Marian Thurm, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU THIS
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
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[0:44]Marion Serum is the author of I Don't Know How To Tell You This, a novel.
[0:48]Marion is the author of nine novels and five short story collections, including Today
[0:53]is Not Your Day, A New York Times editor's choice.
[0:56]Her novel, The Clearvoyant, was a New York Times notable book.
[0:59]Her novel, The Black Mailer's Guide to Love, was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of
[1:03]the best books of fiction in 2021.
[1:06]Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker at The Atlantic, narrative magazine
[1:10]the Saturday Evening Post, Michigan Quarterly Review, and many other magazines, and have
[1:14]been included in the best American short stories and numerous other anthologies.
[1:18]She has taught creative writing at Yale University, Barnard College, Columbia University,
[1:23]Brooklyn College, and The New School.
[1:25]Her first short story was published in The New Yorker when she was 25 years old.
[1:29]Welcome, Marion, thank you so much for coming.
[1:32]I'm totally booked with Zibi to talk about, I don't know how to tell you this.
[1:36]Congratulations.
[1:37]Thank you so much.
[1:38]Thank you.
[1:39]It's wonderful to be here.
[1:40]Wonderful.
[1:41]I've seen you online, and I see wonderful, you're just wonderful.
[1:45]That's all there is to it.
[1:47]Oh, thank you.
[1:48]Yeah, absolutely.
[1:49]And I feel like I have very good instincts about people, and I can just tell you're wonderful.
[1:54]Oh, thanks.
[1:55]All right.
[1:56]I'll go, let's go with that.
[1:58]OK, let's start off by your telling listeners what the book is about.
[2:04]All right.
[2:05]So the book is about a family court judge and her life, both inside and outside the
[2:11]courtroom and her life.
[2:14]Both cases is certainly complicated, and it's also about her husband's sad journey from
[2:23]being a super smart Yale professor and talented writer to someone who begins to lose
[2:31]it day by day, week by week.
[2:35]And as someone who saw this in my own parents who were much, much, much older, I, there
[2:42]are just things that were said, things that happened, you know, never to be forgotten.
[2:47]And so I always try to take even the saddest things, you know, in my life and put them
[2:51]to good use by writing about them.
[2:54]Oh, yes.
[2:55]And there's also a hot class survivor here who is inspired by the mother and mother-in-law
[3:03]of friends of mine, and they really, I was very lucky that they shared with me their
[3:10]memories of her life story.
[3:12]And also, of course, I have to mention that a very good friend of mine was previously
[3:16]a family court judge for years.
[3:18]And he allowed me to sit next to him, and I did this day, after day, week after week,
[3:25]and I took notes and believe it or not, this all started 20 years ago.
[3:31]Oh, my goodness.
[3:33]And I had actually seven books, other books published before this one, because I just
[3:41]couldn't get it right.
[3:42]I couldn't.
[3:43]And as a writer, it's such a frustrating thing, but I had invested so much time in it and
[3:48]meant so much to me that I just couldn't give up.
[3:51]So it was over 20 years.
[3:53]Oh, my gosh.
[3:55]Yeah.
[3:56]So maybe that's a lesson to roll those writers out there with one of your writers, and
[4:01]if you know you have a good idea, and somehow you can't get it right, just to keep
[4:06]at it over and over and over again, that's very inspiring.
[4:10]And you've had an inspiring career to date going as fact, quite a while, you said it was
[4:16]before I was born.
[4:17]Not so sure.
[4:18]I don't think so.
[4:19]Yes.
[4:20]But I am.
[4:21]Talk about how you got started as a writer.
[4:23]Well, oh, actually, I was thinking about this, believe it or not, do you remember 17 magazine?
[4:28]Of course.
[4:29]Yes.
[4:30]So when I was a teenager, you know, I used to be a 17 magazine, and I, even at that point,
[4:36]I knew that I wanted to be a writer.
[4:38]I still can't believe I did this.
[4:40]So I was about 13 or 14, and I wrote a story about my grandmother, which believe
[4:46]17 is not going to be anything about your husband's grandmother.
[4:50]But amazingly, I got a rejection slip, but on the bottom, it said something about we like
[4:56]even though this story isn't right for us, we like your writing.
