Beneath the veneer with Naben Ruthnum and André Forget

Hello

again Kobo & Conversation listeners, and welcome to the third and final episode that we recorded live on stage at the 2022 Toronto International Festival of Authors.

This

event, called Beneath the Veneer, brought together novelists Neben Ruthnam, author of A Hero of Our Time, and André Forget, author of In the City of Pigs, for a discussion about the seemingly well-intentioned but often insidious narratives of so-called progress that permeate our modern times.

Let's

go now to the Harbourfront stage in downtown Toronto.

I

am Nathan Maharaj. I'm director of content marketing for Rakuten Kobo and the producer and occasional host of the Kobo & Conversation podcast.

I

am delighted to be moderating this discussion about what lies beneath veneers with two novelists whose most recent novels engage with this topic brilliantly. André Forget is the author of In the City of Pigs,

the

story of a failed musician, Alexander Otkasov,

who

makes the extremely questionable decision to move from Montreal to Toronto,

where

he finds work as a classical music journalist who explores a borderline, eyes-wide-shut-esque underground and underwater avant-garde music scene.

And to

his immediate left,

you

will find Niben Rutnam, the author of A Hero of Our Time, a darkly funny book about Osman Shah, an edutech startup employee whose contempt for himself is matched only by the contempt he imagines others have for him, especially his colleagues.

Niben,

André, welcome to Tifa.

Good

to be here.

Thank

you.

Now,

I have a bit of a tricky job to do here. You both know each other. Keen-eyed readers actually would notice that these gentlemen acknowledge each other. They thank each other in the end notes of each of their books. So I am a third wheel if ever there was one.

I

know full well that if I do a bad job here, if I prove myself entirely superfluous, that I will at best be the subject of a funny book festival anecdote that gets told later in tandem. So I hope if I do a poor job, it's bad enough to actually dine out on. I want the audience to hear a bit of each of your books, but perhaps let's start with you, André. Could we hear a bit of In the City of Pigs?

Yeah, for sure. And well done on picking up the Eyes Wide Shut reference. You're the first person who's caught that.

I

have nothing to say about Montreal.

I

remember only the slow inevitability of the train pulling out of Central Station,

the

benevolent red glow of the Five Roses sign, the whiteness of the year's first snow sprinkling the trackside. Montreal was a dream from which I awoke as we sped past the lake of two mountains,

a

patchwork of brown nocturnal memories,

a

puddle of piss turning to steam

on

the sidewalk.

Outside

the window, dead fields lay under a dusting of snow so fine the darkness of the furrowed earth was still visible.

It

was the last day of November. Laptops snapped open around me, and my fellow passengers pulled up their spreadsheets and quarterly reports.

I

had no work to do.

I

turned to the window and listened to Glenn Gould's recording of the Brahms intermezi on my phone.

I

was in a sentimental mood,

and

nothing has ever been more sentimental than Gould's fingers landing on the opening chords of that E-flat major intermezzo.

There

was nothing outside the window but farmers' fields and ditches and forests. Occasionally a small town's asphalt roofs and dejected steeples passed by.

The

only indication we were leaving one unhappy province and entering another

was

the signposts.

Towns

named for polysyllabic saints

gave

way to towns named for colonial administrators.

And

yet, I couldn't look away. Montreal had died for me so the rest of the world could come alive.

I

hadn't been to Toronto in years,

but

the city had, over the past months, taken on a dense significance in my mind.

This

was not because of Gould and his delicate E-flat major intermezzo. Gould's Toronto had disappeared decades ago,

buried

under condo towers and chained pharmacies.

If

anything, the more or less complete erasure of the city Gould had known made it possible to imagine moving there. Toronto attracted me in direct proportion to the claustrophobia and disgust I felt walking the streets of Montreal.

The

city as it existed in my mind was an elaborate perversion.

A

glassy necropolis where skinny men in Tiger of Sweden suits ran free beneath the sky refracted in coloured glass.

A

vulgar and frictionless place. A city that could now never produce a Gould.

Alexander, your protagonist, he finds the decrepitude of the apartment he moves into reassuring.

Though

I sympathise, I wanted to ask why. Is it a particularly Toronto thing to be glad that your housing is falling apart?

Well, I don't think too many Toronto renters are glad that their houses are falling apart. But Alexander is a loser. In his own mind, this is his defining quality, is that he's a loser. And his move to Toronto is out of a desire to stop being a loser.

But

he's also very comfortable being a loser.

And

so there's these two things pulling at him

throughout

the novel. Can he cease to be a loser?

Or

does being a loser provide the sort of comfort that he actually wants? So

I

was playing around with that. I mean, I never lived in Montreal myself. So the decrepit apartments that I lived in were in Winnipeg and Halifax. And to a degree, moving to Toronto into a crappy apartment was, you know, there was some comfort to that,

you

know, it's just familiar.

Yeah. He's

a pianist by training, Alexander the loser is. It's an interesting choice of instrument, because he spends very little of the novel

anywhere

near a keyboard whatsoever. And it is an instrument that comes with a certain logistical and real estate requirements. Pianos don't, no one incidentally has a piano at a party, no one whips out a piano around the campfire. Was there ever a point in the novel where perhaps he was an oboist, a flautist perhaps?

Or

was it always that he was going to be a musician whose ability to practice would be severely hampered by

logistics?

See,

that's a really interesting take. And I hadn't thought about that at all.

Now,

in the world of classical music, as I've experienced it, there are two instruments that are kind of the,

I

don't know what you would call them, like the ultimate instruments. And it's piano and violin, right?

