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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network. Like most Americans, I first read the Great Gatsby in high school. I fell in love with the story. But while I was drawn to the optimism of Jay Gatsby, the brazenness of Tom, the clear sightedness of Nick, and the aloof pragmatism of Jordan, there were three other characters that made an even deeper impression on me. Three characters to whom F. Scott Fitzgerald didn't give a single line of dialogue, who were only featured in the bottom half of one paragraph and whom he described in dehumanizing terms. As we crossed Blackwell's Island, a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish Negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry. Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge, I thought. Anything at all. Even Gatsby could happen without any particular wonder. The Great Gatsby, the canonized novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, happened more than 100 years ago and as such, was ripe for a reimagining in the form of the Great Man, a novel by New York Times bestselling author and screenwriter and Kira Davis Lurie. Kira, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:25]
B
Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here.
- [01:28]
A
So, Kira, you write in the author's note at the beginning of the book, if you are born into a marginalized minority group, you come to accept that you will be hated by many of your heroes. Talk about that.
- [01:41]
B
Well, you know, we are all raised in the states talking about the Founding Fathers, and you learn about the Declaration of those who penned the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson and the great Edison, as well as many of these great authors that you read in school, whether it be Fitzgerald or Faulkner. And. And you come to admire a lot of things. I mean, there's a lot to admire in the Declaration of Independence. And Faulkner definitely exercised genius in his writing, as did Fitzgerald. And for our founding fathers, almost all of them are slave owners. And Faulkner was a notorious racist, and Fitzgerald was, too. And it's not just. And many of them, you know, are. I mean, look at Lovecraft, right? You know, and that's. So any minority group, right, is a target there. And yet these are the. What we see as the founders of a lot of genres. And to be honest, many of their works are amazing. And you. And you come to know their works frequently before you come to know the men. So when you begin to dig in, that's when the hatred sort of becomes revealed. The Hatred, the oppression, the toxicity. And you kind of have to make a choice. You can choose to then decide, I'm not going to read any of those works and I disown them from my life. And I turn my back on the accomplishments of this or that person. And sometimes the accomplishments are artistic and sometimes they're not. I mean, like more at the moment, there's this whole reckoning with Cesar Chavez, but we're not going to disown the work. Right. No matter how he dealt with women, what he did for farm workers is admirable. Right. So when it comes to art, I can't separate the artist from the art because the art is. It is the art. It's coming from them. However, I can appreciate art that comes from deeply flawed people. And I know that people frequently who are toxic in their personal lives when they sit down for their art, somehow access their best selves through their art. And I can condemn one and celebrate the other. And I think you kind of get a crash course in figuring out how you're going to deal with that if you are not a white male, because you're going to come across it.
- [04:52]
A
Talk about how you approached writing this book then like given that background, given the love of the work. Yeah, talk a little bit about that.
- [05:04]
B
So the idea for this book came from the history, not. Not because I was so eager to rewrite Fitzgerald. I mean, it's like I found out about a certain neighborhood in Los Angeles, the la's, what they called Sugar Hill at the time, where there was in the 1940s, there was black oil tycoons and black hoteliers and black business moguls and, and black Hollywood celebrities. And Hattie McDaniel would have these gala parties with full servants, a full staff of servants. And there's Bing Crosby and Clark Gable and Lena Horn, Duke Ellington's entertainment. I thought, oh my gosh, okay, that is Gatsby esque, except it's real and it's black. So that was how the marriage, like the marriage just revealed itself to me immediately. I discovered it through a public radio story and it just immediately hit me. So I had two goals here. I wanted to take this little known piece of American history and elevate it by integrating it into the most well known great American story. Right. So the first thing I did is I used the kind of the. Both the basic structure of the book, the bones of it, and paired it with the basic structure of the timeline of that history that I wanted to tell so that I could weave those two together to build to expand on that house, right? To build another wing. And then in terms of my fictional characters, I treated it like I did, like I would any other novel. Which is to say that if I have a character that needs to be like, in another novel, focused, driven purely by revenge, right? Then I have to think, okay, so here I have this young Latino woman who's living in this world. Like, what's. What happened to her? What is her thinking? Who is she? That this particular individual would be motivated that way, right? So then you build around what you need to be like one characteristic you