Ep. 343 The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead — The Stacks Book Club (Franklin Leonard)
It’s The Stacks Book Club Day, and we’re diving into The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Franklin Leonard returns as our guest to examine this powerful novel set in a brutal Jim Crow-era reform school. In today’s conversation, we discuss the ways Nickel Academy serves as a metaphor for America, exploring themes of good versus evil and the resilience required to confront systemic injustice.
There are spoilers on today's episode.
Be sure to listen to the end of today’s episode to find out what our November book club pick will be.
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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, 2024)
Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023)
"Ep. 239 The Purpose of a System Is What It Does with Mariame Kaba" (The Stacks)
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson, 2023)
Luster by Raven Leilani
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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 is the stacks book club day. We are joined once again, by Hollywood producer and creator of the blacklist, Franklin Leonard. Franklin is here to help me discuss the nickel boys by Colson Whitehead. This book is a Pulitzer Prize and national book, award winning novel. It is set in the Jim Crow South and follows the story of Elwood Curtis, a young black boy sent to a brutal reform school today. Franklin and I dig into this novel discussing which parts worked for us, what didn't, and how the novel stacks up to the forthcoming film that will be out later this year, there are spoilers in today's episode. Be sure to listen through to the end of today's episode to find out what our November book club pick will be. And quick reminder everything we talk about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. If you love the stacks and you want inside access to it, head over to patreon.com/the stacks and join the stacks. Pack for just $5 a month, you get to be part of the best bookish community that has ever existed in the history of books. This has definitely been fact checked. I promise you can get access to our Discord, join our monthly virtual book club meetups and get a bonus episode each month. You also get to know that by being part of the stacks pack, you make it possible for me to make this show every single week. So if you like what you hear, please go to patreon.com/the stacks and join another fun perk of the stacks pack is that you get a shout out on this very podcast. So thank you to our newest members, Melanie Madden, Katie Cara and Lisa Lucero crier. Also, if you love the show, you want to support the work that I'm doing, but maybe don't want to be part of a bookish community. I have a newsletter just for you. It is called unstacked. You can access that by going to Traci thomas.substack.com you can get my hot takes on books, pop culture, find out what I'm going to be up to next, and all of that goes right to your email inbox. Again. That's Traci, thomas.substack.com Okay, enough of that time for my conversation about the nickel boys with Franklin Leonard. And reminder, there are spoilers.
All right, everybody, I am joined again today with Franklin Leonard, the creator of the blacklist, Mr. Hollywood himself, Franklin, welcome back to the stacks. Thank
Franklin Leonard 2:38
you for having me. I'm anxious about this. I mentioned this before, but I'm anxious about this conversation. I don't think I've had a conversation about a text in years, at least in public. I
Traci Thomas 2:49
have a feeling that you're, we're gonna get to the end of this conversation, and you're gonna be like, that was so much fun. Every time I do book club episode, when people feel anxious about it, they end up really having a good time. So I'm just gonna put that into the universe. And to be
Franklin Leonard 3:04
clear, I think I'll have fun. I think there will be a cycle of oh my god, I sounded like an idiot immediately after the conversation's over. That's my bigger fear. Well,
Traci Thomas 3:13
let me tell folks what we're talking about today is the Stax book club day. We're talking about the Pulitzer Prize and national book award winning novel, the nickel boys by Colson Whitehead, which is also being turned into a major motion picture, which you and I have both seen. So we can talk about it briefly, though, originally, it was coming out at the end of October, and now it's not coming out until December. So people at home, you'll have to wait a little bit longer. Wait.