There

are far more pianists and violinists than, than any other instrument

in

classical music, obviously guitar or, you know, in pop music or jazz,

you

would, you would find a different breakdown.

So,

so piano is kind of the instrument you play if you're really trying to be

the

best.

I

shouldn't say that I shouldn't cast aspersions on, on people who play other instruments.

Obviously

people who play trombone are also dedicated to excellence. But, but I think it, it has that texture of being, this is the most competitive instrument

in

a highly competitive world of music. So

he's

shooting for the moon by trying to become a pianist in a way.

And

I, I, I wanted that detail in there because

I

think for people who come from a classical music background, that

idea

of the failed pianist would be,

uh, recognizable,

I suppose. Um, he, he observes that he's filled with an incipient sense of dread

by

jobs that lack

a

very specific output

or

require a particular contribution.

Um,

as a journalist, I guess he, he, when he finds that work that he's, he's maybe comfortable, um, I guess when his invoices get paid that there's comfort that he's producing, um, something, um, why to pick up on, on your earlier question and kind of expand it a bit, why would he, why was it important that he be a journalist and not just a musician out of work struggling to find a place?

Um,

well, sometimes these decisions kind of make themselves when you're writing a book,

right?

So if you have a character who's a cop,

then

that allows that character to move through the world in a certain way, right? That's why

we

love cop shows.

We,

the collective culture, I suppose. I don't particularly like them, but, uh, if you have a police officer, then you have an immediate episodic thing. Every week there's a new thing. If you have a doctor, every week there's a new patient coming in, right? Uh, if you have a journalist, then this person's job is taking them out into the world. They're going out, they're encountering

phenomena,

they're leaving the office, they're covering stuff. So as a novelist, that immediately is, is appealing because it gives your character some sort of impetus

to

go out into the world and uncover the story.

Um,

whereas if the, the character,

well,

I can imagine an accountant, you know, also uncovering all sorts of wonderful things,

but

I, I know less about accountancy than I do about journalism. So journalism is where I, where I

landed.

So

this, this is, this is where I want to transition, uh, to talk to Niben a bit, because,

um,

Osman's job,

I'm

not sure what he does.

I,

I'm, I may have missed a detail, that's possible, but, but he, he seems to, I think, share the sense of dread. There's certainly a sense of dread percolating through the book. I wonder if he can label it as clearly as Alexander can, but before we

talk

too much around it, I hope, um, you might read us a bit of, of a hero of our time.

I

have to be a bit uncouth and read it from my phone

because

I came ill prepared. Certain stories are for wielding,

not

telling.

I

used to have one before it was taken away.

It

was more of a joke. A few lines of generic airport experience and television borrowings honed into a minor weapon for use in business situations,

but

I counted on it.

The

final time I used it was at the AAP conference in October, 2018. Seven listeners and I were on a sickle-shaped couch in the lobby of a generic hotel implanted into the superstructure of a retired castle in Montreal.

The

couch was upholstered in washable light gold fabric that rasped against pants and skirts and felt like Kevlar against my palm as I pushed myself deeper into the cushion, hoping to discover a secret angle or groove free of the rigid springs that were pressing into my tailbone.

I

don't blame them. I'd pat me down too. I am always no exception, late to the airport, sweated up when I get there. The air conditioning freezes it on my face and gives me that hospital or strapped-with-plastique sheen.

Then

there's the whole this thing.

I

added, as I did every time, to the invitation of my smile with an up-down displaying wave

of

hand over face.

The

downstroke acknowledged the skin that caused the airport situation and the unease of my listeners.

The

upstroke, a toss like I was flinging salt or a spell, dismissed any tragic significance, sent race into the ether,

let

my listeners join in a laugh if they were brave enough to

start

it.

Anyone

who takes pleasure in rendering even brief power from good will and fear

is

shit.

When

I used this story, I was no exception. I want to make it clear that I understand this and that it doesn't prevent me from discerning that Olivia Robinson was and is much worse than I am.

She's

also, in the sense it matters to her and to our world, much greater.

Thank

you.

Can

you tell us, what is AAP, the company that Osman finds himself employed by?

AAP is an educational technology company that is overhauling the way we learn for a new century. And it's going to really bring

student

learners into a new space of enriching the administrative departments

and private donors to universities. You guys want in on an investment round, right?

That's a good pitch. It's basically, it's a technology company that gloms onto the worst capitalist interests of an increasingly privatized higher education sphere.

And

I wrote this just pre-pandemic. So

the

big revolution in my book is that it was going to, is one of Olivia's big sales pitches is to do a fully remote semester at this one private college to show that

they

can open up their doors to international students paying enormous fees and have limitless class sizes.

Of

course, when the pandemic happened, that, that,

that

sales pitch was kind of taken away from me because it just happened and now it's the world we live in.

Why,

why focus specifically on, on edutech, not finance or social media or, or things that maybe folks might be a little more familiar with?

Um, it's as Andrew, Andrew was saying, it's sort of the,

the

world that presented itself to my life first. I've, I've,

I've,

you know, I've been to colleges, I've taught in colleges,

I've

taught at some exploitative private colleges that I later quit.

I've

also, uh, worked in, in,

uh,

social media promotion for various institutions. And

it

was, it was the knowledge that I had closest at hand and it also had to do with the things about, um,

the

20th century that I value most, um, education, literature, these things.

Uh,

I have to admit that, um, I relate more than I'd like to say to Osman when he says,

reading

is all that my education and inclinations have equipped me to do.

