Dream State: Exploring Fiction Writing with Hopkins Faculty and Alumni

What this episode is about

This discussion centers on Eric Puckner's novel "Dream State," highlighting its exploration of profound themes such as friendship, marriage, grief, and environmental concerns, all set against the backdrop of the fragile Montana landscape. Gabriella Fee, a Hopkins faculty member and writer, emphasizes the emotional resonance of Puckner's work, portraying how it reflects the complexities of human experience and the power of fiction to evoke a deep sense of reality.

Key takeaways

• In 'Dream State', emotional landscapes rival physical ones, proving that storytelling transcends mere geography.
• The novel's 50-year span reflects our own time, questioning how much we've stewarded our relationships and the planet.
• Puckner’s work reminds us: it’s not just our mistakes that haunt us, but generational legacies of regret.
• Friendship, betrayal, and climate change collide in an artful narrative, making us reconsider the 'beautiful' in fragility.
• The Moser Family Writing Series underscores that investing in creativity is the best antidote to a divided world.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Gabriella Fee (Host) · 34 min speaking
• Eric Puckner (Guest) · 23 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Dream State, Eric Puckner, Fontana, Oprah Winfrey
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Fontana, Flathead Lake
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Dream State
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Dream State
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Glacier National Park
6. 40:00 – 45:00: Model Home, Dream State
7. 45:00 – 50:00: Fontana, Flathead Lake, Glacier National Park, Model Home
8. 50:00 – 55:00: Dream State, Fontana

Notable quotes from "Dream State: Exploring Fiction Writing with Hopkins Faculty and Alumni"

• Be your host and moderator for this conversation with Eric Puckner, author of the exceptional novel Dream State, which was a New York Times bestseller and 2025 Oprah's Book…

  about Dream State · at 0:24

• Something real and true about being alive in the world. that in the span of a week of reading, I had actually lived the 50 years that CeCe and Garrett and Charlie live in the shadow of the gorgeous and fragile Montana mountains.

  about Fontana · at 1:15

• Mweenies and the best American short stories. and he's received many honors including a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

  about Wallace Stegner Fellowship · at 2:05

• Thank you. It's so good to be here with you. well, I really enjoyed your interview with Oprah Winfrey for her book club. and in that interview, she opened by asking you to set the stage for us a little bit. so I'm.

  about Eric Puckner · at 3:34

• He's taken Cece on a hike in Glacier National Park. And if you've been to Glacier, there's one particular hike that sort of follows along a top of a cliff. It's called the Garden Wall. and if you're fear if you have a fear of.

  about Glacier National Park · at 21:55

• Four days because the wildfire smoke is so bad. I've I've watched the lake retreat from the dock. You used to be able to dive off of the dock and now you certainly don't want to dive off the dock. You jump in and you hit the bottom. and.

  about Flathead Lake · at 48:55

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Eric Puckner — Person · Main guest · 3 mentions · first at 0:26
  Interview subject and featured author; discusses his novel Dream State, craft choices (time compression, omission), themes (grief, regret, male friendship), and research process.
• Gabriella Fee — Person · Host / Moderator · 1 mention · first at 0:22
  Introduces the event, frames the discussion with close readings and craft questions, and moderates audience Q&A; affiliated with Johns Hopkins Odyssey program as writer-in-residence.
  Of the exceptional novel Dream State, which was a New York Times bestseller and 2025 Oprah's Book Club pick. I'm the inaugural Moser family writer and residence in the John's…
• Oprah Winfrey — Person · Referenced interviewer / cultural figure · 2 mentions · first at 0:32
  Referenced as the interviewer for Oprah's Book Club; her prior interview with Puckner is used as a framing device for the opening question and signals the book's prominence.
  With you. well, I really enjoyed your interview with Oprah Winfrey for her book club. and in that interview, she opened by asking you to set the stage for us a little bit. so I'm going to begin with the same question.

Books & papers

• Dream State — Book · Primary recommendation · 8 mentions · first at 0:28
  Main subject of the podcast, discussed extensively for its themes and narrative structure.
• Model Home — Book · Referenced work · 4 mentions · first at 1:53
  Another novel by Eric Puckner, mentioned as part of his bibliography.
  At Johns Hopkins. In addition to Dream State, he is the author of the novel Model Home, a finalist for the Penn Falner award and winner of a California book award as well as two collections of short stories.

Companies & orgs

• Johns Hopkins University — Company · Affiliation · 4 mentions
  Host's affiliation and location of the writing seminars program mentioned.
  Of the exceptional novel Dream State, which was a New York Times bestseller and 2025 Oprah's Book Club pick. I'm the inaugural Moser family writer and residence in the John's…
• National Endowment for the Arts — Company · Affiliation · 1 mention · first at 2:11
  Organization that granted Eric Puckner an award, mentioned in his accolades.
  Mweenies and the best American short stories. and he's received many honors including a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
• American Academy of Arts and Letters — Company · Affiliation · 1 mention · first at 2:14
  Organization that awarded Eric Puckner, mentioned in his accolades.
  Stories. and he's received many honors including a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Places & events

• Fontana — Place · Setting · 6 mentions · first at 1:26
  Primary setting of the novel Dream State, described as gorgeous and fragile.
• Flathead Lake — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at 5:52
  Inspiration for the fictional lake in the novel Dream State.
• Glacier National Park — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at 21:55
  Mentioned as a location where a significant scene in the novel takes place.
• California Book Award — Event · Achievement · 1 mention · first at 1:55
  Award won by Eric Puckner for his novel Model Home.
  State, he is the author of the novel Model Home, a finalist for the Penn Falner award and winner of a California book award as well as two collections of short stories.
• Wallace Stegner Fellowship — Event · Achievement · 1 mention · first at 2:09
  Fellowship received by Eric Puckner, mentioned as part of his accolades.

