EVENT TRANSCRIPT
Laurie Frankel/John Schwartz
[Words] Bookstore
Monday, June 14, 2021
Jason Strawsburg: I want to welcome you. We opened in 2009 in Maplewood, New Jersey. We started to help people with autism. We serve as a hub for children with autism and their parents. We serve as a literacy center. We have had over 100 events per year, pre Covid. I want to introduce our guests. Laurie Frankel has written 4 novels, the latest being One Two Three. She has received several awards. Our second guest is John Schwartz. He is a writer for the New York Times. Welcome to both of you.
Laurie Frankel: Thank you for your good work; it's amazing.
John Schwartz: This is the best bookstore -- it is so great.
Jason Strawsburg: If you have questions, please put them in the chat.
Laurie Frankel: I was thanking Jason.
John Schwartz: This is a conversation between Laurie and me and we'll have Q&A afterwards. I recommend that you all read this book; it's inspiring. The New York Times says it's winning and amiable. That hits the spot with me. Laurie, can you talk about the plot and what the book is?
Laurie Frankel: It's a hard book to introduce. They sort themselves out and become easier to talk about as it goes along. It's about a small town with a dark past that isn't so past after all. It is narrated by 3 teenage sisters who grew up in the town downstream from a chemical plant that has been polluting the water for years. They suffered significant consequences in long-term health that you hear about in the news. What do long-term consequences look like? That's what it's about. These girls are teenagers and have been very wronged. I hope you get to know and love them like I did. It's a balance between terrible stuff and inspiring stuff.
John Schwartz: Let's talk about Mab, Monday, and Mirabel. How did you get their names?
Laurie Frankel: Their mother while pregnant is alone and she will need a device to keep them straight. She gives them escalating syllables to remember their names and tell them apart. It also helps keep track of the characters for the reader. It is their nicknames for one another. Mirabel uses an electronic speech generating machine. She taps her finger when she's young and they refer to one another as one, two, and three.
John Schwartz: It's a simple trick that works; I was never confused. Sometimes we read sloppily. A little mnemonic aid is a pleasure. Mab is the girl next door. Monday is most likely on the spectrum; she's a marvel and at the end pulls things out of her hat that are consistent with who she is. You must have been concerned about getting the voice of an autistic child on the spectrum. How did you decide to create a character like that without falling into one of the clichés?
Laurie Frankel: I worried about it constantly. She's probably on the spectrum. She notes as much. She hasn't been diagnosed with anything. Bourne is different from other places. The issues of diagnosis are hard and it's hard to get clear answers. It's difficult to know what to do next. What does it mean to be on a spectrum if it looks different as it does in this town? What does it mean to have a disability? These things are different in this town. The diagnosis would be different in this town. That's some of it. Monday is indeed a remarkable child. Her strengths are more obvious than others. She runs a library out of her house. She has a specificity of language. I did a lot of reading and research and did everything I could to push her off of the obvious so she doesn't conform to any one anything. I switched her up a little bit.
John Schwartz: As they say, if you know one autistic person, you know one autistic person. There's not a lot of personality coming through. She's running a library and solving the mystery.
Laurie Frankel: And she's keeping everyone together.
John Schwartz: She, in talking about the disability community, it made me wonder how much you thought about Greta (Cannot hear him/her.). She has said that her autism is her super power. How is Monday inspired by her?
Laurie Frankel: She is doing remarkable things. Girl super heroes are different from the usual super heroes which are usually male with physical strength and visibility in general. It is different for girls and she is a good example. She is super heroing and it's real and is changing the world. She doesn't look like a super hero. The girls in the book are growing up and they don't look like they have super strength. They work together to take over everything and they support one another. Monday gets annoyed with all of this talk. I am impressed by teenage girls and they are hopeful for our future. They are dedicated to the community.
John Schwartz: Mirabel is powerful presence but cannot talk and is wheelchair bound. She is strong and not an object of pity. I assume you did a lot of research into disability activism.
Laurie Frankel: I did tons of research and was careful to make sure she requires an electronic speech generator and has the use of only one arm. She has as many pages as Mab and Monday. She gets to go out and about just as much and has as much interpersonal interaction as anyone else. I pushed her off a particular diagnosis. She is very disabled and very capable and is very smart and has the most perspective. She has read a lot and done a lot of work.
John Schwartz: She had traveled the world in literature. She's a fascinating character. You have avoided clinical terms in diagnosis. People talk about the girls going to college but doesn't mention special accommodations for special needs students. You put it in a box, I'm guessing, that you were trying not to put speed bumps in the text.
