01:12:48.940Are they going to say human and bovine?
01:12:52.420That too. At one point, it's heavily implied that Natalie's like horny for Jesus. Like she's like0.80
01:12:59.160talking about her like prayer and she's like getting turned on. At another point, she describes
01:13:04.740having this sort of weird, like, psychosexual relationship with Caleb's father, who is the
01:13:10.140more kind of traditional family patriarch. I'm so curious, since we always talk about our
01:13:15.620Catholic sex guilt, I'm so curious what your reading was.
01:13:19.940That's what I'm about to, I'm like, what was that? What are we doing here? Did you have Catholic
01:13:24.240sex guilt writing this? You have less Catholic sex guilt, I think, than I do, maybe. Because
01:13:31.780But I think you're really good at identifying these kind of subversive sexual themes.
01:13:39.180And like, for example, in the Kennedy episode, I played you the Mimi Alford interview, where she is expressing that she felt in some ways abused and in other ways was enjoying the power dynamic.
01:13:50.780And you said, I want to allow for that.
01:13:53.160I want to leave space for the fact that this stuff is very complicated and that power dynamics,
01:13:58.700and this is, I think I'm pulling this from a different episode.
01:14:07.840And I think that that can all feel very abstract.
01:14:10.560And I think when I was reading these characters,
01:14:12.960Natalie hates Caleb's father and tries to manipulate him in some ways
01:14:17.820and tries to kind of go toe-to-toe with him,
01:14:20.640but then also is kind of like, has this weird sexual, it's like she's not attracted to him,
01:14:26.500but it's like their dynamic takes on an almost like psychosexual quality to it at times. And
01:14:33.020so it felt like you were making some of these things literal. How did you think about the
01:14:38.040sexual charge in this book? At what point did that come into the draft? What function was that
01:14:43.280serving for you while you were writing it? All of the sex was first draft. And I think that that
01:14:50.640was essential because for everything that was first draft was instinct. It was just like,
01:14:55.120don't think about it too hard. You can always edit it later. If it doesn't work, it doesn't
01:14:59.220work. If it works, it works. Just get to the end. I genuinely don't think that there is one right
01:15:03.780way to read this, in particular about the sex. Like, it doesn't mean one thing to me.
01:15:08.440That means my interpretation was wrong. She's like, gently, there's no one right way. I don't
01:15:14.540know that I describe it the way that you described it.
01:15:17.420No, I actually think you're completely correct. And I think that you're noticing something in me that is totally true, which is like, I'm fascinated by sex. Sex is also not the same as pleasure. And so that is also something that I think about quite a bit. And I think even what we learned in our heterosexuality episode, the tragedy of heterosexuality, the idea that it's a very recent phenomenon for the idea of heterosexual sex with your partner to be connected to pleasure.
01:15:43.040Like I think Natalie would be very much living in the world of like, no, the only correct sex is reproductive sex. And so I think like her lack of knowledge about how the body works, about how her own body works, combined with her kind of inability or refusal to engage with her own life on terms of pleasure and joy.
01:16:03.080Like, she's not a pleasurable person. She's not a sensual person. Her relationship to the world as well as herself is very cold. It's very analytical. And so I really liked the idea and just kind of went with the idea of her relationship to pleasure and to sex kind of basically being explored in ways that she doesn't really interrogate and also in ways that don't really make sense to her.0.94
01:16:26.300She kind of has like a pseudo-sexual relationship with a number of characters in the book.
01:16:32.360Even some of the women, I feel like she kind of has a pseudo-sexual relationship too.
01:16:36.180Like she has a weird moment with Shannon.
01:16:38.360She has like this predator's perspective of a lot of other women, especially at college.0.95
01:16:43.960I think sometimes it's sex, sometimes it's pleasure.1.00
01:16:47.040There's a scene where she has an orgasm and I don't even think she really is aware that it's an orgasm.
01:16:51.780and this idea that like the only form of pleasure that's appropriate is like communion with the
01:16:56.720lord and so that starts to get kind of like intermingled with sexual pleasure where it's
01:17:01.240like well if this feels good either i'm bad or i must be having a moment of like religious ecstasy
01:17:07.280and also in an environment where the whole book is absurd like so much is nonsensical or hyperbolic
01:17:13.580i like the idea of having these little flashes that never i didn't ever want to tie the thread
01:17:18.700I just wanted it to be a thing that, like, people can think about.
01:21:23.460or were there any major, like, deviations
01:21:25.740from what you had originally intended?
01:21:28.880I don't think there were any major deviations. There were a few, like, side quests that were fleshed out. Like, the children in both timelines were fleshed out quite a bit. And, like, their ensuing, you know, moments of conflict and tension were fleshed out.
01:21:43.600The twist remained the same, but how we got there and like working towards this more, I hope, a more complicated understanding.
