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Ep. 35. Ashton Politanoff, Dad Had a Bad Day
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In today's episode I talk to Ashton Politanoff about his 2026 novel, Dad Had a Bad Day.
Ashton Politanoff is a frequent contributor to NOON, edited by Diane Williams. His writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Southwest Review, Conjunctions, New York Tyrant, Egress, and elsewhere. He is a former division I tennis player and his childhood coach was Robert Lansdorp, who is credited with coaching Pete Sampras, Tracy Austin, and Maria Sharapova. His novel Dad Had a Bad Day is forthcoming Spring/Summer 2026 from Astra House (US) and Daunt Books (UK). Politanoff’s first novel, You’ll Like It Here, was published by Dalkey Archive in 2022. He is an English Professor at Cypress College.
Book recs:
- Damon Galgut, The Promise
- Tana French, The Searcher
Follow the show on Instagramand subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Books Up Close'
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for readers, writers, and anyone interested in how texts get made.
Discussion with Ashton Politanoff about 'Dad Had a Bad Day'
00:00:10
Speaker
In today's episode, I talked to Ashton Politanoff about his new novel, Dad Had a Bad Day, published July in the UK with Daunt Originals. And if you are reading along, we're going to talk about the opening fragment.
00:00:23
Speaker
possibly title book title of the year don't know but anyway as soon as i posted on instagram the number of comments i got being like what is this book about so something is going on here ashton is a frequent contributor to noon edited by diane williams his writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in mutsweeney's southwest review conjunctions new york tyrant egress and elsewhere He is a former Division I tennis player and his childhood coach was Robert Lansdorp, who is credited with coaching Pete Sampras, Tracy Austin and Maria Charpova.
00:00:53
Speaker
His novel, Dad Had a Bad Day, forthcoming spring summer from Astro House and Dort Books. Polatanov's first novel, You Like It Here, it was published by Dolkey Archive in 2022. He's an English professor at Cyprus College.
Chris's Initial Skepticism and Appreciation
00:01:05
Speaker
Ashton, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks so much for having me, Chris. I'm excited to talk about Dad Had a Bad Day. And tennis. And look, I'm going to just come out and say ah at the front, I am not a sports person in any way, shape or form.
00:01:21
Speaker
People that know me know this. just can't get into it. Don't understand it. Don't have strong feelings either way. so when I got sent a book about tennis and a middle-aged straight man having like a breakdown, i was like, oh,
00:01:33
Speaker
is this the book for me? Turns out I was hooked within like three pages. So you did some kind of magic here, I guess. Well, Chris, that's great to hear. I guess the concern was, is this only going appeal to people who like tennis? And so that's really wonderful to hear. And I'm just grateful to to have you be in conversation with me today.
00:01:57
Speaker
Of course. And now that I know you also play tennis, now I have like even more questions. But anyway, and before we get to the extract, I ask everyone this. How do you feel about close reading as an activity or a practice? Like what is your relationship to it?
00:02:11
Speaker
Well, great question. First of all, I'm a very slow reader. And so I would like to think, even though I'm not annotating my books, I like to leave my books annotation free. And I don't know if that's because I have messy handwriting and that's been instilled in me since I'm a left lefty, I'm left handed since I was a little little child but uh i am slow reader as a writer i really value language language at the sentence level so that's a big concern of mine and i think i can be quite critical of texts as a reader if it's not appealing to me in that way
00:02:53
Speaker
um The other hat I wear is I teach English at ah at a college here in California called Cypress College. And although our bread and butter as a department is teaching composition and critical thinking, I do integrate literature into my classes. And I also I'm lucky enough to teach some creative writing courses. So close reading is something that I really try to help students navigate, learn, because I think that not only makes us better writers, but better thinkers.
00:03:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's exciting. And yeah, the multiple hats is always like interesting, right? to in this In this dynamic, we might usually be close reading someone else's work, right? So already I've added a weird thing in where I'm like, let's talk about your work.
00:03:43
Speaker
But then also, are you approaching it as writer or reader or teacher, right? There's like multiple kind of lenses, I guess you can take, um which is the thing I'm interested in, basically, in having this conversation of, I see this thing, what are you thinking about that?
00:03:56
Speaker
Or if you have any thoughts about that, right? And that that's all the kind of the fascinating stuff to me. So we're going to talk about the very opening of the book.
Excerpt Reading and Narrative Style
00:04:03
Speaker
It's thing. I've kind of called them fragments in our emails, but i don't know what you would call them, but it's not in like chapters per se. And some of the sections are very long. Some are short. Is fragment an okay word?
00:04:15
Speaker
Absolutely. Fragments, rallies. Okay. In the case of tennis. Yeah. So we have long rallies, short okay points. Yeah. Yeah. I think I also referred to it as bursts of language on occasion when I i was doing a an interview this week with another writer and that's something we labeled it as. Okay.
00:04:41
Speaker
Because like i on the back of my copy, there's a quote from Katherine Scanlon, right? Whose book is also in those kind of like fragmenty pieces, which I really, I don't know. I really like it as a thing. Like it feels like you're just getting like glimmers.
00:04:55
Speaker
you know And you're like, are these connected? is it am I following them in like order? They kind of destabilize something in a way that I appreciate. Well, that's great to hear. i I just gravitate towards that length as right now, as a writer. It appeals to me in terms of I feel like I can control the language a little bit more or at least, yeah, have some sort of what you know mastery over it.
