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Episode 347: Emily Fox Kaplan
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Emily Fox Kaplan is a freelance journalist and she's featured in Issue 8 of Pipewrench Magazine for her piece "Searching for Zarahemla."
Show notes/newsletter: brendanomeara.com
Social: @CNFPod
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction and Offers
00:00:02
Speaker
ACNFers shout out to Athletic Brewing that dry January time of year is fast approaching and if you want to give it a go visit athleticbrewing.com I'm a brand ambassador so if you use the code BRENDANO20 at checkout you get a nice little discount I don't get any money I just get points towards merch or beer of my choosing but that's it go give it a try some of the best non-alcoholic beer I have ever had
00:00:30
Speaker
And since I have a teensy bit more time, not a lot, but a teensy bit, if you leave a review over an Apple podcast, I'll give you a complimentary edit of a piece of your writing of up to 2000 words. Once your review posts, usually within 24 hours or so, send me a screenshot of the review to creativenonfictionpodcastatgmail.com and I'll reach back out to you and we'll get started. Who knows if you like the experience, you might even want me to help you with something a bit more ambitious.
00:01:00
Speaker
You know, I think that the, the voice of a piece has to serve its structure and its function and subject. They see an effort. It's CNF pod, the creative nonfiction podcast, the show where I speak to bad-ass people about the art and craft of telling true stories.
Meet Emily Fox Kaplan
00:01:21
Speaker
I'm Brendan O'Mara. What's up? Today we speak with Emily Fox Kaplan, who headlines issue eight of pipe wrench magazine.
00:01:29
Speaker
It was produced in partnership with Sunday Long Reads, and Kaplan really channels the travel writing vibe of David Foster Wallace, even Susan Orlean in this piece. It's titled Searching for Zara Hemma, Avan the Yucatan,
00:01:49
Speaker
five Latter-day Saints, and the malleable nature of truth, an account written by the hand of Emily Fox Kaplan. Now, if that doesn't sound DFW-ish, I don't know what does. But get this, Emily has not read any David Foster Wallace.
00:02:04
Speaker
So she was largely influenced by the Book of Mormon for this kind of wild, wild piece. Anyway, Emily lives in Brooklyn. Her writing and photography have appeared in publications, including the New York Times, Guernica, and the Washington Post magazine. In this conversation, we talk about her feature for Guernica.
Kaplan's Feature on Guernica
00:02:26
Speaker
if I'm pronouncing that right, I don't know if I am, about a Guatemalan migrant, and I'm going to pronounce his name wrong, named Antonio Saffin-Cumiz, who died of COVID in April 2020. I dug this feature a lot when I was doing a little research on Emily's work, and you'll find the link to it in the show notes. We also talk about voice and how it isn't universal and should shape shift depending on the piece you're working on, influences
00:02:56
Speaker
among Janet Malcolm and Rachel Aviv also Susan Arlene and maybe the best hot sauce in the world got another written review here I'm gonna share this and if I get new ones I love to read them right here give you the shout out you deserve for being so kind with your time this is from geology 26
00:03:22
Speaker
Hi, Rachel. Great interviewer. I love the freewheeling discussions that Brendan specializes in. You can go from craft to content to structure to revelatory comments in a CNF podcast. His focus on the craft of storytelling makes this a required podcast for every writer. Thank you very much for that.
Emily's Journey from Teaching to Journalism
00:03:45
Speaker
So Emily, before becoming a journalist, she taught elementary school in Boston and the western highlands of Guatemala. She's working on a book of reported non-fiction on Protestant Christianity in contemporary America. Did I do this faster? I think my intro got tighter. Who doesn't like that?
00:04:05
Speaker
Stay tuned to the end of the show for my parting shot and a teaser for the next volume of Casualty of Words, but for now, here's episode 347 with Emily Fox Kaplan.
00:04:30
Speaker
I think it really depends on the piece that I'm working on. You know, I write both personal essays and reported journalism, and my process is pretty different for both, I would say. But for both, I think I spend quite a while in the kind of generative phase, really letting my mind just kind of
00:04:57
Speaker
mull the material for a while and have the piece kind of take shape in my head before I even start writing. So for this piece, I think the one that we're going to be talking about today, I actually got COVID at the very tail end of that trip.
00:05:15
Speaker
And I was stuck in Mexico City for 10 days by myself in an Airbnb, which was intense. But I will put in a plug for Mexico City as a wonderful place to get stuck. It was actually good for the piece, I think, because I knew I wasn't going to get started on the writing because I was not up to that. And my head was just kind of like working through the piece and
00:05:43
Speaker
I think it's a pretty complicated piece structurally and formally and different in many ways than pieces I had written before. And so it needed that time to kind of just sit there and kind of make its own connections at kind of the subconscious level before I could sort of consciously dive in and begin to really shape and wrestle with the material.
