the antidote to madness

0:06Like, the difference between a film and a novel, that when you go to see a film, it just goes stampeding across your imagination. You don't need your imagination when you see a film. It's all there. It's even, like, hyper-realistic: the colors, the music, the actors, the costumes. It's all so, like, it's right there in front of you. You don't need to use your imagination at all, even for things that might be subtle, you know, little hints or little Easter eggs, as they're called. But that's not really contemplative. It's being done for you. And when you read, you have to do the work. Like, you need to do this amazing translation of letters into words, into phrases, into sentences. You're doing

0:57that, it's highly intellectual, and then you need to remember it all and to make sense of it. You know, like, why are these characters behaving in this way? Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Nectar of Time. I'm your host, Tamir Barzilai. Today we're going to be speaking with Grant Shipway. Grant is a writer. He is someone who is very passionate about books and literature and has his own YouTube channel called Grant Loves Books. It's a YouTube channel dedicated to reviewing the great novels from the 20th century, from the 19th century, 18th century. Grant has a very deep well of literary knowledge. It's a pleasure

1:45speaking with him and seeing where he takes conversations and how he dissects ideas and offers perspectives that are at times, some would say, cynical or pessimistic, but what I think are quite real and refreshing. And he has the experience and worldliness to offer beautiful vistas of understanding, and that's partly due to the fact that at age 26 he moved to Europe and traveled from Lisbon to Budapest, where he would spend 16 years before returning to Canada. I really enjoyed this conversation. I

2:33think it'll be really interesting and unique for you to listen to. So without further ado, let's get started. This is just, like, caffeine-free rooibos-type cinnamon. Wow. Wow, I would drink it. First of all, thank you so much for joining us and joining me on the second official episode of the Nectar of Time podcast. Grant Shipway, ladies and gentlemen. Hey, thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I really, I'm very pleased. Yeah, I just, you know, I enjoy it. You know, as you get older, you become

3:21so familiar with your routine, and to step out of your routine, even just something like this, is really a pleasure for me. So thank you very much for the invitation. Yeah, thanks for making it happen. I know we tried it in the summer, and the schedules are crazy in the summer, so I'm really happy. Even now it was, you know, a challenging time, and I wouldn't have been upset if you told me, "Hey, we got to leave this till January." But I'm happy that we could make it happen. So. Oh, well, I'm nearly done on my work at the university. I'm almost finished for the semester, so it's getting a bit lighter and I can afford the time. And also my wife is away, and so is my son, so I'm a bit lonely, so I'm happy to have someone to talk to. This is a perfect time, then. Well, just for the audience to know, Grant,

4:09Grant is a writer. I feel like he's been a writer all his life almost, or in pursuit of writing great works all of his life: poetry, prose. He's been published in multiple magazines, and so on and so forth. I've recently read his short story collection. By the way, the reason why I know Grant is from his YouTube channel, and your YouTube channel is amazing. I know that it's not MrBeast, you know, there's not 100 million followers yet. It's not easy candy necessarily that you can just pick and eat and enjoy, move to the next thing. I think Grant's, I compared it earlier when we were talking before we started recording to, you know, like a

4:57bottle of whiskey, where when you're drinking the whiskey, you savor it, you enjoy it, you think about it, and it sits with you a little bit after. You don't forget it. I still think about some of Grant's analyses, looking back at certain novels that he's reviewed. So that's how I know Grant. And maybe just speak a little bit about, you know, how you got started making videos and reviews on books, and we can start there, and then we can go backwards and into the future and all through your stories and short story collections. Sure thing. Let's see, so how did I get started? Well, when I came back from living in Europe to Canada, it was the first

5:48time that I had the internet, like, in my apartment. Like, the whole time I was living in Budapest, I didn't have the internet, so I wasn't watching a lot of YouTube. It was really like, I would go to an internet cafe and I would check my email, and, you know, I would spend 60 minutes on the internet twice a week, and that was all. So when I came back to Canada, I really spent too much time watching a lot of YouTube. But I liked book reviews, and I thought, well, I can do that. Yeah, of course, you know, with the naivety, you know, sure, anybody can do that. But then I realized how much work went into it. But yeah, I dedicated myself to making these book reviews on my channel, Grant Loves Books. But it's a very

6:38amateur thing that I'm doing. I'm doing it for my love of literature, right? Like, I think that's really my main motivation, is I have read a lot of books and I want other people to read some of the books I've read, right? And I want to encourage people to try to read better-quality books. Like, we're just so obsessed with the latest thing, you know, the popular thing, and there's a whole wealth, like, this undiscovered landscape of literature that has been forgotten or is just hidden. It's just slightly beneath the surface, but enough so that a lot of people have forgotten these names and these titles. And that's what I want to bring to people's attention. Just,

7:26there's so much great stuff to read. And yeah, as I was saying earlier, you know, like, one day I'm going to die, and all of the books I've read, they won't go with me, but my love for them will go. And I want to try to, you know, to pass some of this love on to other people who might have similar tastes in literature that I do. I think it's a great summary. And I think the first question that I have for you really is: why is it important for people to read these type of books, specifically the type of great books that you're reviewing? You know, there's an argument to be made that, say, stories are stories.

8:15People are watching Netflix, people are going on TikTok, watching their favorite vlogger, looking at the news, whatever the latest politics is, and then they just sort of live and, you know, go through their life and go with the flow. And why is it necessary to go and read, you know, these great novels? What is it in those novels that is important for us as humans, as people with emotions and lives and our own stories? Why is it important for us to connect with these other stories? Well, I think what you just said at the beginning is about how we live our lives. I think the majority of us are living our lives at a very

9:03superficial level. You know, like, we watch the news, but are we really paying attention to it? Are we really considering the news, or is it just something that's flashing in front of our eyes? You know, like the difference between a film and a novel, that when you go to see a film, it just goes stampeding across your imagination. You don't need your imagination when you see a film. It's all there. It's even, like, hyper-realistic: the colors, the music, the actors, the costumes. It's all so, like, it's right there in front of you. You don't need to use your imagination at all, even for things that might be subtle, you know, little hints or little Easter eggs, as they're called. But

9:51that's not really contemplative. It's being done for you. And when you read, you have to do the work. Like, you need to do this amazing translation of letters into words, into phrases, into sentences. You're doing that, it's highly intellectual, and then you need to remember it all and to make sense of it. You know, like, why are these characters behaving in this way? And that's why, you know, just as a bit of a side note, that's why disappointing literature is really very disappointing, because you feel that the author is not doing a good job. Like, you need that author to carry you away. But you're doing it. You're carrying yourself away with these words.

10:38It's truly very, like, it's such a mental process. It's like playing chess. You know, Kurt Vonnegut used to say that reading was, like, his variation of perfect meditation. Mm-hmm. I went to see Kurt Vonnegut speak in Toronto. Really? Yes, in the '90s. One of my favorite authors. Sure. And he was a joy to listen to, you know, like, so full of energy and so full of, like, good human cordiality, you know, very animated. Yes. And he talked about how at some point, I think, his wife and his daughter got into meditation, and how he said, "Well, you know, I read. You know, I sit, I breathe deeply, I focus very intensely on these

11:29words that I'm reading. I feel calm, and when I'm finished reading, I feel happy." And I always, you know, believed in that quite firmly, that, you know, you're doing something amazing here. You're taking these words and you're making sense of them, even if it's, like, highly alien to your life and your experience. Like, I love to read about the Second World War. I know nothing about it, and it's something that happened so long before I was born, but I'm just fascinated, and I love the details. I love the, you know, the true human emotions. And they're not emotions, they're just words on a page, but I feel those emotions. And I think that's, I don't know where, there's something timeless about those emotions,

12:17because those emotions are perennial. They're not the emotion of 2024, of sadness in 2024. It's that sadness existed in 1924 and 1824. Well, how is it that Tolstoy wrote this long book, Anna Karenina, like, 150 years ago, give or take, and we can still read it with so much pleasure and so much excitement? Like, there's a scene in Anna Karenina where this man, he's a soldier, and he's going to race a horse with some of the other soldiers, and his horse is not as good as the other, and this scene is so thrilling. Like, honestly, edge of my seat. I was reading this, and I didn't want

13:05to put the book down. And this is a very old book, you know, that not a lot of people are going to read, even though it's considered one of the great books of literature. It's just, you know, it has that aura of boredom. It does. It does have the aura of boredom, and it's too long, and it's old, and, you know, classics are just a euphemism for boring. Obviously that's not the case, but you have to be willing to go on that adventure. And I think there's an obstacle in many people's minds to go on that adventure, because it sounds like work, and turning on Netflix is not work. That's passive, it's easy. But the reason why perhaps, you know, playing off

