Poured Over: Téa Obreht on The Morningside

By Jenna Seery / March 19, 2024 at 6:00 am

The Morningside by Téa Obreht is a story of mothers and daughters and finding home, set in an unforgettable building and a near-future world. Obreht joins us to talk about writing a dystopian novel, creating deep and memorable characters, finding hope in society and more with Miwa Messer, the host of Poured Over.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Jenna Seery and mixed by Harry Liang.                  

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.        

Featured Books (Episode):
The Morningside by Téa Obreht
Inland by Téa Obreht
The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
Iron Curtain: A Love Story by Vesna Goldsworthy
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

Full Episode Transcript

Miwa Messer

I’m Miwa Messer, the producer and host of Poured Over and it’s been a minute since I got to hang out with Téa Obreht. And that was oh, Inland 2018. Yeah, it was a B&N book club pick one of my favorite Westerns ever, which we will come back to. But The Morningside is the new novel. And if you’re a fan of Emily St. John Mandel’s work. Sea of Tranquility, Station Eleven. There’s a little bit of that here, if you notice his debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife, which plenty of people do, it was one of those books that when it landed, everyone was reading it. Every everyone was reading a book. So that’s my way of saying, Hey, I’m really excited to see you. It’s been a minute. How are you?

Téa Obreht

I’m good. I’m well, I am so excited to be talking to you. It’s one of my favorite pastimes. In a book club setting. It’s yeah, or in a bookstore setting.

There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. And you and I’ve had this conversation sort of off sides before but why do you write

I think I write to live multiple lives. I think that’s really the crux of it for me, right? Because I become obsessed with the lives of fictionalized people. And I’m obsessed with people in general. And I was reading the method recently, and sort of learning about how method actors train and prepare to inhabit the characters that they play. And there was so much in it that felt very familiar to the writing process. So I think, yeah, I think there’s something of that to it for me.

I mean, as I hinted in the introduction, there’s a slight dystopian flair to the morning side, it’s Gothic, it’s a little claustrophobic. The first time I read it, I actually thought about that, Tom Hiddleston movie, High Rise. Oh, that’s a little bit of a stretch. But, you know, because there’s this sort of weird sort of fantastical element. And you know, Tom Hiddleston, stretching as trotting around doing his thing, but we’re in a really contained space. We’ve got mothers and daughters and aunties, and at this cast of women is really great. There’s also there’s a guy called Louis that will meet in a minute, but really, it’s a story of women and girls under pressure.

I think so. Yeah. You know, I’m just beginning to talk about the book. And, and so hearing your thoughts on it is, you know, it’s one of the first outside impressions that I’m getting, and it’s always so wonderful. I think one of the most rewarding parts of writing is getting to connect with readers and seeing how the book connected with them and sort of hearing their takes on it, because I do believe that every reader brings their own sort of history of readership and their own interpretations and their own emotional state to the to a work and but yeah, I do think it’s about women and girls under pressure and sort of matrilineal kind of lineages under pressure in a way. I’m interested in claustrophobia. Claustrophobia turned out the claustrophobic setting turned out to be a kind of tricky thing to work within, because previous books have been very expansive, you know, they’re these kind of big settings, long timelines, everybody’s outdoors, and then sort of when they’re indoors, they go in for a pressure cooker situation, and then they go back out again, to relieve it. And this was claustrophobic in in nature, but also claustrophobic to write, you know, I think when you’re, for me, the experience of writing a near future world, felt hemmed in by the things I didn’t know. And then as I wrote it, you know, I could get a little bit more horizon. And so it would expand just a little bit. But yeah, it was, it was a strange experience, psychologically, for me to the writing,

Kind of famously, you kill two books between The Tiger’s Wife and Inland and was a total of something like 1400 pages. Okay. And then we get Inland. And you know, I love Nora, and I love Laurie and I love all of the terrible things that you did to them. Even when they’re out in the world, though, it is claustrophobic because the terrain is so horrific. And yeah, this idea of your characters being able to survive in a really deeply inhospitable place. You know, the world of The Morningside felt more a little bit like it was rotting, and not so much that it was a menace, the way the landscape of Inland was, but I knew I was reading you because of the characters and the prose style and I was like, oh, Inland and Morningside feel like they are in conversation in a way that I didn’t necessarily feel with Tiger’s Wife and Inland. It felt like you had sort of gone from, here’s my debut, this is what I’m going to do. I’ve been working on this idea for a really long time. And then Inland was kind of like well, I tossed all that other material in here’s this thing that I really want to say. Mythmaking obviously connects the to writing, yeah, but Inland and Morningside feel like two sides of the same coin, to me in a really good way, so gratified to hear and not in a secret not like you’ve written a sequel or anything like that. But just the way I can see your brain working in both of these. I love it. It makes me so happy. But when did you start working on Morningside.

