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Ep. 28. Seth Insua, Human, Animal
175 Plays15 days ago
In this episode I talk to Seth Insua about his novel Human, Animal (2025)
Seth Insua is an Anglo-Spanish writer and artist. He was born in Kent in 1989. He graduated from the University of Oxford with a First in English Language and Literature. His debut novel, Human, Animal, was published by VERVE Books in 2025 and Letras de Plata in Spanish the following year. It was selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club with Sara Cox, and shortlisted for both the inaugural New Adult Book Prize and the Book of the Year: Discover by the British Book Awards. He lives with his husband, David, between Newcastle upon Tyne and Madrid.
Episode notes:
- Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation
- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 'Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading...'
- Roland Barthes, S/Z (the proairetic code)
Book recs:
- Saleem Haddad, Floodlines (go back and listen to my interview with Saleem!)
- Josh Silver, Fruit Fly
Follow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Find Seth at sethinsua.com or @sethinsua on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Books Up Close'
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers, and anyone interested in how texts get made.
Interview with Seth Insua on 'Human Animal'
00:00:10
Speaker
In today's episode, I talk to Seth Insua about his 2025 novel, Human Animal.
00:00:16
Speaker
Seth is an Anglo-Spanish writer and
Seth Insua's Background
00:00:18
Speaker
artist. After graduating from the University of Oxford with a first in English language and literature, he spent some time working at creative agencies in London before moving north to become a freelance creative.
00:00:28
Speaker
He lives with his husband, David, between Newcastle on Tyne and Madrid. Two very different places, but yeah. okay Seth, welcome. Nice to see you. Hey, Chris.
00:00:39
Speaker
Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, the Newcastle and and Madrid thing is because my husband is a Geordie and I'm half
Language Learning Challenges
00:00:47
Speaker
Spanish. And so I'm here to kind of reconnect with my heritage, trying to practice the Spanish.
00:00:53
Speaker
And yeah, I like it here a lot. How is your Spanish? Oh my God. I don't know. it depends on the day. it depends on who I'm talking to. um i had a really nice day a few weeks ago where the sales rep um at my Spanish publisher was taking me around bookstores and he was so great because he was very patient with me and he asked me a lot of questions and I was able to really practice. But sometimes I go into situations where people are just talking so fast and ah it's like, I don't know, watching ping pong match or something and I just can't follow it. um So some days I'm like, I'm terrible, I'm not making any progress. And then other days, like, no, this is great.
The Value of Close Reading
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, and I find Spanish like very fast when I listen to people. I'm like, whoa, this is, yeah.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, it is. Yeah. I think, I don't know, that there are some linguistic studies on this stuff. And I think what they say is that every language ultimately conveys the same amount of information in the same period of time. But some are sort of phonically quicker and Spanish is one of them. There's more syllables per minute, I think. Yeah.
00:01:58
Speaker
Yeah, I've always struggled with that. I mean, I'm not good at languages generally, but Spanish, I'm like, oh, it's a great language. I'd love to speak it. But i'm well done on on trying anyway. oh Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to have you on talk this book.
00:02:12
Speaker
A, because I know you sent me a copy of this like a million years ago. so I'm sorry it's taken so long to get you on here. That's okay. But also because, i don't know, this is boring some people, but like my academic work at the moment is writing about
Literary Theory and Art Interpretation
00:02:24
Speaker
representations of non-human things in literature. So I kind of put this book aside for a while because i was like, I am actually animaled out in my reading, in my primary reading.
00:02:34
Speaker
Because I've, ah you know, I've had to write a long book on, at least in American literature, the representation of animals and other non-human things. So then you sent me this book, like human animals. I was More animals. I don't know if I can take it right now, but actually a, I'm still super interested in the topic. So yeah, it was, it's a good one for us to discuss today.
00:02:53
Speaker
Yeah, it'll be interesting to get your perspective then. Yeah, I'm just so like immersed in animal-y adjectives and things. that i like it I just see it everywhere now and everyone's writing. It's quite fascinating. But before we get to the extract, how do you feel about close reading? You were about to say off the recording that you haven't done this for a while, but like how do you feel about it as an activity or a practice? or How do i feel about it? I mean, I think it can be really useful.
00:03:18
Speaker
I don't know, I think it's it's a really interesting one because I remember getting quite into this, I suppose before university, because I did a combined English language and literature A-level at school. And as a part of that, we did a lot of like discourse analysis. So we'd be looking at kind of, you know, the transcripts and and not fiction and then um we would be applying the same tools to to fiction and sort of digging into things in a lot of depth um and i really enjoyed that because i just like having more tools at my disposal and being able to approach things in different ways and then it was at university that we started to kind of look at the theoretical underpinnings of different approaches to literature i suppose and
00:04:00
Speaker
like proper pure close reading is is of new criticism isn't it? um And I remember being very into it but my sort of overall view on this stuff is that any kind of literary theory and any kind of approach to literature should never be prescriptive. Like we should never be telling any reader how to read because art is just a human thing, it's an expression of our humanity and everybody no matter what level of kind of education or sort of a formal study that they have is going to have a kind of valid reaction to to art.
00:04:32
Speaker
So I guess I'm sort of interested in like, don't know, like reader response stuff. And I think that close reading can actually be integral part of that. And I think that, you know, describing how people read is more interesting than prescribing how people should read.
