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Episode 27: "I Hotel" by Karen Tei Yamashita, w/ special guest Josh Cook
139 Plays6 months ago
We’re joined today by Josh Cook. Josh is a bookseller and co-owner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has worked since 2004. He is the author of the critically acclaimed postmodern detective novel An Exaggerated Murder and most recently of The Art of Libromancy: Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century, published by our friends at Biblioasis.
We chat about his work as well as I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita, published by Coffee House Press. Some words get thrown around a bit too often and are frequently misapplied. However, I Hotel is absolutely a masterpiece. To give any kind of synopsis is to do the book (and you) a disservice, but in a somewhat quixotic attempt at that: this is a novel comprised of novellas, all set in the San Francisco of the late 60s and early 70s exploring the revolutionary movements (political, cultural, artistic, romantic, and everything that makes life a dazzling experience) of that time and place. It’s a wide-ranging conversation and one we hope you’ll find as exciting and engaging as we did.
Books/authors mentioned (another curriculum for you!):
all of Yamashita’s other works (Tropic of Cancer is next up for Tom, he thinks)
Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Never Did the Fire by Diamela Eltit, translated by Daniel Hahn
Three Trapped Tigers by G. Cabrera Infante, translated by Donald Gardner and Suzanne Jill Levine
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Underworld by Don DeLillo
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
If you’d like to read a bit more about/from Yamashita, here’s a LitHub article Josh wrote “Why Everyone Should Read the Great Karen Tei Yamashita” and another LitHub article on the “The Craft of Writing” by Yamashita herself.
To hear more from Josh follow him on Instagram (@joshthelibromancer) and Bluesky (@joshthelibromancer), and follow Porter Square Books on Instagram (@porter_square_books), Bluesky (@portersqbooks), and Threads (@porter_square_books).
Click here to subscribe to our Substack and find us on the socials: @lostinredonda just about everywhere.
Music: “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” by Traffic
Logo design: Flynn Kidz Designs
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, I'm Tom Flynn. And I'm Lori Feathers. And welcome to Lost in Redonda.
Recording Frequency and Schedules
00:00:18
Speaker
Hey Lori, how's it going today? Tom, it's good to see you. I'm doing really well. How are you? I am good. Yeah. It's a, we're spacing out the recordings a little bit of late. Uh, we both have very busy marches and this is now being recorded on April 1st. We'll go up sometime in May, but it's really strange not seeing you every, every single week and talking for an hour plus about books. So maybe we should just schedule a call to do that separate from the podcast. Yeah, so we don't miss each other. Although we did need some additional time to to read this big chunky book that we're going to be talking about today.
Introducing 'iHotel' and Guest Josh Cook
00:00:54
Speaker
Yes, ah today we are discussing iHotel by Karen Tay Yamashita out from Coffee House Press. ah And we're discussing this because our guest, Josh Cook, ah put it and put it out there as an option. And Lori and I had not done it and both knew that at some point we need to read this book. So no time like the present. And and here we are. and And here's Josh. Hey, Josh, how's it going? Good. I'm excited to to talk about this book and excited to see you all. I think it's been a little bit since I've been in person with with either or both of you. So this is nice. Yeah, this is good.
Josh Cook's Work and Themes
00:01:32
Speaker
um By way of introduction, Josh Cook is a bookseller and co-owner of Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Mass, ah where he has worked since 2004. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed postmodern detective novel An Exaggerated Murder from, I believe, Melville House.
00:01:48
Speaker
And most recently, The Art of Libromancy, selling books and reading books in the 21st century. um That one's out from our good friends at WASIS. So, yeah, Josh has taken off quite a few boxes, ah fiction fiction author, essayist, bookseller, and so on. I mean, frankly, so does Lori. I'm the one that just sort of like podcasts, like that's that's my box these days. i don't have any I don't have any books under my belt, nor do I know that probably never will, but I think um one of the superlatives that Josh deserves is a great person to recommend books and someone who has superb taste in books. Well, thank you very much. Now there's a ton of pressure on this on this episode. I've really got to do well today.
00:02:38
Speaker
Josh, before we get ah too far into our conversation of iHotel, and it's yeah it's going to take a little while for us to really have any kind of a meaningful conversation about this book. It's ah it's sprawling. It's fantastic. It's doing so many things. But before we do that, I was wondering if you wanted to like say anything, especially about um your most recent book, The Art of Libramancy. came out last year, but if I remember correctly, um and it made quite the splash ah within the bookselling and and but in publishing in general, with its arguments for bookstores, bookselling, ah the craft of bookselling and all that. So yeah, I mean, wonder if you want to say a couple things about that real quick. Yeah, so the art of Libramancy came out in August of 2023. And, you know, it it was born when, in kind of its most prenatal form, when Donald Trump was elected to be president. And I, like so many other people had to grapple with
00:03:42
Speaker
living in a world where that was possible and figuring out my role in that being a possibility. and you know i've I've been politically active before. I've done you know volunteering for campaigns. I've been to protests. Ultimately, where I found myself thinking about was my role as a bookseller and how the way booksellers and publishers elevates and legitimize certain ideas might have created the space for someone like Donald Trump to be elected president. I had like a 40 page plus Google Doc that was just a brain dump. So I didn't have an aneurysm, um you know, obsessing over all of these things. I just was kind of sitting around as like a
00:04:26
Speaker
kind of self-care isn't quite right, but like a brain defense for the world that we we're living in. And I eventually did a virtual event with our friends, Biblioasis for Jorge Carrion's collection of essays against Amazon, which started as a chapbook. um that they released on independent bookstore day. And I realized this could be what I do with this. This could be what I could, I could condense these 40 pages into something that is an actual chat book length essay. And then I could continue my investigation into bookselling with a series of of other essays that look at different aspects of it.
