672. - Jonathan Lethem

All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Stateside with Kai and Carter, a new podcast from The Guardian. And they are using this podcast to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions that we all have about what's happening in the world. And they do it three times a week. Jason, does that sound familiar to you? We don't really talk about, you know, a lot of international global news items and climates and cultures and sports and things like that. We do talk about fashion and wellness, but for everything else, Kai and Carter are a great place. All right, so who couldn't use more news? Listen wherever you get your podcast. or watch on YouTube. How long gone is here? The end of July is nigh. We're recording. In Los Angeles and New York. Chris, what's up, bro? Oh, another scorching day in the concrete jungle. Okay. It's disgusting, and I am ready to leave for the equally as warm but somewhat less disgusting city of Los Angeles, California. It's actually pretty nice here right now. It's 80s and 90s, but, you know, it's a dry heat. So it's hotter in New York for sure. Yeah, that's disgusting. As I walk to get my haircut. By eight degrees. Yeah, minimum. As I walk to get my haircut today, I was just drenched watching, you know, just drenched with sweat and thinking about the decisions I've made in my life. How long is the walk from your flat to your barber? It's a little further than I would like because the barber is in the East Village, my old neighborhood, and I'm very loyal. And it probably takes 20 minutes. It's not crazy. 20-minute walk, so about a mile or so. But I stopped at Sweetgreen for some sustenance on the way. I ran into a friend of the show, Mike Nouveau, watch Dealer to the Stars. Was he creating content while he was at Sweetgreen? I wish, but I don't know enough about watches. I told him I love the business of watches more than I love the actual objects. And I think he might agree with me to some extent. He seems to be doing quite... He launched an app. It's a whole thing. But he was going to Vegas for some sort of weird watch show. Just because it says Audemars doesn't mean it's not ugly. Right, guys? I mean, most watches, like most things in this world, are ugly.

Um, so that's not really, that's no one's fault necessarily. Um, but that's just, I'll take it. That's kind of where we're at. Um, that's where we're at, but that's it. Yeah, that's it. Okay. So you, you go, you, you went to get a barber haircut, you went to sweet green and you, you were sweating through your white tee or were you wearing something more? I was wearing a polo, uh, a Navy polo. Uh, and I was sweating through that, but it's, it's tough. Cause I go to the gym. I sweat in the gym. walk home, continue to sweat, have to cool off before you get in the shower or you'll keep sweating through that. And then you shower, you hang out for a second, you send some emails, you have a call, and then you're sweating once again. So it's a real lose-lose. Okay, make you sweat, make you water. How many showers did you take yesterday? Only two. One in the morning, one before bed? Yeah, exactly. I think getting into bed dirty is a sin. Women do it because women don't like to shower because of their hair or whatever, but I don't have that issue, so I try to shower as much as possible. I don't know. I think women want to shower before they get into bed, definitely more than me. You would think. Do some research. The only research I have to do is with my forever wife and that fucking bitch be showering. Don't worry. We'll hear plenty. Clean as a whistle. We'll hear plenty about this. We'll hear plenty about this. I think she would be okay with me calling her a Chex Notes clean person. Yeah, she's a clean freak. We don't use the F word in our house. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Is that ableist or something? What did I do wrong? It's something-ist. I haven't figured it out yet, but I know I can't say it. Yeah, and if you can't say it, then I definitely can't say it. Yeah, and you should really subscribe to the something-ist. It's my new biannual newsletter. I love a biannual newsletter. Thank you for updating me on your new ventures. I love when you're launching something new. Yeah, I was actually just right before having a little workout in the park.

There was a, first of all, I saw a wild pack of deer. Do you know what deer eat? I'm thinking about tempting them with food. They look like they're going to die soon. I don't, I don't really. Of all the people I know, you're not the person I should ask about feeding livestock. I think of deer as kind of the best looking pests, kind of, you know, like they don't really, they look beautiful, but they just kind of eat your. eat your plants i believe is what they do like like the baby shambles they're some of the best looking you you see them ruining your garden and you're like oh yeah and majestic unless you have your unless you have your pellet gun you're not going to do much damage your a salt your bug a salt yeah i mean i feel like maybe a like a butterfly might low-key be a pest but boy are they beautiful but uh anyway um oh i wrote a recipe for apartamento magazine or book or whatever they do like food issues You probably know more about this than I do. You know about this shit? They publish magazines. They also publish books. Shout out to Marco. I know he's listening. Marco. But they do issues where it'll be like this one's all about eggs, and they'll have guest contributors submit a recipe. No, that's not. I mean, I've never. The magazine is an interiors magazine, so I think this is for the book arm because they do several books. They did the book with Frederick. They've done a bunch of food related stuff. Chris, this is for the book arm. Book arm. You fucking idiot. It's for the book arm. I think. I mean, I could be wrong, I think. But what is your... I mean, don't give it away. Well, I'll give you a teaser. Don't give it away. A tantalizing teaser. The issue of this book or the edition of this book is featuring sandwiches. So who's the doctor? They told you to go see, of course. I saw a fucked up sandwich today and I can't remember who posted it. Maybe it was Maddie Matheson. It was like four slices of tomato with mayonnaise and butter. on bread and i was a tomato sandwich that's disgusting with i didn't know you did mayo and butter i thought it was one or the other typically it is one or the other adding butter to it is you could call that gilding the lily but you know good butter is good butter get it in my belly i just i just don't care how good a tomato is eating a tomato sandwich is i honestly might vomit i i don't know if i can handle it well that's what my recipe is for in the sandwich edition of apartamento book

It's a tomato sandwich, but obviously I flipped it on its head. It's not your grandmother's tomato sandwich. Sure. Great. I can't wait. It's not your nan's. I can't wait to not try it. Sarny. It's not your nan's sarny, as I would say famously. Yeah, people like tomatoes too much is one of my, you know, people get excited when stuff is in seat. It's just relax. Tell me the truth, Jason. Level with me here. I'm a tomato lover. You're barking up the wrong bush, bitch. No, I know you're a tea lover. I know you're a tea lover. Seasonal produce. Right now, I've got one thing on my mind. A nice melon. A Weiser Farms chilled cantaloupe. Perfectly ripe. Whenever the fruits and vegetables are getting super ripe. It's showtime for me. Okay. It's like hunting season for being a pussy. Okay. So I like that. I mean, a Wiser Farms melon is delicious, but I guess my question to you is specific to tomatoes because it's something, it's so common in our lives. I think our guest today, we're going to do a lot of mater talk. Sorry. So the tomato is so common. It's in ketchup. You eat ketchup every day. But I'm saying cantaloupe is something you kind of have in the summer. That's not something you're reaching for in the depths of December. You know what I mean? In the same way. Like a tomato is part of our lives. It's on a sandwich. It's on everything we eat. They put them in everything, much to my chagrin. Year-round. Much to your chagrin year-round, but it should not be eaten. Year round. It is a... Well, see, this is what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. This is when you make a deal with God. I don't think it's that different. I think it's only different at the highest level and the lowest level. I don't think the middle ground is that different. Oh, God. I think I'm going to... I just don't. I think I'm going to hurl. Is it actually... Come on. Of course, bro. Come on. That's like saying every fucking piece of sushi is pretty much the same. No, no, no. It's not saying that. It's saying it's... Worlds apart. Worlds. Huge differences. I just don't... But to the train, I mean, it's...

