Lydia Millet | Fair Ones: A Double Novel | Fiction | Ep. 21

Lydia Millet: like I was more cynical, actually,

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: in my twenties, like than I am now, you know, in my writing. Like I was

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: very eager to I was eager to mock things or whatever. And I still, you know, we all like some mockery. We all like humor and to have it we have to objectify everyone.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: And it's great fun, right? And but

Cory: Ha ha ha.

Lydia Millet: and I st still have parts of that, but I don't have like I kinda gave up cynicism, like around the age of thirty. And so if if my twenty something person self, writer self had been writing these books, They probably would have been darker in a way.

Cory: Mm, I actually reached out to the publicist for today's guest earlier this year about their previous book, a collection of short stories. And the publicist said, Do you know she's got something new coming out this fall called Fair Ones, a double novel? And immediately my ears perked up. Because, okay, what even is a double novel? I don't think I've ever heard a book build like that before. Our guest today is Lydia Millett, a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist. I've read a handful of her books. The thing I think most people usually mention, and I love this as well, is her dry sense of humor. But more than that, I think large stretches of Lydia's writing can seem really light on the surface. There's lots of chatting in this book. For example, but at the same time they convey this real sense of weight and complexity. I don't come across that mixture with many other writers, and I have to think it's the result of someone that is truly confident and practiced in their craft. Fair Ones is about two women in their 40s living in New York City, Jen and Mara, whose close friend has suddenly and unexpectedly died. The first novel is told from Mara's perspective in the immediate aftermath, and eventually settles into something that, if you looked at it without glasses on, might resemble a thriller as the two women get involved in the police investigation into their friend's death. The second novel is told from Jen's perspective a year later, and is driven less by any kind of capital P plot, but is no less engrossing, and it brought up really interesting feelings for me about how people process grief, change, and even just getting older. To be honest, I was half ready for a a double novel to be mostly a marketing gimmick, but after finishing the book, I'd been convinced that I really had read two separate novels in an odd way. So who better to help us understand how this work came together than the author herself? Lydia Millett, welcome to the passage.

Lydia Millet: I am happy to be here.

Cory: Lydia, you're gonna read something from mostly towards the beginning of the book. Is there anything that people listening or watching might need to know about sort of where we are, who the characters are, what the scene is before you start reading?

Lydia Millet: Yeah, so first of all some some names of characters. The the person narrating the story is Mara, who tells the first of these two, two books within a double book. and then her friend described in this passage is Jen. And essentially they've just th hastily thrown together this wake at a bar in Brooklyn for for the friend who's just who's just died. And these are people in their forties, so they're quite they're quite shocked. and trying to kind of navigate their way through the strangers who are actually just who are who exist in the bar because it hasn't been you know it hasn't been sequestered for a for a private occasion or anything.

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: and the the sort of random assortment of people on an email list that they invited to this to this wake. and meanwhile they're still sort of in a state of shock and they're mildly drunk and one of them, Jen, has has convinced Mara who hasn't done any more serious drug than alcohol in in some time, to engage in i in n some narcotics in the bathroom. So it's just a really short passage with a little a fragment of dialogue at the beginning.

Cory: Yeah. Perfect. Okay.

Jon: Awesome.

Cory: We're ready when you are.

Lydia Millet: Let yourself go, said Jen. It's your turn to be a leaf. Or like the plastic bag in that egregiously overrated movie from the nineties. That pedophile fantasy dressed up as cinematic art with the rose motif? You can just float there like the bag, swirling in an updraft, in a super obvious yet so gritty metaphor. We hid it headed to the men's room with Jason Patrice, where, as always, there was no line, locked ourselves in and consumed. Just don't be rude, I warned myself. But my own potential rudeness sat on my shoulder like a gremlin. At the same time, I did feel like a floating plastic bag. I was a floating plastic bag, indifferent to the breeze that carried me. The bag was thin and sometimes full of air, but had the imperviousness of plastic. It would last, it would go on and on, though it tumbled and soared. It might snag on a tree or bush, but there it was. I was several metaphors at once, and it wasn't a problem for me. The gremlin was only a figment. On Jasis Coke, I wasn't bothered by any of the conversations when Elise touched on the event. I gave the appearance of listening, though in reality I felt apart from it. And supernatural, a superhero. The plastic bag was a miracle. Who had made it? Who had made me? If Claire had been a bag, she'd be floating there too. Or we might be snagged together in a tree. A green tree, I thought, with squirrels, and nuts and birds, slowly shedding our plastic bodies, shedding and shredding, filmy tatters we'd be. Across the bare winters, but there perhaps for all eternity, or at least till someone cut down the tree.

Jon: Awesome. Thanks for reading that Lydia. Yeah, perfect.

Lydia Millet: Did that work? Okay. Yeah, you think that would okay.

