Andrew Krivak on the Inheritance of Loss, Death as a Character, and Like the Appearance of Horses

Summary

Contemplify Podcast: Andrew Krivak on the Inheritance of Loss, Death as a Character, and Like the Appearance of Horses

Host: Paul Swanson
Guest: Andrew Krivak
Date: November 10, 2024

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Paul Swanson invites acclaimed novelist Andrew Krivak to discuss his latest work, Like the Appearance of Horses, the final book in a trilogy tracing a family lineage through war, loss, and the endurance of spirit. Their conversation winds through themes of gratitude, the multiplicity of hero’s journeys, the insistent presence of death, the inheritance of place and memory, and the transformative power of art, music, and story.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Nourishing Influence of Nature and Mountains

• Krivak’s deep attachment to mountains: Skiing in the White Mountains, and how nature has become more profound as he ages, contrasting with a youthful yearning for cities and activity.
  • “I feel like there's far more substance in that emptiness, that near infinitude, whatever you call it, that transcendence, and just the, you know, the reality of living in the cold, which I prefer now, far over the cities.” (03:13, Andrew Krivak)
• Nature as clarification: Both Swanson and Krivak note the “cleansing” effect of time in the mountains on priorities and daily life. (02:46-03:13)

2. The Clarity Brought by Time

• Focus on gratitude and acceptance:
  • “I really feel like I've increasingly found a way to live. To live in gratitude...maybe it's just as I get older. I turned 60 last August...I kind of look at my wife and I think, wow, so she loves me and it's really awesome to be loved.” (04:59, Andrew Krivak)
  • Recognizing “the old Greek agon” (the struggle): “There would be no story without struggle...I’m grateful for what I’ve been able to make of it.” (05:51, Andrew Krivak)

3. What Formed Andrew Krivak? The Personal Syllabus

• Foundational influences:
  • The Odyssey: The sound, the form, and the mythic structure of the Greek epic. “That sound and the form and content can come together and create a three dimensional literary tapestry.” (08:07, Andrew Krivak)
  • St. Augustine’s Confessions: Discovery “from the inside out”, the writing of autobiography as the making of self. (09:40)
  • A Byzantine icon of St. Andrew, painted by Bill McNichols.
• Bonus influences:
  • Cat Stevens’ Teaser and the Firecat, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and the importance of music for forging identity and sustaining the self in rural Pennsylvania.
  • “Music and art had a large part in that [becoming who I am].” (19:16, Andrew Krivak)

4. The Role of Vinyl, Music, and Nostalgia

• Albums as formative experience: The special, lifelong grip of music discovered during adolescence.
• Nostalgia as homecoming:
  • “That notion of nostos, from the Greek, it just...Nostalgia just means a homecoming, right? That's Homer, that's Odysseus. It's all about the nostos. He just wants to get home.” (18:23, Andrew Krivak)
  • Listening to old records as both remembrance and affirmation of who one has become.
• Multigenerational music connection: Krivak’s daughter, age 13, loves Pink Floyd, and the podcast touches on how music bonds generations. (19:37-19:52)

5. About Like the Appearance of Horses: Structure, Title, and Thematic Depth

• On the title and biblical roots:
  • Drawn from Joel 2:4, “Their appearance is like the appearance of horses...and like war horses, so they run.”
• Recurring motif of war:
  • “War is a constant appearing presence on the arc of the narrative...I've been wondering about that with respect to, again, this notion of the Greek agon, the struggle. War is the macrocosm of our own internal struggles.” (22:08, Andrew Krivak)
  • Family history informs fiction; each generation faces their own version of conflict or homecoming.
• Nonlinear storytelling:
  • Intentionally asynchronous narrative to reflect the way stories and legacies cross and intertwine over generations.
  • “Forget about the time when he or she appears. What needs to be known, this point in the story...Everything just changed when I started to move it around like that.” (27:11, Andrew Krivak)
• The hero’s journey for those who leave—and those who stay:
  • “There is this hero's journey that feels connected...but also the ways that other characters who don't go to war, but are on their own heroic journey...What does it mean to be the hero who stays at home, who tends to the land, who tends to the community?” (29:16, Paul Swanson)
  • Krivak highlights the generational resilience and complexity within these journeys, especially the roles of those enduring the costs of war from home (31:00+).

6. Witness, Lineage, and The Weight of Home

• Generational narrative:
  • The importance of bearing witness to tragedy and resilience, particularly through female characters like Hannah.
  • “I think the idea of bearing witness...is my grandmother, insofar as she bore witness to this generation by just telling a story...that’s what I carry around with me and carry along from her.” (37:11, Andrew Krivak)
  • Real stories from Krivak’s own family, such as the story of Frances Posto, enrich the novel’s tapestry.
• Embodying and mythologizing heritage:
  • Paul finds deep meaning in returning to ancestral lands—a theme echoed in Krivak’s writing and his own visits to ancestral villages.
  • “The connection to land was always another relationship that was at the forefront, but never necessarily having to be spoken about because each character was embracing it in their own way.” (44:28, Paul Swanson)
  • The land, the road, and one’s place in both—embodied particularly in the character of Bzhet/Bex. (46:12+, Andrew Krivak)

7. Death as a Character and the Inheritance of Loss

• Omnipresence of death:
  • “It's almost like death is a character...When war is so much of the background...there's a way in which death is always up front...almost like memento mori without having to say anything.” (49:39, Paul Swanson)
• Personal connection:
  • Krivak began truly writing after his father’s death:
    • “It wasn’t until I could—the man was there and then he was not...That’s when I started to write, when I understood what writing was and what I would write about.” (51:35, Andrew Krivak)
  • Family, faith, and the Catholic imagination shape his perspective: “The church is not letting us be anxious about death...It's not the end, even if it is the end. Just a good long nap, right?” (57:36-61:07, Andrew Krivak)
  • The sense that we are “the inheritors of loss” lingers throughout his novels. (61:55, Andrew Krivak)

8. Honoring Ancestry and the Interwoven Myths of Family

• Intergenerational legacy and myth:
  • Paul remarks on the mythologizing of elders, noting that reading back through the novels allows for nuanced perspectives—both mythic and foibled—of ancestral figures. (54:11+)
  • Krivak notes the Catholic tradition’s comforts regarding death, continuity, and becoming part of the greater cosmos. (57:36+)