It was kind of floating around my brain for a really long time, I think, New York, I was living in New York, I lived in New York for eight years, it was not my first time living in a in a city or even a city that size. You know, I was born in Belgrade. I grew up in Cairo, I lived in LA, I’ve been a city person most of my life. But New York had a strange effect on me. It was a distancing effect necessarily, but I felt often that I didn’t have an in to the city the way other people did, you know, that I had there too late in life or too late in the city’s history. And that all the things that were kind of incredible about it had already happened. And people want to tell you this about kind of every place you move, right, like, it’s not like it used to be. And to a certain extent, that’s true. You know, there’s banks cropping up everywhere, and like, everything’s, everything’s like a new modern high rise, and no one could afford anything. And like, with the exponential growth of capitalism, everything is, everything is rotting. One of the things that happened is I would collect these kinds of impressions of the city and one of them was, you know, going out at sunset and seeing this tiny, tiny, frail, elderly woman walking massive Rottweilers down the middle of the street. And I was like, well, that’s a moment, that’s something you know, and then sort of sort of the banter that would happen, there was this hardware store at the at the, at the end of my block, or I would let you know, and I lived in an old building that was 100 years old. And I’d go in there and interact with people there and sort of seeing the banter going on there as well. This is something to you know, this is this is New York, this is my New York, right, like the mortar store, and the lady on the street where we lived, seminary row, the last few years of us living there, the Jewish seminary, which was at the end of the block, sold part of their I don’t want to get this wrong, I think I’m right about this sold a part of their complex that used to house their old library, to a massive developer, and they started building this tower. And it just went up and up and up and up. And so we were first we were there for the demolition of the parking lot, which was a joy. And then we were there for the building of the tower. And I mean, like the whole street shake. And so there was a lot of you know, there’s a neighborhood ruckus about it. And then this this building was completed in the spring of 2020, which is notable for coinciding with the COVID pandemic that changed, you know, the landscape of how we live today. I think that these things that had been kind of floating around, in my mind, we left, we came here to Wyoming, for the duration of the pandemic and beyond. We’re still here now. And I think two things happen. One was, I think I had to leave New York to write a city novel because for me, it doesn’t work to still be living in the place and be writing about it ever. And then the other thing that happened was this, you know, the pandemic, this closing off of a life before, right, like I came from a childhood that had been kind of bisected by this war, there was my childhood before the war in my life after the war, and then this huge, world changing event happened again, and it felt this contours felt very, very familiar. There was this, you know, before the pandemic and after the pandemic. And I think that combination of things kind of it acted like a magnet for all these moments of city strange city life, that kind of morphed and became Gothic and got that that injection of Slavic folklore that seems to follow me around wherever I write.

I mean, I was talking to someone yesterday, actually. And they were talking about their background, their childhood, and sort of how the church had played into that. And they’re like, Well, you know, you can’t really think your way out of it. And I’m like, Well, you shouldn’t have to, really, I mean, honestly, like, it is right, we pick up pieces of everything from where we are. I mean, you’ve sort of notoriously in the past said, Well, I don’t really tie place to home. Yeah, because you don’t. I mean, obviously, you’ve grown up in all sorts of places. But also you don’t necessarily I mean, home for me is where I happen to be. I mean, are there elements of places I’ve lived? Yes. Am I a New Englander? Yes, do I make jokes about being a New Englander? Oh, all that. Am I ever going to physically live there again? No, no, absolutely not. But I can’t separate those pieces. And you know, that is part of having the supernatural sort of burble through and when I say supernatural, we’ve got an 11 year old, who has many, many thoughts about many, many things. And we’re going to leave a lot of those thoughts out of the conversation. So people can go read the book for themselves, because it’s really so great. And Sylvia is a good kid, and she’s a kid made her a couple of different points in her life, but she’s obviously a child, and she’s obviously in thrall of her mama, as many 11-year-olds are, and watching her kind of navigate. It’s fun, but man, she’s 11. And there were moments of, Hello, 11 year old. She’s a really nice, no, she’s really fresh. She’s really smart. But she’s 11. So we need to talk about this magic act for a second, because it’s not easy to make a kid sound like an actual kid.

