Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Lauren Grodstein: Friend of the Family

Does it feel like it's like I'm at a press conference with this microphone. OK that's good. It's OK. Hi everyone. My name's William Devane and on behalf of Harvard bookstore I like to welcome you to this evening's event with Lauren Gradstein. She joins us today to discuss her newest book a friend of the family. Today's event is one of many fantastic events this month upcoming events include famed chef and restaurant owner David Chang. Radio host Garrison Keillor and in January we have business and technology writer Daniel Pink. We also have a selection of rare titles being printed up for the holidays on our book machine so be sure to check that out for some unique gift ideas. You can find information about these and other events on our calendars at the information desk. Events are also listed online at Harvard dot com. Of course the easiest way to find out about events is through our weekly email newsletter which you can sign up for by visiting Harvard dot com and clicking subscribe. It's that easy. After the talk Mr. Gradstein will answer questions from the audience. After that we'll have a book signing at this table. You'll find copies of a friend of the family at the registers up front and of course you have my

personal thanks for buying your books from Harvard bookstore and attending talks like this one. Your participation supports both this author events series and the landmark innovative and independent bookstore. Today I'm pleased to welcome Lauren Gradstein. She joins us tonight to speak on her book. A friend of the family. The second novel A friend of the family follows a man who is at the edge of his career relationship and life as he knows it. He seems to have been stripped of everything that matters. Everything important tells a tale of how one flaw can tighten someone's grip on a desire even as they lose sight of their intent. The Washington Post writes of the book is horrifyingly plausible and deeply poignant. A friend of the family will leave you shaken and chastened and grateful for the warning seen as such a person is such a perceptive and knowing critic of suburbia that I kept expecting to see her Dr. Lee driving slowly up and down my street peering in the windows. A sort of strange but still a compliment nonetheless and Publisher's Weekly asserts the grads seen as an astute astute dissector of male aspiration she brings great insight into a

father's protective urge for his son. In this gripping portrait of an American family in crisis. Lauren Ghodsee received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. In addition to be an acclaimed author she teaches writing at wrecker's came going to New Jersey. Her other works include reproduction is a love story collection the best of animals and girls dinner club. We're thrilled to have her here with us tonight. Please join me in welcoming Lauren Gradstein. Thank you so much it's so nice to be here hello bookstore people in the aisles right now there's a reading happening. I will sign your Christmas presents for you if you come sit my plea. I look at look at the effect it's having. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here and I am so happy to be in one of my favorite cities and I'm so happy to see look at that see come on how to see it will cheer for you the whole audience will cheer. People in the aisles we will applaud you.

It is a pleasure to be here. And so I'm going to read for about 15 minutes from the book is that good and then I'm happy to answer questions about pretty much anything from how to get a book published which seems to be a question a lot of people have to the writing process itself to MFA programs I work at one I teach at one and I'm pretty knowledgeable about them. The novel explained is the story of a man of his mission who lives in the New Jersey suburbs and he finds himself on the brink of all sorts of collapses. I'm going to read it from the second chapter. The characters to know our narrator a guy named Pete does enough. His wife is named Elaine his best friend is named Joe. Joe's wife is named Iris. They all went to college together. The two main couples Pete and Elaine's son is named Alec and Joe and Iris his daughter is named Laura and Laura who is a 10 years older

than Alec when she was a teenager she committed a horrible crime. What you will find about out about as I read. And is there anything else you need to know right now. I don't think so. The to set up the scene Alec. Pete and Joe just had breakfast. After my breakfast with Joe that morning I went to the office and settled my patients didn't notice but my secretary did and she made decaf in the afternoon set of regular. I took off by 6 No rounds and back at home Elaine and I made spaghetti while Alec was at soccer practice. Apart us each a big glass of Dolcetto before we even got started. Although we both enjoyed it when it happened. Elaine and I rarely cooked together. She was content to do the lifting in the kitchen in exchange for my dishwashing and coffee brewing afterward. Still every once in a while the urge struck and she and I would make something simple and happy together. Fried chicken spaghetti and meatballs that night still hopped up on guilt and shivers. I

