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The History of Literature
725 The Trial by Franz Kafka (#21 GBOAT) | Edith Wharton and Patrick O'Brian (with Olivia Wolfgang-Smith) | An Uplifting Story
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- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hello everyone. The History of Literature Podcast is going on tour next spring. I'll be going with a small group of travelers to London, Oxford and Bath, where we will visit the land of Dickens, Shakespeare, Jane Austen and more. A Trip to Remember. If you're interested in learning more about how you can join. You can check out the itinerary@historyofliterature.com or by visiting our partner at John Shores Travel. That's Shores without an E. Or just send me an email@jack wilsonauthormail.com that's J, A, C K E. Wilson Wilson. Authormail.com let's give ourselves something to look forward to in 2026. We would love to see you there. Jack Daniels is proudly served in fine establishments, questionable joints and everywhere in between.
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Emma
So no matter where you go in.
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Jack Wilson
Every bar, you'll always know someone by name.
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Olivia Wolfgang Smith
J Jack and Coke.
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Jack Wilson
Shot of Jack.
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Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Jack Daniels, please.
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Jack Wilson
Right away. That's what makes Jack Jack.
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Emma
Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org Jack Daniels and old number seven are registered trademarks.
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Jack Wilson
Copyright 2025 Jack Daniels.
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Narrator
Tennessee Whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume 80 proof.
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Jack Wilson
Hello. Today on the podcast, we have an uplifting story. We continue our list of 25 books for 2025 with number 21 the Trial by Franz Kafka. Plus, we talked to novelist Olivia Wolfgang Smith about her passion for the seafaring books of Patrick o', Brien, the Gilded Age of Edith Wharton, if gilded age is the right term, and her new novel, Mutual Interest, the beguiling story of queer romance, empire and power that has earned comparisons to Edith Wharton and Henry James. That's all coming up today on the History of Literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. Happy Mid August. This is a great month and a great time to be thinking about your summer plans, your holiday plans and your travel plans. What's that you say? How can I possibly be thinking about summer plans now? Isn't that a little late? Well, not for 2026 it isn't. It's just the right time this month and next to be planning your trip to Literary England with us, the History of Literature podcast. I know that times are tumultuous and it's a bit hard to plan ahead, but please don't let that stop you. Put your marker down and say, this is what I'm going to do in 2026. I'm going to have a wonderful trip. I'm going to meet Jack and Emma and Other friends of the show in May of 2026 and no one can stop me. You can find out more about the tour by emailing me@jackwilsonauthormail.com or masahiko from John Shores Travel. You can find those addresses in the show notes or just head to historyofliterature.com to learn more. I have a little frog in my throat this morning. Maybe I need a little more coffee. Okay, let's start with something uplifting. Speaking of coffee and speaking of England. This story takes place in England. As you all know by now, I have a hobby, a passion, some might say an addiction for creative pursuits, learning about creativity. And one of my, one of the deepest fantasies fixes I get. I reach for it all the time. Hand me that needle, put it right into my veins is the Beatles. How did those guys create so much and of such a high quality in so short a period of time? And I've read hundreds of books and watched hundreds of hours of documentaries and listened to all the music of course, and so on. It's rare that there's a story about the Beatles that I haven't heard and yet it does happen. This one was new to me and so I thought I would share it with you. It's a great story. So as you may be aware and as you certainly are if you're a Beatles fan, but I won't assume that you probably do know the song hey Jude. I guess I can assume that. It's well known that Paul wrote the song on his way to visit Julian Lennon. That's the Jude he was then. Excuse me, he was then five years old. Julian is John's son with John's first wife Cynthia. Cynthia was kind of a sad story, a sad part of the Beatles story. She was, I would say she's a casualty of the the Beatles success and Beatlemania. She and John had married young and then John was out on the road. Brian Epstein didn't even want anyone to know that John was married. And so I think that kind of helped encourage John not to feel exactly married. The two of them drifted apart and eventually he basically abandoned her and their child Julian for a few years. Some might say abandoned. He left her for Yoko and that was the next chapter in his life. And all that's okay, but still tough when you have a wife and a five year old Paul. Now some people say Paul is kind of cold and calculating, manipulative. Others say he felt strongly just like everyone else, but he buried his emotions deeper. Some say he's petty There's a famous story, he himself worried about it, that he was some kind of monster. That when he heard that his mother died, he said, what are we going to do without her money? Well, his mother was the only one working at the time, working as a nurse. She died suddenly. They didn't have much buildup to it. And Paul blurted it out, what are we going to do without her money? Now is that cold and calculating, manipulative, or is it just. He's got emotions down there that are just hard to deal with sometimes. I like his quote that his guitar is his psychiatrist. He talks to it and it talks back to him. He tells it what he's worried about, what he's feeling, what he's his darkest secrets. And the guitar talks back to him and says, well then this is what you do. This is what that means. And, and what the guitar tells him in the form of a melody or a song is helpful to him. I have. Wow. I don't think we. Paul also said once that he said, I think you can hear a whole song just by listening to a chord. You can hear the melody just by listening to one chord. And then he said, I think you can hear it if you listen to one note, if you're doing it right, if you listen hard enough. Imagine, imagine. And yet he's a human being. I don't think we can really count on the things Paul says to tell us who he is. We have to listen to his music as well to get a full picture of the emotions of the man. That's just how he's built. John was different. John said things to people in a way that seems as direct, if not more so, than his music. John had command of his words and what he wanted to say and what he was thinking. He wasn't always honest. Sometimes he was, he. He was biased. But Paul seems like he stumbles for the right words. He's easy to misunderstand if you just go by what he says. Reporters shoved microphones in his face after John was killed. And you know, what is this? And, oh, everybody comes up with words, right? They say, this is a great tragedy. My heart is with Yoko and Julian and John's family and his kids and with all the people who have loved him. And you know, that's what you stumble for, right? But you grab those words, they're kind of pre built, they're prefabricated for you. You just pull them out of the cliche box because it is close to what you feel. And, and everyone knows there are no words What Paul says, the microphones are in his face. He says, well, it's a drag. And everyone says, it's a drag. That's it. That's all you got. It's a drag. He just seems like he stumbles for the right words, but then he comes through with a gesture or a melody or the feel of a song, and you can see who he is. The song here today on the Tug of War album, that's what he feels. Don't say, well, it's a drag. Listen to the song here today and you see that he's got all the depths that you could ever want. Don't listen to his interview, listen to his music. So anyway, John has left Cynthia behind. It was not great. It was tough. And Paul was thinking about Cynthia and Julian and he drove over to visit them because he felt bad for Julian for losing his dad effectively at the age of five. And he also wanted Cynthia