Behind The Stack

Christopher Bollen, "Havoc"

• Brett Benner • Season 1 • Episode 14

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In this episode Brett talks with Christopher Bollen about his latest book, "Havoc". They discuss age vs youth, finding a characters voice, and the joys of Venetian glassware. 

Christopher Bollen instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/christbollen/

Christopher Bollen website:
https://www.christopherbollen.com

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Brett Benner:

Hey, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of behind the stack. And also welcome to December and your two minute warning that the holidays are going to be here like tomorrow. It's such a weird thing. I think part of it is because Thanksgiving was so late, but it felt like Turkey was finished and suddenly Christmas trees were erected and everything is going to be over in a minute. So I hope you're getting all of your holiday shopping done. I hope you're finding great. Buys, I also you're hoping you're getting a little time for yourself and able to read today. I am thrilled to be sitting down with author Christopher Bolin,

whose latest book, Havoc, is out today. A little bit about Christopher.

Brett Benner:

You. I'm going to read it to you. I'm going to read it to you. I'm going to read it to you. You Orient and lightning people. He's a frequent contributor to a number of publications, including Vanity Fair, the New York times, an interview, and he lives in New York city. So enjoy this episode of behind the stack. It's funny because this book, in particular, reminds me very much of like, Ira Levin. Yeah. And, um, I think I said that to you last time. I looked that

Christopher Bollen:

up.

Brett Benner:

Um, Veronica's Room?

Christopher Bollen:

Yeah, I looked it up. It sounded really interesting. It sounded a bit crazy, which I liked, of course.

Brett Benner:

Yeah, no, no, it is. It's absolutely batshit crazy. But I don't and it's it's very it's not plot wise. It's not anything close to what you have. It's just The kind of essence and the feeling of it reminded me very much in that kind of vein It just it came up for me while I was reading I was like wow because of how havoc really descends into the depths of craziness,

Christopher Bollen:

right? I know and it was so easy. I mean It was so easy to write crazily. I don't know. I really enjoyed that descent It was so much fun and so liberating to write about a character that just goes completely mad

Brett Benner:

Yeah. All right. So, so I, I'm going to preface this by saying, we have had this conversation. We have had it, Christopher Bolin. I so appreciate you because anybody else would have been like, sorry, but I have to explain to the listeners that we had this incredible full conversation. And then I went into edit it last week and, I deleted the entire studio that it was recorded on. And those that gone with. Support and they were trying to find it and they're like, there's nothing. And I was like, how did I make it a warning? So anyway, we're, we're rerecording because you were gracious enough. And I so appreciate you I should have did this yesterday and said, I am thankful for you. Oh, I mean, all those

Christopher Bollen:

musical numbers we sang together, it'll be lost to history. It's a shame

Brett Benner:

right now in space is getting the first snippets of it going out. So anyway, I'm so glad you're back with me to discuss your fantastic new book Havoc, which is just so, so, fun. I had to just, I'm, I'm coming clean. I'm telling the people that, it was a user error.

Christopher Bollen:

Well, and we're, it's a much more sedate conversation probably because we're both overfed from Thanksgiving yesterday. I feel very slothful. Did you have

Brett Benner:

a good, I didn't even ask you, did you have a good Thanksgiving? Yeah,

Christopher Bollen:

I had a great, I actually went to my publisher's house in Chelsea and, um, close friends with, his husband got, and, they did an amazing, amazing dinner. And I was there with my boyfriend. We were the orphans. It was all orphans, kind of an all orphan Thanksgiving, which is how, you know, it's a lovely thing about New York. It's like, you know, people take you in for, Thanksgiving.

Brett Benner:

There was, so is it a big group or an intimate group? It was

Christopher Bollen:

a big group. Yeah. It was lovely. It was a delicious turkey. I've actually never really made a turkey in my life. I mean, sort of helped make one.

Brett Benner:

I've never made one either. I did one year when I lived in New York, I had a small group of people over and I went to get it and I was like, this is so great. And it had a thermometer that would pop out. Yes. And one of my friends who came over to help me set up, she's like, darling, this is a chicken. And I should have known if it had a thermometer that was going to pop out, that it probably wasn't as, you know, a grand bird, now did you have to make anything?