thought cooking with my wife would settle me down my wine quickly and she put NPR in the little kitchen transistor the market report. Elaine and I had been married long enough to feel as though the exchange of a few sentences was a momentous conversation. What I mean is that we were as comfortably quiet together as most couples we knew and relied on oldies but goodies. Alec vacation plans bills to keep the engine of our marital discourse looped. Now of course we had an enormous thing to talk about in the form of our oldest friends daughter and I was glad not only to have Elaine to talk to but also perversely to have something new to talk about with Elaine. They gave the baby a name. I said as casually as I could. Chopping oregano while she scraped carrots into the sink. Sarah she said you know that Iris asked me if I knew what the rules were for naming the dead. We talked a couple of days ago. What did you tell or Elaine and I had been Lapsed Jews for many years but she'd been raised in a semi Orthodox home in the Jewish part of Pittsburgh. She had a religious streak she didn't try to hide in a certain depth of tradition Judaic

knowledge. I told her that whatever she wanted to name the baby was fine as far as I knew. I was surprised though first of all she never really liked her mother. Remember she used to bitch and second you think the name would be up to Laura their daughter. I was surprised enough to put down my knife. Why would Laura get to name the baby. She is the mother Elaine said. It was 10 of 7 in the light in the kitchen was just starting to slant. I took a bulb of garlic from the basket hanging near the window and started peeling its papery skin. She also murdered the child. Murder murder that's what you think happened. Elaine you don't know that we're also quick to condemn all of us but we have no idea if the baby was alive. We have no idea was it was in that poor girl's head. She crushed its skull. You don't know why she did it. So you're pleading insanity. I'm not pleading anything. Elaine said she threw the carrots into the salad bowl and wiped her hands on her jeans. I just think we should show our friends a little loyalty and Laura too. We've known her all her life.

I was honestly surprised Elayne's reasoning rarely did she disagree with me so staunchly and being disloyal. I said you're not the judge here. I said I was. Listen I know how you think you're a moralist you know you live in black and white gray is beyond you. What's so great about delivering a baby in a public restroom and smashing in its call either shortly before or after it took its first breath. Her whole line was making me feel unreasonable. You don't know the entire story Pete. But those are the facts only that she looked at me her hazel eyes colder than I would have preferred. I remember having the strange urge to rub or hair between my fingers to feel its softness. You should know better is what I mean. You have the moral code of a teenager that level of sophistication right is not always right and wrong is not always wrong. What are you talking about Keith. She said The world is not always always easy easy as you'd like. Her face turned mottled then pink. And

just because a teenager delivers a baby in a bathroom and disposes of it she paused. You of all people should know the world is not as easy as you'd like. You're a doctor p. Come on. In all our years together I've grown to rely only in support on Alane support to lean on it like a post she so rarely contested me or took serious issue with my interpretations of the challenges that buffered our lives. So why now. What was different about now. If anything I'd expect her to take my line more seriously than usual since this was a more serious than usual event in our lives and everyone's lives in the hospital at dinner parties wherever around Hillarys found one another it was tough to talk about anything else. The poor girl hemorrhaging panicking dispose of her baby in a dumpster which is of course outrageous but Elaine gripped her wineglass. But because of those very reasons because of the outrageousness of it and because we know Laura we know she's a good moral person. Do you think there has to be another reason this happened. She put a hand on her hip all earnestness.

