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for me, the most urgent voices are the ones that I pay attention to and it's hard to define what urgency means.
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But there's something to the manner in which the writer puts together language that invites the reader and almost demands the, of the reader to keep going.
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Hi, I'm Ariana McLean.
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And I'm Meryl Branch Mc Tiernan.
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And you're listening to, it's All Right, the podcast about the writing life and those who live it.
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Today we're excited to host our professor, Robert Lopez, who is the author of eight books his most recent book, The Best People, is a novel in stories and was published in April of 2025.
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He now teaches at Stony Brook University and has previously taught at Columbia the New School, Prat Institute, Syracuse University, and he lives in Brooklyn.
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Hi Robert.
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Thanks for joining us.
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Hi Robert.
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Hi, Meryl.
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Hi Ariana.
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It's good to see you both.
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Yeah, I know I haven't seen you since I graduated, Robert was my thesis advisor for my collection of short things.
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But Meryl's been in your workshop consistently?
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a super, super
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There's always a place for Meryl
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so what keeps you coming back to Robert's class?
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well, I'd like to be beaten up a little bit about my writing.
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I don't wanna get too confident I could always rely on Robert to tell me the truth about what I'm writing and be funny and smart
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And Robert, how would you describe your teaching style?
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Oh God.
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I would try not to describe it.
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But, just a lot of conversation, a lot of back and forth with everybody participating.
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And you've taught at a lot of schools.
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Is there anything that I guess stands out about the Stonybrook Brook group?
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Or the
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program
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itself?
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The program
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yeah, I think the sense of community at Stony Brook is really strong and.
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I really appreciated that.
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So that's what stands out the is the
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Nice.
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And that kind of aligns with your, workshop model as well is very community driven.
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Yeah.
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I definitely, actually didn't really go out after class until I came to your class,
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Well, I'm glad to hear that because I think it's an important, element of the whole graduate school experience is to mingle and mix with your peers and start laying the groundwork of real friendships that'll last for you, the rest of your creative lives.
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Yeah, and I think when you're in workshop with people who, you know outside of workshop, you have more trust and more, it's easier to be
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No question.
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No question.
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The familiarity.
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Is a good thing.
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So I just finished reading your first book part of the World, and I really enjoyed it.
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And I was struck by how the voice,'cause I've only read six of your books but the voice is very consistent across all of them.
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And I'm wondering how do we get voice?
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What does voice mean?
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Like I, I know it when I see it, but I don't know how to describe it.
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Yeah, that would make two of us.
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for me, voice has to reside somewhere within urgency.
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for me, The most urgent voices are the ones that I pay attention to.
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And it's hard to define what urgency means.
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But there's something to the manner in which the writer puts together language that invites the reader and almost demands the, of the reader to keep going.
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And that's what I respond to as a reader.
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And I suppose in everything I've ever written that was what I was thinking, is that the voice in and of itself beyond any narrative that may or may not be in play, that the voice is going to be compelling enough for somebody to stay with it.
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Yeah, and I think what's remarkable about your books is that sometimes the subjects are like very mundane, like buying a new car or an old car or like moving a couch, but somehow you make it feel like the most urgent thing in the world.
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Yeah.
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To, to me, it's always in those ridiculous quotidian moments that.
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We learn about who we are and what we're capable of and what we're not capable of, and all the rest.
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you know, As far as"Part of the World" goes, when I first started the book, and this is a long time ago now the book was published 18 years ago.
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And it was started many years before that.
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But when I just started writing about this old used car I had.
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I had the idea that, okay, I'll just describe this car and see what happens.
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And then it became clear that, oh the narrator was involved in an accident.
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And so there's that image of like broken glass and certain things.
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I haven't looked at the book in many years, but yeah.
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Okay, I'm gonna start with a car.
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But then why is the car important?
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And it turns out it's because there was an accident and then it turns out that maybe somebody was hurt.
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Maybe it was the narrator, maybe it wasn't, maybe somebody was killed.
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Maybe it was the narrator, maybe it wasn't.
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All the questions are questions and remain questions, but it was at the time, a pleasant experience to, to just start off with writing about a car and then find all these other things
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So did you not really know the answers to any of those questions as you were writing?
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You were just like, we'll figure it out.
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yeah, I had no idea.
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I'm just, I was just describing some guy, trying to buy a car and and then then the rest just revealed itself.
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Would you say that that is still part of your writing process?
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Like just starting with something and seeing where it takes you?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I've never had an idea for anything I've never tried to write about any subject at all.
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Other than the nonfiction book.
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The nonfiction book had its own motivations and unique method of composition but the other books all started with just language and then whatever damage or issues or, whatever was on my head, was gonna find its way into the work and, hopefully there was enough there to make something cohere.
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That's something I've noticed in my writing when I write something in a certain mood, like how I'm feeling on Wednesday.
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And then you go back next Wednesday and you're a different person.
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Oh yeah.
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And it's hard to figure out, like I feel like the story can change because of that mood.
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Yeah, for sure.
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Yeah.
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And so part of the task of being an artist and being a writer is to tap into what you originally started with, if that was what is the most compelling, because maybe how you feel one Wednesday and how you feel on other Wednesday, that might vary, but what, what mood is going to be the most compelling way to tell the story.
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So yeah, that's a decision to make.
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And I can think of, for instance, I'm trying to think of a specific song, but I know of songs where they're recorded as up tempo numbers and also as ballads.
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And so the feel is so different between the two.
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But the actual structure of the song and the lyrics and the chords are all the same, but it's just how you go about telling the tale.
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That brings me to another question I had, which was, how does being a musician and or being an athlete, do any of those things play into your writing?
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Certainly the music has always influenced the way I hear the I hear the language in terms of rhythm and of pitch and volume and timber and all of that register.
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For me the writing was influenced by the music just because I wanted to make the language itself, the kind of music, and as far as being an athlete goes playing tennis right now, like I've been doing for the last 15 years, consistently maniacally.
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If I didn't do that, then I don't think I could be functional in any sort of way.
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I don't think I could have a job.
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You know, Hemingway as a writer talked about how exercising the body was important for writers and it was something that I neglected for a long time, even though I grew up an athlete played, baseball pretty seriously for a while there.
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I went away from it in my thirties entirely.
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And I found that since I came back to athletics and tennis in particular, that I need it, I need to exert the body, and if I don't, then bad things both as a writer and as a human being.
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Do you think it's like you're like getting that energy out so that you could sit or like
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Yeah, I think it has something to do with it.
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And there's something about this, the endorphins, I had a serious injury for a while and couldn't play tennis for over seven months.
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And that was a bad scene.
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The lack of endorphins, I actually felt my brain chemistry change so it feeds you.
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It feeds me, certainly.
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And I couldn't imagine doing anything without it.
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We have to the body and the mind.
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I know.
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Oh my gosh.
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It's hard to be in these meat suits.
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It is hard to be in the meat suits.
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These bodies are ridiculous.
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So what I noticed was a big difference between your first and your last book was that the first one was one long thing with no chapters, and the last one was like more fragmented and much shorter, much more broken up.
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Is that like a style that you prefer now, or is it just how you felt for that book, or what do you think?
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Yeah.
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I think, for"Part of The World" that one needed to be very dense, given the subject matter, given the narrator and the world he occupied it needed to have this uninterrupted feeling for, there's no chapter breaks.
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I believe there's a part one and part two.
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There's one star somewhere I think that was it.
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exactly.
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There's a star that indicates there's the second act if you will.
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So I did provide one break there.
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And yeah every time I've ever done anything on the page, the form has presented itself pretty early on in the process and it became intrinsic to the process of doing the work.
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And it's only been, maybe I've only monkeyed with form.
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And what I mean by that is written something in one form, took a look at and then put it in a different form just to see how it felt.
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And to be even more specific, it, it was like either long, uninterrupted paragraphs say, or short little bits that cut in and out and use a lot of white and for me it's always like what effect is the aim and what am I trying to go after and does it suit the narrative consciousness of the character.