Christopher Bollen:

I made nothing. And, um, my problem is, is I also have a small apartment on, on the Upper West side and I have a table that only sits. It's four, and yet I have glassware that I can't stop buying. So I have like, glassware for a thousand people. And because I live on the Upper West Side, the three digits, no one will come visit me. Like, as soon as you mention, like, I'm in a hundred and people are like, no, I'm absolutely not going up to hell that far. So I'm literally able to like, as soon as I get one person over, I like force them to drink out of like four glasses just to

Brett Benner:

make it worth, worthwhile. Right, it's not even, you could do, we're gonna do a wine flight, but it's not about the wine, it's about the glasses.

Christopher Bollen:

Exactly.

Brett Benner:

Do you have a display case for them?

Christopher Bollen:

Well, yeah, a little bit. Um, a lot of them are Venetian, there's a lot of like Venetian glassware, because I love Venice so much. So whenever I go, I, I'm a, a compulsive Glass shopper person actually recently a a snobby friend of mine who who lived in la was making fun of people who collected glass and I was like, oh, I know whether I was thinking oh god I am I am that person I should really defend those of us in the community who love glass

Brett Benner:

So you're a closeted glass person.

Christopher Bollen:

I know. It was so, it was so easy. I was just so ashamed, you know? Um, no, I love, I do love glass. I love Murano glass. I do have a small kitchen and a small oven, but I would love to, I would love to start cooking more. I always say that every year. I never do anything about it.

Brett Benner:

All right. So for our listeners, can you give us a little elevator pitch about havoc?

Christopher Bollen:

Sure. Havoc is a story of an 81 year old woman named Maggie Burkhardt who has spent the last five years of her life kind of roaming grand hotels, through Europe. She kind of lands in, a hotel in Luxor, Egypt, during the pandemic and sort of has been run out of for reasons you will soon learn when you read it. And then there she, she interacts with this boy and his mother who also checked into the hotel. And instead of like a heartwarming story of an old woman and child forging a friendship, over the generations, they instantly become, or pretty soon after become, uh, enemies. And so it's basically a war of generations inside this, old grand Alderian hotel on the Nile.

Brett Benner:

Yeah. And it's, it's so great. I think. Bill Clegg had said it so, succinctly when he said it's if the bad seed met Olive Kittredge at the White Lotus. And, and I love that so much. And I think that that's so apt for this. You, this is a return for you to. Egypt, from the lost Americans, a particular place you love.

Christopher Bollen:

Well, I've always loved Egypt. Um, ever since I was a little kid, I think it had a lot to do with my love of Agatha Christie and death on the Nile. I did death on the Nile poster up, but I also had this aunt and uncle. Who lived in New York City, again, I'm from Cincinnati, and they were really obsessed with Egypt. And so I was, even as a child, I would get all of these amazing gifts from Egypt and Egypt books. Ever since I was a kid, I was, just fascinated and excited and, and, and curious about Egypt. I had no intention of writing two books set in Egypt. I kind of feel like I had done it all with the, the last one. It was set in Egypt. Primarily in Cairo. And then I was planning to write an actress, planning to write a novel about a male prostitute in Paris. And instead, right at the end of the pandemic, in April, 2021, I was with, uh, my then boyfriend, we flew to Cairo to do a little final research on the last book. And, we had decided to add on, a cruise up the Nile. So we took this, boat from Luxor to Aswan. And it just so happened while in Luxor, we stayed at this amazing hotel that I'd heard about called the Winter Palace, which is like where Agatha Christie wrote Parts of Death on the Nile. It's where Tutankhamen's tune was announced to the world in 1923. And, The story just came to me, and it came to me almost as a short story or as a film, and I didn't know what to do with it because I really wanted to write this next novel in Paris, but I started writing it as a short story and it just exploded in my mind and kept growing and building and just became so much fun for me to write that I couldn't really stop. And so it was, it was really like, you know, and I have to say one of the most amazing, lessons of that was that usually I start out thinking like I'm writing a novel and this story is going to be a novel and like you kind of have in your mind this idea that it needs to have this like wide panorama to be a novel. and it has to involve this and that and all these different elements. And this happened the opposite way. I was like, this is going to be a short story. I had a very, you know, a small idea of what it could be and it built up on its own and it didn't have to be this grand project. And I think for that way, it felt so much freer to write.

