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Ep. 27. Torrey Peters, 'Stag Dance'
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In this episode, I talk to Torrey Peters about her story 'Stag Dance' from the collection of the same name.
Torrey Peters’ first novel, Detransition, Baby won the PEN/ Hemingway Award 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Critics’ Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book. A Times Top Ten bestseller, it was longlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her follow-up Stag Dance is a quartet of short stories that explore trans life past, present and future.
Episode notes:
- William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity
- Strunck and White, The Elements of Style
Book recs:
- Halldor Laxness, Independent People (trans. J. A. Thompson)
- Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The Sound of Things Falling (trans. Anne McLean)
- João Guimarães Rosa, Vastlands: The Crossing (Alison Entreckin)
Follow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Find Sasha on IG @sashajdm. Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Books Up Close' and Tori Peters
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close, the podcast. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers, and anyone who wants to know how texts get made. In today's episode, I talk to the Tori Peters about a passage from her story slash novella Stagdance.
Tori Peters' Literary Accomplishments
00:00:20
Speaker
Tori Peters' first novel, Detransition Baby, won the Penn Hemingway Award 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for Best First Book.
00:00:31
Speaker
a Times Top 10 bestseller. It was long listed for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction. Her follow up, Stagdance, is a quartet of short stories that explore trans life, past, present and future. And the paperback is out now in the UK.
Exploring 'Stagdance': Themes and Language
00:00:46
Speaker
OK, well, Tori, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. This is really exciting. I'm a huge fan of your work. I've been screaming about these two books forever. So I'm really excited to talk about this one. And of the four stories, whatever we call them, in Stang Down, this was the one. I was like, there's no question for me in my mind that we would talk about this one. Because for me, it's the one that seems most interested in language, I think. Yeah. Right? Yeah, and I absolutely agree.
00:01:16
Speaker
And I saw you at the Royal Festival Hall, maybe last year, talking about it. And i think you said something like, oh, you didn't know where to go after writing Detransition Baby. You're like, I'm going to write a story for me that's in like logger slang from the 19th century. You're like, no one's going to be interested in this. But Tori, people are really interested in this.
00:01:36
Speaker
<unk> I'm glad to hear. i'm glad It was a sort of a perverse, I think, you know looking back on it now two years later, i think it was like a little bit of a perverse impulse on my on my part where you know the Transition when it first out, it like...
The Impact of 'Detransition Baby'
00:01:51
Speaker
when it first came out it was like to me, i thought it was like, this is transgressive book, you know, and, know, it was like the bug chasing on page seven, like, you know, but the thing about when yeah a book circulates is it becomes kind of like, i mean, and this is really like a preoccupation of like me as in my own tightness, but you know, it it circulates and it becomes sort of considered mainstream. And then in a certain way, it's considered like, you know, people would be like, Oh, detransition baby. Like, I don't know if I want to read that book. That's a book for like,
00:02:24
Speaker
my mom's book club in indiana or something like that you know and i was like i thought i wrote this like hardcore yeah book and i remember it was like there was a one moment it was like a new yorker clue that detransition baby was like the that it was a crossword puzzle and detransition baby was like was the the answer but the clue was something like super insulting that was like I mean, I'm proud to be chick lit, but it was basically something like, that's what this is.
00:02:52
Speaker
And i was like I was like, wow, I feel like a little misunderstood. i think all of this was like subconscious.
Writing in Logger Slang: A Personal Challenge
00:02:58
Speaker
And so then I was like, okay, well, I'm going write an entire book in lager slang. So, you know, suck on that. like Which is maybe not like the best way of planning out one's career and relating to...
00:03:14
Speaker
Whatever it was, but I think all of that, would like, you know, in writing in looking back to years later, like there was some stuff going on that led me to decide to do this. And I'm happy. I'm very happy'm very proud of I'm very happy I did. But I don't think I was like, but what is the next best career move? It is this.
00:03:32
Speaker
But in a way, it kind of is, right? It's like for every New York Times idiot that's like, oh, this is what kind of writer you are. you open this book of four stories, you're like, wait, Tori's like another four different kinds of writers, you know? yeah And this one in particular is so charged linguistically. There are some great words in this extract that you're going to read for me soon um that I just love. And I'm like, how do I fit this into daily speech? Don't know. But it's like a really fun linguistically. So I thought it would be a great bit to talk about.
Close Reading: Merits and Downsides
00:04:01
Speaker
But before we do, how do you feel about close reading? Do you have a relationship with that as like a practice or activity? and go in and out of it, you know, like, I think that like, it's something that I think it's important to do as an author, yeah you know, and I think that like, you know, for a long time, i was sort of like, the words you put on a page are like a pretty close approximation of the like kind of thought that you're doing. And so you want to have like really good words to like reflect really good thought.
00:04:30
Speaker
I think in school it's different, but like as an, as a ah working author, like I, you know, i don't have another job. I just work on my writing. i think there's a way I have been like a little against close reading of late actually. I'm sorry to go against thing. It's like controversial for your podcast, but I think there's a way in which,
00:04:50
Speaker
you know For students, I think it's great, but I think that like on the sort of like literary industrial complex, kind of like going around as an author, doing stuff, I right now think that there's a kind of fetishization of craft. like I love craft, but I think fra craft can be really fetishized not in like almost like a typically Marxian sense, where it can become fetishized as a commodity that will give you a career. And so people end up talking about craft in sentences, not as like, we like this, this is art that made us feel something, but like, oh, this is a good sentence. And if you can write a good sentence, you can get a book published. If you can get a book published, you can get a career, you can do all this sort of stuff.
00:05:30
Speaker
And so there's a way in which like, I've heard people talk about close reading and sentences and look at this this, you know, this pyrotechnic little thing where I'm like, actually kind of weirdly about producing a product that can be sold on a marketplace rather than art that can move people. And so I'm, I've been a little like, like I'm proud of my sentences. And I think that I was somebody who like, was like, check out what I can do in language, but I'm slightly, I'm a little more wary of it these days because I think, know, I've just been invited to teach a lot of workshops where I'm like, what I'm actually doing is like not
Craft Fetishization in Literature
00:06:06
Speaker
art. It's, I'm i'm saying here's how to write a good sentence because people think it's a product that can be sold.
00:06:11
Speaker
Well, I hope our conversation is I feel very complexly about close reading, right? Like the history of its teaching you know, there's very dubious origins of close reading that's like all decontextual, right? It's like, let's not think about history or the anything behind the text.