need, and then you find ways to build around that. So same thing with a retelling. It's like, okay, so I need a philandering, a bump, you know, somewhat narcissistic husband, right? So those are the two, you know, or at least I'm gonna say self important. He was not. My character's narcissistic too. But nonetheless, I, you know, for Tom in the Great Gatsby is self important and philandering and the entitled. Those are the three characteristics. What does it take for a Black man in 1945 who there is no way was born into privilege. How does that man get to the point of feeling entitled? What? You know, how do you, how do you create that character? I know why. You know what? I need him to have that feeling. But who is he? Because he's going to be a very different person than Tom, and his motivations are going to be different. His background is going to be dramatically different. So then you start to build up that character around those pieces and you come up with this whole new person. So again, it's not that different. And then of course, with the historical characters, that's a whole different thing. Because I'm so sensitive about not giving real people flaws that I don't have evidence of them having, and that doesn't. And the nice thing about real people is that if you do your research, you'll find the flaws. They'd be like, everybody has flaws. And you don't really have to make anything up. But I wouldn't want to. You know, it's like, for instance, 1945. It would not be unreasonable that some of, like someone like Norman O. Euston, who is a character in my book and was a major business mogul, black business mogul at the time, would not be unreasonable to assume that he would be homophobic. But I don't have any evidence that and no evidence of that. So I'm not going to make him homophobic. You know, it's like I would never put that in his mouth. But again, there's always something there that, you know, to make people are complicated. And if you're honest with that, you can play on that. And so I tried really hard to. To be true to those people and not, you know, legally, you know, you can't. You can't slander the dead, but I think you can. And so I didn't want to do that, but I also didn't want to make them some kind of saints. And I hate it when you do that with historical characters. You just strip away the flaws and all of a sudden have like, some version of Jesus walking around and it feels inauthentic. And I don't think it honors those characters. I don't think it honors those people to pretend that they were not human, because what makes those people special is that they were human and yet they were still able to overcome and improve the state of humanity. So what was really nice. Like, again, I'm using normal Houston as a example. And he was definitely. He was. He helped so many African Americans by giving them opportunities through his. The businesses he started. He gave them opportunities for white collar work, lifted people, the af. So many African Americans into the middle class, offered services, financial and charitable services that were not being offered in just ways to the African American community. He did that. And he was an elitist. He was, you know, he was very. And he was judgmental of other African Americans who he didn't feel were doing things the right way or. Or as educated as him or whatever. And so when his grandchildren showed up at a signing of mine, they're now in their 70s. That was a little unnerving because.
- [11:37]
A
Did you know them? I had a.
- [11:38]
B
No, I did not. I did not. I did not. And there they were. I was like, oh, my God, how is this going to go? And. And Ivan spoke out during the Q and A, who is. He's his grandson. And he said, look, this book, it's historical fiction. So sometimes it's hard to tell what's real and what's not. So reading through this book, and I'm sitting there thinking, wait, did my grandfather say this? Because it sounds like him. So do he. Like, and he's like, you know, he goes, look, he goes, he wasn't the warmest guy, but. But, you know, but obviously we, you know, we loved him and had so much respect for him. And I feel like this book has given me another way to connect to my grandfather. And that was everything to me. I mean, that's like, you know, there was no New York Times review that could be as great as that compliment, you know, because I didn't make him perfect, but I did want to make him relatable and real. And I did that for someone who knew him better than anyone. And I specifically didn't reach out to the descendants of these people because I didn't want them to tell me to make them into saints. And I see that all the time with, like, biopics where the families involved. It's like, this is. It's not real. And so to get that confirmation was everything. That's a very long answer to your question.
- [13:13]
A
But, yeah, no, you know, you have me thinking about so many things, you know, so as we said, this is. This is fiction. So it's fiction. So you write whatever you want. It's fiction. It's also, though, you have, as you said, the kernels of this story began. Began in fact, you have done your research. There are real people peppered throughout this book. And where the people aren't real, you are drawing, in part or in whole, dependent on an existing text on. On people. Well, I was going to say on people that F. Scott Fitzgerald created. But I don't know if you all think about it. Thought about it that way or not, or, you know, talk about.
- [13:59]
B
I. You.
- [14:00]
A
You just said, you know, you said retelling earlier. I've heard you say retelling. Reimagining. Like. Yeah, talk, talk, talk about Gatsby as a structure.
