Song Exploder - Book Exploder: Carmen Maria Machado - In the Dream House

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

Carmen Maria Machado is the award-winning author of In the Dream House, a memoir where each chapter has its own vivid style of storytelling. It won the Folio Prize in 2021, and was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and NPR. In the Dream House depicts Carmen’s experiences in an abusive relationship, and in this episode, she spoke to Susan about a pivotal passage from the chapter “Dream House as House in Florida.” 

One note before we start. This episode includes discussion and descriptions of domestic abuse. So please take care before going ahead. You're listening to Book Exploder, where authors break down a passage from their work to show us how they write. I'm Rishi Keish Sheerway. And I'm Susan Orlean. Today I'm speaking to Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House. So In The Dreamhouse is one of the few nonfiction books that we're doing for our series.

How did you end up picking this one? Well, I think that this book would stand examination in just about any genre, whether it's fiction, nonfiction, poetry, gender studies. It's a remarkable book and memoir about a very, very complicated, destructive relationship. In The Dreamhouse was named one of the best books of 2019 by NPR and the New York Times and Time Magazine, and it won several prizes, including, the Folio Prize in 2021. The book is broken into many, many short sections, which have their own tone, their own internal logic. And I first encountered it reading a section

that I believe was excerpted somewhere, and I just thought, I need to have this book immediately. I need to read this book. Okay, here's Susan's interview with Carmen Maria Machado, talking about a passage from the chapter called Dreamhouse as House in Florida. I have many questions. So let's start with this particular section

because it is a real hinge in the book. Yeah. So I have just started dating the subject of the memoir, an ex-girlfriend. We have decided to go visit her parents. We did sort of a road trip and then we flew to Florida where her parents live. And that's where we begin.

It's also in second person. All the sort of memoir passages of this book are in second person. And it comes not halfway through the book, but we've sort of led up to it, and then things move very quickly downhill from this moment. It really does feel like things turn in a way that's subtle, but when you look back, you think, oh, that's where everything changed. You visit her parents' house in the southernmost part of Florida. You fought the whole way down. At the Dulles Airport, she made you cry at a Sam Adams branded restaurant, and several strangers looked over with judgment as you pressed a napkin against your face like a consumptive.

And you are relieved to be there. The book is these fragmentary moments. Tell me how you arrived at this form for this book. I'd been trying to write about this material for a very long time, and I had really struggled to get it right. Everything I wrote was terrible. And I was in Iowa City teaching at this youth nerd writing camp. It's like I would have murdered to have done it as a child. And I was just spending every day sitting with my students talking about genres, you know, horror one day and science fiction the next and fantasy the next and using it as a way of discussing how to think about. things like plot and character and sentences. And then I spent a lot of time walking around this little college town getting like eaten alive by mosquitoes and thinking. And at some point sort of the idea of applying sort of the logic of like a haunted house story or something similar to the memoir could be like an interesting way to go. And it was like the key to understanding what my brain was trying to do because as soon as I figured that out, the book, it sort of fell out of me.

I mean, the whole book just sort of emerged in this way that felt very correct. That actually brings me to my next question, which is the decision to make this nonfiction rather than fiction. Well, I have written about this material in fiction. What I discovered myself in general is that I actually find that when I'm going to write about a subject about which I have many complicated feelings, it's helpful for me to write fiction about it first because I sort of have all the tools I need at my disposal. I can like invent any creature, bring in any sort of being or beast or event or do whatever I want to do. And that kind of gives me space to kind of really figure out what I'm thinking. So for this book, I think I felt like I had written fiction about it. I had organized a lot of my thoughts about it. And I felt like it deserved, it deserves sort of the dignity of nonfiction. Like it deserved to be thought of it not as a thing that one might invent in one's head,

but a thing that actually happened. Mm-hmm. And I feel like for me, because of the subject of the book, like that was really important where I was like, okay, here's a book about what actually happened to me.

Here it is very plainly laid out. One thing that popped out at me is there is this ambient dread and a pacing in this section in particular that for me is exactly the pacing of a horse film. She has an ancient cat who immediately tries to bite you. Her mother is bird-like, too thin, and you are worried for her, for yourself. Her father shows up later, pours himself a generously

sized cocktail. Her family is funny and mean. They are different from your family, who you feel have never appreciated your mind. And there is only her and her two parents, and you are jealous. There is no other word for it. Are you a big horror fan? You said you were very interested in genre. Is that a favorite of yours? I am, in fact, a massive horror fan. I love horror.

