-Thank you, John.

That was a lovely introduction.

And hello, Washington.

Very happy to see you this morning, because we get to hang out with two of my favorite writers and yes, both best sellers, but more importantly, two people that I will follow anywhere, including to the 1970s, which for some of us, we have memories of being slightly feral in the '70s, you know, and I mean that in a very nice way.

But before we get going, I want to ask you two about soundtracks for these novels.

Do we have soundtracks for "Ghost Town"?

Do we have soundtracks for "Lake Effect"?

-I...sometimes I do have a soundtrack for my book, and I didn't for this one, but I listened to a lot of '70's music while I was writing it.

But for whatever reason, whenever I tried to put together something that I... Sometimes I like something like that when I'm in the car.

I wrote this book when I was living in Los Angeles and spending a lot of time in the car.

It just wasn't, I don't know, I couldn't stick with it.

But I listened almost exclusively to '70's music in the months that I was finishing the book, and that was both painful and fun.

-[ Laughs ] How much of it was disco?

-A lot.

-Yeah?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Okay, Tom?

-A lot of my book is about two kids driving around at night, and the radio is always on.

And, uh, I tried... I didn't do any research.

I mean, I just really relied on the memory banks for it, but I did try to just go a little left of center.

So, there's not -- Dylan does get mentioned, but I try to, you know, Bad Company, Uriah Heep, bands that maybe if you didn't grow up then, you might not remember them.

So, maybe people will get the, uh, dubious pleasures of looking some of that up.

Though, you know, it's never gone away, right?

I mean, you could have listened to this stuff on the radio in an unbroken way since 1974.

-For sure.

-And, also, if someone gives you a mix tape, invariably something pops.

Someone's like, "Have you ever heard this?"

And it's like, "Well, actually, yeah."

Because when you do grow up with the radio, everything's sort of there in the background, right?

It's not like you're just picking this one channel, and you can listen to nothing but the Thompson-- wrong decade, I understand, but I'm using the Thompson Twins as an example.

But to just listen to sort of the back catalog of one act, we had sort of the luxury, and we were talking about this a little bit before we got onstage.

But, you know, magazines back in the day, you could sort of just noodle through and have that sense of discovery and you never knew -- newspapers, same thing.

-Mm-hmm.

-You never knew sort of what you were going to stumble on.

And the '70s for me is a little bit of that.

Like, you've got food culture, you've got music, you've got small town, you're talking about class, all of these different pieces that go into the worlds you built.

But I'm really curious to know why you both picked the '70s for your new novels.

-I mean, I picked the '70s... The last year I lived in Rochester full-time was when I was a senior in high school in 1978.

And I never moved back to Rochester as an independent adult.

And so -- and also the story I was telling I felt was very specific to that time period for women.

-Messer: Yeah.

-Which when, you know, really all of a sudden the world was saying everything you thought you had to do, you don't have to do that anymore.

-Messer: Right.

-And in a place like Rochester, they were a little behind where that was happening, say, on the coasts.

So, it was both that.

But it was also, I think, a deep desire to go back to that time when I last lived there and to experience it in a fictional way as an adult and as a teenager I was, was very enjoyable.

-Tom?

-It was a little more of a complicated thing for me.

-Okay.

-So, my mother lived in the house that I grew up in all the way until her death, which was in, um, which was three years ago.

-Messer: Mm-hmm.

-During the pandemic, she was alone there, and she was -- her health was starting to fail.

And so, for about three years, I was going back to the house I grew up in.

-Messer: Mm-hmm.

-And it hadn't changed that much.

You know, my mother had kind of kept it the way it was.

So, it was very strange as a man my age to be going back to the bed that I slept in when I was a teenager and the space that I grew up in and feeling that complicated thing I think that both of these books are about, which is, you know, there are two quotes, you know, about the past.

One is that L.P.

Hartley one.

"The past is a foreign country.

They do things differently there."

Like, it's just a whole other world.

And yet, Faulkner says, you know, "The past isn't dead.

It's not even past."

And it's those two things of that world seems unreal, and that world is right there.

It's still right there.

-Mm-hmm.

-And so, anyway, I think I was realizing that era of finally my childhood was ending.

You know, I'm in my 60s.

Because my mother's living her last few years, and, you know, we sold the house.

I don't go back to that place anymore.

So, it's kind of an elegy for this place and that time and a complicated one because there are things to love about that time and things to really deplore about that time.

-Which sets us up perfectly to talk about memory and nostalgia, because they're not necessarily the same thing.

They feed each other.

And, I mean, neither of you is writing autofiction specifically, though, Tom, I am going to gently tease you about the writer who's narrating "Ghost Town."

There might be a little shared autobiography there, but, I mean, neither of these novels is autofiction, though inspired, certainly, by your own experiences.

I mean, how much do you sort of just, where's the line between memory and nostalgia?

-You go first.

