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Episode 360: Elizabeth Gonzalez James
974 Plays2 years ago
Elizabeth Gonzalez James is a novelist and essayist whose chapbook Five Conversations About Peter Sellers (Texas Review Press) puts the creative in creative nonfiction.
Social: @CNFPod
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Show Notes: Brendanomeara.com
Substack: rageagainstthealgorithm.substack.com
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Transcript
Promo Code & Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay, before we get started, just want to give that classic shout out to Athletic Brewing, my favorite non-alcoholic beer out there. Not a paid plug, but I am a brand ambassador, and I want to celebrate this amazing product. So if you go to athleticbrewing.com, use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout. You get a nice little discount on your first order.
00:00:21
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I don't get any money, and they're not an official sponsor of the podcast. I just get some points towards swag and beer, but primarily beer, I just get some points. It's like skeeball, right? And I get those tickets, and then I take those tickets and I go buy beer. Give it a shot. My favorite these days is Athletic Light or Free Wave. Free Wave is the hazy IPA. My personal favorite right now, go check it out, okay? Okay, good, good, good, good, good, good.
00:00:50
Speaker
Yeah, have you heard of this amazing substance? It's called alcohol.
00:00:59
Speaker
Oh hey seeing efforts it's cnfpod the creative non-fiction podcast the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories I'm Brendan O'Mara how's it going I'm getting over the flu but I still have no taste and no smell which is really really trippy it's never happened to me before and food has no meaning who do we have today it appears it's Elizabeth Gonzalez James is that right Hank
00:01:28
Speaker
She's the author of the novels Mona Etsy and the forthcoming The Bullet Swallower, but she's here to talk about her essay, which puts the creative and creative nonfiction, by the way, five conversations about Peter Sellers, The Pink Panther, Texas Review Press, published this sucka. It's a chat book. This essay is a trick, man.
00:01:51
Speaker
five conversations Elizabeth is having with herself about the complicated actor-comedian impressionist Peter Sellers. So we talk about why she became obsessed with
Fascination with Peter Sellers
00:02:04
Speaker
an oddball actor from the 60s, what she learned from being a vocalist and how that helped develop her writing voice, self-doubt, ass and chair, and alcohol. Sweet, sweet alcohol. Make sure you're heading over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to sign up for the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter. As you know, it goes up to 11.
00:02:26
Speaker
It's now on Substack, so just click the lightning bolt on my website or visit RageAgainstTheAlgorithm.Substack.com to sign up. Still, first in the month. Still, no spam. Still can't beat it.
00:02:43
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If you take the show, consider heading over to whatever social network that you prefer and share it so we can help grow the pie and get the CNFing thing into the brains of CNFers who need the juice. And don't we all need the juice from time to time?
00:03:00
Speaker
You can also leave a kind review on Apple Podcast so the wayward CNF-er might see it and say shit. I have no idea who the fuck Brendan O'Mear is, but CNF, I'll give it a shot.
Listener's Experience & Newsletter Promotion
00:03:12
Speaker
Check this out from Ticahoe. Ticahoe.
00:03:17
Speaker
357 of these? No, 360. Wow! This year, I'm doing a self-titled writing project. Button chair. I've committed at least one hour a day to planting myself in front of the computer to pick up a writing thread I set down when I had my kids. As such, I'm looking for good material to inform and inspire my pursuits, and a random search led me to CNF.
00:03:45
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I've listened to about four or five of them so far as I ride my stationary bike every morning. And each one is generated a long list of quotes, leads, authors, and juicy ideas that I record in my BIC sessions. BIC being butt in chair. So good!
00:04:02
Speaker
And there are 357 of these in the library, 360 now. Can't wait to keep listening. Thank you, Brendan. And to that I say, thank you. That's amazing. And if you leave a review of Similar Nature, even if it's negative, I mean, come on, let's not be mean-spirited, but I'll read it right here on the show. On the show. Show, show.
00:04:28
Speaker
Okay, let's get after it. We've got the wonderful Elizabeth Gonzalez James. I think you're gonna love it. Let's do this.
Transition from Singing to Writing
00:04:41
Speaker
You were growing up in Texas. What were you drawn to? Were you always kind of an artistic person? Someone drawn to books and writing?
00:04:58
Speaker
I was an avid reader always because my mom is a really avid reader and so she kind of brought me up to love books and to really fall into stories. But no, I didn't write at all in high school other than like papers and stuff, but I was really, really active in the choir. I found out that I have a good singing voice when I was in sixth grade.
00:05:22
Speaker
And I did that from sixth through 12th grade. Like singing was my whole life. I competed in it. It was all I dreamed about. And then when it was time to go to college, I chickened out and I didn't major in voice. I was like, oh, you know, I'm not good enough to get into a program or, you know, whatever. And so I just didn't do it. And then I kind of floundered for about 10 years until I found writing, which was another thing that I ended up being really passionate about.
00:05:51
Speaker
But yeah, no, I was I was a singer. That was like my whole identity. Wow. So do you have any especially in and around the time regrets about not pursuing it? I go back and forth. Sometimes I do regret it because it would have been obviously an amazing opportunity to be able to study voice.
00:06:11
Speaker
at a college level. And then, you know, there's the what if, who knows, you know, what could have happened, what could have been. But no, I'm, I'm very happy with my life now, I'm really happy to be writing and to get to do this. And there's a lot of disappointment in any artistic endeavor, you know, there's a lot of disappointment in writing too. But I, I think, you know, most likely, would I have ended up on Broadway? No way, I would have, you know, been, I would have been bitterly disappointed in my early 20s. And
00:06:41
Speaker
maybe it was healthier for me to just never try at all and then kind of get those bitter disappointments later in life when I was better able to handle them. In what ways have you noticed the similarity in terms of the discipline of being a vocalist versus a writer?
