Lev Grossman (The Bright Sword)

Brett Benner: 0:52

Hello. Hello. Hello.

Jason Blitman: 0:54

It's another book release day.

Brett Benner: 0:57

Yeah. Another opening. Yes, they are. They never stop. They never stop.

Jason Blitman: 1:04

What do you want to shout out today?

Brett Benner: 1:06

shouting out today, two books I just read, both of which I really enjoyed. The first one is Liars by Sarah Manguso about the kind of dissolution of a marriage. It's really fantastic. I couldn't put it down. And the other one there's two more, but also John Fram's No Road Home comes out today. It's really fun. This is very much Fall of the House of Usher. The nude comes out today by C. Michelle Lindley, which I don't know much about, but I've been hearing good buzz on

Jason Blitman: 1:38

gripping, provocative and sensual debut about an art historian who journeys to a Greek Island in pursuit of a found sculpture and quickly finds herself immersed in a cultural tug of war and a complicated love affair.

Brett Benner: 1:51

bump bump, Bump. Yeah, it sounds really good. It sounds like a total, total summer fair. And then Ricky Ian Gordon's seen through a chronicle of sex, drugs, and opera.

Jason Blitman: 2:00

Yes, the composer.

Brett Benner: 2:01

Yes, his whole story. And you and I earlier were talking a little bit about Steve Sondheim and Steve Sondheim, I think is going to figure prominently in this book. So I don't know anything about him, but I'm interested to find out. And you, is there anything you wanted to shout out?

Jason Blitman: 2:17

Yeah, the other one I wanted to shout out is The Modern Fairies, a novel by Claire Pollard. Why don't they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen? That they are the same person, just at different points in their story. I'm

Brett Benner: 2:32

very wicked esque.

Jason Blitman: 2:34

a little wicked esque.

Brett Benner: 2:35

It's a great cover.

Jason Blitman: 2:36

People are thoroughly enjoying it, which is so fun. Those are some of the many books that are coming out today, Speaking of books coming out, you could find all of them in our bookshop. org page, which the link to is in our show notes. And if you like what you're hearing, share us with your friends, follow us on Instagram at Gay's Reading. And if you want to like and subscribe and give us five stars wherever you get your podcasts, that will help other people hear these wonderful conversations that we're having with authors as well. today's program, we have a Lev Grossman here with us. here to talk to us about his newest book, The Bright Sword. A

Brett Benner: 3:15

modern take on

Jason Blitman: 3:16

The Bright Sword, the subtitle is A Novel of King Arthur. And I have been using it as my little thing to prop up my microphone when we record. And when we were talking to him, I couldn't use it. So now I'm back to using it again.

Brett Benner: 3:30

Because it is a chunky book.

Jason Blitman: 3:31

It is a chunky book, but it's like made to savor anyway. Lev is the author of the number one New York Times bestselling magicians trilogy, the Magicians, the Magician King and the Magicians Land, which has been published in 30 countries and adapted as a TV show that ran for five seasons on Sci-Fi. He is also a screenwriter and the author of two children's books, the Golden Swift and the Silver Arrow, and his journalism has appeared in Time, vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times among. many other places. And his bio also says that he lives with his wife and children in New York City, but I don't know that's up to date.

Brett Benner: 4:12

I don't think it is. I don't think it is as we've came to find out.

Jason Blitman: 4:15

I know, is he going to find out? I'm Jason.

Brett Benner: 4:18

I'm Brett.

Jason Blitman: 4:19

And enjoy this

Brett Benner: 4:22

Magical.

Jason Blitman: 4:23

magical episode of Gaze Reading.

Lev Grossman: 4:42

Hi guys!

Brett Benner: 4:43

Hello, Lev. How are

Lev Grossman: 4:46

What's going on?

Brett Benner: 4:47

Um, we were just talking about

Jason Blitman: 4:50

Complaining about our mornings.

Brett Benner: 4:51

complaining about our

Lev Grossman: 4:52

Oh, well, what's happened so far? Or not happened.

Jason Blitman: 4:58

I ordered protein bars last night. from the, from the bad place in hopes of getting them an overnight delivery.

Lev Grossman: 5:07

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 5:07

Eight minutes ago, it said they were delivered at the back door in quotation marks, and I just went running around. I live in like this very weird apartment building. I just went running around like a crazy person trying to find them, did not find them. So I just like threw some cashews in my mouth. I was going to say threw some nuts in my mouth, but we just met. So that's, you know, um, so now I'm like sitting here, sweating. I'm like, didn't don't have a protein bar. Anyway, that's, this has been my morning and it's only eight Oh three for me in California.

Lev Grossman: 5:44

That is very, it's very dispiriting. Um, uh, sometimes they, you know, they, they, they say dropped off before they actually drop it off. I

Brett Benner: 5:51

That's exactly right.

Lev Grossman: 5:52

the delivery person is, is, is bumping, bumping down their delivery times. Um, I don't know. That's what I tell myself when this happens to me.

Brett Benner: 6:00

No, but you're absolutely right. And then sometimes now they'll take pictures. Like I'll get pictures and they're bad photos too. Sometimes it's like blurred, blurred, blurry. They're like this, they were delivered and I'm like, where is that even at?

Jason Blitman: 6:12

well, at least most of the time, I, if I see the photo, I'm like, Oh, okay. I know where that is and I could go find it, but there wasn't a photo today. So maybe love you're right. Maybe. Okay.

Lev Grossman: 6:22

be there when we get off the podcast,

Jason Blitman: 6:24

But then after that. Or like mid that, cause I had my headphones on and I was listening to a podcast. My friend drew Broussard used to co host a podcast called so many damn books and An episode that dropped in 2015 was with an author named Lev Grossman, and it was their second time ever asking the author what book they bought that week. And you bought An encyclopedia of Arthuriana.

