Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, Mutual Interest

In this episode Brett sits down with Olivia Wolfgang-Smith to discuss her new novel, "Mutual Interest" which is an Indie Next Pick for February. We talk about the books third person narrative, gender roles, found families, capitalism, and finding queer joy in historical fiction.

Olivia's instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/owolfgangsmith/

Olivia's website:

http://wolfgangsmith.squarespace.com

If you like what you're hearing on this podcast please subscribe so you never miss an episode!

Watch Behind the Stack on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@brettsbookstack

Bookshop.org page:
https://www.bookshop.org/shop/brettsbookstack

Brett's instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/bretts.book.stack

Behind the Stack email:
brettsbookstack@gmail.com

Transcript

Brett Benner: 0:00

Hey everybody. It's Brett and welcome or welcome back to another episode of behind the stack. Wow, we're into February. I don't know about you, but I truly feel like that was the longest year. In one month, I hope you all are holding up. I hope you all made it through. Okay. I hope you found plenty of books to read on a side note, I don't know if any of you are, TV watchers or streamers, but one thing that we started to watch just past week, and it's really enjoyable. It's on Hulu. Uh, it's called paradise. Really. Good show. I don't really want to tell you too much about it. It's a really good cast with Sterling Brown and James Marsden and Julianne Nicholson, who is just incredible. But if you like a good thriller that is twisty, definitely, definitely, definitely check this out. And there's only been three episodes up so far, so you can totally catch up. All right. Before we start with our guest today. I wanted to shout out a few books that are also coming out on this date that look interesting to me. The first is Glyph by Ali Smith. This is the first of a two book series. It sounds almost a little dystopian about two teenage siblings in a world that's a sinister version of our own where citizens deemed undesirable are labeled unverifiables. So, that's the first. The next one It's called Isola by Allegra Goodman, about a 16th century French noblewoman and her lover who are abandoned on a Canadian island in Goodman's historical novel, and how they survive. It looks great and it's an incredible cover. Memorial Day by Geraldine Brooks. This is a nonfiction book about the death of Geraldine Brooks husband, Tony Horowitz. And how she got through the grieving process. She moved to a remote island near Tasmania and this memoir is basically how she got through it. TJ Klune's The Bones Beneath My Skin, which if I'm not mistaken, this is an older book that they're reissuing. But it's about a young man who's. Parents are dead. His journalism career is in shambles and he arrives at his family's old vacation cabin, hoping to escape, but instead is greeted by a strange little girl and a wounded man who holds him at gunpoint. And soon Nate found himself caught up in a web of car chases, government conspiracies, and alien encounters. All wrapped around a heartwarming story of love and found family set in the 1990s and TJ Klune is notorious for his great found family stories. Then this other nonfiction book, which I started and just put it down and I really want to come back to, which is called Shattered by Hanif Qureshi. Qureshi is a British writer who fell and injured himself in 2022 while he was in Rome. And when he came to, he was almost completely paralyzed. So this. is a memoir of his recovery, filled with dark humor and musings on his past and on many of life's unpredictable events. And then the last thing I wanted to talk about was Bibliophobia by by Sarah Shahaya. this is such an interesting kind of hybrid of memoir and litcrit. Sarah Shahaya basically was struggling with depression and It follows that journey while at the same time discussing the books in our lives that are basically ruiners. They're the books that you can't get out of your head, that make you think about things totally different, that, You're not able to let go. You have to have conversations about it with other people. It, it, it changes the way you possibly will think about things. One of mine, I can tell you out of the gate is a little life, which I read when it first came out and it's still, it's something that I think about regularly, but I'm about halfway through this book. It's, it's not very big. It's incredibly interesting. And for anybody who is a. reader You should definitely check this out. It's really cool. And then the last book, out today is, our guest on the show, Olivia Wolfgang Smith and her brand new book, Mutual Interest. It's really fantastic. Such a fun read, creative, laugh out loud, funny, moving. Well, let me tell you a little bit about Olivia. Olivia Wolfgang Smith, her debut novel, Glassworks, was long listed for the Center for Fiction and the VCU Cabal First Novel Prizes and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Apple, and Good Housekeeping. She's a 2024 New York state council on the arts, New York foundation for the arts fellow in fiction, and she lives in Brooklyn with her partner. So enjoy this episode of behind the stack.

