Backlisted - Her First American by Lore Segal

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

This episode explores the third novel by the nonagenarian American writer Lore Segal which was originally published in 1985 by Knopf and is due to be released in the UK for the first time by Sort Of Books in 2025. We are joined by Sort Of Book’s publisher and co-founder  Nat Janscz, who made her Backlisted debut back in 2018 on the Tove Jansson episode. She is joined by the distinguished American novelist and short story writer Jeffery Renard Allen, who was a student of Lore Segal’s.    The story of Her First American follows the Jewish refugee Ilka Weissnix, who arrives in America having just turned twenty-one, after spending a decade escaping from Hitler’s Europe and becoming separated from her family in the process. Speaking barely any English she rooms with her cousin in New York’s Upper West Side and soon embarks on a relationship with Carter Bayoux, a Black middle-aged alcoholic poet and intellectual – who she first encounters randomly in a bar in Cowtown, Nevada – and who becomes ‘her first American’. The novel is the record of their always touching, often funny and inescapably sad relationship. Segal, whose own life story resemble Ilka’s in many ways calls the book ‘her favourite child’. The New York Times review went further declaring that: ‘Lore Segal may have come closer than anyone to writing the Great American Novel’ Intrigued? You’ll have to listen to the end to find out whether we reach the same conclusion… *For £100 off any Serious Readers HD Light and free UK delivery use the discount code: BACK at seriousreaders.com/backlisted *Tickets are now on sale for our LIVE show in London on Wednesday Sep 25th where we will be discussing The Parable of The Sower by Octavia Butler, with guests Salena Golden and Una McCormack * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a patron at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of Backlisted is brought to you by Sirius Readers, a reading lamp for people like you and me. Sirius Readers. I've got one of these lamps and I think it's fantastic. Yeah, it's a great lamp for reading indoors. Perfect, now the night's getting darker because it simulates daylight with its HD light. Which means you can read for hours and hours without any risk of eye strain. The great news is Sirius Readers are giving Backlisted listeners £100 off any HD light and free UK delivery. Just go to SiriusReaders.com forward slash backlisted and use the discount code BACK. B A C K.

That's SiriusReaders.com forward slash backlisted with the code BACK. And there's a 30 day risk free trial, so you can return the light after 30 days for free if you're unhappy with it, which I very much doubt you will be. So without further ado, lightslisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. Today you'll find us in downtown New York. It's 1951 and we're in an untidy hotel bedroom. Sitting hunched on the edge of the bed is a large man with short, graying hair and green striped pajamas. On the bedside table next to him is a glass of bourbon, an empty bottle

and an overflowing ashtray. He gives a heavy sigh and turns to the young blonde woman in a white blouse sitting next to him. She leans in and kisses his face repeatedly. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, where people pledge to support the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And today we are joined by two guests, one new and one returning. The returning guest is publisher Nat Jantz,

and we are delighted to welcome for the first time the American writer, Jeffrey Reard Allen. Hello to you both. Hello. Hello. Hey guys. Great to be back. Great to be back. Thanks Nat, that was good. Nice to have you back. Thanks very much. Well, it's an honor to be here. Well, that's so nice. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you so much. It's an honor to have you. Jeff Reynard Allen is the award-winning author of six books of fiction and poetry, including the celebrated novel Song of the Shank, which was a front page review in both the New York Times Book Review and the San Francisco Chronicle. He was a finalist for both the Pen Falkner Award and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Jeff is the founder and editor of Taint, Taint, Taint Magazine and is the Africa editor for the Evergreen Review.

His latest books are the short story collection, Fat Time and the memoir, An Unspeakable Hope, the latter co-authored with Leon Ford. Jeff is at work on several projects, including a memoir entitled Motherwit and a speculative novel called Radar Country and the short story collection, Try Me. Jeff, and this is fortunate isn't it, is also

a former student of Laura Siegel and will be writing the introduction for the sort of books edition of the novel we're here to discuss Her First American, which will be published by our other guests, Natania Jantz. Yay! It's almost like we've planned this. Geoff, you're joining us from New York City. And just very briefly, give us a quick description of the room in which you are sitting. I just moved into a new apartment, so it's kind of a loft with two different levels. So I'm sitting in what would be my kitchen combined living room. So yes.

If it sounds like Jeff is sitting in a swimming pool everybody, there's a slug. You have no furniture yet, do you? No, I have no furniture. I hope to get everything out of storage tomorrow. Well, we're really grateful that you agreed to sit in an empty room. Turning to you, Nat, Natanya Jantz is a publisher and the co-founder of Sort Of Books, which she runs in partnership with her husband, Mark Ellingham. Sort Of were founded in 1999 and enjoyed early success with Chris Stewart's Driving Over Lemons, which went on to sell over a million copies, many of

them sold by me in some capacity I think. Thank you. I hand sold that, Nat. You're welcome. Despite, or perhaps because of only publishing a handful of books a year, they have a roster of wonderful authors including Stefan Zweig, Jonathan Buckley, Alexander Barron, hooray, Sophie Hanna, Kathleen Jamie and Peter Blegvad, hooray, and are soon to publish folio award-winning novelist Michelle de Kretzer. They have pioneered

the republishing of Thurvey Janssen's work in English and listeners will remember that Nat Lars joined us in November 2018, six years ago, in person, along with now children's laureate Frank Cottrell-Boice, to discuss Tove Jansson's Moomin Valley in November. In 2022, Sorsul have published The Seven Moons of Mali Al-Maidah by Shahan Karanathilika. Oh, God almighty. I'm so sorry. Karanathilika. Karanathilika.