And

even then, not quite at a professional level.

Thank

you all for coming this evening.

Um,

Osman is really the embodiment of how far I think we've let our esteem for, for like a, for liberal arts education fall. Um, because it, it, it,

it, uh,

you know, he's got a job, he's got a job better than, than Alexander's. I mean, he's, he's certainly, I think, less precarious. It's, it would seem right. But, but he's, carrying that sense of precarity and dread with him.

Um,

what,

where,

where did this character, this, this executive, um, who's afraid of his own shadow, where did this come from? How did you, how did you envision Osman?

Part

of it was thinking of myself if I let go of everything I actually loved and valued,

which

would actually be a very practical decision for me.

And

it really does, it pays off for Osman in the book, you know,

not

at the expense of his soul, but at the expense of

any

sense of

a

tangible identity that is actually his own,

as

opposed to those that are visited on him by other people who see him or see how they can use him. And, and the one he kind of takes on as he goes on his little revenge mission, which is really a mission to sort of pretend he's still a real person.

Um,

as, as we think about Osman's interiority

and

his revenge mission and his motivation,

I,

I wondered how alone he was in this and whether, whether there was ever a time when you wanted to get more,

uh,

to reveal more of the interiority of, of, of Nena,

of,

of Vic, of, of the peripheral, especially Vic, um, the, the characters that are more in the periphery, or was this always going to be the interiority of Osman

and

the fear and confusion of others?

I

think his, his greatest problem in addition to, to what he's let go of is

his,

uh, his fundamental incuriosity about people around him. He's, he cares so much about how they perceive him

that

he, uh,

he

never asks the right questions of others, including, you know, the woman he loves and

the

man he grows to admire and even his enemies, because he's,

he's

just much more concerned with what they all think of him and what he can do with them.

Um, and

I, I wanted to,

this

is,

it's

not,

it's

not stolen from Nabokov, but it's at least borrowed second hand from him, from, from Lolita. I feel that's one of the

great

superpowers of that novel is presenting someone who seems to have this incredible perceptual grasp on the world around him

and

yet can do this incredibly disgusting thing.

And

the answer to how he can do this incredibly disgusting thing

is

he doesn't

ask

about other people because he's not curious about them.

He

doesn't care that he doesn't care about them. He only cares about himself.

That's

like, that's a very, um, blunt interpretation of Lolita, but that's, I think

that's

where the evil in that novel comes from. And in the case of this novel, it's where his loneliness comes from.

Uh,

this isn't, this isn't your first novel. Um, it's the first under your, your,

your

real name. Um, you've written thrill, two thrillers as Nathan Ripley. Why for this book did you borrow the title? Speaking of, of, of Russian, uh,

literary

masters, um, why did you borrow it, uh, borrow the title A Hero for Our Time?

Um,

well I think if any of my,

if

any of the fans of my thriller novels had picked this up under, under the name Nathan Ripley and read the first page, they would have been pretty annoyed at me just, just for the sentence length and like general,

not

reader forward leaning nature of the prose. Like it's a book that,

um,

certainly invites you in and hopefully is funny and engaging, but

it's,

it's not one that propels you along in the ways that

modern

thrillers have to be extremely page turningly propulsive.

Um,

it's not that kind of book, essentially. Nathan Ripley's books are very,

you

know, audience facing. I still find them to be

internal

and psychological in a way that interests me, but I must admit is less interesting on the thriller market these days. The sort of, um, Ruth Ware or Shari LaPena type of page turner

is

much more prominent now, which is bad news for Nathan because he sucks at writing those.

Bummer.

Did you see, did you see Osman as, as a kind of, uh, as a kind of Byronic hero, or is he an anti-Byronic hero? I'm just wondering about the Lermontov, uh, uh, borrowing. Yeah,

yeah, um, I, that very much came from,

uh,

uh, Lermontov's Hero of Our Time, um, when it was first released was sort of scandalous to the Russian readers who read it and they immediately assumed that

everything

disgusting about Pachorin, the, the central character,

who

also emulates this, this sort of romantic heroism that is great while being sort of a moral black hole, they assumed, like, Lermontov, that must be you. This book is about you and you're disgusting.

And

in the introduction to the second edition, he said,

this

book is not about me, it's about you, the reader. And it's very much a reflection back to society. And I think,

I

chose that title because,

you

know, having a person of colour protagonist who's crusading against a, a powerful white capitalist,

that's

a hero in, in a modern literary novel. Of course, it's, it's a hero in discourse on,

on

the side of the politics of everybody in this room, I'm sure, because they're at a literary festival. Um, I think,

I

think what I wanted to do is really trouble that and say that

despite

the intentions, despite the goals, perhaps being lofty in some way, it's still possible to have

a

fundamentally corrupt person who sees

a

lever to power in every possible situation.

Mm.

Yeah. Um, on the, uh, on the subject of, of, uh, uh, on the subject of veneers, apparently the name of, of this session you've, you've all come to see, um, cleverness is a theme that, that, uh, that I think comes up in both novels, whether explicitly or, or implied. Um, maybe reading them in tandem is, is what is, what's got me thinking along these lines, uh, as a, as a cleverness, as a quality that the audience perceives, um, and then gets to credit themselves for having done so. Um, it also damns the object of its application, right? Because clever is, is not a synonym for intelligent or wise. It's, it's deliberately coming up short. It's, it's,

it's

a word that does that, that that's its design. Andre, I wanted to ask if you can speak a bit about

the

aversion to cleverness, um, in the music scene that Alexander participates in. There's a, there's a scene where, where cleverness I think is, is discussed briefly as a, as, as a, as a, a, um, an attractive thing to the masses, but less attractive to the discerning.

