John Burt, "A Moment's Surrender" (Press Americana, 2026)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network — John Burt, "A Moment's Surrender"

Episode Details

• Date: July 14, 2026
• Host: G.P. Gottlieb
• Guest: John Burt, Professor of Literature, Brandeis University
• Book Discussed: A Moment's Surrender (Press Americana, 2026)

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Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation with John Burt about his debut novel, A Moment’s Surrender. The book follows Paul Bishop, a lonely academic entangled in a web of love, betrayal, and guilt, beginning when he lies to the police about a friend’s murder. Together, host G.P. Gottlieb and Burt dissect the novel’s moral ambiguities, complex characters, and themes of forgiveness, regret, and the nature of love. The conversation explores inspiration, character creation, personal resonance, and insights into future writing projects.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Genesis of the Novel

• Novel Complexity vs. Scholarly Work

  • Burt reveals that, despite his experience as a poet and academic, crafting a novel proved uniquely challenging.
  • Quote: “The big lesson to me is that [teaching novels] didn’t teach me thing one about how to actually write a novel.” — John Burt [02:06]

• Real-Life Inspiration

  • The story’s inciting murder is loosely based on a real-life tragedy involving Burt’s former roommate in Reno during the 1970s.
  • Notably, the details had faded over time, leading him to fictionalize much of the plot. [02:25]

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Developing Paul Bishop: Flawed and Relatable

• Paul as an Antihero

  • Burt intentionally made Paul initially unlikeable, aiming for readers’ sympathy to evolve over time:
  • Quote: “I wanted...the readers to dislike both Tom and Paul, and I wanted gradually them to see them in a more and more sympathetic light as the novel went on.” — John Burt [05:09]

• Moral Ambiguity

  • Paul’s guilt, rivalry, and evasion of truth underscore the complexity of his motivations and inner struggles. [03:30–04:49]
  • His decision to lie to the police and Tom’s wife is rooted in both compassion and jealousy.

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Setting & Timeframe

• Why Reno?
  • The choice of Reno, Nevada, is rooted in both personal memory and narrative plausibility.
  • The 1970s setting provides realistic context for the murder’s logistics and cultural atmosphere. [05:42]

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Revisiting the Past: Graduate School in the ’70s

• Graduate School as Character-Building
  • Burt wanted to portray academic life earnestly, distancing his depiction from the satire commonly found in campus novels.
  • The debates among Paul, Tom, and Rachel during their UConn graduate days carry lifelong significance and mirror later-life conflicts. [06:44]

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The Character of Tom Corbin: Toxic but Layered

• First Impressions vs. Reality

  • Tom’s disrespect toward a Native American policeman initially marks him as arrogant, but later reveals deeper motives: trying to escape difficult choices.
  • Quote: “Only much later do we realize that he is provoking the policeman to arrest him...which puts off the choice between the two women.” — John Burt [08:59]

• Toxic Charisma

  • Tom is described as a “true jerk” but with redeeming complexities, especially regarding his relationships with women and his hidden vulnerabilities. [08:56–09:49]

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Rachel: Darkness, Charisma, and Self-Destruction

• Modeling Rachel

  • Rachel is intentionally dark and death-haunted, inspired loosely by the literary archetype of Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff admirer.
  • Quote: “She’s a very dark character...there is this almost death hauntedness about her at every moment, which is part of her charisma.” — John Burt [10:15]

• Host’s Reaction

  • Gottlieb strongly dislikes Rachel, critiquing the character’s isolation and self-destruction.
  • Quote: “I wanted to slap her.” — G.P. Gottlieb [11:55]

• Rachel’s Secrets

  • Her complex relationships with both men, a traumatic pre-Roe v. Wade abortion, and a lifetime of self-punishment deepen her character’s tragedy. [12:04]

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Susan: An Idealized, Suffering Figure

• Balancing Perfection and Realism

  • Burt admits the character began as too saintly, prompting revisions to give Susan hidden fears and doubts.
  • Quote: “She’s very brave facing death, but she’s very afraid of death...I realized that if I completely adopt Paul’s idealization of her...that makes her not a credible character to a reader.” — John Burt [13:03]
  • Susan’s battle with cancer becomes a focal point for both her inner turmoil and Paul’s redemptive instincts.