9. Looking Ahead: What’s Next for Andrew Krivak?

• Mule Boy (forthcoming novel):
  • Based on the death of Krivak’s paternal grandfather in the Pennsylvania mines.
  • “It's called Mule Boy...It's about a young boy. He's a mule boy in the mines. It's 1929...There's a cave in—a small cave in...The two miners and two buddies and the mule boy are caught in this room. And they, those four die and the mule boy gets out. And then he has to carry their stories...in his own sense of, here I am, and there they are, they're sealed in there for all eternity and he has to live his life.” (63:14, Andrew Krivak)
  • Examines generational trauma, survivor's guilt, and the need to carry/lift stories forward.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• The multiplicity of influence
  • “It's moments where the mind and the heart open for me, whether it's a book or painting or music.” (13:00, Andrew Krivak)
• On nostalgia and homecoming:
  • “Nostalgia just means a homecoming, right? That's Homer, that's Odysseus. It's all about the nostos. He just wants to get home.” (18:23, Andrew Krivak)
• On the mythic endurance of families:
  • “We are the inheritors of loss because we feel that—they don’t. It’s the last thing you will leave when you go is the people who love you will miss you. But you’re lost, you’re lost.” (61:55, Andrew Krivak)
• On the narrative arc and death:
  • “I didn’t understand the beginning, middle, end of narrative as a writer until my father passed away...That’s when I really started to write.” (51:35, Andrew Krivak)
• On ‘bearing witness’ through stories:
  • “My grandmother, insofar as she bore witness to this generation by just telling a story...that’s what I carry around with me and carry along from her.” (37:11, Andrew Krivak)
• On what’s next:
  • “Mule Boy...I'm just going through edits, changing things around a bit...I wanted to examine that [carrying the stories of the lost]...It really took me to another place.” (63:14, Andrew Krivak)
• Original drink pairing:
  • “I would have a glass of Sagrantino and toast the old world.” (69:51, Andrew Krivak)
• Closing blessing:
  • “Thank you for listening to this slow-cooked episode of Contemplify. May its delights spark wonder, and may any sour patches be sweetened by their folly.” (69:51, Paul Swanson)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:13 – Krivak on outgrowing the city and finding substance in nature
• 04:59 – What has become clearer: Gratitude & acceptance
• 07:48 – The three (or five) formative influences on Krivak
• 15:39 – Memories and meaning of vinyl and music in adolescence
• 21:59 – Title and narrative intentions behind Like the Appearance of Horses
• 31:00 – Discussion on the hero’s journey in war and at home
• 37:11 – The role of women as witness-bearers across generations
• 49:39 – The presence of death and “memento mori” in the novels
• 61:55 – The inheritance of loss, family myth, and honoring ancestors
• 63:14 – Introducing Mule Boy and what’s coming next
• 69:51 – Wine pairing and closing blessings

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Tone and Language

Krivak and Swanson maintain a warm, contemplative, and intellectually generous tone throughout. Their language is richly evocative, speculative, and invests everyday and ancestral experience with mythic resonance.

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Summary Takeaways

• Like the Appearance of Horses is a profound meditation on inheritance, the messiness of family, the complexity and necessity of gratitude, the enduring presence of death, and the transformative power of art and story in contending with a world marked by struggle, war, and loss.
• Krivak’s stories draw heavily from his own family’s history and are animated by the legacies of war, the wisdom of strong women, and the continuity of landscape and labor.
• The episode is itself a slow-cooked, reflective journey—modeling both the importance of the examined life and the kindness of anchoring ourselves in deep story, gratitude, and the work we are given to do.

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For more on Andrew Krivak: andrewkrivak.com
Show notes and resources: contemplify.com

Transcript

[Paul Swanson]

Welcome to Contemplify where we seek to kindle the examined life for contemplatives in the world. I'm your host, Paul Swanson. Today I am in conversation with Andrew Krivock. You might remember Andrew from my last conversation with him about his novel the Bear. In addition to the Bear, Andrew has written a trio of books on a family lineage, beginning with the Sojourn, a National Book Award finalist, and then on to the Signal Flame. And now, like the Appearance of Horses, it is this latest book, like the Appearance of Horses, that we hone in on today. In our conversation, we talk about the profuse and evocative layers in Andrew's writing, the multiplicity of pasts that might be called the hero or the heroine's journey, death as a character, and so much more. As always, you can visit contemplified.com for the show notes on this episode and learn more about Andrew over at andrewkrivach.com that's a N-R-E W K R-I V A K.com now join me in raising a glass to my guest today, Andrew Krivock. A snowshoe trip with some friends, and she said that it was perfect because they do the 10th Mountain Huts and they were in the backcountry and then while they were there, they got a foot of snow, so fresh snow to snowshoe and ski in. While you're already in the mountains, you don't have to work to get up there. That's a guest.

[Andrew Krivock]

That's the best. Yeah, we were in the White Mountains, which is really of people who know my work, who know the bear will know just how much I do love the White Mountains. So we were up there the first half of the week at a place called Bretton woods, which is really family oriented, but it's, you know, you come around through the Notch and Mount Washington is there and the Presidential Range, and it's just like you somehow slipped from New Hampshire into Switzerland. This is lovely. And the conditions were good. There was Monday morning. They had groomed the slopes all night, and then it was 4 to 5 inches of this really light, fluffy powder because it was one degree. And it was just. It just makes you a better skier than you are, you know, or at least for me. But it's just. Yeah.

[Paul Swanson]

So when the conditions are right, I love the way it elevates the skill that is there. Or maybe slightly enhanced by it.

[Andrew Krivock]

Exactly. Yeah. So that's where I am today.

[Paul Swanson]

Great. It's great to have you fresh off the slopes I always think of anytime that I'm out in mountains like that, there's a cleansing that happens when I return to the daily tasks of whether it's connecting across computer screens or dealing with the infinite level of email that comes inbound. The mountains helped me re. Clarify what matters most.

[Andrew Krivock]

True. I was thinking about this too in the ride back. My wife and I had separate cars because she had to get on a flight to go to New York. Actually, I had to go to Cleveland. And I was thinking about the fact that when I was a younger man, I spent a lot of time outdoors. But there was a way in which I felt as though the mountains and nature were too. There wasn't enough going on that I had to get into a city. And I've lived in a lot of cities for a long time. And there was a restlessness in me to get to the cities, to get to where there was something happening. And now it's just the opposite. I go up to the mountains and I feel like there's far more substance in that emptiness, that near infinitude, whatever you call it, that transcendence, and just the, you know, the reality of living in the cold, which I am, I prefer now, far over the cities. So one day. One day I'll get back there and finish it up in the woods.

[Paul Swanson]

Yeah, that resonates with me. It's fun to think back. I feel like I'd only talked to you maybe two weeks ago about the bear, but it's been a pandemic in a couple years since then. I think we last spoke in the middle of the pandemic.

[Andrew Krivock]

That's right.

[Paul Swanson]

And there's this question that my wife loves to ask when you haven't seen someone in a while. And so I'm going to ask you, it's been a few years now. What has become clearer for you since the last time we spoke? Could be at the most mundane level or the most existential level, but has anything become clearer since winter of 2021?