00:04:50
Speaker
there's something about close reading that you kind of get into the craft of the text more and you can still think about it from all kinds of different perspectives so you know you can think about it from a very personal perspective you can think about interpretive communities you can think about um how someone might treat this if they were from a particular background and you can kind of adopt different readers mindsets as you're doing that so it can be a really illuminating exercise in that sense And i also think that, you know, I've heard people disparaging this kind of thing.
00:05:25
Speaker
And it was like that Susan Sontag against interpretation idea where it's like, oh, my God, like, it's not ah a puzzle that we need to decode. it's It's a text and we should just appreciate it in a natural way. But Language is so rich and the creative use of language is so nuanced. And yeah, I think you can discover things and you can discover different things on different days. And, you know, different people will see different things in the text when they look closely. And for me, that's all just a part of it. So that was a really long answer.
00:05:56
Speaker
No, that's perfect. I mean, yeah. And I think, you know, the idea of, you know, this kind of all what paranoid reading, right, that Eve said you would call it, where like, you go to a text to uncover some kind of secret.
00:06:08
Speaker
Like, I'm less interested in that than just like, wait, what is that word doing there? Like, what is the effect of that word? Right. And the effect of that word in that sentence, I might see it one way, you might see it another way. And we have a dialogue about that. That's like the really interesting bit, right? Yeah.
00:06:22
Speaker
I kind of wanted through this podcast to kind of be like, what do I do in a classroom? Like in a literature classroom, like let other people listen in on that kind of conversation. But the flip is that I'm doing it with the author, you know, usually in a, in a literature classroom, my students like, yeah, but what did Seth intend in that sense? I'm like, I don't care. Seth's not here. His opinions got nothing to do with our reading. Right. But in this, in this example, it's like, what would it mean to have you involved
Exploring 'Human Animal'
00:06:47
Speaker
in that conversation? And If I'm like, why is that comma there? And you're like, don't know. Because it just felt right.
00:06:53
Speaker
Like, that's kind of interesting to me. um um Yeah, I agree. Also, I think it'd be interesting for me, first of all, to look back at something that I actually wrote years ago now to maybe try and and tell you little bit about my my style my writing um because i do think it's quite deliberate i i'm not a writer who has come to this without any you know education right like i've i do things for a very specific reason whether or not readers um like them is another matter so to kind of have your your point of view as reader and then and then my sort of expression of intent will be
00:07:28
Speaker
maybe quite a rare a rare thing yeah for sure and for listeners we're reading a passage from like don't know a third of the way through some page 119 if you have the third paperback and i can ask seth to read this kind of opening of this chapter in a second but we might need to say that the book kind of oscillates between perspectives Right. We get the perspective of father and I'm going to say child for gender neutral purposes here. And then a third perspective, which is a kind of historical perspective. We're not going to get into those other two because, you know, i close reading. But, you know, who knows what will come up.
00:08:04
Speaker
But this section is labeled son, son. But for listeners, I'm going to say they throughout when I refer to like the character who's speaking because they've got a whole gender journey going on in this book. And at this point in the book, they are seen primarily as a son, as he. But Tam, formerly Tom in the book, has a different kind of understanding of that. And I think this is one of those interesting moments where they're not thinking about gender, but they are thinking about gender.
00:08:29
Speaker
some other stuff So anyway, um this is yeah from page 119. Seth, do you want to read it first and then we can go from there? Yeah, well, I'm just going to say very quickly that for anyone who doesn't know, this story is a kind of family saga set on a dairy farm it goes back many generations and they're really struggling. And um it's about the conflict really between a father and his son, his child. who's returned from university with a big secret and locked themselves away in their childhood bedroom. And essentially, they are railing against the family business, which is, you know, at a dairy farm. They have come out as vegan and it's kind of in anticipation of coming out as non-binary.
00:09:15
Speaker
I mean, originally I kind of thought of that as a a spoiler, but then my publisher decided that we should actually put that on the back cover in the blurb for like the reprint. So now it's just, you know, it's one of the first things that you you learn about it.
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, you can imagine coming out as vegan doesn't go very well. and kind of confirms for Tom, for Tam, that the family will reject them and it's only a matter of time. And they, that you also find this out right at the beginning of the story, they secretly invite a group of animal rights activists called Livestock Aid to the farm to get some footage for their social media. So they kind of um are attacking the family unit from within while also feeling very sad. Yeah.
00:09:57
Speaker
So that's kind of the the premise. Okay, should read? Yeah, please. On my dusty bedroom floor, I keep company with
Close Reading a Passage
00:10:07
Speaker
internet galleries of mistreated animals.
00:10:10
Speaker
Lambs nestled in the mulch of their decaying mothers. Dead horses, hollowed out in an abandoned paddock, their hooves like clown shoes on shrunken limbs.
00:10:22
Speaker
Pigs biting into their fallen brethren, eating them alive. When I was a child, dad took me and Harry to the park to play football and invited some passing village boys to join in.
00:10:35
Speaker
i was not a natural. I stood there stupefied, shivering in the heat of the midday sun. Dad asked me, are you a man or a mouse?
00:10:47
Speaker
Pigs in cages trample their young to death. Why must I think of such things? The incremental humiliations that built my early life, the stray balls and goalless kicks that tripped me up, that made my brother shout and the other boys jeer.