[ Laughter ] -Well, it's so interesting to me that the book, even by my own publisher, this is a nostalgic novel, whereas, for me, it's about a boy moving through a fog of grief in the summer after his mother has died, and some terrible things happen.

And so, to me, it's not nostalgic at all.

It's a person remembering the worst time of his life.

And yet I think readers are bringing their own sense of nostalgia.

But, also, I think in "the past is a foreign country" side of it, I think people are, in this moment where we're surveilled, where we're never alone, where our phones are constantly there, this is a picture of a time when, for better and worse, this kid was just sent out into this little world and fell under the spell of these older teenagers, who became his sort of dubious guides to growing up.

And yet I think we even look at that now and say, "Well, there's something to be said for being turned out into the world to make sense of it and to have adventures and to be, at times, you know, skating on the edge of something dangerous."

So, I understand feeling a kind of vague, generalized nostalgia for another time that in some ways was maybe had a different set of possibilities.

But, very specifically, I don't think it's a nostalgic book.

-Messer: Yeah.

-D'Aprix Sweeney: Yeah.

I mean, I think I was very -- I don't feel particularly nostalgic about that time period or Rochester.

-Messer: Mm-hmm.

-And so, for me, it was very much, I thought a lot about how to write a book that took place in the '70s and not overdo the nostalgia.

Like, not drop too many brand names or... And I remember, um, Jonathan Franzen's book "Freedom" came out while I was writing "Lake Effect," and I was very curious to see how he handled it.

And it was with such a light touch.

It wasn't in like references or news headlines.

It was in the way how people behaved and the things they said to each other and what their preoccupations were.

And so, for me, it was just trying to get to that point and also be kind to my hometown, but not be nostalgic about it, because it is a place that really fell apart in a very major way in the '70s and the '80s.

And it is, you know, a shadow of what its hopes were at that time.

And it's really a reflection of so many things that people in this country face today, which is a loss of job security and benefits.

And, you know, what happens to a town when the major industries collapse... -Messer: Right.

-...in many ways, for a lack of vision and a sort of hubris that comes from monopolies.

And so, I wanted to be fair.

But I really didn't want to make anyone mad at me.

[ Laughter ] -That's legit.

That is totally legit.

-There's a really interesting moment in Cynthia's book where, like, the central event is these two suburban neighbors, you know, run off in a kind of, you know, two families get broken apart.

And it's just really about like the lifelong fallout of this event.

But then later on, somebody is sort of just dismissing it, saying, "Didn't everybody do that back then?"

And it's sort of like, you know, the difference between then and now.

Like now we think, "Oh, that was the era of the sexual revolution, and everybody got divorced," but it actually wasn't everybody.

-D'Aprix Sweeney: Yeah, no.

-Messer: It was a radical act.

And divorce led to exile.

I mean, you're both writing about a community or the idea of community, but also specific communities where exile actually -- it's like being part of an agrarian nation, and suddenly you get sent away and there is nothing left, -D'Aprix Sweeney: Right.

-I mean, especially when I think about poor Nina.

I mean, listen.

Nina was not -- how many of you have read "Lake Effect," by the way?

Okay, so you know what I'm talking about.

-D'Aprix Sweeney: Good, good work.

-But Nina has to make -- I mean, she makes a choice.

And in the end, it's a great choice.

But there's a moment where she's sort of grabbing the seats going, "What have I done?"

-D'Aprix Sweeney: Well, because, also, like, she has a choice, but does she have a choice?

Like, if she wanted to just not be married anymore and not remarry someone else, that would have been very difficult.

And what was interesting to me about women in that time period is, you know, they got married, like my parents did, in the '50s when they were in their 20s.

If you were a young woman in the '50s who wanted to not live with your parents, you had to get married if you wanted any kind of independent life.

When you think about, when I think about who I would have married when I was 21 and just wanting to move out of my parents' house, it's like, I mean, I can't even live there for more than seconds.

And it is terrifying, these people, and I remember as a kid growing up in a very Catholic, you know, environment, when my friends' parents started getting divorced or when the friends of my parents started getting divorced, being absolutely horrified and disappointed.

But then there was also a part of me, especially as I got a little older, that thought, "Well, what are you supposed to do?

What are you supposed to do if you married the wrong person because you were young and, you know, didn't have the experience?"

And now the world is telling you, "Well, you should be happy."

-Messer: Mm-hmm.

-But it's not actually giving you the tools you need to be happy.

So, you know, what is, what is happiness in that moment and choice?

And it is, you know, so many married couples who split up during those years, some of their lives got better, and some of their lives got markedly worse.

-Messer: Right.

Tom, you have a great line in "Ghost Town," and it's our omniscient narrator.

It's not 13-year-old Jimmy.

But you say, "Normal families were the glue that held the world together."

And that's exactly what Cynthia's coming back to, this whole idea that divorce really sets you up.

When you were writing "Ghost Town," did you know that you had to break up this family?

Did you know you were going to have to start with... -Well, I did understand that this was going to be a novel about the death of... You know, the adult Jimmy says, "Normal families were the glue that held the world together."

