Hannah Pittard, WE ARE TOO MANY: A Memoir [Kind Of]
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Hannah Petard is the author of We Are Too Many, a memoir kind of.
[1:07]Hannah is the author of four novels.
[1:10]And her books have been recommended by the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Oh, the
[1:14]Oprah Magazine, Time, The Guardian, and many others.
[1:18]She is the winner of the Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, McDowell Colony Fellow,
[1:22]and a graduate of Deerfield Academy, the University of Chicago, and the University of Virginia.
[1:27]She also spent some time at St. John's College in Annapolis.
[1:30]She is a professor of English at the University of Kentucky and lives in Lexington with
[1:34]her boyfriend and stepdaughter.
[1:36]This episode was recorded live at the Miami Book Fair.
[1:40]We were up in a little room on top of the author's lounge and Hannah and I did a wonderful
[1:46]podcast sitting face to face, which was so lovely.
[1:49]And I truly enjoyed meeting her.
[1:51]So thank you to the Miami Book Fair.
[1:54]Thank you to Moleskin, who is our sponsor.
[1:56]And thank you to Hannah.
[1:58]We are thrilled that Moleskin is partnering with us again on another one of our Zivi
[2:02]books titles.
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[2:44]Welcome, Hannah.
[2:45]Thank you for coming.
[2:46]On Moleskin, I have time to read books in this interesting recording situation.
[2:52]We're at the Miami Book Fair and they have coordinated this meeting, which is so wonderful
[2:56]to be in person.
[2:57]So thank you so much.
[2:58]I'm so excited to be here.
[3:00]We are in what is a beautiful office.
[3:04]If you're a professor, which I am, there's a patio and a view.
[3:10]True.
[3:11]Yeah.
[3:12]I mean, gloss helpful.
[3:13]Yeah.
[3:14]What else could we possibly need?
[3:15]We have some books here.
[3:16]We have a whiteboard.
[3:17]We can start making sure anything.
[3:18]We're not opening anyone's drawers.
[3:19]We won't metal.
[3:21]Okay.
[3:23]We are too many.
[3:24]Tell listeners about your book, please.
[3:26]Yes.
[3:27]So I wrote a memoir and I'm not by trade a nonfiction writer or a memoirist.
[3:33]I'm a novelist and during the time of COVID and especially those first couple months
[3:40]alone when I think we were all readjusting to you isolation.
[3:45]I tried to work on a new book and I tried to work on fiction.
[3:50]It was almost as though I'd lost my ability because it felt very much like I was living in a
[3:55]fiction and I started reading a lot of nonfiction.
[3:59]I started reading things that were grounding me to reality.
[4:04]And after that wore off, it was just me and my brain.
[4:09]And what I realized was a lot of the silence that I was having in my brain and a lot of
[4:14]that isolation time allowed me to start thinking about events from my past and specifically
[4:23]from my divorce and there were certain conversations that I could not get out of my
[4:31]head.
[4:32]And I think the busyness of life after divorce of reconstructing a life and getting back
[4:40]to teaching, it allowed certain unfinished business to stay unfinished for a while
[4:46]so that when there was suddenly this home and void, those conversations came back and
[4:53]I wanted them gone.
[4:57]And what I did is what I naturally do.
[4:59]I wrote them down.
[5:00]I started writing them down and it wasn't necessarily immediately thinking that it would
[5:05]be a book.
[5:06]At first, those conversations were just for me.
[5:09]I thought I could expunge them.
[5:11]And then the more I wrote, the more I thought these are kind of interesting conversations.
[5:16]Some of them are sexy.
[5:17]Some of them are crazy.
[5:19]Some of them I think people could learn from and I shared some very early drafts with
[5:25]my agent and she said, I'm going to paraphrase here, but she said, essentially, I don't
[5:31]know why I want to keep reading, but I want to keep reading.
[5:34]It's a hot mess and I'm interested.
[5:36]Keep going.
[5:37]And I did.
[5:38]Amazing.
[5:39]So the format itself is really interesting for a memoir and to get us into the characters
[5:46]live.
[5:47]So you have a nice introduction where you explain and you explain what happened after you
[5:50]wrote about people, real people, which of course is an issue when you're writing fiction
[5:55]and memoir, but when fiction becomes very close or people recognize themselves, although
[6:00]they tend to, even when it's not even them, but that's okay.
[6:03]You get into some hot water.
[6:04]Anyway, so you start talking about that.
[6:07]And then all of these scenes, both real and imagined, to sort of piece together what happened.
[6:12]So why dialogue, like you could have gone back and turned it into prose.
[6:17]I mean, you kept it as a screenplay almost, right?
[6:20]All of the different sections, short sections of, so why?
[6:24]How did you decide to keep it like that?
[6:27]So the part one, it's almost entirely dialogue and part of that was simply because that
[6:33]is how it was presenting itself in my memory.
[6:37]And the other part of that was especially writing about myself and necessarily about the
[6:44]people who were involved in my divorce, I wanted to stay away from ascribing them motivation.
[6:54]What I could do is remember what they said.
[6:58]And I could remember what I said, but I didn't want to get into the tricky territory
[7:04]of saying, and I think she said this to hurt me.
