Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Y/N by Esther Yi

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

This week's book guest is Y/N by Esther Yi.In this episode Sara and Cariad discuss Robbie Williams, Chandler, the penis, Sophocles and boiled eggs. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you! Y/N by Esther Yi is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.Sara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to pre-order here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdo's Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdo's Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is YN by Esther Yee. What's it about? YN is a ludicrous and beautiful dive into fanhood and reality. What qualifies it for the weirdos book club? Well, the line between real life and fan fiction is crossed so many times.

Reading this book is like putting your brain through a tumble dryer. In this episode we discuss Robbie Williams. Worlds apart. Chandler. The Penis, Suffercles, BTS, and boiled eggs. Just to say, we recorded this episode before the sudden and very sad death

of the actor and writer Matthew Perry. I talk about him a lot in this episode as I was a really big fan, and this book is all about those people we don't know but love very much from afar. We hope you enjoy it. This week's book guest is Y slash N?

Yes. No. YN, yes. YN. You said yes, yes. Yes, no. Y slash N by Esther Yee. Right, this was suggested to us by a listener.

This is our first listener recommendation. Yes. This is our first. Someone wrote in, wrote in by Scroll. Yeah. And so our very first episode was I'm a fan by Sheena Patel. And the listener said, I'd be really interested what you both thought of. Y.N.

Yeah. So we are also dealing with fandom in this book. This is very, yeah, it's in the same. You could put it on your shelf next to I'm a fan, even though they're both very different, but they are both definitely about extreme fandom. So this has made me realize I'm now into fandom as a form of romance and love. Wow.

And I've now got a textbook about fans. See, okay. Studies. Okay. This is really interesting to me. I wanted to know what you thought this book because I didn't warm to it straight away and I am not someone who was ever a fan of a boy band.

Right. Never. Okay, I'll give you the, here's the history. New kids on the block. Yeah, classic. I mean, how old have you been nine? I'm about eight, nine. Yep.

The whole class does hang in to. we're all moving our arms and I think wow this is amazing everyone knows this dance move wow we're all part of something and then I think so it was the spirit of togetherness that got you into new goodness and it wasn't sure joey macinty had dreamy eyes no obviously I chose john because no one liked him everyone liked joey so I was like well I'm not having joey gross I like john and people go john john I'd be like yeah so don's like a man yeah he's a man he's a man look at my taste of men it all makes sense oh god so he's a tall dark odd man yep boom and so nuke's unbook and then I think I take that came next or another boy band at that time and I at nine thought I can't

believe they think I'm that stupid that they're just going to put another group of men in front of me and I'm just supposed to immediately like them oh excuse me fuck you all and I was done with boy bands because I thought this is ridiculous. You felt patronised by the industry that was marketed towards you. I realized that new kids on the block weren't a band of friends that genuinely liked each other and now I liked them. I really realize, oh, they just put different groups of people together, boys, and then they go, look at this new one, as if I'd forget that I liked those other people. You know who you'd have got on with? My dad. My dad, the jazz musician, turning the radio off.

I like jazz. It's all manufactured. I like jazz. It's all manufactured, Sarah. And when Spice Girls... They don't even play their own instruments, Sarah. When Spice Girls came along, I was like, I can't, what? I'm just supposed to because... What? You saw through Spice Girls as well? Yes. It's just a female boy band, you said. Excuse me, at that point, Pet Shop Boys, released an absolutely brilliant chat, cool, brilliant track called Say La Vida A. I had that on tape and I used to have to argue with my friends to let stop playing Spice Girls track so we could listen to the Pet Shop Boys.

Right. Yeah. Right. So I... When is a film going to be made of your life? Never because it's very, very irritating. No, it's like little man tape. It's like that.

But I... No one wants to go to your birthday party because it's a Pet Shop Boys DJing. Hey, that's a fucking cool birthday party. So I never really liked boy bands. I never really into them. So you, but you saw through them. that's what's interesting is that rather than them pressing your buttons, you could see that your buttons, they were trying to press your buttons.

I felt pressured. I was like, oh, they really want me to like one of them, and then I'm supposed to know everything about them, but I only just learn all this stuff about new kids on the block, and now I'm supposed to just forget all this stuff. This is stressful. Like, I wasn't enjoying it at all, and then it was so like, which one are you? And I was like, I'm none of these people. I know I'm none of these people, and I know that I'll never meet this person.

