Behind The Stack

Jean Hanff Korelitz, "The Sequel"

• Brett Benner

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In this episode Brett sits down with writer Jean Hanff Korelitz to discuss her latest book, "The Sequel". They talk about crafting a follow up to a successful thriller, finding success later in your career, adaptions, as well as her pop up book group, BookTheWriter.  

https://www.jeanhanffkorelitz.com

http://www.bookthewriter.com

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Brett Benner:

Hey everybody. It's Brett and welcome. To another episode of behind the stack. Today. I am sitting down with author. Jean have correlates to discuss her latest book. The CQL. A little bit about Jean. She was born in New York city and graduated from Dartmouth. With college and Cambridge university. She's the author of nine novels. Uh, including the latecomer, the plot you should have known. Admission. The devil and Daniel Webster, the white rose. The Sabbath day river and a jury of her peers in addition. Uh, core looks is the author of a collection of poems. The properties of breath. And a middle grade reader. Interference powder. She's the creator of the book writer, which runs. Runs pop-up book groups, small gatherings with authors to discuss. Great books. The plot was featured on the tonight show. Show as the Fallon summer reads 2021 pick. Correlates lives in New York city and has two grown up children. So now enjoy this episode of behind the stack. I'm so happy that you're with me today, for our audience, Jean Hemph Korolitz with her new book, The Sequel, which is so fantastic. I suddenly almost descended into Oprah territory. The Sequel!

Jean Korelitz:

Just don't give everybody a free copy.

Brett Benner:

Exactly. You get a copy. Reach under your chair. Wherever you are. Reach under your chair. Wherever you are. Reach under your chair. It's magic. No, it, it, it really, it's, I loved it so much. I love the plot as well. But, I have to say that I think you've done that thing. That's not always possible, which is you've made the sequel even better than the original to me.

Jean Korelitz:

Thank you. Well, of course, that's the thing that you're, even as you're writing, you know, the first line you're thinking, and they're going to say, it's not as good as the first one, because that's almost always true, right?

Brett Benner:

I'm so curious and I would love for you to share, with our listeners, with our viewers, your kind of origin story in terms of your writing, because I know you started as a poet.

Jean Korelitz:

That's right. But

Brett Benner:

then how this all, how, how you got into the book world?

Jean Korelitz:

I, I, I'm glad that I started as a poet. I think it really teaches you to kind of write with your ears. Um, I still can't leave an ugly sentence on the page. I'm sure I've written many. Ugly sentences, ugly to other people, but if it's ugly to me, I have this compulsion to fix it. And I think that comes from poetry. but I, I, I always wanted to write fiction. I, I love the novel above all other, forms of writing. But I was terrified. And, you know, all you have to do is think about what a novel is to write fiction. to really, feel the terror. I mean, it is an absolutely terrifying prospect to sit down and write something that's going to take you years. It might not work. You might have to throw it out. Everybody might reject it. Everybody might hate it. It's not like writing a poem where, you know, you, maybe you invest a few days or a week. My husband, who's a poet, might work on a poem for a week. It's a week. I mean, you don't want to, you know, Waste a week on something that doesn't work, but imagine wasting years of your life on this thing that doesn't work. so yeah, I mean there are so many reasons, not to do it. There's a reason why we invented the concept of writer's block to explain why we can't do it. It was just a very frightening prospect. And so I wrote poetry, until my mid twenties, until I was, you know, I was frankly brave enough to try, try and fail, try and fail again, fail better, like Beckett says, until finally, I wrote something that somebody wanted to publish.

Brett Benner:

And that, and that was your, that was the first book.

