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Ep. 22. Elaine Castillo, Moderation
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In this new episode - the start of season 2!!!! - I talk to the amazing Elaine Castillo about her novel Moderation (2025).
(Also I said Dostoyevsky in the episode but obviously meant Tolstoy, so sorry).
Named one of “30 of the Planet’s Most Exciting Young People” by the Financial Times, Elaine Castillo is the author of the debut novel America is Not the Heart, the book of literary criticism How to Read Now, and her most recent novel, Moderation, recently named a New Yorker Best Book of 2025, a TIME Must Read Book of 2025, and a Best Book of 2025 by Kirkus Reviews. She works so her rescue German shepherd Vincent can live a better life.
Episode references:
- George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
- Jane Austen, Persuasion
- Toni Morrison, Paradise
- J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings and 'On Fairy Stories'
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
- Émile Zola, Germinal
- Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed
- Karen Hao, Empire of AI
Follow the show (and Elaine) on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Books Up Close' and Elaine Castillo
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close, the podcast. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers, and anyone who wants to know how texts get made. In today's episode, I talk to Elaine Castillo about the opening of her novel Moderation.
Elaine Castillo's Recognition and Works
00:00:18
Speaker
Elaine was named one of 30 of the planet's most exciting young people by the Financial Times. She's the author of the debut novel America's Not the Heart, the book of literary criticism How to Read Now, and her most recent novel Moderation, recently named a New Yorker Best Book of 2025, A Time Must Read Book of 2025, and A Best Book of 2025 by Kirkus Reviews.
00:00:40
Speaker
She works so her rescue German shepherd Vincent can live a better life. Well, Elaine, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having This is really exciting.
The Intrigue of 'Moderation' and Reader Engagement
00:00:50
Speaker
Everybody, moderation is it's just the book. You should have gotten the book by now.
00:00:55
Speaker
But if you haven't, go buy it. Maybe pause this episode and then just like read it first and then come join us. However, we are going to be talking about the very opening page of the book. So there is no kind of spoilers. there's nothing you need to know.
00:01:08
Speaker
And we're going to be doing a close reading, as you will as readers. So I think that's quite exciting. But before we get to the passage, Elaine, how do you feel about close reading? i mean, you've written a book called How to Read Now.
00:01:20
Speaker
I do feel like you will have thoughts about what close reading means or like as an activity or a practice. Wouldn't it be funny if I was like, I don't really care about it. Having written an entire book that's literally about the politics of reading and about close reading and the value of close reading. I think, you know, in a lot of ways, I think the only, maybe the only reading I've known has been close reading.
The Role of Close Reading in Understanding Texts and Identity
00:01:41
Speaker
And I think, you know, in in How to Read Now, I talked about reading not just books, but films and reading as also just a practice of being in the world. but an active practice of being in the world and and experiencing and and engaging with the world as it is, as opposed to, you know, how we would like it to be or or or to uphold some agendas that we might otherwise that we might otherwise prefer, like with, you know, Austin or you know some of the things that I talked about in Hattery Now, which I'm sure we'll talk about later. But yeah, so I think close reading has been a ah partner in my life and ah and ah a way of navigating the world, I think, since I was a kid. And, you know, maybe that's because of being a kid of immigrants and because you have, you know, people in your home who speak so many languages. So you're so familiar already with the eligibility what the world can be like. that Close reading ends up being ah almost a survival mechanism.
00:02:35
Speaker
I think it's in the very beginning of How to Read Now. You say books aren't the destination, they're a waypoint. Reading doesn't bring us to books, books bring us to reading.
00:02:46
Speaker
And that's like a such a great formulation, right, of in that book, you're not just telling us like, this is how you pick up a
Words, Identity, and Critical Engagement with the World
00:02:52
Speaker
book. It's like, how do you read the world around you? and I kind of started this podcast because I was like, have we just lost...
00:02:59
Speaker
a handle on like words the words just not mean anything anymore right like the world has become so saturated with all kinds of myths and disinformation and gen ai and all these things right whereby words are just evacuated of meaning and i'm like can we go back to like knowing that words do have stuff in them Yeah, it's funny. I haven't thought about that. Well, I haven't read How to Read Now, I think probably since it came out. And yeah, I do still think that I do think books were, ah even though I love books and have, I mean, you know, consider my myself, I have been called a literal bookworm from, you know, Maybe even from birth. I think people thought that I basically ate books. I went through through them so quickly since I was a kid. that What they really did was sort of build me up as a person in the world. not Not even just talking about, you know, building empathy, which is a kind of idea that I sort of skewer in the book, but just the idea of being someone in the world who is active and trying to be commensurate to the world as it is, trying to...
00:03:58
Speaker
you know, not just read the world around us, but to read the history of things, the context of things that that, you know, to be a critical reader is also to be. And I think sometimes this idea of being a critical reader has this kind of dryness to it where it's like, oh, gosh, it's this sort of academic way of thinking. But to me, critical reading is such a sensual, joyful, emotional thing.
00:04:20
Speaker
practice I mean, a lot of times, you know, when you're doing critical reading, you're getting angry a lot of the times, you know, the kind of so the visceral experience of being someone who is deeply engaged in the world is what being a a reader is a close reader and a critic reader. Someone who is not just accepting the terms and conditions of your own life, but actually just clicking. OK, I accept.
00:04:39
Speaker
but actually
Elaine Reads from 'Moderation'
00:04:40
Speaker
reading. So this passage we can look at today is a really interesting way. I think we are asked to do that. which for meetings no no aspect of Every time I'm like, i don't want to talk about the whole book. I want to do proper close reading where we just pay attention. But at the same time, you're you telegraph quite a few things in this opening that I think are really exciting. But why don't we hear it first if you wouldn't mind reading it for us?
00:05:11
Speaker
So this is from chapter one of moderation. I always say it's a very difficult book to give a content warning about because it's about the very people who don't get the benefit of content warnings, who are you know content moderators, who have to filter through morass and the muck and the harrowing violence of the internet in order so that we can all sort of experience Facebook, Instagram. you know, as pleasantly as possible. Whether or not that's pleasant as it is, it's available, but it would be less pleasant without without this labor.
00:05:38
Speaker
So I do give a content warning for it. Also because despite everything I've just said, this does become a love story.
00:05:50
Speaker
So chapter one, little brown fucking machine. Gurley was, by every conceivable metric, one of the very best. All the chaff long ago burned up by unquenchable fire.
00:06:02
Speaker
The ones who had hourly panic attacks, the ones who took up drinking, the ones who fucked in the stairwells during break time, the ones who started bringing handguns to the office, the ones who started believing the Holocaust had never happened, or that 9-11 was an inside job, or that no one had ever been to the moon at all, or that every presidential candidate was picked by a cosmic society of devils who communicated across interplanetary channels.