Hey, then friends came along and Charner churned up in my life, and that was... You were churned up. Chandler. Oh my God. But I was much more of like actors. And also, friends wasn't existing so that teenage girls would have posters of Chandler. No, but I did. But you did. So you just picked him for yourself. So just in terms of this period. But you are a boy band fan is what I'm trying to say. Smash hits, stickers. All of the other boy bands that were existing. You were never even like one song, one album. I did like worlds apart. Okay.

Because no one knew who them, here they were. So I enjoyed that. They were the John of all of the bands. They were the David Foster Wallace, our boy band. And there was one man who had long hair in there, who I actually thought was quite fair. But they also made them look like such little boys. Well, that was the point. And I didn't like that. They were desexualized men.

Yeah, I was after a man. There were eunuchs for us to project sexuality onto without any actual sex happening. Yeah. I wasn't like, I wasn't like, oh, I was hanging around the pub looking for a real man. I just, I wasn't the fact that you like long-haired men. Yeah. As a child, I find really worrying. World's apart were more teenage years.

Teenagers are children. I liked worlds apart because, yeah, no one knew them. But, I mean, I was listening to, look, I'm sorry, call me a twat. I was listening to Bob Dylan and Jani Mitchell by them. No, no, you're not a twat. You're, that's very, it's achingly cool, is what they say. It is, it is, lonely. It's lonely.

Because you wanted music that spoke to you and... I wanted sad music. Everyone thinks that's well-made music, Bob Dylan. And was it sadness? Yeah, I wanted stuff that spoke to my sadness. Boys don't have some songs where they sat down on stools, Carriad. That's my history, boy. bands. Let's go into yours because I know that yours is very transformative and significant.

Well, this book made me think a lot about it. Yes, because you were a huge fan of a particular band. A huge fan of a particular band and I did leave reality. When I was 12 or 13, I met E17, which I actually think is really... My first concert was E17. I tried to do stand-up about it, but it didn't work, but I think it was really integral to me realizing anyone could make it. Because I went to the Ilford Island. No, no offense to E17. No, I'm an offend him. I'll take that till I die.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Who eats a potato and runs himself over? He's 17. So, is that? Can we say that? Yeah, it's true. Everyone survived, apart from the potato.

So here's the thing. A girl at school, I won't name her, privacy reasons, and she's got a very unusual name. Her uncle managed a band called E-17. Right. And so we got to go to the Eilford Island, and it was the first concert I'd ever been to. But also, we got to go. backstage and we were school girls. Wow.

And they were, we were there, you know, audience in inverted commas. And they drank Fosters and they had B-O. And they were, you know, normal person height and shape. And they hadn't been that good at singing or dancing. And they then became so successful. Yeah, huge. Baby have you got to go away? That's one of the best Christmas songs ever, actually.

That is their one really good track. That's be fair. I think. Oh, Steam? Steam's not bad. Which I sing to my husband, Steen, all the time. Because I know all of the words to the rap. There's no need to be afraid.

It's that one, isn't it? Right's to the top. Never stop, drop like cream. You bring the body and I'll bring the steen. Sing it to my husband a lot. He doesn't know who E-17 are. I think he thinks I made that song up. Incredible.

Yeah. Hold my body tight. It's a great album. Yeah, yeah. We had a family holiday with my cousins and, yeah, we played it a lot in France. So I remember thinking, I obviously don't hate E-17. No, they were still formative, but for you, it was tight. that who came and swallowed your heart and it was and it was a projection on to take that and nowhere near

this third level and the poetic level that's taken to in YN but what I did was make up stories in my head that felt real to me about being friends with them yeah about how I understood them about how I saw things in them that other people other fans yeah didn't see I really thought I understood Robbie Williams's sadness before he left. And the reason was, it's just so funny now, because now we see Robbie Williams doing his adverts for cat food. It's just very funny. Happy people don't do that.

Yeah, true, true. So the revelation I had really, really early, and I think it was incredibly wise of me at the time, because it's true, and it's something now when I have very successful friends, if you don't feel worthy of love and you have a stadium full of people shouting that they love you

and they don't know you, it's discombobulating, it's not flattering, and it's why it doesn't make sense to people outside of it, why is that person not happy? They could have any woman they want, they can go anywhere in the world, they're rich and they're working with their friends.

