Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible> right on radio on cafe I 90.3, FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Webber. Tonight on, right on radio. I talk with Harold Holser about his latest book. President's verse the press and this remarkable new history. We examine the dual rise of the American presidency and the media that shaped it from Washington to Trump holds her Chronicles, the disputes and distrust between these core institutions revealing. The essence of their confrontation is built into the fabric of the nation.
Speaker 1 00:01:15 And the last part of that, our Andy speaks with Vanessa Basilica about her latest novel, the great offshore grounds. She is the author of the novel Zen, which won the pen. Robert w Bingham prize. Her short stories have appeared in 10 house and Zion and her nonfiction and GQ, the Atlantic and the activist. She has been at various times, the teenage runaway, a sex worker, a union organizer, a musician, a train hopper, a waitress, and a mother, all of this and more. So stay tuned to write on radio.
Speaker 0 00:01:53 Alright, Harold, whenever you're ready. You can begin with your reading. Alright. One afternoon early in his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt, summer journalists. So his white house office and gave them a special opportunity to hear him and jot down his latest thoughts provided they could keep up with his galloping mind. What made the session unique was not just that it offered the correspondence spontaneous access was that the president conducted the entire briefing while his barber, an African American treasury department messenger named Delaney gave him his regular midday's Shea tr decided that the casual gathering should become his routine. The sessions became known to the correspondence as the barber's hour at one o'clock every afternoon, they would file. The reporters would file into an hour room, connecting the president's office to that of his secretary. There, they find tr in a large armchair, his face cupboard with ladder and Delaney, his weight razors sweeping over it. Um, whenever a particular inquiry arouses him, the president would leap from his chair, clutching his towel and hold forth until he calmed down steady. Mr. President Delaney would plead bladed hand struggling to hold Roosevelt down for fear and unexpected gesture would slit his throat. Very good.
Speaker 2 00:03:19 This is right on radio today. I'm speaking with Harold Holter about his latest work, the president's verse, the press, mr. Holster is one of the nation's leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the civil war era. He currently serves as the director of the Roosevelt house public policy Institute at Hunter college in New York and its recipient of the 2015 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln prize. Thank you for being on retinol radio, mr. Holster,
Speaker 0 00:03:42 My pleasure. Thank you for having me on
Speaker 2 00:03:45 It presents a cogent argument that there's an indelible relationship between political journalism in America and its ability to challenge our presidents since the founding era. How's this confrontation built into the fabric of our nation from the beginning?
Speaker 0 00:04:01 Well, um, I don't think it was the exact beginning because George Washington had the longest press honeymoon in history three full years during which he remained the unassailable icon that he had been since succeeding in the revolutionary war, but toward the end of his first term, his own secretary of state Thomas Jefferson, um, invited a New York journalist to set up a new anti-federalists newspaper in Philadelphia. And he also gave him a job in the state department to carry out of and debit against the president. And for the next four and a half years, Washington was subjected to such intense criticism. I mean about his honor about whether he was stealing money from the treasury for padding, his expense account, um, um, holding himself up as a God before Americans, that I think if you read the first draft of his farewell address, you'll see that he mentions the outrageous of the press as one of the reasons he is saying, add you to the presidency. Um, and I think that more than his desire to not have a monarchy is why he gave up the presidency. After two terms.
Speaker 2 00:05:15 I was wonder if you could talk about this character that was drawn up on him in the Philadelphia aura, Aurora, there's an episode you describing the book with Washington. Uh, he discovered this character of him written and Jefferson observed that Washington guns. One of those passions when he cannot command himself,
Speaker 0 00:05:30 Right. Uh, Washington had a temper, um, which has contemporaries. Those who knew him w quite cognizant enough. Anyway, he saw this character of him going to the guillotine and this newspaper, the Aurora published to his horror by Benjamin Franklin's grandson, and which had criticized him constantly. He threw it to the floor and he basically jumped down, jumped up and down on it with his boots and crushed it until the floor and Jefferson who in a sense was the cause of the criticism. He inspired partisan journalism, just watch sort of amused by this display of temper. I think he, he kind of got off on it to use a contemporary expression, but it characterized how voluble of how a test day, the relationship with the presidents with the president and his journalistic critics had become,
Speaker 2 00:06:26 Okay. I want to ask you about this. Now, the publisher of the Aurora was Benjamin Franklin buck, who you just mentioned was a grandson of Ben Franklin. Right? What do you think Ben Franklin is responsible to Ben if he saw his grandson's attacks on George Washington or just his, the content the Aurora put out in that time? Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:06:43 You know, every generation is, that's a really great question. This is probably scandalized by the, what the next generation does, but, um, I dunno, Franklin product would have been sheepish about it because it was he who trained his young band in publishing and printing. He gave him practice, you know, not only a European, uh, um, education, but a professional education in how to print and publish a newspaper. So I hope he would have felt guilty. Cause I think, um, they, Aurora was, um, just a, um, a staggeringly negative attack, dog newspaper. Uh, they employed a journalist named James calender who leveled most of the vicious attacks on Washington, trailing him all the way back to Mount Vernon and even into his post-presidency. And, um, the Republicans slash Democrats, the opposition were thrilled with him. Um, but one day to show, how part is that? The part is impressive, become calendar, uh, relocated to Richmond, Virginia.