01:21:53.480The main twist of the book I knew from the first day, but getting there and making it work was something that took two years.
01:22:00.300So like that was something that I talked about with my editor, Jenny.
01:22:03.260That was something I talked about with every editor in the auction.
01:22:08.400How can I layer this and make it work as well as possible
01:22:11.960so that if anyone ever wants to read it again, they feel rewarded?
01:22:16.100And it's like, okay, cool, all of these scenes feel a little bit different
01:22:19.200now that I know what's actually happening in the house.
01:22:22.820That was really important, and that was not in the first draft.
01:22:26.100Like, it was much more one-sided, and I was like,
01:22:28.340I really want this to feel like something that deserves,
01:22:31.220that is worthy of at least anyone who wants to do a second read.
01:22:34.120Can you give us an example of an Easter egg that was added later?
01:22:37.960I mean, all of her interactions with Maeve and Mary were related after, like, pretty much everything Mary says. Mary going out into the woods and then having that kind of side plot where, like, Natalie kind of has a spiritual premonition. That was a little, like, side thing that was added in later. There were a lot of, like, little twists that were added so that we could just, like, get to the end. Like, figuring out how to get there was the primary challenge.
01:23:03.500Why was that the twist? It feels like there are so many different explanations that you could have invented anything. So the ultimate explanation for why she is, quote, in the 1800s. Why is that what you wanted it to be?
01:23:22.600it was just right it was just the only one I wanted it was the only one I was interested in
01:23:27.300it was the only one that seemed like it would lead to like the narrative structure I wanted
01:23:32.460of how the parts are titled and how they kind of come together and I think that it allowed for an
01:23:37.920opportunity to have like a final word from the children and not from her which I really liked
01:23:45.540I also think that like people you know this is this is a preference thing but I knew as soon as
01:23:51.100I started writing Natalie that she is not a person who is going to change and that is something that
01:23:56.020is like kind of I think a little bit heterodox in literature like you want people to learn and grow
01:24:01.360and she really doesn't Natalie does not become a different person if anything she just
01:24:05.940digs in her heels and becomes more and more and more of kind of the worst parts of herself
01:24:11.540and so with that in mind of that character trait I was like well that lends itself to like certain
01:24:17.740outcomes and other non-outcomes most of the book I was writing I knew the twist before I got the
01:24:23.960feedback from my agent or any of that oh really yeah like on the first day I emailed her being
01:24:29.160like this is what I want this is the title and this is the twist again I was still at the point
01:24:33.600where I was like fuck it here's another creative project if it doesn't work out you're just 30
01:24:37.560days older I feel like I have changed a lot in the last two years I feel like the way that I approach
01:24:43.040ambiguity, questions, the zeitgeist has changed in the last two years just by the nature of doing
01:24:50.660this project together. I think you've influenced my thinking a lot. And it might be that because
01:24:57.500you wrote it and then you had to edit it for over a year, any sort of change has already been
01:25:03.580captured in this novel because more of you went into it after the first draft. Is there anything
01:25:09.400now in retrospect when you read it back that you're like, oh, I wish I had played with that
01:25:15.620differently. I mean, I'm sure I would write it totally differently now, honestly, than I would
01:25:19.720then. Okay, tell me why. That's really interesting. I don't think there's like a specific reason. I
01:25:25.400mean, I would have it be even longer. I love a long book. Yesteryear is like 120 something
01:25:30.160thousand words. That's long. That's already longer. I would have had a million side quests
01:25:34.560if I could have like I would have really really entered that world and given like each child
01:25:40.920a weird little fucking side quest like I tried to fit as many as I could in but like I think if I
01:25:47.300were to write it again if or if I were given the opportunity to write another version I would trust
01:25:51.760myself even more and I would make it 30% longer and I would build out both worlds even more and
01:25:59.960I would just trust that people are going to be interested to get to the end I was sad when it
01:26:05.360ended I did not want it to be over there were a couple like Mary in particular I was like oh my
01:26:11.020god I want to know I want like interspersed chapters of like Mary's read of all of this
01:26:16.020yeah I have played with writing the book of Mary at some point and like doing the entire story all
01:26:20.980over again from the perspective of the children oh my god and just like having that flip I think
01:26:25.960would be so I mean that's something maybe I'll just like do on my own at some point and whether
01:26:28.780I publish it or not who cares yeah I loved the world I still love the world like it was so much
01:26:34.300fun there were so many opportunities it was obviously like stressful and difficult and all
01:26:38.700of that stuff but there were just so many ideas all the time given the conceit and it was just
01:26:44.500like that felt like such a rare gift to be like well what if this happens or like what if this
01:26:48.360happens and that was where I had my great editors Jenny and Katie to be like that's a great idea
01:26:53.620try that out or like well let's just keep the story rolling and you know obviously I trusted
01:26:58.020them and it turned out incredibly. But if I could do it again just for myself, I would make it twice
01:27:03.200as long. Every time I bring it up, I'm like 30% longer, 40% longer, twice as long.