I could understand why being and take that made Robbie Williams miserable. And you still feel that, right? You still feel that, right? You still feel? No. I actually have recently grown out of the wanting to be friends with them because Ashton did that film with them.

Oh, yes, and that helped us. Helped you. Yes, helped us. Yeah, I was being kind. Yeah, it was like the last bit of therapy where they put the spider on your arm. She told me some stuff, Mark Irwin, said to her, and it was like, oh, right, okay. Yeah, and you're so... And Howard's Twitter stuff come out as well.

And you're so far removed from that teenage self. I think also when you become a parent as well, like your child self takes another step back. No, the fantasy had lived up to... Oh, no. Okay. Up until Ashting did the film. I still thought me and Gary were going to write a musical together. I still don't doubt that happening.

Because Jason Manfred's writing a musical with him. Yeah. And so it's that Kevin Bacon thing. You've going, I'm not six degrees away from take that anymore. It wouldn't be crazy. I'm one degree away. And you were so obsessed with them as a child and teenager. Yes.

Yeah. I just wanted them to come to Rompford, break down in a limo, near my house. I'll take them inside, make them beans on toast, and say to them, you need to get back in touch with the real world, boys. So that was it. So this is before fan fiction. And obviously something that goes on in right in my end is writing a story where you put them in.

What I really understood, like, with the obsession of this thing of like, it was bigger than sex, sex wouldn't be enough. You wanted to engulf with someone. I wanted to be their best friend. Yeah, more than. I wanted to get in a bath, all of us just in a normal house's bath. It's a big bath. No, it's not. It's a normal.

That's the whole point is that we're squashed. The whole point is we're all shoved in there. It's not a jacuzzi, it's a normal bars. I mean, Gary would be right. Mark could be fine. Howard's tall. His legs are sticking out. Everyone's bits are sticking out.

The point was we're washing together. We're a gang. We should say this book, YN, doesn't stand for yes, no. It stands for your name, which is a type of fan fiction she references, and is about a character who's unnamed, who is obsessed with a K-pop band. She's very disinterested, and then she's taken to a concert, and then the fascination starts, in particular with one. And they're called the boys. The pack of boys, yeah.

And the one she's obsessed with is called moon, but there's also Jupiter, Venus, Sun and Mercury. And they are, I mean, the thing I will say about the boy band that she's obsessed with, they're not your typical British boy band. The depth of feeling of what they're writing about is extremely intellectual. Do you never hear any Westlife? You should have heard worlds apart. It's philosophical.

It's very philosophical. It's existential. Which apparently is a bit of a reference. Someone said that. I don't, I'm not, I'm not aware of BTS, but obviously I know who they are, but I know that people are obsessed with them. BTS's fourth album, Map of the Soul, was based on Jungian psych and analysis. Wow.

So perhaps this is a K-pop thing that we're not familiar with. Yeah. But like she becomes obsessed with this boy. That's a lot like Edinburgh shows, isn't it, and your fourth one is. Yeah. Oh, this one's deep. It's not just dead dad. Yeah, nothing happened this year, so I've had to do some reading.

She's obsessed with Moon. She's living in Berlin. She sees them at a concert and feels like, This moon is not only, she sees his neck. His neck all the way down. Yes, and it sort of is connected to her penis. His penis. Yeah, his penis in some of the most beautiful writing.

He's a dancer, the way he holds himself, everything about her makes her feel like. And she says something, I think this is about the boyfriend she has at the time, but the way she describes is she wants him to lie on top of her, I became nothing just a scale for his weight. So she's looking for obliteration. She is for obliteration. You said it's not, oh, I want to be married to this person. She wants to literally live in Moon.

At one point she's given an x-ray of his insides. And she says, why did I not have this? She's had of him. Yeah, why was this not a poster on my wall. And in the fan fiction, and this is why I referenced the bath, quite a lot of it is about giving birth to Moon. Yes, being his mother and his sister and giving birth to him, adopting him.

And the way that people talk about this kind of love is being jealous of people who haven't met them yet because they have that to look forward to or wishing that they could have known of him before he was even born. Yes. In pre-existence, the absence of people and absence of information about people is written about in exactly the same way as actual information in this book. This is because it's constantly, it starts off being like, here's a fan, here's and fan fiction and then it blurs.

