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- [00:01]
Laurie Frankel
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- [00:11]
Kate Gibson
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- [00:13]
Laurie Frankel
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- [00:37]
Charlie Gibson
Welcome back to prom season at the bookcase with Kate and Charlie. If you don't know what that reference is to, you weren't listening last week. And then shame on you. I'm Charlie Gibson.
- [00:48]
Kate Gibson
I'm Kate Gibson. And actually this week, my mom and I took a safari and we went over to the park and we actually viewed the kids getting their pictures taken. So, like, it was a whole. We didn't take a van with the top off or anything like that, but we did walk over to see the
- [01:03]
Charlie Gibson
prom kids, if you were listening, you know that Kate gets very. She lives across from a beautiful park in Minneapolis, and the kids show up for their prom pictures. And Kate was rhapsodic about all of it.
- [01:13]
Kate Gibson
Last week I even yelled at the wildlife. This week it was like, hey, your hair is perfect.
- [01:18]
Charlie Gibson
You look beautiful.
- [01:19]
Carolyn Bix
I love your shoes.
- [01:21]
Charlie Gibson
It is. There's such hope in those kids when they show up for proms this week. As you know, as we've said often, this is a podcast with two generations, two genders, looking at books. And we extend the two business this week in that, I think, for the first time in what, over 200 shows, we have two books. We get a lot of books, and there's some that we just can't fit in. And so we're doing two. And you say, well, they must be related. No, they're not.
- [01:48]
Kate Gibson
Neither remotely.
- [01:49]
Charlie Gibson
They're totally unrelated. We have a wonderful book by Laurie Frankel called Enormous Wings, which is really interesting and quite funny. And then we have a book for Stephen King fans. It's not written by Stephen King, it's written about Stephen King. You should explain.
- [02:07]
Kate Gibson
Yes, I was really excited to receive this book, Monsters in the Archives, My Year of Fear with Stephen King by Carolyn Bix. Carolyn Bix is the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair of Literature at the University of Maine. She's also a Shakespeare scholar and Shakespeare professor like you do. And so she has gone through Stephen King's archives for a lot of his great books in the 70s, Carrie the Shining, Night Shift, Pet Sematary. And she talks about the process of his writing through the development of these novels. I had a great Time reading it. If you're a Stephen King fan, I highly recommend it as a companion to something like On Writing because it's an actual visual demonstration and literary demonstration of what he talks about in On Writing as his process.
- [02:50]
Charlie Gibson
Yes. It's curious that a Shakespearean scholar would be getting into the Stephen King archives. We'll explain when we get to that book. But we start with Enormous Wings and Laurie Frankel and you have to suspend disbelief a little bit. Suspend belief, not disbelief.
- [03:05]
Kate Gibson
Yes, but it's not a fantasy.
- [03:06]
Charlie Gibson
No, no, no. It's a wonderful novel. But it starts with. And you know right away. It's about a 77 year old woman who gets pregnant by natural causes. We won't get into what natural causes means, but you know, and you have to accept that because it really becomes about so much more. But with that setting, it allows her to explore some problems, mostly about dying and about living.
- [03:35]
Carolyn Bix
Yeah.
- [03:35]
Kate Gibson
The dignity of having a baby. The dignity of dying with grace. The dignity of the last days of your life when you feel like maybe you don't have as many choices as you used to have because you're restricted by age and your body and maybe your children again. She definitely navigates all of these really important issues with a tremendous amount of humor. If you don't laugh in this book, I don't trust you.
- [03:57]
Charlie Gibson
It's about choice. And I know when we say choice, you think, well, it's all about abortion. It's not. And we actually had her read a paragraph that relates to this issue of the fact that she wants everybody to have choices in their life.