13:54what Kurt Vonnegut said, perhaps the reason why he feels happy after reading, feels like it's a meditation after reading, is because it is work. And in the same way, you don't feel those endorphins, you don't feel those happy chemicals in your brain if you don't go exercise, if you don't go for a run and move your body. Perhaps it's sort of an equivalent of moving your brain. Reading is an active activity. It's not actually a passive activity. But because it's not a passive activity, there's more resistance, and especially if it's Russian literature. Sure. Well, but we do like to work hard. Like, we do enjoy putting in effort. It's just we need to find the thing that we

14:43enjoy putting the effort into. You know, some people don't like exercise. Okay, all right. I think perhaps they haven't tried the exercise that suits them best, because we do like to move, and we do like to feel like, yeah, I did something today, if, you know, hiking or yoga or swimming, whatever it is you like. And, you know, like, if you say, if you like crossword puzzles, okay, and if you do a crossword puzzle that was made for a five-year-old, okay, or a 10-year-old, yeah, you're not going to be pleased with yourself. Right. "Oh, look, I did it, I did it," you know, "cat," "dog," after, like, that won't give you any pleasure. And, but say you really love

15:30crossword puzzles, and so you get, like, a really hard one, or you get one that, you know, and then if you are successful with that, that will give you a feeling of satisfaction, because you needed that challenge. And literature is the same. Like, right, it just has to be the right literature for your current level, whether it's a comprehension level or whether it's even just an effort level that you're willing to make at that given point. Yes, absolutely. Yes, you're totally right. Like, when I was young, there was some books that I loved that were really quite good for young people, and they're not good for me today, and I try to avoid reading those books because, you know, I cherish them as happy memories. But to revisit them

16:18now. Do you have an example of, like, what type of book that would be? Yes, On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Yeah, I actually have that on my to-read list, and I got a copy in, I was in California earlier this year, some random US bookstore. I'm like, this is the perfect book to get at a random US bookstore in California. Well, like, I read that when I was 19 years old, and it was just like the world changed. And it was the first time, I was at university in Ottawa. I went to university way back when, and, like, this book just filled me with this wild spirit. Like, I jumped on a bus and I traveled from Ottawa to Toronto to look up somebody that I went to high school with. It was really very embarrassing, actually. But, like, this book was life-

17:09changing. Thirty years later, it doesn't have the same resonance. And I don't want to discourage anyone from reading it. It's just that there are some books that, they need to come into your life at the right time, because eventually you'll be too mature for that. Like, when I read On the Road, I read it before they made the film. I think that was 10 years ago at least, to see, just to remind myself. It is important to go back and revisit some of the books, but I was just kind of disappointed. You know, like, I did try to get myself into the spirit of it, that 1950s America, you know, this new country with all this wealth

17:58that, like, doesn't even realize its potential. It just knows that there's this amazing potential in the air, and these young people, there's no war, they're hitchhiking, there's this new music, jazz, you know, New York City, San Francisco. But, you know, it's hard to build a philosophy on hitchhiking. And, oh well, you know, the book hasn't changed, I've changed. It's still a good book. It's just, it's not a good book for me anymore. And sometimes you have the opposite experience, where you look at a book and you said, "This sucks," and then years later you revisit it and all of a sudden it can speak to you. You understand the language, hopefully. Yes. I don't know if I've ever said a book

18:45sucks. Well, I have a couple of times, but I'm going to fact-check that. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. We'll just say, for instance, the first time I read The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, his first novel. Yeah. That is quite an enjoyable book. It's very exciting, but there's this bit in the middle where he goes fishing. He goes on this trout fishing, and it slows the book down, and I didn't enjoy that part. Because the first part is in Paris, lots of drinking, lots of, you know, carousing. The middle part, the fishing trip, somewhere in the northern Spain, Spanish mountains. And in the end they get to the bull-running festival, where they're drinking and going crazy again. And that middle bit, it always bothered me. But then many, many years later, like, that's

19:33my favorite part of the book now. The beginning and the end is a lot of silly drunken antics, which is fun, but now I like the fishing scene, because it slows it down and it's more reflective, and it makes the beginning and the ending more enjoyable because of the slowness and the, you know, just kind of putting all the action on pause, so that the exciting bits maybe feel even more exciting. Do you think it's just something that, like, you didn't understand originally? I just think I was young. You know, like, when you're young, you like a lot of excitement and you like a lot of action and a lot of movement, and when things move slowly, you know, that's annoying for a young person. They

20:21want things to be fast. Right. I find myself questioning, if I get to a portion of a book where I feel like I'm unhappy with it for whatever reason, I question myself, and I think, you know, perhaps I'm just not understanding this the way, like, I always give the author the benefit of the doubt. Actually, I got in trouble for this in a book club a few years back. Over COVID, I think many of us joined book clubs, because that was an easy thing to do, an easy activity. And people would give scores. We give scores out of nine, so you wouldn't be able to just say, this is, you'd have to decide if it's bad or if it leans bad or good. And people would give, like, a six, and I would give an eight, even though I didn't necessarily like

21:11the book. I would still give a high score, because I said, I think the author still did a good job, I just don't like it. And people would hate me for that, because it's basically giving, like, a good-effort ribbon to the author, where they should say, no, you actually need to score it based off the appeal to you. And I just found that maybe that's unfair to the author, because the book could have an appeal to a great number of other people, and I can actually appreciate what the author is doing. It's just not for me at this given moment. So how does that affect my rating? Is this a fundamentally bad book? Probably not. But it's bad for me right now, but it could be good for me in 20 years, depending on how my experiences shape over the course of those 20 years. So they hated me for it, because it's such a

21:58position. It's such a, you know, lack of conviction in that score, right? I don't know about that. You know, like, the greatest novel of the 20th century is widely believed to be Ulysses by James Joyce. That is really considered to be the ultimate novel of the 20th century, but it's awful. Not awful in its construction, and not awful in its execution. It's just very unpleasant to read, and it's a book that you need to pick it apart, and you need to study it, and you need to read all of the notes for it to really give you anything. And

22:48is that a good book if it's as much work as that? Well, some people will say, yeah, of course it is. I mean, that's what it's all about. It's about writing something that challenges you. You know, like, as I was saying, like, this is extraordinarily challenging. Like, you know, the hardest crossword puzzle in the world. You don't even have any clues. You've just got all these empty things you need to fill up with your own imagination. However, well, I guess you ask yourself, like, what do I want to get from this? I think really I'm quite simple in my taste for literature. I really enjoy a good story. I like exciting characters. I like, you know, I like a good plot. You know, like, a lot of

23:36people, they're, like, the real literature snobs. They say, you know, you shouldn't care about plot. It's not about plot. Plot is just how we get from beginning to end. You know, you need to look into the psychology of the characters and the motivation. It's like, well, I can't pretend I don't enjoy the plot. Also, why not have both? Why not have the characters and the plot? The great books have both, typically. Well, you need something to carry you through to the end. Like, you know, there are books that are just these amazing character studies, but they tend not to be 400 pages long. You know, you need something that will carry, you know. And those long books, they're very rewarding, because, you know, it's like a friend that you've had for so many weeks, and, you know, every time you turn a page, your friend

24:22shows you this new aspect of his personality, and he's like, oh wow, exciting, my friend. He just gets better and better. And then it comes to an end. It's like, ah, well, you know, the relationship's not over. You put it back on the shelf and you see it, and you always remember, yes, that's my friend. Yeah. I want to sort of, not totally take this in a different direction, but it's in the same vein, but it's specifically about one review that you made about a book that I like that is more character-driven than plot-driven, which is No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. And I know you didn't have the review for it, not necessarily because of the writing, just because it was very morose and very, I don't know, just difficult to actually read. It didn't really make you

25:09any happier. Well, I think that's a good example of sort of a book for younger people, because younger people do have the tendency to enjoy, you know, that existential angst. You know, they like to really, you know, wear it, you know what I mean? They like to really express how dreadful the world is. When you say younger people, you mean, like, the younger brooding philosopher-type people? Yes, yes. And it's a very self-centered attitude to have. You know, like, "I hate the world, and I think everything is so awful, and, you know, wouldn't it be better just, you know, if

25:56the whole world just were destroyed in an instant, and nothing would be lost." And these, it's a bit immature and self-centered, I feel. You know, there's a book that I haven't read recently which I'm afraid might feel quite similar, The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger. I'm wondering, if I were to read that again, would I get the same feeling? Because it's not, I just, I feel that there's something a little bit too self-indulgent about really dwelling on how horrible you think everything is. Yeah, yeah, I agree with

26:45that. You, there needs to be some balance, or there needs to be something. You know, like, what happens in that book? He drinks too much. Well, he has no hope. I mean, nothing really good happens to him, but he doesn't actually seek good things, and he doesn't seek growth, and he doesn't seek a paradigm shift or any form of change. He resigns himself to all of the maladies that befall upon him. And he realizes, this is just my life, there is no, he's forever the clown, right? He talks about clowning as a kid, and that would get him the attention, only to realize that there's no substance behind that, and there's no growth behind