[5:00]So send us another story, you know, sometime, well, it turned out about, let me think
[5:05]about 40 years later, believe it or not, my story, I mean, the story that I wrote 40 years
[5:11]later was published in 17.
[5:14]It was the last piece of fiction, 17 ever published, but I'm like the kiss of death because
[5:21]this will happen with Madam as Al, I think, I think the same thing.
[5:25]I was, my story was the last, or even last piece of fiction that ever published.
[5:30]But when I told the editor at 17, you know, but I was 13 years old when I first sent
[5:34]it.
[5:35]That was the only other story, I sent them the one story when I was 13 and then many,
[5:38]many years later.
[5:39]So that's my gosh.
[5:41]Wonderful circle moment, but the funniest thing of all is that, and it's still when I think
[5:49]about it, how Locke has so much to do with life.
[5:54]It just really does.
[5:55]And what happened was I was working at Esquire magazine, awesome, a long time ago.
[6:00]And the fiction editor there, his name was Gordon Lish, do you know that name?
[6:04]Right.
[6:05]And actually, crazy thing is both Gordon taught at Yale while I was working for him.
[6:10]And then years later, I taught at Yale.
[6:12]It's like, what are the chances of that happening?
[6:14]Anyway, so there were a lot of writers sort of coming and going to visit him.
[6:18]And so my job was just to read the slush file and then if Gordon was in the round, I would
[6:23]answer his phone.
[6:24]So I got to talk to Truman Capote and who always identified himself, which was funny
[6:30]because his voice was so distinctive, of course, recognized instantly, you know, the writer
[6:37]Raymond Carver.
[6:39]Of course.
[6:40]Yeah.
[6:41]So I talked to him a lot on the phone.
[6:42]He was a photographer and he was actually very, very sweet.
[6:46]We talked about writing.
[6:47]And I guess I was in my early 20s and I told him I wanted to be a writer, which was
[6:52]probably crazy that I would say something like that to him, but it turned out.
[6:56]Anyway, what happened was one day a writer came out of Gordon's office and he doesn't even
[7:01]know.
[7:02]I don't know if I should tell you his name, but because he has no idea who I am and what
[7:05]he did for me.
[7:07]So he worked at the New Yorker.
[7:09]He had been published by them, and his stories were published there.
[7:12]He worked in the New Yorker's typing pool.
[7:14]And in those days, you know, the typing pool.
[7:16]I do.
[7:17]Yes.
[7:18]Right.
[7:19]And but Gordon was interested in publishing him, I guess.
[7:22]And as this young writer was working at a Gordon's office, despite the fact that I was
[7:26]very shy, my dad, I didn't have an office.
[7:30]My desk was out in the hallway and as he was walking by, I reached out my arm and I tapped
[7:35]him on the shoulder and I said, excuse me, could you possibly tell me the name of your
[7:40]editor at the New Yorker?
[7:42]And so I guess maybe I gave him a little piece of paper and he wrote it down and I put
[7:46]the piece of paper in my pocket.
[7:49]And that was what led me to having my first story published.
[7:55]And the interesting thing was I found out later that the name that he gave me was not
[8:00]the name of his editor.
[8:01]He gave me the name of somebody else and that somebody else turned out to be, you know,
[8:06]a wonderful mentor and bought quite a few stories in line.
[8:10]And it was the luckiest thing ever if I hadn't reached my hand out.
[8:15]This never would have happened ever.
[8:17]Well, that's not luck.
[8:18]That was you making a decision and going after something.
[8:22]But actually, here's the funny part of this story also.
[8:24]So some, I don't know, maybe weeks, months went by and I was already working on this particular
[8:29]story and there was an editorial meeting and all the editors were all the way down the
[8:34]end of the hall and Nora Ephron worked there as an editor and her assistant who, by
[8:40]the way, graduated from Yale, had to leave early.
[8:43]And so they were having this meeting and Nora was at the end of the hall and she yelled
[8:46]out to me, Marianne, make sure you answer my phone if it rings, although I couldn't
[8:51]possibly have gotten there in time because her office was all the way down and I could
[8:55]picture this perfectly into the right.