Brett Benner:

And it was it her who came to you immediately?

Christopher Bollen:

Yes, she was the, generally came to me immediately because I was inspired by when I was sitting in the back garden of the winter palace. And there was a woman, an old woman there, in a caftan yelling at this young waiter about her order. And so this idea of this old woman who was like sort of a staple of a hotel and she's like, would, you know, obstinate and his furniture. Hmm. And I had seen a little boy check in, a bespeckled little boy check in earlier, and so it just like, it fused in my mind that this could be, such an exciting, war of generations. And of course it was because of the pandemic and the whole question of, you know, do you sacrifice the old for the young, or the young for the old, and there were all these conversations about this sort of,, Generations, you know, the, the older generations, you know, susceptible to death because of the carelessness of the young generations. And so I think that was front of mind too, just this idea that for once there was this sort of, friction between, The two bookends of life. And so, yeah, and you know, it really, things live or die by the voice. And so, it could have easily been like a great idea that, that faltered on the page. But what really made it possible was just, you know, The fun of Maggie's voice for me and the sort of, uh, wit and wickedness of her, that just like kind of came right at the beginning and I just, it was like a gallop. And so it was just so much fun to inhabit that voice and it just kept sailing through.

Brett Benner:

Who did you hear? when you were writing her?

Christopher Bollen:

Well, you know, I think that maybe I am a 81 year old homicidal woman trapped in a 40 now nine year old, man's body. Because it really like felt kind of like, uh,

Brett Benner:

Like an exorcism

Christopher Bollen:

an exorcism if you mean like the tone or like the timber of the voice, that's interesting I just

Brett Benner:

I wondered just if you as you as she started to come out of you You would hear something, you know, you're dialoguing, you're pushing stuff down. And suddenly she had a particular voice to you, whether that was an actress who had come to mind or whether this was just something that there was a tone with her that, that kind of came out.

Christopher Bollen:

I mean, I have always, I have my whole life been, very much so fond of old people. I mean, even when I was a little kid, I loved old people. So, I think there were a lot of, and there's a lot of actresses that I was obsessed with, even as a child, that were, you know, like a Betty Davis or Angela Lansbury. I mean, you know, all these old, amazing hams that I was obsessed with. But I knew that in a way I didn't want her to be a caricature of an old person either. And so I think she plays with the caricature. She plays with the way that people, mistake her for like a sort of innocent, harmless, old person. person, but I wanted underneath that to be like something really alive and someone to be like really specific and really kind of twisted and, and also just like hilarious. I mean, I don't think the book is very funny, but I do think that her responses to people and like the way that she sort of, you know, Manipulating them is, uh, it's kind of a game to her too, you know, so it's like watching a cat play with a mouse.

Brett Benner:

Yeah, but she's also it's funny because when it started and I think I've talked about this last time It's like if you're an actor approaching a role and you're inhabiting this like this woman you're playing everything she's doing She feels very justified in what she's doing and how she's doing it, right? I think it's so much of her mind. She just feels like She's helping things along. She's helping these people, regardless of the fact of what the outcomes are and, you know, the, the havoc she could wreak in people's lives in her mind. She's thinking, well, I'm, I'm making it better for them and I'm doing a favor.

Christopher Bollen:

I mean, I think it's a, what's amazing too, is like what you can convince yourself that you're doing. I mean, you can, the delusions that you tell yourself and. The motivations you give yourself that are absolutely not true or accurate, but like you have convinced yourself of certain things just in thinking about, like, one's life and one's previous relationships, or, how much of it is imposed after the fact, and, and how one remembers, you know, these, these times, or these people, and how much is accurate, really, even. I mean, it's probably truthful and, like, a fact check, but your feelings about certain things just, like, shifted. Like, it's, it's, the common, obvious example is, like, how people just sort of romanticize their childhood. I never did romanticize mine, uh, for example, I always thought my childhood was bleak and lonely, but, um, which I think makes you a good writer. Bleak, lonely, boring childhood. It was very Dickensian. Yeah. Yes.