00:06:22
Speaker
The ones who took the work home. The ones who never came back the same. Or never came back at all. The floor was now averaging only three or four suicide attempts a year, down from one or two a month.
00:06:34
Speaker
The ones who remained, like her, were the wheat. The exemplars, tested paladins, the ones who didn't throw up in the hallway and leave the vomit there. They'd been, to continue speaking of it biblically, separated.
00:06:47
Speaker
None of the white people survived. Not that there were many of them to begin with. Young middle-class hopefuls bulging with student debt, they'd shown up around the time the position was still being called process executive, back when the site was still in the Bay Area.
00:06:59
Speaker
back when she still lived in the Bay Area. Back when any of them still could. Most of the white candidates didn't make it past the initial three-week training course, the ones who did left within a year. The majority of the workers had been Filipinas, with a smaller minority of Cambodian, Indonesia, and Laotian Vietnamese workers, people who knew about the job through that reliable network still unmatched by LinkedIn, otherwise known as family.
00:07:21
Speaker
People who'd grown up knowing their mothers and aunts had been moderators and so too would they follow. Amazing. Thank you. Loved hearing you read that. I could have let you read on and on, but then I was like, we need to focus on a particular passage. But it does, it does hint towards stuff, right? And I think that's what's quite striking about it as an opening passage, right? Like my, what my main takeaway, I guess that my first point is that like,
00:07:45
Speaker
we don't really know where we're grounded for quite a while through that those opening paragraphs, right? You're really delaying some kind of key information for the reader. A, the title the title of the chapter is hilarious. And you're like, wait, what a where are we going with this? Right? Like, where are we going? And then Gurley was...
00:08:04
Speaker
comma by every conceivable metric, comma, one of the very best. And automatically you're kind of like, what what is our frame of reference, right? The name Gurley is like the first word, is the first word of the book.
00:08:16
Speaker
And it's so different in kind of language from like every conceivable metric, right? it's They're very different kind of semantic worlds. And I really think you're when I first read it, I remember reading it in a cafe outside and i was like, wait, what? And I had to reread the sentence. was like, what are we talking about? Where are we?
00:08:34
Speaker
And I wonder how interested you are in that, like not letting readers have like ah an easy way in straight away. It's funny, I think I've had this conversation a few times on, or, and I think I, because people, you know, who have read my first book, and then obviously who have read the second book. So I think a couple people at different events, so this is definitely a thing. Like, so you like to start your books with a punch in the face.
00:08:57
Speaker
And I thought, I thought, wow, I've been read. I was yeah, i think that I think that is true. And i'm I'm sure for the next book, I have to figure out a really gentle, slow kind of kind of setting the tone in way of beginning the work the book just to challenge myself. But yes, I do think there is ah there's an element of, I think, discombobulating or or starting with a certain kind of energy that I think is a through line with all of my books, but in particular, America's Not My First Novel and this novel, you know, the the way that those books sort of open.
00:09:31
Speaker
is with a thing that is quite, um I think, destabilizing for a reader, especially, you know, reader of like a 19th century novel that sort of begins with sort of setting the tone. But I think it's also, you know, with the, I love that you're pointing out the kind of differences, the kind of different registers that are already in the first sentence, because obviously people don't know that Gurley is a name, you know, that it's a quite sort of common I mean, I would say sort of corny auntie's name in in the sort of fill in the Filipino community, but that you know there there's that kind of friction between that word and then the kind of more ah sort of mannered way of saying by every conceivable metric. So I think you're already sort of getting a sense of someone who's
00:10:13
Speaker
way of thinking about the world and and way of being in the world is something that is moving between registers that is someone who has to i mean i think of the sort of common way of thinking about it would be to code switch, but you know who who comes by that naturally. But I think I also knew that I wanted to be begin the novel with a kind of a sense of, you know, I always say that this novel is about people who are very sure of themselves and who they are in the genre. They think the story of their life is being told in and are 100% wrong.
00:10:42
Speaker
Well, I, you know, to begin and I think I was thinking about this because I'm about to have a conversation about Pride and Prejudice and sort of this novel. And we can talk about that later. But, you know, novels that begin with a sort of a sense of a truth that then is broken down or complicated. You know, she is someone who is the best.
00:11:02
Speaker
And that's the point at which the novel begins. And then the the rest you know the rest of the novel is sort of unfurling and complicating what that actually means. And is that actually true? And if it is true, what are the costs of that and the stakes of that? Yeah, one of the very best. Yeah, she's not even just one of the best. And we're like the very best of what, right? But also girly, which you say like might be heard differently depending on who the reader is, right? Like maybe a Filipino audience might hear that name and hear something, but like I hear that name and and it, you know, I just, it conjures up femininity, right? And like it's most kind of like stereotypical format, but girly, like then you're also thinking about like young
00:11:39
Speaker
not like you think about age right and also I mean this is probably part of close reading but on this copy like the chapter title is in this very like swirly font too yes we I that was very very uh that was that was done also in a kind of nod to the sort of modern regency aspect of it I knew that I wanted this you know quite bombastic title which is a reference you know by essentially passport bros to you know southeast asian women with the kind of very sort of ah Regency Jane Austen kind of romantic font, because there is, that you know I think the novel is playing with that in sort of thinking about what a modern Regency novel or what a modern Austen novel looks like in this particular setting. But yeah, and then, you know, there's also that thing of like, colloquially you'll be like, Sort of, you know, if you're talking about one of your friends, you're like, oh, girly made a bad choice. You know, just talking about a friend of any gender. I mean, girly is a non-gender sort of term of affection, I think, for me and my friends.
00:12:36
Speaker
So I think there's also that, that you you you have that kind of friction where it's, is it a kind of name? Is it a sense of intimacy? But at the same time, a real sense of ah removal and shock. Yeah, I hadn't really thought about that. Like, oh like she's such a musicals girly, right? Yeah, exactly. I just said to someone recently, oh, I'm a persuasion girly, not a pride and prejudice girly. I mean, that is the best Austen novel, but we're not we don't have the time to get into that today. Absolutely. Yeah, okay. Thank you. We don't have time for that today, but it just is, people. Go. You can comment. I don't care. And so we've got one of the very best, but then the second ah sentence, which turns into like a nine line sentence.