I practiced so much for the actual show. Shahan was on. I've so sorry. Karen Othelika. Karen Othelika. I practiced so much for the actual show. Shahan was on. I've now forgotten. I apologize to him if he hears this anyway. And that one, that year's Booker Prize making sort of the smallest independent publisher ever to win the book. I didn't know that. Wow.

They are also the UK publishers of Laura Seagal, subject of today's episode. I must ask you Nat, did you think that The Seven Moons of Marley Almeida would win the Booker Prize? I was certain of it. Spoken like a true publisher. It was my inspirational talk to Shehan was, you know, keep going Shehan, keep going. It's not just, you're not just publishing this as a sort of great piece of world literature. You're going to win the Booker Prize. And after I'd said that about sort of 15 times, even I found that a bit hollow.

So it was terrific that he won it. Well, it's a terrific book. He was a wonderful guest. He came on here and talked about Kurt Vonnegut. We really, really enjoyed that episode, didn't we, John? That was really good. We did. And which book are we here to discuss? talked about Kurt Vonnegut. We really, really enjoyed that episode, didn't we, John? That was really good. I did.

Which book are we here to discuss? The book we're here to discuss is Her First American by Laura Siegel, first published in 1985 by Knopf in America, reissued in 2004 by the New Press and soon to be published, as we've said, in the UK for the first time by Sort Of Books. It was also a book Andy talked about with great enthusiasm on a previous episode of Batlisted, although which episode that was I can't find. Well, I think it was an episode of Lotlisted, but we'll say a bit more about that in a moment. Oh, maybe it was. Anyway, the story of her first American follows the Jewish refugee

Ilke Weissnicks, who arrives in America having just turned 21 after spending a decade escaping from Hitler's Europe and becoming separated from her family in the process, speaking barely any English, she rooms with her cousin in New York's Upper West Side, the cousin we only ever know as Fishgopel, and soon embarks on a relationship with Carter Beu, a black, middle-aged, alcoholic poet and intellectual who she meets randomly in a bar in Cowtown, Nevada, and who becomes her first American. The novel is the record of their always touching,

often funny and inescapably sad relationship. Segal, whose life story resembles Ilka's in many ways, always called the book her favorite child, describing it as an upside down Henry James novel. Because Henry James believed that the innocent American would expand his knowledge or her knowledge by coming in contact with the sophisticated European. Here the European is the innocent and the black man is the endlessly sophisticated. She doesn't teach him anything, but he teaches her everything. But it was the New York Times review that laid down the gauntlet, writing at the time that quote, Laura Siegel may have come closer than anyone to writing the great American

novel. And that is a gauntlet we intend to pick up in this episode. But before we plunge into it, here's a message from our sponsors. What's it like to trade crypto on Kraken? Let's say I'm in a state-of-the-art gym surrounded by powerful looking machines. Do I head straight for the squat rack? I could, but this gym has options, like trainers, fitness pros, botters to back me up. That's crypto on Kraken, powerful crypto tools backed by 24-7 support and multi-layered security. Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be.

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How old were you when you first encountered either her first American or the work of Laura Siegel? Actually, Laurie and I have debated this. But we met in either 1980 or 1981. I was a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago where Laurie taught. Laurie lived in New York, but she taught in Chicago. And I was probably about 19 years old when I took a fiction writing workshop with her, and that's how we met. We've stayed in touch all these many years, have become close friends, and I consider

her like a second mother to me, I would say. So I was still an undergraduate when the book was originally published in 1985 and that's how I first read the book. James Earl Jones passed away yesterday. And I do know at one point, the novel was option and somehow James Earl Jones read the novel and he was interested in playing Carter. But for whatever reason, the production company, they were never able to get us a workable screenplay together. Can I just interrupt and say, when I first read this novel, which was four years ago, James Earl Jones is who I cast in my head while I was reading it.

Oh, okay. So perfect. Yeah, there are a couple other interesting things. As you know, the character of Carter is based on a real person, Horace Caton. And I should say that even in the 80s, when I first met Laurie, Horace Caton, he had passed away by then, but he was a fairly well-known figure in Chicago intellectual circles, especially among black people, because he was the co-author of a seminal book about black Chicago, which is called Black Metropolis. So Horace Caden

was a figure known to many black intellectuals in such a Chicago, you know, so that was another interesting connection, you know, that I had with the novel. Wow, that's wonderful. Okay. Yeah. Nat, you published Laurie in the UK, bringing her books to a new audience. When did you first encounter her work and when did you first meet her? Well, actually it was my partner, Mark, who came across Lady's Lunch when it was published in the New Yorker and thought this was a terrific writer. What an extraordinary story. It was a story about an elderly woman getting together with a group of friends, all non-agenarians, all talking about the affronts and puzzles of aging

and very wittily done. And it was a beautifully crafted story. So we went back over her and found that other people's houses hadn't got a UK publisher. We'll come onto it, but it's the memoir of her childhood, isn't it? Yeah. And it's what launched her. That was the first stories which were published in the New Yorker about her being a 10 year old, being put on the Kindertransport from Vienna to get her away from Nazi persecution in Vienna, being given up by loving parents

to come on her own into the arms of strangers in England, being moved around foster homes. And it's an extraordinary story. And so we went out and met Laurie when we published this book, which was 2018. So it was about the time that you were talking about her first American, I think, Andy. Yes. So about five, six years ago. Yeah. We went to New York and we met her at a wonderful Riverside drive apartment in the Upper West Side. And, you know, we walked into this flat and there was an elderly Laurie, she was 90 years old, very nimble with her walker in the flat and with these penetrating bright eyes and this wit and