00:06:13
Speaker
But in terms of a kind of like daily routine, I don't think I have anything that interesting to say about it other than that. I mean, I know I've sort of given up on writing in the mornings, my brain doesn't work in the morning for this kind of thing. I have a side hustle that requires less creative
00:06:34
Speaker
energy that I do in the mornings. So I think I've just learned as I've sort of gotten into the rhythm of being a professional writer, of just not forcing it when it's not there and just seizing on the kind of mindset what I do have it when I am in that kind of space to really dive in.
00:06:58
Speaker
Nice, and now I understand for some time you were a teacher and you've made the pivot to being a professional writer, what was that, you know, maybe take us to that crossroads where you wanted to make that pivot. You know, as I said on the Sunday Long Read podcast, and I want to give a shout out to Sunday Long Read, they're wonderful, and they co-sponsored the reporting and the publishing of the piece, Searching for Sarah Hemler.
00:07:27
Speaker
I always knew that I had two passions. Well, I have a lot of passions and creative pursuits, but I had two areas that I thought I wanted to do professionally, which was work with young children and write. For some time in college, I considered trying to really meld them, like, write picture books, but that's not really
00:07:53
Speaker
I think that didn't quite satisfy. I sort of explored that a bit, but that didn't quite satisfy either one. And so I decided to go into teaching. I taught kindergarten first and second grade over about seven years and right on the side. But it wasn't really quite clicking as a career, even though I loved the actual teaching. Other things about the teaching profession just weren't really
00:08:21
Speaker
working with for me and at
Challenges in Freelance Writing
00:08:25
Speaker
the same time I started realizing that I could start writing about education and I had a lot of thoughts about education.
00:08:35
Speaker
And so I started writing off-eds about teaching and education. They started getting picked up by places that I was getting a lot of visibility and people were really paying attention to my ideas. And I thought, maybe there's a there there. And so I started
00:08:53
Speaker
It hadn't really occurred to me that I would ever be a journalist. I thought I would always be an essayist or a novelist or something, but journalism had never occurred to me. You know, I went to college with a really good student newspaper and in retrospect, I think I probably should have.
00:09:11
Speaker
been involved in that and stuff. Yeah, it was really when I was kind of realizing that education as a career was not a good fit, even though I love it. And the same time that I really started to get a lot of positive feedback.
00:09:27
Speaker
from my kind of journalistic type writing that I started to think, huh, maybe this should be, maybe I should kind of invert my original plan was to teach and write on the side is to write and find other ways to work with children, which is what I do now.
00:09:42
Speaker
like when you were when you were starting up, being being a freelancer, it can be hard to get that flywheel moving and then to keep the reservoir full. So you know, you can sustain yourself in those periods when you're waiting on checks and stuff of that nature. So how did you get it? How did you get your first momentum where you felt like, oh, this can be sustainable?
00:10:05
Speaker
I mean, it's not sustainable, frankly, even now. You know, I work other jobs to support myself. I think that people who are interested in this profession know or people who are in it know that that writing is an almost impossible way to support yourself unless you're a staff writer or a professor or a, you know, multi-million time bestselling writer.
00:10:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think people going into that should sort of be clear-eyed about that. So at this point, I do have other jobs. In terms of momentum, I just started thinking of ideas that would make good pieces and I started pitching them out and I got some breaks. My first education
00:10:57
Speaker
Op-Ed was published by the Washington Post and that got attention and then I could say that I had been published at the Washington Post and people took me a little bit more seriously after that and then that kind of built on itself. So now that I have
00:11:14
Speaker
a bunch of publications that I can point to and say, look, I've done this and this and this. People, editors, you know, have have more faith in me. But it's, it's hard work, you know, and it's, it's not a good way to to make a living.
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah I know in any number of times over my very objectively unsuccessful freelance career I've been a I've been I mean a landscaper where on my lunch breaks I was making reporting calls I was stocking produce and Whole Foods
00:11:48
Speaker
And working any number of retail jobs, menial retail jobs that took a lot of time and energy away from things that I really wanted to do. And I think it's important to underscore that, like hearing that you've got very prominent publishing credits.
00:12:04
Speaker
and yet you're still having some other mercenary gigs on the side to help subsidize it. So maybe you can just kind of speak to some of those other gigs that you do to kind of keep the lights on so you can keep affording to be able to do this and then hopefully maybe this becomes the primary thing.
00:12:24
Speaker
Right now, I am an editor at an investment firm, which is a super great gig. I know a lot of writers, especially New York City, who do this. And editing in general is
00:12:43
Speaker
great and a consistent way to earn money. I've had an ongoing relationship for years now with a publication called Edutopia who I love and admire tremendously and I have edited on and off for them.
