April 2022 Meeting Transcript: Lost in the City
Brandon’s note: Last year, I shed light on some of the stories in Book Club’s community. The post below is what actually happens when the Club meets to share their thoughts, feelings and experiences about and around a given month’s selection. This transcript of our April 2022 meeting is lightly edited, only to give the reader more of the rhythm of the room’s speech.
Yahdon:
Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Literaryswag Book Club. I am your host, Yahdon Israel. We're here for the fourth meeting of the year. Tonight's discussion Edward P. Jones “Lost in the City.” I floated the idea of Edward P. Jones coming(to the meeting) to his agent. His agent, laughed me off the phone. His agent is a friendly guy but Edward does not like cameras, even getting him to take pictures (is hard). If you notice, I don't even think there is a picture of him in the book. The man does not like cameras. He's a writer's writer. The man just wants to write and doesn't do much public appearances. So it was a swing and a miss, but it was a swing nevertheless. But, how many people are here for the first time? Ellen, this is your first meeting, right? Can we all unmute our cameras? Give this woman a round of applause for her first meeting. Thank you for pulling up and coming out.
Yahdon:
Okay. So the Literaryswag Book Club is a monthly book club and subscription service where we meet every last Wednesday to discuss a book. I created this book club as a collaboration with Strand bookstore, which was a way to just basically create a space for readers to talk about books and discuss books in a reader's perspective. A lot of these books, typically when you go to literary events, the writers are the ones conducting a conversation and the readers are like afterthoughts. And I wanted to create a space where the readers are the front of mind and we're the center of the discussion. And so that's why this Book Club exists. Something that's very essential to this Club as always is, the discussion is central. You do not have to read the books to be a part of the conversation.
Yahdon:
And the reason why I've cultivated and created that kind of principle is because, the barrier for people to feel access to a community is usually based on something that they're learning how to do, which is developing a reading habit, developing a reading practice. I look at so many of the people who are in Book Club now, and if you've been here for two years, that means you got 24 more books in your library than you would've had before. If you've been here for five months, you got five more books in your library than you would have had. And Lord knows how many other books that people have gone on to buy and or have in their library, just by being in a book club where that practice around reading has been developed.
Yahdon:
And I understand that the biggest problem for readers that most readers don't even know is, the hardest part of reading a book is not what you do as you're reading it, or while you read it, but what you do after. And so this is the space about what happens after you read a book, who do you talk about it with? What kind of discussions do you have? And it's nothing more demoralizing when you read a good fast book and you can't find nobody who read it at the same time as you. Try to loan it to your friend and then they don't read it. Then they don't find it. Now you can't even get your book back. A lot of pain points that we saw here at the Literaryswag Book Club.
Yahdon:
So we going jump in this month's Book Club pick, Edward P. Jones' "Lost in the City." As I wrote in the newsletter as well as many of your books, fiction is something that as a person who was not a lifetime lover of fiction, because I didn't know, I did not know how to read fiction. I did not say that twice by mistake. I'm emphasizing like the Donald Rumsfeld, like "the unknown unknown." I did not know that I did not know how to read it. And so I stayed away from fiction because I did not know there was a way to read it. I read it like I read everything else. There's words on the page. "I read it. I don't get it. Did this happen? No, this is stupid." That was my assessment of fiction for a long time.
Yahdon:
And then I had a friend named Brittany James, who would chase me around about "Kindred" to read it. And if it wasn't for my friend who chased me around for like three months of a semester to read it, I would've never had that access to read something. And to have her talk me through it as I was reading and asking her about different principles of fiction. And so I also see Book Club as a space where we not only get to talk about the stories and the things that captivate and grab our attention on the page, but one of the things I'm particularly proud of is because we have people who are practitioners of fiction in the room. We get some of the language of the philosophy of how people approach it.
Yahdon:
But then from a larger structure, what does it mean? What does fiction do? What's fiction's function in the culture, in the society, in which we live. And as I said, last month, I'll reiterate this month, as we go into the prompt was, one of the things that I could think about that fiction does for us is it challenges us and inspires us to use our imagination. So that being said, thinking about that Edward P Jones' introduction, part of what I wanna do in this conversation is, I want to have us engage and talk about this book through the lens of our imagination.
Yahdon:
And usually when people talk about books, there's always this need to talk about how real it felt and those things. And I want to hold space for that way of thinking about this book, but for the practice of what parts of this challenged you to really imagine what it looked like and made you think this isn't just autobiographical, but there's something about the imagination that's at play. So I'm going to start. Everybody say their name, where they're based, pronouns and then the prompt. So my name is Yahdon. Welcome. I'm stationed right now, on Sixth avenue in my office at Simon & Schuster. He/Him and the story that actually prompted my imagination the most ironically, was the story, where is it?
Yahdon:
It was "The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed" and the reason why it prompted my imagination, cuz every time I closed my eyes, for some reason I kept seeing scenes from (the film)Poetic Justice and it was the kind of story where I was trying to think about how the neighborhood was situated and where people were. And so when I was thinking about that story, I found myself thinking about the logistics of where things were. And I think that part of what I appreciated about this collection was how often I found myself closing my eyes to see certain things that I realized the words alone could not do. I need to see this. And so I like read the same paragraph over and over. But "The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed" was definitely the story that was the most imaginative to me. So we gonna go down the list and I'm gonna go, Abby, you next.
Abby:
Abby, I'm based in Brooklyn and I don't have my book on me, so, I don't have it to jog my memory. I'm sorry. I can't do the prompt. I'm sorry.
Yahdon:
All right. What I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna type all the stories in the chat. And we'll come back to you and hopefully if you see a story, it'll jog your memory. Alex, on you.
Alex:
Yeah. I'm Alex. I use she/her pronouns and I'm in Brooklyn. I kind of had a month. So I found it challenging to read and the one story I got all the way through with most of the reading I did this month, was "Lost in the City" itself.
Alex:
I was thinking a little bit about that state when you wake up from a dream, but you're not fully awake yet. Georgia falling asleep, her mom's friend passing out from being drunk while in the Holy Land, I felt that friend had an interesting experience on that trip and a kind of like strange presence in the story. So I was just thinking about that, but honestly, I didn't give it a lot of thoughtful reflection. I'm excited to hear what other people have to say. I was a little frazzled this month.
Yahdon:
It's all. It's all good.
Yahdon:
Christy.
Christy:
Hi, I'm Christy. I'm just outside of Philadelphia, in a place called Perkasie and I use she/her pronouns. I think I'm kind of between, and I only read about a fifth, I'm five stories, five and a half stories into it right now. Between "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons" and "Young Lions." "Young Lions" I had a harder time trying to picture the characters and understand them. But then "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons," I was like pigeons.. On a rooftop that someone is raising... that was hard for me to get my head around. What does that look like? My neighbors have chickens, but pigeons I've never seen. So that was that. That's where I'm between.
Yahdon:
Connor on you, homie.
Connor:
I like literally just walked right in the door, so perfect timing. Connor, he/him. I'm in Stanton, California. My favorite story was probably, "The First Day." So it's that really short story? Yeah.
Yahdon:
The one that you use your imagination on the most.
Connor:
Yeah. I mean, there were a couple reasons that I really liked that story, the first being, and this is less related to it engaging my imagination, but more of it really got me thinking about one of my other favorite reads from last year. "Having and Being Had" just because there's that one line in the story, where she talks about her mother, understanding that money is the beginning and end of everything. So it had me thinking back to that book, but also, I feel like there's so many empty spaces in this story when I finished it. I would love to read a longer version of this story because the narrator is alluding to the fact that she's grown, recounting this story and it's her remembering this moment.
Connor:
And all I could think of is, where is she now? Where did she end up? Because in my mind, I'm thinking if she's recounting this story, then it must have been a formative moment in her life. So how influential was it as she grew? So, and I think, maybe one indicator of good fiction is the empty spaces it leaves for you to use your imagination. For me I think I felt there was so much left open for interpretation. That's why it was my favorite.
Yahdon:
I like that. I like that. I like that. All right. Okay. Diana on you.
Diana:
Hey, y'all I'm in Brooklyn, Diana. She/her, I loved this book. I loved his writing. I totally fell into all the spaces in between that he made. I didn't have one particular favorite that struck my imagination. This felt like I was always in a world within a very magical surrealism world in every story. And each story intrigued or sparked my imagination in a different way, or one made me more visual from a very physical world or one gave intimate details that sparked my imagination for deeper internal dialogue that one of the characters might have had, or between two characters. So they all sort of sparked a different imagination point within my mind for the world to build for each one of them.
Diana:
And he actually reminded me of one of my favorite filmmakers who makes these really long films at four hours long. But I'm just down to watch every minute of it, because he builds this world where you feel part of it the whole time. So you're experiencing the day with them. And I sort of feel Edward did the same thing in all of his stories where I was just down to be part of this world all the time and just hear what's going on and feel these different emotions every time.
Eunice:
Eunice, on you.
