Poured Over: Rebecca Makkai on I Have Some Questions for You

By Miwa Messer / February 21, 2023 at 6:00 am

“It’s a literary, feminist, boarding school murder mystery — everyone’s favorite genre.”

I Have Some Questions for You is the thrilling and inventive new novel from Rebecca Makkai, the author of The Great Believers, a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and The National Book Award. Part murder mystery, part timely take on issues that readers will connect with, this novel will keep you intrigued from cover to cover. Makkai joins us to talk about unreliable narrators, living on a boarding school campus, what keeps a reader turning the pages and more with host Miwa Messer. Listen after the episode for a TBR Topoff from Marc and Jamie. 

Featured Books (Episode)
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
Trust by Hernan Diaz
The Keep by Jennifer Egan
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali

Featured Books (TBR Topoff)
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
Vita Nostra by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Full Episode Transcript:

Miwa Messer
I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Rebecca Makkai, I have been looking forward to this conversation for so long because I’m sorry, I have to do it. I have some questions for you. I know you’re gonna hear that. We’re taping pre-pub. So I’m hoping I’m getting the terrible pun out of the way because this novel is so good. I Have Some Questions for You. Can we talk about where this book started? And Bodie Kane?

Rebecca Makkai
Yeah. The way I have been describing it is it’s a literary, feminist, boarding school murder mystery, everyone’s favorite genre. I live on campus of a boarding school. I don’t teach here, my husband does. Part of the deal is that you, for most faculty, you live on campus, and that your housing is covered, which is amazing. So we’ve lived here for quite a while and I was always going to write a boarding school novel, that was always going to happen. I originally was like, I won’t write it until you know, 2045 I’ll wait until everyone’s retired. But I just kept getting ideas for a story and particularly for the layers of history that a place like this encapsulates the way that people pass, you know, it’s a very permanent place, but it’s one that people pass through very quickly. And yet at one of the most formative times of their life, right? And then the idea of someone revisiting that space very early on, it was going to be a mystery, because books are always either asking questions about the future, suspense, or what happens next, or the present, like what’s going on right now, or the past. And because of these layers of history, this idea of boarding school, I wanted it to be questions about the past. When you ask questions about the past, that’s pretty much a mystery. And then I decided to take that really literal, and it really is a murder mystery. But it’s, you know, it’s certainly not just a whodunit and it’s definitely not like a lady detective with her cat, knitting. You know that which I love those. I see those. That sounds so relaxing and wonderful to read. It’s different than that. But it is a murder mystery.

Bodie Kane is a film professor and a podcaster, a thing that didn’t even exist when she was first enrolled as a student at this school. I mean, professor sure, but podcaster? What? But Bodie is sort of the ultimate outsider. She is never expected Indiana to begin with, but she never expected to be at a place like Granby. Where did Bodie come from? I mean, I get the idea of starting with the school, and the bigger concepts, but she’s got a really interesting voice.

Yeah, it took me a long time to figure her out. I know, so many writers, brilliant writers who start with character. You know, they just, they get a vibe, they hear a voice. And then they have to think about what this character is going to get up to. And I’m the opposite, I start with scenario. And then I, this always makes me sound psychotic, but I reverse engineer my perfect victim, essentially. Who would get into this mess, who’s going to be most changed by this mess? Who’s most vulnerable to these circumstances, who’s going to act in ways that we couldn’t maybe predict? And it was a lot of searching around to find this person. I settled on someone who, she was an outsider at the school, but not as much as she thought she was. Which is so often the case, and no one says, Oh, I was really popular. Everyone was thinks they were an outsider. And she was, maybe more than plenty of them, but really not the only one. And she’s someone who, you know, her work in film and her podcast, it’s about the abuses of women in early Hollywood. She’s someone who, as an adult, critically, has been thinking about the structures of power, about sexism about racism also, but is has not yet been able to turn back and examine her own past with that same critical eye, and think about the structure she was part of, even if she thought she was an outsider, but she was actually part of these structures. This murder that occurred when she was a senior, she starts to realize and this is, you know, slightly a spoiler, but it’s a very, very early spoiler, it’s the premise of the book. She starts to realize that it was probably solved incorrectly and perhaps the wrong person is in prison. So, I needed someone who maybe was trained in that way of thinking but had not yet turned that same eye on circumstances, in this case that was much closer to home.

