Taffy Brodesser-Akner, FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE
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[0:56]I interviewed Taffy Akner as part as the striker center from Temple Emanuel's Women
[1:01]on the Move series, which we did as a webinar with hundreds of people listening.
[1:04]It was really fun.
[1:06]I had been looking forward to interviewing Taffy about her book, Fleischman is in trouble
[1:10]for a very long time, and I finally got to do it.
[1:13]Taffy producer Akner was formerly a staff writer for the New York Times magazine and has written
[1:17]for GQ, ESPN, the magazine and many other publications.
[1:22]Fleischman is in trouble.
[1:23]What's her first novel?
[1:24]Hi Taffy.
[1:25]It's so nice to see you.
[1:26]This is so great to see you.
[1:28]How are you?
[1:29]I'm good.
[1:30]I feel like I've been waiting to interview you forever, and this is fantastic.
[1:36]No better time than in a pandemic.
[1:40]Why not?
[1:42]We are not on the move anymore.
[1:44]That's true.
[1:45]We are sedentary women.
[1:47]So completely sedentary.
[1:49]Yes.
[1:51]Listless.
[1:52]In fact.
[1:54]Okay.
[1:55]So recovering women.
[1:56]Here we are.
[1:58]Well, congratulations on all the success that Fleischman is in trouble has had, and your
[2:03]upcoming paperback coming at July 7th is so exciting.
[2:07]Thank you.
[2:08]Maybe by July 7th, they'll be a way to non-virtually promote, but who knows?
[2:14]I'm sure that most people attending this webinar already are familiar with your book,
[2:21]but just in case there are a few people out there who may not have read it, would you
[2:26]mind giving your quick feel about it?
[2:28]My quick feel about it, first, I just want to say thank you for having me.
[2:32]And also, I'd like to give a shout out to my Aunt Lois Acner and my mother, Daniela
[2:37]Chalmoni, who have followed me around for this tour, so I just want to say hello because
[2:41]I know they're in the audience.
[2:42]Fleischman is in trouble, is ostensibly the story of a doctor on the upper east side
[2:49]who is recently divorced and trying to find his way in a wild new world of dating and
[2:57]divorcing and co-parenting and dating apps on his phone when one Friday, his ex-wife drops
[3:05]the kids off and doesn't return to pick them up.
[3:10]And that's what the story is about.
[3:12]I never know at this point how many people are here because they've read it and have questions,
[3:17]how many people haven't read it.
[3:19]I don't want to give any spoilers, so that's the set up.
[3:21]It's about divorce, it's about dating, it's about, it's principally to me about middle
[3:26]age and it's about trying to figure out how you ended up with the life that you have
[3:32]when and whether or not you could have predicted it when you started out.
[3:36]That's a good question.
[3:38]I would say no.
[3:39]I have to say earlier this morning, I did
[3:47]zoom pediatrician check-ups for my two kids and I mentioned to my pediatrician, yeah,
[3:52]that was fun.
[3:53]And I mentioned to her that I was about to do this webinar with you and she said, I think
[3:58]I know Fleischman.
[4:00]So she wants to know if it's a real doctor or not because she is sure that she knows
[4:04]it.
[4:05]So there are a lot of people who believe that they know Fleischman.
[4:09]While I was promoting the hardcover, I had a couple of people ask if they were Fleischman.
[4:15]I had a couple of people ask if they were Rachel.
[4:20]The truth is, is that I am a person who grew up Jewish in New York and a short specialist
[4:29]on the upper east side is literally the least specific person I could think of.
[4:36]It is a cliche of my life and I am very surprised that the amount of people who think
[4:44]they know him think they are him.
[4:46]I have a couple of friends who match the description well, but you know, it's my first
[4:52]book.
[4:53]And if I had known how well they would match the description and that people would make
[4:58]these inferences, instead of saying, oh, I too know 17 specialists on the upper east
[5:03]side who are short, who are newly divorced, who are dating, who are all three of those
[5:07]things, I think I would have been very scared because, you know, Fleischman doesn't
[5:14]like sexual harassing, he throws raw chicken at his, like those are things I would never
[5:21]have wanted to implicate anyone that I know, but I'm glad to hear that they think
[5:26]that.
[5:27]I'm also surprised that the amount of people who think that, so that's good, right?
[5:32]And the people seem real.
[5:34]That's that's what I will take away from it.
[5:36]Exactly.
[5:37]There you go.
[5:38]Good character development.
[5:39]A plus, please don't sue me, anyone.