Jean Korelitz:

Actually a thriller. You know, I'd had a couple of novels rejected in many, many, many, many, many places. And. I just reached a point where I thought I, I need to write something that somebody will publish. I mean, it was really, really, important to me. And I, I just had a baby, my, my first child, and I was really scared that I had run out of time to be the artiste that I thought I wanted to be. So I said, no, no, no, I'm going to, I'm going to sit down in the few hours that I have each afternoon when the babysitter comes and I am going to write. something that somebody will publish. And it was, you know, the time of Grisham and Thoreau and, and, I did have an idea for, a story about a lawyer, even though I, you know, I'd never gone to law school. And I, I wrote it and somebody published it. It was fantastic. But then they wanted me to write a sequel to it. And they, you know, I, I saw that, that road kind of unfurling before me where I would be, you know, a thriller writer, a whodunit writer. And that wasn't what I wanted at that time. I wanted to, I wanted to be a literary novelist.

Brett Benner:

I totally get it. It's so funny because I have to read you this. I was, I was just tooling around yesterday on the internet about you. And, um, this is from the site called book series in order. And it said, The American writer, Jeanne Hath Corlitz, is well known for her suspense fueled thrillers and mysteries. And I was like, well, she's written a lot of other things too.

Jean Korelitz:

Yeah. Frankly.

Brett Benner:

So, it's fascinating how, how you can get pigeonholed so quickly. It's very much, In listening to some of your previous conversations and the way you talk about writing and the process and the work and, and exactly this getting pigeonholed, it's not so different. As I told you before, I'm a casting director, but it's not so different for many actors who get pigeonholed into something and are really trying to break out the, the actor who's only known for dramas who suddenly does a comedy or Vice versa. So I found that fascinating how many artists find themselves caught in the lane. So kudos to you for knowing, well, I'm going to actually take this road and sticking to it.

Jean Korelitz:

Well, yeah. I mean, thank you for give me, giving me some undeserved credit here. I really was not in control of the situation at all. I mean, I would say to anybody, Who's about to start a writing career and wants to, you know, get seven or eight novels into it without anybody knowing they exist. The best thing they could do would be to not choose a genre. I mean, when the plot was published and it. It kind of around the same time as The Undoing appeared on TV and suddenly people went, Oh, you know, who is this, this brand new writer, this brand new, very elderly writer. And I would say, you know, that was novel number seven. And I'm like, well, I never heard of you. And I think the reason for that is that I, I just could not settle. I love plot. I loved to be surprised in a novel. I love to surprise other people, but I insist on good prose. I mean, it's just necessary as a reader and I, and I have a compulsion to write it as a writer, by the way, many people may disagree with me and that's fine, but you know, I certainly cannot, you know, leave it alone. If I think it could be better, if I think a sentence could be better, I'm, I'm not going on to the next sentence. And I keep. seeing things that I wish I'd made better. Every time I look at the pros, I gave a reading from the sequel the other night and I, you know, I've got my pen out making corrections on the page. It's the compulsion.

Brett Benner:

So you're not able to, when you're finished saying this is done, like what I've turned the last in, it still sticks with you. I

Jean Korelitz:

say it, but I'm wrong because you know, then you open it up and you think, I cannot believe I left. I wrote that sentence and I left it there when it clearly needs. It needs a comma there, and it needs a better word there, and it. It jams against the next sentence. And why didn't I notice that? I mean, they're just,

Brett Benner:

I hate the thought that you left that reading and then went home and tossed all night over that sentence that you could have adjusted. I

Jean Korelitz:

did. I really did. And, and that's not even to mention the things that other people have brought to my attention. You know, misspellings, I can't tell you how many letters I got about, something I said in the late Comer, which is the novel that came out right before the sequel. I said something about Henry Ford that was incorrect. And I eventually decided to leave it there because my, the point I was making in the sentence I thought was more important than the factual, but, but if I'd had a chance, to write it the first time and get it right, I would have found a different way to make my point and not be incorrect. So far, the biggest problem in the sequel is I misspelled a winemaker in Napa Valley. So I hope they'll, uh, Forgive me. We

Brett Benner:

should have

Jean Korelitz:

put it, but we didn't.

Brett Benner:

So, okay, for our viewers and listeners who aren't completely familiar, and I should preface this by saying, if you haven't read the plot yet, you might be screwed because we're going to give some stuff up. So hopefully, and if you haven't read the plot yet, stop this recording or wherever you're listening, go read the plot and then come back for this. So can you give a log line?