00:06:26
Speaker
And I'm not really into that. my I don't know, if I had a close reading strategy, it's very vibes based. You know, it's like, what stands out to you? What do you notice? What goes on? Maybe we understand it, maybe we don't.
00:06:37
Speaker
And i'm I'm really interested in the kind of like ambiguity in it all. And kind of feeling strangely about a text and be like, why that word, not this word? As a kind of way into thinking the text more.
00:06:48
Speaker
In a nerdy way, like i love that. Like, you know, when I was in school, I was like very into like seven types of ambiguity and like, and I liked the idea that the text is all there is on the page and the author, you know, the author's intention doesn't matter so much.
00:07:04
Speaker
And like, if I was operating in a context where like everybody thought that, you know, then it would be like a fun, yeah like a fun game, you know, to the close read. But like the fact that like, you know, it is like an, it is an industry now, whether it be like for being a professor or being, you know, can I sell a book or do whatever, like it's It's not like the same as if it's 1920 and we can just be like, oh, the author's dead and we'll just look at the text and, that you know, in in a sort of like hermetically sealed setting.
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, there's no hermetically sealed at this point. It's 2026. Yeah. Okay, well, in which case, why don't we hear you read this passage? Yeah. um Listeners, this is chapter 13 of Stagdance, the story or novella or whatever you want to call it. And it comes near the end of the ah end of the chapter.
00:07:53
Speaker
so yeah, let's hear it first. Can I set up by saying this is actually like part of a part of us the end of like an ostensible sex scene where the main character compares sex with a degloving, which is when the skin of your hand is ripped off. So sounds sexy. I know. know want cold water. But anyway, here it is.
00:08:18
Speaker
yeah but anyway here it is Well now, here's my point. Each morning, a lop-limbed man finds himself complete when he straps on his wooden leg at the knee. But even more so, his mind comes to feel that the the leg is part of a hole, so that if you kick him in the peg, he might utter a curse of pain, phantom nerves trailing up from the wooden appurtenance. In this very fashion, i can't explain it any other way.
00:08:42
Speaker
As Dagnes stroked my triangle bush, I discovered that it adjoined with me, as me, an appendage that had been missing from my person my whole life without my realizing it, and which my mind and soul had incorporated into into my hole to assuage a hunger that, until sated, had been so ever-present for so long that I had never grown truly mindful of it, balm and sucker to my imperium degloving. The stroke of Daglish's rough fingers traced a gentle V-shape down the fabric that sent a velvety shudder up the wires of my back.
00:09:11
Speaker
The calluses in his fingers worried the weft of burlap, and my mind knew their rough texture by spooky action. The fabric more sensitive to the friction of his touch than the thinnest, most nervy skin elsewhere on my person.
00:09:22
Speaker
With eyes closed, there existed no difference between the triangle and myself. Distinction collapsed. It was on me and of me and in me, and the prodding of his fingers overwhelmed me so that I moaned and lost all shape in myself, the contour lines of my body collapsing and rearranging themselves into shining triangular pleasure.
00:09:39
Speaker
My groans shifted down into a deep hadoplegic hum, vibrating apart into pulsing particulate all that had once been seemed my solid unitary fate. Thank you. Thank And appreciate the the slight accent you do as you read that. i I can't do it without a lumberjack voice. Was that voice in your head as you were writing?
Narrative Voice in 'Stagdance'
00:10:00
Speaker
but yeah it's a little faded it's a little faded but yeah I wrote the whole thing like picture like ah kind of like said it aloud in this like fake lumberjack voice that I came up with for myself as I as I wrote and I was like and the cadence too like to read it like I had this like cadence that I gave this narrator so I had to like You know, I can't read it. It sounds ridiculous if I read it as me. You know, I have to read it as I'm just like in the like a Midwestern American saying it, you know, medical fry or whatever.
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah, um no vocal fry in the yeah i logging Northwest. no But yeah, but the pacing of it, I think is like really striking as you read it then, but also as you read it on the page, like this voice is so particular, right? He has his own way of constructing sentences. Sometimes he goes on to these long kind of poetic bits and then goes straight back to the real kind of hard scrabble language. I think it's just like fascinating. I don't even know where to start with this passage. Like, Well, let me set it up a little bit Now that I've read it out, I think I need to explain to readers who haven't read it. So basically this is a stag dance in the woods. where There are all these lumberjacks in the woods and they are lonely. It's the wintertime. And they put on this dance where some of the men attend the dance as women. And they if you want to go to the dance as a woman, you cut out a little triangle of burlap fabric and you pin it. This is historically true, by the way. You take that fabric triangle and you pin it on your crotch to signify like essentially a bush.
00:11:33
Speaker
And then, and then the other men will dance with you as a woman. And so what happens here is that the main character, Babe Bunyan, who's this like huge, tall, he considers himself like quite rough, human, ugly, like logger specimen of like masculinity, decides that he's going to go to the dance as a woman. And so what ends up what this scene is actually happening is he's got the triangle pinned on his crotch.
00:11:57
Speaker
And this guy that he's kind of interested in starts rubbing the triangle. And in a kind of like the way that like in a prosthetic or an appendage could work where like your body begins to like Treat that appendage or prosthetic as part of your body. He starts feeling pleasure from the guy rubbing the triangle, which is not actually part of his body, but he begins to think of it as part of his body, which is the comparison in his mind to like someone with a wooden leg or you know and and any sort of prosthetic.
00:12:28
Speaker
And, you know, so this for me was like kind of doing a little bit of like trans theory or like, you know, different types of theory about prosthetics and like what what actually constitutes a body. how does the mind, you know, incorporate objects into your body? even Even something, you know, as relevant to now is like, the way so much of my thinking can be outsourced to my phone. that Like my phone is part of my mind and it becomes part of are you, you know, go through the world. If you don't have your phone, you're like, Oh my God, something's wrong. And it's like that, the way your body ends up treating objects, whether it be your glasses, whether it be your phone, whether it be your leg, or if you're a trans person trying to change your body, whether it be,
00:13:08
Speaker
you know, some sort of gendered thing, like, know, if you didn't have hair, your wig or or whatever. And in this case, it's his triangle, you know, his signifier of his womanhood for, in the most like stripped down kind of way. Yeah,
Body and Identity Themes in 'Stagdance'
00:13:20
Speaker
but even that is like, it's not in another person's hands. This might be like a little bit obvious. But when I first read this, I'll tell you, I actually got quite emotional in this moment. There was some, it was on me and of me and in me. I was like, whoa, like this story kind of goes all over the place kind of tone wise, I think. But here there's a real like thinking through that's like kind of funny. So yeah his mind comes to feel that leg as part of a whole thing.