It's the same thing as like good and bad wine or just like this is my normal wine and excellent wine. I can't really. It's not doing much for me, but luckily I'm blessed with the ability to sniff out a good tomato. So it is important to me. Wow. What a skill. Can't anyone kind of do that? You don't have to have a special dog for that. Isn't everyone a James Beard award-winning food writer and super taster? No, Chris. It takes hard work and also a gift from God. I'm not that person either, but I'm just saying there are people. Who are really good at tasting shit. No, of course. By hook or by crook nature and nurture. And then some people, you know, simpleton. I think my mom can go to the grocery store and pick out a ripe tomato. I don't think it's rocket science. Bitch, you thought. Well, first of all, it can only happen for a few months out of the year. Sure. And second of all, they ain't all created equal. I think that your mom can because she's a good, honest Southern woman. And I know she knows what she's doing. But she also. doesn't love doesn't love food as much no no she doesn't thank god i was raised right by people who look at food as merely sustenance and not nerds who get hard for tomatoes two months of the year uh but i've seen your ass not eating for sustenance before okay so pump those brakes queen No, that's true. You know, I do like tomatoes when they're using a sauce for pizza. I do like that. Yeah, exactly. That's when they're the best. When they're out of that San Marzano can. Oh, baby. I can't wait to go to LA Cafe and Grocery and just look at all the produce this weekend. Oh, man. I might be late to Idlewild because I'll be looking at produce. Damn, don't come for the only thing I care about, please. What if I... Hey, Jason, sorry. I'm running an hour late to FWB Fest because I... I kind of got caught up looking at produce at a local farmer's market, and I just couldn't help myself. Some of the squash blossoms, I think it's their last week, so I kind of got to head down there. It's not really an option. But it looks like our guest is here. He's on mute like a good guest. Professional.

He's done this before, obviously, so I guess we should give him an introduction. Yeah, our guest today is Jonathan Latham, who is an author originally from New York. He's written several books that you're probably familiar with. Motherless Brooklyn won the National Book Critics Award, but there's a bunch. He's a teacher, for Christ's sakes. He lives in Maine. uh he grew up on a commune there's so much to so much to dig into here with him he's a certified genius he's got a great head of hair he's got a great bennington great head of hair went to bennington with friend of the show brett east and ellis we can get into that um and uh i read something about him in airmail about his air travel which is 85% of what we talk about on the show, so we can get into TSA business. All right, so we got tomatoes and TSA. Let's give Jonathan a call. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by a new podcast from The Guardian, Stateside with Kai and Carter. This is covering a lot of our bases, Jason. It's trying to slow down. The news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's happening in the world. And I know you particularly have quite a lot of questions. A lot of questions, but how often? Because we do this podcast three times a week and that's a sweet spot. How many times do they do? Three times a week. And I have a feeling just based on the platform and these talking points that they're maybe going to be covering different stuff than we do. That's just a guess. The Guardian is not some billionaire owned. They're not afraid to say what they want to say, brother. Yeah, Rupert ain't sniffing around in what journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman are up to over there at Stateside. But yeah, listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch it on YouTube. It's three times a week. And who couldn't use more news? Especially when it's not from here, let's say. Give it a listen. Give it a listen. Oh, this is huge for me personally. This episode of How I'm Gone. It was brought to you by TaskRabbit. Oh, baby, let me tell you something. This is not a joke. I use TaskRabbit a lot because I can't do anything. You need some art hung? TaskRabbit. You need a fucking something put together? A cabinet? Got to reach that cheese grater on the top shelf? TaskRabbit. Anything you need, TaskRabbit can take care of it for you.

How it works, TaskRabbit connects you with skilled taskers in your area. They can help you move. They can assemble furniture, repairs, yard work, mounting, and more. You can search for a tasker based on cost, skill set, availability, and past client reviews so you know exactly who's showing up and can have confidence that they know what they're doing because taskers have assembled over 3.4 million pieces of furniture, completed 700,000 home repairs. handled 1.5 million moves, and the numbers are just going up, Jason. Yeah, throw a little money at the problem. It's not so expensive. And that job that you really don't want to do is something that another person out in the world is very good at doing and would gladly do it in exchange for a little bit of money. So when life happens, your to-do list grows. Get ahead of it now and get $15 off your first task at TaskRabbit.com or grab the TaskRabbit app using promo code how long taskers book up faster, especially for same-day tasks. So book trusted home help today. That is $15 off your first task using promo code howlong with the TaskRabbit app or at TaskRabbit.com. All right, let's go. What's up, Jonathan? How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. Now, I feel like when we were scheduling this podcast, you were... Getting ready to drive across the country. Is that correct? I was, and I did it, and I'm in Maine. Okay. You did it? Yeah. Okay. I did it. I got from LA to Maine, which is about as long a string as you can. Yeah, that's a journey, and I know you were doing it hopefully on four wheels and not two. You're not a freak, right? Four, yeah. Okay, all right. I just want to make sure. Just want to make sure. Did you get a grant for this, or was there some type of bigger picture project going on with this? Or do you really hate TSA that much? I hate TSA just that much. But no, I also really like the cross-country drive. It's kind of a joy for me. And I've actually lost track of how many times I've done it now. That was my next question because I've actually never... Jason, you've done it once. I don't think I've ever done it. I've done New York to Atlanta, but I've never done the full thing. And it does seem... I hate being in the car, but I love America. So I'm kind of torn.

See, I hate being in America, but I love the car. Total reverse. But no, I like being on the ground in America. I don't like being in the conceptual. space sure okay understood all right all right understood you like to be physically on the ground physically i like to be touching america and to to touch it continuously with four wheels for like a week is really okay thanks to gravity if gravity keeps holding up like she's been doing you're gonna be good to go so you said you've you've you've circumnavigated these fine american states too many times to count how many of those times did you do it alone That's a great question. I could narrow that down. I think I did it completely alone just once. And I had a tiny Jack Russell Terrier with me. So that wasn't even 100% alone. And that was a special one, a great experience. But usually I've got company for at least most of the journey. This last time I had a solo leg from... Fort Morgan, Colorado to Kansas City. Who could do that with someone else? The Majestic Beauty. That's top 10 favorite stretches. 11 hours of flat. If you're going from LA to Maine yearly at least once, I'm assuming, do you try to stop in different places or do you try to stop in the same places and hit your favorites? Well, I mean, first of all, there are only that many trajectories you can trace that are not totally inefficient. And then you have some favorite people. If you have people at all, you have the ones you want to see. And I've got a favorite cousin in Bloomington, Indiana. I've also got a dear, dear couple of friends in Michigan and Kalamazoo and outside of Detroit. So I kind of... I build the route on hitting either Michigan, which is like my north route. I thought you were going to, I thought you were going to be like, there's this sick burrito place in Santa Fe. I hit it every year. Well, there are things like that. You know, the best mole I've ever had in my life is in Salt Lake City.

