Full Transcript for Ep. 16: Chad Harbach on the art of following up (LIVE!)

good fortune to have you here. I will say that I I recognized something of Henry Scrimmsander and Joey Ortiz last night in the 12th inning. Hopefully we'll get that iron out tonight. Just to start, I you know, I read the Art of Fielding shortly after it came out in 2011. I was 27 years old. I just moved to New York City. And the book. it blew me away. I think not just the prose, which was, whip smart, but also so eminently readable. But also I think the subject matter, you know, until that point, it's sort of silly to say, but I didn't know that male friendship, let alone friendship that revolved around sports and beer and banter, could be the stuff of literary fiction. And the fact that it came from someone who who happened to be from the same place that I'm from was really the cherry on top. So it made me feel like my own stories, however unremarkable they seem to me, could matter and be worth telling. And I think that's what the best literature and art can do. The books we love don't just change our taste. They redraw our maps. You know, they tell us where meaning can be found. So I want to thank you for that. And I'm curious if there was a book that did something similar for you. But was there a book that changed your sense of what was possible in fiction? Chad Harbach: Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you. That's a that's a terrific a terrific compliment. for me actually that book was a very a very a much longer book even than this one. it was Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, which had which I think came out about a year before I graduated from college. And at that time, you know, I was I had no awareness of contemporary books or, you know, what was being read, reviewed in the newly in the bookstore. I was just, hunkered down in the college library, reading old stuff, trying to, get decent grades in my classes and also imbibe the canon of great literature. and then just before I graduated, the spring of my senior year, all of a sudden in the dining hall, there were some, you know, some of the cool kids were like carrying around this massive book and it just it just radiated this kind of aura, where you I was like, what is that thing? so I'm so I remember reading Infinite Jest. I think I probably started it right before graduation and then continued to read it. I I came back to Wisconsin after I finished school and I think I I was I finished it that summer. And that book for me that was the that was the bridge for me because it was Just an experience that touched me so deeply. And it also was a book that just felt like it represented the world that I lived in. and it also felt like it really connected the present to this tradition of literature that I was trying to study. so that was the book that made me feel like, like, you know, this thing that all these great authors have done, you could do that now if you if you work hard enough. Jeff Oloizio: Yeah, I think you're not alone in that, certainly. It's been fifteen years since the Art of Fielding was published, which is wild. I imagine a lot of readers assume that when you published another novel, it would be something entirely different, which in some ways this book is. But did did you always know that you wanted to return to the world of Westish College, or did you try to leave that world behind? Chad Harbach: Yeah, desp I really tried to leave it behind. You know, or I I I really thought I would not return. you know, it took me it took me also a long time to write the Art of Fielding. it was eleven years between conception and publication. You know, and then I spent a long time on tour talking about that book. I really went around the world with it a couple times, you know. so finally I s sat down to work on something new and just was, you know, get up every day and write in my notebook and just try to be as in as free a clear a headspace as possible and see what bubbled up. and what bubbled up was Pella, who was, you know, one of the five central characters in the in the art of fielding, the only woman. You know, and although for me, you know, at the for me Pella was really the glue or the heart of the Art of Fielding. It she really felt to me like she made the whole story coalesce around her. she's also probably the the character who just because of the demands of the story, because it is largely about the baseball team, she doesn't get that many pages in the Art of Fielding. So when I sat down to write, I just kept writing about Pella. But I I thought this was a I thought it was a terrible idea to return to this world. Like I really, Yeah, I was like, Chad, what do you okay, stop doing that and think up an idea for a book, and I just I resisted it for months, but then I just had to acknowledge that that was, you know, where my heart was. Pella and then Pella was in these pages that I was writing, had this younger friend named Irma, and the relationship between the two of them became the the germ for this book. Jeff Oloizio: Yeah, maybe this is a good time to do some sort of scene setting. So the book revolves, as you've mentioned, around Pella and Irma, who's a new character. and they're both sort of equally on the cusp of change, I would say. Irma is new to this novel. Where did she come from? Like what interested you about bringing her into the world of Westish? Chad Harbach: Yeah, you never know where these people come from, really. They just they just they just show up on your doorstep one day. You know, so when the novel begins, you know, so Pella, because she got married and divorced very young, she started college quite late. and so as this book begins, she's turning twenty-eight, but she has just finished college at Westish. and as an undergrad, she's become close with Irma Frisk, who as the book begins, is a 21-year-old senior at Westish. Irma is j she grew up in the Driftless area, like in a very remote, rural farmhouse, with her with with her parents and her brother. she has a vexed relationship with her

