Speaker 1 00:00:04 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the web at <inaudible> dot org. I'm Annie Harvey tonight. I'm right on radio. We are listening to a surprise legacy interview, which is a blast from the past that we've pulled out of the archives. That'll be the first half of the hour. So stay tuned. And I'm Josh Weber. And the last part of the hour, Annie we'll talk with selfie Lewis, a London born writer, editor, and translator from French and Portuguese. She has translated works from Jules Verne, amongst many others. She was senior editor at indie trade publisher and other stories from 2010 to 2016. Then in 2016, she co-founded shadow heroes and workshop series. Introducing aspects of translation to G C S C level students, all this and more. So stay tuned to Ryan
Speaker 2 00:01:14 Rather than patrol and other desolate Valley. The flight leader climbed into an orbit over the surrounding mountain and order the flight to reform. Tom pulled up alongside Jessie's right wing and together they climbed toward the others. This is Iroquois flight 13, the lady, the leader radio, the base road recon came up dry. Got anything else? Copied the Marine controller replied. Let me check Tom and Jesse tucked in behind the leader in his wingman, the trailing two Corsair slipped in behind them from the rear of the formation, a pilot named Kenneth radioed with alarm Jesse. Something's wrong. It looks like you're bleeding fuel Jesse squirmed in a seat to see behind his tail, but his range of vision ended at the, his seat back. He looked at Tom across the cold space between airplanes, Tom glance, leftward, and saw a white paper trail flipping from Jessie's belly.
Speaker 2 00:02:04 You've got a streamer. All right, Thompson, Jesse nodded check your fuel transfer. Kenig suggested sometimes fuel overflowed while being transferred from the belly tank to its internal tank. Jesse glanced at the fuel selector switch rub his left thigh. The needle in the oil pressure gauge was dropping Jesse glance at Tom with a furrowed brow. I've gotten all the leaky announced Tom's face saying the hole in Jessie's tank was a mortal wound with every passing. Second oil was draining. The friction was rising in the Plains. Eight cylinders were melting, losing power. Jesse said, flatly, can you make itself? Tom said, Nope. My engine season, I'm going down. Jesse said calm frantically. So scan the brain below for a suitable crash site. All we saw were simply mountains and valleys studded with dead trees. This can't be happening in Thompson. Jesse would never survive a crash in the strain.
Speaker 2 00:02:55 And if he did the Sub-Zero cold would kill him. Tom glance, down to his map and his face twisted. Jesse was going down 17 miles behind enemy lines. If he survived the crash, the enemy would surely double time to capture him. And if they didn't shoot him on site, they had an unspeakable torture that they used on captured pilots. Tom glanced over Jessie as her Corsairs plummeted toward the mountains. Jesse's eyes were fixed forward. As he tried to sort through a help hopeless hand of fate, Tom needed to do something to help this friend and fast Jesse's story. Couldn't end like this.
Speaker 3 00:03:27 Very good. You've been listening to Adam and makos reading from his new book, devotion and Epic story of heroism, friendship and sacrifice. He is also the author of the New York times. Best seller, a higher call. Adam makos. Welcome to right on radio.
Speaker 2 00:03:45 Thanks for having me, Steve.
Speaker 3 00:03:47 This is an amazing story and a true story of what happened during the Korean war. And you read there from the beginning, uh, with Jesse Brown in a plane and Tom Hudner, uh, beside him and, and Jessie's plane goes down.
Speaker 2 00:04:04 Yeah, it's, it's one of the most incredible, true stories of, of any war of human history. Jesse Brown was, uh, was shot down that day, December 4th, 1950, they were on a mission over a place called the chosen reservoir. And they had never been further from home that day. These were men who came from different worlds who became brothers. And it's just one of the most heartwarming stories.
Speaker 3 00:04:31 Yeah. And Tom was a sort of a wealthy new Englander. And Jessie was a poor sharecropper's son from MOAs at Mississippi or Alabama. I can't remember
Speaker 2 00:04:41 He was from Mississippi. And, um, yes, you're exactly right. Jesse was a sharecropper son. Um, grew up farming the fields barefoot. And when he would see an airplane fly over, he would say, I'm going to fly someday for the U S Navy and everyone else would laugh. They would say, there's, they're looking at him, they're barefoot a sharecropper. And they would say, you're never going to make it, but he wanted to serve his country. He wanted to serve a country as viewed him as a second class citizen. And so it was incredible when in 1949, Jesse earned his wings. He succeeded where everyone else had failed. And he became the first African-American fighter pilot in the U S Navy. And that's just half the story of this book. The other half is Tom Hudner. Right.
Speaker 3 00:05:25 Right. Um, and, and we should talk about that because it's amazing when you think about it. I mean, I, I tend to forget, uh, because a lot of this stuff happened either before I was born or, uh, I mean, that certainly happened before I was born, but a lot of the civil rights stuff happened before I was born or while I was very young, um, you know, desegregation was still rampant there. Uh, Truman had only, uh, integrated the military and I think 1948 or something like that. So, so people were still saying to black people, you can't stay at our hotels. You can't eat at our restaurants. And, and for somebody like Jessie, to be able to, you know, get into the Naval Academy and earn his wings is, is pretty amazing.
