Audrey Niffenegger on Her Return to The Time Traveler's Wife
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show
[0:07]and learned endless amounts about storytelling,
[0:10]reinvention, and life itself.
[0:11]Because when you talk about books,
[0:13]you're really talking about life.
[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors,
[0:18]the best-selling and the not-yet-discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy.
[0:25]Audrey Niffanegar is the author of Life Out of Order.
[0:30]Do not let the fact that this book is about 600 pages scare you.
[0:34]I read it.
[0:35]I found it so interesting and you will enjoy it as well.
[0:39]Let me tell you a little bit about Audrey.
[0:40]Audrey is a visual artist and writer who lives in Chicago and London.
[0:44]Her book, Art, Prince and Paintings, are included in the collections
[0:47]of the National Museum of Women in the Arts,
[0:49]the Art Institute of Chicago, the Newberry Library
[0:52]and the Library of Congress, among others.
[0:54]In 2019, she founded Artists' Bookhouse,
[0:56]a nonprofit center for the literary and book arts.
[1:00]Audrey Niffanegar was also one of the founders
[1:03]of the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts.
[1:07]She was a professor at Columbia College until 2015.
[1:10]She has published eight books, including the novels,
[1:12]The Time Traveler's Wife.
[1:14]This is a follow-up to that,
[1:16]because anyone here read that, The Time Traveler's Wife.
[1:18]Anyway, and her fearful symmetry,
[1:20]as well as the graphic novels, Raven Girl,
[1:22]The Night Book Mobile and Bizarre Romance with Eddie Campbell.
[1:26]The Time Traveler's Wife has been adapted into a film
[1:28]an HBO TV series and a West End Stage Musical.
[1:32]Other adaptations include a ballet of Raven Girl,
[1:35]which was created by the choreographer Wayne McGregor
[1:38]in 2013 for the Royal Opera House Ballet.
[1:41]Her new novel, Life Out of Order, is Out Now.
[1:43]Welcome, Audrey.
[1:44]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Butte
[1:46]to talk about Life Out of Order.
[1:48]Congratulations.
[1:49]Thank you very much.
[1:51]So this is the follow-up to The Time Traveler's Wife.
[1:54]When did you know you were going to write a follow-up
[1:57]and when did you decide to just go for it?
[2:01]I had not planned to write any sort of follow-up at all.
[2:05]And in 2012, it's sort of a long complicated story,
[2:09]but basically the ebook for Time Traveler's Wife
[2:12]was finally going to come out.
[2:13]And my agent asked me if I had any extra chapters
[2:17]or things that had been left on the cutting floor
[2:21]and I said I actually did not.
[2:23]But I would try to write just a little extra something.
[2:27]And the thing that I wrote wound up being a chapter
[2:30]in the new book that's called The Yellow House.
[2:33]And having written one chapter, I thought, oh, well,
[2:37]maybe I could do a little more and eventually ended up
[2:41]deciding that maybe it was a book.
[2:43]And 13 years later, it finally was a book.
[2:46]Next thing you know, it's 600 pages.
[2:49]Yeah.
[2:50]Yeah.
[2:51]Well, amazing.
[2:52]You have so many really interesting themes
[2:55]that the book tackles in different ways
[2:58]through, of course, the Time Travel,
[2:59]but really through the relationships
[3:01]with all of your characters.
[3:02]There's this one quote at the beginning.
[3:04]Is it OK if I read a quote or two?
[3:06]Alba's question echoes at me.
[3:08]Why make art?
[3:10]If the future doesn't need her sonata or my novel,
[3:13]why make anything?
[3:15]I don't have an answer.
[3:16]It seems like trying to justify breathing
[3:18]or having more than one color or consciousness,
[3:21]the answer must be so simple.
[3:23]Because everything I care about depends on it.
[3:26]I love that.
[3:27]Thank you.
[3:29]All right.
[3:29]Tell me more about this, about art in general,
[3:33]because it comes up again and again over throughout the book.
[3:37]Yeah.
[3:37]So one of the major things in the book
[3:39]is people trying to teach each other a lot of different things,
[3:42]but often how to make music, how to make something.
[3:47]And the characters are very seldom able to articulate
[3:50]why they want to do this.
[3:52]And I don't think most artists can.
[3:55]People can dance around this idea of why am I doing this,
[3:59]but often people just resort to saying something like,
[4:02]well, if you have to, then you have to, or don't bother,
[4:07]go be an accountant if you don't have to.
[4:10]And I think that's a little bit harsh.
[4:13]But I do feel like many, many people
[4:17]have this profound urge to be creative,
[4:21]whether that takes the form of children or chocolate chip
[4:24]cookies or novels or what have you.
[4:28]And it does seem to make people feel better about being alive.