- [04:14]
Laurie Frankel
Because there's the rub, right? We choose life, but not all life. Not life, no matter what. In fact, we choose life within pretty narrow parameters. Sometimes we say, I choose to live better. I will risk my life for a better life. Or we say, I choose to go down fighting. I choose life so hard I'm willing to give it up. Or maybe we say, I choose to live, but only well and strong. Not a burden, not a shell, not without dignity, not without choices across state lines, around this aching fractal of a country, all over the world, in every society, in every culture, through all of history and all of time. This. This one thing, this is what everyone wants. To live well on our own terms. And then after a whole lot of that, to die gently and bravely and only when the time is right. To choose and to choose and to choose and to never stop choosing right to the end.
- [05:08]
Kate Gibson
So that's one of our favorite passages from Enormous Wings by the Great Laurie Frankel. And now our conversation with the great Laurie Frankel about this awesome book which we highly recommend you picking up.
- [05:23]
Charlie Gibson
Laurie Frankel. It is a great pleasure to have you in the bookcase. The book is Enormous Wings, as we've talked about. I want to start by asking you how you decided to write a book based on what is an impossible premise. And I'm not giving anything away but a 77 year old woman getting pregnant by natural causes. It's not possible, Laurie, we know that. So why do you start with this premise and why was it so central to you to develop the book the way you did with that premise as a base of the book?
- [05:53]
Laurie Frankel
Well, that's such a good question and it's a hard one to answer. I think in a very large way it's really interesting to me to have at the very kernel of something, something which is hard to believe, surrounded by realism. I spent a long time trying to decide whether I wanted to make it more realistic or less realistic. Whether it would be more interesting to put, to put her at the very edge as possible. Like, what if she were 58, what if she were 62? Then maybe you would believe this. So what I liked about this idea and how I landed on 77 in particular was I wanted it to be not quite possible. It's a more interesting thought experiment to me at that point. But then to have the rest of the book and everything else that happens in it be entirely believable and entirely realism, that tension, that contrast, that's. That's what I went into it with. And so to me, I think if it had all been realism, then I was just rehashing arguments that I think we've all heard before and that we've all made before and that we've all had before that, taking it and moving it just enough off center to have this thing that, that you can imagine but you can't quite believe, allowed all of us, I hope, to have a deeper, more interesting conversation than we would have otherwise about all sorts of issues.
- [07:33]
Kate Gibson
But in some ways you bit yourself off an enormous challenge. Because once she's pregnant, you're now writing about a couple of things that have been written about ad nauseam. And you gotta come up with new and interesting ways to talk about becoming a mother, but also dignified death, finding love late in life. Like there isn't really a challenge that you didn't bite off with this book. So were there times where you thought to yourself, I'm freaking crazy?
- [08:00]
Laurie Frankel
Yes. I mean, every morning I would say every Morning. I thought, oh, I'm freaking crazy. I always want to talk about new things or talk about them differently.
- [08:11]
Carolyn Bix
And.
- [08:11]
Laurie Frankel
And so that's what I liked about this. It's a different lens, it's a different way in. It's a different frame to talk about these things that are really important. And therefore, we have to think about new ways, new ways to talk about new things to say than the things that we've already said over and over again.
- [08:28]
Charlie Gibson
We had you read a passage which ends with. And to never stop choosing right to the end. To choose and to choose and to choose. Why does that passage fit. How does it fit into your novel and into your thesis?
- [08:42]
Laurie Frankel
Yeah, thank you for asking that extremely great question. That is my. Really, the central idea here, my hope for this book. You know, I think that at the moment, and for a long time in this country in particular, we think about choice within really pretty narrow parameters. And in fact, we use that word choice to mean really one thing to. To talk about abortion. And, and abortion comes up in this book, but it's not what the book is about. What the book is about is like a small C choice.
- [09:15]
Kate Gibson
This.
- [09:16]
Laurie Frankel
All of the ways in which we want. We always want. We want right to the end to be able to choose for ourselves. And I don't want to talk about things that we have already decided. I want to talk about all of the things around the things that we've already decided. And the central example of this book is being able to choose at the end of your life and the ways in which that's really hard because our options within the medical care system are very limited. Our options as we get older, as to. As to housing, as to family, as to how to navigate all of the challenges that come and also don't come at the end of life. And I think that. That so often we make. We are making those decisions or we are making those decisions on behalf of our parents for reasons that feel like safety, for reasons that feel like prognosticating, for reasons that feel like, you know, fear of what. Of what might come next without any sense of what will come next because we have to make those decisions before we're ready.
