Doug French: Do you think, because you introduced yourself as “Magda Zarin”...
Magda Pecsenye Zarin: Yes.
Doug: … would you like me to refer to you as that from now on?
Magda: No. Socially, I'm “Magda Zarin.” Professionally, I'm “Magda Pecsenye Zarin.”
Doug: So you really want to hang on to that, even though it's such a big mouthful?
Magda: It's a big mouthful. I don't know. Maybe like five years from now, I will have leaned into it. But it's just, you know, it was my name for 50 years.
Doug: I think it symbolizes the passage of time and the fact that you're in the Zarin Era now.
Magda: I'm in the Zarin Era now. I don't know. I need my friendship bracelets for the Zarin Era.
Doug: And I realize it's not a small thing to just drop that middle name, which was your surname.
Magda: Right. It's not small at all, and I'm still weirded out by it.
Doug: Well, you're weirded out by a lot of stuff.
Magda: I know. I'm weirded out by a lot of stuff. So yesterday, when we're recording this, is the fifth anniversary of Shannon Reed's most popular things she’s ever written. Which was a public Facebook post that said, “Sorry your dragon show ended stupidly.”
Doug: Wow, that just came out of nowhere.
Magda: Okay, because we're talking to Shannon Reed today, right?
Doug: Right. But you want to talk to an author and say like the most popular thing she's written is a Facebook post?
Magda: This is what she said! She posted in the memory yesterday and she said, “Happy 50th anniversary to the most popular thing I've ever written.” She had like 10,000, 11,000 laugh reacts and hearts and stuff like that. a whole number of comments of people who are irate about her saying, “Sorry your dragon show ended stupidly.” And I just think it's funny. And, you know, one of the things that she talked about was you just keep trying when you're a writer, you just write and you write and you write and you write, and you don't know what's going to hit.
Doug: Well, it's even funnier that you refer to it as the 50th anniversary by accident.
Magda: Oh, did I say the 50th anniversary? I meant the fifth.
Doug: I’m enjoying the image of her writing her most popular thing while she's, you know, scrabbling around in her crib.
Magda: Well, I mean, the thing is she's actually turning 50 next week.
Doug: Oh, all right. So she wrote it in utero. Even better.
Magda: Exactly. Fifth, fifth anniversary. Shannon Reed has a book that just came out a couple months ago that made it on the bestseller list. It's a book of humorous and sometimes not super humorous, but just sweet, kind, funny, poignant essays about why we read, which I think has been very satisfying to read for people who are readers.
Magda: The reason I wanted to talk to her is that she's about to be 50 and she just hit the bestseller list. This is her second book. She's been writing for years and years and years and years. She was a teacher before she was a writer. But even when she was a teacher, she was writing plays. And sort of this idea of like you're doing really good work with not a whole lot of recognition. And then suddenly you get recognition when you're 50. Sort of how does that feel?
Doug: She was pretty candid about that too. She's like, it's fantastic to have a publishing house that is behind this a thousand percent.
Magda: Yes.
Doug: That's pushing it, that recognizes it as a title that they could really get behind. And that's gotta be a great feeling too. When you have an army of people who believe in the book as much as you do.
Magda: Yeah, exactly. Well, and you know, our younger kid started a job today and is taking the train into his job. And he brought a book, a book. Yep, he has a book. He's been taking books out of the library on my library card, and we also went to the Friends of the Library used book sale over the weekend, and he got a couple of books. He was like, I don't know if I want to keep these. And I was like, that's the beauty of the used book sale. You're kind of renting them. You pay a dollar for the book, you read it, and then you turn it back into the next book sale.
Doug: Well, that's the nature of everything. None of us ever buys anything. We're just renting it short term. It's a whole existential issue of does anybody really own anything? Exactly. But what I liked too about this discussion is she talked a lot about her father's death.
Magda: Yes.
Doug: It was really interesting that she's still been coping with that nine years in. I think she's turning a corner there because she said, I used to really love the constraints of writing plays or the constraints of writing a memoir or nonfiction. You had lines that you had to kind of steer within. And you still do with fiction, but there's just so much more out there. You can just create any world from scratch. And I think the thought that she really wants to explore those for the first time is really healthy. And I think her 50th birthday has something to do with that.
Magda: Yeah, I absolutely think so. She'd had the idea for a long time to talk about why we read. And for as long as I've known her, which is, I don't know, I think I've known her since before our oldest one was born, so 23 years, she always had a book in her hand. That was one of the first things I liked about her. ‘Cause you know, I was one of those kids too. My dad almost hit me with his car cause I was reading, walking across the driveway and, you know.
Doug: I didn't know that story.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: I mean, it totally tracks knowing you and knowing him.
Magda: Yeah, totally.
Doug: Why we read: to endanger our lives.
Theme music fades in, plays, and fades out.
Magda: Shannon, I just want to say that my favorite essay in the book, Why We Read, which is your new bestseller, is the one about books needing an editor.
Shannon Reed: Really? Why is that?
Magda: Because I have that discussion a lot with a lot of people, like way more than you would think I have with people.
And I have a little book club on Facebook. I started it years ago. To be like the old summer reading challenge at the library. And so people come in and they pledge how many books they're going to read over the summer and what prize they'll give themselves when they hit their number. And if you want to, you can report in on the books that you read. And so people do that. And so a couple of years ago, people decided they didn't want to stop during the rest of the year. So we end up having three sort of trimesters. So we're starting the summer. And so people are reporting in on these books that they've read. So sometimes it gets really meta about people saying, oh, I would have loved this if they'd had an editor.
Magda: So here's something that my mother-in-law told me. She has a hearing aid and she's got it paired with her phone. So she gets a little ding when she gets a message. I was like, oh.
Shannon: I have hearing aids that can do that, but I do not have that feature turned on because I want to keep my sanity.
Magda: You are probably getting 20 to 30 times the number of messages that my mother-in-law is getting.
Shannon: That sounds right to me. I get a lot of messages. When Teams goes off, it's just like, so yeah, so I think I turned it off. I'm so sorry.
Doug: Well, I like the fact that as soon as she was talking about, the first ding we got was when she was talking about werewolf vampire stuff and as if the universe was launching its approval.
Magda: I know, it was approval.