mother. She has a vexed relationship with her mother's Catholicism and her own. And she and she is just intensely intellectually brilliant, and awkward in a way that is so much her own that it almost becomes its own kind of coolness at a certain point in the book. I mean, just I don't know, she I mean she She just showed up one day and I was just totally in in totally entrance with her. And yeah, and also and also with the waves that with her friendship with Pella, with you know, with the way that the the twenty eight year old and the twenty one year old, these, you know, these friends who are so close but also have this, you know, fairly large age gap between them. you know, that so their relationship is it's a little bit big sister, little sister. it's a little bit you know, kind of mother daughter, Pella will behave very maternally toward Irma and then Irma will bristle at that. and they have to they have to navigate all sorts of differences even as they like love each other so much. Jeff Oloizio: Henry Scrimshander was, such a central figure in the art of fielding, but he plays a much smaller role in the brightness, although he has a very memorable cameo that I will not spoil for the audience. How did you decide which characters from the novel would move forward to the foreground and which would recede? Chad Harbach: as soon as I decided that I wanted to come back to Westish, I knew that I did not want to write like a sequel in any obvious or traditional sense. I did not want to write a lot about sports. I didn't want to write in the same tone. You know, if I'm gonna return to this world, I like I for one I just needed a very new and bigger challenge for me as a writer. So I knew that this book was gonna be very different. And one way that it's different is that, you know, the the in this book, the women really take central stage. most of the central you know, I really thought of The Art of Fielding as a book about male friendship and I kind of conceived it that way from the very start. and that's why that's why Moby Dick lies in the background of that book. because I think, you know, Moby Dick is a is a really great novel of male friendship. And this novel from the get go was in my mind about female friendship in in the same way. Jeff Oloizio: That's a bold move in in 2026, I think, in some ways for a male author to take on female friendship. I can't speak from personal experience, but I think you do so beautifully. I want to talk about Wisconsin just a little bit. So a couple months ago, I met with the Great Midwest book group over Zoom, and I asked if they had any questions for you. one of theirs happened to be one of my questions as well. You know, the art of fielding is in my mind one of the defining Wisconsin novels of the past, fifty years. Yet you spend so much of your adult life now elsewhere. W what is your relationship to Wisconsin these days? Chad Harbach: I mean, just it's it's a great relationship. you know, I mean I I grew up in Racine. my both of my parents are from the Racine Kenosha area for, you know, generations. I just have a you know, very large, very, very large family there. my brother lives in Bapleton area now. my son and I Come and visit whenever we can, at least a couple of times a year. you know, so you know, nowadays I don't spend as much time in Wisconsin as I would like. But you know, I as I as I go through my life, I just I mean, I realized think a long time ago that I will never understand or have the depth of feeling about any other place that I do. about Wisconsin. you know, I I lived in Racine on and off until I was twenty-eight and have not lived there since, but I could I I'll never trust my understanding of any other place in the in the same way. You know, and I and and and when I return I I find it really inspiring to me as a writer, sometimes in surprising ways, you know, like I'll just I'll just get off the plane and I will just kind of be like, Wow, this is amazing. Yeah, and and so, yeah, I think, you know, I I mean probably will someday set a book entirely outside of Wisconsin. but you know, to this point it's been I just feel really drawn back all the time to yeah, just this this deep relationship. my you know, like I have a very deep personal relationship with Lake Michigan, you know, and and it's really important to my to my work. Jeff Oloizio: Yeah, obviously that that's coming across on the page. a good amount of the brightness still takes place in Wisconsin at Westish. I'm curious if there are other ways in