Ep. 303 The Culmination of My Psycho-Spiritual Self with Kaveh Akbar

Written By Cherie Marquez
Ep. 303 The Culmination of My Psycho-Spiritual Self with Kaveh Akbar

We are joined by poet and debut novelist Kaveh Akbar to discuss his book Martyr!, the story of a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants on a quest for answers and meaning. Kaveh explains how fonts play into his revision process, and why he wanted to proselytize the art he likes most in the book. He also reveals what he found most difficult about prose, compared to writing poetry.

The Stacks Book Club selection for January is Erasure by Percival Everett. We will discuss the book on January 31st with Zach Stafford.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Traci Thomas 0:08
Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I’m your host Traci Thomas and today I am so happy to welcome to The Stacks Kaveh Akbar. Kaveh is a writer, poet and educator and his new book Martyr! is also his debut novel. It’s about a young Iranian man who is grappling with his family history, his own addiction and his desire to have his life and death matter. I read and absolutely loved this novel and I am so thrilled I get to talk with Kaveh today about his impulse to proselytize art in all of his work, how he researched for the book and how writing a book of prose compared to his writing of poetry. There are no spoilers in today’s episode. Remember, the Stacks book club pick for January is Erasure by Percival Everett and we will be discussing that book with Zach Stafford on Wednesday, January 31. Quick reminder, everything we talked about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. Okay, now it’s time for my conversation with Kaveh Akbar.

All right, everybody. 2024 New Year saved me except for I already found a novel that I love this year, which is incredible and unbelievable. I am joined today by Kaveh Akbar. He is a poet. He is also the author of his debut novel, it’s called Martyr!, with an exclamation point, which we will talk about. Welcome to the Stacks.

Kaveh Akbar 2:37
Thank you so much, Traci. It’s so sincere honor to be here.

Traci Thomas 2:39
I’m so happy to be here. I have to we have to shout out Clint Smith, because he’s the reason I know about your book when he was on the show we recorded in March, but episodes aired in April. And he just casually mentioned I’m reading this book, that’s really great. You have to keep an eye out for it. I immediately started my 2024 book. I’m excited about list with one book on it because it was very early to be starting the list. But you know, Clint says it and so I’m really excited to be here with you now because I feel like I’ve been like waiting for this thing. And Clint was right. It’s good. Which I hate to say hey, Clint, I hate to write because he’s already like handsome and has a great voice and he’s a great writer and then he like also is right. It wasn’t the one athlete to athlete any No, Steph Curry. It’s just all the things anyways,

Kaveh Akbar 3:24
it’s really obnoxious. He’s the worst person to be friends with because he’s better at everything. Like like his He’s better at his hobbies than you are at your main thing.

Traci Thomas 3:31
Yeah, I get that sense about him. But he’s at least like kind of like soft spoken about it. He’s not like super in your face. You know? Like, he’s not like an asshole about it.

Kaveh Akbar 3:41
He’s the best. Yeah, he is one of the great sort of stewards of my learning how to write a prose book. I have my back and every step of the way.

Traci Thomas 3:51
I love that. Okay, so now we’ve done our Clint Smith, obligatory Smith praise. Now we get to talk about you, 30 seconds or so tell folks about Martyr!?

Kaveh Akbar 4:01
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I’m going to use some of my 30 seconds to just say how much I love the show and how stoked I am to be here. What a surreal thing. Martyr! is the story of a young man named Cyrus Shams, who is an Iranian immigrant to America. He’s orphaned he’s in he’s newly in recovery. And he doesn’t feel particularly attached to being alive. And he is kind of obsessed with this idea that the thing that he can offer the world is a meaningful death. And he’s trying to figure out how to make a meaningful death count. And he hears about this artist who’s performing her own dying in the Brooklyn Museum in New York. And so he goes to interview this artist for this project that he’s doing around secular martyrdom. And in the course of this journey in these conversations, his whole life begins to flip upside down and there are you know, and things get zany from there.

Traci Thomas 4:58
I should say to everyone, you can Listen to this episode we are not going to spoil. If at any point be spoil, we will make sure we cut it out and you do not hear a single spoiler because you just got to read the book. Okay, I want to start here with the book, where did you get this idea for this book, I have the we’re recording this before the book has come out. And usually when I interview someone, sometimes like, I get a chance to hear them talk about the book or talk about the work, but I really haven’t heard you talk about it yet. Which is exciting for me, but also means that like, I’m nervous that everything I asked you, everyone else is going to ask you. So I am going to try to ask you some tricky questions. But for now, I just sort of wanted over this word like Cyrus came from in the story and like, your interest in murders?

Kaveh Akbar 5:46
Yeah, well, I should say, too, I haven’t really spoken about the book much, you know, we’re still we’re still two weeks away from the 23rd. I don’t know what that math is. But we’re still a ways away from the actual publication of this book. And so talking with you is one of the first real conversations with a reader who’s not married to me, or, you know, like a, like a dear friend of mine, who I’ve known forever. So, yeah, the the idea for this book actually started with the idea of the artists performance of her own dying. You know, there’s a famous performance by the performance artist, Marina Abramovich called The Artist is Present, where she sits in the gallery, and people come and sit across from her for a minute, and she just makes sustained eye contact with them. And I always thought it would be fascinating for someone with a terminal illness to do a similar performance of their own dying in the, in the space of an art museum, right to in, in a culture where we are so insulated from death and, you know, images of the dead. And even when we encounter the dead, they’re, you know, fully made up, and you know, they’re in their in their best gowns or suits, or whatever, you know, and so to actually encounter the dying, right, I always thought that was an interesting idea. And one of the beautiful brilliance of fiction is that it allows you to play out a thought experiment, right? It allows you to sort of enact such an idea without actually having to be literally dying of terminal breast cancer myself, right, you know. And so it began with that, and I actually had this sort of, I mean, I’ve written a trillion drafts of this book, and they all start, I handwrite, everything. And so the earliest drafts were very, sort of, what is it Tuesdays with? maurey? Is that the book where it’s like, you’re like, sat across from the dying person, and there is the sort of oracular brilliant dying person? Yeah, yeah. And, and but I realized that there was no real sort of narrative pulse there. You know, it was just sort of a repository for this person to be saying, Why is nomadic or regular thing? Yeah. And so in figuring out a way to create a narrative superstructure around that art object, you know, Cyrus, who is now really the protagonist of the book, the center of the book, came into clarity and became the vehicle.

Traci Thomas 8:18
Wow, okay, you said something that we have to get back to. You write everything by hand.