Blue lizard. Honestly, if you're going to call your restaurant blue lizard. Do you know what mole is? Just to be clear, do you know what mole is? Are we talking about the same thing? I may not. I may not. I may just be throwing that word around. Good gut check. Thank you. Sorry. No, no, no. I'm assuming you obviously know that's just a joke for it being in Salt Lake City. I know what it tastes like. Well, I mean, you know what it tastes like. I know what it tastes like, and I have opinions about what good mole is, but I don't know if I could give you the like. I got to be honest with you. I'm not a huge mole guy if I'm keeping it 100. Comes as no surprise to us. Blue Lizard in Salt Lake City may turn you around. You know, I've never... Salt Lake... We just went to Rhode Island. Jason and I were in Newport for the Newport Folk Festival last weekend. It was the first time I'd been to the beautiful state of Rhode Island. And I've only got a few states left. And Utah is one of those states. So I guess I got to go to Blue Lizard. Utah is... Well, I mean, it has obvious issues. But... He's actually underrated. What, all the hot blondes? No problem here. But the southern half of Utah. The southern half is breathtaking. There's just unbelievable. I mean, you know, Arizona kind of gets all the canyon stone formation bragging rights, but southern Utah has insane stuff. The coral pink sand dunes. Yeah, that's cool. There's just a lot of really crazy. Topography. Alright, so you're in the car. Mole and topography. That's what I go in for. You're in the motel. Guy Fieri is on the TV in the motel. He says, bop over to the Blue Lizard Lounge in Salt Lake City. They're cooking up scratch-made mole enchiladas. And you said... I'm assuming that's how it went down. I'm pulling this car over. So if you're in the car for this long, even if you're with someone, what is the entertainment? Are you just listening to The Stones' entire catalog, books and tape? Are you listening to all the back episodes of How Long Gone? For me, there is a cutoff with The Stones' catalog. I would never say entire. Sure. I mean, no one wants the entire catalog. No one wants that. There's a due date.

What's your cutoff? Really quick. Sorry. What's your cutoff? We just did this with Metallica, the Black Album. Anything afterwards? No Fly Zone? Anything before? Is A-OK? Dirty work. Dirty work. Is the end. And that's being generous. I don't reach for dirty work a lot. I was going to say that's being generous, but I appreciate you kind of giving them some grace. Most days tattoo you. Okay, that's probably where I would want to kind of... A little more conventional. Yeah, cut it all off. So what do you do? What are you doing in the... For this long, how much air drums can you play, you know? Well, for safety's sake, you should only, you know, play just the snare. Only the snare. That's right. Ten and two. Ten and two. Snare only. Snare only. No, yeah, a lot of music. And I do get into... I lapse into a lot of NPR. Sometimes you realize you've heard the same story three times in a state. in a long state like Pennsylvania or Kansas. Sure, a long state, of course. I'm going to start hearing that in the election talk, hopefully. This is a long state. It's crazy. If Texas had NPR, because that's a really long state. Texas is the really long state. They outlawed NPR years ago, but maybe Austin. They have an enclave. They pirate NPR. It flickers in and out. Richard Linklater is pirating. NPR for the entire city of Austin. It's crazy. He's giving back. I got this American life straight from the board on USB stick if you guys want to trade. Okay, so you came from New York, moved to LA a while ago to become a professor. How many years ago did you do that switch? Yes, I took that job 15 years ago to teach at Pomona College. But I mean, it's a little more intricate than that because I'd already been a Californian in my 20s. I lived in the Bay Area in my heedless, irresponsible youth. Very different California, different me. I was a bookseller and I was an aspiring writer and I lived in Berkeley and Oakland. I bet that was a heady time. Was that like 90s? Yeah, actually like 86 to 97.

Just as an aside, you really do look great for your age, Jonathan. Sorry for interrupting. I heard you guys admiring my hair. I was really happy. Great head of hair. San Francisco in the 90s feels like the absolute best time to be in San Francisco and Berkeley in that time. Besides the 60s, of course. I got a window into the invention of everything that is reality now. The people who made things like the internet that destroyed all of our lives were just my friends kind of tinkering. And they were like journalists who got a, got a new job and they would, they would call you over to their monitor and they'd say, look at this. This is what a website is going to look like. Or this is what a blog is going to look like. Here's, here's salon. This is a comment section. Here's what this looks like. And you'd be like, wow, that guy needs to be in jail. Whoever in the comment section, straight bury him under the jail. I got my hands on whoever entered the comment. Okay. So. So this was like heady times in the garage, you and Wozniak? Yeah, no, a little after Wozniak in the garage. This is more like the media invention, you know, like Wired Magazine and Mondo 2000 and journalists leaving newspapers to start things like Salon. Okay, the early days. Okay, because my next question was, did you maybe miss some investment opportunities to get on the ground floor? Oh, I've always missed every investment opportunity. I don't... I don't think like that real good. I mean, the only thing I ever was aware of missing was that I had a feeling it would have been smart to buy stock in Marvel Comics. about six months before disney acquired them right after the first iron man movie i was like that would probably be really smart because if they can make money off iron man they can make money off all those stupid characters that's right and they care you know they're back on top after this weekend they had a rough couple years i had that one investment thought in my entire life and i did i act on that no i did not okay so you so you were in the ground floor

But I see what you mean. It was the other side. It was like the invention of digital media, for lack of a better term. Yeah, people figuring out how it was going to feel to blog or bloviate or blogviate or whatever they do. It was all sort of... Specifically, Wired Magazine was actually a starting up idea. And the things it was talking about were all being introduced. Now it's like reading it. Encyclopedia Britannica from the 1950s. One of my favorite ways to read. Just really fly through it. It's like picking up an AOL CD-ROM to go on TikTok. I guess I was never that early, but Gawker is the real thing for me. Kind of like the bar. of where where that's that's a lot later it's a lot it's a lot later i'm not that young i just i just that was the first one i think i ever really spent a lot of time on if that makes sense you know like i really but there were also there were other aspects of uh of of present reality that were sort of under construction in uh the bay area in the in the late 80s like that everyone ever like like you find young men both have tattoos i i trust that was when There was only one neighborhood in the world called the Lower Hate where every single person had a tattoo. And if you then went away from the Lower Hate, people would be like, whoa, you're wearing a tattoo. Yeah, you'd get stopped by someone and asked about your body art. You clutch your purse around somebody with a peace sign on their elbow. We talk about this sometimes because I remember when I started getting tattoos, I was probably 18. This is over 20 years ago. tattoo artists wouldn't do hands or face. That was kind of a rule. Unless they knew you, that was like, you don't do that. They kind of still won't. For a minute, I thought you were saying that they were like AI and they didn't know how to do hands. No, no, no. They knew how, but they were just like, this could ruin your life. Yes, right. They were doing interventions. A tattoo artist told me during this era that...

