Hannah Lillith Assadi, THE STARS ARE NOT YET BELLS: A Novel
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[0:41]Hannah Lilith Asadi is the author of The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, a novel.
[0:46]She teaches fiction at the Columbia University School of the Arts.
[0:50]Her first novel, Sonora, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Literature
[0:54]from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a finalist for the pen Robert W. Bingham
[0:59]Prize for debut fiction.
[1:00]In 2018, she was named a National Book Foundation 535 honoree, which I will now never get.
[1:07]She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.
[1:09]Welcome, Hannah.
[1:10]Thanks so much for coming on mom's.
[1:11]Don't have time to read books to discuss the stars are not yet bells.
[1:15]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:17]You are a beautiful, lyrical, poetic writer.
[1:22]I really appreciate your writing style, and I'm very excited to discuss your book.
[1:27]Thank you.
[1:28]Thank you so much.
[1:29]Can you tell listeners what your book is about?
[1:31]Sure.
[1:32]It's about a woman who has dementia, and as she's succumbing to her illness, she begins
[1:38]to live more and more in her past, and in a beside, a lover who has been long dead
[1:44]for many decades, right?
[1:46]So the memory of the relationship sort of resurfaces and reemerges, and simultaneously,
[1:52]she begins to see these sort of strange, metaphysical blue lights that occupy the island
[1:57]where she has lived with her husband for many years.
[2:01]So that's, I'm not very good at this, the elevator pitch, but that's the general summary.
[2:05]No, you did, you did wonderfully.
[2:08]I have a passage that I had just even from the beginning.
[2:11]I just want to, you know, why don't I just read the first part, just the first page, even,
[2:17]which I have online, but it says, it is not yet the end.
[2:21]Moss descends from the oaks, thick as curtains, bailing the night secrets from the living.
[2:25]A wild mare in her full are out to feed before the dawn, sequels bark their hunger
[2:30]at the sky, and Lyra, Lyra, our island remains above the sea.
[2:34]The ocean has not engulfed all this, even though I have woken from that dream I've had
[2:38]again and again over the decades.
[2:40]In last night's rendering, after the island has burned and sunken into the waters, and
[2:44]all the stars had fallen into the Atlantic, I could still swim, and beneath the surface,
[2:49]wandering among the blue constellations like I'm mermaid, at last I found Gabriel.
[2:54]It was so good.
[2:56]Beautiful.
[2:57]I just love her right.
[2:59]I bet.
[3:01]Okay.
[3:02]Take me back and tell me about how you became a writer, why, how do you, how, your style,
[3:08]your training, this way of telling this particular story, all of that.
[3:13]Sure.
[3:14]So I think I was always writing just little fictions ever since I was a child, primarily
[3:20]when I got into trouble or something, I would write a little story.
[3:24]I think my father didn't tell me I did this, but anyways, I wasn't seriously inspired
[3:28]until high school, and the English teacher assigned sort of creative writing, response
[3:33]assignment to the sound of the theory where we had to write a chapter from Caddy Thompson's
[3:38]perspective, and that was kind of the first time I'd ever wrote fiction, I'm sure it
[3:42]was awful, but that was my first piece of fiction, and then, you know, I wrote, but more
[3:50]I would say like journal wrote, right, until I was in college, and I studied creative
[3:54]writing, and undergrad in addition to Middle Eastern literature, and when I graduated,
[4:00]I was writing stories, and I knew that I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I still
[4:05]didn't really know how to formalize that desire yet, and I did my MFA, and that, you
[4:12]know, both.
[4:13]Some day, it definitely helped me.
[4:15]I think there were some instances to it only because of its cost, but it certainly
[4:20]did help kind of formalize my education, also just, you know, pushed me toward the right
[4:25]people to help me actually become a professional, and yeah, so that was, that was kind
[4:31]of the progression there, and after my MFA, I published my first book, Sonora, and
[4:38]once that was out, I had been working on a few different projects, and none of them,
[4:43]I had this tendency to kind of like start something, and it'll get to a certain point,
[4:47]and then I realized it's just not moving anymore, and that was happening with a lot of
[4:51]things, kind of while I was waiting for my first book to come out.