Kaveh Akbar 8:23
I do. I do. I have 1000s of pages of notebooks and notepads and just scrawled and I’m super unorganized about it, too. So like, I’ll be traveling, and I’ll be writing on a hotel notepad. And I’ll be writing on the backs of menus and these and this and that. And then I’ll just, you know, periodically I’ll type it up into the computer, but the typing it up into the computer is such an important revision stage for me. Because, you know, with my hand and my you know, it’s easy to just make stuff on a page, there’s literal sort of kinetic propulsive it, there’s literal momentum, whereas on the screen, you know, you’re trying to fine tune everything as you write it, and it makes everything you know, you’re writing and Garamond maybe already and it looks so sharp, and it looks so pretty, that it sort of disguises half thoughts as thoughts. So yeah, for me, I have to I have to start everything by hand.

Traci Thomas 9:11
This is a thing I’ve heard other authors talk about, about the font mattering. And it is for me, a reader and a person who sometimes has to write but truly does not like writing does not feel precious about I’m just like, how quickly can I turn this in? I have never once considered font. Like, it is so interesting to think that like, I mean, sometimes, like sometimes it’ll be a book where like, one letter is like weird and I’m like, that’s such a weird, like, why is the G so loopy? You know? Like, I have never read a sentence and even or, like written a sentence and ever thought, like, let me change this to Times New Roman and see if it like feels different or like, oh, like, unless it’s Comic Sans, you know?

Kaveh Akbar 9:51
I mean, but that’s the zenith of the thought though, right is like imagine switching from Comic Sans to Helvetica or something very stately, right? Right, like that’s, that’s the zenith of the same thing. And I should also say that I started out in poetry. My whole life I’ve spent calling myself a poet. So I think a lot about that I’m very sensitive to the field of the page, right, the way that the poem is visual object works, you know, just visually entering my you know, and so a poll a page of, you know, really, really pretty looking pros. You know, the way that Garamond makes anything look, you know, make lorem ipsum look-

Traci Thomas 10:29
I don’t even know which font that is, I’m going to change-

Kaveh Akbar 10:31
Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s a sort of serif-ed Times New Roman. You’ll recognize it when you see it, but

Traci Thomas 10:40
Oh, yes, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Garamond. I do feel different about myself.

Kaveh Akbar 10:47
So you can see how Garamond will kind of give it this stately veneer?

Traci Thomas 10:51
Yes, I’m more of an Arial girl myself. That’s what I like.

Kaveh Akbar 10:55
I like to compose in Calibri or Arial. Just because they feel like neutral. Yeah, I was, like, I’m just seeing or like to do first drafts, or second drafts or whatever, you know, like, the drafts where I’m still very new to the pros, and it’s very molten, I like to do and delivery.

Traci Thomas 11:12
Since we’re talking about how you write we should just do this section of the episode. Now it’s very beginning then we’ll go back to Sure. When you’re writing on a paper and you’re not just like out at a hotel or like somewhere doing on scraps. Like if you’re sitting down to write is it a notepad, my sister in law is a professor, she works on her dissertation. Sometimes she gets giant poster boards and online, she like she’s very small. And so she’s like, get on top of the board and like, down on the ground. And like, yeah, it’s like, she just doesn’t sometimes if she feels stuck, she’ll like, get a big piece of paper or like a big piece of butcher paper or something. So I’m wondering, are you using lined paper? Is it in a journal? Is it a notepad I’m a I’m a yellow legal girly myself. I do love a yellow legal pad.

Kaveh Akbar 12:00
Yeah, I love a yellow legal pad. That’s, that’s kind of my platonic ideal writing surface. But I will say I often default to yield notebook because the moleskin moment or like, I need to be so precious. You know, any, any old you know, like, you get a lot of you get a lot of notebooks traveling around and go into universities and stuff like this. And so any any old you know, I actually I like the ones with the dots. You know, instead of the lines, you know that. Oh, like dreads? Yeah, like the dot grids. Yeah, I like those. But yeah, I like a yellow legal pad just because again, it feels so low stakes, like it feels almost like the paper of a rough draft. You know what I mean? Like, it’s like you just flip in, and it’s so easy to tear stuff out to write. The problem is that I often you know, just toss it back in my backpack or whatever and then the pages will tear out and get all out of order and sometimes I’ll lose a page or lose a couple pages and then I’ll be heartbroken so but a lot of a lot of murder was written on yellow legal pads.

Traci Thomas 13:01
I have a I have a whole book is yellow now.

Kaveh Akbar 13:04
And the book is yellow. It persisted. They intuited that through the through the language.

Traci Thomas 13:10
Do you snack or beverage while you write? And when do you write?

Kaveh Akbar 13:14
Yeah, I have IV drip of coffee going at any given moment.

Traci Thomas 13:17
How do you take your coffee?

Kaveh Akbar 13:19
Well, great question. I love this podcast. I don’t know if you know if the listeners are-

Traci Thomas 13:26
They’re gonna love this. They always love when we get into the weeds. I’m like, I’m gonna talk about this. And then all of a sudden, I get all these messages about how weird shit got. Usually we get weird later, but I’m-

Kaveh Akbar 13:36
No, this is perfect. This is perfect. Are you a coffee? Is that what you’re drinking- a tea?

Traci Thomas 13:39
I’m a tea girlie. I take my black tea with milk and sugar. Both. And a lot of both. Half and half, honestly.

Kaveh Akbar 13:49
Wow, I love it. I love it. Yeah, so I sort of trained myself to take my coffee black so that in the absence of additives, I would still enjoy it, you know. But when I’m feeling fancy, I do like a little bit of like oat milk or whatever’s or you know, oat milk or whatever is in the house just to just sort of set it off and feel nice about myself. Any snacks. I’m not a big snacker I’m not a big a right. You’re friends with Clint.

Traci Thomas 14:18
I should have fucking known. You people don’t eat! The Clint community does not.

Kaveh Akbar 14:23
I tend to so I tend to write in the mornings. And the food tends to be the Damar cater of when I’m done writing and can begin like answering emails or, you know, being a being the sort of person who manages of life that I get to be an artist and you know.

Traci Thomas 14:41
Because you’re a professor also.

Kaveh Akbar 14:42
Yeah, right. Yeah, I teach at the University of Iowa. And so usually I spend my mornings into the early afternoon on whatever creative thing I’m working on. And then I shift around noon or one or two into answering email. I was working on, you know, working on class stuff I, etcetera.

Traci Thomas 15:03
Can I ask a question? I’ve always been really curious about people who teach writing as they write a book. Yeah. Do your students and their work ever get in your way?

Kaveh Akbar 15:13
Yeah, so, no, they don’t.

Traci Thomas 15:16
I mean that in the nicest way. I don’t want you to feel like you have to defend their work.