Sponsors

• Elizabeth Moser — Person · Referenced benefactor / program funder · 1 mention · first at 2:37
  Credited as the donor enabling the Moser Family Writing Series and related Johns Hopkins programs (writer-in-residence and tuition remission), which contextualizes the event's sponsorship and institutional setting.
  Tuition remission fund that makes these opportunities more accessible to the Hopkins alumni community. We're deeply grateful for Elizabeth's generosity and her commitment to lifelong learning in the arts.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:20 Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Gabriella Fee and I'll be your host and moderator for this conversation with Eric Puckner, author of the exceptional novel Dream State, which was a New York Times bestseller and 2025 Oprah's Book Club pick. I'm the inaugural Moser family writer and residence in the John's Hopkins Odyssey program and a graduate of the writing seminars MFA program here at Hopkins where Eric is a beloved professor. I'm thrilled to be here with you all to celebrate Dream State. There is so much I admire about this novel. Its scope is sweeping and yet its focus is deeply human. It's about friendship, marriage, grief, fundamental impermanence, our changing climate, and also not insignificantly about the agonies of neurovirus. But beyond all the themes that Eric weaves so brilliantly through the text, what I admire most about this novel is the embodied sense I had when I

1:13 finished it, that I had encountered something real and true about being alive in the world. that in the span of a week of reading, I had actually lived the 50 years that CeCe and Garrett and Charlie live in the shadow of the gorgeous and fragile Montana mountains. All their sorrow and joy was newly animated in me and made me more alive to the world, brought me back in a way to myself. This is the magic of a great book and I'm so delighted to be here with Eric to talk about it with you all today. Eric Puckner is associate professor in the writing seminars here at Johns Hopkins. In addition to Dream State, he is the author of the novel Model Home, a finalist for the Penn Falner award and winner of a California book award as well as two collections of short stories.

2:02 His work has appeared in GQ Granta Mweenies and the best American short stories. and he's received many honors including a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Our conversation today will include two readings from Dream State, each of which will be followed by a series of questions from me. At that point, we'll have plenty of time for questions from the audience. Today's program is presented in partnership with the Moser Family Writing Series, which launched this fall. This new initiative represents a generous investment in creative expression and lifelong learning at Johns Hopkins. Made possible by Elizabeth Moser, a 1966 graduate of the School of Arts and Sciences. The Moser gift supports both a writer and residence program, which brings in writers like me to lead creative writing

2:49 courses and literary excursions, and a tuition remission fund that makes these opportunities more accessible to the Hopkins alumni community. We're deeply grateful for Elizabeth's generosity and her commitment to lifelong learning in the arts. Finally, I'd like to remind those watching live that you can submit your questions using the chat feature below. We'll be monitoring throughout the program and we'll answer as many as we can during our Q&A segment. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming Professor Eric Puckner.

3:21 Thank you so much uh for having me and thank you for that lovely introduction, Gabriella. You did such a wonderful job describing the novel and its themes. I don't feel like I need to to say much about it, but um thank you. It's a real pleasure to be here.

3:34 Thank you. It's so so good to be here with you. Um well, I I really enjoyed your interview with Oprah Winfrey for her book club. Um and in that interview, she opened by asking you to set the stage for us a little bit. Um so I'm going to begin with the same question. Uh for a reader who hasn't yet had the chance to pick up their copy of Dream State, how would you describe this novel? Yeah, it's such a tricky question because really, you know, a novel is about the experience of reading it. It's about the emotional and aesthetic experience of reading the book. So, it's hard. There's something ineffable about trying to describe what a novel is actually about. Um, but you did a good job of sort of laying the groundwork.

4:12 It's um it's a novel that centers around a beloved lakehouse in northwestern Montana, and it spans 50 years in the lives of three friends, uh, two men who have been best friends since college. um and have become a little bit aranged and the woman they both love and it traces how a stunning betrayal goes on to haunt all three of their lives and the lives of their children. So, it's about a lot of things. It's about time. It's about the trapoor of regret. It's about um the end of summers as we know it. Um and um it's also about um the lives that we've sort of chosen not to lead and about what we do with the mistakes both the the individual mistakes that we make but also the collective mistakes we make as a generation. Um and how the preceding generations go on to inherit those mistakes and the the generations beyond that generation end up inheriting those mistakes.

5:14 Well, it's a gorgeous book and I hope those of you who haven't read it uh will go do so. Um and I know Eric, you have a passage for us that you're going to sort of kick us off with.

5:22 Yeah, I thought I would um read something from chapter 3 towards the beginning of the book, partly because it requires almost no information to understand it. It's a it's um a passage that is about Cece's backstory. CeCe is one of the three principal characters in the book. Cece has come out to this house in northwestern uh Montana in a town that I've call Salish but is loosely based on Big Fork, Montana. And um she's come out to this house on Salish Lake, which is loosely ba based on Flathead Lake in northwestern Montana. Um she's come out uh a month early to prepare for a wedding to Charlie. Um and things get complicated because Charlie's best friend from college, Garrett, um who lives in Montana. he's had kind of a rough go of things after college. Ends up um befriending her and things start to get a little bit weird. Um this actually is about CeCe's mother's death and the grief that she feels towards uh

6:25 because of that and and the grief a grief that she's never really gotten over even though this happened when she was a teenager. So I'll just I'll just jump right in. By the by the time it occurred to Cece that her mother was dying, she was dead. Even then, it seemed like possibly a mistake, like there was no way in hell her mother would have agreed to it. Cece hunched through the memorial service, unable to speak or move or smile. People hugged her one after another, a series of random blows. At the national cemetery, she stood on the perfect lawn rolling down to a smudge of ocean in the distance. the tombstones, a run of dominoes waiting to be tipped, feeling like she'd been beamed to an alien planet.

7:08 She could not fathom her own fingers. It was a military burial with guards of honor and a flag folding ceremony and a lone bugler playing tats. The long sorrowful notes floated over the cemetery, turning everything into the tragic plot point in a movie. The grave sites and their wilting flowers. The guards of honor frozen like statues. the hole in the ground where her mother would be lowered and transformed into a skeleton. Such was the grace and beauty of the buger's playing that Cece, returning to Earth for a moment, couldn't help being moved. It seemed to give form to the precious void inside her. Then the bugler stopped in midnote as if he'd forgotten what song he was performing.

7:49 He turned red with embarrassment. Finally, he took the bugle from his lips and shook it, and it played the lost note for a second, as if possessed by a ghost. It wasn't a real instrument at all, Cece realized, but a stereo made to look like one. The thing had run out of charge. A couple of the mourners giggled. CeCe glanced behind her, startled. Later, in the middle of the eulogy, the bugle began playing again from its case. Strangess and sorrow. Strangess and sorrow. Cece went back to school, amazed that her life still existed. My mother is dead, she told herself over and over, not immune to its dramatic value. It was precisely this sense of being in a play or a movie that made her death feel temporary. At any minute, the play would end and her mother would be alive again, taking her to the beach like she used to every weekend. CeCe would massage her head while they watch stupid shows together, dizzy with the smell of sweat

8:43 and Hoba oil. That smell. When Cece was little, she used to suck on her mother's hair, put strands of it in her mouth. Cece missed her so much it howled through her like a wind. She stopped eating on the soccer field. She stood there shivering, staring at the grass. Her friends, understanding at first, eventually gave up on her, stopped asking her to parties and the galleria to bonfires at the beach. When her mother wasn't home, Cece sometimes sneaked into his room and stripped the mattress, gazing at the orphaned sweat stain, pale as a shadow, where her mother used to sleep.