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That's really interesting.
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It sounds like you are you're aware of all the things that are happening, the visual on the page, the, the writing, the sound of the writing, the voice.
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So do you ever, do you consider yourself a poet?
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I feel like the only other writers who kind of speak, I think so highly of the visual and the sound often claim to be, or consider themselves poets.
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Yeah, I don't really concern myself with labels, right?
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So thinking, I don't even call myself a writer when I meet somebody used to tell people I was a jockey and and then I'll just say I teach and hopefully that'll end the conversation.
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But yeah, for me, poetry, the properties of poetry are always the goal on the page.
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It might not be a formal poem.
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It might not have, stanzas or line breaks or anything, but the effect is what I'm going for and certainly the musicality of the language and all the properties of poetry I want to employ
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Do you pull inspiration from any one thing, any person thing or with that, because it seems like you're creating your own hybrid art, if you will.
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I guess we all are, but it seems somewhat non-traditional in the way that you explain your writing process.
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Yeah, and it's the only way I know how to do it, I could never, write a story about a particular subject matter.
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Write a story about a guy who shows up at work one day and then his boss calls him in and tells him whatever, I couldn't do that.
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I wouldn't know how to do it.
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So yeah, I don't remember what the question is, is or no, or maybe, or sometimes.
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The questions just guide the conversation.
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They're not necessary.
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But I guess about that a little birdie told me, didn't read much as a kid.
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So how did you come to words on the page?
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so how that happened for me, I didn't read a book really, certainly not a literary book until I was in my early twenties after college.
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When I was an undergrad, I studied directing.
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TV and film kind of stuff.
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And for our senior project, we had to produce our own television show.
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And as the students, we were responsible for everything, building the set, making the set, doing the lighting, doing the casting, directing, editing and writing the script.
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And I always had it in my head and I don't know why'cause I certainly hadn't written anything and I hadn't read anything, but I always had in my head that I was a writer or was going to be a writer so I volunteered to write the script for our show and I wrote a guy goes into rob, a liquor store and the cops show up.
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You don't see the cops.
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They're off the stage, but.
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He's in there, in the liquor store with the clerk who works at the liquor store and one other customer.
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And so we hired professional actors to do it.
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And when I heard those actors say my words, I said, yeah, you know what?
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I gotta do this.
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This is what I wanna do.
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And so my goal was after graduation for that summer to write a screenplay.
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And I opened up my college lit anthology, which I didn't do when I was in the class, and I started reading it and instead of writing a screenplay, I wrote a hundred really bad poems and two stories, and I I had a new path and so it really took over for me and that's how I came to writing.
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So that kind of transitions to how you have been doing some screenwriting lately.
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So now you're back at that.
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Now I'm back at that and it feels really good.
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I, I write with my best friend and and writing partner.
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We've done two TV projects where we have a pilot script and a bible and all that jive, and we're finishing up a film script.
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We actually believe we should finish it this week and we've been working on this film now for months and months and maybe even over a year, but it we're pretty much done with it.
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We're just going the thing is we do it on Zoom.
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He lives in Washington state.
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And we said that until we read it straight through, without changing anything, it's not done.
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And so we've been changing and tightening it and it's a wonderful process.
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The collaborative element is so enjoyable, right?
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Because as writers of prose, more than 99 times out of a hundred, you're just doing it on your own and you're in your room or you're in a cafe by yourself and you're doing a thing.
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But when you're collaborating with somebody it just changes the entire experience.
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So in your books you have a lot of like thoughts, like there's a ton of thoughts.
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Do you miss giving people thoughts or how do you deal with that?
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It's all dialogue and it's all in the writing to de describe the setting and such like that, right?
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Yeah, it's just another way of using language.
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You lose the interiority.
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And that's where actors are so wonderful because they bring it right.
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They bring their talent to those silent moments in between the lines that convey the thoughts.
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you, it's really very collaborative on that end.
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The actor brings so much to it that's where the interiority resides.
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Yeah.
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We were talking to Meryl's writing partner about how.
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It basically the work becomes something new at each stage.
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Like after you write it and once you start having actors act it, it's a new beast.
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And are you ready to release that control?
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or Would you want to direct or act in that?
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Certainly not act.
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I'cause when we read the script aloud to each other every so often I like, ooh, I deliver that line pretty But then the next line, I completely butcher.
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Yeah, I can never do the acting, but directing is something that I, I um, want do.
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I did a lot of it as a undergrad and it was a lot of fun.
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It was how do you work with actors to get them to give you the performance that you want.
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How much, you let them bring all of themselves to it and you just kind of.
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You know, i'm always very, a light touch with with everybody with writers I work with or musicians, or So I'm looking forward to and eventually very much want to direct something that Sam and I write.
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Are you gonna have to fight with Sam over who gets to direct or are, do you
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No, we've already thought of ourselves as the kind of.
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Joel and Ethan Cohen kind of combination where you don't really know who's directing.
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They they put one name as director and one name as producer, they're collaborating the entire way.
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So yeah, it'll be like that.
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I think you, I can really see you being a director'cause you guide, mentees and students.
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I feel like that's key skill or characteristic of a director.
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And also you, I think you know what you want and you know what you like.
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And I directors that I've worked with in the past that are very young and green, they rely too much on other people's.
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thoughts like you have to be the one who's guiding the ship, and between I think you and your friend, you know your vision.
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I think, yeah, for me, the way I look at it is I have an idea about how I want the scene to go.
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But if this is where you really allowed the actors, all the creative input that they could muster, that if they come up with something that I wasn't thinking about or anticipating, but it feels good, and it looks good and it sounds good, then you know, I'm more than happy to go in that direction.
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That's the magic.
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right.
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But that is, that's the magic where, so like a film, a filmmaker, like.
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Hitchcock, for instance, he said, oh, actors are just sheep and you have to, herd them around.
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I, don't see it that way and would never go to a project with that kind of attitude.
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Meryl has a book that is in the, it's in the throes of publication and is available for pre-order.
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When's it, due to debut
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June 2nd.
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And Meryl was saying that Robert,'cause you have gone through publication, all the books are out.
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People ask you all the questions about your book and Meryl is wondering about advice for when people ask the dreaded question: what's your book about?
00:20:20.761 --> 00:20:21.271
Oh yeah.
00:20:21.451 --> 00:20:22.321
What do you say to that?
00:20:22.426 --> 00:20:27.446
I, I always try to come up with an answer that will, shame the person asking it.
00:20:27.886 --> 00:20:28.487
What's it about?
00:20:28.487 --> 00:20:29.896
It's about 200 pages.
00:20:29.896 --> 00:20:32.777
Something like you could just do that.
00:20:33.196 --> 00:20:38.631
Otherwise, I, you could also, come up with some stupid kind of metaphor.
00:20:38.810 --> 00:20:43.510
It's about an old lady tripping in the park, and skining her knee.
00:20:43.510 --> 00:20:48.185
That's what the book is about and you you there's no old lady.
00:20:49.381 --> 00:20:50.161
it's not to get them to
00:20:50.266 --> 00:20:51.736
can speak in metaphor.
00:20:52.155 --> 00:20:59.901
But if you wanna be straightforward, I say just give like this a synopsis of the book in the most brief manner possible.
00:20:59.976 --> 00:21:02.931
Yeah, I always just wanna kill myself,
00:21:03.665 --> 00:21:03.756
like,
00:21:03.846 --> 00:21:04.596
just read it.
00:21:04.625 --> 00:21:05.435
You get it, you
00:21:05.435 --> 00:21:05.590
read
00:21:05.736 --> 00:21:06.576
it, and then you'll know
00:21:07.415 --> 00:21:08.306
Yeah, exactly.
00:21:08.881 --> 00:21:15.931
About art or talking about a book and the kind of, what's it about?
00:21:15.931 --> 00:21:19.240
Language is always a ridiculous endeavor.
00:21:19.560 --> 00:21:22.891
Right, because I'm never gonna read a book because of what it's about.