You cover so much ground without really leaving the campus of this prep school. I mean, I don’t want to say it’s a locked room mystery. You know, that is a very specific thing. But you do a lot on a very small campus and kind of wild the way you’re moving back and forth in time. I mean, obviously, there are some folks from her past her encountered and some folks who are not. But how did you know when you had the structure for this story?

Right. Well, I didn’t at first for sure. I wanted a hot house novel. I love those, where you have a limited setting and a limited cast. I have joked and I’m not even joking, but my entire career has just been trying to rewrite The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, which was like everyone’s in this one building and oh my god, it snowed and one of them is a murderer. I think I’m not alone in that. I think a lot of a lot of writers of around my generation or was one of their favorites. Originally, the story was going to be this bunch of high school classmates has had to reconvene for a retrial. And they’re all staying in the same hotel. They’re not really supposed to talk to each other. But they’re all here. It’s really high a school reunion. And that was the first stuff that I wrote, I sat down, and I wrote the scene of Bodie, arriving at this hotel. And this case, already being really famous and all this stuff already having happened, I realized quickly that there was just so much backstory to get in, not only what had happened in 1995, but what had happened several years earlier to get us to this place. So, I felt like, okay, I’m going to back up a little, the moment where she got involved, and maybe go back to the school, she’s going to be teaching this little two week class, revisiting her old stomping grounds for the first time. I’ll see how much I need time I need to spend there before I can get to the real story. And of course, that turned into three quarters of the book, her time back on this campus. So, what I thought was going to be prologue, oops, but it is, of course, then, at a certain point, very intentional to go no, no, this is the gravity, this is where the way that the book is. It’s still going to have that strange, everyone packed in a hotel, but that’s going to be the final act, that’s gonna be what everything leads up to. So, at that point things came together, but things change, constant changes all the way through, you don’t know that you have the final structure until it is out of your hands. And your editor goes, Okay, no more changes, that, you know, they’re gonna get really upset with you if you mess up the pagination stop. And then you’re like, I guess that’s the final form.

Great Believers was 2018. You and I are talking now in January of ‘23. And we’re just a few weeks away, obviously, from the release of I Have Some Questions for You. So how long then were you with Bodie and her classmates on campus?

Right. So, I have a long, I think of it as a marination phase, just kind of stewing on a book before I start to write. And I could not even begin to calculate when that started for this, individual thoughts going way back. Taking my kids over to swim in the campus pool when they were toddlers and like, all the lights were off and it’s lit in this beautiful way from the windows and it’s kind of creepy and thinking, this is where something- when I finally write a boarding school novel, there’s something, it’s all about the swimming pool. That was years ago, right? I know that the first time I really sat down and started typing, which is its own specific moment was April 2019. Okay, I was at Ragdale, the wonderful story artists’ colony near Chicago, not far from me. A magical place like you get you walk in the door, and you inhale the air and you’re like, I’m ready to make something. And things were still happening for The Great Believers. That was that was in that room at Ragdale, when I found out I’d been a Pulitzer finalist. Did not write that day, we got drunk on Prosecco at 10am, me and everyone else who was there. It was great. That was still very much part of my world, and it still is- The Great Believers is with me so much. So yeah, I would say you know, 2019 really, really writing but definitely I’ve been thinking, taking notes planning for a couple of years before that. Well, it’s been a while been living with this woman.