00:05:22
Speaker
And it doesn't feel as unwieldy. Right. And I think it's the best that I can do in terms of maintaining integrity at the sentence level um in these shorter passages.
00:05:37
Speaker
And even some of the longer passages in the book are things that I pare down with my wonderful editor, Emily Bell. Okay, we'll do a we'll talk about your writing practice a bit more later, maybe, and we'll tease out some of that. But why don't you read the extract for us first, and then we can start talking about it.
00:05:55
Speaker
Okay, great. My wife was still at work. My son didn't want to go to the park, but I needed to get outside. He had a fever, so I gave him a glass full of ice cubes and told him to suck on them during the drive.
00:06:11
Speaker
His school wouldn't take him back until the fever was gone. I drove in a direction until we found a park. The park was one we hadn't been to.
00:06:22
Speaker
The grass around the playground was tall, uncut, and I followed him down the concrete path. The sky was orange with only a few clouds as the sun set in the distance.
00:06:34
Speaker
A girl was on the swings. She was self-sufficient, tucking her legs behind her and straightening them forward, building momentum. My son was not self-sufficient.
00:06:47
Speaker
He still needed me to push him. The swing the girl was on was silent on the way up, but it sounded like a bird's chirp on the way down. It was rusty.
00:06:58
Speaker
The girl was alone. My son climbed some steps leading to a slide and I took a seat on a wooden bench with chipped green paint. Directly across from me, behind the playground, were two tennis courts.
00:07:12
Speaker
They looked slick and warm from use and the net sagged down the middle. On one side of the nearest court was a young man, a towhead. My guess would be 18.
00:07:24
Speaker
And on the other side was an older man, presumably his father. The young man took his racket back for a forehand with a quick shoulder turn all the time in the world, his feet making tiny little squeaks as he moved.
00:07:38
Speaker
He sent the yellow ball in a clean arc deep to the other side of the court. The father with the sports sunglasses was confident. The rally continued. The constant percussion of the ball being struck with trained perfection by the young man sent a vibration through me.
00:07:55
Speaker
I found myself walking toward the fence, the sound of the ball, the flick of the wrist, feet stepping forward like daggers then tumbling back like leaves. the ball hailing and then collapsing missile-like onto the hard court.
00:08:10
Speaker
Then I heard a cry behind me. It was my son. Thank you so much. I had to mute myself there because I was laughing again um at some of the parts of this. And we discussed a few little passages that we could have talked about today. And i think I think you were right. This one is, like, this is an opening.
00:08:28
Speaker
It tells us so much about the narrator's Yeah, I have so many thoughts about this narrator generally. One thing, and I think this is really of in evidence here, is that this book is very the kind of creative maxim of show, don't tell, right? And I don't know whether you're conscious of this or or what your relationship to that thing is, because I don't really believe in it. But there's this idea of like,
00:08:52
Speaker
we he never says how he feels, like very rarely in this book, right, as a narrator. He never says like, and then I thought, or and then I felt, like you never get that. You only ever get descriptions of things, right, or or kind of this like outside view.
00:09:07
Speaker
so even, you know, like I found myself walking toward the fence, like like he could say, you know, like I was mesmerized by that, but like he doesn't, he never wants to tell us what's inside, which I think is such like a clever thing to do but also like,
00:09:21
Speaker
Is that not hard to sustain that for 300 pages? It's like a really distant kind of narrator, even while we're finding out so much about him. And I think this opening is a really good example of that.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for that reading. And I think you raise really interesting points in terms of the narrator's reticence or inability to share how he feels. And I think that happened organically as I was writing. It just felt like the voice took me a while to land on that voice. I had two false starts before this one.
00:09:58
Speaker
where I wrote 10 pages, discarded those 10 pages, wrote another 7 to 10 pages, didn't feel good about it. And it wasn't until I created a couple outlines from screenwriting practice I didn't refer to those outlines at all while I was writing the book and I went in a very different direction with it, but it helped me get out of the woods.
00:10:21
Speaker
So once I had that down, I started writing and I started, this was the opening, the original opening. Oh, right. And then in terms of, uh,
00:10:32
Speaker
the author, the not the author, the narrator's inability to share feelings, um I think that also says something about the kind of masculinity that exists in this book.
00:10:46
Speaker
And the only times we really have the narrator emoting is these letters to his wife, Lorraine, yeah that he never ultimately really shares with her anyhow.
00:11:00
Speaker
But yeah, it created an interesting tension for me as a writer and sort of this dread under the surface, whether it's a you know a crisis of bottling up emotions and not facing trauma or other things, and also just keeping the reader off balance and also myself as a writer.
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Like there's, I feel like this book, there were multiple times when was like, oh, this is going to go this way. And then it doesn't. Then it's like, oh, it could really go there. Like it was very uneasy. Like I was very tense reading, reading this book. I'm like, there's not a huge amount at stake in this book, right? There's like tennis and one marriage, but like, it feels way more ridiculous. And you're right. The the letters to Lorraine, for listeners that haven't read it yet, you've got this kind of narrative voice all way through. And then the little letters interspersed dear Lorraine one of the first ones had me cackling he's like describing her meeting like saying hello to someone in a park and she compliments like another dad on his children he says when you said you make such beautiful children it felt like a compliment to his semen and I found that deeply offensive yours your husband at that point was like okay
00:12:19
Speaker
This is a book that is speaking to me. Like, this isn't actually about tennis, right? This is about all of the things that are like said and unsaid in relationships, in like, just in the world and maybe like contemporary, you know, maybe it is a book about masculinity, but even just contemporary America, maybe even like, yeah,
00:12:37
Speaker
You know, there's a lot in here about what things look like from the outside versus the inside. And I think this narrative voice trick is part of that. I i call it a trick. I don't mean that in derogatory way, but the way it's working at the sentence level, like this, this what you just read out is very staccato for much of it, right?