Doug: And that's the point of what you start the book off with, or what I get out of this book, the idea that reading shouldn't be a competition, it shouldn't be for speed, it shouldn't be for reaching a goal. As admirable as setting a goal is, reading should be something you just sit and do and enjoy.
Shannon: Absolutely. I have to say, going around the country talking to people and doing podcasts and stuff, what I hear from people over and over again is just like, basically wanting me to repeat that point and validate that you can just read for the pleasure of reading, like whatever hang-up people have developed about reading for themselves. And I think in a lot of ways, like, you know, all of us were assigned reading and many of us had some sort of, like, intense reading experience at the college level or the grad school level. So we come by this sort of anxiety about reading very honestly. But yeah, what people want is to just be told, like, it's okay to read my werewolf, vampire, queer love story, that that's valid reading as well. Or it's okay to not have read Middlemarch yet. And that's great. I love being the person to be like, read whatever you want to read or don't read anything at all. Like, it's all fine.
Doug: I appreciate that because I have Lincoln in the Bardo on my night table right now. And I am building up the wherewithal to dive into it.
Shannon: Lincoln in the Bardo is, as you know, it's a book I love very much. It does teach you how to read it. And it's also a book that really benefits from knowing that you only have to take in about 30% of it to really enjoy that book. You don't get tested on it at the end.
Magda: I may read it now.
Shannon: It's so good. It's so beautiful. I always weep when I read it. I think both of you will appreciate it a lot because it ties into issues of mortality and aging. And what does it mean to start looking towards the end of your life? It has a lot of that in it. And it's so lovely. But it's also incredibly complicated and hard to understand. And yet also really funny and lovely too. So...
Doug: Is it up there with like Infinite Jest, Finnegan's Wake, that kind of impenetrable?
Shannon: It's easier than Infinite Jest. It's much more humane than Infinite Jest. You know, like it sticks with the characters. It's really interested in the characters. I love Infinite Jest, but I think it's really interested in a lot of different systems and organizations and how those function within the world. And Lincoln in the Bardo is just interested in the characters.
Doug: Well, Saunders always comes across as a really empathetic type when he's interviewed.
Shannon: He’s such a nice man.
Doug: Have you met him?
Shannon: He published one of the essays from my book in his Substack, the one about Lincoln in the Bardo. So I've never met him.
Doug: That's fantastic.
Shannon: But I’ve corresponded with him by email. And he's the nicest possible person. He’s really lovely.
Doug: I really enjoyed 10th of December. So I'm looking forward to this,
Magda: I remember when he published your essay in his Substack and you were like, “Oh my God.” And we were all like, “Oh my God.” Cause I think that was like the first, the very beginning of knowing that there was going to be a lot of love for this book and that it was going to become a bestseller.
Shannon: I had no idea it was going to become a bestseller. I think that that has a lot to do with how hard the PR team and the marketing team and my publishing company work. They loved the book and they believed in the book and they worked hard on that book at a time when nobody else was really thinking about that book. There were months in the fall where I had turned in the manuscript and was really focusing on my work at Pitt and wasn't dealing with the book. And they were still out there selling the book and sending it to libraries and getting people interested in it.
But yeah, for me, the George Saunders moment was kind of the moment when he said he wanted to publish an essay from the book in a Substack. That's when I was like, to me, this book has done well. It doesn't matter if it doesn't sell any copies. Like, this is very cool. I really love this.
Doug: Did you happen to see that miniseries on AMC, Lucky Hank?
Shannon: No.
Doug: It was based on... t's based on Richard Russo's novel, Straight Man.
Shannon: I have not seen that.
Doug: George Saunders came on the show.
Shannon: There's no reason for someone as talented and well-connected as him to be as lovely to nobodies as he is. But he's really kind to people he encounters. The whole point of the essay in the book is that one of my students wrote to ask him a question about Lincoln in the Bardo, just like an undergrad student at the University of Pittsburgh. And he wrote her a lovely long response. He's just a lovely man.
Doug: Well, as long as we're in the section of the podcast that gives you the option to name drop, which I always want to give the guests every opportunity to to drop as many names as they've got in the satchel. Michael Chabon, did you ever have any kinship with him at all from the Pittsburgh area?
Shannon: No, but we are very proud of him at Pitt. What I find personally very funny is he went to Pitt a long, long time ago. He was an undergrad English major, which I find personally very meaningful because I'm the director of undergraduate studies for the writing program. So I'm always thinking about the undergrads and the undergrad education that we give. And I really think that we're doing a fantastic job of teaching, especially in the writing program. I say that because I know the writing program, but like we give a rigorous and challenging and exciting and fun education. So in my head, Michael Chabon is just like the proof of that. He didn't get an MFA. He got an undergrad degree from Pitt.
Doug: So we were talking about love of reading initially. It takes a lot to sell a book and it's, as you say, it must feel like a great asset when your people are behind what you've written. What was the first thought you had that this might be a saleable concept?
Shannon: Yeah, it's a really great question. I will say, first of all, that I have always loved books about books. I was a library page. I worked in the library when I was 13 years old and my favorite books were basically books where authors would write about other books that they had read. Like, it just, I don't know, it really pleased something about me. It was almost like I was reading the book with them to know what they thought of the books. I just, loved reading and books so, so very much. And so I always had it in the back of my head that I was going to write a book about books, that somehow I would find a way, sort of a gimmick, to convey my own love of reading through writing about the books that I read. And I say a gimmick because there usually is some sort of gimmick with books like this. Like someone wrote a book where they just read one shelf at a library.
Magda: Well, there's got to be a hook, right? Like that person who had an entire, I don't know, like Instagram or Twitter feed or whatever about making sandwiches.