Speaker 2 00:06:08 It really is. I wonder how many of us today would want to serve a country that treats us that way. And what's even more amazing is his friendship with Tom Hudner. These men were put together in, uh, early 1950 in a fighter squadron up in Massachusetts. That was just during the cold war. So the Korean war is looming, but there hasn't been, the first shot fired yet. And Tom Hudner was from a different world. Calm came from the country club scene of Massachusetts. So he was born to great privilege. He was expected to go to Hartford and inherit his family's business. And he was going to have a pretty comfy life, but just like Jesse, he wanted to serve his country. And so he threw away hardware and everything to go become a Navy fighter pilot. And so when he and Jesse became friends, you had, you had the opposite ends of the American spectrum, but that's what makes this story so powerful.
Speaker 3 00:07:06 <inaudible> yeah. And Jesse made, uh, you know, a lot of friends on the, was it the late the aircraft carrier that he was on? Um, I'm not, maybe I'm not pronouncing it correctly. Uh, but I mean, he, there was a scene in the book where he celebrates his birthday and, and virtually everybody on the chef, it seems like has put money towards getting him a watch.
Speaker 2 00:07:28 Exactly. And, um, and I'll have to find a new passage to read because that was the one. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:07:33 Oh, you were going to read that one. Okay. You can read that. That's okay. We can, we can, we can re listen to that later, but let's talk a little bit more about Tom though, because he comes from this new England background. He, I think he said he had one black person in his school. And so he, he wouldn't, he said this to the commanding officer prior. So I wouldn't have a problem working with Jesse because, uh, because we had a black guy in school and I was a friend of his
Speaker 2 00:07:57 Yeah, that was Tom's exposure. And, um, when they first met, everybody seems to Tom and Jessie just became best friends and they rode off into the sunset. But the really their first encounter was very awkward. Um, Jesse came in to suit up to find Tom was there in the locker room and just gave him an awkward wave. And he said, ah, I guess we're flying together. And Tom stood up and he said, yeah, I'm Tom Hudner. And he's put out his hand, Jesse, just stared at it. Instead of shaking it finally Dessie came around and shook Tom's hand. And Tom's first thought was what an odd guy later on Jessie apologized, he said, I'm sorry, we got off on the wrong foot. You have to understand during flight training, I would come up to a lot of the instructors in cadets and I would say, hi, I'm Jesse Brown. And I would stick out my hand and they would keep theirs at their side. You said, so I don't force myself on people anymore. And Tom said, well, you're never going to have to worry about that. Me and that day, their friendship was born. Right,
Speaker 3 00:08:57 Right. And a number of other guys too, you had Kenig or Kona. I don't know how it's pronounced. And, uh, um, Marty good. And, you know, there were, there were a number of these guys in the flight, uh, group that they were in, who really became very close. It, it reminded me in some ways of like band of brothers and so forth where these people are put into this community, uh, this sort of forced crucible. And then th th their personalities are forged by not necessarily the heat of battle, like you get on the ground, but just the high stress situations that they get put into.
Speaker 2 00:09:35 You said it exactly. It's a Navy band of brothers. And we were fortunate in telling the story of Tom and Jesse. Not only did we have Tom with us, he's still with us. He's 91 today. So he was sharing his memories. And these other characters, you mentioned they're real life people too. And they were contributing to this book. And so we were able to recreate what it was like to be in a fighter squadron and what it was like to go to the Korean war with the help of the men who were there. So it's a very vivid nonfiction account. Very, um, Oh, I guess you could say clear in it's in the storytelling.
Speaker 3 00:10:13 Yeah. Very detailed. Uh, yeah. Yeah. And I was struck by that too, because I know a few people who were in the Korean war, uh, still, um, friends and relatives, and they just will not talk about it at all. So it seems like that was something that world war II vets and Korean vets just, you know, they were pretty much driven to not talk about that ever. Did you, did you find it difficult to get these people to open up to you or not
Speaker 2 00:10:43 Surprisingly not Steve? Um, I think, I think airman represent a different kind of storyline. I mean, they're, they're above the fray. They're the ones who, in the case of Tom and Jesse squadron, they were specialists at ground attack. And so their job was to support the Marines from above to fly into these waves of communist troops and to shoot, uh, to strafe, to drop bombs. Um, and so although what they did was very dangerous and harrowing and, and, um, and traumatizing at the same time that were above it all. So they didn't necessarily see the ramifications of their actions like the guys on the ground did. So they were much premier to talk about it.
Speaker 3 00:11:27 Okay. And you also bring in a red Parkinson and ed Kudair who were on the ground as Marines. So it's not like you ignore that part of the battle because a fairly good sized chunk of the book deals with their issues on the ground, doesn't it?