9:19 Once the phone rang and Cece picked it up, her mother's hair salon asking to confirm an appointment. She died, Cece said perhaps too softly to be heard because the woman on the phone said, "I believe so. Yes, a coloring missed the last one, so wanted to confirm." The next day, Cece drove to the hair salon and showed up for the appointment. The hairdresser didn't question who she was. He led her to a chair, then grabbed a book of color swatches and handed it to her. Cece flipped through the book, a rainbow of tiny rabbit's feet, and found one that matched her mother's hair. She smelled the swatch, but of course, it smelled like nothing. She cried and cried for the first time since the funeral. The hairdresser, perhaps used to such things, ignored her. He painted and foiled Cece's hair, then rinsed it out and revealed the hideous product of her grief.

10:12 "Thank you, Eric. That wonderful repetition of stranges and sorrow makes me think about the title dream state and grief itself as a kind of dream state. Um, and the the novel in general is just such a beautiful and nuanced exploration of among many other things grief itself. Um, and the different temporalities or scales of time that grief plays out against. Without giving any spoilers, there's a very significant death in this novel that's very sudden. a death in a ski accident with a long post-traumatic fallout for the survivors and then numerous other griefs both large and small associated with a aging changing climate losses both personal and collective. I wonder if you could speak a bit about these different kinds of grief in the novel um you know Cece's grief for her mother in this excerpt um and then grief you know more more generally and its role in the text.

11:02 Sure. Yeah. I mean, I'll say that the book in the same way that it interrogates the marriage plot a bit. Um, you know, the first uh hundred or so pages of the book are um based upon the marriage plot very explicitly. It's it feels like maybe a Jane Austin novel or something, one that you've read before. But I was less interested in ending with the marriage and sort of ending um with the wrong marriage in a certain sense and actually seeing how the marriage plays out. That was what was most interesting to me about the book. And that's why I dispense with the with the marriage which I don't want to give any spoilers away either is sort of the wrong marriage. Um and then uh and then the book sort of digs into the consequences of that. Um similarly with with grief um I was interested in in interrogating the trauma plot a little bit because I'm a little suspicious of it honestly. Um this it feels a little

11:51 reductive to me that our entire lives are determined by a single incident. Um so one of the things the book does is is say that yes these incidents are are powerfully um powerfully shape our lives um and go on to reverberate over the span of 50 years in fact even cross generations but they don't define us necessarily. Um and so you know the time plays an incredibly important role in the novel. Um it's sort of the antagonist of the novel in a way. And one of the things that time teaches us is that what we thought we grieved over uh when when it originally happened maybe um isn't as powerful as we thought or else actually we misinterpreted that grief. Um we were grieving something else as well. Um and um another thing that the book another question the book asks is um has to do with love and its relationship to grief.

12:48 So that the two characters uh Cece and Garrett who bond in the first part of the book um much to Charlie's chagrin. Charlie is the fiance. Um one of the reasons they bond is that they share a kind of secret sadness and and they're able to see each other um in a way that Cece I think and uh Charlie cannot see each other um because they're able to access that that grief um that shared grief um that secret sadness inside of each other. And so one of the questions the book asks has to do with love. Is it is it better to see somebody clearly and be reminded of your own secret sadness and grief? Or is it better to be with somebody who maybe is blind to that grief? What makes you happy?

13:32 One of the things that's so wonderful about the scope of this novel, the fact that it plays out over the course of 50 years is that the the the limitations in a character's perspective at the start of the novel are not necessarily, you know, the limitations in their perspective at the end. And so I I love how those relationships shift over time. Um, and speaking of time, which is of course so central here, both as an antagonist, but also as a kind of organizing principle in terms of craft. Um, I'm I'm so curious how you as a writer uh kind of knew when you wanted to uh to speed up, to slow down, to bypass whole decades of these characters' lives and when to um sort of slow down and uh and to dilate. Um, and I wonder if I sort of in leading into this question if I could read you my absolute favorite sentence in the whole book. Um, and uh maybe you could use that as a sort of uh jumping off point

14:22 in answering this question. Um, and this is uh on page 155. It's the last sentence of this um this chapter that describes this uh sort of pivotal ski accident. Um uh he and this he is uh Garrett in this case. He got his shovel out of his pack and yelled at Charlie to dig behind him further downhill. And Garrett began to dig as swiftly as he could, shoveling snow so dense it felt like cement, his arms burning, tossing each bladeful as far downhill as possible, not daring to stop even for a second, the wind biting a hole into his cheek. And he dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dug and dropped out of college and wandered between rooms and fell in love with his only friend's fiance and was still digging. Oh my god, what a sentence.

15:21 I think you missed a few dugs in I think I might have missed a few dugs. Um, but what I'm so startled and amazed by there is this expansion and compression of time which seems so reflective of both grief and love. Um, and I just wonder if you could speak to that both from an emotional and also a craft perspective.

15:38 Yeah, thank you for um, sort of pinpointing that sentence, identifying it as one of your favorites. It's one of my favorites, too. U there's there are a couple moments in the book where time um where a single time sort of like a great amount of time elapses in a single sentence. Uh there's a chapter later in the book um the book goes on to sort of trace the fallout of this sort of like betrayal that happens between um Cece and Garrett and Charlie. And it traces the fallout with their own children, Lana and Jasper. Um and there's a scene between Lana and Jasper. uh a chapter in which they actually age. Um it's a it's sort of rather than a coming of age chapter, it's sort of an age comes for you chapter in which he's not even aware of how much time is elapsing and sometimes within a single sentence like you know I I jump a few years. Um and uh um yeah it it was important for me I mean one of the reasons that I wrote the

16:35 book um is to try was to try to capture the emotional experience of times passing. um it's something I think about a lot and I think it's a sort of deeply subjective experience and it changes um according to how old you are. So now that I'm in my 50s um I feel like time has sped up greatly. In fact, there's an entire I was doing a podcast with somebody who told me about an entire theory of time called the proportional theory of time um which has to do with how long you're on Earth. So the reason that when you're 10 years old um uh a single week feels like a year is because you've only been on year on earth for 10 years, right? Um so when you've been on Earth for 55 years, that same same week maybe feels like a day because it's proportionate to how long you've been on Earth. And so that sort of speeding up of time, the fluidity of time, um even the kind of like um inability to measure time sort of like in an

17:33 objective way, I think uh is partly what the book is about. And a lot of that stuff that's that I allided from the book, the the that exists in the white space between chapters. Some of the most important scenes aren't dramatized in the book. And that's largely because I was less interested in doing the obvious and dramatizing the most dramatic scenes and sort of skipping right to the consequences because that's sort of what time does. And then and then you also have that sort of like the poignency of that retrospective poignency of being able to sort of look back on something that you that the reader didn't even read about, right? Um and I just like I like that effect a lot. That doesn't mean in the first draft I didn't write a lot of those chapters. I did. I dramatized some of those scenes that are missing and I just like the effect without them better. Um, and I also wanted to continually surprise both the

18:23 characters and the reader by how much time had elapsed because that's been my experience of time as a human being is that I'm just continually I look at my son and I, you know, he's now taller than I am at age 15. And I feel like um uh I look at him and I and I see his six-year-old self and I just can't imagine um how he got to be who he is now. So yeah, I mean all of that is that sort of emotional experience was what was important to me.