humor and warmth about her and sharp as a tack. And as we came into the flat, we saw there was a picture in her hall of Laurie Siegel drawn by her friend, her late friend, Morris Sendak, of Laurie as a wild thing. And that's always, that's the image of Laurie in my mind. Laurie is a wild thing. And then a room full of fae-fa drawings. She was in there with all those lovely sort of modernist artists and it was an extraordinary thing. And then she broached us with, okay, so what more are you going to publish my books? And told me about her favorite book, Her First American. And it's to our shame really, that it's taken us so long to come round to it,

but I'm very pleased that we have. Well, presumably there's an element, I'm deferring to my publisher colleague, John here. But in a certain way, you don't want the first single from the album to be the immediate hit. You want to build the profile of the author in the UK before you then segue into their favourite book perhaps. That's a nice way to look at it. There were other things to do with Laurie as well. She was publishing these stories, the ladies lunch stories, and we wanted to work with her on those while she was

interested in them and they were very current. And that was a marvelous project. So I have no regrets about doing that. The amazing thing about Laurie is Laurie is nearing the end of her life. She knows that we're doing this podcast, by the way. And she was very pleased. And as you said, this was her favorite book and she wanted us to talk about her first American. What's extraordinary is that Laurie has always had this talent for finding life interesting. That's her big defense.

And with her ladies lunch stories, it was all about, here I am at this stage of my life, isn't it interesting? Look what's happening to me, isn't it interesting? Look what's happening to me. Isn't it interesting? And she's still generating stories. So we're running to keep up with the 95 year old Laurie. I'm terribly impressed Nat, that you took on an extremely sharp, non-agenarian

New Yorker author keen to promote their work. Because that strikes me as being one of the wonderful things about Laurie, right? That she's here now when you have published her, you know. She is a working writer. She is. She's also very gracious. And I don't know if she told you this, Jeffrey, when she was teaching you, that she always tells her students to try and do whatever editors ask of them so that they can store up goodwill for that one time that they're going to say no. She was edited by Bob Gottlieb at Knopf and New Yorker. They disagreed on the cover of her hardback.

Okay. So I'd just like to also add, I first read this book four years ago and I've got to give a shout out to backlisted listener and bookseller and author, Tom Nissley. Thank you so much, Tom. I talked about her first American on episode of Locklisted. You sent it to me during the darkest times of the first COVID lockdown. You thought I might like it. Well, I absolutely loved it. I think it's one of the best novels I've read in the last 10 years. So thank you, Tom. We probably wouldn't be

making this episode had you not hit me to it then. I have thought about it repeatedly over the last several years since I read it. I tried to get John Mitchinson to read it, but he was busy, he was always on and cool. But thanks to you Nat and Jeff, John Mitchinson has now read Her First American. What did you make of it, Johnny? I just put it exactly in the same class as you have. I think it's one of the finest things I've read in many years. It's so approachably easy to read and yet manages to get that kind of profundity that I guess a lot of writers would struggle to get. It looks, to some extent, artless. It looks like a series of dialogues.

The more you read it and the more you think about it, the more you think, what exactly did happen? I had to go back, I've had to read it twice because you get to the end, it's a pretty extraordinary ending, and then you want to go back and unpack some of the scenes. It's a really, really fine, fine novel. Well, I think it's important to introduce this note

before we move on to discuss her first American, which is Laura's extraordinary life, which Nat has alluded to. And here's a clip from five, six years ago, where Laurie at the age of 90 is recalling her life and how she came to be a storyteller and piano accompaniment is baked in, I'm afraid, but let's listen to it now. I'm Laura Siegel and I have written a book called Other People's Houses. houses. I was 10 years old in 1938 when Hitler annexed Austria. We were thrown out of our

apartment. We were then moved in with my grandparents in a nearby village of Fischermend and when my grandfather's house and shop were taken by the Nazis we then had to come back to Vienna and lived with various cousins. I lived with a school friend and there came the moment, came the day when my father picked me up from my friend and said that we were going to go for a couple of days I was going to stay with them, my parents and my grandparents who'd found an apartment together and he said you're going to England. It had become clear to my parents that they had no means in sight of getting out of Austria I had no means in sight of getting out of Austria.

So they had, my father insisted, my mother reluctantly agreed to let me go on the children's transport. I went to a party given by the students in this class and somebody said to me, how did you get to America? And I began to tell the story and everybody was silent and listening. And I thought, oh, this is great. That's that. And that was really some, that was the moment when I realized I had stories to tell.

Well, there is her account. I had stories to tell. Well there is her account. And I'd like to ask you first, Jeff. There's a thing that's popular at the moment, modish at the moment, called auto fiction, which we've dealt with several times on this podcast. Would it be fair or unfair to describe her first American as a work of auto fiction? I think it would be unfair to describe it that way. You know, Laurie always, as memory serves me, Laurie always talked about the book very specifically as a novel.

And I think she chose to write it as a novel because she wanted to have a certain distance between her life and the actual words she was putting on the page so she wasn't attempting to simply record her life. And as I think of auto fiction, it's not only a type of literature, prose literature specifically that is about the author's life, but it tends to go off on various tangents and associations. And I don't see any of that happening in any of Laurie's work. I would say she's very much a realist novelist as opposed to someone who was venturing into

this mode of auto fiction. Geoff, because you are American, I mean, I'm a British person. I found this novel deeply appealing because it seemed to me to celebrate and celebrate and mark the limits of the discussion of multiculturalism within America, how it works, how it doesn't work. When you read it for the first time, did it ring true for you in that respect? You know, I have to say that, unfortunately, when I read the novel for the first time, I was very much politically engaged and read through a political lens. That's the way I saw the world at the time.