Kaveh Akbar 15:23
No, no, I mean, my answer is that so like, when I was writing Martyr, I, I was on this sort of force feed, narrative diet. So I was reading two novels a week and watching a movie a day just to like, just dump narrative into myself, right. And so, I was just broadly klepto maniacally cribbing, everybody, you know what I mean? That, you know, the students work would indelibly inflect my thinking, but it wouldn’t be so there was never a moment where I was like, Ooh, this line, you know, is so you know, also I’m teaching here at Iowa a last year, I’ve only been here at Iowa for a year and a half. And I’ve taught a lot of undergraduate courses, right. And, and, and I’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to teach mostly literature undergraduate courses. So I’ve been teaching, you know, poetry of antiquity and and, you know, thinking about Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican and sub Saharan African poetry and thinking about, and so the texts that I’m teaching tend to inflect my actual, the registers in my language more than the students whose responses to them.

Traci Thomas 16:34
It’s interesting to hear that you were like consuming a lot of narrative and stuff as you’re writing this, because one of the things that I really loved about the book and one of the things that really stuck out to me, is how many references to other art pieces there are like there’s a there’s a coral opera that’s referenced that I was reading the book in the bathtub, because that is my favorite place to read. And I had to reach out of the tub and like, get my phone and play a library’s misery. Yeah, yeah. And I’ve been listening to it daily now, for like, the last three days since I’ve since since that section through to today. So I think yeah, like three days. And there’s so many things that I like, was looking up as I was reading, or like trying to find pictures of or like, and I and I had the sense of like, oh, the author here is like very interested in art, broadly. And like the stories behind art, which I thought was really interesting, because it’s really not about the song. I mean, it is the scene, but it’s like so good. It is about the song, but it’s really about the story behind the song. And so I guess the question here, and this is sort of a big question about the book is like, how are you thinking about art? ownership or like, art? Who, who was the art about? Is it about the artist? Or is it about the art consumer? Or oh, my God, or neither? It’s such a big question.

Kaveh Akbar 18:04
No, no, no, I love it. First of all, I love that you’re listening to like Allegri’s Miserere, Misery.

Traci Thomas 18:12
Allegri means like, cheerful. Cheerful’s misery, yes. And that first when I pulled up the song on Spotify, it just said, a library and then like, colon: misery. And I was like, Is this supposed to be like, I thought that was the title of the song goes into a lot of classical music. So I didn’t realize that like the artist is in the title. And then I looked it up. And I was like, oh, that’s the guy’s name. But that’s so interesting, because like, obviously, like misery is like sad and Allegri in Italian means cheerful. And I only know that because in ballet, you do a petite Allegra, which is like, yeah, just dance fast feet kind of.

Kaveh Akbar 18:48
Yes. I’ve always been fascinated by that piece and the story behind it, which is, you know.

Traci Thomas 18:54
Well, we’ll say that you have to read the book. Cuz it’s so good, the way it comes up in the book is so good, I don’t want to-

Kaveh Akbar 18:59
It’s funny, because it’s a true historical story. But it is a little spoiler adjacent. But But yeah, so I, it has always felt incumbent on me to proselytize the art that I love when I love it. You know what I mean, in the same way that like, if you have a KitKat, and you’re with three friends, you’re not going to eat the entire KitKat bar by yourself. You know what I’m saying? We’re not sharing. Well, okay. I would. There’s also this thing in Persian culture called Tarkoff, which is like this elaborate etiquette dance where you come over to my house, and I say, Tracy, do you want some tea? And you say, no, no, no, no, no, no, I couldn’t. And I say no, please, please, please. So I pour you a cup of tea. And then I bring out a bowl of fruit and I say, hey, Traci, do you want some you know, you want an apple? And you’re like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I couldn’t, you know, and I’m like, yes, yes, yes. You know, and like the old joke is that two Iranian Men can never get on an elevator because keep saying no. After you after you and then and then the elevator doors will just open and close. But I think that there’s some of that in the way that I love art too is like I just I love it. I love it, the things that I like I really become obsessive about and really, really love and and then immediately it becomes urgent that I you know, push that outwards and that I you know, every because it adds so much value and texture and meaning and joy to my life that I want the people that I love to be the beneficiaries of that, but it can be suffocating. Right? It can be exhausting. You know, my spouse has dealt with me for you know, a decade now of like being like, you’re gonna love this movie. And then just like hawkish ly watching them as they watch it, which is the most obnoxious thing.

Traci Thomas 20:44
I really relate to this. This is me; this is how this podcast started.

Kaveh Akbar 20:48
That’s what I’m saying. We we have these important simpaticos. We’re of the same tribe. And so inevitably, that’s going to come into the art that I make, too. I’m I’m never not thinking about a library’s misery just as I’m never not thinking about EPMD strictly business, just as I’m never not thinking about any of the other art pieces discussed in the book, right? Just as I’ve never you know. And so Bruegel’s follow vigorous is plays prominently, right? Proves landscape with the politics. And so getting to make characters nerd out about this stuff in ways that feel germane to the narrative is thrilling write again, it’s you get to just have and instead of having to exhaustively write, you know, a 10,000, word essay for Artforum about why I feel so moved by this piece of art, or whatever, I can just think 500 Excited words about it without exhaustively sort of researching every provenance, right? And just be a more authentic representation of how that effusion actually feels in my own brain. So fiction is fiction is a delicious, sandbar delicious, and it’s a wonderful, it’s a wonderful place to play in that specific way.

Traci Thomas 22:06
Did you like writing a narrative? I mean, you’re a poet, and I know another poet who’s working on his first novel, and he’s saying, like, that is exciting. But also, it’s hard. Because it’s different. It’s really different.

Kaveh Akbar 22:18
It’s incredibly hard. It’s incredibly hard. I mean, that’s why I was on this narrative diet, right? Because I didn’t want to presume, you know, the hubris of just saying, because I’ve studied poetry my whole life, I would immediately know how to write a novel. And in fact, I think poems are closer to dance or statuary than they are to narrative fiction, at least lyric poetry. And I think that in terms of the crossover, for me anyways, there was so much just architectonic Lee that I had to learn, you know, like I knew how to have I knew how to say wise seeming things you have like characters say wise seeming things do each other, but explaining how they move through doorways and how they got on a plane to the city where they would have this conversation or why they were sat at a table and what the table looked like. And you know, like, these, these sorts of things are the crisis of narrative, right? And, and I had no, there was nothing in my education that ever trained me to do any of that in a way that felt organic and not and oh, by the way, he got the money, because that’s how he bought the plane ticket. And then he got it, you know, what I mean? Like to actually seamlessly blend it in with the narrative was not something that came naturally to me at all. So you know, that’s why that’s how I could just watch any old movie on Netflix. I mean, it could be Pineapple Express or whatever. And I was still learning, like, how you get at you how you get characters through the beats of a narrative, right? How you get people through doorways, and into conversations and stuff like and what they’re doing with their hands while they talk, etc.