00:13:13
Speaker
So you've really gone from this like condensed opening, like hunch to all the chaff long ago, burned up by unquenchable fire. Again, like a very different kind of language. Again, the ones who had hourly panic attacks, the ones who took up drinking, the ones, the what, like, so we get this, the ones repetition. And then we get, and then that turns into, or, or, or there's so many things there that I'm thinking about, right? One is like the ones,
00:13:36
Speaker
like the sense of like there's so many people who are just like the same right like the ones you know like that kind of person that does this thing and very quickly it's like the ones who had hourly panic attacks you're like ah okay the ones who took it drinking then the ones that fucked in the stairwells then the ones that started bringing handguns were like we're in such a different territory then the ones who started believing the holocaust never happened you're like ah okay i'm now getting a sense of like this tapestry of people But again, we still don't know where we are, right? We still don't know or who Gurley is, but we've got this like now this wide kind of global context of people in very different situations and like world beliefs.
00:14:16
Speaker
And I'm interested in like who is speaking, right? At this point of the book, right? Like who the narrator is? That's my always first question to myself and my students. And sometimes it kind of, we are in just like Gurley's brain, right? Free and direct discourse style.
00:14:30
Speaker
But sometimes, like, we're not. And I'm wondering all those times, like, those slippery places where... Because all the chaff long ago burned up by unquenchable fire. That doesn't sound like her. then the one But then, like, all that no one had ever been to the moon at all, that every presidential candidate was picked by a cosmic society of devils. That then sounds like the language of the people that think that ridiculous thing, right? It's almost like we we drift into their Lexus, kind of. And I'm really interested in how that sentence just unfurls in this really kind of...
00:14:58
Speaker
chaotic way, which is so different from that first sentence. I think sometimes I don't necessarily, I mean, I definitely, when I'm writing, I i don't always think of who is speaking, but sometimes I think of what is speaking.
00:15:09
Speaker
in terms of the kind of thematics of what I'm trying to convey, especially in that opening. And for for this passage, there's really a sense of, I kind of, you know, think of thinking about it as a kind of zooming lens that kind of zooms in and zooms out. So you have this kind of macro vision where it's starting to unfold that you're looking at a kind of a mass of people, a particular group of people who have subgroups within them. but are sort of different subgroups of a particular, what you discover is a particular force of workers, a particular sort of mass of workers. So you have this kind of zoomed out lens, not quite omniscience, because I actually really tried to avoid omniscience in this novel in in a way that I think I made use of omniscience and more in my first novel, because, you know, the omniscience is ah ah it' a device of knowledge. It's a device of, well, this is, you know, I... I'm telling you this because I know it. The characters don't know it, but I know it.
00:16:02
Speaker
which is ah Which is a useful device, especially in a you know first novel where I'm talking about intergenerational kind of communities in which you know people have known each other for a really long time. But ultimately, moderation is a workplace romance about people who don't know each other that well, and also but fundamentally about people who think they know things and are wrong.
00:16:20
Speaker
So omniscience is not really helpful to that project because what you're you know what you want to do is stay with your character. I mean, at least for me, what I wanted to do is stay with my characters in their certainties because that's when you stay with your character in their certainty, even even in their blind spots, that only deepens the shock when they experience the moments when the world actually surprises them.
00:16:45
Speaker
So especially the beginning chapter and the opening chapter is really one omniscience. all of the things that this world is certain about, that Gurley is certain about, that here are all the truths and the kind of foundational reality, the foundational truths of this world, political, economic, sort of in terms of the kind of labor relations, ultimately, that are going to be the foundation of this book. I mean, I think I did was thinking of this subconsciously, but I think because in How to Read Now, I'd written about Austin and I'd written about this um this kind of like political fervor that had come about because this Austin Museum in Chawton, I think, had sort of dared to contextualize Austin in terms of the transatlantic slave trade and talked about her ties and her family's ties to the slave trade and her father being a trustee of a sugar plantation in Antigua. And obviously this attracts the same kind of
00:17:34
Speaker
cries of woke revisionism or whatever. I think that probably planted a seed of thinking, well, if I were going to write an Austen novel or a Regency novel, how would I do that in a way that makes visible the labor relations that are invisible i mean in in ah in an Austen novel or the foundational kind of labor and resource extraction that makes these sort of grand manor houses possible? If those sort of relations were visible, what would that look like? And, you know, the opening chapter of moderation is very harrowing for something that ultimately becomes a romance. But I think that is so fundamental to the I think the project of the love story that I end up sort of trying to explore by a love story that doesn't require us to make these kind of labor relations invisible, but brings them to the forefront. And they are at the core of what the stakes are for this main character. Why? Why falling in love with matter to her? Yeah. And it it's like, it's a total inverse of the Austin, where you were saying like the Austin kind of opening statement of like, this is the condition of people, right? This is the human condition. This opening, it's almost like that unfurling sentence is like throwing everything at the reader, being like, these are all the kinds of people that you might meet in this workplace. This is what Gurley is put in relation to, right? Like this is, this is who she's bettering, right? These people who are like slightly deranged, slightly panicked or, you know, or are totally in their own And also they're weak, right? The rest of these workers who are, you know i mean and content moderation is a deeply harrowing, punitive job. So you know the the fact that that that these that her her fellow co-workers would be crumbling under the job is absolutely normal. Yeah, exactly.
00:19:11
Speaker
that would And that would be self-medicating to through these various sort of venues is absolutely normal. So you also have a sense that she's like, well, all of these people are ultimately just weak and I'm strong. i'm i that's That's why I'm better than all.
00:19:24
Speaker
That's why I'm good at this. And then you you sort of then have to think about, well, what does a who is a person what does it take to become a person who is good at this job? Yes, who can withstand so much, right? Resilience is my most hated word of the moment, right? like have god that i never I'm like, why why would you want me to be resilient? Like, this is the condition. one But at the same time, we still don't yet know that this is about content moderation, right? These could be any kinds of workers, really, that we don't know.
00:19:50
Speaker
are the ones who never came back the same or never came back at all I really love that repetition but with like the much darker twist right like some that might be changed or some that might just like we never see from again and there's something quite um again like maybe not foreboding about what's to come in the novel but you be you're right you're like hinting at something like what's to come what ah what is the scope of this book we definitely don't know this is a romance at this point like there's no way yeah The ones who remained, oh, the the line before that, the floor was now averaging only three or four suicide attempts a year.
00:20:22
Speaker
That only, averaging only. And I'm like, whose only is that, right? Is that girly like telling us that like in her ma in her mind, right? That she's speaking kind of institution speak or or is it like the institution kind of speaking is sometimes what I think, right? In this book, well, not the institution, but like the like the idea of like the workplace itself, if that had a voice. that like this is the language that you would see in a report or like in ah in a kind of, oh, but they've gone down, right? And like a imagine a big boardroom, right? Oh no, but we're weigh that we're way down.