I think what helped me was sort of the book exists in a in a like, it exists in a framing device that the opening of the vocal gets still later on in life, kind of reflecting on this particular episode in our life. And I think that kind of enabled me to I think that freed me up to write the raw emotions of childhood without sneering at them because I think it’s looks kind of kindly on herself. I think she’s grown beyond this moment. And yet she’s, she realizes that just like what you were saying that it’s that it’s a part of her that she can’t shed, nor should she want to write. And she’s being very generous to herself. And that generosity in her own character kind of allows the book to not be kind of precious about her age. And like her confusions. You know what I mean? She’s just very real. She very Raleigh believes Raleigh, and really believes that in the journey that she’s on, and that it’s a necessary one, you know, and, and yet, she’s also in, in kind of the spiritual doubt, of herself all the time. And I’m really grateful to hear that she works as a character that you found yourself drawn to her, I am glad. Thank you.

Although the tiniest bit feral, watching this kid pull from all of these different pieces of people’s stories, whether it’s her mom or her aunt, or, you know, people she’s met in the building and whatnot, and not really have anything to measure it against, because she doesn’t have context. Yeah, it’s a trip.

Thank you. Thank you. It was tricky. I think that, you know, as I was talking earlier, about sort of the horizon, kind of kind of the of the story moving out as I as I voted, I think that movement of horizon is all still really wants in the book, like, she just wants more context, right? Like she wants to be able to measure things and see what’s real, what’s not. If it’s real, how many people is it real to, you know, I think, I think she spends a huge part of the book convinced that she’s the only person who sees the reality of the world for what it really is, you know, because she has, she’s piecing it together from all these different things. And that’s a very lonely place for her to be and she’s trying to, so she spends a lot of the book trying to lure other people, or invite other people into this reality, right? Or find a way to kind of justify it to them and be like, Look, this is, this is what this really is, because I’ve collected this evidence and, and I think in that sense, yeah, like, especially if you measure, you know, the feral as something, as something, you know, hinged on survival. You know, she’s trying really hard to survive emotionally, mentally, as well as physically right to sort of give herself a foundation.

There’s a two year waiting list for school and her mom is working, and there’s a lot happening, and she doesn’t, she doesn’t really have anyone besides her mom to model herself on and her mom has a lot of secrets. Her mom clearly has left some other place with her child, and they have ended up here because it’s where she can be. But you know, this is something that you’ve written about in all of your novels, borders, being an outsider, the isolation, lost language. I mean, living a life in translation. This is how I know like, even when you’re talking about the American West, right, like Nora gets plopped into her homestead and wow, all of those things happen for Nora as well. And for her, it’s just a physical shift from point A to she’s in Arizona, and her life is radically different there’s a new language that she’s got to learn. And it’s how do you take care of yourself? And it’s not like she can drop by the a&p and pick up dinner. Right? And here to a certain extent, we’ve got that. I mean, yeah, you can go to the store, but it’s not what we think of as groceries. So you’ve had to build an entire world again, at times. Now you’ve built these worlds that are very you that always come back to this sort of outsider, very gothic, he I don’t trust the world. But I’ve got to make my way through it, kind of tear version of how we see things and you built an entirely new world again. So when did you start? You said, sort of recently, pandemic, all of that, but there’s a little bit of research that went into this. I mean, there’s a moment where Syl’s mom gets a new job. Everyone want to talk about Syl’s mom’s job?