[5:45]So you had a career as this amazing interviewer, so I'm actually a little almost intimidated
[5:51]to be interviewing you because you interviewed so many people and you do such great writeups,
[5:54]like the one you just did about Val Kilmer in particular, which really took me back to the
[5:59]80s and everything.
[6:00]How did you decide to write this book and how did you use all those sort of journalistic
[6:05]skills that you honed over time to create these A plus characters that you came up with?
[6:10]Thank you.
[6:11]That's a great question.
[6:12]When I started writing Fleischman, it seemed so intimidating to me to write a novel.
[6:19]And the impetus for wanting to write it, by the way, was that I was working at GQ at the
[6:24]time and a bunch of my friends had told me they were getting divorced and they were showing
[6:29]me their phones and they were showing me this kind of new, strange way of dating, which
[6:34]was very different than the way we dated in the 90s, right?
[6:37]Yes.
[6:38]And I just couldn't stop thinking about it.
[6:40]And when I can't stop thinking about something, I call an editor and I say, I think I should
[6:45]write about this.
[6:46]And in this case, my editor said to me, you know, you don't always sound like an out-of-touch,
[6:54]suburban mother.
[6:57]But in this case, you really do, because the GQ reader would not even understand what
[7:03]you're talking about.
[7:04]They've been doing this for so long.
[7:06]They don't think this is just how they date.
[7:08]This is like writing about going to a grocery store.
[7:12]It's just, so I have a choice.
[7:14]I could take it elsewhere.
[7:16]But also, I could write it as a book and I could write about one guy that I make instead
[7:24]of the kind of stress of my normal job, which, you know, it's hard.
[7:29]It's getting right that what Val Kilmer's motives are in the world, which is not as easy
[7:35]as asking him what his motives are in the world.
[7:38]I was able to write this like a profile, like that's how I kept it normal in my head,
[7:44]is that it is a profile, beginning, middle, and end a story about a man, whereas when
[7:50]I was at GQ, that's exactly what I was writing.
[7:54]Long stories about men that in the end were more about me and what I was thinking than
[8:01]anything that a self-respecting celebrity would ever share with me.
[8:05]Love it.
[8:06]So how do you do it, by the way?
[8:08]How did you, I mean, even in the Val Kilmer piece, for instance, there was something he said
[8:13]in the beginning where you're like, see how he does that, see how he takes everything
[8:17]and makes it like that there's something good that it was preordained or something like
[8:22]that.
[8:23]What is the trick to that you have found to sort of getting all that information out
[8:27]without being so obvious about it?
[8:29]That's a good interviewer question and with that, I will address what you said before
[8:34]about what the thing that we do, it's very different.
[8:38]You have this obligation in front of all of these, I think there are like hundreds of people
[8:42]here.
[8:43]I didn't try not to think about that, but you have these hundreds of people and they have
[8:49]questions.
[8:50]I go somewhere.
[8:51]I'm spending two days with someone.
[8:53]I try my hardest not to ask any questions and if you don't ask questions, if you just
[9:00]listen and you let people fill the silence, which as you can see is not my natural
[9:06]mode, but if you let people fill the silence with the thing that they have to say, you
[9:12]can ask yourself as the interviewer, why is that person saying it?
[9:16]And when a person chooses what they're going to tell you and you can in turn ask yourself,
[9:24]why would they choose, why would he or she choose to tell me this, then you know something
[9:29]about a person.
[9:30]Whereas if I were to just flood zone with questions, which I don't have to do because I am
[9:36]not here to inform people in the same way you are, you never really get to know a person
[9:43]except for the information that they have to give you.
[9:46]Does that make sense?
[9:47]Yes.
[9:48]And now I'm trying to analyze why you said that as your answer because if you read
[9:55]my transcripts, you'd find them so dumb and boring and you don't want any.
[10:00]when like, sometimes when a story does well,
[10:03]they ask if they could publish like a section
[10:06]of my transcript.
[10:08]And the things I do to make people talk,
[10:11]which are just sit and listen
[10:13]and like a therapist more than an interviewer,
[10:16]the way I look when I do that is a secret
[10:18]that only my transcriber and my fact checker can know about
[10:22]because it's not pretty and it is not entertaining,
[10:26]I promise.
[10:27]Well, but I guess that's really what can make you
[10:31]such a gifted novelist then, right?
[10:32]Because all you do is observe.
[10:35]You're a total observer and then if you take all that
[10:38]and mix it all up and create new people,
[10:40]then you have a winning formula essentially.
[10:43]Maybe.
[10:44]I mean, also think about the people that you interview.