I have to say, at first. I didn’t realize exactly how unreliable Bodie was going to turn out to be and the journey as it were, is really fun. I really, I flew through the pages in a way that I didn’t with The Great Believers. And I think it’s a combination of material. But also, Bodie, because I just, I wanted to know what her deal was and part of it, is her soon to be ex-husband, which I’m giving nothing away there. He has a me-too moment. And that seems to be a point too for Bodie, where she really starts to say, hey, wait a minute, hey, wait a minute. And I don’t want to suggest that you’re writing in real time. I mean, your novel is its own world, and everything else. But you do a very cool thing throughout, I pinged on sort of page 62 and 63. And I just want to use that, I just needed an example for you. But the way Bodie talks about sort of cases in the ether and what’s been happening? Oh, no, that’s the girl with the football team. And it’s a really great device. Do you happen to have a copy of the book handy?

That’s a good question. Yes, I do. I have one and only one copy of this book. One advanced copy.

I’ve destroyed my galley, because that’s how I read. Can you just read sort of from the second paragraph. I really would like to spend a few minutes on that, but it’s so great.

I can read this. Yeah.

It was the reason Jerome had warned me off the internet, Anderson Cooper, with new developments on a story I’d found particularly disturbing. It doesn’t matter which story. Let’s say it was the one where the young actresses said yes to a pool party and didn’t know or no, let’s say it was the one where the rugby team covered up the girl’s death and the school covered for the rugby team. Actually, it was the one where the therapist spent years grooming her. It was the one where the senator, then a promising teenager shoved his dick in the girl’s face. She was also a promising teenager. It was the one where the billionaire shoved the woman into the phone booth, but no one believed her. The one where the high school senior was acquitted of rape because the sophomore girl had shaved her pubic region, which somehow equaled consent. Oliver asked if I was hungry, and Assurant. It was the one where the woman who stabbed her rapist with scissors was the one who ended up in jail. It was the one where the star had a secret button to unlock the doors. It was the one where the harasser ended up on the Supreme Court. It was the one where the rapist ended up on the Supreme Court. It was the one where the woman shaking testified all day on live TV and nothing happened.

So yeah, these were things, obviously, some of these are ones that you can draw connections to real stories, a few of them I’ve invented or changed enough that it’s not the same thing anymore. Here’s how that came about, because this is a sort of a motif that recurs throughout the book, this case that she’s watching, is somehow all cases at once, this was a solution to a problem for me. I wanted there to be something on TV, because it was 2019 and there was just constantly something- old cases, new cases, things coming out that were shaking us up. And I wanted her to be watching something like that I wanted that to be in the background, upsetting her. I didn’t want to pick one real case and have that be the focus. And I did not want to invent a case and have to build this whole thing. And the point is, I don’t need to invent these because there’s so many real ones. So, I just decided it was going to be all of them. Even you know, in this case, she’s saying yeah, let’s say it was this one. But in other scenes, I actually have other characters talking about these cases, they’re saying completely contradictory things, because they’re talking about all of them at once. So, this conversation can’t possibly have happened. You know, the rest of the book is very realistic. But there are these moments where it’s like, yeah, it’s just a mess. Let’s just say that it was all of these things at the same time. It’s weird to say I had fun with that, but it was a very cathartic way of writing. I’ll say that.

It’s a great device. And I don’t mean to belittle the content by describing it as a device, but as a literary device, it really works. It keeps you centered in the story and the overwhelming, sort of, I don’t want to say, it’s not chaotic for Bodie, but it’s clear that she has told herself some things that she may not have the evidence to back up but the idea that so much is in the ether and so much is happening. You’ve one of the kids that she’s working with, on campus, this girl Britt, she’s a really great character. But at one point too, she says to Bodie, you know, I’m not okay with True Crime podcasts. I’m not okay with essentially the homework assignment and yet she ends up essentially creating a true crime podcast for her homework assignment. But I think, this is part of the larger conversation we need to be having about how we treat information like this. I think there was a moment too where the families of Jeffrey Dahmer victims are just like, why is this a television show? And why are you doing- we have made this very clear; we don’t want to be part of it. And if the narrative continues, and it’s like these women don’t even get to have their own bodies, after something terrible has happened.