The city that they’re living in Island City, is sort of is a fallen metropolis. So there’s a couple of things going on. One is there’s major, major flooding, which is sort of claimed the lower part and the edges of the city. And it is kind of isolated different communities on islands, and peninsulas and navigate navigating the cities is difficult. There’s a program there’s an immigration program, that the government of the state, the administration of this unnamed society is running. And essentially what they’re trying to do is stimulate the repopulation of the city. They want to prevent urban abandonment. The deal is if you come you get credits that allow you to eat rations, which are very scattershot at the time that we join Syl and her mom in the city. And eventually, the idea is that you will be provided a house of your own that you can Oh, in this, because the reclamation of the city from the tide is going super, super well. So Syl’s mother starts salvage diving, she becomes a wreck diver, working for insurance companies and also private entities in the parts of the city that have flooded in an attempt to reclaim property. Check for this the stability of structures that are existing. And it’s a very dangerous job for which sells mom is eminently suited because she’s a sort of very petite individual. And she’s very fearless. Still, the fearlessness of her mother, something still really admires and aspires to can’t quite get there. And then at the same time, her mother is very fearful about these other things, right, like, like things that are following her, she’s much more afraid of the past than she is a physical harm to herself in the present, which is a sort of dangerous risk to take.

And the way she approaches language to Syl and her mom have a shared language with some other characters in the book. And we never hear it beyond you sort of remarking that they’re speaking in their home kind of tongue. And of course, like any language, they hear the differences in vowels and how people pronounce things and everything else. But you call the language ours. And it’s one of those things you do, as you’re telling the story. And it’s just it works on so many different levels, especially for the characters. But, again, we have an entire cast that’s living in translation, not in necessarily in the literal sense, because everyone has sort of a working level of understanding of this language, but they’re living in translation, because they don’t fully understand who they themselves are, or how they work in this new world. And it’s such kind of a great metaphor for all of us, right? Yeah. When you’re sitting down, right and working on this cast. I’m thinking you sort of had Syl first, and then maybe mom. Okay, and then some other folks. And then we’ve got a guy called Louis May, and I’m not going to speak too much, I have to say, I really like him as a character. He’s a guy who kind of bumbles his way through to his current situation, let’s put it that way. And he’s running around calling Syl, Snoopy. But when does Louis show up for you as you’re writing? Because everyone needs a little bit of a foil. He’s not, he’s not the bad guy. Okay, straight up. He’s not the bad guy, but you need a little bit of a foil right like stuff needs to happen. So when does he show aren’t for you.

There’s a moment in which he appears in the book. And that was the moment that he appeared for me.

Oh, okay. Okay.

And he appeared like very fully formed you know, like he surprises Syl, she’s doing something she’s not supposed to be doing and he kind of sees her. And I think my mind at that moment was sort of like she obviously needs an interruption here. Like, like things are not gonna go her way. Most of this book is things not going her way and frankly not going the way of not going Louis’s way either. She sees him and the moment she saw him, I had a very strange sort of expansive mental situation where I just saw all the way through his past and, and kind of into the moment that he currently inhabits in the book, gosh, talking around plot points and stuff, right.

It’s a little it’s a little trippy. But part of what I want to bring Louis in right now, though, is he has his own mythology. Right, like you’ve given every single character that we meet, and it’s a pretty tight cast. I will say it’s a pretty tight cast, but everyone has their own mythology. And of course, when mythologies clash, right, we saw it in inland we saw it in The Tiger’s Wife, I mean, this is part of the mythology, folklore. You know, I probably should not use the two interchangeably. I absolutely do. But mythology, you know, even if you’re sitting at the dinner table on a Sunday night with your family, like family mythology is its own, that needs some navigation. Yeah, as well. So you’ve mapped out all of these different mythologies for each of these characters. Yeah, and you just unleash it on your world.

I’m fascinated as an individual by the things that people tell themselves about themselves so much, you know, like, and that’s really does that make sense? Like we live we live in kind of matryoshka dolls of mythology, right. Like, there’s the mythology, yourself, that’s, that’s, you know, told to you by your parents, then you then you build your own as you move away from them. Like your whole act of adulthood is being like my identities and the stories they define me and like, the things I’ve done, the choices I’ve made, and but you’re just the tight, like, you’re the small, small, like, you’re the smallest piece, you’re the one at the center, and then there’s your like, your parents and the outside of that, and your community on the outside of that, and your nation on the outside of that if you belong to one, you know, or several. And those things are at odds with each other all the time.