[10:47]No, like to the essence of what you're saying,
[10:50]you are interviewing people who are naturally
[10:53]because I love your podcast.
[10:55]People are naturally good at talking about themselves
[11:00]when they're writers.
[11:01]I made my career on stories about people
[11:04]who are absolutely not good at talking about themselves.
[11:08]But I still have a story to hand it.
[11:10]My first, like the first story that really put me on the map
[11:14]was a GQ story, my first GQ story in which I was sent
[11:18]to interview Nicki Minaj who fell asleep
[11:21]while we were talking.
[11:22]So I think that you and I have to do a very different.
[11:27]And you are, you get to talk to people
[11:31]who have something to say, whereas I'm talking to people
[11:34]because they're good at something else.
[11:36]They're not necessarily good at talking about themselves.
[11:40]And so I have to do that for them.
[11:43]I can't ridicule them because just because you're a good rapper
[11:46]doesn't mean you're good at talking about yourself.
[11:48]I'm not going to punish you for that.
[11:49]If you're a good actor, the same thing.
[11:51]if you're a good athlete, my god, the athletes,
[11:56]it is like if you want to look at what,
[11:59]if you ever read a great story about an athlete,
[12:03]don't underestimate how hard it was to tell that story.
[12:08]I promise you, I'm not disparaging athletes.
[12:11]They're used to kind of a press conference style
[12:14]way of talking about themselves.
[12:15]And more than anything, they want to protect themselves.
[12:18]So if you ever read one of the great ones
[12:20]and there are great ones, just know that that was harder
[12:24]than anything I ever had to do in the non athlete space.
[12:28]So interesting.
[12:29]I think that a challenge, at least in interviewing authors
[12:33]who are touring for a book, is that I found at least,
[12:37]is that there are very, some authors
[12:39]can be super media trained.
[12:41]So I feel like my whole job is to get past all the canned answers
[12:44]and those are so boring.
[12:46]I just really want to get to know people.
[12:48]I'm excited to get to know you.
[12:49]And so the things that they prepared,
[12:51]I don't want to hear those things.
[12:52]I can read them somewhere else.
[12:53]So I don't know.
[12:54]It's all fun.
[12:55]I agree with you.
[12:57]The most shocking thing that happened to me
[12:59]was getting interviewed when this book came out.
[13:02]And I think about the nature of the answers I gave.
[13:05]They were all true, but they were only true in that minute.
[13:09]Or they were the thing that I thought to say,
[13:11]because there's so much pressure in a conversation,
[13:15]it made me really rethink the idea
[13:19]that is, can you get to know somebody during an interview?
[13:26]Is this a good way of getting to know someone?
[13:29]The first interview I came back to do after my book tour
[13:32]was Tom Hanks.
[13:34]And I had an existential crisis about whether or not,
[13:38]like, is there any way to get to know Tom Hanks?
[13:40]I didn't have one question.
[13:42]We were just kind of running down the clock.
[13:44]And I was like, I don't know.
[13:45]I don't know if this is a valid way.
[13:48]You tell me, like, tell me what you think I should know.
[13:52]Because I don't even know what this is anymore.
[13:54]That's what it became to me.
[13:55]It became like interviewing after this book tour
[13:58]became like when you stare at a word too long.
[14:02]And it becomes just a string of letters.
[14:04]Like, what am I doing here?
[14:06]What am I like, is there any way to get to know somebody?
[14:10]I don't know.
[14:10]I still don't know the answer.
[14:12]I mean, you know, I told you my mom
[14:14]and Aunt Lois are here.
[14:15]Maybe after they'll tell me whether or not
[14:18]that was the authentic version of me.
[14:20]I have no idea.
[14:22]And as you can see, it's plunged me into a space of,
[14:26]I don't know what the hell I'm doing anymore.
[14:28]Oh, this is the space I would say.
[14:32]Nine out of 10 people live in.
[14:34]So there you go.
[14:35]You're just 10.
[14:37]Oh, I mean, I think you're not me there.
[14:43]I really do think it's possible to get to know somebody.
[14:45]Because I know my husband always says,
[14:47]don't call what you do interviewing.
[14:49]Because you just want to chat with somebody.
[14:51]Can you get to know someone if you chat with them
[14:52]for 30 minutes at a cocktail party?
[14:54]I would argue, yes.
[14:55]You don't know?
[14:56]You don't know.
[14:57]I don't know.
[14:57]I'm so self-conscious at a cocktail party.
[14:59]OK, maybe not a cocktail.