which being from this place and being from the Midwest continues to shape how you see the world and how you see the world specifically through your fiction. Maybe if there's a way in which you sort of see that as an advantage, I'd be curious to hear about it. Chad Harbach: Yeah, it's it's a hard thing for me to know. you know, because as a writer, I guess also as a person, I just do my thing and then people call it Midwestern, you know? And you know, I yeah, and it's I I you know, in a way I really don't know what to say about it. You know, I mean I think one thing that's one thing that's true of my work is that you know, I I I didn't grow up in a in a extremely literary family, schools, town. and so, you know, I think I think in my books there is a desire to communicate with everyone, to communicate with my, you know, write a book that like my friends from high school might are gonna like, you know. so I think that you know, gives me a desire for a certain kind of like directness and simplicity. In my style. Jeff Oloizio: Yeah. Another connective thread between these books is you know, they both take place at a small liberal arts college. These are, you know, really intensely knit communities where people are figuring out who they are and who they're gonna become, but they're also places that people most of them at least will eventually leave. What keeps drawing you to the campus novel specifically? Chad Harbach: Well this

yeah, it's funny because the brightness was not really intended to be a campus novel, when I started because I I really started with I really started with Pella and Mike who are like twenty-eight and trying to move out into the broader world. and and and Owen from The Art of Fielding, who's become a somewhat successful writer, we find out, as we get into the brightness. you know, so I was I was really conceiving of the book as more about this period of your late twenties. when you're in a a slightly different phase of self building, self exploration, finding out what the rest of your life is gonna be like. but then a whole other s seg segment of the plot slipped in, you know, which involves Irma and her undergrad friends, and all of a sudden we have a this provocative campus prank that they pull, we have a campus scandal, and sure enough, like a big part of the book takes place at Westish. I mean, I think for me it's what is attractive about it. Two things. One is, you know, as you say, the the small liberal arts college. it's it's fun to I think for the writer and for the reader to have a kind of finite community that over the course of a book you feel like you can come to understand. it kind of functions like the like the the village or the town in a nineteenth century novel where you just kind of get to know everyone who's walking around the place. you know, and also this also, you know, I mean, college is this very potent moment in your life, this very Protean moment where, you know, when you're a college student, you are in a very conscious way looking all around you, modeling yourself on other people, trying on different identities and selves, and and really and really f fashioning yourself, building a self. And I think that's a lot of what my books are about. Jeff Oloizio: Yeah. There's both the the moment in which the characters find themselves in their life, but there is also the specific moment in which this novel takes place, which is twenty fifteen, at a moment when conversations about sexual assault, gender, institutional power were becoming increasingly prominent on college campuses. What interested you about revisiting that particular cultural moment other than y you may have found yourself starting the book at that point. Chad Harbach: well you nailed it. Yeah, I mean, you know, it in I I started this book e I started this book in twenty thirteen. and it was and it's set, as you say, in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen. so yeah, it wasn't it wasn't historical fiction when I began. you know, and but a lot of what the novel deals with, the you know, the kind of sexual politics and a lot of the a lot of things that come up in the novel. Then you know, around twenty seventeen when the Me Too movement really exploded, you know, it really seemed I was like, like the stuff that I was working on is really now it has like kind of come into the culture, people's minds in a whole new way. but I also knew that I wasn't anywhere near done with my book yet. So so I had a period when I was, worried about whether this was going to feel like really old news by the time I finished it, And so I I went through a period of maybe, feeling a bit down about that or just a bit confused about how to handle it in the book. should I not set it in twenty fifteen? Should I, there are many, many possibilities you could entertain as a writer, right? But in the end, I in the end I came to feel that it's a real strength of the book actually. Now when I look at the book, I think that it captures this kind of transitional moment in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen. you know, there's some towards the end of the book, we get some there's some mention of the twenty sixteen election. and that's kind of just hovering on the horizon of this book. so I think it it the book to me now captures