00:05:01
Speaker
And so i so that was in November. I took a ah little bit to pull that pitch together. um I can tell you the date on which I sent the pitch to Dan Wells at Biblioasis. It's a date that might resonate. It was ah January 6th of 2021, and he got back to me that day. um It was hours later that he said this is a project that we want to be involved in. Also, it's a very emotionally complicated day for me, I'll have to say. um and yeah And then from that, um I thought about how we genre books, I thought about how we hand sell. I thought about big ideas like Good Taste. I drew from other writers like Matthew Silesi's fantastic craft book book craft in the real world and how that could apply to book selling. And what I tried to do was put into book form a lot of the conversations that I was having with other booksellers on social media and in conferences, as well as kind of put the rigor of my own, put the kind of put that writing rigor into my own thoughts.
00:06:00
Speaker
ah So I could really know what I meant and say what I meant and and have a ah cogent, articulate, kind of full explanation for what I believe bookselling is responsible for and what I believe bookselling can do going forward. And the end result of all of that was the art of Liebermancy. I mean, it's a fascinating book. The essays are really well crafted. The topics you're addressing I think are incredibly pertinent and important for the larger conversation that needs to... I mean, it's interesting. The sort of almost praxis element of it ah ties in, I think, to iHotel in quite a way. Like, how how do you
00:06:41
Speaker
live in the world, in in a world that is so broken and against you and against things that you hold dear, like in some instances reading, um or even just active engagement with art um and what art means. So it's yeah, it kind it does make sense that iHotel would be a book that grabs you and the way it clearly grabbed you. especially from the the blurb ah that you have in the front of this edition. I'm going to use that as our segue into iHotel, and then i'll I'll let you explain a little bit about why you you went with this book. But um ah Josh's blurb is, iHotel is a brilliant, vibrantly written exploration of politics, identity, radicalism, and activism.
00:07:25
Speaker
Fusing and bending styles, Yamashita's prose sweeps the reader along with the same manifestos at midnight energy that drove the massive cultural changes of the 60s and 70s. Over the years since I first read it, iHotel has grown in importance to me as a reader, as a bookseller, as a writer, and as a citizen. It's an absolute masterpiece of 21st century American literature. Which, man, it's nice when they give us room to actually blur properly, right? When it's not just like a single sentence. or a bunch of ellipses, right? Like some words? Yeah. Well, I've been a supporter of iHotel since about 2010 when it was first published. And the the blurb you're reading from is the 10th anniversary edition. So the folks at Coffee House knew I was a champion of it and so reached out to me and a few other folks to do that as well. um
00:08:09
Speaker
It's a pretty cool group of guys to be. There's a Paul Yamazaki blurb as well. And anytime a bookseller has a bookseller, you're next to Paul's name, you're feeling pretty good about yourself. So very, very broadly, because this is a dense kaleidoscopic work. And so we're going to imagine that you just bumped into me at the bookstore, and I'm going to give you my 30 seconds or so intro into iHotel.
Overview of 'iHotel' and its Themes
00:08:33
Speaker
I Hotel is 10 novellas set one year piece from 1967 to 1968 to 1977 that uses a building in San Francisco called the International Hotel as a center of gravity to tell a story of activism and change in one of the most volatile periods in American history.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yamashita uses the community and the history there to um explore all the major social movements that were going, from the Black Panthers to the Pan-Asian to um the Indigenous movements that include the occupation of Alcatraz, while at the same time drilling down to really powerful stories of individuals losing their parents. making friends and losing friends, um making having lovers and losing lovers, while at the same time capturing the chaos of this era by telling it all in different styles. There are graphic novel portions to this. There's a ah written out film. There's experimental music. um It is one of those books that is everything. And I don't know if I've read a book
00:09:37
Speaker
that so directly, or novels, that so directly captures and inspires the ideas of social change. The messiness, the casualties, but also the anger for sure. I don't know if there's a ah better book that's angry about American politics and American fiction at least. in the last kind of 20 or 30 years, but also the hope, the inspiration, the camaraderie. um And so for our moment that feels so chaotic and has felt so chaotic for quite a while now, Yamachita gives us both, I think, a blueprint we can borrow from the past um that helps us think about that change and that chaos and hopefully improve and build a better blueprint for a better world going into the future.
00:10:27
Speaker
I think it's really interesting that this book is about social change and layered onto the social change and kind of precipitating the call for social change is the immigration story and the immigrant story. And she kind of layers those together. I think in such an interesting way and talking about the Asian community during this time in San Francisco while the Vietnam War is going on. And there's a comment somewhere in this 600 pages that says something like, we're just all clumped together by the
00:11:08
Speaker
by the the majority as Asians, and they don't really seem to recognize or even understand that you know back in our home countries, like we hate each other in some instances, country versus country. But here, the the comment is made, and it's a cute comment, and probably accurate. they think we all look alike and they can't tell us apart. So they just kind of like clump us together here. And I wondered, Josh, what you thought about kind of the way that she interweaves this. I felt like some of the the passages and in this book could are still so very relevant today about immigrants. This is happening in 68 through I guess, 77 or something like that. But
00:11:53
Speaker
it it It feels so real, especially that last novella. I thought all the things that they were saying just, it could be taken off of the newspaper pages today. Yeah, no, I looked at the back of the the of that kind of closing movement and and you could see with the the clash between the police and the protesters, you could see the the Black Lives Matter protests kind of of, you know, imposed on that or um any of the defund the police protests and probably some of the pro-Palestinian protests to To your point about immigration and and how this is an issue that keeps propping up, I think, and i see you see this expressed in a lot of different ways in our culture, there are currents for whom it is vital to their power or even vital to their personal identity to pretend that there is something different about immigrants who came from Europe in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s,
00:12:46
Speaker
or now, and immigrants who came from anywhere else. And that was true in 1968. It was true within the Chinese Exclusion Act um in the turn of the century. There are currents in our American politics that need needs to have some kind of i i idea of a pure American-ness in which they can hang their politics. And um unfortunately, that can be a very compelling story. I mean, as we have seen dramatic, I mean, as we know, Donald Trump launched his campaign with a virulently racist attack on Mexican Americans. And that can be a compelling story. And so I think that what Yamashita does and other, there are lots of other writers who do this well. Valera Luiselli does this um very well, I think. And there've been a couple of other books, but
00:13:41
Speaker
um There is no America without immigrants. It's just, it's just it's there isn't. What we think of now has been built by people who came here from other places or were brought here um against their will from other places. And and there's something about that, that under understanding that at a kind of systemic and cultural and cultural and emotional level that ask questions that those in power don't wanna ask. And that sometimes becomes subtext. That often becomes subtext. And it's just in these eras um in the kind of turn of the century, that era Yamashita was writing about in our kind of new rise in white nationalism era, um it goes from being subtext to text.
