The One You Feed - How to Embrace the Important Elements of Life with Nickolas Butler

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

Nickolas Butler is the author of many novels, including the internationally best-selling and prize-winning Shotgun Lovesongs, which has been optioned for film development and has been translated into ten languages. Nickolas is the recipient of many literary prizes and commendations and has published articles, reviews, short stories, and poetry in publications such as: Ploughshares, Narrative, and The New York Times Book Review, to name a few.  Eric and Nickolas discuss a few of his novels as well as how we can learn to embrace the important elements of life. But wait, there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you! Nickolas Butler and I Discuss How to Embrace the Important Elements of Life and… His novels, Godspeed and Shotgun Lovesongs The fear and doubt he faces in his creative life Comparing our lives to others How we take for granted the basic things that previous generations worked hard for His relationship with his father and grandfather The differences in generations and what he hopes to teach his kids Trying to find empathy and understanding with those you don’t agree with The complexities of parent-child relationships  Why he writes essays for his local newspaper His idea of choosing a tree and practicing gratitude for that tree How friendships are special and unique human relationships Links: Nick’s Website Instagram Facebook By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Nickolas Butler, please check out these other episodes: What We Can Learn from our Bad Wolf with Matthew Quick How to Find Meaning and Live a Good Life with Jonathan FieldsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The more things that I've found in my life that you do for your craft, or you do for your community, or your neighbors, man, the reward is huge on that stuff. It's just huge. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our

spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Nicholas Butler, an American novelist, short story author, and poet. He's the award-winning author of four novels, including Shotgun Love Songs and Godspeed, along with many short story collections and

poetry collections. Hi, Nick. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan. Oh, thank you. Well, I'm a fan of your work also. Matthew Quick introduced us, who's been a guest on the show multiple times. And so I got to know your work after that introduction and have really enjoyed it. And we'll be talking about that, but we'll start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandparent talking with their grandchild and they say in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks

about it for a second and he looks up at his grandparent and he says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah. I've been reflecting on this a lot as I've been listening to your show more and more over the past few months. And I think in terms of the good wolf, I don't worry about my personal life a great deal. I think I'm a pretty good dad and husband and son and citizen. Artistically, I know that feeding the good wolf means sitting at the desk and being a writer and doing what I'm supposed to be doing, which is writing my stories. And, you know, I think I'm going to be

super honest during today's interview because the bad wolf has been on my porch more lately. I think the bad wolf for me means being stricken by fear of not writing a perfect sentence or by putting a book out there that doesn't go somewhere or facing creative rejection. And so my writing has been a lot slower in the last three years. It's been interesting listening to your show and all the wonderful experts and artists that you speak to, and they all seem to be on top of it. And I'm actually fighting that bad wolf quite a lot these days, and I'm hoping to kind of come out of it. I appreciate that honesty. I think it's always good to be open. It makes for much better conversations. And I will tell you that behind the scenes, even a lot of these writers who seem to

have their game together will say similar things. Like when you're in the midst of something difficult, doubt always seems to creep in. Yeah. And I always have been amazed, even these people who've written, you know, multiple New York Times bestsellers will be like, well, just reference the fact that you, you know, wrote two good books before. And they'll be like, yeah, but my brain tells me that was then, this is now, don't have it anymore. Yeah. And for me, I feel like in this moment, I have so many good ideas. I'm aware of the fact that I don't think I'll have enough time on this planet to record all those good ideas in the form of the novels that I write. And I know from having written five pretty successful books that

so much of it as a writer is just writing that draft, just getting it down and finishing something and then going back and honing the rougher parts. But I think for me, something was lost when COVID came around that I just didn't expect. You know, I think as like a child, you know, my dad was something of a prepper, you know, he was always preparing for worst case scenarios. And, and I think there was a part of me that always like fantasized about that, you know, fantasized about some moment where I would be tested or my family would be tested. And surely as a Eagle Scout and somebody who owns 16 acres of land in rural Wisconsin and gardens and hunts, I would be wildly prepared for that scenario.

And actually what I discovered was that I really missed socializing with people. And even though my job as a novelist requires that I spend a lot of time by myself in my own head, I had always taken for granted the interactions that I have with librarians and booksellers and other readers. And when I didn't have that, it was like the wind fell out of my sails real quickly. And I realized that I had built up a pretty good routine. You know, I used to go to this cafe in town and shoot the shit with the baristas there, talk about music for a while, get my cup of coffee, I used to go to this cafe in town and shoot the shit with the baristas there, talk about music for a while, get my cup of coffee, then move to like what was my seat in

the cafe and work for three, four hours. And if you do that every day, you can write a book pretty quick. But COVID just took all that away. And suddenly I'm at home teaching my kids who don't want me to be their teacher. So I'm just trying to get back into that routine, I think. Have you been able to get some of it back as we've moved a little bit? I don't even know what the right thing to call it. I don't think we call it post-COVID, but as life has gone a little bit back to normal, have you been able to get back out on the road and meet the librarians and booksellers again? And are you finding any energy from that? Absolutely. Yeah, there's some sense of normalcy coming back. And it's been great. One of my favorite writers is Jim Harrison. And he talked about driving as being real therapeutic interior

time to think about his stories and to think about the narratives he was working on. And that's always been true for me. Living kind of in the middle of nowhere, I have to drive everywhere I want to go or anywhere I'm requested to be. And so I spend a lot of time thinking about my novels behind the wheel and writing poetry and also working on journalism. And losing that, I think, hurt quite a bit. But that's finally coming back. And I think I just got to finish a novel and then really my schedule will be somewhat more restored. So when fear is kind of on you, how does it materialize? Does it materialize as a reluctance to write? Does it materialize as just something you carry around with you the other hours of the day, some of both?