00:11:06
Speaker
And if we can't even count on parents to care for their children, what hope is there for our animals? We live in a time of industrial slaughterhouses and battery chickens,
00:11:18
Speaker
And dad has become the crazed face of animal cruelty, red and roaring in a flickering mobile video. He is many things. And only a part of him is my father, who loves me.
00:11:32
Speaker
No wonder I am angry, pecked raw. In this day and age, the way we treat each other, i click and click.
00:11:43
Speaker
I self-soothe to visions of hell. Yes, you get a good sense of this character's perspective, mind frame, the kind of language they use throughout.
00:11:57
Speaker
ah But this is a really kind of like interior moment for them in this passage that um you selected. And I think it's a really interesting one. Rereading it now, did you, did anything stand out to you as you read? I don't imagine you've read that passage aloud for a while.
00:12:13
Speaker
oh no, not for a long time. So I think the the main thing that stands out to me is how sort of abrupt it feels, the kind of swinging from the personal to the the political, like the domestic to the industrial. yeah There aren't any transitions in there.
00:12:28
Speaker
There's a kind of bleeding of yet two different semantic fields and yet two different settings and also the the past and the present. Yeah. But like, that's the whole novel, right? Your summary there. Like, the whole novel is the swing from the deeply personal to the kind of structural, the societal...
00:12:47
Speaker
the domestic and the intimate, like the personal and then the familial, right? I think that like, he, like about dad, he has many things and only a part of him is my father. that Like the people are not just their roles, right? But in the book, in so many parts, like people like, well, I'm this role, right? And this is what, like, you know, you are son, quote unquote, to me. I am father, I am farm owner, right? Like if you, if you,
00:13:11
Speaker
mess with those roles or transcend those roles you're like causing the social order to collapse right like well why wouldn't you eat me why wouldn't you drink milk like that's just how society is and it's like what happens if people step outside of those roles so I think that line of like he is many things and only a part of him is my father who loves me is the kind of actually there's a whole wealth of stuff inside everyone in this book that not everyone is willing to look at Yeah, I think you're right that maybe that sentence in particular sort of sums up and exemplifies like a lot of what the novel is about.
00:13:43
Speaker
As is, I think also, you know, if we can't even count on parents to care for their children, what hope is there for our animals? There's also a sense that this whole, I mean, this whole passage is about power and hierarchies.
00:13:56
Speaker
And it kind of collapses. There's like this implied hierarchy between humans and animals. And by the end, that has been completely collapsed. you know, so Tam sees sees animals and humans as as as being on the same level and also identifies as, you know, like a victim, like ah an oppressed, imprisoned animal, trapped in the stasis of, you know, the dusty bedroom floor, low to the ground, you know, the opening sentence, I keep company with internet galleries. um You don't normally keep company with something inanimate, but the internet galleries are not just a way of passing the time. Like the internet galleries of mistreated animals are sort of companions.
00:14:37
Speaker
yeah although i think some of that language is interesting right like because like i keep company like sometimes tam is a tiny bit like grandiose in like their phrasing you know even like yes it's biting into their fallen brethren and you're like the girl who eat like you know like there's a real sense of like a seriousness about them at all times right like because they care so deeply about all of these things and the later sections of the book when they've moved to london and they're with the you know, like the hippie vegan crowd and everyone's just like very like sincere about everything. And I'm like, okay, we all need to take a breath, you know? and But even just that like, I keep company, but also I keep company with internet galleries.
00:15:15
Speaker
Like there is a real, like I care really deeply, but I'm still online. And there's like, there's like a layer in between there, right? It's not, they're not out in the barn. Mm-hmm. Right, they're like looking, they're scrolling through photos of mistreated animals. Like there's a real sense of that like online warrior element thing where it's just like, I'm gonna be perpetually online. I'm just gonna doom scroll and through the Nia. Yes, yeah. you've You've really picked up on some of the, um kind of main tensions I think in Tam's character because Tam to me is one of those young like very idealistic people who's just come back from university and it's like I now know the answers like i I have discovered things that none of you can ever have thought like there's no way you've ever thought about this and it's like maybe they have
00:16:00
Speaker
And maybe they've just kind of come to their own conclusions or maybe they've made up their own minds about things. Tam is a little bit pretentious. Tam is pretentious in their language.
00:16:11
Speaker
Tam spends a lot of time thinking about how things should be and ideals rather than, you know, the messy realities. And I think like Tam's journey is about kind of accepting that,
00:16:23
Speaker
things aren't going to be perfect, people aren't going to be perfect, people are just sort of the products of their own environments and childhoods and actually you know you have to cut people some some slack. Also like the bad things that happen to you maybe not always the the worst things that have ever happened to him anyone and you know other people have had bad things happen to them too.
00:16:42
Speaker
And I also wanted to kind of capture how so on the farm Tam is the one who is least interested in the animals Tam is not spending time with the animals really. um Tam doesn't like it when the chickens are pecking around their boots.
00:16:57
Speaker
Tam actually fits in better in an ah urban environment where you don't really have to think about the mess of life. um And actually that is where, you know, progressive ideas about animals tend to be centered on cities.