Franklin Leonard 3:39
I'm going to interrupt you for one second because I want to point out that then moving it to December is a mark of distinction of how strong the movie is. You do that when you know that your movie is in the hunt for Academy Awards, as this one is, and that is why it was moved. So for those unfamiliar with the goings on in Hollywood, the move is an indication even more that you should see the film, not less
Traci Thomas 4:05
Yes, yes, yes, yes. But you'll just have to be more patient for folks who are listening, who haven't read the book, please know we are going to spoil this book, and this is one of those books that you do want to read before it gets spoiled for you so you can turn us off and read the book. It's very short, and come back and everybody else, I'm going to give you a quick rundown of what what the book is about. It is about a young man named Elwood in the 1960s living in Florida who gets in trouble with the law and sent to a reform school for boys called the Nick called nickel. Nickel Academy, called the nickel called nickel Academy. It is for both white and black children, though it is segregated, and he meets another boy there named Turner, and they become besties. And the place is really fucked up and abusive. And they treat the kids terrible, and it is based on a true true story, true history. So that's sort of the quick rundown. We always start here Franklin, which is like, just generally, what did you think of the book, and was this your first time reading it? This
Franklin Leonard 5:16
was my first time reading it. And it's funny because this conversation, like deciding to have this conversation coincided with the movie coming out, and I was asked to moderate the Q and A's for it at the Telluride Film Festival. And so I was reading it in sort of double capacity, which, you know, if you value efficiency in your life, like I do, it was like, this is a win. I have to read a book that I've wanted to read for a while, and it has two purposes. I was flattened by this book and absolutely heartbroken by it. I think, look, there's no secret that I'm a fan of Colson Whitehead. There's a reason why a lot of people were fans of Colson Whitehead as a writer. But this book in particular, yeah, it just it obliterated me in so many ways, and I think has forced a lot of introspection about what I believe about the world as a consequence.
Traci Thomas 6:01
Okay, we're gonna talk about that. Did you read it? You read it before you saw the movie? Yes,
Franklin Leonard 6:08
I read it before I saw the movie. Okay, same.
Traci Thomas 6:10
So this was my second time reading the book, and I the first time I read the book, felt the same as you. I was like gutted by the ending. I did not see the sort of twist which we can talk about coming even though it is literally on the cover of the book. I somehow missed. I missed that. You're not the only one, but on this, yeah, I don't think so. I think a lot of people missed it, but on this second read, I have to be honest with you, I didn't like it as much, really. I to me the ending was so important, I think, for my love of the book like that, I was so blown away by this twist and that that was so much of the emotional resonance that, because I knew that was coming. I think I just read the whole book this time, looking for clues to see how he did it, and kind of being disappointed, because I felt like he didn't really, there were no tricks. He just did it. He just was like, Nope, this is another kid. He does leave clues throughout, including the first sentence of the book and the cover and all of that. But I didn't. I don't I don't know why I didn't feel as tied to the book in the same way that I did the first time. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think it's really good. I think the writing is really good, but I didn't have any emotional response even to some of the earlier stuff, some of the abuses and things. And I maybe attribute that to the fact that I read a lot of dark non fiction about this kind of stuff, and so I sort of wasn't feeling like as sad about it. I don't know I did like the stories of all the boy the other boys like in the at Nickel more this time, I was paying more attention to, sort of those, like, and I guess, like, sort of like, little short stories about all the ways those other kids were fucked up. But yeah, those are sort of my general, general thoughts. It's
Franklin Leonard 8:11
interesting. I haven't read it for a second time, and I wonder if I would feel the same way. My instinct is, is that I wouldn't, but that's only because for me, I think, like you, I do a fair amount of reading and non fiction in this space. And so the trauma and the violence against these kids was not actually something I was terribly enraptured by when I was reading the book. For me, it was about these sort of competing ideas about how to navigate life as a young black man in America, that this idea that, you know, Elwood fundamentally believes that there's good in the world, that people are, by nature good, and that if you give them all the information that they need to do the right thing, they'll do the right thing. And Turner's intentional distance from everybody and resistance to emotional connection, and then the flip, obviously, that happens. And what Whitehead is saying about the consequences of naivete, about the extent to which speaking out results in tragedy and maintaining distance results in you being broken. And so for me, I think as I think back through the book again, not just not reading it for a second time, but as I think back through it, and having seen the movie now on multiple occasions, I'm more fascinated, and I feel like I'm trying to interrogate more what what is the twist trying to say about who these people are and what they think about the world In the context of the events of the book as I think through it, like the second reading, or imagined second reading? Yeah,
Traci Thomas 9:48
no, I think I think that you're right. I think some of it is that I went into it thinking about the ending, and I read it right when it came out, like my copy is a signed first edition, like I. Read it. Want to save that? Yeah, I've, yeah, I've got it here. Any of the stickers
Franklin Leonard 10:05
pass that down through generations? Yeah?
