The Tim Ferriss Show - #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

This episode is a two-for-one, and that’s because the podcast recently hit its 10-year anniversary and passed one billion downloads. To celebrate, I’ve curated some of the best of the best—some of my favorites—from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited. The episode features segments from episode #76 "Rick Rubin on Cultivating World-Class Artists (Jay Z, Johnny Cash, etc.), Losing 100+ Pounds, and Breaking Down the Complex" and episode #479 "Mary Karr — The Master of Memoir on Creative Process and Finding Gifts in the Suffering."Please enjoy!Sponsors:AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement: https://drinkag1.com/tim (1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase.)Eight Sleep’s Pod 4 Ultra sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating: https://eightsleep.com/tim (save $350 on the Pod 4 Ultra)LinkedIn Jobs recruitment platform with 1B+ users: https://linkedin.com/tim (post your job for free)Timestamps:[00:00] Start[05:11] Notes about this supercombo format.[06:15] Enter Rick Rubin.[07:58] How Rick lost over 135 pounds in his late 30s.[16:03] How artists can hurdle the obstacles that hinder their best work.[19:31] Where to find world-class contemporary music.[20:24] Approaching music production with a fan’s-eye view.[22:53] Recommended reading.[24:22] Helping artists break their creative blocks.[26:54] Rick’s advice for his younger selves.[29:06] Why practicing self-kindness isn’t just nice — it’s a necessity.[32:01] Enter Mary Karr.[32:25] Growing up in “The Ringworm Belt.”[34:44] The catalyst for Mary expressing herself and publishing to the world.[37:47] The role reading played for young Mary.[40:31] The feeling that inspired Mary’s desire to become a poet at a young age.[44:27] “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”[45:17] How Mary, a high school dropout, got into college and became an A student.[49:13] Mary’s struggle with bringing darkness with her even after leaving her traumatic past.[53:23] The highly selective process for getting into Mary’s graduate seminar at Syracuse University.[54:33] The first day of Mary’s class and what it illustrates about processing memoir-building memories.[1:00:20] The value of a commonplace book and helping others find alternative perspectives.[1:04:19] The importance and utility of prayer in Mary’s life and sobriety.[1:17:09] The significance of Ignatian exercises in Mary’s Catholic faith and gratitude practice.[1:23:10] Obligatory Texas talk about weaponry and hunting.[1:26:41] The origins of Mary’s unique wordsmithing.[1:34:24] Mary’s process of rough drafts, revision, and using past memories for storytelling.[1:42:34] How Mary copes with the pain of dredging up memories through writing.[1:46:09] Why Mary feels the happiest at 65 and her advice to her younger self about therapy.[1:49:26] The most and least effective types of therapy for Mary.[1:53:25] Mary’s solution to fear and getting through uncomfortable times.[1:58:14] Recognizing the gifts from suffering through difficult times in retrospect.[2:06:28] Mary’s billboard.[2:07:35] Parting thoughts.*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Tim, and code Tim, T-I-M, to get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra. They currently ship to the United States, Canada, the United over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to sit down with world-class performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply and test in your own lives. This episode is a two-for-one, and that's because the podcast

recently hit its 10th year anniversary, which is insane to think about, and passed 1 billion downloads. To celebrate, I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes. And internally, we've been calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage you to, yes, enjoy the household names, the super famous folks, but to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider stars. These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle. Perhaps you missed an episode.

Just trust me on this one. We went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests, you can find that and more at Tim.blog slash combo. And now, without further ado, please enjoy and thank you for listening. First up, Rick Rubin, nine-time Grammy-winning producer, one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world, number one New York Times bestselling author of The Creative Act, A Way of Being, and host of the Tetragrammaton podcast. You can find Rick at tetragrammaton.com.

Where are we right now? We're sitting in a sauna. We're sitting in a very hot barrel sauna. And I was told that was one of the conditions for having this conversation. And it's such an impressive barrel sauna. It's indoors that I wanted to get the specs for it when I first saw it. And you have a heater that has to be what four times the size of the off the shelf heater that would go into such a heater. Yeah. It's a much bigger heater than for the size of the room. Right. And I'm sitting on the floor because I have such little confidence in my ability to withstand heat compared to you. But we do have the alternate, which is the bath just outside of this door. And you and I have gone back and forth, of course, quite a few times with this type of cycling, but what is right outside of this door? A metal tub filled with ice.

It is a metal tub about four feet, three and a half feet off the ground, full of ice. Looks like, if you were to say what, a horse trough times two, something like that. Something like that. It's got to be maximum low 50s,

something like that. I think it's about, today it's probably about 38 degrees. Oh my God. All right. So we have two mics on the floor. I'm hoping won't explode or melt down. We have the H4 and the H6.

And we have water, ice, heat. Nothing could go wrong. I'm looking forward to it. So Rick, I was hoping perhaps we could start with a discussion of your physical transformation. And I'd love for you to perhaps just describe to people, in my mind, the picture of fitness in a lot of ways now, and we've been paddleboarding before, and you summarily whoop my ass every time we go out. I'm always impressed.

There are a lot of things contributing to my lack of competency and fear there. But where were you and how did you end up undergoing this physical transformation? Because you've lost how much weight at this point? How much fat are you saying? I lost, at the peak moment, I lost between 135 and 140 pounds. And I always thought I was eating a healthy diet.

I was vegan for 20-something years. All organic, vegan, really very strict with what I ate. And doing that, I got up to 318 pounds. And I read a book by a guy named Stu Middleman who ran a thousand miles in 11 days. And I remember reading that and just thinking, wow, it's like I can barely walk down the block. This guy ran a thousand miles in 11 days and it just seems so inspiring. So I read his book and in the book he talked about a guy named Phil Maffetone who I'd never heard of before and he said in Stu's book he gets to the part where he said, well, I met this doctor, Phil Maffetone, and he changed the way I trained and he changed the way I ate and he changed all these things

and then all of a sudden I was able to do all these things. It's like, okay, I want to find Phil Maffetone. I found him online. I sent him an email, and he was living in Florida. And I asked if I could become his patient. And he said that he had just stopped treating patients and retired from being a doctor. It's like, that's terrible news. But the reason he decided to stop being a doctor was he decided to become a songwriter. I said, oh, it's interesting. I'm involved in songwriting and the music world. Maybe we can trade. Maybe I can help you with your songwriting and you can help me with my health and fitness. And he liked the idea and we ended up meeting a few months later,

met several times and became friends. And then he eventually ended up moving into my house and lived in my house for about two years. I did everything he said and I got much healthier. My metabolism got turned on. The hours that I was sleeping shifted. For most of my life, I stayed up all night and slept most of the day. When I was in college, I never took a class before 3 p.m. because I knew I wouldn't go.

And this was at NYU? At NYU. So I'm used to living a night lifestyle. I remember even in high school, I missed the first three classes of school so many times that it was really an issue. But it was just, I had learned to be a late night person. And it kind of suited the music life like it worked well with my life. And one of the first things that Phil suggested when we got together was, I slept with blackout

blinds. And I usually didn't leave the house until the sun was setting. And he said, from now on, when you wake up, I want you to go outside. As soon as you wake up, open the blinds and go outside, naked if possible, and be in the sun for 20 minutes. And when he said it, I remember thinking it'd be the same as him saying, I want you to jump off this ledge. It sounded like the most terrifying, based on the way I lived my life, that just sounded terrible. Right. What time was he recommending that you wake up? Well, by the time we started, it kept moving down. It went from three o'clock to probably noon to 11 to nine. And it just sort of happened naturally. And he knew that if I immediately went in the sun, that naturally my body would want to

start waking up earlier and going to sleep earlier. It was the first time ever that my circadian rhythm was kicking in. I never knew that there was such a thing or knew what that was. So he got me to connect to that. And I did everything he said, changed my diet, started eating some animal protein. I was, as I said, a devout vegan. So eggs and fish were the first things that I would eat. And even then I never liked eggs and I never liked fish, so I ate them more like medicine. And slowly, I got healthier and healthier and healthier and more and more fit. But I was still very heavy. And I was heavy for a long time. What age were you when you brought him into your house?

Or how long ago was this? Yeah, I'm going to guess it was probably late 30s. If you don't mind me asking. Yeah, it was like 10 years ago. 10 years ago. 10, 12 years ago, something like that. So you're changing your diet. What were some of the other things that he had you change?

He had me do 20 minutes of low heart rate exercise, aerobic activity every day, he had me start wearing a heart rate monitor. And my heart rate, I would get into, for me, walking up a flight of stairs would be an aerobic activity. So it would be an anaerobic activity, yeah. So I had to work hard to stay in the anaerobic space. Or the aerobic space, you mean.

In the aerobic space. Below that anaerobic control. Yeah the aerobic space, you mean. In the aerobic space on the side. Below that anaerobic threshold. It's getting hot in here. Yeah, it's getting hot in here. I'm going to take off all your clothes. My hands burning holding the mic. I tried to wrap them in napkins.

I remember you did mention those might get hot, but sorry. I digress. So to stay within the aerobic threshold, you had to work very hard. Yes. And again, my health changed, but I still stayed very heavy. And after two years of time, I'd probably lost a little bit of weight, but not much. But I was much healthier and much more alive and much better than I was before. And after that period of time, Phil said to me, you know, anyone else who made the changes you made out of everyone he's ever dealt with, 99% out of a hundred people, you know, 99 out of a hundred people would have dropped all their weight. For some reason, there's something

else going on with you that's holding onto the weight. So I just accepted that that's how it was, but at least I felt a lot better. My life was a lot better. I was a lot happier. And then a mentor of mine, whose name is Mo Austin, he's a guy who ran Warner Brothers Records for 35 years. He worked for Frank Sinatra. Real inspiring guy in the music business. He suggested, I went out to lunch with him one day and he said, you know, Rick, I'm really

worried about you. I know you watch what you eat and I know that you walk on the beach every day and exercise, but you're really getting big and I'm worried. So he said, I'm going to get the name of a nutritionist and I want you to go to my guy and I want you to do whatever he says. I said, okay, fine. And I knew it wouldn't work because I knew that my whole life, I had a weight problem. My whole life, I've tried every diet and nothing ever worked. But I would do anything for most. So I went, again, open-minded but not believing it would work.

Willing to try but not believing it would work. The nutritionist put me on a high-protein, low-calorie diet, and I'd never done a low-calorie diet before. And over 14 months, I lost 130 pounds, 135 pounds. That changed everything. And I will say, if I didn't do the work with Phil first, I don't believe that the diet would have worked. It was sort of a combination of things in order. It was like the metabolism got turned on. I started being in tune with circadian rhythm. I was stimulating my aerobic system every day. I built a base and then with

the right diet was able to drop the weight quickly. What are things that get in the way of artists producing their best work? Concern about what other people think, competition, wanting to do better than someone else, self-doubt, ego. What manifestation of ego? If someone thinks that everything they do is great, they might not be willing to edit themselves enough or work hard enough at, if I could write 10 great songs in five minutes each, those are the best songs and I'm just going to record it and put them out. And those might not be as good as the ones that you develop over a longer period of time, for example. That might be an egotistical artist

who thinks everything I do is just great when you have the opposite when you have an artist who is doubting themselves how do you help them through that what do you recommend just speaking personally i have continuous self-doubt as a writer i think most artists do that's more of the more typically self-doubt is the case. I think if your goal is to be better than you were, if you're competing only with yourself, it's a more realistic place to be. If you say, I don't want to write songs unless I could write songs better than the Beatles,

it's a hard road. But if you say, I want to write a better song tomorrow than the song I wrote yesterday, that's something that can be done. And if you write a better song than you wrote yesterday every day, then you continue to get better and better and better. And it really is small steps. And try not to think too much, because so much of it is more of a, the job is, it's more emotion and heart work than it is head work.