• Motherhood and Self-Perception

  • The discussion acknowledges the gap between others’ admiration and a woman’s own view of her parenting. [14:41]

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Complex Love and Human Nature

• Falling for the Unworthy

  • Corbin’s toxic charm and quest to become worthy drive his relationship with Susan.
  • Quote: “That’s what she recognizes about him, that he wants to be a different kind of person from the kind of person he is. He can’t pull it off because we can’t.” — John Burt [16:56]

• On Knowing and Loving Fully

  • Burt expands on the theme of loving “from the ground up” as radical empathy—what Keats called “negative capability.”
  • Quote: “The ability to morally invest yourself in somebody who is utterly other to you. And that’s what Susan is capable of doing.” — John Burt [18:16]

• Possessive Side of Love

  • Burt references Blake’s “The Clod and the Pebble,” noting the coexistence of selfless and possessive love in his characters, contrasting Susan and Rachel. [18:50]

• Narrative Subtlety

  • Burt points out a textual signal: Paul is called by his first name only when Susan is present, inviting readerly warmth toward him. [20:15]

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Literary Satire & Real-Life Inspirations

• Poets and Romance in the ’70s
  • Addressing a stereotype, Burt confirms the archetype of predatory poets seducing young women post-readings was rooted in reality—if dated now.
  • Quote: “It was a 70s stereotype, Khalid. I mean, you can’t do it anymore. There’s a lawsuit. But it was a 70s stereotype and poets like Corbyn were a dime a dozen.” — John Burt [21:05]

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Looking Ahead: Burt’s Next Novel

• New Project
  • Burt is working on a novel set at a genetics conference in Edinburgh at the outbreak of World War II, involving extensive research but, he hopes, eventual travel to Scotland. [21:26–21:54]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the challenge of fiction writing:
  "The big lesson to me is that [teaching novels] didn’t teach me thing one about how to actually write a novel." — John Burt [02:06]

• On creating unlikeable protagonists:
  "I wanted the readers to dislike both Tom and Paul, and I wanted gradually them to see them in a more...sympathetic light as the novel went on." — John Burt [05:09]

• On love’s dualities:
  “Love seeketh only self to please, to bind another to its delight, joys in another’s loss of ease, and builds a hell In Heaven’s Despite.” — William Blake, quoted by John Burt [18:50]

• Host’s bracing critique:
  “I couldn’t stand her. She was terrible. ...I wanted to slap her.” — G.P. Gottlieb on Rachel [11:55]

• On Susan’s lived experience:
  “She’s very brave facing death, but she’s very afraid of death.” — John Burt [13:03]

• Poets and the 1970s dating scene:
  “It was a 70s stereotype... poets like Corbyn were a dime a dozen.” — John Burt [21:05]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:06] — Burt on the unexpected difficulty of novel writing
• [03:30] — Crafting Paul’s motivations and complexity
• [05:09] — Intentional unlikability and gradual sympathy for main characters
• [08:59] — The truth behind Corbin’s “jerk” behavior with the policeman
• [10:15] — Rachel’s dark charisma and death-driven psyche
• [13:03] — Evolution and humanizing of Susan’s character
• [16:56] — The allure of redeeming the unreformed: why Susan loves Corbin
• [18:16] — Loving from the ground up: empathy and negative capability
• [21:05] — Poet stereotypes and sexual politics in the 1970s
• [21:26–21:54] — Burt’s research for his next historical novel

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Conclusion

G.P. Gottlieb’s conversation with John Burt offers a richly layered look at A Moment’s Surrender, highlighting the novel’s navigation of love, regret, and self-understanding, set against the evocative backdrop of 1970s academia and personal tragedy in Reno. Burt’s candid reflections on writing, character, and the evolution of his own perceptions make this episode both insightful for readers and inspiring for aspiring writers.