Oh,

are you referring to, uh, the scene with Sev and Alexander and they've just seen an opera and Sev is like, it was so clever.

Yeah. Yeah. They're getting, they're getting,

they're

getting to know each other a little bit

that way. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I think, uh, I think it's a very good question. Um, because to, to go back to Lermontov and A Hero of Our Time, I mean, that novel famously kind of originates the superfluous man,

which

becomes this kind of great theme in Russian literature throughout the 19th century, this idea of these people who have a role in, in public life, but are, are completely disconnected from the public, from, from the idea of the public individual who is contributing in a, in a meaningful way to their society. Uh, and I think both of our books in a way are books about superfluous men.

Um,

and I think that their cleverness,

because

Osman is also a very

kind

of

smart

character

who

kind of sees through a lot of what's going on.

I

think Alexander

is

probably not as smart as Osman, but thinks he is. Right.

Um, and,

uh, this, this idea of the, the, the knowing subject who encounters the world

and

can see through everything, understands everything is, is jaded and cynical

feels

like an extremely contemporary character.

Um,

that this is kind of one of the major poses that is available to someone.

Um,

you can't buy a house.

You

can't, you know, get job security. Uh, you can't get, uh, your teeth fixed

more

than once every five years, but you can be clever.

Right.

And there's a kind of shallowness in the clever,

in

the clever thing. And in that conversation that you're referring to, uh, Sev,

uh,

is a singer. And Sev is one of the people in the book

who

has a reasonably healthy relationship with art.

He

doesn't put too much on

in

the art. He doesn't ask the art to do things that it can't do.

Um, he

has an awareness of his position in the world and he's

not

untroubled by some elements of it, but I think on the whole

is

comfortable, is comfortable as who he is in a way that Alexander absolutely is not. And, uh, Alexander uses his cleverness in that scene. His whole point is even though this opera was intentionally,

you

know, extremely viciously staged and, and annoying and cruel to the participants, um, whether on stage or off, he, he sees that and he's like, Oh, what a great idea. What, what a, what a fuck you to, to everyone. This is great. And Sev,

Sev

is a little bit more like, well, that's kind of a mean thing to do.

This

is like a mean piece of art. Do we actually need,

do

we actually need that?

Yeah.

Which I,

I

think both of those,

both

of those sides, the cleverness, and then also the,

the

desire to let go of the cleverness and just enjoy something,

uh,

is something I, I certainly feel myself that, that duality. Um, I feel that I don't think this, but I feel it

that

to be intelligent means that you can't enjoy anything.

Um,

yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna ask you, I, I had that right in my notes of, of asking, is it a resistance to pleasure at some level, some kind of like

twisted

puritanism?

Absolutely. And I, I,

I,

I think puritanism is a good word, right? Cause he is kind of a puritanical figure. And if you said, Alexander, you're being a puritan, he would be like, no, I'm not. What

are you

talking about? But, but he certainly has that in there. And in a weird way, I think Osman, also in his relationship to his body, which is such a big part of the novel, this like feeling of disgust with the flesh,

uh,

there's, is there a puritanism there?

Yeah,

absolutely.

I

think, I think it's also a sort of, uh,

a

puritanism, it's sort of derived from the East, I would say. It's probably the, the most like a traditional ethnic novel part of that book is, um, his parents are,

you

know,

relative

to him, really libertines, because they've actually, his father especially has taken great pleasure in his life. And while

Osman

is definitely like

a

young brown man of his era, or so he thinks, or so he tries to be,

he

cannot,

he

cannot take this pleasure. And part of that is, is his,

uh,

very displaced and bizarre rebellion against his father, but also his, his, um, his inability to have anything else that his father had, that big list of property that you just listed,

that

is generationally out of his grasp.

But

also the, the idea that he could choose what he wanted to do and what he wanted to be. And

even

in his case, what he

could

choose to look like or feel about how he looks.

Right. Well, his, his, he's an interesting character in how he presents himself, because I got a sense that

his,

his sense of his brownness

goes

no deeper than what white people can see.

He

doesn't seem to think much about it beyond that.

I

mean, and it's right in the, it's in the, in the opening pages where he's telling this anecdote and, and it falls apart because someone takes it seriously rather than holding it at arm's length, I think, as he designed it. Um, and he's tripped up by that. There's also a lovely, um, and I have to get this verbatim. There's a lovely thing where he says, uh, where Osman uses things like banned t-shirts to place them in this, like in like a racial hierarchy. And he says,

uh,

making his light Westernized brownness pop.

Oh, I

think that's Naina actually.

Is it Naina saying that? Sorry.

Naina is observing that of him.

Okay. She's a, she's a Persian. She's Iranian, an Iranian American. So that's, she also has a strategic approach to race when she's

in,

in this case, going to meet a, uh, a hedge fund guy who's extremely powerful.

So

she wants to make him

slightly

uncomfortable, but also welcome with a new order t-shirt.

There we now, now we get the, we get the footnote. It was a new order t-shirt. Okay. All right. Awesome. Um, can you tell me a bit about that sense of, of, of brownness? So that surface level brownness that, that, that, I mean, it's particularly intriguing to me. I'm, I'm a mixed race person who presents frequently as white. So I get read as white,

but

I know what I am. Um, you know, I read your curry book with like more, more skin in the game than, than the, a lot of the other readers. Um, uh, you know, my favorite foods I know by scent and sight, but not by name. Um, that kind of thing. Um, so what, what, I'm kind of asking kind of about the genesis of, of this, this character who, yes, he's in curious about others,

but

there's, there, he's also in curious about himself in this really interesting way while also minding his presentation, uh, putting in, putting a lot of energy into that.