00:07:18
Speaker
there's so many overlaps. So I think I have a really good ear for rhythm. And I think that when I write, I have a really strong voice. As a writer, I've been told that over and over. And I think that that happens somehow in the ear, and I know it's connected to music. When I'm writing a sentence, I just can tell if it works, if it sounds right. And I literally mean in the ear. I don't even mean like,
00:07:25
Speaker
I see a lot
00:07:44
Speaker
like it the words on the page have a nice rhythm. It's just something about like the something about the music of it. I can tell if a paragraph is going da da da da da da da da da da da and then I'm like okay now it's done and I can't really explain it any clearer than that but I know that it feeds into my writing absolutely.
00:08:06
Speaker
Well voice in writing is pretty elusive for a lot of people and it can take a long time to develop that voice by cherry picking various influences and then the Frankenstein's monster that rises off of the table given the electric shock is the voice that we come to and it can come
00:08:30
Speaker
Quickly to some and some it takes a long time so for you. What was the the journey of finding your written voice?
00:08:37
Speaker
I think for me, voice is also tied a lot into authority. If you sit down to write and you tell yourself, I am the authority of this story or this essay or whatever, nobody can tell this the way that I can. I think that that's a huge first step. And then in terms of coming to my voice, my first book is a novel
00:09:03
Speaker
called Mona Etsi, and my character is a bitter millennial who loses her first job out of college during the Great Recession. And that angry, bitter voice came frighteningly easy to me because I also experienced long-term unemployment during the Great Recession.
00:09:23
Speaker
And so it was very easy for me to just sit down and like write this really angry screed about Wall Street and about how my generation got screwed and etc. And so I yeah I can't say that voice was something that I consciously
00:09:40
Speaker
like sat there and thought about it just is what came out. And then over time, I think you learn to trust your intuition and then you learn to believe in your own authority over whatever it is you're writing about. And then that's where I think the really strong clear resonant voice comes from.
Literary Influences
00:10:01
Speaker
Who might you be able to point to as influences, be it for fiction or nonfiction, that you like to model yourself after or just writers that really inspired you to try to not mimic them, but you're like, I want to do what they're doing. I love George Saunders and Kurt Vonnegut. I grew up reading Kurt Vonnegut. I read Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions in high school.
00:10:28
Speaker
and then I came to George Saunders later in life. And both of them are incredibly empathetic writers, in my opinion, and they're both uniquely American writers. I cannot, the way that they write, the stories they tell, and the particular people they choose to tell stories about, it's hard for me to envision those stories taking place anywhere other than America, even if it's a completely nutty,
00:10:57
Speaker
you know, futuristic America that they're describing. There's something like really kind of terrifyingly familiar about it, like a funhouse mirror version of reality. So yeah, both of them, Ray Bradbury was also a huge influence growing up. I read a ton of Ray Bradbury starting at a very young age. And I used to watch Ray Bradbury theater, which was a really nutty show that was on TV in the 80s.
00:11:24
Speaker
So I would say the three of them had a huge impact on me. And Ray Bradbury, again, is also so steeped in Americana, even if he's speaking about a haunted carnival or colonies on Mars. He's reaching back to this kind of Midwestern, I don't know, Norman Rockwell place.
00:11:48
Speaker
And given your history as a singer and now contemporaneously as a writer, there is sometimes a level of self-consciousness that can sometimes get in the way, I imagine. And I suspect, did you ever run into that degree of self-awareness and self-consciousness, be it for your singing voice or your writing voice, that sometimes hampers you as you want to get where you want to go?
00:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I struggled forever with finding the confidence to write. I mean, all artistic endeavors kind of
00:12:27
Speaker
require a certain level of delusion, right? Who's going to want to read this book? Who am I to think that I can do this? And then you just have to find a way to live with that voice or shut it up or whatever you need to do. But yeah, it does require some amount of unearned confidence and complete delusion in your own abilities.
00:12:54
Speaker
Um, everybody's got to sit down and kind of think like this is going to be a number one bestseller. I'm going to get a million dollar advance. Um, Hollywood's going to come knocking on my door, you know, like, I don't know, at least that's how I kind of have to get into it. And then you, you get into the process and you learn more about it and you're like, okay, at the end of the day, I just want to tell a good story and then, you know, and then go on to the next one.
00:13:20
Speaker
And that's satisfaction enough. But yeah, at the beginning, I think you do have to completely lie to yourself and like, this is the greatest book that's ever been written. Right. Yeah, it's in a sense that that's a great way to get you past your inhibitions and to motivate you early on. And of course, that is something of a
00:13:40
Speaker
an externality that you can't bank on because if you do you'll burn out and just
Writing Challenges & Perseverance
00:13:49
Speaker
get really bitter and resentful. So in a sense how have you cultivated a relationship with merely the process and the practice of writing and learning to love that because ultimately that's what you have control over.
00:14:05
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And when I speak to aspiring writers, I just came back from a conference in San Francisco, and I'm getting ready to go to another one in Seattle. And so I talk to people who are in the process of writing their first thing, or they're maybe even just thinking of getting started in writing. And I always tell people, exactly like you said, you cannot control
00:14:33
Speaker
what happens after you finish writing whatever it is you're writing.
00:14:37
Speaker
You can't control if it gets sold. If it does get published, you can't control if people buy it, if they read it, if they like it. I'll even go so far as to say, I've published now one novel and I have a chat book coming out. By and large, most people do not care that you wrote a book. It's very exciting for you and your friends, if they're good friends, will be really excited for you, but the world does not care. And that's fine.