- [10:25]
Kate Gibson
The book even starts with Pepper Mills having choice taken away from her because her kids say, you can't be living independently anymore. You have to be a part of this assisted living community.
- [10:38]
Laurie Frankel
Yes, right, exactly. So she. The book opens with. She gets in this minor fender bender which causes both the. The priest that she's rear ended and her adult children to say, you can't drive anymore. When. When people get in minor fender benders in their 20s, we, of course, we don't say that, but in her case, they say, oh, you can't. We have to take away your license. At which point she. She loses her car, at which point she loses her home, at which point she loses her independence. And so she has to move into this. This retirement facility, this, you know, residential community for her health and safety. Even though that isn't her. That isn't what she wants. That isn't her. Her choice. And eventually what she realizes, or what we realize she realizes is that she has made that choice. Not because she has to, and not because she isn't safe in her home, and not because she isn't safe behind the wheel, but because it is easiest for her children, because it is best for them. And that is a decision that she has been making, she observes, since they were born that this is in many ways one of the last decisions that aging parents get to make on behalf of their children. I. For you, and for your sake, and to make your life better, I will move into the senior living facility. And it's this extraordinary act, I think, of love and generosity. But it's not because she's adult, and it's not because she's old, and. And in many ways, it's because she wants that choice. She wants to make that choice while she still can.
- [12:09]
Carolyn Bix
Yes.
- [12:10]
Kate Gibson
And that.
- [12:10]
Laurie Frankel
That's true when we're 77, just as true as it is when we're 47. Just as true as it is when we'm 27. That's what everybody wants, is to be able to make choices for themselves.
- [12:23]
Charlie Gibson
I don't want to give anything away, but as I read this, I kept thinking, how is Laurie gonna resolve this? And I'm curious, without giving anything away, how you resolve it is really interesting. Did you know all along the way you were gonna resolve it the way you did, or were there several alternative.
- [12:42]
Carolyn Bix
Alternative.
- [12:43]
Charlie Gibson
Alternative endings?
- [12:44]
Kate Gibson
Did you contemplate different endings?
- [12:46]
Laurie Frankel
Yeah. Not just contemplated, wrote, wrote many, many different endings.
- [12:51]
Charlie Gibson
Really?
- [12:51]
Laurie Frankel
Because I, too, actually wondered for a really long time, how's Laurie gonna end this thing? I definitely went into it not knowing. And what I think also does not give anything away is that the book starts with this moment of disempowerment. She rear ends this priest and has all of her choices taken away from her. And what I knew was that over the course of this novel, she needed to get them back. She needed to be empowered. She needed to be able to have her agency returned to her by me, by the end of this book, one way or the other way. And in a way that felt gratifying, I guess, rather than out of left field like that is. It couldn't be magic. It couldn't. I. I spent my magic on the premise. I guess it couldn't be a magic wand sort of a situation. It had to be earned. And it took me a very long time to find out, to figure it out, which is typical for, for me. But it took even longer than that. Maybe it was a hard ending to find, but once I found it, it wrote easily. At some point, I've developed these characters enough that they start making their own decisions, which I think is one of these things that writers say that sounds very woo woo, and I don't mean it that way at all.
- [14:07]
Kate Gibson
He's fascinated. He's fascinated by it. He's fascinated by writers that say, they spoke to me and they made me do this and it surprised me and all of that.
- [14:17]
Laurie Frankel
That's exactly what it is. It surprises me. Like to me, it feels like it comes out of my fingers. It never passes my brain. I mean, sometimes I type it and I, and I read it and I, you know, when I gasp like a reader, like, oh, I didn't, I didn't see that coming. Or it makes me laugh. I mean, it is as if I didn't think of it. It. It seems to bypass the part of my brain that thinks and comes out of some other part. It's not magic, though. It doesn't happen until I'm well into the book. To me, what it feels like is that I don't know what these characters are gonna do or say until I meet them. But of course I can't. I made them up, so I can't meet them until I write them.