Maybe this was simply maternal of her. We had after all pushed the girl stroll around Fairmont Park all those years ago. Do you think something else had to be going on in her head. How should I know it was in her head. I'm just asking you to show a little sympathy Pete sympathy. The market report was preaching the gospel of Berkshire Hathaway up five points I listen to myself grow richer for a minute or two in the morning Kenny my stockbroker would call to congratulate himself on how it handled my money. Elaine in my day baby killers were baby killers or to rephrase when I was growing up. If a girl got pregnant and had a baby and murdered that baby the reasons why she did it would not overrule the fact that she did it in the first place. Perhaps it was more black and white time I don't know. In your day Pete girls had abortions in back alleys and abortion would have been a final turn it of as opposed to murder. You really would call this murder. I don't know what else you call it. It's happened throughout history ph she said using the voice she to use to explain human reproduction to Alec the previous fall. Girls who give birth alone or who cannot support their children or considers

themselves outcasts. Laura Stearns an outcast pregnant at 17 Of course she is being pregnant doesn't make her an outcast. She could have told Joe and Iris and what would they have done to her but been the loving and supportive and wonderful people they are. Presumably she thought they would have punished her ostracized her. Joanne iris of course is not what they would have done but it's what she thought they would have done. She probably felt she couldn't disappoint them. They've always had very high standards for their kids you know. So it's their fault. That's not what I said. It's just that they expect certain things from all four of them and pregnancies certainly isn't one of those things. I can't believe you're blaming Joanne Iris for this. I'm not blaming Joanne Iris. Listen to yourself. Pete why are you so angry about this. Where are you. Pete she said and nothing else. Which is where we ended it. Elaine made salad dressing. I set out the plate still at a loss. How many years had it been since we've suffered the sort of philosophical difference and over something like this. A dead baby in a dumpster. But soon enough it was easy to focus on other things. We had dinner on the table got dropped off from

soccer and sprawled himself across the wooden bench that served as our fourth fifth and sixth seats and wolf down half a spaghetti in the time it took Elaine and me to finish our salads. But we were happy enough to have him home that we didn't pick on him about anything. He was not yet allowed to watch television unsupervised just to give you a sense of the innocence we tried to impose on the kid. But later after sliced up pineapple in front of the second half of the adventures of Milo and Otis and a shower and homework check in a lazy round of dishes in the stillness of the Late Night Kitchen I washed my face and brushed my teeth and climbed into bed next to Elaine who I thought was sleeping. I touched her shiny hair then pulled the quilt over my shoulder. When we were newlyweds I used to coerce her every night to cuddle against me and sleep with her head on my shoulder and her hand on my chest. But that was years ago. Sometimes I used to Sandwich her between my legs and she tried to move in the night. I would wake up grab her pull her to me squeeze her like an anaconda. PETER her voice scratchy in the dark. I thought you were sleeping. I

was. I reached out to touch her leg. Do you believe in heaven Pete. Well I kept my leg on her solid thigh. I'm just curious she said. I really don't know what you'll say we never talk about these things in our dark bedroom. I thought of a million things at once. A 30 year old patient died last week of septicemia Alec running into the kitchen shin guards smudged with dirt and grass. Elaine shoulders moving to the tiniest rhythm as she chopped carrots her soft blonde hair sometimes Haven't I said sometimes Hell I believe in heaven. Elaine said maybe that was why I pulled her close to me I held her tight and I believe in the untarnished soul she murmured into my chest that we all have one no matter what else we've done in our lives. I've been thinking a lot about it these days ever since what happened and that's what I believe. But then her inner soul as far as I knew did not apply to choose Look the baby probably wasn't viable I said my mouth near her hair. That's what you're thinking about in worry. It doesn't matter what Laura did to the baby. It was doomed when it was born. It would have been brain damaged and