Shannon: Yeah, we expect something like really kind of like high concept now with books. I think my first book is about teaching my teaching career and in many ways was quite a difficult book to write. I don't want to say it's a difficult book to read. That's not quite right. But it's a challenging book to read in some ways because it really it goes beyond like “teachers are great. Everyone loves teachers” to really think about what it means to be a teacher. So after I finished that first book, I wanted for my second book to write something a little bit lighter and a little bit more fun. And this was also like having had a book come out during the pandemic and being sort of post-pandemic ourselves and just wanting like some lightness and joy. Oh, and also my editor was like, “you need to write a book about something you feel passionately about, something that's exciting enough for you to spend all that writing time on it.” And I always joke, like, I couldn't write a whole book about Benedict Cumberbatch, so I had to find something else to write about. I really love reading. I really love books. And so I kind of came back to that idea. And he was like, yes, this is great. This is the book you should write. But again, it needs something more conceptual than just like, “I like books. Here's a bunch of books I read.” And that's when we came up with the idea. He kept saying that he wanted it to be titled Why We Read and that I should answer that question. And I kept saying, but I'm not Malcolm Gladwell. Like, I don't have sociolinguistic studies. I'm not a scientist. I can't tell you why we read. And he was like, no, it's about why YOU read.
Doug: Yeah, frankly, I don't care why Malcolm Gladwell reads.
Magda: Yeah. Well, and also, it's not like what's the sociological function of reading, right? Like, why do chimpanzees learn sign language to communicate with humans, right? It's like, what's the pleasure? What's the payoff of reading?
Shannon: So when I started drafting it, then I realized that I would just make each essay an answer to the question, why do I read? And once that fell into place, like it was, I don't want to say it wrote itself because I certainly worked hard on it, but it was really simple for me to find different answers. And I was able to think through different books I wanted to write about or different experiences I had that I definitely wanted to capture and figure out how they answer the question, why were you reading?
Magda: I think that the essays in this book have an ease that the essays in your first book do not.
Shannon: I think that's true. It wasn't hard for me to write most of the essays in this book. And it was quite difficult for me to write some of the essays in my first book. I would say it was cathartic in many ways to write some of the essays in my first book. It was just like, “oh, I want to tell you about this. Like, oh, here's some other things I love about books” in an essay form. And also, I've been a writer for four more years. You know, I've gotten better. I've been practicing my craft. So I think that shows in this book as well.
Magda: In your first book, I kept reminding myself “she got out of a lot of those teaching situations.” And it wasn't that like you didn't convey how horrible some of them were in the way that they were horrible at the time.
Shannon: Mm hmm.
Magda: I knew what I was going through. Yeah, I knew what you were going through because I had been your friend during a lot of that time period and had known and I was relieved when I got to the part in that book where you do leave and you go to your MFA program.
Shannon: Yeah, that sounds right to me. And I think that the second book, while it is lightly chronological and it is memoir-ish, it's not really trying to convey an arc of experience across my life like the first one was. The first one is a story about like kind of stumbling into teaching, getting into it, liking it. Having a really good experience, having a really terrible experience, getting out of that, having another really great experience. It's very narrative in a way. This book is much more like, “hey, books are great.”
Doug: Why do you think that is? Was it just because you're in a different station in life? Or were there very particular things from the first book that you didn't want to replicate?
Shannon: Yeah, I feel that I have processed a lot of the trauma I went through in my teaching career in writing the first book. There are pieces that did not make it into that first book where I really processed some terrible things that happened to me. And I just don't particularly feel the need to go back to that well again. And in this book, I didn't have any particular traumatic experiences connected to reading that I wanted to unpack. I do, towards the end of the book, write about my father's illness and death. And that felt right within the context of the book. It does create a heavier feeling, I'm sure, for the reader. But that feels like an incredibly meaningful and grief-ridden thing that happened to me. But it's not a trauma, if that makes sense.
Magda: At the end of it, you know, if you don't like a book, you can close it. Right. And when you're teaching, you're interacting with other people all the time and you can't just shut it and walk away.
Shannon: Absolutely.
Magda: One of my joys of the last few years has been recording my DNFs, the books that I start and don't finish. It's been fun because I don't feel like I ever have to justify stopping a book. But I do like to record why. And, you know, sometimes I'll go back and be like, why did I stop reading that book? OH. Yeah. And, you know, like nine out of ten times it's because the book needed an editor.
Shannon: Yeah.
Magda: Or a different editor.
Shannon: Needed another draft.
20:07
Doug: So what was your relationship with your editor? I'm a big fan of editors. I think it's a vanishing necessity as far as getting the best work out there and vivifying and preserving the written word so when you sit down to write a memoir you know you know it's going to be largely about yourself but you want to make it relatable you want to make it reach a lot of people on different levels and so what was the best advice your editor gave you.
Shannon: This particular editor repeatedly put in the comments, “Make this funnier.”
Doug: Wow, that's fantastic.
Shannon: Which I was like, I can do that. That is a note I can take. And I'm being, of course, I'm being somewhat facetious, but I think he really kept me from sort of like pontificating. You know, I work in academia. We pontificate like that is our career. And so it's really helpful to sort of pull me back away from that instinct and into like, remember, you're writing a charming and funny memoir, like, let's be charming and funny, not necessarily be like, “Since the dawn of time, man has…” That reminding me of my audience is really helpful. And I would say in general, editors should be helping their writers think about who their audience is and write to that audience, especially at the stage where your, you know, your book has been sold and you are creating a product that is going to be marketed to people. It is worthwhile and I think helpful to think about “Who am I writing this book for?”
21:33
Magda: Shannon, have you read The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt?
Shannon: No.
Magda: Oh, you should. It's 70 pages long. You can read it in an hour. I mean, I finished it and the comment I left on StoryGraph was “10 out of 10, no notes.”
Doug: How many notes can you have for a 70-page book?
Magda: Well, but that's, I mean, who can write a really great 70-page book, right?
Shannon: It’s harder to write well short than to write well long.
Magda: I mean, all of us are writers here. We all know it's way hard to write well short than to write well long. It has the theme of the, like, “who are you writing for?”
Shannon: I'm super interested in like, who is your narrator? Who are they telling the story to? Who is the reader? Is the reader who they're telling the story to? Or is the reader overhearing the story being told to someone else? I think that's, it comes up in fiction a lot and I teach fiction writing at Pitt, but I feel like it applies across memoir. It applies across a lot of things. And a lot of people don't think about it at all when they're writing. It's super, super helpful.
Magda: I think a lot of people don't think about that at all in their lives at all. I mean, I remember when my kids were at that, just, oh God, that age where they're trying to be funny and it's just not at all. And I really didn't want to have to say to them that–
Doug: I'm still at that age, by the way.
