Open Book: Melissa Febos

Summary

Podcast Summary: Live Wire with Luke Burbank

Episode: Open Book: Melissa Febos
Release Date: July 30, 2025

---

Introduction

In this episode of Live Wire with Luke Burbank, hosted by PRX, Luke Burbank engages in an insightful conversation with Melissa Febos, a celebrated writer and educator. The episode, titled "Open Book: Melissa Febos," delves deep into Febos's reading habits, her experiences as an author, and her latest memoir, The Dry Season. This summary captures the essence of their discussion, highlighting key points, notable quotes, and the overarching themes explored during the conversation.

Meet Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos, known for her acclaimed works such as Girlhood and Body Work, is a prominent figure in contemporary literature. She currently teaches writing at the University of Iowa and has recently published her memoir, The Dry Season, which chronicles a year of voluntary celibacy and the personal revelations that ensued.

Notable Quote:
"Books are without exaggeration my whole life. I even started a book club with my three cats, which is kind of frustrating because they never do the reading." — Melissa Febos [02:15]

Early Reading Habits

The conversation begins with a nostalgic look at Febos's and co-host John Good's childhood reading experiences. Both reflect on how reading served as a sanctuary during their formative years.

• John Good describes himself as a "crackhead reader," emphasizing his deep immersion in books from a young age.

  • "I read so much that in the beginning they were like, cool. She's a reader. She has a love of literature. It's so nice. And then they were like, ah, have you been outside today?" — John Good [04:01]

• Melissa Febos contrasts by focusing on her selective reading habits, particularly during her hiatus from writing.

  • "When I was celibate, I just would, like, I bought this rug, this white shag rug, and I would, like, lie on the rug with these pillows, and I would just read for, like, whole afternoons." — John Good [15:45]

Impact of Writing on Reading

Febos and Good delve into how their writing careers have influenced their reading patterns. Writing extensively, especially in genres requiring detailed research, has altered their approach to consuming literature.

• John Good mentions adopting a "mercenary reading" style for research, which contrasts with his pleasure reading.

  • "I have to have like a Sherpa with me. Like a book where I'm writing down the things that happen that I want to remember or I have to have like an auxiliary recording device." — John Good [07:30]

• Melissa Febos shares her struggle with maintaining a balance between academic reading and leisure, highlighting the cognitive shifts required to enjoy books outside her professional focus.

Pleasure Reading: Romantasy vs. Literary Mysteries

A significant portion of the discussion centers around the types of books Febos and Good turn to for relaxation and enjoyment.

• John Good candidly talks about his foray into the "airport romantasy" genre, acknowledging its escapist appeal despite previously considering it beneath his literary standards.

  • "I have like broken the seal on like hyper popular airport Romantasy series books... Sarah Moss. I'm sorry, if you're listening to this, I'm sure you're not, but it's... I feel better about myself reading these books." — John Good [10:08]

• Melissa Febos contrasts this by expressing her preference for mysteries, particularly those authored by women, emphasizing the depth and representation in the genre.

  • "I reread the Sound and the Fury a lot." — Melissa Febos [06:37]

Book Recommendations:

• Flynn Berry's Under the Harrow
  • "It's a good icebreaker... you bounce a quarter off this woman's sentences. But it brings all of the pleasures of a true mystery." — John Good [16:35]

Controversial Reading Opinions

The hosts explore unconventional viewpoints on reading practices, fostering a reflective discourse on personal reading autonomy and literary preferences.

• John Good advocates for the freedom to abandon books that no longer engage the reader without guilt.

  • "It's okay to stop reading a book at any point because you're bored. And never come back to it and never feel guilty." — John Good [17:30]

• He further critiques the predominance of male authors in literature, expressing a preference for female and marginalized voices, while making exceptions for authors like Jonathan Franzen.

  • "I just have like broken the seal on like hyper popular airport Romantasy series books... But I just feel like I spent the early years of my life growing up in the 80s and 90s reading almost entirely men." — John Good [17:40]

• Melissa Febos supports the idea of diversifying reading lists, emphasizing the importance of representation and varied narratives.