00:15:07
Speaker
because I think that when we derive the most satisfaction out of our work, it's when we're doing it to please ourselves, not because we're trying to chase some kind of external reward or immortality or whatever. That's, you're just going to end up
00:15:25
Speaker
getting frustrated and bitter if that's what you need. And so for me, the motivation is always chasing excitement, chasing that shiny new idea. I get so excited about working on new projects. I get so excited about doing the research and thinking of planting my feet in a whole new world. And that's what I do it for. It's just that bright, shiny new thing that I'm always trying to run after.
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, that part, especially that honeymoon period when you have the shiny new object, is very invigorating and animating. And it can also be a double-edged sword in a sense, because once you get to the messy middle of something, the shiny new object over there looks really enticing. So how have you been able to either navigate the project at hand with a new shiny object?
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah, it is hard. And I don't write super quickly. So my first novel took me five years. My second novel took me seven years. The chapbook, actually, it's it's short, and it didn't take very long. But it still took, I don't know, six months or something to write.
00:16:38
Speaker
And that's a long time to be sitting in one world with one set of characters, one idea. And it is hard, but I think that it's just part of it. I don't know. You just have to plant your butt in that chair and like not get out until it's done. And it's really hard. And, you know, I will also say during the seven years that I was writing my second book, my second novel,
00:17:05
Speaker
I wrote short stories, I wrote essays, I wrote book reviews, so I was chasing some other shiny ideas. I actually wrote this chapbook while I was writing my second novel.
00:17:19
Speaker
It's okay to take breaks too. If there's something that you're really fixated on, I got, I wanted to write a short story about these talking cats who are arguing about whether or not to eat their owner who has just died. And I just got fixated on it and I wrote it and I love that story and it got published. And so that's okay too. Like it, you know, within reason you can chase these ideas, but you know, if you're working on a bigger project, like a novel or a collection of essays or something,
00:17:48
Speaker
probably best to, as much as you can control, just sit there until it's done, as excruciating as it is. Yeah. Several years ago, my favorite band, Metallica, they were writing a new record, but over the summer, they had a short tour. I don't know if it was in South America or North America. It doesn't matter.
00:18:13
Speaker
Point is it was like it was like breaking out of the studio tour so it was just like to take a break they you know went out you know obviously and just like hit the arenas saw their fans played their hits played some new stuff and
00:18:29
Speaker
And it is like a good way to sure it took away from like the central thesis of a new record but it was something that was invigorating and recharging to sort of have this little thing that it is a detour and it is taking some time away from the main project but in the end it does fuel and nourish the thing that you ultimately want to finish.
00:18:50
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think too, it's also possible if you're struggling with a theme or something in a larger work that you can try to work it out in an essay or in a short story. And maybe those don't even see the light of day, but it feels like less of a commitment to write something that's 10 pages to figure out
00:19:16
Speaker
why won't this girl talk to her father? It feels a little safer maybe to work that out in a shorter form than to try to figure it out in the novel form. And then whatever you learn through a short story, you can then put into the larger work.
00:19:34
Speaker
And a moment ago you brought up, you know, really there's no substitute for ass in chair, butt in chair, however you want to frame it. And when we are in the chair and we have surrendered ourselves to that, there is still an endless deluge of distraction, be it from phone or just the internet at our fingertips. So when you're writing, how do you mitigate distraction so you stay focused?
00:20:01
Speaker
Oh my God. I'm so bad at that right now. I, um, it's, it's really hard. And honestly, like I haven't written anything creatively since November and it's now, I don't know what day it is. It's February. It's late February. So yeah, it's been like four months.
00:20:19
Speaker
And I feel terrible. I really wish that I was able to focus even like for an hour a day and just get something out, but I just haven't been able to. Cause life keeps getting in the way, you know, just all these like administrative kind of things pop up. So it's hard, but in former times when I was better at, at juggling multiple responsibilities,
00:20:46
Speaker
I would designate a day, you know, Friday, whatever it is while my kids are at school. That's a sacred day. I'm not going to answer email. I'm not even going to open email. I'm not going to look at Instagram. I'm just going to sit down and write, even if it's for, you know, three hours or two hours or whatever it is. I've also gotten up at 5 a.m. There used to be on Twitter something that some of the working, writing moms were calling the 5 a.m.
00:21:15
Speaker
And it was where everybody with small children would get up at 5 a.m. and start writing because that was the time that they had. And again, it's hard. It's really, really hard. And especially there's something about 2023 that I'm noticing people are just reached. They have reached their absolute limits mentally and physically and emotionally of like what they can deal with. And I think we're all breaking down. I don't know what's crazy.
00:21:45
Speaker
uh... one hundred percent i think uh... the pandemic is totally like fucked with our with uh... with the with with obviously the world but i think on an individual micro level it is like broken us in in a way that we're still in it so we can't really intellectual eyes it but we're just and maybe that's part of the burnout from the pandemic is that we're still in it were fried in
00:22:11
Speaker
and don't know how to metabolize it yet because we're still in it and trying to make sense of what's happened the last three years and while still being in it and trying to work.
Pandemic's Impact on Creativity
00:22:24
Speaker
And I don't even have, you know, kids or anything. I can't even imagine what that's been like for people with remote learning and all that. It's just I think, yeah, I think our collective bandwidth is just so fritzed and fried that we almost don't know what to do.
00:22:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's I I've seen it I so I'm the interviews editor at the rumpus and I've really seen it with contributors and then I've seen it with interview subjects to like people who have books to promote are just like ghosting the people that are meant to interview them and I've never seen that before but I just have to imagine that people
00:23:04
Speaker
Even if they want to promote their book, they just are at their absolute limit. They cannot take on another thing. And it's really something special about 2023. Hopefully it gets better. Oh, geez.