Magda: –“Just shut up, right?” So what I said was, think about your audience.
Shannon: Yes.
Magda: There is somebody your age in your class at school or on the playground who's going to find that hilarious. I am not the correct audience for this joke. I just keep going back to that again and again and again. Like, it's really true. You got to think about who's your audience for that joke.
23:14
Shannon: Absolutely. It's a form of code switching in a way, right? I don't want to borrow a term that means something different. I'm not trying to say that knowing who to tell a joke to is like a person switching how they're speaking. But I do think it is a form of sort of like, is this an appropriate time and place for what I'm about to say? And if it's not, what is the appropriate and what is appropriate here? And how can I be all of those different people without compromising who I am or what I think? People who are adept–and I think I'm pretty adept with changing tone and approach in writing and in speaking–also have a tendency to just tell people what they want to hear. Because I can perceive what it is you want to hear, so I'm going to tell you that. It does feel to me like one of the things I've learned with aging is thinking more about how can I be true to what I really feel and believe while also delivering this in an audience- and format-appropriate way.
Doug: And that sounds exactly on point with what I was going to say next, because you mentioned the end of the book and talking about your father. How much debate was there whether to include that or not? It is a memoir and it's, you know, your editor's telling you, “be funnier.” But then there's a real emotional weight toward the end. Was there a debate as to whether his story belonged in this book?
Shannon: No, to his credit, he was just like, that's a beautiful essay. That's all he said about that one. I mean, I'm sure he gave me some smaller notes, but one moment where we did have some discussion and I eventually pretty quickly agreed with what he said was I had written an essay that was about my fondness for giant nonfiction books about American tragedies. Like I love Columbine by David Cullen and Five Days in Memorial by Sherry Fink, which is about the Hurricane Katrina disaster and a hospital in New Orleans. I really love those books. And I love like a good thick book about terrible things happening. And when I wrote that essay, I do, I love them. I think it's partly because I'll never write one. So I can just admire it without being like, oh, I wish I had written that. But anyway, I had written an essay about like my love for those books. And it was just too whimsical.
My editor was kind of like, You know, I don't know that you can. It's not like I was joking about Columbine. Of course, I wouldn't do that. But he was like, your tone is very light and this book is very heavy and sad. They don't go together. And I eventually I just agreed and we just cut that essay. We didn't really I had written way too many essays for the book anyway, so it was fine. So I think he was much more protective of the idea of this essay about your dad's death. This is very specifically about this thing. You don't have to try to make it whimsical or funny. You can keep these sort of siloed, if that makes sense, in a tone sense.
Doug: Are you also a fan of David Graham, I'm guessing? Did you read The Wager?
Shannon: I have not read that, but I want to.
Doug: Or are you talking about a big, thick nonfiction book about disaster?
Shannon: Dope Sick is another one I love. I don't know. I...
26:24
Magda: To me, it scratches the same itch as, remember living in New York City when there was a hurricane coming that wasn't going to hit New York City, but was going to hit. And you would just watch Weather Channel for like three days.
26:37
Shannon: Yeah.
26:38
Magda: And, you know, wait for Jim Cantore to come out, stuff like that. It's like a crisis. Or true crime podcasts. People are so into these true crime podcasts. And it's not because they're glad that the person was murdered. It's just the process of discovery and the detailing. It's the, like it's a procedural.
26:58
Shannon: I think that's totally true. I don't like true crime as well because it freaks me out. But I think it is the same itch. Like I don't, you know, like Hurricane Katrina has come and gone. I am not worried about being caught in Hurricane Katrina. So therefore reading the book feels safer. Like I can learn from it and have that experience. Whereas like even Law & Order, especially when I lived in New York, I was always like, “but that's...my church where people got killed.” I don’t…
Magda: But Law & Order it would be like you'd be watching and you'd realize that it was a very slightly-fictionalized version of something that had happened like six months earlier.
Shannon: Yeah. And also like the person in it I had gone to college with. Like it was all bad, not good.
Magda: Well, yeah, the other thing was Law & Order was filmed in Queens. Remember that? And so everybody you knew who was an actor, working or not, had been an extra on Law & Order because it was filmed in Queens.
Doug: It was filmed everywhere, though. They filmed it in our office, you remember, more than once.
Shannon: They did that, and they were in the chorus of Les Mis. Every single actor I knew. Whether they could sing or not.
Doug: How soon after your father passed did you write the essay?
Shannon: My dad died about eight and a half years ago, and I wrote that essay last summer. So it was a long time. I was not ready to write about his death. for a good five years afterwards. And I can explain why. It wasn't that I wasn't processing or I didn't miss him or anything like that.
It was because I knew that once I started writing about something, and this is true of my first book with my teaching career, like when I started to process something and write about it in that way, that became the version that existed. And so the options for other understandings or viewpoints on that experience dissipated because I had written and especially published this one. And so I just didn't want to sort of like put him in amber in that way. I wanted to still have the richness of kind of like thinking about him, but also dealing with some of the things that he and I had been through. And I wasn't really ready to like put a pin in it. And even now, I mean, there are a couple of essays that refer to him and his passing, but they're not really portraits of him. They use the events of his illness and death as sort of time markers. I don't think I'm quite, I'm still not ready to write about my dad more specifically than that.
Doug: I didn't want to get too far into the weeds if you don't want to talk about it, clearly.
Shannon: No, it's okay.
Doug: How long was his illness? I mean, how sudden was his passing? What was that experience like as far as his exit from this earth?
Shannon: He was ill for a long time. He had diabetes. He had some other long-term health care or health issues. As many people are, I have another friend who's just lost her father in the same way of sort of a gradual decline that retrospectively, you can kind of be like, oh, he had been sick for a long time. And it was manageable. He was actually diagnosed with liver cancer in January of 2015. And he passed away in early September of that year. So for cancer, it was a relatively quick passing. And this is good. I think a lot of people have longer experiences with cancer where they, or at least that had been my experience that people were like sick for a year and then better for a year and sick for a year and better for a year. And it could be like five to 10 years. He didn't even make it a year, but he did decide in the summer of 2015 that he had done a round of radiation and it just left him miserable, tired, unhappy. He didn't like having radiation and he decided that he would not want to do that again and he would rather have palliative care.