Favorite Sex Writing

The conversation takes a more personal turn as Febos and Good discuss literature that explores sexuality with depth and artistic merit.

• John Good highlights Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body as a pinnacle of sex writing that combines intellectual rigor with raw emotional expression.
  • "She is a gifted woman. She has had some sex. Yeah, I'm pretty certain. And she remembers it well." — John Good [20:54]

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with acknowledgments and final thoughts on the importance of diverse reading habits and the joy of sharing books with others. Febos's latest memoir, The Dry Season, is promoted, encouraging listeners to explore her honest and introspective narrative.

Notable Quote:
"Life is short. Everybody should read some books of the people. Like some super popular fun books. Like, it's humbling and it's pleasa." — John Good [17:40]

---

Final Thoughts

Open Book: Melissa Febos offers a compelling look into the intersection of writing and reading, showcasing how personal experiences and professional pursuits shape literary tastes. Melissa Febos's candid reflections, paired with John Good's thoughtful commentary, provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of contemporary reading culture and the enduring love for literature.

Transcript

[Kim Droves]

I'm Kim Droves.

[John Good]

And I'm John Good. We're the hosts of the City Lights Collective on wabe.

[Kim Droves]

We shine a light on Atlanta's arts and culture scene, from hidden gems to the bold voices shaping our creative future.

[Elena Passarello]

Short stories, big ideas, and unforgettable moments.

[Melissa Febos]

For the city we love.

[Kim Droves]

Join us for the City Lights Collective wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Odoo]

This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out odoo-o o.com that's O D O.

[John Good]

Hi there.

[Kim Droves]

This is writer Elena Passarello.

[Melissa Febos]

And welcome to Open Book, a literary.

[Kim Droves]

Podcast from Livewire Radio, brought to you by Powell's Books, where we talk to writers about their reading habits.

[Melissa Febos]

Now, when I'm not having fun being.

[Kim Droves]

Livewire's announcer, writing is my job. I am the author of two books and I'm currently writing a third one, which explains why my home office is a mess of printer paper and Tupperware.

[Melissa Febos]

And an old yoga mat that I.

[Kim Droves]

I just used to curl up into the fetal position for like several hours at a time. I also teach writing here in Oregon. And all of this is to say that books are without exaggeration my whole life. I even started a book club with my three cats, which is kind of frustrating because they never do the reading. This week on Open Book, I'm talking to one of my favorite writers, slash people, Melissa Febos. Melissa is the best selling author of several books, including Girlhood, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism and Body Work, the radical power of personal narrative. Melissa also teaches writing at the University of Iowa, so she reads a lot. Her latest book is the Dry Season, a memoir of pleasure in a year without sex. And one of the pleasures she experiences.

[Melissa Febos]

Of course, is books.

[Kim Droves]

That's what we're going to talk about.

[Melissa Febos]

Along with the ins and outs of.

[Kim Droves]

A book tour, how to reset your reading brain when you read for work all day, and a genre that was new to me called Airport Romantasy. This is Melissa Febos on Open Book.

[Melissa Febos]

Melissa, welcome to Open Book.

[John Good]

Hi. Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here.

[Melissa Febos]

I'm not kidding. You're one of my favorite People in book world.

[John Good]

I feel exactly the same way.

[Melissa Febos]

Do you remember when we met?

[John Good]

Because I do. Yeah. I remember that you referred to yourself as someone who evokes a Cracker Barrel waitress. And I was like, I like this lady.

[Melissa Febos]

I don't remember that. I remember you were sitting. It was at this kind of writing retreat in New Hampshire, and you were sitting on some stairs and there was a bike next to you. And I was like, oh, this is the postcard. Like, I just driven in. And I was like, oh, they made the postcard for me so that I knew that I was in the right place.

[John Good]

No, I remember that I thought upon first meeting exactly what I think now, which is that you were hilarious and brilliant and really, really fun.

[Melissa Febos]

Well, this first question worked out really good. I was hoping to be festooned with compliments. Now, had you written a book when we met 15 years ago?