It's

sort of arrived at externally.

Um,

I guess like the, the intellectual idea behind it is that

his,

right now his brownness, his race and the way he looks

is

interpreted as the fundamental fact of his existence, which defines everything he does and also that that fact is only one fact. It is not different for you or for me what that brownness means. Right. So sort of that's the hovering intellectual idea around this, this, uh, treatment of race. But for him himself, his,

his

parents are both people who,

there

are different kinds of immigrants too. There are immigrants who

continually

talk about the homeland where they came from, who go back every year, every two years,

who

will, who'll always have a piece of themselves up there. And then there's ones who,

when

they immigrate, it's,

it's

a happy thing for them. It, it,

a

purely an uncomplicated flight,

I

think. And I think there are

a

lot of South Asian immigrants who have that experience and then

generationally

their children might feel that their parents are interpreting it this wrong. No, like this was not, this is not how you're supposed to feel about where you came from. This is not supposed,

how

you're supposed to feel about where you ended up.

And

I think there's even a third category

of,

um, of brown people who simply move,

move

through life, move, you know, from, from the subcontinent to here and

don't

really think about it that much. They think about their lives in a very present and grounded way. And of course, racism can manifest in all sorts of ways in that, but it doesn't necessarily have to do

with

the past or with identity. It's about what you look like right now.

And

for Osman, who's found a niche in the world, like first in, in liberal arts and then

in

a tech industry job where he's, his,

his

race is very much valued,

um,

he's found a way to sort of spin that racism and, and just use the external perception of himself

as

the way he feels about his race

in

a given situation.

But

yeah, he doesn't,

he

doesn't think about it, which I think is actually the most subversive thing

about

a Canadian novel

by

a brown guy that you can do right now.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And he's contemptible. Like he's

like,

he's like, yeah, yeah. He, um, there's, there's this, there's this curious thing that happens late in the book.

I'm

not spoiling anything. We're not, we're not going to do spoilers here, but, but he, I think what, what it, what it gets at is, is I was thinking of, of, uh, WB Du Bois's, uh, concept of double consciousness. And,

but

rather than,

rather

than being, uh, highly exclusionary, which I think Du Bois was getting at was like, you know, am I allowed to be here? Am I behaving in a way that allows me to be here? But I'm also like, I'm actually still here and I don't perceive myself outside of that. So there's

the,

the double consciousness I felt of,

of,

of

the,

um, major brown characters in this book

was,

was more about

less

about belonging because,

because

there were capitalist forces that made them belong. You know, the, you're,

you're

part of our diversity and inclusion numbers and you're on the right side of that.

There

was also the, the, the, the, the double consciousness was how much of an interior life do you have?

Um,

how much, how much is there under the surface? And, and, and Osman turns out to have radically overestimated himself.

That's

right. And I think that

sort

of the trick of the race thinking in, in this book is, it, it, you get it through the body that, that, that sort of thing that's also Puritanism.

It

becomes clear throughout the novel that he doesn't actually know what he looks like. He certainly knows that he hates his body. He, he, he finds it disgusting,

but he

doesn't know what it looks like anymore.

And

I think that's,

that's

as close as he comes to thinking about race is,

is

being so entirely detached from

his

own existence, being inside his body,

that he

doesn't know what he is anymore.

I

want to, I want to jump back to, um,

uh,

Andre with, with a question about expressions of taste, as we make sure that we come back up to the veneer topic that we've been charged with here. Um, Alexander realizes, uh, as I think many losers do, um, that, that people with money to spend on food and art are the same ones he believed to have tastes inferior to his. I thought that was a lovely observation of, of where he, where I think he was coming upon the realization that good taste wasn't going to,

wasn't

going to bestow him with, with

power,

with comfort.

Andre quite,

quite the contrary. Andre

yeah,

quite the contrary. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah.

Um, it,

it

made, it made me think about, like, you know,

Jean,

uh, Jean,

uh,

Jean-Luc Godard just died. And like,

like,

the more broken up you are about that, like, that there's like a socioeconomic graph of, like, if that really hit you hard,

you,

you may have missed some things early in life to set you up for material comfort and success. You know what

I

mean? And I mean, I'm completely implicating myself in this. I'm not like at, at, at the zero end of this scale. Um, what was,

when,

when did you have that archetype of, of Alex being that kind of person who just had that, that kernel in their,

in

their, in their heart of,

of

like, my taste is better than most other people's and I deserve something for that.

Yeah. Uh, I mean, it's a really good question, uh, because the, the novel started with the second part. So it's told in four, four sections, four movements, I call them, um, to be pretentious, uh, as much as anything else,

to

convince people that this is not a, it's not that I was lazy and I didn't bother to make a proper novel. It's,

uh, it was

intentional. Um, so the, it started with the second part, my friend Joel Peters, who's a composer based in Montreal called me up and he said, we're doing this collaborative arts project. Do you want to write a story about an underwater organ? So I,

I

thought,

what

the hell, why not?

Uh,

and it was like the only time in my life I've just sat down and written a story,

you

know, it's, it's about 8,000 words. And I wrote it in two nights,

a

bar on Dupont street, you

know,

I just went there with my laptop and I wrote the story. It just came out. It's never happened before since.

