Happy podcast day, and strap in for what Whiskey Jenny described as a “very English lit class” recording. We’re chatting about the tone of books and when it works for us and doesn’t, and then we dive into Esi Edugyan’s latest novel, Washington Black. (We loved it.) You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!
Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around.
0:57 – What we’re reading
2:19 – What we’re listening to
4:40 – Tone in books
24:15 – Washington Black, Esi Edugyan
42:51 – What we’re reading next time!
And here are the things we discussed on this podcast!
“Brothers in Arms,” copperbadge
Miranda in Milan, Katherine Duckett
How Did This Get Made podcast
Limetown podcast
Limetown is actually being adapted for Facebook Watch? which is apparently a streaming service that exists?
Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh
Salman Rushdie
HHhH, Laurent Binet
The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak
Chime, Franny Billingsley
Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenberg
Kate Atkinson
Vladimir Nabokov
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
the Coen Brothers movies
Dear Committee Members, Julie Schumacher
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat, Kate Leth and Brittney Williams
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Ryan North and Erica Henderson
The Woman Next Door, Yewande Omotoso
Notwithstanding, Louis de Bernieres
Undead Girl Gang, Lily Anderson
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon
“Yellow Eyes,” Rayland Baxter
Rayland Baxter’s interview about the song
The Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater, Alanna Okun
Washington Black, Esi Edugyan
We Are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, from the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915, Jackie Sibblies Drury
Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).
Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by: Sharon of Library Hungry
Transcript is available under the jump!
THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.
GIN JENNY: Welcome to the Reading the End Bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. I’m Gin Jenny.
WHISKEY JENNY: And I’m Whiskey Jenny.
GIN JENNY: We are here again to talk to you about books and literary happenings. On today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about how the tone of a book can make or break it for us. And we’re going to review Esi Edugyan’s Giller Prize–winning novel, Washington Black. But before we get into all that, Whiskey Jenny, what are you reading?
WHISKEY JENNY: I have been on a bit of a fanfic kick and have been going through some more of the recommendations that were included in the lovely little starter pack that Kay made me.
GIN JENNY: Yay!
WHISKEY JENNY: I would say my favorite so far is a Bucky one called Brothers in Arms, by copperbadge. And there’s a little robot pals and they’re adorable, and everyone’s nice. And Bucky is very PTSDy, but he lives with Captain America and Sam, and everyone is just nice to each other, and it’s great.
GIN JENNY: Yay. I love copperbadge.
WHISKEY JENNY: And then eventually they move into Stark Tower along with everyone else, and then they’re just all hanging out, being nice together.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Everyone hanging out together in the Avengers tower fics are the best.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s so good. I love it. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: It’s amazing.
WHISKEY JENNY: What are you reading?
GIN JENNY: I just started reading an ARC of a book called Miranda in Milan, by Katharine Duckett, which is a queer sequel to The Tempest where Miranda and Prospero get back to Italy and things are not exactly the way Miranda expected her life to be. The cover is gorgeous, by the way. Y’all should look it up. I am unfortunately running into the problem that I feared I would run into, which is that I don’t tend to enjoy the setting of historical Europe. And so far I am, indeed, not enjoying that aspect of it. But I like other things about it, so I’m hoping that it will turn around for me.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hooray.
GIN JENNY: Hooray, hopefully. And I think you had something that you’re listening to that you wanted to talk about. So do you want to take it away on that?
WHISKEY JENNY: I am. So I just started a huge podcast that I’m sure everyone has heard about, but I just started it and I’m really into it. It’s called How Did This Get Made? And it’s about terrible movies. And they watch terrible movies and then they talk about it. It is Jason Mantzoukas and Paul Scheer, and June Diane Raphael. And I found out through this podcast that Paul Scheer and June Diane Raphael are married in real life.
GIN JENNY: Naw!
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah! And they’re just all hilarious people that I have enjoyed in past other content, and they’re very funny about these horrible movies. And they’ll have special guests usually that are also really funny people. I would say so far my favorite episode has been the one about Action Jackson, which I’ve never seen.
GIN JENNY: I haven’t either.
WHISKEY JENNY: It sounds bonkers. There’s one point where basically it just dissolves—it’s a live show, and it just dissolves into chaos on the stage. Like, everyone is shouting something. You can hardly understand what anyone is saying because they all just lose their minds over one thing one of them is saying. And Jason Mantzoukas is just shouting Paul’s name over and over. [LAUGHTER] It’s really funny. So I’ve been obsessed with that. I have on multiple occasions stayed up late listening to it, which is not something you should be doing. It’ll be there in the morning. [LAUGHTER] But it’s just so fun.
GIN JENNY: Good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Are you listening to anything?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, so Friend of the Podcast Julia recently recommended the podcast Limetown, which is a fictional podcast about this place called Limetown that was a research facility and self-contained community. And a number of years ago, all the inhabitants disappeared and nobody knows why.
[GASP]WHISKEY JENNY: Bum bum bum!
GIN JENNY: Bum bum bum! So now there’s a reporter from a fictional radio station called APR who’s investigating what happened to Limetown. And it’s super fun so far. I’m enjoying it a lot. And I believe it’s getting adapted to be a Netflix series.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, or one of the other streaming services. So that sounds cool. And also, my sister sent me a recording of her singing “You Are My Sunshine” to her son, who is 2, and he sings along with her.
WHISKEY JENNY: [GASP] Oh, no.