Laurie Frankel: You would get it anyway. Their town is unusual but also like it is everywhere. There are people off the spectrum in other places. Accommodations in universities haven't occurred to them; they are young and isolated.
John Schwartz: You put it in the mouth of a character you might not expect it from, they boy. You have to be careful what topic of conversation you start on. He puts it in basic terms and there's a library if you want to know more. Lots of kids in wheelchairs go to college.
Laurie Frankel: They made a town that works for everyone, not by building accommodations, but by making it universal. It's the direction that colleges and education are trying to move.
John Schwartz: They did it without the ADA and realized what they needed to do. Your previous novel is about a family with a transgender side. How are they connected.
Laurie Frankel: My previous book is This is How it Always Is. This topic is possibly shameful and is not necessarily that way for everyone. We should push out the boundaries of what we want to call normal. Most parents will not have a transgender child. This book does that as well; much of the tension comes from the ways these girls think that something is wrong with where they live; they have been wronged. In the world there are lots of people on the spectrum who are diagnosed as such but are very much alive and successful. All 16-year-olds have to learn about the world they're living in.
John Schwartz: If you're different, you think you're alone and will be hated. The boy is the most limited person in the book; he doesn't see beyond himself. I like so much about the book and the limited boy. The girls save the day. In another novel, the boy would be set up as the hero. That got turned on his head.
Laurie Frankel: That's always my hope, to turn things on their head.
John Schwartz: It was nice to see the girls succeed and the boys fail, with a good heart and a nice assist.
Laurie Frankel: He's not the hero, but he's not the villain. He's doing the best he can.
John Schwartz: That's right, pat him on the head. We've talked about the people. The themes are really big -- environmental justice and capitalism. They want to see how many of the 7 deadly sins they can go after. I have seen you say that your first inspiration was a story in the New York Times magazine to get justice for people. How did you carry that into a new novel?
Laurie Frankel: I would love to hear you talk about this too.
John Schwartz: No one cares what I think.
Laurie Frankel: I do. In January 2016 I read an article by Nathaniel Rich in the New York Times Magazine and they made a movie called Dark Waters. It's about a town in West Virginia downstream from a plant and there were 20 years+ that passed. That's a long time to be suing a chemical company. The town is colossally abused. 20 years is a long time and a lot of people don't live to see it through. I read about it and thought about it and realized that what is remarkable is the tenacity. There are towns like this all over the world where they live downstream from all sorts of terrible things. The corporate malfeasance is corruptible. It was a remarkable story and happens all the time. It's in the paper every morning. The particulars vary and it's horrifying. I decided I did not want to set this book anywhere in particular. It could have been any place in this country. Air, land and water are being polluted and dumped on.
John Schwartz: An you have cases like Flint where government is at fault. Corporations are much more slippery. You can go after the governor or mayor, but companies just fog away.
Laurie Frankel: Well put. It's true; they are slipperier. They have so much money and are not separate from the government. It's too easy; it's a systemic problem. They have fought to make sure it stays that way. There's no way in. You can fight the corporations but the policies are so far above our heads that individuals don't enter the conversation. We feel powerless to do anything.
John Schwartz: The companies and politicians can convince people to act against their own interests by promising jobs sand money; sign here.
Laurie Frankel: That is heartbreaking. It doesn't minimize the need for jobs and money in these places. They build in places where people can't so no or look too closely.
John Schwartz: The book is about what it takes to be a good person. What is being good about? The bad people look like the American dream and are called shiny and look perfect. The good people have flaws. The best people commit a crime. I thought of Tom Sawyer and don't know if he was on your mind.
Laurie Frankel: He wasn't but I love it. Some of it is because it's a novel; one is interested in dichotomies. I don't have an interest in characters that are all good or bad. I want them to have flaws. What is going on in their heads? It's realism as much as anything. I'm screwing these people to get rich myself. How do they justify this? That stuff is interesting. People are complicated. They commit crimes in order to do the right thing. Or they commit a wrong to do good.
John Schwartz: There are 3 generations of the Templeton family in the story. The grandfather is a bastard. The grandson wants to help in his own way. The see the dilution of evil through the generations.
Laurie Frankel: That's why we don't meet him.
John Schwartz: Do we have questions from the audience?
Speaker: Of the various paths to right wrongs, you discuss litigation and a vote. It feels like a love note through the power of journalism to bring about change.