Eunice:
Eunice from Columbus, Ohio. She/Her. There were probably three of them, but I tend to wanna pick the ones that had me smiling. "The Rich Man" and "The Gospel."
Yahdon:
Oh yeah. Oh damn.
Eunice:
"The Rich Man" reminds me of a few male friends. I have, and one of my male friends, his brother kinda hooked up with the same kind of crowd. And, they partying in his house and the house catches on fire. And then the male friend I have, he ended up buying the house from him. But the whole thing, when this older guy and his wife stays in the house at the same time. And finally, she dies, this guy so cold hearted, right. And then he finally says, you know what? You know, these young girls come along and he's hooking up with him. They bringing everybody over there and he goes to jail. And I said, the rich man becomes poor at that point. So that interested me because I know a couple people who can fall into that same category.
Eunice:
They're single now. And they want some hot stuff and they get some hot stuff, their life just goes, bloop. Right. And so the other one was "The Gospel." And I was talking with a friend of mine and she's in the church. She's actually created some forum online where, she wants help these women (and) she talks about church stuff, but the reality is the girls who were singing, it kind of remind me of how some of the women from Detroit started singing first and they were all from the church and, they all played around. And of course the men played around. That was kind of my thing, the realism that I seen from both of those stories. And of the third story was "The Store," going to the corner store. And that was his life. But the other two had me cracking up. "The gospel" and "The Rich Man," especially when he went to jail.
Yahdon:
Thank you. Eggie on you, homie.
Eggie:
Hey, what's up? I'm Eggie, Washington Heights. He/him, so with a lot of these stories, I feel there was so much details, down to the most minute interactions between characters, and the images felt so familiar that it wasn't triggering of the imagination as much as it was really painting super clear pictures that almost you didn't even need your imagination. It was pretty visceral. If I had to choose one, it is 'The Girl That Raised Pigeons" and it's because after that one, it is the one that made me feel like, wait, what the fuck was this about? You know what I mean? That one kind of stayed with me and I got my theories about it, nothing worth sharing, but that's the one that made me say "yo, hold up. This was about something else."
Yahdon:
Got you. appreciate you too. Elizabeth, on you.
Elizabeth:
Hi Elizabeth. She/Her. I'm in Jersey. I think I had a tie, "The Night Rhonda Ferguson was Killed?" Yeah. I agree that one was very visually stimulating in terms of me imagining there was a lot of travel, a lot of movement, geography and description of the scenes that was really doing something for me. But also I think "Young Lions," if you can say that the level of anxiety that you "okay, where is this going?" It's tied to the imagination. I spent a lot of time wondering "okay, what's gonna happen here" with that story.
Yahdon:
Okay. Thank you. All right. Who's next? Ellen.
Ellen:
All right. I think a lot of the feelings that I had reading the story, it wasn't really imagination. I think it was closer to curiosity and the two stories that really peaked my curiosity was, the first was I gotta look at the name. It's an "Orange Line Train to Ballston." And the second was "The First Day." So the Orange line. So I lived in LA for most of my life. So commuting is a very solitary experience. You just slave your soul in the traffic, in your car. <laugh> So just the idea of commuter friends is a very novel concept for me. And the other thing that I thought was really interesting for me personally, is that, I used to talk to strangers a lot. People that I met at a cafe. People that I meet on the street or planes and whatnot.
Ellen:
And I stopped doing it for various safety concerns and one, physical safety as a single woman, but also, an emotional safety in a way that sometimes the strings would get attached when I talk to the guys, and they would just try to ask me out and they will get mad if I just wanted to talk to you because I just like talking to people, I didn't talk to you because I wanted to go out on a date with you. Then my friends would say "well, you can't lead people on like that." And I said, I don't understand, why is just having a friendly conversation leading people on?
Ellen:
Can we just have a conversation without strings attached? So I think just watching that scene unfold, having that family and this man that they're meeting on the train, I thought that was really refreshing. I just wanted to know obviously, the woman in the story wanted to go out with him, <laugh>, but at the same time, it was a really nice thing. I wonder what it's like, I moved to New York last year and I still haven't had the commuting life because I'm working from home a hundred percent, so very ordinary stuff, but still something that I haven't experienced. So that was really cool. "The First Day" it's a similar thing. I think the part that really got me was when I found out, that the mother can't read or write, there is that moment.
Ellen:
And I think for me that really hit it because, so I'm a first generation immigrant, so I remember when I didn't speak any English when I moved here. So when I wasn't feeling smart as any other people, but I look and I feel stupid because I can't speak English and my mom still doesn't speak English by the way. So I know I have helped her out a lot, in terms of reading English stuff, anything. So for me, it was when the story ended, especially, it was so short. I wanted to know, what happened with them afterwards. Right? Did the girl have a similar life that I did? How did mom navigate the rest of her life? Not knowing how to read or write when it's such a big part of modern day life these days. Not that it wasn't back then, but, I think for me it was really the curiosity part.
Yahdon:
Dope. Thank you. Errol
Errol:
Hey guys. Erroll He/Him. Calling from Long Island tonight. I think the story that I like...
Yahdon:
I like how you found a different version of your setup where you gotta sit against the bed. "I gotta, I need a bed in here. <laugh> I need a bed frame. I just need the frame. I just need the back."
Errol:
I got an aesthetic <laugh> So the story that I think stoked my imagination the most was actually "The Store" and it's because it felt like such a sitcom premise and kind of story to me, where the entire situation of him, he doesn't have a job, his mom's getting on him to get a job. So then he gets a job. He hates it. And there's this quirky boss, that's always making fun of him. And the only reason he stays there is to try to get back at her. He's trying to just be petty and stay there. So many times where I just imagine a laugh track playing or audience reaction when the first time he tries to hit on the girl and she shuts him down and then there's all these side characters, interesting side characters that come in and then there's that dramatic sort of way it ends.
Yahdon:
Yeah.
Errol:
So yeah that was the one for me.
Yahdon:
All right, bet. George on you homie
George:
Well, I'm glad you phrased the question the way you did. Cause first, every single story, I felt like I was in every single one. I could visually see the people, the characters. And as I was reading the book, wow, this is a sad book. Like I had an emotional experience with, "The Sunday Following Mother's Day" story, I really had an emotional experience reading that story. Cause I just felt I could sympathize with the characters, the young lady and her brother. And then I was relieved to get to the last two stories. Marie to me, was so funny and I visually saw this old woman who was just kick ass, who was gangster. And so that just really resonated with me, but I have to say every single one of these stories, I could visually see them playing out. I think I had a dream about one of 'em one night. It was just crazy. But really, I really thought that it was a sad, and said, "wow, this is just a sad state of affairs." This book made me say, "America is fucked up." That's how I felt at one point <laugh> and I'm done speaking. Oh, I forgot George. I live in BedStuy, Brooklyn, he/him are my pronouns.
Yahdon:
Thank you. Thank you, George. Jake. The snake. What's going on brother.
Jake:
Hey, it's Jake I'm in Brooklyn. He/Him. The story for me was, similar to Errol's, "The Store." Partially, yeah, it did feel like a set, but I also found it was the one that seemed like the most set in a place in time that I just had no frame of reference for, of this idea of having this community store that seemed to sell just absolutely everything. And so, it's the go-to spot for anything a community needs. I think part of it's just living in proximity to cities, but part of it's time of back when the general store was there, but just, yeah, everything about that. I found myself having to kind of transform myself and set really like a whole kind of atmosphere for understanding what would've been likeand how I would've put myself in that situation.
Yahdon:
Appreciate you. Jumi
Speaker 17:
Hi everybody. I'm Jumi. She/Her pronouns I'm based in Las Vegas. Okay. So the story that inspired me to use my imagination the most I would have to was "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons." And I think it's because it requires your imagination. It demands the most out of your imagination. The story itself to me, felt like it was a creature on its own and the way that time was being handled the element of time, we go through huge swaths of time in a matter of a few sentences to minute moments within a specific week between the father and the daughter. And then, also the baton of, who's telling the story in that story, the person who's telling the story is constantly changing. It's like the story itself is a pigeon, a carrier pigeon. And it keeps changing characters that are leading the momentum of the story forward. So I found myself saying "well, what's going on?" Like every time they change who was leading the story forward, I said, "okay, what's happening? What's happening?""Who is miss Jenny? What does she look like?" "And Miles with all the pigeons, what does he look like?" That story just required a lot of my attention. You couldn't just put it down and come back to it later because you had to refigure out where in time are we in all of this?
Yahdon:
Appreciate you. All right. Who we got next? Who we got next? We making moves Kate on you, two fiction writers back to back. I love it.
Kate:
Hi, Kate. San Selmo, California. She/Her. Okay. First full disclosure. I've only read the first six stories and I am trying to read it in order, based on his introduction. I really appreciate the way he assembled it. I'd have to say, I'm thinking about this idea of what makes us use our imagination the most and so many of the stories are just so vivid. "The Store" was probably the most vivid to me of the things that I've read, because that whole set, like you guys have said is, painted really clearly. I think the one that ignited my brain and made my heart ache the most is probably, Cassandra driving around in the car in "The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed" and getting the news the way she gets it. That story was so vivid and so visceral to me.