27:33that. It's just him coping. And so all he has is one coping mechanism to the next. Then it becomes drinking, then it becomes hanging out with the Communist Party and, you know, having his, you know, fun there, so to speak. And then ultimately he finds a partner that feels the same way about life as he does, and then they decide to, I mean, I don't know if this is a spoiler alert, but he decides to double suicide with her. Right. Yeah, there's no hope in it. Exactly. I mean, is that fun to read about? It can be. It's up to the author. It's how it's presented. I don't know why that book didn't resonate with me. I just felt that it was too self-indulgent. It was too much of

28:23the negative. Yeah, like, there, but I think it's purposeful. I think it was purposeful in its self-indulgence, and it gave me a perspective of someone that probably does exist in this world. That archetype certainly exists in this world, and it's very sad. And for that, I mean, it's definitely not hopeful for the reader nor for the protagonist, but it does feel, like, somewhat realistic. And we know that Osamu Dazai almost wrote that as, like, a pseudo-memoir, right? Yes. I guess I just prefer a little bit more, yeah, bravery in someone's fatalism, right? Like, have you read Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky? No, it's on the list. Yeah, it's very, very, very

29:11similar. Okay. And, you know, this man, he's very negative, hates everybody, and he's just filled with this, like, morbid, self-reflective anxiety all the time. He can't get beyond himself, right? But quite a lot of the book is given up to this idea that he thinks that he can make something of his life if he can just get himself involved in a barroom brawl. And not to win, not to kick anybody's ass, but just to be a part of it, because then he can tell himself, "I was a part of something. You know, my life has not been completely futile. I was in a barroom brawl, and, you know, maybe they threw me through the window." And this becomes his, like, overwhelming obsession, to participate, and it's ridiculous,

29:59but at least that seems to be more enjoyable as literature for me. Like, I appreciate that, because we do, especially as younger people, we do wildly silly things. Yeah. To make a point. Yeah. Well, there is an aspiration there. Yes. Whereas the protagonist in No Longer Human has none. Mm. He's just trudging along. In a very strange book called The Drinker by Hans, I read that, I think, this year or last year, like, there's a man, he's not really interested in drinking, and suddenly he just decides one day that he wants to drink, and one drink, like, instantly turns him into an alcoholic. And it's a very, very depressing book, and it's, you know,

30:46just this downward slope. Like, it just goes down, down, down. But there's still something in it. Like, even if it's just his need to drink more, even though it's costing him everything. Mm-hmm. It's still, like, there's some desire. And Osamu Dazai, like, I just felt that it was almost like he'd just given up so completely that there was no desire for anything left. And, like, I'm not interested in that. Like, if you get to that degree in your life where nothing inspires you, yeah, well, I'm sorry, I don't have any patience for you. Yeah, quite dark. And what's interesting is that the sequel to that book, which is The Flowers of, the

31:34Flowers of Buffoonery. Really? Yeah. And, but the sequel was written before No Longer Human. It's sort of just anachronistic in the sense of how he worked that out. But because it was written before No Longer Human, you could tell the tone is happier. The tone has some hope in it. Yes. But the actual work itself was the sequel, post him being rescued from the river after jumping in. And his partner, actually, she ends up dying. He ends up being saved, and it starts, the book starts with him in the sanatorium, and his friends come to see

32:21him in the sanatorium. So I just wonder, because we know Dazai is a strange character, and obviously him and Mishima had a connection, and, you know, they both felt tremendous pain about their lives, but they went about it in different ways. And Mishima's books are obviously very different than Dazai's books. And they were rivals too. Like, I think they met at one point at some event or something, and it sort of reminds me of, like, the UFC, where you have, like, two guys in the room that deeply dislike each other and they have to, like, at each other. But I think it was mostly Dazai who was jealous or upset with Mishima, if I'm not mistaken, but someone fact-check me

33:08on that. Yeah, there, I know I've read a similar story where I think Mishima was quite dismissive of Dazai. Like, he just, he said, you know, "There's nothing in that man. Like, you can't get anything from him. He's lost." And even if, I don't know if he respected his writing, but he just, you know, as a human being, he said, "No, keep away from that one." But I don't know if I'm telling an accurate story here. So I want to shift maybe the subject towards you again, because I just finished reading, maybe, see, I don't know if you're going to see this on camera, but The Friend from Budapest. This is a short story collection written by Grant, and I received it because I'm a Patreon member. So if you guys want one

33:57of these, I don't know, everyone gets one of these if they're a Patreon member? I don't know how that works. Originally it was going to be, you know, for a certain amount of money, but then it just, I got a hundred of those printed, and it's way too many. So now if anyone joins my Patreon page, which is the same title, Grant Loves Books, at Patreon, yeah, I'll send you one of these, because I've got a big box of them still. Okay, sweet. So what I want to do is I want to talk about the way that you end your introduction to this short story collection. And forgive me for loading up my phone here, but I have my questions on here, just so I don't mess it up. That's okay, but you'll have to remind me. I haven't looked at it for a long time. Yeah. So you basically just

34:46describe your journey from how you started, when you started writing, and where you are now. This is a relatively recent introduction. And you talk about how "there's still some creative fire, but as I progress along the stages, writing, editing, rewriting, editing, rewriting, hunting for publishers, submitting, submitting, submitting, my enthusiasm wanes with each new stage until all I want to do is work on something new." And in parentheses you end with, "Actually, all I want to do is lie on the sofa reading books greater than I could ever write." And I think you're outlining a pretty common issue with readers that are aspiring to be writers. And I guess my question

35:36to you is, how do you, as a writer, deal with the reverence for the greats? And does it motivate you, or does it intimidate you? Well, it intimidates me. Like, there are some books that are so genius and so beautiful and perfect that, yeah, it is very intimidating. Like, one of my favorite, it's a series of books, it's called The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, and it's four novels. It's Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea. And these books are such a work of inspired creativity that, yeah, I don't think I will ever be able to write

36:25something like that. There's also another series called the U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos. It's three novels that comprise this series. It's huge, and it's, like, it's beautiful. Like, it's so fantastic and creative, and it all just came out of someone's imagination. So, but I do think I can do something. I think I have a modest degree of talent for writing, and I enjoy writing. I think it's my passion. There's something really personally satisfying to me to write a short story that I feel has a beginning and an ending, and it has

37:15some tension, and it's written in a way that people want to read the entire thing all at once. Like, they don't want to stop reading it. That really pleases me. Afterwards, though, like, you know, all the other stuff that is a tedium, the editing and the submitting. And, you know, like, every magazine, they have this thing about, okay, your name can't appear anywhere in the story, and, okay, we want your name and your address as a header for every single page, and it's just semi-formatting, and okay, all right, that's what they want. And, you know, they do receive hundreds or thousands of submissions every year, especially if

38:02it's a paying journal. So they do like to do these little nitpicky things, because that way, if you're an editor, if it's not the right format, you immediately throw it away, because you've got 300 more to read. Yeah. However, for my own feeling about writing, well, that's my creative energy. You know, I would love to be a painter, but I don't know where to get started. I would love to be a musician, but I don't think I really have the talent for that. But I think that it's the arts, you know, it's doing something creative that makes me extremely happy. That, yeah, I think we all

38:51need a little creativity in our lives. Like something, like, you know, like how happy a child is when they do something, some finger painting, something that they can take home and put on the refrigerator. There's something quite, you know, almost spiritual in this creation. Yeah. You know, and to be really pleased with yourself, like, to have pride, like, yeah, I did that, and that wasn't easy. That took time, it took effort, it took concentration, it took persistence. Like, these are really noble qualities that we have. You know, like, we can be really hardworking, clever people if we challenge ourselves, if we don't give in to laziness, which I think is just the ultimate destroyer in the

39:41world. Like, maybe that's it, being addicted to consumption. Well, maybe that's it. Like, it's not a battle between good and evil, it's a battle between, like, creativity and laziness. You know, like, and I think we all have that. Like, we all want to do something. We all have a little bit of an urge to try. Well, and sometimes it's the bane of perfectionism, where you don't want to produce something because, you know, you can do better, and so you wait, and in the waiting, weeks become months become years, and then you didn't have any output, ultimately. And, do you think that's true? It's true for me. Really? Like, you would be afraid to try because it wouldn't be perfect? Not afraid to try, definitely not afraid to try, but

40:30afraid to put it out into the world until I feel that this is what I want it to be. And, well, you need to get over that. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Absolutely, man. Like, really, like, go to some amateur poetry readings, right? You know, sign up for an open mic, get up there and say whatever you can say in a poem, and listen to the other people. Like, a lot of people don't do it very well, but they try, and they're proud of their efforts, and it's great. Well, that's why they say, if you want to write, you got to write every day, even if it's bad. Sure, yeah, yeah. And you don't have to publish it. You got to do something. Well, and not to be too precious, right? That's very hard. That's really quite challenging. That