I think young Jimmy would say, "My mother was the glue that held this family together."

And so the book begins with the death of the mother.

What happens is nobody's really there for Jimmy.

His father, like a lot of fathers in those days, was not somebody who had thought much about being a parent, who knew how to talk to a kid about grief, who would turn it over maybe to the church, but the church wasn't speaking to Jimmy in some sense.

So, and his sister was sort of off on her own journey.

And so, it is about, you know, a kind of loneliness that is very specific to grief, but, also, you know, an adolescent version where you don't really know who you are, and then you're trying to also grieve.

I think it's hard enough when you, you know, when you're older and maybe more secure in yourself.

So, it is about the extreme vulnerability of grief at that age and the loneliness of grief.

-But it's also like, it's, it's in those situations, you know, talking about like, what's a normal family.

Like, anything that makes you different when you're a kid, whether it's grief or divorce or anything that makes you stand out in any way is so frightening.

And certainly in the '70s, nobody had the language of what do you say to a kid?

What does a school do to support a family?

You know, nothing like that.

And that is what's really so heartbreaking about that book is you just want... you just want Jimmy to, like, you want somebody to take care of Jimmy.

-But the weird thing, he does find people.

-He does, he does.

-They may not be the people who his parents would, his mother would have picked for him.

And he's aware of that.

-Yeah.

-And yet they're all vibrating on this frequency that has to do with feeling alone and not be able to be part of this, the normal community anymore.

So, it's a group, you know, it's a kind of a familiar thing in fiction, this sort of, you know, squad of outcasts.

-Mm-hmm.

-But also both of you write about adolescence in a way where you -- like, the anger is there, but also the awkwardness and the "I just want to belong."

Edwidge Danticat has this great line about how adolescence is this liminal -- "You're a liminal creature when you're an adolescent," and it is kind of the perfect description.

And it's Jimmy and it's Clara and Bridie and Doon and Fern, all of these children who are just suddenly faced with a world that they don't have... They don't, in that moment, have all of the words to describe the experience.

And you both kind of pull back on the page and let them do what they're going to do.

None of them sounds like a 40-year-old.

They all sound like adolescents.

And in a lot of ways, both books are about grief.

Both books are about change.

Both books are about what happens when monoculture isn't monoculture anymore.

And that's a pinch point culturally for all of us, where, again, you just said it, Tom.

People are talking about the '70s being the sexual revolution.

And I'm like, "But there were also a lot of bank robberies and plane hijackings."

Like, the '70s were a really chaotic moment for us as a culture and a society.

And here are these kids having to navigate it, and the adults -- all of these kids are discovering that the adults are maybe not the know-it-alls... -Right.

-...that they thought they were.

So, for you as the writers, I mean, is this fun?

Is this awkward?

Is this uncomfortable?

Are you revisiting your own liminal features?

-I mean, I find it so easy to write teenage girls.

I do not know why, but I love it.

It's the easiest.

-Mm-hmm.

-It was the same with my second book.

The character of the teenage girl was just like pure pleasure.

It's just like I'm mainline it, and I don't... So, I don't know why, and I've tried to think about it.

I liked high school, and, I don't know.

I just can really get back there easily in my head and think about how, like, I was constantly outraged and constantly positive that I was right and aggrieved about everything, and I don't know.

It just lives very... It's harder for me to write about adults being dumb.

It is.

-Messer: [ Laughs ] -You know, I think we want to see characters becoming themselves.

Right?

And I never liked Freudian, the Freudian theory, which is like your life is determined, you know, before you're three in some sense.

Right?

Because there's no agency at all.

So, for a fiction writer, it's kind of a dead end, I think.

But I also remember feeling in high school like I had agency, like I was choosing my paths, you know, and both of these books really are about, you know, I mean, it's a cliché, "the moment that changed their lives."

But in very weird ways, I think the book traces, like, yeah, you know, this summer made Clara who she was.

This summer... -D'Aprix Sweeney: Right.

-...turned Jimmy into the this guy who's, you know, managed to create a writing career for himself, even if it wasn't the one that he might have imagined.

-D'Aprix Sweeney: Right.

-So, we are catching these characters in the crucible, where they're one person going in and another person coming out, though that other person may not be revealed for decades.

-Mm-hmm.

-Mm-hmm.

And how people in the same family can endure the same thing with very... -Messer: With different results.

-...with very different results.

-But also different memories, too.

I mean... -Yeah.

-Poor Fern.

She's the only one who knows.

-I know.

-Never tells anyone.

-I know.

-I do want to talk about character, though, because when I look at both of your sort of collective bodies of work, it's always character first.

And can we talk about process for a second and how process kicks off character because, I mean, you both put your characters through their paces, as it were, but character is always the soul of everything you do.

-The funny thing for me is that I don't start with character.

-Seriously?

Wow.

-I start with situations.

-Okay.