Yeah, she sort of starts writing fan fiction for a fan fiction website, but then it starts flicking between reality and the fan fiction. So she's sort of sometimes following her fan fiction story. where she's Moon's adopted mother who's living with him. And then you're having to cut back to she's in Germany. She's breaking up with her boyfriend because he's like you're too obsessed basically with Moon. He's very Carriad. He's very cynical about Boyb-Bats.

I mean, he's also an absolute asshole to be. But another reason you were like. I mean, he says, I think what you mean is, because she's telling him about her love, you know, about the spiritual companionship that she desires from him and that he understands. Moon, the person she doesn't know. And I think that's the crux. That's what really spoke to me about this book. Loving someone when you know you don't know them.

And what is more real? The feelings that are real or people keep telling you that's not reality. I'm someone who's, I want to embed myself in reality. Like I live for finding them realest, truthfulness thing possible. And that's why boy bands are difficult for me because everything is asking is fantasy. and I am looking to bury myself in reality. I'm going to read this current state, but it reminds me of computer games

and people who start to believe computer games. A complete, yeah, a safe case. Because it becomes realer to you. You're playing the Sims and you feel about that family. Anyway, so this is what Marston says, and this is the cynical view of, I guess, the manipulation of boy bands. I think what you mean is that he designs his lyrical content

and sexual appeal with a specific intent of exploiting the most basic of human emotions like loneliness or the desire for uncondition, love and then derives massive profit from his vampirism. So what you felt as a teenager about boy bands, that is what they're designed to do. Yes, absolutely. It's a product to make you spend money to make you feel connected or grown up or practicing romantic feelings for people you don't know, but they are tricking you into

thinking, yeah, you do. But we should say it's written in a very unique way. How would you describe the writing? Odd. Odd. I found it really hard to get into. Yeah. I found because I don't think,

it's almost, you know that joke about Dawson's Creek where people would be like, that's not how teenagers speak? Imagine that, but they've swallowed a lot of more textbooks. This is a conversation her and Masterson.

He says, you're talking about him as if you know him, he said carefully, normal sentence. I do know him. The person I don't know is you. Am I supposed to take this seriously? I'm never not serious.

I have no idea who you are. But you know Moon, how conveniently hard to prove. Like, The dialogue. That's what I mean about the negative and positive. Yeah, it's a very discombobulating way of writing because it isn't how people speak at all. And actually, I read, as ever, I did my little research and I read interviews with her written down and she writes like this and I listen to an interview and she doesn't speak like this. So it's a very constructed way of talking.

Yes. I feel like it's a deliberate choice from the author. I thought it was sort of poetic absurdism. Yes. Or poetic surrealism. You know exactly what she's describing, but you've never heard. heard it ever described like that before. Yeah, I mean, it's brilliant writing. So this is her walking out. The stadium, it's dark. She smashes a mosquito against her ear, irritated by the

woeful soundtrack of its hysterical survival. I mean, again, she said, this is our protagonist. Someone is trying to talk to her, says, how are you? And she doesn't. She says, nothing makes me want to end a conversation faster than the words, oh, that reminds me of the time. I did not want to remind anyone. Remind anyone. of anything I did not like to be related to. That's so teenage. Is it teenage, you think? Yeah, unexisting yourself, wanting to be absolutely nothing.

It's very dream unexisting yourself. It's not like, oh, I'm here and in my life. The bit I loved so much. She sits next to a guy on the tube and he's reading a book called How to Be a CEO, which is how she knows he's not a CEO, and then she hates that she knows something about him. But all she knows is something that he's not. This is what I mean about the positive negative.

Yes. Sometimes not being a thing or not knowing a thing is the only evidence. Yeah. We've had this with books before. I had a real, real big gear shift in my head of like, okay, this book is surreal, it's not trustworthy, like things are not what they seem. She suddenly goes to Korea, Seoul, to find Moon.

And there's no kind of like, how does she afford it, what happens to her life? She just goes. And she goes because a stranger says, if you really loved him, you try and find him. Yeah, so she's like, oh, you're right, of course, what am I doing in Berlin? It doesn't feel like a very fleshed out character.

who wants to go for themselves. It's Alice Amundland. She falls into that situation almost rather than like, oh, I'm following the challenges of this character. And it's a very, I say again, it's a short book. And I think that's why it copes with the level of strangeness it's asking you. I actually really enjoyed it much more when she gets to Korea. And it feels like the surrealness, everybody is joining in the surrealness.