- [14:51]
Kate Gibson
There's a shift between a writer and a character as well, where eventually maybe you've developed the character so much that they can surprise you and there's a little bit of a power shift as to who's leading who.
- [15:02]
Laurie Frankel
That is exactly what it is. I never thought of that. And that's exactly what it is. There's a shift in there, and it's very similar to that where for a long time I'm raising them and then they say, no, no, it's fine, I'll take over. And then all I have to step out of the way.
- [15:18]
Kate Gibson
I want to throw one thing too in there, which is I don't think our listeners should bypass the fact that this is a hilariously funny book. This is a very funny book. And I wonder if you thought Hilarity was important to bring to all the themes of life and death. Was that something that was central in your mind as you wrote?
- [15:35]
Laurie Frankel
It wasn't. I mean, that's another example where she's just funny. They're funny. These characters are funny. I feel like on the page, if you're going to have a book that is about life and death and issues and, like, these big things, then it has to be fun for the reader, otherwise nobody's going to read it. So I want it to be funny and, you know, a page turny and, you know, and have interesting characters that you want to hang out with. That's, that's. I feel like that's the contract of the novel. Like, we didn't do a whole bunch of important stuff, but you're going to have a really great time all along the way.
- [16:06]
Charlie Gibson
So let me end with a total non sequitur.
- [16:09]
Laurie Frankel
I love it.
- [16:10]
Charlie Gibson
There is in every book a little paragraph at the end about the author, and it says, you make great soup. What kind of great soup do you make and what's your specialty?
- [16:20]
Kate Gibson
I love all your soups. Great.
- [16:22]
Laurie Frankel
All of my soups are great. And I want to say that the really, the beauty of soup is that all of the soups are whatever is in your refrigerator, and it's going to go bad unless you use it and then you put it in a pot. I mean, it is itself. It's its own little miracle. You take a bunch of, you know, vegetables that are slightly past their prime, saute an onion, and all of a sudden, you know, you have soup and you can feed your family for a whole week on that soup.
- [16:48]
Charlie Gibson
Laura Frankel, it is a pleasure to talk to you. Great fun. Thank you ever so much. The book is Enormous Wings worth a read?
- [16:55]
Kate Gibson
Oh, absolutely. We loved it. We loved it.
- [16:57]
Laurie Frankel
Thank you so much. You are both a delight. This is amazing. Thank you so, so much.
- [17:07]
Charlie Gibson
And I would just add to this an addendum. So often Kate calls me and says, I really like this book, dad. If, if, if the author nails the landing. And I think Laurie Frankel wonderfully nails the landing. We'll take a break. When we come back, Carolyn Bix, the Stephen E. King Chair of Literature at the University of Maine. A Shakespearean scholar talking about her book Monster in the Archives. She had access to all of Stephen King's archives and her. Her granular analysis of the first, I think, first five books that he wrote or the first five popular books that he wrote. And how he writes and why she finds parallels to his work and the basis for scholarship. Shakespeare.
- [17:54]
Kate Gibson
Yeah, who knew?
- [18:01]
Laurie Frankel
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- [18:31]
Charlie Gibson
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- [18:43]
Kate Gibson
Prices may be higher for delivery.
- [18:46]
Carolyn Bix
Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now.
- [18:49]
Laurie Frankel
How about a creamy mocha Frappuccino drink?
- [18:51]
Carolyn Bix
Or a sweet vanilla smooth caramel, maybe? Or a white chocolate mocha?
- [18:55]
Laurie Frankel
Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits.
- [18:58]
Carolyn Bix
Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.
- [19:07]
Kate Gibson
So we have two, two for one in this episode of the Bookcase, which we're very excited about. Carolyn Bix is a professor at the University of Maine. She's the inaugural professor of the Stephen E. King Chair of Literature. And if you're a loyal listener, which you should be, I'm a huge Stephen King fan. And so I was very excited to get this book. And I think he's often written off by being a quote unquote popular writer, a quote unquote horror author. But I think one of the things that Carolyn discovered and that I discovered through reading this book, if you've read on writing, you get a sense of how meticulous he is about his process and his word choice. And Carolyn's research into his archives really bears that out. And we've never talked to anybody who has gone through archives before. She's not an archivist by training, but an archivist's job is really to compare and contrast what is versus, you know, what was during the process. And Carolyn does that beautifully in this book.