Brett Benner:

I tend to think people do that with relationships many times, or I know that even, I remember when my, when my father died. My mom and my parents fought for years previous to my, my dad passing, they probably should have gotten divorced, but I remember this whole kind of reframing of him. And I remember sitting with my sister at, the viewing and, and we were looking at each other and we're like, who is, who is she talking about? Like, suddenly it's like, he was like almost going to be canonized as a saint or something, but, yeah, I do think we, we do reframe stuff.

Christopher Bollen:

My sister is a lovely human being as an adult and very sweet and kind, but she was a monster when she was a teenager. I mean, literally a monster. No one in the family seems to remember her, including, you know, conveniently including her. And so I just find it amazing how that was those years of. You know, torment, which is, I have just been glossed over and just forgotten, you know, a hundred percent. So, um, it's true, but you know, that's a survival mechanism. if nothing else,

Brett Benner:

I also love the idea, like you're saying this whole playing with The young versus the old, because you look at it at the outset and you think, who do you trust? Do you trust this old woman who would be seemingly feeble and, you know, wouldn't hurt a fly? Or, do you trust the word of a little boy who is a little boy? Who's, you know, as you said, he's bespeckled. You know, what what harm could a little eight year old boy do?

Christopher Bollen:

Exactly. And as we know tons, well, we talked about this the last time but I admitted my, my sort of, my fear of children and my fear of little boys in particular and weird that we're talking about this because last time at dinner a friend of mine brought his Seven year old son who lost his tooth during the dinner. It was so cute I'm not by being punched, but I actually just fell out like naturally if you want to understand. We actually got along really well And, I was totally terrified the whole time because I'm so nervous around children, but, it was absolutely lovely to like, have this like fun, like conversation for 10 minutes with a seven year old boy. And I was thinking like, Oh, they're not pure evil.

Brett Benner:

do you have, do you have nieces or nephews?

Christopher Bollen:

No,, neither. I wish I did. Um, I wish I were around children more because I, I have lived most of a life without very much interaction with kids. But as I was saying to you, even when I was a little boy, I was scared of little boys. I was like, I did not really like the, to be around like a hated summer camp for this reason and refused to go. Cause like strange children were just like too overwhelming for me. I got, I would, I just felt so uncomfortable.

Brett Benner:

Do you think part of that was the gay thing?

Christopher Bollen:

Totally. I mean, I don't think I would have labeled it at the time. And I don't even, you know, I don't think I understood what it was, but I just felt like I was like a extremely sensitive, nervous child who really just loved more to be alone or with adults. And so, that's, I mean, that's also why I became, I think, such a reader. Because that's what I spend a lot of my time doing, you know.

Brett Benner:

And you were, you were obsessed with Christie.

Christopher Bollen:

I was totally obsessed with Chris, Agatha Christie, yes.

Brett Benner:

and was she who, like one of the first things you really dove into?

Christopher Bollen:

Yes, it was like my gateway drug to, literature. I remember in seventh grade, I had a teacher who pulled me aside. She was an English teacher. And she was like, you, it's amazing that you love to read Agatha Christie so much. But like, there's so many other books out there. Like, you've got to read other people. And I just looked at her like she was crazy. It was like, you idiot. I'm never, I'm never leaving Agatha Christie. So yeah, it was like, a little. Weird Agatha Christie obsessed, child.

Brett Benner:

I love that the teacher came to you and said that there's more than Agatha Christie. And while you were doing that, I was reading like the Dallas novelization of the series.

Christopher Bollen:

I once, I once in second grade, I remember this so well. I wanted to be perceived as a more advanced reader than I was. And so we did have this reading period and I took one of my older sisters. She was three, four years older than I am. And one of her books and was pretending to read it in the class and I remember the teacher came over and looked at it and it was like a picture of like a, like a teenage romance on a bike flirting with them.

