Speaker 0 00:00:07 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Webber. And tonight on red and radio, any Harvey talks with Renee Lenore Hanson, author of watershed, attending to body and earth in distress. Hanson has taught writing and global studies and Minneapolis college for 31 years. Watershed is a meditation on intimate connections between bodily health and biome health. She weaves experiences and the Northern watersheds of Minnesota with stories from her students and from her type one diabetes diagnosis. And I'm Dave Fettig and the last part of the hour, our superstar hosts, and he will conduct yet another interview with the author Meggie ships, dead to discuss great circle, a novel epic and emotional meticulously researched and gloriously told. Great circle is a monumental work of art and a tremendous leap forward for, for the prodigiously gifted mega ships did all of this and more so stay tuned to right on radio.
Speaker 1 00:01:12 Hi Renee. It's so great to have you in the studio.
Speaker 2 00:01:15 It's super wonderful to be here and yeah,
Speaker 1 00:01:18 Y'all, this is my first guest in-person and over a year, um, Renee is a local author and I was so excited when she, uh, was vaccinated and was able to come in it's there's something so special about being able to talk to someone in person and like show them our studio space. Uh it's really,
Speaker 3 00:01:35 And see real smiles, not just eyes smiles. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:01:41 Um, yeah. So let's start talking about your book. Let's just dive right into it. Um, so today we're talking about watershed attending to body and earth and distress, um, for those who haven't got their hands on the book yet, could you, uh, briefly describe what this book is about and read folks a little sample
Speaker 3 00:02:01 I'm going to read from sort of the second introduction, something like that. It's got a lot of little parts in it. This is called how to live, which is pretty audacious. I just say in the notes that I don't really know, but this is the best I can do. And please write your own how to there's a whole blank page, opposite this for you to write yours. Um, I think this explains somewhat climate catastrophe turns up in my body and in yours as the climate shifts, basic life processes alter spring and summer, fall, and winter air and ocean currents, atmospheric density as the climate continues to change the new patterns to which we may have attempted to adapt, begin to swirl Lyme disease extends its reach as a landscape warms. I got a different one last summer and it wasn't lying, but there's all kinds of tick diseases now spreading.
Speaker 3 00:02:56 Anyway, I didn't write that diabetes in both its forms is increasing on all continents at a rate faster than any previous human disease. Climate change will complicate the management of diabetes, water shortages, outdoor conditions that make exercise difficult pollution, novel viruses, infrastructure, instability, too much, or too little or inappropriate food all will make diabetes and other illnesses harder to contend with some of these conditions will further increase the number of people with disease. Paradoxically living in a damaged body can teach us much about how to live in a damaged ecosystem and about how to return to practices of joy. And that's why I wrote it because I was distressed about ecosystem destruction and somehow this miracle of diabetes, um, helped me become more comfortable with it.
Speaker 1 00:03:52 Yeah. Um, and I love just to, just to elaborate on that for a moment about things I especially appreciated. I love how you kind of take folks through the journey of not really knowing you have diabetes, but knowing you have various like mystery discomforts and problems to kind of interacting with the kind of, um, clunky and frankly kind of dangerous gaps in healthcare for people, um, like having limited strips being somewhere and needing something you don't have, um, through to making those connections, um, between continuing to care for an ailing body and continuing to care for an ailing, um, environment. And, um, I was just wondering, because this concept I immediately was interested in this book because, um, of course many people rightfully are writing about climate change these days, but I'd never seen it compared to a co narrative that's so personal and that's so focused on one's own body.
Speaker 1 00:04:49 I feel like there's so much, a lot of dialogue about improvement of the world is about very explicitly like ask <inaudible> like self sacrifice. Um, and, uh, just this, this concept, um, taught me a lot about diabetes, but it could also be helpful for, um, anyone wondering about anything. And it's kind of a, again, for those who haven't read, it combines a personal narrative and interactive advice, ideas, meditations, um, like Renee mentioned, there are some places in spaces where you're welcomed to, um, think about things as they apply to your own life. Um, did you have an envision reader, whether like a real specific group of people or kind of someone more hypothetical in mind when you wrote this?
Speaker 3 00:05:38 Um, I S I think that the first reader that I would think about would be my students and my children, because I was shocked to have students come back to me and say, my parents won't talk about climate change to me. They say, I'll be dead then. So I don't care or like that. And I I'd look at the student and say, you were right there. They sit there and like, you don't get a planet. It doesn't. And I realized that parents were probably too or traumatized too, but yeah, it feels really wrong. And I wanted to be there with whoever is facing this. Um, and it's as of course happening right now, it's not just in the future. It's yesterday. It was really hot and humid. And yeah, my nephew just lived through fires in Arizona and, you know, it's, it's all around and I, I can't be with all of them, but I can at least tell them I care and, and have thought of them. Yeah. So that's much of what I thought about. And then just, um, how, uh, frozen you can get when you deal with a big, big issue like this, it's hard to know how to move. And I thought that if, if life could give me any words that would help other people find their next step or their next word, I would like to do that. So anyone who will join me in that conversation would be the reader.