This book does partake of the genre, the tropes of a crime novel, it’s fundamentally not true crime, because it’s fiction. It’s funny, people keep asking me like, well, you wrote this true crime novel, but it’s literally fiction. It’s the opposite of true crime. It is fake crime. But it certainly is concerned with true crime. The premise of the novel, once you’ve suspended your disbelief is, this is a murder that has captured the public’s imagination, this is something where the family and the witnesses and the man who’s in prison, have absolutely lost control of the narrative, because it belongs to the public now. And what does that mean? And what does it mean for the victim’s family? You know, maybe sidelined a bit here, but certainly part of the story, what does it mean for these kinds of secondary characters, you know, in this thing, where there are people who really didn’t know much, but they got elevated into this role in this case, and then there are people who actually knew more than they thought they did. But because they centralized in the telling of the story, they assume that their information is not valuable. And that that includes Bodie, who all along has had some information that was incredibly important. My job is to complicate things, you know, my job is not to serve up an easy and easy listening hits here. You know, I’m taking that question of true crime, that question of the armchair detective, that question of internet sleuthing, all those things, and let’s really look at this. Realistically, let’s really look at what this means for the people involved.

I have to say, I really liked Bodie as a character. There were a couple of times where I was like, oh, you did? Okay, you did that. I mean, again, it’s it is part of the fun, and I don’t want to make light of the ground that you’re covering in any way, shape or form, but following her and watching her evolve and come to terms. And there’s an internet sleuth, let’s call him that she ends up sort of connecting with in a way that I never would have expected. But it was a great moment when it happens, because you know exactly why she’s doing it. And you know, she believes why she’s doing it. And yet, this is a dude, she’s been making fun of for a while. And she’s like, you know what? I’m just gonna do it. And I think, certainly, I so appreciate the fact that she’s messy., She’s just like, she’s messy. And she’s kind of great. And she doesn’t have terrible intentions. She’s just human and messy. And her life is, you know, not maybe what she predicted it was going to be right.

So, you’re calling her an unreliable narrator and I agree. Here’s my contrary argument. I think she is a tremendously reliable narrator in the that she admits what she doesn’t remember. Because the lie of most fiction and it’s a lie I’m happy to partake in, somebody says, let me tell you what I remember, here’s what happened 15 years ago, and it’s a perfect chronological memory. “And then this person said this, and then he glanced to the side and then he said this, and then this happened.” That’s not the way memory works. That’s not at all the way memory works, right. And what I wanted to do here, I wanted to trap her in the present. I did not want to let the narrative fly us back in time to see what really happened. And I didn’t want to let her memory be this kind of magic fictional suspension of disbelief memory, where it was like I picked up the pen and I was back I was there in 1920s Brooklyn, here’s what happened. So, she’s being as honest with herself and with her kind of audience, which is a strange audience in her head for who she’s talking to, as honest as she can be, about what she remembers what she doubts, what she questions. And so basically, she’s highlighting her own unreliability. In a very, I think, in a very honest way. So, it’s not it’s, you know, not so much about deception, as it is about sometimes withholding right, protecting certain information, and about owning the fact that we’re all hugely unreliable narrators.

I definitely agree with you on her honesty when it comes to what I don’t know. But the way you reveal these bits, is really satisfying. It’s just so satisfying the reader because I mean, there are, there are moments in the book where I would say there were choices you could have made. And I’m dancing a little delicately here. But some of the writers might have made different choices. Some points that happen in the book, and I was just like, oh, no, no. Okay, here we are. A couple of characters who show themselves as adults to be slightly unexpected. There’s a woman who shows up very sort of towards the end of things and, and there’s another classmate who, you know, I was saying to you before we started taping, it was like, oh yea, that guy.

You’re not a fan.

But I understand the POV, and I understand how that character would end up in that place, but at the same time, was I rolling my eyes at him? Yes, I was rolling my eyes at a fictional character.