Speaker 0 00:07:52 And I asked president now, president Jefferson for a job as postmaster of Richmond, not a hard thing to do. I mean, Jefferson had had supported journalists in the past. I've given them jobs and it was time to get Federalists out of federal jobs and put Democrats in. It's interesting. This is all about the post office, which is all we're hearing about these days. Jefferson didn't like the way calender ass. He said no calendar. The longtime Republican editor suddenly became a Federalist Senator, began attacking Jefferson. And it was he who put out the pamphlet that announced to the world that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with his enslaved, um, young woman, Sally Hemings. So there was the first object lesson in for presidents don't mess with the press, reward your supporters. And I think presidents from Jefferson on learned that that was the thing to do.
Speaker 2 00:08:49 John Adams blamed his defeat for a second term in office, on the press. Why did he feel this way?
Speaker 0 00:08:56 Well, because he'd made a mess of the free press and the doctrine of the free press and the constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press, Adam signed and enforced a law, uh, that made it a federal crime to ridicule the president of the United States. And as absurd as that is he prosecuted and imprisoned fine journalists who broke that law, including performance, mr. Kellogg, he went to jail in Richmond, um, for ridiculing, uh, uh, John Adams. I, once I once had occasion to talk with George W. Bush about the press, I recount this anecdote in my book and he told me he had just read, uh, David McCullough's biography of John Adams. Um, and uh, he said, he thought McCullough gave him a free pass on the sedition act. He said, look, I would, um, I never put the publisher of the New York times in jail. And then he winked, he liked to wink if you remember, he winked. And he said, not that I wouldn't like to. So Adam's acted on impulses that other presidents I've repressed, even Donald Trump has repressed them. His bark is much worse than his bite on prosecuting rather than insulting the press. So Adam's paid the price. The opposition press really hated him because he threatened their livelihoods. He threatened their Liberty and he threatened their pocket book.
Speaker 2 00:10:24 I'm glad you mentioned Trump, how his bark is worse than his bite. I think it's interesting how president Trump has been compared to Andrew Jackson and his politics, but after ring's, Jackson's response to criticism towards me in the press, I think it's safe to say that similar attitudes towards the press, but Jackson's actual response though. Went a little bit further. What was Jackson's treatment of the press like I was wearing you talk about that.
Speaker 0 00:10:48 Well, I I'll make it a sort of a Trump analogy as well. Uh, Donald Trump is, is routinely criticized for having a chummy relationship with Sean Hannity of Fox news. They apparently talk a few times a day and half of the maybe, maybe, or maybe not mocks him in private, but feeds off of this relationship to get exclusive conversations. Well, Andrew Jackson appropriately as Trump's hero because Jackson pioneered in this, he had journalists in the white house regularly. They became part of what was later called the kitchen cabinet because they entered the side door and not the front door of the white house. And they were advisors. They were policy makers, they were speech writers. They created a kind of a, the first newspaper syndicate where stories were sent throughout the country, based on what Jackson's loyal papers said. He rewarded the publisher with government printing, contracts and access, but these guys got real federal jobs, a one named Isaac Hill became controller of the United States. Another Amos Kendall became postmaster general. So here we are back to the post office. They control the post office and Kendall once said, maybe I should stop sending, um, anti Jackson newspapers through the mail. He actually thought of that. So again, the, that this unique confluence of presidents press and post office, not to sound too alliterative is not new.
Speaker 2 00:12:23 I want to go back a second here and ask you about Thomas Jefferson. Who's attached in the press, perhaps more than any president before him yet he held a firm belief that the federal government couldn't prevent a newspaper from printing opinions. What, why was Jefferson so different in his response to the press compared to Washington or Adams?
Speaker 0 00:12:42 So I think, I think you're right about a difference, but it may be more of a distinction without a difference. Jefferson said amazingly, uh, um, informed and liberal things. I mean, small L liberal about the freedom of the press. He said, if I had to choose between free government and free press, I choose the free press said that the press was the toxin of Liberty. It was the alarm bell that would preserve American freedom. But at the same time, he, he did crack down on the press in his own way. Yes, he thought that journalists could print things, but he also believed that they should be prosecuted for libel, for printing what they printed. The big difference between Jefferson and Jackson is a Jefferson said, good things about press freedom. But that Adams thought the federal government should prosecute the press. Jefferson who was a state's rights man thought that state libel laws should be pursued. And he encouraged state libel prosecution against Andy Jefferson, uh, newspapers as always with Jefferson. I mean, I said, Trump's bark is worse than his bite. Jefferson's idealism is much more elevated than his reality. I sort of compare his belief in a free press and the way he behaved to his, you know, brilliant word smithing in the declaration he believed, or he said, he believed that all men are created equal, but it didn't practice what he preached in real life. So I think that was sort of the way he dealt with the press.