Kate:
And then I forgot the title gives away what happens. But when I met Rhonda, I didn't know, I forgot the title. So then when you remember and glimpse at the title, I was just said, "oh God, that's what we're headed towards." And I was so in invested in it because it was so vivid. And I was so interested in Cassandra as a human being and all of her feelings, but also "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons." I don't know. These are all amazing. So I could go on about all of them.
Yahdon:
Kenny on you.
Kenny:
All right. Kenny King, New Jersey, he/him, I don't know. Jumi, you made me wanna go back and read "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons." <laugh> the way you described it. I was like, "whoa. OK." So I appreciate, you sharing that, but...
Yahdon:
Did we read the same story?
Kenny:
Yes. I was like, "man, I love that." So anyway, but I think there were a lot in here that were really good. "The Store," for me was one, as far as imagination, I think it had me thinking just that sense of community. I was just imagining what would it be like to have this store where I believe, you know everyone coming in, they're getting this credit, this sense of entrepreneurship, the way that she entrusted..I forget the name of the young guy there to run the store, to get the combination to the safe. And for imagination I think that one was key, but I do want to also mention, "A Rich Man." Yeah. That one was really good cuz I said earlier, I have a cousin who I think went through a similar situation, but I thought about all these people around, but I was thinking in my mind, how lonely is this man with all these people around him, servicing, having a good time, partying, drinking, smoking weed, but, the love of his life, even though they had issues, she dies, but I thought he was just very lonely.
Kenny:
So that that's where my imagination went. And for the cousin that I have, thinking that how lonely he is, he's still living. It was a divorce as opposed to a death, but that's a similar situation. So those two
Yahdon:
Thank you for that. Kirsten. And then Kristen.
Kirsten:
Hi. Kirsten I'm in New York. She/Her. I would say also it was "The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed" and less from a visual imagination standpoint. More so, emotionally I think cuz of that..grief is, we all experience grief. We all experience dread. But hopefully if you experience it, it's only once or twice in your life. That feeling of true anguish. I think that's probably the most powerful emotion. Now reading the book and being prompted with this question, you say "loves the most powerful emotion" and all these different things, but really like that bring you to your knees, feeling that shock, that sort of lit up my emotional circuitry. And also then, the whole lead up of the entire details of the night of, the incident at the house with the guy that one of the characters was around with, them getting lost, the $3 for gas. It said it so well in terms of it got me thinking about major events that have happened and you always remember where you were or what you did.
Kirsten:
So yeah, that was definitely the most powerful for me.
Yahdon:
Thank you. All right now, Kristen.
Kristen:
Hello. Kristen, I'm based in Brooklyn. She/her. I'm gonna say the pigeons one and the way I'm defining imagination is that it peaked all my senses. Did it smell like crap? Like what does all the cooing sound like? How loud is it? Because how can you adore these pigeons when they're cooing up a storm and then, just the sight of all the flapping. And I said, "oh my God." So that's how I defined imagination. <laugh>
Yahdon:
Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. Now, Maggie.
Maggie:
Maggie, She/Her and I'm in Chicago right now. First, I read a lot of good writers, but he's so good. He made me angry at times. There were times I would read a paragraph over and over and you read different types of fiction differently. So I read a lot of high fantasy, which are this thick and you just get used to in the beginning, all these names and places coming at you, and you're gonna figure it out in the first high hundred pages, but you're not gonna figure it out in the first five. And then when you read somebody who's so economical with their description in a short story, you have to almost be a detective. And that's what I felt when I started reading these. I really had to be a detective. And it's interesting that people (reference/talk)about Rhonda Ferguson, you forget the gun goes off in act three, he told you in the title <laugh> and you forget while you're reading it, cuz you get so wrapped up.
Maggie:
But I think the story that I was just so entranced with was "Lost in the City" because as a detective, you say "okay, the man sleeping in the bed. Does she know his name or is it gonna be a dog barks across the street? Is it just, is he being sparse? Your mother was an exemplary patient. Okay. Exemplary. That means she's been there for a while. This isn't holy unexpected." And then there's this sort of, someone said the waking dreaming, that hypnagogic state when you're not really asleep, you're not really awake of having just lost a parent and she's coming outta the room. And then all of a sudden I need to do a line of Coke. And all of a sudden, the whole profile you had put in your head of this woman is, "well, wait a minute, who is this?"
Maggie:
And there's a crystal bowl and there's a golden spoon. And then this trip comes up and I felt that story as short as it was, took my imagination for a ride, because I felt I wanted 30 more pages of this woman who obviously had issues with her mother in life. It's all baked in there and these little croissant like layers just simmering, but it never bubbles over. And then in the end he's basically showing me a character that's high without using drug descriptors. And I was just so mad at that story. It's so good.
Yahdon:
Yeah. Y'all need to be writing book reviews. Maria
Maria:
Hi everyone, Maria. She/Her based in Brooklyn. I think the story that provoked my imagination the most was actually one of the shortest in the book, "A Butterfly on F Street." I think the reason is very similar to Kirsten. I thought it was such an interesting take on grief because it's the encounter of two people grieving the same person, but also that you have another layer of grief for Mildred. She's lost her husband to another woman earlier in the story. And just seeing that interplay felt really interesting, but also, when you live in a big city, like here in New York city, it's such a jolt when you're walking in the middle of the street and then suddenly you run into someone from your past that you're not really expecting and maybe you're not comfortable with, and life just keeps happening around you and you're maybe going somewhere and then you have to stop up and have this sort of very emotional, but also very contained conversation with someone who's no longer part of your life, that it brings you back to the past, in the middle of a very sort of run of the mill day.
Maria:
So I really enjoyed reading that story, cuz it reminded me of when, when I've had that feeling before. Yeah.
Yahdon:
Thank you. Marcy.
Marcy:
Marcy. She/Her I'm in Los Angeles and not to be a contrarian cuz I didn't have one that sparked my imagination more than others, but George said early on and then I think Maggie alluded to, I felt all of the stories there was this sort of dreamlike state that I floated into and then not so dissimilar to the way Ellen and Tali's screens look where, you know, the dream state is the background and then these very distinctive characters, very clear in each one of 'em. It was shocking to me how great he is at embodying all these different souls and ideas and it didn't matter the age or the gender. Yeah. So each story had a similar texture of imagination for me.
Yahdon:
Thank you. Syreeta
Syreeta:
Syreeta. She/Her New York. Queens. Happy to be back. I could not get into "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons" and I didn't think about starting with another short story first <laugh> so I do not have the answer to what story inspired me to use my imagination, but I am excited about hearing what folks have to say about the other stories.
Yahdon:
Dope. So, I'm gonna save you the question for the discussion.Tali
Tali:
Hi everyone. Tali. She/Her. Manhattan. I have a bit of a problem with the prompt because when I was reading everything, I was struck by how real it all felt. And all the details he gave me, didn't give me a sense that I had to use my imagination, but all of the stories or most of them and the experiences and some of the feelings are those that I personally have not experienced. So then I had to dive into the information that he was providing me to try and imagine what being in that space is like. So he gave me the tools to make it all so real and specifically, "The Store" was one story that I finished it and I like had to close the book, sit and think about it for a bit and said, "okay, this is definitely one that I'm coming back to."
Yahdon:
Yeah. All right. Well thank you. So let's, let's jump into the discussion. So the first thing, what I wanna open a discussion on in terms of an addendum to the stories, I did not realize, and this book, what I've been doing since I read "Lost in the City" is I've been particularly looking for versions of fiction books, where the writer writes an introduction to the book. Cause I didn't realize how helpful it is to get a sense of what the writer was trying to accomplish. And I know there's people who feel that robs the reading experience but what I think it did was it gave me a way to just understand what the stakes were and the reason why I really appreciated that was because, I remember Reading The Girl Who Raised Pigeons" and I think it was knowing from the beginning that, it was so visceral for me reading that story.
Yahdon:
Because the thing I was thinking about is "this dude thought this shit?" "who thinks of this?" And not just who thinks of a story about pigeons, but to use pigeons as a way to talk about the way in which time passes and the way people grow older. The way that man's brain worked. I read this story. There's a part that I underlined on page 10 where, I think he talked about Miles and he was talking about, "he had been raising pigeons all his life and whatever knowledge he had accumulated in those years was now such an inseparable part of his being that he couldn't no more explain the birds than he could explain what went into the act of walking.
Yahdon:
He only knew that they did all that birds did and not something else as he only knew that he walked and did not fall." There was these moments. And I think fiction is really good for, when two humans are interacting with each other and you can't name what's going on in the subtext, but there's something more powerful that's happening beneath the surface in the exchange between characters and the moments that Edward P. Jones captured so well is articulating those moments between human beings that you experience, but you don't have language for.