Brett Benner:

It was wifey by Judy Blume.

Christopher Bollen:

Totally. And it was something where the woman was just like, Oh, okay. I'm trying to think of like what, what was the first, what were the first books that I read that were like Provocative like that I actually think they might have it might have been Brett Easton Ellis's like rules of attraction I think which I read from the live the library like 14 or 15 and Those like scenes really stuck with me

Brett Benner:

Sure. And again, let's just compare it because I was doing V. C. Andrews Flowers in the Attic.

Christopher Bollen:

Oh yeah, well, Flowers in the Attic 2, I also read it around that time. And that was also quite shocking with the incest.

Brett Benner:

They were those things of the moment where everybody was reading them and you couldn't really tell your parents about them because of the incest. You were just like, well, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a really intriguing story.

Christopher Bollen:

Yeah, we didn't have many, guardrails on what we were allowed to read, and or watch. I mean, I remember I would just watch the trashiest stuff on, like, Cinemax, which we called Cinesex. And HBO, like, at night. And you know, I really feel like there's also great educations in storytelling as a child, because I think so visually. Because movies really were the presiding, you know, way of storytelling to my, you know, to my youth. And so, I think of novels, even when I write them, as almost like a camera. Moving to a room.

Brett Benner:

Well, and a big thing that you do on all your books, but it's so prevalent in this Is the atmosphere is the place and it's almost like another character in the book The way you describe the hotel there's just the whole atmosphere the pool and There's an eroticism that kind of undercurrent in this book that I think is so interesting with this kind of potential, what they think is male gigolo, who's kind of hanging out poolside, who is, who is the epitome of like sex and sexuality, who kind of sets off a lot of these characters. And, and also her, There's such an interesting thing about her too when we talk about age and there's still a vibrant sexuality to this woman and the way that she perceives him and what she perceives and what she'd like to do. Um, that's almost shocking. I

Christopher Bollen:

wonder, you know, there was a, there was a little moment I think when I wrote the, when I was writing the story where I wondered if I should have like some sort of sexual exchange between them of some sort. I mean, it wasn't going to do like a sex scene with Maggie, but, I could have, I mean, cause I really liked thinking of her as someone who was still so alive and like still wanted things, you know, and she still wants a family. She still wants love, but she also. had what she imagines is a great sex life with her husband and like, you know, still has the those cravings and desires for this like very beautiful young man. so she kind of in her head, like kind of mourns the fact that she's might not have sex again, you know, which is a terrifying thing to think about.

Brett Benner:

But I think a lot of people think that, yeah, you know what I mean? I think that I think I think many people go through that and think, will this ever happen again? Or won't It's, again, that age old thing of, as you age, you think, am I going to be desired by someone? Will that still exist? Will that go away? Will that, you know, what is that going to be? Yeah, absolutely.

Christopher Bollen:

she's also just like, her husband died. She loses her family. She's in Milwaukee in a house, you know, a big house, she's retired. She has nothing in her life anymore. And she's not even Like no one even sees this woman. And so I think, you know, for her, like moving through the world and moving through Europe and, and in Egypt and in these hotels, like she's able to like come into focus, to. You know, a whole cast of strangers. I mean, that's the beauty of a hotel. I mean, or any, anything where there's a limited public spaces allows just a whole medley of, a cast of crazy characters to come, interact with each other. And so, you know, I think she craves that and to be seen and to be felt and understood and still, move around in the world. And so, you know, that was the fun of her making her into sort of this like meddling character who sort of like, sort of sabotages other people's lives.

Brett Benner:

Well, and she wants to feel important and recognized. And I think she wants to feel, that someone would say to her, thank you so much for what you did. You really, it was, it was such an incredible thing that you did. And you helped me so much there's two gay characters in the book that I think are so funny too, who she tries to kind of meddle with. But I just. I just love the dynamic of the three of them and what she hopes to accomplish. And, I don't want to spoil anything.