18:50 It's it's so moving and does feel reflective of something really true about how we experience memory and time. Um, what you said about your your son at six makes me think about and I don't have the quote in front of me, but this idea that all of life I forget which character it is, but someone says all of life is an attempt to return to this feeling we had at six. Um, and and does that have to do with that same kind of dilation of time, the sort of the proportional impact of time at that?

19:13 I think it I think it does. Yeah. I'm forgetting the exact quote as well, but it's when he's skiing and and um it's Charlie, I think, or maybe it's Garrett. Yeah, Garrett goes into the um I'm I'm a lifelong skier and I come from a family of very passionate skiers. So skiing is one of those things I experienced at a very young age which um is kind of like you know Puce Meline for me. Every time I go skiing which is now only about once or twice a year unfortunately um I walk into the ski lodge or I get ready to go backountry skiing and and all of it sort of rushes back and you know that's that's sort of like you're able to access it's like time travel. you're able to access the past in this really incredibly immediate way. And and there's a lot in the book. Um I mean part of the the the meaning of the title Dream State just has to do with as you get older there is that sense of that sort of flattening of time where you're

19:57 living alongside your memories, you know, in this way that's just really interesting to me. Um and there's a lot of sort of like representation of that idea in the book. Uh photography plays a huge role in the book. There's something like to me photography is like the most poignant human invention because you're you're trying to freeze time, right, and make it permanent um at the same time that a photograph reminds you that it's not permanent, right? Um so it's sort of like it's what novels try to do, right? Is sort of like, you know, celebrate the eancence of life. Um but also, you know, get the inherent sadness, sorrow of the fact that life is eancent, right? So yeah. Um, and and there's also, you know, Cece also has this app on her phone, which actually exists where you can imagine yourself, not I'm sorry, not Cece, Lana as a girl. She has an app on her phone where she can see herself

20:46 depicted at different ages. Um, and she imagines that her like 80year-old self is there wandering around the world. Um, and she's really interested in the app. She's always looking at herself at different ages. and and that's sort of that that kind of like dreamy flattening of time where everything is sort of simultaneous was one of the emotional effects that I was hoping to achieve in the book as well.

21:06 Yeah, that was activated in so many moments in so many ways. Um well, I I think it's time to move on to our second excerpt.

21:16 Sure. So, um I'm just gonna I'm just reading from the first part of the book because I don't want to give anything away. I'm I'm assuming most of the of the people here have not read it. Um so this is a very different kind of chapter. This is a chapter about love and not grief. Um this is um from Garrett's perspective. The book um inhabits I don't even know how many different perspectives it sometimes goes into the into the minds of animals as well. But um you know there are five main characters whose um whose heads we inhabit. Um, this is from Garrett's perspective and he has um just gone hiking.

21:55 He's taken Cece on a hike in Glacier National Park. And if you've been to Glacier, there's one particular hike um that sort of follows along a a top of a cliff. It's called the Garden Wall. Um and if you're fear if you have a fear of heights, you probably shouldn't go on this hike. And um Cece didn't realize it was going to be like it was. and she panics up there and um Garrett has to get her down. Um and so they end up end up sort of holding hands not because they want to hold hands but because they have to. Um and so this is after that and Cece is so upset that Garrett took her on this hike that she calls him a really nasty name. Um and so Garrett is convinced that she hates him. They they go back. She drive he drives her back to the house on the lake and um he has to use the bathroom and then she invites him to taste some of the wines for the wedding. And this is after that. This is um yeah, this is right after that.

22:58 Garrett slipped out of the house while Cece was upstairs. Uh Charlie has just called and so Cece has gone upstairs to take the take the phone call. Garrett slipped out of the house while Cece was upstairs, knowing he drunk too much wine. That as soon as he got into his truck, he would technically become a drunk driver, one of the least appealing things a drunk person could become. But he'd stayed too long already. He pulled his car keys from his pocket, almost dropping them on the porch. His hand felt heavier than usual, dense with the memory of Cece's grip.

23:28 She'd hardly said a word to him on the way back from Glacier, staring crossly out the window, still fuming, Garrett imagined, over the death hike. Probably it was a relief not to have to pretend to enjoy his company. He'd had to pee terribly, but was afraid to disrupt Cece's silence. So, he was surprised after he dashed into the Margoluses to use the bathroom when she asked if he wanted a drink. Charlie had sent her some wines to taste. No doubt he'd value Garrett's opinion. Also, drinking alone depressed her. Garrett knew nothing about wine, but pretended to, noting that one called half past a freckle had some earth to it, but agreeing emphatically that something was missing.

24:06 "Wind, fire," he'd said, finally making her laugh. They tried a coat that made his mouth pucker, then something that tasted like a Jolly Rancher, all on an empty stomach. Garrett waited for Cece to kick him out, or at least to nudge him tactfully, out the door, suspecting she was simply absolving a guilty conscience. And yet she poured them another wine and another. Meanwhile, her hand, the same one that had squeezed his up at Glacier, refusing to let go, did not creep away in shame. It did not crawl under the porch to die. Garrett kept sneaking glances at it as if it were a rare and bashful creature. At some point, Charlie called, and Cece had taken the phone upstairs to talk to him.

24:46 Garrett climbed into the truck, studying himself, then dropped his keys before he could get them into the ignition. He switched on the dome light and found them sitting in the thermos he parked in the cup holder. They were soaking in the coffee at the bottom. He tried to retrieve them with his fingers from the heel tap of coffee, but the thermos was too narrow. He drank the cold coffee, extracting the keys with his teeth. When he glanced up again through the windshield, Cece had reappeared downstairs. She searched the living room, then stuck her head into the kitchen. How wonderful this was to be looked for. He was invisible. he could spy on her from his vehicle. Then she opened the front door and went out to the porch and saw him because, of course, he wasn't invisible. He was sitting in a truck with a dome light on.