[Andrew Krivock]

Well, that's a great question. I think gratitude. You know, I really feel like I've increasingly found a way to live. To live in gratitude. And that just doesn't come from reading the Stoics. This one does. It's more. And maybe it's just as I get older. I turned 60 last August, so there was an element to that, too, of just feeling like, okay, this is. This is what I'm doing, and this is my life, my children. I just. I'm amazed at just how interesting and interested they are and My wife is fantastic, and I kind of look her and I think, wow, so she loves me and it's really awesome to be loved. So that kind of gratitude, I think that's where I am a little bit more at peace with the ways in which we. Well, I shouldn't say struggle. I mean, the old Greek agon is always there, right? We're caught in the middle of it. There would be no story without struggle. But I just think I've, as I've gotten older, gotten a little wiser insofar as I recognize that this is what's been given to me. And so I'm grateful for what I've been able to make of it. Thank you for that.

[Paul Swanson]

I live in deep appreciation of your response, of being grateful for what you've been given. I think I'm particularly just. Even this last week, I'm striving to live more in that space of gratitude to what's been given to me and what's been given to me to be responsible for and to nourish and encourage. I feel that certainly in a lot of aspects of my life, but I'm always. I feel very, very much in that space of. Of needing to lean even deeper into that. A question I want to ask, which has become one of my favorites, which I didn't ask you last time. I think we went in other directions, but knowing that some folks will already know who you are. But for those that don't, here's a question just to kind of get a sense of how you are and what's formed you. If someone were going to teach a class on the formation of Andrew Krivock, what would be three mandatory works that could be books, pieces of art, places? What would be three mandatory works that formed you that would definitely be on that syllabus?

[Andrew Krivock]

Wow, that's a tough one. It's tough because I have my favorites. Right. But then if I were to look objectively at this point, it's not always the favorites that form us. Right. That's what we would want to like. Oh, read this. Read this. Right? Yeah. Okay. All right. I'm going to try to give it a go here, Paul. I think first and foremost, it's just got to be the Odyssey. And I'm lucky for that one because it is a favorite of mine. But it was also a place where, because I studied Greek as an undergraduate at St. John's College in Annapolis with a nod to, and also spent a year in Santa Fe up the road from you, I read that book over and over. Again. And I just love the notion of the polytrope on the man of twists and turns. Hearing the sound of the Greek poetry, it's not contemporary poetry or anything, but the fact that you can. That sound and the form and content can come together and create a three dimensional literary tapestry. That's the first place I encountered that for sure. I will say the Odyssey, it's got to be on that list. And you know, Odysseus is not. He's kind of a character that is likable and dislikeable. I mean, he's a bit of a. It's definitely a rogue, but you know, come on, it's the ancients, right? I always resist the psychological reading of Odysseus. You know, that's not what it's about. I really do think it's about the music of the Greek. So that would be on the syllabus too. I always, I want to say as well, St. Augustine's Confessions. And I, I would say that for the sake of the man wanting to know who or what this God thing is, this God person is, but wanting to know it from the inside out. That's where the discovery is. The discovery comes from the inside. And I think I didn't understand that about, about that spiritual world, that spiritual quest, until I read Augustine and saw that, you know, and there's a. I remember this theologian in Cambridge in the uk, Dennis Turner, I think he's passed away now, but he has a book about the darkness of God and he has a whole chapter on Augustine and the way in which the autobiography. For Augustine, that process of making the self is precisely the process that brought him to God, that write the actual writing of the text. I had probably had inklings of that as I was reading Augustine as a younger man. But I was reading Dennis Turner at a time when I was trying to write my own first person autobiography. And that really shaped me a great deal. And you know what, there's a lot of other books I could throw in there. I mean, I would love to throw in Galway Canal's Collected Poems. And recently I would love to throw in John Fossa's Septology. He won the Nobel Prize this past year. That book is incantatory. I know people who've thrown it across a room when they try to read it. I could not get enough of Fossa. I lived in a world of John Fossa. I just wake up in the morning and run downstairs, grab a tea and just start reading Scientology like it was a need. So there's that too. And the third you know what? You said artwork. Right. I'm just gonna. Since we're talking about the autobiography, I'm going to put in there a good old Byzantine style icon of St. Andrew the first called. You know, he's an old man. He's got the parted beard. He lives in twos. He knows what his death will be. It'll be a terrible one. And he just. And he holds up the word. He's the first called and he's an old man. It's just like this is what it's all been about for the entire stretch of the journey. And so something about that icon, Bill McNichols, who's an iconographer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I have his original St. Andrew.

[Paul Swanson]

Oh, no kidding.

[Andrew Krivock]

Yeah. That would be part of the syllabus for sure. I have the McNichols St. Andrew.

[Paul Swanson]

Yeah. You got the OG version.

[Andrew Krivock]

That's right.

[Paul Swanson]

What a collection. What a collection.

[Andrew Krivock]

Yes. So that's a great. I mean, wow. It's a shame you have to drop it down to three already. I threw five in there. Right. So I cheated.

[Paul Swanson]

Well, that's what one should do. You're given three, you gotta take at least five. And then, like I always say, it'd probably change tomorrow, too. Right. Like, a new book would emerge as.

[Andrew Krivock]

A totally change, as another pivot book. Right. I didn't put any albums on there either. Like, I know, honestly. And this is gonna. I would say you'd have to listen to Cat Stevens, Teaser, and Tifa the Tiller man, and it's like, Cat Stevens, come on. But that album, I remember when my sister brought it home and I just started listening to it and I thought, what is this? This is amazing. This guy. There's so much soul in there coming out of that guitar. So anyway, those are the kind of things. I think it's moments where the mind and the heart open for me, whether it's a book or painting or music. I mean, music's been big for me for a long time still. I was just listening to who's Next on Vinyl before I called in with you, just because I love to listen to Keith Moon drumming and Nicky Hopkins on piano in that album. It's just the best.

[Paul Swanson]

That's fantastic. How big is your vinyl collection? Are you a real audiophile or do you have the albums that you like to listen to, start to finish, are part of that collection?

[Andrew Krivock]

My vinyl collection is very young now because it was vast when I was younger. And then, of course, you moved to CDs, and then the itunes and everything. But I got. After years of trying to tell my kids what it was like to listen to vinyl when you're growing up. And they're asking me so, well, what's your favorite albums? Blah, blah, blah. Turns out they bought me a turntable and speakers for my birthday. And then along with them comes these collections of albums know, like who's Next and Tifa, the Tiller man and Traffic Low, Spark of High Heel Boys and Partially Sage Rosemary, In Time. All these songs that my brothers. These albums that my brothers had and that we put on our stereo growing up. And. And I just. I sit there and it's 1970 again, and I don't know, those are the moments as a boy. Like my younger brother and I used to just sit in our rooms. The crushing boredom of rural Pennsylvania was assuaged only by music only. And to me, that was the intellectual music and books, Honestly, stories, those are the only ways. They were the only way I was going to get out. So my vinyl collection currently is small.

