NPR Book of the Day: Karen Russell’s “The Antidote”

Episode Date: December 30, 2025
Host: Scott Simon
Guest: Karen Russell
Theme: Exploring memory, history, and the Dust Bowl through the lens of fiction and photography

Episode Overview

This episode of NPR's Book of the Day centers on acclaimed novelist Karen Russell and her latest work, The Antidote. Set during the harrowing Dust Bowl era, the novel explores intertwining themes of memory, historical reckoning, and imagination. Russell discusses how photography, especially the legacy of Gordon Parks, influenced the creation of her characters and the novel’s worldview, as well as her aim to envision hopeful futures in literature.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting and Narrative Voice

• The novel opens on “Black Sunday,” a pivotal Dust Bowl day in the 1930s, narrated by Antonina Rossi, who wakes up in a jailhouse during an apocalyptic dust storm.
• [01:28] Karen Russell:

  “Before anybody knew to call it Black Sunday, I woke up in the jailhouse to a sound like a freight train tunneling through me… My body trembled like a husk on the cot… I was nothing but the fear of floating off. What had happened to me while I slept? It felt as if a knife had scraped the marrow from my bones. Something vital inside me had liquefied and drained away, and in its place was this new weightlessness.”

2. Dust Bowl Context and Realism

• [02:18] Karen Russell: Describes the Dust Bowl as an era where “apocalyptic clouds of dust… really swallow the sun,” transporting tons of fertile soil even across the country.
• She frames the setting as a product of both environmental disaster and failed agricultural practices, with real-life implications that reached the highest levels of government.

3. Antonina Rossi’s Unique Gift

• Antonina has a supernatural capacity: she “swallows” and stores painful memories for others, who can then retrieve them when needed.
• [03:01] Karen Russell:

  “She has a gift for sort of swallowing the past and holding it in storage for people… this loss... dynamites a space inside her that she is renting out as storage for the memories that people can’t stand to remember or bear to forget.”

• [03:46] Scott Simon draws the analogy to a bank vault, and Russell elaborates that Antonina herself can’t access or know what she contains.

4. Photography and the Character of Cleo Alfrey

• Cleo Alfrey, a fictional photographer inspired by Gordon Parks, is sent to document rural poverty.
• Her magical camera photographs not just the present, but layers of time—yielding images of the past, present, and possible futures.
• [04:56] Karen Russell:

  “Some of the photographs are showing that long before Europeans come to this region, there are other communities, the dozens of native nations that have been successfully living on and with this prairie ecosystem for millennia… she’s also able to conjure both hell worlds, but also… blue skies, places where buffalo are migrating out of the past and into the future.”

5. Influence of Gordon Parks

• Russell attributes much inspiration for Cleo and the novel’s themes to photographer Gordon Parks.
• [05:42] Karen Russell (paraphrasing Parks):

  “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera… We have these things installed in us in birth, and they’re our imaginations. And we can do this incredible thing, conjuring these future worlds that maybe they don’t exist today, but they could, and making those real.”

• Russell aims to emphasize the potential of imagination to “draw other kinds of worlds into focus,” even amid modern bleakness.

6. Memory, History, and Reckoning

• The narrative challenges the notion that the past is safely behind us, depicting how it shapes the present and our possibilities.
• [06:38] Karen Russell:

  “If there’s anything this novel taught me, it’s that the past is certainly not safely in the past. Right. That it really cohabits with the present and continues to shape it… I wanted… to try to envision a future that was not apocalyptic… with shared abundance for all. And… we can’t do that unless we return to our nation’s history and try to reckon with it.”

7. Forgetting as an Antidote?

• Scott Simon raises the idea of “strategic forgetting” as a way to cope with the burdens of memory.
• [07:21] Karen Russell:

  “It’s humbling to write a book about the gaps in people’s memories, while I’m very aware of many in my own. Scott, I don’t think we can hold the entire secret cargo we each carry… It’s not so much about, like, filling in all the holes as sort of illuminating what possibilities and responsibilities we might be missing.”

Memorable Quotes

• On Black Sunday’s horror:
  Karen Russell, 01:28

  “My fingers clawed into the mattress for those early moments in the dark, I was nothing but the fear of floating off.”

• On Antonina’s gift:
  Karen Russell, 03:01

  “Her baby was taken from her at a home for unwed mothers. And this loss in this novel, it sort of dynamites a space inside her that she is renting out as storage for the memories that people can't stand to remember or bear to forget.”

• On Gordon Parks and imagination:
  Karen Russell, 05:42

  “We have these things installed in us in birth, and they're our imaginations. And we can do this incredible thing, conjuring these future worlds that maybe they don't exist today, but they could, and making those real.”

• On reckoning with history:
  Karen Russell, 06:38

  “The past is certainly not safely in the past. Right. That it really cohabits with the present and continues to shape it.”

Notable Segments with Timestamps

• Opening excerpt from The Antidote: [01:28-02:04]
• Explanation of Dust Bowl’s impact: [02:18-02:54]
• Antonina's supernatural gift: [03:01-03:42]
• Introduction of Cleo Alfrey, the photographer: [04:26-04:56]
• Gordon Parks’s influence on the novel: [05:42-06:31]
• Reflections on how the past shapes the future: [06:38-07:12]
• Discussion of memory, forgetting, and responsibility: [07:21-07:49]

Tone & Language

The conversation is thoughtful, poetic, and reflective—much like Russell’s writing style. Both Simon and Russell engage with themes of memory, loss, history, and creative possibility without shying away from complexity but always grounded in human empathy.

Summary

This episode provides a compelling look into The Antidote’s imaginative world, where memory, photography, and history combine to challenge our present and offer glimpses of alternative futures. Karen Russell’s inspiration from other art forms, notably photography and Gordon Parks’s social vision, infuses her narrative with both weight and hope. The conversation is rich with meditations on what we remember, what we must reckon with, and what we dream possible. For listeners and readers alike, Russell’s words are a call to remember—and to imagine beyond despair.