00:13:02
Speaker
since I jumped off into full-time freelancing and that's been wonderful to write for them to earn their trust as an editor and also because they cover education and they're written
00:13:15
Speaker
for and largely by teachers, I'm able to still sort of have at least a few fingers still, if not a whole, you know, a few toes, if not a whole foot in that world of teaching and education. And I also do some tutoring on the side. I do different things to keep myself afloat, but I certainly do not live in luxury, but that's fine.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And when I was reading some of the backlogs, it just happened, I'm like, oh, there's a lot of things here. Let me just kind of pick a couple of things. And I happened to pick the two that were actually sort of on the same coin, if you will. You know, the life and death of Antonio, and also the personal essay that kind of was a prequel of sorts in terms of the publishing timeline, where you wrote, like, pretend nobody died, both for Guernica.
00:14:08
Speaker
But I was just, I was really like kind of struck by the one that was more of a, one that was a profile of Antonio, who's a migrant who passed away of COVID, you know, had the- Right, Antonio Safid-Kumas is his whole name, yeah. You know, in what way, like, how did you know at one point that you were like, oh yeah, this is someone I deeply want to profile to illustrate something and maybe the fallacy of the American dream and the perils of it and the trappings of it?
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll just, for readers who haven't read it, which is most people in the world, the piece that I think you're, that you are referring to is called The Life and Death of Antonio Safrin Cumas. And it is about
Profiling and the American Dream
00:14:52
Speaker
a friend of mine, Don Antonio.
00:14:55
Speaker
who was a source of mine. So I've written a fair bit about immigration. I lived in Guatemala when I was teaching and I go back there at least once a year, sometimes more, and I've done a fair bit of reporting about Guatemala and about immigration from Guatemala.
00:15:13
Speaker
in the course of my reporting a piece, I got to know Don Antonio. Don is the sort of honorific in Guatemalan Spanish. And I got to know him, and we became friends in New York. He was older. He was in his 50s. We weren't super good friends, but we texted every month or so.
00:15:39
Speaker
a text about current events, what was going on in our lives. And he died of COVID in April 2020. And he died after a protracted battle in a Brooklyn hospital. And throughout that time, I was his family's intermediary because they don't speak English and they don't have any connections in New York and they don't
00:16:09
Speaker
know how the American medical system works, et cetera. But they live in a small indigenous village in Guatemala. And I really became emotionally entwined with the family. And the story of Don Antonio is a tragedy. It's a tragedy that he had to leave Guatemala in the first place, that the United States screwed over his country.
00:16:38
Speaker
in so many ways for so many decades. He wanted a better life for himself and for his family. And because of our profoundly unjust society was not able to get that. And he wanted to write a book. He was a very, very smart academically oriented man. And he
00:17:05
Speaker
really wanted to write a book warning other Guatemalan migrants not to come. And that the American Dream, which is so famous in Guatemala and is such a motivator for so many people to migrate, never able to do that. And I
00:17:24
Speaker
began to discuss the idea with his wife and one of his daughters, who's become a good friend of mine, the idea of writing about his life as a way to honor him and to write that message, not in a way that he could have, but to get that message out that his life story shows that for at least someone like him,
00:17:48
Speaker
it is not possible to to accomplish the American dream as it's often talked about. It was an honor to write that for my friend. And it was also a story that was being under covered in all of the COVID
00:18:06
Speaker
coverage about undocumented people and what it means to be one of the most vulnerable people in this society during this pandemic and the very first part of it when everyone was so overwhelmed and scared and vulnerable.
00:18:22
Speaker
you know, like looking at, you know, your body of work, too. And, you know, just I'll preface this by saying, like, I'm drawn to particularly obsessive people, mainly because I wish I was a bit more obsessive and singularly driven. And so some and I wonder, like, for you, just in the in the stories that you're drawn to, like what they might say about you.
Influences and Storytelling Style
00:18:45
Speaker
Yeah. You know, my favorite journalist probably ever is Janet Malcolm.
00:18:51
Speaker
And she was definitely obsessive, which I 100% am as well, for ways that are both beneficial and not beneficial for me. But Janet Malcolm was very obsessive, and she had themes that she was obsessed with her whole life, like psychoanalysis and the ethics of journalism, kind of meta-journalism and photography. And I am also obsessed with photography.
00:19:19
Speaker
and are very interested in psychoanalysis and psychology and therapy and other related kind of disciplines. You know, I admire her so much because she was very obsessive, because she thought so deeply about
00:19:36
Speaker
the people that she was meeting in very deep and kind of surprising ways. Her work lets people speak for themselves, but very much filtered through her incredible intelligence and sort of sharply honed way of seeing the world.
00:19:58
Speaker
And I also admire Rachel Aviv who deals really well with nuance and who digs all of her stories could be written one way and she never goes for that way. She always goes for the deeper, more telling, much more complicated version
00:20:19
Speaker
of what she's covering and I admire that tremendously so I think you know that's I think in my life and in my work you know my writing is is an outgrowth of my way of thinking there's no way around that I'm always trying to understand structural forces behind individuals lives seeing people and the world with
00:20:42
Speaker
as much of a finely tuned grayscale as as possible as opposed to you know in black and white are sort of morally clear ways and and i try to see things i try to sort of make connections among things that feel resonant in some ways but aren't it's not always immediately clear why
00:21:06
Speaker
And I think that Malcolm does that, Aviv, does that, of course, Joan Didion does that. I had this kind of pantheon of female nonfiction writers who just, they all happen to be female, who I just really, really admire for their perspicacity. And as you say, kind of obsessive drive to dig deeper and deeper and deeper.