-And then, of course, then you're stuck trying to write... -Messer: Okay.

-...you know, a character who's doing something, and you want them to do something interesting.

And people have to have explanations that they give themselves for the... -Messer: Okay.

-...interesting or dangerous or sometimes even like self-betraying decisions that they make.

And that becomes the place where characters forge.

And that is what fiction is for, like watching characters explain themselves to themselves and sometimes hit those moments where their explanations no longer make sense, and then they have to create a new story for themselves.

I think that's what fiction, I mean, we talk about fiction as empathy and imagining somebody else, but I think fiction is also the place where we watch the self get created and the self get undone.

-I also start with situations.

-That's wild.

-Yeah.

-Okay.

That's wild.

-And then I have to figure out who the people are, and I've often wondered if maybe I should try and reverse that process because it seems hard.

I don't know, but well, and I... I heard Liz Strout say that she starts with -- that she just writes in the character's voice and writes and writes and writes and writes until she feels like she knows that character.

And then she sort of takes off.

And I thought that's an interesting way to do it.

But I probably need that situation to get me going.

And I mean, then it, for me, I think the final product I want to be very character-driven.

But yeah, it doesn't start that way.

-But when you're reading, are you reading for character first?

Or are you reading for language first?

-Um... -Or I should say voice.

Are you reading for voice?

-I mean, probably voice.

I mean, like without voice, I'm not going to get that far.

But, like, ultimately I need both.

-Mm-hmm.

-But I, yeah, I'm definitely looking for voice when I start reading, yeah.

-Yeah.

Who knows?

You know.

-I know.

I'm very mysterious.

-It is a very mysterious thing.

-Very mysterious.

-You know, and I talk to editors and they're like, "Okay, I can pick up a book, and within, you know, five, ten pages, I'll know."

And I guess that must be a response to voice, right?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-If it's 5 or 10 pages, unless there's some real bang of an opening.

But voice and character are often... -Yeah, entwined.

-...you know, kind of entwined.

But, you know, voice... I will say voice only gets you so far.

-Yeah.

True.

-I've read a lot of books where I've felt like, "Oh, this is so engaging."

And then 40 pages in, I'm like, "Okay, this is what it's going to be.

This character isn't in the process of changing.

This writer is performing for me."

And sometimes if it's, you know, Nabokov on a high wire, that might be enough.

Even then for me it's not always enough to get me to the last page.

So, I do feel like character and a sense of connection to character is going to be what carries me through.

-I don't necessarily have to like the characters I'm reading about, but I'm invested.

-Yeah.

-And I need voice to give me sort of the runway for the investment.

And once I'm in, I'm in.

But yeah, there are times where I'm kind of like, "Hmm...hmm."

-I think ultimately I just want to feel very quickly that I'm in good hands.

-Yeah.

-And so, whether that's voice or plot, I just want to feel like an authority on the page that I feel is going to get me through 350 pages or 750 pages or whatever it is.

So... -Is that why you like an omniscient narrator?

-Yeah, I, I think I like an omniscient narrator because it's just the way my brain works when I'm telling a story.

I want to know what everyone else is thinking.

And so that makes it easy for me to plot a little bit, yeah.

-But Tom, you do a slightly different thing with "Ghost Town," where suddenly adult Jay pops in, and it's kind of delightful to hear.

I mean, he does set us up, but then he pops up a couple more times, and I was quite happy to hear from him.

-Yeah.

-But can we talk about that creative decision and how you got there?

-Yeah.

So, sometimes with books, you know what you're doing.

[ Laughter ] And so with this, I knew -- most of the book takes place in 1974.

And so, you know, it's what I describe.

This boy is grieving his mother and kind of wandering through this summer that changes his life.

But there was this sort of intrusive adult voice, the voice of now, who was, you know, just wanting to say things like, "Well, believe it or not, back then, you know, this was how it was."

You know, he was an explainer.

And it was really slowing down the narrative because I wanted it to feel sort of dreamlike and really carry the reader along.

And so slowly I thought, "Well, I want this material, but I don't want it to be slowing down my 1970's story."

And what I ended up doing was first putting him... Both the 1970's story and the current story were in first person.

And it just had evolved that way.

-Messer: Right.

-But when I handed it into my editor, her one note was, "I think the 1970's material should be in third person," which is a terrible note to get from your editor.

-D'Aprix Sweeney: That is a really terrible note.

-Messer: That sounds like a lot of work.

-Well, yeah, change every sentence.

-A lot of time.

-Yeah, exactly.

-You think it's, you know, A.I.

can do... -Just change all the verbs.

-Yeah.

-But as soon as she said it, I'm like, "Of course."

-Messer: Yeah.

-Of course.

And I just couldn't see it because it had evolved in this way without me having a strategic thought about it.

You know, it's just really me reacting to problems I was creating in the text.

And once, you know, there was this shift of Jimmy, 13-year-old Jimmy as "he," and, you know, 60-year-old Jay as "I," it's almost like he's seeing his young self as a fictional character.