Yeah. You know, and I mean, I know I keep coming back to Inland, but you know, how I feel about this book, and I just, I really am so stuck for me as a reader how the two really complement each other. And again, you know, this idea that you know, Nora’s got her mythology, and Lori’s got his mythology, and there’s some other characters. So you know, they have their stories, too. This is where I say if you haven’t read Inland yet go back. It really is one of those coming of age in an inhospitable world kind of books that even if you’re saying westerns are not my thing, I promise you actually, you need to pick up Inland. But again, like if I look at the world, you created an inland right, like, inhospitable. What are people doing here? This is bonkers. Morningside same thing. What are people doing here? This is bonkers. And the answer is, they have no other place to go. So you may as well figure it out, because there is really no other place to go. In that moment, there’s no escape. Right? Pressure cooker, you’re poking all of your characters with a stick, my friend.

I’m not very generous.

Is it not generous, or just letting them do what they’re gonna do? I mean, they don’t know what they don’t know. Right?

That’s true. And I do think that I mean, we all exist in pressure cookers, of various kinds, you know, every layer of life is more and more pressurized, that’s at odds with our mythology to, you know, this, this idea that you can, that you can earn your way out of pressure, into stability into safety, not just for yourself, but for your children. Right. This is something that we trade in, in this day and age, this belief that like if you do right, if you are worthy, right and you don’t make these mistakes, which I listed for you by the powers that be you too can earn safety and stability for yourself and your and your and your children and you don’t have to be afraid you don’t have to be in a pressure cooker. Things can just you can just be you know, I think Syl and her mom, so’s mother brings sail to Island City on that promise as I think a lot of immigrants you know bring their children to new places because that’s the hope. You know, homesteaders. Yeah, homesteaders? This this idea, this idea that like you can earn a place of peace of the world in which you don’t have to be afraid.

But there’s a lot of isolation that comes along with that mythmaking. And that’s the piece that we seem to not be able to catch. Whether we’re in The Tiger’s Wife, or we’re in the desert in Inland or we’re here in Morningside, the isolation of the characters still keep seems to catch them off guard. Right? Like they’ve told themselves these stories and like, Well, why shouldn’t I be connecting with other people? Why shouldn’t I, we share a story that, and it’s kind of not enough. And it’s like that, to me, right now is pretty much where we are, as a culture of like, we’ve got all these stories, and we’re still not connecting, like, what is going on? And yet, then I read The Morningside, and I’m like, oh, yeah, we’re a little broken. Do you think, though, that you’re ultimately hopeful about where we’re going?

I don’t know. I think it depends on, you know, I think some gestures in society make me very hopeful, you know, I do think that we’re, we have been inhabiting a moment in which more and more people are clued in to the things in our society that are just wrong. And legacies that are destructive to all. And I think that, you know, for better or worse, I mean, I think that the internet can be a monstrous thing, and often has proven itself to be a monstrous thing. And it, you know, gets at all these terrible tendencies in us. And the anonymity makes people cruel, and like her, you know, like, we, you know, all that I’m like, but it does sort of Ignite and amplify the fire of certain movements, right? If something happens to you in isolation, now, if an injustice happens in isolation, we feel freer as a society to say this is happening, and this is wrong. And you will find, you know, you will find purchase, that makes me really hopeful. But, you know, I mean, climate change, or the effects of climate change are the biggest crisis of our time, it’s a crisis that is beyond to some extent, beyond the scope of human imagining, right? Like, because to think of it clearly is the same as the think of your own death, right? Like, like, you can’t, you don’t want to think about it for too long, because to conceive of it is so terrifying, that inability coupled with sort of corporate greed, and the things that brought us here are accelerating it to an incredible degree, right? The kinds of struggles over resources, the unbelievable loss of humanity, that is going to happen in the coming times, which feels inevitable, as, you know, we scrap for resources as diseases, because I mean, this is this is turning now into like a real pet. These, these things are real. And we’ve seen them before. We’ve seen them in points in society where things collapsed, right, like when we see them in these sort of society ending apocalypse is if not world ending apocalypse, is that happen all the time? Not in the West, you know? So, that to me is terrifying. And I, I feel like I don’t Yeah, on different days, it feels really just the terror it feels…