Speaker 2 00:14:16 I'll ask you now about Abraham Lincoln and what I did not realize until reading your book is unconstitutional actions towards the press. And he arrested in prison, many editors and took control of all the Telegraph lines in the United States during the civil war and nearly 200 papers were subjugated under his administration, right? Why did Lincoln believe this was necessary to preserve the union?
Speaker 0 00:14:39 Well, he put it in at once said, must I shoot a simple minded soldier boy for deserving and spare the wildly agitator who induces to dessert. And with that aphorism, he meant newspaper. Men could be pro provocateurs who discouraged enlistment, who encouraged desertion. And they had to be suppressed. You had to drop enforcement of one aspect of the constitution, freedom of the press in order to save the entire constitution from rebellion and civil war. Uh, the Supreme court later said he had no justification for conducting military trials and imprisonment without charge against editors, but by then the war was over and he was dead. So in a way there was no judicial or legislative pushback against his censorship. He argued that the civil war gave him a unique power, not only to be commander in chief, but to be censor in chief and no one ever prosecuted more, um, or sought to the prosecution of more newspapers and editors than Abraham Lincoln. In the end. At the same time, he was a master of maintaining friendly relations with editors in his reelection campaign in the space of about a month. He ordered the imprisonment of two New York editors, including the editor of a powerful democratic party daily, the New York world, but where, when it came to the Republican daily, the New York times, he made its editor, the chairman of the Republican national committee. So how's that for an interweaving and, uh, uh, sort of a schizophrenia attitude toward the, toward journalism.
Speaker 2 00:16:32 One of the best presidents, I think who had the best relationship seemed to be with the press was theater Roosevelt. You mentioned who you did a great reading at the beginning. He was very invested in press managements, more than any president before him. Why was galvanizing public support so essential for him?
Speaker 0 00:16:51 Well, first of all, he saw, he lived through the decline of the big editor publishers, and the part is nature of their work. He came to the presidency in the age, more of yellow journalism and front page journalism. He had seen yellow journalism provoke the Spanish American war, uh, and the administration of his predecessor. Um, and he wanted to, you know, in the same manner in which, uh, as, as someone once said, he needed to be, um, the, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening and the corpse at every funeral, he also wanted and expected to be on the front page of every newspaper every day, every week. Um, he knew that front pages is what the nation looked at now, more than editorials. He made news, he befriended reporters. He, um, uh, so he was into daily journalism with leaks and trial balloons and something called swamping.
Speaker 0 00:17:50 When somebody else had a story, he would issue a bigger story to dominate the news. It was the Dawn of spontaneous photography. He would delay events if a photographer was delayed, um, to make sure he was, he was covered adequately in the press. And at the same time, he encouraged long form journalism to investigate, uh, the meat packing industry, the oil industry. He worked hand in hand with Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens. And when he thought he had milked them to what they were worth, he dropped them and condemned them as muckrakers. They are known as the muckrakers sending. It's almost a badge of honor, but he didn't need it as such. So he's pretty ruthless with the way he dealt with the press, but they loved him because he was a character and they needed characters to write about,
Speaker 2 00:18:35 Yeah, you know, unusual incidents of the press, respecting the wishes of a president. There was an understanding between the press and Franklin Roosevelt that he would not be pictured showing his handicap. How come
Speaker 0 00:18:50 You know, I looked everywhere for, I guess, a smoking gun. What was the deal they struck? And every reminiscence I've found from a photographer was gee, you know, he was such a nice guy and he was so nice to us and he was only trying to help the country. Why should we put something else in his way? And, um, but at the beginning it was this extraordinary gentleman's agreement. Ultimately the administration did push and crack down on anybody who left the fold. I mean, FDR was there for a very long time and, uh, control and friendships began to ease after the passage of eight, nine years inevitably. But it's an extraordinary faith that they protected him. Uh, no shots in his wheelchair, the, the ones who did were banished, really the ones who violated the gentleman's agreement, uh, no shots of him being lifted in and out of automobiles.