the suicide rate for people with face tattoos was like 100% higher than people without. 100% period. No, no, no. It's 100%. Everybody's dead. Total precursors to suicide. I see a guy with a face tattoo two to three times a day in New York City, if not more. Bedwetters. There's always... You can grow... hair to cover certain parts of the face. Seems to me like the full neck tattoo is even less... The full neck, the throat stuff is pretty gnarly, I would agree. I luckily resisted all that stuff because I still want to be a functioning member of polite society when need be. CNBC calls him. He wants to be camera ready. Exactly. I need to be camera ready, but young people do not agree with me. They're getting cursive under their eyes. It's a different time. My young people that I know can't even read cursive. They're like, do we know any other? Yeah, I guess I feel like writers often teach because it's very steady. But is that something you were interested in or is it something you fell into? Well... That's actually a pretty large question that I could answer fairly seriously and think about a lot because I didn't get a college degree myself. I'm a failed student. Welcome to the resistance, Jonathan. You're talking to two guys who don't have college degrees right here. You're home. We've got our posse here. I didn't do very well. I didn't do very well in college. I didn't want to, in a way, I was really psyched to, to throw it off in a, in a extremely, you know, alarming way. If I think about it now, I just felt that I was going to write books and that I might as well get to it. And, and that I, I knew, I knew how I went, wanted to go about it and that being in debt was not a great plan. So I, and I'm, you know, I'm generally, you know, the, the work I did before I was, I was.

I was publishing my writings was all working in news bookstores. I was a retail clerk. So I didn't have any kind of relationship to academic context. And I was pretty anti, you know, establishment, I guess, institutional. I just didn't really like bureaucracy and institutions very much. And that part of it still doesn't sit very well with me, even though in a way I inflict institutional bureaucracy on my students. And I certainly. And I'm caught up in it with my colleagues and the, you know, I mean, I function as part of this, the neoliberal academy, which is a sort of a, it's a haven for a lot of crazy people who have weird thoughts like me, but it's also a cash machine for, you know, it's an industry. Yes. So I'm very ambivalent about the institutional affiliation that I've. that I've wended my way into. On the other hand, there's this like basic thing, which is the contact, the commingling with my students of like my crazy thoughts and theirs and the desire to make art and to be in a conversation about art all the time, which is sort of like utopia to me. It's like exactly, you know, as someone who grew up wanting to make art, but also wanting to hang out and believing, you know, I was not an... an Ayn Rand person. I believed in the community and the communal and the power of the collective and so forth. The tension in what I do, a writer just sits alone in a room and then goes quietly crazy. And I like to do that about half the time. But the other half of the time, I want to run screaming out of that room and make contact. And so, the teaching is a space where I'm in a really alive, continuous, exciting contact with uh people who are not like me but are interested in knowing what i think and what i do and want to talk to me about it so that's an that's an amazing thing so it's it the the job you know 15 years in the job is this collision of institutional responsibility bureaucratic entanglement that i loathe in some fundamental sense and uh hanging out with people talking about what matters the most to me which

is a dream one for you one for them you know it's kind of it's kind of it's kind of life yeah it's a fair bargain it's it's i have a i have a good deal that's a good deal i mean i just don't know i feel like you probably have a better view on the state of young people than we do maybe because i don't think that we interact as much with that. An 18, 19-year-old feels very, very young to me. Unless they have a major record label deal, we don't really talk to 18-year-olds on this podcast very much. Just to be very clear, we don't talk to anybody underage unless they're assigned to a major label. That's kind of our rule here on how long gone. It's a good cutoff. It simplifies things. Are you often shocked or are things where they should be? The most discombobulating features are things that I've now incorporated into my experience. There was a time when I would waltz into a classroom and I would drop names from my reality. And some of them would land and others, you just hear the Doppler echo of them disappearing and you realize that's gone. I would say, like on the Carol Burnett show. No, that's not good. It's gone. It will never be known again. It doesn't matter that I can go to YouTube and watch 100,000 hours of The Carol Burnett Show. It doesn't exist anymore. And this is true of a lot of things. So it's a radical encounter with the remorseless appetite that time has for everything you care about. It's going away. It's disappeared. And we even have documentary films about Carol Burnett and that's still a bridge too far. We don't have to pick up a book. No one would watch that either. Even if you're on a Delta flight. Yeah, last thing. So they have their own reality and you are allowed to visit it and intervene in it slightly and offer thoughts about parts of it. But there are other parts of it that they wouldn't even dream of.

showing to you like there i'll tell you a really a really odd thing that happened to me uh about it's about six or seven years ago now is i got called in to uh la to the real la because where i teach is the you know eastern edge it's not the the palm trees and the ocean and the and hollywood sign it's it's just a a nice suburban you're you're in socal thank you for recognizing that i'm in socal I'm in the region. But I got called in to a recording studio to speak one line of dialogue in a television program with which I trust you are familiar called BoJack Horseman. And I got to play myself as a ringtone. There was a running joke that Diane had a ringtone from NPR. In fact, it was an NPR joke. And so I was on Fresh Air and I was the ringtone. doing a pompous version of myself. But it's one line of dialogue. And it's in season four that I speak my one line as Diane's ringtone. But with my students who really, they're not fundamentally very likely to be interested in my own cultural production. My books are sometimes they're forced to know that I... write books or they're slightly curious about the situation, but they're not reading my books and they don't imagine that there's anything in them necessarily for them. I'm exaggerating slightly, but there's a look that I came to associate with the day that a student who just thought of me as their professor was watching BoJack Horseman season four episode, whatever, and heard my voice on BoJack Horseman and they would come in and they would look at me like, This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Squarespace. Obviously, Jason, you and I spend a lot of time on the World Wide Web, so do our peers, our listeners, our friends, our colleagues, maybe even your parents if they're freaky. And if you're doing anything in the world, writing, taking pictures. I do topless boxing. You need a website. Exactly. A website that works, that does what it's supposed to do, that allows you to be creative but also business-minded.