41:20really challenges the ego, that, you know, a lot, you know, it's something you made. You don't want people to tear it apart. Like, that's, you know, sacred. Like, this is my precious thing, don't ruin it for me. But unfortunately, that's just a part of, like, being an artist. Like, you need to be welcoming of that criticism to grow. It's tough, but hopefully, you know, we can learn. Just as a bit of a side note, when I lived in Budapest, I used to do some martial arts training. What kind? I did predominantly aikido for eight years, but also several other things, you know, I was just kind of dipping in and trying. And how long were you in Budapest? 16 years. Wow. Yeah. Cool. And the

42:10nice thing about going to, like, any martial arts class is to know that you are not good. Like, to know that you have no skills. And it's hard for people, because people watch a lot of films and they watch a lot of videos, and they think, I can do something like that. But you can't, even some of the most basic elements. Like, say, like, doing a forward roll, like a somersault. You think, well, I can do that, I used to do that when I was a child. Well, you can't do it when you're 24. Or you can, but you're not going to do it very beautifully. You're going to do it, like, yeah, yeah, haphazard. And to have that attitude that it's okay to be terrible. You don't have any experience, you don't

42:56have any training, you are terrible. But if you keep coming and you keep trying and you keep practicing, you'll get better. And next year you're going to see some new people, and you're going to be like, oh wow, I was like that. Yeah. And now I'm one year better. And you see the more advanced people, and you're like, oh wow, okay, if I keep doing this, maybe I'll be like that. Yeah. And that was a nice thing to learn from the martial arts, that it's okay to be terrible, because you don't have any experience. Well, it forces you, I've done some martial arts as well, some Muay Thai, did it for a few years. Great. And yeah, it forces you into a no-ego position, because, man, you have any ego? Okay, let's

43:42go. You'll find out very quickly. Yeah. What the ego does. I think I've played other sports as well. I played soccer. Soccer, you can masquerade a little bit, because you can blame the ref, you can blame the pass, you can blame the position, you can blame the inflation of the ball. There's any number of things that you can complain about and, you know, offset your insecurities, right? But in solo sports, you can't hide. I play a lot of tennis now, and it's just either you're going to win or you're not. You can't blame anyone else. Either you're better than the opponent or you're not. And with martial arts, it's the highest stakes, because even in

44:30tennis, maybe blame the racket, maybe blame the ball again. You know, there's all sorts of stuff. But with fighting, you either put to sleep, you're put on your back, you're. Well, it's a wonderful check for your ego, and also, like, just, like, really grounded in, like, just physical reality. Like, I often felt that people have these really, you know, like, when you see, like, kind of children doing martial arts in their head, you know, and they do these, like, kicks, and, you know, they're all kind of in a weird, funny position. And people still do those same moves in their teenage years and in their 20s. They still do the same moves, even though they think they're doing it really well, because they don't have any training.

45:16They just, sometimes, you know, we see, like, in videos and films, like, we see things and we think, yeah, I can do that. Mm-hmm. And when you go to a gym, you go to this training, like, you realize you can't. Like, if you, you know, if you're boxing, you know, just, like, throwing, like, the most basic jab, you know, when the instructor tells you how to do it, and, okay, stand like this, and put the weight on the balls of your feet, and lean forward, and, you know, keep your guard up. And it's like, "Hey, man, this is really complicated." He's like, "No, it's not. It's the most basic element. It's the jab." But it's hard because you don't know how to do it yet. You just haven't practiced it. And then again, a year later, you do have those skills, but you have one year's

46:04accumulation. Yeah, yeah. It's wonderful. Like, it's so nice to know, well, not to think yourself so wonderful. Because, yeah, I think people can have a tendency to get a bit, you know, inflated ego. And we see that happening with, I see it happening in many cases, sometimes with musicians, and I use the term musicians loosely, because nowadays, you know, anyone with a mic and some Auto-Tune can become a musician. But in some cases you have pop stars, or, you know, things like, people like that, where they make amazing songs, amazing hits, and then now the whole world is telling them they're the

46:51best thing since sliced bread, and all of a sudden they're not making those hits anymore, because they think everything they produce is amazing. And they have their fans, they have their, you know, the people that will follow them and go to their concerts for the old songs. But you see that also in fighting. You see it with, you know, like, Conor McGregor is a good example, because the guy did so well and was incredible. I mean, one of his fights, against Eddie Alvarez in UFC, I think in Madison Square Garden, I mean, that was one of the best displays of martial arts anyone has ever seen. And then you see him a few years later, and the guy's on his whiskey and he's living the life. He made his money with Floyd Mayweather, and the fire inside him, the dedication, even if you

47:41watch his interviews, in his early interviews he came off like a monk. He's like, "I don't think about anything except fighting." And then after the fact, "I don't think about anything except whiskey." Because he got, and that took him away from the no-ego martial arts, and loss, loss, loss. And I don't think now he's ever going to fight again, even though the guy is still young. There are people that fight in the UFC and do well late into their 30s. It got to him. Well, that, you know, that gets into some really philosophical territory about, you know, like, how when we're young, like, we really can get very passionate, and we can really become, like, extremely, you know, like, on fire, like, with creativity, or with, you know, if

48:32like, you know, as a sports person, just, you know, like, very limited physically in terms of, like, when you have your peak age. But also artists as well. Like, you know, these young musicians, maybe they are producing this wild, exciting, energetic music, and it just strikes a chord because there's so much passion in it. But people lose passion. Yeah. Like, it's something that is unbelievable to sustain for such an extended period. Like, I don't know how people do that, like, to keep the passion going for such a long time. Especially if you've had early success. It depends what we're talking about, though. For writers it's really

49:19quite different. You know, as a writer, generally there's one thing that you'll always be known for, and there's nothing wrong with that. Like, one of your books is going to be the best one. Unfortunately, all of the other books are going to be a bit disappointing for the audience. And you might love them, and you might really put your work, your life effort into it, but it's just not going to reach the same mark. Perhaps for a painter it's different, because painters can go through different stages. You know, they can find new motivation when they change their style or their technique or their, you know, their colors or their subject matter. But for a writer, a novelist, it's really, it's a bit sad. So that brings me to a good, or it's

50:07a good segue to the next point, next question that I wanted to ask you. So I read your story recently called "Going to Canada," and it's the first story that's in this collection. And you talk about how, in "Going to Canada," you reference, like, some family trauma. And I don't know how much of this is memoir and how much of this is, you know, fiction. I'm sure it's probably a mix of both, I imagine. But you talk about family trauma and some bad blood, and essentially some situations that, you know, involve "pain and guilt and misery." Okay, these are your words in the short story. Now, I'm wondering, is that pain a source of, first of all, creative writing in general? Do you think

50:56pain is, at least what I believe to be, one of the most powerful sources for creative writing? And perhaps, if it's not the source of most creative writing, is it the source of great creative writing? Pain? Well, my initial idea would be to say no. I don't think pain can be a very useful or sustaining thing over a long period. I think with pain, pain is something to get beyond. Like, pain is not to be, you know, you don't want to dwell on it overly, because I think that, you know,

51:46that takes you in that Osamu Dazai direction. Like, you're just, you're dwelling on the pain until it becomes an obsession, until it becomes something that is hard to get past, because you won't allow yourself to get past it. I think you need to, well, personally, I feel that people need to have a sense of humor. That we need to look at the pain and not, you know, squeeze it and enjoy it and get all the pain we can get from it. I think we need to look at the pain and try to laugh at it, you know, to be above it in that way, to have a sense of humor. Not to, because pain, it's a limited experience, and is. When you say "we," is it the responsibility, or is the "we"

52:36the perspective of the audience or of the writers, when you're saying we need to laugh at it, we need to make light of it and overcome it? Because in most novels, right, I mean, actually, Vonnegut has this really nice, I forget where he gave this talk, but he was outlining how to construct a story. I think maybe you've seen that one. And he talks about how you need to put your protagonist through all these obstacles and figure out how he's going to get through these obstacles, and that's what makes the story interesting. And, like, without the obstacles, without that resistance, that friction, it's just not necessarily a very good story. But you're

53:24talking about how, like, the Osamu Dazais of the world focus too much on the negative side of those obstacles, as opposed to overcoming those obstacles. Well, we don't always need to have happy stories with happy endings. It's, I just, like, I see, you know, I'm at university now with a lot of young people, and it's hard for me, because I'm so much older than they are, often even older than the professors. And it is challenging for me to speak with them sometimes, because they do seem to have a lot of, well, typical attitudes for people at

54:13that age. And it's just, it's my own fault for leaving my university education so late. I just, I don't, I think pain is not the end. I think pain is more like the beginning. That there is pain, and there is what you do with it. You know, like, it doesn't stop with the pain. It, like, that is the motivation for becoming something or doing something. You know, like, well, if you really think of great literature, you know, The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, that was really quite a book about, you know, trying to have a more, like, communist mentality with the new American

55:00republic. What's another great book? There's Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Like, that was really the fear and the horror of war in an ironic, sarcastic, humorous way. Like, how do we fly these planes dropping bombs on people who are shooting at us? Like, how do we stay human? And, you know, Heller's attitude was, well, you know, we have to laugh. Like, this is the world I'm in. It's unbelievable. There is pain, there's a lot of pain. But yeah, pain doesn't motivate me. You know, pain is something that I want to, I want to be better than the pain I have. Mm-hmm. It reminds me of a lecture by

55:50Alan Watts called "The Joker," where he discusses the court jester and the importance and the significance of his role, which was to bring everyone back to reality and to not let the people take life too seriously, but rather to take life sincerely. And this beautiful lecture, where he goes really deep into it, and, you know, the ways of Alan Watts to intrigue you and bring you in. But it reminds me of that, in a sense that we want to look at these obstacles and challenges in a sincere manner and give them the respect that they deserve, but not to let them drown us with any negative connotations that they might have.