[4:55]So in the month afterward, my mom, and I had gone to visit my great aunt, who has since
[5:00]passed, and I recently seen this picture of my grandmother with this man, whom none of us
[5:06]knew who he was, although my great aunt, I think, did know who he was, so it was sort
[5:10]of this interesting mystery that I wanted to write about, like the person that you
[5:16]may have got away, as it were, and also just I've always been interested in memory
[5:22]and in time, and certainly in mortality, I think most writers are interested in the
[5:27]latter, and so I thought Alzheimer's was just would be such an interesting condition to
[5:32]try to inhabit.
[5:34]So yeah, that was sort of the genesis of this particular book, and then it evolved, you
[5:40]know, in strange ways from there, and took on a life of its own, obviously, my parents
[5:45]were not in the jewel industry, and didn't live on a strange island off the coast of
[5:52]Georgia, because that was all its own, you know, how a book takes on in some life.
[5:58]And have you always had, you know, you said most authors are focused on mortality, which
[6:03]I share with you, I feel like the movie with Julianne Moore, did you ask Alice that
[6:09]would have called her?
[6:11]Alice, yeah, I haven't seen it, I mean, as you have to watch her, yeah, yeah, I should
[6:17]probably, you know, I avoided things that like felt like they were in similar territory
[6:21]because I was afraid that I would try to emulate too much, but tell me what were you
[6:28]going to say?
[6:29]Well, no, just, you know, it's also sort of an ode to language, right?
[6:32]It's in the power of our command of her language, which is one of the things that Alzheimer's
[6:36]affects, right?
[6:37]It's your ability to even communicate in the same way.
[6:40]I don't know.
[6:41]I am haunted by that, maybe.
[6:42]I think about it more than any other movie, particularly when I am tired and I can't even
[6:47]find the right words, right?
[6:49]And I wonder, and then like novels like yours, like where you really go into that and
[6:53]you like memory and language and all of our mental facilities are just, I mean, they're just
[7:00]beyond our grasp.
[7:01]Very, like it's so easy for it to all just go ahead.
[7:05]I know.
[7:06]Yeah.
[7:07]I mean, obviously this book, you have to sort of spend this belief a little bit because
[7:10]her language stays pretty.
[7:12]She has command of language.
[7:13]Well, well, narrator, until the end, but one of the things I always found really upsetting
[7:19]like reading my grandmother's letters to my grandfather is that she was very articulate
[7:23]in a very elegant and sophisticated writer, although not formally trained obviously.
[7:29]But toward the end, she had Alzheimer's with swelling.
[7:32]She just started repeating herself all the time and misspelling words and forgetting how
[7:37]to spell and just literally losing language.
[7:39]And that was one of the, it's just, you can witness it on the page in a way that, you
[7:44]know, I wasn't there to witness her, but it is so sad that it's so easily lost.
[7:51]I have my grandmother's both at the very end.
[7:54]You would sit with them.
[7:55]You would say it's like a record or something on replay.
[7:58]Yeah.
[7:59]Well, you feel like you're younger than me.
[8:00]Maybe you don't even know what I'm talking about, but you know, like where it just like
[8:02]keeps replaying like all the same, you know, like the track just loops and you're like,
[8:06]wait, you just said that, wait, you just said that what's going on and you're like, am I
[8:10]losing my mind?
[8:11]Or?
[8:12]Yeah.
[8:13]And it's so interesting what they repeat too, right?
[8:15]Like, yes.
[8:16]I don't know, you know, I, but yeah, we don't know enough certainly and maybe one day
[8:22]we will no more about the brain, but yeah, it's it's fascinating and sad at the same
[8:29]time.
[8:30]Did you, did you do a lot of on the research side, you know, I think I did more research
[8:36]and I give myself credit for it, but it's been so long.
[8:39]You may know from talking to as many offices as you do and being an author yourself, how
[8:43]long the machine industry can take.