Speaker 1 00:07:16 That's really wonderful. Um, I love how this book kind of just relenting, unrelentingly joins those conversations that, um, many are averse to having like, um, about problems in the healthcare system about climate change. Um, and you're allowing all of these conversations to run parallel and kind of intertwined, even though they could seem radically different. Like, as I mentioned, I've never before seen a book that's about diabetes and climate change. Um, could you tell me a little about how you structured and organized the book? So the things weave together, but also have their own space.
Speaker 3 00:07:55 Yeah. And another thread that I think is important to put into that is, um, climate justice and a refugee status that I was not aware until students taught me that the Somali war started from a climate disruption, that it was not just the people couldn't get along. And, and, uh, you know, there's this attitude like refugees are here cause they couldn't handle things at home. Well, they couldn't handle things at home because everything died because of climate change. And that, um, that was a really big motivating message to me. And, and students coming to me saying, you please tell the people, you know, you're asking us to tell people which I was please write it, tell it, keeps saying it, but they said, you need also to tell people because you've got access to some people we don't. And as a Minnesotan, Ben met here my whole life and I'm, out-state almost more than city.
Speaker 3 00:08:54 Um, do have people who might be willing to listen to me that my students don't yet have access to it. Didn't exactly answer your question. It was something about how you weave the strands, but I'm going to go to that. I wrote the different parts at different times and in different places. Cool. We were talking ahead of time about writing practice. And one of the things that's important to me is the place where I write. Yeah. Because the place comes through the writing. So when I wrote my, I think my love song to Minnesota watersheds, um, I was up north in the home that I grew up in right outside of, right on Birch lake, outside of Babbitt, near Eley started the Quish river. And I took a week or more by myself there. So I was just with the water to, to write right.
Speaker 3 00:09:46 That, um, the stories of the students I wrote at Mesa refuge in California on a writing residency, because I really needed a cradle like community, somebody who believed that it was worth doing this, that was really painful. Yeah. Those are hard, hard stories to carry and they're extremely precious. So that was a good place to do it. I wrote the diabetes stuff right. In my St. Paul House. Cause I was close to my endo and knew I was safe. Where is where that happened? Um, I think I wrote a lot of the things that are more teacherly on the light rail and at Minneapolis college. Cause that's where I do that. Yeah. And then, um, a really great editor. I hired Scott Edelstein looked at all the parts and said, weave them or braid them. And that was fun. Cutting them up, putting them on the floor, you know, the old, the old way of putting things together when you see them all and you decide now a bit of this and now a bit of that I'm Meda quilt.
Speaker 1 00:10:54 Yeah. Yeah. It feels very visceral and present to be reading this book. So it is not surprising to me at all that you were doing it in the locales being referenced. Um, I'm from Northern Minnesota also. I'm from Duluth. Yeah. And it feels, I just, um, I just, this is sorry for the anti tangent, but I was on the superior hiking trail with some friends last week and it just, um, the, the kind of intimacy and appreciation and feelings of, um, the livingness of the water ecosystem and of the tree ecosystem and stuff like that, um, really comes through in this book. And it absolutely makes sense that you wrote it on site, so to speak, um, and let the site
Speaker 3 00:11:39 Write it. Yes. Because I think we Minnesotans, which includes all of the newcomers who are also Minnesotans, no matter where they come from, we got to S we got to let this land speak through us because it's precious. I know all land is precious, but they're each precious in their own way. Yeah. And we are, we are the source of the water for much of this continent and, and the people who were here before us and who are here now, the indigenous people who, who seem to get it more quickly than we white folks often do. Yeah. Know that we're, waterkeepers what, what the rest of the continent gets is what we pass through us. So speak it, Annie.
Speaker 1 00:12:26 Um, to talk a little more about kind of your process with, uh, students and working with young people, um, your ethos as a teacher was so present in this book, I loved everything you included about things you learned from your students conversations you had with your students and kind of ways you got information and stories and learned really valuable things out of them. Um, you, you show such a respect for your students with mutual learning and, um, you really, you really indicate treasuring that knowledge. Um, and I just wanted to ask for a little more about how your teaching informs your writing and the other way around.