25:29 For no earthly reason, Cece pretended not to notice him, and then picked up the binoculars from the table and pointed them in his direction, jumping back as though she'd seen a bear. A dopey thing, a joke, and yet all was lost. It was like a compass finding north, a happiness as pure and sudden as that. She even looked different, new and strange and somehow in focus. The wild shrub of hair, the slanty jacko'lantern eyebrows, the dimple in her chin that looked like a poke. None of these features was particularly attractive. On their own, in fact, they were sort of funnyl looking, but put together they were beautiful, hard walloping, a face he'd missed his whole life without knowing it.

26:09 Cece, who lowered the binoculars, stared at him in concern. Garrett realized he still had the keys in his teeth. He dropped them in his lap like a golden retriever. I have to go, he shouted essentially to himself. He had some he had some trouble hand eyeing the key into its slot. Then he switched off the dome light and reversed down the driveway and backed into a corner of the fence, which made a sound like a firecracker. Garrett sped off in his truck, then slowed once he realized how fast he was going. The empty road seemed to dangle in front of him. Good God, what had he done? The moon, that lighthouse in the sky, guided him home.

26:45 I'm sorry, he said to Charlie in his head because he damaged something and couldn't remember feeling so happy.

26:54 Beautiful. Thank you. I I one of the many things about this excerpt that's so wonderful is how closely connected the um the the sort of the pleasures and the sorrows or the potential harms of life are, right?

27:09 Um and I I it makes me think about this. I mean, how present uh Charlie's Charlie and Garrett's friendship is in every moment of the text, even one that in which they're not um they're not both sort of in the scene. Um and um I'm I'm and how really like it to some extent um even though they are constantly orbiting each other in a state of sort of love and anger, uh their respective happinesses often kind of come at each other's expense. Um, and I wonder if you could speak a little bit about this friendship, um, this friendship which is so fierce but so often kind of put in jeopardy. Um, and then whether perhaps you could speak about um, like maybe in particular friendship between men in this novel.

27:54 Sure. Thank you. Yeah, great question. These are such good questions. Um, yeah, I wanted to write a novel about male friendship over time, over a long period of time because I just hadn't read very many books that are centered on male friendship. There are so many just terrific books centered on female friendship. I mean the Lena Ferrante books for example, her Neapolitan quartet. Um those books are so wonderful. Um but I honestly I know they exist and I've had many people tell me they exist and and giving me particular names just I hadn't read one.

28:24 Crossing to Safety is a Wallace Daggner book that pops into mind, but there just not very many books about um you know a lifetime uh friendship between men. And I mean, male friendship is so tricky and it's such a sort of fascinating beast and um I feel like I wanted to try to do it justice and um but I also wanted to put it to the test. So I came up with like sort of the worst betrayal I could think of and then and then wanted to see if it could if what what it would look like for a male friendship to survive that betrayal um was was what compelled me. I was interested in that question.

28:58 Um and that's what the book goes on to try to answer. Um, I I feel like there's a particular section in the book they meet, Charlie and Garrett meet when they're in college. And um, I I had a great fun writing that particular chapter. It's a long just a chapter that covers like several years in their life in college and then and then culminates in that sentence that you read um with the the skiing death. Um, but there's something about, you know, meeting um, other when you're a man and you go to college, young man, and you meet other men in your dorm. Um, and, um, there's something kind of romantic about it. And I don't mean literally romantic, but you, you know, you're you're trying to impress each other. You're there's some there's sort of some wooing that's involved. There's a courtship. Um, and I really wanted to capture that sort of sense. So, at the beginning of that chapter, um Garrett, uh Charlie, who

29:51 really wants to impress and befriend Garrett because he's impressed by his intellect, does something funny, which is he pretends to slip on the ice so that that that Garrett will that, um Garrett will have to help him back up. And it's something that you don't usually think about two straight men doing. But, um I I was interested in just sort of like exploring that aspect of the sort of the the beginning, the honeymoon years of male friendship and what that that might actually look like. Um, and they have a really hard time sort of like telling each other that they love each other. It's just something that that straight men in particular, I think, have a difficult time doing. So, there's a section where they sort of where Charlie thinks about that. I think that's from Charlie's perspective. And he's thinking about how it's the way that you do that is that you come up with you insult each other. Um, you come

30:37 up with this sort of like botnage that that gets sort of recycled over and over again. And it's it's not the words themselves that are saying I love you. It's the rhythm of the words, you know, that I think I call it like the karaoke track behind the words that's actually communicating how you feel. And um so I wondered like how would that play out over 50 years when this like awful thing happened, this terrible betrayal, and then these two friends don't ever talk about it um at least not for many many years. What what might that look like?

31:05 And that's really what the plot of the book is. Part of what's so wonderful about that friendship playing out over time is how uh the characters really uh Charlie and Garrett really surprise each other in it. Um and they they kind of um both exceed and and disappoint their expectations for themselves and each other in various moments. Um, and in thinking about that, I I was thinking about how this is in so many ways a novel about expectations, about what people want for themselves, or at least what they think they want for themselves versus the decisions that they actually make and the decisions that are made for them by time, biology, the aging, etc.

31:44 Um, and so in that regard, I have I have two questions. The first is um the role of expectation in the novel as in were you were you thinking about um that sort of dance between expectation and resolution? Um and second um did any of your characters do anything in the novel that you didn't expect? What surprised you about them as you were writing?

32:05 Um yes. I mean I'll answer the second question first. Yes, absolutely. I mean that's the only thing that keeps me interested as a writer is when when your characters start doing things that surprise you. In fact, I wish I could remember the quote perfectly, but there's a wonderful trigger quote where someone asked him, I think he was writing Fathers and Sons or something, and someone asked him like, "How how did your day go?" And he said, "Well, you wouldn't believe what what so- and so did today, right?" So, um, I think that that's what if your characters don't surprise you, they're definitely not going to surprise the reader and come fully to life on the page. Um, so yes, consistently every chapter, the the characters did something that I was not expecting. Um in fact I think in the my original very early kind of inco conception of the novel um the opposite thing happened uh the charact these two

32:50 characters sort of fell uh strangely in love and then didn't get together. Um and the regret was on that side of things and and that that sounds like oh what a completely different novel but in in some really weird way it's the same novel because the the novel is about regret and kind of how silly it is. Um uh I mean I'm someone who uh lives constantly with regret. I I can't even like order at a restaurant without trying to call the waiter back a second later and change my order. And so um it's that kind of life is elsewhere philosophy like oh yes if only this had happened my life would be different. And I think it's I don't know I think feel maybe it's not an American phenomenon but I just feel like it's I know so many people that are so tempted by that. Um, and I think one of the things I wanted to explore is like, you know, I call it the trapoor of regret, which my my son heard me say that on in an interview and