Speaker 2 00:11:45 It does. And I find that willingness to talk. It just, it totally varies, man, to man. Um, I think what we saw with this book is these men realize that they are the difference between their buddies being forgotten or remembered. And so when you, it's one thing, if you say, Hey, grandad, tell me your worst stories. That's another thing when you say, tell me your worst stories, because I'm trying to give a face to the Korean war. You know, this is a forgotten war and that's not good enough. America should never forget a war. Right. We should never forget our veterans. And so you get different levels of storytelling. These guys will go into that painful past for you.
Speaker 3 00:12:27 Yeah. Yeah. I researched it a little bit. Uh, and I mean, I've been researching it, researching it. I shouldn't say researching it, studying it a little bit over the years, just because I found it very interesting. And, uh, one of the things that I learned was that early on, I mean, that was the, the brutal part of the war. And later on the war sort of almost sort of wound down, it continued for a few more years, but during this period that you're writing about, that was when it was actually at its worst. And then it, it got better. So after 1950, it kind of became a different war for all the participants in many ways.
Speaker 2 00:13:04 You're so right. And what, um, I guess I don't want to say unfortunate, but this story is it's set in 1950, the first year of the war, really the first six months of the war. And, and we're able to see the, the battles from different perspectives. So we see it from the Marines who are freezing in the snow fighting and icy Creek beds. We see it from Tom and Jessie overhead. And then we also see it from days, uh, on the Homefront sending her husband off to war. Now, Daisy is Jesse's wife. Of course, she sends Jesse off to war. And then we see her, her deal with the fallout of, of the Korean war. So we show you the, the war from the air land, sea and Homefront.
Speaker 3 00:13:47 Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's listen, if we can, to another passage from the book, uh, you can certainly read that one if you want.
Speaker 2 00:13:55 Well, this is one you alluded to earlier. This is, um, during flight training, Jessie encountered something that seems far fetched, and that is the African-American stewards who served the pilots at their meals. They, they would see Jesse that one black face among the sea of white, and they would come up with their food and they wouldn't give him a chance to actually take it off the plate. You know, they would hold it in front of him for a second or two, and then they would move on to the white cadets because they viewed Jesse as an upstart. So, so this scene that I'll read now, it's set where Jesse's aboard the carrier in the middle of the Korean war. And the stewards are once again acting funny. And he thought they were his friends because Jesse would, would always go out of his way to greet them.
Speaker 2 00:14:45 He was their hero. And now all of a sudden they're snickering, they're smirking, they're avoiding at the dinner table. Um, and they're, uh, something is Houston. Phil Jesse's face. Kenneth lowered his cup to the table. What the heck is going on? Kennick finally asked, Jesse shook his head across the table, Tom Hudner shrugged. He hadn't noticed a group of stewards drifted from the kitchen congregated by the back wall, followed by cooks and t-shirts and stained Abrams. There I've settled on Jesse. The kitchen door swung wide, and the steward emerged carrying a small cake on a tray. Some of the officers' heads turned when the Stuart reached Jessie's table. Tom saw an unlit candle on the yellow sponge cake. Jesse's eyes grew wide and can agree. Lax and seat. Tom grin last week was Jessie's birthday. He remembered the ship's paper had ran a blurb announcing that Jessie had turned 24.
Speaker 2 00:15:40 Excuse me, sir. So Stewart said to Tom and the man beside him, he leaned in and lower the take in front of Jesse. He shook his head in disbelief. Hey, Jesse, severely shouted from down the table. How did you swing a cake and party with 150 guests? There's a war on, you know, Jesse others laughed, but civilly had a point. The kitchen never celebrated just one man's birthday. The chief steward approached Jesse with a small box in his hands. He was an older black man with a small mustache is West. His jacket's left sleeve had three red V-shape patches in a white Eagle of a petty officer. First-class the other stewards and cooks step from the back wall eager to see. And some Brown, the petty officer said me and the boys chipped in and got you a little something. He handed Jessie the box, Jesse grin and surveyed the faces of the kitchen staff.
Speaker 2 00:16:26 They were smiling now free to show their excitement. Jesse removed the packaging and slapped open the box. Top nestled inside was a steel watch with a white face and a tiny silver crown for a logo, a Rolex Jesse's jaw hung open. Holy cow, Kenneth muttered, along the table. Officers leaned in close. The watch had a black leather band and a silver whining. Crown that's a chunk of change. Tom thought, Rolex is where the prices item in the ship store. Jesse slid the Rolex over his left wrist and fastened the snap. He held the watch up to catch the light. Thank you for lifting this up. The petty officer said to Jesse now on the ship, when a black man passes you in the hallway, you never know he might just be a cook or he might be a flyer. Jesse looked at them all from a petty officer to the messiest line.