Cory: Yes. Yeah.

Jon: As always, our first question is why did you pick this passage when Corey reached out?

Lydia Millet: Well, primarily I didn't want to read a dialogue heavy passage. And as you pointed out earlier, you know, the it's a really intensely dialogue driven book. but I really dislike the convention of doing like different voices when you read dialogue. And so I mean I just I just it's like it's very I know it's like fashionable to insult theater kids and I don't want to like jump on that bandwagon. But you know, it's like very it's very it's toothpian, you know? It's just No, I didn't want to have to do voices. It's it's just

Cory: Yeah. Not your bag. Yeah.

Jon: You didn't want to have to do voices. Okay.

Lydia Millet: like torture. In fact if I have to do readings for this book, I might have to actually just employ someone to read dialogue with me so I don't

Cory: Ha ha ha.

Lydia Millet: have to do voices. And also I'm just, you know, I really enjoy a deadpan rendition of

Cory: Yes.

Lydia Millet: I mean, of lots of people's work, but certainly my work, you know, and I

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: always whenever I'm choosing a narrator for an audiobook of mine,

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: it's always like they send me samples of whatever and it's who can be the most deadpan, you know, like that's who that's who I want to read. And I don't want someone emoted. Yeah. Less emotion. Like don't the opposite

Jon: You

Cory: Less emotion. Less emotion, please.

Lydia Millet: of method acting, I want like just total gray rocking, you know? Anyway. So

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: so so that that was the first criteria was just like that it didn't have a lot of dialogue and then of course I wanted it to be near the front 'cause it still as we mentioned it still could use context. It's a kind of fast book. you fairly you fly through it, it's not immensely demanding, sort

Cory: Mm.

Lydia Millet: of in a cerebral way. partly because it's not as interior And it's not as abstract as some of my books. It's really more social. It's a social book. and so it has to be dialogue heavy. And it's also really fun to play with dialogue, right? It's like very fun to write dialogue. And the older I get, the more dialogue I write, because it's so efficient It's just a s a such a fast road to character establishment and

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: I'm not interested in any of the slow work of construction that some novelists are interested in. I mean I just wanna like sort of get where I'm going quickly oftentimes.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: it's like an attention span problem, maybe. I don't know.

Cory: Ha ha ha.

Lydia Millet: but so so so even though dialogue is the kind of spine of the book, I didn't wanna I didn't wanna read it. And then all Also I think this particular fragment sort of is a proxy for the overall kind of form of the book, which even though it which sort of alternates between dialogue and monologue, right?

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: the monologue. That is the subjectivity of the narrator. So there are two narrators, one per book,

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: in this dub double novel, which is what we decided to call it because it seemed it honestly just seemed like us the least pretentious thing to call it. And I'm I hope it doesn't come off like too much of a novelty, because that's we're actually trying to avoid that. But I didn't want to I wanted them both to be read, so I didn't want them published as separate volumes. And I

Cory: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lydia Millet: also just I don't like any more a thing where there's a part one and a part two and both the parts are just really long. I don't know. I just have a

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: a sort of a mild aversion to it. And I yeah,

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: I just didn't want I didn't want there to be a chance that a reader might not read the first or second book if we published them separately. Or or

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: honestly that they'd have to pay out more for separate volumes and 'cause I just don't You know, I just don't like that that idea. So if you

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: did some fancy thing like you s only sold them together but you made them into a little box set or like

Jon: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: bound them together or something, that immediately means that people have to pay more money to read these books if they're not getting them from the library or

Cory: Yep. Yep.

Lydia Millet: or on their on their tablet. And so so yeah, I just so a double novel. So that's where we ended. And then we we first had my editor and I had talked about making it We we played with the idea of making it a a tete beche, what they call a tete bech treatment

Cory: What's that?

Lydia Millet: it's like it's that thing where the it's like upside down from one side, so it's like it's

Jon: No.

Cory: huh, yeah, yeah. Yep.

Lydia Millet: like this, and then you could but the problem with that, so you have a back cover that's upside down, you know,

Cory: Yep. Yep.

Lydia Millet: and you start there and whatever. But the problem is that that sort of device depends on the notion that you could read either book first.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: in in the narrative time doesn't matter to the to the real time sort of order sequence of what you read it. But that's not the case here. You know, you really the preference is for you to read what happened first first in a literal way and then So so it wouldn't have been appropriate,

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: you know, to do a a fancy tete bash treatment. Anyway, that's the double novel story. But I hope it doesn't look too affected to say a double novel. you know what I mean?

Cory: I went looking online trying to figure out if any other book had been billed as a double novel before. I couldn't find any. I I yeah.

Lydia Millet: Really? Okay. Yeah.

Jon: I think that like you said, part one and part two is probably the way that that would normally be handled.

Lydia Millet: Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. I think we

Jon: But yeah.