I think the thing that I've come to learn about this novel and about Laurie's work in general is that she doesn't see the world in an easily defied political terms. So I think her first American works to upset our expectations about how we can easily be defied by race or by gender for that matter. I think that's one of the things that's really interesting about it is that it tries to do more than just speak about the world in a political frame, whether it's through race or whether it's through gender or whether it's through what it means to be Jewish, you know. Completely.

Now, I read this in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. People will remember that the summer of 2020 wasn't just the first COVID lockdown, it was also the surge in Black Lives Matter protests. And I found it very interesting what Jeffrey was saying there. And I'd like just to read you Nat, a short review of this novel, Her First American, from a well-known reading website and ask you to react to it. Because in a sense, it's reflecting what Geoff was just saying in a less positive way. Three stars. A 21-year-old Austrian Holocaust survivor falls in love with a middle-aged alcoholic

African-American man in the 1950s. A poignant conversation about religion, race and class. Siegel is witty and funny at times. For the most part, I found this book rather boring, but the message was powerful. No matter who we are, we all have prejudices." Now that's said without irony by that reviewer as far as I can work out, but there you go. No matter who we are, we all have prejudices. I didn't find this book boring at all. Sorry, anonymous reviewer. No, she makes it sound like porridge, doesn't she? Not literature. It's sort of very weird.

I think there's something extraordinary about Laurie's ability to tune into life. She's the observer. Something that Vivian Gornick pointed out was her ability to be a little bit detached in order to not be reacting all the time, but observing. She sort of uses herself as a conduit for the reader. So the emotions don't sit on the page. You don't have anger, anger, anger at the terrible treatment of various characters. You have her telling you what happens, and you play out that in your own. The reader is enlisted to have the feelings, which makes it incredibly powerful. But there's no testifying in Laurie's books. Nothing is simple, everything is nuanced. And something

that I think she always tries to do is she's trying to get at the truth. Why her First American is so extraordinary in the oeuvre of Laurie's work is that some of the books are super cool in that detachment. And in this, it's like she went through the emotional blast zone of the Second World War of being thrown out, really. I mean, she escapes, but having to escape this terrible persecution. And she sort of freezes and in her first American, you see this character, the character of Ilka Weissnick, Ilka Know-Nothing, suddenly becomes sort of, she thaws and she becomes naturalized through Carter Bayeux. through Carter Bio. Mitch, I'm going to ask you an A level question about this novel.

So prepare, get ready, use both sides of the paper if necessary. Her First American by Laura Siegel is a novel in which there are no supporting characters. Discuss. That's very clever. I like that. characters discuss. That's very clever. I like that. I think the book is about Ilka's relationship with Carter. I think you have to say that Ebony plays a pretty important part in the story. There's a big chunk of the book in the middle of the book, they go and have a Connecticut holiday in a really nice house. And that's pretty important bit. And I think

you'd have to say they are kind of supporting the main relate. But they aren't, I would suggest, student, I've given you a B plus there. I haven't got to my big one yet, which is the mother, which I think is fundamental to the book. But there are no stock characters in this novel. No, I see what you mean. Every time you encounter a fresh personality. I completely agree with that. This is the genius, I think, of the book. She's so good at describing, she describes the emotional state that Carter is in without psychologising it,

without analysing it. Or judging. You never really know exactly. There's all sorts of clues as to what's gone wrong in Carter's life, but they're never made explicit. Similarly, the mother in the same way, I think it's brilliantly done, the dream about the ants and the burglars coming to get her. I mean, it's just a presentation of somebody who has been through deep trauma, the obsession with going back to the very spot that she last saw her husband. It would be very easy for any of the minor characters in the book to fall into cliche,

and she never does that. I wonder, Geoffrey, could you read us an extract from the beginning of the novel, which is a scene with three characters in it, even though one of them is what we would think of as a supporting character, not a stock character? Yes, I would be happy to. Ilka had been three months in the country when she went west and discovered her first America sitting on a stool in a bar in the desert. A crash from the railroad. He was a big man.

He brought her a whiskey and asked her what in the name of the blessed Jehoshaphat she was doing in Cowtown, Nevada. Nevada, Ilka had said. I have believe I am in Utah, isn't it? Utah, the big American turkish sick color. Where the hell am I? He asked the barman. Hagen asked end of no place Nevada, replied the barman, and swiped his dish towel at a glass mug. Aha, so, he'll concept her whiskey and hiding her smiling teeth inside her glass, said,

I do not believe. What don't you believe? asked the American. That I said in Utah. Nevada, said the American. I do not believe Nevada, Utah, America. It's a hell of an opening. It's brilliant. Jeff, could I ask you then about that, that initial scene in the bar? How does Laurie achieve that expansion of character via dialogue? How do you think she does that? Oh, that's a good question.

I wish I had a good answer to give you. She's essentially doing what she does in much of the book, which is she's telling a story in some sense from a remote so that we are left to read the characters and the situation for ourselves. And obviously at this particular point in the book Ilka has not mastered the English language and that becomes very clear. But also one of the things we see here is Carter's wit and humor, which is something that will be on display throughout the book. And then we primarily also see the common theme of the novel, which is

Elka's discovery of America, what it means to be American. And that is the educational journey that she goes on in much of the book. CB It is amazing in that first chapter when the men come into the bar and Carter doesn't exactly freeze because he continues doing exactly what he's doing, but there's a frozen quality to it that he knows that he's now in a very precarious position. He's talking to a white woman in a bar with rednecks. And that's phenomenally well done. You feel that frisson. Yeah.