00:12:57
Speaker
My wife was still at work. My son didn't want to go to the park. um The park was one we hadn't been to. Like it's very kind of short, sharp sentences, right? It's like a very interesting way to begin the book.
00:13:09
Speaker
Like there's a real you you feel kind of there's a gun. It's like clenched somehow. Yeah, my goal was to represent the different tensions or or pulls in the book.
Narrator's Life and Tennis Passion
00:13:21
Speaker
the husband's absent wife, and at least in his mind, right even though she's hardworking and and providing for the family. The husband husband's, the father's responsibility towards his son and his sort of resentful attitude that comes out even in the words of ah the direction of, you know, I told him to suck on the cubes.
00:13:45
Speaker
And ultimately this pull towards an old, a former pastime or not a pastime, but ah ah a former life in terms of tennis. yeah And so when I wrote that opening, i was like, okay, this is also sort of a a guiding reminder to me as a writer in terms of the different things at stake here. The the elements in terms of husband, wife, father, son, tennis that I want to that i want to play with throughout the novel.
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely play. Like, I mean, my son didn't want to go to the park, but I needed to get outside. you're just like, okay, he had a fever. And you're like, oh, already, he's not the most likable person, right? like he's not He's not the person immediately like, i I really care about you. You do by the end.
00:14:38
Speaker
But at the beginning, he had a fever, so I gave him some ice cubes. His school, I love, his school wouldn't take him back until the fever was gone. Right. is that It's like, it's the school, he's the school's responsibility, not mine. I'm lumbered with this thing.
00:14:52
Speaker
Right. That's sick. And I know he's sick and he doesn't want outside, but I need to get out. Bill, like, why do you need to get out? Like, he doesn't tell us, he never tells us, he never shares like what's going on.
00:15:03
Speaker
need to get outside. So the kid's got to deal with it. And you're like, okay. Right. I think you hit on a lot of funny moments there. Um, The school thing is something that is a constant negotiation when your your child is sick. and yeah And my wife and I obviously always try to do what's best for the greater good.
00:15:29
Speaker
We're not going to send our child back. within 24 hours of a fever. right um But I thought it would be really telling to have this narrator want to just push the kid back to school as soon as possible because he he's very busy, obviously.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, very important. yeah know we should We should say, like he's just been made redundant. right this book like You write find out very quickly, we know why his wife's at work and why he's at home with the kid. right like you know There's a very particular context to that, which is like quite hard hitting at the beginning until you're like, he's not applying for jobs. he's not He's not trying very hard to get himself out of this predicament.
00:16:14
Speaker
And then joins a tennis club. But that's outside of this paragraph. So we won't talk too much about that. But that next line, I drove in a direction until we found a park. The park was one we hadn't been to.
00:16:26
Speaker
I think that's like interesting as well. right I drove in a direction until we found a park. Even though he's desperate to get out, he is directionless. from the start right it's not even like let's go to the park that you like it's just like i just went that way i don't know whether that is like a he doesn't really know what he's doing or it's part of his like the way he describes himself to himself right like that i found myself walking toward the fence like no no you chose to walk towards the fence because you were interested in the tennis but it's the way he narrates himself right to himself almost
00:16:59
Speaker
Absolutely. I think as I was composing that or looking back at it in revision, I really liked a direction. Yeah. Because it refers to this aimlessness that ah Ned consciously or or subconsciously is feeling.
00:17:18
Speaker
And yeah, and I think this sort of I found myself walking towards is this, it's a really, in some ways, unresponsible attitude to act as if you don't have agency. Yes.
00:17:32
Speaker
And we can see that, though, happening throughout the book. Oh, yes. You have choices in life. And Ned clearly makes some choices. Yeah.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yes. um Choices is the, it's like another title for this book. Yeah. Like, but even that in that sentence is the one where suddenly the language like opens up right up till this point has been quite ah restrained, quite staccati as I saying, but then I found myself walking toward the fence, the sound of the ball, the flick of the wrist, feet stepping forward, like daggers, then tumbling back, like leaves the ball hailing and then collapsing missile-like onto the hardcore. Like it really, um,
00:18:11
Speaker
ah The line opens up, the language becomes more poetic. I don't love that word, but um yeah it becomes more lyrical, I guess. Even the commas add this kind of, this suddenly movement because he's like entranced by the movement of the tennis.
00:18:25
Speaker
Whereas up till now, it's like, he's just describing like the mundanity of the world, right? Like his lines are this, just like this full stop, this full stop, this full stop. But it's the tennis that like lights him up.
00:18:37
Speaker
Absolutely. That's one goal of mine as a writer. One of my goals at the sentence level, when appropriate to the narrative, is to congest it with feeling.
00:18:49
Speaker
And that was my aim there, was to congest those sentences with feeling, is feelings toward finding tennis again. And his love for the game, but also, as we learn, his complicated relationship for the game.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, his love for the game, but also like what you see in that little section that he's attentive immediately to the relationship between the two players, that it's like a father and son, right? It's not just tennis, but it's like, who are the people playing?