4:51

You

Brett Benner: 4:56

I'm so happy to have Olivia Wolfgang Smith here today with her beautiful book, Mutual Interest, thank you. For being here,

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 5:04

thank you so much for having me.

Brett Benner: 5:05

One of the things just to dive right in. I wondered if you have an elevator pitch for the book?

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 5:09

Oh, this is good. I should be practicing it anyway. I describe it as a queer Edith Wharton pastiche. That's like my super shorthand version of it. So we're in New York city at the turn of the 20th century. Okay. And, uh, this is about a lesbian and a gay man. Those are the labels they would probably use today. Who have a lot of their own personal and professional dramas that they bring to getting married, to one another. And then they kind of loop in a third partner, both for a business venture and sort of to be part of their romantic and domestic life. That's my, that's, that's my attempt at an elevator pitch.

Brett Benner: 5:45

That that was very concise and fantastic. Um, you nailed it. Just from the get go, I love the title because it had so many meanings, beyond, sexuality and, the whole lean into capitalism and business. was that something that came right away? You knew that this was going to be the title?

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 6:04

Um, that's a really good question. Actually, for the whole time that I was writing this book, I was calling it the syndicate. Which kind of was doing similar things in my head. I was like, this is a word that describes these people's, like, romantic and sexual lives and personal lives as well as their business life. and that came from an Edith Wharton, short story called The Other Two. which is about a man who, accidentally makes friends with both of his wife's, And like, he describes them several times in this, like, tone of great anxiety as a syndicate, that he and the two ex husbands, having this, Mutual interest in this woman. We were thinking through as we kind of brought the book into life of being like, okay, Syndicate sounds like a John Grisham novel. If you don't know what it's about, you're going to see it on the shelf and maybe not, not see own drawing room novel of manners, romance, love story. Um, so we were trying to think of other, other terms that conveyed the same thing. So. Long answer to your question, it hasn't always been mutual interests, but it has always been, clear that the title of this book would have to be something that described all the weird, multivalent levels of this relationship that's at the center of it.

Brett Benner: 7:17

and before, before we get into that relationship, I, I want to talk about, cause I love the third person narration in this, for any of our listeners or viewers who are, you know, pop culture enthusiasts, it leans into the Bridgerton of it all. And I loved it so much because it lends itself to having so much humor and just the commenting on, what's happening. Was that something you, again, wanted to do right away or has it found itself?

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 7:46

Oh yeah, that was definitely like from the get go, like the first thing. And yeah, Bridgerton and this book are definitely having some of the same kinds of fun with some of the same tropes of these, like, like this kind of style. It's typical of sort of historical novels of this, like very omniscient, very intrusive narrator, that has like a lot of, Social commentary and like, kind of affectionate, like, judgment of the characters. So yeah, that was like, baked in from the very beginning. I started the, like, very first drafting of what became this novel, was just like, experimenting with that voice. that level of narrative. My, my first book was very, very close third person. Like, I was always very tied to one character at a time. And I, what I found was that it was like so much fun to be able to, to be able to write this way with a character that knows everything, a narrator that knows everything. So yeah, I couldn't, couldn't stop once I had started.

Brett Benner: 8:43

Did you have a, did you have a specific voice in your head?

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 8:46

Asking me this, I've been starting to get a question, just like from all sorts of people, like who is the narrator? Um, and so maybe that is like the Bridgerton question, I guess that's coming into it.