It's been educational listening to your show. I think it was Paul Gilmartin who was talking about various distractions that he uses to get away from work. And one thing that I recognized in listening to that show was I'm a collector. I collect vinyl records. I collect books. I collect sports cards. collect sports cards. And I've always noticed that between projects, when I'm in this area where I'm not actively working on a novel, those pursuits take over in a big way, much to the chagrin of my checking account and my wife's financial management. So I've noticed that, that I'm distracting myself with those things. And I think it's just this kind of fear of writing a sentence that's not up to my own

standards, which is ridiculous because you have to, in order to sell a book, you have to finish a book. And if you never finish a book, then you're doomed to never put anything out. And I know that intellectually, but it's strange how those fears cripple productivity. Let's maybe talk about your most recent novel that came out, which was Godspeed, which is a wonderful novel in a lot of different ways. And I don't want to give away any of the key pieces of it, but there's an idea in there. It actually runs through multiples of your books that I want to talk about. And it's really about how we often compare our lives to other people's

lives. And in the book specifically, there are three men from a town in Wyoming who are commissioned to build a house far faster than a house should be built, but it's a spectacular house. And one of the protagonists said in the book that him and his wife were looking at houses. They were going to buy a new house. It was a big thing for him. And he said, but working on Gretchen's house, this is the house they were building, had pretty much ruined him for any other house. That he found this endless tour of the town's less desirable real estate to be something of a death march. That everything about this property they now stood upon depressed him. And that passage really hit me because it really speaks to our capability of getting something really good. Like for him, this was a big deal. They

were going to be able to buy a house, but comparing it to someone else almost took all the magic out of what should have been a special moment. Yeah. Well, and I think writers are horrible at this. You know, we're always comparing, you know, book sales and who's had a book developed into a movie or something like that. I think writing Godspeed in some way was kind of like an exorcism for me. Back in 2013, my wife and I moved back to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, which is our hometown, and commenced the process of building a house. I won't speak for my wife, but for me, it was the embodiment of the American dream. Building a house in my own architectural vision on a piece of land that I found to be charismatic and inspiring. And I thought, I think during that time, that surely

once I moved into the house, I would be a happier, more fulfilled person. And then two months go by and as a dad of two small kids, like somebody quickly vomits on your carpeting or scratches some woodwork and you realize this is just a box I live in. This is just my house and I am the same person and I just have less money now that I built a house. And so I think I wanted to explore those feelings, you know. I don't think it's just me. wanted to explore those feelings. You know, I don't think it's just me. I think it's a pretty common expression of the American dream of being an American. I think it's more and more pervasive now that social media is so everywhere. While we were building our house, we would look examples of other people's kitchens and it's like, oh, I want that. I want that. Whereas maybe even 20

years ago, you had to go on a house tour to get inside somebody's house to see what the designs were and what the new features might be. So I also think like the book is true to, you know, this sort of unhealthy real estate market that we're in right now. You know, I mean, people were watching their personal wealth grow and grow and they wanted more and more house. And so I think was upstairs. But I opened the door. I'm like, oh, you're right here. So I have let her in. She is wandering around the poor sweet baby with a diaper on because her back legs don't work. She's incontinent. And on top of having to wear a diaper, the diaper won't stay on. So she has to wear suspenders to hold on her diaper.

And she looks like the funniest old man. When I look at her, it makes me laugh and it breaks my heart all in the exact same moment. What kind of dog? She's a Boston Terrier. Hang on. Yeah. I'd love to see her. This is Beans.

Hi Beans. Oh, sweetheart. kind of dog she's a boston terrier hang on yeah i'd love to see her this is beans i have beans oh sweetheart oh man you can see her diaper and her suspenders oh no oh sweetheart that's oh you poor thing yeah oh she really seems unbothered by it like she just carries on i mean it's not like her back legs don't work at all it's just they sort of drag behind her she's got some neurological disorder but it doesn't bother her she just like still has her ball she likes to play when they get to this point you start having to ask tough questions about like is is it time? But I think right now it's not, but it could be anytime soon. She's a 13. Yeah. So I actually love having that insider perspective into your life and into the podcast. I feel like the issues that you cover are very heavy, very human, very complicated issues. And the notion that there's this old dog dragging itself around your

house happily. I like that. Yeah. I call her Zen master gray brow sometimes because she's black and white like Zen is. And obviously she has the gray brows, but she's also just 100% like animals are just their thing. They're this anyway Anyway, okay. Let's pick back up here. I'm going to respond to your thing about Godspeed. Yeah, I agree. And I think the reason I wanted to sort of bring that idea up is because I think it's something that so many of us, as you said, really do wrestle with. And the ability to compare our lives with other people's lives has been accelerated way out of proportion. Not that we haven't always done it, right? I mean, I imagine from cavemen comparing their cave to the guy next door, right? Nice saber tooth tiger teeth, you know, on your

neck there or whatever. We can do it all the time today, to your point, you know, we would have had to go on a home tour before. And it's just such a pernicious way to relate to the world if we don't work on it, because it just robs us of any of the enjoyment for many of the things that we have in life. Yes. So how have you gone about, you know, sort of being able to re-appreciate the beautiful land and the home that you have? And is there anything you do to sort of kind of keep that alive? Yeah, I think I'm in a much better space when it comes to that sort of thing than I've ever been. You know, I think one cool thing about building this house is that it's always been our families. It's our family's story.