blind. Elaine was quiet for a while but I knew she wasn't falling asleep. I've known Laura her entire life since she was just a baby herself. Don't you remember what a beautiful baby she did what she did for a reason. She deserves our sympathy too. OK I said I'd give in tonight. She deserves our love just like any human being. If there's a heaven let's not deny it to her. I didn't ask Elaine what her reckoning was. Why are local baby skull smasher belongs in heaven. I only kissed her head and wondered at the way she saw the world and at the largeness of her mercy. That patient who died of septicemia by the way was one of the very few patients I lost that year. To be fair I was an internist so most of the really sick ones I sent to specialists my debts were almost always the hypertensive and the diabetics with the early expiration dates in their charts. But this uptick was a different story altogether and an awful one. Louis Sherman was an associate of Goldman Sachs himself the father of a newborn and the 10 month owner of a gorgeously restored Victorian not too far

from our own. The wife is blonde and lovely as they come in this Louis 5 7 and thick soles frizzy hair circling a bald spot grease on his tie a triple jointed nose. Who could blame him for selecting as a life partner the slightly insubstantial but beyond charming Christina Sherman Nick Connell The kid knew Luckily stumbled upon it. He'd been my patiences he was a teenager and but the mention a generous spirit. Apologize for not inviting me to the wedding but because of his parents objections to the match the two had decided to elope. Now Goldman Sachs types are usually a lot more slick than Louis was but this kid was a Harvard certified genius the kind of renaissance whiz who built an old Russian at chess that Don made client 10 million by lunch took a 15 minute break to make all the right picks in a rotisserie baseball league and relaxed after dinner by fiddling a hiden number on his cello is a big donor to Israel the fresh air fund the Museum of Modern Art. He spends Sundays with his baby at his mother's house to give Christina time to catch up with her girlfriends. And in short he was beloved and on his chart The only oddity was the absence of the spleen

removed after a brutal hockey injury when he was nine. Christina called me at home on a Sunday night a privilege I usually reserve for favorite patients. Louis has a fever bad pain on his right side. He's not appendicitis right. She really wasn't as dumb as her in-laws made out. Sounds like a reasonable assumption taken to the E.R. let me there by me there. The inflamed appendix was removed laparoscopically by a surgeon I liked a lot and I saw the whole family during rounds the next day taking care of each of them. Steve Sherman a math teacher who looked just like his son Shelley again to the first order in Lewis's brother Joel a poet the indulged family Gadabout the lovely Christina the lovelier daughter Ashley now perched on her daddy's tender lap. That was a close one hundred buck. Not particularly I said. Your wife knew what she was doing. The chart proved we taken the right precautions for a guy without a spleen. He'd been vaccinated against me in the Caucus and other nasty bugs and we were going to keep an even closer eye on his temperature than we usually did for post-surgical patients but his spirits were good his color was fine. The appendix

ruptured. Christina had convinced him to go to the hospital even though he was certain it was indigestion and saved him a world of trouble. I expected nothing but the most positive outcome. I shot the shit with the family for a little while Joel announced shyly he just placed a poem in the Paris Review. I told him I'd subscribe. I held the baby. Lois left the hospital the next morning and returned comatose and dying of septic shock the evening of the following day a neck bowel peritonitis. It was just so fast Christina said as pale and cold as frost. He said he felt a little hot and the next thing I knew it was. It's just so fast. Louis died three mornings later six months shy of his daughter's first birthday and his own thirty first. I was there when he passed in the back corner of the hospital room. The family standing around the bedside murmuring their wrenched dreadful goodbyes. His daughter even at six months was quiet and still as if she understood the lifelong enormity of losing her father. She gripped his finger the way babies do as he slipped away.