to know that she had a friend. And on the way, he wrote the song hey Jude. It started out as hey, Jules. And imagine. Imagine what it must be like to have songs like that just pop into your head. The lyrics in that song and the music, that's all part of music history now. It says it's as big as any song has ever been. Really. What's bigger? Happy birthday. It's a gorgeous song. The other Beatles were stunned when he played it. When he first played it for them, they couldn't believe how beautiful it was. But that's Paul. He had the song Yesterday in his back pocket for a year before he recorded it. He couldn't believe that he'd written a song that was that timeless, just came to him. Anyway, all this is very familiar. Everything I've said so far is very familiar to Beatles fans. It's been told. These stories have been told a zillion times, including the part. I'll just tell it, because Paul always tells it where he sings the song for John, who thought it was written for him, and about him telling him it was okay to go ahead and embrace his new life with Yoko. And. And John kind of gets. A lot of times. Let me just pause here. John kind of gets disparaged sometimes for saying, like, here's a song, hey Jude. He wrote it for your son who you were leaving behind, and you thought it was. You thought the song was about you. That's a little egotistical, isn't it? But if you read the lyrics to that song, you can see why he thought that. You can see why he thought that he thought it was Directed at him, telling him it was okay to go ahead and embrace his new life with Yoko and to have less dependence on Cynthia and the Beatles, too. Time to go free. Let her into your heart. Why would he be singing that to Julian? Let her into your heart, John. Then you can start to make it better. Maybe that was directed at John and knowing that the closeness that Paul and John had with their creative partnership, that battery that the two of them ignited together, electrified everything. When the wires touched, how close they were, like conjoined twins now being separated, maybe that was Paul probably didn't have much on his mind other than, what's this going to be? With John headed in this new direction, what's that going to mean for me, for us, for him? If you read the lyrics, it's really not about a boy losing a father. It's about going toward the light of a new love, a new woman, letting her into your heart. Much closer to John's situation than Julian's. But remember what I said about Paul. You trust the music and the unspoken more than what he's trying to communicate verbally. And Paul hears the story that Paul always tells as he sings the song for his writing partner. John sings, the movement you need is on your shoulder. And then he apologizes for that line. He stops and says, I'll fix that one. Doesn't make any sense. And John says, what? And Paul says, the movement you need is on your shoulder. I'll fix that. I know it doesn't make any sense. And John says, no, you won't. That's the best line in the song. I know what it means. And that kind of summarizes what John brought to Paul. Confidence. A little bit of artistry, unconventional thinking, but mostly just confidence in something unknown, something mysterious. Don't always fight it. Let it out and let it in. Paul, then you can begin. All that is. Those are old stories. I've probably heard all those stories a hundred times. Paul tells it all. Paul's told it a thousand times, I bet. But here's another part of the story that doesn't usually make it into the documentaries. I just read about it yesterday, no pun intended. Cynthia kind of struggled after John left her. Struggled emotionally. And of course, I mean, imagine having that whirlwind go through your life of Beatlemania and suddenly it's over. And you're your ex husband, your. Your love of your life is suddenly, famously, with this other woman. And. And Yoko, let's be honest, love Yoko, but she seems to have done her best to make sure that the world would remember John and Yoko and not John and Cynthia, and then Yoko. And this had consequences for Cynthia, including financial consequences. Well into the 1990s, Cynthia was broke. She had no money, nothing. She got nothing from the John Lennon estate, no royalties, no part of it. And so what did she have? Some memorabilia which she could sell off. And one of the prizes in her collection was a letter that John had written to her. When Julian was 2, it was at the height of Beatlemania and he was on the road. He's describing the. The tour as the four lads from Liverpool were conquering the world. And he wrote a heartfelt letter back home to Cynthia saying that he missed her and Julian and that it was hard for him to be away from them. As Julian was growing up, he wanted to be there with them. I haven't read it, but apparently it was a very heartfelt letter coming from one of the world's most iconic figures at the height of his fame. And thus it was very valuable. And Cynthia needed the money. So she put it up for auction. And some anonymous donor, anonymous purchaser, paid a lot for it, and that was that. These things happen. Everybody's got to eat. Until two weeks later, she got a package in the post. It was the letter, the original letter that she had just sold. And it was in a frame, and there was a note that said, this letter belongs to you and Julian. Love, Paul. That is the beauty of these guys, the closeness that the two of them had. I think it comes out of Paul. Paul obviously feels empathy for Cynthia and Julian, but I think it's also because of the closeness he felt for John. It was the creative partnership that was probably closer than most marriages. John had let this thing slip through the cracks, this marriage and parenthood. Marriage to Cynthia, parenthood to Julian, and he had to do what he did. He moved on to a new life. And he didn't tie up the loose ends, the caretake, the emotions, the wreckage he was leaving behind, as he should have. And Paul sensed it. He filled the gap. And here, after John's death, he filled the gap again with a small gesture, perhaps. And you might say, well, that's easy enough for a wealthy person to do, someone with Paul's money, but it's also easy enough for a wealthy person not to do as we see from what the wealthy people do every single day. It's easy not to care, apparently, based on evidence that I see. But it's a reminder to all of us that caring can matter. Okay, so that's the story. Who knows exactly how true it is or what details I got wrong. All right, I'll take it as a bit of myth. It's the story I heard. Anyway, moving on. We are now up to number 21 on our list of the 25 greatest books of all time. Which is why we have the running fanfare. Building, building it is Franz Kafka the Trial coming in at number 21, not the metamorphosis. Interestingly enough, maybe that will be higher on the list. Will Kafka be on here twice? We will see. And it's not the Hunger Artist, which might be my favorite Kafka work. Maybe close second to the Metamorphosis. But that's no surprise that that didn't make it. There aren't many short stories on this list. It's mostly novels and epic poems. Book length works. Which makes sense for the list of the greatest book of all time. So it's the Trial. I'm surprised it landed ahead of the Odyssey in Madame Bovary, but I'll probably be saying that a lot. Those two books to me are. Should have been way up there. But anyway, the Trial is a great book and of course Kafka is one of the crown princes of 20th century literature. A jittery crown PR and I was thinking of taking a break from our list and giving you a little break from it. Coming back with it next week. But the more I thought about it, the more I looked at the list at number 21 and the trial and Kafka and the more I wanted to include Kafka in this episode where we're going to be talking with Olivia Wolfgang Smith because my conversation with her is about setting time and place. And those authors that she chose to talk about are intensely time and place authors you read Patrick o', Brien, underrated author of the Aubrey Maturan books. You might know them as Master and Commander from the Russell Crowe movie. You read Patrick o' Brien in order to spend time with those characters, but also in that world, the very specific, very realized world of ships in the age of sail, a British sea captain and a naval surgeon in the age of Sale, the Napoleonic era. It's the kind of book where you, you want to talk like them and listen to the music they listen to and eat the food they're eating. Edith Wharton is another writer like that. She's creating a world and it's very specific and closely correlated to the actual world or the, the recent historical past. James Joyce comes to mind here, although he was a little different. His word games and, and