I think, John, for me, that was one of the huge pleasures of reading this novel for the first time was exactly the thing Nat has just described there. Seeing the depth of field of any given comment, stray passing comment or joke, she's so good in this novel at presenting you with, what do I want to say, context without hammering the context. So it's almost miraculous to me now how that scene you've just described, that tension is really there and you like Ilsa are learning about America, but you're learning it by implication on you. You're learning it by what you can infer rather than what you're being told. And she doesn't sense, she doesn't sense the danger at that point because at this point

she doesn't even know, as she says, she doesn't even know what a Negro is. One of the great things is watching her build her model of the world. And he is incredibly generous with his, in the way that he helps her to do that. The book is full of these brilliant little exchanges between the two of them and her getting, you know, her trying things out and being secretly thrilled. There's a little passage, again, from sort of towards the middle of the book where they're

lying in bed together and she's talking about Percival who's a very smart black intellectual who's got a girlfriend who Ilka doesn't like. Can I just say that I think the Percival character, isn't he possibly based on Richard Wright, Jeffrey, do you think? I think he's based on Richard Wright, but also on Charles White, the artist. The artist, yes, both. But this is just a great little, she says, well, why did he marry what's her name again? Doris May, said Carter, I guess he likes her.

She is not interesting. Ilka felt a personal affront when interesting men like Dull Woman. She doesn't talk, said Ilka. She talks to me. I like Doris May. And why would Doris May marry? Ilka became puzzled and stopped. A Negro twice her age? You think I mean that? cried Ilka. What did you mean? That, said Ilka with the thrill of revelation. I'm a racist. Not to worry, Carter said. Some of my best friends are racists. I mean, it's a brilliant, it's just brilliant, isn't it? And you think she doesn't, she's not concerned. No, a lot of writers would be troubled to try and write a scene like that, I think, by eggshells and

not wanting to offend and not, but she's amazing. Let me ask you, Geoff, and that one of the things that struck me when I was reading this book from 1985 in 2020 is how it would be written differently now, or it would probably be written differently now, not by Laura necessarily, but it's an extremely bold artistic attempt to speak for a variety of different peoples and people. And she does it, and she does it absolutely brilliantly. Especially here in America, we have become so territorial. So for example, as a black writer, I should not write about white people, or as a writer, I should not write about white people or as a man, I should not write about women. So certainly, Laurie was defying many of the accepted,

the literary standards of the times in terms of who owns what material, who has a right to write about whatever. And I think the book was transgressive in that way. Transgressive isn't a word I would normally use when I think about Lori, but I think she was simply being herself and being realistic and truthful to the way that she saw the world. But that was not how we as Americans think about literature. And maybe I could add this, you know, one of the things I've always enjoyed about my relationship with Lori, and I don't want to overstate this, but I always feel that she brings an European perspective or an old world perspective in her thinking about the world, which has allowed me to look beyond

the way that Americans typically think about themselves in the world, I believe. And I do think that a European perspective is reflected in the book and how she chooses to write about these various characters from different racial and gender backgrounds. But I think, but Jeffrey, I think Laurie is unique, don't you? I mean, we know lots of Europeans here and she doesn't follow rules unless those rules make her feel that she's getting to the truth. She works away way to try and find the truth. That means paying attention to nuance, paying attention to layers, questioning things. She'll always push back with a why. There's a great little interview that she did

with the magazine. She said, there's nothing I can tell you about myself to which your understanding does not have access. I don't have that sense of shame, or rather I have it, but don't pay much attention to it because I'm more interested in figuring out what it is that's being felt. I say to my writing students, the one thing you can rely on in any situation is that the feelings you're going to have are not the ones you think you're supposed to have. And I think that ability to look at what's actually going on rather than what you're supposed to feel in any given moment. And ILCA is a brilliant device for doing that. Okay, so we're going to take a little break now. When we come back, John,

I'm going to give you an example. You've mentioned Laura's students and you mentioned about the fidelity to truth and feeling. When we come back, we have an example of her talking about someone else's book in exactly those terms. So we'll see you in a moment. Welcome back. We are here discussing her first American by Laura Segal with Jeff, Alan and Nat Jantz. And we were hearing about how Laurie as a teacher would say to her students that you must be true to the feeling of something when you're writing about it. And I found a really interesting essay, which I just want to read you the conclusion of. And this is about Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. And up to this point in the essay, Laura has written about the dashwoods, Eleanor, Marianne, and then she switches into the first person mode. And so she switches

from what we would think of as a traditional critical voice into a memoirist's voice the better to illuminate what she wants to say about sense and sensibility. The widow Dashwood, Eleanor, Marianne and Margaret have been declared to be perfectly comfortable. Mr. and Mrs. John can keep their inheritance all to themselves and feel righteous doing so. And the reader gets to enjoy yet another pleasure, the sense of cleverness, of his penetration, the thrill of intellectual and moral kinship with the writer. If Jane Austen were around, I would catch her eye to let her know that I get it.