00:19:21
Speaker
And it's always men, right? Like he's interested in like male players throughout the book. which is like part of this world as well. So I think it's interesting that, you know, even he's not just saying like, oh, they're playing an interesting game, but like, I'm guessing the boy was about 18. I'm guessing the older man was his father and the father is like fine.
00:19:39
Speaker
No, what is what's the word? He's competent. competent You know, like he's already, he's telling a story about these two men already, right? He's like codified them. He knows who they are. He's projecting onto them.
00:19:50
Speaker
The father with the sports sunglasses. That also feels like a like a read. do like That feels like ah like he's mocking this other man. I'm just like, you would be the kind of person that wears sports sunglasses. What are you talking about?
00:20:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think there is this element of... this scrutinizing, this sizing up that happens throughout the book and we can see it here. And as you astutely observe, it is a father-son on the courts in this initial scene. And that's something that rears its head throughout the book. yeah And Ned is very attuned to that and very sensitive to that.
00:20:25
Speaker
Yeah. I i mean, have to look at what toe head was. That's not a word I think I know. Like there's a particular kind of like blonde kind of young man, right? Yes. Does it have other significations as like a word? It's just an interesting word in the paragraph, whether it's just more American than I'm used to.
00:20:41
Speaker
I think it's more American, also just a very Californian beach culture fine thing to say. And I live in Redondo Beach. I pretty much grew up here in the South Bay. That's a term I've heard quite often, specifically though from an older generation, describing someone with very light blonde hair.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah, like there's something going on there too, right, as well, with this kind of like version of this young white masculinity, right, that runs throughout the book too. Race is here in the book too in a very in a more minor key, but it's like there in terms of the kinds of masculinity or the kinds of like body that we're thinking about.
00:21:24
Speaker
So I think it just like a young man, toe head, my guess would be 18. He's like a doctor or something, you know, he's like, or like a policeman, do you what mean? Like being like, oh, he was about this high. Like he was he looked 18.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah, this kind of like speculation about these other people. You're like, why is that the thing you're telling us about? Not the tennis, you know? Right. It's almost as if he has like Terminator 2 lenses on.
00:21:48
Speaker
and is the sizing and calculating everything. Yeah, everything well, everything is a calculation in this book, right? In so many ways, like he's trying to get away with so much as as the book spirals, shall we say, or as he spirals.
00:22:03
Speaker
Right. And I think it's, you know, even the the tennis, we'll go back to the swings. I'm interested in those as well. But he talks about the tennis courts and he says they looked slick and worn from use and the net sagged down the middle.
00:22:16
Speaker
And um I was like, oh, I sat up for that, like worn from use and sagged down the middle. like Yeah, that has to be a comment on like the middle ageness of things, right? Like that's his kind of projection too, in a way, both like these are courts that are not that are like really overused, right? The they've been there forever.
00:22:36
Speaker
But also that kind of sagging in the middle, right? That's just like such a description of like the middle aged body, right? Like when people talk about the middle aged male body, it's like that sagging. And it's so funny that it's just like, it's in everything he sees.
00:22:49
Speaker
Absolutely. And and even this this selection of the park really reflects his interiority in terms of how he's feeling about himself at this state, physically, mentally.
00:23:02
Speaker
and Yeah, the the description of the courts and is another representation of that. Absolutely. Yeah, it's like because we're locked in his first person perspective, right?
00:23:14
Speaker
And it's present tense as well, right? Which is like also part of that. It's not first person past, but it's like it's very present. We're so trapped in a way in in the way he sees things.
00:23:27
Speaker
So we kind of learn to see things the way he does. And it feels kind of claustrophobic at times, even though, you know, you've broken this book up with these little fragments, you still feel very tightly locked in.
00:23:39
Speaker
And yeah, I'm guessing that's like conscious, but it's an interesting thing to to work with as a writer, I guess, to be you never give us that like wider view. we don't We don't jump someone else suddenly or, you know, make sense of it from a different point of view.
00:23:54
Speaker
Absolutely. i was really interested in the psychological aspects, obviously, of of the character, but also the after effects of playing competitive tennis in individual sport on a court.
Psychological Aspects of Tennis
00:24:09
Speaker
that is usually enclosed on all sides. And then the domestic piece too, in terms of on the surface, there's this noir-ish domestic thriller vibe to to the text.
00:24:26
Speaker
And so those were elements that I certainly was thinking about and how to create that feeling throughout the text. Like, I guess in the way that he is stuck in his place in the world, right? he feels He feels stuck in, like, all of the things that are projected onto him that he's supposed to be as a man, right, in 2026.
00:24:47
Speaker
yeah And, like, we're not allowed to get outside of that either. And I think that's a really clever move in a way. where We're not permitted anything that he isn't. And I'm thinking like the the playground, like the grass around the playground was tall, uncut, and I followed him down the concrete path.
00:25:02
Speaker
Him being the sun, I guess, but it's like an interesting hymn there. Like the hymn is interesting. um The sky was orange with only a few clouds and sunset in the distance. There's almost something like pastoral there, right? This like tall grass, like the sun setting. a girl was on the swings. And you're like oh,
00:25:18
Speaker
It's like this pleasant pastoral image. and then And then it obviously has to turn, right? he describes her as self-sufficient and you're like, oh my God. In his mind, she has to be, like my son was not self-sufficient. He still needed me to push him.