[Paul Swanson]

Wow, that sounds fantastic. What you do have, and I'm such.

[Andrew Krivock]

A.

[Paul Swanson]

Believer, especially when it comes to music for me is there's albums that are complete from start to finish for me, where I want to hear them all the way through over and over and over again. And I was just telling my wife, I had a turntable when I was in high school and I had a few records, but it was before they were coming back in. So, yeah, it was somewhat difficult for me in suburban Minnesota to track down any albums I wanted to listen to, so I ended up getting rid of it. And now when even some of the younger artists that I really appreciate are putting things back on vinyl, I keep thinking, man, it would be great to have that album on vinyl and listen to it. And again, there's the nostalgia aspect of it, which I don't think takes away from it for me, but just the personality of a physical piece of music that I have to put down and play. There's something very grounded about that or rooted in the touch of music that I, for myself also, as a boy, would just listen to music over and over and over again and just let it kind of like move within my muscles and my bones and become a part of me. Like, I often would say, like, Bob Dylan saved me a couple times because of the way that he would turn a phrase. And I would be like, I get that, but I also don't fully realize that. And I would learn through these lyrics to see life at the. The different magnitudes and the different textures that I Couldn't quite see in the more popular music that was being thrown at me at that age. So it was a big window into depth for me. A big window into myth and poets.

[Andrew Krivock]

Absolutely. And in fact, I think, to go back to your question about what I've learned, having a turntable in this final has in a way brought this notion of gratitude around to me in a kind of double sense. Whereas I've. I've been able to come to peace with that. That soul crushing board of rural Pennsylvania because I have these albums and, you know, it's like when I was listening to those, I didn't know who I would be. And I was terrified that I would be something that, you know, I didn't want to be. That I would be caught or I wouldn't fully realize the desire to. To speak about Dylan. Desire and blood on the tracks too. What? Just listening to those albums, wow, those. That's like reading a. Those are like reading novels, you know?

[Paul Swanson]

Yes.

[Andrew Krivock]

And then I put them on now. And this notion of nostalgia. I think you're so right. I am not a man who likes nostalgia or anything like that, but that notion of nostos, from the Greek, it just. Nostalgia just means a homecoming, right? That's Homer, that's. That's Odysseus. It's all about the nostos. He just wants to get home. And so I was listening to Dark side of the Moon, as one does on album. You gotta listen to that album all the way through, right? Yeah, that's. That's the perfect album. And I thought, you know, I remember listening to this in my bedroom with my brother and just thinking, having that sense of what will I become and now listening to it, thinking I am who I am and I'm grateful for who I've become. And music and art had a large part in that.

[Paul Swanson]

Mm, that's fantastic. The way that music forms us and the way that art shapes us and the art may not change, you know, like they haven't added any more songs. The Dark side of the Moon. But the way that it continues to be, this lifelong friendship, I just. I'm so smitten by that. Yeah.

[Andrew Krivock]

Yeah. My daughter loves that album too, actually.

[Paul Swanson]

Oh, does she really?

[Andrew Krivock]

Well, she does. Echoes from Oomaguma, that was her all time favorite song. But she loves Pink Floyd because she gets that sweep. She's only 13, so. That's cool.

[Paul Swanson]

That's very cool. That's very cool. I've heard it said that the music that reaches us in those teen years tends to have a really Lasting impact on us versus music that we discover later in life that doesn't. That whatever happens, as our brain is growing in that period, the way it absorbs music makes a deeper mark than music we maybe find later that we can't get. We never get over the music of our teenage years. And in a very positive sense, I think it can really be a nourishing factor.

[Andrew Krivock]

Interesting. Yeah, I agree with that.

[Paul Swanson]

Well, speaking of homecoming, I think I'd love to talk about your book. Like the Appearance of Horses. And for everyone listening, I cannot recommend. If you're looking for a novel to read, this is the one. As I was telling Andrew before we hit record, there's so many layers to this. And each layer peeled back and touched my own. My own sense of the. These almost eternal themes in stories and the hardship of being human, the tragic sense of life that as they're woven and stitched together in these characters and in their own journeys, although different times and different experiences, they felt so real and so of a time and a place that the different seasons of the story is almost like time machines where I'm being sent to these different portals to meet with these characters. And the significance of the title, like the Appearance of Horses, is a marvelous line from the Book of Joel. I wonder if you could share, what does that title communicate for you of this story? Yeah, well.

[Andrew Krivock]

The epigraph, for those who haven't read it, is from Joel, chapter two, verse four. And it says their appearance is like the appearance of horses and like war horses. So they run. One of the things I was doing after I talked to you, Paul, during COVID was I read through all of Robert Alter's new translation of Hebrew scripture, all three volumes. Wow. Each one about, you know, 700 pages. The footnotes are worth the price of admission, but. So this is the third in a trilogy. Each book, Stand Alone Stands Alone. But they are. They do have characters that I go back to in the family. So this is the sweep from 1933 to 2003 of about 70 years. And this is the war is a constant appearing presence on the arc of the narrative. More than just appearing, war is a constant narrative of the narrative. And I think we have to accept that that's been the case for the 20th century in America. My grandfather's fought in World War I. My father fought in World War II. My brother was on the tail end of Vietnam, was in the Coast Guard. So he didn't. Wasn't in country. He did have a low draft number, and he was on his way for sure. And then I remember some guys when I was an undergraduate who were in Officer Candidate School, who were in the first Gulf War. And it's just. I mean, I suppose every century has this narrative to it. And so I've been wondering about that with respect to, again, this notion of the Greek agon, the struggle. War is the macrocosm of our own internal struggles, if you will. I've not served. I will say, though, that being a Jesuit for eight years, it wasn't a war, that's for sure. But a man asked me during a reading for the Sojourn, which was about World War I, which is, by and large a lot of research for me. And then going back over the stories my grandmother used to tell us about her husband in World War I. And he stood up in front row and he said, I was a Ranger in Vietnam, and I just want to know how you got it right. And I thought, oh, man, here we go. I said, well, look, the truth is, he wants to know if I'd served in the military. And I said, I have not served in any branch of the service, so I don't know what that is to serve. What I do know, though, is what it is like to be a man in formation. And then the rest is finding those common themes and making sure you get it right. So I wanted to try to understand my grandfathers. I wanted to understand my father. I wanted to understand the fathers of friends of mine who were in Vietnam who came back lieutenants and the Marines and friends my brother had who didn't come back. And then wondering about that place where I knew these guys who were deciding to go to officer candidate school. And I was thinking, no, I think I want to go to the Jesuits. Try that. So, okay, back to the title, then. Like war horses, so they run. Joel is describing to the Israelites a plague of locusts. And it's compounded in its vision because, like all the prophets, they're trying to show the Israelites what their infidelity, for lack of a better word, is. They're breaking the covenant with God will result in. And they turn to analogy, and they turn to all these descriptions of what. What it's like to be, what the consequences are. And so this idea of the appearance of locusts being like an appearance of horses, it seemed to me that there's. I wanted to write about the ways in which not just people, but stories come and go in the novel, and that each character is thinking about the way in which he or she is part of a story now. But it has a larger past and it will have an increasingly larger future, of course. And so that's why it's asynchronous, the novel. As you know, the timelines jump around. And I did that on purpose after I had written the novel in a straightforward arc, following the timeline, and it just wasn't right. And I was thinking, okay, which character needs to come on stage now? Forget about the time when he or she appears. What needs to be known, this point in the story. And it just. Everything just changed when I started to move it around like that. So I think that's what I was trying to. When I did that, I realized it had to be the title. I'll tell you that. Initially there was a draft that was Samuel Samuel, because the book has a lot to do with Samuel Connor, his homecoming, 1973 and operation homecoming. But it's not just about Sam Connor. So that wasn't working. The idea of a prophet telling a people that they have to recognize there is a past and there will be a future and their place in it is still important every step of the way, doing their part to be faithful.