Jean Korelitz:

A log line. Okay. That's a very TV thing to say.

Brett Benner:

Well, take the boy out of Hollywood. Yeah.

Jean Korelitz:

Um, it's a, it's a story about a writer, a sort of downwardly mobile writer who, is failing in his career, failing to write, failing to succeed. And he's teaching in a really low prestige MFA program in Northern Vermont. When into his classroom comes the most arrogant student he's ever had, basically says, well, I don't need any of you people because I am writing something that is going to make me rich and famous and, it cannot fail. And, you know, we do hear this. I'm sure you hear this too. Most people in the arts. have experienced some version of somebody coming up to them and, and saying, you know, I, I am, I'm the greatest star I am by far, et cetera.

Brett Benner:

But no, but no one says,

Jean Korelitz:

Well, the version that we novelists get is I have the best plot. You write it and we'll split the money. First of all, second of all, I should take your word on this plot being so great when, as we all know, there are only seven plots. There are Slayin the Monster, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, Buildings, Roman. You know, there are Joseph Campbell did all this for us. There are seven plots. So, you know, your boy growing up in obscurity and becoming the CEO of the trucking company is fantastic, but it is one of the seven plots. So I'm not going to write it for you.

Brett Benner:

Variations on a theme.

Jean Korelitz:

Exactly. But anyway, back to the plot. He, he assumes that this, student is just the usual sort of jerk, but then The kid, the, the, the young writer tells him the plot and, and he knows that, that it's absolutely true. This writer is going, it doesn't matter how good the writing is, it is going to be a success. A phenomenon and a few years go by and he's possible even lower, in his, prospects and it occurs to me he's never seen this book come out and, you know, he would have heard about it. It is that unusual this story and he Googles the guy and discovers that he's dead. And he, he died very soon after their encounter, so this book does not exist. And he has this kind of long night of the soul where he, you know, has to decide, Am I, what am I going to do with this? Am I going to take this story and write it? Or am I going to say no, you know, I'm gonna walk away. And of course, he's a writer, so it's a clear answer. Of course, he's going to write this story. This is not a question of plagiarism. There is nothing to plagiarize. He saw maybe a couple of pages of, of, you know, an excerpt that the. The young writer submitted for the course that they were doing together, but there is nothing to steal, just the story. So he takes the story, he writes a novel. It becomes massively successful, of course, but he can't enjoy it because he's too terrified that somebody is going to come out of the woodwork and accuse him of something. And, even though he, he doesn't feel that what he did was incorrect, the Appearance of impropriety is enough to end a literary career or any other kind of career today. And he knows that. And, and eventually that's exactly what happens. Somebody does emerge to accuse him of, of various crimes. And, and the plot is really about his trying to figure out who this person is, what they want and how he can stop them.

Brett Benner:

Yes. And so that brings us to the sequel. Well, Which is a name my

Jean Korelitz:

agent, uh, presented me with. The minute I said I'm thinking of writing a sequel, she said yes. And we're going to call it the sequel.

Brett Benner:

Yeah. That's genius. That's genius.

Jean Korelitz:

Genius.

Brett Benner:

And so meta. Um, which is much of the book is anyway, when you finished the plot, was there any inkling in your mind? Like, you know what? This could go someplace else.

Jean Korelitz:

Um, no, actually, that's not really the way my brain works. brain worked at the time I was ecstatic to, uh, have finished that book in a pandemic in four months. Unlike the book that I put aside in order to write the plot, it just came Straight out, and it was required not too much revision. Um, and I'd really been struggling on a, on a novel called the late comer, which, you know, I was really, really not making progress with at all. So to have this kind of get up in the morning and just write all day, experience was in itself, you know, a kind of blessing, especially in the middle of a busy day. of those first months of the pandemic when there was so much uncertainty and so much fear. So, I mean, I was grateful to have gotten the thing done. It never, it never occurred to me that I would, come back to these characters. Some of them weren't alive anymore. I mean, like, what was there to come back to? And then I had an idea. Uh, that's when I said to my Agent, I'm, I'm thinking of continuing with this character.

