The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Land of Cockaigne by Jeffrey Lewis

Episode Date: November 6, 2021

Land of Cockaigne by Jeffrey Lewis A novel written as a sharp parable of American society, addressing love, purpose, discrimination, and poverty. In Jeffrey Lewis’s novel, the Land of Cockaigne, once an old medieval peasants’ vision of a sensual paradise on earth, is reimagined as a plot on the coast of Maine. In efforts to assuage their grief over their son’s death and to make meaning of his life, Walter Rath and Catherine Gray build what they hope will be a version of paradise for a group of young men from the Bronx. As Walter and Catherine work to reinvent this land, formerly a summer resort, the surrounding town of Sneeds Harbor proves resistant. The residents’ well-meaning doubts lead to well-hidden threats, and the Raths’ marriage unravels as Walter loses faith in democracy. Meanwhile, the Bronx boys, who have only ever known the city, try to navigate this new land that is completely alien to them. Written as a parable of contemporary American society, Land of Cockaigne is by turns furious, funny, subversive, tragic, and horrifying. Faced with the question of what to do amid disastrous times, Walter Rath offers a clue: Love is an action, not a feeling. Once you go down this path of faith, there is much to be done.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks just voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with a great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in to see the video version of this. Go to goodreads.com. Actually, you go to youtube.com, Fortress Chris Voss. See all the things we're

doing videos on and all the wonderful, amazing authors like the one that we have today. We'll be interviewing and you can see all the wonderful books and works they're doing at goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, where everything we're reading or viewing over there as well. There's an Amazon giveaway going on for my book over there if you want to try and get a free copy. We also have Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those crazy places the kids are at nowadays where we are taking and sharing the show. So you definitely want to follow the show over there. If you haven't over here, you can even see on Instagram we broadcast stuff.

It's quote-unquote live. It's a couple days old, but no one knows the difference who cares. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now,

wherever fine books are sold. But the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Today we have Jeffrey Lewis on the show. He is the author of the book wherever fine books are sold anyway guys uh thanks for tuning in uh today we have jeffrey lewis on the show he is the author of the book coming out on november 2nd which was

yes today there you go i'm used to being a lead-up so you definitely want to order it today because it's out today is a hot day it's the day when it's got that beautiful nice uh print that comes right off of it unless you buy the Kindle version, of course. But you can still smell your Kindle if you want. It's got that fine, new print ink smell. So The Land of Cocaine is out on hardcover November 2, 2021 today. Definitely want to order that video so you can say you're the first one to read it. It's a novel written as a sharp parable of American society addressing love, purpose,

discrimination, and poverty. And Jeffrey is on the show with us today. He's going to be talking about it. He has won a string of awards for his novels, including the Independent Publisher's Gold Medal for Literary Fiction, the Independent Publisher's Gold Medal for General Fiction, and the Forward Silver Medal for medal for fiction his most recent book Bealefort Bealeport I'm sorry Bealeport a novel of town of a town was a 2019 main literary awards finalist he also received two Emmy awards and the Writers Guild of America award as well as 10 additional Emmy nominations and six additional Writers Guild nominations for his work as a television writer, most notably for Hill Street Blues and producer.

A winner in the Humanitas Prize, the People's Choice Award, a GLAAD Media Award, and two NAACP Image Awards and a Golden Globes nomination. He divides his time between Maine and Los Angeles. Thanks for coming on the show, Jeffrey. How are you? I'm good. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. There you go.

Hill Street Blues, man. What a show. What a show. That was an amazing show. In fact, now I've got the tune going through my head. Congratulations on the new book. Today's your launch day, so congratulations. That's always fun for all the work you put into it. Give us your plugs so people can find you

on the interwebs. My plug is simple. Go either to your independent bookstore in the community where you live and ask for this book. They may well not have it because they can't have everything, but they can get it fast. And failing that or is a perfectly good alternative to that go on amazon.com and buy the book and if you happen to like it review it say something nice about it if you happen to like it and you can go on my author's page and leave uh comments there you go give us some reviews guys check it out order it up and all that good stuff so what motivated you on to write this book, Jeffrey? It's a good question, and I would say it probably is going to get a more complicated answer than you would imagine.