00:21:23.651 --> 00:21:32.770
that's not, another question I had about, is there anything that you wish you had known when you had your first book published that you think I should know?
00:21:32.838 --> 00:21:33.739
That's a good question.
00:21:33.888 --> 00:21:34.519
Finally,
00:21:37.009 --> 00:21:42.773
no, I can't think of anything that I wish I had known before I had the first book.
00:21:44.858 --> 00:21:45.368
I'm sorry.
00:21:45.368 --> 00:21:46.959
That's pretty, yeah.
00:21:46.959 --> 00:21:57.189
There's nothing that I wish I had known then that I know now that would've made that experience more enjoyable, or, yeah.
00:21:57.189 --> 00:21:59.348
I never took anything for granted.
00:21:59.898 --> 00:22:01.729
Every book I've ever written.
00:22:02.386 --> 00:22:19.457
Feels like the last book I'll ever write and I think if you do that, if you go in with that kind of attitude, then you really appreciate any conversation around'cause you could think of, this is the last time I'm ever going to do it.
00:22:20.501 --> 00:22:22.571
What was the most fun part about any of it?
00:22:22.903 --> 00:22:29.094
You know, having, just having individual people, and it's almost always writers, right?
00:22:29.094 --> 00:22:37.403
But having individual people say something about the book and what it meant to them and what, it maybe challenged them to do as writers.
00:22:37.737 --> 00:22:44.471
That one reader who, who gets it and who appreciates it and moves them to wanna make something.
00:22:44.501 --> 00:22:47.961
That's always been, the most enjoyable part.
00:22:48.165 --> 00:22:58.556
When smart people, smart, talented people, take the time to review the book or wanna talk about the book in an interview, that's the reward.
00:22:58.556 --> 00:23:07.836
That's, you feel like you're slaved away at a thing alone in a room, and now you get to have some interaction with other people.
00:23:07.836 --> 00:23:09.746
It's not just in your own head.
00:23:10.970 --> 00:23:15.890
Once you're done with the book and it becomes this object, it's not your book anymore.
00:23:16.574 --> 00:23:27.108
It's your book until it becomes an actual book that you could hold in your hand, and then after that it's not your book anymore The book belongs to whoever reads it.
00:23:27.199 --> 00:23:35.259
Do you ever have the reaction from people that is like totally not what you meant or intended at all and then they come up to you and they've seen it in a different way?
00:23:35.933 --> 00:23:37.104
That goes to.
00:23:38.394 --> 00:23:42.394
What maybe I intimated earlier in that I never mean anything.
00:23:42.394 --> 00:23:53.693
I never intend anything, so any reaction from a reader doesn't contradict anything on my end because I never think about it.
00:23:54.183 --> 00:23:55.983
So it, it's all delightful.
00:23:55.989 --> 00:24:00.888
And people will say things and find things in the books that never even occurred to me.
00:24:01.749 --> 00:24:03.009
I think that's really cool.
00:24:08.049 --> 00:24:15.799
As far as in your last book so you have all, you have a few named characters and they sort of circle around each other.
00:24:16.069 --> 00:24:17.329
How do you think of them?
00:24:17.356 --> 00:24:21.017
do, Is there like a truth to them and who they are or does it change.
00:24:22.491 --> 00:24:35.902
Yeah, to me it changes probably when Manny appears as this oftentimes bigger than life character in a couple pieces, or he is referred to that way by the narrator.
00:24:36.451 --> 00:24:40.342
But then in other pieces Manny is not referred to in that manner.
00:24:40.832 --> 00:24:53.821
And I like that ambiguity and confusion and whether or not that speaks to one Manny or multiple Manny's, and maybe everybody's a Manny or everybody in is a Esperanza in this book.
00:24:54.115 --> 00:25:12.325
I have a better idea of Esperanza, but she wouldn't be distinguishable from the other two characters who were named and appear more in"A Better Class of People" and maybe even"Good People." But, those names they're probably all interchangeable.
00:25:13.359 --> 00:25:15.190
And esparanza means hope
00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:17.559
and esp it means hope.
00:25:17.559 --> 00:25:17.799
Right?
00:25:17.799 --> 00:25:20.875
Which most of the work seems pretty hopeless.
00:25:21.509 --> 00:25:24.309
I thought it was interesting that the character's name is Hope
00:25:24.375 --> 00:25:25.154
Yeah, I like that.
00:25:26.013 --> 00:25:30.284
In the best people you have the, I had to bring up a sexual question.
00:25:30.284 --> 00:25:39.179
The the two stories, the attempted sex and an attempted human relations which were like the man's perspective of a sexual encounter, and then the woman's.
00:25:39.564 --> 00:25:45.598
Like of the same encounter did you know you were gonna do that or how did that end up working out?
00:25:46.239 --> 00:25:50.439
I first wrote that story in attempted sex from the man's point of view.
00:25:50.798 --> 00:25:55.388
And then when I was putting together the book, I knew that story was gonna be a part of it.
00:25:56.259 --> 00:25:58.898
I, at some point it occurred to me, Hey, what if you try?
00:25:58.898 --> 00:26:06.769
So it's one of the few times where I've actually had an idea and I said, okay, what if you write the same story but from the woman's point of view and how would it change?
00:26:06.769 --> 00:26:17.979
How would it change how they look at that particular evening that they spent And so it was a lot of fun to, to write it from the two different persepctives.
00:26:18.653 --> 00:26:21.173
And I like that it like bookends the book a little bit.
00:26:21.351 --> 00:26:32.439
The, the sequencing of the stories and placing those two far enough apart that when you read the second one, I hope the experience is uncanny that, okay, wait a minute.
00:26:32.439 --> 00:26:33.969
Did I read this one before?
00:26:34.338 --> 00:26:39.242
I wanted that effect, so I didn't want the stories to be back to back in the book.
00:26:39.242 --> 00:26:41.042
I wanted there to be a lot of space inbetween.
00:26:41.355 --> 00:26:43.852
'Cause then you feel like you've gone through a journey or
00:26:43.922 --> 00:26:50.632
Yeah, What's it called in in mu I was thinking like, I feel like that's how, like oftentimes you craft a, an album, right?
00:26:50.632 --> 00:26:51.622
It's not a bunch of singles.
00:26:51.622 --> 00:26:53.182
Like they, they are talking to each other.
00:26:53.182 --> 00:26:56.362
The order in which you place stories matter.
00:27:01.715 --> 00:27:06.726
How have you pieced together this writer's, this writing life of yours?
00:27:07.086 --> 00:27:10.836
I've been teaching now for about 25.
00:27:12.066 --> 00:27:20.576
And as a graduate student and maybe a couple years after graduate school, I worked in restaurants while teaching
00:27:21.226 --> 00:27:22.046
that's me right
00:27:23.280 --> 00:27:23.760
yeah.
00:27:24.270 --> 00:27:29.010
And that's, it's not fun, but it's what you gotta do.
00:27:29.580 --> 00:27:36.625
And then eventually it could be that I could just teach all the time, full time and have, that'd be source of income.
00:27:37.560 --> 00:27:44.625
So yeah, it's been all teaching now for many and it is a good job for a writer.
00:27:45.391 --> 00:27:51.090
'cause you get to talk about writing and books and, it keeps your head in the game.
00:27:51.173 --> 00:28:00.564
But it also, particularly if you're protective of your time, it gives you the opportunity to do the work and I think that's important
00:28:01.076 --> 00:28:02.006
Yeah, it's a big difference.
00:28:02.006 --> 00:28:03.351
I feel like being an adjunct
00:28:04.076 --> 00:28:04.365
Yeah.
00:28:04.391 --> 00:28:09.191
The adjunct hustle is I would often teach at three different schools in one semester.
00:28:09.851 --> 00:28:14.941
And I did that for years and years before I joined Stony Brook's faculty full-time.
00:28:15.010 --> 00:28:15.445
Woo hoo.