Speaker 2 00:17:12 Cook. Thank you all very much. Jesse said, I hope I've never let you down. No thank you. And some Brown stool replied the others murmured in agreement. Enjoy it. Serve said another God blessed one by one. The cooks and stewards broke from the gaggle with a nod or wave returned to their duty. A steward remained behind. He leaned forward with a lighter and lit the candle on the cake. The frame's tiny light flickered on Jesse's cheek and a bashful voice kind of broken song. Happy birthday to you. Calm the other. Officer's joined in a steward saying to Jesse grinned, as a course of warm voice has reached a crescendo as a song ended applause a thanks so much guys. Jesse said he thanked the steward and wave to the officers up and down the table. Thank you all, whatever in Washington, Jesse leaning forward and blew out the candle.
Speaker 3 00:17:59 Very good. That is Adam makos reading from his new book, devotion, an Epic story of heroism, friendship and sacrifice. And you're listening to right on radio on K F a I, a youth, a number of, sort of, uh, amazing moments. I, I thought back to the, um, Elizabeth Taylor one too, because she interacted with them a fair amount when they were in the Mediterranean, before they were sent off to Korea and she sort of, in some ways adopted them and they sort of adopted her too.
Speaker 2 00:18:32 You're exactly right, Steve. And it was, um, this book is so much more than a war story, as I always say it was a, it's a war story, but it's a love story. It's an inspirational. And at the end, all I can say is it's an American story and what better, what more ironic moments than when Tom and Jesse are deployed to the Mediterranean for training. They're just getting to know each other. They're going to short con on the Riviera and these young men are having the time of their lives when they meet Elizabeth Taylor, except that she's not a celebrity. As we picture today, she was a celebrity, but she didn't behave like one. She was so grounded and kind, and in fact she was lonely because her new husband was already cheating on her. And then she was essentially alone on the beach. And as you said, they adopted her, she adopted them. And it's just one of the most incredible moments. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:19:27 Yeah. And you then, uh, eventually got to go to North Korea with Tom Hudner as part of your research process and part of his, um, efforts to try to, um, um, recover various things from the, from the trip.
Speaker 2 00:19:46 Yeah. My, my research took me to all the places where this book is said. So I went from Massachusetts to Mississippi. I went to conference France to the same beach where these young pilots, uh, spend time with Elizabeth Taylor. I went to the same casino where they went gambling with Elizabeth Taylor. And then in the end, I went to the battlefields to the Korean war, to North Korea. I've been to South Korea to watch, to, to study the places where these men walked and where they lived and where they fought. And it's allowed me to tell a story vibrantly and, um, but it took seven years of work was not easily written. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:20:24 Uh, w talk a little bit about the experience of being in North Korea, because obviously very few of us have been there. Uh, were you there for just a brief time, did you get a chance to, to see people like Kim Jong UN own or, or was it more just, you were in the background and you were, um, observing the various dignitaries, uh, conversing back forth?
Speaker 2 00:20:48 Well, it was, it was a little bit of both. Um, we went to, we were there of course, and I, I almost don't want to spoil it, but we were there to, to keep a promise from the Korean war. Tom made a promise that he would go back and it all was explained in devotion, of course. And so at age 89, he traveled across the ocean and I got to, of course, go with him to keep that promise. And so we heard from Kim Jong-un, the dictator who actually admired that Tom came that far to keep a promise to a friend. And, uh, we were treated very well by the North Korean army. They took us to all, we watched a firework show with Kim, Jong-un sitting 50 feet away. And, and, and so we weren't like Dennis Rob, you know, Dennis Rodman. It was there to glad hand, we were there on a mission to, to honor an American serviceman. And, uh, so it was very different circumstances. North Korea was, my mom was very worried. She was getting married, doing this. Tom Stanley was a little worried, what is he getting himself into? But in the end, uh, the fact that Tom is a medal of honor recipient, he received the medal of honor during the Korean war, our highest award for Valor. It kept us safe because the North Koreans respected that. Right.
Speaker 3 00:22:05 And you, one of the other characters in the book, uh, Lieutenant ream, I there's a Bob bream, uh, also won a medal of honor, as I recall.
Speaker 2 00:22:13 Yeah. There are two metals honors in the spoken and Bob Marine. Um, well, I can spoil a little bit of it. He, he sacrificed his life for a friend. And so there's a common theme in the book. Devotion, it's a question. Why will, why will one man give up his life for another, what leads a man to do that? Yeah. And what we demand to go off to war, to certain deaths for his country. And it's a question I have to ask myself, what would I have done?
Speaker 3 00:22:42 Yeah. And ed Quadera asks that question after that experience as well. Uh, and you cover somewhat similar ground in a higher call too. I mean, that's world war two and that's, uh, a German pilot who has the opportunity to shoot down, uh, is it a British or an American, uh, pilot, American Mark and chooses not to and guides him back to, uh, across the, across the North sea. So there's kind of a common,
Speaker 4 00:23:20 You are listening to KFA 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie Harvey. And I'm very excited to be welcoming to the station today. Sophie Lewis, translator of Nomi. <inaudible> the poetics of work, which is out now through transit books. Sophia is calling into us from London, very excited to have her here. Hello, Sophie, welcome to the show. Hi, Annie. I'm delighted to be thanks so much. So to kind of get us started for listeners who are interested, but may not have read the poetics of work yet. Could you kind of just describe the general premise of it for folks? Yeah.