So we were aware from the summer, like June of 2015, until he passed in September, that he was dying. It wasn't an active dying. You know, it was a, for a long time, it was like a hangout in the nursing home and every single Lutheran in the western Pennsylvania area was going to stop by and chat with him.
Magda: Oh, because he was a Lutheran pastor.
Shannon: My dad was a Lutheran pastor. He was a Lutheran pastor in the Lutheran nursing home in Johnson, Pennsylvania. So it was just like a parade of Lutherans for several months. But we were aware that he was going to decline. And pass. And of course, you know, as almost always happens, when he was actually actively dying, it was very shocking and we were surprised, even though we had been prepared for it for a long time.
Doug: Did you get the chance to talk through enough things with him? Was there, is there a level of closure there, for lack of a better word, or…
Shannon: There was definitely closure. Because it was the summer, I was able to be there a lot and just spend time with him. My dad was a very emotional and verbal person. So he was the kind of guy who told us he loved us all the time, all the time. So that wasn't left unsaid. I didn't feel the need to convey an affection that he didn't know I had for him. He was also hearing impaired. And towards the end of his life, he had trouble, like hearing aids are molded to your ear. They don't fit as well when you lose a lot of weight. And he had some trouble hearing at that point. So mostly I just spent time in his nursing homeroom with him. We watched the Pirates a lot. And just a little bit like, “UGH,” about baseball. Yeah. That was really lovely, actually.
Doug: That's perfect, sure, yeah. So I guess, how likely are we to see something along the lines of Shannon in the Bardo?
Shannon: In terms of working on a novel? I am, if that's what you're asking.
Doug: I mean, granted, we're not going to talk about that limbo period, talking with someone who's left this realm, but I'm glad you're delving into fiction. That's a great leap, and I'm looking forward to read that, too.
Shannon: Like having written two books where I was able to do some flights of fantasy, but mostly it was like, and then this happened and this happened. Like how, how charmingly can I convey to you that these events happened in sequential order? It's kind of the theme of writing a memoir. I'm interested to like find the freedom of fiction and say, you know, in fiction,
Doug: Get out of your own head,
Shannon: Like in fiction, the dead can talk and they have issues and they're, you know, whining about things. And, and, angels come to Earth and talk to you and it's 1600 or it's, you know, the 24th century. Like, I'm interested in the freedoms of fiction after being sort of nicely cosseted in nonfiction for so long.
Magda:Well, and you wrote plays for a long time. A lot of plays.
Shannon: I wrote a lot of plays.
Magda: You wrote plays that were produced quite often. And I met many lovely friends who are good people in my life by going to your plays and meeting your friends who were also there to see the plays. But that's different than writing fiction that doesn't have to be acted out because you really can't, you know, there are only a limited number of ways you can have angels come down in the 1600s on stage.
Shannon: Yeah. Your theater company is like, “We have five actors. We're not building you like elaborate puppet props either. So like you have five actors and $50. What are you going to do?” I love the constraints of writing that way because then I was like, all right, well, some things are decided for me. Instead of being like, is it set in 1600? Is it set in 24? I don't know. I could be like, I have five actors. So, you know, my dream of, I don't know, putting Noah's Ark on stage is not going to happen unless it's like conceptual. I really love that.
Doug: It's easier to kill your darlings, too.
Shannon: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because you can just be like, well, that would take a sixth actor. I can't do it. You know, I think my earlier comments about like audience and tone are also about constraints in some ways. I just wrote a piece for McSweeney's. I don't know if they'll take it or not, but the voice is just a little bit different than my usual voice. And I did think like, does this still fit within the McSweeney's realm? Because in a good way, they don't care that I have a bestselling book. They care that this piece fits in with the tone and style of their website. That's all they can publish. And again, like that constraint is helpful because that tells me like what tone to write in. And so I am interested in the idea of being at a place in my career where I might be able to be like, I don't actually have to have these constraints anymore. I can be a little bit freer with things in fiction. It's really interesting. I don't think I wanted it until now. So that has worked out well.
Doug: It is exciting just to decide what somebody says or does or thinks or what the backstory is and all that. I was just thinking about this because I was looking back at the archives of the dad blog back when it started in 2003. And a lot of that writing, I don't recognize. I don't recognize the person who wrote that. And so at this station in your life, after your father's passing, after you reach the wondrous decade of the 50s. What type of writer do you think you are now? As you craft a story, to what extent do you think your life experience would influence that in terms of what layers of tragedy, what layers of comedy? Because we're all just a product of our experience. And I'm just wondering how your experience would shape a kind of narrative you'd want to make.
Shannon: Yeah, and I've been thinking a lot about that because I am also thinking about a nonfiction book, yet another memoir. I promise it's the last of my memoirs.
Doug: Well, you need a trilogy. You've got to sell all three.
Shannon: Interesting alike. But it would be about being hard of hearing.
Doug: The Reed Identity and the Reed Supremacy and the Reed Ultimatum.
Shannon: It has to have “why” as the first word. I know that like “why something” has to be the title. But no, I want to write about being disabled and being hard of hearing. I've been thinking a lot about the issues that you came up in your question because I'm like, well, what is it that I can write about that's specific and helpful and interesting about disability that only I can write. Because that's the question I'm always asking my students as well. Like, why do you have to be the person to write this story? What is it that you're bringing to the story that no one else can bring to it? Because we each have a unique voice. And so I think that I can write about it now as someone who's had like a lifetime of experiences of being a hearing impaired person in the world. I don't think I would have written the same book at 20. or at 30, or at 40. I mean, I had not written a book at all yet, so I can't really say for sure. But, you know, I just feel like I have some more insight. And in many ways, I feel that now I can be more reflective of how helpful being hard of hearing has been for me. Instead of just seeing it as like this burden that I have carried through my life, the last five or six years have really showed me that it's been a gift in a lot of ways, too. And so I think I can write about that more sincerely and not just sort of like, “well, I'm supposed to say the disability is a gift, too. So I guess I'll say that.” I actually feel that genuinely. It is a book that only 50-year-old Shannon can write.
Magda: So when I said to Doug, oh, let's have Shannon Reed on. What I said was the story that I thought was here was “becoming an overnight success, like a sudden bestseller after like 30 years of steady work.” And it wasn't that you were never recognized. You were just sort of recognized intermittently, sort of just enough to keep you hooked in the game.