I get that but part of me wonders, though. I mean, here you are. And I agree with what you just said. But at the same time, like writing is a hopeful act, right? Like I honestly Morningside does end on a pretty hopeful note. And obviously, we’re not going to say more than that, but it does like, even though you’re tackling all of these bits, that are unpleasant and scary and strange, and all of these other things. We have some really terrific characters to experiences with. And I just, I think, yeah, I guess it changes day to day, but I still think you have to be, in the end, a very hopeful person to even say, this is worth exploring. This is worth taking a piece of art and figuring out how we connect. And maybe we find a roadmap for something better. Maybe we’re just entertained. Maybe we just laughing really inopportune moments. I did have a couple there’s some Chanel And against with SIL and another little girl who lives in the building called Mila. And, you know, 11 year old shenanigans, shenanigans and both fearless in that weird little way. Because you think, oh, there are no consequences for me, the world is not like they know that the world is not necessarily hospitable to them. But at the same time, they’re like, Yeah, I’m gonna walk into a stranger’s house and eat a snack because I’m hungry. They’re 11, 11-year-olds are just. But you have all of these moments, right? Where I’m like, Now, I know, things are complicated. And I just said it myself. Like, sometimes I feel like, oh, man, what are we doing? But then you give us these little girls? Right? No, like, we’re gonna figure it out, you can come along or not.

The thing that like, I do think that that I mean, life is those moments. You know, I think a lot about many members of my family, most of the members of my maternal family, my grandmother’s siblings, and all their children were in most sad and sad, I have a during, you know, during the war during the, the seizures, I mean, like, the, the things they saw, are not possible to explain, you know, what I mean? Like, like, they’re just, they live in them and with them. And yet, when they tell these stories, about their time, they still find moments of humor, that they hold on to moments of resilience that they sort of shrug off is not resilience, right? Like, oh, it was just a matter of fact, we just, you know, we, you know, scoured the shelled out buildings for expired antibiotics, you know, that like, like, becomes this kind of hilarious quest, you know, and it wouldn’t when they tell it, and I think that you have to be hopeful, like, it’s hope, hope is a mechanism of survival. You know, humor is a mechanism of survival. And, you know, we’re gifted these, these lives, it’s certainly been a gift of the sacrifices of people in, you know, my, my grandparents, my mother, to enable me to live a life in which I, you know, I write stories about made urinals, you know, like that, and hope that they connect with people who are feeling that same sort of turmoil between hope and abject horror.

And also you teach, and I think it’s hard to be cynical if you’re around young people who are learning how to write stories, and like, really learning I mean, you have taught what at Texas, at Cornell, at Hunter, right? Am I missing anything?

And I’m currently teaching at Bennington,

To show I mean, what have you learned from your students, because this is a wild moment to be young, this is a really, really wild moment to be young.

Some of them are straight out of college, and then some of them like, lived and like had their grown up lives. And now that like, actually, what I do want to do is right, and that’s an act of hope, right? Like, that’s such an enormous act of hope. Because you’re like, Well, what I want to do is dispense with, I want to be my real self, you know, and do the thing that matters the most to me. That’s it. That’s a really beautiful thing. And I think what I think I’ve learned, in many ways, how to think from them, you know, I’ve learned certain stagnancies in my own thinking, yeah, that sort of when you when you come into an MFA, I think what you’ve done is you’ve hit pause on like, other parts of your life. And what you’re saying is like, I don’t I want to be around people, to whom this matters more than anything, right, like this short story that I wrote, and I was up all night writing it last night, and like you, you know, brethren across the table, you know what that means, right? Like, they’re coming into this classroom, to feel seen by people, like their people, you know, that kind of raw longing, as a beautiful thing, like it’s beaten out of us, you know, by life, but it’s a lovely thing to be around.