Speaker 5 00:23:57 Yes. Gosh. Well, it's a slim book with a lot packed in, I think is, is the first thing to say. Um, and while it's a bit of a whirlwind, I also would dispute that it's heavy going. I think it's, uh, it's, uh, as sort of darkly humorous way of tackling the situations we find ourselves in right now in particularly the language that we use or that we find ourselves using officially and unofficially to deal with these situations, the initial prompt for the four, no Amy's writing the book was the government reaction in France to the, the various terrorist attacks that happened in Paris largely, but also elsewhere in 2015. Um, what followed was a formal state of emergency it's called an <inaudible>. And it means that the government and particularly the president has given specific sort of extraordinary powers to, to combat terrorism, but also generally to control the people of the nation.
Speaker 5 00:25:02 So in practice, that meant a hugely heightened police presence, rolling extensions to these special powers. And well, I mean, for me in the UK, it's different for you, but the, the police for us are more of a benign presence in France. I think it's probably more similar to the U S where the police are viewed with suspicion. At least I think they'll say, um, I'm not really trusted. And I think large police presence indicates a kind of brewing violence or the potential for, for aggression and violence and hostility. And so Noemi is she lives in Leon by the way. So she's not a Parisian, but she, the city of noise, the setting and this very kind of intense and tense police situation is what's going on. And the narrator is a poet and the poet is wandering around the city, prompted by a kind of overbearing father to try to find a job whilst also sort of being driven just to keep wandering, keep thinking, not look for a job and keep wondering about the situation that's all around, um, and what to do about it. So this is, this is the poet trying to deal with the readings that they're doing and the pressure to have a job and the pressure of, of the nations or authority to tow the line, essentially.
Speaker 4 00:26:17 Yeah. I think that someone who's reading this book for perhaps a very specific plot that ties to specific, I dunno, concrete events might be a little confused because a lot of times the book feels more like a kind of a group meeting place or a salon for ideas about culture and work. But at the same time, it's a book that flows very nicely and it's not really like an intense weighty thing that need a seminar to lead you through. It very much kind of just takes you, the poet kind of just takes you on their walks, right with them. So if you could tell me a little more about your relationship with this books form and structure as you worked on that, that would be interesting.
Speaker 5 00:26:56 Absolutely. Uh, you're quite right. That while not being a plotty type of book, um, it doesn't make you work too hard. I think, I mean, you know, work will come up again and again, but it doesn't make you work too hard to kind of go with the flow of the narrator. And I think one of the crucial reasons for this, and one of the ways I approached it is, is through a sort of musicality that is very much the 20th and into 21st century sense of music. It helps. It helps me at least to know that Noemi is a, is a scholar of music of 20th century music, her previous novel that I translated her first one. In fact, her w uh, was very much inspired by Schoenberg. And so she has centers of serialism variations, not in the, not in the classical mozartean sense, but in the classical kind of contemporary music sense.
Speaker 5 00:27:41 And so what we get, I think is motifs that show up again, and again, variations upon a theme, um, developments of images, developments of scenes. And, and in fact, um, as you say, the novel is like a group meeting, but, but group meetings also happen in it. The narrator tries to bring people together and the, to kind of attempts to shape it by having sort of instructions to young poets appear at intervals. Uh, it, it it's it's, uh, would be a kind of putative tree ties, but it's not going to come together, but the attempts to make it also structure it and provide a little way points along as it develops
Speaker 4 00:28:18 In this conversation with the poet about work and about life, they at various points find no poetry related jobs, uninspiring, nationalistic jobs. They find interesting books that they dive into. They find some American beat books and they find some other stuff. And it really kind of evoked for me as I read kind of the dichotomies about different definitions of the word work. For example, there's work as labor in exchange for currency there's work as a thing you do. That's hard. Um, there's work in an intellectual sense like ideological or societal progress. And I was just wondering if you could describe your experience working with those ideas in the context of this book and, um, any opinions or observations you had as you got really intimate with this text and brought it into another language.
Speaker 5 00:29:16 Absolutely. This well, it's a poetics of work, I think because it strives to do the non-pro SAIC to work to the ideas about work. There were, at the same time as, as this state of emergency came into being, there was a big attempt to introduce new labor laws and labor law reform by the president and many protests in reaction to this demonstrations. So there was labor the, of formal governmental sense of it in the air also throughout France. And there's also the eternal question of how does a poet define themselves if no one's paying them because no one wants to buy their poetry, or if they're not even publishing, and yet they are producing the stuff by which they titled themselves, what is it that poets do? What is it they're meant for? Do they have a purpose? I think all of this stuff is it's not exactly it.