00:13:46
Speaker
So if you kick him in the peg, et cetera. But like his he straps on his wooden leg. Like I can't help but hear like strap on, right? in tar that's And you know, whether you intended that or not, but like there's also the strap on, it's like inverting it in a way, right? Because what we're actually talking about is this,
00:14:02
Speaker
piece of fabric that's symbolizing a different kind of body part, right? So like the idea that it's a strap on already is playing with the idea that like the body isn't so knowable, right? That the part is, is just a part, right? It's like, yeah you know, call it synecdoche or metonym or whatever, where the part is standing as the whole, but also like you do say whole, I think twice in here as well. And like with WH, but yeah,
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah. Like there are lots of like oral puns here, AU, that I think are quite funny, but also really pointing at like the kind of unknowability of the body as well as, yeah you know, it's undoing if you like.
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's, um I'm trying to look this through. know, this is an interesting one. So I think that, i think I was amusing myself as I wrote it. And, but usually when I'm amusing myself, it's also like when I'm, when I do actually feel something like emotionally. Essentially, I was was trying to describe like, you know, I probably most people know I'm trans, but I'll just out myself right now. I am trans.
00:15:00
Speaker
And um how it feels sometimes to as a trans person to sleep with different people of different bodies. And the way that like, you know, the first time I slept with, let's say, like a trans guy.
00:15:14
Speaker
And the way that our bodies produced all these feelings that didn't necessarily correspond always trans. the bodies that we had and the ways that like our minds and our actions and our way of doing this. And that like, there's something kind of like, this is why I think like sex is is an interesting topic to write about is that sex is a place in which you can actually transcend your body. And that's, you can do it in this like queer way. where were talking about that, about, you know, what your body actually is and what it makes you feel despite whatever, you know,
00:15:46
Speaker
particular setup you and accessories that you have. But you know I think that's also true, even just for like the most straightforward yeah vanilla sex and a romance book. like Sex is the moment where people transcend their bodies, where the bodies, gets spiritual, it gets beyond the physical somehow, even as the method changes.
00:16:07
Speaker
the the route to arrive to that transcendent place is physicality. yeah So, you know, you can kind of do magic things with bodies and sex. And I don't think that this is something actually totally unique to trans people, but I do think that trans people have ah have, how to develop a language and a lens around it. And so it can get quite technical. It can get quite theoretical when one talks about it. And to me, like a lot of the fun with this kind of language is basically like, well, I don't want to talk about it the way Judith Butler would talk about it. yeah Let me talk about it the way like a lumberjack yeah might try to face some of those ideas.
00:16:44
Speaker
I think for me the most important thing, like I didn't notice the the whole whole life and and these kinds of puns actually until you just pointed it out. For me, I think what I wanted more than anything was the rhythm, yeah like a sort of tumbling. So that the, sense like if you're picturing that the other guy is essentially fingering him, yeah you know,
00:17:05
Speaker
and rubbing his fingers on the triangle not fingering him but fingering essentially the triangle which is a symbol for you know women's gentilia that it is building there's like ah you know the friction is building we're building towards something and you know in the paragraph that is that i didn't read which is next there's a ridiculous orgasm scene where he barks like a seal as he orgasms yeah and some of this actually is that I wanted the the rhythm of the language, even as it's so highfalutin, yeah to use a lumberjack word, to be quite rhythmic in the build of, you know, so that by the end you do get those lines, like with eyes closed, there existed no difference between the triangle and myself. Distinction collapsed. It was on me and of me and in me and the prodding of his fingers overwhelmed me so that I moaned. and lost all shape of myself, the contour lines of my body collapsing and rearranging themselves into shining triangular pleasure.
00:18:03
Speaker
The groans shifted down into deep That word, hadaplegic, we could talk about that. It's a problematic word in this in this and this whole thing. There's two really problematic words okay for tone in this sense. but deep how tolege a hum vibrating apart into pulsing particulate all that had once seen my solid unitary fake So the yeah the rhythm changes right at the end of the play, but do you get that ah dutada dudada du yeahda dada ah in the rhythm.
00:18:29
Speaker
Which I didn't do like by like scanning it. I know that's a writer who like scans, and does but I just say it aloud to get like an approximation of rhythm. I'm not actually like trying to find a perfect meter in it.
00:18:41
Speaker
i'm not that i mean i would love to be that kind of writer, but I'm not. And then the very last line, you get a sort of shift, and then you get the joke of the guy in the next line. He goes...
00:18:53
Speaker
oh yeah, oh yeah, dagglish orc like a seal, oh yeah, yeah. And so it's like this, you know, he's having an orc, he's jerking off as it's happening and it's totally, it's a joke. Like it's yeah it's just like low, it's like to have this thing. And so that was like,
00:19:09
Speaker
you So that last line, my ground shifted down into a deep hadapologic hum. Hadapologic is like, it's the deepest layer of the ocean, i think, is it's in the
Language and Anachronism in Writing
00:19:20
Speaker
oceanography. And so that word is totally anachronistic. It's totally like a lumberjack likely wouldn't know the word hadapologic. It probably wasn't even coined at this time.
00:19:31
Speaker
Um, it's, it's like a totally anachronistic word. And it was like the word that came to me, like being like, so underwater, like, so like the deep hum of the earth kind of thing. And I was like, i shouldn't use that word. That's what that word is like, but I was like, i actually don't think that most people know what that word is. They don't know it's anachronistic and like, we're just kind of going on feel. yeah And yeah.
00:19:52
Speaker
what I wanted was I wanted like a super high language technical word that gets contrasted with something as ridiculous as like, oh yeah, yeah. He worked like a seal in the contrast of those things. There's another word. There's another thing that's totally anachronistic in this, which is my mind knew their rough texture by spooky action, which, you know, spooky action, the physics the physics concept also had not been discovered in the 1800s. But like, This, I think, has to do with also, like, my general feelings towards, like, this language is totally made up in the first place. You know, like, yeah I found a book of lumberjack slang from 1941, which,
00:20:34
Speaker
that was collected by the children of lumberjacks. And i i used the slang from the lumberjack books in this. But then I kind of like came up with like a cadence and way of talking that was like pretty much invented.