[15:01]I'm not like, how about you're sitting next to them at a dinner?
[15:05]And it's just you have to make a conversation, right?
[15:07]You can get to know someone a little.
[15:09]Or you get to know the most ideal version of them.
[15:11]Like if my husband overheard this, he
[15:17]may, I don't know what he's thinking.
[15:18]Maybe he's thinking, wow, she doesn't
[15:20]sound like half the monster she normally is.
[15:23]Or maybe he's thinking she's shier than this in real life.
[15:28]He's not thinking that.
[15:31]Or maybe he's thinking, like what I'm saying is a facade
[15:36]I put, I don't know.
[15:38]We are in the soup.
[15:40]We are in the soup.
[15:41]Gerald, I want to sit in this.
[15:45]This is the stuff I find best to happen.
[15:47]Not my typical.
[15:49]No, I love it.
[15:50]Are you kidding?
[15:51]I feel like, no, we need to.
[15:52]Our husbands have to come in and say, is this really
[15:55]what these two women are like?
[15:56]Are they kidding me?
[15:57]I feel like, OK, well, let's get back to your head.
[16:04]OK, so now we know what inspired you to write the book
[16:07]and all of that.
[16:08]What was your process like writing?
[16:09]How long did it take you to write?
[16:11]Where do you like to write?
[16:12]Give me like the process stuff.
[16:15]So where do you like to write?
[16:16]Is what I call like a man question?
[16:19]Like all of the male writers I know have a place
[16:23]where they could write.
[16:24]And I can tell you this.
[16:26]I wrote my book on an airplane with my child
[16:30]straddling me and crying, not being able to see the keys.
[16:35]I wrote my book in the, you know,
[16:38]like some Nordstroms have a couch in the bathroom.
[16:42]I wrote it.
[16:43]I wrote one.
[16:44]I wrote a big chunk of it there.
[16:46]I wrote it at the bakery in town.
[16:50]I wrote it in the car outside of the McDonalds
[16:54]because McDonalds have good Wi-Fi.
[16:57]And if you sit there, I wrote it especially
[17:01]in the 90 minute period where you drop kids off
[17:05]at a birthday party and don't have to pick them up yet.
[17:09]I have a lot of friends here who used to think I was
[17:13]a very generous car cooler because I would do both ways
[17:16]because of that.
[17:18]And now I don't.
[17:19]So I think I wonder what happened to me because of that.
[17:26]And because I didn't need a special place
[17:28]and I didn't need the wind blowing through my hair
[17:30]in a certain way because I've never been given those things.
[17:33]I think that those people who, the more needs you have,
[17:38]the more it will take you a million years to write your book.
[17:42]I wrote this in six months.
[17:43]And I wrote it because it was a challenge to myself.
[17:46]I was a freelance writer at the time.
[17:48]I was on contract at GQ in the New York Times magazine
[17:50]but that's not a regular, that's not a steady income.
[17:53]And I wrote it as a challenge to myself
[17:56]which was you have six months to try to do something
[17:59]that will get you ahead financially.
[18:01]I'm literally the only person in the history of the world
[18:04]that wrote a novel to make money
[18:08]which is not a statement on delusion
[18:12]but a statement on how little you make as a journalist.
[18:15]The idea is always like how can I continue to do this?
[18:19]And the this is how can I make sure
[18:22]I never miss a basketball game.
[18:24]My children have 600 basketball games a week
[18:27]and I only have two children.
[18:29]How can I ever make it so that I don't miss something
[18:32]that's important to me that I'm home
[18:35]as much as I can be for bedtime?
[18:37]How can I make it so that I don't have to get dressed all the time
[18:41]when I commute?
[18:43]I see all these people like we're all wearing pants
[18:46]and we're all wearing bras and we're all wearing
[18:50]like our hair is done and it just feels like
[18:54]it couldn't possibly be that that's how we're supposed
[18:56]to conduct ourselves.
[18:57]Like if there's one thing that happens after this time
[19:00]I hope we do away with the idea of like restrictive clothing.
[19:06]My husband has always said to me that he can't believe
[19:09]that we're already in 2020 and we're not all wearing
[19:13]like speed skating unitards.
[19:16]And I'm on board with that.
[19:19]That's how I did it.
[19:20]I did it on airplanes.
[19:21]I did it in between.
[19:22]I did it while the kids were setting the table.
[19:25]I would add a sentence, I would add a page.
[19:28]And then when it looked like I was making it to the finish line,
[19:31]that's when I would say to my husband,
[19:34]take the kids to your mother and Florida for the weekend.