Lydia Millet: just we kind of decided late in the process not to have it not to have them be more separate in some way, I guess.

Jon: But with a double novel, then you feel like you're getting even more value for your money. So it works really well. Exactly.

Lydia Millet: No, there you go. It's like a supersize me kind of situation, right? It's like, yeah, yeah.

Jon: I think Cory and I will have a bunch of questions about this passage, but I want to ask something that I want to ask a lot of our authors and I never really get to, which is what's it like to read this passage having not read it for a long time or if ever since it's been published or finished?

Lydia Millet: Yeah. it's always a bit it's always a bit alien, you know, coming to something and reading it. I mean, of course it's the farther back in time something is that you've written from your current self, the more

Jon: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: difficult and painful it is to engage with that thing again. Because it really does like feel as though someone else has written it after a lot

Jon: Yeah. But this isn't that old, so...

Lydia Millet: Right. But this isn't that old, but it still is not what I'm working on now, just 'cause of the natural lag between r and every book is, even though I notice, you know, I used to sort of say when I was younger, like like even in my forties, you know, I would say, I don't like to write the same book again.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: Which strikes me now as a just like vainglorious like move. Because

Jon: you

Lydia Millet: the thing is like, yeah, you don't want to. I mean, what I was trying to do was disting at the time was sort of distinguish myself from writers who kind of do very well by by writing you know, a version of the same book again and

Jon: Yeah.

Cory: Yeah. Yeah.

Lydia Millet: again. And to say to s sort of say, you know, perhaps this is one reason that I'm not famous, you know you know, like because I'm not I'm I'm just a tricky branding project because I do so the brand identity you know, it's not as consistent from product to product or whatever, right? Even though

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: people who do read books that I've written often can tell that I was the person who wrote them, right? But so I I never I always intended to be doing a different project from what I did last time or whatever. But then you start to realize like you have so many ticks.

Jon: Mm-hmm

Lydia Millet: And you have so many tropes and there's so many things you've done a lot of times before

Jon: Yeah.

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: and you just have forgotten them. And so it's

Jon: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: always sort of like you've forgotten that you made that thing that way.

Jon: You

Lydia Millet: Even just down to the level of petty detail, you know, I'll like write something now and then You know, I'm I'm essentially afraid to go back and read my older books because I I don't wanna see that I

Jon: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: just that I actually have written a version of the same thing. Like it's like it would be a bad dream. It's like a nightmare scenario, you know. anyway, so

Jon: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: but but even s which is all to say that like even to go back to something I wrote in this case, what, two years ago or something, is always a bit uncomfortable and unpleasant. You know, 'cause I've always feel like I'm stepping away from something because I have to, you know, when I finish a thing. Like

Jon: Right.

Lydia Millet: I have to and I, you know, and then like invariably there's something to regret. Like in this case there's

Jon: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: a passage I regret, even though the book's literally not published yet. I'm like, my God. Why did I do that? Why did I do that? You know, and there's it's sort of everything is infinitely sort of fungible and fixable hypothetically, but then

Jon: Right.

Lydia Millet: like, you know, like I could go back and and abridge old books like from twenty years ago in a way that would probably aesthetically, you know, tighten them and improve them greatly. But you don't sort of first of all, the world has no interest in you doing that. But second of all,

Cory: Ha ha ha.

Lydia Millet: like you would be doing it would be like editing someone else's book in a way.

Jon: Yeah, yeah.

Lydia Millet: Because you weren't you no longer exist in that idiom, I think like what you were saying just then, like you're not in that idiom anymore. You're not in that conversation. And just to walk

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: into that conversation again, even if you have kind of a smooth like line to sort of sidle up to someone with, you're still kind of an interloper, you know,

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Cory: i if younger you had had the general premise or the idea for this book, how do you think they would have written it versus how you wrote it today?

Lydia Millet: Mm. Well, how much younger? 'Cause there's so many different like iterations. Like threads in the multiverse or strings or whatever.

Cory: Maybe within your first couple of novels.

Lydia Millet: yeah, okay. Well there would have been less dialogue and there would have been more words per thought. More words per thought. I was just having a conversation with my friend Jenny O'Phil, also a writer, and

Cory: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lydia Millet: and she she tells this one story of her old revered writing teacher whose work I also love, love, Gil Sorentino. And and how we used to talk about like how a young writer will write a scene, you know, will be

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: like he strolled over to the sideboard, picked up the decanter and slowly poured the brand liquid into the tumbler.

Jon: Mm-hmm

Cory: Ha ha ha.

Lydia Millet: And, you know, an older writer will just write he fixed himself a drink, you know.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: And I think there's like Great. Truth to that if your writing sort of is moving in generally the right direction, you know, as time goes on. I think

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: that I definitely was more there were tonal things that were even more significant, even more significant than say, like, parsimony of words or whatever,

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: which w were just like I was much more arch as a writer when I was in my twenties for

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: sure. I mean, even in my diction as a human I

Cory: Mm.