this moment that was really in some ways the origin of where we are now. Jeff Oloizio: Yeah, it really exists in a limital space for both the characters and the world at large. I want to ask you about your other book, which is more than a decade ago you wrote an essay called MFA versus NYC, which then spawned an anthology that you edited and wrote the intro for. You in that essay you argued that American literary culture had divided into two sort of distinct worlds, that being New York City and the sort of university MFA program. I'm curious how you see that landscape today. Does that distinction still feel useful to you? Do you feel like that world has expanded in any way? Chad Harbach: Yeah, well I you know what I was what I was really thinking about when I when I started that essay was money. and you know I was you know just first of all pointing out that there basically have become two main ways for a for a fiction writer to make money in the United States. One whether or not one was by via New York publishing, by you know, getting advances and royalties from your books, whether or not you actually yourself live in in New York, but you're working with a New York publisher. and the other one, which was by teaching in the university, and that that trend and phenomenon of fiction writers teaching in the university used to be a very small number of writers as, you know, as the number of MFA programs in the country went from seventy five to thousands and thousands, this it became a major economic center for writers. you know, and so at the time I wrote that essay, around you know, 2010 or so, you looked around and and most of the writers I knew were, you know, they they taught for a living really, you know. and it was in difficult to as it always has been difficult to make a lot of make a lot of money from publishing your books. you know, so in some ways, I mean certainly the in since the Art of Feeling came out, the publishing industry has changed immensely as, I as I'm finding out now. a lot of things I'm doing to promote this book are totally different from the things that were happening then. you know, but I do think,

like broadly speaking, it's still you know, the situation still obtains that there still are are two central ways to to make money as a writer. you know, and I think it is like we're definitely at a very fragile Seeming moment for writers. Feels like maybe people's attention spans are getting a little shorter. It feels like, maybe one single book is capturing all of the attention. And so it's it's you know, it feels it it feels like a hard moment for writers. but when I talk about this topic, I always like to frame it by saying. It's always been very hard for writers to make money, one of my one of my favorite books about this topic is a biography of of Maxwell Perkins, the great great editor of the thirties and forties who edited Ep Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway, many others. and when you read that book, you you know, and like you read that book and Fitzgerald is like dragging himself into Perkins' office to like ask him for a check for fifty dollars, you know? It's always been it's always been hard for writers. There was never some great golden era where they just sort of rained money down upon us. Jeff Oloizio: Yeah, that Perkins biography is an an all timer and something I would I would urge people to seek out if they haven't read it. the brightness is in conversation with the modern publishing world. I think a lot of the humor in the book comes from the ways in which the characters are sort of interacting with New York City publishing. there's a a meta narrative that I won't spoil but is very amusing. Your first novel was obviously an extraordinary success. You've spoken about how disorienting that experience could be. How much did your own experience publishing The Art of Fielding inform your thinking about that world and and how it appears in the brightness? Chad Harbach: Yeah, well s certainly it it certainly it informed it a lot, and not only did I have this really intense and in many ways dreamlike experience of publishing the art of fielding, but I also I I lived in New York for quite a while. and some friends and I started a magazine called N plus one, you know, which was a very indie, small thing, but it put me on the it put me on the fringes of this whole world, the the New York cultural world and the world of publishing, in a way that over a period of years I I came to feel like I knew what that was about. you know, so I think it certainly enables me to write about it a bit in this book in a way that, you know, feels authentic, I think. But so in in this book, Owen from The Art of Fielding is the successful author of a novel called The Art of Fielding. You know, so I certainly I certainly drew on my own experience, but I would not but if should you read this book, I would not read Owen's experience as my experience. you know, I think he's a he's a very different kind of person than I am. and also the thing about Owen is that he is having this success at the age of twenty four. Whereas, you know, I was thirty five when the Art of Fielding came out. Yeah. But so it's it's just very different, you know, if you are Zadie Smith or someone to whom this happens at that age. I