Brett Benner:

Was it a larger labor? This time, it didn't come as fast.

Jean Korelitz:

It was pretty fast. Not, not pandemic fast. We were able to go out to dinner with our friends and go to the movies and do the other stuff that I wasn't doing in the spring of 2020. You know, it, it, it was difficult in a different way and that is, Because when you write a sequel, as I now have discovered, you have to color within the lines that you have put down in that first book. You can't change the character. You can't, change time. You can't change the facts. You have to abide by the rules you made in the earlier book, when you didn't realize that you would ever be Revisit any of this. So for example, I mean, people say, well, did you know you're going to do this? If I had known I would have laid clues for myself to use later. I would have given myself so much more to work with. For example, there's a piece of. Furniture that, you know, has a lot of weight on it because it is the only piece of furniture that happens to have, remained in a particular house after the earlier owners have left and the present owners come in. I mean, that's a statement that will make no sense to anybody listening to that you've read

Brett Benner:

it

Jean Korelitz:

unless they've read the plot and I mean, to have this physical object that spans the time period of both stories, you know, was so valuable that it becomes extremely important.

Brett Benner:

It's a generational piece, we might say. A

Jean Korelitz:

generational piece, that's right.

Brett Benner:

I'm so curious, because of sheer construction of a book like this, Do you work with a very detailed outline? Is it broad strokes? Do you know where you're going to, did you ever know where you were going to end necessarily? Or did things just kind of surprise you as you went along?

Jean Korelitz:

Oh, I was going to say the answer to all of those things was no, but of course the answer to the final thing is yes. I do not work with outlines. I'm not condemning them for anybody else. I mean, I think. I think the object of the exercise is to get the words on the page and whatever helps and whatever makes you do that is kosher as far as I'm concerned. for me, no, because I, I find that if I know where I'm going, I'm just connecting the dots and there's no surprise for me. And if there's no surprise for me, there's no surprise for you. So yeah, this is part of the terror of writing a novel. You don't know what's going to happen. You're just hoping like hell that it's going to work out. I, I have this to, to me that the kind of working metaphor is that I keep, eliminating things that are not good, you know, um,

Brett Benner:

obvious

Jean Korelitz:

things. Well, not even that, but like, it's his long lost twin brother, you know, he's in a few state when he did it, all these things are just stupid. And once you've eliminated all those things, you're just hoping like hell that there is. something left that you didn't anticipate and that therefore the reader didn't anticipate either. So that's The hope that you'll sort of get all the way down to the end of the corner having Shut all those doors because they were too obvious and that there will be something still there

Brett Benner:

As you're going through and i'm speaking specifically to this novel and probably the plot as well Do you share it with anyone like your husband or anyone to say read this and tell me if this makes sense

Jean Korelitz:

Or do you keep it going through it? No when I get to the end of the first draft. I share it with You My best friend from college, who's also an LA person and my agent, and they are two extremely insightful readers and, When they say it's good, I believe them, which I tend not to believe anybody else, but when they say it, I believe them.

Brett Benner:

So, I do want to talk about Anna. She's, it seems weird to say, but she's so much fun. She really is. And the way that many antiheroes are, fun to kind of watch, was it ever hard creating this, person who does some despicable things, but you're still, you're still, I can speak personally here. You find yourself rooting for her a little bit. Does that make me weird?

