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Bad On Paper
Katie Kitamura on Writing Audition
00:30:06
We had the pleasure of recording a bonus episode with Katie Kitamura, the author of our May Book Club Pick, ! We ask her about the book’s inspiration, the writing process of such an experimental novel, what’s ~actually~ going on in the plot, and...
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- [00:18]
Host 1
So we are so thrilled to have Katie Kitamura with us today, who is the author of our May Book Club Pick audition. And we had our book club episode yesterday. And today we get to have this extra little book bonus chat to hear more about the behind the scenes of the book and to answer some of the questions that we came up with during our book club chat.
- [00:37]
Host 2
So, Katie, welcome, welcome.
- [00:40]
Katie Kitamura
Thank you so much for having me.
- [00:42]
Host 1
I think maybe the best place to start is. I'm curious how books usually start for you. Do they start with a character, a plot point, a theme, something else? And what was the seed, kernel of inspiration for this book?
- [00:56]
Katie Kitamura
I mean, I always say that I'm a really slow metabolizer of ideas. I tend to sit with an idea for many years before I actually sit down to start writing. And in the case of this book, it was exactly that. I had finished a book in maybe 20. Oh, I want to say 2018 or so. And I saw a headline that ran, a stranger told me he was my son. And I immediately thought, there's a novel somewhere in there. But I couldn't quite figure it out, and I filed it away somewhere and I wrote a different book, which was called Intimacies, which was about a simultaneous interpreter. And that took, you know, a few years. And it was only when that book was done that I circled back to that old idea, which hadn't really gone away. And then I started looking at it closer, and then I started writing. Audition. My feeling is that the books I really want to write, the idea just doesn't leave me alone, so I can safely stop, stash it away. And even so, three, four years later, if it's a good idea, if it's an idea that's going to sustain the writing of a book, it'll still be there.
- [02:01]
Host 2
I have actually a very specific question for you about character. And so it's not directly related to what you just said, but this character in Audition is obviously nameless, the narrator to all of us. And I was wondering if at any point the character has a name to you, like when you're writing, like, do you have a secret name for her?
- [02:24]
Katie Kitamura
I don't, and I never do. And I actually had worked at various points on adaptations of some of my previous books which also have unnamed narrators. And I find it. I should just make up a name. You know, in a script. It looks kind of ridiculous to write unnamed narrator or whatever. It looks pretty pretentious. But I found it incredibly difficult. And I think I just put in an initial or Something like that. But I don't have a name for the characters. The thing I would say is that I am not a writer, as you probably noticed from the book, who does very much backstory. And it's not that I have the backstory filed away somewhere. It's not a tip of the iceberg situation where, you know, you see the tip and then there's all this vast reservoir of information about the characters. I don't really have that. I know a lot of writers do. If you ask them what is a character's favorite food when they were a child and what's their favorite book and what's their favorite. They know all of that. I really don't know that about my characters. I think what I do know is what they will do in almost any given situation. And to me, that's the more intimate form of knowledge that I'm trying to look at in my book.
- [03:32]
Host 1
That's so fascinating. I was actually wondering about that because your books are so taught in size and if you have much more material and you're paring it back, but it sounds like maybe the process is much more, that you're just very thoughtfully considering anything before it gets to the page. If it, like merits going on the page in the first place.
- [03:50]
Katie Kitamura
I mean, it's funny because with my last book, I actually broke my rule and I did like an 80 page backstory for one of the minor characters. Oh. It was a kind of perverted bookseller character who I completely fell in love with. I thought he was so much fun and wicked as a character, and I wrote so many pages. And with this character, I knew everything from childhood through to adulthood. And I did know more or all of his proclivities As a teenager. I knew about his first relationships, what his favorite kind, all of that stuff. I knew it was just right in the middle of this book intimacies. And then I gave it to my husband, who's my first reader, and he said, you fell in love with this character and you allowed him to completely hijack your novel. And I know you spent nine months writing these 90 pages, but you have to cut it and then you're done. So I cut it and I sent it off to, you know, to my agent and my editors. And I have to say, nobody was ever like, why don't we have some backstory on this bookseller? It was. I was just kind of following my whim completely, which I do think is important in writing. I think if you're not pleasing yourself when you're writing, you Know, what is the point of doing it? So that was a moment when actually there was a substantial amount of the book that got cut. But in general, there aren't really additional scenes or chapters that get taken out. It's pretty much what goes on the page initially. And then a lot of the work that I'm doing in editing is about information and what the reader knows when and things like that.