So, you know, the scratches in the floor from our dogs' feet, you know, those are our scratches. We put a wood stove in during COVID, which was like our one big COVID kind of purchase. And it's the best thing that we ever did. It became the heart of our house. People gather around it. They're not plugged into any

device. They're reading or just resting, closing their eyes. That was a wonderful thing that we did. And it also causes me to be out there cutting wood, moving wood, stacking wood. So it's good exercise. I love where I'm at now. But Godspeed was again, like kind of this exercise and thinking about that time and thinking about the ways in which I was, I guess, comparing myself to other people's lives and had this expectation that a giant material purchase was somehow going to change my life for the better. And I'm glad that I'm over that. And we're not really the kind of people like we don't drive new cars. We don't really wear fancy clothes. This is pretty much what you're seeing me wear today is my uniform. It's pretty much what I wear every day. Yeah. In mentioning your wood stove, I was reading a column you wrote. You write a column for your local newspaper. And one of them

was titled The Purpose of Firewood. And I'm just going to read something that you wrote because I thought this was really interesting. You said, as a child, I used to hear old men speak like this about firewood. And it always fascinated me. Men who seemed incapable of emoting anything, their feelings as unreachable as the furthest stars, talking passionately about firewood. Now I am that man lusting after firewood. Did that give you an insight into the other generations by sort of being brought into that relationship with nature in that way? Yeah, I guess it did. I mean, as a culture, we absolutely take for granted where our energy comes from, where our food comes from, our heating and cooling. We just don't think

about it. We just turn a dial on the wall and it's warm or it's cool. And I think about somebody like my grandpa who's gone now, who grew up during the Great Depression, and surely he would have had a greater connection to those basic things. I remember him talking about walking the railroad tracks and gathering bits of coal, you know, that had fallen off the train. And that was illegal, of course, because he was trespassing on the railroad tracks and technically stealing coal. But one thing I've learned as a writer is that when somebody tells you a story, they're trying to reveal something about their life. And in hindsight, I think about my grandpa talking about that. And what he was trying to reveal is that he and his family overcame something that was extremely difficult. And he was part of that survival. I can remember cutting wood with him. That was one of the things we liked to do most of all because he wasn't really capable of emoting a whole lot.

But in work, we would fall into this sort of rhythm of like him cutting the tree and then I'd help split it and then we'd load it into the truck. And that was a good thing and a productive thing and something we could share together without talking about, you know, complicated feelings or something like that. So I think it does link me to somebody like my grandpa specifically and probably to people in the past. specifically and probably to people in the past. I was listening to your interview with Matthew Quick. You know, Matt's a friend of mine and talking about the men in our past and how we judge them rightly or wrongly. And one thing that my dad, though he was flawed, he would say my grandpa grew up without a father. His dad died in the coal mines. So he had no role model. And my grandpa worked on merchant marine ships. He was always gone sailing. So my dad had a father, but not much of a role model. And my dad was a product of the 60s, any drug he could find, was an alcoholic. And I think he did the best he could, but he just didn't

have a lot of help. And he said, you know, you're going to be better than me. And you're going to be better than grandpa. And your son or daughter will be better than you. And even though he hadn't been taught to emote a whole lot, he could kind of lay that foundation for me and project a lineage of goodness. And so I think that's been true, too. You know, I remember the bad aspects of my dad's personality and my grandpa's personality. And I'd like to think that I don't duplicate those things and try to project a better image for my son. And so I don't know, I still haven't gotten him in on the firewood thing

yet, but maybe that's to come. How old is your son? He's 13. Okay. That's about time. About time. He's 13. Okay. That's about time. About time. I think so. Yeah, I think this idea of generations. I've heard a therapist say before that everything we're doing is generational level work.

And speaking to kind of what you're saying, which is, look, we're trying to take what has been passed down generation to generation and transform it and maybe make it a little bit better for our kids. And I look at my son and I'm certain there's all sorts of things. He's 23, by the way, all sorts of things I didn't do correctly, right? I'm certain. And I don't know even what they are yet. I'm sure they will be revealed. But I also know that I think I did for him better than my parents did for me. And I think my parents did better than their parents did, you know. And as you were talking, it made me think about how people have been saying like, well, you know, for the first time in a while, the next generation may not have it better than the previous generation here in America. And while that may be true economically, and it's very possibly going to be true in a variety of other ways, climate-wise and all that, I do think that when I look at kids around that age today, they have an emotional awareness that was simply not present in me at that age, and no one to model it at that age. I totally agree with that. And I'm so glad you brought that up. I mean, as an artist, you know, one pitfall that a person can be trapped by

is judging your career based on how much money you're making, you know, in your book contracts or how many copies you're selling or something like that. That's an awful way to view your career. You should be trying to be better as a craftsperson. You should be trying to get better at your craft all the time. I was thinking about that even this morning, long before our talk, just thinking what I want to instill in my kids is not that they need to make a shitload of money. It's be happy within yourself. Have a good connection to nature.