00:25:32
Speaker
Which again is just like, he's not, he's like, oh God, this kid needs me to actually like push him on the swings. Right. Like, yeah, that's kind of your job. No. And I think this is also the only moment of even though it's filled with resentment and self-loathing, the only moment of childhood innocence that Freddie encounters in the novel.
00:25:55
Speaker
yeah After this, yeah quickly, ah Ned takes up a membership at the local club with a secret credit card and Freddie's in on it. yeah um And so, yeah, this is the only passage of of some normalcy, so to speak, for for this child.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah, and just like, yeah, just like play, you know, for its own sake. I think play is interesting as well, right? Because tennis for him, for the father, can't ever just be tennis, right? It has to be like serious tennis.
00:26:29
Speaker
Like he can't just play for its own sake. Can't play for fun. No, he can't play for fun. He can't just be like, oh I found a court in the park that we went to with Freddie. Like we should play some time, you know? He's like, no, no, I have to go back to the club. I have to join it. I have to create a league. We have to like beat. And he's like, like the the child here is like fun. And he's like, there is no fun, right? There is only, there is self-sufficiency and there is like a neediness. Like you either look after yourself or you or you're just like this weak thing. And it's just, yeah, from the get-go,
00:27:01
Speaker
And I mean, you you find out as you go through the book that the father, his own father has instilled lots of this in him. But just very funny from like the the opening that he codes everything as like, can you look after yourself? Are you a, don't know, self-sufficiency is also like a very American concept too, right? You know, like the individualistic, you can do it on your own thing. Even down to like, can you make yourself swing on a swing?
00:27:27
Speaker
ah Not sure Thoreau was thinking about that when he wrote Walden, but you know what mean? So it's a different kind of self-sufficiency. Right. No, I love your reading of this this passage. And yeah, i found it alarming and sad this how Ned compares his child to, um you know, what's who this girl is purportedly more self-sufficient.
00:27:53
Speaker
So yeah, I think there's this there's this veiled under the surface, cruelty in some ways too, in terms of just this attitude in parenting.
00:28:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah to but like yeah. To parenting, to just like children, but even just like to other people, right? just Just like anyone outside of him, he's just so detached at this point in his life that understanding others is just very difficult.
00:28:18
Speaker
There's something, I mean, I want to know your thoughts on this, that like the swing the girl was on was silent on the way up, but it sounded like a bird's chirp on the way down. it was rusty, the girl was alone. It's like we've gone from she's self-sufficient to like there's something kind of pure about the swing going up but then when it comes back down, it makes a noise.
00:28:37
Speaker
Yes. And that kind of is like, oh, it was rusty, the girl was alone. Like there's a glimmer of... the kind of ease of her self-sufficiency, if you like, when it comes back down to earth, actually there's like rust in there. There's something complicated in there.
00:28:51
Speaker
And yes, I think it's, yeah. The squeak also then make the, sorry, the chirp then reminded me of the squeak of the feet on the tennis court a little bit later on, right? His feet making tiny little squeaks.
00:29:04
Speaker
You've these squeaks and these chirps, these tiny little noises that are somehow like, i don't know. I don't know how to make sense of them, but there's some kind of like material resonance, right? Of like the the the humanness of it.
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah, there's a frailty there. And I also was at a park a little similar to this. And the swing made a ah certain sound similar to this.
00:29:28
Speaker
And I found the noise a little eerie. m And I think this was my effort to infuse that sort of unease already into the book with with those sounds.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's like every horror novel, right? Like there's always a kid on a swing. Right. ah Like every time that, you know, the kids on the swing and then the swing goes and then it you pan back and the kid is gone. Right. And the swing is going on. It's own it's like every right horror thriller like scene ever. Right. And like the girl was alone. You're like, OK.
00:30:02
Speaker
Right. Like you you think maybe he's going to be like, oh, are you okay Yeah. Or something. But no, he doesn't do anything with that. He just notes it. And then he carries on. Yeah.
00:30:12
Speaker
Which is funny as well as dark. And then at the very end, like, then I heard a cry behind, you know, he's watching, he's watching the tennis. And then I heard a cry behind me. It was my son.
00:30:23
Speaker
Full stop. New fragment. You're like, right. The kind of bluntness of that. It's not even, then I heard my son cry behind me. Like he's not even aware of like what the noise is. Right. he's It's as though he's just turned around. He's like, Oh, it's you. What have you done?
00:30:37
Speaker
You know? And he has to put like a bandaid on it in the in the next fragment. yeah. Just the the thing that takes him out of his revelry. You know, there are always these always these moments like puncture through, you know, the girl is self-sufficient, but then like the swing is actually rusty.
00:30:54
Speaker
The game is like this beautiful kind of like back and forth. And then you hear like the feet, the squeaking, the like the contact with the ground. And then, oh, now my son's crying. Just there are all these like moments of breaking through veneer.
00:31:08
Speaker
absolutely i love that again for me that ending of this first fragment really represents the tension of the novel in terms of this new this newfound pursuit of of tennis and then also his responsibility as a father as as in uh daddy daycare and um You know, how he finds himself being ah pulled away from what he truly desires, which in some ways is just a reverie, a dream.
00:31:46
Speaker
It should be just a game about fun and play. Yeah. But as we know, he takes it very seriously, as do many, many ah tennis players in this book.