Traci Thomas 23:56
So I follow you on Instagram, and I snooping as one does. And I also love the acknowledgments of the book. And there is a person who is the first person you think, which is Tommy orange author of their their and the forthcoming The Wandering Stars.

Kaveh Akbar 24:11
Yeah, you should have him on the Wandering. We’re both from Oakland.

Traci Thomas 24:14
I’ve been trying to get him Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s gonna happen. I this is my year. When I started the show. The year I started the show. 2018 is when they’re, they’re came out. And so I didn’t really have a lot of people on the show, because people were like, Who the fuck is that girl? Five years later, six years later, I’m like, yeah, actually, he went to middle school with my brother. No way. My brother was like, I think I know that guy. Anyways, I’m sort of curious about that relationship. I saw on your Instagram that you guys met once. And then you met again recently for the first time. But you guys like have a daily writing group or something? You’re like in constant contact. I know you share an editor. I didn’t figure that out. Yeah. What is that relationship like? Like I just have to such a fan of his and I did. And there are things in your book that I was like, oh, even before I saw that I was like, Oh, this does have Tommy orange because there’s like all these different characters and they all have their different perspectives. And I knew that your book was published by Crom. Economics. So I knew that like, there was a chance, you know, your your novel feels very Khanum. I don’t know what that means. But like, to me, yeah, no, it’s high res. I couldn’t articulate what that means. But like, as I was reading it, I was like, this book is at the exact right place that it should be at. But I’m just curious about how you and Tommy work together and like what that relationship looks like.

Kaveh Akbar 25:33
Yeah, yeah. So he’s, he’s the, he’s the I mean, he’s my he calls it the band, we’re bandmates. And we and every Friday we do band practice where we swap pages still to the I mean, we just swap pages a couple days ago, but we we’ve sent each other Friday pages for years, I think since 2018. And that is how these novels came to be. He wrote wandering stars when I wrote martyr. Over the course of these Friday pages. He came I was teaching at Purdue University at the time. And in 2018, he came as a visiting writer. And he was actually brought by someone else I didn’t bring him. And I was like, in charge of driving him around. Oh. And as soon as he saw me, he ran up to me, like he was like, surrounded by, you know, thrown by this point, like there there had kind of Yeah, a little bit. And so he was surrounded by like a throng of acolytes. But as soon as he saw me, he literally, like, bounded down the sidewalk towards me. And he had a copy of my very first chapbook not even my first book, but like my first chat book of poems, and he was like, you’re one of my favorite poets, you know, and I’m not sharing this, like, so. But it just like, an immediate, you know, like, what? I know, like, what could be more endearing? You know, like, what could be more and you know, and I’m like, You’re Tommy art. Yeah. And so, we were driving around. And at some point, he told me that while I was driving him, he told me that he had just gotten to sit in on a Simpsons table read in California, like, like the actors doing a table read of a new episode. Yeah. And I like The Simpsons is like a lot. I mean, there’s a Lisa Simpson chapter in the book. And the Simpsons is like a huge, huge thing for me. And just unconsciously, under my breath, I was like, fuck you. Like, I was just, like, I was like, just like, in that way that, you know, like, it wasn’t like animosity, but it was just like I was that I couldn’t be the good sort of Ambassador of the university. And he thought that was the funniest thing. And he like, lost his mind laughing. And then we started talking like real people. And then, yeah, he wrote a poem that night and sent it to me. And so I wrote a poem once I got his poem and sent it to him. And then he was like, Alright, when are we doing the next one? Yeah. And so we started writing poems back and forth. And then we started writing pages. And then we started writing characters. And so yeah, he wrote wandering stars, which is extraordinary. Just absolutely, utterly. Everything you want. It’s like a prequel and a sequel to they’re there. And it’s also just this totally new thing. It’s, it’s if you love they’re there. This is it does everything. I can’t, I can’t sing its praises enough. But yeah, so he’s, you know, he’s all over this book, every, every page of this book, Tommy has read a dozen times and a dozen different forms, you know, in a dozen different drafts, you know, he’s probably read, you know, this book could have been, you know, 1500 pages, if I wanted it to be if I just put everything that I’d written-

Traci Thomas 28:41
We wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Kaveh Akbar 28:42
I know. I know. I mean, that’s part of the game, right? Part of the game is figuring out how to tell a story in a way that the reader will actually take in, you know, like, Richard Pryor said, he wanted to get you laughing so that your mouth would be open, so he could pour the poison down, right. And I think that like that understanding of delighting the reader, you know, like, actually, like, recognizing that the opportunity cost of them reading a book that takes 10 hours, or whatever you read, is like, you could learn how to order, you could learn enough French to like order in a restaurant off Duolingo in 10 hours, you know, what I mean? Like you could watch a season of any, you know, the opportunity cost of reading a 10 hour novel is so great that like, I’m, I’m very, very cognizant of that and every month, you know, and so I wanted it to be as compact and irreducible as possible, which doesn’t mean there’s not like flights of imagination and you know, fun and play, but I wanted it all to feel necessary, right. And so there was there’s so much cut from it. But I say this to say Tommy is read, you know about other stuff. Yeah, Tommy has read like, you know, five verses five martyrs back to back to back, you know.

Traci Thomas 29:54
Well, I will say how I have been describing this book to people it’s like this is one of the most enjoyable reading experiences that I’ve had, like, I’ve just really I really enjoyed reading like I just, I love your sentences. And I love Cyrus and like I just I it was, it’s like sad and dark, which I love. But it’s enjoyably sad and dark. And it’s also like funny and like, kind of like, got a little ad like a little attitude, bad attitude, but like, a little bit of an attitude. Yeah. And since you said this, I’m just curious now, what is not in the book that you wish could still be in the book.

Kaveh Akbar 30:33
I mean, there’s so much I that none of it that I wish could still be in the book, because I think that the book really is like the correct reduced package, right. But there are so many more dreams that aren’t in the book, right? There’s so many more dream sequences.

Traci Thomas 30:47
I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Cyrus, the main character, he has these, the way he helps himself, like go to sleep is by like taking characters or people in his life and like creating scenes for them as he’s like nodding off. And they sort of become these dreams that he’s like, maybe controlling, but also just like observing. So there’s one between Lisa Simpson and his his mother who has died. There’s one between his imaginary brother and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. And they’re these sort of like, weird little interlude type things. So there is an interlude. So it’s not that but it’s like these three. There’s also these like dream sequences that are also maybe like semi conscious. It’s like that space where you wake up early, and then you can’t quite fall back asleep. But you start thinking about like your to do list, but then all of a sudden, you’re like, at school, and then you’re like, wait, I have to walk the dog. It’s like that weird space. That’s what that’s what we’re talking about the dreams?