Speaker 0 00:19:45 And the question remains, did the public have a right to know? Um, or was it entirely private? He, uh, Roosevelt, we all remember. I hope we remember four years ago, Donald Trump's doctor drove up to Trump tower and handed out a health report that said he was the healthiest patient he had ever treated. And then he drove away and that was his official health report. Franklin Roosevelt got a reporter for a magazine to investigate his health and then got three doctors to write that he was the healthiest patient. They had not mentioning his handicap and not mentioning his heart disease and his high blood pressure. And then the one who wrote the story wrote a letter to FCR and said, we really got, we really got it done. Didn't we? So this friendly conspiracy, uh, probably without it, he might not have been president because Herbert Hoover who exercised every day in front of the press, it was called the medicine ball club. They threw a medicine ball around was that he could make an issue out of Roosevelt's disability.
Speaker 2 00:20:52 Many critics of president Trump have complained. He circumvents the press to deploy his message through Twitter, to the public directly. What you show is that he wasn't the first president to do this. And certainly won't be the last FTRs embrace of radio was an attempt to render the print, press irrelevant. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 0 00:21:12 Yeah. Um, there are three, three, three or four presidents who stand out five that he start with Lincoln and his use of the Telegraph wires that as you pointed out the union, um, uh, the government commandeered, he sent out lots of messages on the Telegraph, but, uh, yeah, but FDR combined access with circumvention, he held 998 press conferences during his presidency two a week, most of the time, which is an extraordinary degree of access that had been unprecedented there off the record. Um, and they could get a little brittle as Trump's. Do you want sold a journalist to go stand in the corner, which is like, Trump's saying you're a wise guy, or you're a nasty woman, I suppose, but yeah, he was a master of the radio. And by the way, that began from the place I work at Roosevelt house at Hunter college Roosevelt has, was FDRs, New York city home.
Speaker 0 00:22:13 It's where he ran his 1932 campaign. And on the day after his election, he, uh, went to his parlor and did an address on radio to assure the nation that he would protect them in this hour of need during the depression. And then after he became president, he delivered 28 of these kind of intimate, conversational, but very well rehearsed fireside chats. And he was just a master of the medium. Some people are great on radio and television and some aren't look at the difference between Richard Nixon on television and John Kennedy on television Kennedy, soaring from those televised debates in 1960, which I watched as a kid on black and white TV. Um, he introduced televised live news conferences, and that was another circumvention in a way. And the press didn't like it. They complained about the, about the televised news conference. And one, one reporter said it was like watching Kennedy make love in Carnegie hall, which I think may have had a double meaning because the press was also protecting Kennedy from stories about his personal life, which they were well aware of.
Speaker 0 00:23:25 Cause he was pals with a lot of, a lot of editors and journalists. The televised news conference became appealing to report is when they got TV time. Obama used the white house website in much the same way. Reporters sat, found eventually that his press office would not answer questions. They would refer reporters to a televised message on the website and they did not like being circumvented in that way. Trump is like Roosevelt in one way. I'm trying not to choke on those words, but he's like Roosevelt in one way, he is accessible. For sure. He may be engaged in a joust, uh, you know, in a battle with each press conference and each scrum, but you can't say he's hiding, he's there. He's taking the questions. He loves the fight. And at the same time, he's circumventing the press by doing his messaging. You know, his avalanche of messaging almost every morning with the inevitable daily tweet storm, which by the way, the press allows to become the main story every morning. So in a way they're complicit in allowing him this, you know, the dominance that he enjoys
Speaker 2 00:24:36 With the growing importance of the internet and the global range of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter and talk. Do you predict, we'll see more efforts by future presidents and deploying robust marketing efforts online and promoting their agenda?
Speaker 0 00:24:52 I think absolutely. I think, um, if, if Joe Biden wins, I think his team will do it. I think he has called himself a transitional candidate. I think he'll be somewhat transitional about, uh, the internet as well. I don't see him spending his mornings, um, you know, watching MSNBC and then calling in on the phone and tweeting. Uh, but I think inevitably the next generation of leaders are going to catch onto whatever is the platform of the day. It probably won't be Twitter. I mean, things who would have predicted Twitter 10 years ago, who would have predicted the internet 20 years ago, something will devolve. And for one, I hope it doesn't involve pressing any buttons. I hope you can just like tap your eyeglasses and say, come in mr. President or Madam president, but we will say yes, I think it's important. Every president from here I'm in is going to have to find the platform that he or she is suited to
Speaker 2 00:25:50 My last question for you and maybe the most difficult one, um, should U S presence do they always need to do, do they always need to be prepared to kind of criticism from the press and is it always the press's responsibility to uncover transgressions of a president?
Speaker 0 00:26:09 So I think, yes, the president has to be on his or her guard, um, all the time, but that's part of the balance. They, they don't call the press the fourth of state for nothing. It's like the fourth branch of government. It's the truth telling branch it's the spotlight branch. If they're, if hearings don't work, if, uh, uh, judicial review doesn't work, the press is there to aim a relentless spotlight. The press is there to investigate, to inquire, to press. They're not there always to do gotcha. Journalism. And I think since Nixon's downfall,
Speaker 3 00:26:44 Which the press took a lot of deserves credit for, there has been an effort to overdue scrutiny and to make it into, I got ya. And I think, you know, my own view and it may not be shared by others is that the, the impeachment of bill Clinton was a result of journalistic overreach. But then again, his defeating, the impeachment effort is an example of a president who battles press scrutiny and wins. So I think it can go both ways and that's the way it shouldn't be. We are out of time, Harold holster. Thanks so much for being here on, right on radio with us. Josh. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And now this <inaudible>.