[John Good]

I think I had just published my first book, like, a few months before that. And that was my first residency. So I was like, a little bit shell shocked when I arrived because I was like, whoa, what is a residency? But also like, who am I? Do I have a body?

[Melissa Febos]

All the things that we ask ourselves when someone gives us the time to sit and write.

[John Good]

That's right.

[Melissa Febos]

There's a great writing residency scene in your new book, by the way, Dry Season. We're not here to talk about your books, Melissa. We're here to talk about the books that you read. Tell me what you were like as a reader when you were little, Meliss.

[John Good]

I was like a crackhead reader. And I say that not really metaphorically. Like, I was. I'm an addict. I've been in recovery for 21 years. And I think that reading was literally my first drug. I read so much that in the beginning they were like, cool. She's a reader. She has a love of literature. It's so nice. And then they were like, ah, have you been outside today?

[Melissa Febos]

Put the book down.

[John Good]

Did you sleep last night? Like, I really was looking like a tweaker. Because I would stay up all night reading under the covers of the flashlight and, like, reading inside of my school books. Like, I was super, super obsessive.

[Melissa Febos]

Were you one of those people who would, like, in the bathroom, like, read the shampoo bottle just to have print to ingest?

[John Good]

I actually, when I was a kid, couldn't poop unless I was reading. Like, I would read the toothpaste, the shampoo bottle, anything.

[Melissa Febos]

What do you think that is? I think about it now, like, you know, we don't like it. When people are always. Are scrolling on their phones, like, they sit still. But I. There is this version of that. I also was this person where it was like, I need to have some. I need to be looking at text right now. At printed text?

[John Good]

Yeah.

[Melissa Febos]

I don't know. I mean, I don't think that's necessarily what a writer is, but.

[John Good]

No, I think I was just, like, a sensitive person with, like, various strains of mental illness in my genetics, and life was just sort of too much, and other people were too much, and I kind of needed an out. And books and printed text was available everywhere. That's true.

[Melissa Febos]

Now, when I say books you read as a child, what are the first things that are popping into your head right now?

[John Good]

The first thing I thought of was Clan of the Cave Fair.

[Melissa Febos]

Yeah.

[John Good]

Because that wasn't the first book I read, but I think that was one of the first adult books that I read. And I don't know if you remember Clan of the Cave Bear.

[Kim Droves]

A little racy, right?

[John Good]

Quite racy, in fact. I remember reading it, and it was my mother's book, so, like, she knew what was in it, Right. But I was like, oh, I read this book, putting it back on her shelf, and she was like, oh, masturbation material.

[Melissa Febos]

And I was like, oh, no, she knows.

[John Good]

Yeah. But I just read anything. I read books that now I think I would be too bored, and I would actually stop halfway through. But as a kid, it was. I was just totally omnivorous, up for anything. Reading books like Weird British Novel. I'm just like, I must not have understood anything in there, but I was up for it.

[Melissa Febos]

Were you a re reader?

[John Good]

Absolutely. I'm still a rereader, but I wouldn't let myself do it for a while because I got infused with this weird capitalist sort of approach where I was like, oh, I'm gonna die, and I can't. I have to read as many books as possible. And then my wife Danika, who's, like, so smart in this way, was like, what are you talking about? Why would you. You constantly start books and then give up on them? Why don't you just read something you know is good? Like, we're all gonna die. You' even gonna touch the world's literatures?

[Melissa Febos]

Yeah. You're not even gonna come close.

[John Good]

What do you reread?

[Melissa Febos]

I reread the Sound and the Fury a lot.

[John Good]

Oh, nice.

[Melissa Febos]

I reread Right now. Well, right now I'm writing. I'm in, like, the throes of a book, so I'm not Doing a ton of reading that isn't for that, but I am rereading kind of the same. I'm finding. This is a question that I really wanted to ask you. We've asked it a couple of times on this podcast, which is how writing a book changes the way you read. Right. Since you've had five. I think this could be a multifaceted answer. But to answer my question myself, like for me, writing a book has made me more forgetful as a reader. I think because you always have to cram all this text into your head. Yeah, I have to have like a, like a Sherpa with me. Like a book where I'm writing down the things that happen that I want to remember or I have to have like an auxiliary recording device. So tell me, fifth book, Phoebos, I think we're calling you. How has writing your book, especially this many books, change the way that you work as a reader?