[Paul Swanson]

That's so striking because the title itself is such a vivid image to me. And then digging into where that was coming from in the context of that. And just the ways in which, you know, my image of war horses and my image of locusts, and to have them, I kept just appearing them. Having them appear to me as if coming over a hill and what that would feel like.

[Andrew Krivock]

Absolutely.

[Paul Swanson]

To think about that with it within these characters. The mythic quality of that, I think, really set me up well. For, like you said, this is the third book in a trilogy, but they all stand alone. And this is the first book in this trilogy that I've read. But I cannot wait to go back and read the first two because I fell in love with characters who I discovered there was books about them. And so I need to get to know them in that way, which to me is such an unlikely gift to be able to read a book and then find, oh, there's more stories about Joseph and being excited to tip into that. And there's one thing I was particularly struck by is as you were talking about the Odyssey earlier, there is this hero's journey that is. That feels connected to, like, the appearance of horses and I think just connected to war in general. The leaving, the call to adventure, and I use that word loosely about what we might mean by adventure and also the return. But also within that, I think about the ways that other characters who don't go to war, but are on their own heroic journey. Like, what does it mean to be the hero who stays at home, who tends to the land, who tends to the community, or maybe is secretly offering support in ways that are massive but hidden from everyone else? And there's no congratulations for the work that one is doing in secret. And so I was really right. Taken by the variances of which the hero's journey is being played out by all these characters, but not in just the standard, I'm off to war, gonna go do my duty and then come back. The different. I mean, I feel like I'm just kind of mumbling about it all now, but I think there was an incision at each turn where I could feel like, oh, I don't have this fully right. Because their journey is a little bit different here. What can you tell me about your intention to play with the multiple faces of embodying a variety of heroes journeys? If you think that is true.

[Andrew Krivock]

It'S definitely true. And I'll tell you, I'm excited for you to get to the other two because the first novel, the Sojourn, is about Joseph Vinich's time as a young man in the First World War. He's born in America, but goes back to the old country because of the death of his mother. So that sojourn, that brief period of rest before another journey begins, is such an unlikely one for a man who's raised in the mountains and is sent off to World War I as a sharpshooter. And like, that's that I wanted that. There's not exactly an irony, but a sort of a way in which a sojourn is really inflated in that sense. Like, wow, there's a lot going on here for a brief period of rest. And it's told in a more performative way on the night of March 31, 1972. And I, @ first he was telling his grandsons Bohemir Connor and Sam Connor, and then I realized that if Sam was off to Vietnam, he would be gone then. And so then it's just. He's just speaking to Bohemir Khan or the older brother. And then I just thought, well, why does anyone have to be present? Why can't he just speak it? The readers are the ones sitting around the stove listening to Joseph Vinich tell the story of his coming of age. But I still had this notion of, well, you're exactly right, Paul, what's going on at home as well as at the war. And so the signal flame, which could and should have a second title called as We Wait from the Embolism of the Mass, where the priest says, as We Wait in joyful hope for the Coming, is about Bohemir Khanna, the older son who was never of an age to be in one of those 20th century wars. Not Korea, too young for that, goes off to college, too old for Vietnam. And he's also running the family business. So he's the non prodigal to Samuel Connor's prodigal. Samuel is the prodigal son. That's. You get the title in, like the Appearance of Horses, of. From a Long Way Off. That's where that comes from in the Gospel of Luke. Anyway, the Signal Flame is my Pennsylvania novel, and it's all about. It just tracks through 1972 into 19, starts in April of 1972. You find out why Joseph Vinich was speaking, the sojourn, and then it finishes up on Christmas Eve of 1972. So that's all about staying home. It's a novel about domesticity. And war is a story told. It's something that someone else is doing. Sam Connor, there's news, they know he's missing. An action in Vietnam, Quang Tri. And. And then all that stuff, as you see, shakes out and like the Appearance of Horses. So many elements of the stories, or I should say the chapters that are like the Appearance of Horses came to me peripherally while I was writing the Signal Flame. And I had to not push them aside so much as just wait. I had to wait. All right, where are these going to go? What's going to happen here? I knew there was a bigger. A bigger palette, if you will. And so that's what became like the Appearance of Horses. All those. The reality of the narrative that had gone before during and would come with that period of April 1972 to December 1972, as a kind of colonel, if you will, for the story of the vintage Connor family. So I can't wait for you to get to the Signal Flame.

[Paul Swanson]

Yeah, yeah, I'm getting there. I'm getting there.

[Andrew Krivock]

Okay, cool.

[Paul Swanson]

These characters, they're so tangible and real that it's like a friend. You want to get to know them more. And something you were saying about the Signal Flame reminded me of kind of how I saw Hannah as this generational witness bearer to all the tragedies that she stays home, she sees what war costs her family. She pays the price in her own relationship. She sees what gets torn, what gets torn apart. And that all the tragedy that she experiences. She has such little voice in because it's all kind of been done unto her. And she responds and is an amazing cultivator. But there's so much that she has no autonomy over what happens. Yeah, I don't know that I've read a book that allowed. I mean, it sounds like the signal flame expands this as well, but where there's so much effort to put a spotlight on what goes the cost of war at home. The cost of having to bear that, whether across generations with partners or parents, and then also with sons and the family impact. But then they're trying to. I don't want to say keep a stiff upper lip, but trying to be courageous in the face of the reality that's before them. And I thought that Hannah really set that stage as this character who was their strength. But it's also. She's not leading the way in everything, but she's. She's bearing witness to it all. How important is that? To bear witness to. So that the wars didn't just become. About what happened over there, but the impact at home, too, to have someone tell that story.