00:21:31
Speaker
until complicated and really emotionally and ethically freighted stories. Now with Malcolm, I suspect that many people who hear her name, they just like, oh, the journalist and the murderer, like that's the thing that she's most famous for maybe. What are some other pieces by her that you're particularly drawn to that maybe not everybody else is aware of?
00:21:56
Speaker
she I just was going back recently soon after she died and was reading some of her profiles and she's just she's brilliant she's so fucking funny too like she's so funny she wrote a piece that I think about a lot a profile of Rachel Maddow which
00:22:16
Speaker
structurally is really creative, speaks to kind of the self-invention that Rachel Maddow has done. And I like and respect Rachel Maddow, but tremendously. But this piece sort of gave me a different kind of lens onto what it means to be a professional personality in the way that Maddow is.
00:22:38
Speaker
And, you know, her profile of Eileen Fisher, which I think is brilliantly titled, Nobody's Looking at You, which is something her mother said, which is, of course, you know, the antithesis of what a designer wants to hear. Her portrait of a pianist who, I'm forgetting the name.
00:23:00
Speaker
It will come to me later. The name of the piece that Emily is referencing here is Yuja Wang and the art of performance. The piano prodigy is known for the brilliance of her playing and for her dramatic outfits. August 29, 2016. And I've thought of that too. One of my most recent obsessions has been getting back into playing classical piano, which I used to do pretty seriously as a teenager and haven't done in 20 years.
00:23:28
Speaker
And as I've been getting back into playing and thinking about music and performance, I've thought so much of her profile of the pianist and the insights that she had about music, even though music, to my knowledge, was not one of her lifelong obsessions. She just had a way of
00:23:53
Speaker
digging deeply and understanding narratives that people create about themselves in different vocabularies and grammars of life that people...
00:24:04
Speaker
use I love that I love like when you really like lock in to a particular writer and you can just like it is just like there you're like I want to find a way to unpack what they're doing and like just try to at least do like 1% of what they're doing and it's just like the constant it's it's like it's like the chase and you're after it in everything that you set out to do I love it
00:24:29
Speaker
I don't know if that's how I approach it. I don't think I try to sort of like be like my heroes in a conscious way. I think they, their writing just and their intelligence and their way of understanding things just inform my own. So I think certainly they've influenced me, but I don't think I ever think like, oh, I want to write a piece like Janet Malcolm say.
00:24:55
Speaker
I want what I write to have its verve, its acuity, its smartness, all of that.
00:25:07
Speaker
Well I think kind of underscoring what you're saying is finding voice and specifically your voice and how those influences influence your own voice when you approach the work. So maybe you can speak to that and how did you cultivate your own voice, which this will dovetail into your Piper Inch piece because that is kind of voicey in a lot of ways.
00:25:30
Speaker
And I want to maybe get a sense of how you developed yours by incorporating the Malcolm's and the Aviv's and then developing something that is wholly, you know, Emily Fox Kaplan. Yeah, you know, I don't know. I mean, I don't know to what extent I want to
00:25:59
Speaker
say that I have a voice, I certainly find myself comfortably writing in a certain kind of journalistic voice that I feel comfortable with and I like and comes naturally to me. And certainly when I'm out reporting, I begin to write in that voice in my head as I write, as I report.
00:26:24
Speaker
And I kind of see, oh, this this would fit in this way. This is how I would describe this. And it's I would say that's probably my voice more than more than anything else. But, you know, this this piece that I just published in Piper and is very different from that. And I've written a personal essay that's deeply meaningful to me, arguably more me than anything else I've written. That's written in a very different way. And I'm starting a different essay now that is also very different. So I think
00:26:52
Speaker
I'm always trying to write in different ways and in different registers. And, you know, I think that the voice of a piece has to serve its structure and its function and subject. And so I hope that I don't get locked into any particular voice.
00:27:12
Speaker
Right you don't want to like from the get go be like oh that that's an AC DC song because they just play that same chord over and over again. Right yeah. Right. Like or Green Day you're like bands I both love but it's just like it's just undeniably like OK from the.
00:27:31
Speaker
minute they hit a court like all right okay why no one I'm signing up for it's gonna be probably pretty catchy but I under I I just get that tone and totally always them right and I think that's I mean I was just trying to think like are there musicians that I admire that might be kind of analogous to
00:27:52
Speaker
what we're talking about. And my all-time favorite musician is Joni Mitchell. And I'm thinking all of her songs have, you know, this beautiful poetry to them. And of course that beautiful voice of hers, but she really has tremendous range. Her songs aren't all alike in any way. Certain albums have a sort of coherent voice, which I think is beautiful.