33:39 now he makes fun of me like in the next room. He'd be like just randomly, "Hey, hey, Dad." And I'll be like, "Yeah, what's up?" He's like, "Hey, how's that trap door of regret treating you?" But um but that you know it's sort of about the fact that you know they the characters make a particular choice and it changes the entire trajectory of their life but it doesn't mean that they're happier in that trajectory or less happy. It just means that it's a different there's a different kind of happiness and unhappiness. Right. Um and uh so I was I was interested I was interested in that. What was your first question? I lost track of it. Oh, I well I think you answered my first question um through your answer of the second which was just to what degree were you sort of conscious of that of of expectation as a kind of um

34:25 Oh yeah. Um absolutely writing. Sorry. Yeah. I didn't mean to cut you off there. Um, it's interesting that you put it that way, too, because one of the things that, um, I tried to do in the novel, which you sort of alluded to earlier, um, with the scene that I just read, but, um, I really do feel like, um, we go through life and and we experience so many different emotions on a daily basis. Um, and I feel like so much contemporary literature, at least fiction, doesn't really try to capture that anymore. I mean, there are wonderful books that do, but um you know, one of the reasons that I sort of shout out to Russian literature in the book several times is because I just love the way that those books really try to capture the entire gamut of emotional human experience, you know.

35:12 So, you know, in a Dossi novel, for example, within like 10 minutes, a character will have gone from like searing despair to to, you know, bliss blissfulness and joy and and wonder and love and hate and and and um and I wanted to try to get all of that on get all of that on the page and and and also to show how each moment it, you know, that there's the capacity for all of that. And in fact, um that difference between expectation and actuality, that's that's what makes something funny, right? is that you expect one thing to happen and a different thing happens.

35:46 Um, so you know, you expect to sit down in a chair and someone pulls a chair out from under you and that's not very funny if you're the one sitting down, but it might be funny to the spectators, right? So, um, I mean, so much of the book is both sort of sad and funny at the same time because I don't I think those two things those are two sides to the same coin. They're both reactions to the absurdity of existence, right? Tragedy and comedy, they're really come from the same the same place. Absolutely. The book is so alive to the fact that life is not this branching decision tree, but it's so palestic. It's such a sort of felo. We're living so many lives and um and that um that kind of verticality uh emotional verticality um in a book that also has such a um kind of such a horizontal scope, right? It's it's covers so much time um is just such a marvelous feat. Um,

36:37 that is beautifully put, the fileo dough of life. I love that. I think I'm just hungry.

36:42 Thank Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, well, on that note, I I think it's time to move into some audience questions if that's all right with you.

36:51 Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I will uh I'll read them off for us here. Um, the first one is um something that stood out to me in your introduction was the idea of passing things down generationally. I feel like that word has had a lot more attention lately with a new focus on creating quote unquote generational wealth or healing quote unquote generational trauma. Do you think this is something new or different or is it just a new way for us to talk about something we always have?

37:21 Oh, I think it's probably a new way to talk about something we've always had. I mean, um, but I'm just a fiction writer. I don't know. I I do I do think that with climate change there's it's very palpable. you know, for the first time I I look at my kids, you know, there's a there are some generation zeers, right, in the book. Um, and the book is focused on the three main characters who are generation Xers, which are which is my generation. And I feel like we have really screwed up the world. I mean, we didn't we we knew that climate change existed and we didn't try to fix it. Um, and greed triumphs over the earth. And so um I mean one of the things that the book's about and you know ideally it's sort of in the background and isn't didactic um but it's about th this I mean call it generational trauma call it whatever you want but the fact that we are passing down an earth that is uh you

38:16 know warming incredibly quickly um and devastatingly and um and saying here you deal with it right so I think in that way it's become become much more palpable Yeah. Um the next person has asked interesting idea of skipping right to the consequences and this is when we were talking about the um kind of um what was written and then sort of omitted. Um makes me think about the classic mantra show don't tell. Are there any other rules or practices you try to keep in mind while writing or any you have chosen to ignore or intentionally break?

38:52 Yeah. And I think this is this is an interesting question, especially because you're a teacher, you're a professor.

38:56 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't I don't really say show don't tell in my classes because sometimes you have to tell. You have to show and tell. You know, if you're just if you're just showing, that's a problem. And if you're just telling, that's a problem, right? You need a mixture of the two. And and you know, in this particular case, I was showing those scenes. I decided to get rid of them. Um and I and I consciously actually tried to tell a little bit more in this book. I I tried to make the book I like the way that you were putting it, Gabriella, but I tried to make it a little bit more vertical um than I usually do so that uh there's a there's a a deeper level of interiority in the book. Um and I think you know it's not for everybody. Some people just finds that find that boring, right? But um so yeah um in terms of in terms of things that I have learned that I learned when I was a young aspiring writer from my my

39:50 professors that I have maybe become a little bit more ambivalent about let's say um one of the things is that you know people used to say oh you're supposed to write a first draft really quickly as fast as you can and I think that works for some people but it certainly doesn't work for me. And in fact, I'm often telling my own students to slow down because their sentences aren't quite good enough. You know, I mean, I sentences to me are the most important aspect of writing. They're the thing that brings me the most joy to try to say something in a way that you feel like it's never been said before. Um, is just an incredible feeling. And, uh, it's really what drives me as a writer.

40:28 I I'm really driven by the sentence level, um, more than anything else. And you're not going to get those sentences if you're writing quickly. Um, so, uh, I I actually don't think that's great advice. It's certainly not good advice for me. Um, yeah. And oh, another another one that I've become very suspicious of actually was that when I was in writing work, writing workshops were actually kind of a young phenomenon when I was in college, right? I had some wonderful teachers, but they would often say the same thing to me, which is uh the the sort of famous workshop mantra was um, write as if everyone you know is dead.

41:06 And in fact, Katherine Noel, my my wife, who's a wonderful writer, had that on her computer for a while, and I would walk by, I was like, including me. Um, but uh but I've become increasingly very suspicious of that. I I don't I mean I I I actually don't think it's possible to do no harm at all as a writer because people are always going to be offended by something and it's never the thing that you expect. But but I think you should try to, you know. Um, I don't I don't think that old model of like, well, the artist is a sort of different species and they have a a different sort of moral compass where they can, you know, that that's we we've seen through that. That's just that's silly, right?

41:43 Um, and I really, what really changed my mind is I wrote a actually a non-fiction piece, a memoir about my father. And it was a very honest look at my father. And uh, my brother was really upset with me and didn't speak to me for years. And everything I said in there was true, but he just had a completely different experience with my dad because he was 10 years older than than me. Um, and I don't think it was worth that that interpersonal damage.