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That is Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash how long. That'll get you free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince punto com slash how long. Things have changed. Was that you? Yeah, yeah. Things have changed. And I'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was on that show. Yeah. And so they have their entire own framework of what values and systems, just as I did and you did. I mean, I'm older than you guys. And I made my world out of a lot of eccentric ingredients. But mostly, we have the not going to college, and we've got a couple of tattoos, but no face tattoos. Sure, yes. We can relate to each other. I would find people who also really liked the strange films. bands or marvel comics or uh outre literature that i liked and i had it i had a context for my stuff well they've got that and they wouldn't dream of trying to insist that i understand what it is i i just i yeah i guess i i forget that in those situations you know it's less of an exchange than i think in my mind it is you know um because I guess we talk to people all the time, but it's an exchange. We're not in a position of kind of like, we are bestowing upon you this knowledge. So it becomes a different thing when you start organizing it that way. It is different, though, in a sense, in that they are living in the era, they grew up in the era of the infinity jukebox, where if they wanted to, they could look at 100,000 hours of Carol Burnett programs. I don't think that particular thing's going to happen, but they do sometimes delve into our world and fish out things of value. Totally. I mean, this happens constantly now. That's like what TikTok is. That's why... Yeah, it's a lot of that. But whereas we had the opposite. You lived in a kind of a vacuum. Have y'all heard about the Roman Empire? This shit is crazy. I saw it on TikTok. Yeah. This is before White Lotus. It's like... What?

It's like, oh, gee, yeah. It was when Rome was really a mess. I mean, things were falling apart. They had to put that place back together. This place is a mess. This place is filthy. So, you know, I sometimes reminisce, and this is my age reality, is that, you know, I could hear a rumor about a record that I might like. Like someone might say, Oh, if you're really into that sex pistols, you might be interested in the Velvet Underground. And I'd be like, well, what's that sound like? And then I might have to wait about 10 years to find a record store with a Velvet Underground record that I would take home. And I'd be like, oh, that's what they were talking about. There was the opposite of the Infinity Jukebox. You could just speculate about all the things that you... Couldn't see and couldn't hear. Back then, you just had to hum it for them. And luckily, Velvet Underground is quite hummable. Yeah. Or like enact the story of an entire great film noir that you saw once on the midnight movie. Just really recall it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man, there was this cool guy, Humphrey Bogart. And it was amazing. And you just use the bee's knees. Everything was fragments. and rumors of what could be very cool. We talk about that a lot, about how the biggest difference is access to things and how there used to be an element of searching and discovery that just doesn't exist anymore, which is... Obviously, I think that's bad because I'm a dickhead, but it's probably for the best. It's really different. It's just different. Let's say that. Back before we had the infinite jukebox and television box as well, something like the Olympics coming on television was a huge deal. And now... We could not give a flying shit about it. Did you watch any of these Olympics opening ceremonies? I accidentally watched a couple of things on a screen at a bar last night here in Maine. And there aren't that many bars with screens. There aren't that many bars where I am in Maine. So it was really unusual to be there. And then I was like, my partner and I were...

We're watching people looking at a screen and we're like, what are they focused on? And we had to remember that it was the Olympics. And but yeah, it was like a tiny little shadow of that unifying thing. What are you guys focused on? Oh, it's just the women's water polo first round. Don't worry about it. Drink your beer. I found myself amazed at how ready people get every four years really quickly for like knowing about all these people and things and events. And I'm like, oh. You have to really assemble a lot of information to appreciate it. Dust off my luge rules and regulations book every four years. Well, thank God to our friends at NBC. They're able to put together emotional packages that explain an athlete's journey voiced by Call Her Daddy. So it's a great kind of combo of worlds. So you know who to root for. Yeah, so you know exactly. I don't think that people... The opening ceremony was one of the worst things I've ever seen. And I don't... I can't believe the French people are proud of it, but that's in a whole other issue. I have been hearing some weird trickle down stuff about the opening ceremonies, but it's one of those things where by the time it gets into your feed in the form of memes, you really can't tell which things are jokes about jokes about jokes and which things are actually images from the... event itself so i'd like to be there man it looked really crazy or else people are doing are making really crazy you know fake art about it but i just don't know what it is in this case jonathan it's both and that's kind of the dream scenario for me personally i want i don't care to know what's real and what's not as long as it's all it's advanced it's that's a welcome to the future moment everything's going to be both from now on it's going to be really crazy and then people will decorate it with craziness and you'll just never remember which was which perfect smooth brain baby hopefully that'll be the new sort of class system of those who understand what is real and fake and what is not you know that's that's a currency that i can get behind a differentiator kind of not having other currency yeah well it's it's also a it's a superpower there should be like a a character in the comic books who touches things and reverses them back from their deformation into memes and AI. You see it. And he's like, that's what that really was. Damn. And he touches it and it just reverts to its baseline condition. That's like the Twitter thing where...

You know, under a false, a fake news tweet. What are those called again, Chris? Yeah, it says it's fake. Why are you asking me about fake news? I don't subscribe to that. No, you're just a Twitter power user. There's like a specific phrase for what those are called. Oh, I don't know. But there's like a warning that comes up that basically says this is not true underneath, which is like insane that that's where we're at. They're like, you can post whatever you want. Continuous. We're going to intervene. Yeah, we're going to debunk. Exactly. So you're in Maine. Are you summering? Are you just doing press? Are you barbecuing, getting drunk every night? Yeah. Oh, no. This is where I come in the summers. This is where I like to be. And I mean, I have a house here that I bought when I was first running away from New York City in the early aughts that when I didn't know I'd be working. as a professor in southern california i just wanted to be somewhere other than new york and and i found this insane beautiful coastal place that i come to and i and i love to be here and write and so i still come here i i get here when i whenever i can which is basically summers and yeah i count on it as as a place to both see east coast friends who come up Because midsummer in New York is a time to... You're telling me, baby. I was just complaining about it in the intro. I've been sweating all day. Well, the problem is the house guests, though, because I don't know how many rooms you got, but when people know, you got a couple extra. Well, that is. It's management. It's management. Yeah, it's a lot of changing sheets. I run a hot sheets establishment, as they say. But the ocean is swimmable here, which always sounds more macho than it is. It's like actually not... impossibly cold it's really it's something you can immerse in and be really happy and sort of a little bit and i write i so i write and i swim and i and i and i change sheets okay that's look that sounds pretty meditative but what's the what's the seafood intake looking like are you going oh it's crazy constant fried fish shack is two miles away it's called the fish net and uh yeah it's just a matter of is it the