[8:57]So since all the editors were busy doing things, I just decided I was going to work on this
[9:00]story of mine.
[9:02]So I was completely involved in working on this story.
[9:06]Little did I know I was that I was going to sell it to New York.
[9:09]And all of a sudden, I guess her phone was ringed, but I didn't even hear it.
[9:12]I wasn't paying any attention.
[9:13]I was only paying attention to my story.
[9:17]I can still see her.
[9:19]She was at the end of the hall and she was yelling, Marianne, I told you to answer my
[9:22]phone and sorry.
[9:25]I felt a little bit bad, but there was no way I could have gotten there in time anyway.
[9:30]But then that story and that was the first story that I had resolved.
[9:35]And the crazy thing also is that because I was a slash pile reader, I knew how easy it
[9:40]was.
[9:41]I did it for a red book also.
[9:43]And I knew how easy it was just to read, you know, the first paragraph and you said,
[9:47]this isn't very good.
[9:48]Then you go to the end and you say, sorry.
[9:51]And so I can't believe I did this.
[9:54]I wrote letter to this editor whose name I had at the New Yorker and I said, please.
[10:00]show me to respect, you know, that I tried to do for a flash file. And please read my story all the way to the end. And so here's the letter that I got.
[10:12]And it said, not only have we given your story a thorough reading, we have decided to take it for the magazine.
[10:21]And actually, you'll be interested here is because we were living my husband, I was living in Cambridge because he was a student at Harvard Law School.
[10:28]And I was at a job that I was not happy with and he came home from class and he went to the mailbox and took this letter out. And I wasn't there to take it out myself out of the mailbox because I was at that work.
[10:41]And he called me on the phone and he said, you have a letter from the New Yorker here. Why would they be writing to you? And then I and then the two of us said, Oh, maybe they're writing to tell me that they lost the story that I sent them, you know, send them.
[10:54]He opens up the letter. He said, can I open it and I said, yes, he opened it. And I was in other state of shock. Wow. Okay. Let's fast forward then to I don't know how to tell you this.
[11:06]How did it end up taking 20 years. What went wrong with the prior drafts and how did you find your way through.
[11:14]Yes, what happened was I it's interesting at the time that I started writing it. I was some other of teenagers.
[11:21]And so someone in my family at the time was in a rock and roll band didn't want to go to college. And so that was one of the things that I had, you know, in the judge's life.
[11:34]And I guess it just wasn't it just didn't work. The judge originally was a man with my friend who was a judge was a man and that over the years I began to understand that would be much more interesting to have her as a woman.
[11:50]I just whatever. Oh, and the Holocaust survivor was a man also and I changed it to woman. I just I just couldn't get it right. I just couldn't. And then, as I said, it's over 20 years.
[12:06]So this time.
[12:09]And somehow I think you know your own work that you know it's just not working. It's just.
[12:18]And so, but I couldn't bear to just throw it away because I had so many notes about the various cases, you know that appeared in the courtroom and I put so much effort into it and it just it meant a lot to me, but I grabbed seven other books.
[12:34]Well, I found the cases really interesting in it. They're almost a framing device.
[12:40]Great for that for the intimate story between this couple and what happens when one person's mind begins to go and the other has to sort of mourn the loss in real time and figure out how to deal with it.
[12:54]You also did such a lovely job of not only describing it from Rachel's point of view, but also what it felt like to be in it. And you have this one paragraph. Do you mind if I read this?
[13:05]Not sure.
[13:06]Rachel touched by Jonathan's apparent need to keep the photographs close to him leaves them there in the suitcase where he packed them. No questions asked.
[13:13]The Uber driver who will ferry them to the airport is texting Rachel to let them know he's arrived. They're all set to walk out with their luggage when Jonathan realizes he can't find his house keys.
[13:22]He and Rachel take a quick look in the obvious places, the top of his dresser, the all purpose shelf beneath the large mirror hanging on the wall in the foyer and lastly the kitchen counters.
[13:32]Jonathan seems unduly distressed, but actually what does it matter Rachel tells him they will be away for a week and what do they need his keys for anyway.