[Andrew Krivock]

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, Hannah is surely as the matriarch Joseph Vinich raises her after her own mother dies, and then he raises her. Her children, her boys, essentially, after their father comes back from war. But shell of a man, I think, you know, Hannah is as much of. As an amalgam of the women I knew growing up. My grandmother, my mother, her aunts. I think the idea of bearing witness. For me, it is my grandmother, insofar as she bore witness to this generation by just telling a story, she just had to tell stories. And so I think that's just what I carry. Carry around with me and carry along from her. You know, the story about Frances Postal. That's true. That was my. My Aunt sue, who was a spinster.

[Paul Swanson]

No way.

[Andrew Krivock]

Sewed dresses. Yeah. And I didn't. I just. I knew my Aunt Sue. You know, she was not a very attractive woman. The she did have. She was kicked by mule as a girl, and her jaw was. Was funny, and she talked out of the side of her mouth. And she was really a gruff woman. She loved my mom. So whenever we'd visit, she always. She would always. There's a few times when she would smile and we just knew that she would go. She was the only one who would go back to the old country. My grandmother was like, there's nothing over there. For me, it was communism, the iron Curtain. You couldn't go to Czechoslovakia unless you had a reason to and she would just. She'd go and she'd come back. And her apartment was small, and it's often smelled of mothballs. And when I was a Jesuit, I got a chance to. I lived in Moscow for a bit, and I got a chance to. When I flew in through Prague, I went over to Slovakia and visited the village where my grandmother and my grandfather both grew up. So even the man who was my great grandfather, after whom I'm named, I saw his graveyard. Yes, Tombstone. In the graveyard. In the village graveyard. And my mother still had cousins over there, so I knew the way. And I took my parents before they passed away. I took them back to the old country, and it was just a fascinating visit. Anyway, in The Church of St. Joseph the Worker in the village of Itash, there's a little plaque in the back, the baptismal font that says in some. Loosely translated, but essentially thanking Susan Staphila for all of her efforts to keep the church going in the face of atheistic communism. Yeah, communistic atheism. She would bring the money and give it to the priest so that the church could keep going. She's bringing in this carpet bag, and it was just like. It's nuts. You think about, wow, any one of those officials at any place where you're checking passports, you're checking visas. She got a visa. I guess she got a visa from the priest somehow, you know, it was in a. She lived in Brookside, which is the old Slovak neighborhood in Wilkes Barre. And sure enough, and my mother and father and I are looking at this, and my mother's like, so that's what she was doing all these years. And so I just had to have that in there. Posto is the. Is messenger in Slovak. And originally, Francis Posto was a not very attractive woman, but I. And I just was like, no, I just has. This woman is just the. I mean, my Aunt sue could have been. Could have been very beautiful. And so I wanted. I wanted Frances Postle to be beautiful, to have a stateliness to her, to be tough. Like no woman who is not tough does what Susan Stafila did. And so that's Frances Postal in the novel. And that's another element. And that's also a way of linking the story, which is fictional, about Bzhet Khanna, the half Roma child who grows up and comes to America and finds Finnich the vine. So there had to be a way in which, narratologically, the boys needed to know who their father really was, not just a deserter. I got this idea, actually, from Charles Glass, he has a book called the Deserters. A lot of men during the Battle of the Bulge were separate from units. And some would find French units and fight for the Resistance for a while. It was not uncommon. And it was a group of psychiatrists who were. If they were convicted of desertion after the wars, a group of psychiatrists in Brooklyn and these guys were. Were imprisoned who figured out that they weren't deserters at all. They were just. They just moved to a different part of the war because that's how it works. Like war horses. So they run. Yeah, yeah. I needed that connection, the old country connection there. Yeah.

[Paul Swanson]

Well, there's a way in which I feel like the way each of these characters, stories weaves together, there's such a naturalness to it. And to hear these backstories, I'm having these little ahas of like, oh, how beautiful to have that connection to your own family. And then to hear these stories about the desertion, that's actually an expansion of who you are in war with and joining forces for the same cause. But from another angle, I think is metaphorically rich for how we approach life. You know, an individual vision might be executed in different organizations or different embodiments. That is being a part of something larger, which is part of what this story really landed for me is that expansion of one's lineage and time and place and how one can be seated in a heritage. And how do you say his name? You just said it before, but I always called him Bexit because I was just.

[Andrew Krivock]

Bte is the. Would be the Romany pronunciation. Be. They call him Be because. Yeah, precisely. That's what we.

[Paul Swanson]

We Americans with my American tongue. Yes.

[Andrew Krivock]

Yeah.

[Paul Swanson]

But, you know, there's this moment where like, there's a recognition of the road that he is on as being distinctly important to his heritage.

[Andrew Krivock]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Paul Swanson]

I was floored by that sense of connection because whenever I have that, the hair on the back of my neck go up because there is that sense of a connection when I'm back, being able to go back to my. My ancestors roots in Scandinavia, feeling it there, but then also even in whether it's my grandparents land in the states that they first tended to when they were here. And just knowing that there's blood and tears from my lineage here. And I was so touched by the way in this book that the connection to land was always another relationship that was at the forefront, but never necessarily having to be spoken about because each character was. Was embracing it in their own way. And there's one Thing. And this is gonna be a long winded way of saying this, but I know that a book has gotten inside of me when I'm thinking about it, when other things are happening. So listen to this great interview with Christian Wiman, the poet. He said that when we have an experience in nature in which we are not blending with nature, it's as if there is some sort of reciprocal scene. And he said that reciprocal scene is what he calls God. And I immediately thought of Bex in the woods. I thought about the reciprocal scene that it seemed like he was experiencing in those long walks and how that changed before and after the war. What do you think of that interpretation of Beck's relationship with nature, particularly with those woods as this reciprocal scene?

[Andrew Krivock]

Yeah, well, so Bek says being part Roma, you know, the road is. The road is life. The road is your entire existential journey. But he also came to find Vinich. And for vintage, the land is his journey. It's his identity, and it's what his father always. From the sojourn, his father just wanted nothing more than to be American and have land and to leave the old country and to remake himself on this new land. And so Joseph Vinich does that. His father doesn't, and Joseph does. And so Bex is seemingly split at that route, caught, if you will, between the two. But why an either or? It's a both and for Bex. And that both and is really his own struggle. And his is a road in and of itself to have to walk, this desire to remain, but also this. This part of you that is the road. So I think that's what the land is. And for Hannah, too, the land is. It's hers. Hannah is given to her. It's her birthright, if you will. You know, the land, whatever. And so even in marrying Hannah, Bex knows that this is what he will have to do. He will have to accept this land, too. And so Bohamir, Bo, he's the man of the land I love in the Signal Flame. One of my favorite things to do is to write about Bo working. You know, I just. I learned a lot about woodworking, and I. I do some of my own, but I'm no craftsman. But just taking it to another level, because he is a craftsman in the same way that Joe's. It's a family of men and women especially, who do what they do at a level of artistry because they can't do it any other way. So I think. I think when Bex comes back from the war, the woods are for him are a place of. I mean, for me, the guy who wrote the bear, the woods are the place where nature speaks. And we are just another narrative. We're just another branch on the tree. And regardless of who we are or where we're walking. So I wanted to put Bex in there in that sense and have him recognize that there is both road and there is place, and he comes back. He's lucky to have both of those. But then his own madness is what drives him into the clutches of that bear. Yet another bear. Yeah, I'm not obsessed with them. I just find them fascinating.