00:31:58
Speaker
Right. But especially like older tennis players who, you know, it's like your time in the big leagues is clearly over, right? Like you're competing against like teenagers and like young 20s men. And you're like, no, I've still got it. i You know, there's this real kind of like drive towards I can get this glory back.
00:32:16
Speaker
Although on social media, I was just alerted. today that there's a 45 year old, oh ah Ryan Haviland, who's 2000 in the world right now. Okay, so there's there's still hope.
00:32:28
Speaker
Clearly, I don't know enough about that. Yeah, and it all seems objective, right? But he's always, like, commenting on, like, oh, the young guys that are playing, and he's commenting on their, like, their thighs, and their, like, shoulders are really broad. And I'm just like, this is quite gay, but, like, he does it in such, like, I'm just describing the body in its, like, pure male state, right?
00:32:53
Speaker
Right. ah and But, like, subtending all of that is all of this kind of, like, desire to be them, to be young again, to, like, have that kind of body, to... you know, there's like a woman that comes into the scene. I won't spoil anything, but like immediately he gets jealous when like younger men are in her presence. So like, they're like, yeah, the male body as something he's unwilling to really look at, even though that seems to be like one of the biggest like things that is confronting him.
00:33:21
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, I think um that's a those are great observations about ah Ned. And, you know, I thought it was really interesting to how he.
00:33:36
Speaker
you know, with the, without spoiler alert, um you know, this moment of ah conflict that happens later on in the book when a younger player sort of steps into this, creates sort of a triangle with this female member of the club. um And also, you know, who's he jealous of in that scene? Really? Yes. I thought that was interesting as well.
00:34:06
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, my brain went straight to Challengers, you know, the movie. um Yes. Like all through this, I'm just like, I don't know. There's like, like i there's something about the erotics of tennis, I guess, that like is really and like a charged way of thinking about desire and physicality. i don't Maybe because it's like often one-on-one, there's something about the kind of... you know And it's a constant, as you say, rally, there's a constant back and forth that is tension-ridden, right? it's like it's It's just there in the nature of the game. um Again, I don't know what I'm talking about. But you know when there's like team sports, to me, I'm like...
00:34:41
Speaker
This is thoroughly boring. It's a totally different dynamic. Absolutely. Yeah, and there's just like so many people running around. I'm are you all doing? This is, I'm bored. Whereas at least with tennis, you're kind of like, well, it's either you or you. there is Right.
00:34:54
Speaker
And and it's ah it's a competition, but there's also a kind of element of like in-syncness, right? um Or not in-syncness that is pure attention that has to be erotic at some level, right? Because there's something about like, does it keep going or does it like end? Right. There is something. Right.
00:35:11
Speaker
Yeah, there is like some kind of climax or some kind of like ongoingness to it. Yeah, it's a very interesting dynamic in terms of the players are separated by a net. It's one on one. if If you're playing singles, if it's doubles, you know, there's more people on the court. But, um you know, ah this sense of it's it's very personal.
00:35:32
Speaker
But the language is ah obviously the point. which is very physical. he I think artistic in some ways, but also can be violent yeah as well.
00:35:49
Speaker
And yeah, it's the the, the game is communicated through the rally, through the points. And yeah it is interesting in terms of, uh, the norms of how you're supposed to interact on the court.
00:36:03
Speaker
The communication is largely just calling the score out loud or arguing over line calls. Yeah. um That was fascinating to me.
00:36:14
Speaker
Yeah. So um and even in in practice, and I think it's interesting too, in terms of ah the male friendships that are forged or Forged superficially ah through the game of tennis in this book and what competition does, you know, competition quotes, because at the end of the day, it's it's just the game. There's really nothing at stake. But they these players create the stakes.
00:36:44
Speaker
They create the world, the this microcosm at this club through through gossip and and this sort of hierarchy of who's the best.
00:36:55
Speaker
Yeah. It's as much psychological as physical. Yeah. So this categorization in terms of you know where where you stand, not just on the court, but you know off the court.
00:37:10
Speaker
physically and all of that. so right Like, I mean, the feet stepping forward like daggers, the ball collapsing missile-like, right? like Like, we're in the world of war. Right. right From the get-go. so even though, you know, we don't know how deep into Tennessee is going to get at this point, it's it's it's an attack. And that sets up so much of the the drama that's to come.
Challenges in Writing the Novel
00:37:36
Speaker
I get the sense that this was like a fun book to write. Like, I want to ask you about your writing practice generally, like how you do that. But what was the experience of writing this once you got that voice, you know, after you did your first two tries?
00:37:48
Speaker
Yes. Like you must have had fun writing this. Oh, yeah. It was it was a blast. You know, most of it was fun. I would say that when I got closer to the end of the book, you know, the last...
00:38:05
Speaker
quarter of the book. I had a very different feeling while I was working on the text. It was more of a, it came to me like a fever dream where I wrote it quickly, but I felt very tormented. That was hard. I felt, yeah, tormented while I was working on that part. But Leading up to that, the dynamics of the team, the recruiting, the the shenanigans with his son, the the target runs there yeah with his son. i found a lot of joy and comedy in that while I was working on it, even though this is all leading to a darker place. Yeah.
00:38:45
Speaker
And yeah, i wrote a lot of this book actually at the club that I play tennis at. I wrote it at the upstairs bar but during closing hours, meaning or yeah in the morning. And I'd have a a grand view of all the courts while I was composing the text.