[John Good]

Yeah, I think in the same way that you just described where there is a kind of like mercenary reading that I've learned to do from research as like books. I write books where I do a lot of research for them as you do. And you have to really like gut a book. Like you have to know how to just get in there, get into the guts and get out with what you need. And that's not a great way to read, but it is sometimes necessary. So it's like I'm glad I know how to do that, but I need to like really analog go in and change the settings in my brain when I'm reading something not for work so that I can actually absorb every sentence. So I think in that way. But I will say also that writing books, because I've read so much heavy theory and history, just not fun stuff, but interesting stuff. It has made me a little more generous with myself in my pleasure reading where I just read whatever I want. Like I. I actually hit sort of, I don't even wanna say a new low cause it's so judgmental, but I have like broken the seal on like hyper popular airport Romantasy series books. And I'm like, I think even five years ago I would have been like, oh no, no, no, right, sorry. I'm too smart to read those books. I couldn't possibly be reading the same book as this, you know, whoever next to me on the airplane.

[Melissa Febos]

What tell me the appeal of. I've never read a Romantasy book.

[John Good]

I never. And then I was at a residency. The trashiest reading I read is while I am working the hardest at my own work, actually, because I'm putting so much brain into that that afterwards I'm just like. I need pure pleasure. Just, like, shoot it into my jugular. The pleasure and the escape of it. And so I read. I started with this dragon series called the Empyrean series, and it's. What is it? Iron Flame is one of them. I can't remember what the first one is called, but they're two terrible. But she knows how to do. They're there. You know, A friend of mine just earlier today compared them to pornography, where it's like they have one job and they do it really well, but everything else in them is quite bad.

[Melissa Febos]

Right. They know. They. They. But. But the thing that you want.

[John Good]

Yeah. When you're putting together cry, I become aroused. Like, it's like a literal roller coaster inside of me of, like, sensory experience reading these books. And I just. I just do think that being like, a college professor and the author of five books should make me immune to simple pleasures of the hoi polloi, but it absolutely doesn't. In fact, I am so into it. And then when it finished, I was so bereft that I moved on to the next. The fairy series. The fucking fairies. It's just fairies fucking and warring. It's amazing.

[Melissa Febos]

So they fight.

[John Good]

A court of thorns and roses. You've seen it.

[Melissa Febos]

Oh, Sarah Moss, right?

[John Good]

Yes. Sarah Moss, yes. And this one I actually can recommend because the writing is actually palatable. Like, not good, but you can and don't. Sarah Moss. I'm sorry, if you're listening to this, I'm sure you're not, but it's. I feel better about myself reading these books. They're also. The genders. The gendering of the characters is a little less cartoonish, and that feels better to me.

[Melissa Febos]

Right, right, right, right.

[John Good]

Anyway, I don't know how I got so deep into this, but here we are.

[Melissa Febos]

I think it's good. I mean, I think it's. I will always want to preserve the part of myself that wants to read things that. Like, you go on a cruise. I don't really want to go on a cruise, but you go on some kind of a public thing where people are reading, like, a beachfront and there are, like, six people that are reading the same book. It's the. It's the song of the summer, but it's the book of the summer.

[John Good]

Yeah.

[Melissa Febos]

I don't ever want to be in a place as a writer or a teacher where I can't engage with that unless it's Unless it's like fascist or whatever. Totally.

[John Good]

I totally.

[Melissa Febos]

I always want to keep that. I don't know, is it insulting to call it like a popcorn book?

[John Good]

Beach book?

[Melissa Febos]

That value is a value.