Speaker 4 00:28:30 Hi, this is Annie Harvey on KFA 90.3 FM. Is this Vanessa Salka? Yes. Hi Annie. Hi, thank you so much for the station. Um, I really loved the great offshore grounds and I'm so excited to have you here tonight. Um, could you start us off? Oh, you're you're very welcome. Um, could you start us off by briefly kind of describing the story and premise in your own words? Sure. Um, the great off shore grounds
Speaker 3 00:28:59 Novel that follows two sisters, primarily in Cheyenne, as they make their way through stage capitalism and try to find their way in the world. They don't have a lot of resources and they're not sure where they fit. Um, but is also, um, also has to do with the American projects and, uh, they traveled or road trips, there's even a sea story, but, um, it's, it's characters at the heart of the story
Speaker 4 00:29:25 For sure. Yeah. Um, I totally agree. Um, do you have a short passage that you'd like to read to start us off? Sure. Yeah. Sure. I'll read a little bit from the beginning. Let's start there. Thanks so much. So
Speaker 3 00:29:42 Sure. 15 miles South of Seattle and halfway across Puget sound to the West is Maury Island shaped like an Arrowhead aimed at the mainland. Green is the inner fold of a grass blade. It can be seen from the air cradled in a crook, an elbow of water tourists, right over in fairies to watch for whales and UFOs jets turn around overhead on their final approach to the airport. Even on days when there is no ring missed filters through the evergreens, until it pulls apart like thread bare cloth and burns off the wedding was to be held in the afternoon at point Robinson, the site of an old fog signal station that once have steam whistles fed by Coalfire and water to worn away ships in 1897 at the Dawn of massive capital expansion speculation. The whistle sounded for 528 hours nearly killing the man who had to shovel the 35 tons of coal.
Speaker 3 00:30:38 Still the cargo had to be kept from the rocks who can Hawk the lumbering desires of the world in 1915, the lighthouse with its state of the art fifth order for no lens was built powered initially by oil vapor lamps it's beating could be seen for 12 miles. The lens was the perfect manifestation of Victorian technology. Replacing simple flat lenses with faceted crystal domes prisons cut into tears that made it both astonishingly beautiful and a breakthrough in optics for no lens, had a theoretically infinite capacity to capture diffused light. And by way of internal reflection, pastored like a spirit through darkness. It lit stages and cellular Lloyd pull Polaroid shots and the retinas of ID for ID scans and OnPoint Robinson. It lit Puget sound back across the sound in Seattle lit. He looked out the window of her basement apartment. Her father was getting married that afternoon.
Speaker 3 00:31:36 And though it was already late, April, a cold wet breeze, still whistled through the gaps in the coughing, turning her skin, the goose flesh a few feet away stood her sister, Cheyenne poorly slept, but already draught on freezing such I and I'm turning on the space heater turn on the oven. They charged us for electricity, said Libby, Cheyenne rolled their eyes, but went over to the little white guest of cranking the temperature to broil. She leaned back against the oven door so she could feel the heat on her hamstrings. While at warmed yesterday, they'd spent the whole day picking rocks out of Libby's landlord's garden and trade for a patch of soil near the sunny side of the fence, so that maybe could grow food. It wasn't political live. He didn't care about pesticides or permaculture. She was just the cheapest person Cheyenne had ever known.
Speaker 3 00:32:22 She lived off past state groceries. She washed her clothes once a month and a teaspoon of dish soap in the tub. She made her own bras. Cheyenne was pretty sure she would have rinsed and reused dental dams that she thought it would work. Recently. Libby had become convinced that she could feed herself off three square yards of land. It was ridiculous, but then Cheyenne, it appeared out of nowhere and moved in on her without warning or rent. She didn't have much of a say taller and I'm freckled Cheyenne had chosen a Rose colored cap sleeve shirt with eyelids and a pair of black pinstriped suit pants. She could pass in the crowd. They'd be in today. Her checking hand clothes came off as vintage. Well, her misadventures and body art and made her seem a fine Jace, badly cracked and chipping, but a gritty accent to any room fuel.