GIN JENNY: It’s so cute.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh gosh.
GIN JENNY: He’s like, “You’ll nevah know, dee-ah.”
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, god no. Oh, no. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: It’s so cute. He’s like, “How much I yub you.”
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Aw. Oh my gosh, too precious.
GIN JENNY: It’s adorable. So I have listened to that 16 million times.
WHISKEY JENNY: Rightfully so.
GIN JENNY: Well today, Whiskey Jenny, you came up with the idea to talk about how the tone of a book can make or break it for us, which I thought was a really interesting topic. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, let’s get into it. I don’t know if anything specific gave me the idea. It just came to me in a [DRAMATIC] flash of inspiration. [LAUGHTER] But I think tone is a really important part of a reading experience, and we haven’t really spent, dedicated a topic to it.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: And yeah, I thought it would be just interesting to talk about. I think it’s also something that’s really hard to get it right. And when it’s right, it’s really right, and when it’s wrong, it’s really wrong.
GIN JENNY: And I think when you notice—when the tone is something noticeable about the book, I think you’re right, it’s really risky. Like, high risk, high reward.
WHISKEY JENNY: Totally.
GIN JENNY: Because I think most of the time, the narrator’s affect aligns with the emotional impact of the events that are occurring. So you, the reader, match your emotions to the narrator. And when the author chooses not to do that, you become more aware of the distance between you and the events of the book, so the narrator is acting as kind of a mediator.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hmm.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and I think it’s risky. Because when you create that distance, I think you run a much higher risk of the reader feeling emotionally distant or potentially alienated from the book. So when it works well, I’m always super impressed.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, me too. And I think some of my all-time favorites do it really well. So it is very high reward, as well. Because I think it’s also a very human reaction, like to make light of important things and things like that. So we sort of understand it from an emotional level, even if it may feel distancing. So if it works, it really works.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, no, definitely. I made a taxonomy.
WHISKEY JENNY: Great. Do you want to talk about your taxonomy?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I mean, I would love to.
WHISKEY JENNY: Please, lay it on us. I just have two vague categories of stuff.
GIN JENNY: OK. Well so I have four.
WHISKEY JENNY: Whoa.
GIN JENNY: I don’t know, some of these might overlap. I’m not sure. So my first category is books that have kind of a flood of words and a lot of wordplay, because I think that’s definitely very noticeable to me. So I was think of the Ibis trilogy by Amitav Ghosh, or Salman Rushdie also does this in his books. We read a Salman Rushdie book for this podcast and he really didn’t do any of this in that book, and I was like, aw, but the thing that I liked isn’t present.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Man.
GIN JENNY: But when he does it, I really enjoy it a lot. And then my second category was where the narrator creates a sense of heightened immediacy or intimacy. And I think this is the category that I tend to love the best when it works for me. So I thought of HHHh in this category. The Book Thief. Chime, by Franny Billingsley. And those are all books that I really love.
And then these last two categories, I think, are the same one, but one category just works for me and the second category doesn’t. So it’s just my aesthetic judgment of whether it works or not. So the first one is where the tone is lightly detached and humorous. So I thought of Confessions of the Fox. Kate Atkinson does this, Nabokov does this.
And then my last category was where it’s arch and insincere and kind of pointedly funny. And that’s the category that I super intensely hate. So that’s like Catch-22. The Coen brothers movies are like that for me. I read this book called Dear Committee Members, by Julie Schumacher, that I just hated for this reason. So it might just be whether I actually find it funny or not.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, I think that makes sense. I think part of it might just be our own emotional response to it. And I would say in general both of those categories don’t really work well for me. I am looking at all of my examples of the ones that do work for me, and I think I would say most of them fall into the second category of intimacy? Is that the one? Is that the intimacy one?
GIN JENNY: OK, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: So the final one is the only one that doesn’t ever work for you? Otherwise, if it’s well executed, there are ones that you love in all three categories.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I think so. I think that I agree with you that the heightened immediacy, heightened intimacy category is the one that most consistently works for me if the author does a good job. Those are the books that really speak to my heart.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I think also—what is that called where in neurological memory we tend to block out the bad things and remember the good things?
GIN JENNY: Oh, I don’t know, but I know what you’re talking about.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, that thing. I feel like that thing also happens with that group of books, too. I’m thinking specifically of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society or Station Eleven, where a lot of bad stuff happens in those books. They’re both about pretty serious topics. Station Eleven the world has ended. [LAUGHTER] And there’s a lot of harrowing stuff in Guernsey from World War II, obviously. But mostly my memory of them is, oh, they were just so cozy. Like in Station Eleven everyone’s sitting by the fire all the time and just talking about the importance of art. [LAUGHTER]
And on the one hand, I think I’m definitely preferencing the positive stuff from those books. But I think also it was a very intentional choice by those authors to prioritize not just survival during those dark times, but the importance of gathering together with companions and talking about art, or talking about things that are not what are you going to eat next.
GIN JENNY: Right, definitely.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I think it’s sort of a double edged sword there. Yeah, would you put those two books in the heightened intimacy category?