56:40Because then we become the Dazai characters, where there is no light at the end of the tunnel. It's just a tunnel going deeper and deeper into the ground. Well, it seems a shame to live your life in that way, because there are alternatives. Like, you know, we get stuck often. We get stuck with a mentality, but, like, there's always alternatives. You know, it's something, you know, like, I feel quite badly about, like, suicide, because it seems, it might be offensive to say, but it seems to be, like, a lack of imagination. Like, there's a whole world out there to

57:31play with and to be distracted by, and there's all kinds of things you can do. Like, there's an unlimited number of possibilities for you to do things with your life, right? And even if you are quite obsessed with the pain that you have, you need to look beyond that, because, you know, you've got your eye too close to this one thing, and you're not seeing the other possibilities. You're stuck in a paradigm. Well, like, whenever anyone becomes fanatical about anything, it's a shame, because they've gone too far focusing on one single thing. Whatever it is, whatever anyone has become fanatical about, if it's about money, if it's about

58:20religion, if it's about sex, if it's about drugs, if it's about, you know, like, thoughts of, you know, self-destruction, it's all too single-minded. And, like, we're better than that. Like, we don't need to be single-minded. We can be very open-minded. And, like, that's one of the great things about us, is, you know, we can have all kinds of thoughts, and we can entertain all kinds of possibilities. Some, you know, but there is this getting-stuck problem. I think that ties in nicely to sort of the general theme, and, well, at least what I noticed in the story "Going to Canada," where now, in the emails that we exchanged to arrange this podcast, you

59:10called yourself a pessimist to some degree, or you could, you have pessimistic tendencies. But I don't necessarily find that in your YouTube videos. What I do find is a discipline to not veer into the facade of life, but to keep a steady course with the realities of life. And you pierce through a lot of the veneers and the facades that exist in day-to-day reality. And we see that in the story "Going to Canada," where you're coming from Budapest and you're seeing right through the veil that everyone puts up while living

59:58here. And you point this out, and you point that out, and you point that out. And some people have the patience with it, some people don't have the patience to deal with it, because they find it too negative, they find it too pessimistic. Specifically, the old friend that you ended up connecting with in the story, she definitely finds it, you know, somewhat off-putting, to the point where you give almost an apology of sorts. That, you know, you take responsibility and say, oh, this is just me adjusting to being back in Canada. But I think more than that, you see, I don't see it as a pessimism. I see it as a realism, where you're pointing out just the reality. You're not pointing with any real judgment. Sometimes it's tongue-in-cheek, and sometimes you are poking a little bit of fun, but for the most part, you're just showing what is, and you're doing it very

1:00:50bluntly. And people don't like to necessarily see the truth. They like their version of the truth. They like their truth plus the mask that goes on top of the truth, and that's more palatable. So I wonder, would you still consider yourself pessimistic, or do you use, quote unquote, pessimism as a tool to pierce that facade, to show people what's really happening under the surface? Well, I was born in the, you know, sadly named Generation X, you know, by the local writer Douglas Coupland. And the characteristic that is most often given to the Generation X

1:01:37people is that there is quite a large degree of cynicism. You know, we're a very cynical generation, and I'll accept that. Like, I'll take that. I would say that I'm a cynical person. I always, you know, I always wonder, like, what's behind this? You know, like, is this something real, or is this just another variant of marketing? And then I went to live in Hungary, and Hungarians are extraordinarily pessimistic people. Like, when I went there and I would ask them, I'd say, "You know, tell me, what is the Hungarian character?" And 100% of the time, 100% of the people would always say, "We are pessimistic. We are the most pessimistic people in Europe, and all of our

1:02:25neighboring countries hate us." And it was really such a strange attitude, you know, coming from Canada, where we're so optimistic and so upbeat all the time. And so, you know, even if we did feel that way, we would never say it. And so to go and live with Hungarians for 16 years, yeah, so my initial cynical nature and then all of this Hungarian pessimism has really made me quite an unpleasant person, I think. And I can't help it. I really can't help it. But, and I know it. Like, when I came back, the first job I had, one of my colleagues said to me, he said, "Man, you complain a lot. Like, every time you open your mouth, it's to say something negative." And I realized that was really quite a Hungarian way of making

1:03:13conversation. Like, a Hungarian conversation, it's not going to offend anyone, they will all recognize this. So one person will say something, and the other person, regardless of how they really feel, will just instantly say the very opposite. They'll say, "No, you're totally wrong, that's incorrect." And I'm going to, like, I have a friend in Budapest, his name is Zizi Zoltán, and he believes that RoboCop, the first one, with Peter Weir, okay, is the best film ever made. He believes that very sincerely. And he was a bartender, and I went to this, I used to go to this one bar and, like, artistic movie house. Like, it was a pub, and they showed movies. It

1:04:03was wonderful. I love that place, called Bem Mozi, in Budapest. And Zizi was a bartender there, and one night he wasn't working. I said, "Ah, good, we're going to have some beer and we're going to talk, and he's going to tell me." But he spent the whole evening arguing with this other guy for four hours that RoboCop was the best film ever made. And it was like, guys, please stop. But that was really, like, a very Hungarian way. Like, that's. And I had a friend from Budapest, and she came to visit me after I'd been living here, I think, for a year or two years. And when she came, it was just like, every time she opened her mouth, it was to say the very opposite of what I just said. Like, and she is a lawyer, and I would make a comment about

1:04:51teaching English as a second language, and she'd say, "No, no, that's not right, that's." I'd be like, "Well, what are you talking about? Who has experience here?" Like, and it really made me so angry. But then it's like, yeah, that's the Hungarian style. Like, they just have to be, like, almost antagonistic. What is the utility there, do you think? Is there a purpose to it? I don't know. It's just something, like, maybe in the blood. Like, that's how they converse, is this arguing. Like, it's not. And in Canada, it's the very, very opposite. Somebody says something, and everybody just stands around agreeing with them and adding tacit approval. Yeah. And it's just, like, piling on

1:05:38agreement, and I find that really suspicious. Like, do we all have to agree? Quite odd here when someone disagrees with you publicly, in a group of, I mean, sometimes, yeah, there's, like, some sarcasm. It depends what you say. If you say something outlandish, people will disagree. But if you say blah blah blah is good, blah blah blah is bad, most of the time people just roll with it. You're not going to start a war doing that. Yes. And I feel that is insincere. Like, there are people who are not expressing their disapproval. Like, no, I don't like this, I don't enjoy this. You know, I'm taking these creative writing classes at university, and they are

1:06:27really stressful for me, because nobody wants to hear anything even slightly unpalatable. Like, every time someone, we all read everybody's writing, and the first thing we do is we all go around and we say what we liked about it. And sometimes it's just impossible. Like, this is not well done. Like, this person is not doing a good job yet. Yeah. I've had many conflicts with teachers and other students, because sometimes I'm just too honest in my opinion. Yeah. You know, like, "I think this is full of holes. I think this is

1:07:14very weak. I think you're, you know, you're using so many clichés. It's awful for me to read." And that's where I go over the line, because, you know, Canadian people don't like words like "awful," and they don't, you know, they don't like words like "immature." Yeah. Well, I think, and I think you're probably open to a rebuttal, assuming that person can handle the criticism, and you can spar and ultimately come out with, you know. You don't think you'll be able to handle that? No, no. Well, but let's say you say, like, a certain writing has an issue, that has an issue, that has an issue, and then the person comes back to you and says, "Okay, I see your point on all four or five things, but on this thing, this is the reason for that." You might still be

1:08:02open to having a different understanding of that, right? Perhaps. Perhaps, I think, a couple of the students, yes, but those students are a little bit more mature than some of the. Well, yeah, I guess I'm speaking more in general, not specifically with students, because probably with students, their rebuttal wouldn't necessarily stack up. Well, it's really unfair of me to be at university at my age. It really is. It's very unpleasant for me, and it's unpleasant for them. I mean, imagine it: there are some young 20-year-old people, you know, they're reading Dracula, or what did we read, Absalom, Absalom!, and then they've got to tolerate this man in the room who's the same age as their father. You know, it's just not