Speaker 3 00:33:08 Didn't come to my wedding said, Cheyenne, why should I go to his? Did you invite him? Oh no. He would have arrived like the Lord and expected to walk me down the aisle here. Let me give you a way. Oh, Hey dad. I'm pretty sure you already did that. You're right. Said maybe he would have, so why are we even going? I have a day off work and it's cheaper than movie. I'm tired of ramen and hot dogs and they'll be rich people food. So I'm taking Tupperware. Please. Don't make it obvious, said Cheyenne, we're already going to look so out of place. Oh, because you have jailhouse tattoos apart and clubs on your knuckles or because I don't shave and look like a landscaper. Cheyenne spread the fingers of her left hand, not just clumped in hearts. The one of my son is a diamond and the pinky as a spade, you just can't tell anymore. Livie crossed where she'd laid out or newly washed blue painter's pants and pulled them on over long Johns. I'm going to the wedding because it's a show of support that costs me nothing. I've never thought of him as a dad. So I don't care that it's worse. He's a big blank. The disappointment, he gets a clean slate. That's my wedding present a path. It's the only decent move I shot. My better angels said, Cheyenne, they're angels. You can't kill them if they were real, you could. I'll just stop there.
Speaker 4 00:34:22 Thank you. Um, I think that was an excellent passage to introduce the, uh, family dynamics in this book. Um, uh, a combination of protecting each other at all costs, but also roasting each other to pieces. Um, I also want to point out the way that, uh, that passage so wonderfully brought us into, uh, the descriptions of social inequity and, um, life has a low income person in America, um, which I'd love to talk about with you in a little more detail. Uh, the descriptions of social inequity, including income and equity in healthcare problems in this novel are some of the most realistic and gripping I've read in a novel. Um, and for those who haven't read or finished, Oh, you're welcome for those who haven't read or finished the book yet. Um, one character, their mother Kristin decides not to pursue cancer treatment because of the extremely high cost. Um, the, the boy they took in as a sort of brother Essex, uh, joins the Marines for stability, um, because he'd never really had that kind of income or healthcare before. Um, and I just wanted to know was watching people navigate the challenges of income inequality in very different ways, a goal of this writing project for you, or was that something that happened along the way as you built out the nuance of these people's stories?
Speaker 3 00:35:41 It just felt very natural. Um, I, you know, like many people, most of my life, I've sort of, you know, hand to mouth on a lot of it now I've had more privilege than others in many ways. Um, but you know, I, I, I've never, I've worked a lot of different jobs and they weren't for experience for money. Like I've driven cabs. I've I didn't have health insurance most of my life, you know, I didn't have like a lot of these things, you know, I've had different experiences with, and I've been around many people for whom, you know, had a friend who really good friends in a car wreck, bad one, Bob bad car wreck last week. And the very first thing is both of us said, Oh my God, do they have health insurance? Yeah. Right. And nobody like everybody, we're just telling them, don't think about it.
Speaker 3 00:36:32 Don't think about it right now. We'll take care of it later. Right. How many Americans do that? So to me, it wasn't a construction of, I want to illustrate this. It was the natural outcropping of these are the people I know the people I care about. Um, and then as the characters sort of came out, they had their own way of expressing how they would show up in different parts of their life. Um, I would say that, you know, I knew very early on that, that, that I was writing characters that, um, that it was going to go into class, that it was going to go into, you know, where we are in this moment in time, what people make of it in American myths and, and what they mean.
Speaker 4 00:37:14 Yeah. Um, well, I think that the book really made me think about, um, decisions of stability and ways that people have less or more freedom to, um, pursue safety, pursue health care, um, things like that, depending on situations they're born or forced into, um, on a similar note, as you were talking about finding the characters where they are, um, it felt to me, um, like a lot of the characters, um, were approaching the concepts of freedom versus like safety and stability, um, in very different kinds of tradeoffs. Um, like for example, there were characters who would give themselves the stability and material means to make travel and health care and nutrition and debt repayment possible, like Essex joining the military. Not because he especially cares about them Marines, but, um, because it was a structure with which he could tie up, his loose ends on other peoples versus like Livi who has very few permanent commitments, um, cruises in and out of, um, salmon ship jobs as she'd like to, but also lacks healthcare and stable income and goes a lot of the book without a phone in the 21st century, which is a little unthinkable for a lot of people.
Speaker 4 00:38:30 Um, do you think that your characters felt like they were pursuing the same, like freedom in different ways? Or do you think they perceive their life choices without more abstract thoughts? Like, what am I, what am I trading off freedom and stability.