Lydia Millet: was. I was like slowly have grown toward pop culture. But then also I was very like I was more cynical, actually,

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: in my twenties, like than I am now, you know, in my writing. Like I was

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: very eager to I was eager to mock things or whatever. And I still, you know, we all like some mockery. We all like humor and to have it we have to objectify everyone.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: And it's great fun, right? And but

Cory: Ha ha ha.

Lydia Millet: and I st still have parts of that, but I don't have like I kinda gave up cynicism, like around the age of thirty. And so if if my twenty something person self, writer self had been writing these books, They probably would have been darker in a way.

Cory: Mm, mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: Or this book.

Jon: interesting.

Lydia Millet: Yeah.

Cory: they wouldn't have opened well this this very passage opens with a reference to American beauty, so it sounds like the the younger you wouldn't have wouldn't have stooped whatever so so low for a pop culture reference like that.

Lydia Millet: Well so my first book was full of like very hyper referential to like the name of it first. It was called Omnivores, but before it was called Omnivores. The name of it was Estee Kraft. And the main character in it is named partly for Estee Lauder and partly for Kraft macaroni and cheese, you know. So it was

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: definitely drenched in pop culture, but that was partly because like it was all so new to me. It was like I just got into Mars, you know. in a

Jon: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: way. Like not I don't want to say that I lived on some island as a kid, but just that w our references were so were so not, you know, I mean I heard people talk about Charlie's Angels at elementary school, but I never like saw it until much later. You know, that kind of thing.

Jon: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lydia Millet: I did get to see I dream of Jeannie and and Bewitched at my friend EL's house after school a few times one year in elementary school. But still, my point is just that we were like this little kind of enclave in my house.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: So yeah so it wasn't that I didn't write about pop culture. It's just that my mind hadn't been eroded by it to the degree that it is today. So I guess that's what I'm saying.

Jon: We've, yeah, we've, we've dumbed you down is what you're trying to say in America.

Cory: Ha ha ha.

Lydia Millet: Yeah, pretty much. Or I've I've self dumbed. I've self dumbed 'cause I'm so addicted to various forms of entertainment, you know.

Jon: Yeah,

Cory: Yeah. I I was gonna say one of the things that I like, Lydia, and I I noticed this a couple of times in this book, in previous books, and I'm glad that you chose this passage because this is a good e example of it, is I like how you weigh the sort of con the inherent contradictions of modernity, of like the the modern thought. And one of the like the American beauty reference right in this passage, you go from and it's it's funny you say That you don't mock anymore because the the passage that you just read opens with you mocking American beauty. But then like Jen goes from mocking American beauty and the sort of cliche-ness of the floating plastic bag. But then Mara is kind of like, well, actually that's a pretty good way to describe it. And like I I sort of have to hand it to this movie that we all kind of roll our eyes about because it seems glib or problematic or whatever, but there is this sort of kernel of truth or this essence of like something actually very sort of real in it. At least that's how I'm reading it. Is that how you're reading it as well?

Lydia Millet: Well, so a couple of things, yes, no, I think basically that's correct. And Jen is the one who is more you know, her her character is just harsher, just harsher, more judgmental and whatever, and this is a thing that the they talk about and whatever. It's not it's not a spoiler. and so that's very true. Also like cliches are cliches for a reason, as we all know, which is that they're profoundly resonant with many of us. and then also, I think I'm less mocking as a writer, but that doesn't mean my characters don't don't enjoy mockery.

Jon: One thing that strikes me about your work kind of across a lot of your stuff is that it seems fun to write. It seems like you are having fun while you're writing it. Is that the case? Is writing fun for you?

Lydia Millet: Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. I mean, I hope it's fun to read to some degree.

Jon: It's definitely fun to read, they're not always the same. Sometimes stuff can be really fun

Lydia Millet: Right.

Jon: to read, but they can feel like they were hard to write or unfun to write. even when you were reading this passage,

Lydia Millet: That's true. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Jon: struck me as like, it struck me as somebody who sits down at a computer and like is sort of just having fun with whatever ideas are coming at them.

Lydia Millet: Yeah.

Jon: Not in a way, not that it's like unpolished or anything like that. there's obviously that's not true, but. Yeah, it just seems fun. Is that true?

Lydia Millet: Yeah, that is absolutely true. I mean it's like my it's my great joy in life,

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: really. plus listening to music, dancing around, yes. But like writing

Jon: Okay.

Lydia Millet: is writing is I mean, it's just the thing that makes me happy to do, to make, you know? and

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: yeah, I almost almost always unless I have some commission to do something that I that I'm ambivalent about, that's you know, slightly more of a chore.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: Obviously, but just getting to write like a story any way you like, I mean, doesn't get better than that. It's totally joyous, yeah. Yeah.