Lev Grossman: 7:03

Wow.

Jason Blitman: 7:04

How weird is that?

Lev Grossman: 7:06

that is, um, I'm, I'm getting chills. Um, that is very weird. That is definitely the kind of thing I would do in 2015. Um, it may possibly be this may possibly be this that I bought. I don't know. Um, it's still, it's been my faithful companion ever since.

Jason Blitman: 7:24

I'm like, I'm power walking around my building sweating. I hear that. I like get so excited. I'm like going to throw up this and so weird. And here you are. Yes.

Lev Grossman: 7:40

sugar or, or you know, if you need to, if you need to get more, more nuts in your mouth, um, just,

Brett Benner: 7:46

Good recall. Good recall.

Lev Grossman: 7:48

that's a callback, yeah.

Jason Blitman: 7:51

Love, we just met. It's only eight o'clock in the morning.

Brett Benner: 7:55

Excellent. Recall.

Jason Blitman: 7:57

How has your morning been?

Lev Grossman: 7:59

Oh, my morning's been totally fine. I'm not in my house. I'm in my wife's friend's, ex husband's apartment. So, um, at times like these, one is always bouncing around weird locations in this therapeutic way. So I feel slightly dislocated. I'm also in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Perilously close to where I grew up, a place that I rarely return to, because it's always sort of emotionally discombobulating. But Apart from all that, everything has gone pretty smoothly.

Jason Blitman: 8:25

But you also typically live in Australia.

Lev Grossman: 8:29

Yes, I have been living in Australia for the last, year and a half. My wife's from australia. Um, she uh as a professor at princeton, so she is mostly in america, but um, she turned out missed her family and Wanted to go back. Uh, and I had been in new york for 25 years And I felt like I was ready for some sort of new adventure and that's the adventure sydney I mean when I As a younger man, it never occurred to me that I would ever go to Sydney, let alone live in Sydney. But now I, I am, apparently a Sydney, Sydney resident. Have you been to Sydney?

Jason Blitman: 9:02

amazing.

Brett Benner: 9:03

What do they call a Sydney resident? Is it, is there a nickname for it or is it just simply,

Lev Grossman: 9:08

There is, um, a Sydney resident is a Sydney cider, uh, which is, uh, uh,

Brett Benner: 9:14

it doesn't sound like a drink.

Lev Grossman: 9:15

say say that. Yeah. But that is an official, word for somebody who lives in Sydney. Sydney soccer.

Jason Blitman: 9:20

My husband and I were just talking about this we lived in New York for many years before we moved to California and the, the sound of a New Yorker is so much more like. Intense and direct compared to a Californian. And then we started going through all of the States and we were like, we were trying to think about where the reasoning is behind how, why one is an er versus an Ian and so a Sydney cider that it's very topical in my family right now. That's intense and awesome.

Brett Benner: 9:52

Sydney

Lev Grossman: 9:53

uh, it is, it is actually unbelievably great. I grew up in Massachusetts for which I don't think that there is an actual word for somebody from

Jason Blitman: 9:59

Well, my husband would call you a asshole.

Lev Grossman: 10:02

Yeah, no, that's actually my preferred term, uh, um, but not every, not everybody prefers it. Um, I'm a proud, proud moth hole.

Jason Blitman: 10:10

Good for you. okay, we typically start by asking people the elevator pitch for their book, but because you're talking about the adventure that you went on with moving to Australia, something I wanted to talk to you about was the difference between an adventure and a quest. Because that sort of, those, both of those ideas come up a lot in the book. you know, perhaps a misadventure. What do you, what do you think the difference is between an adventure and a quest?

Lev Grossman: 10:34

It's true. There's, I, I, I use those words a lot and I sort of use them somewhat interchangeably in the book, but they're not, they don't mean the same thing. I think an adventure is something where you don't know where you're going. You don't know what the outcome is going to be, uh, whereas a quest has a specific object, which you are. You're good. You're on, you're on an errand, and you've got to get that thing. You got, you're on a quest for the protein bars. You got to get them and come home again.

Jason Blitman: 10:56

Yes. And it turned out to be an adventure. But it wasn't, it didn't, I was on a quest that was an adventure. But an adventure isn't always a quest. Right?

Lev Grossman: 11:07

Yes, but yeah, the Knights go on many, uh, uh, they do lots of both. It's true. It's true.

Jason Blitman: 11:12

I'm gonna just call myself an adventurer from now on. I don't need to be a New Yorker. I don't need to be a Californian. I'm just an adventurer.

Lev Grossman: 11:18

I, it's just, it's a way I enjoy framing otherwise, humdrum things in my life as adventures, uh, just in order to give them a little extra vividness.

Jason Blitman: 11:27

Okay. Now that that's out of the way, what is the elevator pitch for the book? This,

Lev Grossman: 11:32

uh,

Jason Blitman: 11:33

this little, this short little document.

Lev Grossman: 11:35

everybody makes shaming allusions to it's size, it's girth. I don't know how it turned out to be that long, but that's not the question that you asked. Um, The Bright Sword is the story of, what happens after the fall of Camelot, and it follows a beautiful bride. ragtag group, of knights, in their quest, I think, to find a new king and put them on the throne.

Jason Blitman: 11:56

How long have you and your wife been together?

Lev Grossman: 11:59

That is a non sequitur. Uh, um, we got together in 2000, 2007.

