ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
This might be the most meta introduction to an author interview that I've ever delivered. In Patricia Lockwood's new novel, the narrator is a novelist named Patricia who describes a book tour to promote a previous novel in early 2021.
PATRICIA LOCKWOOD: (Reading) I am readying myself for another interview when the crowd bursts into the Capitol. I have to go get a haircut, with my phone held tensely in my lap under the barber cape and wonder the whole time whether the speaker of the house is having her head chopped off. The haircut itself is administered by a stylist in his 50s who believes in me in a way that no one ever has before, that I can carry off an early '90s fly girl situation. When I step out of the salon and back into the stream of what is happening, I have a feeling that I have possibly never had before - American.
SHAPIRO: Four years ago, I was part of that book tour she describes in this latest book.
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SHAPIRO: Well, Tricia (ph) Lockwood's novel is out now. It's called "No One Is Talking About This."
That was then. This is now. Patricia Lockwood's new novel is called "Will There Ever Be Another You." Tricia, thank you for joining us again for this Russian nesting doll moment.
LOCKWOOD: Ari, thank you so much for having me. I remember you most of all as a man of taste.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
LOCKWOOD: I believe we discussed the sapphires and nipple moment.
SHAPIRO: Yeah. Yeah.
LOCKWOOD: I was just so grateful. I was like, someone, finally, who gets it.
SHAPIRO: Well...
LOCKWOOD: (Inaudible) suck.
SHAPIRO: ...I should say, I almost never interview an author about two books in a row. And it's a testament to you that here we are back again.
LOCKWOOD: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: I don't know if that introduction left people a little disoriented.
LOCKWOOD: (Laughter).
SHAPIRO: But this is a disorienting book.
LOCKWOOD: It is.
SHAPIRO: The way you phrase it is, I was going to write a masterpiece about being confused.
LOCKWOOD: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: Why did you want to write about confusion?
LOCKWOOD: I just strongly felt that no one had done that before. That was a line that I kept popping in and taking out thinking, it's a little bit on the nose. Do I really want this kind of tagline for the project? But it's really what I was doing...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
LOCKWOOD: ...Like...
SHAPIRO: It's a mission statement.
LOCKWOOD: ...Going through the notebooks. Yes, it's absolutely - it's a mission statement. It's my motto. I just had this interest the entire time in what I was doing in my notebook and why I was attempting to observe this thing that sort of categorically or definitionally couldn't be observed.
SHAPIRO: We're talking around this thing and your notebook. Tell us what happened to you - Tricia, the author - to help us understand the experience of your narrator.
LOCKWOOD: Yes. I became extremely ill in March of 2020 with what we all know as the thing that shall not be named.
SHAPIRO: The long C word.
LOCKWOOD: The long C word - the eternal C. And I immediately went into a state of disorientation, dissociation, confusion, seeing gorillas in the trees. And this state really went on for about four years. And so the process of writing this book really began in summer of 2020. I was doing it right away. I was like, why do I feel this way? Why am I seeing gorillas? Why am I afraid of the floors? The entire time, it was documentation, documentation.
SHAPIRO: OK. This is about to get meta again.
LOCKWOOD: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: Because at one point, your narrator is in England and meets an author named Susanna, who struggled with illness and brain fog.
LOCKWOOD: Yes.
SHAPIRO: And oddly enough, I interviewed the author Susanna Clarke in 2020 about her experience writing the novel "Piranesi." And here's what she told me.
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SUSANNA CLARKE: At some points during my illness, I suffered very badly with cognitive impairment, with what they call brain fog, so it had been impossible to write. But I came to a point where I felt I could write. But the pressure of all the years when I hadn't written and all the stories I hadn't written weighed very heavily on me.
SHAPIRO: You can imagine, as I was reading this book, I was like, wait a second. I know who she's talking about here.
LOCKWOOD: Yes (laughter).
SHAPIRO: I did that interview with that other author. So Tricia Lockwood, what did you learn by talking to a writer, Susanna Clarke, who had been through something so similar to what you were living through?