Like the head comes in after to look at what the heart has presented and to organize it. But the initial inspiration comes from a different place and it's not the head and it's not an intellectual activity. It's more inspiration. So the key first is to really do whatever activities you can to tune into inspiration. And things like meditating help. And diving into art in general doesn't have to be even your modality. I mean, going to museums and looking at beautiful art

can help you write better songs. Reading great novels, reading great works of art, seeing a great movie could inspire a great song. Reading poetry. So I would say being in, submerging yourself in great art and the more you can do to get out of the mode of competition, where you're looking at what other people are doing, if you're wanting to be better than them or be inspired by them,

the only way to use the inspiration of other artists is if you submerge yourself in the greatest works of all time, which is a great thing to do. If you listen to the greatest music ever made, that would be a better way to work through to find your own voice to matter today than listening to what's on the radio now and thinking, I want to compete with this. So it's more like a stepping back and looking at a bigger picture than what's going on at the moment. Speaking as someone who is not very well-versed with music, I don't feel highly literate when it comes to music. I enjoy music, but hanging out with you and Neil Strauss, certainly, I feel like I'm lacking perhaps vocabulary and a lot of references are there any for people who feel like they're in my shoes

are there any particular albums you could offer as a as a starting point not the end-all be-all but just as a as a starting point for appreciating good world-class contemporary music meaning not necessarily could be classical music but are there there any recommendations? Yeah, I would just start by listening to the greats, which you can look at, like, if you look at search online for Mojo's top 100 albums of all time, or Rolling Stone's top 100 albums, or

any trusted sources top 100 albums, and start listening to what are considered the greats. It's a good place to start. So I'm not sure I ever told you, the first time I ever saw the name Rick Rubin was actually on the inside of an audio cassette. It was the first heavy metal album I ever bought,

which was Rain and Blood. Oh, it's a good one. And I just remember... That's a really good one. Not having... This was pre-internet, of course, and I was just told by my friends, you have to...

You will love heavy metal, you should listen to heavy metal. And I asked what the hardest heavy metal was that could possibly be found, and Rain and Blood came to the lips of those I asked. And I just remember listening to, I think it's Angel of Death, the first track on that, and

going, oh my god, what have I gotten myself into? And just fell in love with that band. But how did you go from hip-hop to, say, Slayer? It's gotten myself into and just fell in love with that band. But how did you go from hip hop to say Slayer? It's stylistically so different, it would seem, but how did Slayer come about? Because I was coming about it with no technical skill. It's not like I knew about hip hop or I knew about heavy metal. I was a fan of music and I loved heavy metal and I loved hip hop. So it was more that coming at it from this appreciation and as a

fan knowing what I wanted to hear, knowing that especially in the case of Slayer. Slayer were an underground metal band who had two albums out on an independent label and were kind of considered you know the heaviest band in the world. And when we signed them there was this terrible fear that Slayer now doing their first album for a major label, they were going to sell out. Get watered down. Yeah, which happens all the time. And then the album that we made, Reign of Blood,

was much harder and worse than anything that anyone ever heard before. And it really did come from that, you know, I liked extreme things and they were extreme and I wanted to maximize it. I didn't want to water down the idea of watering things down for a mainstream audience. I don't think it applies. I think people want things that are really passionate and the best version of that

they could be. And often the best version they could be is not for everybody. The best art divides the audience where, you know, if you put out a record and half the people who hear it absolutely love it and half the people who hear it absolutely hate it, you've done well because it's pushing that boundary. If everyone thinks, oh, that's pretty good. Why bother making it? It doesn't mean much. Lost in the slipstream of time almost as soon as it comes out. I'm going to do a round of ice if that's all right. Absolutely all right. Let's do some more ice and we'll be back.

Okay, we are back. Do you have a book or books that you've gifted often to other people? The first one that comes to mind is the Tao Te Ching. It's the Stephen Mitchell translation of the Dao De Jing. What's great about it is it's 81 short pieces that could be, look at them as poems, that if you were to read the book today, you would get one thing from it. And if you pick it up in two years and read it again it would mean something entirely different and always on the money you know always what you need to read at that period of time so it's a magic book in that way

that it always fits I actually took this guy this is bringing back a memory I took a cut an entire class on the Tao Te Ching at Princeton when I was an undergrad in East Asian Studies and it seems on some level that that book does what you do for musicians, meaning it sort of reflects back truths that they were not aware of themselves or they could not verbalize themselves. Any other books come to mind? Another one that's really nice is a book about meditation called Wherever You Go, There You Are, which is by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It's a great book if you've never meditated and if you've been meditating for 50 years. If you read this book, either way, you'll care more about meditation, become a better meditator, and just give insight into why we do it and what the benefits are. When you are working with an artist

who believes they can't do something or is just hitting that wall, what are some of the ways that you help them get past that? Usually I'll give them homework, like a small doable task. I'll give you an example. There was an artist I was working with recently

who hadn't made an album in a long time and was struggling with struggling with finishing anything and just had this, it was a version of a writer's block, but it was a, I don't know, hard to explain what it was, but I would give him very doable homework assignments that almost seemed like a joke. You know, like, tonight I want you to write one word in this song that needs five lines that you can't finish. I just want one word that you like by tomorrow. Do you think you'd come up with one word? And usually you'd be like, yeah, I think I can do one word.

And then just very quickly by breaking it down into pieces, like I learned from Laird, and chipping away one step at a time, you can really get through anything. Yeah. Breaking it down into manageable bites. I remember on the beach we had a zipline. Not a zipline, you know, the beam that you balance on. Oh, a slackline. Slackline.

And Laird was pretty good at it in the beginning, but had never done it before. And he would work for hours. He would just be there hour after hour after hour, falling off and getting back on, falling off and getting back on. And then of all of the group of people, he was by far the first one who was able to do it. And it wasn't because he just naturally was gifted at it. He knows that anything he sets his mind to learn to do, if he focuses and just continues to not mind falling off and not thinking he's supposed to be good out of the box, learning to be able to do it. That's how you learn things. I also will say that after having the weight problem that I had for so long, and then finally finding the solution and making the change, it really makes me believe that anything's possible.

You know, we can learn, we can train ourselves to do absolutely anything. It's really just getting the right information. If we get the right information, we can learn to do anything, whatever it is. Now, it doesn't mean we can necessarily be the best in the world at something, but we can be our best at that thing. The best version of ourselves. Yeah, and do things that we never dreamed of as possible

for us. What advice would you give and I'll ask this for a couple of different ages, but I'll start with your 20-year-old self. What advice would you give your 20-year-old self, if any? Try to have more fun. Why do you think you weren't having as much fun as you could have at that point? I think I was more driven and I don't know, I want to say almost like I felt like I had

something to prove. I don't know if I did have something to prove, but it felt like doing the work was the most important thing in the world as opposed to doing the work and enjoying the process and being able to step back and see what it was you know not just be so deeply into it that you know i feel like i missed a lot of years of my life because i was just in dark room working on music you know seven days a week for only 20 years. Wow. I recall, that makes me think of a story from Neil Gaiman, the writer, when he, I think it was with the success of Sandman, and he was in a huge line of readers who wanted signatures

and fans who wanted to tell him stories. And Stephen King pulled him aside and just said, enjoy it. Yeah. And he didn't. He was too caught up in the flow. What about your 30-year-old self? What advice would you give to your 30-year-old self? I would probably tell myself something that still might apply to me today.

I wouldn't have known it at all then. I know it now. I just still, it's not second nature. But she'd be kinder to myself because i beat myself up a lot because i expect a lot from myself i'll be hard on myself i don't know that i'm doing anyone any good by doing yeah that's advice that i need to to give myself as well when do you tend to beat yourself up i've made somewhat of a sport of it, it would seem.

It can happen any time I can come up with anything that I could be doing to further something and didn't already think of it and didn't already do it, I might beat myself up about it.

Why have I not done that. Something I struggle with that I'd love to get your two cents on is related to this, which is, on one hand, I don't want to beat myself up. On the other hand, I feel like the perfectionism that I have has enabled me to achieve whatever modicum of success I've been able to achieve. And I've heard stories, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but about, for instance, ZZ Top and La Futura, and how they worked on it with you from, I guess, I want to say what, 2008 to 2012, something like that, but how they realized the value of you wanting the art to be as perfect

as it could be, or the best that it could be and taking whatever time and pains necessary to make that possible. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because it's something that I continually struggle with. I want to be easier on myself, but I worry that if I do that, I will lose whatever magic, if there is such a thing, that enables me to do what I do. I think that's a myth. And I think that your take on things is specific to you. And it's not because of your, it's almost like you've won the war. And to accept the fact that you've won the war, you have broken through to now you have an audience. People are open to hear what you are interested in, what you learn, what you're interested in learning about and what you want to

share. You can do that without killing yourself. And that killing yourself won't be of service either to you or to your audience. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. When you're hiring for your small business, you want to find quality professionals that are right for the role as soon as possible. That's why you have to check out LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs has the tools to help find the right professionals for your team faster and for free. LinkedIn isn't just a job board. LinkedIn helps you hire professionals you can't find anywhere else, even those who aren't actively searching for a new job, but who might be open to the perfect role. In any given month, more than 70% of LinkedIn users don't visit other job sites. So if you're not looking on LinkedIn, if you're not using LinkedIn,

you are in the wrong place. More than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring, with 86% getting a qualified candidate within 24 hours. LinkedIn knows that small business owners, leaders, execs are wearing so many hats, they're stretched then. They might not have the time or resources to hire in any drawn out way. So LinkedIn is constantly finding ways to make the process easier. In fact, they just launched a feature that helps you write job descriptions, making the entire thing A to Z faster and much simpler. So hire professionals like a professional on LinkedIn. And now you can post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Tim. That's linkedin.com slash Tim to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

Next up, Mary Carr, author of three award-winning best-selling memoirs, The Liar's Club, Cherry, and Lit, and author of The Art of Memoir, which breaks down her process, and Tropic of Squalor, her latest volume of poetry. You can find Mary on Twitter, at Mary Carr Lit. Mary, welcome to the show. Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me. And I appreciate you putting me at ease when I mentioned that I have copious notes in front of me.

That's usually an indication that I am nervous. Not you. You do this all the time. You're going to kill it. It's going to go great. I'm convinced. Thank you. And you reassured me by saying, I make really good waffles. That's what I do.

I'm like a Nona. I'm like a Nona. You got to think of me as a Nona out here in Podcastville. Let's rewind the clock as a first step in Podcastville. And maybe we can talk about Nonas in the family lineage of sorts. And I want to talk about or have you speak to a guy redoing your mother's kitchen and holding up a tile. Could you perhaps elaborate on that, please? Yeah, yeah. Right after my first memoir was published, we were having my mother's kitchen retiled. My sister and I were there.