Speaker 5 00:30:07 I mean, it couldn't be examined in an essay is form for the purposes of this book, but it's touched on, played with toyed with harnessed pushed around, and these are the ways in which it deals with these questions. Uh, there's also quite a strongly ironic approach to it. I think very, very, uh, heavily freighted terms like Arbeit, Macht Frei come into play. Um, work makes you free across the top of the Auschwitz entrance. You know, these things, it's not about taking things too lightly, but it is about introducing a dose of levity. In fact, there's one bit where the poet turns one part of the labor statute into a poem, um, you know, just kind of turning it into verse. And I think that that really is the microcosm for what's being done by the book in terms of poetry and work. And, and also I was told by the publisher in the UK that, that Noemi herself, I thought she was, she was in fact for several years working at a university, um, and teaching in the social sciences and across musicology. And she's given up her, her gainful employment to be one of these poets. She's a writer, you know, she, she creates and, and whether, whether she earns or not is a moot point. So, so I thought that was quite interesting and funny.
Speaker 4 00:31:22 Yeah, that's super, and she traded kinds of work even in her own life.
Speaker 5 00:31:27 She, she is nothing, if not a proponent of what she writes for inspiring.
Speaker 4 00:31:34 So just to dig a little deeper into that while we're on the topic with the, uh, for example, that great moment you brought up in which the poet turns some, uh, labor laws into a poem, the poet takes kind of has some fun with the combined juxtaposition and opposition of what one could think of as a dry societal structure. So that's like labor law, military occupation, and then like beat style literature and things like that. But you could see as the flip side of the coin, um, and I was wondering if you could speak a little to kind of the overlap and kind of opposite yet parallel that exists. There are ways that those things oppose, uh, but also kind of share form or share purpose.
Speaker 5 00:32:19 Hm Hmm. Um, I think it's a tough question, but you're, you're again, right. To draw this out. Um, I think mostly we are talking about oppositions, but there is a key field in which these different modes, I dunno about how they come. It's not an easy coming together, but they do encounter each other or they have a kind of middle space in which they both happen. And I think that the, to that, that place is, um, is that the free thinking poets, the beets or, or any other poets or the free writers such as Noemi herself and Whitman comes in, um, you know, that the kind of free spirited types, they they're quite often driven to document their polar opposite within their poetry. What they're doing is creating the historical record, the literary record, where they see their unfreedom of where they find their limits, where they're testing their limits.
Speaker 5 00:33:18 And I think that in back of the real is, is, uh, a crucial little morsel that does that by Ginsburg. And then there's also the key subtext was not very sub it's. It's very much referenced in the book of Victor. Klemperer his language of the third writer. And he was a philologist who just, I mean, he, he was quite an academic, quite a focused man in an even blinkered you might say, but he, uh, was it you and yet managed to when his way through Nazi-ism through Nazi Germany, staying there and living there, he had to hide all his writing, um, dig it up years later, but it survived and he survived. And what he ended up documenting was the use of Nazi language. He, he wrote about how the Nazis were turning language to the purposes of their state, which became revealed itself as, and became more fascist.
Speaker 5 00:34:10 And that as a document is another of those spaces where, where the free mind is brought to bear upon unfreedom and yeah. Channeling boundaries and, and, and authoritarian clamping down upon thinking upon thought, um, Oh, there's some that there's a whole other field that we should look at, which is the, she was the kind of on paper face off between the mother and the father. I don't know. Um, if that also interested you, but the father is this deeply frustrating, very present and very absent figure who flies in pontificates tells the narrator offer for not looking for a job, not getting one for fussing, for smoking too much, um, for reading the wrong things, having the wrong friends, not having any friends, but for everything all in sundry, basically quite a horrible figure, but deeply influential, like hopelessly inescapably influential. And the mother is dead.
Speaker 5 00:35:12 And the legacy of the mother is an absence of memory of fondness, some attempts to translate some poetry, um, which I find very moving, but this is what the narrator has to has to hold onto if they want, if they don't want the father, the mother is nebulous. Semi-emergency much translated, filtered. And I yeah. Was, was sort of under the cost to the extent that she died in hospital. And I don't know where this figure comes from exactly. But, but again, I think it's, it's something to do with the play of where, who gets to speak, where the voice comes from, who we have to listen to. There was so much going on. It's like it is all packed in and it's quite a whirlwind, but it's, it's, you know, as you read it, it does function.
Speaker 4 00:36:04 Yeah. It felt very much like the father figure and the society were both kind of an Omni omnipresent force that was very structured and very rules. And the poet kind of had to dig and pull to evoke memories of the mother to evoke literature that had a creative side to translate. So to bridge ideas between different languages. Um, and it was really interesting to see the poet receive accusations of laziness from the father. Well, it was quite clear that the poet was doing a lot of thought work about other things. It just wasn't necessarily, you know, bringing in the biweekly check or anything.