And he's getting outside of him, and he's able to treat him with a kind of compassion that maybe wasn't there before, you know?

So, but that was an accidental discovery with the help of my editor, you know, and it seems like such a simple thing when it's done.

You read a book and you think, "Of course, that's how the book is."

But there are many intermediate phases when it's inchoate and confused and, you know, needing some sort of tweak that will make it -- you know, like when you're at the eye doctor, and they give you the lens that... -D'Aprix Sweeney: Right, right, right.

-...makes you see the thing.

-Everyone needs an editor.

Even if you're writing shelf-talker copy, everyone needs an editor.

This is my feeling.

But now that both of these books are out in the world -- and both of you have been doing this for a minute.

This is no one's debut.

But how does it feel to hand the books over to readers, who now have your characters and your situations and your thoughts about the '70s?

-I mean, it's a relief.

I am very happy when I, you know, when the book is, I mean, it's also nerve-wracking, but it's also like the one moment that you get to be on a stage like this and talking to readers and listening to what they loved and listening to what maybe they're confused about and, you know, spending time with peers.

That's a very short-lived period in the life of a writer.

And it's very gratifying to me.

And, you know, I haven't been doing it that long.

So, it's also still pretty thrilling.

And yeah, I mean, it's very gratifying.

-Wait, Tom.

What year was "Bad Haircut"?

-"Bad Haircut" was 1994.

-Oh, wow.

Okay.

And I started writing some of those stories in graduate school in, like, 1988.

-"Little Children" is when you hit my radar.

What year was that?

-2004.

-Okay.

All right.

So, it's been a minute.

-It has.

-Yeah, yeah.

-And, you know, for me what's been happening, and I use Philip Roth as my guide.

You know, I feel for some reason this desire not just to examine my past but to examine my past work.

So, like, my previous book was "Tracy Flick Can't Win," which was a kind of a revisitation of Tracy Flick from "Election."

-Messer: Yeah.

-"Ghost Town" is very much in a dialogue with "Bad Haircut," my very first book, which was about the same world, but not about a boy whose mother died.

You know, a boy who was in a normal family.

But it was about the morality of friendship and, you know, the way that friends enable you for better and worse to grow up.

So, very similar territory in a way.

And there is something maybe weird about, you know, feeling this urge to return.

But I watched Roth do it.

-Messer: Yeah.

-You know, he just could never get away from Newark.

Just something happened in that place to him as a boy that became his myth.

And, you know, his very last book, "Nemesis," you know, which I love, was a coming-of-age story set in the polio epidemic after World War II.

And I do think, you know, if you've done it for a long time, you start to see, "Okay, I am who I am.

I have certain things I have to work out, and I hope my readers will follow me there, you know, and that it will speak to something that maybe they're going through."

I've noticed that a bunch of writers, you know, Ann Patchett's new book, Richard Russo's, there is something about getting to be this age, and I think watching the world change.

I mean, one of the things this book is about is I grew up in an all-white town, and if you go there now, it's no longer an all-white town.

It's actually quite diverse.

-Messer: Mm-hmm.

-And so, on the surface, and, in truth, things have gotten much better.

But, you know, we're also living in this era of MAGA and, you know, right-wing politics that are explicitly racist and nativist.

And, again, the book is about, like, that was another country.

That's not gone.

That other country is... -Messer: Right.

-...you know, in, you know, bubbling up through the surface of the present, you know.

So, it's a political book, as well.

And so it's a response to, you know, what we're living through right now.

-I mean, Cynthia, you have that moment, too, where Nina is looking at her daughters and saying, "They can do anything."

-Yeah.

-It's like the endless possibility.

I mean, that moment where you see sort of the switch go... -Yeah.

-...in her head.

-And I mean, I think I saw that in my mother, like, you know, grappling a little bit.

Excited for us that the assumption was that we would go to college, and she never went to college.

-Messer: Right.

-And that, you know, I mean, I like to say that I majored in moving to New York City in college, which that's all I cared about.

-Messer: Mm-hmm.

-And I moved to New York City, like, 22 minutes after graduation.

And I think that, and, you know, my mom and dad were super supportive and, you know, helped move me into my first teeny, tiny apartment that I lived in with two other friends and a lot of mice.

And, um... [ Laughter ] But I also sometimes saw, like, the bafflement and how difficult it was for her at times when my siblings and I would come home for holidays and want to talk to my dad about work and not include her in the conversation.

She would get very frustrated and say, "No more work talk at the dinner table."

-Messer: Mm-hmm.

-And I understood it was just that she was feeling left out and that she imagined very different conversations with her adult daughters, which she eventually had, about wedding dresses and babies and pregnancy.

But that era in our 20s was confusing for her.

-Messer: Right.

-And it made me feel bad because, like, my mom is a super-creative person, and I think had she had a different kind of outlet, it would have been, you know, she would have loved, say, doing interior design.

Like, our house was always beautiful.