Today, the crab roll or the lobster roll or the... Fishnet sounds like one of your San Francisco startups in the late 80s, early 90s. But you're saying they got crab? Okay, that sounds pretty... I think you're thinking of Fishnet XXX, which I'm also a patron of that as well. This is the original deep-frying Fishnet. Deep-frying, got it. So every day, I'm assuming you hop on a rusty beach cruiser and ride over to the crab shack. And then you close your eyes, throw a dart at the menu? If what you mean is my Toyota, it is rusty, and that's my beach cruiser. Okay. Yeah, the salt air and the humidity. What kind of Toyota are we talking about, Jonathan? It's a baseline Toyota. It has no other name. It deserves no other name. Can you loosely describe the body style? Is it a truck, an SUV, a convertible? Rusted. Body style. Completely corroded. Okay, good. This is a dream car. Electronics barely working. No AC. Hold on, hold on, though. This is not the car you drove across the country. This is the car you keep in Maine. No, not at all. This is a car that can only stay on this peninsula now. This is his Mainer. This is the country car. Yeah, people love Maine. I've never really been, if I'm being honest with you. You people. I've lived in New York for a long time, but I would always just fly somewhere. I don't have a car. I've never had a car here. And I've just never been to any of these places, and they look beautiful. The people in Maine are counting on that attitude to be the prevailing attitude. Like, yeah, it sounds all right, but that's really kind of far away, and I don't have a handle on it, so I'm not going to go there. I got a two-hour max in the Prius kind of thing, so there's only so many places I can go. You get there fast. You take it slow. It's Maine, baby. We love it. But then also, if you don't belong, don't be long is sort of the attitude from the locals, I'm hoping. Right. Well, there's a sign at the... at the bridge where you enter Maine from New Hampshire that says, you know, if you lived here, you'd be home by now. But also Maine, the way life should be. So they're actually, it's a low population place that is looking for more year round people. But if you come to a particular part of it, you're invariably going to be exposed to the opinion that there are too many summer people. Yes, of course. What they really want is a full commitment.

Don't come up here unless you're just going to stay. Year-round in remote Maine. You sound like my ex-girlfriend, Maine. She didn't just want a summer boyfriend. No, this is the problem. They try to lock him down. I told her in April what the deal was, but you know. In April. I thought that was responsible. Get out ahead of it. Every April I come up here. There's plenty of time. So we're talking a lot about driving. In the intro, I brought up a little TSA action. I know that you had some thoughts about it. I was reading the little airmail piece about it. I had a lot of through lines and similarities. You had thoughts on what clothes to wear. Yeah. Slippable. You have a slippable pair of Pradas that you always fly in. I like flying with a shirt with a front pocket in it to put things in while I'm seated. That's good. Right. You do need pockets. Yeah. All right, Ernest Hemingway. Relax. Okay. Jesus Christ. I mean, I don't have like a half a cigar and a quill pen. It's like an edible in my iPhone. You know, it's not really. Dignified ball. You don't keep your mini moleskin and your Cartier pin just right there. It's too bad. It's the other Biscoff, really. One for later. Okay, sorry, Jonathan. Okay, so we need pockets on the plane, and I'm assuming every decade you age, you need another pocket. You need more pockets, and you need to... be real about how much you're really going to sleep. I mean, I used to come onto the plane thinking it was a workspace, but the seat in front of me has gotten closer. That's right. I've gotten more tired. Sounds like a national song. And I just like to embrace exhaustion now. Okay, so you're hopping on the plane. And you're just taking, you're going straight to nap time. It's about shutting down. Okay. All right. Are you, are you drinking something? Are you smoking something? What are we doing? No, I don't, I don't need that on the plane. I want to have, I want to do that when I'm going to be awake and it might be fun. I, I, I like the earplugs and the eye mask and the neck pillow. Oh, wow. So you got the whole, you get the whole kit. It seems a little, a little, uh, fussy, but you know, the, the neck pillow that keeps you from doing the constant.

Yeah. Snore. Head rolls forward. Stabilizes the position of the jaw. That's pretty good. Keep your jawline looking good. When I really have it together, I just put a lot of things on my head, which has the added benefit that other people don't think of you as a human being anymore, so they don't try to talk to you. That is a major bonus. With enough on your head, you can even hang signs on the stuff. They will say like... don't wake me until breakfast on the Atlantic flight. Back in 15, things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Using or sticking with the Rolling Stone tattoo you scale, what is the cutoff on number of hours of a flight where you decide to leave the neck pillow at home versus bring it with you? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, well, I probably wouldn't trouble over it on going up and down the coast like a hop to LA to... yeah the bay area or seattle or something but call it three hours maybe maybe three hours yeah under three hours i might not bother with the necdole but you know usually when i'm when i'm getting on a plane i'm i'm hopping the breadth of our great nation often then you know only to get on another plane and hop to hop to europe or something I do a lot of long flights. He's a hopper. Also, when you're in SoCal, you're kind of in a geographical island. It's far from everywhere. It's not like being in New York where you might take a 35-minute flight to Boston and you're like, oh, I could have done that on Amtrak. Once you're in LA, you're a long way from kind of everything. Or get to London and two Tarantino movies from New York is not something. Here in LA, whenever you go to... Melbourne or Perth. Oh, baby. That's a big thing. I did Singapore in one shot. That was endless. I think I changed who I was on the duration of that flight. I became someone new. I didn't change planes. I changed my personality. I had all new skin. I had a total encounter with myself and I revised a lot of stuff and then I got off the plane in Singapore. Did you pay for that flight?

Oh, that was free. Definitely. The Singapore Writers Festival paid for that flight. And they gave me a choice. There was like an honorarium or first class on Singapore air. And I completely... I went for the first class. I don't even know what an honorarium is. What is that? Is that like a terrarium for your medals? It would be like some cash in hand. Got it. Okay. No, it's where they give you an amount of money that is small, so they call it something nice to make it feel better. Right. It sounds, yeah. Instead of fee, it's honorarium. And you said, I'll take the store credit, sweetie. Fly me out there. Yeah, I'll take the famously great first-class Singapore. Do I want $1,400 or a $14,000 plane ticket? Okay, so you were sleeping like a bastard in there probably, right? I had time to have a couple of sleeps and watch a couple of movies and eat like four amazing meals. That flight was a lifetime. I kind of like that. My problem is I am... I wake up to the smell of the food. That interrupts my sleep. They don't even have to tap my shoulder. So you'd have to add another face thing that I don't even think about, which is nose plugs, too. Nose plugs, exactly. So then I might die because the breathing would get tough. Yeah, I was going to say, if you use the neck brace to keep your mouth from hanging open and you use the nose plugs, yeah, the breathing is a challenge. There has to be some type of... smell inhibitor medication or a pill you can take or there's an app for it or something. Maybe this is what we need to work on. I would love to find something to stop smells that I don't want because that's the number one. It's like a Claritin, non-drowsy, 24-hour smell relief. I got nothing. That's the number one problem in my life. One of the top problems in my life. Okay, I'm just going to say one thing. then you need to really have a beeper on your phone about when you take showers because the people who can't smell anything often are also the people that you are smelling vividly. Yeah, I see what you mean. I see what you mean. I'd be smelling vividly too. Yeah, Chris, he's so affected by it, he actually actively tries to get COVID before his flights to affect his sense of smell and taste. I think I had COVID last episode, but I'm fine now. Many have died. There's a story about...