Jean Korelitz:

Yes, you are weird. No, but I mean, when we look at Ripley, I mean, he's a vile mean, and yet we're, we want him to elude the police because we want to see what he does next. And also we're, we're sympathetic to What made him the way he is? I have to say that my husband and I went to see The Apprentice the other night. Oh yeah. And I came up in the middle and I said, This is weirdly sympathetic to him because his family situation was just awful and You know still produced in my opinion a vile human being but

Brett Benner:

of course

Jean Korelitz:

you at least you understand So like with Anna by the end of the sequel, we knew a lot more about how she became what she became She's not a person who sanctifies human life. That's for sure. I never had a problem writing unlikable people. I think they're fascinating and I don't, by design, have a lot of them in my life because if they are unlikable, I try not to keep them in my life. So it's a way to kind of hang out with really, Terrible people without having to like have coffee hang

Brett Benner:

out with terrible people Was there any amount was there ever a moment when you were writing her and you thought well No, I can't ever do that. That's that's too far

Jean Korelitz:

Yeah, there, there were some. I mean, the thing about Anna, I mean, you could argue that killing somebody is a cruel act. But she doesn't lead with cruelty. She's, you know, she's not, creating unnecessary suffering. Her means of murder are, rather quick and often painless. Sympathetic dispatch. Sympathetic dispatch. I, I don't like violence. I take no pleasure in the suffering of other people. I can't write it. So there, you know, there are plenty of books that I can't read because there's too much cruelty in them. I, I once read a novel by an extremely famous and successful writer of suspense that was so, violent and, just horrific torture that I, I actually took the step of putting a note in the, it was a library copy and saying, you know, I'm, please be very careful in your decision to read this book. It is full of sexual violence. And I mean, I've never done that before. I don't believe in it. You gave your

Brett Benner:

content warnings. Yeah.

Jean Korelitz:

Yeah, and this was like the 80s. So we were, it was a long time ago, but I, it was that bad. I mean, I could never write anything like that. But you know, Anna does suffer. And if you, if you were to ask her, Hey, Anna, why have you done all these things? why do you behave this way towards other people? She, she would say, I've never done anything to anyone who hasn't harmed me first. And I, if only people had just left me alone, none of this had to happen. This is somebody who just wants to live her life and is imposed upon, in ways that no one should be imposed upon. Now, a lot of people are imposed upon. They don't grow up to be, you know, icy cold murderers of other people, thank goodness, but you kind of get it too.

Brett Benner:

Yeah, no, that's, that's what makes it work because you do see her side in a lot of it and you think, well, okay, I may not go that far, but yeah, good honor. So much of the book, because of what she's going through, you really satirize the whole publishing industry like soup to nuts from the construction of a novel down through book tours, which that's one of the greatest joys. It's so funny and and so spot on. I couldn't help but wonder if you were kind of exercising some of your own demons with the industry as you're doing this.

Jean Korelitz:

I have been incredibly fortunate and and not because I've been beautifully and enthusiastically published. from the beginning of my career. I haven't been. I mean, that has only happened in the last few, few books at Macmillan. I mean, I'm having, I think I refer to it as the Rolls Royce of publishing experiences. But I certainly had all the awful experiences that other people had. And, you know, I've been around for a long time, so I've seen, you know, my contemporaries just sail into print in our twenties while I was. you know, not able to get books published. I'm a human being. I was very jealous. And yet I've seen those careers fall off. And I've come to believe that it's not necessarily a good thing to have a huge hit right out of the gate. I'm having a really weird Publishing career and that I've been knocking around for so long that, I wish they were all the time, you know, it's like Agatha all along, you know,

Brett Benner:

yeah,

Jean Korelitz:

but, people didn't know about me. And now there are all these novels for people to read if they, you know, If they like these more recent books, they're just sitting there.

Brett Benner:

Yeah. I said this earlier and I keep hearing it and what you're saying, but so much of the way you talk about your own career, it mirrors so many lives of so many actors.

Jean Korelitz:

Yeah.