[7:08]And I think he said this deliberately, you know, trying to needle me.
[7:14]I didn't want to do that because I don't know.
[7:17]I have ideas.
[7:18]We all have ideas.
[7:19]Why people do things?
[7:21]And I can armchair analyze with the best of them.
[7:24]In fact, I absolutely love doing it in my own time, but not while writing.
[7:28]But with this tricky set of circumstances, and with this tricky set of people, I just
[7:34]wanted to present the facts as I am in the fact should be in air quotes.
[7:40]But as I remembered them and leave the motivation off the page.
[7:44]And so that's how it started.
[7:47]And there was a point in writing the dialogue where I realized as a writer and also
[7:52]as a reader, you can only do so much of that without it becoming overwhelming and possibly
[7:59]even boring.
[8:00]And so I wrote that first part and sat on it for a while.
[8:06]And then I had this realization that there was something that I'd been doing since the
[8:13]day my ex moved out and that was having conversations with him still in my head.
[8:18]I did it all the time, even though at the time of writing it, it was five years later.
[8:23]I was in a happy relationship.
[8:25]I bought a house with a man.
[8:27]I'm helping raise his daughter.
[8:28]So my life is drastically different, but being completely honest, which is what I was trying
[8:34]to be with that book, my ex husband's voice was still there.
[8:39]And sometimes it was an unfair voice.
[8:42]It was what I thought he'd say and I'd make him, you know, really mean.
[8:47]But sometimes I gave him this kind of grace and I gave me a kind of grace.
[8:52]And I thought, what would have happened?
[8:54]These two people who before they ever started dating who are best friends, what would
[8:59]happen if they could have a conversation now and just get a lot of it out of the way.
[9:06]And so I realized that felt like a natural part too.
[9:11]And I knew it couldn't be too long and I knew in some ways that might be the most dangerous
[9:17]territory because I am ascribing him a voice.
[9:21]But and it might be also where I think a lot of the kind of in the title comes from.
[9:27]It's a memoir kind of.
[9:29]But at the same time, I think what I'm doing in part two feels the most honest to me because
[9:36]I'm admitting to a fantasy that is all mine and it's so personal.
[9:43]And so I put this conversation in and I wanted it was also where I wanted to, this is
[9:49]going to sound strange, but I wanted him to, I wanted to give him a voice where he could
[9:53]challenge me because I know that he would have challenged me and I know that there were
[9:58]certain things that.
[10:00]that I might have included that given the opportunity,
[10:04]he would say, I told you point blank,
[10:06]it didn't happen that way.
[10:07]That's not how the affair started.
[10:09]Why would you have included this?
[10:11]I included it because that was what not at me.
[10:14]I had this image of how it happened.
[10:16]So I wanted to include that.
[10:19]But I also wanted to give my hypothetical version of him
[10:23]an opportunity to say, you know, I cry bull.
[10:26]Yeah, and I wanted it also to be sweet, yeah.
[10:30]And I think it's where we attack each other the most.
[10:33]I think it's where I come across the most flawed.
[10:36]But I think at the end of part two,
[10:40]you really get to see the kind of tenderness there was.
[10:44]And the reason that we were best friends,
[10:47]and I will say my partner now and he read the book
[10:50]and he read it early before it was published.
[10:52]Now and your ex?
[10:54]He did not.
[10:54]I did not, my ex did not read it,
[10:56]but my partner now when he read it at the book,
[10:59]I deliberately tried to stay out of the room
[11:01]when he was reading it because otherwise
[11:03]I'm a terrible person.
[11:04]You know, if you laugh, I say, would you laugh?
[11:06]Yeah, right.
[11:07]Like I'm the worst.
[11:08]I saw your face like you're,
[11:10]I moved a millimeter.
[11:11]Exactly.
[11:11]I mean, you didn't like that, right?
[11:12]You knew this, right?
[11:14]I am horrible to be in a room with reading my work,
[11:18]but I saw him tear up and then he actually wiped a tear
[11:22]out of his eye and he put it down.
[11:24]And he said, I just finished part two.
[11:27]I think I, I think I understand it a little bit more.
[11:31]And that was so huge that I was able to make my partner cry
[11:37]by being really honest about the relationship I'd had
[11:40]before him, the relationship I learned so much from
[11:43]that I'm able to be in this much relationship now.
[11:45]So that was part two.
[11:47]Oh my gosh.
[11:48]And I knew that could only go on for so long.
[11:50]And it's, it's right there in the center.
[11:52]And it's, it's funny because that's the one
[11:54]where when I handed part two into my agent,
[12:00]I think a lot of agents are this way.
[12:01]I love mine.
[12:02]I've been with her for a decade.
[12:04]I think she's brilliant.
[12:05]She's got this very calming voice.
[12:08]And she's not often really excited,
[12:11]which is probably, probably good.
[12:14]But what it means is when she is excited,
[12:16]I know I'm onto something.
[12:17]And after part two, she called me
[12:19]and she said, I can't wait until this book is published
[12:22]because I have a friend who is going through this.
[12:25]And what you said about the Dobro,
[12:27]she has with, with cameras.