can't even I can't imagine having the experience that Owen has. I could I I mean, I would have I could barely tie my shoes when I was twenty three. Yeah, so I so he's he's a little bit of that he's having that Vundrikin experience that is a little different from mine. Jeff Oloizio: Did your experience of success change what you wanted from writing or from your career in any way? Chad Harbach: I mean I f honestly I think it allowed me to think about that question for the first time. You know, I had been working on the art of fielding. I s I had the idea when I was twenty three or twenty four and sold it when I was thirty-four, you know, and spent that whole period of my life well, I was for a couple of years I was I was in grad school. you know, and the rest of the time I was just kind of working odd jobs, underemployed, because I was trying to preserve as much time as possible to work on the book. you know, and and all my friends or most of my friends, you know, that were had real jobs and were making money and were paying their rent a lot more readily than I was paying mine. you know so it was it was a time when I think My only goal was to finish the art of fielding. You know, and I think if the i if there was a goal beyond that, the goal was to be able to do it again. Right. like, you know, I I I certainly I'd never I I'd never expected or I'd never dreamed that it would have the success that it had. You know, I think the the goal was like, can I write a book that someone will publish in such a way that I'll get to write another book, you know, and then and then take it from there. Jeff Oloizio: Yeah. Well to that end, you so you you wrote the Art of Fielding over a decade when before anybody you were a name in the national consciousness. with the brightness, you're working under sort of the opposite circumstances, knowing that a great many people are waiting for your next book. How did those two experiences compare? Were you able to compartmentalize and just sort of focus on the work? Were you thinking about audience as you were writing? Chad Harbach: Well, it's very dangerous to think about audience when you're writing. you really you really should not, cannot as a writer. but honestly, both of those experiences were full of pressure, or they felt they felt full of pressure, at a certain after I'd been working on the art of fielding for six, seven years, but didn't feel like it was in a great place, didn't feel close to the end, you know, there's this enormous self-inflicted pressure of Am I just wasting my life? am I gonna be seventy-five years old and still working on this book? am I never gonna have, have I foregone a hundred other careers in order to just muddle everything up? and w and and that's a lot of a lot of pressure, and then yeah, and then after the success of that book, then I

felt a different sort of pressure, which was along the lines of Holy cow, I have written this book that so many people love. how could you ever do that again? and that it's that was a very daunting thought that was at the top of my mind at the outset, I think. And then you have to you when you get into the project, you really have to not think about the reader, set everything aside. And just go as deep down into yourself as you can. Jeff Oloizio: Yeah. I will not make the mistake of asking you the day after your book is published what you are working on now or what you're going to publish next. I am curious, however, just at this point in your career, you know, you've spent a significant portion of your adult life working on these two novels. During those long stretches when the work isn't finished, or or even now as you're sitting down to write, what what keeps you going? Chad Harbach: It's just so fun when it's working. You know, it's just so fun. It's the most Yeah, it's it's and I I had this the it's it's a real exercise in delayed gratification, and you have to sit there with a marshmallow in front of you for like ten years. but 'cause there's with both of these books, there just is so much joy in the most joy I I think is is in the latter stages, but when everything is really coming together, you know, and you're like, I have been Shaping this. I've been in the dark for so long. And now I it I and I had this I had this vision of it. and I had to figure out how to get this vision of this like into words on the page. And now I'm starting to flip through the pages. And as I flip through them, they seem to contain something of the the thing that I that that the kind of ineffable thing I wanted to convey. yeah, I mean yeah it's just it's it's just really fun and and I think I actually am enjoying it more all the time. Jeff Oloizio: No, we have a lot of writers in the audience. we always do listening to the podcasts as well, and a great many more who have other creative practices. You have a lot of demands on your time between N plus one and fatherhood and the sort of gr grind of daily life. W how are you carving out the time to to work on a book like The Brightness? Chad Harbach: Yeah. I you know, so my s my son is four and a half. And I think I think po I think post fatherhood, or with fatherhood, I now I conceive of this very differently. I mean it's not just fatherhood, it's other other things that have happened in my life and other