Jason Blitman: 12:06

I ask because when you said my wife is from Australia and when you just said nights, they had like little lilts of an Australian

Brett Benner: 12:14

No, it comes, it absolutely comes through. You

Jason Blitman: 12:16

And I was like, Oh, when you're living with someone since two or when you know someone so intimately since 2007, that doesn't surprise me. And she's probably said the word nights many, many times to you.

Lev Grossman: 12:26

Uh, I can't hear it in my own voice, but, um,

Brett Benner: 12:30

It's very slight. It's not like, it's not like Madonna or Kathleen Turner. It's, it's a very slight, uh, slight thing, but

Jason Blitman: 12:37

yeah, not obnoxious. Anyway, that's why I was, I was asking. Cause I was like, Oh, when you said nights, that came through a little bit. Okay. I don't know how you're going to feel about this because. It's maybe disparaging to the characters of the book.

Lev Grossman: 12:49

Yeah, don't worry about my feelings.

Jason Blitman: 12:51

When you think about the people who died in the Arthurian legends, It's like, oh, they were the ones who were brave enough to be at the front line. They were the ones who were, who were the people that everyone was trying to emulate. And now we sort of have the leftovers, which is, that's why I said disparaging to, to your characters. and was that a piece of what you wanted to bring to the table? The, uh, people sort of rising to the occasion?

Lev Grossman: 13:16

Yeah, I think that's part of it. can certainly remember early on when I was toying for different ways of Uh, doing a King Arthur story, and it crossed my mind to, um, set part of it after Camelot, and then I thought, wait, uh, who's still alive after Camelot, and then I went and sort of looked at who was actually left, and I thought, ah, goddammit, it's not going to work, because all I have is these, um, you know, these little weirdos, lying around.

Jason Blitman: 13:45

That's the alternate title. The little weirdos.

Lev Grossman: 13:47

Well, I mean, uh, I feel as though, you know, the question of who is, who's a hero, who's a main character in the narrative of, of the world, um, it's obviously a matter of perspective, and what you have is people who are, have been put in the margins, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they. But people don't see them that way, and they sort of haven't been given the opportunity to, to play that role. and I thought it was a fun, it's a fun adventure to, to say, This, this, this is your moment, you get center stage, uh, off you go.

Brett Benner: 14:22

It reminded me, you know, Percival Everett, when he published James, when James came out this year, and he was very clear about saying this is not a retelling of the Huck Finn story. It is a character getting his due. And that's what I thought of in this, where you kind of have taken this island of misfit toys and sent them out and pulled them all center stage, which I, which is kind of ingenious, um, to kind of shift the narrative like that. And then you had all these familiar players making cameos along the way.

Jason Blitman: 14:52

They all look at each other and said, Oh, I guess we have to put the armor on now.

Brett Benner: 14:56

Yeah.

Lev Grossman: 14:57

obviously this is, it's one of my favorite moves, which obviously I, I, I did not invent. My, uh, my wife has just been rereading Wide Seg SOC, which is going to be, among the earliest, books to do this kind of radical change in perspective. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. It's one of my favorite plays. And then, you know, up to James. That move of, of, of taking a minor character and, And exploring the fact that they are the hero of their own story. Um, it's something that I, for some reason, love to see maybe because I have trouble seeing my own self as the hero of whatever is happening. Um, but it's good to be reminded that everybody is the hero of their own story.

Jason Blitman: 15:36

Did you see the play Gary a few years ago on Broadway?

Lev Grossman: 15:40

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 15:40

It was, it was post Macbeth. And it was like The like guy literally cleaning up the, the like janitor,

Lev Grossman: 15:49

Right.

Jason Blitman: 15:49

and it was his story, like cleaning up all the bodies sort of, sort of reminded me of that too,

Lev Grossman: 15:55

lot of bodies at the end of Macbeth, it's almost as bad as King Arthur.

Jason Blitman: 16:00

The play like opens up and it's like a pile of bodies on the stage. I, Joked about it's time to put on the armor. Until this book had literally never, ever, ever thought about how someone puts on armor before. And the idea of there being 37 pieces of the armor, I was like, wait, where's the zipper? Why is it,

Brett Benner: 16:22

Right, the

Jason Blitman: 16:23

how, how long does it take them to put this on? Have you ever put armor on? I suddenly was like, wait a minute. How does this even happen? Did you ever, did you get to practice?

Lev Grossman: 16:34

it's definitely not something you're supposed to do alone, uh, you're meant to have somebody, uh, helping you out with this. I can remember seeing an, I, I have haunted, you know, museum exhibits of arms and armor in the past few years, and I remember once seeing Suit of armor. Actually, you never say suit of armor. They never said that. Back in the day you said an armor, Which I tried to be careful about in the book. I Saw an exhibit of armors and one of them came with its own, custom three headed screwdriver, which was something the knight had to keep with him, when he traveled, so he'd get his armor on and it suddenly, You realized what an incredibly Pedestrian thing, it must have been, and quite annoying to get your armor on. I mean, most people with armor were aristocrats, and so they had a whole bunch of serfs they could order around. But, it must have been quite a, quite a production.

Brett Benner: 17:21

You know there was a lot of, wait, hey, I, I lost my screwdriver. Do you have yours? Would you mind just giving, you know that happened.

Jason Blitman: 17:29

that's what you're thinking. And I'm thinking like how, how a fire person could like slide down the pole and go right into their suit. And it takes like all of four seconds. And when a night gets the call, they're like, okay, hold on. Hold on.

Lev Grossman: 17:44

just,

Jason Blitman: 17:45

Five more minutes. Hold on. Just a second.