00:23:21
Speaker
i'm someone who's prone to get overwhelmed easily and when i overwhelm i just want to like lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling and just like totally shut down the shut down the mechanism and uh... it's uh... uh... it's it's a bug in my factory settings but i met for for you if you get overwhelmed in as well as so many of us are how do you best navigate that is you
00:23:47
Speaker
Try to live, try to be a mom and a contributor and a writer. Have you heard of this amazing substance? It's called alcohol. I think that's been part of the problem too. I drank myself into a stupor the last three years.
00:24:05
Speaker
No, it's been terrible. And actually, my husband and I did dry January, and it was wonderful. We're going to try to do dry March in as much as we can, because I've started sleeping better. I lost weight. My head was clearer. No, alcohol is definitely part of the problem. I think saying no, I'm really bad at that, but I need to be better at that. Setting boundaries.
00:24:33
Speaker
Yeah. And then I don't know, just like, just admitting like, I'm not going to turn that in on time. I'm really sorry. I know that I said I was, but I'm just not going to do it. And then just never have another thought about, about that guilt again and just get it done when it gets done. I mean, of course that's all easier said than done. People have work deadlines and stuff, but yeah, I I've been fantasizing about, um, you know how in the old times, if you had some kind of like, like
00:25:03
Speaker
ailment that was difficult to find an accurate diagnosis for it. They would just like, if you were rich, of course, they would just like send you to Switzerland or something for like three months so you could take in the air.
00:25:16
Speaker
And like that's, I keep fantasizing about that. I'm like, I just want to go to a farm or the mountains and just drink barley water and like look at the mountains. And I can't do anything cause there's nothing to do and there's nowhere to go and I can't leave, but just, that's it for like three months. That's what I need. I need to take in the air.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah, to your point about the alcohol too, anytime that I've pulled back from it, what's really nice, sometimes in the moment, especially working from home, my wife and I both primarily work from home, so when you're here all the time, sometimes having, just like getting buzzed or drunk is at least a way to delineate the workspace from your headspace. It just puts a wrinkle into it that makes it feel a little bit different.
00:26:05
Speaker
And so that's true. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it like that. But yeah, my husband and I also work from home 100%. And yeah, I that's an interesting point.
00:26:15
Speaker
And then if you can in that moment, just not do it as much as you want to. The feeling waking up Saturday morning without any hangover or beer breath or anything, it's just, it's wonderful to wake up at six or seven in the morning on a Saturday and not have any brain fog. It's really, really nice. But it's hard on a Friday night to be like, you're gonna feel better Saturday morning if you just abstain from it tonight.
00:26:45
Speaker
Yeah, future Elizabeth hates past Elizabeth. Past Elizabeth does everything wrong. She makes every bad possible decision. But future Elizabeth is like amazing. She's so on top of it. So yeah.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, well there so I have to I have to ask you like where the the the obsession with Peter Sellers came in a rabbit hole of rabbit holes of how you got got hooked onto this essay with this this what what's ultimately going to be a chapbook called five conversations about Peter Sellers.
00:27:18
Speaker
Yeah, so I mentioned that I was writing my second novel and in the novel I have a character who is a comedian. It's the 1960s in Mexico and he feels he's been pigeonholed into this comedic persona and he wants to break out and be a dramatic actor.
00:27:40
Speaker
In trying to figure out this character, I thought, well, let me go read some biographies or memoirs of comedians of the time and see if I can get anything there, see if I can get maybe a little closer. And I came upon a biography of Peter Sellers. And they described in the book how he
00:28:07
Speaker
He was a comedian and he was a brilliant impressionist and he really hated being boxed into that. He wanted to take on more dramatic roles. He wanted to be taken more seriously. But then the book, it was a whole biography. I read the whole thing and just the stories that it contained of his
00:28:32
Speaker
complete disregard for other people. His kind of ego run amok, all these stories of Hollywood excess that we find so fascinating. With him, it just took on this other dimension. He was afraid of the color purple, and his dead mother would come and speak to him in his dreams, and that would influence how he
00:28:58
Speaker
dealt with his career. And I don't know. This was also the pandemic. So this is like March, April, May of 2020 that I was really getting into this. So I'm trapped in my house. There's also nowhere to go, nothing to do. And yeah, I just fell into, like you said, this rabbit hole of rabbit holes of just like I couldn't stop thinking about him. I couldn't stop like trying to understand like who acts like this? I don't know.
00:29:28
Speaker
his resentment towards the establishment too is something that is very palpable as writers, like you and I were speaking about that a moment ago about how it is easy to devolve into that, especially if you get into, and we didn't talk about this explicitly, but we can now, it's like when you get into comparing yourself to other people, other writers, other artists, and you are left sitting with your own ugliness,
00:29:56
Speaker
It can really fuel, or it can, it's a toxic fuel that doesn't really burn clean, and it just leads to, it leads to this awful feelings of just like jealousy and bitterment that leads to like just a really sad life in the terms of Peter Sellers, and it can be a cautionary tale for people like you and me as we proceed in our careers.
Exploring Identity through Peter Sellers
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my husband heard this on a
00:30:24
Speaker
podcast maybe, but he says it all the time. Comparison is the thief of joy. And that's really true. I tell my kids this all the time. I don't care what your friends have or what they're doing. Be happy with what you have and find ways to appreciate what you have in this life because you have so many wonderful things. If you spend all your time thinking about what you don't have, that list goes on forever.
00:30:54
Speaker
Um, yeah, so absolutely that's, that's a big part of it. And then another part of my obsession was trying to understand. Like I was trying to understand my obsession, but then I was also trying to, I think like indulge. Okay. What if, what if I, what if I'm less interested in Peter Sellers and more interested in my obsession with Peter Sellers, if that makes sense.