00:14:22
Speaker
on the immigration bit, what I also think is so remarkable in this novel is how much of what came before and how much of the previous generations' experiences and their experiences in the countries that ah they originated from, um thinking of Chen in particular, how much of that is not just narrated or or detailed, but how much of it is still present and playing out in the politics of the late 60s, early 70s.
Narrative Style and Writing
00:14:51
Speaker
how much of the Chinese revolution um really the fights and the po and the theory and the attempt to put theory into practice is still being worked on and worked out among this new generation, some of whom don't have any connection to their parents or their grandparents' um life in in those countries. And its it's not just China, it's Japan, it's the Philippines. and
00:15:19
Speaker
just to also say I got on the point of like this is a kaleidoscope. She really gives room and expands on so many different folks, so many different traditions and how how those intermingle and um and play out and find expression. In an email exchange we had before the pod, um Josh, and he also makes this in a a piece he wrote for Lit Hub about about um her work, but he makes the argument that America is not a melting pot, it's more like a mosaic. So what's what's really interesting about the idea of America as melting pot, and I think one of the reasons why Yamashita writes against it, um so as e but I think it's a central part of her work, is that
00:16:06
Speaker
you know, depending on who's doing the melting, um that could actually be assimilation and appropriation and erasure. And and when we all become kind of the same thing, you know who decides what that expression actually is. It's it's those with the most power. and And again, like that story of finding that pure American, that melting pot idea does allow for a kind of powerful homogeneity, despite the clear evidence that it's not homogeneity that makes America great. It is heterogeny. It is the fact that you know you can you can travel the you can travel half the world, like walking three miles in New York City.
00:16:47
Speaker
um Because, you know, everyone, when they immigrated, were with people who were like them. And so they set up Chinatown and and and the little Italy's and, you know, they're even like little Canada's um in like Lowell and Maine, where like state was like, and there is, you know, a story about You know isolation and contentiousness and conflict that comes from maintaining, you know strict cultural and identity borders um But I think there is a middle ground where we can see more unified pictures come when we celebrate the differences when we um Don't just want to make sure that like we don't want it but we when we don't want a situation whereas lawyers were referencing earlier Like everyone from Asia is considered Asian and we don't celebrate the different styles of music and culture and cooking that comes from very different places, um some of whom are thousands of miles away with different climates and and the things that come out from that. And um I think that's one of the reasons why Yamashita structured iHotel like this.
00:17:55
Speaker
ah with the 10 distinct novellas, with the different styles. um She wanted to um share all those individuals in the kind of traditional narrative, but she also wanted to show that that mosaic is a structural thing and can be a stylistic and structural choice. And so there wasn't a way for her to tell this story, I think, without being kaleidoscopic, without having distinct sections, and without being ah stylistically and prosaically and structurally diverse. And you have an advantage over over me, Josh, in having read more of Yamashita than than I have, being this being my first book. And I'm wondering um whether her other books that you've encountered
00:18:40
Speaker
also have this kind of wildly divergent style where you know you'll come across graphic novel and then you know kind of like a film script and then you know back to what we're most accustomed to in terms of a a narrative form in a novel and it's it's very back and forth that way. Yeah, I don't think you see it in a one particular book the way you see it in High Hotel, but across her body of work, you absolutely see it. So she has a book called Tropic of Orange, which has a very magical realism feel. um it It involves like luchador matches and um the Tropic of of of Cancer going through an orange tree and a gigantic,
00:19:31
Speaker
um traffic jam in Los Angeles. ah You also have something like Brazil Maru, which is more of a straightforward um historical fiction. You know, ah you you would very much recognize it, ah but kind of the undercurrent of that is ah is a, I think, at least um One of the great refutations of the idea of of the great man, you know the idea that there are these these singular leaders that make all the change happen. um you know Her work in nonfiction letters to memory uses archival um stuff as a very fascinating structure for how it understands the way we talk about history and how history is built through storytelling.
00:20:08
Speaker
um And then she also did a collection of short stories that features retellings of Jane Austen novels in the Sanse communities in California. um So in a way, you could read you know her oeuvre as two works, iHotel and then the other things that accumulate into their own kind of alternative iHotel, which is why I was very excited to see her win ah the the Lifetime Achievement Award because she deserved the hell out of it. um There's a line in, oh, I'm forgetting the precise title of this.
00:20:46
Speaker
So, you know, for those who have not yet read this or don't have a copy in front of them that they've been staring at on their shelves and working their way, working themselves up to, uh, to attempt it. Um, ah the, each, uh, chapter has, I mean, each novella has its own, uh, title, but each one is a play on, uh, I hotel as a. you know as identifier. um And it can be as simple as using like a homonym like ah the very first one is I hotel but e y e for I now just quickly trying to look up the one with 1971.