- [05:20]
Host 1
Oh, that's the absolute worst. When you kill one of your darlings and nobody, nobody misses it but you.
- [05:27]
Katie Kitamura
I know. And I've started talking about it almost obsessively because I think even now, five years later, I'm mildly resentful that I had to get rid of these bits of prose.
- [05:36]
Host 1
You're just waiting for somebody to ask for the pages. I would be the same way.
- [05:42]
Katie Kitamura
I know. And I keep saying, he's my favorite character. And people just look at me blankly like, why?
- [05:48]
Host 2
You're like, there was so much more that you don't know.
- [05:51]
Katie Kitamura
Yes, yes, exactly. He had depth that you don't even. Can't even begin to understand.
- [05:55]
Host 1
Okay, so I must cut to the chase that while I loved this book, I loved the individual scenes, I loved the thematic material. I do not feel 100% confident that I know what happened plot wise. And so I guess, first, are part one and part two meant to be distinct alternate timelines?
- [06:17]
Katie Kitamura
Yes. I mean, the kind of lodestar for this book is really David Lynch. So when you think about movies like Mulholland Drive or Lost highway, where there are kind of different realities that are unfolding within the book or within the film, rather, I always think of the two parts of the book is two different realities that sit side by side and that hopefully in conjunction. Say something about what it means. If you kind of step back a little bit, say something about what it means to exist in the world as a woman, as an artist, as a mother, about the fact that there are sometimes parts of your life or parts of your personality that feel contradictory or even mutually exclusive and that can't really be reconciled. So I tried to enact that directly in the form. There are, I think, tighter ways of reading it, if you want to read it. And the clues are kind of there for that. I actually had. I went to the theater with a friend who had made her friend read the book, and they had two complete. They said, we have completely opposite interpretations of what happened in the book. And they were the kind of two interpretations I was hoping people would have. One is that in the first half of the book, the couple Thomas and the narrator and the stranger approaches them. And in the second half of the book, this woman had interpreted it as a very elaborate role play where they were just fantasizing that they were actually a family. And then my friend had interpreted it the reverse, where the second half was the reality and the first half was a kind of messed up, repressed version of something that had happened between the son and the mother. And so I wanted those different variations of the book to be kind of percolating through. But I don't think you necessarily need to read for the meaning that closely. I'm hoping that the kind of disjuncture feels interesting in and of itself.
- [08:13]
Host 2
So I finished the book yesterday morning, actually, so it's really fresh. And we talked about it yesterday as we recorded the book club episode. And I've been thinking about it, and there is something about it that really feels a lot like. Like you said, being a woman. And you have sort of like all of these universes in your head of, like, the ways things could go and the choices you make. And, like, they get so expansive and so real. And there's something about it that really mirrored that experience for me, the more I thought about it.
- [08:42]
Katie Kitamura
So much of my writing is about speculation where there's nothing happening. It's just the character thinking about what could happen. And I. I think especially my last two books or so, that's really a mode I've been thinking about a lot. And I've been thinking about it a lot in relation to female experience in particular. And I think with this book, I kind of wanted to push that out even further so that in some ways, a solid half of the book, depending on how you look at it, is a kind of thought experiment or speculation of some kind. And I think some of it has to do with just remembering some of my own, you know, especially when I was younger and when I was, like, entering into relationships. And there's so much fervent speculation that you do, and that's so much a part of how you understand what it is to be a young woman in the world in some way, or at least it was for me, that I think it has kind of bedded down somehow into my understanding of a lot of female experience. I think it also has to do with the kind of field of action that's available to women. And I do think that women think things through. They think about the ramifications of their actions in a very, very considered way.