[19:37]Maybe they won't notice I'm there.
[19:39]Or I would volunteer to do stories.
[19:43]I went to interview Antonio Bandares in Budapest.
[19:48]Budapest.
[19:49]I got that.
[19:50]Because of the ride.
[19:52]Because it would take like 12 hours to get there
[19:55]because there were no direct flights and that
[19:58]an airplane time is really good.
[20:00]time. So that's how I wrote the book. The limited the writing I've done, I'm the same way
[20:04]with you and I'm no, you know, I'm not like you, but I feel like when you have kids and your
[20:08]life is so full and there's no free time, you have to grab the time. Also, to use that time to
[20:14]read, I mean, those are also the moments, the stolen moments where you can get anything
[20:19]literary in any way shoved in. I don't know how you do it. So are you how you read and that
[20:26]because I can't read as quick. I guess I can't read as quickly as you do. I read quickly. I've
[20:30]also figured out sort of had a skim a lot in research authors and I don't read every single book
[20:36]start to finish every single page. I try to do that more for the podcast. For the podcast, I really
[20:41]do try to, but like the Instagram lives I'm doing now, there's just no way. But I say to them like, hey,
[20:46]I'm sorry, I haven't read your book, but sounds great. I feel like for me at least and I don't know about
[20:53]you, but this whole pandemic has allowed me to deal with my perfectionism a little bit,
[20:58]to say like, okay, well, no one is expecting anything of me anymore. Like if you say I haven't
[21:03]read your book, you're like, of course you haven't. How could you? And I'm like, this is great.
[21:11]Yes, I absolutely feel like my husband is doing a majority of the homeschooling, but I
[21:17]I find that the accrued centuries of sexism have allowed people to assume that I'm doing it.
[21:23]So they are really forgiving of me. They're very understanding because it must be so hard for me
[21:29]right now. Whereas I'm not even sure if my kids are, they're in the next room at school. I don't
[21:36]even know what platform they use, they do it for. Like are they on Google Meet, are they on Zoom? Am
[21:42]I okay? I don't know. So I feel like people let me off the hook more, which only makes me more of an
[21:49]ambition monster. Oh, I like it. Maybe I'll be able to write a third book, a second book and a third
[21:56]book during this time. The thing that I'm finding is horrible about this pandemic in addition to
[22:04]the pandemic, right? Like obviously, yes, the pandemic is the bad part, but the amount of ways I
[22:11]have to kind of keep it together for my family and not freak out. It's coming out in my sleep.
[22:18]It's coming out like I wake up at 2am every day now for an hour, just for an hour. Like I'm
[22:27]trying to build some acceptance around it and just and just be up for that hour and be okay with
[22:32]it. But it's so disturbing. But then I wake up and then I'm like, I can't, I can't figure out how
[22:41]to attack my perfectionism. But I also think that I don't have perfectionism. Like I have,
[22:47]I have enough experience with the fact that a good story could be made great by collaboration.
[22:56]So by the time I've written an okay story, I know from experience by now that sending it to
[23:01]my editors is going to make it great. So I make it as good as I can, but I know that it's not just
[23:08]in my hands. There's nothing I do that is left to me alone. Although everything I do has my name on it,
[23:14]so I feel very lucky about that. That's what I'll say about perfectionism. I wish I had some more
[23:20]perfectionism. I have the part of perfectionism that is self-loathing, but I don't have the
[23:26]part of perfectionism that is execution. Interesting. No, I don't, I'm not saying I do anything
[23:31]perfectly. I just aspire to that. It's like, it's like a want to be perfectionist or something.
[23:38]It's like, if I could be perfect, what I would like to be. But I'm failing. And by the way,
[23:44]I don't even try to pretend in front of my kids anymore. I've cried to so much in front of my,
[23:48]I cried more in front of my kids during the past two months than I have in all the years combined.
[23:53]And that includes going through a divorce and all the other stuff I've been through in life.
[23:56]And so I feel like I can sleep through the night because I am a mess during the day
[24:01]a lot of the time. So I don't know. However, we get through it. It's like,
[24:06]like an alternative. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the latest withflationism show will be coming a
[24:12]movie or a TV show where I know you had really exciting news. So what's the show? Yeah. So it is
[24:18]being developed by ABC's signature for FX. And I have these two amazing producers,
[24:28]Sarah Timberman and Susanna Grant. When I went to film school and when I was trying,
[24:36]my first attempt was as a screenwriter, I worshiped Susanna Grant. She wrote Aaron Brockovich.