Have a great marriage. Be good to your siblings. Be good to your friends. Be part of a community. If you're doing all those things, everything else falls into place. The happiness falls into place. I do think my son and daughter's generation, they're so much more sensitive than I was. Oh, yeah.

I was a barbarian as a teenager. I'm not proud of the person I was ages 12, yeah. You know, I was a barbarian as a teenager. I'm not proud of the person I was ages 12 to 20, probably. Right. And I think they're light years ahead of where I am. Yeah. You know, they accept everybody. They're aware of the challenges in our natural world. And I feel like they're a little more attuned to it than I ever was. And so part of me thinks like one of our challenges is just how do we bring young people into politics? How do we bring them into power? Let's let the old guard go, go by the wayside, you know, let's move into some fresh territory. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? As you were talking, It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. As you were talking there, it made me think about one of your books. I don't remember where I saw this line, but it was on my mind today because today is Election Day. I believe it was either a father talking to his son or a grandparent talking to his kids. either a father talking to his son or a grandparent talking to his kids. And he said, when he talked politics with me or my sister pointing a steady and patient finger at us saying, I don't care about left or right. It's all nonsense. All I ask of you is this, be kind, be decent, and don't be greedy. And that's pretty solid advice.

Yeah, that was from Shotgun Love Songs. I think Matthew talked a little bit about this in his interview too. And I hope it's okay that I reflect a little bit on that interview. He's a friend of mine and we're in conversation all the time. So our stories I think are somewhat similar too. And look, I live in a part of the country that is pretty darn purple. And I don't have the luxury of making wide sweeping political statements that I think are just going to be accepted by everyone that I'm speaking to. Any audience that I speak to in West Central Wisconsin is going to be more complicated than that. And it's like that in my rural neighborhood, you know, if it could be called a neighborhood, everybody's on many acres of land, so I can't see other people's houses.

But I'm just kind of interested in making connections with people in the community that we have and trying to find things that we share in common. Because, man, the political environment right now is superheated and it scares the hell out of me. And I want to be on the best relations with everyone that I can. And I want them to see me as a whole human being and not as a blue human being or a red human being. As artists, we're always talking about empathy. This isn't a novel idea, but it's easy to be empathetic with somebody who's just reflecting your values. It's much harder to be empathetic with somebody who's quite different from you and to understand where that's coming from, whether it's fear-based or something that's been drilled into them by the media or their parents or whatever it is.

So I think West Central Wisconsin is a complicated place politically, and I'm just looking for understanding, I think, here. Yeah, yeah. That's what I try and do, too. Try and have some empathy and understanding and have some dialogue. and understanding and have some dialogue. But yeah, so many of us are looking at it and feeling frightened by sort of the political instability that feels, you know, underlying the core tenets of what America has been up to this point. But I don't want to go down that rabbit hole too far. I'm going to pop back to parenting for a second because we were just sort of talking about parents. And I came across a quote of yours, and I have probably said it to like four other people over the last week because it struck me so profoundly as being so true.

And yet I'd never heard it phrased like this before. It's from the book Little Faith, and it says, Part of being a parent is loving your child more than they'll ever love you. And wow, I think our kids can love us a great deal, but I doubt it's to the same level that we love them. And that's just part of it. And what I often see parents do is get wrapped around the axle because they expect that their children will love them as much as they love their children. And I think that's a recipe for disappointment and problems. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm entering into a period of time, as I told you, my son is 13. So you've gone through this stage already with your son.

But I remember just absolutely idolizing my father. He was a deeply flawed guy, but he was my dad. And my favorite part of the day was when he came home from work, he sat in his recliner, he smoked a long chain of cigarettes and drank a Coca-Cola out of the can. And I would try to steal sips of it and that would drive him bonkers. And, you know, what he wanted to do was just relax, but I was so excited to be around him. so excited to be around him. And then as my teenage years progressed, I began to see more and more of his flaws. And I think we all go through that sort of natural moment where we're pushing away from our parents emotionally so we can kind of leave the nest. Well, my son's 13. You know, I think he's just kind of entering into that moment where he's testing his boundaries and he's beginning to see me and his mother as humans and not just as like gods. And I've just been stealing myself emotionally for the fact that, you know, he's got to push away and I love him so much and I know he's got to do that. Yeah. And I don't want to expect anything out of him. Like my job as a parent is just to make sure

that this kid is extremely well-loved, clothed, nourished, that they've got somebody to talk to, that he knows that he's got a system that loves and supports him. But that's it. You know, at some point he's got to leave me. And that's the idea. That's life, you know, that's human life. Yeah. And I was lucky for the most part. I think my parents didn't leave me with a ton of baggage. So I had pretty good role models. dilemmas because the jokes have been going on forever about like, call your mother because it's so true. It's so true that that relationship has that little bit of the parent wanting more from the child typically. And I remember when my son went off to college, I don't know, I think I had a friend who was like, you know, their kid who had gone off to college was calling them all the time. And a little part of me was jealous. But then the bigger part of me was like, I'm glad he's at school and he's just doing his thing and he's

