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-Hello, and welcome to "Book Lust".
I'm Nancy Pearl.
My guest today is Leah Hager Cohen,
and we'll be talking about her books old and new,
but especially her brand new book "To & Fro".
Leah, it's so nice to see you again.
-Thank you, Nancy, you, too.
-So when I read "To & Fro",
I thought -- I could see that it was your book
because the things that you're interested in are in the book,
but it's -- it's published in an interesting way
so that -- I'm going to hold the book up to the camera --
so that you could read it with the blue cover
or you could read it with the, I guess, gold cover.
Talk about -- how do you describe the book?
When you were -- when you were talking to your agent,
how did you describe the book? -Yeah.
So that unusual format suggested itself to me
when I was maybe midway through working on this book.
It was such a challenging book for me to write because,
you know,
I don't think of myself as an experimental writer,
and yet, I found myself writing something that felt formally,
and to a certain extent,
thematically --
it was a divergence from the type of writing
I have done in the past.
And at many times I felt that I was in over my head,
and I didn't know what to do with this material.
And at some point in the process,
when I realized I was writing two related narratives
with two young female protagonists set
in completely different worlds,
I understood that these two narratives
and these two girls were in relationship to each other.
Not in a way that felt
as though they were sort of moving along parallel routes,
but the -- the movement I felt was not parallel, it was this.
It was these two girls and their stories reaching,
yearning toward each other.
And that's when, you know,
I sort of maybe woke up one morning or
in the middle of the night with this sense, oh,
that's what the book --
the object of the book would want to be, you know?
It would want to represent that movement towards, and so --
but I was, like, oh, no, that's super gimmicky,
you know, I'd never really do that.
But I mentioned it to my agent, and he said, yeah, no, I get it.
So that's -- I mean, I could tell you more,
but that's sort of how the idea emerged.
-And did you write -- when you were working on it,
before you came to that realization
of the sort of movement toward one another --
and one of the other experimental parts
is that when you get to the end of each story,
you can see that one goes on this way,
and then you turn it, and the other goes on that way.
Did you write one of these stories first?
One of the parts first? -Yeah.
So the book began with my playing with sort of writing
in response to this very short Kafka parable.
And the parable had for years kind of intrigued me
and mystified me, and I kept thinking about it.
And I just found myself writing from the perspective
of an imagined character
who doesn't appear in Kafka's original,
but I sort of imagined someone overhearing this snippet
of dialog and being --
and being just impelled to start off on a journey
in pursuit of Kafka's man who's going off on a journey.
So it was so much fun, Nancy.
It felt, like, crazy and playful, and I was kind of --
I was cracking myself up.
It was so different and, in a weird way, light of spirit.
And yet, you know, on the other hand, it's Kafka,
so it's at once, like, light and dark and heavy.
And I went, you know -- I maybe was 50 pages in
and completely hit a wall
and thought I am not a smart enough person
or a good enough writer to do -- what am I doing, you know?
I'm not up to the task.
And I was miserable, and for months I didn't write,
and I just thought that's it, you know, I give up.
And then this other story began sort of pressing
at my consciousness,
and I began to write what became the beginning
of the Fro story in the book about the other
young female protagonist.
And at that point, I began, then, going back and forth,
or to and fro, if you will.
-What -- I have to say that --
that the protagonist who is set -- the Fro part,
which is set in the present,
you've always been so good at capturing that adolescent voice.
I just am always blown away.
And her story and her relationships with her mother,
with her brother,
with the rabbi who comes in to talk to her --
you just made her so real to me.
I just thought, God, Leah,
that's so -- how'd you do that?
How'd you do that?
-I don't know about you, Nancy,
but I feel like --
I feel like this is a little bit gendered, maybe.
The freedom and the power that a preadolescent, you know,
on the cusp of adolescence girl has,
and then sadly, usually, loses some measure of
once she crosses that line into adolescence and adulthood,
I'm so drawn to the possibility and adventure and delight
that I associate with that, you know --
with a female child who's as old as you can be
and still identify as a child.
-One of the things that I was so impressed
with about the book is the way the To section
and the Fro section talk to one another.
Not literally, but they, you know --
the experiences of the two young women kind of reflect
and refract from one another. Did that come --
if you could ever say anything in writing comes naturally,
was that something that you were conscious of
when you were writing?
The kind of need to connect them in particular ways.
-Yeah. Thank you, that's a great question
because I think I was actually incredibly resistant to anything
that would feel like forcing the echoes and the mirrorings.
And I knew that in some ways it might be a book
that would be more easily -- more legible and more --
and more readily received by readers
if I orchestrated that part a bit more, and I just --
I couldn't,
I didn't want to, and I think I constitutionally was unable to.
I wanted to respect the organic ways
that certain echoes and mirrorings emerged.
But I was always really wary of overemphasizing that work
or plotting that.