Speaker 3 00:13:06 Yeah. I hope that in the book, I can give a bit of the experience of what it's like to be with a group of people for a semester. It is such a privilege and, and maybe all the schools in Minnesota, I like this, but what I know is Minneapolis college, and we've got these, this great diversity native born foreign born, uh, and they have so much to teach and it would be such a waste. If I thought I was the teacher, I am the co-learner, um, we exchanged stuff. I've got, I've got privileges that I need to pass on. So from those I given them, they've got privileges. I had no idea what it's like to live in the hood. You know, I got taught some really important lessons. And, um, yeah, so that is precious. I hope that in the book I welcomed the reader in, as you would be welcome to a class. So you hear the voices of many, many people who've come to me as you know, they were officially students, but they're just other other beings and you hear their voices as you would fellow classmates. So that, I hope you get the sense of you are in, in this group of beings. And then we let in also the beings of the trees on the, the other ones, oh, that's my insulin pump. I will make it stop that it's,
Speaker 1 00:14:33 It did feel, feel free to have a snack if you need to. It does feel like, um, being in a classroom setting, like I took a really writing workshop, intensive undergrad degree. So like, it felt very natural to have people like speaking up and sharing things and some people would share it sometimes and some people would it other times. And, um, just the way you really, um, highlighted the learning opportunity of being in that room with people from different continents and from different ways they came here and all different ages. Um, like it's, it's so rich that you get to learn from these people regularly. And, um, it's cool that you bring that into your writing. Um, when you're including your students in your writing, do you usually like discuss it with them or
Speaker 3 00:15:18 Those who I had contact with still, I asked a few of them wanted their names to be used. So there are a few real actual names of people in there because they wanted them. Um, and others are compilations of people. Um, and yeah, I hope it's all respectful of the, of the students. It's yeah, it was like that. I was thinking of, there are assignments in here and I want readers to take them seriously. I know they don't have to, but students also didn't have to take me seriously. You know, I give them assignments and they sometimes do it sometimes they don't do it, but I think, um, I think it's important to do it. If you can, to actually stop in the reading and, and do this, I'm going to read the shortest one. It's called the voice of the body. What just now is the nearest body trying to say yes, that one, the one that is you, do you hear it?
Speaker 3 00:16:20 Will you be still and listen, um, on, I, I have to say that to myself sometimes. You know, I didn't listen when I was dying of thirst. I thought I was, I thought I could psych myself out of it. I thought I could tell myself to stop thinking about drought and I wouldn't be thirsty and I needed to pay attention and go to an emergency room. Um, so I really want people to, to recognize that this body is the same as this earth. We're not different. We're, we're one thing. And listening to your own body also teaches you to listen, to listen to the other, the bigger body of the trees and the neighbors, bird neighbors, and human neighbors and all of them.
Speaker 1 00:17:08 Yeah. I don't want to speak for education and too broad of strokes, but in my own life, I've had some teachers who kind of discourage, like just sitting and like, you talk about like spending time with yourself kind of spending time with a tree or a plant or things like that, and really sinking into that. But there are ways that kind of like, go, go, go school culture. That's always about studying for the next exam, studying for the big act or whatever. Um, is something where you kind of have to parallel also be learning about how to listen to yourself or things like that. Because I feel like that's a lesson that people are kind of asked to push aside in order to succeed and kind of the human made around us. Um, and I really appreciated the ways the, uh, kind of the activity sections in your book.
Speaker 1 00:17:57 I'll refer to them. Um, really brought that about, that's a skill that, um, like I cultivated somewhat as a kid being surrounded by nature, but also like that's a skill that I really realized I lacked and really needed to have, um, when I started to need more and more care for mental health stuff, mostly depression. And it's like, I didn't know how to listen to myself because I thought the right thing to do is to push that down. Right. And thinking about that relative to other things, think about that relative to climate change or to paying attention to the people around you to try to create a better society or things like that. Um, the instinct to push through rather than to take a beat and listen, um, is such a thing that needs to be practiced and used carefully. Um, and I'm really, I'm really glad that your book brought that about and that you shared that.
Speaker 3 00:18:47 I think that our ecological crisis is going to bring that about either we'll do it or it will be done to us. Yeah. So the biggest change we need to make is, uh, is, uh, oh, you could use the word paradigm shift, but it's just like a noticing that we are not individuals and that achievement is not the thing that we actually need to follow the cycles that are natural cycles and be part of the whole, and that's what you're talking about. That that's a bigger achievement than kidding the degree that you might have to get maybe to stay alive, but maybe
Speaker 1 00:19:32 Not. Yeah. Yeah. I know so many people, myself included sometimes who feel guilty about resting, but resting is such a vital part of listening to the environment around you, participating in the world around you, um, observing changes and things as they happen. Um, while talking about like being present in what's going on around you, where you are, um, you bring up in the book kind of the, like, I kind of think of it as like the climate shutdown and you use the phrase climate distress, where when folks get in a conversation about climate change, they kind of get overwhelmed and feel like there's nothing to do and they kind of shut down. Um, and you kind of counter this climate distress, or at least you mentioned countering it in the book by saying, you remind yourself, you will live to see the return to the cold.