And yeah, the tile dude pries off a tile and he holds it up and it has a little round toilet. And he looks at my little fluffy haired, gray haired mother and says, Miss Carr, this looks like a bullet hole. And my sister says, Mom, isn't that where you shot at daddy? And she says, no, that's where I shot at Larry. Over there is where I shot at your daddy. So people ask me why I wanted to be a memoirist. I'm like, why would you make stuff up when that's who your mother is? So for those who have no context, I'd like to provide a bit more context. Where was this kitchen or where is this kitchen for that matter?

This kitchen is in Southeast Texas. It's a town that I write about to protect the mayor and the school principal and the people who didn't sign off on what I said about them. I call it Leachfield, but it's really east of Port Arthur, Texas, a small town in East Texas. I call it the ringworm belt. Which I've also heard you describe as a swampy town. So moisture, humidity, ringworm. As a former wrestler, I can say those things combined to produce ringworm. Yes, exactly. Yes. No, that's it. And industrial, like a lot of oil refineries all around. So not Paris in the 20s, I guess is the way I would put it. Now, I'm going to hop around like Memento the movie, if I must. And I must because that is my way. And you've

written extensively about your childhood. You had, in many respects, an extremely difficult, painful childhood and will probably unwind some of that. Now, you've written extensively about it, and you've also mentioned about writing memoirs. And if this is a misquote, please call me out. Quote, I've said it's hard. Here's how hard. Everybody I know who wades deep enough into memories waters drowns a little. And certainly in your book, you paint a high resolution picture of just how painful that can be. And certainly an element might be catharsis, but it is painful. And I would love for you to speak to the catalyst for beginning to publish this type of work, write and then publish this type of work. The publishing is nothing compared to the writing, I think. Publishing for me was great because they

gave me money and I didn't have any. So that was good. But yeah, I think I had a flamethrower on my ass. Can I say ass on your show? You can say ass. Not only are three-letter words allowed, four-letter are allowed as well. Oh, there we go. You know, I was a weird little kid and I was just, my mother was capital N nervous and married seven times and twice to my daddy. And both my parents drank hard. It was Texas. Everybody was armed. And we were a loud, combative house. So I loved my parents. I mean, that's what I should say. I don't think anybody who's read anything I've written about them would challenge that. But it was not a safe childhood. And yes, it had its fair share of blows. I mean, I always, you know, look, I was born in the richest country in the world. My skin color is something the whole country privileges. I'm, you know, I'm a college professor.

I grew up skinny and my teeth came in relatively straight and I have a lot of advantages. So whatever I went through, a lot of people and people I grew up with and loved had it way worse and didn't make it. So I think I was haunted. I was a haunted little girl. I tried to kill myself when I was a kid, when I was still in grade school. I took a bunch of aspirin. It said pain relief. And I thought, okay, this is what I want. So I didn't have a choice. I was, in some ways, not having a choice was a lucky thing because I went into therapy very early. I managed to get, after leaving school without a diploma, I managed to weasel my way into college and had a really kind professor. And his wife kind of

took me under their wing and urged me to go into therapy when I was 19. And so I was sitting in rooms talking to, you know, codependent social workers starting when I was a kid. And all of that helped. But I guess I've been really blessed with a lot of outside help. I'm a big, big fan of the mental health professional and the librarians and English teachers and those kind souls you meet along the way. So you have kind souls that you meet in person. You mentioned a few, and I want to talk more about weaseling into college in a few minutes, but I've read a lot about your reading, if that makes sense. Yeah, I read a lot. Yeah. Some might envision in their mind's eye the childhood you described as a family of illiterates,

nobody picked up anything other than People magazine, but that was not the case. No, the huge advantage, yeah. Describe that a little bit. And also, if I could tag on an additional piece of that question, I've heard you describe finding and reading poetry as Eucharistic. And I would love for you to just speak to that as well. Yeah, I started reading poetry when I was a little girl, and reading is socially sanctioned disassociation. They won't let you drink or, you know, gize heroin when you're a little kid, but you can disappear down a valley of Winnie the Pooh or Charlotte's Web. And in some ways, the poets I read, I think poetry really

captured me early. And my mother, who was a painter, had gone to art school in New York and was enormously well-read. There were books all over my house in a place for the nearest bookstore. The bookstores in my town sold Bibles as big as station wagons and little dashboard icons, but there wasn't a lot of literature to buy. But I found a home in the little library. It was a three-block walk from my house, and I could disappear down the snowy valley of a book, and I was somewhere else. And so poetry saved my life. I mean, my best friends were poets. I think the way people worship saints and, you know, have crosses blessed, I felt that way. And if you think about the idea of the Eucharist, we weren't Catholic, we were atheists. My father was a union organizer and said, you know, church is a trick on poor people to get their money away

from them. And my mother was a kind of Marxist lady who was very smart and, you know, just a loose, a little bit of a loose cannon. So we were not churchy in the Bible Belt. And yeah, you take some, when you read a poem, you know, you put it in the meat of your body. I mean, you're a body person. I'm a body person. I feel like you take somebody else's suffering into you and it changes you. It transforms you. I had this idea of being a poet starting when I was five or six years old, that I wanted to be a poet. It was the strangest thing because there were no poets around. No one I knew had ever met a poet. What was the feeling that elicited that desire? Was it just the tangible brilliance in some type

of wordplay? Was it a kinesthetic reaction to the aesthetics of certain poets? What was it that produced that desire? You said it better than I could, Tim. You win. I mean, it's not a joke that I used the Riverside Shakespeare as a booster seat. That's literally what happened. I sat, when I had to reach the table, I sat on this giant edition of Shakespeare my mother had that was very water-stained. And it was a book that I read very early, and I started memorizing not Shakespeare poems, but the speeches from Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth and Richard III. And I would memorize these speeches and say them to my hungover mother. And she liked it. It was something she encouraged. I got her

attention that way. To say she was not nurturing, I mean, Lady Macbeth is probably not nurturing the way my mother was not nurturing. I mean, her disinterest in being a mother was profound. Let's just put it that way. She once said to me when I was early on, when I was getting sober, she was supposed to watch my little boy who was then a toddler when I went to an AA meeting. And I came back one day and she was like, I can't keep him. He's just too, I mean, I was gone for an hour and a half. She said, I just don't do kids. And I was so mad. I said, mother, you had four children. What do you mean you don't do kids? You don't cook, you don't clean. You haven't had a job in 40 years. What exactly do you bring to the party?

And she thought for a minute and she said, I'm a lot of fun to be with. Yeah, I forgot to do anything for any other living human being, but I am fun to be with, which was not untrue. So I guess I had an aesthetic sense. She played music, she played opera, she played blues. Janis Joplin grew up in my hometown, or rather I grew up in her hometown since she was older. Her brother would be in my high school carpool, so there was a lot of music I listened to. And I think poetry was part of that, the form, the shape. You know what it felt like, Tim? I felt less lonely. I was a lonely person, and I would read these poems, and I felt like someone understands me. Someone knows what it feels

like to occupy this body. And I remember trying to tell other little kids in my neighborhood about it, about poems that I liked. There's an E.E. Cummings poem I once tried to tell some girls about in my school. You know, it's just spring and the world is mud luscious and the little lame balloon man whistles far and we and Eddie and Bill come running and it's spring and the world is a puddle wonderful and the goat footed balloon man whistles far and we, something like that. I can't even remember it, but it's so long ago. That's pretty good for not remembering. I can remember little bits of it. But I remember these girls in my school just going, what are you talking about?

That doesn't make any sense. And I'm like, what about it doesn't make any sense? You know, it's about it's being spring. And she's like, well, what is the mud luscious? Like, that's not even a word. I'm like, no, it's like muddy and luscious and delicious. And it's like, how is mud delicious? You know, it's like, no, like y'all aren't getting it.

And I thought they were messing with me. It seemed so obvious to me how great this was. So I learned to shut up about it very early. You know, by like third, fourth grade, I learned just don't. You like this stuff. Nobody else. Your mother likes it. Your sister likes it.

Your daddy likes it. Nobody else is going to like it. Shut up. One expression that I think was in the Art of Memoir, I've read it in other interviews, and again, I'm probably going to paraphrase here, but that poetry should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. Yes, I wish that were my line. Isn't that a great line? It's so good. Where is that from? Or do you recall where you learned it? Yes, I know vaguely where it's from, but I can't remember the guy's name. You can Google it. We'll find it.

Early 20th century, maybe 1920s to 1950 journalist guy. So I'm sorry, I don't cite him. I wish I could take credit for it. But yeah, all art should disturb the comfortable and comfort that's disturbed, and all therapy should, and most foods. It's not a bad goal to shoot for at the beginning of a day. How did you weasel into college? How did I weasel into college? If you could flash back, because I would imagine that there's some listeners like me who are just in their mind's eye seeing this little girl sitting on Shakespeare and out of focus behind her head in the same kitchen are bullet holes in the tile. And imagining the experience and the experiences, although truly you endured some horrific, horrific things, but wondering how does someone in that position get into college? Especially when they're missing, at least based on some of my homework, for instance, 87 days of school in the sixth grade, things like this.

How on earth does someone get into college? Was it your wielding of words and an essay that just unlocked it? Was it something else? I won an essay contest when I was in high school, I remember. I think it was from the National Council of Teachers of English. And I had some professors. Actually, my mother had gone back to graduate school and got me a recommendation from this teacher of Chinese history who felt me up, sexually assaulted me in his office, and then wrote me a recommendation. So maybe that helped. Actually, what I think helped when I look back on it was I opposed the Vietnam War and I wore black armbands on moratorium day. And that's the kind of thing that where I grew up, I remember my coach, the football coach, pinning me up,

physically pinning me up against the lockers by the front of my shirt and holding me against the lockers and threatening me essentially to take my black armband off. So I did things like I didn't stand up for the American flag. I mean, I don't know. I thought I was Colin Kaepernick or something. It didn't win me any friends. Let me just say that. But I later found out when I got to my school and I had to have a lot of jobs to go there because it was a private school. It was McAllister College. It's a very good school. And I later found out that the assistant principal of my high school, who had thrown me out a lot for things like my skirt was too short, one time he

threw me out for not having a bra on. And I said, what makes you think I don't have a bra on? And then he called in the gym teacher to look under my shirt and confirm, in fact, I didn't have a bra on. So I was a pain in his ass. And I later found out that he called McAllister and told these people in the admissions office that I was a bad citizen, that I wouldn't stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance and stuff. Well, they hear this old redneck assistant principal and they hear about this little girl who's doing this and I think, she sounds great. She's perfect. Perfect. So I actually think my misbehavior that got me in so much trouble and made him hate me so much. I once had an algebra teacher revealed to me, he really is after you, like you're not paranoid. Like he's, he's really, he wants you out of here. And so I actually think,