And so I think in early drafts I was very aware of it,
but it was so subtle
that it was maybe not so legible to readers who weren't me.
And at one point, my wonderful agent,
who I've been with for more than 33 years,
who knows me really well,
he said if you could just make more palpable for readers
what is spiritually obvious to you.
You know, think about that.
And that was the perfect thing to say to me
because he was affirming
that there was something spiritually true,
and really, really obvious to me,
and yet, I didn't want to be obscure or difficult
or, you know -- I wanted to share this with other people.
And this idea that he offered to me,
if I could just, you know, like, when you're with children
and you want to say it in a way
that your children can understand, you know, of course,
I want -- I want to try to do that better.
And so I think that helped me tip -- I hope,
tip the balance over into making those connections something
that readers could see and take pleasure in.
-And I don't think it's the kind of in-your-face connection,
like, you don't read a sentence and say,
oh, I read something very much like that sentence
in the other part.
I mean, it's subtle things.
Like, it didn't occur to me
until I was taking the bus here this morning
that in the To section, there's a cat.
A kitten named Company.
And in the Fro section, the main character has a journal.
A book that she is attached to in the same way
that the To girl is attached to the cat,
and that she names that book Company, Coco for short.
And then I thought, oh, wow. You know, I didn't --
I didn't really pick that up when I was reading the book.
-I think, in a way,
I'm glad that it only occurred to you later, you know, again,
that it wasn't, like, I can see what she's doing, you know?
-Right. Right.
-But it's -- because that was my experience writing the book,
that these moments of correspondence --
they occurred to me as they emerged on the paper
and caused me such -- not only a sense of delight
but a sense of trust and groundedness
that there was some kind of "there" there,
and my job was just to try to perceive it.
-And have the readers perceive it without feeling
that it was made, that it was constructed.
Yeah. Is this the most spiritual book that you've written?
And if so, what led to this?
-So when you just said, you know,
to not have this sense that it was made
but more that I was writing toward something
that exists outside of myself,
that, to me, is, like, the spiritual core of making art,
you know, this -- whenever we can sort of move
our own designs and egos out of the way
and become channels for something
that doesn't originate with us, that's what I'm in it for.
That's what is alive for me. So, yeah,
I would say this book is most certainly
the most spiritual thing that I've written.
And I think that's part of what made it, by far,
the hardest thing I've attempted.
And it's so --
I mean, you're making it relatively easy and enjoyable,
but it's hard for me to speak about it, too,
because I'm writing about the ineffable.
-Right.
Is that what Kafka is writing about, too?
Is that what draws you to Kafka?
-Far be it for me to imagine, you know,
what he would have said,
but yes, I certainly find that he creates containers,
amazing, perfect containers for the ineffable in his work.
-What shape are they? -Have you seen his drawings?
You know, he has these, like, really thick, heavy, like,
pen and ink drawings.
I don't know if --
some of them almost look like with a paintbrush and black ink.
-Oh, I didn't know that.
-Yeah.
So that's the image that comes to mind
when you ask your beautiful question,
"What shape are they?"
They are like shapes that do not have names in known geometry.
-If someone --
what books would you recommend to someone who loved "To & Fro"?
Are there -- that's a hard question.
-So what comes right to mind for me is someone
who I feel very inspired by and I only discovered --
I think I had already begun "To & Fro",
but it was during the process of working on that book
that I discovered Olga Tokarczuk,
the Polish Nobel Laureate.
I guess it was first The Books of Jacob,
this, like, 1,000-page novel of hers that I read.
But then, subsequently,
the one I fell even much more in love with
is Primeval and Other Times.
It's an amazing book and very hard to describe or categorize.
-So you teach writing still, right?
-Yes. -To college students.
-Yes. -Yes.
What advice -- well, let me -- let me back up.
What's the best piece of writing advice
that you got when you were beginning?
And your first book was the memoir, Train Go Sorry, right?
-Yeah. Yeah. -Yeah. I loved that book.
I still have it on my bookshelf.
-You're so kind to me. Thank you.
I guess the best piece of writing advice I got,
and it came -- it came through a few different teachers
and important -- and mentors and nurturers in my life,
was -- and I don't know that it was ever stated as such,
but this is what I absorbed.
Not to take myself seriously, you know,
or not to be self-serious, but to take the work seriously.
And, like, that -- there's so much humility in that, right?
And you can be 100% playful in a way
that is deeply serious and almost reverential.
-That opens up a lot of -- a lot of avenues for discussion.
To step back from it and take the work seriously
but not you seriously, I think -- first of all,
I think it's probably very hard to get your --
to get one's own ego out of the equation.
-I struggle on a daily basis with that.
-Right, right. Right.
I mean, how do you do -- how do you do it?