00:31:20
Speaker
And so I kind of stepped back a little bit in this book and tried to use that as like the driving question, what is my deal with Peter Sellers? And so then if I could turn it into a personal essay as opposed to like a straight reported piece on all the crazy stuff that he got up to, then it was also like an interesting intellectual exercise for me. Does that make sense?
00:31:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, of course. And, you know, you use this idea of a lot of people having this conversation about Peter Sellers. And were those conversations that you actively had with friends or were they kind of your own characterization of an internal dialogue you were having about this?
00:32:11
Speaker
No, yeah, it was an externalization. How did you put it? Yeah, it was conversations happening in my head. 100%. Yeah. So, and that came a little later. I was, I think that I knew that it wasn't going to be interesting enough.
00:32:32
Speaker
to just write about Peter Sellers, because a lot of people have written about him. He was a huge movie star. OK, so I don't want to do that. All right, so I want to do something about me and why am I so interested in this? What possibly is there to be learned by examining this guy's bad behavior? I got into the making of the movie Casino Royale. So for people who haven't seen it,
00:33:02
Speaker
I don't know why anybody would have watched this movie, but it's a spy spoof from 1967 about all of these James Bond kind of, all of these double, all of these MI6 agents who have all been named James Bond and kind of set loose across Europe. And it gets very silly. And it was the movie that inspired Mike Myers to write Austin Powers. So it's got this like very late sixties campy Austin Powers kind of vibe.
00:33:32
Speaker
Anyway, Casino Royale was where Peter Sellers' behavior kind of reached its apex. Because of his behavior, the producers were forced to hire and fire over a dozen screenwriters. They also had five directors working independently on the film. So like nobody knew what the other directors were doing and the
00:34:02
Speaker
head producer of it just figured that eventually, I don't know, like everything would just get tied up at the end. I have no idea what his end game was. So I took that cacophony of voices and that utter chaos and I said, okay, well, what if I have
00:34:23
Speaker
five conversations going on independently in this book. Could I try that? And I tried it and it kind of made sense. I think maybe it works. I don't know. But it was that I wanted to replicate that utter insanity and use it like as a frame for the book.
00:34:46
Speaker
Now there is a, I guess there could have been any number of problematic or complicated actors from the 60s and 70s you could have chosen, but Peter Sellers is the vector for you. So to kind of, to echo what you said and also something that you write in the piece, you know, what is your deal with Peter Sellers?
00:35:14
Speaker
I don't know and I don't know if I ever actually got down to it. I think that I just find him really fascinating as somebody who kind of lived his whole life never really getting what he wanted but he had so much and he was so talented.
00:35:34
Speaker
Was he afraid to push himself? Was he not as talented as he believed? I don't know, and we'll never kind of know. He had this moment, and I touch on it in the book, he was a guest star on The Muppet Show in 1978, so this was two years before he died.
00:35:55
Speaker
And at one point Kermit the Frog tells him, you know, Peter, you can stop doing the voices. You can just be yourself. And he says, Oh, but you see, there is no me. I had myself surgically removed. And that's, it's a joke. And he said it a lot like that was kind of his, his line. But I
00:36:16
Speaker
don't know if he was being entirely joking there. I think that he kind of felt that. And I think it's really fascinating to me to think about what that would feel like, to feel like you had no self, that you were just a progression of masks, that you were constantly putting on and taking off all day long. I find that intensely fascinating.
00:36:43
Speaker
And I touch on this also in the book. He was in a brilliant movie called Being There, where he plays, I mean, I would describe him as like an idiot. That's, I think, how he's described in the film blurb.
00:37:02
Speaker
has kind of no substance, no intellect, no real personality. The only thing that he does is watch TV. And it's a comedy about watching this idiot ascend the rungs of power in Washington. And it's an incredible movie. And he plays the character with like real depth and real like
00:37:26
Speaker
grace and understanding for, for this person. I mean, you can imagine any number of other people in that role and it would have been slapstick, but with Peter Sellers playing him, it's tragedy.
Mixed-Race Identity in Writing
00:37:38
Speaker
And I think it's because he really understood like what it was like to be a person that everybody else is kind of constantly projecting themselves onto and to not bother to see what is actually there.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yeah, you're right in that Muppet scene, if you will, that I think he genuinely felt like he was only half a person or that there was nothing to him, that he'd actually lost himself somewhere on his way to the top or worse, that he'd never had the opportunity to exist at all. Yeah, and that's incredibly tragic to me. And I wonder how many people there are out there who maybe feel that way, who don't feel like
00:38:24
Speaker
there's a there there or who don't feel like there's a them to them. I think this comes up sometimes in films where you have a character who just is like, I don't know, they haven't had, they've never experienced love, for instance. And so they don't even really know what it is to be fully human in that case. They're just kind of going through the motions
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah, and you also, you know, a moment ago you said something like that, that there was maybe not a, I'm paraphrasing, but that it was something that almost didn't make any sense that you kind of latched on to him as an exploration or as a vehicle. But you do write later that, you know, maybe that Peter Sellers is simply a convenient vehicle through which to explore a multivalent identity.
00:39:21
Speaker
And, you know, given that you grew up, you know, half white, half Mexican, that seemed like you were struggling with identity, too. And maybe that is something that really made him resonate with you. Yeah, absolutely. And when I said earlier, you know, I think he understood what it is to be a person upon whom others project like what they want to see.