So her friend, O, who becomes her psychic. She's on, this is why, so she's on a moped with O. Let me just read this sentence, can I? Because this is the kind of sentence that I sort of had to read 14 times. Yes, yeah, yeah. Because it makes me feel so giddy. The headlights on the opposite side of the road grew in intensity, but just when they seemed impossible to endure the boiled eggs of my eyes,

they abruptly disappeared. The lights repeated this process of total existence and total non-existence. So we've all been in a car or on a moped or on a bicycle and seen lights appearing and disappearing. But suddenly we've got boiled eggs of eyes and its existence and non-existence. Yeah, I mean, the writing is incredible writing. It pushes meaning right to the edge,

which is why I think it's poetic and... Yeah, yeah, I agree with it. Again, it's just that thing of like, I found it, I just found it hard sometimes to sit with it because, again, I think I was looking for meaning. I find surrealism in writing... I guess maybe I do find it hard. I do find it hard.

And again, because it's set... You know, we're beginning in this... boy band fantasy which is yeah something i i don't particularly relate to and then she's following and and we this is a spoiler so just prepare yeah she her friend oh who i wanted to say she meets oh because o comes up to her and says i make shoes you're wearing the shoes i make i've been searching my whole life for someone wearing these shoes that's how they become friends and then follows her because she wants to see what happens to her shoes yeah yeah which is it's brilliant um and then there's a they do sheet masks at the cinema they do sheet masks at the cinema they do sheet

at the cinema and they wear them on a moped until they dry and crumble into their face. And they have tiny little mouths that are open underneath their sheet masks. The sheep mask was brilliantly described. That was really good to say. Moon is suddenly announced that he's leaving the band and no one quite understanding what's happening. And then he's going to be deleted

from the world. Yeah. Well they suspect the fans are worried and she meets other super fans who she also hates. She hates the other super fans because how can they love something how can they have what she has? Like if her love is so unique and special, can they have the same issues. Which is how fans feel. Well yeah, I was going to ask you how...

So on her YN website, when they say the most written about person is Moon, there's something very difficult for her to absorb then because it makes her quotidian. It makes her exactly like everyone else. He is a character and she has to reframe it. I think there's a sense of camaraderie with people who could follow bands around. Yeah. But also a sense that, yeah, no one understands them how you understand them because it's a thing you've made up. and the communication between the two of you. There's that brilliant bit where she meets that man who is with a couple who are so into moon,

they just say the word moon to each other over and over again and occasionally one of them accidentally says, moron. Oh, it sounds like that, yes. Because it's going moon, moon, moon, moon. I don't tell you this. So I have a very powerful memory of when Robbie Williams left, take that. And me and my sister didn't go to school. We didn't have to, we were threatening suicide.

And we went to the big breakfast every day to see Robbie Williams, which meant we got up at like four or five, we bunked the train, waited outside big breakfast, and he would come out in breaks and they would film the girl screaming, etc., etc. I remember staring at the back of his head, willing him to turn and look at me.

Very powerfully, and sometimes he did, and sometimes it's a glance across a group of people, and he was doing a thing where he was snogging some people from the crowd, and we'd accidentally told them our real ages, because they pretended it was a quiz competition. So we'd said that, I mean, I said that I was 14 and Cheryl had admitted to me in 12. So we didn't get snobbed. And looking back, good on him, good on him.

Well done, Channel 4. But when I did Rod Gilbert's growing pains, they found footage of me staring at the back of Robbie Williams. And I don't remember the clothes I was wearing, like everything about myself is unrecognisable, except looking at my 14-year-old self and going, I have never been so powerful. Wow. Whatever I felt inside. you know like Matilda moving the pencil with her eyes it was that it was such a strength of feeling I don't feel that for my husband

it's not in the kitchen making scrambled eggs and me going turn around love me back love me back or I'll die the only thing I can relate to which but it's so weird so I was obsessed with Chandler and I had on my folder a huge picture of him in a swimming pool from probably just 17 that I'd cut out he's like half in the swimming pool half out in a suit very funny very funny it's dressed in a swimming pool and I would be in D&T food. That's where's one of my Jesusies.