[13:40]She has hers right here in her handbag and they'll find his when they return from their trip, but he is clearly still upset opening and closing all the kitchen cabinets and drawers slamming them shut in frustration.
[13:52]I'm such an asshole. She hears him say under his breath just as she is reminding him that they need to leave straight away if they don't want to miss their flight.
[14:01]He's not just searching for the keys. He's searching for himself and this is a symbol of what's to come.
[14:08]I am again, you know, he's much younger that my mother of my father was 95 and my mother was 90, but even so it was very painful to see how they had changed and it was very very people and they actually lived in the same building that has been an eyelid and I moved them there so that I would be able to go upstairs and check.
[14:30]They had a live in unfortunately a wonderful wonderful caregiver, but it was very very painful, very thankful and it seems like unfortunately this dementia seems to be this epidemic somehow and keep reading that all the time, but I, you know, witness this with my own eyes and ears and
[14:55]never to do for that.
[14:57]And it was interesting because my one of my grandmother, I never seen this before, never seen dementia before and one of my grandmothers who she was a widow from the time she was 40 and she just did everything absolutely on her own.
[15:12]You know, everyone she was in her 90s, I think she was doing, you know, her taxes and doing her laundry and everything.
[15:19]So it was astounding to me to see this, you know, in my own mother and father, I just never expected it.
[15:26]And I guess my idea of what, you know, elder the people were like was my grandmother to care everything and I don't know what retrospect I don't know how she managed.
[15:37]She had two wonderful daughters, but for the most part she relied on herself and only herself and it's pretty wonderful actually.
[15:46]I'm sorry you had to go through that with your parents that must be very painful and I'm glad you found a creative outlet to put it in. Do you find that it helped you process all that?
[15:56]Yeah, I think it probably did and interestingly, my mother and father died within six weeks of each other so that my mother died first, she was 90.
[16:05]And so my father never really had to mourn her loss because she didn't tell him and actually here's a good interesting detail.
[16:16]So they're wonderful caregiver they had, she didn't want my father to figure out that my mother was no longer in bed beside him.
[16:24]So she blew up some balloons.
[16:27]She put them in the bed next to my father put the balloons, you know, the pillow and I remember I was that's another thing I was astounded by, but I mean she was wonderful.
[16:40]It shows you about it terrifically empathetic, you know, caregiver she was.
[16:46]It was quite something I have to say.
[16:51]There was some very, you know, there are comic moments there are lots of kind of moments and I, you know, I try to to write about them in my in my own work.
[17:01]And tell me a little more about the Holocaust survivor plot line you mentioned they were friends of your family, but yeah, in the book, you know, didn't want to talk about it very much occasionally talked about Auschwitz and there's a shiva in the book later. Tell me a little more about that.
[17:19]Well, so like friends were going to be able to talk about, you know, their mother and mother in law.
[17:25]And I really appreciated, you know, knowing that, you know, she wasn't this, you know, sentimental figure, you know, she was a very strong person.
[17:37]Not sentimental in the least and it made it made sense to me that in order to go on, you know, after the terrible terrible things, you know, that she had experienced and witnessed.
[17:50]And you know, just when I when I thought about them, it's just so it was just awful and interestingly and coincidentally, the judge, my friend, the judge who let me sit with him.
[18:01]His father, his parents were Holocaust survivors that they were, I believe they were in the war, so I get out and they were able to come to the United States.
[18:10]Thankfully, but his, my friends, fathers, twin sisters, so I think we're 13 years old died in Auschwitz.
[18:18]And you know, I never forgot that and that's probably where the idea came from all those while those years ago.
[18:24]But one of the things that I was thinking about is that I remember my mother telling me this that when I was like two years old, we lived in a neighborhood in Queens that had a lot of Holocaust survivors.
[18:36]And since I was only two, of course, I didn't know anything about this. My mother told me this years later, she told me that there was a kosher butcher in the neighborhood where she used to go, I don't know, maybe once a week or so.
[18:48]And maybe the first time she went there with me and I was in my stroller and the butcher began to weep at the side of me because it turned out I looked like his little girl who died in the Holocaust.
[19:02]And so, you know what my mother did. This is kind of the comic part of a story. I know I get all choked up when I think about this.