Of course,

it was just a really satisfying reading experience. And again, this whole hothouse, tiny cast, one location, and the way you’re jumping back and forth in time without the magical pen. Thank you for not “suddenly I saw the photograph, and I was transported back to 1995” There are great pop culture moments in this, there are great sort of class moments. That and literally meaning, not educational class, but class class. And right now, all the things you just do these things in little drops. And then suddenly, we get to the next bit. But can we talk about your literary influences for a second, because there’s a lot happening in this book, in a lot of great ways, the way you handle time, the way you handle memory, the way you handle revelation, and all of that, but I feel like a lot went into this book that we don’t necessarily see.

Yeah, I mean, influence is a really funny question for me always. Because obviously, like every writer, I’m a huge reader. I was a huge reader as a kid onward. I know the moments for me, where I read something and went, oh, my God, that just blew me away. I didn’t know you were allowed to do that. But it’s very hard for me to trace from there into my own writing. Because the last thing I want to do is copy right. But obviously, I’m writing a novel because other people have written novels, Of course I’m seeped in influence. It’s just really hard for me to sort that all out. I do love books, like we said earlier, that had that kind of contained cast, that place, that one time, right. And I love books that yank you around a little bit in terms of structure, in terms of truth. I see because I’ve been checking out your bookshelf. I see Trust by Hernan Diaz.

Who doesn’t like that book?

I can’t claim it as an influence because I’ve read it like three weeks ago. But what a book, right. So, you know, books that do that. My favorite Jennifer Egan novel is the one no one has read. It’s called The Keep.

And sorry, I’ve read that. No, no, you and I, you and I can sit in the corner. The thing is, I will read anything she writes. I will follow her anywhere because I trust what she’s doing. And I have to say the first time I saw the copy for The Keep and I had it in galley a million years ago and I looked at it and said, okay, not entirely sure what’s happening here, but I will do it because it’s her and I trust.

Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. You know, and that’s one where you just go, I can’t believe you got away with that. I can’t believe that worked. That’s not supposed to work structurally, and do I believe this person and then also managing to tell an incredibly suspenseful story, right? It’s not just a gymnastics routine, which is the risk that people run when they get fancy with their narratives. It’s like, all right, yep, I can see you do the double backflip. Great. 10 points. Awesome. Okay, but there’s no like, Where’s my story, man? And that one does it. I think the greatest influence on my writing, is the fact that I taught elementary school for 12 years. I taught Montessori elementary school, and I read aloud to those kids for half an hour every school day. And it’s not so much a matter of what I read them. I can’t say like this was my biggest influence or something. It was a matter of visceral reaction from those kids and my instantaneous feedback on what bored them and what worked, what was confusing what was dragging. The moments where just to save the class, I needed to summarize the next three pages for them, because they don’t want to read a description of the woods, we’re just going to move on, that was an unparalleled literary training. It was really that. I don’t have an MFA. This is dragging, and this kid has just gotten the craft scissors and is cutting the hem of their pants, I can see that this is not working. It partly was about you know, lessons about pacing, lessons about momentum. But it also instilled in me an absolute terror of boring people. But like, as a writer, you know, I can feel when someone will be getting bored. I know, when this is going on too long. I know when you need some plot. I’m very easily bored. I am, I’ve got ADHD, I just need like, constant something. Give me some stimulation. And that’s part of it too, for sure. If you can count that as a literary influence.

Yeah, totally. Because also, you’ve done enough live events where you know, when you sort of start to lose the audience know, you can change the pace of the event very, very quickly. Or, you know, sometimes you get an audience that just wants to stay and you’re like, Okay, I’m gonna take this extra 10 minutes that I would not otherwise have, because clearly you are here and I have not heard a single rustle, I have not seen a single person scoot in their chair. It’s wild when that happens. I would very much like to be part of this, partially as to because as I was researching, you know, and doing my thing before we sat down, you love Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic the way I love Julie Otsuka’s. Buddha in the Attic. And any chance I get to talk about Julie Otsuka’s work with another human being, I’m just like, hi. Hi, can we just rave about Julie Otsuka for a second? Because what she does with voice in that book, and structure, and story and all of the things and she doesn’t of course, and you know, 160 pages.