[24:44]And she was one of the only women who was notably doing that. And I just kind of glammed onto her.
[24:50]And they wanted the book. And so I feel like I'm writing these, I'm writing episodes. And I have like
[24:57]a world class producer and a world class screenwriter to women who are just excellent at this. Also,
[25:05]I've never worked for women before other than my time at a startup. I've never worked in a kind of
[25:11]and a creative model for a woman. I've had a couple of female editors, but not ones that I worked
[25:16]for on contract. There's so much less aggression and there's so much less whatever this is.
[25:24]I love my editors very, very much. But it's a very, it's a very calm experience to work for these
[25:31]two women. So obviously right now, there have been some ideas that people throw at me. Like,
[25:38]what if we were to sequester a bunch of actors and then allow them to shoot this television show
[25:47]even now? But it doesn't really work out that way. Since if you've read the book, Toby has quite a
[25:53]few montages of sexual interaction that last in a screenplay last less than seven seconds. And you
[26:01]don't want to do that too. And to an actress, just keep her in hiding. Keep her in the tower,
[26:07]just for seven seconds. But it's going very, very well. And it's really exciting to think
[26:14]of this living on. I don't know. I think that there's so much opportunity to have to watch these
[26:24]characters live and to tell a definitive story about middle age right now. I mean, that's the thing
[26:31]that kind of set me on fire about the project in the first place. Even if there is all this other
[26:36]more glamorous stuff, there's the sex, there's the dating, there's the wealth. And I'm obsessed
[26:42]with wealth. But it's the middle agedness is the thing that I'm still working my way through.
[26:47]I have a hard time self identifying as middle aged. Do you have trouble with that? Or are you
[26:52]embracing it? Well, I have been since I was 35. I have been self identifying as middle aged. And when
[26:58]I was 25, I was like, well, I guess I screwed life up. You know, like, I always thought
[27:06]that I'm much older. And that's a real curse. Like, you're very lucky because it's a curse
[27:12]to think of yourself as always old because in five years, I'm going to realize I was not at all
[27:18]old right now. And what did I do at the time? I wore a lance and bathing suit and a calf tan
[27:25]because I felt I had to live in hiding my whole life when really this was my youth. Or at the very
[27:31]least, right this minute was as young as I was ever going to be again. It's a really hard thing
[27:36]to think about self in time. Also, you're only middle aged if you live to old age. Like, you know,
[27:42]we're in a pandemic. You might be my senior years. These are my golden hours. And I just don't
[27:50]even know what this is. It is a lie. I mean, I should even joke. This is horrible. I mean,
[27:56]I didn't hear that as a joke. I heard that as like a frenetic could be. Well, how could it be that
[28:02]you and I when we arranged to do this, we arranged to do it live. I was, I negotiated a car into
[28:08]Manhattan, which I thought was the height of glamour. And now we're doing this way. It is unbelievable.
[28:16]I wake up and I cannot believe that this is what's going on in the world. Maybe I can't believe
[28:21]it also because my life right now is so similar to what my life is every other day. I keep thinking
[28:29]it would feel more like reality if I had a true disruption in my life. But even when I write
[28:35]stories for the times, I stay home and I write them. But not everybody is necessarily home with
[28:39]you, right? I mean, your kids are like, right. But they are short and they get home pretty fast.
[28:46]I know. It's true. Yeah. It's the Nordstrom bathroom. What's missing from my life is the Nordstrom bathroom
[28:53]at the short Hills Mall. The department stores cannot go out of business or else novel will cease
[29:00]to exist. What do we do? Blishman will be in more than travel. Blishman will disappear in the
[29:12]bargain bench. Yes. So I just have to ask this is a template manual striker center function and
[29:20]everything. The role of Judaism in this book in particular, how did that play a role and how does
[29:27]how does religion fit into your life? Are you particularly religious or? Maybe I'm not allowed to ask
[29:33]that. Can I ask that? That's a very hairy question. I was raised in a very Orthodox household. I
[29:38]went to Yeshiva. I went to Yeshiva University high school for girls. I say Yeshiva to this crowd and
[29:44]they say, Oh, Ramas and I'm here to reassure you that I could not have gotten into Ramas.
[29:51]And I left it like my mother became religious when I was 12. She was very
[29:57]supportive. Disappointed but supportive.
[30:00]in the fact that I have my three sisters, and they all are religious, and I just couldn't do it.
[30:10]And we work as a family very hard now to accommodate each other, and it is one of the things I'm
[30:17]proudest of that we have not let the variance in our observances become an issue for us.