Speaker 1 00:20:20 Um, and in another area you talk about working with the soil and then another area you talk about advocating with Minnesota three 50. Um, I just think it's really important that this is brought up. And I just wanted to ask, what do you recommend to readers and thinkers who are experiencing climate distress, kind of where to get started, how to sit for a beat and how to choose a reasonable amount of action. That makes sense. Yeah. There's no one individual who is going to walk out of cafe and then instantly solve climate change. And none of our
Speaker 3 00:20:53 Real, no, none of us, but all of us. Yes. Um, I try, I repeat in the book, the first thing to do is to stop. And the next thing to do is to breathe and then assess the situation. That's what I have to do also when I'm going low or high with diabetes. And the same is there. It's interesting. You mentioned that sentence. You will live to the, see the return of the cold, because that was a sentence that came at me from out of the blue. Um, was it the voice of God? Was it my unconscious? Was it my wishes speaking? What would Freud say? Who knows? I don't know, but I heard it and do I believe it? I wish maybe I think there can be miracles like insulin as sort of a miracle. It didn't come soon enough for many people. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:21:44 But came soon enough for me oddly, which is yeah. Um, and so I do problematize this thing, uh, I, you know, I tell you what, what a tree said to me in the book, did the tree early say that, well, as much as I said it, or as much as I heard it, you know, and I think it's okay to take comfort where we can get it, but then also we need to take that, that little bit of comfort and do something. Um, scientifically it is proven that working in the soil will help your depression. So that one really, I can say with assurance, good thing to do, um, joining with others, men three 50 Minnesota, interfaith power and light climate generation, uh, whatever, whatever I'm part of a transition town, whatever works for you, pick that thing and do something with that organization. If, if you have nothing else to give, give money, but most of us have a little bit of time or you can listen to all their things or you can support them. You can bring food to the volunteers. If you can't volunteer or give money yourself, you could do something. But I think it's better to pick one than spread yourself too thin. Yeah. So do something like that. Um, yeah, it's tough. But as we talk about it, honestly, it gets not as awful. Yeah. It, it, it gets like, oh, really, I'm switching the way I look at life and it all is better. It's, it's a wake up that we need and it'll improve other parts of life too.
Speaker 1 00:23:28 There's one other quotation I want to talk about that I really love in this book. It's perhaps my favorite. Um, you give the advice to use your energy, to nourish others as well as yourself, but first learn who those others and ask them what they need when we force the aid, we think is right on others. We violate them. Um, and I just thought that was good advice in interpersonal multicultural, environmental contexts. Um, I think especially, um, I say this as a white person, I think a lot of white people think they know how to solve a lot of things when they actually should be having, um, interracial and interfaith conversations about things before making decisions. And I was just wondering if you could, um, talk to me about learning that and trying to work that ethos
Speaker 3 00:24:13 Into this stories. Yes. Permaculture and permaculture is not the term we should use, but regenerative, agriculture, whatever. When you come to your yard, before you try to take out all the turf grass and plant good things, they w you recommended to live with it for a year. See what grows, um, listen to those things, watch them. And when we're interacting with humans who are different from us too, I think watching, listening, modeling, I mean, sitting like they sit yeah. Um, comes before asking questions. And certainly before trying to help, help should be like taken out of our little white vocabulary if we can. But first, all of those things of, of being receptive, watching, listening, feeling, getting a psychic sense.
Speaker 3 00:25:13 Um, and then before you do something, ask and ask permission. Yeah. Even I am, and it's the same with people as for all the other people that Theresa and the, like before you pick something, ask, and, um, as I heard, uh, indigenous Oneida, elder, I think it was say the other day, you know, you don't, you will look at the first one, but you don't take it. And you look at the second one, but you don't take it. And then the third one you ask and that's kind of the same, I think for any group of beings that find your own way, but those are some hints.
Speaker 1 00:25:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I absolutely love that. Thank you. It hurts my heart to say this, but we're actually out of time. Um, I really appreciate you coming and speaking with us tonight. Um, this has been so much fun, uh, for those who joined us part way through, uh, this is Renee Lynn, our Hanson, um, here talking about her new book watershed, attending to body and earth in distress. Thank you so much, Renee.
Speaker 3 00:26:16 And this chair squeaks. You probably don't know because I'm the first one to sit in it for a year. You heard squeaks it. Wasn't all my pump. Wow. Well, it was great. Yeah. So you're,
Speaker 4 00:26:38 You're listening to KFA 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie Harvey with right on radio. And I'm so excited to have Maggie ship stat here today. Maggie is the author of several novels most recently. Great circle, Maggie, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me for those who haven't had the chance to get their hands on the book yet. Could you briefly describe what happens in it? Yeah, absolutely. Great. Circle is primarily about a fictional female pilot named Marianne graves who disappears in 1950 while trying to fly around the world north, south over the poles, but it starts much earlier and goes through her childhood in Montana and learning to fly in the twenties there. Um, she flies in Alaska in the thirties. She flies in the UK during world war II. And her story is interwoven with that of a modern day movie star named Hadley Baxter.
Speaker 4 00:27:32 Who's playing Maryanne in a biopic about her life and sort of gets drawn in the question of who Marian really was and what her disappearance kind of means. This book has everything. Just picture Stefan on SNL for anyone who hasn't read the book yet and is debating, picking up a copy. There's lots of aviation learning to fly old west moonshine, bootlegging, Hollywood, tabloids, undercover, queer romance, um, contemporary film, stunts, family tragedy, secret children. The book is 600 pages, but to me it felt more like 300 cause I was just flying through it. Things kept happening with all this stuff going on. Could you give me a little insight into your research process for this and how you use research to tell the story in a way that's so engrossing and feel so present? Yeah, well, so I never plan my books. So when I started, I sort of thought that like my other books had just sort of knock this off in a year, which turned out to be extremely incorrect, took three years and three months to write a first draft.
Speaker 4 00:28:37 And my first draft was 980 manuscript pages, which is about 25% longer than, than it ended up being. Um, and I just kind of, I had the only things I knew were Marian's route around the world and I decided what kind of plan she would use. And I knew I wanted her to fly during world war II, but I didn't know if I would do that in the U S or the UK. So I just sort of started. And then immediately I thought, well, I'll start with a ocean liner sinking or the launch of an ocean liner. And so then I have to, you know, go get all these books about ocean liners and try and figure out why they sing and then write that part and then move forward. And that's pretty much my research model throughout the book was I would come up with some question that I didn't know the answer to or something I needed to write about.
Speaker 4 00:29:27 And then I would track down the information I needed and sort of use it. And then it kind of goes right out of my head. So it was really pretty organic. Uh, and then as I discovered, or just across bits and pieces while I was researching, that would then kind of drive the pot as well. Like there are plenty of left turns just because it came across something that interested me or seemed useful or appropriate. But yeah, it was, it just made it all feel like swimming upstream because I'd make a little bit of progress and then I'd be like, now I have to figure out what Seattle was like and, you know, 1928 or whatever it was. Yeah. It was, it was a lot of work that feels very true to the nature of the story in that in the current day track Hadley, unlike a lot of the people who are making the movie and are coming at things from such a prescriptive lens, like, oh, this is what Marianne graves was.
Speaker 4 00:30:23 This woman wrote this book about her. And we're treating that as definitive for this movie, Hadley is so open and flexible to like, oh, um, knowing that she'll never know everything about Marianne or learning something about Marianne and actually like believing and being relieved that the narrative is getting complicated and accepting those non tight answers. Did you feel kind of like you were having a parallel experience when you were writing it or did that ethos writing it play at all into your writing of Hadley's journey? Oh, interesting. Um, I'm sure subconsciously, I mean, I think I didn't, I also didn't think through this when I sort of came up with Hadley, um, which was also some accidental, I think I'd been working for three or four weeks on the book. And then I wrote a section of the book where Hadley is publicly cheating on her movie star boyfriend with a pop star and walks out of the club and on the surface that had nothing to do with this aviation thing I was starting to work on, but I sort of felt like it was the missing piece.
Speaker 4 00:31:18 And I think one way in which that ended up being true is that Hadley has this long-term personal experience of people thinking they know her when they don't, you know, and seeing a picture of her doing something or being somewhere. And then this whole story gets constructed. All these wrong assumptions are made, they spread like wildfire. And so I think that in some ways, predisposed her to look at the bits and pieces of Marion's life that she can find or has access to and not think that she knows the whole story or not. She, I think something in her resists sort of filling in the blanks as enthusiastically as everybody else does. And, and so that was one of the important things about her lens. And the book was just showing, you know, how much is lost when someone disappears or dies. And the reader has this close experience of Marianne's life and knows almost about enough as much about Maryanne as Marianne does.
Speaker 4 00:32:10 And meanwhile, Hadley's like trying to, you know, assemble something out of those pieces and the reader can see how, in some ways, few title it is, but, you know, I don't think we never really know other people even when they're still alive. So yeah, that's so true. So just to dive into that a little deeper, I think that the voice work and the time work in the story was so fascinating. And one of my favorite things about it, because you have the pretty immediate close third person that's describing Marion's life. It feels like a very traditional novel. And then you have the Hadley perspective, which is, feels more contemporary. The language is a little like very emotional, um, a little more sparse in a good way. Like I read through those sections, like I was eating popcorn, um, but still felt them very much. And those together came into, you have a vantage in the past, seeing how things are, you have advantage in our time.
Speaker 4 00:33:08 So the future for Mary and trying to decipher things, and the reader is in a fascinating space where they're holding a curated set of information that none of the characters do. Like we know how Marianne will be perceived in the future, but we also know a fair bit about how she felt in the moment. And I was just wondering, um, how did you, besides that experience, you had writing Hadley walking out of the club. How did you choose film specifically and celebrity specifically as the future corollary to Marian's life, especially when there are so many ways to be a public figure in like the internet, age Hollywood, very specifically. Um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, some of it was just interest and I live in LA and when I started writing the book, I had just moved here and a lot of my friends work in Hollywood.
Speaker 4 00:33:56 And so it's just so pervasive that culture in this city, which, which I find really fascinating. And I had also written a short story that was published in tin house. I started writing grade circle in fall 2014. And I think the previous year was when I published the story that was also sort of an intense first person voice of a movie star. And it was playing with sort of familiar tropes or, or it was playing with the Katie Holmes, Tom cruise story, and was Scientology. And, but I sort of reinvented all the vocabulary and I really enjoyed that process. I thought was really interesting. Um, I talked to Curtis Sittenfeld for book event and she was saying that she feels like when she's writing about public figures, like she's done with Hillary Clinton or, um, Laura Bush, it's, it's like, she's talking to the reader about someone they both know, you know, as opposed to, if you're talking to a friend and you're telling a story to your friend about someone, they don't know, it really changes the feeling.
Speaker 4 00:34:51 And I think that's true. I like sort of having the reader have a running start and the Hadley sections with these little bits and pieces that are sort of familiar and known, but I also think, you know, we get so much of our information about history and past figures through film and TV now kind of for better, for worse. And I also, you know, I thought a lot about Amelia Earhart in starting the book because she's sort of, there were many female pilots who were kind of household names in the twenties and thirties, but she's sort of the one we still remember it. And it's the less about her accomplishments, although they were major than about her disappearance. And, and I it's I'm, I would bet everything I have that she crashed in the ocean and drowned, like there's no way anything else happened, but you know, every few years somebody digs up something so random and it goes viral, you know, photo of nothing.
Speaker 4 00:35:46 And they're like, is this really what happened to Amelia her? It's like, we know what happened to her. And so I think that sort of vitality and that confusion of narratives also was indirectly would push me toward a Hollywood story. Um, and even looking at like the way Amelia Earhart has sort of this game of telephone that happens culturally, that conveys a person's life to, um, to sort of the general public, I think is really interesting. Yeah. I would love to dive into the way that patriarchy is so pervasive, both in the Marion thread and in the Hadley friend. And something I really appreciated about this book is that you, you could say that gender dynamics have changed a lot over the duration of time between Marian's life and Hadley's life, which in some ways it's very true. But on the other hand, it's very true that, uh, both of them had to interact with male gatekeepers and please male gatekeepers in order to have their career.
Speaker 4 00:36:46 I'll try not to spoil anything for those who haven't read, but to give a little context, Marianne had kind of a patron to help her afford her flight teaching, and then Hadley had to deal with, I'll say it. She had to deal with some kind of greasy studio execs who did not behave especially well in order to get her roles. And I just thought that the way that there was that parallelism yet also that difference in how patriarchal society prevents smart and capable women from achieving what they can do without that, um, upward punch of male financial or industry patronage, I'll say male gatekeepers across time. Yeah. Male gatekeepers is a great phrase. Um, yeah, you know, it, it kind of arose of its own accord. Like I, when I started to write the book, I didn't have any thoughts of like, this is how I will weave my feminist agenda into it.
Speaker 4 00:37:37 Although of course, you know, I think a lot of it was just the practicality is of, okay, this woman or girl, a teenage girl in 1927 decides she wants to be a pilot and she doesn't have, you know, wealthiest supportive parents. She's effectively orphan. She's raised by her sort of semi-final childhood raised by her. Ne'er do well, uncle, how do you become a pilot? And you know, certainly there weren't a lot of there, wasn't some structure of supportive female pilots, like looking to help her out. And so she's trying to take lessons and all these men are like no way kid, you know? And, and so she realized that she needs to make money. And how do you do that? And again, that's hard as a girl. And so I think all of these obstacles were very concrete and she had to apply a lot of ingenuity and make some very real sacrifices in order to find her way to this thing she knew she had to do.
Speaker 4 00:38:31 She had to be a pilot and would literally do anything. And it kind of talked herself into like the relationship you mentioned with her patron. She sort of was like, this'll be fine. I'll be able to get out of this one. I need to, and it's a lot more complicated. And, you know, I, I think too, like in her time period, when she decided she didn't want to domestic life, she didn't want to get married and have children. That's not just one decision you can make. It's this endless series of choices she had to make throughout her life to sort of protect this unorthodox life. And she's constantly vigilant about it at the expense of human connection, even with people who, who didn't, you know, overtly want to take that away from her. And so then with Hadley, I mean, you can, as many people do as celebrities can look at her and say, well, this is, uh, you know, extremely rich and famous young white woman there.
Speaker 4 00:39:20 She has no problems, no obstacles and, and sort of on a certain logistical level. That's true, but what's, you know, Hadley's big sort of problem is just the crushing weight of public scrutiny and how you can never do anything, right? Like you can't perform womanhood correctly. You're supposed to be sexy, but not have sex. Uh, you're supposed to be interesting, but not be sort of this wrecking ball that she is a little bit. And she's also, I mean, yeah, as you mentioned, it's, it's, you know, for an actress, it's, there's incredible pressure on your body to live up to this male gaze. Um, you mentioned she has sort of a, what we'd now call a me too moment with a Harvey Weinstein S not even quite, uh, a much less demonic, uh, movie producer, but I think I wrote that before the Weinstein story broke and I've gotten asked about it a lot.
Speaker 4 00:40:12 And it's like, well, one of the things about Harvey Weinstein was like, even people had no connection to the film industry already knew that guy was like a monster. Like, I think it was a huge bombshell that took journalistic tenacity, like nobody's business, but nobody was surprised, you know, casting couch jokes have been around forever. And in some ways it reminds me of the Catholic church, um, abuse, scandals, where it's like, alter boy jokes have been around forever. Like people have always known this, it's been in the sort of in the ambient culture. And then at a certain point, like things break and it comes out. So yeah, I think Hadley, yeah, her problems are different than Marianne's, but I think that they're both just kind of fundamentally grappling with like, how do I make my life the way I want being all SWAT also being a woman.
Speaker 4 00:41:00 And, uh, yeah, it's, it's never not complicated that segues really nicely into something else that I wanted to ask you about in kind of the women's history section of how, of how I perceived this book, both Hadley and Marian in their own ways are given much higher kind of quote, unquote moral standards to meet in life than men in their communities. They're kind of expected to uphold good behavior as they get increasing amounts of attention and also meet the needs of their men, the men in their life, while also being groundbreaking, doing what they do. So they're often blamed for the mistakes of the men that have equal or greater culpability for what has happened. Like for example, Hadley's affair that kind of imploded the perfect dating situation in which she was dating her movie CoStar or Marianne being blamed for her husband's alcoholism instead of, I don't know, acknowledgement that alcoholism is its own thing for this kind of women as moral benchmarks phenomenon.
Speaker 4 00:42:02 How did that play into your story crafting process and your research? Yeah, that's so interesting. I mean, I don't think I've thought about it, but I think it's very true. I think some of it is, you know, men are still very much treated as like the default human experience. And so of course, men face criticism and judgment and for probation, all these things. But I don't think it's often in the context of like, well, that's because you're a man or like, you're not a man. Right. And, and I think that's kind of always lurking for women. It's like in the equation at all times, Marion's uncle who raises her as just complete and total mess. He's like a degenerate gambler. Who's an artist is, has this drinking problem. But I think the way he is perceived, even in that community, in the, in the twenties and Montana is different from how, say the mother of Marian's best friend Caleb is treated who's, uh, also has a drinking problem and is prostituted.
Speaker 4 00:43:04 So, yeah, I don't, I don't know. It wasn't a big part of my thought process, but I think, you know, just so much about the female experience, once you start writing about women, it finds its way, um, yeah. To change topics a fair bit. There are a lot of history of aviation benchmarks in addition to a lot of information about planes that Marion wanted or was interested in flying the world war II planes, how did planes become kind of a central meat of the story and how did you craft them in a way that felt very present? Yeah. I never been big into airplanes. My brother just left the air force after 20 years and he hasn't fun for a while, but he was a pilot in the air force. We flew C one 30 as a child. He was just obsessed with airplanes and he could tell what kind you know is flying over.
Speaker 4 00:43:58 He knew everything about them. And I think a lot of people who are pilots just know it's just this thing. Like I must be a pilot and I never felt that. So when I started writing the book, I had a fair but fair amount of anxiety about like, can I write about pilots? And, and I thought about taking flying lessons and sort of fundamentally, I did not want to, I, I have like sort of poor spatial relations. None of it's intuitive to me. I had, it would be sort of scary. It's very expensive, but I did go on rides in airplanes when I could. And so, like I went in a glider and did a loop, which sort of informed how Marian Wright describes flying a loop. And I landed on glaciers and ice sheets. And I was in Missoula once and at the aviation museum.