00:21:23
Speaker
ah i.e. hotel. I'm thinking specifically of the scene which is hysterical. I mean, this book has such, it is heartbreaking, um it is romantic, it is incredibly funny and in many,
Activism and Social Change in 'iHotel'
00:21:39
Speaker
many parts. But there is a scene between um Gerald, a saxophonist, and the acting president of San Francisco State University, S.I. Hayakala. This is after there were um demonstrations on campus that Hayakala authorized the police to go in on. They beat the hell out of the kids. and Gerald was at the protest ah and has now been picked up off the side of the road hitchhiking somewhat. And they start to figure out who each other are and how
00:22:11
Speaker
not great it is that they're both in this car at the same time. But as the conversation builds and builds and the turned goes from a conversation about jazz into an argument about what everyone's aims were there, um Gerald makes the comment, well, Hayakawa says, negotiate. What was there to negotiate? All you wanted was to destroy the college. um This is on page 258, 259. And um Gerald's response was, we were trying to build a third world college, build, not destroy. And I think that really, there there are moments like this throughout the novel where there's just a line that really kind of gets across a lot, especially a lot of what you were expressing there, Josh, with the idea of heterogeneity and interaction and building something new. And the constant the constancy of that building of something new is ultimately what what has driven a lot of
00:23:04
Speaker
a lot of the positives of this country. Not assimilating, but taking taking and learning and adjusting and constantly adjusting. And just because one part didn't make it in the adjustment doesn't mean it doesn't come into play later on. And it's just this constant reworking, reworking, reworking. And i ah that line jump when you were saying that, that line I remembered that line and it jumped out at me as, I mean, I don't think you can ever say there's necessarily like ah a thesis to a novel, this this sprawling and containing this many worlds, but in a way that one gets pretty close to that, I think, that idea of a ah that ah summation, a a a point to things. um
00:23:47
Speaker
but that's also incredibly reductive. like to say To say this novel has like one point is is absurd and pretty laughable, but I did just say it, sort of. I mean, that is, the in some ways, the fundamental idea of nearly all art. um And I would argue most of the best social justice movements, most of what makes social justice movements successful is the idea of building rather than destroying, um of looking forward rather than looking backward. um and of celebrating rather than denigrating. And it's such it's you know it's it's an odd, I don't know if this is a thing or not, but there is this very strange um kind of current or idea in American political thinking. um In some ways it fits with someone thinking about American literature is this idea that like the the left is no fun. It's all about telling you what not to do.
00:24:45
Speaker
um It's all about, you know, we all remember the, the, the Rush Limbaugh Nazis from, from the 80s, you know, it's all about telling you what not to do. Oh, you can't do this anymore. It's not PC or it's, or it's woke or whatever. um When at the same time, if you actually look what is what people are saying on the left, um they're talking about like feeding humans. They're talking about building um infrastructure. They're talking about um better places to live, ah better health through that. um It's always about building.
00:25:20
Speaker
um And yet somehow this idea is always about what we can do if we work together um if we kind of Set aside some other goals and embrace set aside some like very narrow goals around like profit and power and embrace other goals That we can do much more than we do now and yet this idea persists that um Leftist politics is about what you can't do And I think there's a, again, I don't know if there's a there here, but there's also this idea that big works of literature aren't fun. And if there's like one thing I could do to every like high school student that comes out of an American literature class is to be like, Moby Dick is fun.
00:26:03
Speaker
There are jokes in Moby Dick. For some reason, we get this idea that if it's like 600 pages and deals with with major social issues, that it's it's not it's no fun. It's not building joy. um Despite the fact that I can't think of a big, serious, challenging novel that doesn't have at least some currents of building joy. I mean Ulysses is hilarious. um There's lots of funny stuff in Duck's Noob Report too. You know one of the the climatic scene in Duck's Noob Report where the dude gets beamed with a lamp is hilarious. Like it is it is this weird idea where
00:26:40
Speaker
we We are conditioned to treat anything that is good for us as if it's a vegetable we don't like, um even though there are lots of delicious vegetables that we love eating and are good for us. um I don't know if I have a conclusion um to that idea, but I do think, I think you're right that build, not destroy is the closest we could probably get to a single thesis for this book. And that's a thesis that allows for a lot of other things beneath it as well. Yeah, I guess there's you know there's the whole theme and you get to it towards the back about you know tearing down the hotel and the concept of home and and what that really means and you the fact that people that don't have traditional homes are often disdained and looked down on. um
00:27:30
Speaker
The social issues are are real here, but what's amazing about this book I think is that, um and I'm probably just saying what you guys have already said, but in a slightly different way, there's just there's just so much heart to this book. I kind of wanted the first novella of of Paul and Edmund and Chen to kind of just and i would I would love to read a ah whole 500 page novel of just those guys you know and they're and their relationships and their curiosity about the world and about literature and art. It just a heartwarming, it's sad in some places, but um I don't know. i I didn't feel like reading this book was at all taking my medicine. you know it was
00:28:28
Speaker
It was fun and it really felt human to me, um which I think is a really remarkable thing that this author can do, you know making us face these really difficult issues and particularly during this very tumultuous time in the late 60s, early 70s when you know there were assassinations and the Vietnam War and protests and communism and nuclear disarmament treaties, but also kind of making the the characters in the book feel so feels so real and and lovable and and funny. Yeah, absolutely. I remember um so during during the pandemic when the stores were all closed, we um books did did readings on our yeah on a YouTube channel to like put literature out there and and hopefully break isolation. and I read
00:29:21
Speaker
a bunch of the first chapter of iHotel that took me like 50 takes because it was so emotionally hard to get through um with Paul and his father and and how he deals with it. um I'm pretty sure it's been a long time since i i've I've read it, so um you you all correct me. I believe there's also one very tragic death that happens offset off off screen and you come back to the aftermath and it and it still is as just as as painful as if you'd seen it um because of how Yamashita had built this character and made him a part of so many things um in the specific store in his specific storyline. um I think he actually shows up in a couple of the different novellas. But in your like heart, like you are this is someone you are rooting for.