00:20:52
Speaker
and it's like, what wait, what? Like you have to, I think if you read quickly, you you kind of miss that, like that only kind of suggesting that things are good now. Yeah, yeah, The only is very important for the kind of sardonic sort of ah sort of dark ah humor of the only. And I think you're you're getting at it that, you know, the kind of question of what is this Gurley speaking or is this the institution speaking or the workplace speaking? I think the truth of the matter is that, especially for someone like Gurley, that those borders would be very fluid. In order to survive, you would have taken on the kind of capitalist logic of the institution in a way that you yourself have a kind of sardonic sort of distance from like, oh, we're only averaging three or four suicide attempts a year. So, you know, is the kind of there's there's a sarcasm to thinking about the sort of human lives in that way and the kind of the the and and the kind of, you know, worker welfare in that way. But there's that that kind of blurriness between what makes the institution or what makes the workplace happy and and how an employee or a laborer will try it will begin to pair it.
00:21:54
Speaker
that same logic and i think you know that that starts to show up later in the book as well with people who are very happy to you know and to just to speak all of the kind of toxic positivity of the corporate sort of logic jargon yeah and but but even just like corporate language per se right like I work in a university so you know I'm very used to people talking university speak To the point that now it's all I can hear. in meetings, I'm like, I keep threatening to make like a bingo card, like of all the key terms that we're going to hear in a day. But it's now so ridiculous. that I'm like, I don't even need it because it's just so present. Like, but something that like that language just moves around in a very quick way.
00:22:33
Speaker
So much so that other people just keep saying it. I'm like, where did you get that word from? Like, why are you saying that word, right? Like, how is it? It's become stuck to like, even the rooms. And it feels really strange in that way. So I think this opening is kind of trying to point at that to us the ones who remained comma like her comma like again that's her right being like with a wheat the exemplars tested paladins the ones who didn't throw up in the hallway and leave the vomit there again three very different kinds of language exemplars tested paladins and throw up in the hallway right again these this mixing and matching of of kinds of language
00:23:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think all of my novels probably play with that register with a kind of very sort of sort of literary register even biblical registers, kind of medieval. I mean, I did at some point want to be a classicist and, and and and you know, I think I thought I wanted to be the Filipina Ann Carson at some point. And And then ended up studying medieval French as well.
00:23:29
Speaker
So I think there is this, you know, ah for me personally, for my kind of formation of making, I think I'm interested in roots of languages and different language registers, but then also in in a way, drag, you know, dragging those registers to have friction and aliveness with the world that we actually live in, the world that we live in now. So I think that and I think, you know, because I the way that I approach language as someone who, yeah, grew up in a family where English you know english was not everyone's first language, and but also grew up working class. And so that there there is, i think I always have a kind of sort of suspicion of, I think, i think yeah, the the the polite middle class novel and how it's supposed to sound. And so I think, you know I mean, and I probably need to, and you know at some point, fill in that chip on my shoulder.
00:24:15
Speaker
um but I think you know so so there is definitely that the the constant mixing of of registers and particularly here you have that sense of girly naming herself to be one of the best but it's one of the best of a quite it's it's quite a grim accolade you know I didn't open the hallway and leave the vomit there Olympic medal to me you know so that night kind of so to skewer that kind of like sort of biblical self-congratulations is also the kind of I think core to also the kind way the humor works in the book. Yeah, quite like the bars on the floor, right? Like if more but they'd been to continue speaking of it biblically separated. Like that's very funny. But again, like the, to continue speaking of it biblically, like that then feels like a different kind of voice again, right. From the others, it feels a tiny bit step back almost like it's almost like you, but not you. Right. It's almost, there's all, there's a tiny little bit of something that's like,
00:25:10
Speaker
It's a question for me about like proximity to character, right? How much of the book we're with Gurley, like we, I don't, there are very few scenes where we're not with her, right? In every kind of possible way. So like we're super tight with her consciousness, but there are so many times where i like, are we meant to be identifying with her or like not or stepping back?
00:25:28
Speaker
Our position sometimes moves right back and forth. Sometimes we're like, oh, come on. And other times we're totally sucked into her worldview. So I think it's funny when these little moments break from that. Yeah, I'm glad that that experience comes through, because I think that is really vital to the how how the book unfolds, that you are super, super close to this person and their consciousness and then sort of dawning, you know, realizing, wait, this person is wrong about a lot of stuff. Wait, hold on. And someone who's very sure of herself and very good at what she does and very sort of committed to that and and has her own kind of
00:26:00
Speaker
humor and way of navigating the world that can be very sort of arresting, but also attractive. Because, you know, someone who just cracks jokes, you know, is there's there's a certain kind of magnetism to how they are, but then realizing the kind of defenses, ultimately, that are producing that type of verbal fluidity that she has her ability to skewer things, her ability to critical read, ultimately, she's someone who would think that she is a very, very close reader.
00:26:25
Speaker
Largely because, you know, she's someone who experiences the world in a state of hypervigilance. Yes, quite. But that hypervigilance is almost. But the humor of someone who is hypervigilant also being super wrong about things is, you know. Yeah, because it's like good that hypervigilance can make you not see things, right? Because you're so focused on like, well, this guy is going to be a bad guy. Or like, i'm I'm ready for this thing to happen, right? I'm ready to see the bad thing.
00:26:48
Speaker
Then the next paragraph, like I feel like this is another kind of like the one-two punch, right, of the opening sentence. Then the opening sentence is the next paragraph. None of the white people survived. Now, the thing that I immediately thought of when I read that sentence, and I don't know if the book was in your head or not, I don't know, but it made me think of the opening of um Paradise by Toni Morrison. but with The opening is they shoot the white girl first. Oh, yeah yeah yeah they yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because then in the rest of that book, she doesn't tell you who the white girl is. She doesn't she doesn't tell you the race of the character. So you don't know who the white girl is in that. But some there's something about the kind of the blunt force of that. None of the white people survived. Like it it just had an echo in my brain that may not have been there. But there's something you're you're now telling us something very explicit about race as well in relation to what we've just had in the previous paragraph.
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think I hadn't thought of, a per I mean, i yes, I think that is, i think that's a good point. Yeah, I think there there isn't, well, there's an element of sort of, yeah like I said, the kind of macro micro lens of sort of moving in, moving out. And now you're getting specific about, you know, when you read it, when you just read it there, i was like, wow, that could also be a kind of zombie epidemic novel. Yeah.
00:27:56
Speaker
100% that like but and even that not there were many of them to begin with young middle class hopefuls bulging with student debt they'd shown up around the time the position was still being called process executive you're like I still don't know what this job is back when the site was still in the bay area back when she still lived in the bay area back when any of them still could like that could still be a kind of like post-apocalyptic something right like Of course. And it is a post-apocalyptic novel because it's a post-apocalyptic novel in terms of the 2008 economic crisis being the apocalypse of the 21st century for this community.