00:39:45
Speaker
That is absolutely true, or it has been true in my case growing up by ethnic. I was considered white when I was a kid because I have blue eyes and freckles and pale skin. And I grew up in Laredo, Texas, which is on the border. I remember one time I won some kind of academic award and a parent of another kid said,
00:40:08
Speaker
with an earshot of me. Oh, well, they only gave that to her because she's white. And I mean, like, I'm like, I'm not I'm not white. I'm Mexican. Like, my dad's from Mexico. My last name is Gonzales. Like, I don't I don't know. And so I so yeah, so I was considered white. But then when I moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, which is has a more a more diverse population,
00:40:36
Speaker
there, I was considered Mexican. And it's just like, which one am I? Well, it depends on who you ask. And so that's, I don't know. Yeah, it's a lot. It's something that I struggle with. I really tried to chew it over in this book. I'm sure I'll be chewing over it in another 10 years. Hopefully, at some point, I'll reach some kind of conclusion. But I think for biracial people and bi-ethnic people, it continues to be a struggle. Well, where am I? Who am I?
00:41:06
Speaker
am I sitting on? Depends on the day. Well, in writing this piece too, you've got like several characters that are the manifestation of the voices and dialogue that you're having inside your head. You know, why did that become such a good vehicle for you to write this book, chat book? I think that that's how my thought process works. I'll have a thought
00:41:32
Speaker
And then immediately, I'll have a contradictory thought. So Peter Sellers was a jerk. Well, he had kind of a rough upbringing, and he did bring a lot of good to people in terms of entertainment. And I have this back and forth, and this goes for anything, any kind of hot button issue.
00:41:59
Speaker
I don't know, do you have arguments with yourself in the shower? Yeah, I talk to myself all the time. Yeah, yeah. So this is that same kind of thing. I wrote it down this time and kind of let everybody see it. And I read, I think it was Montaigne who said like an essay
00:42:25
Speaker
is an argument. I think he said that. Maybe I'm misquoting. I don't know. But I think an essay is an argument, or it's at least the thought process on the way to forming an argument. I mean, an essay can be a lot of things. But I think that insofar as an essay is an argument, you are seeing the argument happening in real time on the page throughout the chat book.
00:42:54
Speaker
And how did you arrive at the names of each of the characters in quotes? Yeah, well, L, Izzy, Abby, Beth, Elizabeth. I just pulled them straight out of my name.
00:43:10
Speaker
I'm lucky to have a name that's so easy to make into nicknames. When I was talking to Will Haygood about a year ago, he's a really wonderful biographer. When he's picking a subject to write about, it has to be someone that you're so
00:43:31
Speaker
you're almost obsessed with and that you in a way kind of love that you want them like sitting in your living room so when you're walking down the hallway you're like and you come around the corner and you're like oh there you are like I'm happy to see you and otherwise it's gonna be a disaster for your whole project and granted this isn't the scope of a big biography but you still had to spend a lot of time with Peter Sellers
00:43:55
Speaker
So in a sense, how did your relationship with Peter Sellers here kind of evolve and how did you stay engaged with him so you weren't like sick of him every time you went back to write and rewrite? Yeah, I think a lot of that comes back to what I was saying about how it
00:44:13
Speaker
I turned this into a personal essay, so it would be more interesting to me. I think I would struggle writing a biography, especially like a big tome, like the one about Alexander Hamilton. It would just be hard for me to sit with somebody else's
00:44:29
Speaker
thoughts and with their life for so long. So I have huge respect for biographers. So turning it into a personal essay was part of it because I never get tired of talking about me. And so that made it easy. And then also because I think I approached it as an investigation. This was another interesting thing. I read two different biographies of Peter Sellers.
00:44:55
Speaker
And one of them was very, very negative. I was unsure, I even said this in the book, I was like, why would you write an entire biography of somebody? It's obvious you hate. And so immediately, I'm like, all right, well, you're bringing emotion to this, so do I trust this? And so then it became also an investigation of like, well, what is
00:45:22
Speaker
The truth was he really this bad or does is this biographer coming to this with some amount of bias. And so you know that the investigation also keeps it interesting is there a particular voice or character throughout this that you identified most with.
00:45:43
Speaker
I really like the character of Izzy who is kind of the pop culture reporter. She tries to turn every screenwriter who gets introduced in the book, she says, okay guys, let's do a shot. She's like really not taking this seriously and just kind of cracking jokes and that tends to be my MO.
00:46:05
Speaker
I crack jokes out of anything and I'm always trying to, what's the phrase like? Not diffuse the situation. What is it when you, oh, dismiss. Yeah, I tend to be like glib and dismissive and so I really like her voice too because she's always kind of just not taking anything seriously and being kind of silly about it.
00:46:32
Speaker
An editor I worked with when I was working on a different project is sometimes my tendency in writing, too, is to sometimes use humor to cut myself off at the knees. Ultimately, in my experience, it has taken the reader out of the experience.
00:46:54
Speaker
Every time I did that, it's always something I have to be mindful of, be like, all right, is this kind of joke or turn of phrase here for any reason, or is it distracting? So I can imagine if you have a tendency to be glib and dismissive, that that can seep into your writing in a way that can be distracting. So is that something that you work through, especially in your rewriting phase?
Role of Humor in Writing
00:47:17
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And it's something that I've gotten better at as I've gotten older.
00:47:23
Speaker
I know when to treat a subject seriously, and I know when I can get away with a little bit of tongue-in-cheek kind of stuff. That's more of a project for me to work on as a human as I get older. I have been called out on it a couple of times, and it's a nasty habit, and I'm always trying to be a better person.
00:47:49
Speaker
I am mindful of it and I'm trying to work on it. Thank you for asking. As you were writing this, did you ever have the moment where you're like, I don't know if this is working, given that it's such an interesting vehicle to tell the story? Were you ever like, I'm doubting the footing that I'm standing on here.