not thinking about me and he's thriving. Like that's the better thing than having him still sort of dependent upon me. But boy, I think this is really tricky waters for those of us that are parents is how do we let go of them in a way while remaining supportive and tend to our own emotional lives? The emotions that come up as a result of them moving away from us, whether that's when they're 14 and they spend more time in their room or that's when they go off to college or when they're 25 and they don't come home for the holidays or whatever it is. Like, how do we tend to our own internal emotional work versus dumping that on them? Yeah, it is hard work. Both my children are still so young that I haven't like fully moved into that period yet. But mostly what I'm feeling these days, and maybe this is naive, but real excitement for

the future to find out what people they develop into as parents were trying to introduce them to ideas and music and books all the time and different experiences. One thing we love to do as a family is go to national parks and camp there and take our kids on long hikes and kayak trips and stuff like that. And I hope that sticks, but it might not. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to miss out on being a kid, having that intimacy with a young person, but I'm also really excited for the period of time that you're in right now where they start to become their own person and they can come back and you're like, wow, this is an adult that an adult that I've, I've had a hand in raising. That's really exciting to me. It really is. And I'm in a position where it always feels

condescending in some manner to be like, I don't, maybe it's not to say like, I'm, I'm so proud of him, but I am, I'm just proud of the person that he is becoming. And then of course there's the inevitable slight, you know, pat on my back, like, good job, you know, but that's okay. You know, that's okay. Yeah. Yeah, it is okay. You know, when I think about the parable that's at the, you know, central gravity of your show, nobody's harder on themselves artistically or professionally than me. I am hard on myself on a molecular word by word sentence level. I mean, I'm my worst critic by far. But sometimes I think about like what I just went through with the last three years with COVID and I'm like, we got through it. We got through it as a family.

We're still together. You know, I'm still married to my wife and man, the drinking was getting a little out of hand there at times, but it's not anymore, you know, and our kids are actually still well prepared to go to school. You know, we were still reading books through it all. We were still learning things. It's not like they went to school and their brains had utterly atrophied. And where does that fit into the wolf that I feed? You know, I mean, I was working on my family during that period of time. And that's something, I think, right? It doesn't show up in the book sales numbers, but it's something. And a lot of the coaching work I've done with

people over the years, there's an interesting theme. It shows up with people who have younger children, I'll say like the age of your son and downwards, right? And these people have this idea that in addition to having a career and raising good children, they should be doing all these other exceptional things in the world. And they come to me because they want help in doing those things. And sometimes that's the right thing. Like, let's go figure out how to do that. But sometimes the answer is like, take it easy. Like the stage of life that you're at, it's appropriate that your kids take almost all of your energy. And it is the most important work that we can do. No one else can raise our children, right? I mean, like we have to do it. And I think raising decent and kind and good human beings as a parent is so hugely important. And I just think as parents, we don't give ourselves credit for the work that we put into

that. Back to the idea of taking things for granted, we just sort of go, yeah, yeah, of course I do that. But really connecting back into like, yeah, good for you. Good for you that you really steered your kids through the pandemic in a kind way. And that should go more into our internal calculus of a life well-lived than it often does. Yeah. Like my mom, for example, said that she was so thankful she didn't ever have to go through something like this. Yeah. And hearing what you just said or hearing her say something like that was so profoundly impactful for me. You know, my mom has gone through tons of challenges in her life, but just a small thing like

saying, I wouldn't have been able to teach you kids, you know? And I don't know that I would have made it through it. And it's funny, like, you know, I went to the best writing program in the world. Harder to get into than Harvard Law, for example. You learn a lot of neat tricks about writing. But we didn't talk a lot about being a human, being a parent, being a spouse. How do you manage those things? You know, I always tell people, and I'm happy to share it here on your show, that my mentor when I was at Iowa was a guy named James Allen McPherson, first black man, I believe, to graduate from Harvard Law, first black man to win a Pulitzer Prize, exceptionally deep human being. very deep soul when you were learning from him or even just in his presence. And always he would ask me about my family and about my wife because I went through Iowa under sort of strange circumstances. My family was living north of Minneapolis and I was kind of

commuting to Iowa City back and forth every Monday and Friday. And he knew that I was doing that. He'd ask about them. And then sometimes he would say to us, you know, the Pulitzer Prize isn't going to visit you in the nursing home. Oh, boy. I think about that all the time because, you know, especially when we think about comparing our lives to other people, comparing our relative success to other people. Like you see somebody win a big literary prize or, you know, their book is made into a movie and you think they've got everything.

Our culture moves so quick that, you know, it's like, if I had to tell you who won the World Series two years ago, I couldn't do it. Yeah. You know, I couldn't tell you who won the Pulitzer Prize three years ago. But the important things are that generational work that you were talking about. How do you raise a decent human being who can in turn reign as another decent human being? Yeah.