[John Good]

Yeah. And I consider it a sign of my maturation as a human being. That I know, because when I was younger, that was not the vibe. When I was younger, I was like, no, if everybody likes it, I can't partake. And now I'm like, yeah, I am part of the people. I am a person. So I am. And give me the simple pleasure. Give me the easy to digest escapist pleasure. I need it more than ever.

[Melissa Febos]

And it feels so good to be with other people when they're doing something. It's so fun to talk about.

[John Good]

Yeah.

[Melissa Febos]

So you are touring your book right now, which means that that part is done. And the wind up and all the things that you have to write. So maybe you have a little extra time to read now.

[John Good]

I actually saved the last fairy. I forced myself to stop. I can't believe I'm talking about this in a recording. This is. I've grown even in the last year, because I wouldn't say people would be like, what are you reading? And I would just have like the last literary novel I read to pull out of my pocket. And I wouldn't mention the dragon books. But now I'm out. I'm out of the closet. There's no going back. But I saved. I saved a fairy book. But I'm also reading a very. I truly am also reading a very depressing New York Review of Books. So I have my dignity.

[Melissa Febos]

The New York Review book series.

[John Good]

Susie Boitzer loved and missed. Oh, God. Dagger in the Heart. It's so good. When is it so good? But it's like, I think it was published like in the 70s and it was just reissued. But it's beautiful.

[Melissa Febos]

A novel.

[John Good]

Yeah, yeah.

[Melissa Febos]

And it's a. It's a heart wrenching novel.

[John Good]

It's a heart wrenching novel. It's just about like a mother with an adult child in London and her daughter is a drug addict and she ends up raising her daughter's daughter. And it's just like funny and beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking.

[Melissa Febos]

London in the 70s has a, like a chasm of grit and harrowing.

[John Good]

It is very gritty.

[Odoo]

Cool.

[John Good]

Yeah, it's great.

[Melissa Febos]

And so you're kind of. You've kind of marshmallow tested the fairy book and then you have this other book.

[John Good]

Yes. So I have the fairy book. I'm gonna save it till the end of tour. So I'm still reading real novels at this point in the tour, but I'm only three days in, so by the end of the week it'll probably be Back to the fucking Fairies.

[Melissa Febos]

Do you buy a book at every book. That's the title of ep Back to the Fucking Fairies with Melissa Felix. Do you buy a book at every bookstore you visit?

[John Good]

No, I used to do that, but then I've donated so many books that I just can't. And I also am middle aged now, and so I have a bad. And I needed to bring a suitcase that I could actually lift myself without suffering severe injury. So I brought a carry on suitcase for like a month of tour and I. Someone gave me a tote bag at one of my earlier readings and I actually had to give it away. I was like, this doesn't fit.

[Melissa Febos]

You gotta travel super light. I think I saw this on social media. You have like a tour suit. Like a. I have two suits, two touring suits.

[John Good]

These are the pants of one of them. Oh yeah.

[Melissa Febos]

And they're a very wrinkle resistant kind of sear sucker.

[John Good]

Yeah, it's like a black seersucker. And then I have a green and creamy striped classic seersucker with a little jacket.

[Melissa Febos]

So the book, the Dry Season. Congratulations on this book. Thank you. I feel like you are our champion of memoir, Melissa Febos. You stand up for it in your writing and in your advocacy and as a literary citizen. Like, memoir has such a fighter in you.

[John Good]

Yeah. A friend did ask me at lunch today. Cause I told him that I was writing two novels. And he was like, what about People are gonna feel betrayed?

[Melissa Febos]

You're Dylan going electric.

[John Good]

Holy shit. I don't know. So we'll see.

[Melissa Febos]

So this new memoir, the kind of timeframe of the memoir is this year of voluntary celibacy. Is that the. And this was like nine years ago? Yeah. What did you find yourself reading during that period of time? Not for the book. The book has a ton of books in it. But like when you were actually living.

[John Good]

Oh, that's ne. Even better question because I've been talking about the research for the book a lot, which is a bunch of nuns. Great research, Totally excellent. It's much sexier than anyone knows, except people who know word.

[Melissa Febos]

I learned so much about hot nuns from your book.