forms of maturation. But like for many, many years I thought of myself as a writer who needed certain conditions in order to be able to write. You know, and it was like I gotta wake up in the morning. I don't look at anything. I eat breakfast, I go immediately to the coffee shop, I get a cup of coffee, I'm there when it opens, I work for four hours fresh and clear headed. my life in the last few years has not allowed for those kinds of routines. and and also I was and also I was on some pretty intense deadlines toward the end of this project. and so I had to just of necessity throw all of those ideas about what I'm like as a writer just totally out the window. And I was working on this book at five o'clock in the morning, at two o'clock in the morning, at ten o'clock at night. you know, a and just any time I could grab anywhere, you know, for, you know, for a couple of years really. and it was it was a it was an arduous and scary experience at times. but in the end, I think it really freed me. and what it freed me from are was some of these restrictive ways of seeing myself as a writer, you know. and now I feel more like you just call upon it and let it happen, you know. Jeff Oloizio: It's just about six forty five. I want to make sure to leave time for audience questions. But first I'm hoping you will indulge me in a a little writing forward tradition and do a speed round of questions with me. Is that all right? Okay. Chad Harbaugh, who is your favorite character you've written in the Westish universe? Chad Harbach: Colour. Jeff Oloizio: Do you have an all time favorite Milwaukee brewer? Chad Harbach: well, my current favorite Milwaukee brewer is is Sal Freelick. Jeff Oloizio: Mine too. Do you have a favorite campus novel besides your own? Chad Harbach: Hmm. Well, the first one that pops to mind, which is a great one, is Lu Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amos, which to me is kind of the real like origin i original campus novel. It's from I think nineteen fifty four. not you know, not the first novel ever set on a college campus, but like kind of the the post war tradition of this thing I think starts with Lucky Jim. Jeff Oloizio: Yeah, great novel. Slightly more acerbic than your own, but but worth checking out. Do you have a favorite place in Wisconsin? Chad Harbach: Yeah, yeah, North Beach, interesting. Jeff Oloizio: Last, what's the most Wisconsin thing about you? Chad Harbach: I'm I'm a hundred percent Wisconsin, man. Jeff Oloizio: Thank you. We won't ask you to show your ID or approve any more of your Wisconsin bona fides. I wanna open it up now, if you can raise your hand and Jane will bring a mic to you. And just keeping in mind that the novel came out yesterday, so if you have read it, we'll try not to spoil too much of it. Chad Harbach: Hi. Well Dorda Fielding, so I'm a large group of people. just hearing this news about the adaptation by A24. I know you've had not a lot of maybe time to digest it, but how involved would you want to be in the writing, direction, casting, things like that? I know authors sometimes want to have nothing to do with it. They're they're giving it off to the world and others who want to be involved. So I just wondered if you have a sense. Yeah. I mean so first of all this is this is not my first rodeo with the art of fielding. it's actually been through multiple rounds of Hollywood development. so I I learned a lot through those iterations. Yeah, so the v so the team that we have now, I mean, is really terrific. I am not the

person in charge. I am not the head writer on this project. I'm a producer, essentially. Yeah, but we'll see. There may be, you know, I think you know, should we actually get to go ahead to make this show, I think I will be, you know, quite involved at some level. I'm just wondering if it will be a movie or a mini-series. well the plan is for a series that goes on and on and on. And and you can watch it for the rest of your life Jeff Oloizio: Mm. Chad Harbach: So Chad, Caleb, what books are ants are reading right now? What what books are your son reading that you recommend to other parents? Well, this isn't this is an easy one because my son is currently obsessed with Winnie the Pooh. everything is Winnie the Pooh. he we listened to the songs in the car. he's got every chapter of each of the books memorized, and and they're they I hadn't read them in quite a while. They're really they really are good. Jeff Oloizio: They hold up. Good. Chad Harbach: What are you reading right now? I you know, things have been so frenetic for me the last month or two that I have found myself but I still like to read, you I I always read when I'm going to bed at night, but I haven't actually had time to figure out what to read. So I have been just pulling books that I've already read off my shelves. I recently reread Emma, which by Jane Austen, which which reminded me actually of How much Emma kind of lies in the background of this book and my my conception of Pella. There are certain things about the way that you know, because the the whole point of Emma, the whole plot of Emma is that she is just so brilliant and charismatic, but she's also just wrong about everything. and she's just always just kind of meddling and misperceiving things and and I think a little bit