Laurie Frankel: I feel like it's the power of storytelling; I don't mean it to be cheesy. Matters are taken into their own hands; they don't just talk about it. Looking at the big picture and long term is how you change the world. We also look at telling stories to perpetuate lies. So often we are offered litigation or government but journalism by educated story tellers is how we change the world.
John Schwartz: Journalists can say, "I made it a story." They draw attention to this 18-year-old crime. What do you want people to take away from this book?
Laurie Frankel: I hope they feel empowered. I am a little torn and sheepish about that. So much of this is happening so far upstream from us. There is a lot of lip service paid to it. I worry about that; it's letting people and organizations off the hook. The empowerment may not be initially obvious; it's not clear until they did it. It's not what you've been told; it's somewhere else. I hope the book makes people look for the paths to justice that are available to them.
John Schwartz: You can find a different way to lead that fight.
Jason Strawsburg: That was fantastic; thank you guys. It's hard to touch on any other things; John has run the gamut. I'll go to some questions. You want empowerment; what attracts you into looking into relationships? What inspires you? You've written 4 novels and they focus on relationships; you're not writing thrillers.
Laurie Frankel: I am interested in non-traditional families and things we don't usually define as a family. These girls are triplets but are an unusual family. I think that's interesting. This is my project. I don't know very many families who are "normal" anymore. It makes me crazy to say that "normal" families don't count.
Jason Strawsburg: That is so awesome. In these virtual events you can get a window into the writer's actual office. You can see where John Grisham writes and I'll miss this; thank you for that--a window into your writing life.
Laurie Frankel: I wish I had a writing chalet. The virtual events are wonderful things. I'm all the way across the country and we get to do that. We get to be in the same place.
Jason Strawsburg: One final question about your writing style--do you fly by the seat of your pants as you go along?
Laurie Frankel: It's more about what I can manage to do. I have no idea what will happen in the book until it happens. I cut thousands of words from the book; I write dozens of drafts. I'm not a plotter. I work with what I've got.
Jason Strawsburg: I love the honesty; you're the first person who's said that. We have reached our time and I want to thank you both; it's been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for making the time.
John Schwartz: We got from New Jersey to Texas.
Jonah Zimiles: Thank you for doing this. Our store is open and we do have copies and we want to see you soon. Thank you guys.
Laurie Frankel/John Schwartz
[Words] Bookstore
Monday, June 14, 2021
Jason Strawsburg: I want to welcome you. We opened in 2009 in Maplewood, New Jersey. We started to help people with autism. We serve as a hub for children with autism and their parents. We serve as a literacy center. We have had over 100 events per year, pre Covid. I want to introduce our guests. Laurie Frankel has written 4 novels, the latest being One Two Three. She has received several awards. Our second guest is John Schwartz. He is a writer for the New York Times. Welcome to both of you.
Laurie Frankel: Thank you for your good work; it's amazing.
John Schwartz: This is the best bookstore -- it is so great.
Jason Strawsburg: If you have questions, please put them in the chat.
Laurie Frankel: I was thanking Jason.
John Schwartz: This is a conversation between Laurie and me and we'll have Q&A afterwards. I recommend that you all read this book; it's inspiring. The New York Times says it's winning and amiable. That hits the spot with me. Laurie, can you talk about the plot and what the book is?
Laurie Frankel: It's a hard book to introduce. They sort themselves out and become easier to talk about as it goes along. It's about a small town with a dark past that isn't so past after all. It is narrated by 3 teenage sisters who grew up in the town downstream from a chemical plant that has been polluting the water for years. They suffered significant consequences in long-term health that you hear about in the news. What do long-term consequences look like? That's what it's about. These girls are teenagers and have been very wronged. I hope you get to know and love them like I did. It's a balance between terrible stuff and inspiring stuff.
John Schwartz: Let's talk about Mab, Monday, and Mirabel. How did you get their names?
Laurie Frankel: Their mother while pregnant is alone and she will need a device to keep them straight. She gives them escalating syllables to remember their names and tell them apart. It also helps keep track of the characters for the reader. It is their nicknames for one another. Mirabel uses an electronic speech generating machine. She taps her finger when she's young and they refer to one another as one, two, and three.
John Schwartz: It's a simple trick that works; I was never confused. Sometimes we read sloppily. A little mnemonic aid is a pleasure. Mab is the girl next door. Monday is most likely on the spectrum; she's a marvel and at the end pulls things out of her hat that are consistent with who she is. You must have been concerned about getting the voice of an autistic child on the spectrum. How did you decide to create a character like that without falling into one of the clichés?