Or is it that Jane Austen is getting me, giving it to me? I'm having that well-documented experience of approaching a person who looks unpleasantly familiar, someone of whom I don't entirely approve. In the moment before I recognise it is a mirror I am walking towards, Jane Austen is holding the mirror up to my nature. Story has the power to prevent my natural tendency to cover myself from my own observation. How familiar the last time I paid my taxes was the experience that it was inconvenient, my regret that so large a sum was to be parted with, my irritation at the trouble of getting it to them, the

realization that money once parted with never can return, and the feeling that this, happening over and over every year, made my income not my own. Wait, I have an inheritance story too. My parents-in-law's aging aunt, call her Minnie, must not have read her King Lear, for she gave away her summer house on a New England lake to her children, a chilly son and his beautiful wife. The following summer the young people invited their mother to spend a weekend at the lake, then they sent her home to broil in New York.

When Minnie became a nuisance, they put her in a nursing home. My husband's parents went secretly, took their aunt out and brought her home with them. Minnie disinherited her son and daughter-in-law, settled everything on the niece and nephew, and died. Her children were advised against seeking legal redress, there being no legal leg to stand on. By year's end, both of my parents in law had died as well. Minnie's children may not have deserved the inheritance, but neither did I or mine. I had thought the old woman a nuisance. My children had refused to kiss her.

Did it occur to me to pass the inheritance back to the blood relatives? Briefly, in a world of speculation only. I was by then widowed with two little children. The chilly son and the beautiful wife were better off than I. Would I, had they been worse off, have given them what was legally my children's? Would you? Oh, Mrs. John Dashwood, notre semblable. That's the end of the essay.

That's wonderful. So great. I think as both literary criticism and memoir. What was it like, Geoffrey, being taught by the writer Laurie Segal? Oh, it was a great experience having Laurie as a teacher. One of the things I would say is that I'm a very different kind of writer than she is. She wants to use the word baroque to describe the kind of writing that I do, whereas she leans more towards Jane Alstead and Chekhov among other people. And that said,

among other people. And that said, what was great about her is that she could, you know, she taught me very much about the importance of trying to figure out what I really believe about the world, trying to figure out what I really feel in a particular moment and how to get that on the page. And she also was able to direct me to writers that I could use as models. Such as? Can you remember? Well, at a certain point I became a member of Faulkner, which was a writer I hadn't read,

but she recommended it. I think one of the things that was great about her as a teacher is that she did not try to impose her own literary taste on the students, but she did the best that she could to help us understand what we were trying to do as writers, so how we could better do it. Well, here is a clip of Laurie recorded last year at the age of 95 articulating why she writes and what she hopes others will achieve through their writing. Well, the impulse, as you and I have now agreed, was to correct the mistaken or absent information. But the thing is, once a writer starts writing, it becomes something different.

It becomes that desire. I think to say what was it like is really the most correct way to put it. Once I got going, I wanted to convey the experience. I wouldn't have put it that way when I was 10 years old, but that's what I was trying to do. Here's what it felt like. Here's what it was like when this happened or that happened. And then you start describing, you describe the circumstances, you describe the ambience, you describe what you were wearing, you describe when you open the door and what happened when you went through it. Once you have become a

writer, what something was like is a stronger impulse than to bear political witness. impulse than to bear political witness. Yeah. Nat, we had a hurried editorial conference during the advert break there, and we decided that it would be preferable not to discuss the ending of Her First American. All I will say is that is a devastatingly truthful ending. But you wanted to read us something that summarised that similar sense of truthful expression of emotion, realistic. Yes. It's just the way that Laurie will get to the, what does it feel like? And I thought

this was extraordinary. This is a young girl, she must be 10 or 11. She's been called out of class into the study of the headmaster to be told that the impossible, a miracle has happened. Her parents, who she thinks like the other Jewish children's parents in her class, the other refugees, that her parents would be dead, that she has managed to write a letter that has got her parents a visa to Britain and they've arrived. And she's called to the headmistress' office and has told this. She says, well, said Mrs. Levine, so aren't you excited, you funny child? Yes, I am.

I'm excited, I said. But I was busy noticing the way my chest was emptying, my head clearing, and my shoulders being freed of some huge weight that must, since I now felt it being rolled away, have been there all this time without my knowing it. Just as when the passing of nausea or the unknotting of a cramp leaves the body with a new awareness of itself, I stood sensuously at ease, breathing in and out. Mrs Levine was saying to the headmaster, you never know with children. All she ever does is mope around the house and write letters and now she isn't even pleased. I think that's the sort of way that

Laurie writes. She notices what really matters in a scene. Can I just draw the listener's attention to one quiet but brilliant phrase in the section from other people's houses that Nat just read, I stood sensuously at ease. There's Laurie for you. Now that's what a real writer does. You know what I mean, Geoff? It's like that's a tiny passing phrase, which isn't even designed to catch the eye in the way it caught mine there,

but is so perfect, it seems to me. But who out of all of us didn't fall in love with Carter Bayeux? The incredible charisma of the man and the erudition and the worldliness of him. I mean, who, if you're an inexperienced young woman of him. I mean, who, if you're an inexperienced young woman seeking to know more about the world, what better teacher? And she gets that across so well. And yet he's a big guy and he's much older and they can't have sex. He can't make love to her the first time they try. he asked her to sleep with him, meaning fall asleep with me because he was too drunk. But that's amazing. This also is in the genre, and to some extent, isn't it, of the campus novel. These are intellectuals, and it seems to me almost a subversion of the campus novel, the heavy drinking intellectual who feuds with other heavy drinking intellectuals in the tradition of who's afraid of Virginia