00:48:15
Speaker
Oh, I mean, it's I have a printed copy of it next to me like bound and it's
00:48:21
Speaker
already starting to ship to people who ordered it. And I'm like, I don't know if this is working. So yeah, I have no clue. Yeah, it was a big risk. It's a weird subject. It's an esoteric subject. And it's a weird approach on a weird subject that's pretty niche. And so I have no clue. I don't know. This comes back to that kind of like,
00:48:47
Speaker
Unfounded self-confidence like I wrote it. I workshopped it with my writers group and they gave me some great feedback and I adjusted it according to their feedback and Then I'm impatient. So I was like, all right time to send it out. Let's see. Let's see what happens and a publisher does
00:49:05
Speaker
did end up picking it up. And so I then to me, I'm like, well, it was working enough. I don't know. I'm never that sure about anything. Like, I believe in that phrase, like books are never finished. They're just abandoned. And
00:49:24
Speaker
Yeah, so I don't know. I have no idea if it works or not. Erica Berry, who was just on the show, she has a new book out called Wolfish. Wolfish, yeah. Yeah, and she, publishing the book, she called like kind of a self amputation. And I was like, yeah, that's kind of spot on. It's kind of, it's gone. It's like permanently gone. It is what it is now. And you kind of have to move on from it, celebrate it in the moment, but then, and then it's in the reader's hands at this point.
00:49:54
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I've realized too that not only do I move on, I move on and I forget. Like, um, I, uh, my second book, my second novel isn't out yet, but it's, um, it's in the copy edit stage. So like it's, it's out of my hands at this point. And I genuinely cannot remember like.
00:50:15
Speaker
Some things that are in it like I because I worked and worked the storyline this way and that and I I can't I yeah, it sounds ridiculous But I genuinely don't remember what all is in there Somebody asked me the other day of the name of a short story I published in 2018 and I couldn't remember it I don't know if that's my kovat brain or what but like no I really move on I'm just like I don't know man
00:50:41
Speaker
You tell me what it's about because I don't remember. Right. We talked about the delusion it takes to pursue a career in the arts and certainly finishing a book or an essay or anything.
00:50:57
Speaker
But on the flip side of that, too, is crippling self-doubt. And I wonder how you wrestle with that, if you wrestle with it at all, if your delusional voice can totally drown out the self-doubt, or if you have to find a way to dance with the self-doubt in some way.
00:51:15
Speaker
Um, I do have really bad crippling self-doubt as I think like everybody does creative or non-creative. Yeah. And it's, it's really hard. I, my husband fortunately is like my, my unpaid therapist. And, um, so when I'm struggling, like I'll just go to him and he's very patient fortunately and has, you know, given me the same pep talk.
00:51:42
Speaker
I don't know, monthly for the last 13 years. You can do this. I believe in you. I know it's going to be great. Yeah, for me, I'm lucky I have a person that I can go to and they always believe in me.
00:52:00
Speaker
Two, I've found that that button chair time too, you just sit there long enough and just keep writing crap and like something is going to come through. Something's going to bubble up and that's finally going to be the thing. So I think it's also routine and just, I don't know, banging your head against the keyboard until something comes out.
00:52:25
Speaker
Oh yeah, I talk about this frequently, but Seth Godin, who's like a multi-best-selling, like 20-something book, he writes a lot about marketing and art, but his thing is like, nobody has writer's block. What people have a problem with is bad writing.
00:52:44
Speaker
And if you have the muscular chair or the stamina to stick with enough bad writing, like you were just saying, good stuff almost has no choice but to come up. But you have to be comfortable enough putting down shit, because eventually good stuff will come from it, but you have to endure the shit.
00:53:02
Speaker
Exactly. I heard Maya Angelou in an interview one time say like she would sit down and you know sometimes she would just have nothing. Nothing would come up other than like the cat sat on the mat with the rat and I mean I seriously doubt that that's what she was writing but it just it was so silly
00:53:22
Speaker
And like such a terrible poem that she gave as an example, that I was like, okay, if Maya Angelou can sit down, you know, and be fine writing the cat sat on the mat with the rat, then like, I can do it, you know.
00:53:36
Speaker
Well, even musicians, too. I mean, if they're noodling on a riff or a solo or anything, you know, in those generative phases, I'm sure some things would be like, oh, that doesn't sound right. I mean, your musical background, I'm sure you can attest that it's like, oh, that doesn't sound quite right. But you keep kind of workshopping and workshopping. And all of a sudden, you're like, oh, wow, that is really resonant and just like feels natural and beautiful. But it took a little while to get there. It doesn't just
00:54:03
Speaker
It doesn't just spit out fully formed. I remember in this essay by, I think it was the John Jeremiah Sullivan essay about Michael Jackson that was in Pulped. Did you read that book? A while ago. Yeah, I need to come back to it though. Yeah. Well, I'm pretty sure he has an essay in there about Michael Jackson and he said something like, one of Michael Jackson's hits and of course, now I can't remember which one it was.
00:54:32
Speaker
got to be starting something. There was one of his big hits that he was like, listen to it. It sounds like na, na, na, na, na. And it's the stupidest little risk. But it's so catchy, actually, when you kind of change it a little bit and plump it out. And then it became this huge pop song. So I don't know. Yeah, I know what you're saying.
00:54:57
Speaker
Now, Elizabeth, I want to be mindful of your time, and as I like to bring these conversations down for a landing, I always pose the recommendation question to you for the listeners out there, and that can be just about anything that you're excited about, that it can be a, well, often people say books, but it could be a brand of coffee, or a brand of socks you really dig, or a long lock. So I might just extend that to you, Elizabeth, what might you recommend for the listeners out there?