01:27:10.160I think something that is interesting to me about your decision to write this book and also
01:27:18.900what you're telling me right now about how you loved that world. It feels to me like there is
01:27:27.780a part of you that on some conscious or subconscious level really understands the allure or the
01:27:38.200romance of the fantasy that these people are selling yeah i think i do and maybe feels
01:27:45.560a little attracted to it yourself on some level but then you have the instinct to like
01:27:54.140interrogate and kind of like tease it apart. Yeah, I think it's true. I began talking about
01:28:01.260Tradwife discourse because I was interested in it, because I was like, why do I like this so much?
01:28:07.260I think yes, you're in many ways just on a literary level is the closest I will ever get
01:28:13.480to writing a Western. So it's just fun in that way to just be like, this is my Western. This is
01:28:19.060my like wild west americana bullshit moment and that was just fun for me it was fun to have
01:28:26.040a vehicle to talk about so much american nostalgia so that was part of it but yeah i mean i think you
01:28:32.780and i talk about this a lot i totally understand why it's appealing it's a beautiful image it's
01:28:38.400fun it's like it's romantic so many movies and television shows and books are about this romance
01:28:44.160of not just homesteaders, but cowboys and the Wild West and do-it-yourself conquering,
01:28:53.080conquering fertile land, aka like mowing down indigenous tribes. It's romantic. It's Yellowstone.
01:29:00.580We do this story again and again and again and again, and it's always bullshit, but it's really
01:29:06.900fun. And so there was something that almost felt like having my cake and eating it too,
01:29:11.320where it's like you get to kind of lean into the fantasy,
01:31:54.640but on the surface it's very shiny happy people you know what it makes me think of is severance
01:31:59.920as well like what you're talking about that that is the brilliance of severance is that there is
01:32:04.480as much as the conceit of that show is in some ways like yes you're absolutely absurd there is
01:32:11.000something about it that makes sense like there is something about it that we kind of inherently
01:32:14.520understand the idea of turning off your brain turning off your brain to half of it and then
01:32:20.820there are the scenes inside of severance where the innies will basically get information about
01:32:25.980their outies that are obviously bullshit where it's like your innie is really good at baseball
01:32:30.720your innie um gets straight a's and you're watching these actors again brilliantly equal
01:32:37.720parts find it ridiculous and love it yeah it's like they know it's bullshit but they don't want
01:32:42.800that little moment to end of hearing about their outies this is where i get back to like being a
01:32:48.960human means being irredeemable. You are never perfect, and you're living in a culture
01:32:55.180where probably a lot of your thoughts and impulses and perspectives you know are wrong.
01:33:01.720And so just watching a version of people that is how you think people should be,
01:33:07.760which is flawless, essentially, or like flawed but, you know, clean house, flawed but
01:33:13.660white furniture, it just feels good. Oh, that's so interesting.
01:33:18.080it's like there's like a coherence it looks like how it should be and your life is how it isn't
01:33:23.820actually right and i think that it's just really cathartic that's the fantasy right is a world
01:33:31.220where it all aligns and it all kind of makes sense totally yeah so on that note um
01:33:40.060you're pregnant I am pregnant and you are the father I'm so excited to be a dad yeah are you
01:33:52.080nervous at all about the way in which your own personal life is about to be woven into the
01:33:57.980narrative of this book through this press cycle yes I'm very instinctual with like what I share
01:34:05.240of my life and what I don't that's true on this podcast that's true on social media there are
01:34:09.740things that I talk about that other people would never talk about publicly. And then there are
01:34:13.740things that other people share publicly that you couldn't waterboard out of me. I never, never
01:34:19.980wanted to be pregnant on tour, ever. I did not want to be showing. I very much tried to plan it
01:34:28.180to not happen this way. And turns out, God is real, folks, and he had other plans. So that has
01:34:35.480been a real experience of letting go of just being like, I will try to control this in the
01:34:41.880ways that are in my control. And I will acknowledge that there are things that I cannot control
01:34:46.940and also not to get corny, but I am also in charge of not stressing my baby out.
01:34:54.600You're like, you're like, I don't want my baby. I'm like, our baby.
01:34:59.720So that is something that has made it easier for me in some ways. I think I would be torturing
01:35:05.040myself more if it was just me. But now I'm like, well, I don't want my body to be stressed. I don't
01:35:11.120want stress hormones going through my body. And so how can I minimize that on any given day?
01:35:16.020Oh my God, stop smiling like that. Fucking turn your camera off if you're going to smile like that.