00:20:45
Speaker
i read a couple different books. Like I read um Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. And I was like, this book is totally ridiculous. Like there's no chance that like a bunch of like cowboys, think everyone's like, oh, this book is so poetic. And I was like,
00:20:59
Speaker
Yeah, that this book is like a a fever dream, like a very 1980s fever dream. yeah It is not like it is like this is what like a dude in 1980s thinks is like really incredible language. yeah and and And there's zero chance that anybody on on the border of Texas was was talking this way. And like, you know, even something like, you know, Moby Dick is so these American classics are kind of just ridiculous in their cadence.
00:21:26
Speaker
and the things that they say, what you know what is the kind of shit that Ishmael is saying is is is there a joke. A book like A Brief History of Seven Killings, the Marlon James book, which I love. I think it's incredible.
00:21:39
Speaker
But the the Jamaican kind of patois that is in it, I think is, as far as I know, not at all how Jamaicans talk. There's something kind of created. There's like Jamaican slang, but something is created language-wise in there. And so I was basically like, I actually think that like creating these anachronistic languages don't work if one is has to is too faithful to them. Right. And so I just was like, by that by the time I was writing this book at the end of the book, I was like, spooky actions, a physics word that nobody would know. And it makes no sense.
00:22:11
Speaker
but neither does the idea that the cowboys and blood meridian are speaking in the cadence in in shakespearean king james cadences or whatever you know shakespearean or king james i should say yeah but it's like we don't i mean i don't go to historical fiction for like that accuracy you know i know some people do yeah but like you know why turn to a novel about a time period like if you want like accuracy or something like go to the source material or something but here you're translating a particular person in a particular moment for us now. Right. So like, yeah, we we're not in that moment. And I think, you know, as soon as you read tailing up from the wooden appurtenance, which appurtenance is a great word, um like you don't mind how to police, like, I'm not going to look up like, oh, did they know that word then? Right. Like it's the sound as well. Like it's ah it's the moments when he is describing something so difficult. Right. He says like, I can't explain it any other way. Like he's, he's grasping for,
00:23:11
Speaker
ways to translate this experience he's having that he never expected to have to as reader so like we do just grasp for whatever word or phrase we have in our vocabulary right maybe words I would never say out loud to friends but like sometimes I'm in a room and i'm like oh this is the only way I know how to say it and I think there's some like fun there right to go from pertinence to approach my triangle bush, which is just like up against each other produce like a literal friction, and like a linguistic friction that is then happening in the scene as well.
00:23:44
Speaker
But even an appendage that had been, like again, appendage, right? Like in another world, like you'd imagine the appendage is something a different kind of sex yeah right on body parts but we're talking about this like triangle of material with all of the historical weight of the triangle right for like queer folks which again yeah we're reading now but like did at the time didn't Right. Yeah, it would have been before World War Two or before the reclamation of it. Yeah. total Yeah.
00:24:12
Speaker
But, you know, even in your like bio, you say like the book is about trans life, past, present and future. Right. Yeah. And there's a sense of that historical movement. Right. Like, yes, it's set in a time that it's speaking to us now. Right.
Discovering Body and Identity
00:24:25
Speaker
Why? Right. yeah why write historical fiction in the present if you're not talking about the present too, right? You know, like it has to kind of go back and forth. But that appendage that had been missing from my person my whole life without my realizing it. And that's like a big thought, right, for this book. Like how do we, how do we, we're so certain of our bodies sometimes, or some people are. yeah
00:24:45
Speaker
The moment of this guy who is so like, you know, macho, butch, like manly man, finds out something about himself by accident almost, right? he's He's intrigued about what it means to be like the woman in the stag dance. Like there's something ah the kind of exciting about it, but I guess he doesn't know why But the idea of this piece of material replacing the body part that he has, then, and which my mind and soul had incorporated into my whole to assuage a hunger that until Satan. I do get that. but I think that pun was actually unintentional. Now that you say it out loud. Yeah. had been so ever present for so long I had never truly grown mindful of it like he's asking us to consider like we think we know our bodies but like I don't think you do like have you ever sat to think about your body you know yeah and if and if this is like quote-unquote trans theory in literary form right it's like yeah trans folks have to think about their bodies but like when have you cis people done that properly have you ever sat down to be like
00:25:44
Speaker
how do I experience my body and he's here in this moment being like who knew and I think it's it's just like a beautiful moment even in the comedy I was like I like felt it in my soul yeah oh I'm glad that's that I mean that's what I was going for in this is like and I think that like the tonal shifts that you're talking about have to do with like destabilizing what yeah you know for a reader Whether you're supposed to laugh, whether you're supposed to cry, and then even within a single paragraph, I think it kind of it like a little bit wrong-foots the reader emotionally yeah in ah in a way that I think opens up a space for feeling things. yeah it's like
00:26:22
Speaker
That's what I'm intending to do, but I'm also, you know, I notice that in writing that I really love. when i'm Sometimes when I'm wrong-footed, my defenses fall down and then, you know, just...
00:26:34
Speaker
a line of like real emotion will just kind of hit me, you know Yeah. Because I was laughing or something and then, ah whoops, you know, there's a tragedy or something. Yeah. Just like another little idea that like, wait, I didn't know we were here. I mean, and like, as you say, like, bomb and sucker to my Empyrean degloving. Oh, what a beautiful phrase. Given the like horror that it's describing.
00:26:56
Speaker
i was like, should we discuss that passage? that I read it. I was like, absolutely not. with I'm not putting this out. It's such a horrific scene, but again, it's part of the body at its most extreme. Right.
00:27:07
Speaker
which I think you do in most of these stories and in D-Trenches and Baby, right? Like the body, not as solid, knowable, but as always like precarious, always kind of open, right? um yeah I love the phrase, the fabric more sensitive to the friction of his touch than the thinnest, most nervy skin elsewhere on my person. Just like a great way of The thinnest, most nervy skin. Like that's, that I don't know. That's like a summary of like so much of your work, right?
00:27:35
Speaker
The skin as so like volatile in a way. Yeah. Oh, it's been a very flattering read. I mean, I guess that's so the the fun of post reading is that, you know, it's a, And also as ah as a the indulgent, you get to be indulged as an author and be like, you know, look what you did there, that pun. And it's like, whoops, I didn't know I did that. But yes, I did. What incredible work. You did it, Tori. I mean, the one thing I do want to ask about is, I mean, this is very technical, right? With eyes closed, there existed no difference between the triangle and myself, colon.