[12:30]And I cannot, there are 30 women that I'm going to hand it
[12:33]to and I was so excited because I knew
[12:36]I was onto something there that I'd tapped into
[12:39]being so particular into something kind of universal.
[12:42]Totally.
[12:43]Yeah.
[12:44]We've actually, we had so many people
[12:45]who were coming into the store and to my bookstore
[12:47]asking for memoirs or novels
[12:49]or what books can we read for a friend
[12:50]who's getting a divorce or going through a divorce or whatever.
[12:52]So I've actually started a whole new section.
[12:55]That's so smart.
[12:56]Books just for that.
[12:57]Like if you're going through a main book divorce,
[12:59]love and heartbreak and all of that.
[13:01]Because what you went through,
[13:02]I mean, it's your story,
[13:04]but it has so much universality, as you say.
[13:08]Like there's so many emotions that you can relate to
[13:10]and no relationship is perfect.
[13:12]No person is perfect.
[13:14]And we get to know all the flaws of your ex,
[13:17]but also of you.
[13:18]I mean, you're really open about it.
[13:20]And so you see it's, I don't know,
[13:21]sometimes I'm like, I can't believe any relationships
[13:23]you've been working out.
[13:24]I know.
[13:25]I feel the same way, but it's, you know,
[13:27]it's really funny.
[13:27]Helen Ellis, when she was a friend of love,
[13:29]she's so amazing, right?
[13:30]It was funny.
[13:31]It was smart.
[13:32]Right?
[13:33]It's the best books when she was the first person
[13:35]to offer me a blurb for this.
[13:37]And hers was she wanted to go to high school students
[13:40]and pass it out to girls, like in high school
[13:43]to say, here's what not to do.
[13:45]And I was having dinner with Maggie Smith,
[13:47]also her own beautiful divorce memoir, right?
[13:49]Yes.
[13:50]I was having dinner with her last night
[13:51]and she was talking about what she'd always imagined
[13:54]was her ideal readership for her book.
[13:56]And she was thinking, you know, 41 and up.
[13:58]And I said, Maggie, my undergrads, 18 to 22,
[14:03]my grad students, they aren't married.
[14:05]They love it.
[14:06]They treat that book like a Bible.
[14:09]I mean, it means so much to them.
[14:11]I think it's tapping in to something
[14:13]that is a very female experience
[14:14]regardless of whether or not you have kids,
[14:17]whether or not you've ever been married.
[14:19]And I just saw it in my hair, in my books and writers
[14:23]who can do things like that.
[14:24]Yeah, let's just hang out Maggie's back.
[14:25]I know.
[14:26]I'm going to be doing that at two o'clock.
[14:28]We're supposed to talk about each other's books
[14:30]and we're going to make you listen.
[14:32]They're there for you.
[14:33]I'm basically just going to highlight you.
[14:35]No.
[14:36]Like sign a light around you.
[14:39]No, but both of you took a different form
[14:42]to tell a story.
[14:43]It's not just standard prose, which I find really interesting.
[14:47]And often when you're going through anything,
[14:49]whether, and it's almost a trauma, right?
[14:51]I mean, it kind of, when you go through the loss,
[14:54]I shouldn't say almost it is a trauma, right?
[14:55]When you go through the loss of your most central relationship,
[14:58]you can't always think about it in like prolonged prose.
[15:01]It can be like, well, what about this?
[15:03]Well, and you just keep replaying all the things.
[15:06]Absolutely.
[15:06]And that's why I saw in part three,
[15:08]which I think of is my most traditional section
[15:11]where I'm just telling these short anecdotes,
[15:15]not unlike Maggie's short anecdotes.
[15:18]It took me a year to realize what I done accidentally.
[15:22]I mean, I can look back and say I did it deliberately,
[15:25]but I didn't part one.
[15:28]There's all of this noise in the data, right?
[15:30]It's everyone's voices.
[15:31]Part two, I'm able to eliminate everything,
[15:35]except my ex and me talking.
[15:37]And in part one, and I wrote it in that order,
[15:41]part one is where I'm finally able to speak
[15:44]without sort of the experimental performance
[15:48]of the other modes, the other structures.
[15:51]And I'm just using the first person pronoun,
[15:54]and I'm able to talk about me in a way that
[15:58]it's very uncomfortable.
[15:59]That's why I'm a fiction writer.
[16:01]I love to make up stories.
[16:02]And I am view so many of my characters with myself.
[16:05]That's very easy.
[16:06]But to say I did this, I couldn't sleep at night.
[16:10]I watched Netflix for 10 hours at night.
[16:13]And I loved my part though.
[16:15]I loved to.
[16:16]I love to.
[16:17]I love to.
[16:18]You only did it once though, you said.
[16:19]I did only do it once, yeah.
[16:20]But this is, I also am an overshare now.
[16:23]Like I think the more we share, the more we make connections.
[16:27]And who doesn't love to make connections?
[16:29]And there's always some person who, when you admit something,
[16:32]really, what you think is the embarrassing piece,
[16:36]you see one or 12 fans go up in the audience.
[16:39]Now I'm on Trazadone.
[16:40]It's how I sleep.
[16:41]And it's my prescription.
[16:42]And it has my name.
[16:45]And it's something we all laugh about in my family.
[16:47]My sister's like, you don't need your dog.