- [09:52]
Host 2
Yeah, there's this line in the book, and I was talking to Becca about this, about the choice to have kids or not to have kids. And how when you make the choice not to, that choice has a presence. And it's not like a lack of something, but it's just this presence, this thing that takes up space in your life anyway in this very same solid way. And I think that's kind of reflective of, like, the two parts as well. And I was really curious if you always knew from the beginning there's going to be two parts that's going to be sort of like the rough structure of it.
- [10:24]
Katie Kitamura
I didn't know. I wrote about 30 pages of the novel. And I thought it would be a pretty straightforward realist novel, much in the vein of books I've written before. And it would be about a couple without a child who met this kind of entrancing young man and then entered into this kind of strange, imaginative, roleplay, fantasy relationship with him. And I was about 30 pages in when I. I just had this feeling that I knew how to write that book. And it had a kind of improbable core to it, but I felt that I probably would be able to execute it. And the one thing that I feel like as a reader I'm always looking for in a book is the writer taking a risk of some kind. And the thing that I think I really hate as a reader is the only thing I hate as a reader. And I read pretty widely. I think so much of reading is having the imagination to see what the writer's doing and trying to do and taking a book on their own terms. But I think the one thing that I don't love as a reader is when I feel that the writer is complacent in some way and is kind of like, I know what I'm doing. Look at my great technique. Get my great scenes. Something about that. I feel like, you know, we talk so much about. I teach creative writing, and we talk a lot about what we call stakes. And I think we have a tendency to think about that as being what's happening between characters on the page. But to me, the really important stakes are, like, what's happening between the writer and the page, if that makes sense. What is a writer risking? What is a writer exposing? And so I just started to have the feeling that the book was going to unfold in this. In this mode that I had done before. And I thought I would like to take a risk. And the entire time I was writing the book, and even after I finished the book, I kept saying, my friends and to my partner, I Kept saying, it might not work, but there is another way, and I do know how to do it that other way. So I will take this risk and see what happens.
- [12:17]
Host 1
Oh, that's a fascinating lens to think about it through. So, you know, when you have conversations like this, when people are maybe unsure of what's happening in the plot, and are you frustrated as the author, or is there, like, a little bit of giddiness for you and, like, delight that you have created something that's so ripe for interpretation and discussion?
- [12:36]
Katie Kitamura
A question that I get asked a lot is how teaching has changed my writing. And I think the biggest way that teaching has changed my writing is it has made me a much more empathetic reader. And it's also made me understand how to read outside my own taste. And it's made me understand how, as a reader, I bring so much baggage with me. You know, a book will be good or bad depending on whether I've had coffee, which is actually shocking when you think about it. And in that sense, that reading is so highly collaborative with the writer is something that I really wanted to play with in this book. And I do think it's a book that really relies on the reader in so many ways. And I always kept thinking of the book as I was writing it. I kept thinking of it as a structure that had to be big enough for me and the reader so that the reader could kind of step inside and make the book alongside me. At some point in the book, the character, the central character, says that a performance is made in the space between the audience and the performer. And for me, that was like a line about the book, really, that a book is made in the space between the reader and the writer. So I love the different versions of it because to me, it feels like it's such an act of generosity on the reader to bring something to the book, to make it with me to do that. And so it makes me very, very happy. I think when I wrote it, I knew there were kind of three or four different ways of interpreting it, but it's been very gratifying, and I feel very lucky.
- [14:03]
Host 2
An act of generosity. That's such a lovely way of putting it. When it comes to the role of author and like the performance of that. Do you ever think about that? Have you thought about that more? Given the themes of this book, do you feel comfortable with that?