[John Good]

Honestly, there's a lot of hot nun material. But that's not what I was reading in my pleasure time. And it was so pleasurable when I took this break. I had been in nonstop monogamous relationships, basically, for 20 years. And I just had. It had never occurred to me that being partnered impinged on my reading. And now it makes perfect sense. Like, of course, there's always another person there with all their needs and their consciousness. So, like, less reading time. Right. But. But when I was celibate, I. I just would, like. I bought this rug, this white shag rug, and I would, like, lie on the rug with these pillows, and I would just read for, like, whole afternoons. And it actually reminded me exactly of when I was a kid. And I would just. I remember looking at my parents when I was a kid and being like. Like, these people never read. It's so sad. Like, what's wrong with them? And they were like, we have jobs. Little miscreant. And I also have a job, but, like, not in the summer. And so I just would, like, lie and read for, like, seven hours in a row. And it was mostly mysteries. I love mysteries. I love literary mysteries.

[Melissa Febos]

Like Patricia Highsmith, or.

[John Good]

I like Patricia Highsmith, but there's too many men in her books. Actually. It's all these, like, horrible men sort of doing horrible things to each other, which. There's a certain pleasure to that. But I just get tired of hearing them talk, even on the page. And so I actually keep a Google Doc of all of the mysteries that I love best, which are mostly mysteries written by women that have mostly female characters and hopefully queer characters and good writing.

[Melissa Febos]

Okay. I, too, have summers off, or this summer at least. Who is an author who's writing this kind of mystery that you like so.

[John Good]

Much that I can't wait to. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Happy to. There's a book that I tell people, you might not need this. I don't know if you read mysteries.

[Melissa Febos]

No.

[John Good]

But it's a good icebreaker. Cause it's so killer in literary ways. Like, you bounce a quarter off this woman's sentences. But it brings all of the pleasures of a true mystery. And that's Flynn Berry's under the Harrow. Okay. It's kind of a slim, totally gripping, beautiful, murdery book. It's great.

[Melissa Febos]

Love a thin book.

[John Good]

It's just. You can just gulp it down in a day.

[Melissa Febos]

A book that you can put in the pocket of your seersucker jacket.

[John Good]

That's right.

[Melissa Febos]

You know, or like, fold it over and hold it in one hand when you're on the metro.

[John Good]

That's right. That's right. Use it to swat the rats.

[Melissa Febos]

So we always end with the same question here on Open Book. We ask our hallowed guests For a controversial book or reading opinion. Melissa Feebos, do you have one?

[John Good]

I have so many that I actually can't. They're crowd. They're bottlenecking in my mind. Can I. Lightning round. Okay. It's okay to stop reading a book at any point because you're bored.

[Melissa Febos]

Amen.

[John Good]

And never come back to it and never feel guilty.

[Melissa Febos]

Life is short.

[John Good]

Everybody should read some books of the people. Like some super popular fun books. Like, it's humbling and it's pleas. So do it. And I don't know that I ever. Like, I will, but I don't need to ever read another book by a man. You can cut that if it's too complicated.

[Melissa Febos]

No, no, no. We like it.

[John Good]

But I just feel like I spent the early years of my life growing up in the 80s and 90s reading almost entirely men. It's not even like a political position. It's like a physical. Like, it's just too. I'm just that capacity, you know? And so there are a few who. I'm like, I will always buy his book when it comes out, but I just. If there's two men talking for too long, it's like I have an allergic reaction to it.

[Melissa Febos]

Yeah. They don't talk about the book equivalent of the Bechdel test, but that's basically what it is. How long are men talking in this book before someone else intervenes?

[John Good]

Yeah, I just. I just. It's just my hand just drops it.

[Melissa Febos]

So there are some people that you still might read who are male writers, man. Writers. Who would those be?

[John Good]

Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I read plenty of male writers. I just don't feel obligated to. Not with a single cell of my being.

[Melissa Febos]

So that's an important point is, like, even if you say you don't need to read it again, you're probably going to like. Like, they're always washing up on the shore of our consciousness.

[John Good]

There are male writers that I like. I just don't feel I ever owe it to mankind.