And I would stare at the door, willing Chandler to come into this classroom and say, you don't have to be here. Your life is better than this. So that's the same thing. So that's what it is. I wasn't in front of Chandler. Like I knew it was complete fantasy.

I, for me, at that point, not really properly existing, not properly being seen, not probably wanting to be seen, thinking I was so ugly. The idea of Robbie Williams's eyes seeing the outline of me, It wasn't like I thought he was going to recognise a kindred spirit,

but I thought I will start existing when he notices me. Yeah, yeah, that's similar. And I do also think that part of my lack of boy band was fear, that I was too young for it, that I was like, no, thank you. Even the projection of this is a bit scary. And it wasn't until I was like 1415 that I found Chandler. And I was like, oh, now a boy, I'm ready for a boy to notice me. But that's definitely what I wanted.

I wanted Chandler to come in and say, Chandler was still really non-sexual. And funny, that was my big thing, was that he was funny and we would be funny We would be funny. We would be funny. We like the jokers. We like the jokers.

That was my obsession was definitely that he was funny in his group but not attractive. And that's how I felt was like, I'm not attractive, but I can be funny and we will be funny together. And he'll be like, hey, you're funny. You don't have to make this soup and write down how it would be sold in a cafe and budget.

Thank you, Chandler. So the escapism, these are the themes that I think are very true of fandom, wherever you find the person, it's a lot to do with yourself and what you think you're lacking. It's what they see in you, which is reassuring or builds you up in some way and escaping from a situation where you're currently unhappy.

I don't think you exist as a super fan or an obsessive fan when life is satisfying. No, I don't think you can. I think it's something is not nourishing you, so you're searching for food somewhere else. Yeah. She wrote something, which just really stuck with me. So when she returns home,

maybe this is part of the fan fiction. It is. When she returns home, she realizes that the third person she'd sense in their apartment is the star that moon is poised to become. Every human body is capable of producing a spirit that lingers apart from it. But whether that spirit is truer or fulser than the body,

she has no answer. So for certain bits, I was like, wow, it is really asking some huge questions about celebrity and a lot of people, the stuff I read on the internet, but we're talking about parasocial relationships. What is a parasycial relationship? When you, someone on the internet you think you know because you follow them on Instagram all the time.

And so you're like, oh, I know, that's weird. The same. Like they get me. They're my friend because I follow their Instagram. Because I saw a cartoon the other day. I didn't understand the joke. And it was a man on one knee with a skull saying, alas, poor Yorick, I knew him parasocial.

That's a good. Yeah. And I was just like, I need to find out what that word means because I think that's a really probably funny. It's very recent and it's very coming to parasocial relationships. So it's the idea that a fan, especially now, so what people are saying is like now, you can have such a closeness with a celebrity,

or not even a celebrity, an influencer, a mum who shares her children and life on the internet, that you think, oh, we're definitely friends. And I would argue that that's always been the case, like you're going to the big breakfast. Like I think it's, the internet gives a different access, but there was always an access, you know, I think the amount of material we get now

because my materials were take that videos and then the extras on take that videos and then if they did appear on a TV show video in it. So it was... Yeah, I mean you didn't have Instagram live at that house. Yeah, and so the information you had

was also then so easy to control and limit. Mark's got an iguana. Yeah, but does that cause more fans because there's more material? Oh no, she's... Yes, the gaps. That's why I think you're projecting onto space. Yeah.

But this character is like, watching basically an Instagram live where he just eats food. And then there's one where his bandmate eats his fingernail cuticles. Yeah. Because he wants to consume him. That I've found difficult. So you know what I mean? So like in terms of fandom, has it always been this way?

Have teenage girls always had this power? Or has the internet changed it? And now we have this power of social relationships that like, like imagine what you, 14 year old you would have done with? I guess I don't know because I don't know any 14 year old girls. I don't know any any fans in my family. real life, anyone who is having an intense relationship with a public figure. I wonder if sometimes in some ways, because there's such a deluge of people, maybe it's

really filtered down. It's much more like, yeah, I like them. I liked that one song they did. Well, BTS have definitely surpassed that. So, K-pop seems to be doing it. But is British, I mean, is that what happened with One Direction? I'm just too old to know about it. You're not too old to know, aren't we?

Yeah. Well, people did get, yeah, same with One Direction. I think they were probably the last big take that style band. from Britain, maybe, but God, correct me if I'm wrong. Obviously, K-pop has a swath of girl and boy bands that people are obsessed with and are hugely globally successful. And they're very manufactured, aren't they? Sort of like living in houses and managed.