00:28:15.752 --> 00:28:15.992
any
00:28:16.022 --> 00:28:18.663
is a hustle and it's a grind.
00:28:19.083 --> 00:28:23.462
And, but if you want do it because you don't get rich teaching, right?
00:28:23.462 --> 00:28:26.462
So if you want money, then it's not what you should be doing with your life.
00:28:26.675 --> 00:28:27.336
I don't think we like
00:28:27.486 --> 00:28:40.404
time to make stuff then it Well, I suppose I could say everything was all right until it wasn't.
00:28:40.944 --> 00:28:41.184
It's
00:28:41.184 --> 00:28:42.535
all right until it wasn't.
00:28:42.768 --> 00:28:45.204
Didn't sell it right until it wasn't or until it isn't,
00:28:45.557 --> 00:28:46.127
All right.
00:28:46.137 --> 00:28:47.393
Is that your final answer?
00:28:47.574 --> 00:28:49.073
I suppose Yes.
00:28:49.367 --> 00:28:49.397
Are.
00:28:49.502 --> 00:28:50.732
do whatever you wanna do.
00:28:51.167 --> 00:28:51.678
I love it.
00:28:52.202 --> 00:28:53.702
That's actually, that's the best part.
00:28:55.294 --> 00:28:55.413
That
00:28:55.413 --> 00:28:59.824
sounds like so childish, but it like you have to do all these things in life.
00:29:00.453 --> 00:29:02.473
If you're sitting down and writing, do whatever you want
00:29:03.163 --> 00:29:03.763
exactly.
00:29:03.913 --> 00:29:05.173
Just don't be boring,
00:29:05.253 --> 00:29:05.554
all right.
00:29:05.804 --> 00:29:06.614
Thank you.
00:29:07.828 --> 00:29:09.028
thank you very much.
00:29:09.028 --> 00:29:10.288
Thank you for having me.
00:29:10.763 --> 00:29:13.673
We, we have another Lopez we're interviewing next, actually.
00:29:13.673 --> 00:29:13.699
Oh
00:29:13.973 --> 00:29:15.719
family friend Loretta Lopez.
00:29:16.493 --> 00:29:16.784
Okay,
00:29:17.044 --> 00:29:30.309
Yeah, she wrote a middle grade book called City Girls the month of Lopez We're back now for the second half of season one.
00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:33.190
You can tune in every other Tuesdays.
00:29:33.190 --> 00:29:38.220
So every two Tuesdays we'll have a new episode, probably until the end of the year.
00:29:38.529 --> 00:29:44.259
Please like, share, subscribe, all the things you do with internet things.
00:29:44.500 --> 00:29:51.400
You can follow us on Instagram at It's All Write, pod write spelled W-R-I-T-E.
00:29:51.640 --> 00:29:57.759
Check the show notes for links to pre-order Meryl's book, Meryl, what's it called?
00:29:58.089 --> 00:29:59.529
What you should worry about,
00:29:59.529 --> 00:30:05.430
In the show notes, you can also find links to Robert Lopez's work thanks for listening.
00:30:05.486 --> 00:30:06.205
Signing off.
00:30:06.566 --> 00:30:07.796
Bye bye.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.362
for me, the most urgent voices are the ones that I pay attention to and it's hard to define what urgency means.
00:00:10.109 --> 00:00:21.030
But there's something to the manner in which the writer puts together language that invites the reader and almost demands the, of the reader to keep going.
00:00:26.618 --> 00:00:28.428
Hi, I'm Ariana McLean.
00:00:28.559 --> 00:00:30.120
And I'm Meryl Branch Mc Tiernan.
00:00:30.164 --> 00:00:35.130
And you're listening to, it's All Right, the podcast about the writing life and those who live it.
00:00:35.789 --> 00:00:48.079
Today we're excited to host our professor, Robert Lopez, who is the author of eight books his most recent book, The Best People, is a novel in stories and was published in April of 2025.
00:00:48.420 --> 00:00:56.490
He now teaches at Stony Brook University and has previously taught at Columbia the New School, Prat Institute, Syracuse University, and he lives in Brooklyn.
00:00:56.743 --> 00:00:57.493
Hi Robert.
00:00:57.493 --> 00:00:58.692
Thanks for joining us.
00:00:58.799 --> 00:00:59.640
Hi Robert.
00:00:59.776 --> 00:01:00.856
Hi, Meryl.
00:01:00.856 --> 00:01:01.935
Hi Ariana.
00:01:02.228 --> 00:01:03.151
It's good to see you both.
00:01:03.515 --> 00:01:13.415
Yeah, I know I haven't seen you since I graduated, Robert was my thesis advisor for my collection of short things.
00:01:13.715 --> 00:01:17.676
But Meryl's been in your workshop consistently?
00:01:17.727 --> 00:01:18.641
a super, super
00:01:18.850 --> 00:01:20.171
There's always a place for Meryl
00:01:20.751 --> 00:01:23.772
so what keeps you coming back to Robert's class?
00:01:23.823 --> 00:01:26.763
well, I'd like to be beaten up a little bit about my writing.
00:01:26.763 --> 00:01:35.378
I don't wanna get too confident I could always rely on Robert to tell me the truth about what I'm writing and be funny and smart
00:01:35.905 --> 00:01:39.433
And Robert, how would you describe your teaching style?
00:01:41.069 --> 00:01:41.670
Oh God.
00:01:41.670 --> 00:01:44.250
I would try not to describe it.
00:01:44.359 --> 00:01:50.352
But, just a lot of conversation, a lot of back and forth with everybody participating.
00:01:51.120 --> 00:01:52.911
And you've taught at a lot of schools.
00:01:52.911 --> 00:01:57.370
Is there anything that I guess stands out about the Stonybrook Brook group?
00:01:58.141 --> 00:01:58.320
Or the
00:01:58.381 --> 00:01:58.743
program
00:01:58.771 --> 00:01:58.781
itself?
00:01:58.781 --> 00:01:58.801
The program
00:01:59.540 --> 00:02:03.787
yeah, I think the sense of community at Stony Brook is really strong and.
00:02:04.536 --> 00:02:06.631
I really appreciated that.
00:02:07.596 --> 00:02:10.566
So that's what stands out the is the
00:02:11.675 --> 00:02:12.156
Nice.
00:02:12.156 --> 00:02:17.272
And that kind of aligns with your, workshop model as well is very community driven.
00:02:20.573 --> 00:02:20.872
Yeah.
00:02:20.872 --> 00:02:24.953
I definitely, actually didn't really go out after class until I came to your class,
00:02:25.123 --> 00:02:42.507
Well, I'm glad to hear that because I think it's an important, element of the whole graduate school experience is to mingle and mix with your peers and start laying the groundwork of real friendships that'll last for you, the rest of your creative lives.
00:02:42.637 --> 00:02:49.356
Yeah, and I think when you're in workshop with people who, you know outside of workshop, you have more trust and more, it's easier to be
00:02:49.862 --> 00:02:50.673
No question.
00:02:50.703 --> 00:02:51.212
No question.
00:02:51.212 --> 00:02:52.342
The familiarity.
00:02:53.092 --> 00:02:53.877
Is a good thing.
00:02:54.306 --> 00:02:59.235
So I just finished reading your first book part of the World, and I really enjoyed it.
00:02:59.616 --> 00:03:07.475
And I was struck by how the voice,'cause I've only read six of your books but the voice is very consistent across all of them.
00:03:08.105 --> 00:03:10.455
And I'm wondering how do we get voice?
00:03:10.455 --> 00:03:11.475
What does voice mean?
00:03:11.626 --> 00:03:14.355
Like I, I know it when I see it, but I don't know how to describe it.
00:03:15.086 --> 00:03:16.496
Yeah, that would make two of us.
00:03:16.526 --> 00:03:22.406
for me, voice has to reside somewhere within urgency.
00:03:22.425 --> 00:03:27.596
for me, The most urgent voices are the ones that I pay attention to.
00:03:28.306 --> 00:03:31.788
And it's hard to define what urgency means.