Uh,

and part of what made that story work, I think, is that it's not really a story about Alexander. At that point, Alexander was just this kind of eye that I could move around and show things to.

Um,

and, uh, the novel,

writing

the novel was a process of saying, okay, this eye that I've created for this story and that I've used again in this story, how do I turn that eye into a character

rather

than an observer, a function that allows me to tell the story I want to tell?

Um,

so that story that the lower registers about the underwater organ,

um,

he knows a lot. That's, that's a key thing, in the story is that he's researched these underwater organs and he just tells you everything about them. And he kind of has this way of

speaking

that's very comfortable with classical music and these sorts of references. Um, and that I did

for

that story, for that project, right? Without thinking about it too much.

Um,

so then I had this character and I thought, okay, so why does he know all this?

Right?

I, I mean, there was a technical reason why he needed to know all that stuff for that project.

But

then you zoom back and you're like, okay, so he was in musician at one point. Um, where was he a musician? Why isn't he a musician anymore? Why is he a journalist now? So you start answering all those questions. So,

I

mean, the,

Niven's

written several books now. This is my first one.

And

so it was really an education in how a book comes together.

Uh,

and I previously had the notion that writers would sort of sit down and plan out everything.

And

I think some writers do that. Orhan Pamuk has said that he plans literally every chapter, uh, and then he writes the book. But my experience of writing this was much more,

you're

solving all of these little problems.

Right.

Um,

and in the process of solving the problems, you limit your options. So your character,

and

I think there's something philosophical about this maybe that, that our individuality is a product of limitations.

Uh,

me being me or you being you is a product of the fact that of the infinite

number

of things that one could be,

we

are only this one.

Yeah.

We tried other ways and the world said, no.

Yeah.

Yeah. There's a great line in, uh, Duddy Kravitz

where

Duddy goes to his uncle,

uh,

and his uncle says when,

when,

when a man is 20, there's seven people he can be.

Uh,

and by the time he's 25, there's only two, cause he's killed all the rest of them.

And

I think by the time he's 30, it'll just be one.

Yeah.

Uh, I may be getting the numbers wrong there. Um, but I, I, I like that idea of as a creative impulse that,

that

writing is about

starting

with infinite possibilities and slowly backing yourself into a corner.

It's really interesting that you, that you chose not to leap,

uh,

to only go forward from, from the lower registers, um, from the, that chapter about the hydro organon. Yeah. Is that a hydro organon? It's got an umlaut and everything. It's very sophisticated. Um, it, uh, it, it was because that could have been the beginning. We could have started there and we could have gone into the folly of, of, of, uh, of so many things,

but

you, but you situated in the middle.

It

was a place you had to get to,

um,

from somewhere else. Uh, was that, was it obvious to you that, as you said, solving problems, did you, did you see that you had, you had problems of, of,

of,

uh, precedent to solve and then problems of, of destination or what, or was that like a, was that a riddle that, that sort of bothered you for a time?

Yeah.

I mean, there's, there's, there, there's, you know, I think I cut something like 50,000 words

from

this manuscript.

So

it's

a short novel. Yeah. So I,

I cut, you know, two thirds of it basically. Um, or no, no, I'm getting them. I'm not getting mad. I'm sorry. I don't know how much I cut. I cut a lot. Um, it

was 50,000 words. That's a short novel. There's this, this other short novel that landed on the floor.

Yeah, exactly. Okay.

Yeah. Uh, so yeah, so that's part of the, the process of, um, trying things and seeing what works.

Uh,

because again, it is a form

and

the form places demands on you.

Uh,

the form requires that you do certain things for this novel to work as a novel.

Then

we have to have a certain amount of continuity of characters. We have to have

a

certain amount of action

and, you know,

the modulation between action and moments of reflection. Um, yeah, that's what a novel is. And there's a certain,

again,

to go back to limitations, that's

the

pleasure of working in any artistic form is

the

way that the limitations

help

you come up with ideas. If I know that he has to end up,

that

this has to end, there has to be a last page and a final scene.

What

does that look like?

You

know?

Um, and

how do I, how do I get him there? I knew really early that it ends with him at the train station deciding not to get onto a train.

I

knew that

when

I only had about

25

,000 words written.

Right.

Yeah. Right. So then how do we get to, how

do we get to the train station? Yeah.

Yeah. This has not spoiled it for you. Okay. There's plenty, plenty to get out of it. Um, Osman says,

uh,

and this is not, this, this is not, he's got, he's a very quotable dude. Um, even when I'm misquoting him, um, reading novels taught me that I'm a coward. Did reading novels ever teach you that you were a coward?

Um,

well, it's a fundamental reading novels taught me that I could never live with being a coward,

which

is why the only instances I've ever been

brave

in my life have become,

been

because I've been terrified of cowardice.

Like

I have to do something

or

else I just won't be able to live with this.

And

I'll think about it in the shower every morning for the rest of my life. So I have to say something. That's where, that's where bravery comes from, from men like me is,

you

know, reading,

reading

the, the Scarlet Pimpernel when you're 11 and then realizing, oh, I gotta be a Pimpernel right now.

But

I think in, in his case, um, it's, it's dual because reading like that, what defined his life, like this sort of deep investment in art and what matters and ideas and,

and, you

know, the values he saw incarnated in art and the, the value that was put upon that art by those around him. Abandoning that

was

an act of cowardice for him deciding like

pretend

disguising it as a rebellion and deciding that this is not for me.