Yahdon:
To me, what I appreciated about his fiction was he used human interactions to get at the unnamable and then name the thing. That's exactly right. The way he just connects the stakes in the subtext of moments. Jumi, you raised your hand. So Jumi on you.
Jumi:
Yeah. So I was thinking a lot. So one of the reasons why my favorite story was "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons," because I felt the story was trying to capture emotional realities about living and being in a working class, African American community that the African American characters they themselves could not verbally express like with Ms. Jenny. She had a lot of use as a character. She wasn't trying to have her own motivations herself, but she was there to facilitate what happened to Robert and his daughter, Betsy Ann. On pages six and seven, he says, "I don't think I can do this. I know I can't do this. If my daddy had just said the word, I'da been on that train with him." And then on page seven, Miss Jenny is talking about the city. And how the city's gonna take care of his "chirren. I love that touch, "chirren."
Jumi:
On page seven, it says "she did not come back up, as he had hoped, and he spent his first night alone with the child. Each time he managed to get the baby back to sleep after he fed her or changed her diaper, he would place her in the crib in the front room and sit without light at the kitchen table listening to the trains coming and going just beyond his window. He was 19 years old." And there was this vulnerability that you see in this character that really comes out through Miss Jenny, but it's there because Miss Jenny is part of the previous life. At least my perception is that Miss Jenny's part of this previous life that Robert thought he was going to have with his wife. But when she passed away, all that changed. How do you be a single Black father? The narrative you usually know, the narrative that's usually being told, which is what Jenny is kind of gently telling him is that you can put this child down, someone else will pick him up.
Jumi:
And I just found that such an age old conversation about how communities raise children. And the fact that we're getting these messages, not directly through one central character, but through different characters as the child is growing. I found that so interesting. And I said this before, I'll say it again. I felt each of the characters were carrier pigeons. They're passing a message that becomes different as it ages over time. And I think time is like a really important element of the story in order for it to work the way it did. I mean, how many years were covered?
Yahdon:
That was, yeah.
Jumi:
You know, when we think about how much time is actually covered in the story, it's all of Betsy Ann's life. And then some time before that. Right. But it's not a coming of age about Betsy Ann. I think it's a coming of aging of the community. That's what I think and how they cope with the different losses that the community's been hit with.
Yahdon:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jumi:
I don't know if others feel that way. I mean carrier pigeon metaphor side, there was a lot of time that was being covered, which makes me think this is a community story more than it is a story of a particular family.
Yahdon:
Well, I think to your point, and I don't know if people wanna raise their hand or jump in. One of the things I think every story does to your... And to harken on what George said is, every story does document the neighborhood in a transition, right? If you think about even a story, like "First Day" with the mother who's illiterate and she doesn't know how to read, and she's handing her kid off for the first day of school, you're watching these sort of either people have passed these intergenerational shifts. When you think about a story like "a rich man" where we're watching the community change over decades.
Yahdon:
And we watching this man navigate through different decades. It's what gets lost in time also, because what's interesting about you know, and we talked about this and like to connect it to another conversation in Book Club. When we talked about the first book we read for this year, "Crying In H Mart" we were talking about what kind of food do you eat when you're Greek? What kind of brings you... And one of the things I remember talking about was just one of the things this book made me think about was living in Bedstuy and living in Bedstuy long enough to see most of the changes that occurred happen, but also live in bedstuy to realize that to the people who live there, I'm new.
Yahdon:
And so it's.. You're navigating a space where, because you are to other people, like they encounter you the way you encounter them. And even though you have more of the historical relationship to the neighborhood, the fact of the matter is because the neighborhood is also changing. You don't have the same relationship because where you thought things were it's like, "oh, that thing ain't even here no more." Right. I think that one of those, when I think about "a rich man" and this man's albums being like the way, if you put what the albums did in "the rich man" against what the pigeons do and the way the pigeons function and "the girl who raised pigeons," we get to see what changes through these constant items, so the pigeons don't change.
Yahdon:
Pigeons fly away and they come back, but we get to see everything changing through the pigeons and around the pigeons, cuz they're the constant in the story. And then in "rich man" that album collection is what you learned to watch because you remember in that last paragraph. He leaned down and there's a while where he doesn't really talk about the albums, the narrator. And then he goes, "he leaned down and picked up a few of the broken albums from the floor and read the labels. "I would not hurt you for anything in the world, Horace," Elaine said, Okeh Phonograph Corporation, Domino Record Co. RCA Victor." This is page 268, by the way. "Darnell, Jr.'s crying stopped, but he continued to look down at the top of Horace's head. Cameo Record Corporation, N.Y.Before his head came in your record corporation."
Yahdon:
"You've been too good to me for me to hurt you like this Horace. He dropped the records one at a time: "It Takes an Irish Man to Make Love." "I'm Gonna Pin a Medal on the Girl I Left Behind." "Ragtime Soldier Man." "Whose Little Heart Are You Breaking Now." "The Syncopated Walk."" And I don't know what y'all read in that moment, but I said "oh, he killed shorty." What I got in that image was this dude, what he realized he had left didn't even matter in context to the person who he had it with. So all those records represented in my mind memories that it's "oh wow." Like everything about these records were as good as the people who could share in that memory. And he was the only one who had the framework to understand that.
Yahdon:
And so, I just think about what happens when you find yourself, in a sense "Lost in the City" is in the introduction of the book, he talks about the DC that didn't exist anymore. He had to use his imagination to bring back the parts of DC that were real at a point and they were no longer real. And the last thing I'll say is this book in many ways reminded me of the documentary, Summer of Soul where you had those concert goers when they were kids saying "I remember a concert happening and I remember seeing Nina Simone and Gladys, and.." People saying "shut up. Ain't no Gladys Knight came to no damn Harlem." And then to see the footage, and say "I did not make that up."
Yahdon:
And so there something like an act of reclamation that goes in this book where he not only conjures back versions of DC that he remembers, but because memory in itself is so unreliable, part of it is invention anyway, because he gets to not just remember it a certain way, but imagine it in a way which extends the life of it in a way that sometimes documenting things as they were doesn't do, cuz you always are looking for where things are, but getting to the emotional sentiment of it. Yeah. How time passes in this book is wild. Especially with the short story. So George, Jake, and Eunice.
George:
So I have to be honest for me. Well, first I lived in Washington DC for several years. So the street names and all that had such familiarity in the neighborhoods. The book and I think someone said earlier, they couldn't really identify with these stories and the problem for me, I could identify with some.. some more indirectly than directly. And you know, I'm such an emotional man. I gotta be honest. And my daughter says that all the time. So when bad things happen, it affected me in some respect. So I think a lot of these stories and as I read 'em, I was said, "wow, the wrong person would read this book and they'd go to a bad place." You think about some of the incidents, "The Lion," he just physically abused her or when a parent kills another parent, all those things.
George:
So it was such an emotional experience for me. And I remember in the opening section where the author talked about the book now, and again, I'm not a writer, so all the writers in the building can speak to it. If you write a fictional book, cuz kids have great imagination. Fairies and stuff like that, I feel that's truly fiction. But to me, these stories have such an interesting twist where these are realities for some people and the author in the opening says, "look, these are not true stories." And I said "well, why you have to tell them they're not true stories. If it's fiction, you don't have to tell me it's fiction, if I know it's fiction." So I just thought that was interesting. What, these are not true stories?
George:
So I don't know if as a fictional author, when you write stories that people can relate to, if there's something either you've experienced or, you know someone has experienced and it comes into play. When you write these stories, I was saved when I read "Marie" and "The Rich Man" I was saved. I said, "Thank You, Lord" a story that I could just crack up and laugh about. And to me her being an old woman and slapping a girl when she's trying to get her social security benefits, in DC, them girls would've been all over her. But old people and young kids, sometimes they say and do the darnest things. So I was relieved to get to that point in the stories. But to me, I could relate to so many of these. And that's why I see it in a different light.
George:
I see it as the reality for some people, as opposed to the fictional aspect and some of the people that are much more writers that can really dig deeper in this stuff, I admire you greatly. I just saw it as it broke my heart cuz of people losing their parents or the teenager in the pigeons story. He was 19 when his wife died and then in mother's house, her son was a gangster. He killed his brother. The boy was raised as his brother. So all those things weren't directly close to home, but indirectly they were close to home. It's George and I'm done speaking.
Yahdon:
<laugh> I love how you do this. Like a city council meeting. And he always ends that way. "That's my time." Jake, then Eunice.
Jake:
Yeah. I mean, I think kind along the lines of what George is getting to, is you definitely pick up on the change in these communities and each community is different in terms of how close it is to the city and how far apart, but like the theme across this for me was love and the complications of love towards community and what that represents. And especially as time changes, the pigeon story, you have the neighbors downstairs that are always looking out for the daughter and always aware of what the dad is doing. Or eventually when she's in that store, stealing candy, the people who recognize her and call her out. "The Store," the same thing, the store owner feels so connected to this neighborhood. And even after the accident recognizes that it's less important for her to be a store owner and be from the community, but to make sure people there supported. And so that was really what I saw as the underlying theme is how people battle with that ability to show and connect love to a community as it changes or as they change and potentially, grow out of, or grow past certain parts of the community.