[19:09]When she would go to the butcher, she would leave me outside the store in my stroller.
[19:15]And in today's work, she didn't want to accept the butcher in today's world. She would have been arrested for abandoning your child, but I guess in those days it was perfectly safe.
[19:25]And when she told me this, you know, she told me years and years later, and you know, I never forgot it. I just so much to me.
[19:33]And today, giving everything that's going on.
[19:38]Yeah, these things made me even more. I was wondering if you were all interested to hear when I was a young mother, you know, and about mother of, you know, young children and how I managed to.
[19:51]Oh, yes, do tell me this. Yes, tell me, tell me your, tell me that, please.
[19:57]So, interestingly, I
[20:00]I understand how I did it, but I was most productive.
[20:03]I'd ever been on my children more young.
[20:05]And I think I had five books published in seven years.
[20:08]And I just went and think to another to another.
[20:10]And so I had a babysitter from 10 in the morning
[20:13]till two o'clock in the afternoon.
[20:15]And then I had a wonderful babysitter,
[20:18]me and the audition ball in today's world.
[20:20]So I had a very limited amount of time.
[20:23]And we were living a long time ago
[20:25]in a one bedroom apartment, believe it or not,
[20:27]with two kids and a cat.
[20:30]So what I did was, it did this all the time,
[20:34]in the beginning of my summer, so I was in school.
[20:37]So that was good.
[20:38]I didn't have to pick them up until three weeks back, right?
[20:41]So babysitter was there.
[20:43]And every day when she would come,
[20:44]she would say to my daughter, who became a writer herself,
[20:47]by the way.
[20:48]Let's go downstairs and do the laundry.
[20:50]And so then there was no laundry.
[20:53]There was no laundry.
[20:53]It should be done five days a week, certainly.
[20:55]And then I would sort of walk them to the elevator
[20:59]and then say, thanks for doing the laundry.
[21:01]And then I would run back inside the apartment.
[21:04]And I had a lock put on the bedroom door
[21:06]because if I didn't, my wonderful little girl
[21:09]would have opened the door, I'm sure.
[21:11]So I had a lock on the door and I stayed in there.
[21:14]And if I ever needed to use the bathroom,
[21:18]I had a slip and no gun to the door, and I hope that the,
[21:24]you know, the babysitter would see it.
[21:27]Oh my gosh.
[21:28]Well, what you, the links you go to to get things done
[21:32]as a month.
[21:34]I know, it's really true.
[21:36]And one of the things was I never, I never forgot this
[21:38]that my daughter who actually was very tiny
[21:41]is still as small today.
[21:42]She had tiny little hands and she had a play date
[21:45]going on in the other room while I'm working.
[21:47]And she slipped her hands under the door.
[21:50]And I could see that there was enough room
[21:51]between the bottom of the door.
[21:52]You know, on the floor.
[21:53]And I saw her hands coming through.
[21:55]And I heard her friend little, you know,
[21:57]three or a whole friend date her,
[21:58]what's your mom doing in there?
[22:00]And my daughter's response was she's a typer
[22:03]as in typing on a typer.
[22:07]Although I wrote everything by hand,
[22:10]everything with it, with it, that we did or not.
[22:13]And then I think of no matter.
[22:15]But yeah, it's true.
[22:16]What moms have to go through in order to get it done.
[22:20]Oh my gosh.
[22:21]Marianne, thank you so much.
[22:23]Thank you for this really elegant portrait
[22:26]of an aging couple and what people go through
[22:30]for each other.
[22:31]What love looks like is as we all shape shift through time.
[22:35]And the impact also of course of society
[22:39]and all of the many cases that you brought to our attention.
[22:43]So thank you so much for this lovely story.
[22:46]I thank you very, very much for this opportunity.
[22:50]And I hope I haven't said too much.
[22:52]Not at all.
[22:53]Not at all.
[22:56]Thank you.
[22:57]Okay, bye bye.
[22:58]Bye bye.
[22:59]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi
[23:02]formerly mom's don't have time to read books.
[23:05]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[23:08]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[23:11]and spread the word.
[23:12]Thanks so much.
[23:13]Oh, and bye the books.