language love Puns, all that kind of overwhelmed him sometimes. But the impulse he had, he comes to mind because of the impulse he had when he said that he wanted to recreate Dublin brick by brick. That's the impulse I'm talking about. Patrick o' Brien creates the world. Well, not brick by brick. Sink the ship, plank by plank, rope by rope, roll by roll. You live on those ships with that crew and those people, and on land too. And it's one of the great reading pleasures that I've ever experienced reading the Patrick o' Brien books. Kafka, Horton's similar. Kafka, though, is different. Kafka has a connection to Prague and his history in Prague is important. And there's some feeling that we're in a particular time and place. But there's also something detached, unmoored, airy about Kafka. Something set apart, drifting, like we're in some other realm of timelessness. Sometimes. Sometimes the stories could all take place anywhere, just about and anytime a hundred years before, a hundred years after, in Cleveland or St. Petersburg or Tokyo or on a cloud or in a village or in a city. It's Prague, but a dreamy version of Prague, or a dream with little hints of Prague, with Prague only there. Because Kafka does have to live in the world. So his dreams and nightmares take on some elements of the world that he drifted through by day and the era he was living in. But the. The fantasy, the creation, the literary world is more vivid than whatever actual world managed to seep into the details of the story. Reading Patrick o' Brien is a full immersion in the world of J. Aubrey and Stephen Manturan. Reading Franz Kafka is a full immersion into the world of Franz Kafka. So the trial, or in German, der Process. Did I pronounce that correctly? Looks a lot like process. Proces was written in 1914 and 1915. It begins with a line that has been translated in multiple ways. The first time I read it was someone must have traduced Joseph K. And I didn't know what traduced meant. I had to look it up and I thought, WTF? I'm 20 years old and I can't get four words into a book without having to go to the dictionary. It's also translated. I think other translators have tried to avoid that problem on their readers behalf by translating it as someone must have slandered Joseph K. Or Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K. In the end, I like traduced once I knew what it meant, because it does Kind of clip along. I could see why they chose that word. But anyway, the important thing is not that which verb traduced or slandered or was telling lies, but the rest of the sentence, which is for one day without having done anything wrong, he was arrested without having done anything wrong. That's translated in other ways too, but that's good enough for me. One fine day without having done anything wrong, he was arrested. That's one of the great first lines in literature, and I'm glad it kind of proves my point. It doesn't start with a paragraph about Prague in 1914 or a description of the street where Joseph K. Lives. The cobblestones and windy path down to his little hovel or the great. Maybe the big gravel driveway of his estate. If he's. You don't know if he's living in a house or an apartment or at work. Is he even. Where is he? We do soon get the feel of his living arrangements. Not because Kafka wants to build the world brick by brick. This isn't Joseph Conrad saying my job is to make you see. It's because he's building a nightmare moment by moment, glimpse by glimpse. This is about a scenario more than a setting. And we have the whole scenario in that amazing first sentence. What happens when you do nothing wrong and you're arrested? Is that. Who's arresting you for having done nothing wrong? Is that. Are you subject to evil people or is it a mistake? And what really is the difference if it's evil or a mistake? They're both different flavors of living in absurdity. Either the system has gone berserk for benign reasons or bad ones. But our relationship with the state is the same. The individual has to live in fear. We do nothing wrong and we get arrested. It could happen to any of us at any time. It's the stuff of nightmare. It's as relevant in 2025 as it was 100 years ago. And what happens if you get arrested for no reason? Well, you correct the mistake, right? Well, not in the world of the trial. Let's hear a bit more. Someone must have traduced Joseph K. For one day, though he had done nothing wrong. He was arrested every day at eight in the morning. He was brought his breakfast by Mrs. Grubach's cook. Mrs. Grubach was his landlady but today she didn't come. That had never happened before. Kaye waited a little while, looked from his pillow at the old woman who lived opposite and who was watching him with an inquisitiveness Quite unusual for her. And finally, both hungry and disconcerted, rang the bell. There was immediately a knock at the door and a man entered. He had never seen the man in this house before. He was slim but firmly built. His clothes were black and close fitting, with many folds and pockets, buckles and buttons and a belt, all of which gave the impression of being very practical, but without making it very clear what they were actually for. Who are you? Asked Kay, sitting half upright in his bed. The man, however, ignored the question, as if his arrival simply had to be accepted, and merely replied, you rang. Anna should have brought me my breakfast, said Kay. He tried to work out who the man actually was first in silence, just through observation and by thinking about it. But the man didn't stay still to be looked at for very long. Instead, he went over to the door, opened it slightly, and said to someone who was clearly standing immediately behind it, he wants Anna to bring him his breakfast. There was a little laughter in the neighboring room. It was not clear from the sound of it whether there were several people laughing. The strange man could not have learned anything from it that he hadn't known already. But now he said to Kay, as if making his report, it is not possible. End quote. Who is this man? He doesn't identify himself. He doesn't show a badge. He has official looking clothes. They're busy and impressive, but looking more closely, it's not at all clear what the buckles and buttons and folds and pockets are for. Somehow this has made a big impact on everything. Everything and everyone. The the breakfast doesn't come as it usually does. That's never happened before. And the woman across the way is looking at him strangely, inquisitively, like she knows something's up. But that's never happened before. And he's trying to work out what exactly is going on. And the guy says, you rang. As if he's. As if he rang for him. Do we live in a world like this today, in America, where people just show up and arrest people? Well, I don't think I need to answer that, do I? Kafka did not finish the trial or publish it in his lifetime. It was written after most of his stories, including the Metamorphosis. He wanted it destroyed, as he himself destroyed 90% of his work. But his friend Max Broad jumped in, saved it along with several other works. This is why we know who Kafka is today, because of Max Broad. He edited it, did his best to figure out what Kafka wanted for the trial, arranged for it to be published A year after year after Kafka died, not even a year, a little more than nine months later, the world needed this book. Broad thought, and it's hard to disagree. Although the esteemed critic Edmund Wilson disagreed, or sort of. Kafka's works started coming out in English in the late 1930s. His name was still virtually unknown when the works first were coming out. But by the 1940s, he was a sensation and the backlash began to set in. How can this be a major novelist? Wilson thundered. He didn't complete a single novel. He didn't even leave clear plans for how the novel would be resolved. Well, Broad and later editors have been reduced to guessing what his plans were. Wilson, here's what Wilson says. What Kafka has left us, said Wilson, is the half expressed gasp of a self doubting soul trampled under. I do not see how one can possibly take him for either a great artist or a moral guide. End quote. But in that criticism, Mr. Edmund Wilson, in your criticism, is the key to Kafka's genius. Kafka, half expressed gasp of a self doubting soul trampled under. That's it. That's it. That is great artistry. That is being a moral guide. That's what's great in what's great in Dostoevsky. Kafka was a fan of Dostoevsky, by the way. He said he's like a close relative of mine. But what's great in Dostoevsky, what's held up is the gasp of that soul trampled under. The self doubt, the. The agitation, the fidgeting, the dark nights, the sweaty fear that all is not well and it might not get better. What hasn't held up as