00:28:07
Speaker
Distinction collapsed. Semicolon. It was on me and of me and in me. Like that colon double, like semicolon. Yeah. Double thing. Like it's a real, I don't know. It's like expansive, but then it's like breaking. And then the sentence like unfurls. And I guess that's more part of the rhythm stuff you were talking about earlier, but I'm just like, why? Yeah. i And a colon.
00:28:28
Speaker
What are you doing? Let's see. Okay. So why would it be that way? Let's see. let's i yeah know get I wrote this probably two or three years ago, so it's a little hard to remember exactly that why I chose the punctuation. area But with eyes closed, there exists and no difference between the triangle and myself. so that's And then there you have and and ah an elaboration of the no difference between the triangle myself, which is colon distinction collapsed, yeah which is isn in itself like a complete sentence distinction collapsed. Yep.
00:28:58
Speaker
And then, so it wouldn't make sense to comma next. And then we have what is meant to be a sort of run-on in the rhythm.
00:29:09
Speaker
So I think that's, you know, the run-on is all basically qualifying. i mean, you could do a period ah after overwhelm period, I moaned. Mm-hmm.
00:29:21
Speaker
But I just wanted it to I wanted it to keep running keep running, keep running the way like, again, because ah it was meant to be like masturbatory. And, you know, both that literal act, but also the swelling of like experience that is like outside of oneself, right? Like it overwhelmed me and I lost all shape of myself, the contour lines of my body collapsing and rearranging. Like, how do you know write that unless you make the language and sentence kind of unfurl away?
00:29:48
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that, you know, some of the choices here, punctuation choices for me I have like, I have like a way that I feel them emotionally. Rather than like, because basically I would say that like my understanding of punctuation is mostly strunk and white, you know, like having read strunk and white in like college and like memorize the rules of strunk and white as, you know, refers to when to use a semicolon or when to use a a comma, which is quite, you know, pedantic. and and And then, so I'm like, here's the basic rules that I've memorized 20 years ago.
00:30:25
Speaker
yeah And then I just kind of do it by feel after that. And the nice thing also with publishing on a press like Random House is that you have quite good, again, wish I could take credit for all things, you have quite good copy editors. The the copy editor for Random House is, oh, he's just retired, but my my first book, Benjamin Dreyer is his name. He did 30 years of copy editing at Random House and he wrote
00:30:58
Speaker
And he, Random House has a very, unlike sort of like New Yorker, again, and I think this is a little bit different than like British, standardized British things, but Benjamin Dreyer did 30 years at Random House as a copy editor and really kind of like,
00:31:13
Speaker
came up with a sort of like house style and standards for for how you can do the copy editing and the punctuation and what words to use that is is much a much more flexible elaboration of something like Strunk and White.
00:31:28
Speaker
And then he trained an entire sort of crew of copy editors at Random House. It was markedly different. I mean, people are like, how can we choose this? Or how can we choose that? Everything that I published before I was at Random House, I mostly had copy edited myself. yeah And then when I got to Random House and I and i was working with...
00:31:49
Speaker
Benjamin Dreyer and also his team, like, they are pretty incredible. and Not just knowing all the rules of it, but but knowing knowing the rules of of punctuation, and grammar, of of usage, but of knowing how to break them and how to do it. So...
00:32:07
Speaker
When you get back a manuscript from one of them, they have done just in and in like they're the unsung heroes of a bunch of stuff. It's incredible what they do. For instance, for this, they actually created they ended up recreating a glossary of lumberjack terms.
00:32:27
Speaker
to make sure that I used all of the lumberjack slang that I found and sometimes invented, wow that I used it consistently across the book. So if i made up ah if I made up a word, let's say even like the word scooch in this book, I made up because the actual word had the actual word that meant something similar had racist, like anti-Native American undertones. And i was just like, that's not the hill I'm going to die on ye for like historical accuracy. Like I'm, you I'm using already spooky action. I'm not going like, well, it's, you know, historically accurate to use those racist terms. Like it's yeah not, that was not what I wanted to do.
00:33:03
Speaker
So I made up some new terms to, you know, for this and they made sure that everything that I made up was consistent across 200 pages in a way that, you know, even I was sick of double checking this stuff.
00:33:20
Speaker
I do want to say that like, there's a, there's a kind of, know, when you look at like, how come you chose a colon there or a semicolon there, that there's a sort of like cult of the author, that the author is a brilliant poet who,
Role of Editors in Writing
00:33:31
Speaker
you know, it could only have been a colon, you know, but, And I think I probably wrote that, but it may have been, know, suggested to me by, by one of these truly like highly specialized, brilliant copywriters on the, on the random house team. And you know, I just, I kind want to shout them out. I'm all for something like my first book for self-published. They're full of typos, like I'm all for self-publishing, but I also like to give credit that I was a benefit, like on an artistic level, was a beneficiary of these people.
00:34:03
Speaker
I love thank you for sharing that um yeah people don't have any idea about in in a book but people who are like highly trained and know what they're doing like yeah I mean this is like what you know as people talk about AI and they talk about all the you know what gets written and it's like know there's stuff and it doesn't go into all books you know not and there's different standards across different countries like translate you know some countries they have the the and the size of the press and all this sort of stuff. But like sort of the the heyday of the Big Five Publishing and whatever these big publishers like, certainly problematic. But the heyday of it, they put together resources to help authors on an artistic level in ways that like,
00:34:48
Speaker
I don't know if we'll ever see it again. Even just your average commercial book went through like so much editing and reading and and and work that you can't reflect in an an environment of AI or all this sort of stuff because it is not.
00:35:01
Speaker
This paragraph is probably like the result of a conversation between four or five different people. who are like my editor, the copy editor, me.
00:35:12
Speaker
It's a really beautiful process when it works well, know, and I don't know if it's going to continue to exist, but it was i'm I'm very grateful to have had it. Yeah. Yeah. I love hearing that. Before I ask you about your, I want to ask more about your writing because that's like a really way into it. I just love that final know sentence of the bit we taught, vibrating apart into pulsing particular that had at once seemed my solid unitary fate. I think there's something also to say about this whole story about syntax, right? Like the ordering of the words too. You know, it's not just like the rhythm that you're talking about earlier and the kind of vocabulary, but
00:35:43
Speaker
I just love that, A, Pulse in particular, that alliteration, but had once seemed my solid unitary fate. Like there's a real, like you he feels like a real person, even though as you're saying, umm like anachronism and stuff, but I just love like the real push of language there that seemed my solid, solid unitary fate. Such a great phrase to describe. I thought my body was one thing. And it's like, yeah so something else. Right. And you could read that with Leo Bassani. You could read it, you know, through all these different kind of thinkers. Right. But in that moment, it's like, oh, no, I i get that.