It's interesting. I think about what you just said often, which is even if you get the pinnacle of success, those big moments, the Pulitzer Prize, the Oscar Award, the podcast of the year from Apple, whatever those things are, there's a momentary burst of wow, you know? But like you said, culture moves so fast.

It's like that is forgotten by 99% of the people two days later. They're not paying any attention to it. Those things don't nourish us. I was having a conversation with a woman the other day and she was talking about what satisfies the soul. And we don't need to get into what the soul means. I think we all have a sense of it being something deeper, right? And she was like, it's never the external award. It's the work that goes into it. It's like you said, the pride in my craft, the getting better at the thing, the loving the thing for itself. And that those external metrics, not that they're not important because they are in many cases, right? Book sales are important because that's how you make a living, right? So it's not to say that those things don't matter, but they're never enough. You know, I read a quote recently

that has been on my mind, similar to your one about, you know, we always love our kids more than they love us. Another one I heard was, it's hard to get enough of something that almost works. And that is why these things are so hard to see through because they almost work or they temporarily work. You know, all this would be so easy to see through if getting a new car gave you no enjoyment. You'd just be like, who cares? It's a car, right? But it gives you a little bit of enjoyment for a little bit. It's just that we habitually overestimate the importance of those things. Yes. Yeah. I give you credit. Like I didn't expect that you would motion towards this little column that I write for my local newspaper, which I'm sure the literata in New York City and Los Angeles must be befuddled by. Why am I writing for a paper that almost nobody really reads and nobody's heard of

beyond the Chippewa Valley of West Central Wisconsin? But I did that for the best reasons. Like our newspaper circulation, like many newspapers was in sharp decline and they wanted to do something a little different. So they said, do you want to write an essay for us every three weeks, write about whatever you want. You know, initially they told me there was a word count. Then over time, like the word count really didn't matter. I could just do whatever I wanted. And what I found was in writing those essays, I was writing for the purest reasons. I was highlighting people in my community, or I was talking about my family, or I was talking about our local food systems or

the environment around here. And I was also working on my nonfiction craft. Mostly I'm a novelist. I don't really write a ton of essays. And so at the beginning of that project, I wasn't super satisfied with what I was writing. And over time, I could see that the craft was improving. But also, you know, Matthew Quick would say that there was a mission there. And my mission was writing about something beyond money or prize or accolades from the literata. It was community-based. And it's one of the best things I've ever done, you know, and no one sees it really. People in our community see it and I think they're pretty darn excited about it. But to our earlier point, I'm not going to make a lot of money from it. I ain't going to win a big prize. But the more things that I've found in my

life that you do for your craft or you do for your community or your neighbors, man, the reward is huge on that stuff. It's just huge. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you,

my friend? Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. As you can tell, I do a lot of research on the people that come on the show, and so I did ferret out your column.

And I love that you do that because I do think it speaks to these things we're talking about, which is like paying attention to the small parts of our lives that really matter and paying attention to our communities and our families and our craft. And the psychologist would say like most of that stuff is more intrinsic motivation, right? It's closer to home than extrinsic motivation, which is what the New York Times and the New York Book Review and Los Angeles Times are saying about your novels. You know, this column is doing nothing to bolster any of that, right? And yet it's still deeply rewarding. And this echoes back a little bit to what I was saying about raising good children. I think the other thing that our culture has done, in addition to giving us all sorts of material things to

compare our lives to, is it's given us the ability to compare our lives with people doing what seem to be these really amazing and fantastic things. And that often leads us not looking to do the little things that we can do that are actually far more satisfying than they seem from the outside. And I think your column that you're doing is a perfect example of that. Thank you very much. Yeah. And also, you know, I mean, the ways that we're comparing ourselves to other folks online or in the pages of glossy magazines at the grocery store or whatever it is, it's so easy to forget that all of that has been manufactured and edited and photoshopped.

It's in front of the camera. You're not seeing anything behind the camera, you know? And yeah. Yeah. So increasingly I'm just focusing on that. And even though I began this podcast by telling you that the bad wolf seems to be dominating my thoughts more than the good wolf or the work of feeding the Good Wolf. I mean, that's another example. Like I've been doing this column, which doesn't get a great deal of exposure during that three years that I've been sort of focused on like, man, I'm not making enough progress on this novel. Well, I don't know, maybe I need to be a little easier on myself. I've been doing other things that have mattered. It's not like I haven't been writing at

all. I've probably produced two books worth of material during the last two, three years. It's just not the stuff that I'm normally acquainted with producing, if that makes sense. Totally, totally. And yeah, I do think that it's been a challenging few years for lots of people in lots of different ways. And I think as it's a little bit more knock on wood in the rear view mirror, I've noticed the ways that it affected me that I didn't even see at the time. You know, if you'd asked me at the time, I'd say, look, we're okay. None of us are sick. We're healthy. I've done my work from home always. So I'm doing it from home now. I just would have said like, it's not having much of an impact on me, but I'm able to see in retrospect, similar to you, I'm not a hugely social person, but the amount of it that I did have was more important to my wellbeing than I thought. to come back that I've seen like, yeah, okay, that was tough. And for me, like your mother,