[16:50]You are the dog.
[16:51]You have become the dog.
[16:52]I actually accidentally took my dog's medicine.
[16:55]Not at purpose.
[16:56]And I was pregnant at the time.
[16:58]And I was so, I was like totally distracted with my other kids
[17:01]and I was like, you know, I just was talking to somebody
[17:04]and I put the pill in my hand.
[17:06]And instead of giving it to that, I just like took it.
[17:08]And then all of a sudden, I was like, oh my God, I just took my
[17:11]dog's medicine.
[17:12]And I remember my husband, my now, my ex, it was like,
[17:15]call the doctor, what did you do, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[17:17]So I called my OP and she's like, well, call me if you start
[17:19]barking.
[17:23]That's the best answer.
[17:24]Yeah, it was obviously completely fine.
[17:26]But yes, so it turns out you could take your dog's medicine.
[17:29]You just woke up heartworm.
[17:30]Yeah.
[17:31]Your heartworm saved for the program.
[17:33]Actually, it was like, gabapentin.
[17:35]It was like a pain medicine.
[17:36]Sure, I felt great there's the day.
[17:40]Well, you shared so much in the book about your own history
[17:42]with eating disorders and how it started and the friend
[17:46]that sort of made it sort of click that you could do this,
[17:50]even though you just like chart for us, the whole progression
[17:54]of it, where you found it almost avoidable.
[17:57]It seems there was a question mark.
[17:58]It's because you were like, my life was going in this direction.
[18:01]I hadn't even thought about my body.
[18:02]I was just sort of tall and thin, which only a tall and thin
[18:04]person could actually say.
[18:05]But anyway, but you're like, I didn't even think about it
[18:08]until this friend was doing what I was doing,
[18:11]but on purpose and better in a way.
[18:14]Yeah.
[18:14]And then you were like, well, I only want to eat skittles, too.
[18:17]And I should do this.
[18:18]And you got caught up in it and then it went on and on.
[18:22]Anyway, talk about a little bit how it felt
[18:25]right about your whole history of eating disorders.
[18:27]Are you OK putting it out there?
[18:30]And even at the end, when you're like, you know,
[18:32]I still do these tricks.
[18:34]I still measure your relationship with your body now
[18:38]and how did the writing make you feel about it?
[18:40]I loved being honest about it.
[18:43]It was such an unnecessary secret for so long.
[18:47]And I think there's this shame that we are taught
[18:53]when we're little, especially young girls.
[18:56]But I do know there are boys who suffer from this as well.
[19:00]But there's this shame that goes along
[19:02]with wanting to control our bodies and the methods
[19:05]that we use it.
[19:06]And so we don't ask for help.
[19:08]And we don't articulate what's going on.
[19:11]And I write in the book that I've read a lot.
[19:17]I was a pretty precocious young child.
[19:20]So I knew that there was something going on.
[19:22]I knew I shouldn't be doing it.
[19:24]I was ashamed of it rather than scared of it.
[19:26]And so I read about why my young ambitious,
[19:32]someone intelligent girl like me do this.
[19:34]And when I caught that line about it's a way
[19:37]to control your situation, I glommed onto that,
[19:41]that this was about control.
[19:43]And I do certainly think it was about control.
[19:45]But it was also, at a certain point,
[19:47]it did become an obsession with the body.
[19:51]And so these two things, I couldn't control my parents'
[19:56]divorce and the 10-year custody battle,
[19:58]which was insane.
[20:00]And that was out of my control.
[20:01]And I do think I was looking for attention
[20:05]and at the same time terrified of being caught,
[20:07]you know which I think is the human heart
[20:09]and conflict with itself.
[20:11]Both things can be true.
[20:12]And so it was a relief really to sit down
[20:18]and to pinpoint those moments, you know, pinpoint the skittles
[20:22]and pinpoint that day on the bus
[20:25]where somebody pointed out that I was skinny
[20:28]and you're right.
[20:29]Only a skinny, tall person can say,
[20:32]I had no idea of what my body looks like.
[20:35]And my sister and I have talked a lot about this.
[20:37]She's beautiful.
[20:38]She does not have the exact same body that I have.
[20:41]And we've talked about how she was struggling
[20:44]the whole time in a much different way.
[20:46]She never made unhealthy decisions like I made.
[20:49]But I kept it that secret was so secret for so long.
[20:54]And I think it impacted so many relationships.
[20:57]You know, just the way you have to get up
[20:58]from a dinner table,
[20:59]just the way that you have to pretend to want to be alone.
[21:03]And then depending on whether or not
[21:04]you've gotten your eyes puffy,
[21:06]you have to pretend to be upset at something.
[21:08]So all of it's actually, there's just so much,
[21:12]there's a butterfly effect happening
[21:14]of just wanting to expel food from your body.
[21:16]But then there's the day that it's no longer controlled
[21:19]and it's no longer your body,
[21:22]you're just stuck in this horrible, horrible pattern.
[21:26]And I wanted, I wanted to put it on the paper
[21:31]because I want there to be mothers and fathers
[21:33]who read about this and who are aware of this.
[21:36]And I want there to be girls who read it
[21:39]and think I'm close to doing something like that.