00:55:25
Speaker
Yeah, I am reading, um, I will, I will stick with creative nonfiction. I am reading a wonderful book that's coming out pretty soon. It's oh, I have the date on the back three, seven, uh, March 7th.
00:55:39
Speaker
of this year, and so it's called The Wonder Paradox by Jennifer Michael Hecht, embracing the weirdness of existence in the poetry of our lives. I haven't finished it yet, but her thesis in the book is
00:55:55
Speaker
She is an atheist, but she is talking about how atheists can bring meaning, ritual, and community back into their lives, functions that would usually be fulfilled by religion. They can bring it into their lives through poetry. And so she divides the book up into sections for meals, for
00:56:23
Speaker
making decisions for mourning, for birth, for whatever. And she offers poems in the way that that poetry can be used in these kind of sacred moments in these life milestones. And it's really, really fascinating. I am coming to appreciate poetry more and more as I get older and as I get to be a better writer. And so yeah, it's a it's a really fascinating book.
00:56:50
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, I'll have to check that out. Maybe I can get her on the podcast too and unpack it a bit. But yeah, that's awesome. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much for hopping on the show and talking shop and Peter Sellers. This is a really cool examination you did and the way you went about it was really, really cool and like putting the creative and creative nonfiction, I think. So thanks so much for the work and for carving out time to come on the show. Thank you so much, Brendan. I really enjoyed speaking with you.
00:57:23
Speaker
Hey CNFers, thanks for listening. And thanks to Elizabeth, that was great. If you like this conversation as much as I did, consider sharing it and tagging me and the show at CNF Pod on Twitter or at Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram. This show will only grow because of you.
00:57:40
Speaker
As you know, I'm a nobody, so it's the validation of your endorsements that makes the needle move. There's so much content out there, so many old shows like mine, and many more new ones cropping up all the time from people looking to kinda grab on to the attention of everybody.
00:57:56
Speaker
And the show will only survive the pod fade. And believe me, the pod fade is real if you celebrate it. So long as it's worth celebrating. I think there's a leak in the bucket, so to speak. When I feel the leak in the bucket, I just know I need to double down and really serve the people who are still along for the ride. And it's through you guys sharing it that validates it, gets it into the right hands. So this community grows. And the podcast grows and does its thing.
00:58:26
Speaker
you can always consider heading to patreon.com slash CNF pod to throw a few bucks into the chip jar the chip chip jar I'll take I'll take chips my personal favorite these days are Juanita's a gluten-free tortilla chips they are lightly salted they're addicting I won't turn down a Frito
00:58:46
Speaker
I am never above a Frito, turning down a Frito. Scoops, primarily. Okay, there. For some reason, I find them more enjoyable to eat. But tip jar. Okay, show is free. Sure as hell ain't cheap. Fritos. This podcast is dropping during AWP 23 in Seattle.
00:59:09
Speaker
practically on my doorstep. I debated for a while whether I should attend. I stopped short of being one of those people on Twitter who say, I'm not going to AWP this year. Maybe I should make some merch, like coffee mugs, maybe even t-shirts that say on. I'm like, I'm not going to AWP this year.
00:59:28
Speaker
It's only five hours away. And frankly, the best part of AWP is seeing friends and going to the bar. So I was like, maybe you should just go up there, get an Airbnb, not actually attend the conference, but just find out who's there and then go to the bar. That's where you make the real friendships.
00:59:43
Speaker
Frankly, I don't glean too much from panels. Sometimes I wonder if panels are only there to jack up the egos of the people on the stage. But that's just the old asshole in me, who has only, over the years, only ever been invited to one, to be on one panel. This was for last year. And we were going through like another, oh no, was it two years ago? No, it was last year, I think.
01:00:07
Speaker
Yeah. And there was like some sort of another COVID variant spike and I was just like, you know what? I don't feel like flying cross country again. Anyway, it was a bit sketchy. So I withdrew and I even paid to go to that one. It's the one in Philly. Was that last year? I don't know. I was like, nah, I'm just not going to go.
01:00:26
Speaker
and someone else filled my spot naturally. But given the reach of the podcast and the sheer number of people who have been on the show, I should probably attend AWPs and host an event for listeners, like host a reading, a non-fiction reading, and have listeners mingle, maybe some past guests can speak or just be around.
01:00:48
Speaker
You know, be a community member, a literary citizen as the great Donna Tallarigos want to say, instead of just me being all resentful for the writer-industrial complex that is AWP. Why should I be? Maybe I'm bitter because lots of other conferences can't survive, smaller, more intimate, better ones, and yet the glut of this conference just marches on.
01:01:15
Speaker
Maybe if AWP gave out grants to smaller conferences so they can survive and maybe thrive. In fact, you know, the Hippocamps of the world that had the table put a pin in it. Can't do it this year. And yeah, AWP marches on.
01:01:32
Speaker
I think the other thing that AWP attendees that kind of bugs me, I guess, is it just kind of reeks of desperation. I feel like I can say that because that's been my feeling for years. You know, will I find the secret key? If I corner an agent, will they take me? Should I cost every panelist? Should I hand out business cards? Here's my business card. Please take this.
01:01:56
Speaker
Then you see some writers on Twitter brag about how many panels they're on and it's enough to make me just want to stay away. I don't feel like being in and among that. Plus I feel like nobody I knew was going. I swear I'm like that asshole that wonders where the party is only to find out that I was the only one not invited.
01:02:15
Speaker
And, uh, so that's a personality bug on my part, and, well, we figured you'd say no anyway so we didn't invite you. Anyway, you're putting like 10,000 very insecure people in a conference center, and that just does not spark joy. Shit, no wonder why I have no friends. Just a microphone. Thank you, microphone. Stay wild, CNFers. If you can't do interviews, see ya.
01:02:56
Speaker
you