[4:32]I mean, I think if people are just kind of existing
[4:35]and consuming, they don't feel so nice about that usually.
[4:40]And I think that bringing new things into the world,
[4:44]having something in your mind and then managing
[4:46]to manifest it in the real world
[4:48]where other people can participate, that's an amazing feeling.
[4:51]I mean, the whole time I was writing this book,
[4:53]I think maybe 10 people read it.
[4:56]And some of those were my agent, my editors.
[4:59]Yeah.
[5:00]And I did not pass it around very much
[5:04]to fellow writers or pals.
[5:06]Unlike previous books, just felt like I needed
[5:09]to kind of be very small and quiet with this thing.
[5:12]And so now that people such as yourself are reading it,
[5:15]it's kind of astonishing to me that you have read it.
[5:18]And you know who these people are.
[5:21]And yes, your questions.
[5:24]Well, you actually have this one little medicine
[5:26]at the end about showing the book to someone.
[5:30]And the person's response to that.
[5:33]And I felt like it was like you saying that to us
[5:37]the reader as well.
[5:39]Yes, that is the very last scene that got written.
[5:42]You're like, here you go, take it.
[5:44]You interpret it now.
[5:46]Have it.
[5:49]When did you first realize you were a person
[5:52]who derived a lot of joy from creating art
[5:55]and writing and all of that?
[5:57]Did it all come out at once?
[5:59]Or did you start down one avenue and then go to another?
[6:03]I think, you know, like a lot of children,
[6:06]I like to draw pictures and make little stories
[6:10]and make my own little books, you know,
[6:12]fold up pieces paper, make a book.
[6:14]My mother is an artist.
[6:15]And so it just never occurred to me to stop.
[6:18]There was just no pressure to not do it.
[6:21]Nobody said, oh, well, you'll never.
[6:23]My dad, actually, who was a civil engineer,
[6:26]was always very concerned about how I'd make a living.
[6:28]But he certainly never said,
[6:31]oh, you shouldn't go to art school or any of that.
[6:34]So yeah, he was always worried about the practical stuff.
[6:37]And maybe I should have been more worried
[6:39]about the practical stuff.
[6:40]I don't know, but it worked out.
[6:42]It seems like it went OK.
[6:44]Here we have to go talking.
[6:47]In the book, one character says to another,
[6:49]it's my job to worry about you.
[6:52]And I was just wondering who you worry about.
[6:54]Oh, boy, that really depends.
[6:56]I mean, I'm 63, and a lot of my friends are older than me.
[6:59]In the last year and a half, eight people have died, friends.
[7:04]And so, you know, I'm kind of getting into that part
[7:07]of my life where we all are rightly a bit worried.
[7:10]You know, the waiting for the other sheet of drop.
[7:12]And so yeah, I worry about various people
[7:18]at various moments, but it's OK.
[7:21]It's just how life goes.
[7:23]How do you cope with all that?
[7:25]How do you cope with all that loss?
[7:27]My whole, all the things that I make
[7:29]have to do with love and loss.
[7:32]And you know, like my second novel
[7:35]had to do with, very overtly, it starts with a man
[7:40]whose love has died in the first couple of paragraphs.
[7:45]And he happens to be a volunteer at a cemetery in London.
[7:50]And he's a tour guide.
[7:53]And so the book sent us around himself and his friends
[7:57]and other people who live in his building.
[8:00]And all of them are coping with loss in some way
[8:03]or, you know, trying to figure out how to get back together,
[8:06]how to figure out how to separate and just,
[8:10]that's what the whole book is about.
[8:11]And so I've been thrashing around with these questions
[8:15]for a long, long time.
[8:16]And now that I'm dealing with them on a more frequent basis,
[8:21]it doesn't feel like a surprise.
[8:24]It's not a natural.
[8:25]It's just, you know, here we are.
[8:28]And now we do this, unfortunately.
[8:32]Well, I'm really sorry.
[8:33]That's not fun.
[8:35]And I'm sorry that happened.
[8:38]You write a bit about marriage.
[8:41]And in some cases, many parishes all at the same time.
[8:45]And you have a quote where you say, surely, no married people
[8:48]ever tell each other everything.
[8:50]Talk a little bit about that.
[8:51]How do we feel about that?
[8:53]Well, I don't think any two people could ever tell each other
[8:57]everything.
[8:58]I mean, you could know, you could feel like you know somebody
[9:00]down to the bottom of their soul and still you can't be them.
[9:05]And I mean, Elba in particular is a very secretive person
[9:08]because she's been brought up explicitly brought up
[9:11]to not tell everybody everything she knows.
[9:14]She's had pressure put on her not to just go around
[9:16]bloating out everything.
[9:18]And knows too much just about all the time.
[9:22]So she's kind of a special case.
[9:25]But I do feel like it's just important for your own well-being
[9:31]to have things that are just yours, whatever that might be.