Yahdon:
Damn, Eunice on you.
Eunice:
Okay. All right. I mentioned "The Store," but before I do that, Kenny, we were talking about "The Rich Man" and you were saying he was lonely. When you mentioned that he was lonely, I don't think he was lonely. I think he was looking for some, "poontang" as they would call it back then. <laugh> So the girls came and the girls brought all those. That wasn't what he signed up for, you know what I mean? And the other girl passed him on to the girl who used to be an addict. And so I can relate to it. As I said, it was so real to me, I'm like, he did a great job because I can relate to it because I did mention, I knew it was a couple guys, but I can see that because some guys, no disrespecting any other guys back here, but you know, they are whores in the beginning and they're whores in the end.
Eunice:
Remember he cheated on his wife the whole time? The entire time. He wasn't lonely then. She slept in the bedroom, he slept on the couch. But then when he got some young stuff, it was all about the play. And so they came all the rest of those people. He wasn't lonely. If they want to bring the other folks, he still got to lay with the girl. So that was one point. But we are talking about how real it was even "the store" where I actually related to how he went in there. He was looking for a job. He wanted to see who the lady was. She put him to work and the whole idea, his father instilled this "work hard" ethic. So I could relate to that. And maybe, Yahdon, you say I'm "the oldest member in here." So I could relate to that.
Yahdon:
I don't think I've ever verbalized that at all. I don't think I've ever..
Eunice:
You did in beginning. You called me out <laughs>
Yahdon:
I did?! I apologize
Eunice:
<laughs> yes you did, I told my friend
Yahdon:
There would've been no way for me to even know that. I'm sorry
Eunice:
<laughs> You did.
Yahdon:
<laugh> I'm not denying it right now. I'm just like,
Eunice:
<laugh> Okay. Don't. So I'm saying, if you go back in the day, even when Maria slapped that girl, because she was older, nobody would've said nothing. They wouldn't have. Now the young girls would jump on the old woman, probably beat her up and not back then. You were raised to have this respect for elders and this is all she had back. She had this money coming from the system or whatever, system it was. And she was really afraid. So back then you can see them getting wrapped up because jobs were not that great. And so I kinda, I relate to that back then, because you had Maria, then you got the store, you got the corner store. That was all surreal to me too. I just couldn't see it. I said "he made that up? It looked and sound real to me." So, yeah.
Yahdon:
Kenny, I don't know if you, did you wanna say something to the lonely part? Cause I,
Kenny:
I think two things can be true. You could be chasing the Poonany or whatever..
Yahdon:
<laugh> So is this going to be the Greyhound bus for this month's discussion?
Eunice:
No, no, we're not doing that. Cause then we have to talk about in the sale
Kenny:
<laugh> but I think you can still, at the same time be lonely. I think all of that chaos, I call it chaos of having all those people around. I think, yeah, in the moment..sure
Eunice:
In a moment he would be, lonely, but not what he was seeking.
Yahdon:
But, I would say to the point, Eunice is, the way in which he went about his affairs to me, communicated the man was lonely. When I say lonely, there's a distinction between he had a lot of company, right? Yeah. But he wasn't ever making the sort of connection, the deep connections that were meaningful. In other words, what he was looking for was so outside of himself, that even when he was chasing what seemed to be another person, it was just their company. I think about that line where he had the woman living with him and (page)256, right?
Yahdon:
"Young stuff is young stuff. Horace thought the first time Elaine brought Catrina by and Catrina gave him a peck on the cheek and said, "I feel like I know you from all that Elaine told me." That was in early March. In early April, Elaine met another man at a new club on F Street Northwest and fell in love, and so did Horace with Catrina, though Catrina, after several years on the street, knew what she was feeling might be in the neighborhood of love but it was nowhere near the right house." And that line right there, just to me communicated....I know these old men and I know the women who date old men and there is this dynamic where the women I know.."all he wants is for someone to talk to him. I don't have sex with him. We don't do any(thing), all he really wants is for someone to be nice to him." And then when you hear that someone is essentially paying someone's rent or flying 'em out to all these destinations. And all they want is for somebody to answer the phone when they call, ask 'em how they're doing. There's a kind of loneliness that's bone marrow, deep loneliness.
Eunice:
I can agree with that, cuz it's some kinf of loneliness. Cause remember from the wife, he was doing the same thing. It just a continuation. Remember did he go to the hospital? I don't think so.
Yahdon:
No. And all right. And yes. To me, I just like he was so outta touch with himself. That everybody around him was collateral damage. So the fact that his house literally turns into a crack house, the man's house becomes a crack house. And then he gets beat up in his house. He's in jail and no one's really coming to his aid. He's taking care of all these people, but.. One of the things that Edward P. Jones was able to do with that story was he was able to use Horace making him a sympathetic figure without making him a victim. Because the way he built that story, this dude was cheating on his wife as she was dying. Bro, you need to just chill. Like it's not that serious. So he built him up in a way where, when you see shit happening to him, you say "good for you." At least, I said that. I said, "well, he was campaigning for this life for a long time and got it."
Yahdon:
Exactly campaign. So, how can you be lonely if you campaigning for it.
Yahdon:
But there's something to me and I'm gonna come to you. I see you Elizabeth, there's something to be said about someone who goes to the length of exhibiting self-destructive behavior. It might not look like, when someone goes, "oh, this person's acting out because they're depressed." It's moreso when you watch how Horace is navigating, he's making decisions that are counterintuitive to the life he even seemingly wants. He sought in his life convenience to the detriment of everything else to the point that he put himself in the most inconvenient position where he is living in a crack house.
Eunice:
He didn't realize it though. He didn't realize it.
Yahdon:
But to which case, my thing is, what kind of film is over your eyes where you don't see what's happening in real time? There's so many, there's all these strangers living in your house. You don't even know these people. And you're like, when did this happen? The fact that he was living in it and didn't see it to me is, there's a film. In a lot of ways, his inability to see anything else besides his own convenience, put him in the position where by the time you get to the end of the book and when he's first angry, he doesn't even see that he has himself to hold accountable for his position.
Eunice:
His eyes were opened then.
Eunice:
He was in the clouds the whole time till he went to jail.
Yahdon:
No. But even then when he gets home and it is not until he sees the records, the thing that he prizes the most and he realized like, "oh, I've been.." But then, he takes it out on Elaine. That's why, I don't know who thought this. I thought the way that paragraph was said to me, oh, he kills this woman.
Eunice:
Oh really?
Yahdon:
That's how I read it. Which then means if he kills this woman, he going to jail for sure. You think like with the Martin Luther King quote, "the long arc of history bends towards justice" is like, you think, people like him don't get their just due, but they've been digging the hole that they're gonna die in. And You got to see what that hole looked like for this man. To me, I don't feel bad for him, but I do. I do understand. I see, it happens without the person, a person could be creating, digging their hole for themselves and never know it. And that's what that story showed really well.
Eunice:
There is a part in there when comes in the door and he says, "how do you start all over again?" And so I guess I can agree with you. Maybe he did kill the woman because he says, "what do I have to lose now?"
Yahdon:
Right. Elizabeth take this conversation so we can talk about other things. <laugh>
Eunice:
OK. <laugh>
Elizabeth:
I just had thoughts about the introduction. I remember when I was first reading it cuz we were talking about imagination. Even your note in the front of the book and he makes such a point to say, "I imagined these things and don't limit what you think the imagination can do." And I remember being skeptical because I said "doth he protest too much?" why make this specific statement in the beginning of the book? Then I just kind of had to think about it for a second. And I don't know if anyone else maybe had similar thoughts that this was originally published in '92. I've at least seen recently, when authors are able to attain this like sense of reality in their work or some certain kind of vividness that they captured a reality.
Elizabeth:
People ask "oh, what was your research process? What was your research?" He's doing some masterful things on the page. And so maybe it was "give me my props where my props are due." Are there assumptions that you would only be able to capture this kind of sense of reality if you had direct exposure to it? Maybe because of the types of communities that he was writing about and so then he felt the need to almost have to be in that little bit of a defensive position where he's explicitly stating "no, I didn't know someone who raised pigeons. No." And I can just imagine people asking him, "well, who was the girl that you knew when you were young who raised pigeons?" "no, I didn't know someone who raises pigeons. No, I didn't know this. No, I didn't have an experience with this particular thing." Yeah, this was my pen.
Yahdon:
What you're saying. And I read it the same way. It makes me think about actors like Cam'ron will say lthere's still people coming up to him and asking him why he killed Mekhi Phifer in Paid In Full. He say "it was a movie. I didn't kill anybody." And when people have such visceral responses to performances, actors have to tell that "I'm not the person I play on television." So that's what that just made me think of. Errol and then, Christy.