What can be done for a case like this. What can I say to the family. What can I do for these breaking hearts. I was powerless as a child. I can describe Xanax for anyone who wants it I can listen but I cannot explain why this would happen beyond hideous Fourchon and gruesome bacteria and of course I cannot bring back the dead. The Shivah at losing Kristina's house was hell. I stood in one of the darkened guest bedrooms and held Steve's hand for a good 20 minutes. We're standing by the window looking out on a beautiful April evening. The magnolia in the yard was cloaked in blossoms and the rabbit the live rabbits lived under the purple hydrangeas were foraging in the fading daylight. The air in the room smelled heavy with food and sweat and burning wax and Lysol and clean linen. Steve didn't cry didn't speak just held both my hands in his own. His grief was stark and monstrous behind his thick gentle glasses. The room was silent. Jews love life doctors love life. It is intrusted to us to preserve it. To do whatever must be done to preserve it. I

failed as a doctor and a Jew although the Shermans would not think to blame me as the room darkened Shelly knocked on the door and then came in. I let go of Steve's soft hands. He took his wife in his arms and together they rocked back and forth her head buried in his neck. A slow but that IC inconsolable waltz. This is what parents who lose their children should look like 25 weeks or 30 years. It doesn't matter to me. This horrible waltz is what it looks like to be the parents of the dead. I sat in the Shermans lovely kitchen that evening and watched the ArcSight burn. I was the last person to leave. Laura Stern's trial loomed aliquid soon turned nine one steamy July night walking to Carvel to pick up his Fudgie the whale birthday cake. I saw Laura Stern by herself slowly picking at a bowl of chocolate soft serve on a bench outside. They let her out by herself. She should be left alone like that.

She's wearing an enormous blue T-shirt smudged glasses dirty sandals. She took the smallest possible bites of ice cream mouse by its defiant breath before she opened her mouth. Her hair was greasy her fingers were small without quite realizing what I was doing. I hurried Alec into the shop. My hands on his shoulders awkwardly guarding my son's eyes so that he wouldn't have to look. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. It's a cheerful cheerful book. So if anybody has any questions I'm more than happy to answer them and again I'm happy to talk about the book but more broadly I'm happy to talk about how you turn a manuscript into a published book and the invitation still stands to the people in the stacks and I'm over it. You know I have to go. So yeah if anyone has any questions I'm glad to answer. Oh good.

It's the lighter side of Kelly maybe it's you know. I've been told I have I have a fidgety stage presence. OK. But I am I'm a woman. Right I mean young younger than our narrator and female. And so there is there has to be that disconnect listening to me I think read this voice. Right. Yeah. Yeah yeah. Yeah I I've not been able I've listened to the First there's an audio book and I managed to listen to the guy read the first sentence a couple of times and I have to turn it off right away because I just instantly mortified. You know it's not it's the wrong voice you know. Yeah yeah. Thank you.

It's the second time I've done it. My novels also from the point of view of a man and the first time it was an easier answer the first time I did it. I was simply looking to write about someone who wasn't me. I needed. I wanted to write a novel. I had written a collection of stories I want to try novel and I was very anxious to not write myself. And I wasn't sure how to do that I felt myself creeping into everything I started writing so I thought well a good way to separate myself would be to make him a man and that's what I did and as soon as I did that the book flowed. This time I just had this voice in my eye. I truly it was it was almost like I had a little. Angel sitting on my shoulder telling me the story and I woke up one day. I hadn't written. I've been struggling to try and find something to write. I knew I wanted to write a new book. I tried I spent three years trying to write something new it fell apart and I spent six months pretty despairing and then one day I woke up and I

had this guy's voice in my head and I got this first draft three and a half months and concerning the years it had taken me to ever produce anything else. It was a strange almost out-of-body experience. And but he arrived fully formed so it wasn't it didn't really feel like a decision. It felt like this was the man and this was a story and I was going to tell it now. I love doing that but you know i had ta I had. I have a wonderful sort of generous academic schedule with summers off and this is before I had a baby so I was really able to take the time I needed so I would get up you know at 6:00. Right. My set time which is usually from like 6 to 1 in the afternoon and I wouldn't do anything. I mean I would brush my teeth and sit down and eat. Really I wouldn't do anything until those pages were done and then I would spend the after and then I would eat you know wash my face and then I would spend the

afternoon on line or reading medical journals or interviewing doctors on the phone or talking to doctors I knew or a combination thereof and doing that the afternoon I had this really luxurious time. You know that I was able to use to do but to both write and to research. And I enjoyed it a lot. Good for you. Yeah go ahead. I thought.