Brett Benner: 17:47

right, they just, and they wear the screwdriver around their neck. I was reading, I was listening or reading this interview that you did with NPR years and years and years ago. And you were talking about, um, T. H. White's, um, Once and Future King. And you said he took the ultimate English epic and recast it in modern literary language, sacrificing none of its grandeur or its strangeness. And it's very strange. In the process and adding in all the humor and passion that we expect from the novel. And I, this is such an interesting quote only because it's like you predicted what you were going to create. Um,

Lev Grossman: 18:18

I think at that time when I was saying that it had not yet occurred to me. Well, I don't know what year that was, but, um, you know, for most of my life, I thought that once in future King was, definitive. and, and he had, you know, it done it, it translated Mallory into, into a great modern novel. nobody else needs to do that. And it was only gradually that it, the idea dawned on me that maybe not everything, had been said, by T. H. White. And it is in some ways, yeah, in a way, I did try to do the same thing. And what, you know, With, with White, I need to sort of run away from T. H. White a little bit because he is such an incredible writer. Um, and find kind of blank spaces on the map where he had not gone. Like, for example, what happens after Arthur's death. Uh, I mean, White himself told the story of Arthur's childhood. Nobody had ever done that before. All that stuff about Merlin, uh, being his tutor and turning him into different animals. He, he just made that up and that was the whole first book. And there were some things I didn't want to describe because I, I knew the white had done it too well. and it turns out there were a little, bits and pieces that white didn't get to.

Jason Blitman: 19:19

I have two different. branches of conversation that I want to talk to you about based on what you just said. I'll start on a more macro level. Colum, our protagonist, I think is familiar with some of the Arthurian legends. when he finds himself in the thick of it, there are some things where he's like, Oh yeah, this tracks the scans with what I've learned. And there are other things where he's like, wait a minute, this didn't, this never came up in the stories. Sometimes it's as simple as a night has a hangover. Well, of course they have a hangover because they were drinking the night before very heavily. And you know, it's sort of like how you don't see someone go to the bathroom in a movie. You just sort of assume. Were there things that you, were surprised by yourself where you're like, Oh, wait a minute, This wasn't in the stories, and, and it just, it appeared in a way that took you by surprise.

Lev Grossman: 20:05

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, something that, a detail that I came on, came upon early on, that kind of made things come alive for me was, there's a, uh, historian of arms and armor with, who has the wonderful name Ewert Oakeshott. And he's written a lot of really detailed books about armors and weapons. Um, and, uh, when you're a novelist, the things that you want from history aren't generally the same things that historians want. So, it's often very difficult to find out the details that you need. And one of the things Oakeshott says, as a throwaway, is, um, That it was customary for knights to grow their hair to shoulder length and then pin it up on top of their heads, before they put their armor on, uh, and it would serve as extra padding. I liked that, but what I really liked was the idea of a knight taking off his helmet, and letting down his hair, after a hard day's work. Adventuring or questing somehow that feeling, uh, or that image of a knight letting down their hair Suddenly made me feel like I was in the I was in the room with him. uh, and it was one of those just those little interstitial moments in the in the in the day of the night, um, you never think about but but must have been very real to them. I'm sure there's others but that's the one that that leaps to mind.

Jason Blitman: 21:11

Oh, I like that. conversely, was there anything that you found yourself disappointed by? Like, I would have thought this person would be braver. Or, oh, I, you know, it was, uh, the walks were longer than I was expecting them to be.

Lev Grossman: 21:24

Yeah. Um, boy, I spent a lot of time riding around in forests. Um, uh, I feel like I had

Jason Blitman: 21:31

these trees look the

Lev Grossman: 21:32

the geography. Tolkien was very particular in measuring out exactly how long it would take somebody to ride from point A to point point B, and he never hedged and he always made it take that long. Um, I think that I probably skipped a few days gravely in that just because I, I couldn't face, I couldn't face describing more trees. I certainly remember that I think about the jousting thing, jousting got really important to knights, especially during peacetime, and they'd find every possible way to cheat at it, and they had their special sort of jousting armors, which was like this huge hunk of steel they would put on, because they knew they didn't have to walk around in it, or even swing a sword in it, you know, they would put on this just massive foot thick thing, Thing of steel, when they were jousting. That's a little petty, a little bit disappointing. I remember seeing one of them had a little locking device on their gauntlet. so they would put it on, pick up their sword, and then they would do the little gauntlet. So you can't drop your sword. You couldn't uncurl your fist. Uh, and I was like, really? Did you need that? I guess every little thing that, Gives you an advantage.

Brett Benner: 22:28

Sometimes your hand gets tired.

Jason Blitman: 22:29

I was just gonna say, I would be worried about it getting stuck somewhere and your like, arm getting ripped off,

Lev Grossman: 22:35

I feel like that would be, uh,

Brett Benner: 22:37

That's a very, that's a very, valid

Jason Blitman: 22:39

right? Isn't that a hazard? I'm prone to accidents.

Lev Grossman: 22:42

yeah, no, I know, I know, and every, like, every possible bad thing happens, happens to knights. You start reading about, um, how knights died, and there was all these sort of improbable things, you know, like, the arrow that goes just right through the visor, um, and into their, uh, uh, right, right through the eye. Right. Um, or even like a flying splinter. and you think, how could that possibly happen? but these things are sadly well documented or if you just, if you fall down in like a, you know, a foot of water, if you can't immediately get up, you will simply just lie there and drown. Um, and

Jason Blitman: 23:12

right? You will

Lev Grossman: 23:14

that happened. I know that happened a few times. Um, very disappointing outcome for any, for any self respecting night.

Brett Benner: 23:20

I know. Could you imagine that? And how did he die? Did he die in the field? No, he drowned in his own water in the pond.