well are the times when Dostoyevsky tries to give us great artistry or when he becomes a moral guide when he puts on his didactic necktie and preaches paths to respectability. Maybe we're more interested in art than morals, or maybe we're like a patient who has outlived the doctor, but not the disease and we've had enough time to see that the prescription didn't work. There's a great phobia that runs through Alfred Hitchcock's movies. The fear of incarceration. And it's not the fear of claustrophobia, but the fear of false accusation. North by Northwest takes this to an extreme where Cary Grant, playing the character of Roger Thornhill, is confused for someone named George Kaplan. Roger Thornhill is an advertising executive, but Kaplan is up to something. People want to kill him and Thornhill is caught in the crossfire, Hitchcock has an origin story for this intense fear. He had this lifelong fear of being falsely accused, being locked up for no reason. When he was a small boy, his father gave him a note and told him to take it to the police station. The police officer opened the note, read it, and then with no explanation, walked over to the cell, opened it up and told young Alfred to get in it and locked the door. Locked him in. Today we'd probably lock up Hitchcock's father for doing this. That's what the note said. Please lock up my son after a while. Is it an hour? Five minutes? I'm sure it must have seemed like forever to the young boy. Even five seconds would be traumatizing because in those five seconds your whole world has changed. You don't know how long you're going to be in there. The shock of it is the whole point. And apparently the idea from his father was, well, this will be good discipline for him. It'll show him what happens to little boys when they're naughty. You can be locked up, but what a moment when you've done nothing wrong and don't know, have no idea why you're. It's no wonder that Hitchcock the artist returned to that feeling again and again. And it's no wonder that we turn to the trial again and again. This is our nightmare. To live in a world where the government is powerful, but also faceless, where it's manipulative, where there are no checks on its ability to destroy our lives in a casual way, a casual, unfeeling way. There's people in the other room laughing at our confusion. We don't even know how many people there are. What is going on behind the scenes? This makes no sense. What am I being locked up for? Why am I being put on trial? What is this? It's as mysterious as the buttons and buckles on the clothes that don't do anything. And it tells us we live in a world where we aren't totally free. We don't have agency. We're at the mercy of illogical forces, the mercy of, of profit making companies. Our healthcare system should probably pay royalties to Kafka's estate and mid level functionaries who themselves follow orders. There seems to be this process and nobody can depart from it. He just says that is not possible. It is not possible. Doesn't explain why. This system has its own rules and momentum and its own logic. But it's not. It's not the orderly logic of mathematics, it's nightmare logic. In mathematics, the signs and symbols lead you toward airtight conclusions. In Nightmare Logic, the signs and symbols are empty. They suggest, but they don't signify. They may or may not correlate with reality. The confusion untangled, but you untangle the confusion. But it only produces more confusion, or something maybe even more frightening than that. There might be this might not just be confused. There might be something terrifying at the bottom of all of it. Or there might be nothing, which may be the most terrifying thing of all. That's Franz Kafka and the trial. Number 21 on our list of the greatest books of all time. Wow. Pretty good book to be sitting there on the outside of the top 20 looking in. And speaking of good books, let's return to the world of sunshine and light, of sea mist on the face as the cannons thunder in the chest, and to the gilded world of rich men and women aspiring to get even richer and maybe find some love and humanity as well. Edith Wharton and Patrick o' Brien with our guest Olivia Wolfgang Smith after this. Hey folks, it's Jack. If you're like me, you don't need fancy clothes, but you do need some solid basics that give you a lot of good options. I work every day with the same people. I can't wear the same thing all the time. That's where Quince comes in. Quince has closet staples I reach for over and over, mixing and matching cashmere sweaters with jackets, button down shirts and polos. These clothes take me from the office to a dinner party or sometimes just for a weekend hang. The best part Everything with Quince is half the cost of similar brands. 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- [39:19]
Jack Wilson
Okay, joining me now is Olivia Wolfgang Smith, who is the author of Glassworks, which was long listed for the center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She's here today to discuss her new novel, Mutual Interest, and her passion for the works of Edith Wharton and Patrick o'. Brien. Olivia Wolfgang Smith, welcome to the history of literature.
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Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Thank you so much for having me.
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Jack Wilson
So this book was pitched to me as three queer misfits turned business titans, and I keep reading the comparisons with Edith Wharton and Henry James. So what can you tell us about mutual interest. Who are the main characters here and what is the story about?
- [40:03]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah, so it's definitely. I'm stealing from people like Edith Wirth and Henry James is somewhere. I describe it as like a queer Wharton pastiche. That's like my very short log line for it. So it's. We're at the turn of the 20th century, mostly in New York City. And yeah, there are three kind of main characters. The kind of central figure is a young woman named Vivian Les France, who would probably call herself a lesbian if she were alive today. And she runs away from home as a teenager upstate. Basically a very ambitious, driven young woman who's coming to New York City to make a new life for herself. And that involves, first off, a lavender marriage with Oscar Schmidt, who is a gay kind of middle manager at a soap company, a personal care company, so soap cosmetics. And they eventually bring in a third partner, Oscar's business rival, Squire Clancy, who is like the black sheep of a very old money New York family. And they have a business partnership that is also a kind of domestic, romantic sexual partnership. And that's the kind of the conflict of the second half of the book ensues from there.
- [41:15]
Jack Wilson
Okay, so why set the novel in the Gilded Age?
- [41:20]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah, it's kind of funny. Most of the book actually takes place during the Progressive Era, which the Gilded Age kind of wraps up right at the close of the 19th century. And the bulk of the book's plot takes place kind of between 1900 and 1915. So it's just interesting. We hear the Gilded Age reference a lot talking about the book, and I think it's a shorthand for many people for anything historical that's centered on New York City. So that's. I've actually been fascinating to see come up. One element of the book is about how, as we as human beings do this, we kind of split time and space into subcategories and label them with capital letters. But anyway, the real answer to the question is that the period at the turn of the 20th century is very compelling to me because it was a time of enormous technological and social change in a way that feels very existentially familiar to us today. And then also just that the aesthetics and the material culture of that era are fascinating to me. And I've loved reading books and watching films set in those years for a long time.
- [42:21]
Jack Wilson
So you mean the fashion and the technology, I guess we're sort of moving into an increasingly electric era and that kind of thing.
- [42:32]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
That's part of it. And that Actually is a problem for the characters who are trying to market candles. So that was sort of an interesting element for the book. But then also the invention in New York, specifically the subway, debuted in 1904. And that's kind of a large part of the book. For at least one character who's very interested in trains, that's a large element of the novel. So, yeah, just an exciting time. This is also around the time that New York became one city as opposed to when the boroughs were sort of consolidated. So, yeah, just a lot going on.