It was just an ordinary suburban house built in 1969.

But the inside was special.

And I would often think about, and she was a voracious reader and such a smart person, and I would often think about what that must have felt like to see her daughters be able to have very, very different lives.

And we weren't very good about talking about that stuff because she could get defensive if she thought we were being condescending to her.

But yeah, I mean, I thought about that a lot when I wrote this book about what it was like to not change your life when the world changed and to sort of stay in your lane, but to watch your kids have opportunities that you really couldn't have dreamed of.

-Jimmy's mother may not be with us in the traditional sense, but he's, I mean, for a 13-year-old, he's pretty clear on his interpretation of his mother, but it doesn't seem that far off from who she was.

I mean maybe he doesn't remember exactly, sort of -- you set him up where he's seen all of these photos of his mother, and he's trying to remember.

But I think as a person, he knows that she would brook no silliness.

-Yeah.

It's interesting, right?

Because we don't really see the living mother very much.

-Right, right.

-And there aren't even a ton of memories in the book about who she is.

It's more how she lives in his mind.

-Messer: Right.

-And, you know, I think, I think many of us have that parental voice in our head for better and worse, you know?

So, my mom was like your mom.

She didn't go to college, but was very clear that her kids were going to go to college.

And my dad did not have that feeling.

He would have been happy if we had just gotten a job.

-D'Aprix Sweeney: Right.

-And, you know, college was not seen as a necessity.

-D'Aprix Sweeney: My dad did go to college, and he grew up in a really poor family and was one of those people who had an English teacher who said to him -- he grew up in Utica, New York, and was going to go to, I don't know, a community college or SUNY or something.

And he had an English teacher say to him, "I want you to go to Hamilton College" and, like, facilitated the whole thing in a scholarship.

So, it completely changed his life to the point of, you know, my dad's last name was D'Aprix.

His mother was a tough, old Irish biddy.

When she married Charles D'Aprix, she said, "We're pronouncing it phonetically."

So, my dad grew up Roger "Da-priks."

[ Laughter ] And his first day of college at Hamilton College, they were marching into chapel, and the dean was reading off all of the names and said, "Roger 'D'Aprix,'" and my dad paused for a minute and he said, "Well, is it 'D'Aprix' or is it "Da-priks'?"

And my dad said, "It's 'D'Aprix."

And it was like that, you know, that's like too good to put in a book.

It was like, not, it wouldn't even make sense.

But so, it was that kind of split.

It was like, "Oh, that changed his life in ways that created this opportunity for all of us.

So, we better take it."

-Yeah.

Well, and you know, for us, it was my mother got what she wanted, but it also meant her kids ended up living far away from her.

-Right.

-And I think when you mentioned before that prickliness, that sense of, you know, "Don't condescend to me."

You know, she got what she wanted, but she also paid an emotional price for getting it.

-But we get to see the evolution of all of your characters and the world.

I mean, you know, I've said this before, but world building should not be limited to science fiction.

It really shouldn't.

Can we just talk about the world building that went into both of these?

I mean, to feel like I'm in both of these places fully with these people and that I recognize who they are for who they are.

Right?

I mean, Cynthia, you know how fond I am of "Lake Effect."

And, Tom, you know how fond I am of "Ghost Town" and the earlier books, too.

But to sit in this world -- right?

-- and watch these people, it's kind of amazing.

But you've talked about Philip Roth as an influence.

I know Chekhov, you know, you dip in and out.

-Yeah.

-Can we talk about other influences for a second?

Maybe there's something specific to "Lake Effect" that you were thinking about?

-That's interesting.

I think that "Lake Effect," you know, it was my third book, and I think really it was the first one where I wasn't thinking a lot about other books while I was writing it.

-Messer: Okay.

-I kind of had a, I had something very specific that I wanted to write, and I did a ton of research.

So, that involved going to the Central Library in Rochester, New York, because I really wanted to read a suburban, like, society paper that I grew up reading, "The Brighton-Pittsford Post."

And I wanted to go back into those issues.

And they only exist in microfiche in Rochester.

And so I spent a lot of time doing that and then just a lot of time, like, going through my old yearbooks and stuff like that.

and I read like so many books about Xerox, like hours and days of my life I'll never get back.

And just tried to understand the Rochester that I was writing about from the perspective of adults, not just a 17-year-old girl.

But that was a real pleasure for me, that part of it.

And it made me very proud to be putting a book in Rochester.

And that's been one of the most fun things about all of this is the town is really happy.

And I went -- I did a big event there last month at the Memorial Art Gallery, which was like a dream come true because it's one of my favorite places in Rochester.

And when I got there and this auditorium was full and they introduced me, I was really choked up.

Like, I had a hard time starting my lecture.

It was just like, "What's..." But everyone there was just so happy to see themselves in a book.

And, uh, if that's a little gift I can give the people of Western New York, that felt like really great.

-Tom, I realize you did not do that kind of level of research, but you gave Jay a happy ending.