00:17:15
Speaker
which I just find really interesting because there's a lot of like very, but there are a lot of very interesting and compelling debates about the way that we treat animals. But it's funny that the people who feel strongest about that um are often not living around the animals and they're not in the countryside. I mean, there are lots of different reasons for that, which we don't need to go into now. But um yeah, that's something that is there in Tam's perspective. Yeah, there's like a remove and it's just good. It's just great. There's internet galleries, like so many of the scenes of time, like they're on YouTube or they're on their laptop or their phone, right? Like the internet is a mediating thing for them,
Character Analysis in Depth
00:17:53
Speaker
right? And then it's like, then the next couple of lines, lambs nestled in the mulch of their decaying mothers. Like this is really like emotive, rich language, right? Dead horses hollowed out in an abandoned path. the hooves like clown shoes on shrunken limbs, pigs biting into their fallen brethren, eating them alive. Like this real, I'm like, who are they narrating for here? It's like they're they're angering themselves, right? Primarily. yeah and But you know, for us as reader, it's like, it's like super intense and there's so much like sibilance that you put in there, right? Hooves, shoes, shrunken limbs, nestled mothers. Yeah, i think I think like nestled and mothers, these are kind of, from the semantic field of like children's books. Right. So, and then like clown shoes, I mean, it kind of, yeah yeah clown shoes thing sort of anticipates the, the humiliation narrative, you know, that these are animals that are not treated with respect and they look ridiculous, but there's like a juxtaposition between, you know, I suppose what could be soft maternal language about parents and children
00:18:56
Speaker
And then this like horrifying language of of decay and death. And yeah, you're right. it's It's very grandiose. It's very like, listen, everybody, you know, like, yeah, you can see why Tam is drawn to livestock age as an organization. Yeah, for sure. And like, when you read it that way, you're like, yeah, this is horrific. Like, why aren't we all like... you know fighting like it's really provocative language and it really sucks you in although there's this like moment of like pigs biting their fallen brethren eating them alive which is like even okay so even like the animals themselves are like feasting on each other right this is there's this element of like the it's not just the humans that are bad but like there's something about this scenario that has now gotten out of control right there's this is kind of specter of
00:19:39
Speaker
Chaos, almost. this is This is true, but also it then goes on to say pigs in cages trample their young to death. So, like, the thing that is yeah um to blame is imprisoning animals, yeah so they can't kind of express their natural behaviours. And Tam also feels imprisoned and, like, they can't yeah express their natural behaviours.
00:19:57
Speaker
And, yeah, there's this, I don't know, there's this sense of just being... It feels very obsessive. It feels kind of maniacal and, like, Tam is just being pulled back and in cycles.
00:20:09
Speaker
But even but the fact that you go from like eating them alive, full stop, new paragraph, when I was a child, like, as you said the beginning, there's this real kind of oscillation between this stuff that they're scrolling through online and then their feelings that keep coming up, right? And obviously it's scene about playing football, which is like, ah you know,
00:20:27
Speaker
I had that pang in my body. i was like, no. But then they say, I was not a natural. I stood there stupefied, shivering. Again, loads more sibilance here, right? You followed through from that opening paragraph. But I was not a natural. Like you could easily misread that as I was not natural, right? Like what is a natural versus like what is natural? and the whole book is...
00:20:47
Speaker
you know, what parts of gender are natural? What parts of like interspecies life are natural or unnatural, right? loads of those questions in the book. And just, I was not a natural like playing football, but like I was not actual, like being a boy, right? Is part that. Yeah.
00:21:03
Speaker
and being my dad's son and yeah then dad kind of asking and there's the direct quote are you a man or a mouse it's very like very standard but kind of diminishing phrase that is shaming and i don't know i actually just looking at this again i think there's sort of an elided phrase at the beginning of this paragraph so he's talking about how it feels to not be good enough and also to be imprisoned and also to be I guess like dehumanized and it's almost an example it's like a listed example you know like all of this stuff is happening look at these mistreated animals for example when I was a child yeah this happened to me and it's like it's actually slightly different but in Tam's mind the two things are same. Yeah entangled but and I think like for their benefit you know the question are you a man or a mouse does install a kind of there is like a species hierarchy right to use the
00:21:59
Speaker
theoretical language where it's like being a mouse is the small pathetic thing whereas a man is like in control of themselves and of of nature right and you're like well like a mouse is pretty cool and they can run much faster than you can and you know like like there is a we do have our human language is suffused with species hierarchy where like our species is better than other species right and there's like a and but the fact that that's gendered too right are you a man or a mouse is like are you are you also so feminized right in some kind of way are you feminized are you not quite grown up so like this this idea of like the good son the good man is also about being the good human right right it's about not lingering in some weird animalistic space right you need to be like strong and in control and in charge and all those kinds of weird things yeah and to be a kind of non-human animal is sort of synonymous in this with being ah subjected to something to being a victim to not being like an ah an active agent in your own life um but it's also interesting again looking at this now the um we sort of
00:23:09
Speaker
foreshadow Tam's realizations about their own father um because it's saying you know pigs in cages trample their young to death and this is just after reflecting on the way that George the dad is treating them and has treated them in their life So it's kind of acknowledging that maybe George is in a cage of his own, which, you know, the more we learn about George's perspective, the more Tam learns about George's perspective, that's entirely true. Yeah, that's interesting.
00:23:42
Speaker
And then that that line, pigs in cages trample their young to death. What a new sentence? Why must I think of such things, comma, the incremental humiliations that built my entire life, the stray balls and goalless kicks, dot, dot, dot. And you're like, wait, wait, wait, you've done something. Why must I think of such things?