It's my favorite genre. So it informs you whether it's deliberate or it's simply that it's something you love, so it affects the way you write, because it has this feeling where, as a reader, you keep wanting to say, there's something in the house. Yeah. Run! It has a huge horror riff going through it. They feed you. Chicken and Israeli cus-cus and cookies and calmata olives and a bean salad with so much dill.

Seafood and risotto and fresh fruit, you laugh. Maybe we should move here, you say, and her mother smiles brightly. And for a moment you feel like a scene in a movie, a boyfriend being clied by the culinary arts of the mother of your lover. You never see her mother eat, not once. And that phenomenon of it all looks lovely, but in fact there's something evil inside. Yeah, you know, it's so funny. I feel like as a reader, my favorite thing to read is a piece of writing where something is absolutely wrong, but it is not 100% clear what is wrong. And I feel like there's something about that that I find very, obviously very unnerving.

but very satisfying in its own way. And that's also like part of horror, that sense of atmospheric dread where like all these little details are adding up to something that isn't quite correct. And it's like this weird sort of sum of this arithmetic that's happening

where suddenly you're like, I don't know why, but I feel very uneasy. Yeah. I mean, I think the thing about this that's so interesting is like if you've ever been friends with somebody who's been in an unhealthy relationship that there is a horror movie quality to it

where you're like, I can see what's happening because I'm viewing it from the outside, and it seems clear to me that it's bad. But this person seems unable to see what's happening. And it's just like any kind of horror film where, like, the protagonist is making choices that don't make a lot of sense. I guess it's surprising to me there isn't more horror about a music relationship. It feels like it's just ripe for it, honestly. We'll be right back with more after this. I want to talk about some of the specific

word choices and sentences and so forth in this passage. So one thing that's stuck with me, after I read the book, I kept going back to this image, which was her mother's knife as it wraps the cutting board with unnerving precision. The next day you get into a fight about almost nothing at all while sitting on her childhood bed. You decide to walk away. Go sit in the kitchen. I'll be reading, you say, and you do for almost an hour. Her mother is standing at the counter, chopping something fragrant and chatting at you in a bright voice. Your girlfriend comes into the kitchen and asks, what are you reading as her hand starts to circle your arm? I am, you start to reply, and her fingers tighten. Her mother still chopping says,

Are you girls still going to the beach later? Her knife wraps against the cutting board with unnerving precision. Her grip goes hard, begins to hurt. You don't understand. You don't understand so profoundly your brain skitters, skips, backs up. You make a tiny gasp, the tiniest gasp you can. I could hear it, the tap, tap, tap of the knife. And that struck me as this is just the way you build suspense and horror. Was it Chekhov who said if there's a gun? It has to be fired. With this, there's the knife and you think, oh my God. The events of this chapter were so vivid. to me, that it was very easy to write it in the sense that because this was this hinge, this moment where sort of what I'd experienced before this, which had been primarily psychological

and verbal and very cruel, slipped very suddenly into this very light physical abuse. And like that moment of sitting there and her grabbing my arm and squeezing it, And I remember like writing that bit and thinking about like trying to describe how my, because my brain like truly, I feel like I was not able to like fully process what was happening. Like what does it mean when you're an adult? So you're not a child fighting with a sibling. You're like an adult human who does not regularly physically fight people. Like you touch people either like neutrally or with affection. But like to touch somebody with anger, to touch them in a way that is like threatening.

It's so alien to me. I mean, it's as alien to me as I could possibly imagine, honestly. And also one of the things that feels very natural is I think when you have a traumatic experience, you often keep trying to make sense of it in little bits. And that's what this felt like to me was you worrying the idea over and over again, How did this happen? How did I get here? How did I allow myself to be in this abusive relationship? And if I turn it this way, will it make more sense? If I turn it that way, will it make more sense? It reads like synapses firing.

This is not normal. This is not normal. This is not normal. Your brain is scrambling for an explanation. And it hurts more and more. And everything is static. I feel like the whole paragraph of my brain responding to the way she's grabbing me. I feel like that was such a hard thing to describe. Well, you did that very difficult thing, I think, of helping the reader not turn away in horror, but to lean in to the story of something deeply disturbing. And that alone is, I think, a huge challenge

to be beckoning even when what you're demonstrating is something quite awful. I think it really is about, you know, so much of this book, I'm a fiction writer by trade, and so much of this book was a learning curve for me in terms of transferring information from my brain to the page without that sort of intermediary of fiction as like a thing. Do that makes any sense?