00:30:10
Speaker
This is someone you want to see succeed. He's not perfect. um But this is someone who you know has his heart in the right place. And then suddenly that heart is just gone. um Because that's how things happen sometimes. um Especially back when you didn't have to wear a helmet while you were driving a motorcycle. ah Yeah, and and yeah, I think that we we want to we get this idea that like every big serious book ah Serious and air quotes is like just for literature professors who really want to know how smart they are despite
00:30:43
Speaker
you know when you actually give them the time, none of them being like that, or at least none of them that anyone still reads today. I don't know where to where we go with that. That's kind of one of the ah things I see um as a job of mine, as a bookseller, is is to help people give them the resources they can to kind of get over that fear um and introduce them to books like this that may look intimidating. and are intimidating, but are rewarding of every bit of effort you put into them.
00:31:15
Speaker
Well, it it certainly can't help that we give them labels like systems novel. I mean, that just sounds like, you know, an inoculation or something. Not anything that someone would, you know, sit at home comfortable on their couch and drink their tea and laugh and cry over, you know. um We don't do a very good job of making them inviting sometimes when these I think these academics get a hold of them and try to like you know classify different books in different ways that make it make them seem totally unappealing. Yeah, and and you know connected to that idea about how we tell different immigrant stories, how we tell the melting pot story.
Understanding Books and Power Dynamics
00:31:57
Speaker
There is a source of power in presenting yourself as the only one who can understand this work. Presenting yourself as the only one who can judge the value of books. um And then using your power and influence that comes from that to elevate the books that connect with you and teach everything else is garbage. um you know Not everything is a system of power. um But a lot of things are, and I think you you know there is a part of that in how we read, how we are taught how to read, and how we get these attitudes about these, I would say, buoyant, liberating books to think of them as the exact opposite of what they actually are. This is a topic, I mean, this is us doing a thing that we were talking about doing at the start of kind of digging in
00:32:47
Speaker
This book is not as well known as any of us think it should be. I mean, Laurie and I hadn't read it yet, but we both knew of it and we knew folks like Josh who held it up as, you know, one of the major, major works of the last, last while, but we also should know about it because that's, that's our profession in in many respects. Um, but outside of that, like it it is not. It is not randomly being read by book groups. it is not um and and Part of that' the size is certainly intimidating. I'm not saying that that's not the case. It can definitely turn people off. I think also to your point, Josh, of how people are are taught to read and and taught what reading is for as diversion, as entertainment, which this is, but it's not just that. This is the this is the kind of important work that challenges
00:33:41
Speaker
challenges you, challenges your idea of how things how how literature works, but also how the world works. And that's not what I think a lot of people or most of the reading public goes for um at this point. I'm not sure that if they that was ever the case, but certainly of late, it does not that doesn't seem to be the case. And if we're not if we're not getting a majority of readers on board, then getting outside of that particular bubble is gonna be almost impossible, I think.
00:34:14
Speaker
and just also say that that's also quite frustrating i mean that I have so I have a more than passing understanding of like a lot of what's being discussed, especially when it comes to Chen talking about ah the 1920s and the art scene in Paris and what was taking place in China. Like I don't I have nowhere near mastery, but I i've read some history. I have ah an awareness, but there are a lot of things I don't know in that. But I also have this, you know, pane of glass that contains the sum total of like human knowledge accumulated to date. that I could take a quick glance if I'm if I'm wondering, or I don't have to. and I can just listen to Chen's story and get a set and it's clearly communicated within the novel itself, within the narrative of where the fault lines were developing and how things were going. Like you don't you don't need all the other parts. But I don't know. I feel like folks feel like if they come across something that they don't have a hard understanding of, then it turns into homework.
00:35:17
Speaker
And it's like, it's just, that's just not, you don't have to read that way. You can just let it, you can let it flow. You can let it go. And then if you have a question, you look it up later, you ask a friend, but I don't know. This is also. Yeah, I'm half ranting at that point, so I'll let someone else step in. Yeah, so I think you're hitting on a couple of things I've been thinking about when thinking about why this is not more purchased and read, at least at the level that I think it should be. I think one we have to do acknowledge is that not every author has permission to be ambitious.
00:35:53
Speaker
in our our culture. And even though iHotel fits perfectly with um Gravity's Rainbow and its relationship to to war and um underworld and its relationship to kind of the systems that undergird American society or infinite jest with its relationship to with a sense of how entertainment and storytelling influences how we understand it is right in there with those big American postmodern novels. There is there it doesn't make sense to exclude it but
00:36:27
Speaker
we give permission for white guys named David and Don and Thomas and you know whatever to have that ambition. So there's a permission that I think readers are, they're they're ready to be challenged when confronted with a certain, this is better than it used to be for sure, as we know, because we were able to help ah Duck's New Report to a significant level of success. And there are other books like that that we're starting to see more of. Um, Ms. McIntosh, my darling is now back in, back available. it Um, so now we're kind of being, so we're being able to complete that picture of big post-war American novels, but that perception, I think still, still exists, you know, and, you know, unfortunately we still read a lot with our assumptions. And so we see the name Carrente Yamashita and we want
00:37:15
Speaker
maybe a Lisa C novel. Not there's anything wrong with Lisa C novels at all, but where we want an Amy Tan novel. Again, nothing wrong with those novels, but that's not Yamashita's project. And so there is that kind of one big structural barrier that Yamashita and any writer who's not a white guy um faces up against in general, and especially when they are writing in a particular kind of mode that has been Um kind of cordoned off so dramatically as the big post-modern novel But I think you hit on another thing which is in school. We tend to be caught to read for the a You know, we are reading to pass the test and when we don't
00:37:58
Speaker
When we fail the test, it sucks. We feel bad. We feel like we're stupid. like We feel like we're not good enough. And that reading for the test, I think, follows us. um And so I think that's one of the big reasons why once they're out of formal education, so many people abandon challenging reading completely because they don't want to make be made to feel like they failed. And so when they approach a book like iHotel, it looks like a really easy book to fail. And honestly, if you are reading for the test, it is a really easy book to fail. ah There is a lot to keep track of. There is a lot to understand. And the thing is, you're not going to understand it in ah a single reading.