00:28:19
Speaker
and necessary for albums, but over the course of her career, you know, she sang and wrote in so many different ways. And it's like, yes, they're all characteristically her in that her thinking and musicality and poetry and way of seeing things and describing people is inherent, excuse me, to all of
00:28:47
Speaker
her songs, but I wouldn't say that they're all in the same voice. I mean, they're literally all the same voice, but what we're talking about. Yeah. So how did you, with this pipe wrench story, how did you arrive at this story and how did it come onto your radar and you're like, oh, this is something I want to tackle?
Exploration of Mormon Culture
00:29:06
Speaker
So I wrote, I reported and wrote a piece in last year, 2021, a much more straightforward piece about the future of liberalism within Mormonism. And I got really obsessive about researching this world that's not mine and this culture that is not mine. And I had to
00:29:32
Speaker
to do a lot of research to get kind of conversant in this religious culture, institution, theology.
00:29:43
Speaker
And so I had to learn a lot. And I, you know, along the way, I learned about this phenomenon of Book of Mormon tours, which is what I wrote this latest piece about. And so it was really an outgrowth of this other piece that I had written and then the response that that other piece got where a lot of Mormons were talking to me and I was sort of processing
00:30:08
Speaker
these various trends that I think are really interesting within Mormonism. And so really it was just an outgrowth of this kind of obsession that I developed in service of this prior piece.
00:30:22
Speaker
And with this piece, too, there's something to be said about style and being, in a sense, it's right from the get-go, you know it's gonna be, it feels, it's very writer-forward, even to the extent of, you know, the subtitle of it, you know, it's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, an account written by the hand of Emily Fox Kaplan. And that could be an editor choice versus a you choice, but at what point did you write it?
00:30:48
Speaker
That was a new choice that I pushed for because it's a play, you know, it's a signal to Mormon readers that this is, you know, a deep reference to the Book of Mormon because the Book of Mormon is an account written by the hand of Joseph Smith. So, you know, I was getting to the idea that I am writing something
00:31:12
Speaker
in that vein and in that tradition, which is, you know, I understand it an ambitious thing to attempt, but that, yes, you know, the piece is about really the power of literature when it comes down to it.
00:31:30
Speaker
you know, and the power of writerly decisions. The Book of Mormon is what it is because it is really a tremendous work of literature and very complicated. And yes, so I was very explicitly nodding to that.
00:31:46
Speaker
You say it's about writerly decisions the power of writerly decisions and even in the early goings of it to you know you like suggest these these headlines like about atheist joins more mentor and Mesoamerica name of journalism and then like this this little ira glass imitation to which is like very
00:32:04
Speaker
It's a very writer decision. It's also very stylistically forward. What was the mindset and the approach to that, just as you as the writer thinking like, this is the risk and the fun I'm looking to have with the piece of this nature? Right. Well, those early parts of the essay where I kind of turned the prism in terms of how to open the piece is
00:32:31
Speaker
making a point structurally that all pieces of writing can be written in different ways. And those different ways serve very different ends and have different effects and speak to different readerships. And so the piece is about
00:32:50
Speaker
a retelling basically of Mayan history. You know, these people who believe that the Book of Mormon's events happened in Mesoamerica believe that the Book of Mormon is the true history and
00:33:07
Speaker
you know, secular, widely acknowledged histories of the region are incomplete and they are rewriting it. And so I wanted to speak to that in addition to talking about the ways that the Book of Mormon is
00:33:26
Speaker
is operating on many levels, literally. And Joseph Smith is doing a lot there with his choices. I wanted to speak to that, both explicitly and through the structure.
00:33:39
Speaker
And with the group that you were traveling with throughout Central America here, what was the... Yeah, Mexico. Yes, sorry. And what was the experience like in reporting on them, but also trying to... I guess it could have been very easy to cut them off at the knees and make them look bad.
00:34:03
Speaker
But I think you do treat them with, I think you just lay them out there and you treat them with a certain measure of repartorial empathy. I just want to get a sense of how you approached reporting and interviewing them and treating them fairly.
00:34:19
Speaker
People are worthy of respect, even if institutions that they're a part of aren't. I think that individuals always are. And I think that individual people are generally much better than the institutions they're a part of.
00:34:38
Speaker
And also, in some ways, right, this is a wacky endeavor, like going and retelling the history of Mayans in Guatemala and Mexico, but it's also very serious. I mean, the real world ramifications of this way of thinking
00:34:57
Speaker
I would argue what is responsible for the colonization of most of the world, you know, not specifically by Mormons, but by the idea that you can tell the story, you can know, and you can tell the story of people that are not you is, I mean, that's very serious and, and, and I think needs to be treated seriously.
00:35:21
Speaker
The piece also had this David Foster Wallace on a cruise kind of vibe to me. Like you were very much this outsider coming into this other world and you were just going to go on this trip and report back to it. Was that a particular model that you had in your head to be like, oh, this could be like my cruise piece?