Christopher Bollen:

Well, they were really fun to write too. Like I knew I needed to give her like some sort of allies or some sort of community within the hotel because, she's sort of like a permanent. And so are they. The two guys are, are there sort of semi permanently too during the pandemic. And so they're like long stays who have their own problems, you know, so they're married and she usually finds weak spots in people and, and sort of, manipulates them to sort of test their, their happiness or where they are in life. And, well, you know, the gay couple's a bit more, a bit trickier that way. because they have the different allowances and rules. So

Brett Benner:

Removing agatha christie. What makes a good Thriller or a mystery to you?

Christopher Bollen:

well, I You know the way I write them is like I really use my own. Like am I bored? Do I need something to move to go? I wrote the first novel I wrote I never thought of as the first novel I ever wrote was my first novel was published and it was Not a mystery or a thriller. I mean there are murders actually so it was but I find that what's so helpful to me about writing, A plot that has sort of a thriller element to it is it gives it a like an instant motor I found like the first time I was writing a book I didn't know where it was going and I did I felt like I was just sort of like drowning in too much Too many great scenes and fun writing and and and not really like moving it as a plot toward an end point So for me, it just like creates a structure an instant structure that I can rely on and so I try to write it as literally as possible and try to You know infuse it with great characters and place, but, but I love the fact that a thriller just gives you a target and a place to go with it. and you know, as you know, like from not just Agatha Christie, but like Patricia Highsmith, Graham Greene, like all these, I just love the element Of a thriller you love. The mix of mystery and fear and suspicion and the whole, mood and tone of those books like always really appeal to me.

Brett Benner:

Is there anyone contemporary that you feel that with?

Christopher Bollen:

Yeah. I was just reading, there's this writer, Mona Awad, who is, I love Mona. She's amazing. And she, I was just actually reading her latest, novel, Rouge. I just finished it. And I felt like it was such a, like actually a good companion to, Havoc, because it really just deals with like the limits of a first person narrator going crazy and like what you can get away with. I think hers kind of goes more extreme than mine and in some ways, but, I really admired the voice of it. And it's very courageous to, try to make it an interesting character that is also like, Slightly insane, because, you know, you have to have the reader follow along or want to follow along and listen to this voice. And so it has to like, certainly be appealing and charming and funny as, as like you descend into hell with it, you know, so it's a, it's a really difficult dance. But, you know, I've been thinking about this because I finally have been writing that Paris novel about a young male prostitute and having written someone who's 81, it's actually quite hard for me to go back to a 23 year old. I mean, it's probably is alien now being 23 to me as it is being. Because I'm so not 23 anymore. And what's really liberating about doing 81 is that you can impose a list among her that's earned. I find it very hard to write a 23 year old because I sometimes feel like maybe he wouldn't be this wise here. Like, does he know this? Am I giving him too much, you know, Of a, a sort of breadth that like a young person doesn't yet have, but when you're writing 81 years old, this is like a lifetime of wisdom. And so they know a lot of things or they think they know a lot of things, and so it's a much more sure voice. I think coming from, from an 81-year-old 23 is tough because

Brett Benner:

Sure. You don't want them to

Christopher Bollen:

sound like a 40-year-old, 23-year-old. Just like you don't wanna have a kid who's like, you know, 30 who's, who's, you know, in the body of an 8-year-old. So it's, it's tough to do ages, I think, and youth and innocence. And that's why it was very important to me when doing Otto, who's the 8 year old nemesis in it, that he wasn't like a 30 year old man trapped in an 8 year old body. You know, because that's a lot of those precocious kids you get who are just so unbelievable. It feels, you know, so heavy handed. So I wanted him to just kind of also still be a And a baby and a brat and a kid and he's wicked and smart, but he's also has these like moments where he's just like a pathetic child.

Brett Benner:

So did you have to find, did you speak to anyone who had a kid to say, is this out of the realm of something that someone this age could do?