[9:35]And you really can't just vomit it all up to anyone else.
[9:41]I mean, it just doesn't work that way.
[9:43]your existence in the world can't be known that completely.
[9:48]I remember a long time ago when I was first studying photography.
[9:51]And I think it's an Edward Weston quote,
[9:56]talking about the idea of composition,
[9:58]composing a photograph.
[10:00]the idea that composition is essentially choosing what to leave in and what to leave out,
[10:06]you know, can come, I'm not going to get this quote right, but that's okay.
[10:09]You know, composition is just a certain way of seeing. And I think it's just that way for everything.
[10:14]I mean, certainly making a work of art, you have to leave some stuff out, you know,
[10:19]the book would be as large as the world. If you didn't, you know, somebody comes home and says,
[10:26]how was your day? And, you know, you might say, oh, yeah, you know, I, the dog did this or
[10:32]the kid did that. And, you know, they say, oh, yeah, you know, the computer stopped working at work
[10:39]or whatever their reality is. And it doesn't even touch what it was like to live through that day.
[10:46]I feel like my husband is actually really good at pulling out the funniest parts of the day,
[10:51]even like a tiny interaction in like the grocery store. Next thing you know, I'm laughing.
[10:55]Like, how do you call that one out? Anyway, I think it's lovely that he's probably thinking,
[11:02]how, how am I going to tell her this? You know, like, am I going to do it and kind of making this
[11:07]little nugget for you to present to you when he gets back? That's nice. Now I should say thank you.
[11:13]All right, tonight I'll think of y'all. I'll thank him for his little story.
[11:18]You had one more line where you say sometimes I feel as though I'm waiting for my life to begin.
[11:23]Sometimes I feel invisible, a disembodied mind observing other people's vital real lives.
[11:29]Do you ever feel like that? At this juncture, no, I mean, I'm 63. I felt that way when I was
[11:35]a teenager because, well, because that was true. You know, I mean, when you're 15 or 16, you,
[11:42]you feel the enormous number of things that you don't know and you're constantly coming up against
[11:50]just the fact that there's a whole lot of other people in the world who
[11:54]have much more experience than you do. And you would like to be those people and you,
[11:58]you emulate them and you're interested in how to become that person, but you just can see that
[12:04]it's going to take some time. I feel like that sense of looking on the outside looking in is
[12:11]something that is so universal, especially to writers that there is this observational sheet
[12:18]in front of the world and the writer. I don't know. You know what I'm talking about.
[12:23]Yeah, although of all the art forms, I think novel writing is the one that tries to let the reader
[12:30]through and inhabit the mind of these. You know, sometimes a fictional person, sometimes a non-fictional
[12:36]person, but it's an attempt to create a little tunnel between your mind and the reader's mind.
[12:44]Yep. The thing that's so funny, of course, is that if you could see the movies that the readers
[12:50]are making out of your book, they'd be so different from what you yourself imagine.
[12:57]I mean, I've had, I've been lucky to have a few things adapted and sometimes when I'm looking
[13:02]at the result, I'm like, wow, this is nothing like what I thought I was giving people,
[13:08]you know, they've really taken it out there somewhere. Just a tiny question.
[13:13]Why in time travel do they have to arrive naked?
[13:17]Oh, well, the mechanism for them time traveling is biological. It's a genetic thing.
[13:24]So the clothes can't become part of them. You know, like they're like if you were time traveler and
[13:32]you you had something very wrong with the tooth, these are people who would have to get the tooth
[13:37]pulled because you can't keep losing the filling over and over again. The eyeglasses hearing aids,
[13:43]none of it's going to come with you. Like a rebirth essentially. Interesting, but also like, yeah,
[13:50]if it's part of you on a cellular level, like a tattoo, it can come, but not anything that's
[13:59]just attached to you, but not part of you. Have you talked to scientists and people about this
[14:06]biological mechanism? Like, is there a world in which this could potentially happen?
[14:12]No, but not too long after time travel is what I've got published. I heard from a scientist at
[14:17]Northwestern, who studies clock genes and clock genes are part of what keep us in sync with the
[14:25]world, you know, circadian rhythms, that kind of thing. And she said that the next time they
[14:31]discovered a new one that they would call it time traveler, which is cool. But, you know, so there
[14:38]are genetic elements in us that keep us, you know, they function as our internal clocks and they keep
[14:44]us in sync and account for things like jet lag and all that. But I don't think anybody's going to be
[14:51]losing contact with the present and finding themselves bursting into other times the way Henry and
[14:56]all, but in all of our older. I just thought maybe, maybe you knew something.
[15:00]the rest of us didn't. So I just had to ask. Yeah, I think it would be a horrible way to
[15:05]exist. I really do. Well, it doesn't sound like Alba particularly likes it, right? I mean,
[15:10]it's like, you know, it's a stress. It's like having a medical condition.