Brett Benner:

And just, and I don't, I don't think it limits it that, that it could be musicians, any kind of anyone in the arts more so than many other jobs. I don't know many people who were like, God, I've been, uh, Money investor for so many years. I'm just waiting for that moment. It's such a different thing and I think some of it Is you just never know. And it's longevity. It must've felt for you at times, like you were almost working in a vacuum because you're getting stuff out there,

Jean Korelitz:

but I didn't, I had something going for me and that was, I had an agent who really believed in me and she could have dropped me, you know, after every single, I mean, she came on with my. Third novel. And you know, the novels didn't make any money. No, not many people were reading them and she had every right to say, Hey, we gave it four good books and we're gonna like say goodbye now. She never did. And, then soon after I was taken on by this wonderful editor, and I really feel that these two women have held me up through, many books and, and a lot of frustration. And they're, by the way, they are kind of mildly satirized in the novel itself, and they are so in love with their, portrayals, even though they're not entirely, you know, positive. Like, they're made fun of, too, that they, volunteer to do a kind of sweepstakes where somebody could buy the book and enter the sweepstakes and then they would have lunch with this person. It's just like, oh my God, in the book. So I just, they're just so terrific. And I, I'm so grateful to them. I mean, I could not have done it without them.

Brett Benner:

I love that. You know, one of the things you do have among many things is you've had an incredible track record with so many of your books getting adapted. And I know now, The plot is being developed with Mahershala Ali, which is just fantastic. how has that experience? How, how involved have you been? Is it easy for you to just say, okay, this is my piece. I'm letting it go. Cause I know things. I mean, listen, I saw The Undoing, and I was like, this is kind of the book. Because I remember reading that book when it first came out. So I wonder what that experience is like for you.

Jean Korelitz:

I'm glad that I had the experience of admission being made into, uh, the 2013 film with Tina Fey first, because that was the lesson of, you know, it's not going to be your book. And that was a much gentler adaptation than you should have known to the undoing. I mean, I have, I have nothing bad to say about what David E. Kelly did. He told me From the get go that it was going to be different. It was going to be more of a who done it. he also told me that the first time he, He encountered the novel, you should have known. He passed on it because in his words, it decelerated in the last third, which is, I guess, not what you want in a TV show, you want acceleration and you know, the novel you should have known is really about this woman kind of losing her life, you know, having her life fall apart and then rebuilding her life. So a deceleration, No helicopters. No, you know, child abductions, nothing like that. No, no trial in the novel. So, he said he kept thinking about the book and he decided that he liked the characters and the situation, but he wanted to go in a different direction. And I said, you know, you are David E. Kelly. You do whatever you want. And it was very, very different. And. I think after the second episode of the show, it really was a totally different story. And as a result, I didn't even know who did it. Before I sat down to watch the final episode, I, I guessed, but I was wrong. So, you just have to let go. You really just have to let go and you know, nobody's making you sell your novel to, for an adaptation. You did that yourself. So, just let go and hope that people will say, Oh, there's a book. I want to read the book.

Brett Benner:

Yeah. Yeah. No, I understand. But I think if you speak to many authors, that is the great hope that Oh God, maybe somebody is going to take this on and, and give it some kind of other life. One of the things that's so clever that you do in the book that I love so much is having each chapter is the name of a sequel, which, you know, I funny, I didn't look in the end of the book for the reference when I started it. And Moron that I am, I was probably about halfway through and I was like, Oh my God. And then of course I started to turn backwards, but not only are you making each chapter the name of a sequel of a book, they really do match what is happening within that chapter, which is genius. How long did that take you?

Jean Korelitz:

I was on a flight to LA actually, and. I, I was thinking about the title of, Erica Jong's sequel to fear of flying, which is how to save your own life. And that's a great novel. Um it's one of my favorite sequels actually. And I read it without knowing it was a sequel. I was. I was a teenager and I think it had like a sexy cover. So I probably read it because of that. It's a wonderful novel. I later, of course, I did read fear of flying, another wonderful novel. And I was thinking how, how appropriate that title, how to save your own life would be for one particular chapter late in the sequel. And then I thought maybe I'll make them all the titles of sequels. And I didn't. Do it right away. I started compiling a list of sequel titles that I thought would work. And there, you know, there are plenty of sequel titles that wouldn't work like, you know, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is not gonna work, but How to Save Your Own Life will work. It Starts With Us will work. Doctor Sleep will work. So I just, you know, I just wrote down as many as I could and then when I finished and I, I had the manuscript, I started going through and mixing and matching and trying to attach every, title of a sequel with something that was happening in that chapter. So, how to save your own life that went to a very obvious place. Yeah, it starts with us, obviously went to the first chapter, and, you know, it was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun doing it.