I don't know how I got in. I don't know how I got in. It was clearly a mistake. I made a D in art, you know, my senior year. And my mother was a painter. So, I mean, all I had to do was slap art on something and I would have gotten, you know, a B. And I couldn't handle the pressure. It was too hard. So I don't know how I got to college, but once I got to college, I've got to say, I really felt everybody else was complaining about their parents and the, I don't know, that you weren't supposed to smoke pot in your room or whatever they were mad about. I was like, this is great. All these people read books and they'll talk to you about them. And I made straight A's

and I got a scholarship and it was just shocking to me that I might succeed at something, you know? What about the environment? Aside from people who read books and are willing to listen, if it was the environment, maybe there are other variables led to the straight A's. Was it being outside of your home environment? What was the recipe that contributed to that conversion of sorts from D for defiant to straight A? Maybe you were still defiant, but you got straight A's. I wasn't defiant. I wanted to please people. I mean, I think I had a lot of jobs. I had one of those hairnet wearing jobs at the food service where I had to go in at four in the morning and cook scrambled eggs and wash dishes. And so I think

in some ways I had to organize my time, but I had been living with a bunch of drug dealers before I went to college out in Southern California. We moved out there initially, we lived in cars and stuff. And then we got some, a couple of us were slinging dope, mostly pot and psychedelics, although one guy had robbed a drugstore. And it was, I was hitchhiking one day from Laguna Beach to San Clemente where my friends were surfing. And I got picked up by a guy who really scared me. I thought he was going to rape me and had to jump out on the side of the road. And it's interesting because there were six of us who lived in that house when I left home. And of the six, four went to jail. And two of those were dead before they were 20. And only me and one other guy, who's still my best friend, Dooney,

wound up getting sober. And we both kind of made it, quote unquote, him in construction in Southern California and me doing whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing. So I was scared. I was scared by how dark things that I brought to darkness with me. You know, you get to Southern California from where I grew up and you're like, where has all this been? You know, everybody's orthodontured and, you know, people's teeth are great and nobody's missing any digits or anything. Everybody looks so amazing and everything's so beautiful. And you're like, God, I've never seen anything like this. Golly. And so you would think everything would have been great. But you know, as you know,

when you have a lot of trauma growing up, you bring the darkness with you. So I had this idea after I was hitchhiking and I got scared. I went to jump out of this guy's car. It was a Volkswagen that had no backseat and had a bunch of garbage in it. And I pulled up on the handle of the door and it just went floppy round and round and round, like it was locked and I couldn't get out. And so the window was open, stuck open, wouldn't go up, wouldn't go down. And I stuck my arm out the side of the window and opened it from the outside and jumped out and went down this embankment on the side of the road. I was really scared. I was, you know, how those moments of trauma are. I was scared like I had been when I was a little kid and there were bullets flying around my house. And I thought, I know, you know, I'll go to college in Minnesota. And I mean,

it's just, that was the other thing. Everybody in Minnesota is so damn nice. Have you ever been there? I have. I have spent time there. I couldn't, I used to make a joke about, an unkind joke. I'd say, if you're not a virgin, when you get here, you will be when you leave. It was just, everybody was so damn nice. Oh my God, I'd never seen such nice people in my life. And still, I got there and I did extremely well for two years and I won all these prizes. And then I dropped out. I couldn't handle the prosperity. I couldn't handle the success. It took me a while to finally start getting sober, I guess. I guess that was a lot of my problem. Which we will definitely talk about.

I want to dig into that. And I also am going to ask you, just to plant a seed, about how those mentors initially convinced you to go to therapy. But first, I want to bounce around chronologically. Yes. Because from these origins, I've, in the process of doing my homework, read about your graduate seminar at Syracuse described as hyper-selective. And you're certainly a writer and poet of great note at this point. Lots of people know who you are. Lots of people love

your work. Lots of people love you describing the craft and process that goes into your work. How do you select the students who make it into your graduate seminar, or how did you? I mean, I do it. I wish they would just give me a wand and I'd get to pick all my people. But interestingly, I've been teaching there, gosh, 30 years, something like that. I only teach in the fall, and I go and I commute from New York City. So we do it based on the work. We do it solely based on the writing.

And George Saunders, my colleague George Saunders, has gotten so famous that he attracts a lot of people and have a lot of people who teach there. Arthur Flowers, Junot Diaz is taught there. We just have gotten up to, you know, 1,200 applications for 12 positions. You end up with these 12 gems of assorted colors and kinds. Yes. What is day one, class one? What does that look like? Oh, you're thinking when I teach my memoir class. Yeah, well, I used to do this thing. Yeah, that's so funny. I used to do this thing where I would stage a fight in my class with someone who

was opposite from me. So let's say, you know, like my colleague, George Saunders, who is just the sweetest guy. I can't even tell you. I was in the car with him once and there was a bug on his shirt. And I was like, George, there's a big beetle on your shirt. And he'd be like, well, he has to be somewhere. You know, I'd be like, kill it. And he's like this Tibetan Buddhist with this amazing practice, you know, just the sweetest guy. So George comes in and starts arguing with me that my classroom is in fact his classroom. This is in front of all the students. In front of all the students.

And for them, it's the first day of school, and it's like having their parents fight. And I script it so that I say only nice conciliatory things. I back up, he walks forward, he's bigger than I am. And then it ends with him like throwing the papers up and, you know, telling me to go fuck myself or something. Or telling me to go hang. Maybe, I don't know if you can say the F word. Can you say the F word? F word is not only allowed, but endorsed. I grew up on Long Island. You're in good company. I feel so much better. Just telling me to go fuck myself. And then we asked the students to write. So let's say there are 17, 18 students in this class, 20, somewhere between 15 and 22. And

they're all smart and they're all young. They were all incredibly juiced on adrenaline and cortisol because they were scared and it's a public scene and they don't really know each other that well and they don't know us that well. So they're all extremely alert. They're hypervigilant. And we asked them to write down what happens and everybody writes something just a little different. Interestingly, people will describe me in very aggressive terms. Like, even though I'm the one backing up and I'm saying, well, I can clear out during the break, George, but like, I don't understand why you're so upset. And he'll say, you don't understand why I'm so, I mean, and he walks forwards and I'm backing up and my head is down and I'm doing every conciliatory gesture I can track star, Betsy. And, you know, Betsy just threw her papers up in the air and was screeching at me. Well, you know, she's this kid, and here I am, this professor with, you know, fancy clothes in a position of power. So people would, in that class of undergraduates, assume that I had done horrible things to Betsy. In one class, there was a young woman. One of the ruses I set up is that I leave my cell phone on so I can start

to argue with George before he comes in and then ask the students, you know, how often did he call? How long between each call? And ask them to guess things or remember things about time. And some people, he calls three times. Some people will say he called once, some people four times. So all those details are very influenced by who they are. The young woman with sickle cell anemia will have this enormous compassion for me because I'll say, I have to leave my phone on. I'm waiting for medical results. And she'll assume I'm waiting to hear if I have some awful ailment. And she sees George as a complete beast and me as this woman, perhaps ill, who dragged herself to class while everybody else in the class thinks, what a diva. She's answering her phone in the middle of class. She can't wait an hour to get medical results. I mean, come on. So there are always people in class who have those perfect memories. I remember one kid, often they're musicians.

This kid was a jazz saxophone player who was very famous in Brooklyn for giving these amazing house parties. I think he made a living giving house parties for like, I don't know, years. So this kid had this amazing memory. We had a script and he remembered the script exactly. He remembered what George had on. He remembered where we stood. He remembered that I backed up every step. And then when he wrote it, he wrote it exactly as it happened. He didn't miss anything. And he said, George was the aggressor, but I wonder what she'd done to make him act that way. I guess the purpose of the exercise is for you to realize that you remember through a filter of who you are. Memory is not a computer. It's not a perfect storage system. Obviously,

even these fine minds of these young people, very alert and paying attention in their first class and wanting to get everything right and do well, misremember. And what I want them to think about is how they are not just perceiving things, but beaming the world, the landscape into being with whoever they are inside. It's important as a writer of anything to realize what kind of filters you're strapping on that prevents you from seeing what's going on. I would imagine that is an opening exercise that a lot of your students remember, speaking of memory, for a very, very long time. What other exercises or aspects of your teaching, it could be in any setting, do many of your students remember or have stick out for them, would you imagine? I think a lot of practice things, a lot of, I think it's important as a writer or as in anything to develop habits. I mean, you talk about this and for our body, for our work week, you've developed a lot of practices in your life to shape your life so that you're kind of operating, you know, to constantly be

growing and developing. And so things like keeping a commonplace book, just keeping a notebook where you write down beautiful pieces of language. What is a commonplace book? That is where you capture the sort of beautiful turns of phrase that you encounter? Yeah, things you read. So you might copy poems, you might copy something you overheard on the street. There was a guy standing on my street, this is like a couple of years ago when I first moved into this apartment, screaming murder or suicide at the top of his lungs. And everybody was walking around the street, walking around him. And it was early in the morning and I walked up to him and I said, excuse me, sir.

He was screaming murder or suicide, murder or suicide. And I went up to him and said, sir, isn't there like a third alternative? Like, isn't there a door number three? And that little encounter I wrote down, but things I overheard... Well, hold on, hold on. That's too much of a cliffhanger. So, what happened when you said that? Well, you know what was beautiful? I went into, I was going in to get a pastry for a friend of mine who was visiting from London. I got him one. I thought I'd bring him a pastry when I came out. But when I walked into the bakery, he was looking at the sky, you know, with a curious look. You know, he was thinking, like, isn't there a door? Isn't there a door? Isn't there another? Gosh, there might just be a door number three. But mostly what I write down are pieces of language or things, poems that I read, paragraphs, anything, so that you're just constantly copying. In longhand, you can't type it. You're constantly copying things that are beautiful. You're constantly guzzling beauty. You're guzzling the beautiful language so that you're kind of steeped in it, you know, like a fruitcake and good brandy.

Is the value of the commonplace book and using it this way in the writing down, or do you have some approach to review or using that later? I mean, the great thing about them is that if you get on an airplane or you're going along, you sort of know what you're reading. But I've also been doing this. A poet named Stanley Kunitz, who was a poet laureate in like 1978 or something, told me to do this. So I've been doing this since 1978. Also, every time I give a lecture, I put the quotes I use in the lecture on index cards. And so I have like, you know, I've been teaching for 40 years. I mean, I have 40 years of index cards with quotes on them. It's oddly satisfying. I don't know what it is. It's like a sit-up you do. It's like a push-up you do. It's something you don't really, I often don't look back on. I think it's

in the writing down. I think it's in the practice. And it's kind of, it's like an altar. You're making an altar for yourself every day. You know, I wanted to, might as well use this as a segue, alter. Could you speak to the importance or utility of prayer in your life? Yeah. I mean, I'm a prayer. I was an atheist my whole life, and I got sober in 1989. And believe me, I drank my share. I did my part. I remember some guy I went to high school with telling me, when my mother was still alive, I was home. And he says, you don't even drink anymore. You don't even smoke pot. I was like, no, Jack O'Lantern, I don't do that stuff anymore. He's like, why?

I was like, well, it just didn't agree with me. It made me do things that I didn't want to do. And he says, I just think you're a quitter. I just think you're a quitter. I just think you're a quitter. I just think you gave up. I mean, what is smoking pot going to do? You're never going to, like, rob anybody's television or anything. He said, well, that's true.

That's true enough, Jack Lantern. But you have had this job pumping gas since the 11th grade. Please tell me this guy's name was actually Jack Lantern. His name was Jack. We called him Jack Lantern because of a sad tooth thing he had and because we were not ones to stand on ceremony. And he said, I said, you have had this job since the 11th grade and you're 50 old, and you have an ambition deficit disorder by my yardstick. So, no, but he would say, Jack Leonard, he'd say, don't call me that no more. I'm like, what do you want me to call you? Like, that's your name, dude. That's been your name since you were 15. That's your name. What does prayer look like for you? What is praying?