- [19:58]
Charlie Gibson
Now, you know, authors write on computer and the early drafts can get lost. But Stephen King, when he started writing, was writing it longhand. And so she had a chance and
- [20:08]
Kate Gibson
on his wife's typewriter, Right.
- [20:10]
Charlie Gibson
And so she had a chance to go back and look at the early drafts and how he crafts his prose. Carolyn Bix,
- [20:22]
Carolyn Bix
Caroline Bix, it is such
- [20:23]
Kate Gibson
a pleasure to talk to you. Your new book, Monsters in the Archives. I'm a huge King fan, so I tore through this. What I want to start with is what is an archivist's sort of job. And what is their responsibility to the chair that is the namesake of the job.
- [20:40]
Carolyn Bix
So I'm the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine. So I was hired as a Shakespearean. I'm a Shakespeare scholar. I teach classes, I do my research. I write books about Shakespeare. But I'm not an archivist. So I. The Stephen King archives is a totally separate private space run by the Stephen King Foundation. And I, when I took this position, was told, you're never going to meet Stephen King. I was like, oh, okay, fine. Well, I'm happy to take this position. It's an endowed chair. I can support the public humanities. And it was four years in when I get a phone call from Steve at my house saying, hey, it's Steve King. I think we should meet. So I like, okay. So the journey that got me into his personal archives was. Was quite a long one and had nothing to do with my position other than the fact that he. He noticed me because I had his name attached to mine professionally. It was really just, I think, this magical kismet that he reached out to me, and then I invited him to come speak to our students for two days. And he came and he said yes. He was amazing. And I think we met at the level of, like, we're both teachers. Like, he's really an incredible teacher, and we both care about the language and the writing. And that's. I think that's why he and Tabitha, his wife, trusted me to say, sure, go into our private archives for a year. So.
- [22:02]
Kate Gibson
So this was your proposal? Like you said, I want to delve into the history of Stephen King.
- [22:09]
Carolyn Bix
I want to understand why the stories I read 40 years ago are still stuck in my head, you know, So I have the Shakespeare professor literary skill base to get in there and really appreciate how he's crafting his language. But I wanted to get in there and find out because it was also my scared little girl and teenage self who wanted to understand why I still couldn't sleep next to an open closet. Because of the boogeyman.
- [22:33]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah, it might surprise people. I think that a Shakespearean scholar would be the Stephen King archivist.
- [22:41]
Carolyn Bix
Why would a Shakespearean be interested in Stephen King? And would I remind people or let them know? Because maybe they didn't know Shakespeare was writing for popular audiences. I mean, he was not an elite writer. He didn't go to university. Stephen King did. But Stephen King didn't have a fancy background. He came from nothing. So Shakespeare and Stephen King actually have a ton in common, you know, in terms of their backgrounds, in terms of how they weren't taken seriously. Or Stephen King, I think, still is not fully taken seriously, certainly by academia. But I always knew I loved him. I loved his writing. I love Shakespeare's writing. And one of the things that came out as I was researching and reading, you know. Cause I got access to his drafts with his Marginalia. You know, I was looking at all the 1970s books. So Carrie, the Shining, Salem's Lot, Night Shift, Pet Sematary, which he actually wrote in 1978. I could see how he was crafting the words really intentionally, because of their sounds, their word sounds. You know, he'd have notes to his copy editor, like, nope, this is actually the sound of the word that I want to capture. And of course, Shakespeare, right? He's. He wrote to be heard. He's a playwright, so there's a lot of overlap in terms of their appreciation for the musicality of language and how you can really use the word sounds to capture human emotions and experiences.