00:35:48
Speaker
I have actually never read David Foster Wallace, which I am embarrassed to say. And I did not know about the existence of that essay, unfortunately. So no, it was not, that was not a motto because I didn't even know about it. But I mean, certainly I'm aware that there is a long tradition of
00:36:07
Speaker
of travel writing and and road trip writing and you know one writer who I who has been very influential to me since I was a teenager who I didn't mention earlier is Susan Orlean who does a lot of that kind of like go to some wacky place you know and and write about wacky people which I think is
00:36:29
Speaker
not a completely fair way of characterizing what she does. But, you know, she'll go to something, an event, or she'll accompany people doing something that most people don't know about. You know, one of her earlier collections of profiles is called The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, which was very influential to me as a teenager. And she profiles this female bullfighter
00:36:52
Speaker
which is not a world that I certainly am familiar with. And, you know, presumably most readers of her work will not be. So in some ways, yes, I see that as a tradition that this piece is speaking to and part of. At the same time that it's, you know, writing about religion and writing about literature and the power of literature as well.
00:37:20
Speaker
It seemed like the one moment in the essay where you actually connected with anybody was when you expressed not wanting to eat animal products because you didn't want to contribute to the cruelty of that system.
00:37:42
Speaker
And, you know, was that something that kind of surprised you that that was like, of all things that that was the thing that kind of caught someone's ear is just like, Oh, I actually get
Veganism and Personal Beliefs
00:37:50
Speaker
that. But that makes sense to me. I wrote about this in the essay is that it was more that the guy that I call Matt, that I give the pseudonym Matt and the piece had shown
00:38:02
Speaker
no respect toward me and myself or my beliefs or my way of life before that point. And so when I said that I am vegan, it sort of struck him. The way that he understood it was that I have a set of rules that I live by and adhere to them. And that is something that he can identify with.
00:38:29
Speaker
even though his rules are different, as a strict Mormon who doesn't drink coffee, doesn't drink alcohol, doesn't do lots of things that non-Mormons do in our society. The idea of not doing something because of your belief system is something that was familiar to him. But he only respected it, I think, because it was
00:38:54
Speaker
He had constructed that kind of narrative for himself. He certainly did not respect the fact that I'm an atheist, or other things about me. Yeah, because I've been plant-based for years, and my very omnivorous father-in-law
00:39:13
Speaker
he like he telling my wife and I was just like oh look you know veganism is kind of like kind of like religion and we're like we're like pump the brakes on that but in a way it really is because there is a certain set of values that you adhere to that really shape
00:39:32
Speaker
your decisions and the way you move through the world. And it's like, Oh wow, I guess in a lot of ways it kind of, it kind of is, uh, like that.
00:39:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm Jewish. The idea of keeping kosher is very familiar to me. It's something that my forefathers did and some of my extended family do. Yeah, the idea of restricting your eating because of your beliefs is certainly out there in the world in different ways. I've always thought since I became vegan,
00:40:14
Speaker
at this point like eight years ago or something, that it feels to me like keeping kosher in a way that's deeply meaningful instead of arbitrary.
00:40:23
Speaker
which is, you know, people who keep kosher would not describe it as arbitrary, but that is always how I've thought about it. So in some ways, it's almost helped me understand the people I know who keep kosher because I also have dietary restrictions, which are deeply meaningful to me and make complete sense to me and are in line with my life philosophy.
00:40:48
Speaker
Yeah. And in this piece, too, what were maybe some of the central questions you were after when you embarked on this journey?
Themes of Truth and Narrative
00:40:59
Speaker
And were those questions answered? Did you feel satisfied by the end of your trip? You mean when I embarked on the actual journey or the journey of writing it? Let's go with the actual journey.
00:41:15
Speaker
I didn't really have particular questions in mind before I joined this tour. I was really curious about
00:41:31
Speaker
how the people on my tour who I assumed would all be white, which was correct, would interact with Mexican people, especially people with Maya descent, because the premise of the tour is that Mayan people don't know their own history. So I was curious about that.
00:41:55
Speaker
I noted some interesting things, and it was kind of in line with what I expected, frankly. But if my piece is about the nature of truth and its relationship to narrative, I didn't really know that that was going to be the central focus when I started this trip. I mean, that was an idea that I had.
00:42:21
Speaker
The themes that I wound up writing about became clear over the course of my experience on the trip and then mulling it afterwards. Well, and towards the end of the piece, too, it's just like, you know, you do the mock headline thing again. You're like, Emily Fox Kaplan goes looking for something. Not sure if she's found it. Was there anything in particular that maybe you were hoping to find? And then it was just like, well, I don't know if I did. I was hoping to, but I don't think so.