Lev Grossman: 23:27

I think, yeah, heat stroke is a big problem. You know,

Jason Blitman: 23:29

oh my

Lev Grossman: 23:30

it wasn't always, uh, what you want.

Jason Blitman: 23:32

that should be like the companion piece, the Darwin Awards for the

Lev Grossman: 23:36

Yeah, no, I know. Probably more than in The Magicians, not to demystify things too much. I think when I started, in the early, draft of the book, I, I, leaned into these many indignities that the Knight suffered, and the things that, you know, the things that, The more dark, there won't tell you. I think I backed off on that a little bit because, the bright side in the end, it is a romance, it is a, an adventure, and not merely an active of demystification, um,

Jason Blitman: 24:04

that said, I said my first question was, was on a more macro level. Here's a micro one talking about, coming up with this story early on in the book. So this is not a spoiler. We're spoiler free on but I will say, it happens on like page 52. of 700. Um, uh, it comes out that Sir Bedivere is in love with King Arthur. At what point did you know that was a part of the story that you wanted to tell? Or when did you discover that?

Lev Grossman: 24:33

it was more like a, a discovery thing, which doesn't happen to me very often. But I remember writing that sentence, and then stopping and looking at it. And just thinking, there must've been this, if there had been a round table, which there Definitely wasn't, um, but if there had been, you know, there would have been, I'm sure, a lot, just a web of unacknowledged emotions or unspoken emotions, you know, going around that roundtable, that probably people felt like they couldn't express. And that, that story, it felt like a story, I'm sure it's not an untold story, literally, but maybe not so much told. It suddenly seemed like such a moving, an important story, to tell. I suddenly realized that that was a big part of, Bedivere, Arthur, I'll Always close and chummy, in the legends. But nobody ever said that part, out loud. And, since I wrote that line, I thought, ah, yes, absolutely. that would have been a big part of life at Camelot.

Jason Blitman: 25:26

Yeah, something that comes up. I can't remember if it's better that says that or Arthur in, a flashback, it refers to someone, sometimes he didn't know if he was a hero or a coward. And I feel like that really sort of sums up the experience of a queer person living in the closet or, not really coming to terms with who they are trying to find their place in the world. I, it's. You're a fiction writer. You can write all sorts of characters. You can, you are creative. It's silly to ask a woman how they write a man so well, or a man how they write a woman so well. But I think the layer of, sometimes you didn't know if he was a hero or a coward, as a, Heterosexual man, that was such a deep and specific feeling. where did that come from? Do you think, where, how did that inspire you?

Lev Grossman: 26:24

I'm glad that line landed for you. a good question. I mean, Even straight people know what it is, what it, what it is like to bury emotion consciously, um, and, we don't have to do it nearly as much, I'm sure, you know, there's something very universal about that, about David's love for Arthur, and I, you know, I tried, I did, I didn't want to take it on as an issue, you know, I didn't sort of want to say capitalistic, you know. This is about the gay experience of being a knight. It was just a very human story. And, yes, I found myself, you know, just very, sinking very deeply into that character. Um, maybe more than, maybe more than other ones. He looms quite large in the book. I don't know where, I don't know where it comes

Jason Blitman: 27:03

Well, it's interesting to your point, like it wasn't. I think I have a hard time, Brett, I don't know if you feel this way, but when it's, when it is explicitly a queer story written by a straight person, and this is not what this is, right? So I think that's why it took me by surprise. And so I was like, oh, this is like a very deep and complex emotion that like queer people really deal with and contend with regularly. And so I think to your point, it's not dissimilar from acting, right? You really tap into. a character. And I think to really, you've, you've lived with these people for a very, very, very long time. You know them so well. You're essentially their parents, their comrade and their, their comrade in armor. Yeah, so I feel like that's not to answer your question, not to answer the question for you, but it, it makes sense that you know him well enough to feel that emotion. Yeah.

Lev Grossman: 27:55

trans. and, he was growing up and going through that, over the extremely long amount of time it took me to write The Bright Sword. And I'm sure, I'm sure now that you've, now that you've mentioned it, I'm sure that was part of it as well. Ross is somebody who I feel, you know, I feel like, you know, I'm Nobody I feel closer to than, than Ross. I feel, you know, this very powerful connection to him and just a ton of empathy. I'm sure going, watching him go through that, and, struggling with it and eventually coming out. I'm sure that was part of it as well. I'm sure it's in the mix.

Brett Benner: 28:23

The arguments about Christianity versus secularism, becomes such a central part to so much of this book. And the idea of who is godly, who is good to follow God, who is not, what kind of person, uh, is a good person. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Lev Grossman: 28:43

Yeah, it was a, it was a. challenging part of the book for me. Because I, uh, I'm not Christian and I, I wasn't raised Christian. still don't know that much about Chris Christianity. The Arthur story from a very early time was a Christian story, and Arthur was a Christian King. Um, in early drafts of the book, I actually sort of thought, what if we sort of rubbish Arthur? what if we go the other way, wouldn't it be edgy to make Arthur, sort of lame and stupid and or a bad person. it quickly Daunted me that he really wasn't Arthur anymore. when you do that with him because Arthur is defining trait I think it's his desire to be good and to be better better than he is. And the other thing about, about, King Arthur is, God's kind of a character in the King Arthur story. Um, certainly if you read Thomas Mallory, God is always sticking his oar in, um, you know, and sending marbles. He's not a distant God. He's just like right over there.

Jason Blitman: 29:31

Choosing kings.