00:36:17
Speaker
I get that. Yeah. I just think it's just like a beautiful way. And then as you say it, then the next line is hilarious, like orgasm. But like really pushing language to extreme there in a way that is understandable, I think, for people.
00:36:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this' this is, I guess, something else I've been thinking about is that, like, I think about it both in the style and and, again, like, you know, a year out, a year and a half out from publication of this book, I think a lot about when people are willing to go with you on, like, a kind of idiosyncratic style journey and when they're not in in a something like this.
00:36:52
Speaker
and And also like the different, what audience you have at a particular time. Like, I think that, sure, you could read Ulysses 1920 when everyone's excited about modernism.
00:37:06
Speaker
If you wrote Ulysses now, i mean, maybe there'd be some people who recognize it as ah other as a great book. And ah and clearly, i think it's a great book. But I think that like, you know, you have to write to sort of the audience that you have in a moment. And so if I did like all sort of like super high modernist hijinks,
00:37:26
Speaker
I think that my audience just wouldn't come along. And so there's also like for me, I've been thinking a lot about gossip in writing. This is not one thing about it then, but i'm thinking about it recently.
00:37:39
Speaker
that if you have something that's gossipy enough, people will come with you on it, you know? So this is like, they'll they'll like follow you on a style journey if if what if the payoff is like some gossip some juicy gossipy thing.
00:37:54
Speaker
So, you know, even if we go back to something Ulysses, like, you know, you you can read this difficult, modernist thing, and the payoff is, like, oh, my God, he left while his wife was sleeping with another guy. Can you believe he's just walking around the city while she fucks that guy? And you're, like, it's, like, it' like you'll you'll read whatever style starts so you can get that, like, juicy gossip payoff.
00:38:19
Speaker
And I think that, like, gossipy is oftentimes, like, sort of feminine-coded, but I think it's especially in, like, the sort of, like, very macho modernist stuff like Sun Also Rises is a good book because it's just Hemingway being a huge bitch you know the opening thing about Robert Kahn that people would like talk about like he was a boxer like that that that opening thing is like his nose was fucked up he looked weird we didn't talk to him like you know it's just with like it's so bitchy Gotham and so I think that like when you go on these style journeys for me if I can make the payoff be something like really gossipy and ridiculous, which is like these two lumberjacks were like fumbling around each other's junk in a shed.
00:39:04
Speaker
there's a There's a payoff to this to to the style that I think my audiences now are more willing to go on me on those journeys, on a style journey,
00:39:14
Speaker
if there's like a emotional, fun, juicy payoff. Whereas like, if I try to do something that's like more high style on a more dry idea, yeah i lose people. Like I just feel that. And I'm somebody who wants, I want my audience to come with me. If you, if you get, if you pick up one of my books, yeah, sometimes I'm indulging myself, but like,
00:39:37
Speaker
I want it to be a good time for you, the reader. I mean, you're winning on that. Like, all this book, I was, like, flying through. Like, this story in particular, i was like, I did not know what was coming at any point in the story, right? Like, you know, you're kind of heading towards the dance. You're like, okay, the dance is going to happen, but... You can any number of ways, right? Like you're playing with fire quite literally with all of these guys, right? So i think thinking about it as gossip is hilarious. I'm not going to go through my just yeah shelves being like what is the gossip of this book? That's hilarious. Yeah.
00:40:08
Speaker
I mean, some books are like obviously gossip. Like, you know, Middlemarch is like this – Middlemarch is a book of like just incredible gossip. I mean, choosing all these classics just because I feel like people will have probably read them. But like, know, it's not a book like Middlemarch.
00:40:22
Speaker
You're like, I was in the church pew and then he came in and he didn't even look at me. And like, you know, and you're like – and what it is like this incredible like – you know, psychic, perspicacious, psychological observations. But like, really it's like, he can't be church. And I was standing there waiting for him to look at me and he didn't even look at me, you know?
00:40:42
Speaker
No, I'm great book. Persuasion, right. Like persuasion is the same. Like, is he going to come back? Is he going to look at me? He didn't even look at me. Like, it's fantastic. I'm now on a teacher class called like, just gloss it. i'm I mean, there's all, I mean, like, you like The opening, like every famous line, like, you know, all all find family, i all happy families are alike, except unhappy, whatever, I'm paraphrasing the Tulsa line, you know, unhappy families are um are unique or whatever.
00:41:14
Speaker
I just butchered that, obviously. But you know the but the point of it is, like this family is fucked up. You can't believe what Oblonsky was doing. you know like it's like that's the That's great. That's all their literature right there. yeah you know You're right. yeah you You want the author to let you in even while they're taking you somewhere right like yeah You need that window.
00:41:35
Speaker
and if the window is like, I need to find out more about these wild people. Yeah. Yeah. This is a great framework for thinking about if you are writer if you are a writer, like, are you taking the reader in or are you holding them at arm's length? Right. Like I've read a lot.
00:41:50
Speaker
I'm just like, why? yeah Why don't you want me to enjoy this? but but Like you can feel the author, like not wanting to let some breathing room in. I want to know how you write, not in a, you know, magical craft way, but rather, yeah you have like a standard setup? Are you typing? are you doing at the same time every day?
00:42:10
Speaker
do you set yourself amounts? I mean, I've gone through different phases, you know, like ideally I have like a routine, you know, like I, for people who wonder why I'm like looking so sweaty here is that I'm, I'm living in Columbia and I had my time wrong. So I was like running on the, on the shore here. And then it was like, wait, it's an hour earlier Columbia from what I think they think I'm in New York. I gotta go. So, but I'm in Columbia. I've ive started coming to Columbia and spending where I've got a place I've spent
00:42:44
Speaker
Winter is here and I'm increased spending more and more time here. And it's partially to like get out of sort of like the maelstrom of bullshit that living in the United States as a trans person and while trying to think about trans issues ah is right now, like,
00:43:01
Speaker
What is that famous belt line? The moronic inferno or whatever. you're just It's really hard to be like, I'm going to write a novel that's going to take me three years to write when every day is manufactured, you know, just like shit show.
00:43:17
Speaker
intentionally meant to distract your attention and not make you think about anything other than like the extreme short term. And I think that like a lot of the sort of like typical practices of a writer, like I'm going to write every day at 5.30 in the morning or whatever, have always been to like sort of get away from the maelstrom of bullshit. But it seems increasingly more important in this era to do it. And I'm very lucky that, you know, after DeTransition Baby came out, i I was in a position that I could spend half the year outside of the United States, which I'm so grateful for right now.