[Melissa Febos]

If you have a game, you're gonna seek out another.

[John Good]

Yeah. And that, like, obviously excludes trans men. And, you know. But the only man who comes to mind right now who's not like a friend whose book I will buy in hardcover and just read it, is actually Jonathan Franzen. I love reading his work. Except for that one bad one.

[Melissa Febos]

What do you love about Franzen's writing?

[John Good]

It surprises me. It's thoughtful. I just trust him. Like, he has a kind of authority, even when he's being a bozo. And I'm like, enough about the birds. You know, he does love those birds. Like, I just trust he's going to, like, make it interesting for me and that there is some thought behind it. And there are really deep, profound surprises. And most of those surprises arrive in the form of, like, the depth of his representation of human consciousness. And that is one of the principal things that I read for in novels. And he almost always delivers it.

[Melissa Febos]

The depth of human consciousness or a deep exploration of the sense.

[John Good]

He goes into the labyrinth and depicts it in a recognizable, humane way. More humane the longer he writes. I think his earlier books were less humane. He was sort of meaner to his characters. He's still pretty mean, but you can tell he loves them now.

[Melissa Febos]

Yeah, I think that makes me think about what we were talking about with beach books, too. Because, you know, then it's like, well, why don't we only read beach books? Because these literary endeavors sometimes give us a profound surprise, an architected surprise. This, like, grounded, confident, sort of epic discovery.

[John Good]

Did you read the Safekeep?

[Melissa Febos]

No.

[John Good]

By Yael van der Wouden? It's so good. I mean, not only because the sex in it is absolutely mind blowing. It is. But because it has one such surprise.

[Melissa Febos]

Okay, okay. We have to ask one more question. I'm sorry. I think we'd be remiss, Melissa, if we didn't ask you what's some of your favorite sex writing?

[John Good]

Oh, my God. Eileen Miles. Jeanette Winterson, maybe my favorite.

[Melissa Febos]

Like, I just teleported, like, the guy in Ratatouille back to being, like 20 years old.

[John Good]

Oh, my God. Written on the body.

[Melissa Febos]

Sexy, sexy.

[John Good]

And the cherry, the passion. I mean, it's just. She was the first writer where I was like, oh, you can be brainy and aesthetically great and just nasty, nasty at the same time. And you can write about, like a piece of fruit or something totally cliched. And it's. She just. She is a gifted woman. She has had some sex. Yeah, I'm pretty certain.

[Melissa Febos]

And she remembers it.

[John Good]

She remembers it well.

[Melissa Febos]

She may have been taking some notes.

[John Good]

That's right.

[Melissa Febos]

That's what I should have done. Melissa, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Even when there's a microphone in my face.

[John Good]

Oh, my God. The pleasure is all mine.

[Kim Droves]

That was Melissa Febos on Open Book. You can order her latest book, the Dry season, [e-mail] thanks for listening to Open Book. I'm Elena Passarello, your host. Our executive producer is Laura Hadden, and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevchenko. Eben Hoffer is our technical director. Hazik Bin Ahmad Farid is our mixer. Awalker Spring composed our theme song, and Ashley park is our social media marketer. A big thanks to the entire staff at Livewire Radio, the fine folks at prx, and of course, Powell's Books for sponsoring this podcast.

[Elena Passarello]

Dear Livewire, when we first met, I was really shy. I had no idea we'd spend so much time together or that you'd be one to fill my heart with. With joy and make me want to be a better person. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were here. I was busy reading a review from one of our many, many rapturously smitten listeners. Oh, wait. Actually, no. Sorry. This is from Elena. Anyway, the point is, it would be really helpful if you wanted to leave us, us a review. Feel free to say really nice things about us, and we'll even read them now and then on the show so you might hear your review of Livewire. Read on the program itself. A review has helped other people hear about the show. And then we can keep doing this for a long, long time because we love having this job. Thank you so much. If you've left a review, and if you're about to leave a review, you can go ahead and do it right where you get the podcast.

[Melissa Febos]

From prx.