00:38:41
Speaker
And unless you're your Mashita herself, you're not going to know all the references or all the history or all the research. so But once you can let go of reading for the A, once you can be comfortable not getting it, um once you can enjoy a reference without knowing exactly where it goes, and enjoy, like you said, Chen's story, enjoy the kind of weird comics that are in here for what they are and not necessarily have to worry about like the history of colonization by Chiquita Banana. like a lot of literature opens up for you. and that kind of The sad irony is once you kind of let go of that need to know, it becomes a lot easier to learn because you're motivated to learn. You're motivated to look it up and and and those things stick with you more. and so you know i think people approach I think people are scared of iHotel because they don't want to fail.
00:39:30
Speaker
And and they just realize there's no failing. I think they're also scared of it because great works of literature change you and they demand and on some level that you change in response to them. And a book like this that is wearing that is so clearly political, but also um driven by art. Like it is so many things that, frankly, if you are if you are engaging with it, you as a person, as a thinking person, will have questions about what is it saying and how am I living. And that is going to so like it's going to so is's going to scare them because of failing the test. It's also going to scare them because it might ask them to be slightly different at the end of the experience. And that's That's not something that a lot of our um but of our art and a lot of our media necessarily does anymore, or at least not how it's how it's sold en masse any longer. um And I think that's yeah that could be part of it too.
00:40:31
Speaker
I think ah at the expense or the the the the risk of being ah too theoretical here, ah we just I think have become a people that that are are our idea of comprehension um as it relates to art is just it just really skewed. you know I talk to people a lot at the store and they'll come in and I'll ask you know they'll ask them, you know well what did you think of what did you think of that book? And people get so frustrated by ambiguity.
00:41:12
Speaker
and by nuance. And I guess maybe to your point, Josh, it's it's because maybe they feel like it's a failure with them, that there there is there is an answer, but they just didn't get it. And so it's very frustrating. But then you look at what's going on with our whole society and we have a problem our political discussions, I think, exemplify this. People have a hard time thinking two things can be right at the same time or two things. you know It's like these these two different conflicting ideas or not having things like really spelled out very clearly. and um I'm not trying to be demeaning to anyone, but we've somehow, along the way,
00:42:00
Speaker
lost our ability to be comfortable with with the uncertainty and in a text, I think. Yeah. it It requires not just an open mind, but it requires bravery. like It requires a willingness to say, I don't know. um might I'm not sure what happened here. I'm not sure what this means, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. um And those are and are hyper-optimized, this is how you should wake up in the morning and these are the this is when you should have your coffee and these are these supplements and eat within this window. like with you know we We have swung so hard into the the body as a machine, the mind as a machine that we're a little afraid.
00:42:42
Speaker
to to lean into the heart part. And I think it's important to remember that the idea that there is always a single correct answer is also a very convenient idea for a certain ah currents of power. I mean, that is in some ways um not just the American conservative or right wing, but like the the very general conservative right wing. That is the appeal. There is an answer and we have it. And so and so to tim to maintain that, ah you have to cultivate and support and allow for that discomfort with ambiguity that but Laurie talked with that laie mentioned. Because if people are comfortable with ambiguity, there's nothing that the right or fascist or white supremacists can offer. and Nothing. There's not a thing they can do to someone who is perfectly comfortable not knowing.
00:43:33
Speaker
perfectly comfortable understanding there are different approaches, different solutions to the same problem. The different problems will come from the same solution. um And so there is, I think there is effort to maintain that. And and we see that in um We maybe have never seen it as directly as we do now in in Fox News, um but it's been there at all conservative spaces in various different ways, making sure that as many people are afraid to be wrong or afraid or even just afraid to not know as possible so they can be there to so give them the answer.
Complexity and Richness of 'iHotel'
00:44:09
Speaker
So when we talked about how we were going to talk about this this conversation, conversation um we decided ah that trying to actually like, you know, Josh gave a really great high level overview at the start, um but trying to dig into like each section of this novel, we would be here for at least six more hours, probably more like, I don't know, 20. There's just, there's just too much to do. However, I was curious if, uh, either of you had a section that, that you especially, like that especially jumps out at you, that you especially enjoyed. And while you're thinking about that, I'll kind of cheat and say that I kinda, I mean, kind of have, kind of have to, I really, really love the opening novella. Um, I also think it's a very.
00:45:00
Speaker
clever move on her part to it's probably the most straightforward in terms of structure and style of all of them. So if you're going to stealth mode, get someone hooked into it and get them deep enough that when the the script shows up and all that, they kind of feel like they have to keep going. That's that's how you do it. um But also Just the interaction among Paul and Edmund and Chen is just remarkable. It's so fully developed. It's so kind and generous. And it's just really, really lovely. I also really enjoyed Ben and Olivia. Ben is half Filipino. Olivia is, if I remember correctly, Chinese. They have a kid together. They named Malcolm after Malcolm X.