- [43:04]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. Well, listeners may be familiar with this from. I just did, I think a three part episode on Henry James's the Jolly Corner and that tells the story of. It's basically Henry James himself was gone, I think, for 36 years. And the character in the story has also been gone from New York for 36 years. And so in doing some research about it for those podcast episodes, it really was an astonishing time in New York City. I mean, the. The number of buildings, the museums that went up in the public library and all the things that we kind of take for granted now as being fixtures in Manhattan had all arisen while Henry James was out of the country. And so he kind of left it. And there was still a lot of farmland and there was still a lot of farmland and that kind of thing around. And then when he returned, it was. Everything was booming, but also a whole different feel that we maybe would recognize. I think we might recognize the New York of 1905 in some ways more than someone from 1860 or 1870 would recognize it.
- [44:21]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Wow. Yeah, that's a really fascinating thought and I think you're probably right. That said, I feel it seems like taking 36 years away from New York at any moment would probably produce. You can always find people complaining that their favorite pizza place from last week closed. So I'm sure that a lot changes anytime. But yeah, I think that that particular, like the. The very end of the 19th century and very beginning of the 20th were really just like a huge. A huge transformative time.
- [44:52]
Jack Wilson
Right. So you mentioned kind of doing some research. I'm wondering if you had to do any research on the people. Did you. Did you base your protagonists on any real life models or, or their professions? On any real life occupations you were able to find?
- [45:09]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah, for the most part, these three individuals are not based on anyone. This isn't like a specific fictional biography of anyone. I was very lightly inspired and took huge poetic license with a little bit of historical trivia about the origins of Procter and Gamble. William Proctor and James Gamble, I just learned, were initially business rivals before they became business partners. And they were in the personal care industry, as these characters are in the book. And as in the book, one of them was a soap maker, one of them was a candle maker. And those industries at the time had common raw materials, mostly animal fat, as like a slaughterhouse byproduct. So they had like, a supply chain issue and were enemies and then happened to. Historically, what happened is that they married into the same family. They married a pair of sisters, and their common father in law sort of like, took control of the narrative and pointed out they were being stupid. But I was fascinated by that and had that sort of moment of, like, that's a really great historical tidbit. I want them to have fallen in love. Like, I want it to have gone further. And it was also, you know, this happened half a century earlier than this book is set, and in Cincinnati, not in New York City. So it's almost unhinged how much poetic license I took after being inspired by that story. But, yeah, truly, I did research into the personal care industry, of course, research into the time and place and the sort of, like, aesthetics and material culture and locations that everything is taking place in. But it's not any three specific people that I was dramatizing right now.
- [46:50]
Jack Wilson
Were you tempted to use the present day, or was it always going to be set in the past? And if you had it in the present day, how do you think that might have changed either your characters or your story?
- [47:03]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
I think that the seed of why I wanted to write this book is sort of just having been a lifelong devoted reader of novels of manners, things, you know, written in or set in this kind of time period.
- [47:17]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [47:17]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
So that's partly sort of that material culture, but partly the style, the writing style, and the voice itself. And getting to have this very omniscient and intrusive narrator who can kind of have this beautiful, like, stylistic, like, getting to butt in and kind of have this, like, social satire and affectionate judgment of the characters. And of course, there's no reason that narrators with that style couldn't be used to. In a. In a book with a modern setting. But I think that I just. This was the world that I wanted to. Wanted to explore. This is like the kind of story and the kind of book that I. I wanted to put myself on the shelf among, like, in terms of getting to the play in that space. So for this particular project, I never really considered it. It felt like very important to the heart of it that it be set in this moment.
- [48:05]
Jack Wilson
It's so fascinating that you say that because it does seem like we lost our grip on the omniscient narrator. It seems to have dwindled around the time of E.M. forster and kind of that, you know, he was sort of in some ways a 19th century novelist. And you know, if you think it reached its peak with someone like Tolstoy, we never really got it back. And I have a theory that it's because people became too aware of who they were and a sort of difficulty in speaking for the whole world like that. Even though, you know, there's no reason why the same doubts couldn't have been in the minds of a Tolstoy. But we seem so aware that if we say we, we're only speaking for a slice of humanity and our particular demographic and it, it just became kind of the first person or the close third just seemed to kind of take over.
- [49:07]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
That's really fascinating. And I think that there's absolutely something to it. And the. Yeah, I guess that the, the confidence maybe that. That belongs to that kind of writing. So that's interesting. And that might be. Maybe that's. That's part of the reason why it feels easier to deploy a narrator that omniscient in this kind of drawing room setting where maybe the world feels smaller of what you're claiming. But I think for part of how a modern author can get around that. I think part of what I was thinking about with this book is that think of the narrator as a character and the narrator may be speaking with that level of confidence, but that doesn't mean they're right about the world. You know, that the narrator is speaking about the world of this particular project, of this particular book.
- [49:55]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. And even omniscient narrators, I mean they were never presenting themselves as infallible. They would often kind of poke fun at themselves or admit to some limitations or something.
- [50:08]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
So it just seems that's my favorite thing about it.
- [50:10]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [50:11]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Right. When I read and including like these classic, like 19th century novel with omniscient narrators, the best part is when they. Is when suddenly this all knowing narrator second guesses themselves or goes back on something they've said earlier or realizes they've misrepresented, that's catnip. That's always so exciting as a reader.
- [50:32]
Jack Wilson
Now with these three characters being queer misfits, it seems like if you had them set in the present day, you would have been facing a much different kind of scenario for them in terms of how self aware they could be, how open they could be, and so on. Did that seem like you were sacrificing something or did it kind of liberate you in a way to think of? Well, it would be fun to imagine what their lives would have been like given who they were. But in that particular context.
- [51:06]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah, I think it was much more the latter, although it's a good question and it's a complex thought. I think that with these three characters obviously being individual people, their sort of like self awareness and, you know, pride in themselves and confidence in their lifestyle varies a lot for like personal psychological reasons as much as for sort of social acceptance reasons. But I think that, you know, doing research around this book, part of what really impressed itself upon me was that historically, like then as now, there were queer people all over the city and all over the world, like making lives for themselves and living in community and having a varied and full life experiences. So that didn't feel like too much of a limitation. I think that as in any literary fiction, there are, there are struggles and conflicts, but that, that comes from wanting to try to tell an interesting story about complicated people. But yeah, I found it. This is in general a book about characters who are really trying to make their own rules and their own life and kind of like carve out a space where they get to define what their relationship is and what their identities are. And that is something that felt. I mean, it's the great thing about all kind of novels of manners is that they feel very psychologically timeless to me. I think that that's part of why these authors resonate with us across time, that they're very. This is like psychological and emotional and it's often hormonal drama that doesn't really vary very much, no matter what kind of the aesthetics of the moment might be.
- [52:47]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, I mean, Jane Austen turns 250 years old this year and she's still going strong.
- [52:54]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah, exactly.