That

was a lie to him. He knows he was being a coward, but also he's talking about the contents of those books and all the things he sees done that he knows he can never do.

I

want to ask about Ephemera,

uh,

cause Ephemera is important for both of your books as well. Um, if we stay with, uh, Osman's world, Brody Beagle is a fun character. I wanted more of Brody. Brody, Brody was ridiculous. Uh, Brody Beagle being a, uh, a, a, a

dude

who, who, who was a, uh, tech startup CEO guy who has billions of dollars. And, and

he, what

is it? He produces, like everything he does is ephemera. Nothing is, is there's nothing substantial,

but

he owns things and the things he owns,

he's

lost track.

That

came from sort of my understanding or misunderstanding of how valuations are done in the, in the tech world, how the valuations are often made on based on,

you

know, how much funding a project has received, how much a VC

faith

basically is put in the product. How much is everyone else already in for? Exactly.

And

like, this is true of something like Uber, which has never turned a profit or, or Netflix. And

I

just found that so fascinating because, you know, we're the losers. We're the ones who make things that nobody wants to engage with. We write books. That's so useless. Whereas like tech, that's so practical.

And

yet at the highest levels, it's just

all

faith based.

And

you know, that faith is going to pay off. There is obviously a lot of money in that world, but I found, I find this

enormous

long in between stage, um, especially in that,

uh,

sort of, what's her name? Elizabeth Holmes story, of course, the, the, which is that part of the inspiration of this novel

where

this, uh, was it Theranos her company? Yeah.

Yeah.

This company was creating a product that would never work, that never existed, but it was able to create enough faith,

enough

faith to continue

for

money to continue coming in.

And

it's looked at as being this, like, look at this uniquely crazy thing that happened.

It's,

it's not a unique thing that happened. It's happening all the time,

the

highest levels.

If

you look at successful tech startup guys who are unicorns who got out

having

made a billion dollars, if you look at the,

the

trail of like dead product and companies in their background,

it's

pretty rare to find,

you

know, that there isn't

a

kind of Theranos light in there somewhere.

Yeah. Right. I mean, I mean, the more, the more Elon Musk talks,

the,

the, the more miraculous his wealth seems.

I

mean, that's, that's a great, he's,

uh, uh,

uh, Bill,

Bill

Burr has,

has

pointed this out about Steve Jobs. It's like, he didn't actually make anything. He pointed at people and gotten, got them to make them for him.

And

that's exactly what Elon Musk's entire career has been. Maybe,

maybe

he made part of the PayPal cash register. I don't know. But ever since then, it just,

it's

the, the power of the inspirational power of the CEO to, to

create

labor. That is what we worship.

Yeah.

It's

the ephemera manifests differently in, of course,

uh,

in the city of pigs. It's, um, uh, it's how Farrah Civitatem, the underground, um, cult art collective, uh, there, they, they seek to completely evade capitalism

through

the ephemeral quality of the art they produce.

Um, talk

to me a little bit about that. That's, that's a tricky thing for music because it is, it is an art that just happens in time and you were there or you weren't. And, and any, any way to broach that seems to be just completely gobbled up by some, some capitalist mechanism or another.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, value comes from scarcity, right? Broadly speaking, desire and scarcity and the intersection where desire and scarcity meet, that's where value is. So, you know, when we were growing up, you

know,

I'm sure you remember this. I'm sure you remember this too. You know,

new

album comes out, you know, 10 tracks.

How

is it? Is it good? Does it hold up?

You

go to the record store, you know, do they have it yet?

You

know, and you happily pay your $15 or $10 or whatever it is, and you bring it home and you sit down and you listen to it

and

you listen to it again.

And

this is so precious, this experience, right? And every one of those tracks,

you

know, becomes your friend, you know, if it's a good album and if it's a bad album, there's this feeling of betrayal

or,

or worse, it becomes

your friend anyway. Right. Cause you only have so many albums, right? And, and, um, and I, I,

we

don't live in that world anymore

because

I have Spotify and I could just look up any song,

you

know, and I can listen to it. And there's, there's absolute, like the, the number of limitations has been removed, which is the promise of this technology

is,

but what, what does that do to value?

I

think it creates

a

problem for value because when you remove these limitations,

then,

then you, you change the fundamental relationship that the person has. So if you take that to its logical conclusion, you say, well, what would be the most valuable music

under

that rubric? It would be the music that is only ever performed once in one place, is not written down, is not recorded, never happens again.

Right.

One step removed from the Wu-Tang album that Martin, Screlly,

that nobody gets to hear.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. So, so there's, there's a lot of other stuff going on. They're also doing, I mean, they're basically raves, you know, classical music raves. Um, so they're trying to create these intense experiences.

Um,

but, but as music, that's kind of the thing that, that I think the people who create these are going after.

Now

that's where the rubber hits the road in, in the novel is that, how do you actually create all this stuff? Well, someone needs to be footing the bill.

Mm-hmm. You know,

someone needs to be ponying up because if it's only created once and it only exists in this very precious space, well, musicians aren't going to want to do it because they can't put their name on it because these things are illegal.

So

they're not getting any clout for,

for

being, for being in that famous show because they can't admit that they were in it.

Um,

and there's no product that could be sold.

I

mean,

I

think they, they sell tickets so you can get in, but

it's

not a way to build a career,

right?

So

to

me, that's a very pure ideal of art.

Like

that's decommodified art.

That's

art that really does not exist in a marketplace the way most art does these days.