- [14:21]
Katie Kitamura
I totally do not, which is why I think the book is written the way it is. You know, I came to writing relatively late. In fact, I started writing in my mid to late twenties or so. But I was never writing as a child. I didn't take creative writing classes at college at all. And I really still think of myself primarily as a reader rather than as a writer. And I think one thing that I really like is the authority of the author. It's inbuilt in the word itself, but it makes me uncomfortable, the fact of being the person who's supposed to know or the person who's controlling a reader's experience. For me, this book was really about giving up control, as you know, as I just said, of kind of handing over the reins to the reader. It is that strange thing of then stepping. Once you finish writing the book, you step into this mode of talking about the book, playing this part of being an author, which is really strange. It happens every few years, and I have to brush my hair, although I haven't today. But I have to kind of, you know, make myself moderately presentable and try to talk about my work in a coherent way. But I think the kind of much more nebulous way and kind of, I think letting things unfold in a much more uncertain way is much more comfortable to me. And it's even something, I think, that's reflected in the prose. You know, I write first person, but it's very rarely a kind of first person where the reader is being told to look here or told to look there. You know, I hope it's a much kind of softer first person where you're just taken inside the thought process of the character. So something that I always think of when I'm trying to explain the quality that I'm trying to achieve in my first person prose is that the character never finds a perfect metaphor on the first try. She's almost always, you know, she'll try it once and then she'll articulate it a second time. Then not the third time. Maybe she'll reach a little bit closer towards articulating it the way she wants to. And that's in part because it feels to me so much the way my own mind works and certainly the way the minds of a lot of people around me work. And one of the kind of useful lies of first person is that the narrator reaches a perfect expression on the first try. But very few people are equipped with that kind of linguistic facility. So I'm almost always interested in the opposite, which is lack of facility.
- [16:48]
Host 1
So I want to switch gears completely because we have limited time. But one of the scenes that has stuck with me the most is the bit about the actor with dementia and the rumination on if the work has value, if there was no intent behind the performance, which I think is equally applicable to books. And I heard that this is based on a true anecdote, and I'm curious if that's in the public domain and if that's something you can share.
- [17:19]
Katie Kitamura
It is based on a true anecdote. I think it's. It's not in the public domain.
- [17:24]
Host 1
No pressure to share it.
- [17:26]
Katie Kitamura
It's not. And I swapped the gender as well. But, you know, the result is that everybody thinks it's Bruce Willis, but it's not Bruce Willis. But the person is, to me, quite an iconic actor. I changed the gender from FEMA to male, and now everybody thinks it's Bruce Willis, but it's not Bruce Willis. I wasn't even aware when I wrote the book that Bruce Willis has dementia. And I'm casting no theories on how he's achieving his performances. But there was a particular film, and it was. You know, I saw the film. I thought it was completely extraordinary. I was told this story from the director, in fact, and when I looked at the performance again, I could see it, and it was really startling. But it made me think a lot about what is the importance of intention in a performance, but also in writing in general. And I think it's. That it's not actually that important. I think the effect it creates often floats free of what the author meant for it to do. And so that's kind of why that story is there. Because, as you said, this is a book that's very open to interpretation. And I kind of wanted to put. Maybe only subliminally, but put the message out that what I want it to be is almost secondary. What really matters is how people have experienced it.
- [18:45]
Host 1
I was saying to Olivia yesterday, it really made me think, because I'd heard an author talk about on a podcast, that she didn't know what her books were about, and she waited for her readers to tell her what they were about. And I was kind of irrationally angry at that. And I couldn't quite articulate why, but it felt maybe like there was some type of laziness or some type of lack of intent behind it. And reading this anecdote, I totally was able to connect that dot of why it made me upset. But it also made me reconsider, through this anecdote, if it matters.
- [19:15]
Katie Kitamura
Yeah.
- [19:16]
Host 1
If it still has the same net effect on the reader.