- [52:57]
Jack Wilson
So. So I think there's also maybe. I don't know if this occurred to you at all, but it also would feel a little bit like if you're writing an Edith Wharton like novel and setting it in Edith Wharton's backyard, so to speak, you think, well, I'm not going to out Wharton. Wharton. But the way you can do it, the way you can add some value and some interest for a contemporary reader is knowing that. But you're bringing a modern sensibility to your look at the characters. I'm thinking of people who set a novel in the Roaring twenties or something, and they Think, well, Fitzgerald, he kind of owns that field. But if you have a book written today that's set there, you would say, oh, good, the black people aren't just invisible or they're not just going to be a prop. They could actually be a character because they were there. You know, it's just the authors kind of overlooked them. And so it's sort of. It's kind of refreshing to think, well, now we can revisit this era that we all love so much from all the books that we've read, but we can see them through a modern day person's eyes where you might see things that they themselves either didn't see or. Or chose not to record for us.
- [54:20]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah, yeah, I think that that's really wonderfully put that this is. I mean, yes, obviously no attempt is made to out Wharton. Wharton, of course, like that. It is more, you know, to have an homage and pastiche of the style of these books that I love so much and to sort of be, as you're kind of describing, paying attention to something that. That was not really paid attention to in those. In those works. So to kind of try to replicate as best I can the experience of that I have had reading these books that I've loved, but with characters and relationships that I would be interested to see get that treatment.
- [55:01]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. Now we've talked a little bit about the setting, the location, New York in this era. We've talked a little bit about the omniscience of the narrator. What else could you take from Wharton's novels? Was there anything that you were able to import with the plot or things like that? And was there anything that you felt like you had to change?
- [55:23]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
The style and the material worlds are certainly the main things that I lifted. The other thing, I guess it's related to the narrative voice, but something I really, really love about her writing is the fun that she has painting secondary and tertiary characters. Like there are no small parts in her books. In a way that I really love. Even if there's someone who just gets a line or two in passing, I will remember that line or two forever. One of my favorite characters that I have read is Dallas Archer, the son at the very end of Age of Innocence who comes in for like one scene, the very last scene in the book, and just kind of like rips the plot of the novel apart at the very end. He's so iconic and memorable to me and even though he's only there for a couple of pages. So I tried to kind of emulate that, to try to, like, pay very close attention to the minor characters in passing which is something obviously the omniscience lets you do. There are certain little character moments that rhyme a little bit with specific Wharton scenes. Early in Mutual Interest, Vivian, the main character, is down on her luck financially and she had some very, like Lily Bardish strategies for trying to economize. Like, you know, being offered one cigarette and taking, like, five or six. And also, similarly to Lily, getting a job is, like, at the bottom of her list of strategies for how to deal with this. Like, she'll do anything to avoid that. So little things like that. There's a very quick joke. I think it's in Custom of the country. There's a quick joke at the expense of a character who collects snuff boxes that made me laugh so hard that I put a snuffbox collection in my book just to get to think about that. And the last thing that I, like, consciously did was that there's a running thread all throughout Wharton's work of characters who sort of express physical affection to other people's clothing rather than to the person themselves. You'll see people a lot, like, caressing a ribbon or a glove or a scarf. I feel like there's a lot of Newland Archer genuflecting to dresses rather than to women in a way that I have always. It's always stuck out to me in her work. So I've tried to pay some homage to that with certain kind of romantic milestones in this love story involving characters, watches or pockets or clothing in that way. But I'm sure there's much more of it that I didn't consciously steal and just unconsciously stole. But it's a lot of little things like that.
- [57:58]
Jack Wilson
The last example you gave would be something it seems like a novelist could borrow as a trick, as a technique in any era. That would be something that might not occur to you at first but once you see how Wharton does it, you think, oh, I could make this work.
- [58:14]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah, of course.
- [58:15]
Jack Wilson
Make it work in any place at any time.
- [58:18]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Pretty much, yeah. That's a great thought. Yeah.
- [58:21]
Jack Wilson
So Wharton, we know, wrote some works privately. We discovered the erotica, or semi erotica, maybe. You'd say, do you think she could have written a book like yours, knowing what we know about her? And I guess a bigger question might be, do you think she could have published it?
- [58:46]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah. Wow, that's quite a question. I mean, first of all, right off the bat, Edith Wharton could have written anything she wanted to.
- [58:53]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [58:53]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
There's no question of could she. She was a genius. She could have written anything.
- [58:58]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, well, she. Well, let me. Let me push back on that a little bit. So she wouldn't have needed the hundred or so years that we've had since then in order to kind of get to know these characters and what makes them tick a little more. She wouldn't have. She could have treated them as human beings and not as stereotypes, for example.
- [59:17]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
That is a. Yeah, that is a different question, I think, about the very anti Semitic portrayal of Rosedale in House of Mirth. I think that her ability to portray. I don't know if we necessarily would want to know how she would have portrayed a queer love story.
- [59:32]
Jack Wilson
Right, right.
- [59:34]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
In that particular way. I do think that her work has a lot. I mean, I'm speaking for myself only, but I think her published work, her public work, has a very subtle and expansive portrait of sexuality and gender roles for its time in a way that I think that there's a reason that many queer readers find characters and relationships in her work that resonate with us. So it's a complicated question. I think that, like, yes, she had the talent, but maybe not the context or sensitivity. And to the question of whether such a book, if it did exist, could have been published. I can only imagine. No, I'm just comparing it to Forster's Morris.
- [60:20]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [60:20]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Which he wrote in 1912, 13, and just wasn't published until after his death in the 70s. So. But I will say I. There's kind of. There's a sexual frankness to a lot of Wharton's, again, published work. Even that I wouldn't, as a kid, wouldn't have imagined was possible to get away with in the time she was writing. So I guess, who knows? And this is America, it's different. But I can only imagine that wouldn't have been possible.
- [60:48]
Jack Wilson
And I feel like. Yeah, I feel like she maybe could have because she was so good and Henry James, I think, might have struggled a little more with it because he would have made it so elliptical and guarded and everything he did seems to have gotten so wound up and hidden behind 10 different layers of veils and so on that she's a.
- [61:08]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
She's a very. She was a very frank writer. So I think that if very hypothetically, if she had wanted to tell a queer story, I don't think she would have wasted time, like, obfuscating.
- [61:21]
Jack Wilson
Right, Right. Okay, let's take a quick break and then come back with more from Olivia Wolfgang. SM Foreign.
- [61:42]
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- [62:51]
Jack Wilson
Olivia, we're back. I was very interested when I saw the Wharton and then when I saw Patrick o', Brien, who's one of my favorite writers. When did you become interested in his works? What drew you to them?
- [63:10]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah, this is. I am new to the Aubrey ad. I have become an o' Brien fan in the last couple years. Only. I read the first book for a book club with friends. It wasn't my pick. I had seen the Peter Weir movie. I knew that I liked kind of naval adventure novels and series as a genre, even like things like Star Trek. I sort of lump in this category. So I was intrigued to try. But I got so hooked from the, from the first page, basically. I was like completely. I was like, all right, this is my life. And I read them all kind of. I chain smoked them over the course of like a summer.