But then

that creates

this

complicated relationship, let's say, with the people who can actually

put

some money behind, behind this project.

Mm

-hmm.

Well, so I love that that exists in the same novel as the Hydro Organon,

which

is a capital intensive,

uh,

undertaking. It's this gigantic musical instrument that makes music that,

that

nobody can hear, that, that, that, uh, that defies all, all, um, uh, all, all experiential data. I mean,

uh,

Alexander can't write really about, he's got to write about the, his, his story winds up being about the, the capital outlay, about the logistics, about, about the, the stuffness of it, because he can't write about the music. Uh, he, he writes about the bubbles coming out of the pipes, I guess, is, is all he's got there. Did, did,

I,

I found that, I find that remarkable because these two things exist in the same novel. And especially as you described writing it, it really seems like a, like a, kind of a,

a

real eureka to come up with this, this cult of ephemeral music. Um, after you've been weighed down, but after the, the, the core of the story is this, is this work of steel buried in seawater.

Um,

did there, did, was, was it like an outside thing? Was there something in the world where you thought, well, that's an interesting thing I might throw into my book? Or did you have to grow that organically?

The Hydro Organon?

No, the, the,

the cult.

The

cult. Well, I've always loved that stuff. I've always loved the idea of like just weirdos doing stuff

in

a, in a very,

uh,

inaccessible way underground, that, that whole idea, it does something for me.

Okay.

Um, and a lot of books that I love are kind of about,

about

that, right? About these kind of weird groups that are secretive.

Yeah.

Um,

and I, I think there's an element to which I'm attracted to it also because we live in such a public age,

um,

especially for art that, that being an artist is about being a public figure or trying to become one, right? You have to be on Twitter. Yeah. You know, you're not going to sell books if you're not on Twitter. You have to be on Instagram. So I'm,

I'm

drawn to that, you know, and because I'm, I'm a good, I'm a good soldier in that sense. I, yeah, I'm on Twitter. I'll tweet about my book. I'll try to get people to come to an event like this.

Well done by the way. It was great.

Um,

but because I'm, because I'm doing that, I'm perversely drawn to the inverse of that, which would be someone writing a book and then only distributing it to their friends as a PDF, you know, and refusing to be public in any way about it.

Uh,

and I think these cultists are kind of,

you

know, they're, they're, they're not quite that far, but they're, they're moving towards that.

Uh,

Yusuf Racha, um, is an Egyptian writer has a great novel called The Crocodiles, which is about this secret group of poets in Cairo,

um,

that, that

I

read it after I started this book, but

it

was really hit the sweet spot for me.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. I gotta, I gotta ask about rockabilly music guys, because, because, because it was, uh, as, as a person who had to read both your books, uh, uh, in relatively short order, it was stunning to me to find rockabilly music showing up not once, but twice to have each of you addressing it. Tell me about what, what's the, the, what's the, what was, what was the play there?

Well,

that wasn't me. That's him. That's the character. Of

course it was.

I

think it,

it's in particular, um, Osman goes to this bar, which he thinks is going to be a cool bar

and

it is for an hour or so. And then it, it turns out to be like, um, it's their rockabilly slash ska revival night, which points to

what

I was pointing to is like, there's this point in the late nineties where

they

made those things cool again by making the worst version of them. And they became very popular for two months. And,

and

it was the, for the way a lot

of

people encountered that music. You know, there's obviously a lot of great rockabilly music that's decades old.

It

might still annoy the shit out of you, but it exists. And I wanted him to, I wanted that to be about artifice basically about this sort of,

we're

getting nostalgic about a fake thing now.

Yeah. I think, I

think Alexander at one point compares rockabilly to the crusades, uh, which I wouldn't go that far. I wouldn't, uh, I don't, I think the crusades were far worse than rockabilly,

uh,

has ever been. Um, I don't know. I think rockabilly is a funny word. Yeah.

I

thought it was funny to have the word rockabilly in that sentence.

Yeah.

And sometimes it's as simple as that. That is actually true. I mean, sometimes a word is just funny and, and it

fits

well with the other words that are more serious in the sentence. Yeah. Sometimes it's just about

cheap

joke.

Uh,

I, I loved, I loved both, both jokes. Uh, however, however cheap, um, we may be valuing them at.

Um,

I, I just want to read this one line, uh, this one sentence from, um, from in the city, uh, of pigs. Um, and it is, and I wonder if, I wonder if you know what I'm about to read here.

It

is a well-known fact that in Toronto, even a symphony performed

by

deaf orangutans

would

be entitled to a standing ovation. So long as at least half

of

the orangutans showed up.

That

was bang on. There's no comment required on that. I just needed, I just needed to say it in front of a

crowd. It's a truth

universally acknowledged.

Absolutely.

Um,

that is all the time we've got. Uh, I want to thank you, Andre and Ben for your time, for writing wonderful, provocative novels. Folks, thank you for coming. Thank you all for being part of the Toronto International Festival of Authors, and

we

hope to see you back here soon.

Thank

you so much. Thanks for coming.

Thank you,

Nathan. Thank you.

We

hope you've enjoyed this series of live author interviews. For us, it was so much fun to be out in the world again, taking all reasonable safety precautions, of course, and gathering with folks

like

yourselves who care a lot about books and the authors who write them. We, we really can't wait to do it all over

again. This

episode contains audio recorded at the Toronto International Festival of Authors and was produced by me, Nathan Maharaj. We'll be back soon with author interviews recorded in closets and bedrooms, as you've come to expect. But for now, thanks for listening.