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Transcript

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[B]

The two Reno policemen to whom Paul Bishop had already lied before he had made up his mind about lying were friendly enough, though not so friendly as to put him at ease with them, especially since they kept calling him sir, a term from which they did not try to polish away the oblique menace. This is GP Gottlieb, host for New Books and Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. And today I'm talking to John Burt, a longtime professor of literature at Brandeis University, whose debut novel is A Moment's Surrender. The story is told by Paul, a lonely freshman instructor who dropped out of grad school a decade before. His best friend had also dropped out and the relationship hadn't ended well. So Paul is surprised that Tom Corbin visits him in Reno. But the visit is disturbing because Corbin says he's leaving his wife and instead driving to the home of a woman they both once loved. But he's murdered before he gets the chance. And the story opens with Paul lying to the police, telling them that Tom was headed home. This is a thought provoking, nuanced story about love, betrayal and guilt. Hi Ja, thanks for joining me.

[A]

Hello, Khalid. It's a pleasure to see you.

[B]

So although you've published scholarly tomes and books of poetry, why did you wait so long to write a novel? Can't have been anywhere near as complex as the many other books you've written.

[A]

Actually, it was considerably more complex than the other books I've written, though, because it was a new process for me. I do have what reputation I have as a writer, as a creative writer, is as a poet. But I've always written narrative poetry, which is not really the style in the last hundred years. And I've always been interested to see, well, what would be the difference to write a prose narrative, particularly an extended prose narrative. But this novel actually caught me by surprise. The story had been beating around in my head for about 30 years because the murder that sets it off really happened to my then roommate in Reno. He wasn't murdered. His friend was. But by the time I got around to writing the story, he had died and I couldn't recover the actual story of the murder, so I had to make it all up. But I was interested in what it would be like to write prose fiction. I've taught novels to students for 40 odd years. The big lesson to me is that that didn't teach me thing one about how to actually write a novel.

[B]

Isn't that amazing? Oh, wow. Okay, we're going to talk more about that, but first I want to talk about your protagonist. We meet him, Paul Bishop, while he's admitting that he lied to the police about where his friend was headed on the day of his murder. Can you talk about how you created Paul and why?

[A]

Well, yes, Paul is somebody who has. He's at an impasse. He's had a romantic impasse, he's had a creative impasse. And that's partly because he believes that he's done something unforgivable to the girlfriend he had back at the University of Connecticut. When he meets his former grad school roommate and longtime best friend and he asks permission to leave his wife, whom Paul doesn't know, to go live with Rachel Lake, who is Paul's own ex girlfriend, the girl he dropped out of graduate school over, he feels a stab of pity for the wife, particularly when he sees her picture and he thinks this is the woman he's going to hurt and I can't do anything about it. And that brings up all his own guilt about what he did to Rachel many years ago and his sort of rivalry with his best friend over the many, many years. And he decides that he really doesn't want anything to do with the romantic tangle that Corbin is in. And among the things he doesn't want to do is he doesn't want to tell the police that Corbin was leaving his wife because they'll tell his wife that.

[B]

Okay, so moving on. After he lies to the police, Paul tells the same lie to the victim's wife, to Tom's wife. He doesn't want to hurt her. But his. He's kind, but his kindness is somewhat mitigated by anger and jealousy. Did you want your female readers to like him?

[A]

I myself really didn't like him at the beginning of the book, and I grew to like him more and more as the book came on. I wanted, actually, I wanted the readers to dislike both Tom and Paul, and I wanted gradually them to see them in a more and more sympathetic light as the novel went on.

[B]

Ah, good job about that. Let's talk a bit about the geography. There's some beautiful descriptions throughout the book. What made you choose the Reno, Nevada area to set the story?