I know. It's one it's interesting it's one strand of the book is the story of Laura and what she did to this baby a decade ago. My response to what she did is much more complex than our narrators response I really see what she did as a product of biology is sociology and it's it's not as compartmentalise apartment a compartment you can't compartmentalize it as easily maybe as you'd look as as our narrator does our narrator really sees what she did as murder and a crime and forgivable the way that murder would be and yet I did a lot of research about what she did and it happens more frequently than you might expect it happens in all cultures and different cultures have different attitudes towards it. Some

cultures actually give a sort of 24 hour grace period to mothers. I don't find what she did forgivable necessarily but I don't think that it's something that necessarily needs to mark her for the rest of her life the way that the narrator does. I was intrigued by the subject because when I was a junior in college. Teenagers who grew up very close to where I grew up in the New York suburbs who were students at the University of Delaware. She was pregnant. They were freshman. They drove to a motel she delivered the baby there they killed the baby disposed of in a dumpster. And this happened got a huge amount of media attention in 1996 and I never forgot it. It just lived in me. The story lives in me and I I wrote about it because it was going to come out sometime. So it came out here but if it had come out here I think I would have written about those events somewhere else. I just I never got over that the

idea of this baby in a hotel room and never going to. Oh yeah. I've got I've got. Not really people have not talked about that aspect of the book much at all to me. And in the letters I've gotten you know people tend not to write you when they don't like something they tend to post on the internet instead. So the letters I've got have been very kind. But some of the you know some people have said I found the narrator distasteful they find him much too black and white they think that he is not nice. And people sometimes don't like to read about characters they don't think are nice now. I actually like this character a lot I like all the characters a lot they're part of me so you know I'm a little biased but people find

him and his reaction the way he tries to control his son's life the way he meddles they find it alien in a way like who would do this what kind of jackass would act this way as though you know we're not surrounded by people who behave this way but so that those have been the responses that I've found kind of the most you know surprising like this guy is such a moron. I don't know anyone like this and I never will. They are OK. I try not to but I get. But I do. I mean I do period. And the reason I do is a couple of things one as I'm trying now to write really trying to be involved in my next book. It's really easy to procrastinate by Googling yourself. This is a bad habit I don't encourage it. In fact if there's a way to take Google off your computer while you're writing a book I urge you to do so. And then people forward me things. So

my sister who also I clearly has too much time on her hands will e-mail me you know look what this guy thinks of you. Guess who's not such hot stuff after all exclamation point like. Thanks. So my team of family and friends and my own worst impulses keep me aware of what's going on online unfortunately and sometimes Fortunately a lot of stuff has been very very nice to see. How I mean how easily it came how the story just seemed to just unfold. Oh that was a surprise that's a great question. Yeah and then you're like yeah without too much you know without trying to spoil anything. P at the narrator's wife gets becomes ill which I wasn't planning on writing at all and I had this image of her. It doesn't change the story too

much now that she's suffered from breast cancer she had a reconstruction I had this image of her that came out of nowhere of her rising up out of the steam in a bath tub with one reconstructed breast. And I don't know why. And that's where the story line came from was a society of her coming out of a bath tub. And I suppose I must have seen somewhere without even noticing really pers that it appeared ad for perspex or a support bra or something that that got me thinking about this. But it's such a surprise that it happened and then I just kept going with it. And that also involved involved a whole new level of research because suddenly I was taken into breast cancer blogs and breast cancer support websites and breast cancer treatment. And felt deeply grateful that I haven't suffered from that because the the wealth of information the wealth of of wealth that's not the right word and the the depth of this the sadness

of that disease was everywhere and hard to escape once I got into it. And I think else. I mean. Well I'm I have a question of a collection I have some sort stories that I'm eager to finish but I think short stories can be a trap like you can sit there and just I'm going take the shorts are perfect or not do anything else. But I've been doing for a while. So. And then I have a couple of ideas for a new book and I've been trying to get started on that too but it hasn't been easy I blame my child. Thank you. That's what I did. That's what I do. Yes yes great yes. I read Independence Day by Richard Ford like twice while I was three times maybe and I kept going back to passages if you haven't read that I'm sure it's here it won the Pulitzer Prize several years ago it's a great you know I'm sorry it's Independence Day by Richard Ford It's great. It's about it's a story of a New