[8:46]So sometimes I say it feels faint to me, but I did do some research.
[8:50]I wouldn't say it's heavy, right?
[8:53]Because I really wanted this to be her own story and it's lyrically driven, as you said,
[8:59]but I did do research into sort of, you know, how the condition manifests itself just
[9:05]to hopefully get some of the moments, right?
[9:08]So like, there are moments when it's sunset, so those liminal hours where she is worse
[9:14]and I think that is manifest in the book, which I think is called sun setting, right?
[9:19]So I did do, yeah, I did do some research and I did a lot of research into the treatment
[9:24]of mental illness in the 50s and 60s since she is undergoes electric shock, electric shock
[9:31]treatment, and also sort of the advent of pharmaceutical drugs to treat depression.
[9:36]And so there was research just like, I don't think I read too many books on the matter.
[9:42]It's a lot of, I would never hate to admit this, but a lot of Googling and, but I did
[9:49]read about Pumbulin Island and the car and these there as well, since that sort of inspired
[9:54]the setting of the book, so.
[9:56]You should read this new book by Lee Cravitz, called The Confessions of Sills.
[10:00]VIP, I think that's Wisconsin.
[10:02]About Sylvia Plath, and it has a whole section
[10:03]of her electric shock treatments.
[10:07]Oh, yeah, I would love to.
[10:09]I would love to all pick it up.
[10:10]Thank you.
[10:11]That was really good.
[10:12]So you said it took a long time.
[10:15]When did you start writing this and what was the whole trajectory?
[10:18]And did you use the same publisher as your previous book
[10:22]or what did you go out of it with it all over again
[10:24]or tell me about that?
[10:24]Yeah, I know it was a different publisher.
[10:27]My first book was published by an independent house.
[10:29]And this one was published by Riverhead.
[10:32]And they did a beautiful job, obviously.
[10:35]But there were, I think a lot of people were delayed.
[10:38]I sold it in the fall of 2018.
[10:41]So when it came out in January,
[10:44]so you can do the math there is a few years.
[10:48]But I think just so much was delayed.
[10:50]I think first, there was the elections and before COVID
[10:56]hit, and I think a lot of publishers
[10:58]didn't want to come out in that season.
[11:00]Because they knew it would be dance with books
[11:02]that were more politically relevant, which
[11:04]makes sense.
[11:04]And then COVID delayed so much.
[11:07]And then it just once seasons got backed up more and more.
[11:11]So it feels like I've lived with this for a long time,
[11:17]even though the writing of it has been done also for a while.
[11:20]But there is a way in which it's not fully released
[11:25]that are relinquished at or something
[11:27]until it's out in the world.
[11:29]I think that's just the nature of the B.
[11:33]So in an interesting few months to finally begin the process,
[11:38]really, of letting it go.
[11:39]And just like, OK, now I've had the life of it.
[11:41]So there's something I can do about it.
[11:45]It's like kids going off to college or something.
[11:47]Sure.
[11:48]Yeah.
[11:49]I'm only in the toddler, so I'm not sure yet.
[11:53]But I'm sure that I hopefully
[11:56]I'll be somewhat prepared, but probably not.
[11:59]What are you working on?
[12:01]I was going to say, what do you work on now?
[12:02]But then with the toddler, you never know.
[12:03]So are you sure now?
[12:05]No, no, I am.
[12:06]I am where it was funny.
[12:07]It's interesting.
[12:08]I was working on something for quite a while,
[12:11]while I was waiting for this to be published.
[12:14]And similar to my last experience,
[12:16]I've put it aside for the time being, yeah,
[12:19]I'm not sure if I need some space from it to see.
[12:23]With it will begin moving in a way.
[12:25]Like, there's something very, I don't know,
[12:27]mystical about the experience to me.
[12:28]And I feel like if it's not taking on a life of it's on,
[12:32]maybe it doesn't want to life.
[12:34]So I started something new that's actually just really material
[12:39]that maybe I haven't been wanting to deal with already
[12:42]to deal with for a long time.