I liked Jay's ending.

That was delightful.

-It's half happy.

-Yeah.

-Listen.

-We gotta, we gotta... That's a win.

-Yeah.

-It did feel like a win.

It did feel like a win.

I'm supposed to turn it over to audience questions, but I have... Can I sneak in one more?

Okay.

Thank you.

Because I promise we'll get to audience questions.

Did you do everything you wanted to do with this?

I know, I know, Cynthia, you just talked about Rochester, and I love the way you talk about Rochester and the response.

And it's been really fun to see.

But, Tom, did you do everything you wanted to do with "Ghost Town"?

I mean, grief and motherhood and class and growing up and all of that.

I mean, it's an epic novel.

-Well, it's a short book, as well.

I don't have any sense of, you know, feeling like I, there's something more I want to put in.

Maybe I'll feel that way five years from now.

You know, we were just talking about, you know, long novels, which there are many right now.

But one thing I've been feeling more and more when I write is just this desire to have something feel whole and to have something that doesn't lose energy at the end, which, you know, it just happens to me a lot in novels.

Like, I feel like I'm done, but the novel's not done.

-Messer: Right.

-And I'm trying to find a way to write something novel length that maybe has the energy and coherence of a story so that, you know, the end is still charged, and you feel like you're getting new information right up to that moment.

And I do I feel really good about it.

I felt it as I was writing it, and that the ending was, you know, one of the most alive parts.

-D'Aprix Sweeney: Yeah.

-We have two microphones at the front, so if you'd like to join us, we'd love to... -Someone is ready!

-There you go.

So, feel free to line up the microphones and ask away.

-Woman: So, this question is for Cynthia.

So, I grew up about an hour southeast of Buffalo.

So, obviously... -Okay.

Where?

-Woman: Holland, New York.

-Okay.

Sure.

-Woman: More cows than people.

But I just want to first quickly say thank you for writing about that place.

You really captured the nostalgia without kind of glossing over some of the warts and some of the reasons why people like me still can't easily go home.

-Right.

-Woman: You really captured that.

But, as you know, the food is such a huge part of your book and Western New York has such a really kind of underrated but amazing food culture.

What kind of food research did you do and how many Wegmans charcuterie trays did... [ Laughter ] Because I could feel every single cheese that you talked about.

-Well, my dad still lives in Rochester, in the house I grew up in.

And so I have more Wegmans charcuterie trays in my life than I care to count on an ongoing basis.

But I did a lot of reading of food writers, like Elizabeth David and Julia Child and M.F.K.

Fisher, but a lot of that was also those society papers I talked about.

There were food columns in those papers and they were horrifying.

-Messer: How much Jell-O?

-So much aspic.

Everything was gelatin.

Yeah.

But also kind of sweet, like, you know, it was this one woman who wrote this column called "Gourmet's Choice," as far as I could tell, featuring all of her friends who were trying to have "international" meals and, you know, like they were so well-meaning and so wrongheaded and yeah, but, like, in another life, I might have been a food writer, and I have some friends who are food writers.

So, that was also a lot of fun.

And I also ended up having a very lengthy conversation with a food stylist.

That was really fun, yeah.

-Woman: That was so cool.

Thank you.

-Thank you so much.

-Man: Hey, uh, I guess this is a question for both of you.

It's one of my favorite questions to ask.

What do you each like to read, or if it's television or whatever consume, that you think your fans would be surprised to hear is an esoteric or guilty pleasure of yours?

-I love a medical memoir.

Like, if you've gotten sick and almost died, and it's taken many, many doctors many years to figure out what's wrong with you, I am in.

[ Laughter ] -Well, you know, you mentioned this column in a women's magazine in the '70s called "Can This Marriage Be Saved?"

-Yes!

-And, you know, my mother had a lot of women's magazines laying around the house when I was a kid, and I just was a voracious reader.

And so I read a lot.

And when I wrote "Little Children," that was my first book with a female character.

And I remember, you know, being on "Fresh Air," and Terry Gross was like, "Well, how do you know so much about women?"

And I just realized, "Well, I've read a lot of women's magazines."

-D'Aprix Sweeney: "Redbook."

-And that was kind of peak women's magazine, too.

And they were all like the size of a doorstop.

I mean, I just the golden age of magazines, right?

Like, because I was one of those kids, too.

And you're just like, "What is happening here?"

-Well, you know, it's funny because my parents were like, "We don't believe in -- you know, we're Catholic.

We don't believe in divorce."

But I got a lot of marital strife from that column.

-Woman: You mentioned music from the '70s, Cynthia.

There's so many musical cultures in the '70s beyond even disco.

I mean, you got glam rock, like David Bowie.

You've got prog rock and art rock, LED Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

You have Philly Soul.

What exactly did you listen to that inspired you?

-Wow.

Okay.

So...true confession.

I am the oldest of four children, and all my parents listened to were Broadway tunes and The Lettermen.

And so, my music knowledge was so stunted.