Well, I think it started off, I think poems are my first prayers. The ones that I read, like I said, I felt less lonely. So I started praying not out of any virtue, I didn't believe in God. I had no religious training whatsoever. When I was a little girl, you know, people would say, would talk about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. I thought they were kidding. I thought they don't really believe this horseshit. I mean, I figured out pretty early on, by the time I was like six or seven, people were serious that they prayed when people weren't looking at them. I couldn't believe it. It was shocking to me. And daddy would say, well, you know, folks ignorant, you know what you're going to do.

So I had not a religious bone in my body, but I did notice when I tried to stop drinking that I couldn't. Like that, I tried to stop drinking for two or three years. And I tried by myself, and I tried drinking only beer, and I tried drinking only alone. I tried drinking only with other people, and I tried drinking only wine. I tried drinking with food. I tried drinking on weekends. Somehow, I had crossed some line where I just couldn't stop drinking. And I went to get help and I went to sat in church basements and I hated everybody I saw who was sober. I just hated them. They just seemed like the guys selling incense at the airport. I just didn't like them. They just didn't look fun. And I just, they were so nice too. It was like getting to Minnesota. They're,

hi, you know, welcome. I'd be like, oh God, I hate these people. And finally, the last time I drank, the last night I drank, I had gotten together for like, it was the longest amount of time sober I'd had since I was 15. And I'd gotten together 90 days sober by going and, you know, sitting in church basements and talking to people who were sober. And I got a 90 day chip. And then I had to give this talk. I had to give a poetry reading at Harvard. Sorry to interrupt, just since I don't have much familiarity, when you say 90 day chip, is that some like literal token that you were given? It looks like a poker chip. And so you get one the first day you go, and then you get one at 30 days and 60 days and 90 days. So this was, for me, an epic accomplishment. I mean, there was no time that I ever ran the 100-yard dash in that was as important to me as that 90-day chip. And I was

happy that I was sober. I felt better. I was sleeping better. My kid was better. Everything was better. And I had to give this poetry reading at Harvard College. And I was nervous. I'd never given a reading without drinking. The reading went okay. I was teaching at a bunch of places, including one class there. And I went out with some of my students. And the next thing I know, it's three o'clock in the morning and my car's spinning out on Storer Drive in Boston. And I'm going towards this concrete. And I somehow didn't crash the car and I somehow got home. And so at that point, everybody had been saying, you know, got to get on your knees and pray.

And there was this great heroin addict, recovering heroin addict, Janice, at this halfway house where I did volunteer work. I drove people to meetings, basically, and would pick people up and drive them to meetings. A lot of disabled people. And Janice said, just get on your knees. And I'm like, Janice, you know, what kind of God wants me to grovel and go, oh, God, you're so great. And she said, you don't do it for God, you asshole. And that Boston accent, you don't do it for God, you asshole. I'm like, well, who am I doing it for?

She's like, you're doing it for yourself. Just get on your knees. Just say, help me stay sober in the morning. Get on your knees. And I say, thank you for helping me stay sober. And so I'd be like, okay. So I get on my knees. Help me stay sober in the morning. Get on your knees at night and say, thank you for helping me stay sober. And so I'd be like, okay. So I'd get on my knees, help me stay sober. At night, I'd say, thank you for helping me stay sober. Well, some weird things started to happen. I mean, sometimes I would literally shoot the finger at the light fixture because I just thought,

I hate this. You know what's terrifying about praying is the loneliness of it. I always tell people, young women I sponsor, you show more faith praying when you have never prayed before than any nun. To sit in that silence with all your fears and all your self-doubt is so scary and hard. If you have a big, loud head like I do, and I have a big inner life and mine never has anything good to say, it thinks it can kill me and go on living without me. Something started to happen. I would have these moments of quiet. And the only way I can describe it is it was south of my neck. It was like in the middle of my chest. If I was living my life with my head, like yammering at me like a chihuahua all day and do this,

don't that stupid bitch, put that down, pick that up, go over there. I mean, it was just eat this, don't eat that, call him, hate him. You know, like just these moments, like in the middle of my chest would be like this broad expanse of quiet. And I remember one particular day, our little shitty car broke down. My kid was a toddler and he was, I had to pee. We were on the road. I didn't break down. I had a flat and didn't have a spare, a working spare. It was rush hour. We were on Memorial Drive. We were trying to get home. And I just, in that moment, what I normally would have done, I would have been there throwing the jack around and trying to get the car jacked up and in a state

of indignant fury that I didn't believe in God, but I believed that there was fate that had doomed me to misery and that the guy with the Jaguar would always get my parking place right before I pulled in. And I believed I had a head that had memorized the bad news and spewed it out all day. And I remember that day, it was the sun was setting. I just got out on the side of the road, got Dev out of his car seat and the sun was going down and he was looking at me afraid that I was going to be like angry. And I just sat there and he said, he was hungry and I didn't have anything to eat in the car. And I'm sitting there and I said, let's just look at the sunset a minute and then we'll go, we'll walk and we'll get some help. And we were just sitting there looking at the sunset, and this truck pulls up with these Goomba guys from this 12-step meeting,

and they have ginger ale, they have a jack, they have a way to tow my car, they give Deb potato chips, and it was just like, you know, all I have to do is just find some space in my body and just wait for a minute. And so I started to notice things happening when I wasn't bent over the day, like a dog over like a bone that was about to be stolen. You know, like that, and I could just, I could just like sit there for a moment. And so I began to get a space in my body and I began to get, I began to hear not the voice of God. I would call it, I would have some leanings. Like I would be thinking, I should have just killed myself. Like literally, this is what I'd be. I should have killed myself.

My husband would marry some nice girl who wore barrettes and my son would have this great mother and his life would be better if I weren't there. And I would hear this voice in my head that was like, you need a sandwich. Why don't you get a sandwich? Why don't you make yourself like the biggest sandwich you can make? And I'd be like, oh, great idea. Like I just started to have these small good ideas that were not like anything I'd ever heard when I was afraid before. Yeah, then I had all these crazy spiritual experiences. And like one of the things, I had this great sponsor, Joan the Bone. God, I loved her. She was so great. She was the kind of girl who lived in Alaska and would go to the bar when it was like 50 below in a tutu. She was just like a badass. And she was a Harvard social theorist, too, I've got to tell you. Joan the Bone. Joan the Bone. Joan the Bone. All that and a bowl of biscuits. Yeah. Sounds like a mobster. What's the origin of the name? Do you have any idea?

I just called her that. That was my nickname for her, Joan the Bone. I see. I see. All right. Joan the Bone. And Joan would tell me things like, I was such an ingrate, she'd say, you have to make a gratitude list. And so she'd call me and say, what's on your gratitude list? I would say, I have all my limbs. She'd say, no. Okay. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to make a gratitude list every day this month for every letter of the alphabet. And you're going to call me and read it to me. I said, shut the fuck up. I'm not going to do that. She's like, yes, you are. Or else, you know, like I won't talk to you anymore. I'd be like, okay.

So I just started trying. I just started trying. Instead of sitting there with my arms crossed and my lower lip stuck out and my baseball cap pulled down over my eyes, I just started trying shit that people who were happier than me suggested I should try. It was so simple. And so one of the things I said to her, she said, you've got to pray for what you want. What are you praying for? I said, I pray to stand it.

Yeah, not to kill myself, not to get to stand it, just to get through the fucking day. That's what I'm praying for. And she said, okay, well, you've got to pray for what you want. What do you want? I said, I made $9,000 this year. I would like some money, please. She said, well, why don't you pray for money? I'm like, you can't pray for that. She's like, well, why not? I said, okay. So I would literally get on my knees in the morning and say, keep me sober. I would like some money.

I'm not even making this up. And I would get on my knees and say, thank you for keeping me sober. I would still like some money. Three weeks later, after I started, this is a true story and you can look it up. I get a phone call from a guy who says he's from this foundation. He's giving me $35,000 that I'd never applied for or asked for, that somebody just put me up for. And I so thought it was, I thought it was my friend, George playing a trick on me and say, you know, fuck you, George. And I hang the phone up. And the guy calls back and he asked me on the speakerphone, you can hear people laughing maniacally. So I've never gotten money from prayer again.

And then Joan of Arc says, well, you must believe that there's some sort of God. I was like, no, because they were meeting to give me that prize before I had stopped drinking and started praying. And she said, Jesus Christ. And I would also talk to her all the time. I'd say, how can there be a God? Because look at the Holocaust. She's like, God didn't do the Holocaust. People did the Holocaust. Like, what are you mad at God for? People did that. God didn't do it. That has nothing to do with God. So that's how my prayer life started. It's a bizarre story. I like bizarre.

So Ignatian exercises. Does that mean anything to you? Yes. Yes. I became a Catholic. I became a Catholic. And I do something. I practice a kind of spirituality called Ignatian spirituality, which when you become a Jesuit,

you go away to the Jesuit place or the Jesuit-making place. You go to Jesuit school, and then they give you these 30-day exercises. And the purpose of the exercises is to find God in all things. So like this election, which is just turned around to look at my screen to see if we had a new president. So this election, for instance. Just a side note, somebody just sent me a text before we started recording and said the entire country has electile dysfunction, which I thought was pretty clever. Why didn't I think of that? Oh my God, that's so great. That was a clever turn of phrase, yes. Oh my God. No, it really is.

So finding God in all things. you know, has come to hurt you. So what you do actually, Tim, is in the morning I do a prayer and meditation thing for 20 minutes where I do like centering prayer for maybe, I don't know, five, six, seven minutes. And then I read a scripture and I meditate on the scripture. And then I have a bunch of people I pray for. I have a list of people I pray for and things I pray for. Then at night, I do something called the examine of conscience where you, it's not like going over your day and making a list of good things that happened or whatever, and then repenting for the bad things. It sounds like that, but it's not that. What it is, is you kind of press play on the recorder of your day. So you

think I woke up and so what did I do? Where was I? What mindset was I in? And you close your eyes and you try to review your day literally like you're watching a movie. And where you see moments of grace or luck or even something, you know, a good sandwich, something yummy to eat, You're supposed to savor those moments and occupy those moments. And it's a very body-oriented exercise. You're supposed to smell. What do you smell? What do you hear? What do you taste? How do your clothes feel? You're supposed to really recreate that moment in a sensory way and thank God for the grace or the gift of that. And then you kind of press play again and you see moments where you turned away from God or

your best self didn't act and you say, I want to do better next time. Instead of snapping at the robo call voice, snapping at Siri because she doesn't understand me, I love me for myself alone, you know, to just, you know, tomorrow I'd like to be more patient, help me to be more patient. So what it does is it made those moments of gratitude. And I also keep kind of a list or journal of those things and a prayer journal daily. I don't keep a journal journal, but I keep a daily prayer journal. And I just will kind of highlight some of those things.