Jon: And what do you think about it is so enjoyable?

Lydia Millet: I guess well first of all just the freedom of it, the freedom of getting to do whatever you want in that in that world at any given moment, you know, is great. not having to take responsibility for what you're saying is tremendous. Like like that's what I love about fiction, right? Like Yeah, yeah. All the puppetry is

Jon: You can put it on somebody else. Yeah. Yeah.

Cory: This is Jen's opinion that that American beauty is a pedophile

Lydia Millet: is excellent. It's it's her opinion. She's yeah, she's

Jon: You

Cory: fantasy, not mine.

Lydia Millet: Sure, exactly. Or yeah, and even of course more toxic so so called toxic things. I mean, you can be like take the villainous parts of yourself or maybe they're devil's advocate parts or whatever

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: and And put them in the mouths of made-up people who will not be harmed by this.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: you know, will not be harmed. And so I love that about fiction. And I do when I wrote I've only written one book of nonfiction. And it was not funny for the most part, and and not fiction. So it was a just totally different thing. And I did love writing it too, but that's cause it was more of an act of some things can be more an act of like consecration or like grief or you know other they have other reasons for existing. But

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: when I write fiction it's almost always just to like amuse myself and also like try to learn something as a write it. There was one one book I wrote that changed that changed kind of the way I came to writing and sort of made me less cynical in the work I was doing, which was this like book called My Happy Life, which I wrote a long, long time ago. And It actually changed me to write that book. somehow. I realized that what our task should be, you know, on the earth is not to set ourselves apart you know, by defining what we don't like or even hate, but to

Jon: Mhm.

Lydia Millet: try to love whatever we can. Which is a very I I a very basic perhaps trite recognition, but it meant a lot to me and it still does, you know. And that doesn't mean I

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: what I mean is like the realization was try to love. Like try to love whatever you can.

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: When you can't, you know, there's probably a reason for it and you can like interrogate that reason or whatever. Like I may try to love my MAGA neighbor. I may fail to love that that MAGA neighbor, you know, who shoots

Cory: Right. Yeah.

Jon: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: up guns in his front yard. and there's no

Jon: You

Lydia Millet: shame in failing to love him.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: but like maybe try in the first place, see how you do, and then

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: when you fail, then that's something interesting to look at and Whatever, but like try to love first, right? And I had really tried to hate first in the books before that. Like it just amused

Cory: Ha ha ha.

Lydia Millet: me to have these these bitter characters. And I still like

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: to have bitter characters, and definitely I like to have you know, characters who are not conventionally likable and whatever. I I love all that stuff. And just prickly ones and characters with a lot of blind spots, 'cause those are the that's the most interesting thing, right? When like

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: our own blind spots and how we will never know what they are. And I I just kind of you know, we're such tragic animals. and and that's great. And that's a great fodder for fiction.

Cory: I'm curious, just on a actual writing process level, how did Fair Ones get get written? do you remember writing this exact passage that you that you wrote? do you remember writing the book? Were you all over the place? Were you in in in one specific spot?

Lydia Millet: do you mean like physical spot? Yeah, yeah. I w I was okay so

Cory: Yeah. Where do you write from?

Lydia Millet: I was generally in one spot, although I have two spots. So,

Cory: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: when I'm in Arizona for that part of the year, which is most of the year. I I am in one spot and heavy kind of ritual just because I'm I have the luxury of ritual now. I didn't always

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: you know, like when my kids were little and I was a single

Cory: Mm.

Lydia Millet: mother and whatever, I didn't I just had to write wherever I could for fifteen minutes at a time or whatever. But now I have a partner and he's really helpful with my son who's still at home. and so I can write for like an hour to an hour and a half in the morning and before my day job, which is a six-hour

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: day job. job

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: and then for like an hour and an hour and a half every night and I do that every day. and

Cory: Every day.

Lydia Millet: if I every day, like there's no vacation from the writing part of that. And I don't wish for it. I mean unless I have to, like something prevents me. But like I would never take

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: a vacation where on purpose there was no place for me to write, you know, in a day. It does

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Cory: Yeah. Yeah.

Lydia Millet: happen, but you know, like not on purpose. and the wear of it is just this really kind of falling apart little guest house that belongs to my mother that's on the The property next to mine in the desert outside Tucson.

Jon: Hmm.

Lydia Millet: So it's like big Seguara cactuses all around. The neighbor who shoots guns. And there used to be another neighbor who shot guns on the other

Jon: haha

Lydia Millet: side with this

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: massive dog, but he moved away. So anyway. so I I walk from my house over to this other little house that doesn't have many amenities, but it has like a bathroom and a refrigerator. and then I sit outside at that because it's I'm riding not in the hot part of the day.

Cory: Yep.

Lydia Millet: writing you know dawn and dusk sort of and so I just sit on this like cement block patio outside this little this cabin and write.

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: And then in the main part of the year, which is where where I am now, which is like June, July, August, I I actually

Cory: Yep. Main f physical physical main, not like the primary part of the year. Yeah. Yeah.

Lydia Millet: Physical Maine. Yes, exactly. Physical right, physical Maine. Mid coast Midcoast Maine. It's like near Rockland, but out in the country I'm right on the like Saint George Inlet. it is a Walmart hut. I mean, they don't call it a hut. It's like a pavilion tent that I got from

Cory: Hm. Yeah. Yeah.

Lydia Millet: Walmart. two summers ago for a hundred and ten dollars. And it's like set

Cory: Yeah. Can't beat that.

Lydia Millet: up at the co it's awesome. It's lasted. I think this

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: this is probably the last summer. It's set up like

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: at the corner of our meadow where it meets the woods. Where I'm pretty sure I found bear scat just like twenty feet away the other

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: day. 'cause we have a lot of critters here.

Cory: Yep. How about the actual process itself? I I'd be surprised if you told me that Fair Ones was carefully plotted out or that you had all of the specific points in advance, but maybe you'll you'll surprise me. What w when you sort of sat down in the beginning, how how do you write?

Lydia Millet: Yeah, so I never p I don't plan anything 'cause for me that would like you might have an idea. You might or some things that you're gonna hang it off or like in my case it's usually it's usually some sort of affective goal. like I want there to be this feeling at the end of the book,

Jon: Hmm.

Lydia Millet: you know. th I mean primarily that I have. I can't like obviously guarantee anyone else's sentiment.

Jon: Can you give an example? That's a really interesting way of thinking about like starting a book. Like, what does that mean?

Lydia Millet: sh sure. I it's just very simple and it's hard to but it's hard to articulate like what that is. So I it's some kind of like gestural thing where I'm thinking, you know, I want to find myself in a state of I don't know, call it desolate confusion. I mean I'm just making that up. You know, like but some sort of you know what I mean? Like it's but

Jon: Okay. Okay, yeah. I get what you're saying. Yeah.

Lydia Millet: it it's not it's largely kind of pre verbal the way or

Jon: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: something the way I think of it usually. It's not like fully formed. But I know I will know it Like pornography, I will know it when I see it, you know.

Cory: Yeah.

Jon: Actually, I think that makes a lot of sense. It kind of gets back to what Cory was saying in the very beginning about how like there's a quality to your writing that it seems kind of easy going, maybe that's not the right word, but you know what I mean, but that there's a lot working under the surface. And I think that the way you conceive of a book like that kind of makes sense for what you're talking about. Like you want there

Lydia Millet: Okay, good.

Jon: to be a... I don't know, something that is hard to verbalize at the end of it.

Lydia Millet: I do, 'cause I I sort of feel like that's why that's why you would write a whole book. Like that's why you would bother to write a whole book, so that you can get

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: to something that you couldn't just do in an elevator

Jon: Right?

Lydia Millet: bench, you know. you can get to you can create some sort of ca chemical concoction that ends up at a certain place that if you could easily describe it beforehand, why just write a poem, write a like excellent fucking poem, you know? 'Cause

Jon: Yeah. Something we ask all of our guests, if you could hear one author talk about their writing process the way we're asking you to talk about yours, who would it be? Dead or alive?

Lydia Millet: Hmm. Ooh. Wow. Interesting. maybe Thomas Bernhard. I mean probably someone else has said him.

Jon: Yeah.

Cory: Yes, they have actually. I I I am surprised. Yeah Yeah. Yeah.

Jon: You get a prize, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's come up at least once, yeah.

Lydia Millet: really I would like to I would like to think of someone like more obscure, You know, just to to to to do them justice.

Cory: I thought that was obscure enough when the first person mentioned it,

Jon: I was gonna say to a lot of people that's plenty obscure, yeah.

Cory: and so I'm surprised to hear you bring him up as well.

Lydia Millet: Well, he's he's just such a r he's kind of a writer's writer to a certain like at least set of kind of Gen Xers, I think. and maybe boomers even, yeah, I would say.

Cory: This guy was younger. I actually I I never asked Sam his age, but I got the sense that he was younger than us.

Jon: He was younger than us.

Lydia Millet: know, and and that is a hard

Jon: Or who do you think you maybe learn something from, or who have you learned something from as far as process

Lydia Millet: Well so many I've learned from stuff.

Jon: or craft or something along those lines, or just how to think about writing and character you've already talked about.

Lydia Millet: there are so many like this is the anxiety of influence sort of question. Like I you know, like I there are just so many writers I've learned different things from. I mean, I think I think that again, like when I was younger, I had more patience for writers who took up a lot of space. And the older I get, the more I like writers who take up less space. Both in like terms of how big how physically large and long their books are. Like I I just had more patience for that. But also in terms of the way they use language and like just white space and and you know caution. Caution.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: And I think if they were If I could fix my own books, I would go back and sort of exercise some caution. But I I really loved, like I learned a lot. I think the answer really would finally be that I learned a lot from different writers at different stages of my life. And even like now my my friend Jenny, who often reads n often but not always reads books of mine, depending on like before they come out, you know, depending how busy she is. She has taught me things about economy of language. I don't know. It's like

Jon: Yeah, yeah. It's actually, it's

Cory: Yeah. Yeah.

Jon: really funny because I was thinking, I was just telling Cory before we started this that last week I read Salman Rushdie's book, Knife, about his attack that

Lydia Millet: Mm-hmm.

Jon: he had. And it's like 200 pages long and it's very, it's almost kind of dry. It's a great, I think it's a great book, but it's not exuberant in its language at all. I...

Lydia Millet: Yeah.

Jon: I read it and I thought this is a really, really great book. And then I thought I'll go back and read Satanic Verses because I haven't ever read that book. And I picked it up off my shelf and within like a page, it's like two different writers completely. I mean, there's much more, like unbelievably

Lydia Millet: Yeah, yeah. It's much more florid, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

Jon: more. And I mean, there's 45 years or something between them, but

Lydia Millet: Right, right.

Jon: a lot changes. I mean, just a lot changes in that time. And it's clear that that's sort of what happened.

Cory: Lydia, we wrap everything up always with a series of quick rapid fire questions. So we're gonna ask you a couple things. And

Lydia Millet: jeez. Okay. Is it like yeah. Okay, word association?

Jon: You can do it however you want.

Cory: the idea hopefully is that yes, the is is that we're not gonna pontificate upon each each thing and we're sort of gonna go with your sort of gut reaction. So I'll I'll start off. What's one aspect? Yeah. We'll we'll let you know at the end how you did.

Lydia Millet: Okay. I'll try. I feel like maybe this is a test. Is this a test? Okay. Okay. Okay. All right.

Jon: It's a pass fail test, yeah.

Lydia Millet: All right. Thank you.

Cory: What's one aspect of writing you think you're particularly good at?

Lydia Millet: doing it consistently.

Jon: And what's one aspect you think you're bad at?

Lydia Millet: Impatience. I'm too impatient to give and I'm getting better over time, but I'm too impatient to I allow too many flaws to exist in published work.

Cory: Hmm. What's

Jon: Really?

Cory: harder to write, the first line or the last line?

Lydia Millet: That's good question. They're both so fun to write. It's harder to make the first line Right though. It's harder to make the first line right than the last. The last is just like pure like joy, usually. Not always, but like usually.

Jon: What's the first thing you edit out of a draft?

Lydia Millet: I mean it it used to be interstitial passages. So connective tissue. but I almost never write any connective tissue anymore, so I don't need to excise it. And by connective

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: tissue I just mean like something that's getting us from A to B. You know, I guess I guess it would be a part well I'm not a part of speech, but almost like what I most often end up doing is removing the last line of a paragraph where something was overwritten, where

Jon: Hmm.

Lydia Millet: I doubled down on a point when I didn't need to, you know. Something of that nature.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Cory: What's a word you always misspell and auto correct saves you?

Lydia Millet: Mm. I'm not sure which word b although I do think there are some. But it's like I have problems with double consonants sometimes. Like I think and I think it ha partly has to do with having grown up in Canada

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: and but having been American and also b you know, being subject to American spellings. Because there are some cases where Canadians and Brits spell things with like before the E D, like

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: for the participle or whatever, they there'll be a double L or something. Yeah, yeah.

Jon: Traveled. Traveled, yeah.

Cory: Yes.

Lydia Millet: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So I think it's that kind of thing most often.

Jon: Do you write longhand, Google Doc, Microsoft Word? What's the platform?

Lydia Millet: It is Microsoft Word. I mean, you know I don't like to do an activity profile.

Cory: You you seem so enthusiastic about it.

Jon: It's a classic.

Lydia Millet: It's just like it's all bad. But it is Microsoft Word.

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: And it has been for a really long time. It used to be in the nineties when I was starting out it I would write in Quark Express. I don't know if you guys remember

Cory: Wow, okay.

Lydia Millet: that, but it's it was like a magazine kind of desktop publishing software program. And you could lay things out in a really attractive way when other software only allowed you to do really basic stuff like, you

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: know, twelve point curry or double spaced

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: or whatever. but then that that disappeared. So now I just use Microsoft Word. Yeah.