[30:25]I have Friday night dinner. My kids don't use screens on Shavat. My kids go to day school.
[30:32]I pay membership at a synagogue that I attend sometimes, and that I enjoy when I attend.
[30:40]I am planning a bar mitzvah, and that is the only, like, the last time I kind of had a crisis
[30:46]around this was when I planned my wedding. Now I plan, I plan this bar mitzvah, and I, you know,
[30:52]trying to think about, like, how do I want it to be? And it always forces me to ask these questions,
[30:57]which are how do you want to be, which leads to me saying, how are you 44 years old, and you don't know
[31:07]yet? Like, when or when are you going to figure this out? But when I wrote the book, I did not think
[31:14]of it as a Jewish book. I thought of it as a book about my world, about the kinds of people that
[31:21]I've known. Like, you know, they say, write what you know. And I always rebelled against that,
[31:27]because when I hear that, I think of it as the same thing as people saying stay in your lane
[31:33]in journalism. You should only be able to write about people who are like you. But, you know,
[31:37]some of the best stories I've done, like I wrote about Don Levin, who is a gay black man. I've
[31:43]written about Gentiles. I've written about all kinds of people who aren't like me, and I really
[31:48]am against the idea that we can only write about the people who are like us. But the thing that
[31:55]writing about people like you is, is it gives you specificity. It gives you, it's a way to speak
[32:03]without having an accent, right? Like, I know, like, it's my first time out. I'm going to write a book,
[32:09]you know what? It's going to be about the people I know. Another aspect of it is that you ask me
[32:16]where I wrote a lot of this book. And the one place I didn't mention, which is crazy,
[32:22]because it's where I practically revised the whole thing. But wrote a big chunk of it was my
[32:27]aunt Lois, whom I've said is in the audience here, owns the studio next to her apartment,
[32:33]maybe to one day turn into a palace that, you know, I can, I can only hope I will still have access
[32:42]but it's where I've gone. And the upper east sideiness of this book comes from the fact that
[32:50]I spent days sequestered in her and my uncle Allen's place going out to get food, standing in
[32:57]line at the salad place on third avenue in 85th Street, and noticing how on the upper east side,
[33:04]it seems like people are exercising all the time. Like, there is no peak period of exercise,
[33:12]women exercise. Like, if I wanted to leave writing, the thing I would do is open up an exercise
[33:18]business on the upper east side, because people will exercise as much as it's like that water will
[33:25]fill the tank. Like, there's more exercise to be done. And I would watch these women wearing these
[33:31]amazing tank tops that said like, like lipstick and lunges and in and live, love, laugh and, you know,
[33:41]but first coffee and all of those things came from seeing them and all of the Jewish aspects
[33:49]of my book didn't feel like Jewish aspects to me. I am like a post Philip Roth fiction writer.
[33:58]They felt like a specific American experience to me. So that's how I'll, that's how I'll say that.
[34:04]I do know that like, I didn't think of it as a Jewish book until, until I named it. It had a few names
[34:12]and then I settled on Fleischman as in trouble. And I was warned by several interested parties
[34:20]that that that might not sell well in the UK, right? For example. And I'd say, why? And they
[34:28]say, because it's, it's, it's to New Yorkie. And I'd say, are you sure anything in the right
[34:34]words? Because everyone was very proud of the, you know, like, everyone loved the cover,
[34:40]right? Which is an upside down New York cityscape. That's when I found out that it was a Jewish
[34:45]book. And then when I toured and two things happen, three things happen. Number one,
[34:50]synagogues were interested in me. Number two, I met a bunch of people named Toby Fleischman
[35:00]had a bunch of people brought me pictures of their, their late grandmother or a great uncle
[35:06]named Toby Fleischman. And it was remarkable and young people too. And the third thing that
[35:13]happened was that people asked me this question. And I guess I, the answer is like, you know,
[35:19]I maybe I'm too Jewish to see outside of being Jewish. I don't know. That's my answer.
[35:26]That's a great answer. And by the way, I have grown up on the upper east side. And until
[35:32]the pandemic have been there and basically most of my life. And I do not work out like that at
[35:36]all. So it's not everybody. But I do see that. I'm in New Jersey and pre pandemic. If I want
[35:43]to exercise, there is a two hour period of time that follows drop off the school drop off.
[35:49]Same thing. New, whatever you mean. When I was staying at Aunt Lois and uncle Allen's apartment,
[35:57]I could exercise at 11 p.m. However, I wanted to on a Saturday. It was amazing.