- [14:09]
B
Yeah, so I usually use the word reimagining, rather retelling. I know I just use retelling because what I was referring to before, I think, is it applies to all retellings and reimaginings in terms of how you deal with the characters. But that said, I call it reimagining, at least for what I. The way I approached it. And that's because I see it as doing a good reimagining of a classic work or any work is like covering a song, a good cover. So if you're just going to do the song exactly as it sounded, why are you doing it? Just leave it. Leave the original. Let the original stand. You don't. You don't need to mess with it. Let people find that, you know, promote that. Don't do it. But if you are going to do something completely different with it. And one perfect example for me is what Johnny Cash did to Hurt the song by Nine Inch Nails. Right. When Nine Inch Nails recorded that song in the 90s, Trent Reznor was in his 20s, was like, at the end of his 20s. And the song is filled with, like, this kind of youthful angst and anger and tension and, you know, I think it's a bit masterful. And then Johnny Cash comes and he records it within a year of his death. And the song is filled with. With mourning and regret and this kind of beautiful. Like, this beautiful strain of stubborn but dwindling life that you feel through the song. It's a beauty. He didn't just. He didn't redo the song. He entered into a conversation with the original work and added, you know, and. And said, take these words, take this structure, and look what you can. And this can. And it can mean this too, you know. And so that's what I tried to do with the Great Man. I'm not looking to replace the Great Gatsby. I'm not trying, you know, I'm. I'm certainly not suggesting him, like, read mine instead of this. That's not it. And entering into a conversation with the original work, and there is, you know, obviously the antecedent is blatantly clear. I'm putting it out front, and that's all I do. But on the other hand, I am not. Imitation is not the goal here. It is to reimagine, to reshape, to put it to a different rhythm with different, you know, with different harmonies, and then give the reader that. To add to that. To add to again to add to that conversation.
- [17:32]
A
I found my experience in reading the Great Man. So I had read Gatsby before. It had been about. I think I read. I've read it once or twice, but it had been about 15 years since the last time I read it. Honestly, I was not a big. I. I had been indifferent to Gatsby my whole life. Like, just. That's the best way. I was just sort of indifferent to it as. As a text. But when I sat down to read the Great Man, I. I did this. Like, should I reread Gatsby? I decided, yes, I wanted to. And then I had to ask myself, should I read it before the Great man or should I read it after the Great Man? And I decided I wanted to read it before because to the extent that you were making callbacks and those kinds of. Which, again, this is all before I cracked the spine. Right? Like, I wanted to be able to see those things happening. And so what I wound up doing is I wound up listening to the Great Gatsby.
- [18:37]
B
Oh, okay. Interesting.
- [18:38]
A
Simultaneously to. While I was reading the Great man in text.
- [18:42]
B
Wow.
- [18:43]
A
And I'll add one more really Interesting thing. The version of the Great Gatsby audio that I chose was narrated by Leslie Odom Jr.
- [18:55]
B
Wow, this is new. I like, there's lots of people who have told me, oh, you know, I reread the Great Gatsby or after I read your book, I read the Great Gatsby. I've heard all that. This, your approach is completely original. And I'm so fascinated right now.
- [19:10]
A
Yeah. And so I think a few interesting things happened. One is I, I was, I was able, I think to, you know, to appreciate the Great man, the, the craftsmanship, the craft, personship that you put into the Great man in those places where you chose to call back. Because I felt like I was able to see those. And so I was happy about that. But there was really interesting that happened with time because, you know, there's a hundred years between when Fitzgerald wrote Gatsby and you wrote Man. Gatsby was contemporary. You are writing about, you know, 1945. Ish. And in listening to the audio with Leslie Odom Jr. Who was phenomenal. This is a black actor reading the text of Gatsby. And so I, first of all, I appreciated Gatsby in a way that I had never appreciated it before. Like, I, I found it contemporary, I found it fresh, I found it resonant. And also the Great man is also all those things. Yes, it's written by someone contemporary, but, but I think, you know, there are. Your novel does. It walks this amazing line between sort of the fresh and the contemporary and the timeless. And yet also like it's very clearly. The book is very clearly set in 1945. Like you don't. Or you know, in the 40s. Like you don't, you don't forget that for a second.
- [20:45]
B
Yeah, well, you know, it's funny because of course one of the things I keep hearing about this book, basically, particularly because of the year and time that it came out, June 25th, is. Oh my gosh, it's so relevant. And that's never like a good thing on a societal level when people tell you a book is relevant, you know, this all going to be flat. Exactly. Timeless. Right. I be. Yeah, it's like. But it usually means that like there's problems aside like bug or dysphobia. Novel feels so relevant. But, but it's. I think it feels timeless because people and don't change that much and society, for all our technological advancements have. Has not changed that much. And you know, my, my mother always said to me, you know, our technical technological evolution has dramatically outpaced Our psychological evolution. And so we. We have this tendency to see people from the past as not like us. You know, they're. They. They don't. They. They're. They're almost like alien beings, you know, and we can look at their tragedies with an enormous amount of remove. Because it doesn't. You know, it's like, well, that happened in the beginning of the 20th century. You know, it's like, so the Titanic becomes like a fun story, right? You know, put. You know, I see people have, like, on Halloween, like, Jack the Ripper tombstones, right? Because his victims don't feel real. That. That whole thing is just. It's. They're not. They're not like us, except they were. Amanda. I think that if you develop characters well and are true to their complexities, then no matter what time that they're in, we can recognize them and feel that timelessness. And again, the struggles that this community was going through feeling, unfortunately, I think, very familiar to a lot of people. You know, the. Without giving anything important away, one of the themes for the book aims or one of the. The book is structured, again, around Fitzgerald, but it's also around his court case. There was. This was a very affluent African American community, and they were living in mansions. And unfortunately, those mansions had racial covenants on them. And their white neighbors were trying to get them kicked out of the homes that they purchased with their own money. So these are wealthy African Americans living in luxury and still dealing with the same. I don't want BS of everybody else's, of that their four counterparts are. And you look at someone like Charles Q. Brown, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who's. I. His list of accomplishments are ridiculous. The number of battalions he run, the head of, like, you know, the Naval infantry, just like, he just. It's. His resume reads like a wish list, right? And yet Pete Hegseth in his book writes, we'll never know if he got that job because he's black. African Americans are always being asked to prove that they are worthy of the things that they have already accomplished. That hasn't changed. Did you get into Harvard because you're black or because you deserve to be here? You are in a position now that you have to prove that. Are you. Were you hired as a lawyer at this firm because they were looking for diversity or did you actually earn. It doesn't matter that, you know, you may have won X number of cases and stuff. You have to. You're constantly being asked to prove that you are worthy of what you have earned, already accomplished. That was true in 1945. It's true in 2026. So you have characters and people who are as complex as we are, that we recognize, and you see struggles that feel, unfortunately, somewhat familiar. And then you get timeless.