00:23:58
Speaker
You imagine they are referring to that previous sentence, right, of the pigs in cages, but they go straight into the incremental humiliations. and you're like, okay, fine, we're with the football, but also like, you're not a pig in a cage, or you're not the young being trampled to death, right? Like you might feel like you are, but you're not. But they're such like, get but at the language of the, at the level of the sentence, sorry, they're referring to two things at once. And I think that elision is quite,
00:24:24
Speaker
sneaky on your part but also like it's a real example of their thinking of how all of this is one and the same there is a kind of flattening of experience like there's one thing to say like our fates are entangled right like queer people or like people who are mistreated or marginalized is is like akin to the ways that you know animals are ah like oppressed in various ways yeah but flattening those experiences is like oh well that's something different right that's a different kind of thought you were having. And that's happening at the sentence there where i was like wait, that's not what, okay. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then there's a kind of attempt to draw these two things together and say, well, you know I'm sort of exploring my own
00:25:07
Speaker
experience of this person who is my father but is the animal's farmer in order to understand like why must it be this way or why is it this way you know if we can't even count on parents to care for the children what hope is there for our animals and you know tam is kind of there saying well it's because they care about the animals but actually like all of this is emotional and it's it's coming from this sense of being kind of abused, like feeling abused.
00:25:36
Speaker
And, you know, dad has become the crazed face of animal cruelty. So like at this point that the father is sort of symbolic of all of the the terrible abuses that are perpetrated by industrial slaughterhouses. And, you know, and then I don't know, like that kind of red and roaring imagery is it's almost demonic, isn't it It's like there's a flame lit face. Yeah.
00:26:00
Speaker
No wonder I am angry, pecked raw. and then Tamsua becomes one of the the battery chickens. Yeah, it's again, it's like, it's not just like a metaphor. It's a, or it's not like, it's not a simile. It's kind of metaphor, but it's also then, it's not, I'm not like a chicken. Like I am a chicken.
00:26:17
Speaker
right It's like a real kind of like collapsing of the two between them. But I also think that um the crazed face of animal cruelty, red and roaring, like it made me think ah of, I was just Googling then because I didn't want to misscite it, but like it's from like red in tooth and claw, right is the Tennyson quote. And maybe that wasn't even in your head, but it like makes me think of the the red in tooth and claw, which in memoriam,
00:26:40
Speaker
is the kind of like the viscerality of like being alive, right, in a body. You know, the kind of the the the brute fact of like life. And the dad is like, he is passionate, he is caring, but he's also forced into that position, right, by these people who get onto his farm and but video him. Like in parts, I'm like, I feel sorry for him, right? You you do feel sorry for him. And then other times I'm like, okay, but you're not making your life any easier. You could just like acknowledge that you are doing something that other people don't like.
00:27:10
Speaker
And instead he just always becomes this like face of, yeah, resistance. and Whereas Tam is also resistant, but like they present a face of like something else. So yeah, I think it's really interesting how they're all, how this is all through Tam's mind, but in this latter part, they do a lot of, and if we can't even count on parents, we live in a time there's a there's pulling us in as well right it's like it's not just their thought it's like this is what we all agree on right collectively yeah yeah yeah very kind of collusive and yes that's the word
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I also think that the the ending of this passage, I click and click, I self-soothe to visions of
Societal Themes and Personal Identity
00:27:52
Speaker
hell. I mean, like, you know, there's a lot of talk about the self-soothing these days and well-being and all of that. And I think that actually we do all kind of self-soothe to visions of hell on the Internet. I think that's like the modern you know condition.
00:28:06
Speaker
human condition um but i also think there's something about the compulsiveness of like a click and click yeah the way that um tam's mind is is circling these things it almost feels ah like masturbatory like there's pleasure in it like sitting there self-soothing clicking being outraged um feeling like a victim maybe not taking responsibility but also like tam has genuine grievances But it's it's it's just that they're obviously very stuck.
00:28:36
Speaker
Yeah. And this passage suggests stuckness and, yeah, stagnation. But a real outward facing anger, right? Like it's like, I'm stuck in this small little space, but look world, like look at the, you know, it's like, it's always the question, right? In a first person narration, like, who is, who are they talking to? Right? Like, you know, part of the falsity of fiction is like, when there's a first person narrative, like, is there a sense that like, there's a clear directed audience and they talk to themselves? Is this like part of their mind? And here it's almost like they're trying to persuade us as reader,
00:29:10
Speaker
And maybe even themselves, right? They're like no, I do have a reason to dig into this actually, right? If I if i find enough examples online of animals being mistreated, I have the evidence, right? I keep clicking, I'll keep clicking.
00:29:23
Speaker
And it's like, at what point do you need more evidence? Like, you know, they're being mistreated. What more evidence do you need for this? yeah like make your own case to yourself or to your father or whomever but yeah the i click and click the fact that you repeat click emphasizes that repetition right you're just clicking for the sake of it it's not i click and scroll or i you know but i click and click is like i'm just doing the repetitive motion because the repetitive motion is the self-soothing right as you say we all do yes yeah right the doom scrolling the the
00:29:55
Speaker
the motion, the algorithm is the thing. It just so happens that we're staring at like the abyss. Do you know what mean? Like we've now just, the abyss is useful to us because it keeps us like in a state of like emergency or high alert almost.