01:35:21.280Don't look at me ever again. I mean, you've known about this for a long time now. I didn't even know
01:35:26.260if I was going to announce it. I'm comfortable talking about it with people. Like when I run
01:35:30.500into, like when I talk to reporters, like when I'm on the road, if someone brings it up organically,
01:35:34.440Yeah, I talk about it with everyone in my life. It's so much fun talking to other women about this kind of stuff. It's been such a buoying force in my life how so many women, you have such immediate moments of intimacy when you're trying to get pregnant and then when you're pregnant and then when you have kids.
01:35:53.240And I have cherished that. But I have no interest in exploiting my pregnancy, in having my child be like a thing that is commodified on this tour. And also like in having Natalie's relationship to motherhood and Natalie's relationship to children be something that is then transcribed onto me or vice versa.
01:36:16.060That is a separate thing. That is a book about a fake person. That's what yesteryear is. And so I've had to really just be like, everyone's going to have feelings. And yeah, don't need any advice. Don't need any tips. Just going to keep chugging along.
01:36:36.060And I think you're handling it all really, really, really well. I know that you feel like you're in a fishbowl, and I know that this process has been just destabilizing on so many levels, but I think you really deserve the flowers that you're getting and are going to continue to get. I think you're a brilliant writer. I think this book is incredible, and—
01:37:01.420i i will bomb the home of anyone who tries1.00
01:37:08.900the first negative review of yesteryear katie's gonna fire bomb you're getting drone striked
01:37:21.780okay drum struck so tread fucking lightly as a person in the world it's just gratifying to get
01:37:32.020to watch somebody who's so good at what they do and is has just so much to offer like actually
01:37:38.520getting recognized for it and i know that like the world of publicity and marketing is so
01:37:44.460chew you up spit you out the instinct to like not allow your pregnancy to become part of the
01:37:50.580storyline or to be commodified in that way is so important because I think that that is obviously
01:37:55.600what's like that's what's going to ask what people are going to try to do and so the instinct to be
01:38:01.020protective is so wise and also I hope that on some level this can be a gratifying and enjoyable
01:38:08.940kind of like victory lap for you yeah because you really deserve it and like I think if we've
01:38:14.140we've learned anything today it's that this has been a long time coming there were so many other
01:38:19.400worlds in which this didn't happen because you stopped and like you didn't stop there was some
01:38:26.000belief that you had in your ability that I think is like supernatural because to get yourself to
01:38:33.660this point is just so singular this happens to like one novelist a year you know and it's you
01:38:40.240and you did it and I just I hope you feel like five percent as proud of yourself as I feel of you
01:38:46.260I think that that's probably the ratio that's correct. I do feel very proud of myself. It is really overwhelming, but it is also I have given all of my caveats of all of my negative feelings. I am also probably the happiest I've ever been in my life.
01:39:02.320I genuinely feel so fulfilled. I can't believe I get to work with you. I can't believe
01:39:06.320we get to have a company like this. It is such a source of stability for me at a time when so
01:39:12.520much in my life feels unstable and figuring out how to have a baby while also being a person
01:39:20.360whose income is very important for their family and who has to navigate all these moments at the
01:39:26.840exact moment when like you wouldn't want to stop or slow down if I hadn't had you and Riley are
01:39:32.980like the two people in my life that like not just the support but game planning and talking things
01:39:38.300out and being like how am I going to do this like practically speaking I feel incredibly lucky to
01:39:44.700have so many people who are as much as a lot of the stuff that's happening externally is very
01:39:50.420overwhelming i feel so grateful to have so many people internally who are like keeping me stable
01:39:57.840and i am not a stable person although i may occasionally present as such so um yeah that's
01:40:04.900why we're naming the baby katie or katie as we katie what is what are the two dots over the e
01:40:12.480uh the dots are over the i thought they were over the i no no they're over the e okay i don't know
01:40:17.740what that changes the sound too kta burke i can't wait our kid is gonna be so cute well
01:40:27.180congratulations thanks it's an honor and a privilege to be mentally unstable alongside you
01:40:34.580and long live yesteryear long live diabolical lies go by yesteryear if you know what's good
01:40:41.820for you if you don't want your house to get drone striked in the night and
01:40:45.540and that's all folks and we'll see you in austin on friday night oh my god whoa we're gonna do our
01:40:54.940first ever live thing together yeah oh my god that's crazy i was gonna say let us know if you
01:41:00.640want us to tour but we're probably gonna do that anyway so i guess don't tell us yeah don't tell
01:41:05.180us we're doing it don't tell us you don't want us to do that oh my god that was fun that's it that's
01:41:13.180Caroline, there is literally no one on planet Earth
01:41:19.640who is more interesting to me than you.