- [25:49]
A
How did you think about. From, you know, Fitzgerald's Gatsby? How did you think about what to pull forward or pull into the great man versus what not to? And I'll give one. One example. Like old sport, right? Jay Gatsby's old sport. Which, again, I think the first time I ever read Gatsby, like, for me, just. I was. I couldn't wrap my head around it. But it's one of the things I've always. You always remember. I. I think you think about Jay Gatsby, you think about the use of old sports support. And. And here we have. Yeah, hear that.
- [26:26]
B
Yeah, I know.
- [26:28]
A
He's like.
- [26:29]
B
I don't, to be honest, in regards to that. Maybe that was me being too cute by half. But I just wanted to give that little tribute in there, you know, it's like it was such a key part of Gatsby. I think I have James saying it once, but it isn't.
- [26:42]
A
I love. He says it more than once.
- [26:44]
B
Say more than once. A couple times. It's like. It's a nod to. To the antecedent that I. Again, reimagining and hopefully honoring. And Marguerite is French for Daisy. So. Yeah, yeah, so. So there are little. There's these little Easter eggs throughout the book of like, I am still. You know, this is a. You know, this does come from Gatsby. This is that. That is where it was born. And other than that, other than those little pieces like that again, those little Easter eggs pieces, things like that. Again, I took the bones of. Of Gatsby and just put. You know, and then just build something different on, you know, like use different. Like different muscle tissue. Different, obviously different skin, different different shapes and so on and so forth. But the bones, it's. But I'm using those bones, right? And. And so there's. There's many beats that I'm following along to with Gatsby. Again, they play very differently in this community just because of everything that they're dealing with. And it's interesting. Again, it's with characters like Terrence, who is the antecedent, Tom or Marguerite, Daisy, These people who seem. I mean, my character, Terrence, he's entitled. Daisy is. Or Marguerite is carefree as Daisy was. But again, what does it mean for a woman living who was born in the Jim Crow South. And living with extreme racism is genuinely, there's no argument, it's institutional as racism. How do you become carefree? How does that happen? Right? So, so you have to, you know, look at what that would mean or how you, how that manifests in, in her body. Um, and so, yeah, so it's like. So that's how I sort of. So that's kind of what I was thinking about when I was like, where I'm diverging and where I'm not. And once you sort of figure out the characters, they can kind of let you know that too, where it needs to diverge. And I will not say it here, but there's one key difference in the ending that to me speaks to how black communities, regardless of whether they get along or not, have to work together or when. When and not always, but when they have to work together and how. And how they, they need to show up for one another so in ways that are not necessary in more white privileged worlds. So it's so, yeah, so there's. So those are the, the kind of things where I was, I was thinking about.
- [30:18]
A
I, I probably should have opened with this, that this is a, you know, this. We are having a spoiler free conversation because we want people to go and get the book and read the book. So this will continue to be a spoiler free conversation, which I, I am struggling with at some point because I have a whole line of questions I'm like just dying to ask you about. And we can't talk about this while it's recording. So maybe that's for off the record conversation about themes and, and those kinds of things as well. But we will, we'll, we will hold that for, for the people that have read the book. You talked before about, you talked some about research, you talked about a court case as being part of this. The. The neighborhood of Sugar Hill in Los Angeles. I'm curious, what, what were some of the other things that you discovered in your research? Either either that, you know, that make their way into the book or actually didn't make their way into. Into the book.