Brett Benner:

Yeah, it's, it's really. It's such a nice understated touch, but I was clearly aware like, Oh, the work went into this. So it's really brilliant. It

Jean Korelitz:

wasn't so much work and that part was fun because after all, I didn't write any of those sequel titles. Yeah,

Brett Benner:

sure. But even just finding what the words were in that particular title that would adhere to something that's going on in that particular chapter, I think it's, I think it's great.

Jean Korelitz:

It was my little reward for writing. The rest of the book.

Brett Benner:

Now is your personal reading as varied as your books are?

Jean Korelitz:

I would say yes. Probably more remarkable for what I don't read. I don't read science fiction, fantasy, westerns, romance. I do read literary fiction, thrillers, biographies, nonfiction. I didn't, you know, I don't read short stories. I'm not, I'm just, it's just not my form. Recently, I tried to read, advice for cleaning women. Because it was on that list of the 100 best, books. Yeah, the New York Times. And she was an amazing writer. But still, after about six short stories, I, I couldn't go on. I wanted a novel. It's just, you know, as Woody Allen said, the heart wants what it wants.

Brett Benner:

Yeah, I find it, my problem with, short stories. And I always say this, although it's funny because this year I've, I've stumbled across a patch of them that I've thought were great, but I always find I like about 60 percent of them and the other 40 percent I don't. So I, I, I want to be with certain characters for a longer time. I want something to expand into something more full. I will say there's one book that came out this year. Do you ever do audio books?

Jean Korelitz:

Oh, constantly.

Brett Benner:

Ok, well, here's an audiobook you have to get. Ben Shattuck wrote this book that came out this year called the history of sound, which are around 12. Stories that are kind of interconnected. They're all set up around, the New England area and goes up into Canada. The audiobook is a full cast with Chris Cooper, Paul Meskell, and the first story in that collection, Paul Meskell is going to star in the feature. It is fantastic. One of the best audiobooks I've ever heard. These performances are next level.

Jean Korelitz:

Yeah. The history of sound here. It is. So I would

Brett Benner:

say, check it out. And maybe that'll break your streak a little bit.

Jean Korelitz:

Okay.

Brett Benner:

The last thing I really want to do to talk about for a moment, doesn't have really anything to do with, the book. It has to do with you and I love you do this so much. I discovered it, which is book the writer.

Jean Korelitz:

Yeah.

Brett Benner:

Can you talk a little bit about this? I think this is so amazing and it makes me want to move back east. Just so we're

Jean Korelitz:

on zoom now too. I mean, we have, we have, we are in person, but we're also have an active zoom for every But it, it, um, it came out of something that I used to do when, I lived in Princeton, New Jersey for many years and I started it as a fundraiser for my kids' school, And it was a Quaker school and they weren't into kind of flashy, you know, ski chalet vacations and thing It was like. Let's, let's do bread baking and stuff like that. I don't want to do bread baking. Then the head mistress or the head of school said, well, you know, all these writers, why don't you have a book group where the writers come? And I thought, okay, I can do that. So for about 10 years, I ran this book group in Princeton where the author would come. And, the members of the book group made a donation to the school and, and that was a lot of fun. did you do this

Brett Benner:

out of your home? Yeah.