[A]

Partly, I chose Reno because the actual murder took place while the guy was leaving Reno, and I had lived in Reno and remembered what it looked like in the 1970s. That's why I picked that. I picked Riverside and Reseda, California, the two other locations, because they were two places that you'd have to take different roads to to get from Reno. So. So that it might not have been obvious if Tom were killed on Highway 395 before the turn off to Resita where he was going. So that made it plausible to Bishop to keep Tom secret. And then he offers his, you know, his condolences to the widow, and he realizes that he's already in over his head with her. But he's also in a morally ambiguous position with her because he's nobody to her. He has set out himself to rescue her, but he realizes that all his motives about her are neurotic because he doesn't really even know her.

[B]

After the initial story of the murder in its aftermath, we go back a decade and get a firsthand look at Paul and Tom when they were friends in grad school at UConn back in the late 60s. It's 1970, I think. So I'm wondering if it might have been been when you were in grad school and how much of their experience was based on your own.

[A]

Some of it was, though. They're both slightly older than I am. They would have been. They're each maybe five or six years, seven or eight years older than I am. But some of those were graduate school experiences. I had a slight ax to grind in the graduate school scenes because novels set in academia almost always treat people who have literary interests in academia as fakers and frauds. And most academic novels are satires. And most people I know in academia work really hard at it and care a great deal about it. So although the arguments they had in their Friday night salons, there is a silly side to them, but they also mean them seriously. And the things Tom and Paul and Rachel argue about as graduate students actually characterize them in later life, through their whole lives. They're essentially living out the positions they had argued as graduate students.

[B]

Yeah, Tom Corbyn became a famous poet, and he's ostensibly visiting Nevada to give a talk at the college where Paul teaches. And there's a brief story in which Corbin is disrespectful to a reservation policeman on their way. What do we learn about him from that interaction.

[A]

Well, we learn one thing when it happens, and only much later in the novel do we realize that what we've learned is wrong. I mean, what it looks like when it happens is he's an arrogant, selfish person and also somebody who does not treat Native American policemen very well and does not care that he's getting the young woman who's driving them to Pyramid Lake, which is this beautiful place outside of Reno where, when I was in Reno, we always took the visiting poets to go see.

[B]

Okay, yeah, he's kind of a jerk.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, A true jerk. And only much later do we realize that he is provoking the policeman to arrest him. Because the reason he's in Reno is not to give a poetry reading. That was a pretext. The reason he's in Reno, he says, is to ask Paul's permission to leave his wife for Rachel. Now, this tips off Paul, the fact that he had had an earlier relationship with Rachel when Paul and Rachel were together. One little thing about Tom is that Tom is actually there because he's hoping Paul will talk him out of it. But Paul is too angry when he discovers what he discovers about the earlier relationship with Rachel to really pick that up. And what he's doing with the tribal policeman is he's trying to provoke the policeman to put him in jail, which puts off the choice between the two women.

[B]

Yeah, these are young men in their early 30s, about the age of one of my kids. And they're not. I mean, they're supposedly fully formed, but these boys are. They're acting just both of them. Like idiots.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

So they both. Paul and Tom both slept with Rachel in grad school. It slowly becomes clear there's something seriously wrong with her psyche. Can you address that?

[A]

I have to say, she's a very dark character because she's the opposite of Susan. And there is this almost death hauntedness about her at every moment, which is part of her charisma, you know, she has. I modeled her kind of on Emily Bronte, you know, the kind of person who would love Heathcliff.

[B]

I couldn't stand her. She was terrible. She didn't have a single girlfriend. She chose the least acceptable way of living her life. She didn't belong to community and this Catholicism that she. This going to the church and not talking to anyone. I didn't understand her. I don't.