- [23:56]
Kate Gibson
I'm interested, too, if it's freeing or intimidating to go through somebody's work in an archival way. For a writer that's still living.
- [24:04]
Carolyn Bix
We really developed a really lovely working relationship. I felt like I could ask him questions. So as I'm writing this book, I'm also asking him questions. I'm also able to have conversations with him. So it didn't feel intimidating when I started the project. Cause I already knew him, and I knew he was a very generous person. And he also loves to talk about writing his own and other people's. He's so well read. That's another thing I discovered, like, day one in the archives, when he's, like, quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson in his notes to the copy editor. You know, like, he's. He. He's read everything. You know, Wallace Stevens, Shirley Jackson, Shakespeare, James Dicke. You know, he's swimming in a sea of beautiful language.
- [24:46]
Charlie Gibson
Given the fact he is so prolific, you sort of are amazed, as I took away from your book, how granular he is in terms of each sentence, each paragraph. And so what did you learn about the way he goes back over his own prose?
- [25:05]
Carolyn Bix
We still have exchanges. Even though the book's out now. You know, we'll still have exchanges. And he'll say, this is how I do it. I write a draft, then I go back and I, you know, recraft it. Then I go back a third time and I polish it. You know, like, he's got a very. He's. What I learned about him is that his work ethic is extraordinary. I mean, he still gets up every day and he's writing. And this is what he told my students when he came to talk to them. He says, you have to read if you want to be a writer. Read all the time. And he is like, stories I hear from people. One of the privileges of my position is I get to talk to people all around the state of Maine because this is an endowed chair that's about supporting the public humanities. People have stories about seeing him walking on the side of the road, always holding a book. Like, he's always walking and reading.
- [25:51]
Kate Gibson
Do you get the sense that he's comfortable with his level of success or that he is baffled by it or both?
- [25:58]
Carolyn Bix
I wouldn't want to speak for him. You know, one of the reasons this book, I think, works and that we were able to have a really lovely working relationship is I made it clear from the start that I wasn't writing this because I wanted to psychologically mine him or invade his privacy. So when we would have conversations, like, if he wanted to tell me a personal story, like the Salem's Lot chapter really developed around a story. He told me about moving to Durham, Maine, when he was 11 and how he fell in love with the town. And it was one of my favorite conversations with him, because Salem's Lot is based on the town of Durham. And he said, you know, I hated it first, and then I fell in love with it. And that just. That was a situation where I wasn't mining it and being like, tell me more. Why did you hate it? Or, like, you know, but he would just sort of reveal things, you know, and then he. That's when he said that amazing line to me. You know, you come to Maine through rock. And I was like, what is that? That's brilliant. There were limits, you know, when it came to personal things. So how he feels about his own fate, I mean, I think he's very comfortable. He's very comfortable talking to other people about his success. At the same time, I think, like, asking a writer, I think what it must be like for him. It must be very vulnerable. I know it is vulnerable for someone to say, hey, hi. Here's a draft of something you wrote 50 years ago. Do you remember it? You know, and sometimes he wouldn't remember something he had done that I found remarkable, like the fact that Carrie was originally set in Boston, which is fascinating to me, having lived in Boston for 20 years. I was like, do you remember that it was Framingham, where Ralph White dies. He's like.
- [27:37]
Laurie Frankel
Like.
- [27:37]
Carolyn Bix
No, I don't. Actually.
- [27:40]
Kate Gibson
It's funny because I was thinking about what you said about psychological mining, I would imagine. And I've had conversations with a few horror authors. Cause I'm a huge fan. I've. I've dragged my dad kicking and screaming into conversations with Josh Malerman and Stephen Graham Jones and Chris golden and Paul Tremblay. And I think that it's probably true of horror authors more than any other authors. People want to know what's going on inside their head, that they come up with these twisted, dark vines of stories that they. That they type out and that. That can get very vulnerable very fast.