00:03:32.536 --> 00:03:43.455
But there's something to the manner in which the writer puts together language that invites the reader and almost demands the, of the reader to keep going.
00:03:44.006 --> 00:03:47.096
And that's what I respond to as a reader.
00:03:47.455 --> 00:04:02.320
And I suppose in everything I've ever written that was what I was thinking, is that the voice in and of itself beyond any narrative that may or may not be in play, that the voice is going to be compelling enough for somebody to stay with it.
00:04:03.135 --> 00:04:16.651
Yeah, and I think what's remarkable about your books is that sometimes the subjects are like very mundane, like buying a new car or an old car or like moving a couch, but somehow you make it feel like the most urgent thing in the world.
00:04:17.269 --> 00:04:17.560
Yeah.
00:04:17.829 --> 00:04:23.595
To, to me, it's always in those ridiculous quotidian moments that.
00:04:24.555 --> 00:04:29.504
We learn about who we are and what we're capable of and what we're not capable of, and all the rest.
00:04:29.504 --> 00:04:38.447
you know, As far as"Part of the World" goes, when I first started the book, and this is a long time ago now the book was published 18 years ago.
00:04:38.778 --> 00:04:40.817
And it was started many years before that.
00:04:40.817 --> 00:04:45.382
But when I just started writing about this old used car I had.
00:04:46.326 --> 00:04:50.107
I had the idea that, okay, I'll just describe this car and see what happens.
00:04:50.286 --> 00:04:55.107
And then it became clear that, oh the narrator was involved in an accident.
00:04:55.646 --> 00:05:00.416
And so there's that image of like broken glass and certain things.
00:05:00.476 --> 00:05:03.177
I haven't looked at the book in many years, but yeah.
00:05:03.177 --> 00:05:04.762
Okay, I'm gonna start with a car.
00:05:05.107 --> 00:05:06.516
But then why is the car important?
00:05:06.516 --> 00:05:11.766
And it turns out it's because there was an accident and then it turns out that maybe somebody was hurt.
00:05:11.797 --> 00:05:15.487
Maybe it was the narrator, maybe it wasn't, maybe somebody was killed.
00:05:15.487 --> 00:05:17.317
Maybe it was the narrator, maybe it wasn't.
00:05:17.797 --> 00:05:30.297
All the questions are questions and remain questions, but it was at the time, a pleasant experience to, to just start off with writing about a car and then find all these other things
00:05:30.713 --> 00:05:35.004
So did you not really know the answers to any of those questions as you were writing?
00:05:35.004 --> 00:05:37.343
You were just like, we'll figure it out.
00:05:37.418 --> 00:05:39.519
yeah, I had no idea.
00:05:39.519 --> 00:05:47.752
I'm just, I was just describing some guy, trying to buy a car and and then then the rest just revealed itself.
00:05:48.454 --> 00:05:52.783
Would you say that that is still part of your writing process?
00:05:52.783 --> 00:05:55.543
Like just starting with something and seeing where it takes you?
00:05:55.793 --> 00:05:56.874
Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:56.874 --> 00:06:05.033
I've never had an idea for anything I've never tried to write about any subject at all.
00:06:05.194 --> 00:06:06.574
Other than the nonfiction book.
00:06:06.574 --> 00:06:30.774
The nonfiction book had its own motivations and unique method of composition but the other books all started with just language and then whatever damage or issues or, whatever was on my head, was gonna find its way into the work and, hopefully there was enough there to make something cohere.
00:06:31.550 --> 00:06:38.120
That's something I've noticed in my writing when I write something in a certain mood, like how I'm feeling on Wednesday.
00:06:38.120 --> 00:06:40.995
And then you go back next Wednesday and you're a different person.
00:06:41.144 --> 00:06:41.504
Oh yeah.
00:06:41.595 --> 00:06:46.245
And it's hard to figure out, like I feel like the story can change because of that mood.
00:06:46.610 --> 00:06:47.649
Yeah, for sure.
00:06:47.680 --> 00:06:47.920
Yeah.
00:06:47.975 --> 00:07:08.848
And so part of the task of being an artist and being a writer is to tap into what you originally started with, if that was what is the most compelling, because maybe how you feel one Wednesday and how you feel on other Wednesday, that might vary, but what, what mood is going to be the most compelling way to tell the story.
00:07:09.158 --> 00:07:10.629
So yeah, that's a decision to make.
00:07:10.678 --> 00:07:21.843
And I can think of, for instance, I'm trying to think of a specific song, but I know of songs where they're recorded as up tempo numbers and also as ballads.
00:07:22.189 --> 00:07:25.608
And so the feel is so different between the two.
00:07:26.129 --> 00:07:36.706
But the actual structure of the song and the lyrics and the chords are all the same, but it's just how you go about telling the tale.
00:07:37.406 --> 00:07:46.471
That brings me to another question I had, which was, how does being a musician and or being an athlete, do any of those things play into your writing?
00:07:47.552 --> 00:08:02.672
Certainly the music has always influenced the way I hear the I hear the language in terms of rhythm and of pitch and volume and timber and all of that register.
00:08:02.721 --> 00:08:22.288
For me the writing was influenced by the music just because I wanted to make the language itself, the kind of music, and as far as being an athlete goes playing tennis right now, like I've been doing for the last 15 years, consistently maniacally.
00:08:22.973 --> 00:08:26.994
If I didn't do that, then I don't think I could be functional in any sort of way.
00:08:27.024 --> 00:08:28.494
I don't think I could have a job.
00:08:28.874 --> 00:08:44.864
You know, Hemingway as a writer talked about how exercising the body was important for writers and it was something that I neglected for a long time, even though I grew up an athlete played, baseball pretty seriously for a while there.
00:08:44.864 --> 00:08:47.953
I went away from it in my thirties entirely.
00:08:48.524 --> 00:09:02.547
And I found that since I came back to athletics and tennis in particular, that I need it, I need to exert the body, and if I don't, then bad things both as a writer and as a human being.
00:09:03.626 --> 00:09:07.830
Do you think it's like you're like getting that energy out so that you could sit or like
00:09:08.442 --> 00:09:09.792
Yeah, I think it has something to do with it.
00:09:09.797 --> 00:09:18.076
And there's something about this, the endorphins, I had a serious injury for a while and couldn't play tennis for over seven months.
00:09:18.447 --> 00:09:20.216
And that was a bad scene.
00:09:20.677 --> 00:09:26.730
The lack of endorphins, I actually felt my brain chemistry change so it feeds you.
00:09:26.730 --> 00:09:28.081
It feeds me, certainly.
00:09:28.441 --> 00:09:30.717
And I couldn't imagine doing anything without it.
00:09:31.421 --> 00:09:33.760
We have to the body and the mind.
00:09:33.910 --> 00:09:34.091
I know.
00:09:34.120 --> 00:09:34.870
Oh my gosh.
00:09:34.931 --> 00:09:36.605
It's hard to be in these meat suits.
00:09:37.855 --> 00:09:39.480
It is hard to be in the meat suits.
00:09:39.480 --> 00:09:41.096
These bodies are ridiculous.
00:09:47.301 --> 00:10:03.275
So what I noticed was a big difference between your first and your last book was that the first one was one long thing with no chapters, and the last one was like more fragmented and much shorter, much more broken up.
00:10:03.546 --> 00:10:10.365
Is that like a style that you prefer now, or is it just how you felt for that book, or what do you think?
00:10:10.385 --> 00:10:10.686
Yeah.
00:10:10.686 --> 00:10:26.390
I think, for"Part of The World" that one needed to be very dense, given the subject matter, given the narrator and the world he occupied it needed to have this uninterrupted feeling for, there's no chapter breaks.
00:10:26.541 --> 00:10:28.760
I believe there's a part one and part two.
00:10:29.150 --> 00:10:32.431
There's one star somewhere I think that was it.
00:10:32.985 --> 00:10:33.495
exactly.