Kaveh Akbar 30:47
Yeah, there’s more of those. Yeah, so there are these weird little scenes that are and it’s, it’s a way of getting to know the characters. I mean, they were for me early on just a way it was almost like an exercise, you know, so that I can get to know who make it. You know, some people make like a, like a character bio, she Shams is six, one. Brown here, whatever, you know, and I sort of did these little dream sequences. So there are those I mean, there are gave the Cyrus’s sponsor in the book. Oh, yeah. There are scenes with him that ultimately were cut from the book scenes with him and Z actually, in his in game son like at a diner I put, I make ziens like, I make little, it’s nice to like, have a creative practice that’s not attached to how I bind my dog’s food. And so I one of the things that I do is like paint and make little scenes and stuff and, and I did put, there’s like a diner scene with them. And I put that into the zine, I’ll make sure to send you one too. But, you know, just just little sort of riffs and ideas. And there’s more of, you know, sort of flashbacks to Iran. And there’s an uncle in the book, and there’s more, there’s more uncle.

Traci Thomas 32:59
The uncle is. Uncle is my favorite part of the whole book.

Kaveh Akbar 33:05
I dream about him, which is maybe not a very sexy thing to say about it.

Traci Thomas 33:10
A very dark dream.

Kaveh Akbar 33:13
Well, that’s the funny, you know, I speaking of our friend Clint, you read Ross Gay with him. And I think a lot of I think that what your conversation got so right. And what a lot of people miss about his work is that he is so brilliant people are like, Oh, he’s such a joyful poet. He’s such a delightful poet or a poet of gratitude. But it’s always gratitude made wise, by having known greed is always deep. Yeah, there’s always like, the sick father in the room or the sick world in the room while there is you know, which makes the great I’m getting goosebumps talking about this, because his his work means so much to me, but, and that is the if the book is I mean, the book is obviously about serious themes. It’s yeah, yeah, addiction and wanting to kill yourself and wanting to make meaning out of life and, and death and heritage and art. But one can be consumed by all of those things and still enjoy making out with their boyfriend, you know, what I mean? One can be consumed by all of those things and still enjoy a movie or a concert, you know. And, and I wanted that sort of braided essence to be the case throughout the book. And so yeah, I I Hearing you say that it was enjoyable to read. I mean, that’s that’s everything to me that no joke that mean, that’s the most gratifying thing in the world to hear.

Traci Thomas 34:36
Yeah, well, it was. Okay. I have some more questions about the actual book itself. And is uncle’s job in the military? Is that real or did you make that up?

Kaveh Akbar 34:55
So the uncle’s job in the military in the Iran Iraq war was So, in the book, his job is to ride around the fields. After the battles have been fought, right, he goes out at night, wearing a big cloak with a flashlight under his face on top of a horse. And his job is to just ride around. And these dying men who’ve just given their lives in this battle, who aren’t quite dead yet, we’ll see this hooded rider with an illuminated face, holding a sword, he also has a sword. And believe him to be the angel of death, or, you know, in some ways, he’s there to validate their belief, you know, that they have died for a righteous cause,

Traci Thomas 35:36
So that they won’t, so that they won’t kill themselves, because if they kill themselves, they will not get to go to the after the here right hereafter, right?

Kaveh Akbar 35:43
Because in lots of Islamic theology, or in lots of Islamic beliefs, if you kill yourself, even if you’re already dying, even if you’re dying on a battlefield, you don’t get to go to heaven. Right. And so he’s there to sort of bolster their resolve to die nobly without accelerating. And so you know, the whole book at large is thinking about Cyrus wanting to kill himself, right. And so there’s this sort of mirroring with regards to that job being reality. I met so my father was in the Iranian army, as were all of his brothers. And, and he, in the end, I was working on this book, early, early, early, early, early stages, as you can imagine, and I knew that about the so they would give the infantry the grunts, keys to wear on their necks that that were like, they would call them keys to heaven, right? The idea being that these infantry were so sort of expendable, right, but they should be thinking of gonna die. So you need this key 100,000% Yeah, it was the first war since World War One to use human wave attacks. In other words, like, instead of like clearing a minefield, you know, slowly and deliberately of each mine, you just threw out like a wave of men to clear the field and then throw up right away, you know. And so they would, they would go into battle wearing these keys around their necks as as, you know, keys to heaven. And I was writing about that. And I asked my dad the word for because they had a name. And I asked my dad what those keys were called. And as he was telling me, he also told me then, that each battalion had one of these soldiers, right?

Traci Thomas 37:29
Well, yeah, but this idea is.

Kaveh Akbar 37:32
Yeah, I mean, again, like in my dad’s consciousness, and, you know, my relationship to my dad is not complicated. You know, like, all of our relationships. We don’t have to do that. Yeah, no, no, I’m just saying, like, in my dad’s consciousness, what he shared with me was a version of this thing. And I, as you can imagine, was instantaneously obsessed with this idea of these men who were like their peers in every way, except they would dress up as the angel and go out at night and comfort the dying and encourage them to die bravely and not to accelerate their dying in any way.

Traci Thomas 38:12
Right. Yeah, wow. I sort of was hoping you were gonna tell me you just made it up.

Kaveh Akbar 38:19
I’m sorry. Well, so again, like

Traci Thomas 38:22
it could it could- we were not sure. But it

Kaveh Akbar 38:25
It lives in the Schrodinger his Valley. I mean, again, like I can’t I you know, if if such a man existed, he’s certainly not going to go on American news and talk about it. Right. You know what I mean, and Iran isn’t going to say that they had such a man do it. Right. And there’s no way to prove that such a man didn’t exist, you know. And so it just sort of lives in this Schrodinger. Schrodinger is valley of possibility.

Traci Thomas 38:53
As I mentioned, I was on your IG stalking you. And on one of your posts of I think maybe when you got the arcs of these books, you said something along the lines of like, this book isn’t by you, or have you but but that it is you? And I’m curious, what what do you mean by that?

Kaveh Akbar 39:12
I mean, I and I told my spouse this when we got the final copies of the book, too. They, they were holding it and they were sort of like, how do you feel? And I, I really do I mean, it’s gonna sound like I’m joking, but I really do feel like with the AI that we have right now, today, like if you just fed this book to that AI, and then like, put that into like, a talking mannequin or whatever, like, it could be like, 85% of hanging out with me, you know what I mean? Like, like, like, like my spouse, like if I ever die or whatever, like my spouse can just feed this book into an AI mannequin and like, just kick it with me. I mean, I don’t know that they would necessarily want to do that. But, but it just, it feels like, you know, like what your thumbprint is do your hand like this is like a brain print. You know what I mean? I just like it and it’s such an uncanny way of talking about it, you know, I am in recovery. And I’m so I’m a sober person. I’ve been in recovery for decades. And in my particular vein of recovery, they mark significant intervals of sobriety with chips. And I remember holding my one year chip when I got it, and that feeling is almost like indistinguishable from holding the finished final copy of my book, right? It’s just like, it’s not this like creative epic of my like EPO. Ch. Not EPyc. Is that pronounced epic at epoch?