I look at people who had kids through the pandemic and I think, my God, like what a time, what a time to suddenly have your children at home that you now have to figure out how to take care of in school. And you've still got to figure out how to do your career. And like, I look at parents that have been through this with a great deal of admiration and respect, because it looked hard to me. Yeah. I always wish in podcasts that the guests were given more time to ask the host questions. So when you think about it, like, what did you miss specifically? What was it about the COVID time that you missed socially? I think that what I have discovered is that I need some degree of novelty in my life. I don't want to need it. And I'm a Zen practitioner. And in Zen, we say like the most ordinary thing is what you pay attention to, like just love what's right in front of you. And I think that's

good advice generally. And I try and do that. And I think that's good advice generally. And I try and do that. And I think there's a depth that emerges there. And there's a part of my psychological makeup that needs to be exposed to different things. And I start to languish when I'm not. And so whether that be other people in person, whether that be getting out to a bookstore, whether that be going to see a live concert, whether that be getting out to a bookstore, whether that be going to see a live concert, whether that's having dinner with a friend, whatever it is, you know, so I've post, again, I keep not knowing what to call it. But the thing I've sort of made myself do, and I've had to make myself do it, because I think the pandemic settled me into being a homebody

more than I want to be, that it became comfortable. It's generally Wednesday night, but it doesn't always have to be where I have to leave the house and I have to do something that involves another person. It doesn't matter what it is, but I have to do it. And it's been really good for me. Like we're in Atlanta right now. And tonight I am going to a yoga class with like a 24 year old who lives in this area that we're in that I've just had a couple of conversations with. And I'm like, well, all right, let's go do that. And not that yoga is that different, but going with a 24 year old is not my own son. So I think that's what it was for me and recognizing that I need some novelty and some change in my day-to-day environment.

Did you get COVID? No, I have not. I have not. I mean, I feel like I'm one of the last ones standing. Yeah. Was your attention span affected by COVID, by the quarantine? I don't know about my attention span. My work really didn't change much in that, again, I didn't suddenly have kids at home that were fracturing my normal four hours of concentration time. You know, my life is pretty quiet now. And so the bulk of my life looked the same. I read a couple hours every night before bed and getting ready for interviews. I have two conversations a week, you know, where I'm kind of focused. And so I don't know if my attention span fractured. I think what happened

was my overall baseline level of enthusiasm about life drained down a little bit. I have a depressive tendency anyway. And I think it just was little bit by little bit. It was like the level of my mood just slowly seeped down. I didn't even really notice it that much, but I think it was happening. Okay. Yeah. A cloud. Yeah. A low ceiling cloud. Yeah. So we are near Thanksgiving. We've been working on a gratitude episode that will probably have been out by the time listeners hear this. And I just taught a workshop on gratitude recently. So it's been on my mind a lot. And in one of your local columns, there was an idea that you had that I thought we could talk about.

And you got the idea from someone else who got it from someone else. But the idea was simply choose a tree and every day thank that tree for allowing you to breathe. Talk to me about that experiment, why you decided to do it and what you chose and what that's kind of done for you. writing retreat outside of Missoula, Montana, which was a really wonderful transformative event for me. Because as I said, I'm more or less kind of a hermit here, you know, focusing on my book. So when I get out and get a chance to talk to other writers, it's meaningful. And there were a lot of conversations about the natural world there. And this idea of thanking a tree came up. And I love the idea right from the start. But it seemed

like as somebody who cares about the natural world a lot and who lives on 16 acres of land with many, many trees, this was a serious question that I put years into thinking about. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I should have chosen a random tree. Like picking your favorite song. Sure. Yes. So I thought about it and, you know, there was a white pine that stands alone in a field that's very charismatic and slightly windblown. I thought about that tree. I thought about this sort of choke cherry tree that drops beautiful blossoms in the springtime and how much I adore those blossoms. And eventually I came to one of the scraggliest

trees on our property, which is a box elder tree, which is commonly hated in this part of West Central Wisconsin, just thought of as a junk tree because its form is not very elegant and they tend to pop up along fence lines. But it's the first tree that I see in the morning when I look out my bedroom window. And it's the last tree that I see probably before darkness falls. And there is something really wonderful and warm and positive now about seeing that tree or walking beneath its branches and saying thank you and realizing that the tree and I are interconnected in ways that I can't really always fathom. Also that that tree is a mortal being that might not always be there. It could be that one day my neighbor who's a farmer decides

that the tree is a nuisance and too close to his fence line and cuts it down and that's part of life. I hope that doesn't happen. But focusing on time and mortality and life and breath and my exhale and the birds that migrate and land in the boughs of that tree, all of that I feel like is good work. It's work that we don't really recognize in America in 2022, but it's work that I think in some ways our ancestors were doing. Maybe they lost it for a little while, but I think deep down, maybe they were doing it all the time. So I would like to say that I religiously practice gratitude for that tree. That would be false. I don't do it every day, but the notion that I have the practice at all is important to me. Because when I do practice gratitude for that tree, I get so much out of it.

Yeah, I love everything you just said there. I loved the idea when I read it. And, you know, you hit on a couple things there that the scientific research on gratitude really points to, which is that there's a little bit of savoring, right? There's a little bit of paying closer attention to it. There's also the recognition that this thing may not always be here. You know, that's one of the things gratitude can really help us do is appreciate what actually is here. And one tool of doing that is to imagine it's not, you know, imagine it's gone, how much I would appreciate it. Or that I'm gone, you know, and that I'm here now. I can appreciate the things that are here now.