[12:43]And now I feel maybe sort of ready.
[12:46]It's intimately connected with my life here in New York,
[12:49]which I feel like I always feel like it's maybe ending.
[12:53]But I'm not sure.
[12:54]So I'm working on that.
[12:56]So that's that's anyway, I can't talk a lot more than that.
[12:59]But it's new for now, and it'll be a third novel.
[13:03]And I'm also doing some research into maybe trying
[13:08]to write a screenplay and doing research on historical figures
[13:11]that I'm interested very interested in.
[13:14]So that's something new creatively that I'm,
[13:18]everyways, maybe you can tell I'm a pretty visual writer.
[13:22]And so I feel like I've never really applied that to anything
[13:25]else but prose.
[13:26]So it might be interesting to try.
[13:28]But I don't know.
[13:30]So it's all very, I'm in the collagen still.
[13:34]And I have a toddler running around screaming.
[13:38]I guess you know times four, right?
[13:41]Well, I don't have toddlers anymore.
[13:43]Yeah, but you have four children.
[13:45]I have four children.
[13:46]But they're not so old, seven, eight, and four children.
[13:49]But the toddler days, the little, I mean,
[13:52]I don't know.
[13:53]It's funny, because now I talk to people like you and I'm like,
[13:55]oh, well, how could she possibly get anything done?
[13:57]But at the time, I was like, I still wanted to get everything done.
[14:00]And I still was getting stuff done.
[14:02]But it was just harder.
[14:03]I think it's not until they get a little bit older
[14:05]that you're like, wow, that was almost impossible.
[14:08]Like, why did I try so hard?
[14:10]Like, the time was going to pass.
[14:12]I mean, I know that sounds ridiculous.
[14:14]But I don't know.
[14:15]I have to say I have so much respect for people
[14:17]working with small children at home, especially now.
[14:20]and especially in a creative thing,
[14:23]where you have to access this part of your brain
[14:25]to get into a certain space to write and produce all of that.
[14:30]And then there's constant distractions.
[14:33]So I don't know.
[14:34]Yeah, I'm trying to cherish it while at the same time
[14:37]getting things done.
[14:38]I think that's the real psychological existential part.
[14:43]Like, I know this won't last forever and it's adorable
[14:46]and also like, yeah, I mean, honestly, modern day life
[14:50]is just not particularly well set up for your head.
[14:55]I mean, at all, really, you have to stop everything
[14:58]and you have to be patient and you have to allow for tantrums
[15:02]and you can't be in control of your time.
[15:04]And yet everything else is so, you know,
[15:08]I cowl blocked off everything.
[15:11]I don't know, it's like a joke.
[15:14]Kids just make a joke of all the scheduling and all the stuff
[15:18]you might be trying to do.
[15:20]Yeah, yeah, that's a good word of putting it.
[15:22]Maybe a joke of it.
[15:23]That's for sure.
[15:25]I like it.
[15:26]You put that you're in the cauldron.
[15:27]It's a pretty dark place.
[15:29]But maybe you're making something really
[15:30]delicious in the cauldron.
[15:31]Yeah, yeah, I think it's sadly.
[15:36]I think it has to be a little dark for me
[15:37]that you can do it.
[15:38]So we'll see.
[15:40]Hopefully, one day we'll be able to talk about that one.
[15:44]Yeah, I'll just take it, allowing, being a little more
[15:48]forgiving of myself, as you said, right?
[15:50]Because these are, yeah, these are the top three years.
[15:53]And I hope that I'll have more time, one day.
[15:57]Do you have a writing partner?
[15:58]Like, do you ever show your work to anybody
[15:59]or read it aloud?
[16:01]Or yeah, you know, at a certain point,
[16:04]I show it usually to my mom.
[16:06]And I have a few trusted friends, a few readers,
[16:09]like a few readers who always are, at least in the past,
[16:13]two books I've read early drafts of my book.
[16:17]But pretty, pretty soon thereafter,
[16:19]if I feel like I've been with it long enough
[16:21]and revised that I've done, it's my agent.