00:43:58
Speaker
I am like incredibly, incredibly American. and in my like worldview in ways that are, I don't mean that is a as a positive, but it is it is how I am. and And yet I need to be away from it to to have any sort of perspective to think about it.
00:44:16
Speaker
So as a result, my my writing is pretty bifurcated, whether, you if I'm in the United States and I'm working on a project, I'm probably promoting something or trying to work on some other little side project or something while I'm in the States. And then I have these periods in which I go away and I try to either finish something or conceive of something. Like right now I've i've been here, whatever, since January, it's April now. i don't know when this gets posted, but I've been here like three months.
00:44:47
Speaker
And largely what ah the work that I was doing here wasn't like sitting down and writing every day, even though I intended to be. i was trying to write this mystery kind of thing. And I realized that it wasn't working and that like the mystery was not the plot worked, but like,
00:45:03
Speaker
Do I care about this? Is it of value? Does it speak to the moment? And you know the answer was no. And I sort of conceived of it in the United States and then had to come here and had this like time to think. And in that time to think, I was like, wait, this doesn't work.
00:45:19
Speaker
What might work and instead? What do I actually care about? Can I have um can i have some time to connect with myself, to to project into the future and think about what is a project that would excite me and that I could do for three years?
00:45:34
Speaker
How am I to execute it? both like artistically, logistically, financially. And then once I have that project and I look at what my life is like in the particular moment, I can set up my life for that project in that
Adapting the Writing Process
00:45:47
Speaker
time. But like the idea that like, you're going to come up with a method a of writing that's going to just, this is going to be good for me forever, you know It doesn't work that way, I've found. you know I came up with something when I was writing de-transition baby, which was a desperate time in my life.
00:46:00
Speaker
I sort of found this like equilibrium where I was able to like write pretty frequently, maybe three, four days a week in the afternoon. It took me like, ah I was like the fucking around a lot for, for like two or three years. But when I had to finish it, I had this like, sort of like, it was this period of flow for like seven months where I, I sort of was able to carve out these spaces, usually 1 PM in the afternoon, couple of times a week, three times a week, four times a week for about six months.
00:46:29
Speaker
And that was great. That, that does not work with my life right now. it doesn't work with how it is, you know? And so What I've discovered is is instead this process of like, what is my project? What am I doing? What is what does my life look like right now?
00:46:41
Speaker
And how do i not think about being a writer who has a routine, but how do I think about setting up my life to execute this particular project? for How do conceive of it and execute it versus for the period of time that I think it will take two, three years and sustain sustain a lifestyle yeah that makes that work?
00:46:58
Speaker
That's fascinating. I think like, yeah, it's such a different way of, I think lots of people talk about like, as you say, like the fetishization of practice above all, or like, I'm going to go and I'm going to the thing. I'm like, but as you're saying, like, what does it mean to like organize a life? But how do you tap into, that's a bigger question though, right? Like, how do tap into the thing I want to write about? The thing that will make sense to me?
00:47:19
Speaker
The thing that might speak to the moment? Like those are much harder questions, I think, than saying today I'm going to write 900 words or whatever. But I think that that that's the problem with that. This is, again, where the fetishization of craft gets in. is it like If you just say that you're going to write 900 words a day, and which, you you know, whatever, it's like going to the gym or something. It's like to put in the chair, make yourself do it. yeah That's great. But when is the moment when you can actually look up? If you're just telling yourself the most important thing is 900 words, at what point do you look up and be like, actually, I've been putting 900 words a day in something that sucks? Yeah.
00:47:51
Speaker
And Nigel, I want two years back. You know, the idea that this is like, this is going to work for everybody. Or you say, i want 900 words a day. And you came up with that idea. And then you had a kid or you got pregnant or you, you know, it's like this, this idea that there's a,
00:48:07
Speaker
And oftentimes ah the one in practice, it looks the same, but but the stages in which you write a book, they're not the same. The beginning of a book is not the same as the middle of a book is not the same as the end of a book. And your life doesn't look the same. So it's got to be great if there was if there was like a just a one size fits all regimen for all books and all people at all times. But I don't think that's how anything gets made ever.
00:48:30
Speaker
This is why I write poems because I just can borrow a snatch of time and yeah and it's very, how am I, yeah, where am I at emotionally, physically? Either it will come out in one go or it'll be a few lines on that. I'll come back to that in a year because I can't look at that, you know, like. Yeah, totally. Yeah, now that's really fascinating. you have't Do you have an early memory when you first wrote? Like, were you writing as a kid? Did you think I want to be a writer as a kid or not?
00:48:56
Speaker
No, i think i'm a i think I'm a reader. yeah Far before I'm a writer. You know, if you had to be like, Tori, you can never read again, or Tori, you can never write again, i would happily choose never write again over never reading again,
Influence of Reading on Writing
00:49:11
Speaker
you know? And I think that the fact that I write is an offshoot of the fact that I read.
00:49:16
Speaker
You know, what happened, I think, to become a writer is is that simply at some point I started, i don't think I wrote anything much until I was in college. And it was simply that like, know, I had an assignment to write something and then I had read so much that when when it was my turn to write, i had this well of past readings to pull from so that like, i mean, i don't mean to sound arrogant, but like what I wrote was better than other people wrote. And then I was like, oh, I might be good at this. But it was like, the reasoning was not like, I'm going to be good at this. It was that I, I had this like, you know, kind of like this well of fuel or something
00:49:55
Speaker
that was just words built up in my mind. you know, I've tried to refine that, but you know, my project now, like, you I'm in Columbia and I, and my next book is going to have a lot to do with, it's got big pieces that are going to take place in Mexico and there's going to be research.
00:50:12
Speaker
And my Spanish is okay right now. And I need my Spanish to be really good to be able to do what what what is next. And so my big writing project right now is not a reading or conceiving or or whatever project. It is that I need my Spanish to be much, much better than it is. So like, what am I reading right now? I am reading the Romantic books.
00:50:33
Speaker
I'm reading them all in Spanish. Like I'm reading a court of thorn roses and the dragon ones because it turns out that that's exactly my level of Spanish right now. I can just like fly through them and I'm collecting like thousands of fairy based words in my brain in Spanish, which, you know, if you read my next book, you're like, why is everything in Spanish? So, yeah yeah so fairy, or why is it, ah why is everyone wearing a wreath on their head?