Yep. So I would be remiss if we didn't talk about one last thing before we wrap up. I get so much a sense in your work about friendship. And most of it is friendship among men. friendship. And most of it is friendship among men. And, you know, I think you write very well about the challenges that come as an adult in continuing friendships. Can you talk a little bit about why that topic is so important to you and what some of the difficulties you've seen are? Yeah. Well, it's funny when you start off being a writer, I don't think you really consider themes, or at least I never did.

I've been really fortunate in my life to have deep, long-lasting friendships with people that I've known since I was as young as 10 years old that are still in my life in a major, major sort of way. I've also worked really hard to maintain friendships through letters. I have pen pals that I've been writing to for over 20 years. I think I'm fascinated by friendship that I think are more crass. To me, friendship is about enjoying your time with another person and having fun and other things develop out of that, like respect or, you know, learning or something like that. develop out of that, like respect or, you know, learning or something like that. I guess I'm just fascinated by the way that people find each other that way and how they maintain it. And that it's not easy to be friends with somebody that we do have darker human emotions that get in the way,

like jealousy. You know, I've been friends with people for a long time. And then all of a sudden somebody makes a pile of money and you think, well, why don't I have a pile of money? Or why don't I have that success? Or why does their marriage look so easy? Why do their children seem so well behaved? All these sorts of, you know, questions that really aren't that important. But working past them and working on the friendship is just, I don't know, it fascinates me. And friendship was one of the things that got me through COVID. You know, Matthew Quick was talking about his movie club. I have a vinyl record club. Once a month we would meet, we'd exchange records through the mail along with a handwritten letter about why we purchased this record for our friend. And then we'd drink a lot, way too much on our Skype meetings and get really emotional talking about music and the way it made us feel. And man, that was one thing that really carried me through. So I don't know. I just find myself coming back to it every single time. I don't mean

to. It's not like I set out to write a novel about friendship, but it's something I think I'm trying to understand better with each and every book. but it's something I think I'm trying to understand better with each and every book. Friendship is really important to me. It's one of the things I feel like I have been fairly good at in my life. Some people are savants at it, like Chris, our producer and editor is, I mean, it's just amazing all the friends he has. But it's something that's always been important to me. But reading your books, I really did get that sense. I really started to see that the friendship is there, but then there's all these life elements that weave around it. Like you said, jealousy. One of the things in Shotgun Love Songs that I loved, and maybe you intended this, maybe you didn't, but the core friendship is between Hank. His life looks a

lot like yours. He's a good father. He's a good husband. He lives on some land. He's not a writer. And then the other is Lee, who is a famous rock musician who travels the world. And it's so interesting because early in the novel, it's all Hank looking at Lee and going, man, you know, occasionally having these moments of like, look what Lee has, you know. But then later, as it starts to circle around and I hope I'm not giving away any key plot points. It's Lee who starts looking at Hank and going, man, what you've got is what I want.

And I just found that arc fascinating and to see how up until some late in the game events that the two of them negotiated that pretty well, right? Like they found a way to negotiate. Our lives are very different, but our friendship survives. And there's some beautiful scenes later on after there's a breach in their friendship about the way they start to put it back together. And again, I don't want to give anything away, but they do it by getting up to some of the hijinks that they would have gotten up to as teenagers.

I found the whole thing really an interesting have gotten up to as teenagers. Yes. I found the whole thing really an interesting look at friendship. Thank you very much. Yeah. That's a book that still is finding readers around the world. It's like in its eighth or ninth printing in Spain. It was nominated for major awards in France. Hollywood has poked at it with a stick several times.

So maybe someday it'll become a movie. I don't know. You know, and that was my first book. I was naive about everything. I didn't have any expectation that it was going to be published, Eric. I mean, none. A guy from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who knew no successful novelists growing up. You know, I've had a string of crappy jobs up until that point. And I just had no idea it was going to get published at all. But what I love in hindsight about the writing of that book and what I accomplished is that I think it's emotionally extremely honest and vulnerable. And it talks about friendship and love in really earnest ways. And in some ways, I'm always trying to get back to writing that book and how open I was, you know, and vulnerable in writing that book.

Because you could imagine if you were a literary critic in New York and what you really wanted to champion was ironic, super intellectual books, Shotgun Love Songs is not going to be your book. No. You know, it is a book about friendship and home and community, and it really is passionate about those things. But man, readers love that book. Yeah, it's a great book. I loved your latest one, though. Godspeed a great deal also. So, all right. Well, we are out of time. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation for a little bit. And I'm going to ask you a little bit about what do

you think keeps friendship going? And we'll also probably talk about a beautiful walk in the rain. Listeners, if you'd like access to the post-show conversation and other benefits, like an episode I do each week called teaching song and a poem and the joy of supporting something that you care about, go to one you feed.net slash join Nick. Thanks so much for coming on. I've really enjoyed talking with you. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. It's a podcast that I've started to listen to earnestly on my walks with my dog, and it makes me feel less alone as a writer. That's for sure. To understand that I'm not the only one having these challenges and feelings. So thank you.

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why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.