LOCKWOOD: She was such a hero to me, and I wanted her to win so badly, just so I didn't have to give a speech, first of all. But...
SHAPIRO: So you meet her at this award ceremony. Yes.
LOCKWOOD: Yes. Now, when she did win - thank God - she grabbed me from behind. She was standing behind me, and she grabbed sort of my elbow to steady herself. And I was just like, I will never forget this in my entire life, that Susanna Clark, the great genius, grabbed my elbow to steady herself. And I just turned to her, and I said, I mean, this means that I'll be able to do it again.
SHAPIRO: Wow.
LOCKWOOD: The fact that you were able to do it again, it showed me. I just felt in that moment that I'll be able to write another book. I'll be able to do what she did.
SHAPIRO: One small detail that I want to mention - because I bring it up whenever I'm telling other people about this book - is that you write the phrase brain fog as Brian fog, which...
LOCKWOOD: Brian fog (laughter).
SHAPIRO: ...I find to be such a perfect distillation of kind of your writing style, where you are embodying the thing you're talking about in a way that is funny, but also more real than any analytical description of what brain fog feels like could possibly be.
LOCKWOOD: It's absolutely Brian fog. I originally had a little bit more about that, but I liked it just to leave it as that line. I was reading a lot of Reddit at that time. People were describing their symptoms. They were misspelling things. They were saying that they were suffering from Brian fog. And I just felt that - I was like, I'm on the frontlines of something. I'm sort of witnessing people talk about this new illness in real time and try to figure out what it is and what might help them. But it's also funny, isn't it a little bit?
SHAPIRO: Oh, it's hilarious.
LOCKWOOD: Like...
SHAPIRO: And that's one of the things...
LOCKWOOD: ...Gorillas (laughter).
SHAPIRO: ...That I love about your writing, is that even as you're describing near-death experiences, you're doing it...
LOCKWOOD: Right.
SHAPIRO: ...In a way that takes very serious things not too seriously.
LOCKWOOD: Yeah. I just think that both things are present. It was always like that in my household. And I just think you have to keep both bits in. Like, that's part of the observation. That's part of what makes it true.
SHAPIRO: OK, so the narrator's husband has a near-death experience - hemorrhaging, emergency surgery. When he gets home from the hospital, the wife is responsible for cleaning the wound. And...
LOCKWOOD: Yes.
SHAPIRO: ...Your own husband had an event like this. How did you think about the juxtaposition between this very visible, physical problem of the body and the experience that you and your narrator were having of this much more kind of invisible, slippery problem of the mind that you were wrestling with?
LOCKWOOD: Yeah. It's such a great question. It put me back into the realm of the concrete.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
LOCKWOOD: It filled me back to my fingertips. I had a job to do on this planet Earth. I woke up in the morning. I drank my coffee, and then I went into that room with the chihuahua mistakes all over the carpet, and I tended my husband's wound. You know, it just felt - you were on your feet. You had something to do. And you also - you know, that sense of your own uselessness just went away. You're like, I can handle this. Let me do this. Let me in there. Let me take care of you.
SHAPIRO: There's a moment towards the end where you talk about this kind of movement towards conclusion. Could you read from page 240?
LOCKWOOD: Yes. (Reading) The end was an oasis you never wanted to reach. The best version was when you were in it and all the components were in hurricane. No one could ever read that but you and the people who inherited your papers. But it was the real thing in its way. If I could communicate the way it was put together or the act of putting togetherness, this was a kind of immortal life. Her body was to be found. Her correct body and mind were to be found in the process of assembly.
SHAPIRO: How are you now? Do you feel assembled? Do you feel in the process of assembly?
LOCKWOOD: I feel closer to my own name. I do feel more like myself, and I am much better.
SHAPIRO: Patricia Lockwood, thank you so much for talking with us.
LOCKWOOD: Thank you so much for having me.
SHAPIRO: Her new novel is called, "Will There Ever Be Another You."
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