There you go. Most of my books come about when a number of different things stuck in my memory, my craw, or my imagination fit together in some kind of constellation of events, it seemed to hang together and make a story which means something, usually in societal terms. In this case, there were a number of things.

One was in 2016. I'll go back farther than that in the village where i spend my summers and fall on the coast of maine some years ago there was rumored to be and only a rumor and i didn't know anything more about it than a rumor that a couple who had lost a child in the child's honor was thinking to establish a drug rehabilitation clinic somewhere on the outskirts of the village. Nothing ever happened with that for various village, would respond to a drug habilitation clinic on its outskirts. the man who was then the governor of Maine in a news conference which gained national attention even so that you may have heard of it and many of your viewers may have heard of it made some comments about drug dealers

who came to Maine from out of state and caused a lot of trouble in Maine by selling their drugs and then as he said half the time getting a white girl pregnant before they went back to where they came from in Connecticut. And I don't even want to characterize that statement. It's pretty obvious from the words. But it kicked my mind into gear as to how some kids who were not drug dealers coming to the state of Maine, but did come from an inner city, namely the Bronx, New York, would respond on hearing those words.

Then there were some other things as well. Years ago in my life, I spent some time in the criminal justice system in New York as an assistant DA for a couple of years and actually dealt with courthouse diversionary programs quite a bit. That is to say, programs which were established trying to keep kids who were getting in trouble with the law out of incarceration by proposing alternatives to incarceration. And I actually had a girlfriend who worked in one of those programs for a while so I felt then some sympathy I continue to feel that sympathy as I remember while I was working on Hill Street Blues and it's remained in in my mind and feelings to this day so that that also that diversionary program in the Bronx New York fictionalized

a fictionalized program of course played played an important role in the book and when all those things came together I began to have the outlines of a book I would add lastly although the the village portrayed in Land of Cocaine is substantially different from the village that I frequent live in on the coast. In particular, it's different because where I live has a substantial summer community and the village in Land of Cocaine in particular does not. Nonetheless, my being here and loving the place, really. Awesome. Nonetheless, my being here and loving the place, really, all came together in this book. Awesome. So give us an overall arcing of the book and what's inside.

I'm sorry, can you repeat that? Could you give us an overall arcing view of what's in the book, the storyline? I'll try to do that without too many plot explainers. Roughly, I think what I said previously may already capture it. A couple, and in this case, an extraordinarily rich couple, wealthy couple, because the guy had been an early business guy in Silicon Valley. He had left early. He couldn't take it anymore. He had left early. But even if he left early, he left with quite a fortune. He and his wife show up in this village and settle there and raise their child there.

And when they lose that child, they set out to honor his memory when they learn that the only wish of his that they're aware of anyway was that some of the kids who were members of the diversionary program that he was working on in the Bronx, New York, in the Bronx courthouse. His wish that they come up to where he had grown up on the idyllic coast of Maine for a couple weeks and live a completely stress-free, trouble-free, obligation-free life. That's the

basic setup of the book. It's about, in turn, whether the married couple can survive as a married couple, whether this town or this village can support and deal with the arrival of people who are substantially different from themselves from quite far away, and vice versa, whether these kids, what they get out of or don't get out of, having been extracted from their lives for a couple of weeks. So your novel's set in Sneed's Harbor Bay. Is that a real place? No, no. Simple answer to that. There is, as you may know, there is a town across from near the George Washington Bridge, New Jersey side of the Hudson River. But I believe in New York State called Sneedon's Landing.