[21:43]It's not embarrassing.
[21:45]It's something that I need help for.
[21:48]And I also wanted to put it on the paper
[21:50]so I'm accountable.
[21:51]I tell anybody who will ask about it.
[21:54]And again, it goes into oversharing
[21:56]but that is, that's my way of,
[21:59]it's a bit of self-protection for me.
[22:01]If people know about it, then I'm much less inclined
[22:06]to do it.
[22:08]And there have, within the last six months,
[22:11]there have been moments where I've had to say
[22:13]to my partner, we need to go downstairs and watch a movie
[22:17]and I need you to know that what I would love to be doing
[22:20]is being in a toilet by myself
[22:23]and getting rid of this food.
[22:24]And he'll just say, let's go downstairs,
[22:26]let's watch a movie and what do you need for me.
[22:28]And that is just having somebody that you can say,
[22:34]there's nothing more that I'd like to do
[22:36]than get rid of this food.
[22:37]And for them not to tell you there's something wrong with you
[22:41]but that they'll sit through it with you.
[22:44]Because once I'm on the other side,
[22:46]I'm always so relieved that I didn't do it.
[22:49]But I do think it's, I also equated to alcoholism
[22:52]where, and I'm not an alcoholic,
[22:54]but I've known alcoholics in my family,
[22:57]related blood, not related to me.
[23:00]And I've read enough about it
[23:02]that it's this thing that you carry with you.
[23:04]And in the same way, they have to make choices every single day.
[23:08]I have to make choices every single day.
[23:09]And if I could give a gift to all women out there
[23:15]and again, I know that men and boys suffer from it too,
[23:18]but if I could give this gift to women of just
[23:22]never, ever having that awareness of my body
[23:27]looks better this way.
[23:28]Or I wish my body looked like my friend Brenda
[23:31]or Janet so much thinner.
[23:34]That is the gift I would give to everyone.
[23:36]Like just suck it out of it, you know, never to have that.
[23:42]Who would be amazing?
[23:42]I know, I know, it's such a waste of time.
[23:45]It's such a waste of time.
[23:47]You know, Emma Thompson talks a lot
[23:48]about it, Caitlin's lid talks a lot about it.
[23:50]And I love listening to them talk about what a waste of time.
[23:55]It is.
[23:56]And I don't think they mean it judgmentally at all.
[23:57]It's like there's so many other things
[24:00]we could be doing, like writing our sixth book
[24:02]or second book or first book, or illustrating a children's book
[24:06]or learning to make pasta from scratch.
[24:09]There are so many other things that we could be doing
[24:12]reading a zippy book.
[24:13]Exactly, right.
[24:16]Yes.
[24:18]Well, I have so much respect for you for sharing all of it
[24:21]and sharing some of the low points of it
[24:24]and the secrets and the tactics even.
[24:27]What you did and just to like,
[24:29]it's almost confessional, right?
[24:31]Like I'm putting this out there.
[24:33]I'm going to share all this.
[24:34]And now I can move on from it.
[24:36]Because sometimes until we do that,
[24:38]it's still like in there.
[24:40]Like it really is.
[24:42]This is not, this is not a plug for an earlier novel of mine,
[24:45]but I went into extreme debt credit card debt
[24:50]when I was in grad school.
[24:52]And I never let anybody in my family know how extreme it was.
[24:56]And I got myself into a debt repayment program.
[25:01]And I finally got out of it when I was 35 or 36.
[25:06]And I think at some point I confess to being
[25:11]in this debt repayment program.
[25:13]People knew about that.
[25:14]But no one had any idea about the money.
[25:17]And in my second novel, I'd finished it.
[25:20]I'd sold it.
[25:21]My editor in that way that editors will do.
[25:23]When she bought it, she said, it's perfect.
[25:25]I love it.
[25:26]And then once you sign, it's,
[25:28]so there's just one thing missing, right?
[25:31]And so she said, there's one thing missing.
[25:33]And I said, great.
[25:34]What is it?
[25:35]I'll do it.
[25:35]And she said, I don't know.
[25:37]But I can tell you're holding back something.
[25:39]This is a good book, but it's missing the magic.
[25:42]And I took my dog on a lot of long walks.
[25:45]And it was about these three siblings
[25:48]that were not unlike me and my brother and my sister,
[25:50]both of whom are hyper achievers as well
[25:52]and very successful as well.
[25:54]I was reading tables trying to write a book, right?
[25:56]And also going into massive debt.
[25:59]And there was this one day where I was walking my dog.
[26:01]And by then I was in the repayment program.
[26:04]And a money sign went off in the top of my head.
[26:08]And I didn't have to rewrite the book.
[26:10]It was just going through.
[26:12]And I gave the narrator all of my numbers.
[26:15]I gave it everything I was paying.
[26:18]It was like $890 a month to the debt repayment.
[26:21]And I broke it down.
[26:22]There was a chapter in fact,
[26:24]where I break down the exact numbers
[26:26]that I was paying every single month.
[26:28]And that was my coming out to my family.
[26:32]And they got the book and they said, wow,
[26:34]this is so specific.
[26:35]And I said, surprise, guys.
[26:38]I've been getting out of $40,000 debt
[26:40]for the last 10 years.