[A]

Well, it's ascetic because she's punishing herself throughout the whole novel. She's fighting a temptation to suicide, which shows up in her poetry. And Bishop understands that. That's part of her sexual charisma is this death hauntedness and part of her intellectual charisma. And at the same time, she's very charismatic. And she's also, I think, particularly at the end of a novel, when she stumbles into a salvific moment with Susan, she's actually ironic and funny. At that part of the novel. I wanted her to be darkly charismatic, but also a little bit irresistible. But maybe you have to be a guy to find this bad girl so attractive.

[B]

I was just. I can't even. I couldn't even speak. I was so angry at the way she was behaving, I wanted to slap her.

[A]

Well, also, she is aware that in some ways her relationship with Paul and Tom, she's in double bad faith, right, because she was sleeping with Tom but didn't tell Paul about it. And when she got pregnant, she took Paul to the. She had a sort of traumatic pre Roe v. Wade abortion. She took Paul to. To. To Portland to have. Have the abortion, but she never told Tom that she'd been pregnant. He. He doesn't learn that until 1980.

[B]

So now let's talk about. Let's talk about the fourth important character, Corbin's lovely wife, Susan. As much as I disliked Rachel, Susan, first of all, they have an adorable, precocious little boy together, and she's an oncology resident at a nearby hospital. What did you love about writing her character, and why did you decide to make her suffer?

[A]

Well, I made her suffer because I loved her too much. And I was. I have to confess that in the first draft of the novel, she was so idealized that everybody I sent the first draft to said she is not credible as a character. She's too saintly, she's too stoical, she's too resilient. And I realized that I had picked up Paul's idealization of her. Paul loves her because she can love somebody wholeheartedly. And if you can love Corbin, you have to be able to love wholeheartedly because he's not easy to love. And that's what he loves about her, that she is capable of loving somebody like him. That's also one of the many reasons why she's not available to him, to Paul. Paul also thinks she's a spectacularly good parent and a loving, nurturing parent, which she is. And he thinks she's incredibly brave as she's facing death, which she also is. But I realized that if I completely adopt Paul's idealization of her, even though I think Paul is right, I love her the same way that makes her not a credible character to a reader. So what I decided to do is instead of darkening her character, I decided to look more closely into her mind, and I would recognize that she does not share the other character's idealization of her. It occurs to me I know many, many women who are excellent parents, and I don't know one who believes she is right.

[B]

That's so true.

[A]

And so I decided that's. That's. I'm going to give that to Susan. She's very brave facing death, but she's very afraid of death, and she's very afraid she won't manage what she has to do between. Between the moment she's diagnosed and the moment she's dying correctly. And I did have her hit rock bottom at a very. You know, each character hits rock bottom at. At a point in the novel and. And at her point that for her, she's coming back from the arraignment of the person who had killed Tom. The high. The. The carjacker who had killed Tom. And she hasn't told anybody that she's dying of cancer because she's just learned it, and she had not told Tom that she had had a brush with cancer five months before.

[B]

Okay, don't give away too much here.

[A]

I won't give away too much, but the dark moment is she thinks what I'm about to go through and what Jack is about to go through is so horrible, it would be better to die right now if only we could do it without fear and without pain. Now she has that thought. It's involuntary. It's not something she wants to do. It's not something she plans, but she has that thought, and it's completely involuntary, and she's totally shocked by that thought and totally ashamed of it. And just at that moment, you know, she mentions to Paul because she needs somebody to take her to the appointment in a few days when she's going to have it, that she's going to do it, and completely without batting an eyelash. He said, yeah, of course. I'll see you as long as you need. Because he's looking for a reason to take care of her. This gives it to him. She is so impressed by that, she falls in love with him. And that's a problem because she doesn't have a right to love him.

[B]

Right. Okay, now you go into some detail about Corbin's poetry in his books. Remember, he's a. I remember he's a famous poet, but you especially talk about the one that's Written with a pseudonym. And I'm going to be perfectly honest, John, I knew and dated toxic boys like Corbin how we all did. How did he manage to get, you know, get somebody like, as sweet as Susan to fall for him?