Traci Thomas 40:44
I don’t know.

Kaveh Akbar 40:47
Any words that I know on the page? Yeah, never have to say but it’s not this creative pinnacle. I mean, it is a creative pinnacle. It is not create a pinnacle amount but but it really feels like the sort of like psycho spiritual culmination of like, every meeting that I’ve ever sat in, and every, you know, every newcomer that I’ve ever helped in every, you know, every prayer that I’ve ever prayed, you know what I mean? Like, it feels like the culmination of my sort of psycho spiritual self, more than it does a combination of my creative self, which again, I know, it sounds like so it sounds like so sort of woowoo and pie in the sky and sort of pinky in the air. And like, I’m flattering myself, but it just, I can’t. And that’s, I think that was like the sentiment of the Instagram that sounds like corny or whatever. But like it really it. I can’t say it any other way. Like, that’s what it feels like, to me. It’s just like, here is, here is my heart. Maybe it’ll fit in your chest.

Traci Thomas 41:44
Yeah, I feel like some of the marketing copy that I got on this book, which I never read. But sometimes I’ll go back afterwards. I hate to hate it.

Kaveh Akbar 41:52
I hate it. Because I do the same.

Traci Thomas 41:53
I do the exact same thing. Because like, it’s a lie. It’s sometimes it’s such a lie that it will fuck up my entire reading experience. Yeah. And with this one, I knew I was going to read it because of Clint. So I was like, why don’t like when they sent it off? I was like it just send the book. I’m like, Sure. Sounds great. But I never really asked novelists about this, but it’s only because they put it in there. They call this an autobiographical novel. But do you call it Yeah.

Kaveh Akbar 42:22
I mean, I believe you listen, I believe you.

Traci Thomas 42:23
I saw that. And I was like, I read it after I read the book. And I was like, Well, do you feel that?

Kaveh Akbar 42:31
I mean, I yeah, I’ve spoken about this with, with other people enough to is like, I feel like I relate to orchid and the artist or the uncle as much as I do. Cyrus, you know, there are certainly superficial details of Cyrus’s in my life that have symmetries. You know, I’m an Iranian American poet in recovery. But so are there symmetries with our ash are good. And Ollie his father, you know. And so it’s autobiographical in that, of course, it’s all sure emanating from my singular unprecedented consciousness and everything that I do and language passes through the filter of my experience, but I didn’t set out to have Cyrus be an avatar for me or have some hidden set of symbols or shibboleths that would reveal something. autobiographical for the world about myself?

Traci Thomas 43:26
I didn’t get that sense. But I was like, I gotta ask him because I didn’t get that sense. But like, maybe I just didn’t, I couldn’t find anything about you online.

Kaveh Akbar 43:34
I don’t know. And that’s no shade to I don’t I mean, like, I know, my favorite writers do brilliant auto fiction. But I don’t think that’s what this is.

Traci Thomas 43:42
Okay. That’s not what I thought either. Okay, speaking of real life, things that are in this book, there is a plane crash. That is there’s no spoiler very early on. And it is a real plane crash happened in 1988. The United States accidentally murdered hundreds of people by shutting down and Iranian plane. Flight 655.

Kaveh Akbar 44:05
Yeah. Yeah.

Traci Thomas 44:09
And I wanted to know why you wanted to talk about that in the book. And also, and this is like, really small. You talk about the meals that were served and what was in the flight catalog? Did you actually look that up and find, okay, okay, it was so specific that I was like, either this guy is crazy, and just made up the most specific details ever. Or he researched the shit out of this. So you research it, but why? Why did you want to talk about this flight?

Kaveh Akbar 44:37
Yeah, so in 1988, a US naval air ship shot a civilian Iranian airliner out of the sky over the Persian Gulf. And 290 people on board were murdered, including 66 women and children. And nobody knows about it. You know, nobody, nobody in America knows about it any wrong. They literally put it on postage stamp. Just like I have an Iranian postage stamp, like commemorating this disaster honoring or memorializing this disaster, right, the same way that, you know, we have a lot of Lebanon. Yeah, exactly. And if it were the other way around, like, imagine if Iran shot a US airplane, you know, Iran would have don’t have a glass, you know what I mean? Like, and it’s like the, the imprecision of American justice is a given, right, like the naval airship said they thought it was a military plane, and it was flying too close to them. And, you know, the, the, there’s nothing about its behavior or its, you know, communications that said, it was a minute, you know, it was a civilian airliner flying on a civilian air path, right. And that number 290, is, I mean, I’m thinking about the same thing now in Gaza, and in Sudan, and Congo, and in Ukraine, right, like, we see these numbers every day, and 290 290 people killed on this flight, if it was 291, or if it was 289, my brain wouldn’t really be able to register the difference, you know, like, they’re both sort of like middle large numbers, it’s more than five, but it’s less than 50,000. Right? You know, like that. And, but that difference, that one person difference is this entire book, right? These generations and generations of people and also like, associated to those, you know, z is a character in this book whose life is indelibly inflected by this one person’s death on that flight, right? And I wanted to give the texture of individual narrative to a collective grief. Right? And, you know, because that’s what fiction can do, because if you see that one of those 290 lives is felt this deeply across this many generations by people so far removed from that one person like to begin, you have Ramadan, Novak, this polish Egyptian immigrant who has nothing to do with Iran, you know, but his life is indelibly impacted by this death that happened 30 years before his birth or 30 years before the actions of the novel. You see, that that one life and now now extrapolate that outwards? Right? 290 times, right? Or however many times you know, and that is the that is the sort of political exercise that I’m really, really interested in, right? For myself, right? Like I have struggle, I struggle to make meaning of these abstract numbers, right, right. But when they are lent the texture of individual narrative, it clarifies the magnitude, right? So if the only thing a person walks if someone’s like, I hate this book, but now I will always remember that in 1988, a US Naval Air airship shot Iran Air flight 655 out of the sky, then that’s a rousing success for me.

Traci Thomas 47:51
Yeah. Wow. Man to do just like an insanely hard shift.

Kaveh Akbar 47:58
Sure, sure. Sure. Yeah.

Traci Thomas 48:00
You said you don’t know the difference between epic and epoch? Pronunciation? Yeah, I think I did it right. I don’t know. What about a word that you can never spell correctly on the first try.

Kaveh Akbar 48:09
Oh my God. restaurant I always forget weird.