Lev Grossman: 29:33

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So this question of being good, it's really, it's a very live one. and the other thing about that's fascinating about Arthur is that magic is real in Arthur. So you have on the one hand, this divine supernatural presence, and then also this other kind of supernatural presence. And they're kind of threaded through sort of in this process. Woven way in Arthur's world and in some ways competing ideas about what it means to be good and how you're supposed to live your life found it very exciting and interesting to have these characters caught in that Caught up in these questions in this real way, which I think it is pretty Probably was what it was like to be alive in the medieval period. somebody, I think it was Barbara Tuchman put their finger on something that always had been confusing to me, but I never articulated, which is wait a minute. So in the medieval period, Christianity permeated absolutely everything, um, certainly in Western Europe, it was a life thing, people knew that they were going to heaven or hell, you know, but they didn't behave any better than we do now. they were still bad, even though they thought God was watching and that they would be punished, I found that, so weird, but fascinating, and I think that the characters are very aware of their needs to, their need to sin, and the difficulty of figuring out what exactly being good is, It's just a live question, throughout the story. And for me, kind of like the defining question for King Arthur, not that it has an answer, for whatever, anybody who puts their 30 bucks down, you're not going to get the answer about how to be a good person. But it's definitely, it's in the air, except everybody knows that one can be good. But when it comes to the details, no one ever knows that. The right answer.

Brett Benner: 30:59

Well, there's a lot of gray for all of us, I think too. And, and, you know,

Lev Grossman: 31:03

It's actually, it's a big question within the, genre of fantasy. It certainly from Tolkien on, this question of dark versus light, it's always the defining question, of fantasy. But as fantasy has evolved, I think one of the things that it's Changed for the better is this awareness that it's not really so obvious, as being an orc or being an elf, how, how to be good. And everyone's always trying to figure it out.

Jason Blitman: 31:23

Talking about the presence of God in the story, they are a great optimist when it comes to questions of how much people can endure. How much do you think people are capable of enduring?

Lev Grossman: 31:34

God, an incredible amount.

Jason Blitman: 31:37

Yeah.

Lev Grossman: 31:38

so often hear people, going through things that you, you feel you never could. And they probably, if asked, would say they, they, they never could. I, my personally have always been a glutton for suffering of various kinds.

Jason Blitman: 31:50

Yes.

Lev Grossman: 31:50

uh, I, I think it's sort of the East, my Eastern European background, because the slobs have always, you know, uh, uh, they go into that.

Jason Blitman: 31:59

I think the question, I'm sorry, really should have been, do you think God has it right to be optimistic in, in what people can endure? I like that question better.

Lev Grossman: 32:09

Yeah. I mean, it's a strange thing. because Suffering is super, is super real as part of the experience of being a Christian, at least in the book. Pleasure much less so. Whereas, you know, the pagans, pagans don't even really believe in an afterlife. Uh, for them, this is basically it. And you're sort of, the gods are trying to have a good time, you know, probably we should try to have a good time too. Some things that are, there are, worth, suffering for, and people in the medieval, certainly the 13th, 14th century, they suffered a lot in just unimaginable ways., I remember there was a passage about all the diseases people used to live with, um, uh, and their incredible dental problems. I think I cut that out because it was, it was too much. But you realize that people were in pain all the time, all the time, unless they were just real physical outliers.

Brett Benner: 32:58

Just the dental part

Jason Blitman: 32:58

Hobbling

Brett Benner: 32:59

thinking about, I know, but thinking about that, I was thinking about just having to get, you probably just had your teeth ripped out because, you know, abscesses and cavities and what else? Ugh. And it's not like they had dental floss and fluoride.

Jason Blitman: 33:13

you know, It's so funny. I didn't think we'd be talking about God so much this morning, but, uh, God is omnipresent in the book. But, uh, as I said earlier, choose the next king in legend.

Lev Grossman: 33:26

yeah,

Jason Blitman: 33:26

and nobody seems to know what makes a man a king. do you have, I don't, I don't, I'm not asking for answers necessarily, but like, if the question is, do you, what do you think makes the man, what makes a man a king or a person a king? we don't find it in the book. It's like me asking you what makes somebody good, right? Like, I don't, I don't know that there's an answer.

Lev Grossman: 33:48

yeah, I mean, in the Arthurian story, it's, the desire to be good. No one can say that they are perfectly good, or even necessarily they know what good is. But that desire to be good, that feeling of striving towards something that is better than he were yesterday. I feel like it's what, it's what makes Arthur as a character, including the fact that he doesn't always know what, what it means to be good. but he knows that he wants to be, and he knows that good is real. It's just, uh, um, implementing it is not always as straightforward as he thinks. Eventually he finds himself in conflict with God. He's been, like, it's not just doing what God says. Because sometimes even God doesn't get it right.

Jason Blitman: 34:26

Yeah, I know it's very overwhelming when you like, read the book and think about the parallels to life and what we are trying to do as people and, the adventures and the quests that we go on and, who wants to be king and who doesn't want to be king and who ends up being king and, uh, yeah, good luck, everyone reading.

Brett Benner: 34:46

no, but this reminded me, this reminded me of something else. Like, cause I was thinking about this and even in terms of what you were just saying, because there's a Part when Merlin is talking to another character about Arthur and he says, you know, Arthur really believes that he's worthless. You know, he was, uh, discarded by his parents and raised in obscurity and the world tells him he's a king, but he feels like he's a fraud and he's terrified the world will, will find out. And I was like, basically, he just. Gave the epitome of everyone's fear of imposter syndrome, right? That, that Arthur feels like, uh, and like so many people would, and why not? And, um, is that something you feel? Do you feel ever that, uh, that, that sense of imposter syndrome when you're writing? I mean, clearly you've been very successful. You've had this, uh, this trilogy that's been huge, but you're undertaking this and feeling like, Oh my God. No way.