about Devo early in their career that they were being flown somewhere and they decided together to not shower for like four days before they got on the flight. Just as like an outsider art? Just as a Devo intervention. That's outsider art. There's no other way to describe that. That's just mean to you. Yeah, get outside. That's just mean. That's just mean. Yeah, it's not kind. You mentioned earlier at the beginning of our convo that your students may or may not be able to read cursive. I know that that's a partial joke and you're exaggerating. Well, actually, I'm thinking of one of my own children in particular who will hand me something in cursive, like a menu, and he'll be like, you have to read this to me. Can I get a translation, Pops? Yeah. Okay. I think I read or I heard something recently that people are considering, or I guess teachers, professors, whatever, are considering bringing back handwritten things because of AIs, students using AI to write pieces or stories or turn things in. Is that something you've considered combating with your students? Well, yeah. For the college professors, you can think about AI in a lot of many different ways, all of which are interesting, except for the one that college professors are stuck with, which is having to catch a new kind of very, very boring cheating. Excuse me. It is boring. I'm doing my best to stay out of that situation because I teach creative writing. I actually think the place where AI meets the artistic practice of creative writing shouldn't be just a... pearl clutching oh my god they're coming for our for our creativity space but that actually it's a tool it could be it could be okay you know it's a question kind of like a lot of things of how are you going to use it where is it going to enter your your practice your responsibility what are you going to do with it well you not even but not even taking the ethics the kind of um moral element the responsible element out of it being like are you going to be interesting or boring with this just like what

What can you make happen that would actually be worth doing, would be fun, would create something that no one's read before? But yes, if you're assigning a paper or a take-home test or something, suddenly you've got this problem that people could just generate reams of generic garbage, which would actually, ironically, only be distinguished by the fantastical mistakes that AI is prone to making. Otherwise, it would be totally... drab and dutiful and you know syntactically really dull and you know so this is a real thing and uh there are already lots of workarounds i mean the blue book is coming back do you guys you know what's the blue what's the blue like an examination book a really cheap little um notebook that the professor hands out at the start of a class or a test an exam and says write all the answers in here by hand and then collects the blue books at the end of the at the end of the session but um Yeah, it's a sort of a sad area. Do you find, to borrow a comic phrase, do you find your spidey sense for AI detection has increased, or do you feel like you're doubting, you're second-guessing yourself, or you're like, oh my god, is everything fucking AI? Does it drive you a little crazy, or do you feel like you can have a good sense of when it's fabricated or not? Well, I... have not been presented with a lot of fake AI, you know, paper writing essays, the kind of, like I say, my position in college teaching is slightly different. So I haven't really examined like a real one and a fake one and just, and tried to test my own capacity to call it out. But just looking at stuff on the internet, I mean, I feel like when a website throws itself at me because of some search result and it's like within a couple of sentences, if it's doing that weird, muddy churning deliberate thing it's so obvious it's just so so obvious it's so obvious or the email the bulk email thing or the bulk email yeah i i've never thought that it was going to be uh fooling me on that level or that i'd wonder you know it just like it's it it throws it throws its weird distinctive form of

gray text, gray prose at you really, really quickly, almost to a degree that I find funny. So I think, you know, I've used it in a couple of, I wrote a couple of short stories where I let the AI extrapolate some stuff for me and do some, try to fill in some narrative sections. And what's great about it is this incredible, deliberate, you know, every sentence is slightly redundant to each other sentence, like overestablishes everything. So then you can kind of make a certain amount of fun out of that, but you have to rework it. Sure. So you're doing, you're doing, you're like, I'm still doing the work. You're doing the, we're still doing the work. Absolutely. You have to, you have to use it as like a, it's like a, a paint in the, you know, in the, in the toolbox now. Yeah. Yeah. It's just a guitar pedal or something. You got to keep. twiddling those knobs. Just let the wah-wah pedal do the entire solo. No one wants that. So I guess you're the wrong person to ask because you're teaching the one group of students who actually want to write versus the other people who have to. I'm at a very lucky position, doubly so, because yes, I'm teaching a proportion of students within my institution who are there to try to figure out what's interesting about writing. So the idea of a workaround just getting out of the work getting out of the effort doesn't appeal to them but also i'm in a very elite college with a lot of really amazing i was gonna say these nerds are we got some overachievers we ain't dealing with these are these are very upstanding students who are who are on the whole not like kind of trying to just uh slag off their whole effort and just right you know get through yeah that's too bad what university is this by the way jonathan which which one pomona college pomona college and so i i meet a lot of terrific students. You know what I mean? I'm not running down other institutions or situations. I just mean that. I know what you mean. It ain't University of Alabama where they're going to go to the football games. They're going there to learn. I also, you know, there's a lot of proneness in our culture. I mean, especially in certain areas of the, you know, political world where they're trying to score points, where they're just like, they are beating up on the 18-year-olds. They're just...

The idea of them is just they're unbelievably lazy and useless and out to lunch and uninterested or ahistorical. And I'm like, that's not really who I'm spending time with. Not my teens. Not what I'm spending time with. How would you compare Pomona College to a college like Bennington, perhaps? Well, that's a... Cool question for me because when I was a college student, I went to Bennington for three semesters, but I did that in the mid 80s. So I'm comparing, I mean, we already did some of this. The past is another country, right? So, but as it happens, I recently visited Bennington. I was invited to give a talk and I had this fantastic memory trip where I got to walk around the old dorms and be in these, you know, because it's a very, I don't know if you know that campus, but it's a really unbelievably, Bennington's like a... a dream campus it's so beautiful there and so so tiny i've heard so tiny and and lily uh lily who did sorry for interrupting lily who did the podcast about bennington she was on our show a couple years ago and so was brett so we we know we know about it but i don't think either of us have been there you know about it yeah yeah it's like a kind of a stage set of a college campus so being back there it's sort of um timeless so i really was able to trip out on on being back there But I also got to meet some of the present version of the professors and students and just taste the atmosphere there. And it's comparable in some ways. I mean, Bennington, the brand is a more eccentric brand than where I teach, Pomona College. Bennington is more in that anti-college college, which is what drew me to it. It was why I thought I might be able to be a student there. And they still do that, but I think they do that in a more, I don't know, I guess, If you talk to Brad, of course, you know some of these stories, or if you know Lily's podcast. When I went there in the mid-80s, it was kind of a crazy place. It was like a branch of Andy Warhol's factory that had been turned into a college in the Vermont woods. Now it's got its feet on the ground. It's still an anti-school place, innovative, unusual, attracts the...