Shannon: That sounds right to me.
Magda: So how has it been suddenly having a bestseller, having people adore you? Because I know you, and I read this book and the first essay made me burst into tears. And I think everyone I know who's a real reader who read this just got kind of weepy at the first and second essay because it just felt so much like the experience of being a small child who loved to read. I think that kind of puts you in the like “beloved author” category. That has to be a little bit strange.
Shannon: It is a little bit strange. It's lovely. When I've been going to book festivals and events, I've been surprised by the fervor with which people approach me and want to talk to me. They wish for me to understand just what you were saying, that they too are a reader and that they feel the same way about books as I do. It's very important to them that I understand that. And so it's been quite challenging in a lovely way to receive that information as new and meaningful over and over again.
Magda: Right.
Shannon: To not be like, oh, yeah, everyone says that because that's not what people wish to hear. And I understand that I also wouldn't wish to hear it. But to be like, it's really beautiful that we love reading. We both love it. I'm so glad I captured something that's meaningful to you. To tie back to your question about being an overnight success, I don't think I would have had the capacity to do that at 35. I think I would have been more like, uh-huh, yeah, I get it. I don't want to do that because I feel like I have to falsely assert a bond I don't feel. I just feel so honored that people are seeing that in my work. And I really want to let them know that I am honored by that. That's like heavy emotional work. And it's beautiful and it's lovely, but it's unexpected. I wasn't anticipating that.
I also have to say, like, I've never been a person who wanted to meet heroes. I think it's a pastor's kid thing of like, I know what these pastors are really like. I'm not going to exalt anyone. And so I think it's so much for people to be like, oh, I actually want to meet you. Like, it's not an instinct I have.
Magda: There was always that question, “who would you want to have dinner with, alive or dead” or something? And I think the answer you were supposed to give was someone you really admire. I just never really thought in those terms. So I always thought about somebody who was like a subject matter expert in something that I thought was interesting.
Shannon: Yeah, absolutely. Like I want to ask them tons of questions.
Magda: Right. Like somebody who's really into building suspension bridges or anything.
Shannon: For me, it would be like a relative who passed before I was born or who I didn't know for some reason. And I don't even necessarily want to talk with them. I just want to watch them and see what are they like? What traits of theirs do I have?
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: I did a lot of high school tutoring and used to review kids' application essays. And one student answered that question, who would you like to be with on a long-distance plane, living or dead? And the kid wrote, “Nobody. I just want to sleep the whole way.” And he got in.
Shannon: I was going to say, I'll take that kid into Pitt. Like, that's fantastic.
Doug: This guy has, he's got some brass, right?
Shannon: Just want to sleep. That's beautiful.
Doug: I love the fact that you're talking about becoming a more notable writer at this age so you can kind of realize the profundity of it. I mean, if it had happened younger, it might have felt like, not like a birthright, but kind of, this is expected. This is what you're supposed to do. Success is linear, the end.
Shannon: Yeah, I think I would have.
Doug: And now you have to build on something as a more known name. Does that enter into your process at all? And if not, how do you banish it?
Shannon: I've thought of it. It doesn't weigh on me too heavily for two reasons. And the first is my first book was not a success. It came out in June of 2020. In the most granular way, my first book was supposed to be a big library book. You know, libraries buy enormous amounts of books. But in April, May, June of 2020, the libraries were closed completely. It did okay. It's not like it was, you know, it was nominated for a Thurber or like it was, it was fine, but it was not a hugely successful book. So what that means to me in relation to your question is that I have very little control. My second book has been a bigger hit. I wrote the best book I could both times. And then it's sort of out of my hands. I can't control global pandemics. I can't control whether the publicity team loves the book and wants to do a good job. Like all those things are out of my hands. So even having the thought process of like, oh, this third book, I would like for it to be super-successful. What should I write about? I can want my third book to be more successful and to build, like, of course I want that, but I can't actually control it. And that's freeing to realize.
And then the other thing that keeps me from thinking about it is like, I have two careers. I have my writing career, but then I also have my career at Pitt, which takes up just as much, slightly more time in my life. And because of that, like, you know, it's a less glamorous, Pitt does not fly me to Los Angeles for a book festival, but it is also in some ways much more tangible and you know, like I can help a student immediately find the course that they want to register. I can intervene in a dispute and get things settled. I can write the schedule in hopes that everyone is able to take classes that they want to in the fall.
And it's also very like interpersonally meaningful in that I talk to my colleagues, I talk to my boss, I talk to my students and have nice like interactions with them as well, which you don't get as much of in the writing business. It both keeps me humble in the sense that at Pitt, they're proud of me. Everyone's proud of me, but no one's like, hey, Shannon, tell us some thoughts about reading. They're just like, did you grade my paper?
Doug: Well, if we're to believe Wonder Boys... Pittsburgh is the literary hub, and they're flying people in to see you, right?
Shannon: Oh, of course. Of course. Absolutely.
Doug: You've got to pick up Robert Downey at the airport in time for Rip Torn to show up and hold court.
Shannon: I do hope that Robert Downey Jr. plays me in the film adaptation of Why We Read. I think that would be perfect.
Doug: Oh, my gosh. We've got to get that effort started yesterday.
Shannon: I need to talk to my agent about that.
Doug: Speaking of higher ed, I'm glad we moved on to your teaching career because we talk a lot about college. Magda and I have a couple of college-age kids.
Shannon: It's insane and I cannot believe that that is true. But yes, yes, you do.
Magda: I know. I know. Because you remember when they were little teeny.
Shannon: They were tiny. They were tiny. How dare they?
Doug: How dare they indeed. And they've had stern talking to’s about their growth for a long time. What is higher education like now? What is teaching college students like? And how is it perhaps different than you may have anticipated? Or how has it evolved since you've been doing it?
Shannon: Yeah, it is different. It has changed a lot. The pandemic changed a lot. But I think the students were also in the process of becoming a different kind of person over the last like 10 years.
Doug: Wow, that's diplomatic. It's a different kind of person. Yes.