GIN JENNY: I wouldn’t have said Station Eleven. I don’t know that I disagree with you, but I wouldn’t have thought of it for that category. But I think epistolary novels, because of the way they’re set up, do tend to be—there is a heightened immediacy, because it’s like you’re the letter recipient. So yeah, I think Guernsey for sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: I also have another example that I’m sort of struggling where to put it in your category. I just read—and I think we’ve talked about this, and this is only vaguely a part of it, or a small part of it, but it was the part that I found very interesting—which is the Patsy Walker comic. I just read the first trade paperback.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: And it’s mostly overall extremely charming, and she gets a job at the mall or whatever. But there’s just a couple of allusions to her apparently extremely dark past and literally going to hell and coming out of hell.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: And just a couple of mentions, not quite as skating over it as I just have, but in a way that I found very interesting saying something about she is purposely being this peppy, always cheerful optimist. But it’s not an unstudied behavior. It’s very purposeful. And I just really enjoyed that, and I liked that dissonance.
GIN JENNY: I do, too. I think you’re right, it doesn’t really fit in any of mine. The closest, I guess, is the lightly detached one, but it’s not really detached. But I totally know what you mean. That’s definitely a category of book, where the tone is choosing to be happy. And I feel like the same thing is true of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. Even though there’s not as much trauma in that one, you can feel the writer making a conscious choice to be happy and funny. To me, I really like that. I think that’s really touching and optimistic in a way that is kind of hard to come by in these dark times.
WHISKEY JENNY: I do too. And I think when it’s done well, it’s not minimizing any potential past trauma or current trauma, or any of the bad stuff. But it is acknowledging that but making a choice to be sunny about it. Obviously when that fails, it feels very frivolous and dismissive of negativity—negativity covering all bad things in the world—which is the real risk of that one.
GIN JENNY: Can we do a quick sidebar on Patsy Walker? Because I loved it, and I feel like we have not discussed it enough on this podcast, even though we recommended it for someone.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Did you read it here? Because I feel like I got it when you were here.
GIN JENNY: I think you did, and yes, I think I read the first volume when I was there. And then I got the other ones at the library. And I continue to really enjoy it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yay! Yeah, no, I really like it. Maybe in the very first issue, she’s stopping an armed truck robbery, and then she becomes best friends with the dude who’s robbing the truck. And it’s amazing.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: It’s so great. She helps him to get his life on track, and then they’re friends through the rest of the whole comic. It’s amazing.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s really great, yeah. And she just has a really great set of friends, also. It’s very pro-friendship.
GIN JENNY: Yes, it’s so pro-friendship. And they’re always—even when things are going wrong, she still keeps a good thought. It’s just, I like it so much. I did not expect to like it as much as I do.
WHISKEY JENNY: Man, I can’t wait to keep going. I’m so glad it’s getting rave reviews from, ahem, the people, a.k.a. you. [LAUGHTER] Everyone’s saying it’s great, so.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Man, I should have asked for it for Christmas. It’s so delightful. OK, sorry. That was Patsy Walker a.k.a. Hellcat. Everyone should read it. Returning to tone.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Returning to tone. Another book that I would like to mention that I need your help categorizing, and I thought for sure you would mention, is The Woman Next Door.
GIN JENNY: Oh.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which we read for podcast. Because I feel like that book covered some very heavy topics, such as apartheid, while also having pretty funny cranky old ladies as main characters. [LAUGHTER] And I’m just not sure what to do with that. What would you do with that?
GIN JENNY: I mean, to me that was one of the ones where the tone of the book matches to the emotional content of what’s happening. And I guess what I liked is that it takes on the tone of everyday life, because everyday life in South Africa does exists with the knowledge of that past historical trauma. Like the same way in the US we live with the many, many past and not past injustices to black and brown people in the country. And I think that what was different and interesting for me about that book is that the characters actually have to acknowledge that past instead of glossing over it, which a lot of people would much prefer to do. But the tone didn’t necessarily strike me as surprising. I’m interested that it did for you, though.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I mean, certainly not jarring. But I think—
GIN JENNY: Sure, sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: —for a book that is about people having to confront those issues, there were more laugh lines than I was expecting. [LAUGHTER] No, I think that’s a really interesting way of framing it, and I totally agree, it’s because that’s what life is.
GIN JENNY: Tell me a little bit about times that tones in books have not worked for you. What tends to make it not work for you?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I think first of all, when it doesn’t feel like a conscious choice. If I can’t see the intent behind it and what you were going for, it does not work for me. I’m thinking specifically in this category of Notwithstanding, by Louis de Berniere, this collection of somewhat interrelated vignettes and short stories about this little village in England. And mostly it’s cozy little stories of an English village, and then there would be some very, very different ones. Like there’s one where somebody shoots someone’s beloved pet.
GIN JENNY: Oh my God!
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it felt very out of nowhere to me, and I couldn’t reconcile it with rest the book, and I also couldn’t figure out its purpose. And so then it doesn’t work for me, if I don’t know why you’re doing it.
I think also the ones that have really worked for me have faced head on that dissonance and acknowledged it and leaned into it. You can’t hedge on this, I would say. You can’t tiptoe around the line. For me in general, it has to be very—you have to face it head on. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. And I think that one book that I think struggled with this and wanted to play it both ways but couldn’t really, even though some things did work for me in that book, is Undead Girl Gang, which we also read for podcast.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, a lot of things I liked about that book, but then sometimes it just couldn’t decide what it wanted to do, and ended up—
GIN JENNY: Splitting the difference unsuccessfully.
WHISKEY JENNY: Like it had old ladies with shotguns that we’re supposed to be on the side of now. And yeah, exactly. Splitting the difference unsuccessfully is a great way of pointing it out.