Traci Thomas 10:08
But I think, like, what has stuck with me over the years since I've read it, you know, hundreds of books later, was that ending, was that twist, and so I think going back to it. That's what I remembered most, and that's what I was the most curious about. I definitely think, like, the writing is great. I think those questions you're talking about, which we're going to talk about today, are also great and really beautiful and and those did, like I did think about those things, but I think mostly I was just reading to get to the end this time in a way that like didn't, I don't think it served the book, but I also, you know, one of the things that I think about a lot is like, what makes a book an award winning book? What makes a book especially like a Pulitzer, a National Book Award, which this book won? What makes something worthy of those kinds of honors? And one of the things that I often think about with books, which is different than how I feel about maybe like an Oscar winning movie, is that, to me, a book like that should be able to be read multiple times, and each time you read it, you get something new and different, and it changes with you, whereas, like sometimes an Oscar movie, I'm just, like, I saw it. I'm never going back to Oppenheimer. Okay? I'm never doing that again. I'm glad I saw it. I liked it. I was impressed, but like, That ship has sailed. And I was a little shocked by how much I didn't feel like this book had changed for me. And so that made me sort of question, like, I don't and I again, I think maybe I was just like, went into it with the wrong energy, I don't know, but it was, it was a little disappointing for me this time, though I still, when I got to the end, was still like, that's such a fucking good twist. Yeah, yeah. And I guess since we are spoiling it, we should tell people, if you haven't read the book and you don't care, the twist is that Elwood ends up dead by the end of the book, and Turner takes on elwood's identity. So we're we see el we see an adult Elwood throughout the entire book, and then we find out on page 202 of 213 that adult Elwood is actually Turner, all grown up, but taking on Elwood after elwood's death, which is just the tent so tender,
Franklin Leonard 12:23
yeah, I mean, it's, there's so many layers to it. There's just so so many layers to it.
Traci Thomas 12:30
Well, let's go. Let's start with Elwood and his sort of early, early in the book, we meet Elwood. He is a teenage boy. He is, by all intents and purposes, a goody two shoes. He is a rule follower. His like great, his great object of his affection is a record of Martin Luther King speeches. I mean, he is like the most stereotypical Good boy. He, he's his parents have run off to California. He lives with his grandmother. He, you know, takes a job at a candy shop, and he, he tells on the kids who are stealing candy, you know, like he is so gullible, he loses this encyclopedia, like he does this whole contest, and it's all they scam him out of these or into These encyclopedias. But he is always so morally clear, good do the right thing. Smart, going to take classes at a college on his way to the college. He is gets he hitchhikes so he can be on time to his class, because he's our good boy. Gets in the car with this man who, of course, is not as good as Elwood is legally in the criminal eyes of the criminal justice system. He has stolen a vehicle. They're pulled over. The cop has a great little racist line to end the section, and he ends up at Nickel. What do you make of this main character being so squeaky clean.
Franklin Leonard 14:01
You know, I think, I think that his squeaky cleanness comes from a belief that, through good works, there's salvation in America, even if you're black, right?