Speaker 5 00:36:41 It was re really not bringing in. Well, actually you're quite right. But there is, there is the thing quick novel
Speaker 4 00:36:50 They're so right. Let's talk about the thick, wet, novel neck, something I love in this book. And this is a very minor spoiler. It's still definitely worth reading once you know this, but like maybe two thirds or three quarters of the way through the book, you find out that, um, this poet who has been berated by their father through the whole book for not doing anything useful is making lots of royalties on what they refer to as a thick, wet novel. Um, so like kind of a mass market book, maybe something in the U S you'd probably buy at the grocery store or target that the poet just doesn't ideologically respect, but made it and is making some money off of it. And I just wanted to ask you Sophie, first of all, love that idea. And second of all, what was it like translating that thick? What novel I'm assuming that is not a direct translation. I'm assuming you did a little bit of tinkering and backend magic to create the right phrasing for that.
Speaker 5 00:37:44 Well, I'm interested that you feel it is the right phrase because I was so stuck on that for so long. Um, there's not a lot of tinkering. I could do the Frenchies hormone Debbin, which means a kind of stupid novel, but it's in Italian. So it's more than stupid. It's like, it's like a really dumb novel. And in fact, if I, if I'd felt comfortable writing specifically for a North American audience, I think I might have plumped for double novel, but I needed it to be readable without pausing for more English readers than that. So, yeah, I think what novel and also DBL is, is like a slightly kitty word. It's a kind of like a dimwit thick. I don't know it was tough. And I struggled because I didn't think anything was right. And I'm glad that for you, it works. The other thing that was difficult about, about the Pequot novel is the title, because one of the things that's fake or dumb about it is that it panders to old ancient forms, namely, and by the Alexandra, uh, which is the classical poetic meter of French poetry and theater of the golden age.
Speaker 5 00:38:58 So it has seen, and Malia and all their contemporaries wrote in Alexandra and they wrote 12 foot lines over and over it's it's like, it's, it's an equivalent to an, I am R I'm big pentameter, but it's more restrictive. I think it's less speech. It's much more kind of sententious. And so the poet in their incarnation writing this novel that was meant to sell, titled it with an Alexandra. And so I had to write an Alexandra line for the title and I'm hoping, but not hoping that people will notice or not notice, you know, I don't know what, what needs to happen here, but it is one because it's harder in English to write them than it is in French. It just doesn't fall in the language so easily. So there was quite a lot of work behind that. Um,
Speaker 4 00:39:50 I think it, for the, for both the title of the thick, what novel and the thick, what novel, I think what makes it so interesting is that the clunkiness felt very authentic to me. And it very much of evoke the, kind of the frustration and the embarrassment that the poet was experiencing. When thinking about this item that was creating their revenue. Um, there's one other part of the book specifically that I wanted to delve into that just felt really relevant because of what I mean has been going on in the United States for hundreds of years, but as specifically going on right now in terms of danger to civilians from law enforcement agencies, like even just the other day, I was walking around in my neighborhood and there were six tanks and four people with huge guns outside of grocery store. And, um, I just wanted to kind of discuss the security state aspects of things. Um, and to kind of give folks an example. I was wondering if you could read maybe a page page and a half starting on 51.
Speaker 5 00:40:53 Yeah, absolutely. So this is the opening of chapter four. Here we go on my bed. I was thinking about how I was doing it. Wasn't tiptop, not far off being a clairvoyant, you can't see, or a princess who's never done anything, but dream things up welcoming her golden locks or an old man who doesn't have a single memory of his own. When you see someone, a black guy there, do I need to say it getting punched in the chest with the full force of a cop and all his impunity, then being dragged away by another, who kicks him to a pulp on the riverbank pavement? You realize that all you've been able to in your of youth is pure crap. Once was it to prove that I was of the human species, despite all that past of my father's lineage, I began my biography as if I'd had a life.
Speaker 5 00:41:45 Although I still don't know what it means to have left childhood behind. Yes, indeed. I wrote pages and pages of my life story, your fakery of the real leg stronger. I drew myself being born into a brand new era, and I developed myself in line with the emotional attitudes of those lost causes that make you rebel attitudes. I've found in old, new way films, that words like actions and violence mixed up with love, but all added up to a real life, but it was all fake. Even those 1970s films with their themes of urban loneliness, suicidal company, execs their dialogues so stupid. And so real between Romy Schneider and Michel Piccoli for me, they stopped much too closely to the stuff of life to be credible in this biography. I became someone a lot of face or a type or a character, but I kind of specifically social figure tie to a moment in an environment. But after a while, I had to make the call between this role and the iron and the soul, which really can't be ignored either. So I gave up to become someone with a social position. You probably ought to have special equipment weapons, shield, ear protectors, a helmet, but it professed chainmail tunic.