00:28:30
Speaker
but But also the you know apocalypse of the kind of the the contemporary legacy of capitalism. Yeah. and And the digital, right? Like quite particularly the, yeah, without spoiling it. but anyway. Well, the futile nature of you know labor in the tech era.
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah. and Process executive. Like again. Yeah, because that sounds fancier. It sounds fancier. So that's why. We're still middle class people there doing the job then. Yeah, quite.
00:29:00
Speaker
But again, like I like that repetition that you're like building. You've done a couple of times now, back when the site was still in the Bay Area, back when she still lived, back when any of them, this this repetition as part of her own rhetoric as well, right? Her own storytelling, as you say. like This is something you can imagine her saying to people, right? not that she goes to many parties, but like if she were to get, you know, eventually she does, but like, you know, not that she's always dragged there kicking and screaming. Yeah, exactly. By her family members.
00:29:25
Speaker
Most of the white candidates didn't make it past the initial three week training course. The ones who did left within within a year. Again, like both her narration of these other people, maybe the workplaces and ah description of the other people.
00:29:37
Speaker
and we're starting to the initial three week training course. Like there's also something quite ah interesting here, skewering like the very best are not the white people, right? Like, see you're opening up but you're open open a question here that it's like, what does then the reader do with that? Like, is is that a good thing? Because then we find out we're like, wait, but what they're doing is like horrific stuff, right? They're having to look at horrific stuff. Then you're like, what is this? How is this skewering? And I think that's what's quite enjoyable about this book is that I don't always know what it's skewering. It's not a clear like this is like tech is bad or like this is, you know what mean? Like there's something very, there's a really precarious line between what it means to like see difficult material on the internet, be invested in like other worlds, retaining selfhood, like all of these questions, right? But I think it's really interesting that here it's just like, well, the white people are shitty. So...
00:30:28
Speaker
I love that you say that it's it's it's not always easy to know what the book is curing, because I think that is really actually important to me. um So and I love the way that you put that. I'm glad that you said that. I think because, you know, if you're writing a novel that's ultimately about tech dystopia, it is very easy for it to be like, hey, tech oligarchs are bad. Have you heard?
00:30:47
Speaker
and you're like Well, I could just go to The New York Times or The Guardian at any given hour of any given day and read a skewering of tech dystopia. So trying to think about, you know, a novel or the the world building that you're doing is something that has a more 360 view of it and also something that doesn't just pause it. You know, Gurley as this exploited laborer who's never done anything wrong in her life life, and she just lives a life of misery and tragedy as a minor character in these tech oligarchs' overarching story. But maybe her worth is in fighting the tech oligarchs, which ultimately is still a way of centering the tech oligarchs. So, you know, thinking about ways to...
00:31:24
Speaker
Elisa Ratham- illuminate her life but also you know skewer her show her vulnerabilities her blind spots and and I think though what you're. Elisa Ratham- Moving between those registers and making it unclear about who and what is being skewered or you know, having her in this opening chapter skewer a particular kind of you know way of thinking or a particular group of people.
00:31:43
Speaker
really confidently and then later in the book sort of realizing, hey, I might have been wrong about that. Actually, I might be an asshole too. God, yeah, everyone's life story. The majority of the workers had been Filipinos with a smaller minority of Cambodian, Indonesian, Laotian, Vietnamese workers, people who knew about the job.
00:32:00
Speaker
And like here you're starting to like, this is where it's also interesting, right? And it reminds me of How to Read Now as well, where you talk quite explicitly about white writers invisibilizing whiteness and only naming race when it's like to mark out other races, right? Or to mark out other identities.
00:32:17
Speaker
And here and throughout the book, you you are very explicit often about characters, racial or ethnic or kind of like nationalities and all these kind of various parts of their identity. And I think it's really interesting that you list them here, right? There's something again, again, I don't know who's speaking fully. Because that line is quite like removed or like institutional, right? Just like listing these like ethnicities. But then the colon is people who knew about the job through that reliable network still unmatched by LinkedIn, which is suddenly like one of their language. Like it's someone in that community speaking, right? That reliable network, which is like really funny. And I hate LinkedIn. So it made me laugh even more. Yeah, I'm not on LinkedIn at all.
00:32:58
Speaker
otherwise known as family, which is like a really lovely end to that sentence, right? There's like, again, you're moving so quickly between comedy, irony, and then kind of sincerity too. People who'd grown up knowing their mothers and aunts had been moderators, and so too would they follow.
00:33:13
Speaker
i want to talk about the, so too would they follow as a kind of grammatical, that feels kind of Austin, right? That's not, and so too they followed or they would follow, but would they follow?
00:33:25
Speaker
so there's a little There's a little grammatical inversion there. I feel like you're aping something. Yeah, I think. Well, I mean, first of all, I think I think this particular passage is doing i think exactly what you know we've we've already been talking about. We're doing something where it's positing a kind of like census taking sort of ah voice or it's like, well,
00:33:43
Speaker
The white people were out, the rest of the people were this, this, this and this. And then sort of moves into an intimacy by saying, well, actually, you know, who who came there via family? And then you're starting to talk about mothers and aunts and the kind of the the nature of how these laborers might come to to work at this place. And I think, you know, some of that was coming out of, you know, all of the journalistic research I did around content moderation was so harrowing and was and did focus ultimately on the kind of exploited nature of the work and so but you know the job of fiction always is to not necessarily reduce some you know a person to the most miserable part of their lives so you know i think that the kind of bringing in that humor but then also bringing in that well how do people come to join you know then you're starting to see that actually the people who come to this job are people because you know they might be related to each other they're family members there is a kind of sort of community and so social fabric that is making up this labor force. But then, of course, you know, by naming all of the sort of ah races and particularly in this sort of, I think, Southeast Asian races, you're also, you know, I'm also calling attention to the fact that this labor, like a lot of the, I mean, ah this labor, I mean,
00:34:54
Speaker
And who does this labor and who is tasked to perform this labor has a colonial aspect to it. You know, the kinds of people who do the most sort of exploitative underclass of labor in in tech. And, you know, that's that's not just in tech. I mean, that, that you know, we were talking about the feudal history of capitalism that is seeing its sort of contemporary iteration in tech. So there's that aspect of it. And I think, you know, I think I like, I mean, I don't.