I mean, it can't be --
again, it can't be, like, this obvious, you know,
I'm not taking myself seriously,
my ego is nowhere in there because, to some extent,
your ego has to be in there because it's a part of you
that you can't shut off.
-Well, you are a writer, too,
and I imagine you know the experience
that once you've cleared aside all the,
you know -- you've charged your computer,
you've, you know, done the dishes,
like, all the things that get in the way,
that once you're there
and you've done a little throat clearing and you're in it,
don't you -- like, you lose yourself.
-Right.
-I completely lose myself when I'm in it.
Thank goodness, thank goodness there is no ego when I'm in it.
I really am in the service of --
or, I don't know,
just being, like, a very good playmate to this process.
I think of it as being like when you're a little kid,
you know, you're in the sandbox maybe with friends.
You're working on something, you're building, and shoveling,
and, like, you lose yourself in the best way
and it's at once deeply playful and deeply serious.
And for me, in those moments,
I don't have to work to get my ego out of the way.
It's all the rest of the time. Yeah.
-I mean, there's a poem by Reed Whittemore called --
I think it's by Reed Whittemore called Clamming
which -- I think that you would enjoy reading the poem.
But one of the lines is, "The self, what a brute it is.
It wants, wants," and then goes on from there.
Isn't that a good line? -Yeah.
-I will look that poem up.
-Okay. All right.
And you have, actually, my email,
so if you can't find it, I'm happy to send it along.
What's the worst bit of advice that you got as a young writer?
-Anything to do with focus
on external recognition approbation, you know,
that has always been super damaging.
Whether it's -- whether I'm sort of receiving a positive review,
which comes with an initial sense of, you know,
giddy elation, and then I firmly believe quickly becomes toxic.
Or whether it's because I'm receiving,
you know, negative, critical responses
or no critical attention at all, you know?
Whatever -- whatever happens externally,
for me, is ultimately toxic, I guess,
because then I get in my own way again.
-Yeah.
And then it comes back to that whole question of ego
and what's been hurt and that kind of thing.
-Yes.
-Is that what you share with your students
when you give them -- like, what advice -- how do you --
how do you get your students to get out of their own way?
-Yeah.
I mean, sometimes the very first day of class we do an exercise
where I ask them to write on one side of an index card, you know,
what are your wildest dreams for yourself as a writer,
as an artist, as a person?
And then on the other side of the index card,
what gets in your way?
And then sometimes we do rituals with these pieces of paper.
And I do think, Nancy,
I'm really fortunate to teach only undergrads,
and virtually no students, or very, very few students,
who have their sights set on being capital W writers.
And so what's lovely is that's just mostly
not what we're collaborating on together.
We're coming together in a community,
we're exploring, like, what does it mean to be free,
and how can language and narrative,
you know, be part of a process of figuring
out what it means to be alive in the world.
Yeah, so I have taught in an MFA program,
and I realize I'm much less happy
if I'm being asked to support students going down
a sort of professional path.
-Right. Right. -I don't know how to do that.
-Yeah. Right.
Was there a book or an author
at the beginning of your writing career
that really influenced you?
-There's so, so many. And when you say -- I mean,
when you say the beginning of my writing career,
what I think -- this might not be what you meant,
but I think of being, you know, like, four years old,
when I couldn't even write yet, and I was making up stories
and my mom would write them down for me, like, you know?
-Yeah. -So it started early.
-Yeah. -A big one for me,
actually, was when I was maybe in elementary school
and discovered E.E. Cummings.
And I thought, oh, you can be, like, a grownup and play,
and sort of,
like, dismantle the rules and play within those dismantlings
and find these free spaces, these spaces of possibility.
Oh, I didn't know you could do that even
once you've become a grownup.
That felt precious to learn.
-And in this interview we've talked a lot about play
and the importance of play.
Is that -- obviously it's not --
if you were influenced -- you were aware of that
when you were reading Cummings, so it's not something new,
but when did it become -- and this is my last question.
A hard question, I think.
When did it become central to you
that play was necessary in your life and in your writing?
-I think that I -- you know, I was,
I'm sure, an insufferable young woman who took -- you know,
I did what perhaps a lot of adolescents
and young adults do and thought, like, oh,
the way you cross that threshold to, you know,
adulthood is, you know, you have to be very serious.
And I think I "played" a version of myself
that was more serious and weighty
than I actually felt myself to be.
And I think it's only, thank goodness, thank goodness,
as I've gotten older -- today is my birthday, I'm 57 today.
-Oh, happy birthday. -Thank you.
And I love feeling as though the older I get,
the more I have --
I'm able to grant myself permission to, you know,
drink from that well of playfulness
and recognize in that something powerful and powerfully good.
-Wow. All right, Leah, thank you.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
And I won't say good luck because that seems too --
but how about happiness and lots of play in your books to come?
-Nancy, thank you. It's beautiful to talk with you.
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