- [19:19]
Katie Kitamura
I mean, I think what can be frustrating is if you feel like there isn't any intention at all. But at the same time, I think writers are sometimes wrong about their own books. I mean, I think sometimes I've thought that I've written books with the intention of doing X. And then you have this wonderful experience of having readers respond to it, and you're like, what I intended is not what the reader. That's not the book that they read. And that's really fascinating. And it's part of the process, I think, of kind of sending a book out and letting it kind of have its own. And I think that's also the dream of every writer. I think you want to write something that you hope in some way. I don't want to say surpasses you or exceeds you, but that somehow moves away is beyond what you're able to control. I think if you were able to control every single effect within your book, it seems quite limiting. But the dream of writing is that in some small way you. You can escape yourself.
- [20:16]
Host 2
And to see it have all these different lives with all these different people is kind of special, I imagine it.
- [20:22]
Katie Kitamura
Is really, really special. And I feel really grateful. And I also, you know, I appreciate people kind of grappling with the book as well and trying to understand what it means. And then I think a lot of people then kind of step back a little bit from it. And somebody. So reader actually mailed me, like, a little anecdote. And it was about hearing a curator explaining a painting and, you know, saying that. The people on the tour kept saying, what is the meaning of this painting? And the curator said, you feeling is a meaning? And I. I love that because it's really true. It's in the response of the reader or the viewer that the meaning of a work is really made, not however much I might try to control it. And I mean, with this book, it, you know, there was ironically, quite a lot of control that had to be exerted in order to make the two sides kind of operate or to have tension in it so that people would hopefully, hopefully read through to the end. I had to exert quite a lot of control on the sentences and the scenes. But at the same time, I think ultimately what I really wanted to do was just kind of hope that people would trust to whatever feeling they might have while they were reading it.
- [21:28]
Host 2
One feeling I kept having while reading and something I kept thinking about was actually social media while I was reading. This idea of performing for your peers or strangers and their interpretation of what they see and the ways that you're sort of like constricting yourself into this image and what that means and what is true and all of that, and if the truth is even relevant. And so I was wondering if social media is something that was at all on your radar while you were thinking about all of this.
- [22:00]
Katie Kitamura
Yeah, for sure. I mean, social media is something that I think about quite a lot, I think, because I'm interested in performance and it's become so that we are all performing all the time. And I mean, my daughter, who's 8, but this was when she was very little, a babysitter showed her a reel, I think was what it was, or, you know, like a little video of like a unboxing of something. You know, you put like the object there and you put your hand behind it so the camera can focus on it. And she only saw it once and, you know, which is totally fine. But within one viewing, she had 100% picked up the entire language of it. So she was obviously doesn't have a phone or anything, but she was kind of going around her room and she was like picking up objects and saying, and now I'm going to just try it out a little bit here and you can take a look there. And I thought, oh, that's really fascinating. There's something about this language of self presentation. We can just pick it up almost instantly. I think it's the same for men and women, to be honest. Although obviously there are so many studies that show that social media is particularly impactful, I would say, on young women and mental health. But at the same time, I'm a little bit torn because I think on the one hand, social media has maybe exacerbated is a wrong word. It has made it more obvious and more prominent. But I think in so many ways we are all in acting roles anyway and have been doing so for a very, very long time. And the character in this book is definitely very much acting in reaction to what social expectation is. So like the book starts with, she's outside the restaurant. She's not sure if she should go in and see Xavier, the young man. Somebody opens the door for her and kind of like inclines his head as if to say, do you want to go in? And she goes in as a kind of act of acquiescence because that's what you're meant to do. So she's performing to a certain social expectation. I think everything about our behavior is really regulated by social expectation. I think social media has made that even more obvious in some way. But I guess the flip side to that is that we figure out who we are through performance in so many different ways. And so, you know, I just told that story about my daughter, but on another level, that is just a child trying to figure out who they are and what it means to be a person in the world. And in that particular instance was maybe a little bit destabilizing or unnerving to me. But in so many ways, it's no different from the role play of little children pretending to be a doctor or pretending to be a teacher or pretending to be, you know, working at a checkout in a group grocery. It's all role play. It's all figuring out who you are. I think the thing with social media is that if you're not careful, there's a record of you figuring out who you are over many years that's publicly available. That seems to me, you know, a peril. But performance is what allows us to exist in the world. It's what allows us to have relationships with people, and it's part of what sustains relationships as well.