And so I feel like for this, being able to say like, okay, I need to like that moment that she did that thing, I need to write about that with clarity so that somebody else understands it. I remember being on a panel once years ago, like a nonfiction panel, and they asked us, how do you describe creative nonfiction?

How would you define it? And I can't remember who it was, but somebody else on the panel said, I think of it as nonfiction that's true down to the syllable. Ooh, I love that. I know. Isn't that amazing?

Because it's like there's a truth that comes from a precisely crafted sentence, whether it's a literal sort of journalistic truth or a sort of more metaphorical truth. And that not just the facts are true, but like the choice of words and the arrangement of the words and the sound of the sentences are themselves reflecting that truth as well, which I feel like is like the hardest. I mean, I feel like in this section in particular, it's me using, you know, one, two, three, like many, many sentences to describe a thing that happens in a relatively brief period of time because I was trying to slow it down and be like,

what was my brain doing while this thing was happening where I was trying to process it but couldn't. And so I feel like that part was like a kind of crash course and like how to get a reader to like follow like actually a very sort of complicated or very subtle or nuanced experience. And I feel like that's a moment where I was like, how do I convey this brief moment of fear? in a way that feels clear and understandable to somebody to whom it did not happen. This whole chapter both shows this moment of transition to this other darker place and also even almost like accounts for it, which was really important to me. Like on some level I can never know a lot of the whys of this situation.

Like there's a lot of whys that I'll simply never know. And the challenge of book like this is like you're confronted constantly with like the way the brain works in this way that is very alarming. and stressful. And now here's Carmen Maria Machado reading the passage from In the Dream House. You visit her parents' house in the southernmost part of Florida.

You fought the whole way down. At the Dulles Airport, she made you cry at a Sam Adams branded restaurant, and several strangers looked over with judgment as you pressed a napkin against your face like a consumptive, and you are relieved to be there. She has an ancient cat

who immediately tries to bite you. her mother is bird-like, too thin, and you are worried for her, for yourself. Her father shows up later, pours himself a generously sized cocktail. Her family is funny and mean. They are different from your family, who you feel have never appreciated your mind. And there is only her and her two parents, and you are jealous. There is no other word for it. They feed you.

Chicken and Israeli cuss-cousse and cookies and calmata olive. and a bean salad with so much dill. Seafood and risotto and fresh fruit. You laugh. Maybe we should move here, you say, and her mother smiles brightly, and for a moment you feel like a scene in a movie, a boyfriend being plied by the culinary arts

of the mother of your lover. You never see her mother eat, not once. If you go out for a walk later, her father says, drinking his third martini, make sure you watch out for alligators. Alligators, you repeat in alarm. They probably won't attack you, he says. The glass is suddenly empty, probably.

The next day you get into a fight about almost nothing at all while sitting on her childhood bed. You decide to walk away, go sit in the kitchen. I'll be reading, you say, and you do for almost an hour. Her mother is standing at the counter, chopping something fragrant and chatting at you in a bright voice. Your girlfriend comes into the kitchen and asks, what are you reading as her hand starts to circle your arm. I am, you start to reply, and her fingers tighten. Her mother still chopping says, Are you girls still going to the beach later? Her knife wraps against the cutting board with unnerving precision. Her grip goes hard, begins to hurt. You don't understand. You don't understand so profoundly your

brain skitters, skips, backs up. You make a tiny gasp, the tiniest gasp you can. It is the first time She's touching you in a way that is not filled with love, and you don't know what to do. This is not normal. This is not normal. This is not normal. Your brain is scrambling for an explanation, and it hurts more and more, and everything is static. Your thoughts are accompanied by a cramp of alarm, and you are so focused on it that you miss her response. In The Dream House is available in hardcover, paperback, and audiobook. Carmen's website is carmenaria machado.com. You can visit us at bookexploder.com for more information. This episode was produced by Theo Balcom, Julia Botero, Susan, and me. Nick's song is our production assistant.

Raina Takahashi created the Book Exploder logo. Our episode artwork is by Paula Jackson, and I made the show's theme music. Book Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. A network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. Find out more at Radiotopia.fm. I'm Rishi K. Sherway. And I'm Susan Orlean. Thanks for listening.

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