Woolf, but written by an outsider about in some ways another outsider. Yeah. I think her great campus novel actually is An Absence of Cousins. And I think this sort of plays on a homogeneity of people which the outsider then joins. And in this, there's no one character is like any other character. No. Yeah. I mean, her genius for also, you have to say, just for creating things very, very quickly, when she says, on the 16th floor of the Bloomsbury Arms lived and practiced Dr. J. C. McSamuels, whose nature, appearance, and manner had predestined him to be one of the lovable

characters in a novel Charles Dickens did not get around to writing. It's so great. You immediately know who Dr. McSamuels is. He's a kind of Wimic figure. John, do you have a little bit? Well, I could read a little bit without introducing all the characters, but... Magnificent Ebony. Magnificent Ebony. Ilka senses that Ebony is kind of, she disagrees a little with Carter about what's, you know, he says, she, Ilka says she's cross because she can't sleep. And Carter, you feel all the time Carter's always got this deeper, richer, more complex

series of reasons, but she gets Ebony likes to get, I get, obviously that former lover gets him to tell a story, a funny story. Ebony says, Carter, tell how you lost your head in Syracuse, New York. That is a funny story. So Carter goes on, not in Syracuse, New York, Knossos, New York, said Carter, is where I lost my head. That was the time I still went all over and lectured on race relations in clubs and organizations and churches and universities. That was okay. What I couldn't take was afterwards, when I was exhausted from the trip and the talk and wadded a hole up in some little black hotel with a bottle of booze and pass out. There was the dinner at some white faculty's house and the reception to meet students and all those questions and all that goodwill. Got so I didn't mind talking to

white folks," said Cudder, so they didn't talk to me about race relations. All that goodwill, said Ebony. So, I'm at the University of Knossos, New York. The dean comes up, says, Mr. Bayou, I know that I'm talking on behalf of all my faculty and students and everyone who has heard your eloquent and moving address here tonight. Everyone stops talking. Everyone is listening.

When I say that this has been a memorable occasion for us, you have given us food for thought, Mr. Bayou. You have made us aware of situations and conditions that I do not ordinarily come our way. I'm ashamed to say, and Mr. Bayou, we owe you a debt of gratitude. And I will speak to my faculty, and I will speak to our student body

and to our civic leaders and the leaders in the private sector who I am certain will wish to join me in turning this feeling into something tangible. We want, Mr. Bayou, to do something not only for your people, but to express our gratitude to you personally in any way or form you may wish to suggest to us. Mr. Bayou, is there something, sir, that we can do for you?" Well, I was moved. All those good white faces, so pleased and so eager, I lost my head. "'Lost your head?' said Ebony. I told him.

I said, well, yes, as a matter of fact, something does come to mind. I'm two-thirds into my book about the effect of an emerging Africa on the American Negro that I've been working on for the last couple of years. Now if I could take the spring off and work through the summer in some quiet place." Percival smiled. "'Just outside of town?' People began to laugh. "'On one of your beautiful lakefronts, perhaps some little cottage?'

"'Sure lost your head.' Ebony nodded so profoundly. She sandwiched little Annie between her breasts and her lap. Annie giggled. "'Just a little old cottage,' said Ebony. "'On the lakefront, shouted Carter. Dean said, we will certainly look into a little matter for you. Keep our eyes skinned.

See what we can come up with, hollered Carter. We want you to believe, I know everyone here with me 100 percent. What a truly, truly memorable occasion this has been for every single one of us here. Sure was one memorable occasion, yelled Ebony. Just a little cottage just right on the lakefront. Ilke held a smile through the protracted storm of black laughter. It's just perfect. It's funny and it's perfect and it's subtle. It's so good. As someone who writes comic prose themselves, I would like to say that the rhythmic elements of Laura's prose are often very, very funny. The beats are where they ought to be all

the time. They land all the time. It's really, really accomplished comic writing apart from anything else. So listen, we're heading into the final straight of the episode. Jeff, I would like to ask you, firstly, have you written your introduction to the new edition of A First American yet? I have indeed written it, yes. Okay, good, NAPS, that's good, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Without giving away anything, what is the thing that more than anything else that you

want to communicate to readers of this novel? Well, you know, uh, one of the things that strikes me about Ilka is that she is often curious about the world. And one of the things I try to bring out in my introduction is if the book is at all autobiographical, then Ilka and Laurie are, you know, very much equal in and their curiosity about the world. And I think that curiosity is reflected in the novel. And the other thing I would say is what I was saying earlier about how this novel is transgressive in refusing to play by the rules in terms of race and gender and that kind

of thing. LW – Can, Jeffrey, do you have the intro to read the last paragraph of it? Because it's so moving. JL – Okay, I'll just read that then. Here is where Siegel's novel speaks most to us today. At this time when ethnic gatekeeping and accusations of cultural appropriation may create art about the other contentious and controversial. By now we must know that the human heart cannot be policed. Attuned to our shared humanity, the artist is tasked with examining felt life in all this complexity and ambiguity. Her first American stance as a stunning achievement

because Siegel is willing to sow the depths and dangers of existence and show us what is true about ourselves and the world. Brilliant. No further questions, Your Honor. Well, that's wonderful, Geoff. Thanks so much. Gosh, that's very moving. Nat, you were telling us something before we started recording that I think we should share with anyone listening to the show today. Well, something that, you know, Laurie is approaching the end of her life. She knows this. She wrote to Mark and I and all of her editors and I think, and you too,

Jeffrey, to say that she could no longer eat or drink and had maybe days, maybe weeks, maybe months left her or maybe like Jimmy Carter, three years. And we jumped on the email and said, choose three years, Laurie. We want you to read the reviews of your book that's coming out, but also, you know, we all just felt so deeply about it. And she's with us still and she managed to tell her daughter Beatrice that she was pleased that we were doing this podcast and going to be talking about her first American. And there's something, oh, I also want to give you the news

that Laurie, in the last month, so a month, nearly two months ago, she had a story published in the New Yorker. In the New Yorker, yeah. Called Beyond Imagining, and it has this great line, group of old women meet and they decide with no need for discussion, they agree that they are not going to pass or pass away on any consideration, pass on, that they're going to die when they die. And Laurie has that sort of absolutely looking at things squarely. And she has just had the news that another set of stories are going to be put together as a sort of portmanteau story and published in The New Yorker. So, this is a woman who is writing for the New Yorker now, you know, just amazing.