Shannon: Different. That's what I would say. That's a whole summation. I actually really love undergrads. Of course, there's always one or two that drive me insane, and I'm sure that I bother one or two of them. But in general, I really love their optimism, their enthusiasm, their energy. I always say like they keep me young because they allow me to sort of pretend that I'm not turning 50. There's nothing wrong with being 50. I'm not ashamed of it in any way. But I spend so much time with like 18- to 22-year-olds that in some ways my age doesn't feel quite real to me. I feel like I'm more 30ish. Like older than them, but not quite adult.
Magda: And they think that 30-year-olds are decrepit.
Shannon: Oh, yeah. When I tell them that I'm turning 50, they always look at me like, that could not be true because 50-year-olds are near death. Yeah, like there's no real difference between 50 and 80 today.
Magda: Right. Well, I saw some yet another thing about like “Gen Z thinks this Millennial fashion trend is, you know, in the grave” or whatever. And it's like it's something completely innocuous, like “they wear shoelaces!!!” or, you know, something like that. And I just feel so thrilled that I don't have to care because I am too old for anyone who's 18-years-old to be looking at my shoes.
Shannon: Right.
Magda: So if a 30-year-old is decrepit, you're probably in the same category as a 30-year-old to them.
Shannon: I think they think of me as kind of like a cool grandma.
Doug: It's a binary thing, right? Isn't there some cultures where there's two numbers? There's one and more than one. And here there's like “regular” and there's “older than regular.”
Shannon: The students that I teach, which are almost always upper level creative writing majors and minors. So it's a very specifically selected group. I'm not talking about like gen ed kind of populations. And I'm just noting that because I don't want, to apply what I'm about to say to every single person who's 18, 19, 20, 21. But the students that I teach are incredibly kind people. Magda, I actually just the other day said something to them about like I was wearing a I think I was wearing skinny jeans. Yeah, I was wearing skinny jeans. And I was like, I apologize that my Gen X is showing, I'm wearing skinny jeans. Like I was just very self-deprecating, joking around with them. And she raised her hand. And when I called on her, she was like, “I think you look great.”
Magda: That is adorable.
Shannon: Actually sort of offended that I was so self-deprecating. She was sort of like, “Girl power! You look fantastic! Good for you!”
Doug: Have you reached the point where you're telling people you're 65 so people can say, wow, you look fantastic.
Shannon: I should be like “I'm in my early 70s. Don't I look great?” I just they’re so, they’re just such lovely, kind people. And I will also say the thing that perhaps I love most about them is they have taught me to see disability as an identity and not a curse. Because they really struggle with disability and identity issues in a way that at least my version of Gen X just didn't. I love what they have taught me about how to see a disability as just an aspect of who you are and not a thing that you are burdened with. And I know that it's been hard work for them. You know, I have students who are transitioning. I have students who are coming out. I have students who are really going through some intense identity issues in terms of mental illnesses and disabilities. And it's really a privilege to be right next to it. And it has changed, I think, how I think about those things in a way that maybe I wouldn't. If I just lived in Western Pennsylvania and I was 50-years-old, maybe I wouldn't really have all that many opinions about transitioning or gender identity. And so I love that they brought that richness to my life.
Doug: And that can translate to what your writing will become in terms of just awareness of the whole spectrum of the human condition.
Shannon: Absolutely. I usually have a couple of teaching assistants every semester who I invite to teach a book that's important to them towards the end of the semester. And more and more, they're teaching LGBTQ and or trans literature. And I love that they're doing that because it's not something that I can do in a way that's more than just sort of like an attempt. They can teach it with real authority and interest. And it helps me to think about reading differently as well. What does it mean to read queerness into a book? Or what does it mean to learn about your identity from a book that you're reading? Those are not really things that I experienced when I was their age. It's lovely. It's very rich.
Doug: How do you think that affects the writing that they submit to you? I think the writing of a generation speaks a lot about the thinking of a generation. And I'm wondering what kind of perception have you seen in terms of the types of things that undergrads write about now versus what they might have written about 10 years ago?
Shannon: Yeah, there are always students who, especially when I'm teaching like intro to writing fiction, they write two stories for me. And the first story is often a riff on something that they have read themselves. So if they read a lot of fantasy YA, they turn in something with a lot of elves and a lot of dragons. And it says on my syllabus, like, I'm not your person for this. You know, they're aping what they have read themselves. They're just copying, which is fine. That's what, all writers do that. And so I find it so interesting to talk with them about their stories and workshop them and read other stories, read other published stories and see what comes up for their second story. Because the second story is when I get like, somebody coming out and I'm like, oh, okay, you yourself are dealing with whether you want to come out or not. And this is a way for you to think through that and process that, which is kind of amazing, right? It's like a dress rehearsal.
Doug: Well, that's interesting. Yeah. Because you think you could go two ways with that. You can either lean into all of the pressures that kids that age are going through or you could just tune out entirely and go into magical thinking, magical realism, fantasy stuff, and just think about dwarves and elves.
52:35
Shannon: Absolutely.
Doug: And everything's great in Hobbiton, for sure.
Shannon: Yeah, they do both. I'm very, very careful to never assume that what they're writing is about them. I'm always really adamant. Even if I have written a story that's about Sharon Reed, and she is a professor in Pittsburgh... And never like, “oh, this is about you.” And I think that gives them a sort of freedom to explore things that they maybe wouldn't have if they felt that they were, you know, turning a spotlight on themselves. And then I also think that sometimes they just write things without even realizing that they're writing about themselves at all. Because we all do that with fiction.
Magda: Well, you know, it's like my alter ego is Monica Peterson. So, yeah.
Doug: Is it really?
Magda: Well, because people always mishear Magda as Monica. And people can never say Pecsenye. So my brother has started just putting in Peterson for our last name when we need a reservation because people understand Peterson, right? So I haven't come up with an alternate for Zarin yet. Maybe Zinn, something like that.
Doug: But you're not using the Donner party anymore?
Magda: Oh, well, yeah, we do that sometimes for fun. But I mean, I always have to ask him, are we under Peterson or Donner?
Shannon: Sharon is like my frenemy name. Like I don't actually, I got called Sharon too much when I was a child. So now I am a little like, eh, about Sharon. But it is very close to Shannon.