1:08:49fun. And I know that, I really know it. Like, it's not fun to have someone your father's age in the room. It's just not cool for the environment. It's like any religious person having a conversation with Richard Dawkins. And the teachers, I'm much closer in age to the teachers, and they like me in the class, because suddenly it's like someone they can talk to, right? Which makes it even worse, because, like, I've told the teachers, I said, "Look, I sit in the very back, and I don't even want to say anything. It doesn't mean I haven't read the book or I'm not interested. It's just, like, it's not my time," right? Like, it's their time. My time was 30 years ago, and I don't want to be putting up my hand and offering my

1:09:38comments. Like, let these kids do it, because this is their university time, right? Feel like. Well, anyway, just getting back to pessimism, I'm not sure. I don't know, like, in terms of my life, or in terms of writing. Hopefully it doesn't come out too strongly in the writing, because, you know, it needs to be a balance. It's like a juggling act. I think you did a great job. I think you did. I didn't feel like it was over the top or anything like that. I thought it fit the character, it fit what you were trying to achieve with the character. I really enjoyed the dialogue. I think you did a great job with the dialogue. It felt very realistic. Dialogue is sometimes where stories can fail, where the dialogue just doesn't seem

1:10:26believable. It seems robotic, it seems, you know, just unlikely. Whereas I thought this was quite natural, and I thought the length of it was sort of, like, a perfect, like, bite-sized short story. Do you enjoy, because I know you wrote in here that you're working on a feature-length film script as well, do you prefer writing short stories or longer-form novels and scripts and things like that? I like all of it, but my goal is to write a novel memoir. Okay. I'm not a huge fan of James Joyce at all, but I find that, like, what he wanted to do, like, he wanted to really highlight his frustration with his country, Ireland. And

1:11:14I feel I want to do the same thing. That, like, I love this country, but I think a lot of the things that I dislike about it are more clear to me, having lived away for such a long time. That, you know, I lived in Eastern Europe. Like, it's a different world. Yeah. And I grew up here, and I had a really Canadian, typical kind of experience, and coming back here, it's been quite hard for me. Like, I keep bumping into things, you know, silly little things that just, you know, like, why do we have to do it this way? Yeah. You know, like, I don't know if it's just, you know, this minor thing. You know, in British Columbia, what's the drinking age? It's 19, right? Yeah. But then they have

1:12:01these signs, like, if you look like you're younger than 35 years old. Right, right. That is very close to twice the legal age. You know, like, why do we have to be such, like, lunatics about alcohol restriction? And then we have this freedom about the marijuana now. It seems that, you know, it's just such a bureaucratic country, and it's a bit hard to love it for all of its problems. Anyway, so that's all by way of saying that really what I would like to do is I would like to write a memoir about, like, when I left Canada, when I was 26 years old, and when I came back, when I was 42. So there would be, like, one leaving, and hopefully

1:12:50that'll be funny. That'll be, like, a coming-of-age, even similar to On the Road, because, like, I traveled from Lisbon, Portugal, all the way to Budapest, Hungary. That's a lot of European land. Like, by car? By train. By train. By train, nice. And, you know, I was looking for a place to live, and originally I thought I would have a Portuguese experience, and Lisbon is gorgeous, you know, beautiful, beautiful city with, you know, rich history, cultural heritage. But it just happened that I ended up in Budapest, and that was where I ended up staying. The second memoir novel would be coming back to Canada and, well, seeing, you know, like, a more mature reflection

1:13:38on what this country seems to be to me. But I like short stories, because I think that's fun to read and it's fun to write. You know, like, it's nice, it's very compact. Film scripts, I like the film scripts that I've written, because I think that's where I've been the most creative. Like, a lot of my short stories and, you know, novel memoirs are based on my own personal experience. But when I wrote a film script, like, it was pure imagination. Like, there was nothing about my own life. It was, you know, what I would like to see as a film personally. Like, if I were to write a film, what kind of a film would I like to watch?

1:14:26So I think that, you know, I pat myself on the back, because that was my most inspired efforts. And now you're just in the editing phase of that? No, no, I submitted them to some, you know, scriptwriting competition, and they didn't win, and I got some feedback, and I said, okay, yes, I accept all of the feedback, I understand all of the criticisms, and that's it. Okay, yeah. Now in the process? No, they're just in a Word document on my computer, sure, and God knows if I'll ever get around to doing something with them. It takes time. You know, in the studio we had Barry Sonnenfeld, the director of Men in Black, The Addams Family, all that fun stuff. He was with the Coen Brothers for, I think he was

1:15:13their cinematographer for, like, 10 years. So he was sitting in that chair, so maybe through osmosis or something, you know, you're going to get the Hollywood infection, and luck will come your way after this podcast. Well, thank you. That would be wonderful if it did. I don't know. My energies are a little bit too dispersed. I would really like to put all of my effort into writing. Yeah. Because, you know, it frustrates me. Like, if you really have a concrete idea for a novel, write it. Yeah. Write it, don't talk about it. Don't dwell on it, just write it, man. Every day, if it's a thousand words a day, do that. And I feel like this is a personal pep talk for me,

1:16:03so I appreciate it. Sure. Well, I mean, like, a novel is a big project, but a thousand words a day is very, very manageable. Like, in the beginning, no, in the beginning it's hard. Like, it's because your muscles are rusty, you know, and they need that warming-up phase. But once you get into it, like, you've been doing it for a week or for 10 days, man, a thousand words a day will turn into 1,500 words, and you'll get to the end of it. You're just going to become a better writer. Just like if you run 20 kilometers per week, and then if you can increase that to 40 kilometers per week, and before you know it, your endurance, your cardio, your zone two is on another level. Yes, absolutely, yes. It's just not being lazy, making the time. Like, making the time,

1:16:50that's where all artists, or all would-be artists, that's where they all fall down, is just not making that time. I know there's questions about money and, you know, where you're situated in your life, and your space for creativity. But, you know, right, you can do it, and really can. And the books I have here, Murakami, Haruki Murakami, and he's famous for his first two books, actually, Wind/Pinball. So Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1984, I don't know, I can't remember, can't remember which year, 1983 maybe. But he wrote, those are called his kitchen table books, because he ran a bar, and this is when he's 30 years old. He runs a bar, and then when he

1:17:39gets home, around two, three in the morning, he sat at the kitchen table for two hours, and by hand he would write these two novellas, essentially. So basically, like, if you want to make the time, you can make the time, and it's difficult to do that, but if you have that effort, then you got to do it. Well, yeah, and to write a novel, you have to be somewhat ruthless with your own self. Like, not allow yourself to make the excuses to give up. You know, to see it through. Like, even just to see it through to the end of the first draft, you've done it, right? All right. Like, you're not going to win the marathon. You won't. But you can finish the marathon,

1:18:25and that's good enough. That's better than most people. Most people just, "Oh yeah, maybe I'll do a marathon one of these days. You know, it would be nice." Yeah. Well, I think what's better, because the issue with that is, I mean, there's, like, an objective good or bad. Obviously, when you're running in a race with a thousand other people or 500 other people, you're really racing against yourself, right? Unless you're a professional. But in some respects, with creativity, with writing, every piece of writing sort of leaves its own, like, indelible mark on the world of writing, whether it's good or bad, based off of critics. But there might be some people, some group out there, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and some people, even though it could be objectively bad,

1:19:13for those people it could be good, because maybe they like your flavor, they like the subject matter, or they like something about your book. So I do feel like there's almost, you're creating something, as you said earlier, and you have the joy of creating it. And then there might actually be, no matter how good or bad it is, there might actually be people out there that also would enjoy it. Sure. I mean, the writing is one thing. Yeah. All right, that's you trying hard and enjoying your creative energies. The submitting it for publication, or getting other people to read it, that's quite a different matter. That's, you know, the creativity is finished, and now you're into the marketing. And it would be nice if that

1:20:02were an enjoyable process, but personally, I don't find that it is. Yeah, well, that's the different thing, being, like, well, you're talking about the tedious parts of it, right? And not necessarily the salesmanship part of it, or both? Yeah, the, like, the editing and the going back, that is somewhat enjoyable. Like, when I write something, I leave it for a month, and then I go back and I look at it again, and it helps me to see it with a fresh set of eyes. And it is quite different, having left it for a while, and hopefully it's still good enough that I want to

1:20:49continue to the next step of trying to make it better. It's just that, even in terms of, like, creative energy, you know, it's always nice to begin a new project, because, you know, you have all the fire, you have all the passion. Like, I've got an idea. And, you know, the editing and the going back and the rereading, it's, you know, that initial energy really gets tapped out. Yeah. And, you know, it would be wonderful if we all had so much money that we could hire editors to help us, to show us, to give us some guidance. But, you know, when you're new and nobody knows who you are, it's really, all the burden is on you. You have to do it all. Do you have, like, friends that edit for you, or no? No. Okay.