Cory: That that sounds kind of interesting 'cause it I would imagine it allows you to get closer to how the typeset page might actually look. Was that how you were using it? Yeah.

Lydia Millet: Right. That's exactly right. And I still do that so I always write in like a preferred font, which is usually

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: something in the Garamond family or like

Cory: Mm.

Lydia Millet: right now I'm using one called Balai that you have to I'm very font I'm obsessive a little bit about fonts. And so if I I've actually had to Yeah, yeah. So I purchased this Balai font. Yeah,

Cory: Are you purchasing custom custom fonts? Are you are you paying for these? Wow.

Lydia Millet: I had to pay for it. But then the problem is no one else has it, you see.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: So that's a that's a real problem. But

Cory: Do you get into back

Jon: Right.

Cory: and forths with Norton, the production people when when it comes to typesetting?

Lydia Millet: did ask Nor They are s they okay, yes, but they are so kind to me and and so good about this stuff. I

Cory: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: mean just like I've never had a a kinder publisher around these matters 'cause 'cause they most of them really understand that font choice like is is so important like for how language lands with the reader and stuff and it means a lot to so many writers, especially just body fonts, you know, like

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: what your main text is. Yeah, so I am quite I'm quite opinionated about fonts. Like I don't like Times New Roman. Don't like it.

Cory: Lydia, we could not be more on the same page. It's sometimes I will pick up professionally published books and I it just blows my mind. Did no one think of how this book was gonna look on the inside? Like it makes me

Jon: You

Lydia Millet: I am Exactly. Yes.

Jon: if

Cory: mad.

Lydia Millet: Yeah. No, it's offensive. Yeah, no, exactly.

Cory: Ha ha ha

Lydia Millet: I'm so glad you feel this way.

Jon: I know Cory

Cory: John's like, I don't care. lit lit

Jon: is obsessed about Fonsi.

Cory: Yeah. Lydia, both of us are former book editors, so like I you know, I both of us were heavily involved in this process at at one point in in time.

Jon: Yeah, but I was going to say usually when an author had a request for a font, it was a bad idea and I had to kind of talk them out of it. But in your case, I think,

Cory: Right. Yeah.

Jon: you know, it's maybe more rare than an author. And this is probably more true of like fiction writers that they have a good sense of style and taste and they know what looks good.

Lydia Millet: Sure. Okay.

Cory: We have two questions left. when you're when you're writing, are you listening to music, TV, do you have a podcast in the background? Do you have to write with

Lydia Millet: Nothing.

Cory: silence? You are outside, so.

Lydia Millet: I'm outside with just outside sounds and I don't listen to music because genuinely it is distracting to me even though I love it. I've used to in the past listen to music without words.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: but I no longer do that either. I just want the the page in front of me, yeah.

Jon: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: Yeah.

Jon: What's your go-to procrastination method? Although it sounds like you really look forward to sitting down to write,

Lydia Millet: Yeah, I don't In in the situation that I'm in now I don't procrastinate because those are my set aside times when no one's allowed to interrupt me. And so th I would be shooting myself in the foot to

Jon: Right.

Lydia Millet: but I am like by by nature s somewhat of a like I'm a putterer. I'm a person who can't sit down for infinite like I don't I have a hard time sitting through a movie, you know. Like I'll even though I love movies and whatever, I always have to get up, like at least twice in a in a l even in a theater, you know.

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: I just I don't do long sitting, just like sitting down for a long period. So I'm so I'm a putterer. Yeah, I'll putter around, do a task. I'll typically like I don't like cleaning, like I don't like scrubbing or anything like that, but will I tidy? I will tidy, you know?

Cory: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: I will tidy. Yeah. I'll take things off a surface. I'll be like or I'll just like rearrange them on the surface. I'll

Jon: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: be like these things are too like, especially my partner will put things in a really rectilinear kind of pattern and I'll be like no, no, you gotta this gotta be angled, it's gotta look casual. You know,

Jon: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: someone go over you know, that kind thing.

Jon: Yeah.

Lydia Millet: I don't know anything about feng shui, but it's like my personal feng shui.

Cory: Yeah. Well, that does track with with how much you care about typesetting and and

Jon: Yeah.

Cory: the way that that the book looks too. Everything

Lydia Millet: There you go. Yeah, yeah. It's like a

Cory: has to kind of be in in i in exact order.

Lydia Millet: It's an order like there is an orderliness. Like I can't work in a messy room. I can't work in a messy

Jon: Mm-hmm.

Lydia Millet: room. But also if the order looks like too deliberate, yeah, I don't like it. You know? Yeah.

Jon: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cory: Mm-hmm. Lydia, that is all the questions that we have for you. Really appreciate you coming on the show and taking the time to talk with us.

Lydia Millet: Thank you. This was really a joy. Where

Jon: Awesome. That's what we like to hear.

Cory: Awesome.