Talk about getting away with things that you would not think you could get away with. I have the hardest time, I mean, my enthusiasm convinces people to read that book. But what do you say? Like it’s a book, there are no characters. There’s this story. It’s really good. Which sounds to me like my nightmare read. Like I just said, I need stuff. I’m need story. So, you say okay, well, it’s about Japanese immigrants to California. But you can’t explain that book, you just have to start reading. That’s all.

And just how you move through the story. I mean, yes. We just said there is no story. Well, there is a story. It’s the language just pulls you through and before you know it, you’re done. Yeah, I do read really quickly, but I will slow myself down for Julie Otsuka. So again, just an excuse to yell about brilliant books.

I was talking to my students about what their engines are. What would make someone turn the pages? What is the momentum here? And if you know, if it’s going to be plot, then okay, let’s talk about plot structure. Let’s really get in there. What makes plot go, what moves us forward? If you think you can get away without plot, what are you doing instead? And she’s a great example. It’s like, oh my god, litany, lyricism, voice, there is movement, it’s just poetry that works. Sometimes it’s other things like it’s something about structure, where it’s like a story written like a list, right? And it’s not her but you know, someone else where okay, maybe I don’t need to plot because I have this sort of exoskeleton. There’s something else. The students who think that they cannot have plot and also not have anything else that is like this incredibly compelling forward movement that that’s where it’s not going to work.

Yeah, sorry, no, make a choice. Have you had a chance to read The Swimmers? What she does, where it switches where you’re in the pool and you’re with this community, and then suddenly, there’s that shift halfway through. And I knew something was coming. Because that one person, we knew that person’s name. Just that tiny, tiny bit, and then suddenly, we’re in the rest of the book and again, it’s 159 pages. So, if you haven’t read it yet, please just go by it and read it because it’s brilliant.

This is the Julie Otsuka podcast.

I mean, I can just fan girl for hours. When you talk about that shift in narrative, that’s exactly what you’re doing in a lot of ways, through Bodie. I come back to this, but this idea that you’re using all of the different pieces of all of the different cases, whether they’re real or imagined, it’s such a great way to keep us grounded in the larger pieces of the story. And I appreciate that. And, you know, I would like to see some art with my art like, some people experience stories in different ways. That’s great. But just the fact that I have language to hold on to is a delight for me. And which brings me to The Great Believers a bit only because Fiona Marcus, who is a big piece, obviously, of The Great Believers, there were moments where I felt like Bodie Kane and Fiona Marcus sort of sat on a continuum, and not just because you are the writer. But because there are women who are very emotionally compressed in a way and don’t always have space for the rest of the world, the way we’re told women should always have space for the world. And, you know, I respect that, because but can we talk about that sort of intersection for you is there I mean, you’re coming off of this very big, winner of the Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction, winner of the ALA, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, finalist for the National Book Award, a lot happened, you spent a lot of time on the road, talking to people about The Great Believers. But can we just talk about the intersection of these women?