Some people would say they are, but obviously other people, you know, they do produce good music and it's very successful. I just mean that they aren't, they're not allowed to have relationships. Yeah, I'm sure it's highly, I don't know enough about it. It does seem highly controlled. Everything I know is from True Crime Podcasts. only other real bad guys. In the book, it says,

after reading a Korean translation of Sophocles, the boy band, the boys, have become fixated on Oedipus Rex's decision to couch his eyes out. Consequently, the album they're performing is a statement of protest against Edipus's capitulation to darkness. And that's in the book, which obviously used to say, I would get back into boy bands if it was that kind of stuff.

Well, I think you'd like BTS. I think there's a lot of that going on. I mean, I am going to have to do some research, aren't I? into their philosophical album. This for me really summed up why fandom is a safer place than real love and the real risks. You've settled for a comfortable distance from him so that you can yearn without suffering. And then he's saying, sorry, but you're not in love, you're a fan, boring, lethargic, overfed.

And this is the person who tells her to go to Korea. Like if you really loved him, you'd be in soul right now. that comfortable distance yearning without suffering there's something really enjoyable to that kind of yearning when it will be without end and your imagination can keep coming up with more and more scenarios and living in that emotion will feel really really alive and vibrant and skinless and sad but in an enjoyable way because it's not suffering because it's not real rejection well how did you feel about the second half of the book where there is moon is removed for the band but there is a competition by lottery that you can go and charlie in the chocolate factory yeah we've seen that plot before us 10 fans are going to go to this pyramid plaza where they live they live there they write their songs there no one else is allowed in oh her friend enters but forces our character to go says i'm not going you go she goes there she finds she speaks to the music professor who's the woman who has created it all orchestrating it yeah and then that woman tells her where

moon is actually hiding and she meets Moon. Yes. That for me was the really interesting part. Was it? Yeah, because that was like reality. I was so overtaken by the dementia patients. Yes. And the description of dementia. So we should say he's living in a care home.

Yes. For three dementia patients. And dementia is described as people as become children again. Yeah. And then it became even more like this level of like what is real, what is reality when you have people who are experiencing dementia. Yeah. That moon became so much less. important to me and I guess that's why I love the narrative of this book this isn't

girl sees boy in concert tracks boy down meets boy it's something so much deeper about what is real and what is worth feeling and what is worth doing yeah I think you're right I think I just found it hard to get into it it felt like it felt like I was reading behind five layers does that make sense of like, it just felt like, because the language was so heightened and poetic and the things that happened seem so slippery that sometimes I was like, oh, just what is happening? Like, what's going on? And then I found when she meets Moon and it's, and she's in the same room with him, but she sort of runs away and is like, I'd rather not meet you because then I'm going to have to face reality. And he kind of doesn't really get her want much to do with her. And there's another girl whose dad has dementia, who's in the home, who he's, who he's. clearly having a massive thing with. Well, you sort of see them naked at the end, don't you?

Yeah, and like they are really understanding each other. Like, she says they're like staring each other in that way that you just described. Like, he can't take his eyes off her. She's got this, you know, long plat and she's in agony because her dad doesn't remember her. And like, there's this weird tension between them. And I was like, oh, yeah, I find that interesting of like the super mega fan arrives, almost waiting for Jesus to be like, teach me. And it's like, well, Jesus is quite busy actually.

He's got a wife and he's, like, sorting this. out and it's i guess i found that interesting of like the disappointment that she's kind of she kind of realizes consuming him not knowing him being him eating him was what she was after not to actually meeting him earlier in the book she explains that what she desires well than anything is to be bored by him yes because was boredom is knowledge true love is boredom it's it's not the will they won't they it's not do you don't you it's not what am i showing you what am i hiding it's the point where you can relax and the person you love most in the world

can walk into the room to get some brand flakes and they start talking and you're on your phone so she's looking for that is that what you feel yeah because that's the only way to make this go away the obsession yeah yeah and I'm not I'm not saying that that was explicitly there but no no but it's interesting I hooked onto she was never trying to get with him that would have been

disappointing yeah yeah yeah and it would have been too much it wasn't love it's just interesting that when she finally is in the room with him she doesn't even that is not what what she's seeking and I think that's me not understanding superfandum. What did you think of this description of the erection at the end? Oh, I can't remember that. Should we read it?