Traci Thomas 48:14
Yeah. Oh, is that is that a club is the most elite club Jason. Angelina Jolie. Wow, Quinn, Tarantino. Wow. And then others that I can never remember. But like many people are in that club is probably the most said word. And you’re I’m a person who cannot spell like a truly horrific speller. Yeah, I can spell restaurant. No fucking amazing. I can never revert I can spell.

Kaveh Akbar 48:41
Yeah, I can never remember where the AU goes. Yes. I know that an AU exists in it. But who knows? And like bureaucracy is another. Just like never do that. Yeah. Puke pile of vowels, somewhere in there. And it’s just like pure luck if you can. Yeah, if you got it.

Traci Thomas 48:58
Right. That’s so true. Um, I I’m just a little bit curious about what what things that that you were reading or watching when you were preparing for this, as you mentioned, that like, stick out to you as having been particularly formative or like, harmful?

Kaveh Akbar 49:15
Yeah, tell me oranges. There. There is huge, huge, huge for me, both near biographically. Like in terms of my life, bringing me in touch me, Tommy, who’s now one of my best friends. But also just creatively, aesthetically, in in tricking you by creating such a delicious narrative that you don’t even notice that he’ll go two or three pages of just thoughts about the world. You know, like he’ll, he’ll just like, he’ll just be like, here’s what I think about art. Or here’s what I think about death, or here’s what you know. And it’ll just be like a little essay, a little treatise on dying, right? But because it’s in this narrative package, you don’t even notice who’s doing it right. And that I mean, this whole book is basically just cribbing him in that respect, right? Because like, it becomes this incredible way to just figure out what I think about stuff and then take antagonistic positions from what I think I think just to sort of ventriloquist them and make the sock puppets argue with each other. Right? So that that is a huge influence on me. There’s also this book by Nicholson Baker, who is a big person for me, he he’s, he’s this incredible writer of ferocious, granular observation, you know, like the eccentricity of the way that he looks at things is so specific and delicious. And yeah, yeah. And he had this book called checkpoint that I read in high school. And the whole book, this, I think, was published in 2004 2005. there abouts. And so it was right after 911, right after we went to war with Iraq, right, despite Iraq having nothing to do with, you know, nailed it. And yeah, and, and the whole book, all of checkpoint is just an ethical conversation, sat in a room with this guy, who is deliberating whether or not to assassinate George W. Bush. And, you know, in the ethics of assassinating George W. Bush, he’s like, I mean, he’s killing a lot of people over there, and I would just be killing him and myself. So like, is that an ethical good thing, you know, and that see, I mean, I read this, like when it came out, so, you know, I was probably I don’t know, 1415. But I remember it feeling so radical to me, I remember it feeling like, like the Anarchist Cookbook, or something like I needed to hide it under my mattress, you know, because I was this Iranian Muslim kid who had this book about assassinating George W. Bush, and I read it and reread it. And I was like, Oh, my God, you’re allowed to say, you’re allowed to admit that you’re thinking about the ethics of something like that, you know, and, and again, I mean, I didn’t start martyr until 15 years later, right? Start working on murder in earnest. And it’s not going to come out until 20, or I don’t know, the math, whatever. But you know, it’s a long time between these events. But I just, I think about that planting the seed of like, you know, I mean, this, but I think there’s a part in this book where Cyrus talks about the ethics of kidnapping a conservative Supreme Court justice or something like that. Right. And it’s like, I mean, I don’t know, like, it feels like the net bad would maybe be Yeah, worth it. Yeah. And, and, and the idea that I’m allowed to write that sentence in a book is utterly radical, still feeling to my mind, you know, I talk to my students a lot about risk, you know, and I think that, you know, there’s a place for the kind of risk that says, you know, what, drugs you snorted off of what surface or what sex acts you committed, and what place right. But there’s also the kinds of risks, that’s just like saying, the really scary thing when you’re, you know, what I’m saying? The thing that could actually get you in trouble, the thing that could actually have people, you know, June Jordan has a poem where the first line is, What if every time they killed a black boy, we killed a cop? Right. And she would read that in front of groups of, you know, and this is, this is decades ago, you know, before, you know, even saying it now on a podcast, little like, Ooh, you know, yeah, but but that feels like risk to me. You know what I mean, that feels that feels like you’re actually advancing something that could be taken away from you, you know, what I’m saying? And I’m interested in in artists like that, who are really sort of putting putting something on the line.

Traci Thomas 53:44
Yeah, I love that. I told you at the beginning. I don’t even know if I said this on air. But I might have said it. Before that I was going to ask you a personal question. That wasn’t that personal. But what’s exciting to me, and we don’t have that much time. So I have two questions. One of them is you are a poet in community with some of this show’s favorite poets. You are friends with EMIF. And Clint. And in the in the same group chat, actually. Oh, my God, I wouldn’t be in the chat.

Kaveh Akbar 54:11
Sorry, I guess the first rule of the group chat is you don’t

Traci Thomas 54:13
tell who’s in the group chat. Anyways, I have my own group chats. Don’t worry, you’ll be jealous. But in the book, basketball comes up a lot. Yeah. And I know some other poets who are also really into sports. Are you a basketball guy? And how would you change the Pacer?

Kaveh Akbar 54:34
No, I’m actually a Milwaukee Bucks guy. I’ve been a Bucs fan since like, she moved around awhile.

Traci Thomas 54:39
So now it’s a good time to be a back fan. But yeah, but it’s the-

Kaveh Akbar 54:42
I mean, I grew up watching like the Sam Caselle Ray Allen Glenn Robinson, even the Vin Baker.

Traci Thomas 54:47
Bucks. I’m a warrior’s fan. Oh. Well, now it’s gotten really interesting, but it used to be like hell, and then it was like this is the greatest thing ever.

Kaveh Akbar 55:00
You’re at the tail end of a really incredible I mean, this is like a life defining run. I mean, I we’re sort of in a similar boat where like Yanis is the best player who will ever play for my favorite team in my lifetime. Yeah, you know, like, there’s no one, you know, there’s no, there’s never gonna be a warrior who’s drafted by the Warriors who’s gonna be a more important player than Steph Curry. You know what I mean? Like, we’re, we’re living in the peak franchises right now. Right? So I’m trying to like, absorb it all and take it all in, you know, like, Clint, Clint actually took me to, he was speaking. This was the last like, public thing that I did before the quarantine. But it was that bug season he took me to, he was speaking to the team, for I know, this is what I’m saying. He’s like, Yeah, it’s like, like, I’ll be like, you know, I’ll be like, ah, you know, like, this place said something about my book. And he’s like, cool. I was hanging out with Yanis today. Actually, literally the other day, I was talking about American fiction, and like, how excited I was to see it does a couple of weeks ago, and he was like, oh, yeah, cool. No, I just did this. Like, I just did this. Yeah, I just did this event with the star of the film. But it was literally like, I was talking about it like that. And then he’s gonna be away. Yeah, yeah. But he took me to a king’s Bucs game and because he was the guest, we got to sit like literally like feet on the hardwood. And it was like the coolest experience. I mean, I’ve been to a lot of books games now, but never like were like, you know, Chris Middleton is like, right.