Yeah, definitely. You know, I’ve had female protagonists before but there is a there is a sort of a continuum there of kind of unapologetic. You know, in Fiona’s case. It’s interesting, she’s someone in The Great Believers, she’d started as just this very secondary character, this young woman in her 20s in the 1980s, who was always kind of drunk at the parties. And later on, it was partway into the draft, when I realized I wanted her point of view as well and I want a present a point of view. So, I went in and kind of plucked her out of out of the cast and went, okay, who did this woman turn out to be in her 50s. This woman who lived through this basically war in her 20s and lost everyone who is she, she’s really got PTSD. She’s really living in the past and in ways she’s very conflicted. She’s very guilt ridden and has failed in many ways as a mother and just a bit of a mess. But she’s also someone who will have sex with some guy she found on the airplane, and she’s gonna go after what she’s looking for. I had a lot of fun with that. Just this like, “I don’t have time for your nonsense.” I think the same way that for me thinking about her, I think about where a lot of people get if they’re lucky enough to live into their 80s or 90s the sort of like, I’ve seen so much, you can’t just, you know, and she’s only 50 or so. But she has lived through so much, she has lost so many people that I felt like I could put her in, in almost that same place in terms of like, none of this is going to touch me I’m good. Bodie is younger than that, she’s really, I think 40 When we first meet her, rather than her younger self, but we’re not there with her younger self. She’s the mother of young kids, but I very specifically did not want to put those kids on the page. They are really not in the story. Despite absolutely everyone in the book constantly asking her who’s watching her kids. Any woman who has traveled for work knows is like, just you’re gonna get it three times a night. And people might not be meaning to make you feel guilty, but that is the subtext, how are you here instead of at home, she’s someone who’s in the process of reinventing herself very much in this moment, her marriage is ending. What had been her career starts to end in these two weeks when she’s back and she really starts to realize that the space she had always been making for other people the way you put that, the stepping aside, this investigation was going on in 1995. And she figured, I can’t possibly have information, because I’m not friends with those people and not the right crowd, and instead, actually gave the police, the only information she thought she could which turned out to be, you know, possibly wildly misleading to them. But instead going, Wait a second, what if I’m not an outsider, what I’m not only not an outsider to this story, but what if I’m not an outsider to life? In general, outside of life, what if I actually just take center stage here, it was important to me that in high school, she was a theater kid, but she was always backstage, she was tech, she was wearing black she would not have come on stage for the curtain call. That was not who I was in high school. But like, that’s the person I needed to make and then change. I need to start her at a certain place so that these events can transform her.

She really is a great character. Before I asked you though, what you’re working on next, can we talk about your substack for a second? Yeah, this is really fun. I’m totally plugging your substack because it’s fun. It’s fun between the Zillow thing and the books in translation. Oh, how are you finding the time on top of everything else?

So right, I started the substack, it was only about a month ago, something like that, it’s a newsletter, and people can subscribe. And there’s a there’s a paid version for more stuff, but it’s called submakk, I basically went on Twitter and I was like, Who wants to name a sub stack? I can’t think of anything, and someone suggested it. So, you know, I was always spending a lot of time on social media. You know, not just scrolling, but telling stories. Like, here’s an unsolved murder from the 20s that I found or check out this weird house I found on Zillow, or here’s this wild, historical rabbit hole that I went down. I think it’s honestly, it’s a lot of it’s like the part of me that misses teaching elementary school. I could be like, oh, my God, you guys, did you know this thing about Magellan? Like, we need to talk about this? Because I was sitting alone all day, it doesn’t always, you know, if it doesn’t fit into my book, who am I going to tell this really cool stuff, too. I also started to realize how unstable things like Twitter really are and felt like I wanted to reach people more directly. And also, say things in more than seven words at a time, I’ve been having a blast. And you know, what’s funny is, I will get, the only time I get writer’s block is with emails, I write fiction very fast. Once I get going. Something like a substack, with those, I could whip out about seven of them a day, if I didn’t think people would get sick of me. It’s Oh, it feels very natural. It’s a lot of fun. It’s the way my brain works. It would have been a 25 tweet Twitter thread, putting it in this slightly more respectable place.

Have you found the books that you were trying to figure out for Eritrea and there were some you’re working on the 84 books? So, that was the question. I was kind of like, Alright, where are we going next?

But I’m doing this project in honor of my late father who died in January of 2020. And we’d never had a memorial service. And he was a literary translator, among other things. I’m reading my way around the world and reading 84 books because he lived to be 84 years old. And someone had already done around the world in 80 books. I was like, no, 84 has more meaning. I started in Hungary because he was Hungarian. I’m going to end there too. And I just did number six, which was Greece, and now I’m reading a Turkish novel called Madonna in a Fur Coat and I haven’t actually started it yet I need to. So yeah, I’m gonna work my way kind of have books picked out for like Palestine, Yemen, Egypt and then I’m gonna work my way down the east coast of Africa next. It was crowdsourcing a little bit, crowdsourcing was not terribly fruitful because I’m not shocked, but not a lot of people, at least on my Twitter feed, have a great knowledge of African literature. So, it’s something you know, I have some knowledge. I feel like when I look at it, and it’s like, well, God, most of what I’ve read is Nigerian or South African, and with a few other things mixed in, you know, what’s the greatest thing ever written in Kenya? What’s the greatest thing from Eritrea? Obviously, these places have deep, deep literatures so I think I’m gonna have to do more googling unless- God if anyone you know, listening to this podcast wants to tweet at me suggestions for, it needs to be in translation- so not written in English, but any genre any year. Just something important.