- [63:54]
Jack Wilson
And I read an essay where you said you were at a point where you needed a reading project that would feel like a warm bath. Can you explain that a little more?
- [64:05]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah. Yes. So that was, that was that summer. That summer that I read them all.
- [64:09]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [64:10]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah. I think that this probably happens to everyone, to me. I think that as a writer, it's important to always be reading books that challenge and amaze you on the craft level to keep your brain really firing on all cylinders thinking about what's possible in literature. But there are certain seasons where I think that if your brain has been firing on all the cylinders for too long, it gets burnt out. This is happening to me. I had just published my debut novel and around the same time, my partner had just been through cancer treatment and that had all wrapped up. It was great news. Everything was Great. Everything continues to be great. But it had been a really big year and a really tiring year, and I had this feeling that I still wanted to read and learn and immerse myself in this kind of, like, virtuosic literature that would teach me about craft. But I wanted it to feel, like, familiar rather than surprising. I wanted to be getting to experience a formula executed repetitively with great skill over and over again. And the o' Brien books are so.
- [65:11]
Jack Wilson
That, yeah, you found the perfect reading. I'm sorry to hear that about your partner, but I'm glad to hear that things are going well. You found the right author and the right set of books. Because it does seem. I mean, I knew somebody who finished with the last one and then just opened up the first one again and started back on page one. And it was.
- [65:35]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
I love.
- [65:35]
Jack Wilson
And I thought, oh, you want to now? You think you'll understand it better or something. He said, no, I just want to spend time with these people. I just want to be in their world and be in Patrick o' Brien's world. We talked about language before. I mean, I don't know any historical fiction writer who has a kind of mind meld with the vocabulary and the setting and the. The objects and just the lore of his era, like he does. It really immerses you in that period.
- [66:12]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah, it's incredible. It's really amazing. And what a compliment for your friend to pay. That's, like, the greatest compliment to any author, I feel, to get to the end, especially, I think, cumulatively, it's, what, like, 7,000 pages to get to the end of that and then just flip back to the beginning. It's so amazing.
- [66:30]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, here we go. We're starting over. So I also was fascinated by your take on Aubrey and Maturan, and you view it as a romance, but you say it's in a way that is almost certainly against o' Brien's intentions. So what do you think o' Brien was attempting to show with these two and what kind of ended up making it onto the page?
- [66:52]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
I think what's on the page is exactly, I'm sure what he meant to show. I think it's just a matter of tropes that mean different things to different people, depending on the layers that each of us is bringing to the table. Like, I don't know for sure, but I would bet a lot that O' Brien meant to show a deepening best friendship over 21 books. And it just so happens that the tropes he used to deploy that are identical to the arc of an adventure rom com and include grand gestures and declarations of fidelity and interdependence. And to a modern queer reader, I felt like I was reading a love story.
- [67:27]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [67:28]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
So I think it's just a case of the same very affectionate and tropy writing, meaning different things to different people in this beautiful way. Actually, I'm happy that it's there.
- [67:37]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. And maybe that's the lesson you could take from it. If you're a creative person, you could say, let's say you want to have a friendship and you don't want it to go farther, but you want to show this deepening friendship. You can borrow from rom coms. Right. I mean, Aubrey and Metron, they have a Meet cute, and they discover they share this love for music that bonds them, and they respect each other's differences, and they're a very good couple in this kind of friendship kind of way.
- [68:09]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah. It's the arc of a relationship in a way that, like, this is something that you get used to really quickly writing historical fiction, especially about queer people. Like labels and identities have shifted so much, and especially, like, what archivally is preserved or written down, that question of how would this relationship be defined becomes less and less interesting to me the longer that I read and write. In historical fiction especially, it's just a joy to see the psychological arc play out.
- [68:41]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. Right. And you point out, one of my favorite things about the two of them is that they adjust to help each other when they have failings they don't. You know, they complete each other in some ways. And Aubrey is the experienced captain and he's very comfortable with everything to do with the ship, and Steven is not. Steven's the opposite. Right. And one of my favorite things is when Steven, every time he gets on the ship, he falls into the water. But then at some point, Jack starts ordering the Marines to carry him on board. And Steve is being hauled on board by these Marines are carrying him on board, and he gets mad. This was unnecessary. Jack's like, we don't have time, Stephen, to fish you out this time. We have to get moving. Things like that. And of course, Steven does the same with Jack. He knows that Aubrey has his own failings and shortcomings as well. And Stephen, with his intelligence and his medical knowledge and his political knowledge and so on, is able to help Jack in different ways. So it is fun watching them in this way. And, I don't know, you sort of feel like, I don't know, I'm a big Beatles Fan. So I'm always comparing everybody to John Lennon and Paul McCartney, but you kind of feel like. Like there just are these two who were meant to meet one another and then what they could. The connection that they had just make something kind of magic.
- [70:21]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's funny, but this is sort of a. I feel like there's no way to say it now that doesn't seem really insulting to Lennon and McCartney, but that it is. It's truly. You're getting at the fact that it's like. Like the huge running gag of the books are that escalates, as you also point out intensely over the course of the series, is that Steven and Jack are so very talented in their spheres of expertise, but, like shockingly incompetent outside of their jobs in a way that sort of makes them. The interdependence is to the point that they sort of become one person or feel. It feels that way by the end. And again, that I was one thing that really surprised me coming to the books, not having read them. I'm so surprised that people don't talk more about how funny they are. They're like very, very, like laugh out loud funny all throughout all the books. And that a lot. The sort of character relationships have a lot to do with that.
- [71:19]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, yeah, they are. And there's. I have this memory. I mean, I read them now. It was a while ago because it was on. I finished them when my kids were quite young and they're now college age. So it's been, I guess, 15 years or so since I've last read one. But so a lot of it is a little bit hazy in my memory. I don't remember which book this came from, but there was a character where they were doing like a poetry contest on board, and they would come up and they would take it so seriously. And then when people would laugh at the wrong place or something, they'd get all red in the face and they'd throw the poem back in their pocket. Never mind, Never mind. And it was just this beautiful moment of them being vulnerable to something like poetry. I can't imagine that happening on board a ship today, but just in that era that they had enough respect for poetry that they wanted to reveal their feelings in these poems and just things like that that people who haven't read the books maybe would expect. They think of it probably as being a lot of. Of battles and maneuvers and boarding beat to quarters and that kind of thing.
- [72:37]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah, I think that the things like the poetry contests, it seems like they come up a lot in sort of the later. Like, the back half of the series. And I think that part of that is maybe o' Brien having a little. I'm assuming a little bit of a blank check and realizing that they were gonna. They were gonna let him write as many of these as he wanted. And so he's like, all right, time for the big poetry contest.