00:35:21
Speaker
I think there can be, i mean, going back to the kind of ah sort of, I suppose, like middle class conventions of like novelistic language. There is this idea that sort of by naming someone as Laotian or Cambodian that there's that, well, that's census language. we We need to speak in a sort of higher register or Or it's it's gauche to mention, you know, but I think those types of conventions sort of, I mean, besides being class conventions, ultimately about what constitutes, you know, good literature and and what doesn't is you're also deprive yourself of the kind of ah sensual and material humor of contemplating
00:36:00
Speaker
racism material fact in people's lives. I mean, a lot of it's her just making fun of skewering people on a very specific basis, which includes, you know, like her skewering of particular Filipino conventions or sort of Southeast Asian conventions or sort of tensions between sort of Asian communities within this particular force. And I think if you're not able to, if you shy away from naming or talking about that, you lose this whole sensual dimension of, you know, talking about people's lives.
00:36:30
Speaker
and how they relate to each other. Yeah, yeah, it's it's about relation, but outside of the capitalist machine, right? Like aunts and mothers, not just like co-worker, right? Which is what we've had before.
00:36:41
Speaker
But all of the cultural texture you get to that, right? of Of all of their lives and their kind of particularities when they they get together. But I love that it's also like had been moderators, because at this point, like we're now like, oh, what are they? But also, you know, the title of the book is Moderation, which you can read in like so many ways. Right. Like this is not just about content moderation, but content moderation means like removal.
00:37:04
Speaker
But like moderation could be, the you know, there's just so many kind of inferences of what moderation or what a moderator is. And when I think like mothers and aunts had been moderators, you might think. you know, the person that stood in between like family arguments and dynamics and like made everything cool, right? You know, that that sense of moderation, but also moderation as, you know, not excess.
00:37:25
Speaker
And what this opening of this book has given us like a lot of excess, right? Like the book has kind exploded with excess, really. So I think there's like a really lovely play here on what that word might signify as that as the story goes on.
00:37:37
Speaker
Yes, absolutely I think throughout throughout the book, there's a kind of ah play with what moderation means for the book, but for the characters. But I think also in that when that line says that, you know, their mothers and aunts had been moderators, and so too would they follow you're also sort of, it also places you in time in a way, because it's saying, well, no, there's generations of women that have been moderators now in a way that so you're you're also I mean, for me, it's also conveying a sense that we're kind of in the near, we're kind of in the future, this not taking place in our current era Just because you know moderation has not been you know around in the way that, you know I would say nursing has been, if if I was writing a contemporary novel, I would say would be nurses you know for a particular community of Filipino women and like mothers and aunts would be nurses and they would follow. I mean, i you know I think everyone hoped that I would be a nurse.
00:38:27
Speaker
So I think there's ah it's also sort of placing you in time where you think, okay, well, wow, okay, moderation has gone on for a while. This person has been a moderator for a while. There's been generations of moderators. So now you understand that you're also we're also a little bit in the future.
00:38:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's super fascinating. Before we talk about some broader questions, was the title like set in stone for you early on? I think it was pretty set. When I knew that I was writing about content moderation, it was set in stone pretty early on. I think I knew that that was the title. And I'm not very good at picking titles, I think. I don't i think this is probably... i mean I'm going to try to stick with shorter titles. It's...
00:39:02
Speaker
As my career goes on, because that seeming seemingly is the best way to go. But yeah, no, I think I knew this title just because of the, like you say, the multiplicity of meanings of moderation, moderation in terms of the labor, moderation, what does it mean to moderate yourself and and the the... kind of complexity of yourself for palatability of the rest of the world? What does it mean to, you know, moderate your experience of the world? but then also, of course, because because the novel is sort of playing with the idea of what a contemporary Regency novel is or an Austen novel is, there is that sense of like moderation sounds like well persuasion or you know these kinds of abstract nouns that can mean various things or pride and prejudice etc so there's that nod or wink yeah yeah for sure although your other two titles are also great america is not it's like and how to read now is like great because it's like you do you do multiple things at once in titles so i would be yeah be nice yourself these good titles you're all myself okay
00:39:58
Speaker
Okay, I want to ask you about your writing practice. So do you have a like specific writing practice? Do you get up at a certain time? Are you writing a certain amount each day? have you got a desk? Well, I think, I mean, I have, having written three books now, I do think I've realized that every book teaches you how to be the author of it.
00:40:16
Speaker
But, you know, and I think you kind of think, well, I've got, you know, I got two books under my belt now. So I know how to do this. And it's like, no, you know how to write those two books. You don't know how to write this book. So I think, you know, for me, it's it really depends on what stage I'm in, in terms of the writing of the book, if I'm still in the kind of research gathering and kind of world building and sort of, you know, gathering, know, especially a book like America's Not the Heart, where have to do a lot of historical research, you know, that that can just I mean, that can take up.
00:40:45
Speaker
months And you can stay a long time in the research aspect of it. because the aspect can be very I always say that it's a little bit the research aspect can be dangerous. Because I think especially maybe for someone like me who has a constitution where it's like, well, if I just know more, that'll be better. oh yeah The thing about writing fiction is that what actually helps you is being able to move into the unknown and move into places of uncertainty. And that actually Parts of the book that are maybe emotionally true, but are have not been as as sort of meticulously historically researched are still more powerful and resonate than something that's, you know, you've done all the meticulous research of it, but you haven't bothered to write human beings.
00:41:26
Speaker
So I think, you know, so it depends on if I'm in that phase, then, you know, I am a worm and I'm gathering a lot of, and you know, it's it's like the worst time for people to ask you, what are you reading? Because then you're like, I'm reading about virtual reality therapy and the St. Louis World's Fair. Okay, step away slowly. Yeah, exactly. And then if yeah if I'm in the writing of it, then usually, yeah I will work. Yeah.
00:41:48
Speaker
from morning to about afternoon with breaks for dog walks, which I think has been in in some ways the most important part of my riding practice. is Because I think before being a dog person, i would just, you know, ride all day and then sort of like at 4 or 5 p.m. just realize you're in a kind of shrimp position, having not moved. And having a dog and sort of requiring you to get out of the house, to walk and to kind of move within your thoughts in a different, take your thoughts in a different space actually has really helpful.
00:42:18
Speaker
Yeah. And you are a typer, handwriting? I'm a typer, yes. right I mean, I've been typer for a really long time because i when I was a kid, I used to type on my grandpa's old US Army typewriter.
00:42:32
Speaker
so that was i mean so i So I wasn't even, and I think I might have been must have been like 10 or nine already at that point. And the typewriter was really loud. My parents would be like, it's the middle of the night, and you need to stop.