Magda: It's very close to Shannon. I feel like it has a different feel to it, though. It doesn't feel like it would be the name of twins. Like it doesn't feel like you would name your twins Sharon and Shannon.
Shannon: No, that would be Bridget.
Magda: Bridget and Shannon. Yeah.
Shannon: Bridget and Shannon would be the twins.
Magda: And Susan and Sharon, like in The Parent Trap.
Shannon: Yeah, absolutely. I do a whole unit on names with my students. It's really fun. Names are fascinating.
Doug: Benedict Cumberbatch. Well, let's turn the lens to the future a bit. I mean, the good news is you've got this book, you got some momentum, you got a few ideas in the hopper. That's fantastic. But how do you see this playing out long term? We've had a talk with
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Magda: How do you see this playing out long term?
Doug: And when Downey plays you, how insufferable will you be around the water cooler in Pittsburgh?
Shannon: I have no idea. I have no idea.
Doug: I think that's, yeah, none of us does. I just think we've talked to a lot of people about their children and we've talked to a lot of people who don't have children and what it's like to prepare for retirement for an elderly existence and without a younger generation to think about.
Shannon: Yeah.
Doug: I'm just wondering if that ever enters your mind. And if so, what do you think about?
Shannon: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I think about it a lot. My mom is still alive. She's 76. She's in great health. She's doing great. She lives by herself in the house that we grew up in. I think this is what a lot of people in that sort of sandwich age do. So I don't have the other slice of bread. I just have like, I am the filling and my mom is a slice of bread. There's no, I'm an open face sandwich.
Doug: With french fries on top, no doubt.
Shannon: Yeah. So I tend to think more in terms of like, if and when will she want to downsize? You know, like, would she want to go into a cottage at a nursing facility, a senior care facility? How will her health hold up? I tend to think in the long term about her. more than I do myself. But I will say that over the course of the pandemic, I really struggled with some health issues and still identify as a person with chronic illness. I'm really lucky in that we found a medicine that pretty much fixes me up. I mean, knock on wood, like maybe not forever. And maybe not totally, but in many ways, I'm a much physically healthier person than I was two years ago, which is great. That's why my doctors are in the Acknowledgments for the book. And by the way, I got to say, if you want to really please your doctor, give them a book that you said thank you to them in it. They love that. They are so happy.
Doug: “Take a couple of blank prescription pads on me.”
Shannon: “Like I can get anything now!” But I do think that resurgence of good health has probably made me more interested in embracing today rather than worrying excessively about tomorrow. You know, like I kind of had a glimpse of a future that was full of pain and maybe shortened. And I feel like I'm not in that place right now. So partly perhaps I'm reluctant to go back to that way of thinking. And that makes me want to like do my yoga and go for my walks and eat relatively healthily and all that kind of stuff, all those good things. But it also makes me just like today, baby, that's what I got. I got today. I don't know what tomorrow brings.
Doug: So would it be fair to say then that you now feel as though you might live longer than you thought?
Shannon: Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I have a condition, and I'm not trying to hide what it is. I don't know. We don't really know what it is. But I have a condition that causes my lymph nodes to sometimes just, like, swell up, which means that I'm–
Doug: Fucking lymph nodes. God damn it.
Shannon: Like, calm down, y'all. Like, eh. I call them.
Doug: Maybe just a talking to would work. Maybe if you just sat them down and said, look, you goddamn lymph nodes.
Shannon: I'll send a text message to my friend that's like, “The Lymphies are at it again.” Because it's just like, one will just, like, pop up. because I am very grateful to have extremely excellent healthcare. I have to go to an oncologist. He has to order a scan. The scan gets ordered off and then goes to a biopsy. All it says is like, I'm in constant conversation with medical professionals about my health. And so my life is irrevocably changed from being a person who could just like freestyle it, whatever. It didn't really have any health issues. Like that is that maintenance and that thinking about it and having it always be there. It's just with me now. And that's a significant change.
Doug: And at least now, you know, on your hospital chart, rather than say Shannon Reed, it'll say New York Times Bestselling Author Shannon Reed.
Shannon: Then we find out how much they don't care.
Doug: Oh, so a bit of literary renown doesn't extend your life automatically? This is news to me.
Shannon: They do not care. They're much more interested in the fact that I teach at Pitt because it's the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. So they're like, “oh, you're a Pitt person.” My brother said, oh, it would be great if you got cancer because then you could write a book called Why Did I Get C?
Doug: There's your trilogy right there, all the way down.
Shannon: The “Why” series.
Magda: So the book that is out right now, the New York Times bestseller, is Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries and Just One More Page Before Lights Out by Shannon Reed, R-E-E-D. And how should people find you if they want to find out about your essays, your McSweeney's stuff, your Shouts and Murmurs, all that kind of other funny stuff?
Shannon: Yeah, absolutely. I have it all linked at my website, which is Shannon Reed like my name dot org. They can find stuff there. The book, they can ask for it at their library. They can order it on Amazon if they want. And I would absolutely love it if people would actually go to an independent bookstore and get it there.
Doug: Well, we'll put links to all that in the show notes. I always link to the publisher. I never link to Amazon. I suppose we could link to Amazon and get an affiliate gig going on, but screw that. Life is too short.
Shannon: Yeah, I'm trying to be realistic. Most people do go to Amazon to at least look for information. They look for it as the database, but I love it when people go somewhere else.
Doug: Well, pre-order is important too, right? I mean, you can pre-order on Amazon and that helps you out.
Shannon: Yeah, pre-orders didn't do anything for me. So I'm like, eh, it was fine.
Doug: It's great to have you on. Thank you for sharing all these experiences and congratulations on this new book. I'm loving it. As linear as your trajectory can be toward much more insufferable success, I wish you all the best, especially when we get Robert Downey on the phone.
Shannon: He stopped returning my calls, but maybe he needs, maybe this podcast. That was fantastic. Thank you.
Magda: Good. Thank you so much.
Doug: And thank you all for listening to episode 46 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecseny Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been author Shannon Reed. Don't call her Sharon. When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles, LLC, and is available on all the usual platforms and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe there for our weekly episode every Wednesday and our Friday Flames newsletter every Friday. If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, please leave us a review there. And we'll see you next week for episode 47. Until then, have a great week. Bye-bye.