[36:06]I was like, but I could have. I know. I always like when I'm like driving home from like a
[36:10]dinner or something. And I see somebody like in a building on their treadmill. And I'm like, wow,
[36:15]they're still working out, right? It's like anyway. What were your alternate titles? Can I ask?
[36:20]Yeah. The first one was called Schrodinger's Marriage. And everybody said to me,
[36:27]how some people said you can't put an omelette in your first novel title because people you
[36:32]already have such a screwy name. Nobody will know how to search for it. The other half said
[36:38]great title. But then a week later couldn't remember it. So that's that's where I took my guidance.
[36:44]The second title was in what universe because I love the audacity of it. But then I found out that
[36:52]there was a YA novel called in what universe. And I felt like that's a really good YA novel title.
[36:59]I don't think that's a good like. The thing I'm doing is a little darker than that. And my friend
[37:05]Elizabeth Wilde, who's also a writer, she was at the New York Times magazine at the time with me. But
[37:10]now she's at ProPublica. She came up with the title. Plishman is in trouble. And I kept trying to think
[37:17]of other good titles. And I couldn't think of anything else. And now I'm so happy that we went
[37:24]with this one. And also it's on done pretty well in the UK. And also it is sold. It's foreign.
[37:33]It's foreign rights have sold in a kind of order of anti something like like Poland, Hungary,
[37:40]Croatia, Germany, like those were brands. Those are like the first places to go.
[37:45]So I want to make sure we have time for all the questions. But I just I just want to ask what your
[37:50]next project is. And then see if you have any advice for aspiring authors.
[37:54]Okay. So what's your next project? My next project other than the television show is a new book
[38:02]that will be out next summer called Long Island Compromise. It's about a family from Great Mac
[38:09]and inherited trauma and inherited wealth. And it and the way Fleischman was ultimately about
[38:16]middle age and gender and relationships, which are all kind of one thing. If you follow it down
[38:25]the whole, this is about the disappearing middle class. And this is about wealth in the suburbs,
[38:30]wealth among Jews. And the way it's really, really hard to get ahead now in a way that it wasn't
[38:37]for my parents generation. And my advice for aspiring writers is it depends. You know what it is.
[38:46]In no way to despair, it's a good question to not ask anybody's advice and to not listen to
[38:52]anybody's advice. I get that I think that every time you ask for an opinion from someone that you
[38:59]admire, for example, you take that to be the absolute truth when it's entirely possible that you
[39:07]are better, you are going to be better than the people that you admire. And asking advice of
[39:13]writers, reading writer blogs, which I've done, listening to writer podcasts, is an excellent
[39:22]way to convince yourself that you have, that you are writing when actually you are not writing,
[39:29]you are doing the opposite. You are taking in information that will make writing
[39:35]impossible. The more information you have, the harder it is, I think. Again, that's me as a
[39:41]patented terrible student. But I think that if you ask people too many questions and you start
[39:47]listening too much, the only way to be a writer is to write. The only person who can call
[39:54]themselves a writer is someone who has written today. There is no amount of doing anything
[40:00]than writing that will leave you with a page full of writing and a hundred percent of unwritten
[40:09]novels don't get sold. Whereas you stand a chance to just write, do not believe in writer's
[40:16]block. It was invented by people who want you to feel bad. You can always write the next sentence
[40:21]and just go and I can't wait to read whatever you have to write. There are so many people
[40:26]saying that right now is a bad time to write and there's so many people who are doing this thing
[40:33]where they're making it so that you feel bad about writing or that you're thinking it's impossible.
[40:40]I see it on Twitter all day. Nobody will be able to produce good art right now. You know what?
[40:46]Some days are bad and some days are good. You can still do it. Don't let anyone tell you that.
[40:52]And so now for someone who had no advice, that was my advice. But you have to put an
[40:58]asterisk and say that it's okay if people listen to my podcast to inspire them.
[41:02]Where is this into how to podcast? Okay, read your podcast. That's why I listen to it or I'll
[41:08]say I couldn't listen to it because I cannot listen to it to that. Okay, good. Just make
[41:13]sure you didn't rule me out there. No, no, no. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you so
[41:18]much for having me. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[41:25]Please don't forget, subscribe, rate, and review this on iTunes. Tell your friends about it. Spread
[41:31]the word. Thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much to Jiggy Puzzles for sponsoring
[41:36]today's episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Get 10% off with Code Zibi at jiggypuzzles.com.
[41:42]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to
[41:47]Morningmoon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[41:51]Thanks for listening. You could always email me at Zibi at Zibi Owens.com.