Brett Benner: 8:55

No, it is. Well, I think it is because it suddenly be like, you know, the reveal of like, you know, Oh dear reader, you know what I mean? Is it, is Julie Andrews. Yeah.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 9:04

Yeah. This, this narrator, and they also uses the royal we, um, from time to time. Yes. And so yeah, I've had, I've gotten started to get questions about like who the narrator is. Is it me? Like, it's kind of interesting to see what pronouns people choose to, like, use for the narrator a little bit. I find that to be, I kind of like it being an open question. I think that, there is a, there is a true omniscience to this narrator, I was thinking a lot as I read this book about, like, queer community and, the sort of, mutual archival project. And that's who I think of as the implied narrator. As much as I was thinking of it, the question, I love the question and it fascinates me because it is not something I was thinking about as I was writing it. I didn't have, like, a one secret person in mind that this narrator was.

Brett Benner: 9:53

But you didn't hear it a specific way, like female or male, or was it something, or was it just

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 9:59

I truly didn't. Interesting. Yeah, I truly didn't, and I think that, um, I sort of, it's a, it's a wonderful thing to realize in the moment of getting the question, because I think that it's so easy to be overly self conscious as a writer and to sort of, for me, I should say it's easy for me to be overly self conscious especially with something that is so, um, stylized as this kind of narration, I sort of am like, oh, thank goodness. I didn't even realize I was escaping this high concept, uh, you know, thing that I think I think if I had had a specific voice in mind, in terms of a specific person, it might have weighed me down. Or stuck me, like if it had been, if it had been a woman, I might have been stuck more in a certain character's perspective. If I had added that, like, I think that it allowed, allowed like a true fluidity that I didn't even, I wasn't even conscious of it, that I was, that I was

Brett Benner: 10:50

doing. I would love to, Sit in a room of people who have read the book and pull everyone and and say, was the narrator for you a male female? What was the voice? I would just be fascinated to hear how people perceived it

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 11:05

because it

Brett Benner: 11:05

was for me. It was very much a woman. And I'm not going to lie. I did slip into Julie Andrews a little bit, but I, you know, because I just felt this kind of proper, um, all knowing British woman, but I, I am so curious how other people hear that voice. I

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 11:22

think it's fair. It is fair to say that. Of the three main characters, if it's any one's book, it's Vivian's book, like, but, but, so it does make sense. If I had to, if I had to pick, like, now that I, now that I know that I want to be, I want to be stubborn and not pick, but I, but I did. Like, um, it certainly, the book, like, belongs to her as much as it belongs to everyone. And the narrator does have an awareness of marginalized people. Characters experiences that does not really sure that is maybe fits more to being a female voice than a male But

Brett Benner: 11:56

And also slightly modern as well, which is interesting almost a modern sensibility looking at this So you said about it being first and foremost a Vivian story. Is that where you started with this? Was she the kind of impetus?

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 12:12

yes and no, actually the, the, the impetus was sort of, so the other two characters are, are Squire and Oscar, who are these, these sort of two, I don't know if I don't, hapless might be too unkind a word for them, but these other two, central figures for the book, and they're based on one iota of real historical trivia, um, which is that, Proctor and Gamble, William Proctor and James Gamble, Historically were, business rivals, were professional enemies before they got together. One of them was a candle maker, one of them was a soap maker. And they were in competition for like the raw materials of both candles and soap at the time being made out of. Animal fat, um, tallow. They were in competition for this limited resource. So they hated each other. and then happened to marry into the same family. And then had a common father in law who sort of like banged their heads together and was like, you, why are you fighting? You should go into business together. I happened to learn that in passing and I was like, that is so fascinating. It's the senior, but like, I would, I need. I need more. I had some scripts notes for reality. I was like, I need them to fall in love. I need them to like this to be like a true partnership and I need it to be, I need there to be a more fascinating figure who is sort of pulling the strings, of them getting together. So it's a very roundabout answer to your question that Vivian, Vivian sort of came last. But. She was the first moment that I Started writing a story in my head right like like so so the idea of these two men Was what like first piqued my interest? But then when it became the book was what was the idea Vivian she sort of catalyzed it into a story

Brett Benner: 13:52

It's so interesting. The kind of family they make up very quickly. It's, it's almost, it reminded me a little bit of Noel Coward's design for living. And this everything from the outside and anyone looking at this. These people would assume that this one was a couple and, you know, these other two were partners. But what's actually going on behind closed doors. I just loved it. And it also speaks so much to the idea of, found family because all three of these characters, as you learn in the book are all outcasts in some ways.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 14:27

Yeah, sure.