Well, I want to break the fourth wall and I'm going to hope and think that Laurie might be listening to me talking right now. So I'm not addressing any listener now except Laurie. And we've never met Laurie. And I just want to say that I, I, a callow English youth of 56 utterly loved her first American. And I want to say directly to you thank you for writing that novel 40 years ago that landed with me all that time later thank you for expanding my horizons but most importantly and everyone who listens to this show will know why I'm saying this thank you for the pleasure you gave me in writing the book and letting me read it.

It's an astonishing piece of work and it will, I think, continue to delight readers for as long as people read fiction. It's one of those books. I think it has everything that you want a great novel to have. So yeah, thank you. Thank you, Laurie. Nat, when are you planning to bring this book back into print? Your how? Because it's July. Next year. Yeah, July of next year. So that's not that many months to go. July 2025. The good news is, Nat, as you know, people will be listening to this in July 2025 and subsequent months and years. So good, just hang

on in there everybody. Just nine months to go, nine months to go. Right, John, I think we should wrap up. I think we should, although I have to say what huge fun this has been. Anne could talk about this novel even longer. We have to say huge thanks to Nat and to Jeffrey for deepening our appreciation of this wonderful book and of the life and work of Laurie Siegel. Also to our producer, Nicky Burch, for turning our conversation into what we can only describe us as a podcast, weaving our four voices into one. If you want show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the 218 that we've already recorded, please visit our website at backlisted.fm. If you want to buy the books discussed or this or any of our other shows, visit our bookshop at bookshop.org, specifically in July 2025, and choose Backlisted as your bookshop.

And we're still keen to hear from you on ex Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and wherever else you feel compelled to write from. If you want to hear Backlisted early and ad free, you can subscribe to our Patreon, which is patreon.com forward slash Backlisted. Your subscription brings other benefits if you subscribe at the lock listener level. For less than the cost of a quarter of house bourbon at the Bloomsbury Arms, you'll get not one but two extra exclusive podcasts every month. Lock Listed features the three of us talking and recommending the books, films and music

we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight. For those of you who enjoyed What Have You Been Reading, Slot, that's where you'll now find it. It's an hour of tunes, musings and superior book chat. Also, lock listeners get their names read out on the podcast accompanied by praise like this. Joan Rabb, thank you very much. Julie Lasky, thank you. Anne Drewer, thank you Anne.

Ilona Love, great name. Thank you. Simon Brooks, thank you. Pete Sherman, thank you Pete. Charlotte Kersley, thank you. Hannah Thorne, thank you. Sarah Banach, thank you, Pete. Charlotte Kersley, thank you. Hannah Thorn, thank you. Sarah Banach, thank you.

Wendy Williams, thank you. And thanks so much for listening, everyone. For those who fancy it and are in London, why not join us live at Foyles in Charing Cross Road at 6pm on Wednesday the 25th of September 2024 for the live recording of an episode dedicated to the parable of the sower by the amazing American sci-fi writer Octavia Butler with special guests and friends of the show Selena Godin and Una McCormack. You can book via the backlisted website or via foils. Before we go, Nat, is there anything we haven't discussed about Laura or about her first American that you would like to add?

Everything that Laurie put in that book, she thought about, she meant, she cared about. And Jeffrey, you were talking about whether it was political or not political or looking at it through a political lens or not a political lens. Laurie is a very switched-on, compassionate, non-judgmental person. It's a fabulous book because of that. – Jeff, anything you'd like to add? – Well, I would also like to break the fourth wall and simply thank Laurie for her work and her mentorship and her friendship. Thank you. Beautiful.

Thank you everybody. It's amazing. Thank you everybody. So we'll be back in a fortnight. If you just keep listening, you'll hear one last contribution from Laurie that we wanted to share with you you reflecting how somebody of her great experience interacts with the world of current affairs and literature and we felt all listeners to this show will really appreciate what she says here so

thanks very much Jeff thanks Nat this has been fantastic please do read the book because you will not regret it. Yeah, absolutely. See you next time. Bye bye. I'm wondering how much you follow what's happening in our country, in the world. Are you someone who reads the news obsessively or do you try and keep it at bay? I do read it and I also try to avoid it. My joke is, and it's not really much of a joke,

that I'm reading Shakespeare and Virgil because it's easier to deal with the horrors of long ago than the horrors of today. I don't have to be scared of what will happen tomorrow in 2,000 years ago. I am scared of what will happen tomorrow here. So I hide out in the literature of the past. I don't want to rouse you into feeling those terrible things about the future and the present,

but what worries you the most? I bet it's the same thing that worries you. Well, I mean ultimately that we're all going to blow each other up. I think that's that's all. That's all I mean. Shoot each other. Yeah. Nothing new. I mean what I'm reading in the past is that that's what was happening then also, right? Yeah, yeah, but except I don't have to be it's it's it's in the past This is not this is I don't I recommend this I don't think it's a good idea But that's how I'm hiding from what what scares me