Lev Grossman: 35:46

I'm feeling it right now. Um, I mean, Arthur's story. The weird thing about Arthur's story is that he's sort of Harry Potter. Um, you know, he's sort of somebody who has, as a, as a young person, was told that He has this great destiny, and he's famous, everybody knows who he is. but, but, oh, but he didn't, he never realized that his parents were who his parents were. Um, it's absolutely the Harry Potter story, but I, I tried to, I wanted to lean into that, that aspect of it. Because, the words you quoted, they are in the mouth of Merlin. Merlin. Not actually the greatest human being, in the book, but I gave those lines to him, in particular because I thought that they were true, and I thought it was interesting how even bad people put their finger on, on something, sometimes I know the ones to say it. One of the funny about the, Authorial lifestyle is you finish a book and then you go out and you talk to people about it as you are doing that You are also starting your next book because you got to get one, you know in the channel and starting a novel The experience of starting a novel. You know, I rarely feel like a bigger idiot or a bigger imposter than when i'm writing the first line of a novel because you write the sentence and you stop and you look at it and you think are you kidding me? You really believe that someday that's going to be printed that Anybody but you is going to read that, what do you think you're doing? You really do go back to the beginning. Actually, not to the absolute beginning. I can remember Trying to write novels before I had been published and it's never been as bad as that. I know now, at least, that I have done it before, um, but it still seems impossible and that there's something actually wrong with me. Um, which means that other people can write novels, but, but not me. I

Jason Blitman: 37:19

Well just start breaking them up into smaller ones. Then you could write

Lev Grossman: 37:27

I, I, I'm gonna put, going on the record, I will never write a 700 page novel again.

Jason Blitman: 37:32

You heard it here first everyone.

Lev Grossman: 37:34

Yeah, no, It's great to do it once, every writer ought to write a big massive novel once, but then maybe not twice.

Brett Benner: 37:43

Tell that to George Martin.

Lev Grossman: 37:45

Which, by the way, this, George, all of the Game of Thrones novels are longer than this novel. Like, this novel, it's quite long, but this is not absolutely freakishly long. Especially for

Jason Blitman: 37:56

not. I'm, it's really, it's honestly, it's not even 700 pages. So like, it's, let's, Give yourself some credit. It's both long, but also not crazy long. It's

Brett Benner: 38:06

think it's, I think it's appropriate to the, I do think it's appropriate. to the genre. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 38:10

You've brought up Tolkien multiple times now. I, much to my husband's chagrin, have not read any of the Lord of the Rings books. He thinks I would really like them. Um, were, you were inspired by them? I read this and I was like, Oh, I feel like this is probably what it feels like to read a Lord of the Rings book.

Lev Grossman: 38:28

I've read the Lord of the Rings one time, and I've never re read it, um, but, you know, certainly that story, is so familiar and so, deeply ingrained in our consciousness that, you want to do, variations on and I have a bad habit of rubbishing Tolkien and saying, look, it's just was just dark versus light, and you know, as we all know, the world is more complicated than that. I think, I feel like Tolkien, Tolkien probably understood that too. But still, it's, it's hard, especially when you're sort of crossing to the epic side. The Magician's Books weren't epic fantasy, they were much cozier than that. They were much more in the sort of C. S. Lewis, Philip Pullman category. but when you cross into the epic, the epic form, and you, and you're going to have a big battle, and when you're going to have people riding on horses, a very long distance, Tolkien is always looking over your shoulder. Tolkien, interestingly, who wrote the first half of an Arthurian epic, but then gave up, I always find that an interesting factoid, he never finished, he just walked away.

Jason Blitman: 39:20

Do we think that lives somewhere?

Lev Grossman: 39:21

Oh, it's, it's, it's out there. It's actually really good. I'm sorry, I feel disappointed that Tolkien didn't finish it.

Brett Benner: 39:27

I think he had imposter syndrome and that killed him. He's like, how can I ever do this after Lord of the Rings? But by the way, I have to say it's interesting that you brought up CS Lewis, because as we're talking about this, I remember distinctly in my church. When I grew up, they had a library and the two for kids, there was not really anything, but the two things you could check out were the Tolkien books, which is what I did and the CS Lewis books. That was it. So it's so fascinating that they're the two you picked up on. And Jason, as a side note, I would have to say, I think you'd be bored stiff with those books. Like I think you'd be much more suited to honestly, the ones in future King or the myths of Avalon. Both of, Mists of Avalon I think you would love, but the Tolkien, like, you would like, put your head through a wall. It, they're, they're,

Jason Blitman: 40:15

My husband was like, skip the songs that you can like skim through certain things.

Brett Benner: 40:20

No, I thought,

Lev Grossman: 40:21

He shouldn't have put Tom Bombadil at the beginning. Tom Bombadil is a poor ambassador for what, you know, what's going to come. Tom Bombadil utters a lot of poetry.

Brett Benner: 40:30

Yeah,

Jason Blitman: 40:31

You talk about dark versus light and Tolkien. And it's so interesting that those stories are so popular, but also so is Star Wars and it's the same thing. And yet the world is so much more complicated than that. And I think it's just processing right now. Like, Oh, I think humans really need a sort of distilled and simple, dark first light story to help us sleep at night.

Lev Grossman: 40:51

I think it's a, it's a profound human wish to that, that the lines were clear.

Jason Blitman: 40:55

Yeah.