Brett Benner: 14:27

What I love about Vivian is she's incredibly strong. She's so far ahead of her time. She's shrewd, she's practical, she's incredibly smart. She's almost the epitome of, if you can lock up capitalism in a person she is. That thing, Can you talk a little bit about how you, you've switched up the gender roles in a brilliant way where you've kind of taken the woman and made her the strong, aggressive, business minded, and you've domesticated the two men and almost put them in this, uh, You know, domesticated story about, uh, well, two men.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 15:06

Yeah, I think that, I mean, Vivian's situation is, is, yeah, she's, you're right. She's a true capitalist. And in the sense, partly that she's a true. Individualist. I think that that's something that from what we see of her origin story or her childhood and her upbringing that there was like a survival tactic, in her family of origin. and I think that that's just a value system that she brings to her adult life as well. And, I think that, For all three of these characters, they're all very, um, let's say driven by their inner children, if that makes sense. By like, by, by wounds of early life. So that it happens to fall along what maybe we would still consider atypical gender stereotype lines now. And certainly we're, uh, 20th century when these characters are living. Which kind of makes them, uh. a little bit freer almost in the sense that they're so outside the bounds of what their society is even Looking for that they can kind of hide in plain sight a little bit but yeah that that we have by chance the two male characters, oscar and squire are In very different ways, people who are, looking for, like, this kind of, settled domestic love, and that Vivian is someone who is not looking, not looking for safety there. She's looking for a different type of safety.

Brett Benner: 16:29

It's interesting because, even their view in terms of sex. Oscar seems initially to have so much kind of shame towards his sexuality, his proclivities and, and Vivian revels in it. And I love that so much. I just love she's looking for it and she knows where to find it and she knows how to spot it and, um, and what that means.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 16:49

Part of that too, is how. Homosexuality was spoken about, at that time in this very fascinating way where it was like very clear that and that male homosexuality was a thing. And like that there would be, you know, it was like criminalized and there were very serious like repercussions, but, and then like, Lesbianism was a little bit more nobody really knew. Did it exist? What was it? How could you tell if it was happening? And so like that, that some of that sort of shame and fear on Oscar's part is like a very real Like society was very willing to tell him what was wrong and what would happen to him if he was caught as opposed There's a little bit more Latitude to operate in for Vivian than for Oscar.

Brett Benner: 17:32

Yeah, it's such an interesting thing and I don't know how much of that's changed Sadly or whatever because I Always just say people had a easier time with gay men if they said, okay they they Have hardcore sex and that they're promiscuous. And that was easier. I think that's easier for people to get their head around than Two men. having a loving relationship or intimacy. I have to ask this about Squire cause he's such an interesting character. Spectrum. Yes. Did you view him as on the spectrum? I mean what we now know is probably someone on the spectrum. They wouldn't have known that.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 18:05

Yeah, I think that that's a good way to put it that if Squire were living in the world today, he would probably be diagnosed as on the autism spectrum. I think that a lot of things About this book are about these kinds of like labels and identities and the fact that people who have these experiences and live These descriptions have existed for as long as people have existed And that that kind of these different identities are very differently conceptualized and very differently treated both like internally and externally throughout time but and in different eras, Folks of all of these types, like moving through the world and like looking for understanding, including from their loved ones has been a constant this whole time.

Brett Benner: 18:48

Completely. Are you a history buff?

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 18:50

Um, yeah, it's very, very much a lay person. So I have no credentials. I love reading like a lot. It's mostly like pop histories. Like I'm going to museums. I'm starting, I'm, I'm leveling up through the process of being a historical novelist. I've gotten a lot better at research, which has gotten me the more you learn, the better you get at learning, but Yeah, it is, it's, it is lifelong, but very amateur.