00:45:54
Speaker
And if there isn't another argument or a point in this novel about making making an argument towards building and coming together, I don't it know. i that That's another one. That's a really good one. But also just stylistically, um a lot of that section is done almost aphoristically and not aphoristically wrong, but just in short bursts, um almost mimicking the Analect style that shows up in in the first not um first novella. And that really works for the the fire of their relationship, the fire of their politics, the drama of the life they're leading, that it does have that it is expressed structurally, stylistically in that manner. It just works so well. so those Those would be the two that in particular pop out to me.
00:46:42
Speaker
Yeah, and it it is. She definitely, I think Yamashita definitely wrote with an understanding of this is a difficult novel because you're right. I think the the opening novella is such a is so approachable. It's recognizable. um in ways that maybe other parts of it are. um She also uses the the open so the open cubes. ah It's these shapes, if you have it, it's these shapes that kind of give something of a sense of the dynamics of the themes and what's going on um in the chapter. And I think her chat her section titles within each level are also very um elucidated. they're They're helpful in understanding where you are and where you're going.
00:47:21
Speaker
In terms of a passage that stands out um for me, I don't remember which section it is in, but there is a section in which in for right ah one or two times, she narrates like committee meetings. And if you've been in a committee meeting, you probably are thinking to yourself, why would anyone ever try to write out what I just went through? ah Committee meetings are boring. um They're supposed to be in some ways, but they are somehow. and they But they're up a huge part of organizing and social change. like There's a lot of boring stuff to changing the world. And Yamashita did them in such a way that it didn't feel like she was sensationalizing them.
00:48:06
Speaker
or like turning them into something they weren't. They were just really prosaically, narratively, perfectly executed. It was like the difficulty, the like the the most difficult thing you could write is probably a committee meeting. And she nailed it a couple of times. and There ended up being fallout from these meetings that kind of rippled throughout the rest of that novella and and I think stretched out because there are some relationships that were sundered. um There are also some relationships that were formed. I'm trying to remember if anything in the text goes into COINTELPRO, the kind of CIA infiltrating um leftist organizations and planting moles to actually whose job it was to disrupt these meetings. I can't remember if that's in the book, but I think I Spy Hotel um might have a bit of that in there, but this novel is so sprawling that like trying and it's a needle in a haystack trying to find some of this. So when you all read it, because all of the listeners I'm sure are going to, just know when you get to a committee meeting, Josh says it's going to be good. Don't be afraid of the committee meetings. Embrace the committee meetings. Yamasha does a genius. She'll make you do it.
00:49:16
Speaker
I'm going to, I'm going to clip that Josh and send it to all your coworkers. So the next time there's a store meeting, they can blame you for your love of the, of the meeting. Yeah. Lori, do you have a, do you have one you want to highlight real quick? Yeah, I guess I'll just repeat what I said previously. I love the first novella and probably the last novella, the the the met the best, the most. um And I feel a little guilty because um I think both of those are really just traditional narrative. I mean, I think in the first one, there's some song lyrics and some other things. And I don't want to take away from how amazing I think, like all of the
00:49:58
Speaker
the the drawings are and all of the really cool things that she does in the vast middle of the book, which is so, so interesting and wonderful. But I think in in particular, there's just so much of, I mean, I just had to pause reading that last novella because It's like, you know, dang has, has nothing changed, you know, that takes place in 1977, a long time ago. And just their sadness, the hotel gets, you know, bulldozed and um there's a pretty
00:50:37
Speaker
violent thing that happens, but it's also full of you know like the fact a lot of resilience. um There's a great food scene in that last novella too. I just i just thought that she really just nailed the way she bookended this big book. um with with two really great great novellas that that just seemed, they're just very satisfying in and of themselves. But when you combine them together with the greater whole, I think it's really pretty amazing.
00:51:12
Speaker
um I just wanted to quickly read the last paragraph in the first novella because I think it gives such a, I mean, we've been talking about how brilliant this is and we mentioned what good writing it is, but it is exquisite prose. um Light flashes a sudden blast, illuminating the falling house, but the thunder that follows is the thunder of its crashing. Grown in slippage of parting concrete, shattering glass, cross beams of weighted timber, caving in on three tiered floors of gracious elegance. Living room falling into library, falling into studio, falling. And just and it's heartbreaking, but
00:51:51
Speaker
I don't know how you get to that point and not decide that you need to read everything else that's to come, even if it's going to take you the rest of the year, you know, but so, Josh, usually we kind of wrap things up with some books that resonate with
Comparing 'iHotel' to Postmodern Novels
00:52:07
Speaker
this one. You've already mentioned you've already kind of situated a bit with Gravity's Rainbow and Underworld and the like. I'm wondering if you have a couple, any others that you want to throw in there. I have like kind of, I think, one, maybe two But yeah, do you have ah do give have another one you want you want to throw on that like if you liked iHotel or if something about it spoke to you, what's us what's another novel that yeah someone could jump into?
00:52:31
Speaker
Yeah, so um ah like a kind of the flip side, the kind of yin to this yang. um There's a ah novel from Charco called Never Did the Fire by Diamela Eltit, E-L-T-I-T. And um that is a very claustrophobic, it's a short novel and it's very claustrophobic. And what you are seeing in it is ah is ah is a man and a woman in the fallout of a failed revolution. And um it's a very it's it's mostly in one room. It's almost entirely ah two people. But it in some ways, it is the other side of iHotel. It is when anger has given way to exhaustion, when um hope has given way to dismay,
00:53:22
Speaker
when you know revolution has given way to resignation. And there are tough aspects to it um because it is a very sad book. But you know we do have to grapple with the fact that we can fail. We can fail in big ways and small ways. And I think the way this book articulates it is you can kind of approach those emotions and learn about those emotions and that intellectual experience without having to necessarily go through it um yourself. And you can kind of gain something through that. I mentioned Valeria Luiselli, another much shorter book that I think fits in with kind of the spirit of iHotel as her essay, um Tell Me How It Ends, which uses the um asylum application questionnaire um to explore how our American legal system decides which people are worthy of um of being here and of being here safely.
00:54:18
Speaker
um For a couple of years, she worked as a translator, specifically for children seeking asylum um in New York City. So these questions had us particular residents because she didn't just have to translate the words, she had to make them understandable for five-year-olds and eight-year-olds and six-year-olds. And I think that the reason why that resonates with iHotel is, A, it asks some big human questions the way iHotel does, but it also uses this brings in this other resource.
00:54:49
Speaker
um this other kind of existing document that Luiselli uses to kind of pull apart and rearrange. And it took this like major bureaucratic, this like very powerful bureaucratic item and made it a work of literature as well. And so the nice thing about both of those is you could probably read them before you've gotten a quarter of the way through iHotel. They're both very short. They're a bit faster. And I think speak to different currents through iHotel in different and really fascinating ways. That's great. And that's a Charco title I haven't checked out yet. So that's also very exciting to have something to look forward to on that run. Laurie, do you have one or two you want to throw out there?
00:55:36
Speaker
I have one, and I struggled. I had thought about this quite a bit this afternoon, because I knew you were going to ask it of us, and the one that just keeps coming back, even though I'm trying to push it ah push it away, I guess a little bit, because um'm I'm doubting myself a bit, but I think Zadie Smith's white teeth is what kind of comes for me. um you know it doesn't That book does not take place in in the US. s It takes place in England, in London. But just the whole immigrant experience, how the immigrants in white teeth, you know they have their very own tight-knit community, the way that the evocation of the sights and the smells and what it means to kind of
00:56:31
Speaker
live in a place that's that's not your own, but trying to somehow fit in and yet maintain your own distinction and identity as as someone that's that's not necessarily assimilated or wanting to be assimilated. but all of those social problems and political and economic problems that that are related to that as well. that That's just the novel that I thought of, and and I love that novel. so I'm not hesitant to recommend it because I don't love it. it's just In some ways, it's a much more traditional type of narrative. Stylistically, it's really hard for me to come ah come up with something that kind of is as crazy and wonderful as I hotel.
00:57:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's a tall order to try and find one. That's like I could tell. I had two, what I mentioned but and very early on in the podcast, actually, I think, um Three Trapped Tigers by Cabrera Infante. That is a novel that paints a picture of 1959, I think, um Havana. um And it's this sprawling novel of voices, just so many threads and types of ah folks running through that. And I think kind of works a little bit
00:57:58
Speaker
It's not really is not by any means doing the same things as I hotel is but that sort of cacophonous element to it I think really, really kind of puts them in. in it in a similar family tree. The other one, and it actually got me thinking because of the the blurbs, we already mentioned the front, but specifically um Paul Yamazaki um mentioned ah Savage Detectives as one of his comps. And I mean, it's Paul, so of course he's right. um that that was As I'm reading it, I'm like, well, this is, there's so many elements of the artist's journey and like,
00:58:35
Speaker
finding your way through social and political tumult that is that is so remarkable and like elucidating in its own way. um It was just... Yeah, yeah, that I read that, like, OK, maybe. And as I'm halfway through, I'm like, fine. All right, Paul, it's fine. You're you're better. It's cool. I get it. um But ah yeah, I think those two I just one. What is my contribution? One is me, um I guess, reaffirming. Paul Gampazaki's selection.
00:59:06
Speaker
This is such a such a wild and wonderful book. It's really an accomplishment. I'm so glad that Coffee House is like just put out a 10th anniversary edition is doing everything they can to make sure people pay attention and know about it. And I'm very glad, Josh, that ah you made us read it because I don't know how much longer it would have sat in my shelf before before I forced my way into it. But I really appreciate that. I've got plenty of those on my shelf too. Don't, don't, don't feel too bad about that. yeah we We, we, we all do. And we all go into, we all go on vacations and and make sure we find ah a used bookstore or a, or a good indie nearby to go scope while we're supposed to be away. Nice little bus mens holiday sort of situation. We're all, we've all got that going on, but, um,
00:59:53
Speaker
To say something in favor of the approachability of iHotel, I believe, and I hope I'm not miss-speaking, but that this was a selection of the California Book Club, I think in 2022.
Encouragement to Read 'iHotel'
01:00:08
Speaker
Perhaps ah perhaps one after Karen won the award, but I think that they read it. and that's That's a pretty big group of people just out there wanting to read good literature. so Yeah, pick it up. You won't regret it. And Josh, where can, uh, where can folks, uh, find you online, you know, in your store and any of that good stuff? Uh, yeah. So you can find me personally on blue sky, um, and Instagram, both at, at Josh, the Libromancer. Um, and I do a lot of the portals for book, social media. So if you hit us on blue sky threads or Instagram, uh, odds are pretty good. You're going to be talking to me as well, but you might be talking to someone else and that's cool because they'll be cool too. Um,
01:00:51
Speaker
So I think we're going to wrap things there. We hope you all dig into this as soon as possible. It will be on the shelves of all all good indies. um And if it doesn't happen to be on the shelf of your local indie, ah they can totally place that order and it'll be to you quickly. um So with that, ah thanks again, Josh, for coming on and hanging out with us. um Thank you, Laurie. And we will talk to everyone again very soon. See you later. Thank you very much. you