- [73:02]
Jack Wilson
Right? Now you have in your essay, you talk about what you call obriens time loop and your theory that this winds up pointing us toward marriage. So what is that all about?
- [73:14]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Oh, yeah, this is also, I guess, about that blank check moment a little bit. But, yeah, about half of the series. I did not know this beforehand. I don't know how commonly this is known. About half of the series takes place in the repeating year 1813.
- [73:28]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [73:28]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Because O' Brien was running out of war faster than he was running out of things he wanted to write books about. So, yeah, like. So for. I think it's 12 books, it just constantly stays 1813, even though many years worth of time are passing.
- [73:45]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [73:46]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
And Steven and Jack are kind of just in a Groundhog Day situation. They're crisscrossing the world, getting into these naval battles or having their adventures on shore. And theoretically, the war is progressing. They're getting updates from their bosses, but in the next book, they experience, you know, another version of those same few months. And it took longer for me to notice because I don't know that much about the Napoleonic wars, but I think that for the. Maybe history buffs who were reading, it might have stuck out quicker.
- [74:14]
Jack Wilson
And aren't they getting older and getting promoted and so on? I mean, I don't really remember. Like, I think I missed this probably because I would read, you know, half a book and then I'd have to do other things for a few months. I'd go back to it and. And that kind of thing. But you were saying that O', Brien, in his mind, would call the years 1812 A, 1812 B.
- [74:36]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
And so, yes, yes, he just wanted more time. He wanted the war to go on longer, which is actually something the characters wish for as well. So it all works out. But, yes, yes, they are. He's very cagey about it. He doesn't say exactly how old they are. But, yes, things are happening and they are getting promoted. It's not like it resets, so it makes it all very fuzzy, hard to pin down what's happening. That was the line past which the series, I thought, was more about the relationship between the two characters. Because if you're writing a naval historical series, that matters. Right. You don't just put history on pause for 12 books, like that's something important not to do. So for me, it became a domestic bubble where dramatizing the war took this big backseat to showing us the evolution of the relationship between Jack and Steven. And it stuck out for me. I was reading this after. Right after COVID lockdown and then the extension of that lockdown for my household while my partner was in treatment, and I just, I saw some echoes of that sense of like a two person bubble universe while the rest of the world is. Is doing its own thing.
- [75:39]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [75:40]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
So for me, it reminded me of that kind of sense of a. Of a domestic partnership during a difficult season.
- [75:45]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, well, it's true that. I mean, when you're younger, everything is so clear to me where I was at a certain time, because I can remember what grade I was in. You know, like, I was in seventh grade. Oh, yeah, of course. I was in eighth grade when that happened. And so I can be very precise about the years. And then once you start a job, it just becomes a big amorphous thing. And relationships are like that too. You know, this is when I was dating so and so, and this is when I was dating so and so. And you can kind of mark time that way. But then with marriage, it just becomes, you know, 20, 30, 40 years of all kind of in one amorphous time period. And it's harder to sort of remember, well, would that have been in, you know, 2011? Like the pandemic gives us sort of this moment. Oh, I remember things if it was before the pandemic or after the pandemic, but. But not exactly. Like, I can't kind of do it by month and year, so. Well, and you're kind of saying with o' Brien restarting all the time, and it just becomes as if Aubrey and Steven, it's sort of like the moments when they're together and the moments when they're apart for some reason, but it's kind of in one big blob of time.
- [77:12]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Yeah. And to find a way to tell a story that has that structure, or lack of structure, when you're theoretically telling a story about a major war, which should be one of the easiest things in the world to lay out events with those kind of signposts is like, I don't know. I think it's incredible. It's one of my favorite things about the books. But yeah, it's just like a really interesting element and One of those things that I was like, I can't believe nobody talks about this. If someone had told me, you should read this series of books, there's 20 of them and half of them take place in a time loop, I would have gotten there much earlier.
- [77:50]
Jack Wilson
Right. Well, I guess we have the big question now to bring this full circle is would you set a book in the world of Aubrey Maturin? Would you take that on?
- [78:07]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
I think that I feel very intimidated by my lack of knowledge of the age of C sail and naval. There were so many moments in this series, especially when we're talking. I'm really a Steven when it comes to knowing about sailing. I have port and starboard down better than he does, but not so much the full rigging. And there were many moments reading the naval battles and who has the weather gauge and figuring all that out where I just sort of let it wash over me. I was like, I'll be able to tell when something good versus bad is happening. So, no, I will. I think that I'm happy to be a fan only of this particular series.
- [78:46]
Jack Wilson
Well, maybe three or four times more through the whole series and you'll be ready to go.
- [78:53]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
That's the spirit. Thank you.
- [78:54]
Jack Wilson
In the meantime, I would urge listeners to check out your essay on the o' Brien books on Lithub, which I found really a good read. And of course, we also have the novel. If we can't have it set in the world of Patrick o', Brien, we'll have to settle for Edith Ward, which. Which is not too bad. The novel is called Mutual. Olivia Wolfgang Smith, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.
- [79:19]
Olivia Wolfgang Smith
Thank you so much for having me.
- [79:26]
Jack Wilson
There we go. That's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. My thanks to Olivia Wolfgang Smith for joining me. We will be back and soon. Not clear to me yet what exactly we'll have in store for our next episode, but I think we're going to reclaim some lost episodes soon. That's on my list of things to do. These are episodes that have fallen out of the archive for one reason or another. We gotta clean them up, fix them up. We're like Max Broad grabbing Kafka's works from the. From the funeral pyre, pulling him out of the fireplace and cleaning them up. Publishing, hopefully on your list of things to do is to head over to John Shore's Travel to look at the History of Literature podcast tour. Itinerary. Itinerary. We still have some spots available and we'd like to fill up these cars and train compartments at restaurant tables. It's going to be a small group. I'll be there and we would love to have you as part of our company. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.
- [80:56]
Emma
Behind every great meal is a person with a story to tell. Hear them on Culinary Characters Unlocked, the podcast that reveals the lives behind the food. Hosted by me, David Page, Emmy Award winning journalist and creator of Diners Drive Ins and Dives as I talk with everyone from culinary legends to mom and pop standouts about the creative creativity, grit and passion that shape the food we love. Follow Culinary Characters Unlocked on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind every Empire are the people History Tried to Forget. Lost Roman Heroes tells the stories of the remarkable characters who shaped Rome from its mythical beginnings to its final fault.
- [81:43]
Jack Wilson
Each episode blends armchair storytelling, sharp historical insights, and a bit of humor to bring these lost figures to life. From generals to scientists, from rebels to empresses, from priests to politicians, these lost Roman heroes have one thing in common.
- [81:56]
Emma
They stood up for civilization when the bad guys threatened, and in doing so, they changed the course of human history. If you're into history that's vivid, surprising and deeply human, this show's for you.