Brett Benner: 19:16

Interesting. Okay, so my other question, was about this business that they go on to, which could follow in line with Procter Gamble, with the scent and the candle business I was so curious, are you someone who's interested in that? Are you someone who's a, A cent person A are you that type of person

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 19:34

this is the first time I've gotten this question, um, and I've like, it's, uh, inevitable and great to get it. But so, so yeah. The business that they're in is personal care is like the term for it. at at this time in history, like, cosmetics, uh, soap lotion. They do scented candles in there. Um, and I've taken a lot of. Liberties with, like, how a business like this might be run and, like, where it's likely to have been based. but again, this is another area in which I am an enthusiastic, layperson, amateur. I have no, I kind of had the idea when I started writing this book of like, I want to be into, like, I've, one of my dreams is to someday, is to have, like, a, Like a signature perfume, the way that I associate with, with like my grandmother, like it's like there's this certain scent or like a signature lip color, like certain kind of things that you just associate with certain people, um, I've never, I have never been a person like that, and I had that idea when I started writing this book, like, If I'm going to write a book about three people who run a perfume and cosmetics business, I'm going to come out of it knowing exactly like what my signature scent is going to be. Hasn't happened. If you have any suggestions, I am like ready for them. I swear to God,

Brett Benner: 20:45

I pictured you, I literally pictured you at the cosmetics counter of some, you know, department store trying on a million different scents and spraying it to get the scents or just trying to break down the makeup of each individual thing because it's so specific in the book. Yeah. And what they're using, um, at the very least, I imagined you writing with a lavender candle.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 21:05

Yes. Well, and I'm not going to lie. I have had special, certain special candles for, for different times of working on this book. Yes. I think it's, I learned enough to know how much I don't know. Like I think that I learned how complex like this, this business and this art and science is but I understand how complicated it is. I'm a little bit more forgiving of myself for not having more of an instinct of like what the perfect scent on the occasion would be. Sure. Yeah. Uh, there are some characters in this book who are less talented than others and I kind of fall more on their side of the equation.

Brett Benner: 21:38

As someone who is queer today, and you were, doing the research for this book, was there stuff that surprised you, either in a positive or negative way, that you wouldn't have thought of before going into it?

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 21:49

Um, I don't know if surprise is the word, but I did find doing some of the research for this book very, uh, therapeutic. As a queer person living in New York City, the city I was writing about. In the moment that it is. Again, like, we know that queer people have always existed, and always found community, and found joy, and, you know, been more than, items in a police blocker, uh, in the newspaper, but it is It's really like a joyful thing to like read and find evidence of those things. I've had some conversations with folks that I just encourage anyone who's even a little bit curious about that to look into, um, your local history if that's what interests you, but that it's truly a joy, um, to, to do that kind of research into the archive.

Brett Benner: 22:36

Yeah, it is fascinating. And what I find, especially interesting is the way that people found each other, throughout it. I read that one of the things that you talked about was how The M. Forrester's Morris was very, influential on your work. Um, oh my gosh, and I have to show you this. I thought of you because when I was reading all this. Faber is publishing these new versions

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 23:02

of

Brett Benner: 23:04

their illustrated editions of E. M. Forrester's books. And, I just thought they're, they're so beautiful, but it was interesting because I opened up the first page and it says in here, content warning. This edition is the original text from 1971. It may contain language that's offensive to some readers. Oh,

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 23:19

wow. So

Brett Benner: 23:20

I have no idea what that is yet, but I'm so curious. Oh, my gosh. And, I remember this was because I'm a little bit older than you. I remember this was one of the first Queer books are books with queer content that I ever read. And I remember sitting like I grew up in Pittsburgh. I remember sitting on the train to go on down into town and I had a paperback copy of it. And I was so terrified that someone would know what it was just by the cover and that that I was reading it and what that meant. But finding this, like, key into something that I couldn't fully understand, I just related to it.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 23:57

Yeah, that resonates with me. I've heard a lot of people have, like, really similar experiences with that book. I think that there's something, like, I think that that goes back to the 19 teens people have been having that experience with that book in a way that's really incredible.