42:06 Yeah. Um, someone here is curious about the balance of reality and seriality in the book. Uh, he asks, "While there are many indulgences into dreamlike states, the novel in my reading stays very close to the reality it establishes. How was that balance struck? Was it important to stay grounded in reality given the latter half of the novel taking place in a near future?"

42:29 Yeah, it was really important. Thank you. Um yeah, I you know I like surrealism and I and I certainly read it. Um but um the books that move me the most are books that are psychological pieces of psychological realism that defamiliarize the world. You know that just has always moved me the most. Um so you're reading about the world, you're convinced this is the real world and yet you are able to see it aresh like in a new way. Um, and so that's always been sort of what I've wanted to do um, with my own fiction.

43:06 Thank you. This next person says, "I reread Model Home after having read Dream State, and it struck me that in each book, the characters struggle so much with the problem of finding real intimacy, of being truly known by somebody else. Is it fair to say that this problem, the problem of trying to escape one's own lonely interiority, is an abiding interest of yours? Gosh, it's an abiding interest of mine.

43:31 That's a good question. Yeah, it's like that Ian Forester mantra, only connect, right? Um,

43:38 yeah, of course. I mean, I feel like that's what all novels are about, right? Thank you for going back and rereading Model Home. That's nice of you. Um,

43:45 yeah, that's um, yes. I mean, I was thinking about this yesterday, in fact. Um, and I I'm working on a new novel, but also I was thinking about the next novel I'm going to write. Um, which never happens to me. This is only this is a late life phenomenon where I I'm thinking two novels in advance. But I was thinking I was wanted to write about young love. And I was thinking about that moment um, which is sort of the first moment in every person's life when you are convinced that the other person feels the same way that you do. when you're both so madly in love with each other that you can't speak and um and you're convinced that person feels like I feel right now. It's such a rare feeling and that's the only time really that you can be certain I think right is is in that moment. And I'm sure many people argue you can't really be 100% certain. Um but um but yeah, I mean that that idea that you actually can connect

44:39 with somebody and know exactly what they're thinking. I mean it's it's kind of a fantasy, isn't it? um but a necessary one.

44:46 Yeah. Someone here asks, could you share about the book ends of your process? How do you begin writing? How do you know when a piece is finished? Um and then this person has also asked um when you start a new novel or story, what is your process? Do you handr write first, brainstorm ideas, etc.? So, this question is sort of process in general.

45:09 Yeah, good question. Um, I never know when something is finished and I don't even know when it's begun. Honestly, if if I have an abiding interest in and I and I keep returning to it, then I think, oh, I'm working on something. I used to write mostly short stories and being a novelist is sort of, you know, I wrote Model Home and then I wrote another story collection and and um but I was just talking to my agent a couple days ago and I'm really thinking myself as a novelist now. Um, maybe you need to write two novels before you give yourself the permission to actually feel like you can do this thing. Um and um but it's very very hard to know whether the novel you're writing is the novel that you're supposed to be writing. Um and the only way to do that is just to make it the novel that you're supposed to be writing is to keep writing it. I mean writing a novel is like having religious faith or

45:54 something. I mean you have to have this faith that you're going to spend years and I mean years and years on something. And you have to have the faith that not only is it going to be like a beautiful thing in the end but actually a thing at all as a book at all. Like you don't know that. you don't know that it's going to coher into a novel. I I think I've learned that the more I work on something, I have the ability, even if it's a not a very good first draft, to turn something into a novel, you know, and that's what's so scary is that you're going to work for years and years and not have anything. Um, but um so I've gotten more comfortable with that, but I never know if I'm finished with something. It's really just when you get so sick of something you can't look at it anymore. Um, and you show it to a hundred people and you've gotten lots of feedback. You you never write the the novel that was in your head, that

46:37 platonic ideal of the novel that was in your head. You never get there. You probably don't even get close, but you get as close as you can and then you give up, right? I think that's what that's what the process is.

46:48 Yeah. Connecting back to that question of expectation that the sort of inbuilt disappointment of expectation that life life consists of.

46:57 Um this next question loops us back to the question of uh the topic of climate change. Um, this person asks, "I thought your discussion of the result of climate change was quite vivid. I wonder if you have read to paradise by ha yanagahara and her chapter about the state of the climate in New York in 2093, which is far more dystopian. Do you think we're headed there?"

47:17 I haven't read that. Um, but I I'll tell I'll say this. I mean, when I was writing the book, I sort of resisted having it go into the future, but I also knew that I wanted it to because I wanted to to cover 50 years. And it's really a book that moves from a kind of paradise. I mean, you know, if you start looking for it, you see sort of like Edenic symbols all over the book, right? There's apple trees in the backyard in the orchard and then and I don't want to say where it ends, right? Um but

47:45 um but while I was writing the book, um you know, one of the reasons I wanted to write about this place was because I love it so much. Um, but the book is also kind of an elegy because the place has changed so much in the last like seven years I would say particular. You know, sometimes we go out we go out there every summer. This is I should have prefaced this by explaining that this is a a place I've been going to for 25 years every summer um with my wife and my kids. Now, it's a um it's been in my wife's family for many years. her great-grandfather uh was a Lithuanian im immigrant who came over to Mont in to Montana, settled in Montana, had absolutely no money whatsoever, lived in a packing crate for a while and survived because the trains would come through and throw coal to him and he kept himself alive that way. And um but then he ended up becoming kind of a a a dry goods salesman and a a

48:38 self-made middle-ass man and he built this this house on on Flathead Lake. Um and so we've been going there for many many years. Um, and one of the thing that's happened is that in the past, say like seven years, like we get so excited to go um be there and we get out there and we can't go outside for three or four days because the the wildfire smoke is so bad. Um, I've I've watched the lake retreat um from the dock. You used to be able to like, you know, dive off of the dock and now you certainly don't want to dive off the dock. You jump in and you you hit the bottom. Um, and uh and it's getting hotter and hotter, you know. I've seen the glaciers melt.

49:13 They're they're just they're almost gone. You know, in Glacier National Park, there used to be over hundred and um I forget how many there are left, but but under 20. So, yeah. I mean, it's just very powerful. I had to go back and actually make things worse in the book as I was writing it because things were getting more dire than I thought they would get. I mean, it was just getting hotter than I than I expected and the wildfire smoke was getting worse. So, here we are.

49:36 Yeah. I hope not, but yeah. Our last audience question um is how did you know you wanted to be a writer? How old were you? Was there something, someone or an event that sparked your interest in writing? Um and then there's a a part two to that question which is what are your thoughts on self-publishing?