GIN JENNY: I think that when I tend to notice that happening is with first person narratives. Because I think that inevitably makes you more conscious of the narrator. And then, like you said, if the author hasn’t totally thought through what they want the tone of the book to be, it can be really jarring and dissonant to have the immediacy of a first person narrator, but to have them responding in ways that don’t feel familiar to me as a reader, if that makes sense.
WHISKEY JENNY: Right, because you already have that extreme connection with them, usually, if it’s first person.
GIN JENNY: It’s so interesting that the main thing that you identified to make it not work for you is if the author hasn’t thought it through. Because I don’t disagree with that, but the thing that I thought of immediately is when the tone feels insincere, I really, really cannot get past that ever. It’s so, so off-putting to me. Like the arch tone of the Coen brothers movies—I know I’ve talked about this before. And I know everyone loves them. I’m so sorry, I don’t. But yeah, it just comes off insincere. It’s like, oh, ha ha ha, we’re being so funny. But I can’t tell with the emotional content is supposed to be, and it feels like the emotional content is also kind of a joke, and I don’t like that.
WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting. What are some other examples of things in that category?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, Catch-22 was another one that I thought of, because I read that in high school and I thought it was really funny. And then when I reread it, I was like, wow, it is very hard for me to access the heart of this book. And that can be my failing as a reader. I don’t necessarily—I know some people really love Catch-22, and I know that there’s a heart there. But another example of this is Kurt Vonnegut, I’m so sorry to say, who to me also reads insincere. When I’m reading his books, I just feel like I’m watching him do a thing that I’m supposed to find really clever. And I find that off-putting enough that it’s very hard for me to emotionally connect with those books.
WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting.
GIN JENNY: I know. I’m so sorry, Kurt Vonnegut lovers.
WHISKEY JENNY: I very shamefully have never read any Kurt Vonnegut or Catch-22, so I can’t weigh in on those.
GIN JENNY: I read—Slaughterhouse Five was my first Kurt Vonnegut book. And I read it when my sister was first dating her now husband, and I was trying to bond with him over books we both would like. So I was trying to read one of his favorites, and I really didn’t care for it, and I was trying to think of nice things to say about it. And I felt so bad.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw. You tried so hard.
GIN JENNY: I tried. I did my best.
WHISKEY JENNY: Have you read any Thomas Pynchon? Would you put him in this category?
GIN JENNY: So I have still not read anything by Thomas Pynchon. I know that you really liked The Crying of Lot 49.
WHISKEY JENNY: I did, surprisingly. And I love Inherent Vice, as well. But I was very surprised by how funny The Crying of Lot 49 is, and how many jokes and wordplay is in there. But I will say, there is a heart there, but it is not a book for the emotional content.
GIN JENNY: Sure. Which is fine. It doesn’t have to be.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I don’t know, for me it worked because it’s not like it’s obscuring anything. It’s just like, that’s the—I’m sure I don’t understand Thomas Pynchon. I’m not nearly smart enough to understand—but there’s not, like, a love story that it’s getting in the way of, I guess.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Here’s a question I have for you. So when I was in Latin class in high school, there was this thing—this tool that you’re supposed to use to critically examine whatever text you’re talking about. And the mnemonic was SWWIMMTTAG. And the things were sound, word order—
WHISKEY JENNY: [CHORTLES]
GIN JENNY: I know. Sound, word order, word choice, imagery, mood, meter, theme, tone, allusions, and grammar. And by the way, that’s in my notes right now, but when I was trying to write my notes, I only forgot one of those. And this is from high school Latin, so praise me, please.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I’m really impressed. You rattled those off so quick. Were there two W’s and two M’s?
GIN JENNY: Yeah. There’s two W’s, two M’s, and two T’s.
WHISKEY JENNY: All right, well. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Yeah, no, I agree.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: I feel like you gotta spell your acronym right.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I mean, take it up with the Latin—I don’t actually know who invented it.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, SWIM TEST. Sound, words—
GIN JENNY: SWWIMMTTAG.
WHISKEY JENNY: Swim tag. Sound, words, something, something, what?
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Sound, word choice, word order, imagery, mood, meter, theme, tone, allusions, grammar.
WHISKEY JENNY: Huh. Interesting. Mood and tone, I—
GIN JENNY: Yeah, exactly. I always really struggle to distinguish between mood and tone, and I was wondering if you had any insight into this matter. Because I came up with kind of a distinction, but I think it’s maybe nonsense.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I think you can—uh. Gosh. Mine’s going to be nonsense also. But I feel like you can in your tone be talking about something really horrible in a kind of joking manner, and be making jokes about it, and that would be the tone. But ultimately the mood is, we’re still discussing a dark subject, and that’s sort of the mood that you leave with.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought. I thought the mood is more to do with the ambiance of the book, versus something closer to narrative diction, maybe?
WHISKEY JENNY: Right. I think you would come away from it with a feeling more in line with whatever the mood is. And the tone is however they’re describing or talking about that mood.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah, that’s a perfect definition. That’s really, really good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I like yours.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Great. Well, we each tip our hats to each other.
WHISKEY JENNY: What did you call it? Narrative what?
GIN JENNY: Diction?
WHISKEY JENNY: Narrative diction. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds really good.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: This is how I got good grades on my AP exams. I would just say things that sounded good.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m sure also it’s because you were smart.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Thank you. I appreciate that. I was good at translating Latin, but also I was good at saying a lot of words quickly.