Like for me today, right now, Steve Kornacki's haircut, which I know he does himself. I don't know. The guy who delivers the big map thing on MSNBC. I just like the himself. I don't know. The guy who delivers the big map thing on MSNBC. I just like the guy. I just like him. Every time I see him, I feel like I'm spending the night at my girlfriend's house and he's her nerdy brother who's like secretly hot. I had this flash of panic. So I was like, oh, fuck, here's somebody important. I'm not saying he's unimportant, but I'm just saying, oh, God, here's another guy that I have to pretend I know because I'm on the podcast.

No, he's the guy who delivers the darn, you know, what the electoral map says on MSNBC. Got it, got it. So if you're a liberal, you're like a nut and you watch this way. Other people watch other things. He's this really nerdy kind of math goop guy who wears like khakis and a really like a clip on tie and has this really bad haircut. And I just have a complete crush on him. I just crush on him. I don't even like young men. I don't.

I really don't. You have to have some, you know, you have to have some hair coming out of yours for me to want to date you. But this guy just does it for me. I just like him. I just like him. So wait a second. Tie that together for me. Does that have anything to do with the prayer journal? Yes. Or were you just confessing that? No, no. I have a crush on this guy who's on TV every day, and it tickles me to see him. It's

kind of a little thrill. It's a little thrill to see him. It really is. It's so stupid. But it's also, it makes me feel like a child. It makes me feel like I'm in junior high school. And so there's something innocent and sweet about it. Also the fact that he's so dorky, I like, I just like that. So you have a prayer journal. You have the commonplace journal. Right. Do you have any other journals no that's it those are the prayer journal i don't really i only write like actually write and i it's mostly kind of looks like a list do you know what i'm saying it's mostly like a list of things like the lady at my drugstore who the my pharmacist who uh they were all out of, you know, the pneumonia vaccine. I get pneumonia a lot. And she went out of her way to call me and say, you know, I got you the pneumonia. If you can

come in right now that we had a cancellation, you know, I can do that. Just kindnesses, moments of kindness, but also moments of presence and awareness of God. A lot of people feel it in nature. I feel it a little bit in Central Park, which is all the nature I have. I am currently in Austin, Texas, which is home base for me. Shut the front door. Yeah, I've been here for three years. I live in the Republic of Austin slash the Republic of Texas. One of my favorite t-shirts, not everyone's going to get this, but is a shirt with the Texas flag, which says most likely to secede on it, which I quite like. Yes. So I'm in Texas, although a lot of Texans would argue that I'm not in Texas. Of course. Yeah, I know i know right listen or do you have

a weapon if you have a weapon you belong i do i'll get good for you what do you have can i ask can we talk as far as weapons yeah sure i i have a a seven millimeter wind mag hunting rifle i have a glock 34 which is a nine millimeter i know what it is i know what a nine mil you know i don't know what a nine millimeter guy i'm not explaining it. I know what a nine millimeter, I don't know what a nine millimeter guy is. I'm not explaining it for you. I'm explaining it just like getting on your knees. Not for, not for God, it's for you. I'm explaining to the listeners.

So nine millimeter Glock 34, I have an M&P 45 and a few other. Do you hunt? Firearms that I don't use much. I hunt, but infrequently. And that started in 2012. I always had a very negative association with hunting. I've just given my exposure to it. It's kind of a great saying.

Yeah, I had a very negative association because I saw very irresponsible hunting on Long Island. And then in the process of working on The 4-Hour Chef and learning to forage, I felt it was incumbent upon me to hunt if I were to consume animal protein. So I had my first deer hunt with an incredible hunter and conservationist named Steve Rinella. And that really completely shifted my lens on how ethical and responsible hunting could be. Now, in Texas, you have the whole spectrum from responsible to machine gunning hogs from helicopters, which I do not partake in. Although people could argue it's an invasive species, et cetera, et cetera. But yes, so I do hunt infrequently. Probably, let's just call it once every year or two. I'll hunt. You know, those javelina hogs are fun to shoot. I'm sorry to say it. I'm embarrassed to say it, but I've shot a javelina hog. So I'm anti-gun, but pro-hunting.

So does that make sense? It does. I mean, I'm just imagining these kind of backwood Kiwis in New Zealand hunting hogs with knives walking into the woods barefoot, which is a real thing. I know one guy who did that. So you can be pro-hunting while being anti-gun. I think that's possible. No, but I mean, if I were to hunt, I would hunt with a gun. But it's funny, one of my best friends is a young writer named Phil LaMarche, who's one of those guys who stocks his freezer with bow and arrow kill venison. He called me this week and said of very interest, he just killed his deer. And he said, you know, the longer I hunt, you know, the only thing I hate about it is the killing. I think there's a lot of shared sentiment to that by a lot of hunters. Yeah.

I mean, the most reverent people I know about the natural world are practicing. Many of them are practicing hunters. True fact. Well, I want to use this to tie a bunch of things together in the most awkward fashion possible. That's okay. Because I've been trying to force fit a segue somewhere, so I might as well do it here. Yeah, do it. And that is to hear your description or explanation of how some of your wordsmithing

came to be. Part of what I enjoy so much about your writing is that you have this, let me get this right, time critic Lev Grossman said in his review of Lit, Carr seems to have been born with the inability to write a dishonest or boring sentence. That's high praise. Now, the least boring sentence is for me, and God, I wish I could remember it. But you take this, what seems like this sensitivity to language and poetry to create sentences using cat shit sandwich metaphors and so on, which also seems to me, and maybe this is, you tell me if this is warranted or not, but to be a very kind of Texan thing also, it kind of makes me think of like a trial lawyer in God knows where in Texas, right? Who gets up and just demolishes some slick trial attorney from Los Angeles in a complete mismatch, right?

I mean, just dismantle someone with these really clever turns of phrase. Where does that come from? Or how did that develop in you? Because I do think it is one of your superpowers. Well, I think growing up in Texas, it's a storytelling culture. Texas idiom is poetry, as far as I'm concerned. And I had two great practitioners. I'm a seventh generation Texan. I'm my mother's side and fifth generation of my daddy. So my daddy was a great barroom storyteller. I mean, he was a labor union organizer for the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Local 1242. And he was just funny as a crutch and told these amazing kind of tall tales like out of Mark Twain. But he also spoke

in poetry like he would say, like a woman with an ample behind, he'd say, she has a butt like two bulldogs fighting in a bag. And for him, that was a compliment. There was nothing insulting about that. He used to call me, I'm a little skinny thing. He used to call me a gimlet ass. Pokey, you need some talor on that ass. You got you a gimlet ass. I don't even know what that is, but I knew it wasn't good. A little flat butt. Or he would say, it's raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock. You can scan that, by the way.

It's raining like a cow pissing on flat rock. Wait, what do you mean by scan, real quick? What do you mean by that? Like Shakespeare's iambic pentameter, or my first love poem that was ever written to me, I saw you on your horse today, your eyes like eggs, your hair like hay. That's like, it's iambic pentameter. It's da-da-da-da-da-da. It doesn't matter what it is, but you can hear it when I say it, right? That it's raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock and that you hit that flat rock. For one thing, it creates a whole landscape in which cows piss on flat rocks and people stand around and marvel and go, my goodness, lookie at that. And then you attribute that to the rain. It's a metaphor. It operates way beyond

the bounds of propriety. It's not how you talk in church. You're not supposed to talk like this. So the minute you say this and somebody laughs at it, you have them. They're in your boat. They have transgressed by laughing at your joke. Well, Daddy was just the master of a story, but he was also a poetic imagery. I mean, to me, that poetry, I grew up, I was steeped in it. My mother, who was an enormous reader who read everything, Chinese history and Russian novels and philosophy and just read everything, was just the master of, you know, I remember when she was dying, she had all these old men who were always trying to marry her, which, why? But she's dying. She's actively dying. And one of these old boyfriends has come to see her at the hospital in Houston. And the nurse spins over and says, Miss Carr, your husband's here to see you. And she says, well, he must look like shit. He's been dead 20 years. And, you know, I mean, she just can't stop herself from saying like the most horrible thing you've ever thought.

And so I think between the two of them and just growing up in Texas, the idiom, the language I grew up with is epically beautiful. And the need to not be boring when you speak, you know, people will, I'm gonna stomp a mud hole in your ass. That is so much better than I'm going to whip your ass. It's just like, yeah, right. My friend Dooney got in a fight once with a guy in a bar and the guy said, and he told the greatest story about it. It was actually the guy he decided to stab. He went out in his truck and got a knife and came back with like a Swiss Army knife. And he starts chasing this guy who was a state congressman, by the way, I won't tell you his name, but he starts chasing him around this bar. Well, to brandish a weapon in a place

where alcohol is served is a mandatory, I think, 10-year sentence, some big, you know, it's frowned upon. And he's chasing this guy around. And somebody says to Danny at one point, that's a little bitty old knife you got there. He said, well, notice he don't want to get stabbed by it. And then he runs out. And then we hear the siren. So here comes the siren.

Here comes the siren. And he runs out. He gets in his truck. And one of those mall cops, security guys, runs out. And Dooney says, he stands in front of my truck, in front of my headlights. He's got a belt buckle that will pick up HBO. And he holds his hands up and goes, halt! Halt!

And Dooney just puts it in first gear and hits the guy. I mean, he doesn't hit him hard, but he knocks him down and then leaves and gets pulled over and is convinced he's going to prison for brandishing this weapon, for trying to hit this guy. But anyway, it turns out he had to call the guy to apologize. The guy's daddy knew Dooney's daddy. And he said, all he wants you. The guy's daddy knew Dooney's daddy. And he said, all he wants you to do is apologize. And Dooney's like, apologize? You know, I'll blow the guy. Like, are you kidding?

I don't want to go to jail. Of course I'll apologize. But here's the punchline of the story, and this is what makes Dooney still my best friend since I was 15. So he calls the guy up, and the guy answers the phone. And Dooney goes, I am so sorry, man, about last night. I am so sorry. And the guy says,

you almost killed me. And, uh, Duney says, man, I'm so sorry. I didn't know it was you. Don't you want to say that though?

The next time somebody happened, I didn't know it was you. The next time you do some horrible thing. The next time I get in a really stupid argument with my girlfriend, that's what I'm going to use. Don't you want to say, I didn't know it was you, honey? I don't know. Only in the state of Texas do you have that story. It's just got all the elements of a Texas story.

How could I not love it down there? I mean, oh, my God. Let's talk about revision. Okay, revision. How could I not love it down there? I mean, oh my God. Let's talk about revision. Okay, revision. I'm a big revisor. I'm a big revisor. So you have said, anyone who's read a rough draft of anything I write is just shocked at how bad it is. It's terrible.

And what does the process look like? I mean, I know this is a very, hopefully it doesn't sound like a really naive question because I know that there are many, many aspects to revision. I'll lead with just a bit. This is from writermag.com, but Car says she takes a hard look at every sentence she writes. Can I make this sentence less boring, more interesting, prettier, more colorful, more true? So that's a teaser. What does your revision process look like? Because I've read that you threw out something like 1,200 pages. Throughout 1,200 pages of lit, yeah. Finished pages, too. That's not draft. And that was written over about, I want to say, five or six years. And I remember when I threw it out, Tim, I was so upset. I had been, well, first off, they were about to hang me. I was so late. I was like seven years late on a contract.