49:56 H I have no thoughts on self-publishing at all really. I don't I mean I think if you write a great book and and um you want people to read it and you're having trouble with the traditional gatekeepers, I don't see why not. Um, yeah, I I really have no thoughts about it. I just I think that that one thing that I tell my students is that um it's very hard to find an audience when you self-publish. You know, those gatekeepers exist for a reason. Um they have an entire sort of like, you know, publicity team and um and also people respect those gatekeepers. So yeah, um uh but if if if you're writing because you love to write and the size of an audience isn't as as important to you, then you know I one of the sort of thought experime I just wrote an essay um that I published in the Swany review and and one of the thought experiments in the essay was like if there was a sort of like Snapchat for writers where you

50:52 wrote a sentence and then it just evaporated forever as soon as you perfected it, would you still Right. And you know, I say yes because that's really what gives me the most pleasure is writing the sentence. It's not having it read. I mean, I love having the sentences read, too. That's part of it. But but first and foremost, it's the writing of the sentence. So, um, uh, I'm sorry, what was the first sent the part of the first question again?

51:17 The first part of the question, I'm just spinning out on this thought experiment and thinking, what would poets do? Where does the line,

51:22 right? Yeah. You know, um, well, isn't that what poets or did The first part of this question is how did you know you wanted to be a writer? How old were you? Was there something someone or an event that sparked your interest in writing?

51:37 Um yeah, I mean I I sort of always wanted to be a writer. It's a weird thing. I just fell in love with books. I think it was a partly just a generational thing like we all read, you know. Um actually I didn't come from a literary household but I just fell in love with reading. And there were a couple sort of like seinal moments for me. One was um my brother who's 10 years older than me. I think I was like 10 or something. He got um the collected stories of Ray Bradbury and uh it was this huge t I mean you know Bradbury has tons of stories. It was huge. And there was a giant picture of him on the back, you know, they used to, this was like in the late '7s. And um uh and they used to do that. They'd have like the entire author, you know, standing there on the back and you could it would be the entire back cover. And um and so I read that that uh collection like repeated over and over again actually every

52:28 story. Um and it had never I had never thought about authorship before then. Like I had never really thought about, oh yeah, like somebody actually sits down and writes all those sentences. But I kept looking at Ray Bradbury's picture on the back thinking like this person, this human being wrote each of these words and created these stories. And I suddenly became very fascinated by that. Um yeah, and then I just I I wrote a lot of bad poetry as a kid and um and even into college. I thought I wanted to be a poet for a while and then my um adviser took me aside and and sort of gave me a big stack of short story collections. I think tacitly tried to tell me I should try a different genre. So, um, and that was that. I I loved all those story collections I read.

53:09 Yeah. Thank you so much. Um, I have one more question for you before we wrap up, and this is my own question. I'm just so curious. Um, one of my favorite things about being a writer is collecting details from niche subject areas. Um, and you seem, if Dream State is any indicator, to enjoy this as well. Um, Dream State involves uh Wolverine conservation, cardiac anesthesiology, independent bookstore management. Um, and I'm so curious because Dream State is full of the kind of detailed specificity that produces a sense of the real. Um, you must have had a real research process. Um, who did you turn to? Did you enjoy it? How did you know when you were done? What was research like for this book?

53:46 Yeah, that's a good question. And actually, ironically, I don't really like research very much. I like writing, you know, and so I always feel like I'm not writing when I'm researching. Um, and I don't I don't like reading. I I do tons of it because you have to, but I don't like I don't like reading as research, but I do like talking to people. Um, and that's the best kind of research anyway. And so, you know, I I I know somebody who's a cardiac anesthesiologist. I'm quite good friends with them. So, I spent, you know, I kept texting this poor guy while when he was like, you know, he's a cardiacologist.

54:20 So, he was in the ER and he's like, I'm doing a triple bypass. No, a transplant. Like I'm doing a transplant. Eric, please leave me alone. Right. Um you'll be texting with questions and um the wolverine. You know, I I just happened to meet somebody who was a wildlife biologist who I I liked quite a bit and he worked with wolverines. He was a wolverine specialist and uh we became friends and I read his book, which is wonderful, The Wolverine Way. Um and um I just saw him when I was in Montana. He lives in Whitefish, Montana. Um, so yeah, I mean I like meeting people and learning about the fascinating things they do. So that that's really all it's about. Um, right now I'm writing a historical novel, which I've never written before, tried to write, and I'm finding that aspect difficult. You know, you you write a metaphor about roller skating, and you're like, did roller skating even exist in 1880? And then you

55:13 have to get on the internet, which I hate doing when I'm writing. So um, so that's the kind of research I don't like. Yeah, and that's a great teaser because that's the other thing I was going to ask you is what are you up to now? So, historical novel in the works.

55:26 Yeah, it's about the American West. It's kind of a literary western. Um I I'm I love the Western as a genre and I've never um for a while I was kind of I didn't really even admit it to people how much I loved, you know, True Grit and um but I but uh but yeah, it's I mean it's sort of I'm trying to some do something new with with the genre and we'll see if it works. Um, I'm deep into it now. It's too late to go back.

55:52 Well, Eric, thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to that. Um, and have really, really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your process with us. Um, thanks as well to all of you who joined us today. If you are feeling inspired and want to deepen your own writing practice, either in fiction or poetry, our slate of spring Odyssey courses just open for registration this Monday. For information on the five courses being offered between January and April, please visit odyssey.jhu.

56:17 jhu.edu. Um, we hope you enjoyed our conversation and encourage you to join us for more public virtual programs in the new year. You can visit hopkinsome.jhu.edu for more information. Thank you again. Um, and I hope you all have a really wonderful afternoon.

56:33 Thanks so much, Gabriella, for having me. Those are terrific questions. Thank you.

56:37 Thank you.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Dream State: Exploring Fiction Writing with Hopkins Faculty and Alumni"?

Gabriella Fee (Host), Eric Puckner (Guest).

What is "Dream State: Exploring Fiction Writing with Hopkins Faculty and Alumni" about?

This discussion centers on Eric Puckner's novel "Dream State," highlighting its exploration of profound themes such as friendship, marriage, grief, and environmental concerns, all set against the backdrop of the fragile Montana landscape. Gabriella Fee, a Hopkins faculty member and writer, emphasizes the emotional resonance of Puckner's work, portraying how it reflects the complexities of human…

What is mentioned in this Johns Hopkins University episode?

14 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Dream State, Eric Puckner, Gabriella Fee, Fontana, Johns Hopkins University, Flathead Lake. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Dream State: Exploring Fiction Writing with Hopkins Faculty and Alumni"?

The episode runs 57 min; the transcript is about 11,263 words in 98 timestamped sections.

More from Johns Hopkins University

• All analyzed episodes
• People mentioned on Johns Hopkins University