WHISKEY JENNY: I have sort of a fifth category, but maybe not.
GIN JENNY: OK.
WHISKEY JENNY: You understand the taxonomy better than I do. I don’t know if it’s a tone issue or not, but when you talk about very small things as the most important thing in the world and ascribing a giant amount of meaning to them. Would you chalk that up to tone?
GIN JENNY: I think it can be. And to me that was kind of what The Book Thief did. It took this very small piece of a global conflict and made you have every emotion about it. So The Book Thief sort of fell into that category.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, interesting.
GIN JENNY: But I was still thinking of it in terms of heightened immediacy or heightened intimacy.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh. Yeah, no, I like that.
GIN JENNY: But this is a good subcategory, so talk more about this.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So honestly, the first thing that came into mind was not a book but a song. There’s this song called “Yellow Eyes,” by Rayland Baxter. It’s about a breakup. It’s a sad little jam. It’s a great song. It starts out, “There’s a paperclip resting on my countertop. Sunday morning I forgot what it’s like to lose a friend.”
GIN JENNY: Ooh.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s a very beautiful song. And he’s talked about, in interviews—there’s a specific NPR interview where he talked about, I thought in a very moving way, he had an actual breakup. And he was talking to a girl across the kitchen table. And while they were breaking up, she was fiddling with that paperclip, and then left it when she left his place. And he left it on the countertop, literally, and just kept living his life around this paperclip. And then it was a symbol of their failed love, and it was like, how long can this paperclip last?
GIN JENNY: Oh, man.
WHISKEY JENNY: Just all these, yeah, these really interesting ideas all around this paperclip. But I also feel like you can totally see someone—I don’t know, it’s a very visual thing that you can picture someone nervously fiddling with it. And then you can picture that paper clip on the counter top, and then every time he walks by he thinks about it. And it really, really worked for me, even though it’s just a paperclip.
GIN JENNY: Oh, man. That’s a really good one.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t know what that means, but.
GIN JENNY: You’re for it.
WHISKEY JENNY: I think that I would also put that song in your category of heightened emotional intimacy, where through that paperclip and through his reactions to that paper clip, you can rebuild this entire world around him of his feelings at that time, around that breakup.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I think a book that we read for podcast, The Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater, by Alanna Okun, and also did a great job—
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Because in her essays, she would expand out a specific craft project to what was going on in her life at that time. And she talks about who taught her to knit, and losing her in her life. And that expanding from a very small physical object really works for me. It’s not always a tone thing, but I think it can be tied to it.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, no, I like it a lot, as well, when there’s good use of a symbol.
WHISKEY JENNY: For sure, yeah. I feel like we got very English Lit class in this one.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Well, do you want to talk about Washington Black?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I do.
GIN JENNY: So this was my pick, although it was really both of our pick, because we were both really excited to read it. And the premise is, there’s a slave called Washington Black, and the owner of the plantation dies. So his son takes over and is just the worst. And Wash is growing up in this really horrible, cruel environment. And then the plantation owner’s brother, Christopher Wilde, who’s called Titch, comes to stay. And he’s trying to build an airship, and he takes Wash on as an assistant. And it’s about all the ramifications of that. So, what did you think of this book?
WHISKEY JENNY: Gosh, I sure loved it.
GIN JENNY: Oh, I really, really, really, really liked it. I wish it would win every award. I thought it was amazing.
WHISKEY JENNY: I thought it was, too. I have high hopes for it. I think it was just stunning.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. The writing was gorgeous. I feel like it covered so much ground. The emotional stuff really got me. It was just good in every category.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. It covers so much ground physically, also, because it’s very much a journey story through multiple continents and countries. And I really love that aspect of it. I think she’s also a really good at describing different environments. I don’t know if this worked for you, because I think it doesn’t generally. But I thought that she did a really great job of capturing the multiple different varied settings that our hero, Washington Black, finds himself in.
GIN JENNY: I agree. And also I think she did a good job of creating an emotional content to the settings, if that makes sense.
WHISKEY JENNY: Mm-hm.
GIN JENNY: So it wasn’t just the physical descriptions, which, like you said, are not necessarily my most important thing. But also capturing what they mean to Wash.
WHISKEY JENNY: Totally. And what is happening in his life at that time. Yeah, yeah. Hard agree.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I would like to start keeping a list—because you know sometimes people are like, I just want to read a really good book, with really good writing and a really good plot. And I feel like I need to just start keeping a list. Because that specific ask can be really challenging to fulfill. I always say Fingersmith.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, sure, yeah. And that’s basically always what I want. Like, that’s the dream, is a well-written, well-plotted book. [LAUGHTER] That’s what we all want.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Right, exactly. People are like, oh you think you could just come to me and have it all?
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: No, not that I begrudge them the question. But it’s like, man, me too. Let me know if you find them.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: But I think Washington Black is a book like that. This is one that I would hand to people for sure if that’s what they were looking for.
WHISKEY JENNY: I agree. I think it’s a very hard beginning, I think purposely so, because you start out on a slave plantation.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Therefore the reading experience of that is difficult, and it took me forever to get through that part on Faith Plantation. I’m not saying that is a bad thing. I think it’s intentional and purposeful, but it slows it down a little bit. But after that, I just flew through it.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I did, too. And I appreciated that, Esi Edugyan because slavery in the Caribbean—slavery everywhere was really bad. But slavery in the Caribbean was particularly really brutal and hideous, because they just didn’t care how many slaves they killed, the plantation owners, because they felt like they could always get more. And that is really, really reflected in the beginning of this book. And although it was hard to get through, and I would definitely give that as a content warning when recommending this book, I was glad that Esi Edugyan didn’t mince words on that. Especially because a lot of the book is about Wash being either escaped from slavery or being in slavery in a less brutal context of being the assistant to Titch.