00:42:42
Speaker
So that's why even when I do, you know, when people always joke about people who do the period and then two spaces, I still do that because I started really writing on a on a typewriter. So I never I do handwrite, but and I have my father's penmanship. He was a surgeon in the Philippines, security guard in America, but he had that very cliche doctor's handwriting. And I think I do too. Whenever I sign books for people, I'm always like, I'm so sorry, that is not legible.
00:43:07
Speaker
So I mean, I could write books, handwriting, and then I wouldn't be able to know what I'd written. Yeah, you'd be like, whatever that says. Whatever that says. I'm sure it's brilliant. When you're editing, you're not like scribbling on the printouts or like are you editing straight in the screen? Yeah.
00:43:21
Speaker
No, I tend to edit straight in the screen. I tend to edit that way. And then sort of things that I've deleted, you know, ah or things that I've taken out, I sort of save them in a kind of sort of file of things that have been deleted from, you know, this section of writing or something.
00:43:33
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's fascinating. I always want to know like how people are doing this thing. Well, I know some people work in Scrivener and things like that, that kind of help you sort of piece in a kind of like minority report way sort of move between but I don't think I I've tried it and I i can't really work like that. It's not that I think I do work there. There are stops and starts and sort of um forward and backwards. But I think generally I work in a linear fashion so I think the kind of moving around happens a little bit already after I've written you know all of the thing or most of the thing so I'm not necessarily someone who's like oh I think I'm gonna piece put this chapter here or there all i mean yeah maybe for the next novel we'll see what happens in the next one so my other question is always like do you have an early memory of writing and you've just said you were typing on that typewriter what were you typing
00:44:23
Speaker
I think at the time it must have been, i think, about what was I really, I mean, i thought at that time, I think I liked a mix of kind of, detective-y things, but also i was already getting i mean into classics and Greek classics, sort of like the kind of kids' versions of that that my dad gave to me. So I think I was writing a lot of stories, although at that time, i often say this, that I can't remember a time where I wasn't reading and writing. My dad made me a reader really, really early on, so I started reading really early in my life and then started writing along with it. But I don't think I ever realized that that was a thing that I was doing. It's like saying that, like oh, I am my left arm. like It's such a part of how I was in the world that I don't think I realized, oh, I'm a writer until, you know, I think maybe high school until I was 16 or 17 or so when I thought, oh, I think this is what I do.
00:45:12
Speaker
So, yeah, I think I think the. I mean, certainly the earliest memories my family would probably have of me writing would be that loud typewriter, writer into the night. But I, yeah, I think that that's probably the kind of strongest memory I have of writing. And always like fiction in relation to these other texts or were you, you know, making up? Yeah, I think when I was, when I was younger, it was, it was always fiction. I think, um,
00:45:39
Speaker
Yes, I think, you know, sort of thinking about, even when I was writing stuff that was sort of genre-y or sort of classics-y, I think the only short story I've ever written is a short story that's about was it called? It's called The Girlhood of Achilles. And it's about sort of Achilles' young kind of life when he's essentially in disguise as a girl and the kind of, kind of yeah, gender fluid Achilles.
00:46:05
Speaker
So I think, and i I always say if I ever manage to write another short story, it'll be a success because I still have i love such a long form brain. I genuinely don't, I can't write short stories. I think you know if i if I ever managed to do that, it'll be a real turning point in my writing.
00:46:22
Speaker
But so yeah, it was always, always fiction. I think even now, i was i was saying, don't I don't know if I ever want to write nonfiction again. That's fascinating to me, because that book, ah How to Read Now is so good. Even, you know, not just like the thinking, but like even the sentences, you care about sentences. I mean, you should, but like not every writer cares about sentences. And yeah I don't i do want to be too hot on the microphone today, but you know what I mean, right? Like, think you care about... Obviously, if someone has written that book, you know that I skewer things. Yeah, exactly. But it's such like an amazing combining of both the form and content in the way that you would talk about fiction, i think. Sia, please write more nonfiction. You're great.
00:47:02
Speaker
Oh, that's that's very kind. I think the reason why I think that I don't want to write any more nonfiction, the way and this is not true of all nonfiction writers, and nonfiction writers that are better than me can write from a different place, but when I write from nonfiction, I do tend to write from a place of knowing.
00:47:18
Speaker
so this is something that I'm sure about and my Virgo ass will now tell you about it. And, and and you know, with with sort of humor and and vulnerability, you know, to to some extent, but there is a position of kind of certainty that I feel like I start from with nonfiction. I do find that that, I love that book. I'm very proud of that book. And then I'm proud of it. The only other nonfiction and thing I've written is a very long form essay about dog rescue and German shepherd, the history of German shepherds and I was like, that's my legacy.
00:47:47
Speaker
I think what I realized is that it doesn't, starting from that position isn't as helpful to me as a artist. I think just because for me, I do want to move into places where i I'm not sure, where I am uncertain, where I get it wrong and experiment with the things that I don't know in a way that I feel like nonfiction doesn't afford me as much as fiction does.
00:48:09
Speaker
like Fiction is a scarier, riskier place to be, I think, for me right now. Well, I'm excited for whatever you bring out anyway. sir I will take your words under advisement. Yeah, amazing. Okay, the last question, which is when I ask everybody, because I always want more book recommendations, what things are you telling listeners to read? What are you going to thrust into their hands? Old, new, things you return to, things that are not out yet, whatever you want.
00:48:33
Speaker
Oh, gosh. Okay. Well, this will be another hour. Well, this year, I did finally finish my 20-year-old copy of War and Peace. a copy War and Peace, which my dad and I had bought in a used bookstore in high school. i must have been 15 or 16. And this is just to give hope to anyone who thinks that they're taking too long to read a book. It's Fine. 20 years is absolutely fine.
00:48:58
Speaker
Or over 20 years. And I loved it. and but i was f Afterwards, i you know it was the very much the kind of thing where you're like, have you heard of this amazing book, Warren Pacey? Yeah, it's literally a global treasure.
00:49:10
Speaker
But I did. I really, really loved it. And I think, you know, because it's funny, i always say this. i Sometimes when people ask what books do did authors, you know, read as inspiration for their book? I sometimes think it would be better to ask, well, what did you read right after finishing it?
00:49:30
Speaker
Because I think when when when you're a writer and you're writing your book, a lot of the times, you know you're going into it, you're finding out what you're writing as you're writing. In my experience, the books that I've read right after delivering a manuscript for a novel, have been books where I thought, oh, this has nothing to do. This is going to be such a break from my world. This is going be so nice. I've been writing, you know, about this immigrant community for so long. I'm going to read George Eliot's Mill on the Floss. Turns out George Eliot's Mill on the Floss is a Filipino novel.