00:39:06
Speaker
And some of that was fleeing ah distractions at home yeah to write. And some of it I wrote by hand and then I would type into the computer later. Other times I would change location. that's something that helps me keep the momentum.
00:39:22
Speaker
if If I'm trying to write for a couple hours, sometimes writing in one place and then going somewhere else, getting that that breather and and and sitting down again helped me.
00:39:34
Speaker
But I wrote the first draft very quickly. took me about three months. When it was acquired and I worked with my editor editor, Emily Bell, I doubled the length of the book. So it was much, much shorter before. And and really, it was just a draft.
00:39:52
Speaker
So really added a lot in terms of flashbacks okay and such. Okay. you know the But the writing process was was still pretty similar in terms of you know writing some of the scenes by hand.
00:40:06
Speaker
I had a list of scenes that I wanted to add into the book. And i sort of went through them like a checklist and not everything was included in the in the new draft.
00:40:17
Speaker
Ultimately cut some of those scenes that I initially added. But that was what the writing process was like. Oftentimes, you know, getting back to this close reading coming full circle, I would chew on language.
00:40:32
Speaker
before I even started writing for the day. And I would pick up a book by Christine Scutt or an issue of Noon edited by Diane Williams.
00:40:44
Speaker
Or i would read Old Food by Ed Atkins. And I would just read the work aloud and just for a minute or two and just chew on language. And that really helped me as I sat down to compose.
00:40:58
Speaker
And get into that particular headspace. Yeah. so you you see you don't mind if you're typing or writing by hand then? and Do they give you different, like, are there different affordances to those things? Like, do they make you write differently or think differently?
00:41:10
Speaker
i think when I feel more in my head about it, when there's more self-doubt, sometimes slowing down and writing by hand helps me. Right. I can't be a self I can't be as critical because, again, i have really messy handwriting.
00:41:27
Speaker
So and I do when I have the patience for it, I do really like writing by hand because writing it by hand and then transferring it into Doc or a Word document, editing takes place. And I find that the end result is something that is hard to get when I write straight into the computer or type right into the computer. so yeah But when i want to get a greater sense of the narrative or how am I going to fit this puzzle piece in,
00:42:00
Speaker
It is important for me to be working off of the computer in in a Google or Word document. yeah I find that really important for that. But yeah, i vary i vary in terms of how I write.
00:42:14
Speaker
Oftentimes there's a buildup too in terms of, again, I had some false starts with this book, but i had been thinking about writing this book for a long time. i grew up playing tennis. I played competitively. I played college tennis.
00:42:29
Speaker
I played some semi-pro events and quickly learned that it's really tough out there. And I and i took some time off from the game. um And I would say I definitely have a complicated relationship with the sport.
00:42:44
Speaker
I think i I have forged a better relationship with the sport now. um i view it as exercise and play. i yeah I hit with my wife quite often now. She's learning how to play and i really enjoy that. And I have a a few friends that I really enjoy playing with. Okay. Even when things get a little competitive. Are you ripping your children into tennis? Have they started?
00:43:11
Speaker
So my youngest loves it and he wants to play all the time. But, um, and I feel badly because I, I should be responding to his requests. But we he they're both playing baseball right now. And they play soccer and not to sound like a a total jock. But my my oldest is taking piano lessons and he's quite the artist. OK, good. i Definitely believe in fostering those those interests as well. But yeah.
00:43:44
Speaker
But yeah, I maybe I'm a little too passive in my role as a, you know, a soccer dad or baseball dad. But yeah, just my thing is always, hey, are you having fun? Did you try your best? But are you having fun? And yeah.
00:44:04
Speaker
you know that's how I that's my attitude right now no I like that um my parents couldn't pressure me into sports even if they wanted and and also I think sometimes not even trying our best I think that's also fine too sometimes we just leave we just do what we do and that's good today but that's funny that that's amusing I mean you can't write this book if you don't know tennis in so I assumed you did know tennis to some degree but like ah Interesting to see that from the kind of inside out.
Ashton's Writing Inspirations
00:44:32
Speaker
When do you first remember thinking about being a writer? Were you were you writing as a kid? Were you imagining that as a thing you would do?
00:44:40
Speaker
i used to draw a lot as a kid. My father was a production designer and and film TV, but he also painted and made sculptures. So I was lucky enough to be in in an environment where that yeah Artistic Pursuits was encouraged and, you know, he bought bought me several notepads and gave me some some pencils that he would use. And so I love drawing portraits. and And from a young age, I was really into drawing, I guess, like mazes and things that, you know, one can interpret as being very psychological in nature. Yeah.
00:45:17
Speaker
So that piece was already brewing in me in terms of the the sort of ah text that I like to write. i I didn't write much. I wasn't much of reader.
00:45:28
Speaker
i do remember, though, we had a substitute teacher when I think I was in fourth or fifth grade and we had a creative writing exercise. And I remember how much I loved the feeling of being in this world that I was creating and just being in that zone.
00:45:47
Speaker
And i still remember that feeling, what it was like at the desk. and then And then the sense of warmth that I had when the substitute teacher, she was so kind, where she really took the time to read through what I had written.
00:46:01
Speaker
on the spot and she underlined things that she really liked. And and she even said this right here, this is ah this is a writer, you know what you're doing here This is so good. and and and And obviously, I remember those words. yeah But my focus really was tennis. In high school, I didn't i read a little bit of Herman Hesse and and you know outside reading on my own. But it wasn't really until I was in college when I had an athletic advisor, say Ashton,
00:46:35
Speaker
Take this creative writing class. It's an easy A. you're gonna And i first of all, I didn't get an A. i got a B. And secondly, I remember the instructor, a man, he said, Ashton, you're great with plot, but you really need to work on language.