Speaker 3 00:38:47 I don't think these are characters that have ever known stability. You know, I was speaking to somebody about them at one point, they said, well, it's really surprising because poor people usually can't move around or don't move around it, like setting aside refugee status. Right. And I thought, well, that's not true most people for a bit. And we've grown up in that way. They move about three or four times a year, depending on evictions, you know, depending on changes in circumstance, depending on a variety of things. So it's actually, I think maybe when you really look at it, it's more constant motion. Right. And so in the face of constant motion, constant schools, constant, you know, all sorts of things that change is always there. I don't think my characters think of stability in the same way. I think they don't expect it in that sense. However, with Livy. Yeah. She wants to make sure she owes no one, anything. Yeah. She wants to support herself in a, you know, she wants a small, she wants a boat someday when she was very simple one and she's willing to work really, really hard to get them. And she doesn't want anything to destabilize her. She feels her economic fragility very seriously. Um, but in that sense, I think she has more expectation that if she does everything right, it will be right. And yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:40:11 Cool. Um, I'm keeping on the Livy train. Um, much of the story hinges on the twin sisters, uh, Livia and Cheyenne, trying to find out the truth about their origin story. Um, because the mother who raised them Kiersten, um, did not birth at least one of them and they know that for awhile. Um, and I'll try to ask this question without spoiling too much. Um, but the mother, they end up finding that Cheyenne finds, um, expresses having no regret at living her life without active involvement. Um, with that family that she helped set up, which she was aware of and knew where it was the whole time. And I personally, as who I am in the world, read that scene and found it absolutely crushing with sadness, but I suppose that others could have read it as liberating or neutral. Um, how did it sit with you as you create it and, um, set it up in the minds of those particular characters?
Speaker 3 00:41:08 Um, I think that crushing with sadness was the intention, but I think the other part of it that Cheyenne is, um, that Cheyenne has to see you in that moment. It's more, the almost gaslighting question of is, are her emotions just part of her immaturity, you know, is there a greater freedom if she could let go of them all there? So I think that that's, that's also in that, and it's an interesting part, uh, that, you know, was part of the struggle of bringing their books into publication was that, um, and again, I don't want to do any spoilers. Um, so, but that parts of those, it's not as straight ahead a book as it would appear to be in the beginning. You know, it's not as if there's one mystery that gets answered and that's the arc. Yeah. There's um, and, and some of the story and of the project to me was about, um, pulling apart the idea of the hero's journey as this kind of, you know, sort of construction of capitalism in some ways.
Speaker 3 00:42:22 I mean, in some ways the mother has very, I think it's stupidly figured out that the way that she's created this origin myths for them, that she told them and, and it's meant to make them feel special. It's meant to make them feel like they have a desperate, you know, their own destiny, their own becoming that's always about to happen. And, and she does it for all the right reasons. She does it because she looks around and she goes, she, she identifies that as the place where, um, where people with more means and more privilege have the edge on everybody is they actually believe that they can do something great. They believe the world is waiting for them. They believe all of these other parts. And so she wants to try to instill something like that. So her girls will believe that too, and, and it kinda backfires, uh, and there's a lot of emotions around it. And so this idea of, you know, how myth affects us, whether it's personal myth, whether it's national myth and, and whether it's a good or bad, uh, is, is pretty central to the novel as well. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:43:31 Um, a big reason that I even wanted to interview about this book is because I began reading it, thought I knew exactly where it was going to go. And then it continued to go in like a larger and larger constellation of, um, nuances and possibilities and ways that different segments of the American population and American society interact with each other. Um, and I just want to say that for anyone who that last question, um, really sold you on thinking through kind of those dichotomies of what your life is and what connections and options are. I could not recommend this book more and I'm super excited to be in this conversation, um, to really drastically change the topic. Um, there are, uh, there are ghosts in this book, they don't play a huge role. Um, but it was a fun reading experience where everything felt relatively realistic, sometimes crushingly realistic, and all of a sudden, um, a character would encounter a ghost. Um, and I was just wondering from a creative standpoint, um, why, and how did you decide to throw some ghosts in here and there?
Speaker 3 00:44:45 Um, well, the America of the novel, um, is the combination of, of, of place and history and it, and it's, it's more of an ambient factor than it is, you know, directly there, but occasionally I think it steps into the narrative differently. And, and I think that the way I look at language and writing is I'm always trying to describe something. Sometimes it's hard to describe and I'm trying to get at it and I'm trying to get at it, you know, it's like, and, and sometimes the language I have available to me doesn't feel like it's sufficient and, and I reach for something that's a little more figurative or I reach for, you know, for something that's, you know, and, and so there's, uh, there are two are two small, goes through their two main goats in the novel. One of sir Walter Raleigh, and one is John Arthur, Lucien, uh, who was, uh, Marines Marine.
Speaker 3 00:45:44 And, and they both have to do with, you know, colonialism and imperialism, but they also are lost things upon the land they're sort of, um, and I think my, my initial writing of them, I do a lot of free writing. I don't sit and plot things out that way. Um, so they came to me as unexpectedly, you know, and I'd be doing the right end of them and see what they had and what they had to say. Um, but yeah, but I think it's also just that there was, there is, um, a conversation that's always going back and forth, a call and response to the nature of America history about who's. It is about who has the right to tell that story, you know? And, um, so this is, uh, you know, there's a very complex relationship with no, they're never far in the novel from stolen land.