[26:42]Like celebration.
[26:44]Oh my gosh.
[26:45]And I wanted and it's also another
[26:48]personal accountability thing.
[26:49]Yes.
[26:50]Guess who's not in debt now?
[26:52]You, me.
[26:52]Yeah.
[26:53]Congratulations.
[26:54]There's a credit card bill that comes.
[26:56]It gets paid off.
[26:57]And I know that I say it from a point of privilege
[26:59]that I'm able to do that.
[27:01]But I also make sure that I'm never spending,
[27:04]I will never do that again.
[27:05]And that book is there as a reminder to me all the time.
[27:09]I will not do it again,
[27:11]because I could not sleep.
[27:13]It was every night going through the numbers of what I owed.
[27:18]But this is how we learn, right?
[27:19]Yes.
[27:20]But at the same time, if I can help somebody else
[27:22]make, you know, start to pull out their credit card
[27:25]and then say, wait a minute.
[27:26]Didn't I read a book about a young artist?
[27:29]It was, what was that?
[27:30]It was called Reunion.
[27:31]I have to go read that now.
[27:33]But it was, and you know, it's an artist.
[27:35]She keeps pulling out her credit card.
[27:36]Yeah.
[27:37]She wants to be like, she wants friends
[27:39]and she'll get it.
[27:41]Yeah.
[27:41]It's just this silver card that's slide across the table.
[27:45]By the way, for anyone listening,
[27:47]if you happen to hear some background noise
[27:50]as I mentioned before, we're at the Miami Book Fair right now.
[27:53]And there seems to be some sort of outside event occurring.
[27:56]So it's a party.
[27:57]You'll feel like you're just a part of the whole scene, right?
[28:01]It's an advertisement for this book vest.
[28:03]It is lively.
[28:05]Another big theme of, we are too many,
[28:08]is the betrayal of your ex and getting together
[28:12]with your really good friend, Trish, who,
[28:15]and then also how you chart your relationship with her,
[28:18]how you chart your relationship with him
[28:19]and how you handled it when you found out
[28:22]that they had gotten together, which is so crushing.
[28:26]It was crushing, so crushing.
[28:29]It was so crushing and it was also the thing
[28:31]I was always scared of.
[28:32]It was always in the back of my head.
[28:34]And I think that more than anything,
[28:37]I was so disappointed in myself,
[28:39]that sometimes it felt like I just kept pushing off
[28:44]the inevitable.
[28:45]It wasn't inevitable.
[28:46]What?
[28:47]Just because you worry about that,
[28:49]just because you had a glimmer,
[28:51]doesn't mean this should have happened.
[28:52]It shouldn't have happened.
[28:53]It shouldn't have happened, but it was the way I found out
[28:57]it was very sudden.
[28:58]It was the launch of my third book
[28:59]and I got the news and I was in New York,
[29:03]so I wasn't at home.
[29:04]I was in New York, she was in New York,
[29:06]and my now ex was in upstate New York
[29:10]at a writer's colony.
[29:11]So we're all sort of in proximity together
[29:14]and the series of phone calls that have been so fast
[29:18]where I called her, I asked her, she lied,
[29:24]I hung up the phone, she called me right back.
[29:27]She admitted it, she said,
[29:29]do you want me to have your husband call you?
[29:32]I'll never forget that.
[29:33]Do you want me to have your husband call me?
[29:34]And I was like, ever, never ever use that word with me again.
[29:37]It felt like such a fast pass.
[29:39]And then when she started blaming him on the phone,
[29:43]he did this to put a wedge between us,
[29:45]it's his fault, using profanity to refer to him.
[29:49]And I just said, thank you for your honesty.
[29:51]And I got off the phone and I didn't call him
[29:55]because I knew that he was probably not awake.
[29:57]And I got a phone call from him at about noon.
[29:59]And it was just.
[30:00]But did you have sex with her?
[30:01]Wasn't more than once?
[30:03]Do you think you're in love?
[30:04]Thank you for your honesty.
[30:06]And I kept thinking both of them for their honesty
[30:08]because it blew me away that they weren't lying
[30:12]because I also, at about the same time,
[30:14]I knew some other people who were going through something
[30:17]similar, there was an affair, and everyone was lying about it
[30:20]and everyone knew, but nobody would be honest.
[30:23]And there's this gas lighting that's crazy.
[30:26]So I was really grateful, and it made it so simple.
[30:29]If he had chosen anyone else,
[30:31]then the woman who introduced us,
[30:32]then the woman who I talked to about my eating disorders with,
[30:36]she was the one before my partner who knew about my secrets.
[30:41]And so for this woman who had my secrets to make that choice,
[30:46]and to lose them both at the same time,
[30:49]was it wasn't having the rug pulled out from under me.
[30:53]It was having the floorboards,
[30:55]and the scaffolding pulled out from under me.
[30:59]I was a mess, I was just...
[31:00]How could you not have been a mess?
[31:01]It was, and the very first time I got in touch with a therapist
[31:05]after that, she said, well, what do you want?
[31:08]And I said, I don't know.
[31:10]It's been so long that I've been pleasing,
[31:13]so many people, what I want is to know what I want.
[31:17]That is what I want.