00:46:56
Speaker
And I must have taken that to heart because that has become a preoccupation of mine. But yeah anyways, after that experience, I was transferring to a different school. I spent a summer abroad working for some family in France. I have family there, i'm part French. And in Shakespeare and Company was a few subway stops away.
00:47:20
Speaker
And I found myself there quite often. And then I discovered a informal writing group that met on Saturdays with all these expats. And although I didn't share any work at at any of those informal gatherings, I listened and I read a lot that summer, specifically writers that had crossed paths in Paris. Yeah. Spent some time there.
00:47:45
Speaker
And I had decided when I went back to school that fall at at UC San Diego that I was going to change my major to literature with an emphasis in creative writing.
00:47:58
Speaker
and I discarded the notion of becoming a ah lawyer. Wow. And, uh, I was initially studying political science to, to, to, you know, eventually achieve that and go to law school. But, um, you know I just fell in love with reading and, and, and writing. And, um, I had some wonderful faculty there and Sarah Bynum was one of my first instructors. I took, uh,
00:48:23
Speaker
I think ah two classes with Chris Krause. um I had Anna Joy Springer there who really encouraged experimental avant-garde work. One story I wrote kind of more as a conventional narrative. And then in the revisions, she encouraged me to look at William Burroughs' as cut-up method. And that's what I did. and And I won an award for that story at the college.
00:48:46
Speaker
But I also took a screenwriting class and I was encouraged to to pursue that. um I had an in to the TV film industry through a case of nepotism. And so I did that for a number of years. But ultimately, I came back to prose.
00:49:04
Speaker
My mother became very ill with cancer and You know, i found an escape writing short stories again before work at the in the parking structure of the studio lot. And I started submitting those. And eventually I sent a story to Diane Williams at noon.
00:49:25
Speaker
had been a fan of the journal. was fortunate enough to have her work on that story with me and ultimately she published that story and um i think that really marked a turning point and i decided i was going to go back to school to get my master's so i could teach writing while i pursued writing and and that's and here i am now I love this origin story. This is a great origin story. Sorry, I've gone on for quite a No, no, no. i but I, part of this podcast is to a show general listeners, like inside a writer's world, right? inside the text and be like, this is thought out. This is deliberate. You can do this too. But also writers are just like random humans, like everyone else. They're not these magical things that spring out of the ground, you know? Um,
00:50:12
Speaker
everyone has very Everyone has a very different direction and journey towards writing. So I love hearing the history. This is this is good to me.
Book Recommendations and Future Projects
00:50:20
Speaker
Can you give us any book recommendations? This is the thing I ask for everyone. they can be new things, old things, things you return to, anything you like. Absolutely. Last year,
00:50:31
Speaker
I would like to boast was my greatest year in reading 2025 since being a parent. I think I read about 20 books, which is a lot for me.
00:50:43
Speaker
And I was James Wood pilled in terms of the critic James Wood and reading a lot of the books that he recommended. But also a lot of, so I went through the archives of the New Yorker right and tracked a lot of those titles down. ah So many fantastic ones, but the one that really stood out was The Promise by Damon Galgood. I read that and I absolutely loved that book. yep I think it's so brilliant.
00:51:10
Speaker
The language is incredible. The narrative structure is incredible and just such a moving tale. So that's one I've been recommending. Mm-hmm.
00:51:23
Speaker
Other books, I read Tanya French's The Searcher. so that was my first Tanya French. I read that earlier this year, so 2026. And I really liked that one as well. It sort of scratched that itch for me of sort of a thriller noir, which I enjoy, but it felt much more literary yeah than something typically in that genre. And yeah i really loved the the slow sort of Western pacing. of the book building towards some action at the end and how Western Ireland was rendered.
00:52:02
Speaker
So I really enjoyed that as well. So those are two books that I would recommend. Right now I'm just reading a lot of surf surfer biographies gearing up for my next book, which is going to be a surf novel.
00:52:16
Speaker
Okay. Wow. You really are Southern California through and through, aren't you? This is just, yeah yeah. Yeah. The promise is amazing. The structure is he shifts these narrators and you get this real kind of kaleidoscope thing. Yeah. Really fascinating. And Tana French, I listened to an interview with her where she said, you know, she's so used to crime novels that they open with the dead body.
00:52:38
Speaker
Right. can't remember which one it is. I think it's like the witch elm that she says, like, I'm not going to give you the dead body until like 200 pages in. wow So she was like, how do I write the crime novel that isn't the crime novel everyone has read already? Yeah, I love that. i just I guess I just delay the murder, I delay the body. And I was like, so she is really thinking again, like, what can genre What can the form do? yeah, great recommendations. Love those.
00:53:02
Speaker
Thank you so much for your time. Ashton, it was really, really great to talk you about this book. Well, thanks so much, Chris, for having me. And it was really great to talk to you about this book. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you want some more episodes on interesting family dynamics and parents and children, go to episode 12 with Abigail Bergstrom or episode 28 with Seth Insure.
00:53:26
Speaker
Please subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or YouTube, share with people in all the places, tag me in any posts of episodes that you like. There's a feedback form, you can get more information by subscribing to Substack. This show was made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Hertfordshire.