00:50:59
Speaker
It's like, well, that's the Spanish. i everyone like with But hopefully I get, and you move on to other books but it's like I don't actually care what I need now to do this project what I need language wise it's like i need raw material and I'm just like and these books you can fly through them yeah there other people want to talk about them so I'm just reading tons of them even as I'm like would I ever write something like this would I ever read it in English no but it's it's perfect for what I need right now and I'm book two of the
00:51:31
Speaker
Court Thorns and Roses, I'm a book one of the, just finished the first of the dragon, and the Yaros dragon books, and who knows what order, but but it's like, I've been doing this for the last couple weeks, and like it feels like a writing project.
00:51:44
Speaker
yeah even though doesn't look like a writing product to anybody else that's also useful though like writing is all of the stuff that comes with you know just the sentences but um brilliant okay so if we see a dragon suddenly appear in this new and you know like we're like Cory's really into like elves yeah um the the What's funny is actually, i know that there's things in the English books that are like also weird anachronisms, like people tell that that Court of Thornos and Roses, like that that apparently the phrase haul ass in English is all over those books. we really They're always paul hauling ass to places, um which is not, they did not translate that literally into the Spanish I've found.
00:52:27
Speaker
but young But some things are translated very literally into Spanish, including the phrase balls to the wall was course was translated literally into Spanish. And I was like, a like what is this?
00:52:43
Speaker
ah Oh, it's balls to the wall. So, you know, if you get a few a few balls to the wall in my in my next book, it's the traces of...
00:52:56
Speaker
it's fairy books yeah I love an idiom just translated into straight okay final question book recommendations I ask everyone for this at the end like anything you want to recommend to listeners stuff that you come back to classics things that are not yeah anything you want uh I'm always a fan of like one one of my My favorite books of all time is Independent People by Haldor Laxness, the Icelandic book about a sheep farmer. Laxness won the Nobel in 52, largely on the strength of
Book Recommendations by Tori Peters
00:53:29
Speaker
this book. It was translated by a British guy who only translated one book in his entire life, and it took him seven years, it was this book, Independent People. And I think he might have been a genius. Like, I don't speak Icelandic, but i was reading papers where people were the Icelandic people were like, we would never have thought to translate it this way. And it's incredible. And I've read other Laxness books, and they're in English, not that you not have this like weird vest. Yeah, the independent people has. And I think it has to do with this, this one particular translator. Again, the marriage of the translator laxness in English for the book Independent People produced, I mean, it is one of my favorite books of all time. And it is it is a funny, it sounds, if I tell you what it's about, it's about an Icelandic sheep farmer who just looks at his sheep all day and has fights with his daughter. You'd be like, that sounds like a bad book. But actually is.
00:54:25
Speaker
so funny so human so full of drama and myths and like know he's incorporating all his like old icelandic myths into it and um a lot about the passage of time and history and much the way that like i think priest uh is sort of a precursor to like the magical realism of marquez or something or something falconarian about it like it's it's an and It's just um it's an incredible. It should be talked about as like a 20th century masterpiece in the same way as all these other books. In my mind, it just happens to be in Icelandic.
00:54:59
Speaker
I'll say independent people. ah There's a book, there's a writer here in Colombia who I think is quite good, Gabriel Vasquez, who wrote a book, a good really good book about, and my most famous book is The Sound of Things Falling, El Ruido de Cosas al Caer. I think it is in Spanish.
00:55:16
Speaker
And a terrific book that sort of does a little bit of like an auto fiction thing, but then into like just a full fictional crazy take on drug on the drug war an escobar and Escobar and all this stuff. Incredible book.
00:55:32
Speaker
2011, that one came out in. i think it was on the Booker International list at the time. really and And really like pioneering his own kind of Latin American form of fiction at's at the moment.
00:55:44
Speaker
So I'll say him. And then I'm going to say a book that I've never read, but which is not against your against your thing, but there's this book.
00:55:54
Speaker
the The reason I do is I want other people to read it and I'll read it too. And then they'll have people to talk about what it when it comes out. yes Well, there's book, it's going to be called Vast Lands, The Crossing. And I think it comes out in twenty twenty so in in September or maybe it's June of this year. I'm not sure.
00:56:12
Speaker
But it is a translation of this Brazilian book in Portuguese called Grand Sertão, that everybody who can read Portuguese says is the greatest book ever written. And they're like, this is better than Shakespeare.
00:56:28
Speaker
they They say it's the greatest book ever written. And it's written in a vernacular, a Brazilian vernacular of Portuguese that is almost untranslatable. And so they tried to translate it in 1953. It did not. The people were like, this doesn't work. It's not good.
00:56:42
Speaker
Anyway, there's this Australian woman named Alison Entrichen, I want to say. She's a translator Portuguese. And she's been working on this book for like 12 years, trying to recreate, and this very lumberjack, you know, idiom kind of stuff, recreate in English, the idiom, the port the Brazilian Portuguese idiom of this like backwater Amazonian he's like ah He's like a thug. He's like a a thug crossing like this thing. but So like it's like ah like a mobster, yeah like rural mobster, Brazilian, Amazonian language, untranslatable.
00:57:22
Speaker
And it was coming out in English after literally 70 years. and failed attempts. And everyone says, I sound like Donald Trump, everyone's saying, Alison and Hendrickin really succeeded. Yeah, everyone, they all love it. But that is what everyone's saying. And so, you know, take it a grain of salt that I haven't read it, but everyone else is saying, this is the book. And so I'm...
00:57:51
Speaker
I'm very curious about it. I thought say that one too. Okay. Well, everyone, when it comes out, we'll all go buy it and then we'll just call a story up and we'll do like a book club or something as soon as it comes out. Yeah.
00:58:02
Speaker
That's what I want. I want to hear about what people are saying. with does So those are, those are, those are, it is an incredible collection of books. That would be great. This is what we need. Yeah. No, like the, you know, there's the books everyone knows, but I'm really interested in those other things that people love or, you know, do you want to thrust in people's hands. So I appreciate them.
00:58:20
Speaker
Tori, thank you so much for your time. i so appreciate this. Oh, this is wonderful. Really fun. Really, really very charming. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this episode. For more on trans writing, you might want to go back to episode 16 with Harry Nicholas, or for fiction about gender and the body more generally, you could also go to episode 13 with Okuchoku and Zelu.
00:58:43
Speaker
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00:59:03
Speaker
The podcast was made possible by an Impact and Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.