00:10:33.495 --> 00:10:36.635
There's a star that indicates there's the second act if you will.
00:10:36.645 --> 00:10:38.535
So I did provide one break there.
00:10:38.686 --> 00:10:52.849
And yeah every time I've ever done anything on the page, the form has presented itself pretty early on in the process and it became intrinsic to the process of doing the work.
00:10:53.389 --> 00:10:57.528
And it's only been, maybe I've only monkeyed with form.
00:10:58.744 --> 00:11:05.577
And what I mean by that is written something in one form, took a look at and then put it in a different form just to see how it felt.
00:11:06.028 --> 00:11:35.976
And to be even more specific, it, it was like either long, uninterrupted paragraphs say, or short little bits that cut in and out and use a lot of white and for me it's always like what effect is the aim and what am I trying to go after and does it suit the narrative consciousness of the character.
00:11:37.077 --> 00:11:37.798
That's really interesting.
00:11:37.798 --> 00:11:49.043
It sounds like you are you're aware of all the things that are happening, the visual on the page, the, the writing, the sound of the writing, the voice.
00:11:49.403 --> 00:11:52.202
So do you ever, do you consider yourself a poet?
00:11:52.202 --> 00:12:01.442
I feel like the only other writers who kind of speak, I think so highly of the visual and the sound often claim to be, or consider themselves poets.
00:12:02.413 --> 00:12:06.134
Yeah, I don't really concern myself with labels, right?
00:12:06.134 --> 00:12:19.009
So thinking, I don't even call myself a writer when I meet somebody used to tell people I was a jockey and and then I'll just say I teach and hopefully that'll end the conversation.
00:12:19.399 --> 00:12:27.399
But yeah, for me, poetry, the properties of poetry are always the goal on the page.
00:12:27.399 --> 00:12:29.589
It might not be a formal poem.
00:12:29.619 --> 00:12:42.568
It might not have, stanzas or line breaks or anything, but the effect is what I'm going for and certainly the musicality of the language and all the properties of poetry I want to employ
00:12:43.381 --> 00:12:55.912
Do you pull inspiration from any one thing, any person thing or with that, because it seems like you're creating your own hybrid art, if you will.
00:12:55.961 --> 00:13:02.567
I guess we all are, but it seems somewhat non-traditional in the way that you explain your writing process.
00:13:03.902 --> 00:13:10.322
Yeah, and it's the only way I know how to do it, I could never, write a story about a particular subject matter.
00:13:10.322 --> 00:13:16.981
Write a story about a guy who shows up at work one day and then his boss calls him in and tells him whatever, I couldn't do that.
00:13:17.032 --> 00:13:18.442
I wouldn't know how to do it.
00:13:18.831 --> 00:13:24.258
So yeah, I don't remember what the question is, is or no, or maybe, or sometimes.
00:13:24.418 --> 00:13:26.668
The questions just guide the conversation.
00:13:26.668 --> 00:13:27.988
They're not necessary.
00:13:28.087 --> 00:13:32.347
But I guess about that a little birdie told me, didn't read much as a kid.
00:13:32.827 --> 00:13:35.187
So how did you come to words on the page?
00:13:35.423 --> 00:13:44.235
so how that happened for me, I didn't read a book really, certainly not a literary book until I was in my early twenties after college.
00:13:45.004 --> 00:13:48.184
When I was an undergrad, I studied directing.
00:13:48.720 --> 00:13:50.169
TV and film kind of stuff.
00:13:50.929 --> 00:13:56.206
And for our senior project, we had to produce our own television show.
00:13:57.017 --> 00:14:08.376
And as the students, we were responsible for everything, building the set, making the set, doing the lighting, doing the casting, directing, editing and writing the script.
00:14:08.376 --> 00:14:29.111
And I always had it in my head and I don't know why'cause I certainly hadn't written anything and I hadn't read anything, but I always had in my head that I was a writer or was going to be a writer so I volunteered to write the script for our show and I wrote a guy goes into rob, a liquor store and the cops show up.
00:14:29.142 --> 00:14:30.101
You don't see the cops.
00:14:30.101 --> 00:14:31.461
They're off the stage, but.
00:14:31.777 --> 00:14:36.630
He's in there, in the liquor store with the clerk who works at the liquor store and one other customer.
00:14:37.051 --> 00:14:40.234
And so we hired professional actors to do it.
00:14:40.533 --> 00:14:44.813
And when I heard those actors say my words, I said, yeah, you know what?
00:14:44.813 --> 00:14:45.653
I gotta do this.
00:14:45.653 --> 00:14:46.793
This is what I wanna do.
00:14:47.333 --> 00:14:52.283
And so my goal was after graduation for that summer to write a screenplay.
00:14:52.899 --> 00:15:13.958
And I opened up my college lit anthology, which I didn't do when I was in the class, and I started reading it and instead of writing a screenplay, I wrote a hundred really bad poems and two stories, and I I had a new path and so it really took over for me and that's how I came to writing.
00:15:14.438 --> 00:15:19.839
So that kind of transitions to how you have been doing some screenwriting lately.
00:15:20.558 --> 00:15:22.328
So now you're back at that.
00:15:22.379 --> 00:15:25.168
Now I'm back at that and it feels really good.
00:15:25.168 --> 00:15:29.538
I, I write with my best friend and and writing partner.
00:15:29.538 --> 00:15:36.708
We've done two TV projects where we have a pilot script and a bible and all that jive, and we're finishing up a film script.
00:15:36.739 --> 00:15:46.938
We actually believe we should finish it this week and we've been working on this film now for months and months and maybe even over a year, but it we're pretty much done with it.
00:15:46.938 --> 00:15:49.448
We're just going the thing is we do it on Zoom.
00:15:49.448 --> 00:15:50.828
He lives in Washington state.
00:15:51.818 --> 00:15:59.908
And we said that until we read it straight through, without changing anything, it's not done.
00:16:00.298 --> 00:16:06.849
And so we've been changing and tightening it and it's a wonderful process.
00:16:07.558 --> 00:16:11.023
The collaborative element is so enjoyable, right?
00:16:11.023 --> 00:16:20.222
Because as writers of prose, more than 99 times out of a hundred, you're just doing it on your own and you're in your room or you're in a cafe by yourself and you're doing a thing.
00:16:21.043 --> 00:16:25.918
But when you're collaborating with somebody it just changes the entire experience.
00:16:26.057 --> 00:16:30.707
So in your books you have a lot of like thoughts, like there's a ton of thoughts.
00:16:30.947 --> 00:16:34.158
Do you miss giving people thoughts or how do you deal with that?
00:16:34.662 --> 00:16:42.256
It's all dialogue and it's all in the writing to de describe the setting and such like that, right?
00:16:42.307 --> 00:16:45.927
Yeah, it's just another way of using language.
00:16:46.346 --> 00:16:47.817
You lose the interiority.
00:16:47.817 --> 00:16:52.197
And that's where actors are so wonderful because they bring it right.
00:16:52.376 --> 00:17:03.116
They bring their talent to those silent moments in between the lines that convey the thoughts.
00:17:03.764 --> 00:17:06.676
you, it's really very collaborative on that end.
00:17:06.676 --> 00:17:12.176
The actor brings so much to it that's where the interiority resides.
00:17:12.795 --> 00:17:13.035
Yeah.
00:17:13.035 --> 00:17:16.305
We were talking to Meryl's writing partner about how.
00:17:17.070 --> 00:17:21.191
It basically the work becomes something new at each stage.
00:17:21.191 --> 00:17:25.530
Like after you write it and once you start having actors act it, it's a new beast.
00:17:26.441 --> 00:17:28.961
And are you ready to release that control?
00:17:28.961 --> 00:17:31.980
or Would you want to direct or act in that?
00:17:33.140 --> 00:17:34.339
Certainly not act.
00:17:34.420 --> 00:17:42.839
I'cause when we read the script aloud to each other every so often I like, ooh, I deliver that line pretty But then the next line, I completely butcher.
00:17:43.089 --> 00:17:47.410
Yeah, I can never do the acting, but directing is something that I, I um, want do.
00:17:47.410 --> 00:17:51.917
I did a lot of it as a undergrad and it was a lot of fun.
00:17:51.917 --> 00:17:57.528
It was how do you work with actors to get them to give you the performance that you want.
00:17:57.907 --> 00:18:01.782
How much, you let them bring all of themselves to it and you just kind of.
00:18:02.448 --> 00:18:17.863
You know, i'm always very, a light touch with with everybody with writers I work with or musicians, or So I'm looking forward to and eventually very much want to direct something that Sam and I write.
00:18:18.478 --> 00:18:21.988
Are you gonna have to fight with Sam over who gets to direct or are, do you
00:18:21.998 --> 00:18:24.748
No, we've already thought of ourselves as the kind of.
00:18:25.182 --> 00:18:30.823
Joel and Ethan Cohen kind of combination where you don't really know who's directing.
00:18:31.242 --> 00:18:36.413
They they put one name as director and one name as producer, they're collaborating the entire way.
00:18:37.002 --> 00:18:39.643
So yeah, it'll be like that.
00:18:40.452 --> 00:18:45.952
I think you, I can really see you being a director'cause you guide, mentees and students.
00:18:46.022 --> 00:18:49.262
I feel like that's key skill or characteristic of a director.
00:18:49.262 --> 00:18:52.952
And also you, I think you know what you want and you know what you like.
00:18:52.952 --> 00:18:59.038
And I directors that I've worked with in the past that are very young and green, they rely too much on other people's.
00:18:59.147 --> 00:19:05.637
thoughts like you have to be the one who's guiding the ship, and between I think you and your friend, you know your vision.
00:19:05.657 --> 00:19:11.298
I think, yeah, for me, the way I look at it is I have an idea about how I want the scene to go.
00:19:11.867 --> 00:19:31.462
But if this is where you really allowed the actors, all the creative input that they could muster, that if they come up with something that I wasn't thinking about or anticipating, but it feels good, and it looks good and it sounds good, then you know, I'm more than happy to go in that direction.
00:19:31.968 --> 00:19:32.557
That's the magic.
00:19:33.383 --> 00:19:33.863
right.
00:19:33.923 --> 00:19:37.432
But that is, that's the magic where, so like a film, a filmmaker, like.
00:19:37.807 --> 00:19:43.428
Hitchcock, for instance, he said, oh, actors are just sheep and you have to, herd them around.
00:19:43.478 --> 00:19:51.932
I, don't see it that way and would never go to a project with that kind of attitude.
00:19:57.929 --> 00:20:04.209
Meryl has a book that is in the, it's in the throes of publication and is available for pre-order.
00:20:04.328 --> 00:20:06.118
When's it, due to debut
00:20:06.398 --> 00:20:07.449
June 2nd.
00:20:07.501 --> 00:20:12.811
And Meryl was saying that Robert,'cause you have gone through publication, all the books are out.
00:20:12.842 --> 00:20:20.731
People ask you all the questions about your book and Meryl is wondering about advice for when people ask the dreaded question: what's your book about?
00:20:20.761 --> 00:20:21.271
Oh yeah.
00:20:21.451 --> 00:20:22.321
What do you say to that?
00:20:22.426 --> 00:20:27.446
I, I always try to come up with an answer that will, shame the person asking it.
00:20:27.886 --> 00:20:28.487
What's it about?
00:20:28.487 --> 00:20:29.896
It's about 200 pages.
00:20:29.896 --> 00:20:32.777
Something like you could just do that.
00:20:33.196 --> 00:20:38.631
Otherwise, I, you could also, come up with some stupid kind of metaphor.
00:20:38.810 --> 00:20:43.510
It's about an old lady tripping in the park, and skining her knee.
00:20:43.510 --> 00:20:48.185
That's what the book is about and you you there's no old lady.
00:20:49.381 --> 00:20:50.161
it's not to get them to
00:20:50.266 --> 00:20:51.736
can speak in metaphor.
00:20:52.155 --> 00:20:59.901
But if you wanna be straightforward, I say just give like this a synopsis of the book in the most brief manner possible.
00:20:59.976 --> 00:21:02.931
Yeah, I always just wanna kill myself,
00:21:03.665 --> 00:21:03.756
like,
00:21:03.846 --> 00:21:04.596
just read it.
00:21:04.625 --> 00:21:05.435
You get it, you
00:21:05.435 --> 00:21:05.590
read
00:21:05.736 --> 00:21:06.576
it, and then you'll know
00:21:07.415 --> 00:21:08.306
Yeah, exactly.
00:21:08.881 --> 00:21:15.931
About art or talking about a book and the kind of, what's it about?
00:21:15.931 --> 00:21:19.240
Language is always a ridiculous endeavor.
00:21:19.560 --> 00:21:22.891
Right, because I'm never gonna read a book because of what it's about.
00:21:23.651 --> 00:21:32.770
that's not, another question I had about, is there anything that you wish you had known when you had your first book published that you think I should know?
00:21:32.838 --> 00:21:33.739
That's a good question.
00:21:33.888 --> 00:21:34.519
Finally,
00:21:37.009 --> 00:21:42.773
no, I can't think of anything that I wish I had known before I had the first book.
00:21:44.858 --> 00:21:45.368
I'm sorry.
00:21:45.368 --> 00:21:46.959
That's pretty, yeah.
00:21:46.959 --> 00:21:57.189
There's nothing that I wish I had known then that I know now that would've made that experience more enjoyable, or, yeah.
00:21:57.189 --> 00:21:59.348
I never took anything for granted.
00:21:59.898 --> 00:22:01.729
Every book I've ever written.
00:22:02.386 --> 00:22:19.457
Feels like the last book I'll ever write and I think if you do that, if you go in with that kind of attitude, then you really appreciate any conversation around'cause you could think of, this is the last time I'm ever going to do it.
00:22:20.501 --> 00:22:22.571
What was the most fun part about any of it?
00:22:22.903 --> 00:22:29.094
You know, having, just having individual people, and it's almost always writers, right?
00:22:29.094 --> 00:22:37.403
But having individual people say something about the book and what it meant to them and what, it maybe challenged them to do as writers.
00:22:37.737 --> 00:22:44.471
That one reader who, who gets it and who appreciates it and moves them to wanna make something.
00:22:44.501 --> 00:22:47.961
That's always been, the most enjoyable part.
00:22:48.165 --> 00:22:58.556
When smart people, smart, talented people, take the time to review the book or wanna talk about the book in an interview, that's the reward.
00:22:58.556 --> 00:23:07.836
That's, you feel like you're slaved away at a thing alone in a room, and now you get to have some interaction with other people.
00:23:07.836 --> 00:23:09.746
It's not just in your own head.
00:23:10.970 --> 00:23:15.890
Once you're done with the book and it becomes this object, it's not your book anymore.
00:23:16.574 --> 00:23:27.108
It's your book until it becomes an actual book that you could hold in your hand, and then after that it's not your book anymore The book belongs to whoever reads it.
00:23:27.199 --> 00:23:35.259
Do you ever have the reaction from people that is like totally not what you meant or intended at all and then they come up to you and they've seen it in a different way?
00:23:35.933 --> 00:23:37.104
That goes to.
00:23:38.394 --> 00:23:42.394
What maybe I intimated earlier in that I never mean anything.
00:23:42.394 --> 00:23:53.693
I never intend anything, so any reaction from a reader doesn't contradict anything on my end because I never think about it.
00:23:54.183 --> 00:23:55.983
So it, it's all delightful.
00:23:55.989 --> 00:24:00.888
And people will say things and find things in the books that never even occurred to me.
00:24:01.749 --> 00:24:03.009
I think that's really cool.
00:24:08.049 --> 00:24:15.799
As far as in your last book so you have all, you have a few named characters and they sort of circle around each other.
00:24:16.069 --> 00:24:17.329
How do you think of them?