Errol:
I wanted to say two comments. One was, um, other people had mentioned this about how real it felt and George was saying how someone even reading this, how it might be a trigger or something. And it reminded me of just how when a work of fiction can really capture that reality, how it can be so visceral for some people. When George said that it reminded me of a friend of mine who could never watch "The Wire" cuz he lived through that in Baltimore. And essentially got chased out of Baltimore on some gang stuff like that. So I think it's really a testament to a writer when he can write that viscerally in a way.
Errol:
My second comment, I was interested by, some of his choice in craft, on writing in such a detached third person when all his dialogue seems so very vernacular and personal. And part of me wanted this to be in first person and just see that language throughout in the same way that maybe like Junot Diaz would do. But then I also look back on it and I feel that sort of detachment made the emotional points hit harder. But I was just interested on why he chose that when you can definitely see, he knows how to write (in that other way) but he chose to be purposely pick this like sort of detached third person perspective to the stories.
Yahdon:
Damn. Okay. We got more hands, Christie and Jumi.
Christy:
It's interesting that Errol you just brought up the fact that he wrote mostly in the third person, there are only two stories that I think he wrote in the first person. That was the "first day" and "the store" and that jumped out at me that those were first person, the rest were in the third person. So that's just something I thought about. But I was wondering too, a lot of us have talked about how, these stories are so real and these characters are so real. And I don't know that that even if they were people that he knew and it was like all situations where maybe he did know someone who raised pigeons, it doesn't, I don't think it takes away from the writing. The writing is so beautiful and there's so many lines that are just like zingers that jump out. Thinking of "the store," there's so many lines that I felt were new language, even just "times were bad, said the old man who was so bald, you could read his thoughts."
Christy:
I said "well, there's something I hadn't read before." And that was on page 78. And he had a lot of those lines in that story. And the other thing that jumped out at me is that all of the stories, and I've only read, like I said, five and a half at this point, but each voice of each character, each voice in each story was so different. If you hear a song and you say, "that's a Taylor's swift song" or "that's a Jay-Z song" or, " that's a Murakami story." These were all so unique. I was really impressed by how different the voices were in each story and I'm Christy and I'm done. I'm stealing George's line.
Yahdon:
Oh no, damnit George, is that the way we gonna do zoom etiquette now? <laugh> all right, Jumi it's on you.
Jumi:
So I just wanted to respond to Errols question about why Jones chose to write in third person when the stories are so intimate. And I think this was a craft decision that Jones made as a writer. A message that he's trying to convey, that we can be able to appear inside people, even at a distance and be able to experience their inner worlds as a whole, if we take distance, in the sense of the stories of collective memory in community. Like Cassandra, so many people said that they connected to "The Night That Rhonda Ferguson was killed" and that was in third person by Cassandra. And I felt so connected to Cassandra, even though it was in third person and it had that distance effect, but it made me with the distance, I'm able to better examine and admire the emotions that the character is experiencing rather than experiencing myself. Junot Diaz does that wonderfully with second person, reinforcing empathy on the reader by making them embody that identity. But we can also achieve that through distance.
Yahdon:
Yeah. You know, also one of the things I think that you think about the Griot culture, in West African and Black American communities where you hear stories from people about people and sometimes it never occurs you to ask what role the person played in the story because the person tells the story so vividly it's the best storytellers. That was what the Grio did. They told the story as though they were there. And one of the things I thought about with the third person was in many ways,
Yahdon:
How so much of the information we get is through story. And sometimes those stories feel as though whether it was told through first, second or third person, you forget the proximity or the distance, because you felt like you were there. Right. So to your point, the technical and craft decision of third person and first person, it's almost no difference to me, when, you hear a really good joke. A Richard Pryor joke or something like that, where there's a story being told, I think about Mud Bone, for example, one of his characters who used to tell these tales or whatever, and the way that, Richard Pryor used to create an idea of a character to tell a story that seemed to be rooted in some sort of experience, but you were encountering fiction within a fiction, and it never occurred to you to think if it was real or not.
Yahdon:
So that that's something to think about too if you're in the hood, and someone says "oh, you should have been here, " "what happened?" "So, and so," and then the person sitting on the stoop was like the
Yahdon:
Edward P. Jones in the neighborhood, and "then they said this, and then the cops showed up" and you don't realize that that person is a third person. Their relationship to the story is they're close enough to tell you what happened, but they give the sort of interior life of the people. And then you feel, you're in that sort of level of investment. So I think my question for you, Errol, was there a stark contrast for you in your experience of it when it was when from first to third?
Errol:
I honestly didn't even remember it being in first, but now you're saying the story that I said made me use my imagination the most was "the store." And that was in first. Yeah but I think like Marcy alluded this in the chat, how third person, how having that sort of detachment, let the characters rise up more. Yeah. I think that's what really struck me about it and made me appreciate the decision that he made eventually and in thinking the characters and their dialogue can shine so much more in contrast to the sort of narrative voice.
Yahdon:
Hmm. Okay. Ooh, Kate and then Connor
Kate:
I just wanted to speak to the idea between third and first person. I really liked what Kirsten said in the chat about it taking care of that trust issue, because I do think of it as permission when you use third person, you kind of give a reader more permission to link up to the story. You remove the idea of the author. Whereas when you're in first and you're very aware that someone is telling the story and there's someone in the story telling a story. With fiction, at least I don't think we always forget there's an author there. Right. That someone had made that up. And I think that's a lot of why Edward P. Jones did that introduction too. So yeah, its definitely a craft choice, and he also moves around perspective so beautifully in time and third person lets you do that. Whereas in the first person, it really needs to progress a little bit more chronologically to hold you.
Kate:
I'm Kate and I'm done.
Yahdon:
Oh damn George. You really started this damn thing. Connor.
Connor:
Yeah. So I wanted to actually, touch on something that you first brought up last month when you were introducing this book. And I made a note of this just because it was such a new thing I had never thought about before. It was something along the lines of, if you're reading fiction, looking for the real elements, then you're reading it as nonfiction. And so many of the things that like people in the Club have brought up today have been related to how visceral some of these stories felt and all the real elements or the relatable elements. I'm just wondering have we been hardwired to just look for the realism in fiction? Are we still reading it it wrong? Or I don't know. I'm curious if anyone felt they walked away after reading this book as if they had a different appreciation for fiction or if they felt they now read it differently?
Yahdon:
I like that question. That's a good question. Who wanna answer that? Who would like to,
Eunice:
I let me say this
Eunice:
<laugh> well now listen, listen. So I'm just saying to you, if we think about this time when he was describing what was going on during this time, especially, um, "the store" and again, the lady Maria and then the rich guy during my time. I can relate to that so well, because it was during that time, especially in "the store" where he went across the street, police man had him go back and forth and his mom told him," don't do this, don't do that." Cuz you don't wanna deal with the police. That was back during my time.
Yahdon:
Yeah.
Eunice:
But if you are not (raised) during that time, like my nieces and nephews, they got all this mouth. Right. And you can't tell 'em anything. And my niece probably would've knocked Maria in the mouth. I mean, seriously. So I guess it depends on what time when you were born, like me, so I'm retired. So, um, so that's why I can see that, but for someone who is younger? Yeah. You're gonna have to use an imagination. I did not. It was almost like he painted a story for every last line. It was so real.
Yahdon:
Okay. Here's another element to that question. And this is for anybody. I saw somebody raise their hand. I think Diana, you raised your hand. You know what Diana and then, Eggie or did you drop your hand? Diana?
Diana:
Yeah, I drop my hand. My thought just escaped me. So I'll come back later.
Yahdon:
<laugh> Eggie
Eggie:
Before I even, well, so it was kind of Connor's question about whether or not we're misreading the fiction or almost expecting different things from it. I feel the level of detail in this is.. It's just so much..the imagery, there's no questions left about the imagery. So in "a new man," right. When he's talking about running into the two boys in the room with his daughter, everything down to the way the boys looked at each other and then what they had in their eyes, when they looked at him, all of that stuff is so described down to the minutia, "the kid then put his index finger on his watch." You know what I mean? Like it's so, so specific with the details that it's difficult to even imagine stuff, it's all right there for you. I don't know if that is what you were getting at, but..
Yahdon:
Okay, so here's the way to think about it. You know, when actors play and I've heard this and this is the analogy. This is how I learned to think about it. When an actor, a heterosexual male actor plays a gay character, people go, "well, ain't no way he's straight, he played that too well." I've heard that. "There's no way he could be straight if he played that character that way." And to me, to this point in the conversation, what I've learned to understand is that it speaks to a very binary way of seeing the world. There can be no way that this person could enter or conjure an experience without them being in some way, touched by it to the point where this isn't actually a craft thing. This isn't actually art I'm witnessing, so that's the best example.