[A]

My view of it is, well, that she fell for him. Fell a reason that had to do with why he fell for her. He remember he had just picked her up as a girl after a poetry reading. He always did that. He's a toxic, predatory guy. And while they were in the bar with a bunch of loud students, she says something about her career as a doctor, which he takes as a kind of rebuke to himself. Not intended by her, but he takes it as she is earnest about life in a way that I'm not, and I want to be earnest about life in that way. And he decides that he wants to be worthy of her from that moment on. That's what she recognizes about him, that he wants to be a different kind of person from the kind of person he is. He can't pull it off because we can't. That isn't how it works. But she wants to say what we really are is not what we are at our worst moment, but. But what we are when we're fighting that thing we may lose to, but which we don't give up against. And that's what she loves about him.

[B]

Several times you mentioned love being about knowing someone from the ground up. Can you expound on that?

[A]

Well, yes, because that's what. What I mean by that is you have an intuitive sense of what the other character needs and wants. And you have an intuitive sense of what you can do good for that character. That you have the ability to place yourself in another character's shoes. It's a sort of great big version of what Keats calls negative capability. The ability to imagine. The ability to morally invest yourself in somebody who is utterly other to you. And that's what Susan is capable of doing. And that's what all of the other characters want to be able to do, is to love somebody, to desire somebody else's good in a selfless way. Now, of course, there's another side to love in these novels too, because love is possessive. It's almost a hostile takeover mood. One of the early titles of the novel was the Clod and the pebble, which is a title of a poem by Blake. The last line of the last stanza of which is, Love seeketh only self to please, to bind another to its delight, joys in another's loss of ease, and builds a hell In Heaven's Despite. I had in mind that Rachel and Susan were the two contrasting stanzas in the Blake poem about what love is. And I had in mind that despite everything, Susan is going to win out. You'll notice in every conversation Susan takes part in the person she's speaking to believe they have the upper hand over her. And Susan never contests the upper hand with any other character. And yet she always winds up with it. And we never know how she gets it.

[B]

Oh, wow. I didn't pay attention to that. But you're right, that is what happened.

[A]

She'll. And that's the moment when we begin to like Bishop. I don't know if you noticed this, but as long as Bishop is with Corbin, I refer to him by his last name as Bishop. But as soon as he asks Susan to call him Paul, the narrator calls him Paul whenever Susan is in the scene. And that's because I want the reader to think a little more warmly about him.

[B]

Why is Paul so concerned that he never understood Corbin's poetry? And this is a two faced question. As someone who was admittedly drawn to musicians, but never poets, did you ever witness a young woman jumping into bed after a poetry reading? Much as I'd like to, I'm not asking you for personal details. Just did you ever.

[A]

It was a 70s stereotype, Khalid. I mean, you can't do it anymore. There's a lawsuit. But it was a 70s stereotype and poets like Corbyn were a dime a dozen.

[B]

Okay, who knew? So, John, what are you working on next?

[A]

Okay, I have a novel set at an actual genetics conference that was going on in Edinburgh, Scotland during the week World War II broke out.

[B]

Have you started researching?

[A]

Yes, and I'm going to be a few years doing that research.

[B]

Oh, does it involve going to Edinburgh by any chance, during the Fringe Festival?

[A]

Oh, I hope so. I hope so. But I'd like to go to the Edinburgh of 1939 rather than to the Edinburgh that's there now. And that'll be a little harder to do.

[B]

That would be tricky, but I wish you the best. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a pleasure talking.

[A]

Thank you so much, Galit. This was such fun.

[B]

And thank you for joining me again. This is G.P. gottlieb, author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery series and host for New Books and Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. Today, I've been talking to Professor John Burt about his debut novel, A Moment's Surrender. Hope you all have something intriguing to read today and always happy reading. Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website newbooksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and BlueSky with the handle ebooksnetwork, and subscribe to our weekly Substack newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.