Our nation's most eccentric. Yeah. But it ain't cheap either. Well, it never was cheap. It never was cheap. But none of them are cheap. It's just ridiculously expensive to go to college. I mean, when I went to Bennington, it was the most expensive college in the country. And that price tag was $13,000. $13,000? Can't even get half a middle school education with that. What the hell? Yeah, that's two days of... Pre-K. That's two days of pre-K in Silver Lake. Okay. But you did not complete your teachings or your schoolings at Bennington? No. To this day, I remain a sophomore on leave from Bennington College. That's nice they had you back without even having to graduate. I should have gone to college for a semester just so I could go speak now. They never considered giving you an honorary degree after you got... They don't give. That's part of their brand is they don't... mess with and we kind of like that that kind of turns us on doesn't it it's sort of good yeah yeah but they do i mean in a way they have given me one because they list me now they've sort of backed into it they list me as class of 86 which is when i would have graduated well they list if you if you go on to have some success they're willing to claim you it's the ones who don't have any success that they're not interested in claiming well i had a little bit and it's sweet that they like me over there because i was not i didn't honor that institution in any particular Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. You didn't do anything extra special. No, no, I wasn't helping. I wasn't helping. How old are your kids? My two kids are teenagers. They'll both be in high school in September. Do they think you're cool? They think you're a freak? What's the vibe? I don't want to speak for them. You'll have to get them on your show about their assessment, but I have a good time with them. Okay, that's all that matters. We do fun stuff together. They have not turned a cold shoulder to me. Okay, well, I think that's the real litmus test. And they come to Maine with you or do they stay in Cali? Yeah, one's still here. The other one ran back to be with his buddies in California. But he was here for a part of the summer.

Yeah, he needs to shred in LA. I got it. I was the same when I was that age. Actually, you just called it. He's a guitarist, and he wanted to go to a special jazz workshop. Jazz workshop? You better tell him he wants to make some money. He's got to find a new genre. Yeah. He's not like a wah-wah pedal guy anymore. He got really esoteric, but he's a good player. That's cool. Young people are playing complex jazz now. I've seen it online. Yes, who knows? Next they may be writing in cursive. Cursive is the jazz of letters, right? It really is. It's the jazz of writing in a lot of ways, Jason, in a lot of ways. So are all of his friends into that? Is that like something that's happening? He's got a cohort of cool jazz boys. He's got a tiny drum kit, probably. No one's doing drugs or smoking cigarettes. Well, he's not driving, so he can do a full drum kit. Oh, wow. I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get that callback to the early part of our program. Yeah, that's actually... That's good stuff. I did not know this. I didn't know this was a thing. I didn't know this was a thing. I didn't know what jazz was when I was 15 or whatever. I just knew it was the part of the record store I wasn't in. I mean, I saw the word. Yeah, I'm familiar with this word. I know how to spell it, but I don't really know what it means. They don't have the Ramones in that section. They do not have the Ramones in that section. They do not. I mean, if you listen to music nowadays, it's gotten so bad that we have to reach for jazz. That's right. We've been forced into the jazz section. We've been forced. They figured out how to drive us. They drove us to it. Yeah, it's like, I don't understand these time signatures, but shit, I'll take this over another round of espresso. I heard the new Ice Spice, and I just started going... I like listening to jazz when I'm doing stuff, you know, because often it doesn't have lyrics, which makes it easy to kind of work to. But I... Playing it seems very difficult and hard to understand to me, to my mind as a non-musician. For your mind, yeah. I think playing it is difficult. I think that's true. Yeah. It's a bit of a wank fest, bro. That's kind of half the battle. Well, I'm not going to say that. I'm not calling out the wank fest. Look at what I do. Look at how I spend my time. Yeah, writing is a wank fest, too. I mean, no question there.

But we say it as if having a wank is a bad thing. Am I right, listeners? Good point. Do you, though, are you like a lot of writers that find it torturous or do you actually enjoy it? Well, I know from listening to your program that you are going to shame me deeply if I talk about the infinite sacrifice and deep... It's a fission effort that I undergo every day. But no, actually, you're out ahead of me on that because I always feel that writers exaggerate the suffering and that really we are in fact having a wank fest, that there's a lot of self-pleasuring going on, that we're amusing ourselves and then revising that to make it even better so it looks like we were funny the first time. And then we're the master of what do they call it? Monday morning quarterbacking. Every character is clever because we get to fix their dialogue. And then we come out and we show it off to people. I think it's a lot of fun. And if I didn't, I always tell my students this. If you don't find the... the joy in this practice, you won't do it. Because then, I mean, if it's suffering. Yeah, the money ain't so good that you're willing to slog through. Right. No, absolutely. It's not a good investment. You're not buying Marvel stock just before the Disney acquisition. And what's more, if the things about it that can be irritating or a little bit, you know, like sensory deprivation, like sitting alone, not moving your body, just barely moving your fingertips for hours. you know, having to shut off the internet because it's distracting. If those things bother you, you're not going to do this work because it is joyous. And also you're going to convey the joy, like making it interesting. Even if you're writing about deep things or profound things, or you're trying to move people or make them think about painful things, there also always has to be pleasure in the language, surprise.

elements of animation or velocity or excitement, or no one will read it. No one will read it if you're not having a good time. So I think it's the underrated aspect of this work. No one will read it if you're not having a good time. I think that's very true. I think you can feel it. I also like the word velocity in there. I believe that's true. Whoever's listening to this and who has written a paragraph where you hit period and you're like, oh, shit. That was fucking good. You know, like that's probably a very addicting feeling if you're able to string enough of those along to get a book deal, you know? Well, and I always see that as like the measure of a workday is I have to like crack myself up really great, you know, to a great extent at some point. And I have to have been like, whoa. Johnny boy, you've done it again. Yeah. You know, but also if you only execute the plan, it's boring. You have to find a surprise, you know, like the characters have to say something. hadn't intended and you know you have to be a little bit like like a reader as you're writing and like whoa that was cool what was that can't wait to see what happens next yeah exactly while you're writing it from my own brain and the new book is out now or is it out soon so i have a a book that just came out like or or i think like today or or or yesterday the sheets are still hot it's really just out which is a collection of my writings about art which include fictions about art called cellophane bricks But I also, I'm going to be all over the place talking about the paperback of Brooklyn Crime Novel, my last novel, which came out in November last year. And so it'll be paperback in about, I guess, like six weeks. We love when it hits paperback. Okay. It's a little easier to carry around and you feel less bad taking it to the beach. or setting your coffee on it or something. That's true. I feel less bad throwing it in a dumpster. That's true, too. It's recyclable. Only when I'm done finishing it, when the single tear falls as I close the last page.

Chuck it in the bin. It feels good. Exactly. That's the plan. That's the plan. Jonathan, thank you for joining us. It was a pleasure. An honor. To chat with you on how long gone today. Thanks for having me along. Of course. Anytime. Enjoy your summer over there in Maine and have a crab for me. I'll listen to some of your episodes on the long drive back to LA. Please do. That's why we do this. That's why we do this. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks again. Everyone go grab cellophane. Only on Amazon.com. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Jonathan. Thanks, Jonathan. Later.