Jean Korelitz:

I did. Yeah. And, and I didn't pay the authors, although we, you know, we would sell 20 copies of their book. And for most of us, that's a big deal. But then when I moved back home to New York, I thought, well, maybe this can be a business. So we, we converted it into something called book the writer and we have, we call them pop up book groups. It's not a book group where you're with the same people every month. You're with whoever. Is first to buy the 20 tickets and the author is there and we're in somebody's fantastic home, which is why our unofficial slogan is come for the literature, stay for the real estate because usually the apartments are just spectacular. 1 of the apartments that we use frequently is the Mrs Maisel apartment where,

Brett Benner:

oh, my God, the

Jean Korelitz:

pilot of the marvelous Mrs Maisel. And that's a lot of fun, but we've got about a dozen really spectacular. Apartments at this point. The other night we had Joyce Carol Oates, and, before that this fall, we had Michael Cunningham. We have Griffin Dunn coming up. Moon unit Zappa just to round out the LA, Ness. Uh, I'm looking forward to her memoir and it's a mixture of literary fiction. We tend to have a one or two biographies a year, some nonfiction, lots of memoirs. And the wonderful thing about it is that everybody who, comes to one of these gatherings really wants to be there. I mean, nobody is there because, oh, it's Susie's turn to pick the book and Susie always has such awful taste. And, you know, you chose to be at that book group. You bought a ticket for that book group. And, it's everybody reads the book beforehand. So you get past, you know, what's your book about, you really get to a great deep level of conversation about the book. And, you know, we've had actors, we've had Steve Martin and Julianna Margulies and Rachel Dratch. And, you know, I'm interested in comedies. So I try to get all the comedians. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't, but I'm always amazed at who says yes. I mean, Steve Martin doesn't have to sit down with 20 people who read his novel. You know, I think many people don't actually have that opportunity to have a conversation with 20 intelligent people who've committed, you know, 10 hours to reading their fiction. So it's a nice experience. And then during the pandemic, we did go online because our regulars were kind of begging me to do it. They really missed it. the conversations. And after the pandemic, I didn't want to lose those people. So now we have a zoom, concurrent with the gathering and people on the zoom can ask questions also. They just, you know, unmute themselves and ask. And so that's, that's very nice.

Brett Benner:

I think it's amazing. I like, And I would think people would be jumping at it, frankly, on both sides. I think authors would really be enthusiastic about it, but readers, especially what an opportunity it's a treat.

Jean Korelitz:

It is a treat. And it's, it's very meaningful to me. Like the other night, as I said, we had Joyce Carol Oates talking about her new novel butcher, and there was somebody online who said, you know, you've been my favorite novelist for many, many years. And I've read everything you've written, which, you know, for Joyce, it's a lot of reading. And, and, and to say, I've always wanted to ask you this question. So, I mean, that was a person who wasn't. in New York. They were, I don't know where they were, but they were in a different city. But to just to be able to facilitate that is great. And also to have a reader discover a new novelist or a new writer for them is great. I haven't heard of you, you know, but I was free on this night. So I signed up and now I love your book and I'm going to read everything that you've written. So it's a very pleasant experience and I will keep doing it as long as I have the energy to do it. It is a lot of work. Um, but yeah,

Brett Benner:

yeah, it's interesting too, because you know, having been in my job that I've been forever, I, I don't get, I don't know if starstruck is the word, but I don't, I don't get that normally with many actors. I have gotten that with writers. And I think part of it is first of all, reading is such a solitary and intimate thing. And you're kind of, In this dialogue with a writer and what their story they're giving you and unschooling in your head.

Jean Korelitz:

Absolutely.

Brett Benner:

They're in your head. I don't know that I could do what you do. And so for that, I'm in so much awe of the craft of how you construct, of how you think and the work that goes behind it. I just think this opportunity to be able to marry these and Really get to sit down with people and pick your brains in terms of how it all comes together is, I think it's a beautiful thing. I, I, I think it's fantastic.

Jean Korelitz:

I, well, thank you. If I ever needed any more encouragement to keep doing it, I, that, that means a lot. You should come to one of our events. I mean, I'll, I'll just put you in the zoom room. You'll enjoy

Brett Benner:

it. No, I absolutely, I'm going to look at them. I absolutely would love to do that. Well, this was lovely I will link, not only you on social media, but also book the writers. So people can check that out, and please everyone get the sequel and the plot and all of her other books. I will have a link on my bookshop. org page, which will have. All of your books up there for people to get and please buy independent if you can. Jean, have a wonderful rest of your day and, uh, we'll talk soon.