Yeah, I got really stuck on it too. Because I was sitting down and thinking and sort of the list I came up with, I was just like, no, actually, none of this is in translation. They’re writers I love, and they’re great, but I’m like, Abdulrazak Gurnah lives in the UK, born in Zanzibar, love his novels. I mean, he’s amazing, but I was just like, yep, doesn’t fit the bill. We all have our experience of literature in translation. And there’s some regions I know really well, but I just I’m staring at this note in your substack. I do not have a good answer. So, I would love to know what people think, too, because I’m just very curious. And I think it also sort of speaks to global publishing. But that’s a whole separate conversation. That is a whole separate conversation. But it does bring me to the so what are you working on that isn’t your substack?

Oh, yeah. I’m supposed to be writing other things? I am. I am beginning a new novel. I’m at this phase where I definitely think I know, I definitely know what the next novel is, partly because I feel like it’s a novel where I feel a political urgency in writing this book. And I have a couple of other ideas that are very compelling to me, but they’re ones that could just as well wait. And so there’s, there’s something that I’m writing, and I this is definitely actually not giving it away, but I’ve been doing a lot of research on the rise of the Nazi Party, I got to go to Germany and do a little bit of research. Anyone picturing what book they think I’m writing- It’s not that book, nor is it a holocaust book, actually. So, I am really drawn in. I will say, though, the really intimidating thing is this is the first time that I’ve, hopefully successfully, written about the life of a real person. And it’s a very different experience, reading biographies and memoirs, and being you know, partly limited and partly liberated by the actual historical record, this question of what can I get it right? But then also will do I care if I get it right. Is that really the point? Or am I creating a fictional character who has the same name as the real person? So it’s giving me fits, and I’m still, I’m still circling the airplane a little bit on it, it’s a lot of notes and research and only a few pages of writing that’s really more spaghetti at the wall that’s definitely not going to end up in the actual novel. That’s what I’m working on. My hope is that by the time I’m really on the road for I Have Some Questions for You that I’ll be ready to do some good solid airport floor writing. I actually write really well on airplanes, strapped in and people bring you food and the Wi Fi doesn’t really work anyway, even if you pay for it, so you might as well, but some good and there’s like a very specific time limit.

I love working on airplanes. I get so much done. I get so much reading done. There are people in my life who know that if they see me at dinner, slide me something before I get on a plane, and it will get read immediately. I actually scared a person sitting next to me because I gave myself the hiccups because I’d been holding my breath reading something. The woman sitting next to me, because this was back in the day when you know, we were basically sitting on top of each other, and she just looked at me.

No, it’s a really great sales pitch.

I don’t usually talk to people on planes either because it’s work time. It’s totally work time. It’s exactly what you said. It’s just like you’re there, you don’t have to think about anything other than what’s right. I’m so intrigued by this new book, I realized it’s not in a space where you can talk about it yet, but I’m intrigued.

I can tell you after we stop recording.

I would like that very much. Yes, I would very much like that because here’s the thing- I, apparently like Jennifer Egan, I will follow you anywhere. That’s really what it comes down to. I mean, listen, we’ve got the story collection. There were two novels obviously before The Great Believers– The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, which, you know, if The Great Believers was your first experience of Rebecca, go back, read the stories. If you don’t think you like short stories, go back and read the stories. I promise you. Lots of clever stuff happens. And you know, I Have Some Questions for You– I have more questions, but we don’t want to spoil it because this is going to air right as the new novel. Rebecca Makkai, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over. This has really been a treat.

Thank you. This is a great conversation. I really appreciate it.