And so I finally, my agent called me and said, you know, you're going to have to, I said, you know what? I will sell my apartment and give the damn money back if they don't shut up and leave me alone. It's just going to take me a minute. So anyway, so I'd sent them, I don't know, I had sent them like 130, 140 pages. And my editor at the time estimated that I had thrown out 1,200 pages. And let me tell you when she said that they sucked as bad as I thought they sucked.

I mean, I knew they sucked when they sent them, which is why I didn't want to send them. I wanted to keep working on them. So I just, I went to bed for like two days and I watched, you know, Dr. Phil reruns and a lot of cooking shows. And I ordered a lot of curry. I think I had a whole pizza at one point and slopped around in my bathrobe. And then I called Don DeLillo. I was one of the people I call. It's like, you know, the nuclear button, you know, who's like just one of the great novelists who also happens to be a friend of mine. And I said, Don, I think I'm writing a...

He's like, what are you crying about? I said, I think I'm writing a bad book. And he said, well, who doesn't? And I thought about that. And I thought, God, he's right. Tolstoy's written bad. I mean, people I read, you know, every writer I know has written a bad book. Okay. So maybe it's just supposed going to be a bad book, but it's the book that's standing in line to be written.

And I think I became willing to fail, to just say what happened. Basically, what it looks like is just clawing through a line at a time or a sentence at a time. I think one example I give in the art of memoir is that when I'm, my mother is driving me to college. And I think the sentence I started with was something like, mother drove me to college in her yellow station wagon. We stopped every night at the Holiday Inn and got drunk on screwdrivers. I can't remember. Might have said puke and drunk on screwdrivers. I somehow was able to remember being in that car. The thing about my mother's yellow station wagon was that it didn't have an air conditioner. So at that time,

you could buy an air conditioner that strapped under the dashboard. Well, it would build up condensation. And when she turned right, and I was sitting in the shotgun, the water in the air conditioner would spill out onto my bare feet. And it was icy, icy cold water. And I remembered that we had stopped and gotten a bushel of peaches in Arkansas. And she was drinking vodka, driving, drinking vodka and orange juice and eating these, watching her eat a peach. You know, when you're 17 years old to watch your mother eat and show any desire for anything is just so horrifying. You just want to die. There's just nothing uglier than watching your mother eat a peach

when you're 17. You just think, my God, woman, shut your mouth. Take a smaller bite. Jesus, it's not going anywhere. But the smell of the peaches and being in, and suddenly I remembered that I had a copy of A Hundred Years of Solitude. It was her book that I had started reading and she said, read it aloud to me. And I remembered reading that book and driving and I remembered, you know, you grow up around these kind of Texas dirt farms. I mean, there's plenty of corporate farming in the state of Texas, but then you get to the Midwest, and it's just so organized. It's just, there aren't the rusted cars in the yard and the refrigerator on the porch, you know. rows of corn in these big cinnamon colored silos. And I remember driving into that landscape up to that college and reading that book and thinking, I could be a writer. I somehow was able to remember those details and occupy that body in space and time and remember how disgusted I was by my mother and how terrified I was that

I wouldn't do well at school, that I would fail. I've been such a screw up. I've been arrested the year before with a bunch of kids and there was a bunch of dope and some of them went to jail and I didn't because the judge was a guy who had known my mother when she was a reporter for the local newspaper. And I still remember sitting in here. She came to pick me up wearing a leopard. She had leopard skin pajamas. It was July 4th. And she had on a beaver coat with a mink collar and those leopard skin pajamas in this hot

night in Coons County, Texas. And here sits this judge behind this, this liver spotted judge with these palsied hands and every meal he's ever eaten on his tie when she came to pick me up. And he said, I remember your mother. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. And she said, oh, you old fool. I mean, it was just like, oh my God, mother, get me out of here. Sucking up is underrated. So anyway, yeah, I think it's memory. I do an exercise. I just did it the other day for a colleague of mine, Dana Spietta, a wonderful young novelist I teach with. And she's teaching an undergraduate class. And I said, I want to do this right. There are 90 kids in the class.

I said, I want to do this writing exercise. She said, well, the writing, you know, it's been uneven. And I said, trust me, everyone will write well. And you have them focus on a room they grew up in and to try to occupy the smell, to try to remember a room you were in where your mother's cooking, your grandmother, wherever you had a good meal when you were little, and try to close your eyes and smell that. Because, you know, smell is the most primordial memory and the most emotional memory, and it's stored way back in that snake brain hypothalamus we have that is where all the trouble starts. You try to get in that memory and interrogate your body about what you can smell, taste, touch. And then finally, what you want, what are you yearning for and what's keeping you from getting it? Maybe it's a bite of the brisket or some of the barbecue or daddy's oysters coming up out of the fryer or what's going to keep you

from getting it. It's my big footed sister who, as daddy said, nothing ever got between her and a bag of groceries. She's going to get all the oysters and I won't get any. And so it's really more about trying to occupy a former self. Because I think, as you know, just as in trauma, the body remembers, the body also remembers beauty. It also remembers pleasure and love and those other things too. for these memories. Sometimes there are costs associated with that. Tony Horan show. Yeah. I've read that while you were working on The Liars Club, that you'd suddenly fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon as if you'd driven all night and you would sob, you'd really suffer. What did you do to cope with that pain? And I should just say, you and I were chatting before the recording about trauma a bit, and I've recently described some of my childhood sexual abuse, and the podcast that I did related to it didn't seem to exact a horrifying toll, but the process years before of trying to write about it and getting a

very, very rough draft brutalized me and just left me paralytic for, God, more than six months in some ways. And I just love to... I'm so sorry. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. And I'm horrified by the experience and also fascinated by it in a way because I don't know why those two things should be so different. And I'd just love to hear you expand a bit on the price that you've paid or your experience with dredging up a lot of these memories or recalling them, putting them down, and why writing seems, at least in my experience, to be so different from some other forms of expressing these things. Well, I mean, because you're alone. I mean,

that's for me where the prayer and the God comes in. I do have a sense now that I didn't have back in the day. I mean, by the time I started writing Liar's Club, how old was I? I don't know, 35. I've been in therapy for 16 years. And I'd also had a prayer practice for, you know, a meditation and prayer practice for some years. I hadn't converted. I wasn't a Christian. I didn't, I was a Catholic, but I was about to become Catholic. And I was very active in recovery programs and I had a sponsor. And I also had, based on all of those efforts, I had done a lot of the processing and recovery. I had flown down to Texas when I was 23 years old and got my mother drunk on margaritas and told her, you know, you tried to kill me with a butcher knife and it's not because I was a bad kid and it ruined my life.

And what the hell was wrong with you? What was going on? You know, I had done a lot of that work before. And I tell people when they tell me they want to write a memoir about some horrible stretch of childhood or some awful period of trauma, maybe they don't. Maybe they don't right now. So I think I had a sense of, you know, when I was drinking, my idea of medicating myself or anesthetizing myself, that was all I knew how to do. That was what my parents told me to do. That was all they knew how to do, was try to drink it away. My daddy was in the Battle of the Bulge. I mean, he went in at Normandy and he came out at Bukamal. I mean, that's plenty of trauma. Plus, being married to my mother would have been simple. There's only one person with a weapon as opposed to the Nazis. So yeah,

I think I'm a big fan of a hot bath. I'm a big fan of nutritious food. I'm a big fan of cardio. Even now, I mean, I'm 65. I don't do five dance classes a week, but I get up in the morning and I walk four miles and then I do Pilates three or four times a week. And I take a dance class a couple of times a week and all those things keep me in my body. And when I'm in a lot of pain, I take care of myself. When I was drinking, I felt like I had this screaming baby that I was holding and I was screaming at it all the time to shut up. So yeah, I think I still have even writing anything now, I find very, I'm not dealing with anything like that. But I'm also, I'm so much happier now than I've ever been in my life. I mean, I'm 65 years old. I've never been

so happy in my life. I've never been less good looking, had less social power, had any of the things that you would think would make me happy, joyous, and free., I wake up every day really feeling lucky to be alive and feeling loved and feeling like, not every day. I mean, I wake up plenty of days and I'm, you know, mad as an old stomp piss ant, but most of my days are pretty lit up and it's a lifetime of practice. So I tell a lot of my students, my young students, you know, want to write about sexual assault or trauma of various kinds. Well, maybe, why don't you get some treatment for this first? Why don't you treat your heart first,

treat your body, treat yourself with a lot of care and see if this is what you want to write about right now. Something you can write about maybe five years from now or something, you know. What advice would you give yourself about therapy? If you were talking to your 19 or 20 year old self and how were you first convinced to go to therapy? I remember you mentioning that long ago.

You know, I didn't have to be convinced. I mean, here's the other thing. Yeah, no. And there weren't a lot of people saying, gee, I wish you'd stop drinking. I mean, I led a pretty isolated existence the way a lot of people who grew up the way I grew up do. I mean, my idea of telling somebody how I felt, I remember right before I stopped drinking, I remember I was teaching sort of all over the academic ghetto around Boston. But I remember specifically one day at Tufts, I was copying something for a class and I had dropped my kid off, like vomiting out the side of the car before I dropped him off at daycare. And then I drove to Tufts and I was Xeroxing something and

somebody said, how are you doing, Mary? And I was like, you know, I want to Tufts and I was Xeroxing something and somebody said, how are you doing, Mary? And I was like, you know, I want to blow my fucking brains out. And that was my idea of telling somebody how I felt, making a glib sort of awkward, socially awkward statement to somebody I hardly knew. And I've been in therapy then for a while, but I was also drinking every day, everything I could get my meds on. What is good therapy to you? Because therapy is a term that's extremely broad. It's kind of like saying medicine, right? Yeah, exactly. There's so many different specialties. What has proven to be good therapy for you?

I think it totally depends on the person. I mean, the best therapist I ever had, I think, I mean, for me, the difference in therapy and recovery, I think in therapy, I'm the baby and they're the mommy. And that model sort of, especially when I first started, I just felt like I needed a lot of nurturing. And I had great therapists. You know, my first therapist, when I look back on things he said and did, was insane. He would have been fired. He told me to go down after he'd been seeing me nine months and confront my homicidal, suicidal mother about all this horrible stuff she'd done to me.

And I did it. And he said, I won't see you until you do it. Wow. I mean, nobody's ever done it. For he said, I won't see you until you do it. Wow. I mean, nobody's ever done it. For a penny and for a pound, yeah. I know. I mean, I look back on it, I was like, he was crazy. Nobody's ever... I had a great therapist when my son was a baby who was a psychologist, PhD psychologist, and who really helped me try to learn how to be a mother when I hadn't had one.

And all the feelings that come up around what you didn't get when you were a child, when you have a child, the protection and stuff. It's funny, my son watches me with his daughter now and just says, I don't know, sort of gives me nothing but a stroke. And I said, let me just tell you, I was not this good with you. Like I was crazy about you and I loved you, but I didn't have what I have now that I have with her. That's just, I don't even break a sweat going in there. I can do this stuff. It's funny.