- [28:11]
Carolyn Bix
Very fast. And I would say another big takeaway that I. After going through all of these drafts and talking to him and thinking about why I was still scared of the boogeyman and like, why do these stories endure besides the fact that they're so beautifully crafted, you know, And I think it has to be really well crafted. Is that just. Just as you've said, you put it so well. It's like we. Horror stories have a way of gripping us at our most vulnerable. Right. At our most vulnerable in terms of our experiences of our fears of grief and loss. Right. That are very human, not supernatural at all. Right. The best ones, that's why they endure. It's because they. They're able to capture that. And, you know, as he writes so beautifully. Right. These stories are a filter for us. It's a way for us to be able to face traumatic fears without having to look directly at the sun. He says, right. So it's a filter for us, and it's a way to actually make us feel a little bit better about it.
- [29:07]
Charlie Gibson
When I first picked up your book, I thought, this is strange that a scholar, Shakespearean scholar, to begin with, would be writing about Stephen King. Why is he important to study?
- [29:21]
Carolyn Bix
Ah, that's a great question. I mean, I think it's important to recognize that great authors, popular authors, can also be great writers. And I feel like he has been just misunderstood by academia. So part of is I felt like this was, you know, a duty that I was happily taking up. And it's not like anyone asked me to do it. He certainly never would have asked me to do. Came out of my personal passion for his writing. I think it's important to study all kinds of genres and to not silo off popular writing as something that's separate from elite literary fiction. And I think they're great horror writers. And Katie, I'm sure You're more aware of this. Like, I don't keep up with all of the horror writers, but you know that there's a lot of conversation about breaking down these silos. I mean, the New York Public Library now has a horror section. They didn't have one before. I didn't know this till I was in conversation with a New York City public library and herself, who was like, yes, we've all gotten together. We now have a horror reading series. You know, and it took the librarians to recognize it.
- [30:30]
Kate Gibson
Right.
- [30:31]
Carolyn Bix
Like, I dedicate my book to the librarians and the teachers because they're the ones who are on the ground with people understanding what books affect them and why, you know, they're not up in an ivory tower deciding, this is real literature. This is not. So, Charlie, it's a great question, and I think that's sort of. You're helping me think through why. I think this is one of the reasons why we need to give recognition to the writers that are popular and recognize, like Shakespeare, who was also popular and not appreciated during his time, that you can also be a brilliant writer.
- [31:05]
Kate Gibson
And I think that a lot of horror, like, there are a lot. There are authors now that are working sort of within the social justice field, which I think is fascinating. Stephen Graham Jones's Buffalo Hunter. Hunter, that came out last year. Or Victor LaValle's The Ballad of Black Tom, which was a terrific, terrific story. And so. And I wonder if he sort of set the stage to allow, again, horror authors to. I feel like they're finally getting the recognition of. They explore important social issues in their work, even if there's some blood.
- [31:39]
Charlie Gibson
I don't think there's any question of that. And I think what Carolyn just said, that the New York Public Library now has a section of horror, is probably. It's the same reason that cooking in the United States took off, I think would have happened. Julia Child, who was such a wonderful contributor, Good Morning America, she always said, yeah, I broke some boundaries, but it would have happened in time. You know, people were ready for it. And therefore, the kind of cooking that she engendered would have happened in time. But I don't think there's any question that King is responsible for so much of what you're just talking about.
- [32:16]
Carolyn Bix
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I. Yes, I love that you brought up Julia Child, but here's. That's a great example of, like, she also had so much charisma. Right. So I think it also takes the right personality to make the case to the larger public and And King, even though he's kind of quiet, he has a huge social media presence and he's not shy about expressing his opinions. So I love that you said that about Julia Child. You know, I think about, like, Charles Dickens. He was writing for magazines, right? He was. He was publishing some of the greatest novels that we teach now and revere to make money like he was. And that's okay. You can still be a brilliant writer, you know, and be doing it for the money and be doing it to reach a popular audience.
- [33:00]
Kate Gibson
So I wanted to end with asking you if you are done, because there's the Stand, which is a sort of his I Ching, I almost included. There's the Dark. There's the Dark Tower series, which, like, brilliantly, he. He winds his own personal story into the last few books. Are we going to be seeing more of. I don't know how you examine notes from the Stand. I mean, it's like it's the Stand.