Traci Thomas 14:13
Especially maybe if you're black, yeah, that you that
Franklin Leonard 14:17
by being good, you can participate in the American dream. You can have all the things that we are told that we want, even in the face of the white supremacy of sort of early 1960s Florida, specifically Tallahassee. You know, it's funny. I think there's a little bit of like King X sort of happening here between wood and Turner and, yeah, I think that's where it comes from. And I think that even in the early days of, you know, pre nickel Elwood, you know, he gets involved in this dish washing competition, and he thinks that by winning the dishwashing competition, by being the best, he'll have access to knowledge, he'll get, he'll win these encyclopedias. And he takes these inside. Encyclopedias home, and most of the volumes are blank, which, again, I think, is a metaphor for the the black experience in America. You can be the best, but the the prize is, is a is a fake. You know, you can, you can do well in school. You can be the gifted student who's invited to go to to this, to this, this college, and take extra classes, but you won't even get there, because something that you did so that you could be a part of that will be intentionally misread by the justice system and instead put you in this reform school. And you know, I'll be honest, I identified a lot with that I was the squeaky clean kid in west central Georgia. My parents were not unaware of the world. Were not unaware of the realities of being black in the Deep South, my father grew up there as well, but they, I think, tried to protect me from participating in a lot of the resistance around that, because there was a longer view. We got to keep you safe. You're special. If we can just navigate you through this difficult period. You can go off into the world, and maybe you can participate then, but at least then you'll be prepared to do so, you know. And it was hard the more I read the book, and definitely when I saw the movie, there's a moment where they show Turner's driver's license as Elwood right in the film is, it's a brief shot towards the very end of the film. And, you know, he's born in the late 1940s My father was born in the late 1940s in a place not far from, from where this story takes place. You know, my father was the squeaky clean kid who did really well academically. He was the, I believe, the third black graduate of the Medical College of Georgia, like he was Ellwood. And I think thinking about it in that context was, I think that was the beginning of the process of flattening me.
Traci Thomas 16:54
Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I do think like what you're saying, because I too, relate to an Elwood as a younger person. I think I have more turn. I think I'm more a little more Turner side.
Franklin Leonard 17:10
I think that's what happens. I think I suspect, and I haven't been able to have this conversation with Colson, but I suspect that he was also an Elwood in his youth and became a turner, which I think is also sort of part of the central metaphor of of what, the, what the, what the book is saying is that many of us start as elwoods, but the only way to survive is as a turner, because being Elwood gets you killed,
Traci Thomas 17:35
right? But okay, let's, let's carry this, yeah, the only way to survive is to be a turner. However, in the book, Turner is the one who dies metaphorically right turn, there's no continuance of the Turner line. The Turner becomes the Elwood. And it's an interesting sort of inversion, because the argument that I feel like is being made throughout the youth of the book is like Elwood is too naive. He's too simple. He doesn't see what's happening. He doesn't see the danger, you know, he's Little Red Riding Hood. He doesn't see the fox waiting for him, and all of these things. Turner sees it. Turner says, I'm gonna write my own story. I'm I'm gonna do this on my terms. That's his line throughout the book. That's like one of the clues that Colson gives us throughout the book, is, I'm gonna do this my own way, my own way, and but in the end, he chooses to wear the costume or the embody that good, that good boy, right? Like he chooses to take on that name. And so when we as we're reading it, before we know what happens, we think that Elwood has really matured into this other person, that it's possible to go from being an Elwood to being more like Turner. But really, Elwood is killed, and Turner has put it on. Does that make sense? Like what the question is, it
Franklin Leonard 19:01