Speaker 5 00:42:58 So I'll stop there with, um, armor, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, this is one of the, one of the motifs that reappears throughout the book. It's a moment the narrator is wandering through the flower markets on the edge of the sword, which is one of the two rivers that cross in the center of Leon and, uh, in classic sort of French city center style, there are raised pavements and then steps down to the actual river bank pavement where you can walk. And what the narrator sees essentially is a group of police jumping on someone who doesn't seem to have done anything that person jumps down to the next level, right by the river is followed and jumped on again and immobilized essentially on the pavement. And that's, that's the image which we play through. And there was a, as in one part, there's a very detailed description of the current weapon of choice for the French army, which is the six hour, uh, something or other.
Speaker 5 00:43:59 Um, and, and the detail given is, is very, very technical. But I think it's, it's a kind of displacement and also a way of continuing the focus on the violence and the institutionalization of it, which is really inactive implemented in fact, created by the presence of the police. If the police weren't there, this wouldn't have happened. We assume that this person hasn't done anything wrong, but it looks like a dodgy type. I E is the wrong ethnic profile for being trustworthy and that this kind of a preemptive polarization of who's okay. And who's not okay, is really a kind of key part of the rot and what we want to avoid in a police state, or in fact, to get out of, you know, what we want to not have assuming they want a police state. Um, yeah, exactly. So I think this is one of the images around which, um, nohemi's anger, crystallizes, and it's very powerful and, and it speaks to right now, as you've noticed and it's, and sadly, um, I mean, she was writing a couple of years ago. It's Insta right now over again, it's just, it's just really upsetting how, how, um, how right she was to pull that bit out. Yeah,
Speaker 4 00:45:09 It's topical, but it also like becomes topical again, maybe every nine months in the United States. And I think that it's really important to think of it in the context of as a whole society, the way that it makes so many civilians feel disempowered, it makes civilians of color feel disempowered to go out in the world and run their errands and do their thing. It makes civilians in general, for some people experience a lot of hopelessness after incidents like this. Like if this structure is so widespread and so challenging to folks staying alive, it's really big, but it was really interesting to see that idea taken apart in this context and bringing that in. And I think that that's another way that this, this tiny little novel has so many very, uh, very thoughtful and important components in it.
Speaker 5 00:45:56 Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. In fact, I mean, I knew I knew some of this would be in it, but before I read it, I didn't know exactly what I just read fresh. I read all the new Amy's books and it was quite a relief to find that in there because I love her sensibility. And I'm very glad she trained her eye on this.
Speaker 4 00:46:16 Yeah, absolutely. I think that, yeah, every, every perspective and every conversation we have about this kind of societal violence is so important. And I think it's really cool to see this particular perspective taking it on. I kind of want to, since we're running out of the end of our time, there's one more question I really wanted to ask, so we're going to fit it in. So the poet opens the book are our friends and they're eight or the poet. Um, by saying that there's not a lot of poetry in society at the moment and closes the book by saying that there's a fair bit of poetry at the moment. And I just wanted to ask you, what does this poetry idea of poetry kind of mean to you in terms of, is it something about literal proliferation of poetry and ideas? Is it an idea of freedom? Is it some combination, um, kind of locate us in that sphere of ideas.
Speaker 5 00:47:08 I click it as precisely a kind of strong sense of freedom, freedom as a very active thing. Freedom though, defined as freedom in language, freedom in language, freedom to say, to speak one's actions to speak, what one thinks or to speak, what one feels to speak, how one acts as
Speaker 4 00:47:30 A justifiable way to be, to kind of speak with one's life and to speak three one's life. Yeah. It's it is, it is. Um, how can I put it any better? It is a freedom, but it's just about, it's a, it's a freedom through language. And that I think is what the poet is after that is what poetry is. And that's also what the poet can't help doing. So I think that's the thing it's, it's, you know, being a poet is, it's not something you, you decide upon. I mean, of course you can decide upon doing it, but it's, it's sort of a conflict. You can't help yourself at the same time. You don't, can you state it chooses you. And it's also a kind of societal value. I mean, we need all poets, we need freedom and we need our poets and we need our poetry.
Speaker 4 00:48:09 And then we may not pay the poets very well. Perhaps we should pay them better other argument, but, uh, we really need our freedom and we need our poetry the same way. Yes, absolutely. And I think that the, the bookends of poet in this book are such an important parallel to the concept of work in this book, um, where you have work, that is a thing where you sit in a desk or push a lawn mower, drive a bus and get paid to do it. And then there's the work of bringing society forward. And with poetry there's, I don't know, getting a book deal and getting your advance for your book deal. And then there's the personal sensibility of walking around every day and feeling better when you're writing and feeling more engaged with the world when you're translating what you're doing into writing. And I think that this book is just such an amazing example of that. For those of you who started listening part way, this is right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM. We have been speaking to the amazing Sophie Lewis translator to Noemi live fab for the poetics of work, uh, which is available. Now, Sophia has been such a delight to have you on the show. I really appreciate this conversation. Thanks so much, Tony. Uh, it was a joy to speak.
Speaker 1 00:49:19 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 9.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Webber. I'd like to thank our guests tonight, selfie Louis, plus our listeners without your support and donations KFA would not be possible. You can find more news and info about right on radio at cafe.org/program/right on radio.