Lev Grossman: 40:56

And I always, I'd always look actually to George RR Martin as the person for me who intervened in that tradition in that way and so powerfully and, broke it into gray shards, where you don't even know who to root for anymore. Um,

Brett Benner: 41:08

probably because there's so many fucking characters.

Lev Grossman: 41:11

yeah.

Jason Blitman: 41:12

Everyone gets to pick one.

Brett Benner: 41:14

I mean, so many, I think I got to like book seven and then I was like, really, we're still going for 850. I'm gonna come on. Let's bring it home, Rand. I'm like, I'm done.

Jason Blitman: 41:24

completely unrelated, but I need to say it before this conversation ends for our listeners. As you were talking about writing and imposter syndrome and et cetera, there's a line in the book back to talking about Bedivere Loving King Arthur, where you go on to describe that Arthur definitely spent a lot of his time in the company of a lot of big, strong, sweaty men. And our listeners, who have always had imposter syndrome about writing, take that and give us the fanfiction that we deserve, gaysreadingatgmail. com, we'll share it with you, I want to read every single one.

Lev Grossman: 42:06

you know, there's a lot of untold stories in there. They've been telling Arthur stories for 1400 years. There's so much left to do.

Jason Blitman: 42:12

I know. I was like, Oh, the King Arthur smut. I could get on board with that. I think I found my niche of where I'm going to become a writer.

Lev Grossman: 42:19

Just have them take off the armor first.

Jason Blitman: 42:22

Yes, exactly. That's what we've learned. We've

Lev Grossman: 42:24

girls, you know, stay

Brett Benner: 42:25

find your

Lev Grossman: 42:26

off the armor. Yeah, exactly.

Jason Blitman: 42:28

Bring BYO screwdriver.

Lev Grossman: 42:30

Yeah,

Jason Blitman: 42:31

You have not always been a fantasy writer. You've written nonfiction. You've written articles. You've like done a lot in your career. And Colum, our protagonist. it's told early on in the book, I'm paraphrasing, but the idea of stories smothering over the gaps and sharp edges of the world. do you believe that to be true? Yeah.

Lev Grossman: 42:55

I feel it. I mean, telling stories. I actually feel like it's a fundamental cognitive part of what we do. Every second of every day. I mean, it's how we organize, our sense of what's happening to us, I feel like is, into stories and, one rolls into the next in this sort of ineffable way, and then, you know, some of us make a specialty of telling them in this particular way, in books, but I think something which we're all doing all the time, and it allows us to you. Very certain things, certain facts that we, that we don't want to look at, for better or worse, and just say, that's the Not germane to the story. we're gonna leave that aside. Because it's in the air, the, um, that story of, uh, about Alice Munro that has come out the last couple days, I was talking about it with my wife. And, you know, she just talked about how Munro probably couldn't tell that story, couldn't tell the story of her life that had that abuse in it. And so, um, Pushed it to one side, and never reckoned with it. So I feel like stories are incredibly wonderful and magic. And I, you know, I tend not to tell, I don't do avant garde sort of modernist stories that, you know, that are all broken apart. You don't know where, where things are happening. I like to tell straight ahead stories with a powerful arc to them, but I'm also trying to stay conscious of, the many things that stories conceal, while they're being told. Telling about other things.

Jason Blitman: 44:05

I love that. Because of my discovery of you buying the encyclopedia of Arthuriana back in 2015, there's, you go on record saying that on another podcast. Reflecting back, are you, are you surprised? Are you proud? Can you believe that you did it? That you didn't put it in the drawer like Tolkien? That you, how are you feeling? This is, you, you, you did it. You did the thing.

Lev Grossman: 44:33

I, I'm still in the phase where I wake up in the morning and then I remember. I actually finished the book. Um, and my job today is not to get up and work on the bright sword. Anybody who spends 10 years on a novel, it doesn't, it has gotten lost in the middle, because it doesn't take that long to write a novel, even a super long novel. and I did get lost with the bright sword, a number of times. and then I feel like I've found my way in the end and I wrote the book that I wanted to write, but I didn't always know that, that it was going to end that way. I thought, maybe this is just isn't going to go anywhere and I'll look back and I'll have wasted five years of my life. it's a very good and, and, uh, very relieved feeling that, uh, it's done and it's the best book I could write. And it's, and it's going out there. It was a real struggle, uh, this book, and I even, I can't, to this day, put words as to exactly why, um, but it turned out, sometimes you're drawn to stories that you feel like you have to tell, and sometimes those stories are actually stories that are really hard for you to tell, um, I know that it overlapped with a lot of personal stuff for me that probably required working through as I was writing, um, there's a lot of fathers and sons in, in King Arthur, I'm sure that I was working through things about my own dad, and being a father while I was, while I was, uh, writing it. I had to do a lot of processing to get to the end of this. Um, uh, and I feel, you know, I feel super proud of the book, uh, but it definitely went through some dark, some dark, I went through some dark woods along the way.

Jason Blitman: 45:56

Might you say it was both a quest and an adventure?

Lev Grossman: 46:00

That is absolutely true. I will definitely sign off on that statement.

Jason Blitman: 46:05

Lev, this has been really lovely. the book is, uh,

Brett Benner: 46:09

It's fantastic.

Jason Blitman: 46:10

It's exciting to read. It's exciting to be a part of this world. and frankly, to be on, on the quest and the adventure with them. So thank you for sharing it with us. Lev Grossman, thank you so much for being here today.

Lev Grossman: 46:23

Yeah, thank you for Having me on.

Jason Blitman: 46:25

Everyone, make sure to check out The Bright Sword. You can find that. in our bookshop. org page. The link to that is in our show notes. All right. We'll see you soon. Bye.

46:35

I'm not sure I can do this.