00:30:09
Speaker
And for Tam, that's like, it's kind of debilitating for them. It's like, no, stop. Log off, please, please log off. For sure. I also think what you've just said is really interesting about um who is the implied audience to a first person narration. yeah Because I think that my my approach to this generally is to imagine that we're just kind of getting a summary of, you know, sensory impressions and thoughts as they come to the writer. Like I try to write quite
00:30:41
Speaker
simply and immediately. I'm not writing the sort of, i mean it's literary fiction, but literary fiction tends to tell more than show and to focus a lot on kind of um voice and perspectives on things and sort of digging into perspectives. And I actually think this passage that we've just gone through is is quite unusual in this book in that like it is this very sort of introspective it's like i mean tam is more introspective maybe than than the the father but it is a moment where like everything is stopped they are just sitting there and i think it does just capture something it's almost like a manifesto it's like it it captures how tam sees the world and you get a sense of somebody sitting and just working themselves up into yeah whereas like
00:31:30
Speaker
Normally it's it's almost, and want to use the word cinematic, but it's like it's quite visual a lot of the time. And it's quite just like, you know, this is happening, this is what I see. And then I try and sort of write it in a way that captures like the very natural language that that particular character would use. But here there's like a little bit more... it feels more rhetorical, right? Like it feels more persuasive and more like, um yeah, like, like TAM is sort of working through something. it's It's not, it's not just like the natural everyday language that TAM would be using, even though TAM does tend towards pretension.
00:32:05
Speaker
Which is just really interesting. I'd never really... i mean, I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote. I just knew that, like, I was trying to capture that, like, very specific feeling of, like, doom scrolling yeah and obsessing over something.
00:32:19
Speaker
know, like, well. Just to... Yeah, I'm sure we sure we all do these days. But just to, like, to kind of give the listener a sense of what I i mean. So we follow this, you know, in this day and age, the way we treat each other, I click and click, I self-soothe divisions of hell. The next paragraph is...
00:32:35
Speaker
Mom drives me to the station the next day. She tells me a small check has arrived from a charity that helps struggling farmers. Only she doesn't want me to tell dad who's proud about such things. So it like it just becomes much more like banal or to like, what's that like, Bartesian narrative code? It's like pro-oretic rather than like um hermeneutic or symbolic, right? Like the code has completely shifted.
00:33:01
Speaker
And yeah, I think that's that's interesting. Like it's, some yeah, I don't know. I mean, he's the word manifesto again. that Yeah, no, it is. And I mean, the one thing i probably should have said at the beginning, this is what I tell my students to do, is like, this is all written the present tense.
00:33:16
Speaker
Right. Like not only is the book entirely in multiple first person narratives, but it's all present tense to like there is a an immediacy to it. Right. Like I keep company, not like I kept company.
00:33:28
Speaker
Right. And that present tense is part of what you're saying. Right. Trying to describe experience as it happens or trying to capture experience as it happens. And there is more, yeah, like manner of fact writing throughout. But then there are moments of like little poetic little bits where you're like, oh, something's happening here. And that's what I always tell people to like close reading is something's happening here.
00:33:51
Speaker
what's going on where is this coming from this isn't like the previous page right like that's when you should like sit up a little bit in terms of if there's no one way to do close reading but for me the best one is to be like why is that word being used that's not the word that's not a word that person would use normally or the tone is different here why is the tone different why is the speech different or the sound different because that's like a real yeah it's Yeah, real good place to zoom in to be like something's happening. You know, it's not like the tremble in the water, right? Like and like the dressing park thing, right? you like you You see the ripples, but you don't see the the dinosaur for ages, right? you're seeing
00:34:29
Speaker
ah You're seeing like an effect. and And that's where I'm like, zoom in on that. Look at that thing. Because that will tell you so much about what's happening behind the scenes, if you like. um Yeah. Okay, well, this is this is fun. This is a good passage to talk about, actually.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah.
Seth's Writing Process
00:34:44
Speaker
You can take a tiny bit of a text and read so much into it. Yeah. yeah I do want to ask you about your writing more broadly though. Do you have like a writing practice, whatever that means to you? Do you have like special chair, special socks, snacks, writing by hand, computer, like phone?
00:35:06
Speaker
I've had a lot of answers to this question, including writing in the bath, writing in bed, writing on trains, on the phone. So like, Oh my god, no. i mean, i I couldn't write in the bath. yeah I'm not really a bath person, actually. But i I write anywhere and everywhere. And the main thing I would say is that I can't stay. i just can't sit still. i can't. like I don't have a particular place because after 20 minutes of trying to write there, I would be struggling and I'd have to like, I just have to keep moving. So in at home in Newcastle, i will just move around the house and I will also shift um my kind of medium. So like I will write by hand. I will write on my phone. I will write on the laptop. Writing on my phone is usually something that I'll do if something comes to me. i mean, usually that is in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning.
00:36:02
Speaker
But like I normally write directly into a um document on my Google Drive, which the the title of which is it doesn't matter if it's shit. Yeah. And that just helps um unblock me that I can just write anything. It just doesn't matter. Get it down.