And I think part of Sneed in the title of the name of this village is situated somewhere somewhere down east from bar harbor maine and the famous acadia national park does the former governor of maine paul lepage make an appearance in your book without being named is that true certainly it's not named it's it's he doesn't really make an, but the kids find out about what he said, which the kids find out. And the woman who helped bring them to Maine, who was the girlfriend of the deceased son and who works in the diversionary program in the Bronx, becomes aware of it. And in the first instance, i guess you could say simply it's a case of hurt feelings they'd all come hopeful and for at least a good time and the scene when they heard these words even though they weren't directed to them directly and they

didn't hear them directly and in fact they'd been said said sometime in the past. Nonetheless, they feel as though they've been, they feel those words. Awesome. So your book is, I guess, to my understanding, a critique of racism in America. Do you want to talk to us? Is that correct? And do you want to talk to us a little bit about that? Critique probably is something more... I don't know if critique is the right word.

Exploration, like the... I wonder about the word critique, even though I know it's in the promotional material. Yeah, I was going to say it. I read it, and I know other people think so. Someone who, once I've written a book, feels that my opinions about the book are about as valid as any readers you know that they're probably

they're probably familiar with the words more recently than I am nonetheless I would say explore perhaps more honest than critique because critique

would imply that the author knows full well what to do about this problem and i sure don't i'm not i don't uh it's a big problem we know it's a big problem and it's very complex into our social order we had a great author on friday i believe it was jamar tisby how to fight Fight Racism. That was an interesting discussion. My understanding is in the book that your well-intentioned characters struggle with how to combat it. Is that kind of way of you trying to show we need to process or deal with racism? Oh, sure. Sure. The outcome of the book, though, is without giving everything away in the book, though, is, without giving everything away in the book, I would say is ambiguous and certainly open to question whether any progress has been made in race relations. I'm not sure. I think James Baldwin would disagree with all of us that nothing has really happened. I think there's a statement that I'm trying to call back that i can't remember a quote of his well i don't think the world was

renewed by anything that happens in this book it seems to me proper for people of all dispositions and beliefs to examine the question of race in this country as is obviously happening now in the country but it's proper because I think the most conservative voice, the most person least likely to want to look at these questions would have to admit that

race has played a heavy part in American society for a very long time. Yeah, even before we were in America, this has been a 450-year problem. If I take my little stab of the character in this book take their little stab let me ask you this the mayor the the main or i'm sorry the main paul gentleman that we referenced earlier the page he was fond of calling himself trump before trump and then uh there's some other discussion in the notes uh here for trump is for a lot of white people etc etc how big of an influence did today's politics, the last five years of politics and Donald Trump play into mainly the story you wanted to weave in this book?

I'm sure the Trump presidency led me back to LePage's words in 2016, who after all he said he was the Trump before Trump. Yeah. So I would say very substantially, on the other hand, I would say, full confession, this book was written before, say, the events of 2020. It was written before COVID and George Floyd. It was written in the rising period of Black Lives Matter, I would say, the early eruption of Black Lives Matter. Yeah, I believe it started in 2014 under Obama. Black Lives Matter came. It's interesting. Things are getting worse as opposed to getting better because we haven't fixed this problem. And therein lies the thing. We've had James Baldwin discussion on the show with a number of brilliant authors. And it's funny, you can take all of James Baldwin's quotes. It's not funny, actually. I

shouldn't characterize it that way. But it's interesting that you can take all of his quotes and you can literally take them from, I think, 1955 to 1960 or the whole era, whatever he said, and literally just copy and paste them onto today's problems. And there you are. What are some other things we can tease out on the book? Are there any teasers you want to share with people? Something you just said, another interpretation of this book. I mean, one hope, I hope when I write a book that people will come up with all different ways of thinking about it that I never had. One way that I've thought of it, I don't think this is the only way of viewing it, but are the protagonists of this book, Walter and Charlie, the married couple, are they simply using the question of race to solve problems that are for themselves far more personal?