00:24:17.356 --> 00:24:21.017
do, Is there like a truth to them and who they are or does it change.
00:24:22.491 --> 00:24:35.902
Yeah, to me it changes probably when Manny appears as this oftentimes bigger than life character in a couple pieces, or he is referred to that way by the narrator.
00:24:36.451 --> 00:24:40.342
But then in other pieces Manny is not referred to in that manner.
00:24:40.832 --> 00:24:53.821
And I like that ambiguity and confusion and whether or not that speaks to one Manny or multiple Manny's, and maybe everybody's a Manny or everybody in is a Esperanza in this book.
00:24:54.115 --> 00:25:12.325
I have a better idea of Esperanza, but she wouldn't be distinguishable from the other two characters who were named and appear more in"A Better Class of People" and maybe even"Good People." But, those names they're probably all interchangeable.
00:25:13.359 --> 00:25:15.190
And esparanza means hope
00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:17.559
and esp it means hope.
00:25:17.559 --> 00:25:17.799
Right?
00:25:17.799 --> 00:25:20.875
Which most of the work seems pretty hopeless.
00:25:21.509 --> 00:25:24.309
I thought it was interesting that the character's name is Hope
00:25:24.375 --> 00:25:25.154
Yeah, I like that.
00:25:26.013 --> 00:25:30.284
In the best people you have the, I had to bring up a sexual question.
00:25:30.284 --> 00:25:39.179
The the two stories, the attempted sex and an attempted human relations which were like the man's perspective of a sexual encounter, and then the woman's.
00:25:39.564 --> 00:25:45.598
Like of the same encounter did you know you were gonna do that or how did that end up working out?
00:25:46.239 --> 00:25:50.439
I first wrote that story in attempted sex from the man's point of view.
00:25:50.798 --> 00:25:55.388
And then when I was putting together the book, I knew that story was gonna be a part of it.
00:25:56.259 --> 00:25:58.898
I, at some point it occurred to me, Hey, what if you try?
00:25:58.898 --> 00:26:06.769
So it's one of the few times where I've actually had an idea and I said, okay, what if you write the same story but from the woman's point of view and how would it change?
00:26:06.769 --> 00:26:17.979
How would it change how they look at that particular evening that they spent And so it was a lot of fun to, to write it from the two different persepctives.
00:26:18.653 --> 00:26:21.173
And I like that it like bookends the book a little bit.
00:26:21.351 --> 00:26:32.439
The, the sequencing of the stories and placing those two far enough apart that when you read the second one, I hope the experience is uncanny that, okay, wait a minute.
00:26:32.439 --> 00:26:33.969
Did I read this one before?
00:26:34.338 --> 00:26:39.242
I wanted that effect, so I didn't want the stories to be back to back in the book.
00:26:39.242 --> 00:26:41.042
I wanted there to be a lot of space inbetween.
00:26:41.355 --> 00:26:43.852
'Cause then you feel like you've gone through a journey or
00:26:43.922 --> 00:26:50.632
Yeah, What's it called in in mu I was thinking like, I feel like that's how, like oftentimes you craft a, an album, right?
00:26:50.632 --> 00:26:51.622
It's not a bunch of singles.
00:26:51.622 --> 00:26:53.182
Like they, they are talking to each other.
00:26:53.182 --> 00:26:56.362
The order in which you place stories matter.
00:27:01.715 --> 00:27:06.726
How have you pieced together this writer's, this writing life of yours?
00:27:07.086 --> 00:27:10.836
I've been teaching now for about 25.
00:27:12.066 --> 00:27:20.576
And as a graduate student and maybe a couple years after graduate school, I worked in restaurants while teaching
00:27:21.226 --> 00:27:22.046
that's me right
00:27:23.280 --> 00:27:23.760
yeah.
00:27:24.270 --> 00:27:29.010
And that's, it's not fun, but it's what you gotta do.
00:27:29.580 --> 00:27:36.625
And then eventually it could be that I could just teach all the time, full time and have, that'd be source of income.
00:27:37.560 --> 00:27:44.625
So yeah, it's been all teaching now for many and it is a good job for a writer.
00:27:45.391 --> 00:27:51.090
'cause you get to talk about writing and books and, it keeps your head in the game.
00:27:51.173 --> 00:28:00.564
But it also, particularly if you're protective of your time, it gives you the opportunity to do the work and I think that's important
00:28:01.076 --> 00:28:02.006
Yeah, it's a big difference.
00:28:02.006 --> 00:28:03.351
I feel like being an adjunct
00:28:04.076 --> 00:28:04.365
Yeah.
00:28:04.391 --> 00:28:09.191
The adjunct hustle is I would often teach at three different schools in one semester.
00:28:09.851 --> 00:28:14.941
And I did that for years and years before I joined Stony Brook's faculty full-time.
00:28:15.010 --> 00:28:15.445
Woo hoo.
00:28:15.752 --> 00:28:15.992
any
00:28:16.022 --> 00:28:18.663
is a hustle and it's a grind.
00:28:19.083 --> 00:28:23.462
And, but if you want do it because you don't get rich teaching, right?
00:28:23.462 --> 00:28:26.462
So if you want money, then it's not what you should be doing with your life.
00:28:26.675 --> 00:28:27.336
I don't think we like
00:28:27.486 --> 00:28:40.404
time to make stuff then it Well, I suppose I could say everything was all right until it wasn't.
00:28:40.944 --> 00:28:41.184
It's
00:28:41.184 --> 00:28:42.535
all right until it wasn't.
00:28:42.768 --> 00:28:45.204
Didn't sell it right until it wasn't or until it isn't,
00:28:45.557 --> 00:28:46.127
All right.
00:28:46.137 --> 00:28:47.393
Is that your final answer?
00:28:47.574 --> 00:28:49.073
I suppose Yes.
00:28:49.367 --> 00:28:49.397
Are.
00:28:49.502 --> 00:28:50.732
do whatever you wanna do.
00:28:51.167 --> 00:28:51.678
I love it.
00:28:52.202 --> 00:28:53.702
That's actually, that's the best part.
00:28:55.294 --> 00:28:55.413
That
00:28:55.413 --> 00:28:59.824
sounds like so childish, but it like you have to do all these things in life.
00:29:00.453 --> 00:29:02.473
If you're sitting down and writing, do whatever you want
00:29:03.163 --> 00:29:03.763
exactly.
00:29:03.913 --> 00:29:05.173
Just don't be boring,
00:29:05.253 --> 00:29:05.554
all right.
00:29:05.804 --> 00:29:06.614
Thank you.
00:29:07.828 --> 00:29:09.028
thank you very much.
00:29:09.028 --> 00:29:10.288
Thank you for having me.
00:29:10.763 --> 00:29:13.673
We, we have another Lopez we're interviewing next, actually.
00:29:13.673 --> 00:29:13.699
Oh
00:29:13.973 --> 00:29:15.719
family friend Loretta Lopez.
00:29:16.493 --> 00:29:16.784
Okay,
00:29:17.044 --> 00:29:30.309
Yeah, she wrote a middle grade book called City Girls the month of Lopez We're back now for the second half of season one.
00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:33.190
You can tune in every other Tuesdays.
00:29:33.190 --> 00:29:38.220
So every two Tuesdays we'll have a new episode, probably until the end of the year.
00:29:38.529 --> 00:29:44.259
Please like, share, subscribe, all the things you do with internet things.
00:29:44.500 --> 00:29:51.400
You can follow us on Instagram at It's All Write, pod write spelled W-R-I-T-E.
00:29:51.640 --> 00:29:57.759
Check the show notes for links to pre-order Meryl's book, Meryl, what's it called?
00:29:58.089 --> 00:29:59.529
What you should worry about,
00:29:59.529 --> 00:30:05.430
In the show notes, you can also find links to Robert Lopez's work thanks for listening.
00:30:05.486 --> 00:30:06.205
Signing off.
00:30:06.566 --> 00:30:07.796
Bye bye.