1:21:39You trust yourself and yourself only. Well, but I don't, though. Like, see, even in the creative writing classes, I have got good advice, right? You know, like, they said, "Look, this bit here needs to be moving in a direction a little bit quicker." Mm-hmm. "Because what you're doing here is, it's not moving anything forward. Like, it's not bad, but it's not, you know, for a short story, it all has to be sort of aiming in one direction." Yeah. So that helped me, and really, yes, I was happy to get that advice, and it did improve what I was writing. Yeah. I'm going to actually put that story onto Patreon, so people can read it. Yeah, yeah. Because I'm happy with it. Like, I

1:22:26really think it turned out well. Awesome. Well, I look forward to that. One more question, then we can wrap up. Okay. I guess it's a two-part question, but I know you're sort of 50/50 on Murakami. Murakami is one of my favorite authors. He actually got me into fiction again. As a kid, I was really into fiction, then you grow up, you prioritize: I want to make money, I want to build a software company, I want to do this. So you saw earlier, huge shelf of non-fiction books. And I find that, just in general, like, a lot of folks are really into reading if it's for direct improvement of their life, and they will sometimes discount novels as, like, you know, a cute little pastime that

1:23:15doesn't necessarily move the needle in their life. But I had that shift happen in 2020. I mentioned earlier, I joined a book club, and I joined it with the purpose of reading more fiction, because I knew I wouldn't pick it up on my own. And I would read, like, pseudo-fiction, like, you know, philosophical fiction, like Hermann Hesse and things like that, you know, Siddhartha. I'll read The Odyssey, I'll read Ramayana, I'll read, like, all these, like, philosophical, spiritual classic works. But this is when I got into more modern fiction. And the first book we read was pretty good, I can't remember what that was. And then somehow Murakami came up, and I had heard of him somewhere, and the book that we ended up reading was Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Have you read that one? Yeah. It's one of his earlier works, and I remember reading that and finishing it and just

1:24:05thinking, like, holy, I didn't know a book could do that to me. And that's when I realized, like, the magic of, that's when I really got pulled in. Because there's a lot of books that can do that to you, but I didn't know that that was really possible. It was, frankly, magical. It felt like I was transported to a different world, and, you know, Murakami was my guide to that world, essentially. And then I got more and more into fiction, and more and more into Murakami, and I just found, like, he was, like, a really good balance in what I was looking for in a book. But then, before you know it, you get, and, you know, you get addicted to other fiction. You, "I want to try this, I want to try this flavor and that flavor." My question to you is, do you think he's, first of all, overrated? He has a new book coming out

1:24:52called The City and Its Uncertain Walls, I think on November 19th, is coming out. It's his first new book in six years. I think the guy's in his, like, 70s now. And it's actually some kind of a weird sequel to this Hard-Boiled book. But I'm wondering, I guess, first of all, do you think he's overrated? And then, if the answer is yes, why, and what specifically about him, I guess, do you like and dislike, given the reverence that he has in, you know, many readers nowadays? I do think he is wildly overrated, for whatever reasons. I think mainly to do with just pure marketing, like, purposes. Like, his publishing company, they have these very bright neon, like, cotton-candy-color spines. Yeah. And when you go to a bookstore, they

1:25:43just leap out at you. And then he's got this name, Murakami. Oh wow, that sounds exciting. And people pick up these, you know, candy-ice-cream-colored books, and they buy them. I liked very much Norwegian Wood. I thought that was a great book. And I liked Wind/Pinball. I thought that was pretty good. I thought that was a bit, you could see that he was a young writer and he hadn't figured it out yet, but it was still good. Like, it was good enough. But then I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka, Kafka on the Shore. I'm not too big on magic realism, right? I'll tolerate a bit

1:26:31of it. But when it gets to the point where it just becomes impossible, you know, like, in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, he does this thing where he goes and he sits in a well, right? Yeah. And he does some astral projection. Yeah, it's like a portal or something. And that, I'm done. You know, because now, like, once you open up these possibilities, then anything's possible, and any kind of silly contrivance to help you figure out your ending, your conclusion, is possible. Like, it's all on the table now, if you allow for these things to happen. And I think that's cheating. You know, it's just, it's cheating.

1:27:18You know, everybody makes such a big deal of this, you know, Chekhov's gun. But you've got to be, like, gentle and coaxing with your readers. You've got to carry them along. Like, when the guy who wrote Life of Pi, from Montreal, what's his name, Martel. I never read the book, but I did watch the movie. He said in one of his interviews, when they said, "What are you doing with this Life of Pi? You know, like, is it just a magic realism? Are you just having fun?" And he said, "Well, what I wanted to do was I wanted to carry you along and say, okay, like, are you willing to go along with me this far? Okay, all right, you are. Good. And now

1:28:07what if we go further? Are you willing to come with me to this degree?" And, you know, that's quite a popular, well-loved book. I believe it won the Booker award. And again, I dislike that book as well, because it just becomes ridiculous. Mm. Like, it really gets really silly towards the end. And I found that with, you know, Murakami's more eccentric novels. Like, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle gets, like, it starts great. Like, I love the beginning, where. First chapter is epic, because, I don't know if you know, but it came from a short story. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, you know, his girlfriend disappears. Yeah. And, you know, he doesn't. First the cat, then the girlfriend. Yeah. He doesn't understand. And then there's this weird, you know, teenager living a few houses away, and strange stuff,

1:28:55and she works, what does she do? She goes to Tokyo and she's counting the men with, whoever is wearing a wig or toupee or something. All great, all really good. But then it takes on this, you know, weird metaphysical stuff, like with the clairvoyance, and she's like, "I'm a prostitute of the mind," and she was, like, aware of being in his dream, things like that. Yeah. And, like, well, I'm not interested. It got a little bit too weird. I mean, I actually agree with you on Kafka. I think Kafka is just absurd. It's very, very weird. I mean, that's with the fish falling from the sky, and Colonel Sanders as a pimp, and all sorts of stuff. Like, I never recommend to anyone to read Kafka on the Shore unless you're, like, a die-hard

1:29:43Murakami fan, where you could, like, accept it. But even for me, I found it to be very, very weird, that book. It is, it is really weird. I thought Wind-Up was a little bit more palatable than Kafka. And for sure, Norwegian Wood is his only book that is, or is his only fiction book that doesn't have any magical realism elements to it. I prefer that. I much prefer it, because I just, I can't go along with those leaps. You know, one of the things that my young classmates hate to hear is that, like, I hate anything with a dragon. Uh-huh. Because I just, right, like, I don't care, right? You know, like, it's not interesting. Leave it for Alice in Wonderland. It's not scary. It's not, like, I don't feel any dramatic tension. "Oh, the

1:30:33dragon." There's no dragon, man. Like, I'm not afraid. I'm afraid of nuclear war. I'm afraid of international terrorism. I'm afraid of, you know, people being kidnapped to feed the international, like, sex trade. Those things scare me, right? The environment scares the hell out of me, right? Dragons do nothing. It's almost insulting your intelligence at that point to throw that in there. And I used to have an English student, he just loved Game of Thrones, and I just told him, I said, "Attila, anything with a dragon is stupid, man. Like, don't even try." And he was so insulted. He's like, "Game of Thrones is the best television ever made." It's like, well, what kind of a low standard is that, anyway? Yeah, I agree with you. It was sort of the same for me. I

1:31:25don't know if you're a Star Wars fan, but it was sort of the same for me with that. I'm like, I like space. Space has enough scary things. I need all this other fantasy in space? I think Interstellar is, there's enough time dilation, and Interstellar is a scary enough phenomenon. I, like, I love science fiction, but with science fiction, like, I want, like, especially films, not literature, but films. By the way, have you read or watched Solaris? It's the poster behind you. No. Okay, we'll talk about that later. But I want science fiction to scare the hell out of me. Uh-huh. Like, there was a film that was not popular, and people said it wasn't a good film. It was that,

1:32:12the guy who directed District 9, the South African director. What is it about? District 9 was about these. No, not District 9, but you said there's a movie, like, District 9? Okay. So his second film, which was, oh, there's this, you know. Oh, it's the one where they, it's a first contact one, right? No, with Matt Damon. Oh, Elysium. Elysium, yeah. Now, okay, perhaps that is not a great film, but the beginning, like, the first half of the film, is so dirty and so ugly and so horrid, and it scared me. Like, just that opening scene of Mexico, that, what was it, he needed meds or something? I can't remember the premise. He wanted to

1:32:59get up to this space station where people have this, you know, cure-all machine. And I like that film. That felt like a potential timeline that we could find ourselves in. Yeah. And, like, I want science fiction to scare me. But yeah, see, most of the time with science fiction writing, it's more ideas-based than it is, like, literary technique. Like, the only thing that divides, like, literature and everything else is just the ability and the technique of the author. Like, 1984 is science fiction, and so is Brave New World, and so is Fahrenheit 451. Those are all science fiction novels, but they're always in the literature section because of the skill of the author. And that's the only thing. Like, most novels, literary novels, are actually