Brett Benner: 24:11

It did make me wonder as I was reading this, is it important for you in terms of your writing and these characters you're creating to create a world that shows queer people in a positive light or that have some sense of maybe a happy ending?

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 24:29

Yeah, and that is a really, there are a lot of like big lessons of Morris and that is one of them. That's something that really sticks with me about it that it was so important to Forrester to have that. to have a happy ending, I think that, I felt very in communion with queer readers and writers from before me and after me, partly because I have this like historical novel with this high omniscient, like narrator that kind of has this sort of implied knowledge of both, The ancient past and to some extent, to some mysterious extent, the future, so, uh, yeah, I think that it was an important part of this book to me to, not deny any kind of darkness, but to have this not be a tragic story, I wrote this book because I love, and have always loved, novels of manners. Like, this kind of, this sort of, like, type of, of book, and this type of love story. And, wanted it to feel like a gift for other people who also love this kind of book, and who maybe also have felt like a wish that there were more queer stories in this genre and I certainly didn't want it to be a gift that then turned into like getting the rug pulled out from under you about like that kind of, that kind of joy. Um, so yeah, that, that's certainly something that was on my mind.

Brett Benner: 25:41

Yeah, and I love it because, because of everything you just said. First of all, I love the time period. The way you describe it, just the New York City, all of it, the interiors. It's so beautiful. It's, it's, it's almost weirdly like a fairy tale. No pun intended. So much of so much of what seems to get published sometimes. And it absolutely. deserves and needs a place are either coming of age stories or queer stories that have more tragic bends to them. And so that's another reason why I just love this so much because they're flawed characters. They're very human characters. Um, but their sexuality is just a component of who they are, which is just a large part of the larger fabric of the whole thing. And, and I really, really, really, really appreciated that. Can you talk a little bit about this idea of found family, with the three of them, even going as far as, and this is not really a spoiler, but kind of a heteronormative idea about connecting and then children and all that kind of idea, but can you talk a little bit about that?

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 26:38

Yeah, sure. Um, so I think that, yeah, there are certain things about found family and chosen family that I think are kind of on the surface here that we've got like these people who are literally like kind of. running away from home in some cases, being kind of these transplants, getting almost kicked out of home in other cases, and sort of starting over, finding each other, like forming this literal, like, you know, domestic, partnership. I think that part of what I'm, was interested in is the way that found family. We hear it so often, referred to in a book. purely positive light of like all of the great things found family can do for you, and so i'm also just interested as a writer and as a reader as someone who's interested in complicated stories of the ways that that that found families can hurt each other, uh, you know that that led the closeness and vulnerability, um that that you don't you don't have to be a biological family of origin to Really do a number on somebody but then you're also you're kind of getting at the fact that one of the One of the conflicts in the latter half of the book is that this, love triangle is, very complex, kind of, like, sort of polyamorous and sort of not a relationship, that they start to have differences of opinions about whether to have a child. And, kind of what I was interested in there was the ways that, these characters like maybe radical life choices in politics maybe don't necessarily protect them from disagreements and from from also like different different ideas of how radical to be and what being radical as a family might mean Just like the idea that these are folks that might have made a choice Made a choice at one point in their lives that they thought would protect them from certain Existential And then 10 years goes by and did it, or is it in fact maybe a little bit more complicated than that? So I think it was, it was something that I was interested in telling a story that takes place over this long. Like you talked about it that many That we have so many queer stories that are like coming out stories or coming of age stories, and then it sort of maybe ends with the character being like 17 and ready to start their life or something like that. So I was interested in like, okay, like what if now this character is 54 and like things have changed and we've got different priorities or different conflicts coming up.

Brett Benner: 28:54

I dunno if I can Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. And how it cha and, and, and how we just change as people and, how what we want changes. Yeah. Um.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 29:01

And how much more complicated that is if there are three people in the relationship and, and three different opportunities for conflict.