And also, if you think about the emotional connection, right, like, you know, you see kids on social media who are just like I heard all the fields are there weeping copious laser, and it’s kind of exciting might be the wrong word. But it’s kind of great to see that these kids are so open in their connection to literature, and story and character and all of these things. And, you know, I do I’ve said it before, I absolutely believe that there’s a book out there for everyone. And I do also think that, you know, someone else may not read the Morningside exactly as I do, because they don’t have my POV and I don’t have their POV. I mean, we all bring ourselves to whatever we read, but it is kind of exciting to see that stuff connect and to see. Kids want to do younger people want to do that work right it. I mean, there are easier ways to make a living. Yes. And yet, you got to make the art and like, there are the people who are just gonna do it because they cannot do it. Right. I really would like some of them to meet. So I really would. I like this kid. And I like her as an adult. I just, you know, it’s nice to be able to say, oh, right, I get who you are. Right, like, yes, you were a figment of someone’s imagination, but I get you. But do you miss these characters? Do you miss these women? Do you miss Lewis?

I really do. I really think there’s some deep mourning that happens when you finally put a book away and say, Well, this is it, right? Like it’s the closing of a, of a door to a world that you know, it’s a world that you got to go in and tinker with for a really long time. And in some ways, you’re it’s only inhabitant, and in other ways, you’re its inhabitant alongside these people that have, you know, come fully formed out of someplace in the ether, you know, and you’re just there trying to be the conduit of the correct parts of their characters and like put the words in the right order. So other people will meet them as you see them and that at the same time, once that, you know, you close that door for the last time now other people can go in, which is beautiful, right? Like, like, like to see, readers connect. And like go around this world that you created isn’t the most extraordinary feeling. But the world has to remain unchanged from now. You know what I mean? Like you can never get back in again, you can see pictures from the world, right? Like you can remember what it was like to be there but you can’t ever go back the way that — your role becomes something else. And that I think is very painful. And I do miss going into the world of The Morningside. I’ve been lucky because my editor and my editor and my sainted copy editor it’s literally one of those things where like you get the email the day before the final final drop dead date and they’re like, this is it get out of now you know and know who and like they’ve been very tolerant with me and very generous with my time in the world. But like I miss it very much. I have to be honest, I really miss Inland. I really miss being in that house with Nora and having done more research for it and all those things they miss and Linda a lot too.

Yeah, I know when I’m reading, that’s really what it comes down to is I know when I’ve handed myself over to your brain and I’m just like, Okay, I’m gonna follow you anywhere straight up. I will just I will follow you into the past I will apparently follow you into the future. I will apparently follow you anywhere. But you’re about to hit book tour. You’re about to go on the road and do all sorts of stuff. Do you get to read when you’re on the road? Have you been reading because I when you’re finishing a book right you have no time to read you have no time to think about other people’s work you and I have yelled about Parini Shroff’s The Bandit Queens. We both love that book. But what else have you read recently that you’re wild about?

Oh my God, that’s terrifying question. Okay. I’ve just been reading a lot of student work. I read the Biography of X, which I love. I have just finished Iron Curtain by Vesna Goldsworthy, which I adore and would recommend to anyone. I’m super behind that. Like I’m reading books that came out three years ago that I should have read, like, like back then, you know, like, oh, Beautyland.

The Marie Helene Bertino? Yes. Spectacular. It might our copy might actually be right over my shoulders. Right.

Yeah, I see The Bandit Queens from where I’m sitting. But and I think Beautyland is right there.

I’m pretty sure it’s in one of the two. These are behind me are all of the books that we’ve featured on the show, actually, since June 1 2021. And I get pretty excited. Actually, when I see these spines. I think we did and are continuing to do some interesting stuff, which is fun. And, you know, that’s the other thing too, though. I mean, hearing you say, well, I should have read these books three years ago. It’s like, well, actually, Sometimes life happens. Occasionally I get to reread stuff, and it just absolutely floats my boat. And then there are times where I go back and I can’t find something and I have to combine your copy because I can’t find my copy because I’ve given it to someone. And it’s wild how a reading can change. Right? And sometimes it changes in a great way. And sometimes you’re like, oh, no, what I remember but okay. Now I move on to something else. Thank you very much. You know, I guess. I mean, that’s the thing like you just that’s the beauty of the book, man. You just hit it when you hit it.

I’m back and forth on rereading for that reason. You know, I kind of want some books that I’ve that have been formative to me. I suspect that if I went back, I’d have that experience, right like this feeling of oh, I don’t know about this now. But I kind of want them to be encased in amber emotionally for me, because I don’t want to, I don’t want to reject them, I want to just silently let them slip into the evening of the past, you know?