And of course, that's a question that could be addressed to many people who have raised their voices in the last couple of years on the subject. Most definitely. Some other aspects of your book, the Bronx Cares Diversionary Action Program, is that a real organization? Why did you use that in the book and at what usage? Fictional name for a fictional organization however i would say that years ago when i did work in the manhattan courts not never in the bronx there were these diversionary programs designed to provide alternatives to going to jail for young offenders and i I have no reason to believe that some version does not exist now. This one is fictionalized. Oh, there you go.

So that's good to know. Let's see. The married couple, the protagonists, Walter Rath and Catherine Gray, rehab an old camp and invite 15 carefully selected black and Latino young men from the Bronx to stay there for two years. Do you want to give us any teasers on what they were trying to accomplish and how that sets the tone for the story essentially they're trying to do something to respond to the impossible circumstance of a couple losing their only child. And the reason they're doing this is as an attempt to do something

either to keep alive the memory of that child or to come to grips with his loss or to honor his memory or to, for a dozen other things you could probably say about their relationship to their son. This was an identifiable thing he thought would be interesting to happen. And they learn this from his girlfriend in the Bronx who comes with the kids to Maine. And it is really to assuage their grief, to honor him, and in the end to try and do something for, what do you say, something selfless.

Although it's hardly selfless, like they were doing, but they would have a selfless aspect. They would have to do something that had some good in the world, at least in the case of the wife. The husband doesn't quite feel that way at all oh really the husband is much more ambivalent about the whole process he feels it's more for her sake that all that this should happen he thinks that his son had to be kidding which it turns out he probably was it Might have been when he had the idea. The husband is a harder creature and some dead rational in a lot of ways. And not easily bought into sentimental ventures.

What do you think most people are going to come away from with this story? What do you think most people are going to get done when they get done reading the book? What aspect are they going to take away from most? Or do you hope that they might take away from most? I've got a cheap answer for the last part of that question, which I hope they feel they didn't waste their money. I hope they feel they did not waste their money in buying and reading this book or their time. Aside from that, I don't that, I'm not going for a message here. I would like them to feel something. I'd like them to feel something of what all the characters, and there are myriad characters in this book.

It's not a long book. It has really quite a number of characters on all sides of a complicated equation. It feels something for them, as if witnessing a struggle that has not an entirely satisfactory resolution, but nonetheless is somewhat like life. Definitely.

It's racism and systematic racism is so integrated into so much of everything we do, including laws and society and how cities were built or designed to be racially separate us. There's so much work that we have to do. Everyone needs to take a part in it. So as we go out, give us your last plugs and anything you want and say to invite people to order. Please. I would be out of the camera if I got down on my hands and knees and begged to go buy this book. But I think you'd get something out of it. It's published today, which means you can now get it on Amazon tomorrow or your local bookstore this afternoon if you put down your laptop or wherever you're viewing this and go out and get it. Or if it's

a week from now or a month from now or a year from now, I'm sure the book will be around. And if I'm lucky, it will still have some relevance. I'm sure it will, sadly. we'll probably, and there's so much work we need to do. It's going to take hundreds of years to fix. I think some of the systematic racism things that we have. Thank you for being on the show, Jeffrey. We certainly appreciate it. Thanks for coming on and spending some time with us today.

Thanks for having me, Chris. There you go. And guys, check it out. You can order it up wherever fine books are sold. Land of Cock and cocaine. It's a hardcover November 2nd,

2021. It is out today. So you want to definitely order that baby up or go to your local bookstore. As Jeffrey said, or wherever you find books are sold, just stay away of those dark alleyways. When you buy books, that's the main thing.

Yeah. I got shiv once in a dark alleyway, trying to buy a book off of some guy who's like, do you want to buy a book in here? I don't know why that joke's funny. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Go to youtube.com forward slash chrisvoss. Hit the bell notification button. Also go to goodreads.com forward slash chrisvoss. See everything we're reading and reviewing over there. Go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and all those different places on the interwebs and

be good to each other. We'll see you guys next time. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well.

So you can preorder the book right now wherever fine books are sold. But the best thing to do on getting a preorder deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom made, numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me.

There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold.