Shane McCrae, PULLING THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN: A Memoir of a Kidnapping
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[1:03]Shane McCrae is the author of Pulling the Chariot of the Sun, a memoir of a kidnapping.
[1:08]Shane is the author of several books of poetry, including In the Language of My Capture,
[1:12]which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,
[1:16]and the Carlos Williams Award.
[1:18]Sometimes I never suffered shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and his most recent collection
[1:23]came named The Animal.
[1:25]McCrae is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature
[1:28]Fellowship, a Landon Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
[1:31]He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.
[1:34]Welcome, Shane.
[1:35]Thank you so much for coming.
[1:36]On mom's time to read books to discuss your memoir, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun, a memoir
[1:41]of a kidnapping.
[1:42]Thank you for having me.
[1:44]My pleasure.
[1:45]What a powerful story.
[1:46]Oh my gosh, my heart just like bleeds for you, reading some of the things that have happened
[1:51]and your relationship with your grandfather, and oh my gosh, all of it.
[1:56]Tell me about what it was like writing this book for you when you decided you wanted
[2:00]to make your life into a book and just tell me about that whole process, please.
[2:04]I think I probably first started thinking about it when I was in graduate school for the
[2:08]first time getting my MFA for poetry, and so that would have been possibly 2002, more
[2:15]likely 2003, so about 20 years ago.
[2:18]Then I first started seriously writing it maybe 10 years ago, or nine or so, but I didn't
[2:27]quite know what I wanted to do with the story or how to do it until maybe three or so,
[2:36]maybe three or four years ago, and that's when I started writing it in earnest, maybe
[2:40]three years ago, and it was, I mean, writing it was, you know, I was surprised to discover
[2:47]that there were times I enjoyed writing prose, which is unlikely for me.
[2:51]I generally speaking, although I like to read it, don't really like writing it, but I
[2:56]surprised myself, and there were times when, you know, when I was falling asleep or, you
[3:01]know, just going about my day where a bit of prose would occur to me, and I would have
[3:05]to make a note about it, which is extremely unlikely a thing for me to do.
[3:10]Wow.
[3:11]I mean, your poetry background shines through in basically every sentence.
[3:15]I mean, the way that you write, the way that the sentences are constructed, linked together
[3:19]or the short sections, the longer sections, the, I mean, it's the narrative itself
[3:25]is quite poetic, and yet the pain sort of like seeps through in every line.
[3:30]Can you tell me a little bit more about or tell listeners perhaps the main crux of your
[3:36]story and how you, you know, for people who don't know anything about it and how you
[3:41]were kidnapped by your grandparents and what that meant to you, and when you, which you
[3:46]discussed in the book, but when you even acknowledged it was, in fact, a kidnapping.
[3:51]Sure.
[3:52]Well, so my mother and father, my mother for sure, and I think my father too, were both
[3:58]teenagers when I was born.
[3:59]Although if not, my father wasn't his very early 20s, and my mom was 18, and my mother
[4:04]was white is white, my father's black, and my maternal grandparents were both racists.
[4:11]And when I was three years old, three years and nine months, I just discovered this about
[4:16]a week ago that that's the old I was when I happened.
[4:18]I just thought it was three, but I didn't have any sense of what time of year it was.
[4:23]So when I was three years old and nine months, my grandparents, my grandfather, on my
[4:27]father's side, so my father's dad had just died, and my father wanted to take me.
[4:33]We were living in, I was with him in Salem at the time, Salem Morgan, and he wanted
[4:37]to take me to Phoenix, Arizona for the funeral.
[4:41]And my grandparents, maternal grandparents, whom my father thought were still living
[4:47]in Salem.
[4:48]My grandmother came by and asked if I could stay with them, just for a couple of days,
[4:53]I think overnight actually was what it was.
[4:55]And my father said, sure, I didn't let her know that we were going to go out of town.
[4:59]And so my grandmother took me, and it turns out they weren't living in Salem.
[5:04]They were living in Portland, so they took me to Portland.
[5:07]And so when they didn't come back and didn't bring me back the next day, my father was
[5:12]understandably confused.
[5:14]And they had gone to Portland, as I said, without telling my father where they went.
[5:17]My mother wouldn't tell him where they were.
[5:21]And some time later, maybe it's probably just a few days because they had to plan this
[5:25]all out.
[5:26]They took me to Texas, a suburb of Austin, and they didn't tell my father where I was,
[5:32]and he had no further contact.
[5:34]He ran into my mother, well, my aunt, his sister, ran into my mother in Salem when
[5:40]I was nine.
[5:42]And my mother said, oh, you know, I would love for you to be in contact with Shane.
[5:47]So he gave them a phone number, but it was a fake number.
[5:50]And so he didn't hear from him again, I couldn't find, I found him myself when I was 16.
[5:55]And he had no idea where I was, but that's what happened.
[5:59]What it meant to me, I mean, it's hard to say, you know, it didn't, I mean, it was
[6:04]my life at the time.
[6:05]And I didn't really know that I had been kidnapped when I was a kid because my grandparents
[6:09]were really invested in me not knowing.
[6:12]And so, you know, one of the things they did was they told me repeatedly, my father didn't
[6:17]want me, another thing that they did was they told me that what they did, they had
[6:20]done when I was 18 months old, not almost four.
[6:24]And so my sense of reality was really undermined, but I didn't know it.
[6:30]So I had no idea what was going on with regard to maybe in kidnapping or anything like
[6:34]that.
[6:35]And I started to become aware of it probably maybe in my late teens or early 20s, but it
[6:42]didn't really hit me.
[6:44]It was a thing that a term I had used in my poetry for years, but it didn't really hit
[6:48]me until I was writing this book.
[6:50]It was really very, very recent and I'm still, I'm still not quite sure how to deal
[6:54]with it.
[6:55]So it has meant recently, it's been really sort of devastating personally, but it,
[7:00]and that's something I wish I could have dealt with years ago, but yeah, that's, that's
[7:05]what happened.
[7:06]Oh my gosh.
[7:08]What has been the effect of this surrealization in the last couple of years, like what
[7:13]would have happened differently, have you had you confronted it, like when you say you wish
[7:18]you had known years ago?
[7:20]Well, I mean, in so far as like, you know, I don't, I don't have a therapist and I haven't
[7:25]had one for about 20 years or so longer than that actually, maybe 30 years almost.
[7:32]And so if I had really confronted it or, you know, even really been deeply aware of it 30
[7:38]years ago, I would have had somebody, you know, a medical professional that was talked
[7:43]to about it.
[7:44]And it's not as if I cannot connect with a therapist now, I suppose I could, but I would
[7:48]have had, you know, an environment, you know, sort of ready-made for me to deal with the
[7:55]talk with folks, et cetera.
[7:57]And as it is now, it's just something that it feels like I kind of need to deal with on
[8:02]my own and I am trying to deal with it on my own, but I've spent a lifetime not really
[8:06]thinking about it.
[8:07]And certainly since I became conscious of it, because I think that there was, at some
[8:11]level, even as a child, I was aware of it.
[8:14]But since I became conscious of it, I've still been not really thinking about it.
[8:18]But it has meant is when I'm thinking about it, you know, when I was ready to memoir,
[8:24]and this time, you know, the memoirs release, it's sort of hard to do other things, very
[8:28]hard to write poems, which makes me, write and poems makes me extremely happy.
[8:33]It's very difficult to do much of anything other than, well, nothing set around and not
[8:41]do things.
[8:42]But I'm trying to figure out how to sort of integrate an awareness of this into my life
[8:49]in a healthy way so that I can live with the constant presence of this fact of the kidnapping
[8:56]because, you know, the book is a kind of manifestation of that, but also live my life
[9:01]in an ordinary way that, you know, is happy.
[9:04]Wow.
[9:05]You know, I referenced this earlier, but just the many, many times you talked about your
[9:10]grandfather beating you and it was almost like a poetic or frame, honestly, at the end
[9:14]of many chapters in this, like, and then my grandfather beating me for this and then
[9:18]for this and the dogs and this and that, two things.
[9:21]One is, did you think about writing scenes of what that actually looked and felt like?
[9:28]Or was this a way of coping to sort of summarize it in that way?
[9:32]Like, did you think about going more in depth each time into what happened?
[9:37]Or, you know, I mean?
[9:39]I mean, since I don't remember what it looked and felt like, I couldn't really write
[9:43]it.
[9:44]All I could do was write from the position of not remembering sort of the specific events.
[9:52]As I talk about in the book a little bit, our lot, I mean, the whole book is written
[9:56]in such a way as to reflect this, sort of make this a sort of felt experience.
[10:00]for the reader, but since I was very little,
[10:03]I've been blocking out painful memories.
[10:05]Probably this started when I was kidnapped,
[10:07]but it's hard to say.
[10:09]But apparently my tools for doing this,
[10:13]my mechanism is extremely effective.
[10:15]And I can't, I remember so little from my childhood,
[10:18]and I remember so, you know, I don't remember these events
[10:21]with my grandfather really at all.
[10:22]I almost don't remember him.
[10:24]And so the only real way to talk about it
[10:27]that I could figure out was to write about not remembering it,
[10:30]which is what I did.
[10:32]You know, what has been the response
[10:36]sort of within your family about the book?
[10:39]I don't know.
[10:39]My father read it, and he seems to have thought
[10:43]it was a good book.
[10:45]And my mother, I think, she just got it.
[10:48]I don't know if she's read it yet.
[10:49]But those would be the concerned parties, I suppose.
[10:52]My grandparents are dead.
[10:54]So yeah, I don't really know what they think.
[10:57]My dad thinks it's good.
[10:58]I don't worry about the things.
[10:59]Aside from writing poetry,
[11:01]where else do you find joy in your life these days?
[11:03]My own family, my children, my wife, Melissa.
[11:08]And I like playing video games and I like reading.
[11:12]Yeah, I would say those are the main things.
[11:14]What's your go-to video game?
[11:15]I'm well versed in the video game world of kids.
[11:18]Well, I mean, I guess the game,
[11:22]I should probably say that Skyrim is my go-to video game
[11:25]insofar as it's the one that playing it for like 10 years
[11:29]or whatever, that really got me into contemporary video games
[11:33]because there was a lacuna where I didn't play them for years.
[11:38]So there's a way in which I played that game more than I ever
[11:41]played any game in my entire life.
[11:42]And so I suppose that's the one.
[11:43]But I'm not playing it today.
[11:46]I might play it tomorrow.
[11:48]So I guess that would be interesting.
[11:51]How do you come to terms with the only way
[11:55]you were raised when you're raising your own kids?
[11:57]Like, do you feel, do you parent with a sense of intentions
[12:02]or every day, like, how is it affected your parenting?
[12:05]And I have no idea.
[12:08]I can't.
[12:11]I don't know that it would be possible to parent that way.
[12:14]But I suppose, you know, when you're
[12:17]parent, at least for me, I shouldn't speak
[12:20]for anybody else when I'm parenting,
[12:21]because I don't know what it's like for anybody else.
[12:24]I'm never sitting around thinking, well,
[12:26]my childhood was like this.
[12:27]So I'm going to do that.
[12:29]It's you are sort of responding to whatever it is that's
[12:33]going on, you know, when it's going on,
[12:36]there's a way in which a way in which I had one of my,
[12:40]I've fallen back on that phrase a little time.
[12:42]And I don't even know if it has a lot of meaning for me.
[12:44]Because the sort of central events of my childhood,
[12:47]at least the central negative events were so extreme.
[12:50]There isn't really a way for me to replicate them,
[12:53]at least, you know, like, you know, the kidnapping,
[12:55]it's sort of the central thing.
[12:57]And so I think goodness, I can't imagine how that would come up.
[13:01]So it's not really a part of anything with regard to parenting.
[13:05]But I don't know.