[Paul Swanson]

Bears are endlessly fascinating.

[Andrew Krivock]

Yeah.

[Paul Swanson]

Connecting that and just thinking about each character in this book, I often would just think about the presence of death in the book. How there is. It's almost like death is. And this is part Me too. Just like comparing it to my own life.

[Andrew Krivock]

But.

[Paul Swanson]

When war is so much of the background. The 20th century. And then there's also stories of illness infiltrating and taking loved ones away, or addiction. There's a way in which death is always up front. And it's almost like memento mori without having to say anything. Because there's the risk of that's been put in the book about drinking and driving, about addiction, about illness, about just the cost of war and the description of the battle of the bulge and what that would be like. And yet there's a swallowing of death, too. Of recognizing like I cannot just live in the face of fear of what may be, of what may be my end. And having that be pebbles on the beach of the entire human story, this entire lineage. There's almost like an acceptance that allows this to be held not with levity, but just the stark naked truth of it all. Do you feel like it's important that death always be a character? Only read two of your books. But the presence of the finality, or just the risk, or that we live with this uncertainty at all times has been present. Is that something that you're conscious of? Or has it just been reading too much of the Stoics? Or how would you emphasize that?

[Andrew Krivock]

That's very interesting, Paul. I didn't become a writer until my father died. I mean, I wrote, but I didn't. I didn't understand the beginning, middle, end of narrative as a writer until my father passed away. And I saw. I mean, I had grandparents who died. And I knew. I knew kids in high school who died, always car accidents. I lost count how many people died in car accidents where I grew up. That's why often a Car is a character in my novels as well, at least in the Pennsylvania novels. But in any case, it wasn't until I could. The man was there, and then he was not. And I stared over that abyss and I said. And I thought, okay, so this is how it goes. That's when I think, when I really started to write, when I understood what writing was and what I would write about. And I love this idea. Yeah, that you're. I mean, maybe I'm afraid to look at it, but your death is a character in my novels. I mean, especially in, like, the Appearance of Horses. Right up to the last moment, this is the character. And so I will say that while I was unconscious about it until you just asked this question, I think it's because I. I have seen it. I do see it. And rather than looking away from it, I love this idea of it's just a pebble on the beach. It's what we do and what a great narrative in and of itself. So to continually probe that and let. Let characters accept it or push back against it, be fearful, be accepting there is nothing else. And I don't want to be afraid of it. I'm not afraid of it. I feel that now I'm going to places where I hadn't really thought about. But, yes, I think it is a character in each of my novels precisely because that moment of. Of seeing someone whom you really love just not there anymore is profound. I mean, different people get through it different ways I started writing.

[Paul Swanson]

It's really honoring, I feel like, of when death is that present in your writing and there's multiple generations being spoken of. In a time where we live in these, at least to me, often can feel like individualized little capsules where there's little sectioned off small groups of people we call families. And often, as we move around more and more mobile, there's less connection. And to read stories that honor the stories of ancestors and little snippets are given as meaningful insights into how one might add values or perspectives to their life. Because this came from this generational story that's been passed down. And then these stories kind of get mythologized in a way that I find really, really helpful to mythologize your own family story in a way so that it can become stories that are bigger than just their spirit gets carried on in more almost like an aggrandized way without losing the reality of what they. They gifted future generations. And you do that so well in, like the Appearance of Horses, even in the tone of which I hear the characters speak. It's almost like the. The elders are these mythic creatures who are offering so much. And I can only imagine that as I get closer to those characters that I see their own human frailty in their particular stories. But because they're more far removed from Beau and Sam, they live in this kind of like elderhood state that, that we don't get that me as the reader of this one book, doesn't get to see the full figure of their humanity. But it. This is part of what I'm looking forward to. Your other two books is the generosity of seeing a person up close and seeing, walking, seeing them go through these, their. Their own foibled life, their own stumblings, allows for that, the immediacy of the impact of that. Then as you get further away and you hear other generations talking about them or looking towards them or even seeing them in that rearview mirror, they can loom much larger and hopefully with. With this generative spirit of the. Of an esteemed ancestor, with all their. Their little peccadillo's personality.

[Andrew Krivock]

But.

[Paul Swanson]

In so much of what I find today in modern American life, there's not that honoring. There's not even that ability to mythologize with warts and all. It's the mythologizing of a made up past. And maybe I'm being too grandiose about how I'm reading into this, but there's that level of distinct honoring. It bolsters my own courage to face the facts of my own lineage and the things I can celebrate and the things I can just own as, as hardships that have shaped me in known and unknown ways. Does that make sense or am I talking gibberish around how the lineage pulls one into the present moment?

[Andrew Krivock]

Yeah, I mean, no, it makes a lot of sense. I guess as a storyteller too, that's fascinating to me because that's again, this idea of past, present and future. You have to have that sense of the arc. And you'll see in the Signal Flame that Hannah is smack in the middle of her Life in 1972. And the book is as much about her as it is about Beau. And I just wanted to write this powerful woman who just keeps it all together and it's just the world just keeps hammering away at her and she will not give up. And Ruth too, Ruth Younger, she has a place in the Signal Flame which is quite powerful. Ruth and Hannah are a bit of two peas in a pod in many ways. But I'll tell you what, Paul, I'm going To give my own Catholic upbringing its due here. Because I think that the other thing that had been accumulating, if you will, or information throughout my life is the church is not letting us be anxious about death. This idea of souls, all souls day. I knew my grandfathers had passed away as a kid. And there's always this element of, well, they're just not here, but we have them. They've lived good lives, or maybe not so good, but God is forgiving, and, no, you're going to be fine. Everyone's going to be fine. And I don't. Theologically, these days, I don't really believe in the sort of resurrection of the body and soul and life everlasting. Amen. I mean, I think about it more at the level of quantum physics, where I. This body, this consciousness that's created, that is Andrew Kock right now, you know, it'll. There'll be lights out one day. The matter will go through the old substantial change, but it's still like, I gotta go into the Earth and I'm going to be on the planet and in the planet's going to be part of the solar system, and we're not going anywhere. And I find fear of the lights out to be a little bit too hubristic anyway. But I have to say, though, that growing up a Catholic, a boy who just. I love the church. I still love the church. But, you know, with all of its picadillos, if you will, that sense of death, plenty of terror. Right. But also plenty of, hey, you know, don't be anxious. It's gonna be all right. Everyone goes through it, and it's not the end. Which is a kind of a cool. A cool thing to think about. It's not the end, even if it is the end. Just a good long nap, right?