of that filtered into filtered into Pella. Yeah, one example. Jeff Oloizio: Hello, do you see this new book as a true sequel or do you see it as more of a standalone? So for someone new to Westish College, do you think they should jump right in or do you think they should really go back and start from the beginning? Chad Harbach: Yeah, thank you for asking that. because it really was it was just central to the project that I didn't I I wanted to write a universe here that was totally self-enclosed and just like full and rich unto itself, that you could come to if you had never heard of the art of fielding, or if you had read the art of fielding, frankly, fifteen years ago and like 'cause I don't remember anything about the books I read fifteen years ago. But it was, you know, but just for me, like I the cheesy joke that I made the other day was like it's an equal, not a sequel. and but I I never I never thought of it as a sequel. I mean to me a sequel to the Art of Feeling would be about Henry, minor league baseball. what's you know, like it would be kind of written in the same tone. and that's not what's not what's happening here. So yeah, to me it's more of more of a companion really. Yeah, so I was just wondering what The challenges of writing about a fictional town versus about possibly writing about a real town? Yeah. Well, you get to make stuff up. In the Faction of Town. I mean, yeah, it's funny 'cause there I mean, and then there there are both there are they're kind of both in this book, 'cause you know, Westish is an invented place, but then in in the center of this book there's a big a big wedding on Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island and and Long Island. you know, and that's a very that's a very real place. and I I cite a lot of the landmarks there. for me, I think honestly it doesn't matter too much to me. And I have I now have lived with Westish College so long that it's so fully real in my mind that there are parts of it that I have n not never, you know, described in writing that I could if you want to I could tell you all about, you know, what like you know, I could make do one of those three D models of the whole, you know, campus in town and tell you where everything is. So yeah, it kind of takes on a reality of its own. Jeff Oloizio: since you become a father you've lost a little bit of your Chad Harbach: So now how many days? feel that you actually get to write. Yeah, I mean that's the thing. It you know I think I in you know more relaxed times in my life it's I would I would like to write for, you know, four or five hours a day. I mean honestly in the in the past year or two it has been anywhere from zero to twenty four. and I you know and I've the zero is the zero can be can be tricky because when you're working on a big project it's like it's hard to take time off. But but I certain not o not just because of not just because of fatherhood, but for various reasons. Like I've had a lot of days. I have a lot of days now where I don't don't get to work. and yeah, and it but it's all it's okay. Jeff Oloizio: Hi. so I first read your book way back when I was in high school. and I've re read it a couple of times when I was graduating college and like kind of it's like transitioning transitionatory phases in my life. and like the meaning of the book and like little pieces that I pick out of like the character's motivations really kinda changes and like the lessons that you learn upon a reread of the book. so I guess do you have any books that are like that for you? or Chad Harbach: Yes. I mean think that's I mean I think you know when you re when you reread the same great book at various at different moments in your life, you almost wonder like what even is a book? because they because you just perceive them so so so so differently, you know. I mean one book that I return to every couple of years is on a Karenina. and I've done that for for a very long time. It it I mean you know, when you have a a work that magnificent, it always just feels incredibly fresh because it's just like you just open the you know, open this hundred and sixty year old book and it just smells like fresh flowers all the time. But but yeah, it's

it's but it is you know, it's something I recommend to like go back to a favorite book that you read a long time ago and just have a completely different experience of it because the because because the reading experience is so much a relationship, right, between the the reader and the writer, and it's a and it's a two way relationship. Jeff Oloizio: So you mentioned growing up in Racine didn't necessarily le lend itself to being, you know, surrounded by people that were really into literature or that kind of thing. So how did you fall in love with this classic literature that you're talking about all the time in writing? Chad Harbach: Yeah, it's well, I was a I was a very early reader and I and as a as a small kid, I was just a very, very earnest reader and would just, you know, whatever the maximum number of books they would let you take out of the library, I was doing that all the time. and I don't know. I mean think you know there are there are advantages to growing up in a place that where Everyone's doing what you're doing and there's a real community around that and