Brett Benner: 29:10

Exactly. What you've actually written is a warning against threupelism. It's

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 29:17

not a primer.

Brett Benner: 29:20

Yeah, no, not at all. Not at all. How to share a lot of money with your throuple and thrive.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 29:27

Yeah.

Brett Benner: 29:28

Starting a business with your loved ones. I'm so curious. This is just that's not even really book related, but it's just mostly because I'm thinking about the capitalism thing and the current state of our world. And just your thoughts of this pullback of the DEI stuff. And, I'm just thinking specifically really of Target, which always seemed to me, Progressive but I'm also very aware of the whole idea of companies that, lean into, pride month, for example, or, black history month or any of these things.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 30:00

I think it makes sense that that comes up reading this book. It certainly came up for me writing it, uh, that there are a lot. I mean, this is a book that's very much about capitalism and, identity, capitalism and creativity. One way I talk about it is that this is kind of a book about three different people who are trying to figure out whether a job can love you back. And we're trying to figure out the limits of trying to define success and self worth within a framework of capitalism. Like, how productive are you? How much money are you making? How much power do you have over others? Um, and that's kind of how these individual characters experience it. But yeah, to tell It occurred to me first as like a fun joke, like, because we see these like corporate responses during pride month of this very, let's become very like meme ified as we all try to like survive it and get through it, kind of like, hey gay! I started, like, I was thinking of it as like a different type of story about queerness and capitalism and like the idea of this joke that what if this What if this was the origin story of one of these, huge, corporate monoliths that is this very, kind of, like, marketing, manipulative, force. But to me, it, like, a lot of things, I guess, about this book, it was both a joke and kind of dark and intense, because Realistically, all of these companies, you know, we're, we're started by people, individual people and are run by people. And so these, these decisions are all being made, uh, in a, in a fairly calculated way. Um, so yeah, I don't know. There's no, I don't have a, it's like so big and messy and thorny. And I think the book is the attempt to, to start asking questions and to start thinking about it, but yeah, sure. Um, it's definitely a huge part of what's going on.

Brett Benner: 31:49

Not giving anything away, and certainly we're not going to give spoilers, but your arc of each of these characters, did you know early on where you were going to end up with everybody, or was this something that surprised you as you went through?

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 32:02

That's a really good question, and well asked in a way to not reveal anything before we end up, Radion. I think it was somewhere in between. That I sort of had, a certain idea, like about the scope and scale of the story. I was like, okay, this is going to be like a lifetime story. We're, in it for the long haul. Like this is a, this is a narrator who knows. Who knows everything, But, then that started to raise a question. As I start, as I was writing, I was like, Well if your narrator is omniscient, Like, you gotta end the book somewhere. How do you choose when to write the end? When do we stop? When do we let everybody go home? And that, forced me to really think about, whose story it was and, how to define the parameters of the story. How are we going to define the end? If there is no like necessary end to the to the narrator's knowledge. I don't know. I'm speaking very vaguely because I don't want to.

Brett Benner: 32:54

No, you're doing and you're doing very well. And I will just say I thought I thought it was pitch perfect. I really did. I really I loved it. Um, and I thought it was summarized and wrapped up in such a great way that not only spoke very truthfully to the characters that you had already met, but, uh, yeah, it's a great. exit

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 33:16

appreciate that. I do think it will be controversial.

Brett Benner: 33:18

I'm sure, I'm sure, and some people might want something more succinct. But I, I thought it really spoke, especially in terms of the characters, to everything that we had learned about them previously and who they are. I

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 33:31

appreciate that.

Brett Benner: 33:32

Well, um, the book is fantastic. so please get it and buy independent if you can. It's really, a treat. I so appreciate you being here today and congratulations I can't wait to see what you come up with next. If you're a staying in the past, if you're moving ahead a little bit, but, you're just a delight to talk to. So thanks again for being here.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith: 33:55

Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.

33:57

Before we start our conversation today.