Yahdon:
You remember, when Will Smith did the scene when he cries for his dad? And there's Twitter and like the Internet just be fucking lying. And they say, "that scene was inspired by when Will Smith's father left him and blah, blah, blah." And Will Smith had to do a damn tour, a press tour (to reinforce and tell people) "that was acting. I went out, I did that scene and I didn't do it well. And I was getting angry and James Avery said, look at me." And he did the scene. And one of the most iconic scenes for people who lost their fathers, (yet people still said), "well, Will Smith had to have had the same relationship with his father that I have with mine." Come to find out this man, his father has been one of the most central figures in his life. And to me, it says more about the larger culture's appreciation of other people's crafts, less than it does about what a person is capable of doing.
Yahdon:
So If Edward P. Jones is able to conjure a scene so well, and give us so many details, I don't think that his creating so many details eliminates the imagination. To me, that's the prime function of his imagination. The fact that he could provide so many details is his imagination at work. The only way that a person who doesn't do or have a framework for understanding the value of that art can assess it is, "well, he had to have not made this up." Which then is at that point, I don't think to Connor's question is necessarily a misreading. I think it's a lack of a framework for how to appreciate what this person is doing and how difficult it is and different things. So I'm gonna, cuz more hands shot shot up. So wait, hold on. So Diana, Kate Errol and then Marcy,
Diana:
You sort of just spoke to exactly what I was gonna say actually <laugh> basically can you tell someone a story about what happened last night or about your childhood? You don't tell 'em about putting your index finger on the wristwatch, right? "Yeah, We cross the street and right before we cross the street, I look down at my shoe and I open my watch." No one does that for real, when they're telling a story about real life, but to the point and kind of what you're saying is oh, that's why I think I got so lost in it. Sometimes when you hear a story of reality getting lost in it and the in between spaces doesn't really happen because the story feels so factual to a degree.
Diana:
And he really felt like fiction to me because of the amount of details, because no one ever builds worlds that way, at least to me, my world, or even when I watch TV sometimes. And it is fiction to that degree, it's always to the point of being so binary, the intimate details are often so lost, even when we're trying to retell a story because we're all so stuck in the plot sometimes of recounting of our lives, that we forget the emotional part is often in intimate details that we remember and perhaps our hearts and bodies, but not necessarily in our practical mental recount of it. And I think that's sort of why I sort of fell in love with Edwards writing so much because I always felt I was sort of in between of the intimacy of all the details of their lives that I think is so hard to build. And I really appreciated it.
Yahdon:
I like that. I like where this conversation went, man. Thank you, Connor. Kate Errol, then Marcy, then Eggie
Kate:
I just want to say, I don't know if I'm gonna say this. Well, I never say anything well, but, I can't write nonfiction because it feels like a lie. I don't <laugh>. And so I only write fiction because it feels true to me because I'm trying to get to an emotional truth and I think why this is so successful, cuz we can observe it and we can feel it. I was thinking about my daughter just went to Washington DC on a school trip, a big eighth grade seminal trip for them. And I said "this is great. This is gonna be awesome. You're gonna see all the things. But when you come back, I want you to read some of these Edward P. Jones stories so that you can feel DC." And that's the difference to me, what you can accomplish in fiction and the way that we should enter it, its just a permission to experience a place in a completely different.. In a real way
Yahdon:
Errol, then Marcy and Eggie.
Errol:
Yeah. What you mentioned before, when a straight actor plays a gay character, people start to question. I think I had that same sort of experience with this right? With Edward in this cause he's a male writer and writes most of his stories from female protagonists and I felt he did it so well that I was just curious about how I think that was another question I had of why he chose to write from female protagonist or for instance, one of the stories that people said struck them the most was "The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed." It is also just highlights how we just need to appreciate the craft these people put into bringing these to life.
Yahdon:
Marcy and Eggie.
Marcy:
I'm curious what people's definition of imagination is regarding real life fiction versus fiction. I'm a visual artist and taught art before. And it's very funny because a lot of people who don't look at a lot of paintings tend to like representational art. But at the end of the day, when you think about it, all paintings are abstract, they're abstracted from the real world. So getting back to this idea of fiction nonfiction, any story, any narrative is going to be abstracted from the real world, or it couldn't be a story or a narrative. And so, narratives were born to teach people, lessons, they weren't any kind of entertainment. They were sort of like, "this happened to me in the woods the other day when I was hunting" and it's a distillation. It wasn't, "first I took one step, then I took another." So absolutely I think Connor had asked, "does this make you look at reading fiction differently?" Absolutely. But maybe only because his style is so incredibly distinctive, I've always been a lover of fiction. I also read nonfiction, but there is no one truth and there's no one reality, there are things that definitely bump up against truths better.
Yahdon:
Hmm Eggie and then Diana, and then I have a way to address your question, Marcy. Okay.
Eggie:
So basically I don't think that I'm looking at an actor, like for example, play a gay role and then saying there has to be some truth to it or whatever. I think it's, there's not a lot of room for me to use my imagination in the writing. It's a testament to his writing because there's so much detail. So when I was thinking about even the prompt question from earlier "what triggers my imagination?" There wasn't a lot of stuff that really triggered my imagination because there wasn't a ton of room for my imagination. It was so much of his own, every single aspect of the story building and just the rooms that they're in, everything is covered to the point where there isn't really a ton of imagination that I need to use to picture everything.
Eggie:
Yeah. And I don't think that he's less of a writer for it or anything like that. It's not, "oh shit, this is wack, you know what I'm saying?" I feel it's dope. It's dope that he took so much detail to paint this whole scene, but at the same time, it doesn't leave a ton of room for me to use my imagination with the whole thing, which is, not a good or a bad thing.
Yahdon:
It is what it is.
Yahdon:
One of the things I would say to that is, one of the things I heard some people say they either wanted some of the stories to be longer, which is a form of imagination. Or they wondered to know what happened after. Right. Cause the thing about a short story is you don't get a novel. You don't get a resolution to these situations, you get things that leave parts of the story, "well, what happened in that moment?" For me, I think about the first day of school and I'm wondering how that actual first day of school went for the little girl.
Yahdon:
That's a form of imagination, which is a way to come to your question, Marcy. Which, I have a technical thing about what distinguishes, non fiction from fiction. I think part of what I think of when I talk about the imagination and what fiction does is, how much more curious are you when you read this thing that is based in something that didn't happen. Which is a way of saying there were a few people here in Book Club who spoke about being curious about the stories and about what happened after, or the state of being of the relationships with the people. That's the active mind working. There's something that your brain is doing, that it wasn't doing before you encountered this thing. That is a form of what the imagination does. It's saying "how does this work? How did this person do this?" "I wonder...I'm curious about...that's how I would categorize it" but Diana, and then if Eggie or Marcy wanna follow back up before we begin to wrap and tone it down. Diana
Diana:
I was going to speak to Errol's point about it being women characters, which I actually didn't realize, but bringing up, that's a really great point. And it made me think that perhaps it's another way to further do a deep dive into the imagination world, it's almost sometimes easier to describe someone else's hand than your own by being so close. And it gives him the perspective, the distance of the points that were said before in the chat of further building this world of trust, because then it doesn't feel like it's actually his own personal story, cause he's a male author. And also it challenges you in essence to think, even more what could this person's world be like.
Diana:
It gives you less room to be lazy about it, as opposed to writing a personal experience, there's certain details and nuances that you might not mention. Cause it seems so obvious to you at the time, but if you really have to think about someone else, then you fully immerse into every part of their being in a way that almost makes it seem more vivid than your own personal experience in the moment sometimes. To the point of the imagination and what qualifies imagination for me, when you look at the clouds and then all of a sudden you see a different shape and a different animal and then it changes in like 30 seconds from a dragon to a dolphin and you ask "how did this happen?" And then you see all these other shapes in the sky and it creates a whole story of in betweens where you could look at it as puffy clouds and white and sky. But the imagination in the sense is what allows you to allow something to evolve and change as you're actually experiencing it, which I sort of loved about his stories. I'm Diane and I'm done.
Yahdon:
Oh my God, <laugh>, y'all gonna troll with this. To answer the question from mechanical standpoint, shorthand, what distinguishes at least editing fiction and non-fiction as an editor, but also teaching it, the difference is the relationship the writer has to direct text on the page. So Kate, you addressed it, when you said, "when you're reading fiction, particularly practitioners are aware the narrator, "the character" is functioning as in some ways of a proxy of the writer in some form. Their a separate entity from the writer, the main distinction as it pertains to when you read a work of nonfiction and the work of fiction is that the stories that you're getting in nonfiction is coming directly from the writer.
Yahdon:
So if you read this Harry S. Truman biography. Jeffrey is the narrator in this book, right. Jeffrey, the writer. But when you read "Lost in the City," the narrator isn't Edward P. Jones. The narrator is an imaginary figure. When you read "The Store" the narrator isn't Edward P. Jones, the narrator is the character telling the story in "The Store." The main distinction is who's telling the story? Is the writer telling the story directly? Because if the writer is the person for whom has the authority on the page, that's nonfiction. If this writer's authority is obscured through a narrator or protagonist, that becomes fiction. So it's literally that treatment makes it so. And that's just my understanding of learning what's the difference between Auto/fiction and memoir is it's about the premise for which you understand the writer's role to the story being. Is the writer telling the story directly, or is there a narrator functioning who serves as.. In different ways. Whether you call it a barrier or different things. So at a craft level, who's, who's telling the story and the narrator is a way to be able to conjure that distance. So any last comments before we end for the evening? Any last thing? Oh yes.