WHISKEY JENNY: Can we talk about Titch some? I guess let’s talk about Titch now.
GIN JENNY: Let’s talk about Titch, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: [FLATLY] All right. Great. [LAUGHTER] I have such complicated feelings about—no. Well, they’re not complicated. They’re mostly negative. But he is the guy that sort of helps Washington escape, basically.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, he’s the biggest—he looms so large in Wash’s life, because he trains him to become a scientist, and gives him access to an education. And Wash is a really good illustrator and a really good scientist, and he wouldn’t have known that if it weren’t for Titch. But at the same time, Titch owns him. And bad stuff happens to Wash because of his association with Titch. So yeah, it’s complicated.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s very complicated. I think Esi Edugyan does a great job of grappling with that complexity and not shying away from it. He’s very much multifaceted. I would say the book very successfully gives him a reckoning for sins while acknowledging that he was an abolitionist and did work hard to—
GIN JENNY: Protect Wash.
WHISKEY JENNY: —protect Wash. Even though he literally abandons him in the Arctic! Like, I—
GIN JENNY: Yeah, yeah, OK, let’s get to that!
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: That’s the worst place to abandon someone!
GIN JENNY: Yeah, so the reason that they have to flee is that the owner of the plantation and Titch have this very louche cousin called Philip, and Philip comes to visit them and kills himself in front of Wash, basically.
WHISKEY JENNY: In front of Wash and only Wash.
GIN JENNY: Yes, right. Yes, good point. So Wash and Titch are sure that Wash will be blamed for this death, so they go on the run in Titch’s airship. And the plantation owner sends a slave catcher after them. So Wash is constantly living in fear of this guy finding him. And yeah, they go to the Arctic, which was like, I kind of remembered that this was going to happen. But when it happened, I was like, OK, OK, we’re just going to the Arctic now.
WHISKEY JENNY: That loomed very large in my head of the description of this book, so I was very much looking forward to it the whole way. I think it lived up. I enjoyed the Arctic part—until Titch abandons him in the snow. And Titch just walks out into the snow and is like, you’ll be fine. Bye!
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and leaves Wash behind. So they’re going to the Arctic because Titch’s father is there. Living with his boyfriend, also unexpected.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, I was going to ask about that. I was like, that was—they’re together, right?
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, cool. Great.
GIN JENNY: And then the father dies, and then yeah, Titch is like, OK, I’m going to go for a walk and just walks off into the snow.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well no, he walks off before the father dies.
GIN JENNY: Does he?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. The father dies because he catches a cold from wandering around in the snow looking for Titch.
GIN JENNY: Oh, that’s right. God, Titch sucks.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Yeah! [LAUGHTER] I also—I know he was originally at Faith Plantation, he says, to write a paper on how horrible slavery is. But he does a lot of flarging about and just chilling there. It’s very strange.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: He’s not to the point with this paper, and he makes the slaves build him an airship, which is just, I don’t know, a weird thing. I’m like, what are you doing? What are you doing, Titch? What is your deal?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I think Titch’s deal is he wants to feel like a good person by calling himself an abolitionist, but he doesn’t actually want to do any of the hard work of trying to abolish slavery.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. And I think Wash really slowly comes to recognize that over the course of the book. And another thing that I really loved is that as Wash grows up and does become more cognizant of that, he’s aware of why his feelings about Titch are complicated, but it doesn’t stop him from having feelings of affection and missing Titch, while at the same time being very aware of Titch’s failings.
WHISKEY JENNY: I did, I really appreciated that, too. Just because he looks back older now at the past and seeing, wow, that was really not great of him, doesn’t lessen his emotional attachment to him. And I think that was a really mature way of handling it, for sure.
I also really appreciate, though, when he just wandered off and they were like, well, I guess he’s dead, I was like, no body, he is not dead. [LAUGHTER] There’s one thing I know for sure about where this book is going, and he is not dead. And I just appreciated the general plot rules, like, if you don’t see a body—
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, comic book rules apply.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Or like Black Sails. Yeah, they still apply to this book. [LAUGHTER] I guess that’s a spoiler. Sorry.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Well, I read the end, so.
WHISKEY JENNY: But yeah, it’s pretty obviously like, he’s probably dead, which is reasonable, because he just wandered off into the snow in the Arctic. But he is not.
GIN JENNY: Do you want to talk about the Goffs?
WHISKEY JENNY: Let’s talk about the Goffs. Yes, great.
GIN JENNY: I love the Goffs. OK. So Wash eventually makes his way to Canada, and he’s working in this town in Canada. And he meets this mixed race girl named Tanna, and she and her white father are naturalists, and Wash starts helping them. I loved Tanna so much.
WHISKEY JENNY: I really loved Tanna as well. And I think in general, because it’s a journey book, you meet a lot of different people and characters throughout this book. And I think she is so good at making them all seem like very real people. None of them are one-dimensional. Everyone is very complex, even if you’ve only met them for a little bit. And Tanna definitely falls in that category.