Jersey realtor in the middle of a domestic and sort of personal crisis and this is a New Jersey doctor in the midst of a domestic. But they're both these these sort of intensely first person very these sort of observational books. And I found that reading that was helpful it held my hand when I when I would come I mean the book was did come easily but there are always moments where you like oh what now. And I would pick up and read a few pages in a Penn State be like that's what's next. I was so grateful to have a book. So I emailed Richard for e-mailed I wrote a letter to Richard Ford God is that terrible that e-mail suddenly stands in for write a letter I didn't email him I wrote a letter explaining all this and how his book held my hand and how grateful I was and what he you know acknowledged that in any way. No but you know don't be sad because I think he will one day because I was talking you know I think I think that eventually you know weird things happen in the world and I think eventually our paths will cross and I'll be able to tell members.

Anything else. Good. OK. It's it's not it. My characters tend to be wholly invented but my my locations tend not to be I really feel safe on ground that I've been on. So all of the locations in this book not just the New Jersey ones but from the you know there's a brief moment in Philadelphia he talks about the beginning the book The Seven Delaware all those are places I know well and in fact in the I finish writing this book I teach in Paris and the summers and I finish writing this book was teaching in Paris and the reason that

there's a there's a bit of Paris at the very end and that's because that's where I was. I find that I feel sort of safer in some ways like the fictional enterprise is so huge like to make up an entire world is such an enormous and insane thing to do that. And I love it. I love doing it but I find that rooting myself in places that I know gives me the confidence to make up everything else. I would I would like my in the novel that I've been thinking about and hoping to turn into something real is about a stewardess who doesn't really live anywhere. So you know that will be interesting too because I tend to write things that are really rooted in place so to have a character who's ruthless will be kind of a challenge. So if there are no other. Yeah OK yeah. Vulnerability characters are aren't Molnar aren't interesting

to me at least I mean there's a whole subset right of movie heroes and and heroes novels who are vulnerable and that's their appeal that they can you know repel bullets off their forearms and who never get hurt. And and and that is a fantasy that I think people take some comfort in right. But the the truth. Human experiences the experience of loss and grief and weakness and it's tempered by happiness and joy of course but we lose things and we're vulnerable to that loss. And and that's what fiction really is usually about. It's about some kind of grief. So I don't know how to write about something that that doesn't explore our vulnerability. And the other truth is that if you love something a lot right isn't it is it a Buddhist thing and it would just hear like where you're not supposed to form great attachments is that right. I mean this is a half assed half assed religion studies Yeah. Right well you because.

There are cultures where you're not by by having no attachments. You have no vulnerability right you're supposed to. You limit your exposure to loss by limiting how much you love things. But that to me is to me to just to me no offense any religious anything but to me the joy of life is to feel attached so that although of course it makes you vulnerable I mean people still told me before I had my son that I would never understand love like that. It's completely true. Nor would I ever expand it. I understand fear that way and that's become completely true as well. We can't have one without the other so I say to me if literature is going to reflect life of good literature is going to reflect life that it has to reflect the vulnerability we live and be live with every day because that's what life is that's what makes life real and exciting and sad. I'm sorry. Oh sure. Really an exciting and sad. It's going to be in my own blurb for my own book.

It's like Eat Pray Love. Anything anything else. Well it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming out and happy to sign some books. Thank you.