Speaker 4 00:44:45 And just by chance, these two guys were taking up a 1927 traveler, 6,000. And they were like, tell that lady she can come to. And I was like, oh, and so, you know, th that was completely serendipitous. And I made that the kind of plane that Maryanne learns how to fly because I'd written around in it, in the exact place where she was learning. So I'd seen the sights and I heard it and smelled it, and I had video of it. But the more, you know, and I read lots of books by pilots and about pilot and I use internet resources like YouTube as well. But you know, the more I learned about aviation, the more kind of moving, I found it just the speed at which this technology changed the world. And an example, I think of all the time is Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic in 1927 in sort of a glorified laundry basket.
Speaker 4 00:45:35 And it was this world event and parades and his most famous person in the world. Just this one flight, you know, that's not so ordinary to us. And within his lifetime, he was present at the launch of Apollo 11. So he was there for the moonshot, that shift just in one human lifespan, I think is, is really sort of odd, inspiring as we're just kind of those early pilots are so adventurous reading about them is also a way to see how much the world has changed. Like they would just sort of land wherever, just in a desert and hope for the best. And, uh, just the wildness of the planet was something that I thought about a lot too. Yeah. Again, try not to spoil for folks who haven't read yet, but they land in Antarctica. They're all over Europe. There's so much going on in here.
Speaker 4 00:46:24 And all of the flights scenes feel very tangible. They feel like a real experience and flight felt to me, like it was the perfect Lincoln force between Marianne and Hadley, because they're pretty, they have pretty different personalities, but they're both free thinking. They're, autodidactic, they're really avid at doing things on their own, be it reading, exploring, and they both have relationships to tragedies without being defined by their tragedies. And it just felt like solo aviation still has that kind of adventurous connotation even today. And it just, it felt like such a good link. Yeah. You know, I will say one of the hardest possibly the hardest thing in the revision phase after I'd written, my first draft was sort of how to connect these, these two characters. And so I was always looking for ways to do that. And, and through my drafts, I strengthened the sort of concrete coincidences they have, like their orphans are both raised by uncles and it was less about doing anything cutesy and more just about creating a reason why Hadley would sort of look at Marianne as something to do with her.
Speaker 4 00:47:30 Like, I think Hadley is, is fundamentally as self absorbed person as she inevitably would be growing up as a child actor. And she's like, she thinks the universe is sending her messages and this is one. Um, but I had different versions, you know, there were, there was a draft where Hadley and this producer, she works with Redwood or like in a library, like going through files and like digging up stuff I'm Maryanne, but that was like two sort of on the nose and literal. And so, yeah, it was the sort of, kind of the last thing that fell into place with the book was having enough, but not too much Hadley and having their connection be close enough, but not too, too tidy. So yeah, I think, um, flight, or even just a, sort of a metaphorical sensation of flight was something I was sort of trying to put in there.
Speaker 4 00:48:23 Yeah. It felt to me like the connection between Hadley and Marianne came out balanced really nicely. And then I think they each had nice foils within their own lives. Like I really enjoyed the parts about Jamie for again, for those who haven't read, Marion has a very pacifistic exploratory brother who doesn't really understand her, but participates in her life and goes on his own adventures. And it feeds really nicely into her story for revising this book down hundreds and hundreds of pages. Is there anything that you wish could have been in or could have been done differently or are you, do you feel like you came down to something that you really feel settled on? That may be a weird question and feel free to take it back? No, not at all. I mean, I think part of the reason I'm able to publish books is that at a certain point, I go, okay, this is done.
Speaker 4 00:49:16 And then I don't really let myself second guess it. So I cut 230 manuscript pages. And most of that was done doing small pervasive cuts. Just the book that long, you cut a little bit on each page and you ended up cutting a lot of pages. Um, there was one section that we cut that I miss, I think it was absolutely the right decision to cut it, but there are these sections called incomplete histories, you know, that zip through sort of long periods of time. And there was one for Antarctica, but it came very late in the book right before their flight. And my editor was like, you know, people have read 500 pages. Aren't going to be excited when it's like Pangea peers. And you're like, I just want to know what happens. I don't want to know about the movements of the tectonic plates so that when I miss a little bit, there was also, Jamie had a different storyline for awhile that involved him, joining a religious community in Canada called the duke of borders.
Speaker 4 00:50:18 Um, and they're sort of like Russian Quakers. They're communal, they're pacifist vegetarian, they're Christian, but don't use the Bible. It's all sort of some, it really interesting people. And my editor was like, this is just one sort of weird thing, too many. So that got cut. And then, um, I had to sort of reconstruct his, his plot line, but yeah, I think, you know, it's just, nothing's ever perfect and you know, no one ever wishes, they published a book sooner, like an earlier draft without thought that horrifies me and I'm sure I could have done more, but also it was like, it had been seven years since my last it's now been seven years since my last book was published and it was just, you know, it was time. Yeah.