No, I totally get that most of the rereading I do now is work based. So either it’s for the show or it’s for, you know, I’m thinking about something else. And am I right about this reference point? It’s that kind of thing. I do still need to sleep. You know, things like that are good. I mean, we do a lot of all the episodes of this show like there’s, there’s a lot going on. So I don’t always get to reread, but I mean, am I ever without a book? No. Like I that I’m still that 11 year old saying, There’s nothing worse than running out of stuff to read, I will read the cereal box. Because what?

As you’re as you’re kind of approaching the end of a book, if you haven’t lined one up already, I mean, I’m sure that you don’t you don’t face that problem often.

I know, I actually don’t I find myself actually just wanting people to not finish books that are not working for them. And I spend a lot of time on social media. And it’s just constantly people saying, well, I’m finishing this book that I hate. And I’m like, Why? Why are you doing that to your stop doing that to yourself? There are so many, like, somebody else will love that book. It’s fine. Just put it down. And that’s kind of my big moment now where it’s like, I’m not necessarily concerned about where the next rate is going to come from. It’s more if it’s not working for you put it down, give it away, hand it off to someone else. You know, not every book is forever, reader. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So what’s next? Good question. I know you just finished this one, but you always have something cooking. You always have something going on.

I have a couple of short stories that are that I that I kind of have in the hopper. We had some we had some really trippy experiences happen to us the but I was gonna say I recently became a mom, not true, child’s two years old.

That’s kind of recent, though. There’s, she’s not driving…

She would if you let her. Did she do you want to talk about feral? We had some strange things happen to us and like the first three months of parenthood, my husband, and they’ve sort of made their way into both of our fiction in like, a strange, like, you know, like we’ve sort of compared notes recently and be like, where are you? Are you writing about that? And it’s like, yeah, no, I am. And I’m writing about in a different way. That’s interesting. So that’s, that’s kind of a fun, little interesting thing. And I have, I have another novel on the go, I’m in that place where to emotionally commit to it, I have to let go over the morning side, in a kind of definitive way. And I think that once the book is out, it will help me to be like, okay, but like we’re living with these people now. Like those people are gone, like living their own lives in a separate place. And like an alternate reality, and we’re with these folks now. And these folks deserve attention and time. And

Wait, are you working on the new book while you’re on tour? No, God, no, no, yeah, that’s what I was like, Wait a minute. Wait, what? The math is not math.

One time I checked on Michael Cunningham. And he was like, I love working on new material on a plane. And I was like, I love not having to reach for the vomit bag on a plane. So I love to not work on the plane, just sit there with like, my hands on my eyes like this, until the landing happens. So no, there’ll be no working on tour.

Now, I am excited, though, for these events, I think people are going to have a really good time with this book and with Syl in The Morningside. And Lewis, who I should say you refer to as throughout the novel is May and I just I don’t know, I kept thinking of him as Lewis even though I knew who I was reading about when you were saying May but yeah, I liked these characters. I liked this world. I was bummed when it was over. It is for me one of those books like Inland where it was like, Oh, I really wish I could read this again for the first time. And everyone likes new book, right? Like, your eyes get really big. And you’re just like, oh, yeah, this is totally the one for me. That’s how I felt about both. And not to leave The Tiger’s Wife out. But it’s been a minute since I read that book. And I remember thinking, Oh, wow, this is why we’re all reading this book. It was a different kind of reading moment. Right. And the world was a slightly different place, but Inland. Oh, yeah. There was a lot of yelling for me about that book. But anyway, alright, you I knew this was gonna happen. We’re bumping up against time and I have to tell you that when I saw the announcement for The Morningside, there was some yelling in the office because I was so excited to have a new book for me this year, not an every year writer. That’s great. Like if that works for you. Fantastic if it doesn’t whatever but for me I get really, really excited when I see that you have a new novel because you do make me wait a little bit. You’re one of the few people that can be patient for actually writers I can be patient for it’s other stuff that I can be patient with. So Téa Obreht, thank you so much Morningside is out now if you haven’t read inland or The Tiger’s Wife, go pick those up, please.

Thank you so much. This is this is just the loveliest time thank you so much.