- [31:20]
B
I mean, there's so much I had to leave on the cutting room floor because it just didn't advance the story. Right. You know, and that was for me, the most painful part of the process because there's so much in it for product, you know, So I mean, okay, we'll start with like Hattie and Gone with the Wind. Right? So for instance, I find it really fascinating, like Hattie, one of the things that Kind of helped me understand Hannie. And her character is that her father, which he never talked about, was an escaped slave who was really. Who served in the Union army, who was actually a hero in the Battle of Nashville. Right? And, you know, it's fascinating. You know, that's his. His dream. And she becomes most famous for her role in a movie that elevates the Confederacy. But also the way that the federal government treated him and did not care for him, despite his extreme wounds throughout his lifetime. It, I think, really informed Hattie in regards to what it gets you, if you like, try to be righteous and. And too precious about not making compromises. She was not going to go back there. It's like. It's not like I can say all the right things and do all the right things and end up like my father or I could not. But then there's other things too, like with Gone with Gwyn, I do have it in there that she was not allowed to attend the premiere because it was a segregated premiere in Atlanta. What I do not put in there is that there was the only black people that premier was they had a children's choir come in and a black children's choir. They dressed them up in rags and then they had them sing Negro spirituals. Bring back the feeling of the antebellum south, right? The romanticism for the white audience. And in that children's choir was Martin Luther King Jr. And, you know, it's fascinating to me, and to me, it is so telling and compelling that the man who, you know, led us to that. He went from that to leading us to the mountaintop. You know, it's like such an amazing arc. It's also true that in 1945, nobody would have known who Martin Luther King Jr. Is. Nobody. Nobody. So I cannot have it in there. There was, you know, Loren Miller did this amazing journey to the Soviet Union with Langston Hughes, where they were going to be in this. Going to be the first true interracial film that was filmed. Was going to be filmed by the Soviet government or in conjunction with. In partnership with the Soviet government. And then Stalin himself killed it because he was told by an American businessman that if he went forward with this film, FDR would never recognize the Soviet Union. And this was Pre World War II, and they still wanted American acknowledgment. And so Stalin killed the film. That's fascinating. Has nothing to do with my story, but it's fascinating. You know, it's like there's so much. Right? So, I mean, Lena Horne was having an affair with Orson Welles. It's like there's a lot going on, but for one thing, you have to stay true to. Not to a. Like things like with Martin Luther King Jr. What people would know at that time. Also, it's a first person book. If Charlie doesn't know it, the reader can't know it. So if Hattie McDaniel, the last thing that she would have done is talk about her, her father with anyone at that time. Not in that respect. I mean, she was essentially lying by her father at that time, saying he was a preacher, which he was not. But that was a narrative that was really helping her. And so I don't want to be disparaging in counting Daniel because actually she, she was a very strong woman and she did, she really did what she could to advance black actors and was a genuine friend to, to the two other black actors who didn't try to undermine it, you know, but, but you know this. But again, you research people and you find their true flaws. So, so it's, it's just that you, you have to figure out what they would say, Charlie would know, what advances the story. And if it doesn't, it is to the benefit of the book to cut it out. And you know, you read books all the time. Like you'll be reading a mystery or a thriller or something, and then all of a sudden they'll go into all this forensic stuff. It has nothing to do with the book. And you're like, why am I learning all this? You're learning all this because the author fell in love with the research. I totally get it, okay? But ideally you should, you know, to quote a great author and sadly racist film, Faulkner, you have to kill your darlings.
- [36:58]
A
One of the things that struck me as I was reading this and I had messaged you about this offline and I think I'm so interested in your take on this. I said I'm curious about the vision of, of like Gatsby and Man as migration novels. And like, I don't know
- [37:22]
B
that a Gatsby as a migration novel. I mean, yes, the people in it move around, but I don't see them really as migrating.
- [37:35]
A
Nick Care. I think I was thinking about Nick Care. Like Gatsby. I was thinking about Nick Carraway comes from the Midwest to the Northeast, which is like, I felt like, was like, that's a, that's a thing. I mean as, as a. I've. I've lived, I've lived most of my life in the Northeast, but I've lived in The Southeast. I've lived in the Northwest and I've lived in Europe. I've never lived in the Midwest. And that is by design. I am not. I don't. I don't belong. That's not to disparage Midwesterners. I don't belong there. Yeah, but to move from the Midwest, early 20th century Midwest to Northeast. But then what I thought was really interesting then is in the Great man, you have characters who. Who really did, like, migrated.
- [38:20]
B
Yeah, they migrated. Yeah.
- [38:21]
A
From the Southeast to California. Not to the Northeast, not to the Northeast, not to Chicago or Detroit, to Los Angeles.
- [38:30]
B
Right. Yeah. Again, and this is a semantic issue that I think you could kind of go either way on for me, a migration. First of all, it's usually part of a movement, Right. You know, there is, you know, when we talk about the Great Migration, we're talking about black people, you know, tons of them, you know, like thousands, millions, moving from the south to places where the Klan had less of a hold and there was less. And at the very least, Jim Crow was less overt. And whereas, yes, people move from the Midwest to the. To the big city, and there's always. Or he didn't move to a big city, but it's like, move to the Northeast, and that's a cultural change. But I don't see it as part of a movement. You know, kind of like we see 50 million movies about, like, you know, small town, girl moves to New York. Right. You know, like, that's a whole theme and a trope. But I don't see it as a migration. Right. And whereas African Americans were actually part of a whole movement, a whole cultural shift to other places. And in la, it was really pronounced in that era during. And one of the reasons for that is because of the war industry. Right. I mean, there were jobs during World War II. And Hollywood, to be honest, during the war, opened up more to African American actors because they were trying to get us to feel more patriotic and therefore be more willing to support the war and the war effort. And that's not like extrapolating. This was explicit. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a letter to the studio heads. Walter Wright had a meeting with them, and they had it armed with that letter and a letter from the War Department saying, we need roles for African Americans that make them feel good about this country. And that went away like that. When the war was over, it's like those roles immediately dried up. But the point is that for this period of time, there was a lot of allure for Los Angeles. And so there was A huge migrational shift coming towards California right then and the city. It's interesting. It's the same. It's always the same, right? African Americans came there because they needed workers. They wanted to put them in these roles. They wanted to put them in the. And when I say roles, I'm not just talking about Hollywood. I mean, these place. They needed them, and then they resented them for coming. You can see that with Latino population right now, okay? It's like, we need them, but then now that they're here, we're angry. Right. I, it's, it's so baffling to me, but that is almost always the way that it works. And, and so you have this huge influx of African Americans. And the more that showed up, the more intense. In many places, the racism became. The LAPD at that time was. I mean, that was real. And it was Parker's boys, as they were called because Parker was the chief of police and he was very racist. And so it was. And so it was interesting. It's on the one hand, they were essentially invited and they had this community and it was thriving and it was vibrant. And there was a lot of African Americans who reached true success, and they were still dealing with the same toxicity. So that is the story of. That is the common story of black and brown migration.
- [43:04]
A
Another story that's, that is in the novel. Thematically, is this question about aspiration versus inspiration.
- [43:12]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [43:14]
A
I.
- [43:15]
B
So the thing is, there are people in history who inspire us, right? We are inspired by, by Gandhi, by Martin Luther King. We want to be Beyonce. Okay. So, you know, it's like people don't necessarily, you know, they don't aspire to, like, be seeing the poor walking barefoot across the land and, or being. Putting themselves in positions where they're going to be shot. And that's not the dream. You know, we're inspired that, that these people do that. But what we go for ourselves is quite different. You know, when we look at the people who we aspire to be, they are not barefoot. So it's. And for the most part, I, I, I really do believe that we need books. We need books, right? I think we need people to aspire, you know, to aspire to who can show that success is possible with this, with this skin color, with this background or with the, you know, from coming from, you know, lack of means, whatever. You know, it's like those are. And we need people to show us the value of sacrifice. The only challenge is that when you pair self interest, which is in itself not a bad Thing with a unfettered capitalist sensibility. That's where the problems lie. You know, I do think that we all owe it to ourselves to take care of ourselves. Right. And to put our, you know, and to prioritize our interest. Right. You know, I was having, I was at dinner with my sister in law and her friend and her friend said, you know, I, one of my, it was her birth, her friend's birthday and she goes, you know, one of my goals for this year is like, you know, relationships. I'm really going to learn to like prioritize myself and my needs. And you know, my sister in law said, yeah. And it was like, and yeah, you know, put yourself first. Absolutely, that's great. But if putting yourself first means that you're exploiting your workers, if putting yourself first means that you are finding measurable, tangible, material ways to elevate your stature. Without much interest in the community and the society around you, that's a problem. And again, it's that marriage of capitalism and self interest that where you get issues and I think in the great man, that's what, it's a complicated story for this group because they are all capitalists and they live in a capitalist society and that is how success is defined. And I do not fault them for that. But it does sometimes get thorny in regards to when do you need to pull back on that? When is what you're thinking of as self interest really something, a toxic expression of capitalism? And it's, it's again, it's all the time. I mean, all the time. Right? I'm, this is something I think we always struggle with. There's, you know, we, there's, I too grew up in a capitalist society and you know, well, you know, I talk about all the things, you know, the care for the environment and for, you know, I try to be so good about these things and society. But then on the other hand, I'm in the middle of a major move. I'm stressed and I'm like, I'm sorry, I need the Amazon delivery today. So watch my, watch my global footprint just get a little bigger because I can buy it and I need it and I can't deal with it. Right? This is what my needs are and it's not pretty, but I feel like that's also very human and particularly in this world as it is made up. So again, I think I kind of, if people feel the book is timeless again, it's because we're dealing with the same, the same kind of choices, the same kind of compromises. And the same kind of societal expectations.
- [48:09]
A
Speaking of time and timelessness, something else jumped out at me as I was reading it, and because we. You talked about, you know, retelling, reimagining, and that's Rememory. You know, Tony. Toni Morrison's. Toni Morrison's Rememory, I felt was a pretty strong. I. I felt it in this book. And I'm curious, you know, so much of what you do when you craft a book like this is very conscious, is very, very, very thoughtful, very deliberate. And I also know when you're writing, though, sometimes things appear that in hindsight, and you may lean into them after. You know, after they appear in hindsight. But I'm curious. I'm curious how much of. To the extent that you agree that Rememory is evident in the book. How much of that was deliberate on the front end versus it sort of appeared and then perhaps you leaned into it further.
- [49:05]
B
Yeah, you know, it was. It was fairly conscious. I didn't put it in those terms when I. In my mind when I was writing it, but. But I knew. But I. And yet I. I knew that's what I wanted. You know, I wanted the way. The way people process their pain in their past. We reshape our memories to. To accommodate our psychological needs. And so I really. And I thought that was really important for these characters, all of whom have been through various traumas. I mean, that's the thing. It's like to be. To be black again. These are very, very successful people, but they're black in America in 1945. And that means that they were born. Almost all of them are in, like, the turn of the century. You know, they. They. They saw. They. These are people who lived through the rent summer. You know, it's like. So everybody's been through trauma. You know, you have this usually when we see pictures of, like, you know, the. The rich and famous, when we see it depicted in fiction, like things like succession, the trauma is just like a dysfunctional, patriarchal family. Right. But these are people who went through real societal trauma, every single one of them. And when you have that, then, yeah, you. Then. The role of memory and how you process that is so pivotal to how you're able to function in the world. So. So, yeah, so it was. It was definitely intentional. And from the get go, I feel
- [51:01]
A
like we have to talk about the title, and I feel like it's good to talk about at the end. I'm glad that we didn't start with the title. Just. Yeah, talk About. Talk about the title.
- [51:09]
B
Yeah, so this was actually, you know, I. I did consider this as well. Like, the first things that came into my mind was the Great man, because this idea of, well, obviously place off the Great Gatsby, but also my main character. And my main character is James Mann, or not my main character. My main character is Charles Tramiel, but my Gatsby figure is James Mann. And so. But also the idea of, like, this elegant, wealthy black man that we see on the COVID and someone like, again, someone, you know, this position looking very. Of that much wealth and success of that era, looking so very different than how we've been taught wealthy, successful men of that era should look like. And then calling him the Great man with an extra N, like just a little bit something different there very much appealed to me. I will also say that when I admit I did not explain all that to him, but when I threw it out to my husband before I submitted it, he was like, oh, he hated the title. Hated it.
- [52:26]
A
Right?
- [52:27]
B
So I was like, okay. So I did something else, and I don't even remember what it did, but, you know, I. I turned it in to. To. To the editors. You know, they pick up a book and they said, but we got. You have a new title. And they said, could you give me, like, 20 titles? Right? And so I'm like, well, I'm not great at tiles, but here you go. And I put the Great man in there immediately. And when I went into the editorial office, you know, all the editors were there, and they're like, your title is amazing. You said you weren't good at titles, but the Great man is fantastic. And I said, well, you know, I almost didn't put in because my husband hates it. And they're like, never listen to husbands, never slide. So but anyways. Yeah. And, you know, and to be fair, if I had explained why the Great man appealed to me, to my husband, the way I appealed to the way that I explained it to you, I think he would have come to a different conclusion. But I just threw it out there, you know, like. And he had an immediate reaction, which is his right, but he's wrong.
- [53:33]
A
Did. Did the character. And again, it's sort of the Gatsby analogous character. Did the character James Mann come like his name anyway? Did he come first or did the title come first?
- [53:48]
B
He came first.
- [53:50]
A
He came first.
- [53:51]
B
Yeah. I don't title my. When I'm. I. I don't title something in conda.
- [53:56]
A
I'm gonna ask you this question, and we can edit it out if we're. Because we don't want to spoil. I don't can say I wanna. I'm. I don't know.
- [54:02]
B
Spoilers.
- [54:03]
A
I don't want to spoil anything.
- [54:04]
B
Okay, okay, Okay.