[15:14]It is a medical condition. I mean, okay, it is, it is a medical condition. Yeah, I mean, I was
[15:18]thinking a lot about epilepsy and schizophrenia, how like the fact that Henry and Alba both see
[15:26]ours before they travel, just kind of modeling and things like migraine headaches and that kind
[15:33]of thing. Well, I thought it was really interesting how even though Alba lost her father previously
[15:40]in that when you time travel and you can still sort of see the person in your time travels,
[15:48]then they you still feel the grief, but because you're with them, it feels better and it just felt to
[15:53]me like that was any time you go back and you like look at the pictures and you reread people's
[15:58]letters and you like immerse yourself with someone you love who has been lost. You can almost like
[16:04]conjure up something for that momentary relief before it all goes again. I feel like that was
[16:10]a sense. Yeah, it's meant to be very analogous to memory. So yeah, exactly. Are you ever going to
[16:18]continue this? Could there be a trilogy? I don't know how. Yeah, I had no idea. It was going to
[16:26]take me this long to write it and I have so many other projects that I really am longing to get to.
[16:32]Yeah, I think I'm going to let it be. I feel like I've given everybody their conclusions.
[16:38]Yeah, I think it was a certain point. So I thought gosh, I'm having to write a little
[16:44]dust scene for everybody, but I thought, well, it's a very long book. So it won't be all
[16:49]dust scenes. Over the course of the time you were writing it, why keep like what was it about
[16:58]this book and these characters that made you keep going and going and going versus saying like,
[17:03]okay, I got it now. I didn't know. I just, you know, when you're finished and for a long time,
[17:09]it just seemed like it was not only unfinished, but I it took me a long time to get the correct
[17:16]order. I mean, when I was writing it for the longest time, the section where Alba is a child was the
[17:24]first section. And I just kept thinking that I hadn't really cracked the structure of the book.
[17:33]And so I kept writing, but I also kept trying to figure out how to put things together so that it
[17:38]would be more, I don't know, just effective, I guess would be. And is there one moment that you
[17:47]would like to time travel back to? I would go back and be with various people. I mean, that in the
[17:54]books, that's kind of what's motivating a lot of the time travel. I mean, everything from Alba and
[17:59]Henry meeting up to Henry repeatedly going to his mother's car crash, you know, just they can't
[18:06]necessarily control it. They may or may not want it. But that's what's pulling people. And I,
[18:12]I do feel as though when people write the kind of time travel where you're going to hang out
[18:18]at some major historical event, I mean, maybe that would work for people who are historians,
[18:25]you know, who have a real passion for the Civil War or something. I don't know. It wouldn't
[18:30]interest me enough to just be like, hey, let's go see, let's go learn how to turn butter.
[18:35]And the future would terrify me. The kind of time travel where you go forward would be very
[18:41]stressful, I think. Yeah, I agree. Well, you do have the Democratic National Convention in here
[18:48]at that one point. Our historic event, so to speak, but anyway, amazing. Well, what are you most
[18:56]eager to get back to? Probably anything to get off the Zoom, no I'm kidding. Back to, in a sense of,
[19:03]like you said, you had so many projects you were excited to get back to. Gotcha. Well, for one
[19:08]thing, I, it's not that I haven't made art for 13 years, but I've made less art than I might
[19:13]otherwise have. And so I'd like to spend some time in the studio. I made a story quite a long time
[19:19]ago called the Night Bookmobile. And I'd like to write maybe a bunch of linked short stories
[19:25]that exist in that universe. It's about a world in which the afterlife is a gigantic
[19:32]celestial library. There's four categories of beings. There's readers, librarians,
[19:41]books and authors. And the books are very much like people. They can take the form of a book sitting
[19:47]on a shelf, but they can also take the form of person and go off and do things. So that I've written,
[19:55]I've written a few of those stories and I'd really like to keep going with that.
[20:00]a very congenial universe.
[20:02]Nice.
[20:03]Oh, can't wait to read that.
[20:04]Well, Audrey, thank you so much.
[20:06]Thank you for the time and the story
[20:08]and for waiting till you got to the end
[20:11]so that we could have the ending that you brought us to,
[20:13]which was sort of devastating,
[20:15]but also satisfying.
[20:16]So, thank you.
[20:18]Thank you for everything and thanks for the time.
[20:20]He's met with me.
[20:20]I appreciate it.
[20:21]Yeah, thank you, Zippy.
[20:22]It was really enjoyable.
[20:23]Thank you.
[20:24]Take care.
[20:25]Thank you for listening to totally bucked with Zippy.
[20:28]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[20:30]If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[20:32]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens
[20:36]and spread the word.
[20:38]Thanks so much.
[20:39]Go and buy the books.