[Paul Swanson]

Yes.

[Andrew Krivock]

I like it.

[Paul Swanson]

Nice long nap. I find this very. I wasn't raised Catholic, but what I find with those who were one of the best things they received is this Catholic imagination, where it's a cosmology that is. That can be really helpful for expansion and to hear what you're just saying about, oh, return to the Earth. I become a part of the cosmos in a new way. And it's not when lights are out, everyone's missing me. Which, of course, there's the reality of that. But it's also returning to what was there before you were here. And there's a humility of returning one's body back to that that I'm warmed by.

[Andrew Krivock]

Yeah. One thing I thought a lot about with Respect to my father was. It's a shame that when people pass away, they don't get to experience just how much you miss them. You know what I mean? That's what we're going to leave behind. That's. We are the inheritors of loss because we feel that they don't. It's the last thing you will leave when you go is the people who love you will miss you. But you're lost. You're lost. So I think that's why death is a character. All my knowledge is precisely because of that. Exploring that.

[Paul Swanson]

Yeah. Living with that, lost, that presence.

[Andrew Krivock]

Yeah.

[Paul Swanson]

This has been such a rich conversation for me. I've enjoyed every second hearing you expound on the different themes of your work. What's coming next for you. Any chance we can push you towards a fourth book and make this, this trilogy expand one more or do. Is there something else brewing?

[Andrew Krivock]

I think the Darden series is over, but I do actually have. I'm always. I have another novel coming out. It's nearly finished. It is finished. I'm just going through edits, changing things around a bit. But it's in the same way that I wanted to write about my mother's father for the sojourn in World War I. My father's father was killed in the coal mines. And I've always wondered about those last minutes. Like, think about dying underground. What would that be like? So again, you've hit the death button on me for this one. And so I, I. This novel is about a young boy. He's a mule boy in the mines. It's 1929. It's just at the very edge of the animals and sprague sticks in the mines. Everything's about to be electrified. And there's a cave in. It's a small cave in because these men are what they call robbing the pillars. It's a room that's finished. They're taking the pillars of coal out because they're. They were valuable. And the two miners and two buddies and the mule boy are caught in this room. And they. Those four die and the mule boy gets out. And then he has to carry their stories, what they told them, what they talked about. In his own sense of here I am. And there they are. They're sealed in there for all eternity and he has to live his life. So it's told from the perspective of an old man who lives far from the Pennsylvania mines. Now in his old age, but also his own journey. It's about. He goes through a lot from leaving that to school, to World War II. He's a conscientious objector. It's the first time I've actually don't have one of my characters go off to war and his own, you know, his marriage. But he has to deal with this, what he carries for his entire life. And I just wanted to examine that. So that's. That's the novel coming out, 2026. I think there's a question as to when it will come out, so I won't. Don't hold me to that. My publicist always gets angry when I say these things on podcasts. But, yeah, that's coming out. It's called Mule Boy. And I really. It's a shorter novel and it really took me to another place. I'm also thinking about language in there, too. A kind of. A kind of sentence structure that approximates madness, but yet has to. Has to be readable. So I think you'll dig it.

[Paul Swanson]

Yeah, I. Well, you're a writer who has captured my imagination. And the bear is obviously very different tonally than like the appearance of horses. And I know that when I found a writer who has these different settings and tones, and I appreciate both for different reasons. I'm along for the ride, so I cannot wait to see what else you write. And we didn't talk about the Long retreat, which I did read and really enjoyed hearing that stretch of your own journey. And so, yeah, I mean, I think there's something for me as someone who loves to read is finding the authors who are able to penetrate questions and stories and bring them to life over and over and over again, that there's. I'm bought in, so I'm along for the ride or whatever you are writing, so be sure to keep my eyes peeled for that. Because your curiosity minds things and brings the research out in such a way that it doesn't feel. It just feels like a natural unfolding of the story. And I know that's a lot of time and energy goes into that, so that's nothing for me to sneeze at that it comes across that naturally. The work of your pen is so mighty.

[Andrew Krivock]

Well, thank you. Yeah, thanks, Paul. That's just the labor. You know, I. I grew up in a. In a family with grandparents and parents. You know, it was all about the work. Like, what do you. What do you do? Or that person's a doer. It's just about the work. And so I figure, like, okay, well, if I'm going to do this, I've. I've got to do it. In a way that's. I've got to do my work. Yeah. Yeah.

[Paul Swanson]

Well, I would put you in that same camp of a craftsman who whittles away and wants it to be beautiful. Not just a good story, but to be told in the right way is really important. And if you may remember, I always like to close by asking our guest, if you're going to pair our conversation with a drink, what would be your drink of choice and why?

[Andrew Krivock]

Conversation. Yeah. Well, so I remember last time we spoke, I was speaking of the coal mines in Pennsylvania. I was enjoying the occasional rye whiskeys. I've since tapered off on the whiskey because just doesn't. It doesn't. It wasn't being my friend, you know? You know what I mean? But I'm a. I'm a wine drinker and I just. I've been. I've discovered some really great new wines. I would say an Italian Sagrantino. The Santino is a grape from Umbria, and it's as big as a Bordeaux, bigger than a cab and a Sagrantino that has been opened for at least three or four hours. Because I find that with these wines that are really bold, that there's an arc of a narrative. You open that wine, you taste it out of the bottle, you taste it 30 minutes, two hours, four hours later, it's always changing and it's always a different wine. A friend of mine and I, we had a Sagratino that six hours after we'd opened it, it was still, just still changing. So that's what I would do. I would have a glass of sagrantino and toast the old world.

[Paul Swanson]

Toast the old world. I love that. I love how you're the consummate storyteller. Or even what you are drinking is telling a story to you and you're paying attention. At that level, it rings true. It rings true. Thank you for listening to this slow cooked episode of Contemplify. May its delights spark, wonder, and may any sour patches be sweetened by their folly. Head over to contemplify.com to find the show notes for this episode. Sign up for the monthly Contemplify non required reading list and also the weekly contemplative practice. Lo fi and hushed. If you are enjoying Contemplify, rate and review it on your podcast player. The Internet tells me this helps spread the contemplative cheer. The theme song for Contemplify is called Langside by Charles Enns and Darren Hovius. Fellas, thanks as always and of course, I am looking forward to bringing you more musings and more conversations with contemplatives kindling the examined life in the world. Until then, be well.