[16:23]But there are a few people who are both writers also
[16:28]that I trust would really work.
[16:30]But I don't have a writing group, which may be a good idea
[16:33]to hold me a little more accountable,
[16:34]but I just don't see how I can be accountable
[16:36]to anybody else right now.
[16:38]So yeah, you have a boss baby at work.
[16:41]So yeah, exactly.
[16:43]What advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[16:46]Hmm.
[16:47]I think the real only thing that I can say,
[16:50]I mean, there's so many paths publishing
[16:53]and it really looks different for everybody.
[16:56]I think just like you can't give up, you know,
[16:58]if this is what you want to do,
[17:01]there's, it's not an easy life.
[17:04]And there's so much rejection and so much struggle.
[17:08]And I think that's the only rule
[17:10]is that you just don't give up on yourself and on your work.
[17:14]And that's it.
[17:15]Okay, you know, the rest of it, you'll figure out.
[17:20]Let me want to.
[17:21]Amazing.
[17:22]Well, thank you for this beautiful book
[17:24]and the conversation and allowing me the opportunity
[17:27]to feel grateful for the memory I still have
[17:30]while I still have it.
[17:31]Good, good, you know, holding on to that,
[17:34]trying to shove it in there.
[17:35]So it's not, yeah, it evaporates.
[17:39]And, you know, we're also lucky for the time we have
[17:42]when we're able to be at our most productive
[17:45]before other forces are at work.
[17:46]So it's a good reminder.
[17:48]And of course you.
[17:49]Thank you.
[17:50]Power of love.
[17:51]Yeah.
[17:52]Yeah, that was that.
[17:52]Thank you so much for having me
[17:54]and hope to meet you one day in person.
[17:56]You too.
[17:57]Where are you by the way?
[17:58]Where are you based?
[17:59]I'm in Brooklyn, but you know,
[18:01]that's always, it seems to be debatable.
[18:05]We're not quite sure what's next,
[18:07]but yeah, we're in Brooklyn at the moment.
[18:08]Are you in this situation?
[18:09]I'm like, should see there in New York
[18:11]or like Santa Fe, because you know, like the archways
[18:14]and the other.
[18:15]Yeah, I know, this is funny,
[18:17]because I am from Arizona and this is a park
[18:19]that we're actually subletting me.
[18:22]We lived here for many years and went to Arizona
[18:24]and came back and we've sublet this
[18:26]for the semester time teaching it.
[18:28]Columbia, it does have a very southwest
[18:30]and feeling it's totally random,
[18:32]but it is sort of an interesting reminder
[18:35]of where I come from.
[18:37]So yeah, where are you?
[18:38]Where are you?
[18:39]We're in Arizona to grow up in the Phoenix area.
[18:43]So we'll see.
[18:43]We may, you know, it's a very complicated relationship.
[18:48]I have, when I'm out west, I miss it to city.
[18:52]And when I'm here, I miss it out there.
[18:54]So maybe one day I'll figure out how to have both,
[18:56]but at the moment, certainly this past winner
[18:59]has made me miss Arizona, for sure my head.
[19:02]My mom and stepdad basically retired out there.
[19:05]And so you're outside Scottsdale.
[19:08]Oh yeah, okay.
[19:09]They come here for the summer is basically so.
[19:11]Yeah, that's the idea of life.
[19:13]So I grew up in Scottsdale and find out where are they?
[19:19]In a tiny town called Carefree.
[19:22]Oh yeah, I love Carefree.
[19:25]I love it.
[19:26]I love, I mean, Cape Preaking Carefree, or just,
[19:30]because they retain that sort of old West feel,
[19:32]but they still have sort of the nice parts of Scottsdale,
[19:37]you know.
[19:38]Yeah, yeah, that's nice.
[19:40]All right, well maybe out there or here, I'll see you one day.
[19:42]Okay, perfect.
[19:44]Thank you so much.
[19:45]All right, thanks a lot.
[19:46]Bye bye.
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