Laurie Frankel: I worried about it constantly. She's probably on the spectrum. She notes as much. She hasn't been diagnosed with anything. Bourne is different from other places. The issues of diagnosis are hard and it's hard to get clear answers. It's difficult to know what to do next. What does it mean to be on a spectrum if it looks different as it does in this town? What does it mean to have a disability? These things are different in this town. The diagnosis would be different in this town. That's some of it. Monday is indeed a remarkable child. Her strengths are more obvious than others. She runs a library out of her house. She has a specificity of language. I did a lot of reading and research and did everything I could to push her off of the obvious so she doesn't conform to any one anything. I switched her up a little bit.
John Schwartz: As they say, if you know one autistic person, you know one autistic person. There's not a lot of personality coming through. She's running a library and solving the mystery.
Laurie Frankel: And she's keeping everyone together.
John Schwartz: She, in talking about the disability community, it made me wonder how much you thought about Greta (Cannot hear him/her.). She has said that her autism is her super power. How is Monday inspired by her?
Laurie Frankel: She is doing remarkable things. Girl super heroes are different from the usual super heroes which are usually male with physical strength and visibility in general. It is different for girls and she is a good example. She is super heroing and it's real and is changing the world. She doesn't look like a super hero. The girls in the book are growing up and they don't look like they have super strength. They work together to take over everything and they support one another. Monday gets annoyed with all of this talk. I am impressed by teenage girls and they are hopeful for our future. They are dedicated to the community.
John Schwartz: Mirabel is powerful presence but cannot talk and is wheelchair bound. She is strong and not an object of pity. I assume you did a lot of research into disability activism.
Laurie Frankel: I did tons of research and was careful to make sure she requires an electronic speech generator and has the use of only one arm. She has as many pages as Mab and Monday. She gets to go out and about just as much and has as much interpersonal interaction as anyone else. I pushed her off a particular diagnosis. She is very disabled and very capable and is very smart and has the most perspective. She has read a lot and done a lot of work.
John Schwartz: She had traveled the world in literature. She's a fascinating character. You have avoided clinical terms in diagnosis. People talk about the girls going to college but doesn't mention special accommodations for special needs students. You put it in a box, I'm guessing, that you were trying not to put speed bumps in the text.
Laurie Frankel: You would get it anyway. Their town is unusual but also like it is everywhere. There are people off the spectrum in other places. Accommodations in universities haven't occurred to them; they are young and isolated.
John Schwartz: You put it in the mouth of a character you might not expect it from, they boy. You have to be careful what topic of conversation you start on. He puts it in basic terms and there's a library if you want to know more. Lots of kids in wheelchairs go to college.
Laurie Frankel: They made a town that works for everyone, not by building accommodations, but by making it universal. It's the direction that colleges and education are trying to move.
John Schwartz: They did it without the ADA and realized what they needed to do. Your previous novel is about a family with a transgender side. How are they connected.
Laurie Frankel: My previous book is This is How it Always Is. This topic is possibly shameful and is not necessarily that way for everyone. We should push out the boundaries of what we want to call normal. Most parents will not have a transgender child. This book does that as well; much of the tension comes from the ways these girls think that something is wrong with where they live; they have been wronged. In the world there are lots of people on the spectrum who are diagnosed as such but are very much alive and successful. All 16-year-olds have to learn about the world they're living in.
John Schwartz: If you're different, you think you're alone and will be hated. The boy is the most limited person in the book; he doesn't see beyond himself. I like so much about the book and the limited boy. The girls save the day. In another novel, the boy would be set up as the hero. That got turned on his head.
Laurie Frankel: That's always my hope, to turn things on their head.
John Schwartz: It was nice to see the girls succeed and the boys fail, with a good heart and a nice assist.
Laurie Frankel: He's not the hero, but he's not the villain. He's doing the best he can.
John Schwartz: That's right, pat him on the head. We've talked about the people. The themes are really big -- environmental justice and capitalism. They want to see how many of the 7 deadly sins they can go after. I have seen you say that your first inspiration was a story in the New York Times magazine to get justice for people. How did you carry that into a new novel?
Laurie Frankel: I would love to hear you talk about this too.
John Schwartz: No one cares what I think.