- [33:24]
Carolyn Bix
Honestly, the Stand was hugely important for me as well, as a teenager, but it was so massive. And he'd already come out with an authorized kind of RE edition with all of the changes he would have made. So I felt like that story is kind of out there already. I was really interested in telling stories that people didn't know and that maybe he didn't even remember about his own writing. So, yeah, I mean, I can see all kinds of other sequels to this book. You know, I would want to make sure that it's something I care about and that I have a connection to, because part of the magic for me of this book, Monsters in the Archives, is that it's about my own personal Year of fear with Stephen King.
- [34:00]
Kate Gibson
I desperately hope you will write more. Thank you. Just because I'm an obsessed fan, I felt seen when I was in high school and I read Carrie and I was being bullied and I was a weird kid. And I felt seen even in the Shining because I am an alcoholic and I very much buy into. If we do not address our demons, they will raise our children 100%. And so I am very much looking forward to whatever you do in the future because I'm a huge fan and I really enjoyed this book. Thank you so much.
- [34:30]
Carolyn Bix
Carol, thank you so much for inviting me on. It's a pleasure.
- [34:38]
Charlie Gibson
I'm fascinated that she was told you could probably. He's somewhat reclusive. You're not going to have any contact with him. You've got access to his archives, but don't expect personal contact. And then after a couple of Years. She picks up the phone and he says, hi, it's Steve King.
- [34:52]
Kate Gibson
Like you do.
- [34:53]
Carolyn Bix
Like you do.
- [34:54]
Kate Gibson
It reminded me that story that Christopher golden told us, Christopher Goldin, the horror writer who wrote Ararat. And he got a call from Steve King, and Steve was like, hey, Chris, it's Steve. I'm going to blurb your book. And Chris said, I really had to work hard not to go. Get out of here. Who is this, really? He's a very generous, but he is a little reclusive. And Caroline, she put it beautifully when she said, I think one of the reasons he's reclusive is people always want to mine horror writers, authors, especially one as popular as Stephen King, to find out where all of his darkness comes from. And sometimes it must feel like unnecessary psychological digging. And so I get why he's reclusive, because a lot of people would say that from his book, his mind is pretty strange. But I think Carolyn also talked about why he's so wildly popular.
- [35:38]
Charlie Gibson
Well, you're a bigger fan of King than I am, but I am a fan, and I think he writes marvelously. And his last couple of books were not horror books. So it's really interesting to get into his mind as she does in the Archives. The book again is Monster in the Archives. We'll bring you up to date on who makes this podcast possible, as I always say, every week. And then a coda from Laurie Frankel. We talked to her on Mother's Day, and obviously, as you'll hear in her coda, mothers were on her mind, as they should be.
- [36:09]
Kate Gibson
Yeah, I think she actually didn't her mother call in the middle of the interview.
- [36:13]
Charlie Gibson
Her mother called in the middle of the interview, and she had to say sorry, and I'm very pleased to say she kept talking to us and put off her mom.
- [36:22]
Kate Gibson
Oh, God, don't say that. Laurie Frankel's mom, we love you. We think that you should have been a higher priority than us, but, you know, hey, what can you do? Anyway, a reminder about who makes the podcast possible. And then a coda from Laurie Frankel.
- [36:35]
Charlie Gibson
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie is a joint production of Good Morning America and ABC Audio. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions, and our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make special mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, and Ariel Chester of ABC Good Morning America and Josh Cohan of ABC Audio. You can follow us and rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like to find any of the books mentioned on this podcast. You can find them listed in the episode description.
- [37:08]
Laurie Frankel
It's Mother's Day, so what's in my head is my mother and my grandmothers and my child and my gratitude, I guess that I am close with all of those people and that all of those people are close with each other. I mean, my grandmothers unfortunately did not live to meet my daughter, but my daughter carries on that tradition of being very close with her grandmother and I am very grateful for it. So I guess my coda is wow. The power of motherhood. We talk a lot about it and I still don't think we talk about it enough.
- [37:43]
Kate Gibson
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