Speaker 3 00:46:38 Yeah. They walk through it like they are never far like there's echoes of the Confederacy, there's echo, you know what I mean? And also, I mean, like, there's, you know, there's Raleigh there, there's not a way that that's one of the that's one of the parts of the book is, is they are at one hand inheriting all of American history, they're Americans and they're born in to this land. And on the other hand, they're trying to figure out what history is and what mr. There is to take and what are theirs to leave. And I have a deep anxiety about reinvention. I think it can be so brilliant. And I think it can also be so dangerous and the way it's sort of cutting responsibility or cutting complicity or, you know, um, and so I think all of those things go through, run through the book and the ghost hold some of that.
Speaker 4 00:47:26 Yeah. I definitely appreciated, um, the way that it kind of drew you into America as a whole, um, Livie in the novel who calls herself not political and doesn't vote, or really make much of an effort to participate in larger society chooses to Joan join a protest action when motivated by someone she loves. Do you think that, um, having love and kind of a future to look forward to with that person motivated her to quote unquote, be political on a personal level? Or do you think that she was kind of participating in this larger action to learn about and engage with her loved ones values? Um, or do you think she kind of had a shift of what political might mean?
Speaker 3 00:48:10 Um, I, I know this one for a fact I've been, she did not have a shift about what political night she did it straight up for Luxe. And the reason I was curious about that is, you know, my, my father years ago, you know, there was, want to share all the, say this is a respectfully as possible, but, um, he was very, my father was very political and he was in an environment with, um, uh, where he's working with the particular Indian tribe and, uh, for a while, and got very close and stable for years and years and years, and had done a lot of work, um, that was honored and respected, uh, for the tribe and in that situation. And I had always assumed, so, and then my father was adopted ceremonially into, uh, into the, uh, into this tribe. And, and I'd always assumed that it was for the work that he did years later, I come to find out that, well, that was part of it.
Speaker 3 00:49:18 The man whose mother adopted him, um, was deeply in love with him and unable to come out. And I think becoming brothers was the closest they could be calm. And, and that struck me so much because I thought, how many times do you think something is done for one reason when it's done for another, how many times do you think, did I think that something was done for a overtly political reason in another context that was really dumb out of a desire for closeness. Uh, and I thought about that with ethics. And I thought about that, you know, you hear people in the military talk about that all the time. I don't believe in this. I don't believe in that, but I believe in the person next to me. And again, that's one of those things that I think is a horrible bind and a beautiful, but on a horrible bike, you know, it's not, so that was very much the perspective I had with Livy was what is it like to be that person?
Speaker 4 00:50:21 Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love to hear that. Um, we're needing to wrap things up in just a couple minutes, but, uh, I want to ask you about one of my absolute favorite moments of the book, um, where Cheyenne, um, is just thinking about how terrible she feels about her life. And, um, a stranger working in a gas station tells her when she's talking about her worries. Uh, everybody gets a test pancake as kind of a moment of support. And I just, I just, uh, was really struck by that moment. And I was wondering if you could talk me through how you decided to deliver the kind of more redemptive message in that way.
Speaker 3 00:51:02 Yeah. I, uh, that scene was a one that meant a lot to me, even though it was very small and I really fought to keep it in. It was, there were a lot, not from my current ed, but there were a lot of iterations where, you know, it was one of those things that, nah, it doesn't need to be there. But to me it did because I think that there was moments with strangers that are just simple kindness. Yeah. Just offering someone the benefit of the doubt, you know, being half on their side in a moment when their RA is, uh, can be a life changing contact. And so in that situation, Cheyenne is very raw and she has a very realistic and true view of all the things that she has messed up. Um, and what she's been wrong about. And you know, when she's talking about love or this or that, and the woman says everybody, you know, well, honey, everybody gets a test pancake. There is something so generous about that statement. I actually had someone say that to me once and it stayed with me a long time. And so I put that in sort of as an homage to that kind of person. I don't know where that, I mean, I never met that person was there for 10 seconds, not 10, maybe two minutes. And I wanted to reflect that. So, yeah. Um, so that's how that came to be in there.
Speaker 4 00:52:26 Well, thank you so much. Well, leaving everyone with the thought of you get a test pancake, Vanessa, thank you so much for joining me tonight. Um, it's been really wonderful to have you and, uh, I cannot wait to hear all of my friends feedback after I, uh, after they read this book after hearing this, uh, thank you very much. Have a good night.
Speaker 3 00:52:46 Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be on good night tonight.
Speaker 1 00:52:51 <inaudible>
Speaker 4 00:53:06 You are listening to right on radio on KFA 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
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Speaker 1 00:53:14 I'm Liz Alz. I'd like to thank our guests tonight, Harold Holzer and Vanessa Becka. Plus our listeners who make this show possible,
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