Christopher Bollen:

I had to do a few times, like I was curious. Yes. And I had friends who actually one, Uh, was it two summers ago? I was visiting a friend in Ireland and her son was eight years old at the time. And I was staying at their house for a few days, and he's a very smart, precocious eight year old. But I was just, listening to, how he spoke, and, what level of communication he was at, and, you know, what he was preoccupied with, because I was curious, like sometimes, like I saw someone, yesterday at Thanksgiving, there was also like a four year old there, and someone was saying like, oh, he's turned four, and I was looking at the seven year old, I was like, he's so tall for four. But yeah, sure, because it just shows that, I have such a non knowledge of children that I wasn't even able to identify the difference between four and seven.

Brett Benner:

But I think it also changes as we age because I think it also your perception of what is older and what is younger begins to alter

Christopher Bollen:

because

Brett Benner:

when you're in it you don't see it but I'll look at older people now and as I'm talking to them realize I'll find out after the fact how old they actually are and then I'm like wow I didn't expect that or talking to a 30 year old who Is great and articulate. And we have something that we're in common with. And I, all of a sudden I realized, I like that's happened a lot on this whole bookstagram thing where I'm talking to these kids and I'm realizing. I could be your father. That's a weird moment.

Christopher Bollen:

It is weird. And I always wonder if that ever, ends, like, will there just be a time when we're just adults for each other and it doesn't really matter what generation you're in, or it doesn't matter how old you are. I think. I don't know because now I'm approaching 50 and I feel like it's always you're sort of always being aware of this yardstick of where you are with other people in relation to, age and your generation, you know?

Brett Benner:

Yeah. And I, I'm like you, or I always generated to people that were older. I always, and I see it. And I think I talked about this with you last time. I see it. It's my son has that exact same thing. Even when he was in school, it was very evident he had no time for his peers, but was loved his teachers Generated towards his teachers. He'd stay after and talk to them and we'd always get these glowing, Reports and you know, your son is so wonderful. And I don't think he's ever viewed himself as The age that he is except certainly now he has the energy and you know as he's discovering and suddenly once he's 21 And now he can go to bars and do all the things

Christopher Bollen:

right? Well, that's when you become your age I think like you suddenly do like love being 19

Brett Benner:

for

Christopher Bollen:

all the right reasons. You're like, Oh, actually being my age is great right now. I don't want to be any older. Yeah. I was really lucky because when I came to New York. I befriended a lot of older, people and a lot of older writers. And I really valued those relationships so much. I would hang out with them. And in fact, I just had dinner with Ed White, last week and he gave me this drawing he had for 50 years in his storage of the Winter Palace Hotel, which is, was based on, I know it was so sweet of him and he, he's someone that I, I really love. He is, I think he's 84 now. And, Just someone whose friendship I've always valued. But I feel like, I'm not pulling my end of the contract because I actually don't have a lot of younger friends now. Like, I don't have a lot of 20 year olds that I know and, and, and hang out with. So I feel like I'm still, like, still thinking about older generations, but I'm not really, I don't, I haven't done my due diligence with befriending the younger generation as much.

Brett Benner:

But they can search out you as well.

Christopher Bollen:

Exactly. I think then you like, once you get even a little older, then you can, hopefully open your home to, uh, I don't know if I think maybe things have changed. Well, they have changed a lot, but I also think as a, as gay men, it was maybe more natural somehow to. Sort of make a new family in, in New York, for example. And I think within gay men, there's this sort of understanding of, of mentorship and, kind of creating these sort of communities of different ages. And in a way that I think that, you know, in, in more traditional forms, it's always stays within a family. You know, in New York, I feel like you created these sort of different kind of figures, like replicating one's family, like these uncles is feeling like, and, that was really important to me. I mean, you know, it still is very important to me.

Brett Benner:

Yeah, this is not the kind of relationship that's going to be fostered between Otto and Maggie. No,

Christopher Bollen:

no, absolutely not.

Brett Benner:

Sadly. Well, Chris, again, this has been so delightful. You're just a joy to talk to, and your book is fantastic. It's out today, so please pick it up. Shop independent if you can. You can also find this book as well as all of Chris's other books on my bookshop. org page, so check that out. And again, Chris, thanks for being here.

Christopher Bollen:

Thank you, Brett. Thanks for talking to me. It was a lot of fun.