Kate:
I just wanted to say, I think that what you were saying about imagination, the more you talked about it, I thought what you were saying was what story sparked your greatest emotional investment? I mean when you elaborated on it, cuz we are all imagining these stories. They're so vivid. His writing is so vivid and so your imagination is active, but it's what is that story that made you wanna stay in it or felt the most connected to Cassandra or whoever it was.
Yahdon:
To your point, what I realize and Marcy, you tapped on it too and I didn't define, when I asked the question, "by imagination, I mean X."
Yahdon:
It was a word that was highlighted so much in the introduction and I'm not even necessarily sure what he meant by it necessarily. And so far as, the mind conjured the things that are on the page, I did not think to describe the various instances in which somebody would interpret the imagination. Cuz it's interesting for example, to hear Eggie talk about it. Some people talked about the imagination along the lines of curiosity. Other people talked about it in terms of what you said, intellectual and emotional investment in curiosity. But even that was interesting. Cause I didn't even think about that. I used the word, but I didn't go "let me hone in on what I mean by the word."
Yahdon:
There is something, wait question for Syreeta
Syreeta:
Yep.
Yahdon:
I had meant to ask you throughout the conversation, the conversation went in different directions. What was it that was difficult for you to get through? What made it difficult for you to navigate that?
Syreeta:
You said what made it difficult for me to navigate?
Yahdon:
You said you couldn't get into "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons"
Syreeta:
I don't know. I don't know if it's cause normally when I'm reading a book, I listen to it and read it at the same time, but I started off with this book just listening to it. So one, I don't know, if it was that, because then I can't see the pages. I need to see what's happening then I can get the world he's in. But I also could have just hopped into another story, which I didn't think about. Cause I'm normally reading from page one up versus
Yahdon:
Yeah, versus just jumping around.
Syreeta:
I didn't really give him a chance honestly
Yahdon:
Fair enough. Christy. You were about to say something.
Christy:
I was just gonna say like Syreeta, I started with the audio and I found it really hard to get into that first story. But then when I actually opened the book and read it, the words jumped out at me. His language, the way he talked about the 19 year old with the daughter and just certain passages, they jumped out at me more written than they did read. I don't know if it was a reader or if it just wasn't a very audio book, but I had the same issue.
Syreeta:
Interesting. I'm gonna try reading it and see what happens without the audio.
Yahdon:
Ah, ah, the last thing I leave with, somebody says something about the concept of being lost and like in connection to fiction. And at a point it made me think about the title being this double entendre or this meta meaning of, as the reader, you get lost in the city of DC, because you're going and encountering all these different stories at in different areas of DC at different times through different characters lenses. And so you don't really know in DC where you are and because of the descriptions and how embedded you are in each of these stories. if I asked you at any point, "the night Ronda Ferguson was killed,"
Yahdon:
Did that happen in the same area of DC where the (girl who raised) pigeons happened or is "the store" in the same neighborhood as the, as "the new man?" That doesn't matter to you. You see these composites of each world as sort of existing in their own way. But then to think this is all in one city speaks to what I thought in that moment, "Lost in the City" could also be interpreted as what the reader is encountering. It's getting lost in an entire city. So that was something that the conversation sparked, but Eggie I'm gonna let you have the last comment, then we gonna wrap it up.
Eggie:
I might have missed it if we did, but ddid anyone ever bring up the meaning of that first story, "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons?" Did anybody else get a deeper meaning from that? And could they share it before we go?
Yahdon:
Kate? You wanted to take that one? Or wait, Jumi?
Yahdon:
I mean, Jumi..yea. Jumi had the...
Kate:
I just wanted to add on it. I thought it was about loss of innocence. It was her father's loss of innocence and then it was her loss of innocence and he tries to spare her from that by not letting her see any dead pigeons, but then....anyway, that's what I thought it was
Eggie:
Got it. Got it. Some of the lines.
Yahdon:
Yes. Well, (for members) we gonna have the video going out, so you could hear, Jumi's masterclass. Jumi what you gotta do now, is you gotta make a YouTube page and you gotta do breakdowns of short stories. I'm teasing you, but if you do it, you know..you might get some bookstagram money. You might get that tik tok money.
Eggie:
One subscriber right here. Cause I'm always trying to figure out what this shit actually mean. You know what I'm saying?
Yahdon:
All right. So thank you all for a good evening. Appreciate y'all, so littest member Connor, definitely for asking the question, that opened up a different kind of discourse. Anytime we can have the kind of conversation with like five or six hands shoot up, I always appreciate it. And we're interacting and it's the closest thing you get to feel to being back in person. Just so y'all know, one of the things with the summer coming up, we're going to try to experiment with what a hybrid Book Club meeting looks like with in person zoom. Logistically, we have to figure out what that looks like.
Yahdon:
With the summer I feel more comfortable. I do not feel comfortable bringing people in. We're still in the pandemic indoors and people getting sick. And I know our government has checked out on regulations, and a lot of things, but I'm not good with that. So I do feel more comfortable doing an outdoor setting in Book Club, but figuring out, as I said, what does that look like with considering the amount of members who are now living in other states? I wanna make sure that those people don't feel alienated because they don't live in New York and it's figuring that out. So if you have suggestions, any of y'all that are tech people who have seen what this looks like in real time, please let me know, but I'm scouring the internet for what that could look like. So yes, littest members, Connor, Jumi with that brilliant interpretation I seen people's faces go "damn I think Edward P. Jones, your pen name?" You definitely brought the funk on it. Eunice, George and Kenny, I will call it the elder trifecta, the Greek Black chorus of wisdom.
George:
How you gonna call us the elder trifecta?
George:
Calling us old, man. <laugh>
Yahdon:
I didn't say old, elder is a status. That's not you, man.
Kenny:
I'll take that. <laugh>
Yahdon:
I'm about to just, I'm about to just log off.
Yahdon:
Marcy, for your question of the imagination. Elizabeth, by bringing in the introduction as you did. Kirsten, I appreciate how you always find a way cuz you since January's meeting, finding ways to incorporate the way you think about grief and folding it in through new lenses, I appreciate that. Maggie and Syreeta, cuz you was honest about what stories you didn't like. I think that also is the most honest part. Eggie, Jake, I think the best part of a Book Club is when someone feels comfortable enough to express an opinion (particularly)"I ain't fuck with it." "I actually didn't get it." "I actually didn't like it." And I feel when you create a space where someone can share that in the room. I think we've created the safe space (where) that is possible when everyone can just be honest and as opposed to feeling they have to say the right things. So let's take this group picture. Let me announce this book for next month.
Yahdon:
All right, so y'all ready. 1, 2, 3. All right. Now are y'all ready for the book for May.
Yahdon:
Okay. So curating these book lists are difficult as shit. It's a mixture of picking different authors, different genres, different backgrounds, different stories, different kinds of stories. And what I realized looking through it, we've read a lot of non-fiction but they were all memoir. And so I want to do a book that's narrative nonfiction, which is something where we can learn about the larger society we we live in. But then, what is a book about a topic we have not read before? And then, what is also a kind of book that, in some ways, challenge us to think deeply about something we encounter every day.
Yahdon:
So, between those three things, what we have is (Dr.)Marcia Chatelain's "Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America." Won a Pulitzer Prize last year, a book on McDonald's and Black People won a Pulitzer. If somebody told you in the 1990s, I'm gonna write a book about the relationship between McDonald's and Black people, somebody would've said that's racist, right? Because it's like that relationship doesn't run deep. But what you get to see in a book like this is that, the relationship between McDonald's and Black people because of the framework of how franchises work, where the real estate for a lot of the McDonald's are stationed, because of people's access to food and healthy food. What you see is, in a lot of ways, a deeper story about who has access to life and healthy food and who doesn't. How do those relationships run deeper in ways that we take for granted?
Yahdon:
This book right here is definitely a book I'm excited for us to discuss because when I look at the Book Club picks, we never did a book that was dedicated to people's relationship to food, in the ways like.."Crying H Mart" got to it at a personal level, but I wanted to get something (that asks) how does society engage with, and what does one of the biggest chain restaurants in the world, particularly, and a particular community's relationship with it tell us about the state of the world in which we live and how do we understand that? So this book is gonna be coming to y'all. As you see, another month where books got out before the 10th, right? 2 months now. We getting some(where), what you bout to say, George?
George:
No, that's good. No, getting the book earlier, I can get 'em read. Yeah, no, I'm lovin it, man. I'm lovin it.
Yahdon:
You know, like I said, making my adjustments. Thank Y’all! See y’all next month.