GIN JENNY: And that was actually one thing I was a little worried about, because oftentimes a journey book like this doesn’t work as well for me because of that very reason, because it necessarily involves so many characters. And it can be hard for me to connect with them. But in this book, that was not the case at all. Like you said, she did such a good job of painting people with a lot of vividness and specificity.
WHISKEY JENNY: For sure. I love how they first meet, which is that Wash has been going out early in the mornings to draw and paint. And it’s sort of his only, he feels, time where he has true freedom, I guess. He has no expectations, and it’s just for him, and it’s this really important moment to him. And then someone else starts coming along on the beach and painting at that time, and he’s like, what the hell?
GIN JENNY: He’s like, this is my painting time!
WHISKEY JENNY: But then she comes up to him one day, and it’s a woman. And he is so shocked, because from afar he thought it was a man, because she’s wearing pants. And they build this friendship around art to begin with. And I just really liked it.
GIN JENNY: I liked it, too. And then I liked it that Wash goes back and meets Tanna’s father. And he and Tanna are both doing work with the father, but because of their race, and also because of Tanna’s gender, Wash and Tanna are never going to get the recognition they deserve for doing this work. And I loved that, because I think it’s really important to remember that the people that we remember as having done important science aren’t always the people who were exclusively responsible for doing that science.
WHISKEY JENNY: Often—usually aren’t. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, exactly. So these so-called great men and innovators of science were able to do what they did because they had tons and tons of support, like the slaves that Titch commandeers to help with his airships, or like Tanna’s father who has these two people working for him who are brilliant. And I loved that parallel. Oh, god. It’s such a rich text that’s so dense with these themes and ideas. And it all feels totally organic. I just—god, this book was good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, its exact same thing with Titch’s father.
GIN JENNY: Yes!
WHISKEY JENNY: Once again, very complex. Titch is very angry at his father for knowing that all of the money that is funding all of his scientific exploration in the Arctic is from slave plantations and just being fine with that. So absolutely, upon the backs of everything are all of these discoveries, and we never look beneath the surface, often.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and not to kill everyone’s joy with Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer and stuff, but more broadly, you think about these periods in European history that a lot of white people are really nostalgic for—people love reading about the Regency and stuff. But all of that wealth and leisure was founded on Caribbean slavery, or Empire in general.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And I feel like it doesn’t—I think as a nation, America, we’re sort of slowly—some parts of the nation are acknowledging that a lot of it is built on slavery. But I feel like that concept doesn’t get brought up as often in relation to Europe, really, and how much of a worldwide blight it was, I suppose.
GIN JENNY: I think in America what people like to forget about especially is the genocide of Native nations. And then I totally agree, we think about these periods in European history that seem so picturesque and fun and all this stuff. But yeah, it was all founded on other people’s misery and extracting resources from countries that had their own people and their own lives. And I think Esi Edugyan does such a good job of reminding you of that. And, god. Yeah, it’s really good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Totally agree. There was one moment—getting back to Wash and Tanna, there was one moment that I just wanted to be like, all right, buddy. [LAUGHTER] It’s I think early on in their meeting, and he’s like, oh, I don’t usually notice this stuff, but then starts waxing eloquent about her beauty. And I was like, really? You don’t usually notice that stuff? The naturalist artist doesn’t look at details? OK. All right, sure, buddy. All right. No, you didn’t even notice the beautiful curl of hair on her nape. All right, sure.
[LAUGHTER]I almost wasn’t sure, because it is a first person narrative book, and so I was wondering if that was supposed to be a disingenuous moment, where we all know that he noticed how hot she was.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: The reason that I’m going to say yes, I think it was supposed to be a disingenuous moment, is that Wash himself in the course of his work with Titch is injured and badly scarred by an explosion. So he thinks a lot about the way that he looks. So I think it is him trying to convince himself that he’s not as shallow as all the people who look at him are.
WHISKEY JENNY: There’s another line when he’s talking about Tanna and her father where he says he likes both of them, but he didn’t like them together. He doesn’t like this weird relationship that they have, or the way that they treat each other, or who they become when they’re around each other. And I thought that was such an astute observer of human nature.
GIN JENNY: There were a lot of good emotional insights.
WHISKEY JENNY: There’s kind of strange—would you agree that there’s sort of a question of supernaturalness towards the end?
GIN JENNY: Remind me? It’s been a minute since I read it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. Wash thinks that Titch is dead for a while and then gets word that maybe he’s not and is trying to track him down. And he talks to Titch’s father’s boyfriend in Amsterdam, who’s—I think he’s trying to say that Titch is really into ghosts now, and that when he walked away from the campsite in the Arctic, he became a ghost and was watching them, and later on was able to describe in great detail what was happening, even though they went looking for him and couldn’t find him.
GIN JENNY: Oh, that’s right, that’s right. Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: That was the one thing that I could not figure out.
GIN JENNY: I also wasn’t sure about that, and I wondered if rereading it would make it clearer to me.
WHISKEY JENNY: I was a little bit confused of why it got introduced. I do think, though, the Cloud-cutter, the airship or whatever you call it, I think lends itself to that sort of fantasy, dreamy quality of it. I really appreciated that aspect of it, but then towards the end when it was brought back, it didn’t totally work for me. But yeah, maybe on a reread it’ll make more sense.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Can we talk about the Titch reunion? Because I thought it was so good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Oh my god. So eventually Wash discovers that Titch is alive and he’s able to track him down. And he goes to where Titch is living and meets with him. And it was so good, because Wash has been searching for titch for all these years and missing him, and trying to resolve his feelings about him. And he goes to this meeting thinking this will explain everything. And what he discovers when he’s there is exactly the thing he already knew, which is that Titch has some good qualities and cared about Wash somewhat. But he didn’t see Wash as a full person in the same way he would if Wash had been white. And he didn’t care enough about Wash to stick around. And I liked it that Esi Edugyan did not attempt to resolve those two elements in some satisfying way. They’re both true. It’s very unsatisfying.