Traci Thomas 56:32
It’s a tough time to be a warriors fan, for sure. But I just love it. There’s like this poet, guy, poet, basketball contingency. And people because I’m not into poetry, but I am into basketball. And I’m like, something to talk to you all about.

Kaveh Akbar 56:47
Vivian Lee is a is a really, really wonderful editor for Little Brown, who’s also like, in RS or you know, and she’s a huge clippers fan.

Traci Thomas 56:55
She is also the lead actress of my favorite film Gone With the Wind.

Kaveh Akbar 57:02
Yeah, I’m sure that she’s got I’ve never even made that connection. Hers his ally, but yeah, oh, yeah. Nabila loveless is a really, really wonderful poet who’s also like a basketball. Sanjoy priest is a wonderful. So there are Natalie Diaz that ruin Oh, yeah. Yeah. How are you feeling about Draymond right now?

Traci Thomas 57:20
You know, I have a lot of really complicated feelings about it, because I’m having a lot of issues. I really hate Adam Silver. I think he’s a terrible Commissioner. And I think he’s like a spineless human. And the whole punishment of this whole thing and like the arbitrariness between the Jama rant and the dream on thing made me think, oh my god, I like wanted to cry last night when I went to them and be like, You guys fucking roll me for those 25 Fucking games. For being like, weaker, because I haven’t been playing and then I come back out and they give you like, eight incredible games. And then I get off some shit that I did that was fully legal on my social media outside work.

Kaveh Akbar 57:59
Well, and the hilarious thing is, like, if he was like an NFL player being like, look at my gun closet here 27, ak 40 sevens or some shit?

Traci Thomas 58:08
I think it has, I think he would have had to be a white player. I think the whole point. Like if he was like a black quarterback, it wouldn’t have Yeah, the whole like John Moran punishment, and then trying to justify whatever they do to anyone else based off the arbitrariness of that has made this whole Draymond thing really frustrating for me, because I’m like, if you want to punish him for something that he did, during his work, job, that is against the rules of the job, which I understand your work job, it’s against the rules. So I get that, like, you super shouldn’t do things. But if that is something that he’s done, then you as the institution that is punishing him, you should have some guidelines about what you’re going to do the indefinite suspension. Yeah, if it’s a thing, like, Do you know what I mean? It’s like in your little handbook, hey, if you keep hitting people or choking out players that everyone hates, and nobody wants to defend or whatever, like, then you’re gonna get 10 games, or you’re gonna get 15 games.

Kaveh Akbar 59:08
Yeah. Defense is like a fine. Second Offense is one game.

Traci Thomas 59:15
Because now I’m like, Okay, well, it’s what Draymond did. Actually. less bad than what Yeah, John Moran. Yeah, yeah. So having all of those feelings.

Kaveh Akbar 59:23
No, I feel exactly I’ve always loved like, I love those sort of undersized players who are just like all over the court like diving after every so I’ve loved so love Draymond.

Traci Thomas 59:32
I, yeah, my favorite kind of athlete is, is the villain. I love. I like Steph Curry, because he’s great, but I’m like, he’s fine.

Kaveh Akbar 59:42
Steph Curry is like, the rich man’s Russell Wilson in terms of just being.

Traci Thomas 59:47
Who is my least favorite black athlete. I hate Russell Wilson.

Kaveh Akbar 59:50
That sort of like everyone likes me and I’m kind of neutral about you know- like Steph Curry actually has thoughts and ideas.

Traci Thomas 59:58
He’s a little, can be like a little chesty, sometimes.

Kaveh Akbar 1:00:05
When the games matter, Steph Curry gets more than a little chip, which I which I love. I mean, like I say this, you know, like I love that competitive streak when he lends it out, but he’s also like very clean. He’s a sweet guy like you understand that constitutionally, like he would he would have your back, you know? But yeah, I do like mantras. Terrell was one of my favorite players ever and now he’s like, basically out of the League for the same sort of vibe. You know, like, he was just like, he’s like, a little undersized, but diving after every loose ball and you know, all this.

Traci Thomas 1:00:32
Okay last question. If you could have one person dead or alive, read the Martyr!, who would you want it to be?

Kaveh Akbar 1:00:38
Oh, my God. Wow, I was not ready for that. I just in the interest of me not having to take forever. I’ll say Borges. I love Jorge Luis Borges so much. He’s like one of my Mount Rushmore guys, and just just just to be able to say that Borges spent time with a thing that I made. I don’t you know, I don’t think he’d like it. You know, whatever. I you know, it’s, it’s about you. It’s not about him. Yeah, I just to be able to know in my marrow that Borges engaged with a piece of art that I made would be incredible. If you asked me this question again. In an hour, I’ll have a different answer. But I didn’t think about it.

Traci Thomas 1:01:18
No, I’m glad that you didn’t. We got an authentic unprepared answer. Well, yeah, I think everyone that’s it for us today. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. You can get it wherever you get your books. I read the book, but I am told the audiobook is fucking fantastic. A friend of mine rosmond from the Stacks Pack read it loved it said it was so well done. So if you’re an audiobook person, I will give it my official unofficial stamp of approval cuz I haven’t listened. But the book is so good. I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be great. You can get it the book is out. Now as you’re listening to this. It came out yesterday as you’re listening to this. So go get it. Let’s get this book on all the lists and everything. I have no doubt we will be talking about all year long. So thank you so much, Kaveh.

Kaveh Akbar 1:01:59
Thank you so much, Traci. This was so much fun.

Traci Thomas 1:02:01
And everyone else we will see you in the stacks.

Alright, y’all, that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening and thank you to Kaveh Akbar for joining the show. I’d also like to say a special thank you to Josie Kals for helping to make this conversation possible. Remember the stats book club picks for January is Erasure by Percival Everett and we will be discussing that book on January 31. With our guest Zach Stafford. If you love the show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/the stacks and join the stacks back. Make sure you’re subscribed to the stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you’re listening through Apple podcast, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. For more from the stacks, Follow us on social media at the stacks pod on Instagram threads and tick tock and not the stacks pod underscore on Twitter and check out our website stackspodcast.com This episode of the stacks was edited by Christian Duenas with production assistance from Lauren Tyree our graphic designers Robin MacWrite. The stacks is created and produced by me Traci Thomas.

Cherie Marquez https://www.cmediacollective.com/
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