Laurie Frankel: I do. In January 2016 I read an article by Nathaniel Rich in the New York Times Magazine and they made a movie called Dark Waters. It's about a town in West Virginia downstream from a plant and there were 20 years+ that passed. That's a long time to be suing a chemical company. The town is colossally abused. 20 years is a long time and a lot of people don't live to see it through. I read about it and thought about it and realized that what is remarkable is the tenacity. There are towns like this all over the world where they live downstream from all sorts of terrible things. The corporate malfeasance is corruptible. It was a remarkable story and happens all the time. It's in the paper every morning. The particulars vary and it's horrifying. I decided I did not want to set this book anywhere in particular. It could have been any place in this country. Air, land and water are being polluted and dumped on.
John Schwartz: An you have cases like Flint where government is at fault. Corporations are much more slippery. You can go after the governor or mayor, but companies just fog away.
Laurie Frankel: Well put. It's true; they are slipperier. They have so much money and are not separate from the government. It's too easy; it's a systemic problem. They have fought to make sure it stays that way. There's no way in. You can fight the corporations but the policies are so far above our heads that individuals don't enter the conversation. We feel powerless to do anything.
John Schwartz: The companies and politicians can convince people to act against their own interests by promising jobs sand money; sign here.
Laurie Frankel: That is heartbreaking. It doesn't minimize the need for jobs and money in these places. They build in places where people can't so no or look too closely.
John Schwartz: The book is about what it takes to be a good person. What is being good about? The bad people look like the American dream and are called shiny and look perfect. The good people have flaws. The best people commit a crime. I thought of Tom Sawyer and don't know if he was on your mind.
Laurie Frankel: He wasn't but I love it. Some of it is because it's a novel; one is interested in dichotomies. I don't have an interest in characters that are all good or bad. I want them to have flaws. What is going on in their heads? It's realism as much as anything. I'm screwing these people to get rich myself. How do they justify this? That stuff is interesting. People are complicated. They commit crimes in order to do the right thing. Or they commit a wrong to do good.
John Schwartz: There are 3 generations of the Templeton family in the story. The grandfather is a bastard. The grandson wants to help in his own way. The see the dilution of evil through the generations.
Laurie Frankel: That's why we don't meet him.
John Schwartz: Do we have questions from the audience?
Speaker: Of the various paths to right wrongs, you discuss litigation and a vote. It feels like a love note through the power of journalism to bring about change.
Laurie Frankel: I feel like it's the power of storytelling; I don't mean it to be cheesy. Matters are taken into their own hands; they don't just talk about it. Looking at the big picture and long term is how you change the world. We also look at telling stories to perpetuate lies. So often we are offered litigation or government but journalism by educated story tellers is how we change the world.
John Schwartz: Journalists can say, "I made it a story." They draw attention to this 18-year-old crime. What do you want people to take away from this book?
Laurie Frankel: I hope they feel empowered. I am a little torn and sheepish about that. So much of this is happening so far upstream from us. There is a lot of lip service paid to it. I worry about that; it's letting people and organizations off the hook. The empowerment may not be initially obvious; it's not clear until they did it. It's not what you've been told; it's somewhere else. I hope the book makes people look for the paths to justice that are available to them.
John Schwartz: You can find a different way to lead that fight.
Jason Strawsburg: That was fantastic; thank you guys. It's hard to touch on any other things; John has run the gamut. I'll go to some questions. You want empowerment; what attracts you into looking into relationships? What inspires you? You've written 4 novels and they focus on relationships; you're not writing thrillers.
Laurie Frankel: I am interested in non-traditional families and things we don't usually define as a family. These girls are triplets but are an unusual family. I think that's interesting. This is my project. I don't know very many families who are "normal" anymore. It makes me crazy to say that "normal" families don't count.
Jason Strawsburg: That is so awesome. In these virtual events you can get a window into the writer's actual office. You can see where John Grisham writes and I'll miss this; thank you for that--a window into your writing life.
Laurie Frankel: I wish I had a writing chalet. The virtual events are wonderful things. I'm all the way across the country and we get to do that. We get to be in the same place.
Jason Strawsburg: One final question about your writing style--do you fly by the seat of your pants as you go along?
Laurie Frankel: It's more about what I can manage to do. I have no idea what will happen in the book until it happens. I cut thousands of words from the book; I write dozens of drafts. I'm not a plotter. I work with what I've got.
Jason Strawsburg: I love the honesty; you're the first person who's said that. We have reached our time and I want to thank you both; it's been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for making the time.
John Schwartz: We got from New Jersey to Texas.
Jonah Zimiles: Thank you for doing this. Our store is open and we do have copies and we want to see you soon. Thank you guys.