00:36:18
Speaker
And i yeah, I also find that writing by hand really useful because it slightly slows me down. And then I find that I can process more as I'm doing it and I'm less likely to self edit as I write. So I don't know, i'll I'll just like write something. And also, even if I know that I'm not happy with it, it's fine. I just keep going. And there's something satisfying about filling pages in a notebook or i don't know. And then i will try to type that up like at the end of that day. And as I type, I usually make some changes. But I don't know, I also find it really hard to write like on a train or I'm not, so i really admire people don't
00:36:59
Speaker
like oh god I'm so busy I have like 20 minutes to write today and I'm gonna do it because if I have 20 minutes free in the day I'm going on TikTok and even if I really don't want to like I i can't I'm not a very like regulated person in that sense I just wish that I was um but I don't know like writing is something that I i have always done so it just sort of finds a way It just finds a way. And when you're like typing it, like do you've got the it doesn't matter if it's shit document, but does it all stay on Google Drive and the whole novel? Are you downloading it? Are you working on it and printing it out or or does it stay in that digital world?
00:37:37
Speaker
ah When I finish my first draft, i will print it out and I will go through with like a red pen. And um it, oh my God, it gets scribbled on a lot. yeah And yeah, I'll just like, I'll keep tidying it up until I'm ready to share it with my agent, I guess.
00:37:56
Speaker
And i don't know, I'm quite ruthless, I think, with myself. Like I'm not i'm not particularly precious about... my writing. obviously fall in love with my characters and my stories and i think I write quite like troublesome people um because those are the ones that I find most interesting.
00:38:16
Speaker
But then I kind of, I don't know, like I think my main thing that I can be sort of sensitive about is I see them as not just characters I see them as like representations of like real world not like people that not specific people but like flawed vulnerable people who are kind of deserving of of love and care and and healing and forgiveness and all of that yeah like I'm happy to then like hack a manuscript as long as we're sort of careful with the it's like doing surgery right yeah you know you you want to kill the patient and you need to be yeah you need to be mindful that you're sort of working on stuff that's that's real right yeah it's like alive yeah yeah yeah it's not an abstracted kind of thing yeah yes exactly you said like you've always written do you have like a first memory of like writing or like do you remember when you first did that as a kid
00:39:08
Speaker
I don't remember when i first did it, but when I say that I've always written, um even before I could could write, I was telling stories with pictures and my mum would like staple them together into little books. I was that kid. i Because my other thing is that I'm an artist, an illustrator. And so when I was... very very small I guess I would just sort of copy stories that i already knew it'd be like fairy tales or I was really obsessed like weirdly obsessed with Disney's Pinocchio um for several years and like I think the first word that I could write other than my name was Pinocchio um and there are about 20 surviving copies of you know me just drawing the story of Pinocchio um
00:39:53
Speaker
you know with varying degrees of success of slowly getting better and then yeah like by the time I was like five or six I was definitely telling kind of original stories I was really obsessed with hurricanes and tornadoes as well so like quite often I would tell a story and then just suddenly there'd be a tornado and yeah I'd watching the Wizard of Oz too much or something I was really into Wizard of Oz.
00:40:17
Speaker
What else was I into? Yeah, I mean, that was a big one. I think I wrote my first... So the first eight longer thing that i wrote, i was about 11 and it was Harry Potter fan fiction. Goblet Fire had just come out. I was really into that and I couldn't
Seth's Writing Journey
00:40:32
Speaker
wait for the next book. So I wrote this like terrible Harry Potter 5. And it was only about 100 pages long, but at the time,
00:40:39
Speaker
that was significant and then when i was like 12 i wrote a ya thriller called the clippings which i actually sent to a literary agent it was a full-length novel and they very kindly wrote back to me rejecting it but like in a very um encouraging way oh that's nice yeah and then i wrote like a terrible derivative fantasy trilogy as a teenager and what happened was I was changing so much as a teenager that because it took me like it was over a thousand pages long oh my and so yeah I was this was like my main thing that I liked doing I was that kid and I just kept rewriting it because I would go back I would like finish it and then I'd go back to the beginning and be like oh no and then would start like telling the whole story again
00:41:30
Speaker
And then I went to to uni. So like, the reason that I chose to do English at at uni is because one day I wanted to be a writer. It actually kind of killed it for me for a while because I just felt, I think, so intimidated. Yeah. That, you know, like, but there's no point in writing a novel unless it's going to be... I mean, I think I've got over that now. I just write whatever i I'm interested in.
00:41:51
Speaker
you know, that that like transitional period of your of early adulthood where you maybe have some aspirations, but your own knowledge and experience can't keep up with them is a yeah particularly challenging time for a writer.
Character Complexity and Reader Engagement
00:42:08
Speaker
But yeah, so like it really has been a thing that I've done forever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and you've got now hundreds of manuscripts in your drawer that you could like take out and be like, maybe. if so if we see a three-part fantasy series, we'll know where it comes from.
00:42:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, this is true. I do actually have quite a few things. yeah Oh, there you go. yeah Yeah. And I'm sure those hundred pages of Goblet Fire Next Step are better writing than anything that that evil demon woman could do. So like I would read that book over the other ones any day. that i like to think so. Yeah, I'm sure. here You all know what I'm talking about. um yeah And if you like that stuff, you can find another podcast. It's OK.