a real push and education around that. you know, but I think there's also there are also great advantages to like having your own thing, you know. and so I think you know for me, you know, maybe paradoxically, something that was, you know, maybe one of the reasons I valued literature or valued the authors that I liked so much was because That seemed very rare and special to me, actually. Jeff Oloizio: Could you please describe when going back to what you said about how it's such a joy writing when it's working well? In this book, could you describe a moment when it was really working well and you just had so much pleasure writing? And on the flip side, stuck in how you got through that stuffness. That's a great question. You should do my job. Chad Harbach: Yeah, I mean I'll try to keep I could tell some really long stories about this. I'm gonna try to keep it short. yeah, I mean the stuckness. So I I finished a draft of this book almost five years ago now. and that was when I first had a complete manuscript. That's when I sold the manuscript to my same editor at little brown who had edited the first book. and I was just so happy and relieved to have reached that stage. and then I took a little time off. Actually that's when my son was born and went back to it you know thinking I think this book is pretty close to pretty close to done but you know but via via my editor's response, which was, largely positive, but had some reservations about the about the latter part of the book. And especially via my own rereading, I really I was like just like, dude, like the the the latter chunk of this book, which was, you know, I mean which comprised, you know, I don't know, three hundred pages, it's just not very good. And you've already been working on this thing for eight going on nine years, and it feels like you really need to revamp the whole last part of it. And it also feels like you'd have no idea how to do that. so I I went through yeah, I went through a really dark phase around that. and I went through a phase where I, you know, where I where I really did have to reconceive. some things later in the book and and it took me you know I think it would have it it was gonna take some time anyway. but then of course it like it doesn't help when you go to a despairing place about it, which I which I did for a while, you know. and yeah just quickly I mean I had a like there I mean there was a a moment like at the very, very end of of the writing of the book where I was still I was still in some uncertainty about a c about a crucial thing that happens at the end. And I knew this thing had to happen. But it just I wasn't sure how. And it just everything has to just feel intuitively right. And I was just like, and it's a big event and you just I I I don't know. and I I actually went, you know, and of course I I mean I think the best thing always to do is just get away from my desk. you know, and often often now it's like to go like walk with my dog in the woods. But on this particular day, I went to a sauna like near where I live and I just sat in the sauna, then I went and sat in the cold pool and then I went back and sat in the sauna. But I was just having this this out of body and well nigh religious experience where the an entire chapter of the book just began writing itself like while I'm sitting in there. And I and I was I was kind of flustered because I was like, should I go write this down or should I just stay here and keep doing this? Am I going to forget? Because I'm it's just literally the literally the chapter is just like un spooling in my and it's like in my mind, right? And so I wound up just stay I wound up staying in there and then I I I went to a place nearby where I could sit down and I just I and I I mean didn't get all of it down, but I I probably wrote for like three hours. yeah but I think I think that kind of thing is the kind of thing that can happen. when you have worked on something like so intensely for so long that they the res the result can just kind of kinda rise up, you know. Jeff Oloizio: I think that is as good of an endorsement of sauna and coal plunge as you could ask for. We're right up against time. Chad, thank you so much for doing this. Chad Harbach: Thanks, Jeff. Jeff Oloizio: And that'll do it for our first ever live episode. Another big thanks to my guest, Chad Harbaugh, and thank you for tuning in. We'll put links to purchase Chad's books in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating or share it with a friend. It really helps. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss new episodes. They come out every Wednesday. You can reach me anytime at jeffaloisia.com slash writing forward. That's J-E-F-F-O-L-O-I-Z-I-A dot com slash writing forward. I'd love to hear from you. Season two of Writing Forward is sponsored by Leopold's Books Bar Cafe. This episode was recorded live at the Madison Public Library. A huge thanks to the Madison Public Library Foundation, Lake City Books, the Wisconsin Book Festival, and most of all, Festival Director Jane Rotunda for making it happen. It was produced, edited, and mixed by Ana Ben Wagtendonk. The theme music is by the Lola Ombre. Logos are by Tim Burton. Thanks again for tuning in. In the words of the late great Bob Eucher. See you next time.