- [24:56]
Host 1
It's so interesting to hear you, as the author, speak about performance, and it sounds like you're generally telling us that it's healthy and normal and there's a positive aspect to it. Whereas I feel like the ending of the book ends in quite a negative way with the character performing this monologue and understanding the hollowness of it, but not wanting to spoil that for her son. So it sounds like maybe you've come to a slightly different conclusion than your character. Is that fair?
- [25:26]
Katie Kitamura
That is a very astute question. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. You know, I mean, it's a little bleak either way you look at it. In the end, it's either it's her slipping out of all relationships and identities in contact, or it's her, as you say, enacting these parts, understanding that they're hollow and still carrying on. But to some extent, I think that's what a lot of life is. There are moments when you think this isn't real in some way, but then you. You carry on and you recommit to the choices that you've maybe made for better or worse, which I now realize I sound not nearly as upbeat as I sounded about 120 seconds ago.
- [26:15]
Host 2
Well, that's life. You know, multiple things can be true in their own way.
- [26:18]
Katie Kitamura
That's true. That's true.
- [26:22]
Host 1
So as a final question for you, you already talked to us a little bit about teaching and how that impacts your writing, but I heard on another podcast that you specifically run workshop seminars. And so I imagine that's just a lot of voices in your head at once, other than your own writing. And I. I'm wondering if you are able to write while you teach, or if it's something that has to happen totally separately, or if there's maybe some kind of positive effect of having all of these voices in your head that aren't your own.
- [26:56]
Katie Kitamura
I mean, it's depends on where I am in a book. I think if I'm in the middle of a book, as you know, you can just kind of tap into the world whenever you need to. It's kind of very much there. If I'm still building the world of a book, it's a lot harder. But I have learned so much from teaching. Workshop in particular. I suppose one thing is that I see mistakes that people are making, and some of those are mistakes that I make as well. Although I hesitate to characterize anything as a mistake because. Because that sounds too absolute. But I see the places where people are maybe making choices that aren't leading to exactly what they want to achieve in their writing. And often I will see, oh, I do that as well. And so one thing I will definitely say is that teaching has made me a much better editor of my own work. I can just look at my work and see the things that I'm doing that are not useful to what I'm trying to achieve. But the thing that's really moving and inspirational to me is how vulnerable the writers are willing to be in a workshop. They're coming in with work that they've maybe finished 24 hours earlier, and they are sharing it with a room of 12 people. And, you know, there are a lot of voices in the room in the sense that there's a lot of different pieces of fiction that you will read, but there's a lot of voices in the room in the sense that these writers are getting 12 people telling them what they think about their work, which is incredibly intimate and incredibly vulnerable, but they still do it. And I really, as somebody who never shares my work until it's totally done, I really admire. And it's changed my writing practice a little bit. You know, I have started sharing drafts much earlier with my editors. I've started trying to take input and direction. And I think it's what allowed me to think of books as a much more open system rather than a kind of closed system, that you're controlling every little thing. I've really seen how they're made in dialogue, so that's been great. And I've had amazing, truly incredible writers come through my workshop, which is a huge, huge honor. I mean, Raven Leilani was in my workshop. She workshops sections of Luster. Rob Franklin, who has a wonderful novel called Great Black Hope, which is out in June, was workshopping that in my class. And, you know, you really are with your peers. I'm ostensibly the teacher, but I know no more than anybody else in the room. So it's really nice to be with other writers. And we're just trying to figure out what everybody's trying to do and what we can do to help each other get there. Except I never share my work. I haven't been that inspired.
- [29:40]
Host 1
Well, we realize that you're not sharing your work, but you have been very generous today and sharing your perspective on this book and sharing some insights into the process behind it, which we are so grateful for. And this has been such a. A pleasure talking to you about this.
- [29:53]
Katie Kitamura
Likewise. This has really been a joy. Thank you both so much.
- [29:57]
Host 1
Thank you.