1:33:46romances. The majority of them are, but we don't call them that, because, you know, we feel, oh, that's demeaning. You know, they're literature. You know, like, this one, doesn't he have an affair with, like, two girls, twins? Which is this one, A Wild Sheep Chase? Pinball. Oh, Pinball. Yeah, he's got a lot of stuff. Usually, I mean, his works are like dreamscapes, and a lot of times, I mean, the women have been compared to, like, animas, like Jungian animas, where they're basically just there. The women are just there to, like, act as conduits for some other purpose and teaching that they give. So rather than focusing on the actual, like, romance. A lot of times, I think his only real romance book is 1Q84. I don't know if

1:34:37you've read that one. Yeah. That one is, like, that one's really, like, unrequited love, like, from page one. Whereas these are more like, the women come, the women go. Dance Dance Dance, he's looking for his, like, ex-girlfriend that just vanished. But it doesn't feel like a proper romance. It feels like, I wonder what this mystical thing is going on. But yeah, he's not known for, like, romances. Well, anyway, to, you know, just, I think he needs an editor to really help, but he's too famous now. Like, no, like, now, like, he writes that way. Yeah. And people love it. He's extremely successful. He must be very well off. He's

1:35:24got all of these books that are really highly rated by. He gets a lot of criticism from the Japanese literature community, though, because people don't like that when people think of Japanese literature, they only think about Murakami, when there's so many other great Japanese writers. Like, I'm a part of a bunch of Facebook groups, and every time someone in the Japanese literature group drops Murakami, yes, there's love for him, but, like, they don't like that he's so highly rated, and, like, relative to everyone else. I just, I consider him, personally, I consider him the Stephen King of Japanese literature. Yeah, that made me. Fair enough. Produces a lot. It's light and fluffy and a bit, you know, immature, as far as I'm concerned. And other authors, like Tanizaki, who wrote

1:36:12The Makioka Sisters. Yeah. One of my all-time favorite Japanese novels. I've got to get to that one. It's on the, too many good ones in Japan. I can't tell you how wonderful that book is. And watch Grant's review on it. Really, I can't tell you, because it's not about very much. There's four sisters. Sister number three is unmarried, and it's 500 pages of "let's try to find a husband for sister number three." Yeah. Because sister number four already has a potential husband, but she can't get married yet. Yeah. Until, you know, that's not proper, right? So that's the whole book. Yeah. And how is it so compelling to read 500 pages of this? It's unbelievable. Most Japanese novels, though, are quite

1:36:59short, and written in a very beautiful, very elegant. Yeah, I feel very, it's very concise. I'm happy to go and read, like, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, and it's fantastic, but it's dripping in imagery, and it can get heavy. Whereas when you're reading Japanese literature, when they use imagery, when they use metaphor, they use it sparingly and very purposefully. Such a light touch. That's what I think these days I value most highly, is this very subtle style of writing, where they just, you know, the colors are very faint. They still paint a picture. They're not these bright, loud, fluorescent colors that we get in some writing. You know, really, in the 1980s, there was this really, like, very heavy,

1:37:49stylized kind of writing, like Martin Amis. Like, really, you read Martin Amis, London Fields, or he wrote another book called Dead Babies, which, when I was in my 20s, I loved it, because it was, like, jumping off the page and grabbing you by the throat. "Here's my beautiful metaphors," and, like, crazy writing, but a lot of fun. And now I just, I can't stand that stuff. Yeah, you got to be in the mood for it. There's a new writer, oh man, I forget his name, but he wrote On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and it's very poetic. His prose essentially is like poetry, and you read it with that, like, you read it knowing that that's the flavor that

1:38:36you're going to have. And so when you feel like, you know, reading that, then you can pick it up and you can have it. But if it's just surprising you with that, then it's sometimes a little bit like, you know, you want the more, you want the elegant prose as opposed to the flowery poetry. I think so. And there's nothing wrong with Martin Amis's style. I think that's really good, again, for younger readers, because it's very exciting, it's very engaging. It really, like, it's fun to read. Like, you've never seen sentences like that. It's ridiculous. Yeah. But, you know, Martin Amis's father, Kingsley Amis, who was also a very successful writer, he didn't like his son's writing, and it was really quite a

1:39:24contentious story, because a lot of people thought Kingsley Amis was jealous of his son's success, because his son really sold a lot more books than his father did. But Kingsley Amis said, you know, "It's just, I can't read his books, because it feels like he's in the room, ringing a bell, kicking over the furniture." Like, when you read Martin Amis, you can't escape the fact that Martin Amis is in the room with you. And that is really accurate, that there are some writers that you just feel like they're sitting on your shoulder, kind of tapping you, saying, "Yeah, do you see what I did there? That's really good, isn't it?" And in the Japanese writing that I love, you don't feel that. It's just the beauty of the words, right? Well, I think maybe we should end it there. We'll keep talking for

1:40:11another couple hours. Yeah, yeah. On the next genre of literature. If, yeah, if I start talking about, you know, books and literature, it's never-ending. It literally is never-ending. Grant, thank you so much for being here. Really was an honor to have you on the second episode of Nectar of Time. And yeah, I'm sure at some point in the future we'll do this again, but thank you for this round. It's my pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me today. It was, I hope it comes out well, because, ah, I, you know, I want my ideas and thoughts to be well formulated and well articulated, because I do think these are important ideas. And I think that people can love reading, and it can add something, a dimension to

1:41:02people's lives that I think sometimes people aren't even aware is absent. That there is, like, a great, you know, joy and just experience from reading a book that resonates. You know, it's just like, yeah, you know, when I've got to tell everybody about this book. Yeah. Like, that is a weird kind of joy to have, because it's almost like it's bigger than you. Yeah. And, you know, isn't that a wonderful thing? That, you know, like a teenager, like, they hear the new music, and you got to tell all your friends, like, "Here's the new music." Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's the goal. That's the goal of this podcast, is to shine a light on fiction, and to show that fiction can be another tool in your arsenal, both for joy but also for

1:41:50learning more about the world, more about yourself. And, you know, go pick up that non-fiction book, but also pick up a fiction book as well, because a lot of those authors, they've read a lot of that non-fiction stuff. One example I always give is Hermann Hesse was neighbors with Carl Jung. Really? In Italy. And they were buddy-buddy, and you see a lot of it in Hesse's writing. So don't discount the great authors. The great authors are great for a reason, and a lot of the knowledge of the world is distilled in their books, and you're never going to lose by reading a book. Well, absolutely. I just, you know, maybe to make one concluding little statement about, you know, my YouTube channel, is that I want to hopefully encourage

1:42:39people to read some books that are a little bit lost. Like, one of the books this year that I read, which really had a very, it's just so amazing, it's called Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, and it's by an author named Elizabeth Taylor, not the actress. Okay. And it's about an elderly woman who's recently widowed, who goes to stay in a London hotel which kind of caters to elderly people. It's one step away from an old person's home. Like, these people still have some self-reliance, for now. Mm-hmm. And it's heartbreaking, man. Wow. That book, it will really show you something about old people and getting old and how it feels. And that book, man, you know,

1:43:30like, I get emotional just thinking about it. Like, it's fantastic. And that's a book which is almost completely lost to the world today, even though I think it was shortlisted for the Booker award in the '70s somewhere. Anyway, like, on my Patreon thing, you know, I do this book magazine lottery, and the woman who ended up winning actually lives in England. And so I ended up sending this British book to this British woman that she'd never heard of. Uh-huh. And she said, "I'm in my book club, we're all going to read this." Mrs Palfrey? Was this recent? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. And it's like, you know, how happy am I to recommend literature from their own, like, one of their own British authors

1:44:17that just, you know, fallen out of favor. Just not popular. Yeah. You know, maybe, you know, they just don't print the books anymore. There's a lot of great writing, and the attention span is getting shorter and shorter. So we're going against the grain, but I think we'll have a renaissance again soon. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Yeah. Wouldn't that cheer you up? Well, if you want to be part of the movement, go follow Grant Loves Books on YouTube, and yeah, you won't be disappointed. If you really like it, support him on Patreon. And then, if you're part of his Patreon, you will get to be, put in your name, put into the raffle to potentially win the books, and he'll ship you the books that he talks about. And I won one of his books. So I still got to read it, though, so that's my

1:45:04homework. Which one? The Ishiguro one. Yeah, yeah. I forget the name of it. Is it, An Artist of the Floating World? Yeah. Oh, you got to read that. I know, I have to read it. It's happening soon. It's that Japanese, that light touch. You need to look carefully. Yeah. And you start to see something. It's not on the page, but it's there. It's lurking beneath the sentences. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we'll leave it at that, and in a future podcast I'll give my review of that book. Sure thing, man. All right, thanks so much, Grant. My pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me.