[13:05]I just try to parent as well as I can and learn from my mistakes,
[13:10]basically.
[13:12]And what types of books do you like to read?
[13:15]I mentioned, do you really like reading prose,
[13:17]even though you prefer to write poetry?
[13:18]What kind of books are you reading now?
[13:21]What books do you love?
[13:22]I don't like reading prose that much.
[13:25]I use it a lot of fiction.
[13:26]And I use it a lot of nonfiction.
[13:28]I really prefer to read poetry.
[13:32]But if I'm reading, I mean, I read the Bible every day.
[13:35]And I do read literary criticism, a good amount.
[13:38]And honestly, it may be that literary criticism
[13:45]is the prose that I'm reading these days.
[13:47]And I need to change that.
[13:49]But I'm not, yeah, prose wise, literary criticism
[13:52]in the Bible or sort of what I'm doing.
[13:54]And who are some of your favorite poets?
[13:56]My favorite poets are, OK, well, Sylvia Plath
[14:02]was the reason I started writing.
[14:04]And so she's sort of a permanent favorite,
[14:06]even though I don't necessarily read her all that much
[14:10]at the moment.
[14:11]Patricia Smith, I think, is an exciting poet.
[14:14]Luis Glick.
[14:15]For a long time, I thought of as my favorite poet of all time
[14:19]that might still be the case.
[14:21]Robert Lowell and Jeffrey Hill are two poets who I like a lot.
[14:27]Sandra Lim is a poet.
[14:28]I like a lot.
[14:29]Let me think William Empson, I guess, is a poet I like a lot.
[14:34]I mean, it's a sort of unending list.
[14:37]OK.
[14:38]So what do you want readers to take away from this book?
[14:43]Why share your experience?
[14:44]What do you want all of us to know to feel, to think?
[14:48]I mean, nothing in particular.
[14:49]I don't, you know, so there's a story at the center
[14:54]of the book that is a sort of extreme story.
[14:57]And I understand that people are going
[14:59]to be interested in the book, many of them
[15:05]will be interested in it for kind of how shocking the story is.
[15:08]But what I was interested in when I was writing the book
[15:11]was the writing itself.
[15:13]What I care about is technique.
[15:15]And it sounds maybe almost a little offensive
[15:20]and I don't mean it to.
[15:21]But I wanted to make to the extent that my abilities,
[15:26]such as they are, would allow me to do so,
[15:29]I wanted to make a beautiful book.
[15:30]And so if, despite what's being said in the book,
[15:35]despite the content, if a reader finds any part of it,
[15:39]if you had to hold that would be gratifying.
[15:41]But yeah, what I really cared about,
[15:44]the story was something that would allow me to do writing.
[15:50]And what I care about is the writing itself.
[15:52]Well, it is absolutely beautiful.
[15:54]So do you have any advice for aspiring authors or poets?
[16:00]I mean, I do, but it's probably the advice
[16:02]that they've already heard, but it doesn't mean
[16:03]that they shouldn't hear it again, which is that they should
[16:05]read as much as they possibly can.
[16:07]And they should study.
[16:09]They should study poetry seriously.
[16:11]They should take apart poems they read.
[16:14]They should figure out how poets do it.
[16:16]They should learn meter and rhyme,
[16:17]even if they're not going to write meter and rhyme.
[16:19]They should get a real, serious knowledge of the thing
[16:24]that they're developing their life to,
[16:25]if they're really devoting their life to it.
[16:27]They should be experts.
[16:29]So study and read.
[16:31]Wonderful.
[16:31]Well, Shane, thank you so much.
[16:33]Thank you for coming on mom's.
[16:34]Don't have time to read books.
[16:35]What a feat.
[16:36]This beautiful book.
[16:37]Congratulations.
[16:38]Thank you for having me.
[16:39]Thank you again.
[16:41]Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's.
[16:43]Don't have time to read books.
[16:44]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[16:46]at zebi Owens, and at moms don't have time to read books.
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[16:56]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[16:59]for the Sound Editing.
[17:00]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[17:02]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.