[31:18]I don't know what a good relationship looks like.
[31:20]I don't know what a good friendship looks like.
[31:22]I know that I'm attracted to very witty,
[31:25]I think mean women.
[31:27]So we need to probably look at that.
[31:31]And I know that I keep a lot of secrets,
[31:34]and so we should probably look at that
[31:36]because that must have impacted how I was in a relationship
[31:39]with my husband.
[31:40]But a lot of therapy wasn't just dealing with the betrayal.
[31:44]It was also for me to figure out
[31:46]what I even think a life for me should look like.
[31:51]That took some time.
[31:51]Well, I'll take some time.
[31:53]I have to say, when you shared all of Trisha's
[31:57]habits and how, basically, every time she suggested a guy
[32:01]to you, she would go up with him, or do something,
[32:04]or whatever.
[32:05]I think there's some pathology or something
[32:08]is going on.
[32:09]That's not the right word.
[32:09]Something she has something that has nothing to do with you.
[32:13]Yes.
[32:14]Like she has some issue.
[32:16]It's self-sab touch because she's going to keep losing friends.
[32:18]I think so.
[32:19]And with me, there was a kind of competition,
[32:25]which I think, at first, before the men got involved,
[32:30]I think I was flattered by the competition
[32:32]because she was so beautiful.
[32:34]But you're so beautiful.
[32:36]Thank you.
[32:36]I mean, I really, you are.
[32:38]I mean, it's subjective.
[32:39]It's not even subjective.
[32:41]Well, I thought she was beautiful.
[32:43]And she seemed to navigate.
[32:45]We were both in the same writing program.
[32:48]Her stories had that spark.
[32:50]And I felt like my stories had that spark.
[32:52]So I thought very healthy writing competition.
[32:56]And when she chose me as the person to take under her wing,
[33:01]she's younger than me, but she was older than me
[33:03]in the program that she chose me having never
[33:07]been a cool girl up until that point.
[33:09]My brother was popular.
[33:10]My sister was popular.
[33:11]I was a wallflower who blushed and cried
[33:14]if you talked to me at a party.
[33:16]So for her to choose me, I learned a lot
[33:19]about navigating bar culture from her.
[33:22]And it's nice for me to be able, especially on book tour.
[33:26]And I travel a lot alone to be able to go into a bar
[33:29]and eat a dinner alone.
[33:31]I can do that because of her.
[33:33]And I'm completely confident enough
[33:35]to, you know, if somebody wants to hit on me,
[33:38]I just reject them in a nice way.
[33:39]Or if I want to talk, I can.
[33:41]Like I've learned a kind of persona.
[33:43]I think a lot of people on book tour
[33:44]learn a kind of persona.
[33:46]So there's a lot that I did learn from her.
[33:49]And at the same time, there was that competition,
[33:53]the sort of sexual competition.
[33:55]And then, but every time I'd feel it,
[33:57]like I said in the book, every time I'd feel it.
[33:59]And I'd get this, a clarity was almost there.
[34:03]Of this is not right.
[34:05]That was a mean thing that she just said.
[34:07]It was designed to make me feel vulnerable.
[34:09]It was designed to make me want to go home and vomit.
[34:12]Every time I'd get close to being able to say that,
[34:15]there would be something with my stepfather
[34:17]who adopted me in the hospital
[34:19]that would just be a turn for the worst.
[34:21]And she lost somebody very close to her as well.
[34:24]And we just had this in common.
[34:26]And she was of all of my friends in grad school.
[34:30]She was the one who knew about a parent-like figure dying.
[34:34]And she was so good at it.
[34:35]It was where she really shined.
[34:37]She was just never judgmental.
[34:39]She didn't, a lot of my other friends
[34:42]would really want to make a big deal about crying.
[34:44]Are you okay?
[34:45]What do we need to do?
[34:46]Do we all need to leave?
[34:48]And she just say, I got your tab if you want to go,
[34:50]if you want to stay, we can.
[34:52]It's up to you alone.
[34:53]What do you want?
[34:54]And so she didn't treat me like a pariah.
[34:56]There was just this right amount of empathy.
[34:59]And that's how it always brought me back.
[35:01]It always brought me back.
[35:03]And then she was the first person to ever.
[35:05]I didn't have boyfriends early.
[35:08]She was the first person to ever tell me I was sexy.
[35:10]And even when she told me that, I knew there was a kind of,
[35:13]why are you telling me this?
[35:15]But you think I'm sexy.
[35:17]You're like the sexiest woman I know.
[35:19]And it's so flattering, right?
[35:21]I was actually just been watching Sex and the City
[35:23]the first season last night.
[35:26]It's always what I do.
[35:26]It is like the best.
[35:27]It is absolutely the best show.
[35:29]And I watched the one where Charlotte
[35:32]for the first time is dating this man
[35:33]who keeps calling her sexy.
[35:35]And it turns out he's looking for a three way.
[35:37]And her friends keep saying, Charlotte,
[35:40]it's not that you're not sexy.
[35:42]But the reason he keeps telling you that your sexy
[35:44]is he wants you to feel sexy so that he can have this thing
[35:49]right.
[35:49]And as I was watching, and I was like,
[35:51]I know she wasn't angling for a three way.