Like, when I went off to college with my Judy Garland and Billie Holiday albums and tried to play them during parties.

So, then the other thing I would listen to was my digital clock radio went off in the morning.

So, it was like America.

You know... ♪ Oz never did do nothing to the Tin Man ♪ You know?

So, I had this weird -- I had a little bit of pop culture and then I knew a lot about musical theater from the '50s and '60s.

So, and then, of course, disco.

So, it was more kind of back filling, like the music I started listening to when I moved to New York City in 1982, which was more like David Bowie and The Kinks and, you know, MTV sort of filled in some of that stuff for me.

So, to be perfectly honest, I would just find a '70's station on Spotify and let it rip.

And whatever it was, it was.

Yeah.

-Hi.

-Woman: Hi.

Hello.

This question is for Cynthia.

I read your book.

Loved it.

I really loved the title "Lake Effect."

-Thank you.

-Woman: And when it got to the point where I think the character was thinking about the phrase "lake effect," tying it all in, that was just so satisfying.

And I was really curious if you went into writing the book knowing that that was the title and that was going to tie in all the themes or... -Yeah.

This is the only book I have known from the minute I started writing it that that was the title.

And when I told my editor, she said, "That can't be the title" and "There are too many other books that have been written called 'Lake Effect' or 'The Lake Effect.'

And it's going to -- like, the metadata, the algorithm.

We're going to have to come up with another title."

And I said, "Fine."

And I just said to myself, "I am writing this book as if it's being called 'Lake Effect.'"

And every few months or so, someone would say to me, "Do you have any other titles in mind?"

And I was like, "Nope.

I look forward to your suggestions when I hand in the manuscript."

And when I handed in the manuscript, I got a text from my editor the next day and she said, "I love it.

Let's talk at the end of the week.

And the title is 'Lake Effect.'"

-Woman: Thank you.

-Okay, I just want to say I'm keeping an eye on the clock because that is part of my job.

We have five minutes.

So, gentleman in the orange coat, you're our last question.

-Okay.

-Woman: Hi.

I was just wondering the process that you go through in deciding who narrates your audiobooks.

-Well, what happens is the producer will, at least for me, they give me like a handful of choices, and I listen to samples from them.

Though with my last book, "Tracy Flick Can't Win," they actually had a real ensemble star-studded cast with Lucy Liu read there.

So, that was just like, "Oh, Lucy Liu.

Sure."

You know?

But they give you a little bit of -- it's like with covers, too.

You know, it's proposed to you and you get to approve.

-Yeah, I don't think unless you, like... unless you have a friend who's a celebrity who is dying to narrate a book, it's generally their little -- they have a selection of narrators they like.

-You make the decision.

-Yeah, my publisher, Ecco, which is an imprint of HarperCollins, just sort of has a relationship with the actor Marin Ireland.

And she narrated "Good Company" and "Lake Effect."

And I think she's amazing.

So, that is just kind of an extra little gift.

-Woman: Thank you for coming.

-Thank you.

-Woman: Hi.

Thank you.

My question is for Cynthia.

I read this book as a part of my apartment building's book club.

-Apartment-building book club?

That's amazing.

-Woman: Yes.

And there's a few of us here today.

We're discussing the book on the 26th, and I was hoping that you could give us, like, one key takeaway or one key question that we should take back, like something that you're hoping that we talk about.

-You know, I'll be honest with you.

I don't think about that when I'm writing a book.

Like, I don't think about what I want people to take from it or I don't -- I'm not, like, have a message.

I guess I'm always hoping that people will, it will raise some questions for people.

And I think that the question I thought about a lot when I was writing "Lake Effect" is, what do you do when choosing your own happiness means sacrificing the stability of your family?

So... -Woman: Great one.

Thank you.

-Go forth and argue.

[ Laughter ] -Man: Hi.

This is also a question for Cynthia.

So, you mentioned earlier during the discussion that you couldn't go back and, like, even think about if you had married the person when you were 21.

-Right?

You want his name?

-Man: Yeah.

No, I don't, actually.

[ Laughter ] But I thought it was really interesting because in some ways, Sam was Nina's second shot at marriage and Finn was her third because of the falling apart.

So, I was kind of wondering about the choice to have Nina have had that first opportunity fall through so that she didn't end up marrying that person at 21, and how that kind of influenced her character in your mind?

-I think that I always wanted Nina... Nina, I knew, was going to have to have some gumption.

And so, the only way that made sense to me that she would be brave enough to make that choice is if she did have a little bit of a life before getting married and if marriage wasn't, like, the be-all and end-all goal for her.

So, that's basically how I decided to give her that little bit of, that little taste of independence that would linger there and maybe give her some courage when she needed it.

-Man: Thank you.

-Thank you.

-And that gets us to 10:30.

So, thank you, Washington.

Thank you, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney.

Thank you, Tom Perrotta.

-Thank you, Miwa.

-Have a great festival.

Thank you all.

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