00:42:50
Speaker
I mean, I, right, so I did the headlines as a nod to sort of the idea that you can write things in that journalistic way and that that is also very much a genre and a tradition. In terms of that, you know, I titled the piece Searching for Zara Hemla, I think that
00:43:09
Speaker
You know, when I was writing it, I don't know whether this comes through in reading. There's a kind of current, undercurrent current of yearning and searching and wanting. And, you know, that is such an integral part of religion for a lot of religious people and certainly for writers and certainly for me. So I wanted that.
00:43:38
Speaker
you know, headline to kind of speak to that a bit. And when you were working with Michelle on this, who's, you know, she's been on the podcast before and, you know, what were, you know, when you were approaching the writing and the structure of the piece, you know, what were some of the conversations you were having to manifest the best version of it?
00:43:57
Speaker
I workshopped the first few 3,000 words or so of an early draft of this when I went to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference this summer.
00:44:09
Speaker
Um, it was pretty similar to how it is now. And people in my workshop who are wonderful. Um, I want to shout out the Lassicki group, uh, wanted a lot more. Paul Lassicki? Yeah. Uh-huh. That'd be Paul. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, nice. Yeah, I've spoken to him a bunch of times. Yeah. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, he's wonderful. He was, he was our instructor. People wanted more about my friend.
00:44:33
Speaker
the one who I lost and who I wrote about in the piece, not extensively, but it's in there because thematically it's very similar. And by lost, it's like you guys had something of a falling out, right? Right. She didn't pass away or anything.
00:44:54
Speaker
Right. No, she is very much alive. Yes. But our friendship is not because, and I wrote about this in the piece, she created a narrative of me that I pushed back on and we have conflicting narratives of who I am and as a result of our friendship.
00:45:18
Speaker
and the way that we relate. And of course, that resonates with the ideas of conflicting narratives. In early drafts, she was much, much more present on the page, but Michelle
00:45:34
Speaker
sort of guided the piece away from that for a few reasons. And I think that that was the right thing to do for this piece. I mean, I know it was the right thing to do, but I kind of could let go of that, of this piece being kind of half about that loss of a friendship. And so Michelle's ability to help me kind of detangle myself from that
00:46:02
Speaker
sort of over emphasis of that in the piece was incredibly helpful. Now earlier when we were talking, this particular piece for Pipe Wrench was definitely, it pushed you in a different direction creatively in terms of the style and how you approached it. Now that you've done this and stuck the landing, where do you see some of your writing going knowing that you can flex this kind of muscle?
00:46:32
Speaker
You know, it's the first piece that's like fun and kind of playful in this way that's this long that I've published, but I've written others. I just haven't published them for various reasons. You know, so I have a collection of essays that are more personal in nature.
00:46:58
Speaker
But also, you know, they look inward, but they very much look outward as well in the works about the nature of truth and how we understand truth.
00:47:14
Speaker
know, I'm working on on that kind of on the side, you know, it's I don't have a book contract or anything for it yet. Although if anyone is listening, I would love for you to give me one. Yeah. So, you know, I feel like I have two writing lives in a way. I have this sort of more playful, inventive, structurally, yeah, traditional kind of work. And then I have more, more journalistic work. And I, you know, so right now, I'm
00:47:44
Speaker
in the early stages of working on a book on Christianity in America that will be more in the sort of comfortable journalistic voice that I have come to
00:48:01
Speaker
you know, be comfortable in and write quite a bit in. But it's also pretty structurally inventive, you know, structurally kind of unusual. And so I'm having a lot of fun with that. But, you know, I, again, like I sort of, I fit the structure and the voice to the pieces that I'm working on. So I certainly like
00:48:27
Speaker
having the ability to have a lot of fun with pieces like I did with this and really have a piece be about the relationship between narrative and truth. That's so awesome to
00:48:44
Speaker
to be able to do something like that. Yeah and I hope that I just have more and more opportunities to have fun in a piece like that and kind of like play around in reported pieces. This is the first piece, reported piece, that I've had the opportunity to do that and I'm so grateful that Michelle
00:49:03
Speaker
was so happy as she said swing high and I did and that was I'm really grateful that I could. So, you know, I hope to do more reported pieces in that vein. But it's certainly something that I've been working on on my own for quite a while now because it gives me great pleasure.
00:49:20
Speaker
Nice. And the one last thing I'd like to ask Emily is bring this airliner down for a landing. It's just a recommendation of some kind for the listeners. And it can be anything. It can be a brand of socks. You're really excited about. Loose leaf tea. Geez, I don't know. A fanny pack. It can be anything. Right? Yeah. So I'd extend that to you.
00:49:44
Speaker
Okay, I have two ideas. One is the newsletter of Ben Mock. I think I'm saying his name correctly. I've never heard him say it, but he's a journalist. He does fabulous stuff. I don't know him or anything. I mean, I hope I do someday, but he is awesome. And I always love his newsletter because he writes about
00:50:08
Speaker
He lives in Germany and travels a lot. He writes a lot about China, and he does really interesting work, and he thinks really brilliantly about writing and reporting. So I would recommend his newsletter, which is called The Fugitive World. And then can I recommend something else too? Absolutely.