00:49:58
Speaker
It's such a family novel about class. And so I think, you know, I think... you kind of subconsciously get drawn to things that you were thinking about and looking for things that will illuminate the thing that you've just done. So I think War and Peace was that in a sort of, you know, the way Tolstoy is like, yeah, Napoleon, very petty, boring, arrogant, don't focus on him, focus on, you know, the the kind of minor characters of history. So I think there was that aspect it of thinking about, oh, I'm not writing about tech oligarchs. I'm not writing about and the the Napoleons of tech. I'm writing about, you know, the bazookas.
00:50:34
Speaker
And then i reread Zola's Germinal, which I'd read for the first time in university in French and reread this time in English because I think i had I knew that there were some passages of the book that are not translated in English, which I find very telling.
00:50:50
Speaker
But I think, you know, then I realized, oh, I'm rereading this because ultimately it's this, you know, novel about labor and labor resistance and minors and unexploited underclass of workers. And then i I thought, oh, okay wow. So Germinal is actually a tech novel because it's about how this particular type of tech is sort of deforming this society and the societal relations within it. And then I was like, well, I guess moderation is a 21st century minors novel then. in that kind of, so, you know, thinking about how Zola sort of, and then I went off on a whole Zola tangent and I was reading a bunch of ah Zola, for which I won't, I mean, i dont I won't enumerate now, but then, okay, I'll name only two more things. This is the thing that I just, if you'll see that I am, that ultimately I'm a reader, because if you ask me to recommend to people, I'm like, well, this is actually what I want to talk about. The first thing that i read for the very first time which was another thing where i was like, wow, have you heard of this? And everyone around me was like, elaine was Lord of the Rings?
00:51:50
Speaker
I'd never read Tolkien. I'd never read any of the Lord of the Rings or or even watched any of the movies. And then fully, fully, fully became an obsessive and was like in group chats with people. and And so I realized that some of my friends had been hardcore Tolkien obsessives and just never talked to me about it.
00:52:05
Speaker
To the point where I think we created like an astrology chart based on Tolkien characters. Like like you if you were like sort of Aragorn rising or something like that.
00:52:16
Speaker
And then I read Tolkien's essay on fairy stories, which I just loved. And I felt like it was also illuminating for me something that I was trying to do, which is, you know, the the thing that he says about joy, at the the consolation of the fairy story is the happy ending and ti really thinks about the happy ending, thinks it through kind of critically in a close reading way, you know, to your point. is was so is just i would all I would recommend that to any writer to read on fairy stories because the way he thinks about narrative and the morality of narrative, it's it's funny because I read that alongside, and maybe this is two things I would recommend for writers to read, is Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed, where he he's a Brazilian theater practitioner, or he was, and was you know lived under the Brazilian dictatorship, had been you know imprisoned and tortured and lived in exile in a while. And his whole thing in that book is that tragedy, particularly Greek tragedy or Aristotelian tragedy, as a tool of state oppression.
00:53:10
Speaker
These are kind of, you know, for someone who was a classicist, I was like, oh, this is provocative. So but to think about, you know, kind of narrative conventions in these ways, I was thinking, you know, to think about how Tolkien thinks about the happy ending and how Boal thinks about the kind of sort of oppressive nature of tragedy. I think that really resonated with me because I think I knew that you know for moderation, I was like, I'm not writing an unhappy ending. This is a romance and this is, you know for for all the tech dystopia, I'm not writing. you know For all talking about the dystopian nature of tech, I'm not writing a tech dystopia. I'm yeah doing something else.
00:53:44
Speaker
Those two books, I mean, I think they're they're useful for any writer who wants to challenge their kind of notions. around Because yeah, i remember I taught those two texts at a university class, just like a a writer in residence thing. And the students were so sort of like,
00:54:00
Speaker
wait, we're're we've been told that happy endings are cliches. and No, no, no, no, we're we're we're not. This is really making me, I mean, I kind of want, and it was so sweet because someone was like, well, I really like Tolkien, so I'm glad you said this, or or I actually really like romance, or I wanted to write a happy ending, but I thought it's not literary. And I thought, God, it's such a political idea that the happy ending is not sort of worthy of serious literature or even sort of contemplation or intellectual contemplation.
00:54:25
Speaker
Right. Well, that happy is somehow, yeah, that's like, what does happy mean? You know, it's it's kind of resolution, right? We might talk about it in the narratological terms, right? It's just that the kind of disruption is being kind of like smoothed over again, right? I mean, persuasion is just long time being like, is this going to be a happy ending? Are we going I don't know. Okay, so of all these book recommendations, so three really unknown writers, Tolkien, Dostoevsky, and Dolores. Oh, wait, let me name a contemporary one. um I really love Karen Howe's Empire of ai That's a nonfiction book um that, you know, is related to moderation in terms of talking about them.
00:55:03
Speaker
the dystopian nature of tech. So if you want tech dystopia, that book really offers it in a really bracing and I think really fundamental way, especially for understanding the world that we're moving in and the labor relations behind it. mean, you of course, you briefly mentioned generative AI, et cetera, but reading that book is sort of required reading for people. Yeah, that's been on my list for ages because I heard her on a podcast somewhere and I was like, who is this person? I need to read everything she's written. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we met in Edinburgh and she gave a talk. It was fantastic. Yeah. I also finished reading Mill on the Floss like last month, which is really weird. I'd never read it before. It's so funny also. And, you know, I just realized, but the mill on the floss also has an aspect where someone is really sure of themselves. Like that beginning aspect when she's with the, I'm going to use the sort of culturally insensitive term because Elliot uses it, but she sort of meets the gypsies, the road with the traveler sort of community. And she's like, I'm going to be the queen of the travels. I'm sure they're all going to like me. And then they're all like, who is this white girl?
00:56:05
Speaker
I think that the way Elliot writes and skewers that scene of her sort of sense of herself, i it's so funny. Yeah, I mean, again, it's a book are just full of people who like think they know best about everything. and you're like, no, what? What strange book. like that I was like, this book is going on for a really long time. And I'm like, I'm not even sure what's happening or where we're going.
00:56:26
Speaker
Such a wild read. And then, oh, well, I won't spoil you. Yeah, yeah. This was so fun. Elaine, thank you so much for your time. i really appreciate it. I had so much fun. These were amazing questions. I love doing it. love the concept of a close reading podcast. I don't think I've ever done a podcast or an interview like that. It was really, really fun. And I i got to think about the book in ways that I haven't.
00:56:45
Speaker
Oh, that's so exciting to hear Well, yeah, thank you so much again. and it was great. Thank you for listening to this episode. Please subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review and share with people you know.
00:56:57
Speaker
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00:57:09
Speaker
You can get show transcripts and more information by subscribing to the Substack. This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.