[35:53]But there is something about that word
[35:56]and the way that it can catch you.
[35:59]It can catch you offhand.
[36:00]It's like a little excitement of who I've never,
[36:03]I've never even considered that before.
[36:05]What would that make me for the rest of my future?
[36:08]Thank you guys.
[36:10]Oh my gosh.
[36:11]There's so much more to discuss.
[36:12]But what are you working on now?
[36:15]Like, what can we expect?
[36:16]What's your next book?
[36:17]Will you write memoir essays all that again?
[36:21]I, so for the first time in so long,
[36:25]I wrote a short story.
[36:26]I have a short story that my agent is shopping right now.
[36:30]And I love it.
[36:31]It's like I've remembered that kind of.
[36:34]It's still, yeah.
[36:36]Art, you know, I teach it to my students all the time
[36:38]and I read them all the time.
[36:39]But I have lost that ability until recently
[36:42]to distill and kind of that magic sauce that's necessary.
[36:46]But I wrote a piece.
[36:47]I'm really excited about that.
[36:48]But in the meantime, I've just finished a novel.
[36:51]And it's, it is a novel.
[36:54]But it is about a 43 year old woman who,
[36:58]her, it's me, it's me.
[37:01]It's me, it's her navigating life
[37:06]as a stepmother and life in not in the suburbs,
[37:10]but domesticity.
[37:12]And it takes place in Midwestern town
[37:15]and her family more and more of her family
[37:17]keeps moving to town, her sister, her biological father,
[37:21]her mother.
[37:22]So there's this like real encroaching of this privacy
[37:26]that she's always had.
[37:27]It's about secrets.
[37:28]It's about writing.
[37:30]I love it.
[37:31]It sounds amazing.
[37:32]I want to read it.
[37:32]I'm very excited about it.
[37:35]It's experimental in the same, not in the same way
[37:38]as we are too many.
[37:39]But I'm lucky in that I've got tenure, which is set for life.
[37:46]In many ways, I could always mess it up if I think,
[37:49]I think if I did cocaine on a desk with students watching,
[37:53]I could definitely lose my academic freedom and be fired.
[37:58]But it does mean that I'm in a place
[37:59]where I can kind of write the books I went to write.
[38:03]And they may not get published.
[38:04]I hope this one does, but it's
[38:07]I think I'm writing at the height of my talent right now.
[38:11]And it's definitely about what it is to be a woman
[38:16]and have that interior life that I think is so much of us
[38:20]have.
[38:21]Send it to Zippy Vakak.
[38:22]Can you fucking get it on that guy?
[38:25]Take a peek.
[38:26]It's a, I was describing it to someone.
[38:29]And I said, if George Saunders and Robert Cooper
[38:34]had a baby and Margaret Atwood was there
[38:37]to take photos, like that's what I'm doing.
[38:40]But it's very much about the female experience.
[38:42]But I want it to also be, I want it to be intellectual.
[38:45]I want it to, because I think women are so smart,
[38:47]and we don't often, we're always
[38:50]congratulated for how emotive we are.
[38:52]And that we're so empathetic.
[38:54]And what that really means is that ability to be empathetic
[38:58]is because we're so hyper intelligent
[39:01]that we're able to make these connections
[39:02]and understand why people may be behaving.
[39:06]There's something at that source.
[39:08]And so I'm really interested in giving that at two
[39:12]and then on the page.
[39:13]For somebody who started her career,
[39:15]I did writing about men.
[39:17]My debut has been focusing on a woman.
[39:20]I have now gotten to the point.
[39:21]And it's something that's happened in my 40s.
[39:25]I just want to read about women.
[39:26]I just want to read about women's minds.
[39:28]I want to read about them during their daily lives.
[39:30]And the way that, you know, I quote my partner here.
[39:32]And this is, I use this in my book.
[39:35]But I totally believe, especially now that I've
[39:37]got a stepdaughter in my life, the day's crawl and the years
[39:41]fly.
[39:42]And so it's just, but it has to be about what's
[39:44]going on in those days that I'm making our lives.
[39:47]And so I really want to look at the tiny
[39:50]to explode it into the big and universal.
[39:53]Amazing.
[39:54]Oh my gosh.
[39:54]Well, that's what's the title for that working title?
[39:56]The working title, I have two different working titles.
[39:59]One of them is it.
[40:00]love it, let it kill you, which is my family's motto. But the other one is goat show,
[40:04]which is the way that my family talks about, like an expletive show, like if something is
[40:10]really bad or it's just like gone crazy, it's a goat show, like a goat show, goat show.
[40:16]And I love a spondi for a title, you know, and Patrick will tell you that,
[40:19]but with those two words that you can see, Tom Lake, Dental, goat show,
[40:25]yeah, bounce house. There you go. I love a spondi. Hannah, thank you so much for having me
[40:29]a mom's turn of time to read books, especially with this crowd and all the excitement of the
[40:33]Miami Book Fair. Good luck on your family. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
[40:39]Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's don't have time to read books.
[40:42]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at mom's don't have time to read books.
[40:48]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet
[40:52]lots of authors on zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact,
[40:56]texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[41:01]this fantastic intro and out trim music.