00:50:28
Speaker
Okay, I am obsessive about a lot of things. And one of the things that I'm obsessive about is hot sauce and spicy things in general. And I stumbled across this company called Mama Lambs at the Greenpoint Farmers Market, which I want to put a plug in for because they're amazing. I live in Greenpoint, love it. And they make the best hot sauce in the entire world.
00:50:55
Speaker
It is the vegan Malaysian hot sauce and they're based in Long Island City, which is right next door to me, but they sell at lots of different farmers markets. I sound like they're paying me to advertise them, which they are absolutely not. I'm just obsessed with them and every time
00:51:13
Speaker
I make a dish for someone and include it. They love it too. And they're a little family company. I've looked them up because I'm so obsessed with them. So mama lamb's hot sauce and they make other sauces too. But I know I need to go to the Union Square farmers market and stock up. Last year I bought I think eight jars because I knew I would run out and I almost have so I'm going to get more.
00:51:39
Speaker
The writer, Ander Monson, on his Instagram, he does chip reviews, reviews of potato chips, all that he comes across. I think you need to start to be the hot sauce influencer of Instagram. Oh my gosh, I would love that. My friend and I are gonna do, she's also vegan, we're gonna do, it has been in the works for a little bit, and it hasn't started yet.
00:52:04
Speaker
Uh, but, um, a blog, a food blog around New York city and go to different vegan restaurants around New York city and write about it. And yeah, so that will, but yes, it has not occurred to me to write specifically about hot sauce, which is one of my abiding lifelong passions, but that this is a great idea. You've given me something to think about.
00:52:26
Speaker
Well, I love it. Well, Emily, thank you so much for carving the time to come on the show and talk about writing and some of your past pieces and, of course, this current one for Pipe Wrench. So thanks again for the work and thanks for the time. Thank you so much. Thanks for your podcast in general.
00:52:45
Speaker
Oh, thanks for making it to the end, CNFers. Thanks to Emily for coming to play ball. Be sure you head over to BrendanOmero.com to sign up for my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter and also consider shopping around at Patreon.com slash CNF pod. Show is free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap.
00:53:04
Speaker
And if you like what you're hearing, please link up to the show. And if you tag me or the show, I'll be sure to swoop in there and give you some primo James Hetfield gifts. It's kind of what I do. My tenure putting together a little blurb and a shared transcript with long reads is over.
00:53:24
Speaker
I'm really bummed, but I guess the analytics didn't return on their investment in cross-promoting, activist stories, and by extension, ye olde podcast. It did put the show in front of more people, and I got a few bucks every month for doing this for longreads, which was awesome.
00:53:43
Speaker
It was this nice little anchor gig, but that anchor is gone now. Super grateful for the opportunity, but I feel like I failed them. What other reasons are there to cut ties, you know? I've been beating myself up over it, but what can you do? It's beyond the rejection. It's more like a breakup. So now I need to go get out there, get into dating shape, and just put myself out there.
00:54:11
Speaker
buy some new clothes, get a new haircut, lose 20 pounds. CNF pot is worthy of love. And in all seriousness, I couldn't be more grateful for Peter Rubin and Long Reads for putting the show in front of more people and taking a flyer on it.
00:54:30
Speaker
It was a lot of fun. When one door closes, another one usually stays closed. But maybe if you get some bolt cutters, you can break through the door and find the riches on the other side. So all right, in lieu of a more fleshed out parting shot, here's a teaser for volume five of Causals Tea of Words is going to start in 2023. All right, so you're going to hear that in just a moment. So stay wild, seeing efforts. And if you can do interview, see ya.
00:55:05
Speaker
Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. This is Casualty of Words, a writing podcast for people in a hurry. That's you. I'm Brendan O'Mara. How's it going? This is a little teaser of what's to come in 2023. I love this micro podcast. I love that it's snackable. I love that it's like a shot of B12 or the Baileys and whiskey you drop into your Guinness for a car bomb.
00:55:32
Speaker
I have an ambitious goal for 2023 and that is to make Casualty of Words a true daily podcast in one calendar year, Monday to Friday. A little shot in the arm that might be a little inspiration, might be a little craft in sight, might be a breakdown of why a particular TV show or essay or book is so good from a writing point of view.
00:55:56
Speaker
So you might be able to take some of those notes I've gleaned and find a way to fold it into your own work. I love me some long-form podcasts and interviews and magazine stories and books, but sometimes you want something you can listen to and digest in the time it takes to brush your teeth. Of course, the goal is to make a tiny podcast that's of service and valuable, and if you ever want me to riff on something, by all means, send me an email. You can visit brenthedelmara.com.
00:56:26
Speaker
to sign up for my monthly Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter and to find ways to reach out so this show can be something that inspires you to pick up your pen or dust off that musty manuscript and finish what you set out to do. We're all in this mess together, am I right? That's Casualty of Words.