Blanked it out of my mind. I just loved it because, so the first thing, the first thing she notices about him is his neck when she first sees him in concert. And then she just imagines his body all the way down to his penis. And it's just the most amazing way I've ever heard male anatomy described. And then finally, at the end, we actually see the penis. Oh, yeah. And first of all, it's all sort of like curled up and hibernating really sweetly.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll read a bit of what she's by your looking, because she's, says, I don't see the novel as a cautionary tale against anything. To be honest, it's simply documenting this one individual's attempt to perhaps experience something beyond the boundaries of her given conditions, beyond the boundaries of her human consciousness, which of course, for any person is an extremely dangerous thing to embark on. Either you are sent over to the other side and possibly you never come back to reality. You never survive to tell the story, or you come back and you're probably a little bit destroyed, to put it mildly. I thought, oh, that's, yeah,

it's like if Alice could come back from the looking glass and be like, fucking how do you want to know I've just seen? Yeah. Is any come down? Yeah. Is any come down from any, you know, huge emotional or chemical or... I can't cope with disappointment, Sarah, so I don't allow myself to even get the highs. The penis began a steady expansion into itself.

The tip unsheathing, its contours sharpening, what was once as soft as an eyelid. Am I embarrassing you carry out? You're 41 years old. Listen to the penis. I'm pretty, Judy. As the penis rose straight into the air, it assumed the appearance of an ancient arrowhead. It cast a baleful gaze upon its surroundings as its master remained sunken unconsciousness.

How incredible. This is the whole point with surrealism or absurdism. It's seeing the world freshly. Yeah, yeah, no. And I've seen so many dicks. Everyone wants some colors. You've seen so many dicks that I cut you off. I've seen so many dicks that I've forgotten the magic.

You know, I'm not writing poems about them anymore. It's a really interesting book. It's really interesting, it's really fascinating. And actually for people who did read, I'm a fan, I think it's a really great second book. Yes, I agree. It's like a good pudding to the main of I'm a fan. So yeah, I'm a fan is a really incredible book. And that's your dinner.

And then someone comes in and plays the bagpipe's really loud in your ear. That's this book. Yes. Yeah. You think you're getting pudding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but you've just had a clown throw a gungy in your face. A penis that looks like an arrow's a peer.

I've got a last line. Great. I've got like a little bit too, yeah. Oh, okay, you do yours then because I was just... Well, mine's about reading, which is why I chose it. Oh, okay, well, I just like, she said, she shut her eyes. It's just so much better in our head, she said,

and then she went far, far away. And I was like, that's what this book is about, if you feel it's better to live in your head. Yeah, and that there's no, there's no superiority. There isn't a right way to live your life. No, no. This is the music professor. Have you been reading as if your life depends on it?

She liked to ask the boys. Have you been reading as if every, single sentence could be true. Have you been reading until you feel sick on everything you know? That's what I'm asking to our listeners. Have you been reading like everything's true and it makes you feel sick? Yeah. Because we have. Yeah. That's the level of intensity of this book. It's really intense. It's really intense. It's really intense. It's very, very intense. But yeah, I'm so glad that the listener recommended it because I hadn't heard of it and I would never have picked it up. And I found it really interesting. I'm now really into fans. You know that they did doing like MRI scans

and the parts of the brain that lit up for, it's like religious. fanaticism. And it was like mum's looking at pictures of their babies. Wow. The love is real. Oh, the love is real. And that's what this book does really well. And we can have a whole other conversation about how that teenage girl fandom has been patronised, been minimised, rather than recognised as a genuine, powerful love and capitalised and monetised.

China Patel's about loving someone who isn't worthy of it. But this is someone who doesn't even matter who the person is. The emotions are real. Yeah. So actually the realness of the world falls to pieces. If you were affected by the breakup of Take That, we'd like to recommend YM by S to you. Or talking to Ashton, who made a film with them. Yeah, have you been affected. And that film is great.

And you should watch it. Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. Next week's book guest is still born by Guadalupe Nettle. Sarah's fantastic novel Weirdo. It's available to buy now. And my book, You Are Not Alone. It's awesome. Also fantastic.

Available in the shop that sells books. or sometimes other places. Into you? Yep. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.