WHISKEY JENNY: Right. She doesn’t attempt to diminish either one of those aspects and end it on one side or the other. And I also found that extremely powerful. And I think she does a great job of setting that up, too.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Tanna in particular is always like, this dude abandoned you in the Arctic! Why are you looking for him? And I was like, yeah, I agree, Tanna. [LAUGHTER] But also I think you understand why Wash is still so attached to him. And both of those can be true, as well.
GIN JENNY: And also that when Tanna shows up and meets Titch, she—I hesitate to say she likes him, but she’s able to enjoy a conversation with him.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: I thought that was interesting, too. That you can be personally amiable, but also in important ways a real moral failure.
WHISKEY JENNY: But in other ways, she says, did a lot more than other people in his situation would have done to stop slavery.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. All of that is true all at once.
GIN JENNY: And there’s this line that I loved so much and I cannot stop thinking about where Wash says of Titch, “His harm was in not understanding that he still had the ability to cause it.” And I thought that was an amazing insight.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh my god.
GIN JENNY: I wrote down a lot of lines from this book.
WHISKEY JENNY: I did, too. I thought it was very beautifully written. Yeah, me too. The other emotional hammer that really got me was his relationship with Big Kit.
GIN JENNY: Yes! Oh, can I say one thing, too, about Big Kit. I loved it that her name—her name is Big Kit. Titch’s real name is Christopher. And I loved that doubling of his two parental figures having different versions of the same name. I thought that was another really fascinating choice by Esi Edugyan.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, I did not even put that together, but that’s really great.
GIN JENNY: I didn’t either when I was reading it, but as I was writing down my notes I was like, wait, Kit is a nickname for Christopher.
WHISKEY JENNY: So Big Kit on Faith Plantation is very much his mother figure, she’s a very complex one. And—
GIN JENNY: Can be very harsh with him.
WHISKEY JENNY: Can be very harsh, can at times be violent with him, but is ferocious in her protection for him, as well. And that relationship, I thought, was really extraordinary and beautiful. And then later on—and I guess this is a spoiler—he is looking in the records of Faith Plantation and realizes that she was actually his mother and not just a mother figure. And it’s a real blow to him, and he has to reframe all of their interactions and the way in which they loved each other, and all of his survivor’s guilt after the fact, that he escaped from the plantation and she did not. She died there.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was just such an amazing moment. It’s also right after he sits down to draw Faith Plantation from memory and describes in vivid detail his drawing of, like, this is the bloodstained stone, and all of the horrors of slavery, and then sitting up on the hill is this pristine white house and the sparkling turquoise water that’s built upon all those horrors. So it comes right after that. And I just thought it was such a hammer blow, really, of a moment
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I definitely agree.
WHISKEY JENNY: In a very earned way.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Yes.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I love this book, yeah.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I do, too. It was a great, great—I was about to say it was a great pick, and then that fell too self-congratulatory. [LAUGHTER] But I think we both picked it, so I think it’s OK.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I think we both had this on our fall preview, as well. So it’s always lovely when things live up to expectations.
GIN JENNY: I also always like it when I find a book that I really love late in the year. So do you want to tell us what we’re reading for next time? Also very exciting.
WHISKEY JENNY: I do, yeah. So we are reading a play next time, which I don’t think we’ve done for podcast. We were reading, by Jackie Sibblies Drury, We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, from the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884 and 1915. Can I just say, I was very nervous about having to announce that title on podcast.
GIN JENNY: I was about to be like, hooray! That’s so good!
WHISKEY JENNY: Because that’s such a long title. [LAUGHTER] But yeah, we’re reading that. You probably know a little bit more about it than I do. Do you want to tell the people what it’s about?
GIN JENNY: Yeah! So this is a play that I’ve been wanting to read for a while. Listeners of this podcast or readers of my blog may know that I’m a huge fan of Namibia. And this is a play about a group of actors putting on a play about the genocide of the Herero people in Namibia. The Germans colonized Namibia and created these concentration camps which really served as a model for what they later did during the Holocaust. So several indigenous groups in Namibia rebelled against German colonization, and then the Germans conducted this campaign of racial extermination, essentially. So yeah, I think it’ll be a pretty sad play, but I think the framing device of people putting on a play about the events to me sounds really interesting, and that kind of metafictional take on things is always interesting for me.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I’m looking forward to reading it. We wanted to read a play next, because we both enjoy it but don’t always remember to seek them out. So I’m looking forward.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I am too. I’m really excited that we’re doing this.
WHISKEY JENNY: All right, well, this has been the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow Gin Jenny on Twitter @readingtheend and she’ll pass messages along to me, because she’s very nice.
GIN JENNY: Yes, I will.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: We’re both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us, and we hope you will, at readingtheend@mail.com. If you like what we do, you can become a podcast patron at patreon.com/readingtheend. And if you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review. And until next time, happy holidays again.
[GLASSES CLINKING]THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.