00:42:45
Speaker
You said you're an illustrator. I didn't know this until now. Did you draw this then? Yes, I did. Yeah. Oh, I didn't quite make the connection there. Listeners, I will put this on the Instagram post. You can see it. but there's a beautiful little postcard that came with my copy of like the father looking out the window, looking quite horrified and scary. But, um oh, that's amazing.
00:43:07
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, that's the opening of the novel yeah um where George, the farmer, has just woken from a nightmare about cows getting out and trampling over his brother who's died. and um And he goes to the window and his elderly mother...
00:43:26
Speaker
is running around in the garden at night and he's freaking out. And that's, ah that's what I've drawn. That's really cool. Yes, I will post that for everybody to see because I realise you can't see it on the audio format. But um that's amazing. Thank you.
00:43:39
Speaker
Okay, the question I ask everyone at the end is like, what books are you recommending to people? They can be old things, new things, things haven't come out yet, stuff you go back to, whatever you like.
00:43:50
Speaker
Okay, so it's just come out and I think you've just had him on the podcast. Salim Haddad's new novel, Floodlines. I absolutely loved it. I think it's probably my favourite novel of the last year.
00:44:02
Speaker
Cannot recommend it enough. I just think it's so fascinating. It's so, it just felt so real to me, so vital. So many fascinating characters. no easy answers to kind of some of the thorniest issues I think that we have today i just yeah I loved it I just admired it so much yeah that book is great go back to episode two listen to that conversation with Salim yeah very like immersive book very immersive and like like real people you know like by the end of human animal I was like these people feel like three-dimensional to me right in a way that I'm like
00:44:40
Speaker
oh I really care about this person but now I don't care about this you know like I really i don't often with reading get sucked into character so much like i'm I'm not a real big character reader I'm like I don't care if I like the character couldn't care less really you know people like oh I can't read that book because the characters are annoying I'm like couldn't care less I won sentences and thoughts and things but in this I was like really drawn in Thank you. Yeah, I think I'm the same, actually. i mean, like, normally I don't find characters to be sort of straightforwardly likable, right? Like, it's not something I look for at all. there people I know people that do. you go on BookTok, it's just that.
00:45:20
Speaker
that I didn't like this person, therefore DMF. Yeah. Yeah. they That's so strange to me. i Because I just think also, actually, one thing that I have found, um this is not to complain about anyone who's read my book, because anyone who's read my book, even if they didn't like it, you know, thank you. Thank you reading my book. But I always find it interesting when people are like, oh I hated this character because they were really judgmental.
00:45:44
Speaker
And I'm like, you're kind of being judgmental right now. Like, this is a little bit hypocritical. Because, like, i don't know. i don't think there's anyone... i don't think there's anybody in my book who is just villainous. You know, like, they're not... i mean, maybe Luke, if you...
00:46:01
Speaker
If you don't want to kind of, yeah. um But I think if you actually spend some time like thinking about why Luke might be the way that he is. So Luke is like the head of livestock aid and he's a social media influencer, but like everyone has reasons to be who they are. And that's just life, you know, that's, I'm saying like pretty basic things because it's just a universal truth.
Conclusion and Book Recommendations
00:46:25
Speaker
Yeah, when people like, oh, the character was selfish. I'm like, are you not sometimes? like is that not the na Yeah, always surprises me. yes, ah Floodline is a great recommendation. did you want to recommend any others? So like a very different book that is coming out very soon is Fruit Fly by Josh Silver.
00:46:46
Speaker
it's um It's more commercial. It is such a page turner. It's it's darkly funny. It's about a kind of well-off successful novelist called Mallory who's had a bestseller but then she's had writer's block and she's got married to this like very desirable husband who works in TV and everyone's sort of jealous of her but she is stagnating and really struggling and she wants to write another bestseller so she looks on Reddit to see what's selling these days and it's like
00:47:19
Speaker
go dark, go sad, go gay, maybe not in that order. And so she downloads Grindr and she starts pretending to be a gay man and infiltrating the lives of some gay men and essentially exploiting this particular young man who's down on his luck in a lot of ways. And you get his perspective as well. I found it like very funny that the satire is um the satire is funny and interesting, but I don't think that's like the lifeblood of the book, even though that seems to be one of the main um angles that they're promoting. um I think it's more about like people doing terrible things and you know, like sometimes how kind of thin the excuses are that like there aren't sort of these grand redemptive narratives necessarily, that you can just sort of get deeper and deeper and deeper into bad behaviours without realising that's what you're doing. i mean, bad behaviours, that sounds very simplistic, but I think what I mean is um destructive and exploitative behaviours.
00:48:21
Speaker
And I just found it so compelling. Like I had to find out what happened next. I just, I've read it so quickly. So feeling something very different than me yeah maybe that. Those are two great recommendations. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for your time today. I really, really appreciate it. It was nice to see you Thank you. yeah I've really enjoyed this.
00:48:40
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode. For more queer fiction that thinks about community and environment, you could go back to episode two with Andrew McMillan or to episode five with Sean Hewitt.
00:48:52
Speaker
Please subscribe to the show if you haven't already. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on YouTube. Give it five stars and share it with people on all of the places. Follow the show and me on Instagram. Tag me in any posts of episodes that you like.
00:49:07
Speaker
And if you can, please do fill out the feedback form that is linked in the show notes. You can also get show transcripts and more information by subscribing to the Substack. This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.