I was in, I babysit one or two days a week. I was in Prospect Park this week and I had taken her across the park in a stroller, and a thunderstorm broke out. I mean, pouring rain. And I've never shared DNA with somebody this good-natured as this baby. This baby coos, smiles, laughs, never cries. I mean, sleeps, eats, is just the best-natured kid. I used to babysit in high school and college, so I've taken care of a lot of babies, and she's just the easiest kid. I get across the thing, it's pouring rain, and she starts screaming, crying like she's being beaten. And I take her out of the stroller, and I hold her, and she calms down. I go to put her back in the stroller and she just starts screaming, crying again. Well, it's two miles across a muddy field in the pouring rain. And

I've got a stroller and a bunch of crap and I've got this, you know, 27 pound unit, screaming unit. And I just had no problem doing it. And when I was 40 years old, 35 years old, it would have been like being beaten with a hose. I just thought, you know what? Daddy was in the battle of the bulge. This is not that hard. I just had the physical energy, even at my age, that I didn't know I had to do it. And I got back to the house and I went to fold up the stroller. There was four inches of freezing water in the bottom of the stroller that I've been putting her in. And she was soaked through to her skin.

Yeah, there was, she was perfectly reasonable to be, you know, now I understand I could have just emptied it out and put her in the stroller and wrapped her up in a blanket. But I, I didn't know what it was, but I just thought, well, I'll get her home and it'll be fine. You know, I didn't feel like, oh my God, oh my God, I'm a terrible mother and I'm going to wind up trying to stab her with a butcher knife, which is how I felt when my kid was that age. I didn't know that I wasn't going to be my mother. I didn't know that. So scary. That is scary. Yeah, super scary.

And it sounds like, please correct me if I'm wrong, but that you've learned in some form or fashion, or maybe many forms and fashions, to wear the world like a loose garment. I'd love to know if you agree or disagree. Based on my reading... I wouldn't say that. Well, okay. So your first confession... Absolutely not. No.

Priest said to you, wear the world like a loose garment. What does that mean to you? Well, I mean, I think it's not... You know, the problem isn't whatever your mind is telling you the problem is. The problem is the fear. And for me't be terrified and curious at the same time. And so when I was walking the baby across the field, just all I was was physically uncomfortable. I mean, I was thinking, gee, can I shove this thing and hold her moose, you know, and get everything and get all this stuff. How am I going to do, you know? And so I went crossways across mud fields. I'm shoving the stroller and carrying her. I didn't know physically if I could do it. I was sort of dubious. I was thought maybe

I can't do this, but all I had to do was do it. I thought, well, if I get tired, I'll sit down. It'll rain on me a minute and then I'll get up and go again. Like that's what we'll do. But I don't know. Here's the way I put it. I tell people it's like I have a trick knee. It's like most of the time I walk fine, I run fine, I can squat more than my body weight and do advanced Pilates for an hour and 10 minutes. and I'm tough as a boot. But there are days that I don't feel that way, or there are moments where I get, my knee goes out and I fall on the ground. All I have to do is honor those moments. All I have to do is, I have a heating pad, I have a weighted blanket. My kids have a pit bull I'll bring to stay with me, while an idiot is my little comfort animal. I call people. I still have a

sponsor. I still have a therapist I don't talk to all the time, but I didn't have to be convinced to go into therapy. I knew I needed it, but when I first started it, as you know, it was just so damn painful. For those of your listeners out there, if you're having a hard time, I just want to say it's like you lance a boil and the infection's draining off. And if you can just get by that, it's going to tell you that it's endless, but it's not endless. There's a bottom to it. So did you ever smoke? You never did. I was never a smoker.

No. Yeah, you're just such a jock. You're such a specimen. You're such a specimen, Tim. Well, we're all specimens. It depends on how we look on the autopsy table. But I was born premature, so I have respiratory issues on my left lung. And that was part of it.

So I had a lot of breathing issues growing up to begin with. And secondly, sports saved me. So sports kept me out of a lot of trouble. Yeah. I was good at sports and then I quit when I was like, I quit. I'm much more of a jock now than I was then. Why did you ask about smoking? I was going to ask you about smoking because when you quit smoking, there's a phenomenon that happens. It's also when you quit drinking, but somehow it's more intense when you smoke. You'll have a craving for a cigarette, and the craving is as intense as it was the first day you quit. It's as overpowering. But if you just keep note of how long the craving lasts and how many of them there are. They're as intense, but they're

not as long and as frequent. So it's the same thing about suffering when you first start therapy or you first lance that boil and you're unearthing some of the painful things you grew up with. It's as intense the first day and you just feel like, oh my God, I'm in the burn ward and I just got snatched out of the fire and every ounce of me hurts and I want to run screaming down the street like my hair's on fire. And it just won't last as long as it did the first time. And so for your listeners, if you're just looking at hard things that you grew Excellent advice. that it will get easier. It's not linear. And there will be those days when it's as painful as the first day and you'll think, but I'm no better than I was, but you are. It doesn't feel that way. Yeah. Excellent advice. Just a few more

questions. I'm having so much fun. I could go forever, but I... You've got a lot to do, dude. Do I? Do I though? I don't know. Where in Austin do you live? live well i spend most of my time downtown for recording and then live in the burbs outside of that i love it in austin and expect to be here for quite some time i wanted to move here right after college i didn't get the job and uh there was those morons they screwed up up. Yeah. Well, you know, possibly I also think that that could have been in everyone's best interest. Really? I think I make it quite terrible employee in most circumstances. Me too. But at the time, and, uh, you know, I didn't expect this

to lead here, but at the time that I was not given the green light to get an offer from Trilogy Software, way back in the day, it seemed like a death blow. This seemed like the end of the world because I'd put a lot of eggs in that basket. I didn't want to do anything that was recruiting on campus really otherwise. And I listened to and watched your Syracuse University commencement speech. Oh, that's so nice of you. And then I read a transcript, and I think this is from the speech, unless it was sort of mistranscribed, but here's the paragraph. Almost every time I was super afraid it was of the wrong thing. And stuff that first looked like the worst, most humiliating thing that could ever happen

almost always led me to something extraordinary and very fine. So my question is, could you give us an example of that that comes to mind? It could be something humiliating, it could be a favorite failure, but anything that, as it turns out. When I first did a kind of moral inventory and recovery that they encourage you to do, I had a lot of resentments against God. When you say they, this is in a 12-step program? Yeah. And Joan the Bone, you know. Joan the Bone, right. Like one of the things I really resented God for, my son, who was just this little beautiful blonde hair, blue eyed, and a tank of a boy, a natural kind of athlete.

When he was little, he was sick all the time. I mean, he would get a cold and he would get these sinus infections. His fever would go to like 105. We'd rush him to Children's Hospital in Boston. It was terrifying. We're always rushing to emergency rooms because his fever was so bleeding high and just so terrifying. And so I never slept. I never slept. And I was depressed. I was probably postpartumly depressed and I was drinking. By then I had started, I decided drinking would help me take care of a sick child. Great idea, Mir. It's like the bad mom in the after school special. And so what?

And I remember, so when it came time to do Ignatian spiritual exercises, you're trying to find God in all things. Where is God in that? Where is God in a sick baby? I'll tell you a secret. When I actually looked at my life and the decisions I was making, I would have kept drinking. If I'd had one of those playboy babies that sleeps 12 hours a night and never is sick and just coos and cuddles, I would have kept drinking. If I'd had my granddaughter, who's like the easiest, like 12 hour night sleeper,

eats everything you give her, laughs at everything you do. I would have kept drinking. I could not physically drink the way a real alcoholic needs to drink and take care of a kid who was sick all the time. Couldn't do it. And work and make a living. I couldn't do all those things. It's too hard. And so I don't think God sent pathogens into my infant son's body. I don't know how any of this works. But when I ask where God is in this, my own physical discomfort forced me to get sober. So my sister died this summer, very suddenly, of pancreatic cancer in less than a week. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry too.

You know, we were not in touch. We had a terrible childhood, and we had not been really in touch for seven years. And that was my choice. And I remember saying to my therapist, isn't it going to be terrible when she dies? She said, yeah, it's going to be terrible anyway. And although it's horrible that she's dead, there's nothing. I feel my love for her. I don't have to defend myself against my love for her the way I did when we were estranged. I can cherish and remember all the times we were there for each other, all the ages we were in each other's lives. And I would give anything for her to be alive,

but I still think our not being in touch was the best thing for both of us. You know, I don't regret that. And there's this amazing gift to me of being in touch now with her son and her husband and her stepchildren. And I would give anything if she were alive. But there are gifts in this suffering that are real spiritual gifts. I practice when things happen that I find very disappointing. My son had a film coming out, his first feature film coming out

at Tribeca Film Festival. And it's a global pandemic. And so there is no Tribeca Film Festival. And it's a global pandemic. And so there is no Tribeca Film Festival. And he's raised somehow all this money and put years worth of work in and moved heaven and earth. And you know what? The film's being released. He's got a great distribution deal.

He just won Best Director at Fright Fest. And, you know, it's unfolding just the way it needs to unfold. It's getting curious about where the light is, just being curious about where the light is. Getting curious about where the light is and the all-powerful reframe. And it is really incredible what can happen, as you said, when you really get curious in the face of fear. I have to say this on air, Tim, because I have to say it. I have so many young people who come to me about sexual assault, so many young men who have come to me, my students, young writers, young poets, and your being open about this on this podcast has just been such a gift to all these young men.

Thank you. So good for you. So good for you. So a horrible thing that happened to you that's being used to help a lot of, give a lot of people hope, and it's going to prompt a lot of healing. I hope so. And I've seen a lot come out of the woodwork. And it's been simultaneously, and I know you've experienced this certainly, it's been simultaneously appalling, rewarding, and brutal in a way. I mean, it's all of those things. I mean, there's a lot of pain and beauty in it. And I'll just mention that of my closest male friends, and there me after that podcast to describe their own experiences with sexual abuse that I know nothing about. And these are people I've known for a very long time.

So I hope there's healing. Of course there is. We're living, look, we're not curled up on the back wards of mental institutions and we both could be. Yeah, very true. Well, Mary, we're going to talk again. And I want to ask one more question, which sometimes is a dead end. I'll own that if it is. Okay, then. But we'll see where it goes. The question is, if you could put anything on a billboard, metaphorically speaking, to reach billions of people, however many you want a word, a phrase,

a question, a quote, a poem, anything. What might you put on that? That's so hardcore. Oh my God. That is really,

God, that's a little, it's aggressive. It's aggressive. It's hardcore. It really is. It's a little javelin of hogs. It's a pack of javelin of hogs running out of the bushes at me.

And it doesn't have to be the one and only. This could just be the first billboard. The first billboard. You know, put down that gun. You need a sandwich. You need a sandwich and a hot bath. No, I know what I would put. I would put 90% of what's wrong with you could be cured with a hot bath.

That's what I'd put. I love it. I love that. Well, Mary, this has been so much fun. Been a hoot. I've really, really enjoyed this. People can find you at your website, marykarr.com. That's marykarr.com. That's marykarr.com.

Twitter at marykarrlit, L-I-T. Is there anything else you'd like to say, suggest, ask, request? No, just let's all heal. Let's all heal as a country, no matter how different we think we are. We're all suffering souls, and we all want to heal this riven country of ours. So that's what I'm wishing for all of us. I'm wishing everybody a lot of love and light today. And a big, nice cigar. Hear, hear. Hear, hear.

Get curious. Look for the light. Thank you, Mary. All right, Anne. You take care. You go do you. I will. And to everybody listening, we'll link to everything that we've mentioned in the show notes at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, thanks for listening. Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.

It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email,

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