- [54:04]
A
I. I had this because I've been thinking on the title and. And what all the title means as part of the book and inside the book, outside the book, you know, Gatsby, all the things. And then I had this thought, you know, that the title is the Great. The Great Man.
- [54:21]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [54:23]
A
And, you know, I think there isn't. There is an immediate instinct to assume it's talking about James to the extent that the Great Gatsby is talking about Jay Gatsby, the idea that the great man would be talking about James Mann. But I'm not sure it is.
- [54:39]
B
Yeah, you're not the first to brought that up. Okay, so, first of all, one of the key differences between what Fitzgerald did with Gatsby and what I did with the great man is in the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald's protagonist is not his main character. Gatsby is the main character. And as a result, the only relationships we care about are. The only relationship of Nick's that we care about is his relationship with Gatsby. We don't care about Nick's relationship with his cousin. We care about his cousin's relationship with Gatsby. We don't really care about Nick's romance. It's Gatsby. In my book, my protagonist is my main character, and that's Charles Trumel. And so it is not unreasonable for people to look at. If they read the book. And Charles is definitely. And he is. Nick would be his antecedent. He is clearly the protagonist. He has his own arc, he has his own demons. He has his own struggles and relationships. So it's not unreasonable to look at the COVID and say, that's got to be Charlie. And I think that for me, I don't really care who people assign the COVID or the title to if they put it to James Mann or Charles, because to me, it kind of is encompassing to both of them and the community at large. It's like these are. They're the great. Each one is the great man. They're all, in this time, exceeding all expectations, breaking through all the limits that were placed in front of them in a time where they were absolutely were not supposed to. So again, when I say I like the idea of seeing this dapper, affluent, African American man on the COVID and then saying the great man with that little extra, you know, that little Sort of unexpected as the character himself is. I'd like to think that could be applied to many. Yeah. Of the characters in this book. So I see it as a more all encompassing title and the COVID image almost being a composite of the men inside that book.
- [57:19]
A
If there are literature students listening and that are looking for a. An article topic, I have about a page and a half of notes of like that needs like deep analysis and writing about this book. So shout out to people out there. Again, if there are people that are looking for a topic, I have a whole bunch here that I would just love someone to go incredibly deep on because there's a lot. There's a lot. Okay, one. One last question though. And it's. And it's not that. It's not that we, you know, we. We touched on earlier about, you know, our. Our contemporary times, the times that we're living in Black history. What is happening to black history, what people are doing to black history. And I'm curious about how you think about this interplay between fact and fiction and the fact that you have a novel. You have a novel, your novel is historical fiction, but your novel is not pretending to be the story. You know what I mean? Like the true story of these people that really existed, but there's fact in it. How do you think about the novel as a vehicle for fact or truth? To the extent that fact and truth
- [58:41]
B
are true for things, I think yeah, it's very true. Well, is it? Gosh, it was Emerson who said that fiction reveals truth, that reality conceals. And I very much believe that. And so I think that every. People learn best through storytelling. I mean, that is how we absorb not just facts, but philosophies and societal truths and societal patterns. And I think every society is aware that storytelling. That is why every society has mythology. I mean, there's reason why every society does storytelling. And I think there is very much a place for. I mean, I read a lot of nonfiction, so that's wonderful and I strongly recommend people should do that. But frequently what brings people to nonfiction is. Is starts with fiction. And whether it's a book or a movie or something, and they hear a little, you know, they read something and they'll think, wait, is that true? And then they go down a rabbit hole. And when you just. Storytelling can bring history to people in a way that's not just palatable, but that stays with them and makes things much more real for them. Again, while I was saying before with like, you think about these tragedies and these people of the past, like they're aliens, like they're not like us. And when you tell a fictional story and you're. You're able to create dialogue that you don't know existed, you know, and didn't exist, right?
- [60:38]
A
You're.
- [60:38]
B
You have to. But the fact that you're able to create that dialogue and base it on the reality of these people's lives, then all of a sudden they stop becoming just an article or stop becoming a statistic, something that you just mark from history. And so that, to me, is the value of storytelling, particularly all storytelling, but certainly through historical fiction, I think it's so. I think it's really necessary. And, and in a time when there are people in forces working so hard to erase portions of our history, you, through storytelling, you can weave it into somebody's brain and their experience in a way that nothing else can and that no one could erase.
- [61:39]
A
The book is the Great man by Kira Davis Lurie. You can find Kira online at Instagram, threads and TikTok ciradavislurie. You've been listening to Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Sommer, a new Books Network podcast. I am your host, Sullivan Sommer. If you like what you heard, subscribe, follow and drop us a rating on your favorite podcast app. We're on Instagram Ditions to the Archive, and we're free over on Substack 2, where you can find even more great author interviews. Thanks for listening to Additions to the Archive.