does. It's interesting. When I was reading the book, you know, it would flat, it would flip back between sort of the 2010s and the 1960s and one of the things that I really struggled with was, how does Ellwood, the Ellwood we know in the early sections, end up running a moving company like it just never, it never struck me as consistent. It was like he was, was he so broken by this thing that was all he was capable of, and it was, and so that was actually one of my early clues that something was up. Like I didn't know what it was so interesting, you know, and I clocked the ace that the moving company is called ACE, which is obviously the highest level at Nickel. That is supposed to be your salvation. And then there's, you know, the there's the Epilog, which, if I'm I made these notes sort of while I was reading. But it's, you know, it's not enough to survive. You have to live. And. Yes, Turner is taking on the mantle of the name, but he's the one who lives. And that, I think, is the big takeaway. And I don't know that he's actually living either. I think that he is surviving, you know, and he's surviving better than Chicky Pete did. He's definitely surviving better than Elwood did. I think that's my takeaway. Like I actually hadn't thought about the fact that he's bearing elwood's name, and what does that mean? Because I guess he probably could have just chosen any name, right? But I think it's also as I think about it now, I think all of us who have evolved into Turner's in one form or another know that there is nobility in being Elwood, and that being being Elwood, in the face of the consequences of it, is something worthy of acknowledgement, reverence, praise, but it's not a rest. It's not a recipe for for surviving, and it's certainly not a recipe. I'm not sure I want to think about I'm
Traci Thomas 21:03
not sure that there is something, I think we're told there's something noble about being in Elwood, but I don't, I don't know that that's true. I think that that's like, a nice idea, that, like, we have been taught, that is like, internalized into us, that we want, that we should be like like, that we should be idealistic, and that we should see the good in everybody. But I just don't know that. I don't know that that's not like white supremacy itself, telling us that right like, I think doing the thing to survive, I think doing the thing to blaze your own trail is noble to me, because it is easy to it is easy to be, to become a person who does things for the recognition or the approval of others, which I think is also like, sort of the flip side of who Elwood is like. He's a goody two shoes because he wants to be seen as he wants to be seen by another outside force, whether it's his grandmother, whether it's white people, whether it's even the people at the Nichols Academy. And I'm just like, I don't, I don't know if I believe that, that that is the right and noble way. Well,
Franklin Leonard 22:19
it's interesting. So I read Elwood a little bit differently. I read Elwood as having an incredibly righteous sense of right and wrong, and a belief and a belief that by being right, you can win the argument with anyone right, that by being good, it is therefore undeniable that people have to recognize your humanity and have to treat you as a human being. I think he knows, for example, that you know, writing a record of everything that he's seen at Nickel and sharing it with people. He knows that there are potential consequences for that, but he's willing to do it, even if it attracts the disapproval of his best friend of the teachers and may cause him severe harm. I think that he sort of represents this belief that, like, there is right and there is wrong, and you do the right thing, and in doing the right thing, you make the best argument for for your humanity and for for goodness. I mean, there's, there's a lie in the book. If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things. And for me, that that's, that's the part that I think that we all, on some level, have reference for, reverence for we we do have reverence for, and I think should have reverence for the people who are willing to stand up and say, Listen, this comes with great potential costs for me, but we gotta be real. This is how it is, and the rest of us because we need to survive, because we want to live, because we gotta pay our rent. May not be as vocal about the way things are by necessity. And I think that both of those strategies are what we as black people in America, but I think more broadly, as people facing injustice have to deploy in order to navigate the world and try to make it better.
Traci Thomas 24:16
Okay, I am realizing and talking to you about this, that perhaps I am more cynical than I knew.
Franklin Leonard 24:26
Well, hi, I'm probably with you. Well,
Traci Thomas 24:29
I'm just thinking like I'm hearing you. I agree. I think Elwood has this very strong moral compass, but to me, his lack of understanding about the world is not admirable to me. It is a sign of, like, his incompetence and like that youthful sort of bravado where he thinks, just because he's seen an injustice, if he talks about it, that this is like, you know, we talk about like a lot of times in the. Justice circles, like dealing with, you know, injustice, whatever is, like, There are tactics to doing the thing that you want to do. And I think that Elwood is like, a little bit of a like dummy, because he, like, thinks, like, oh, I wrote all these notes, and I'm just gonna hand it to these people, and that's the best way to do this thing. Or, like, I think that, like, that part of him worse, maybe we're supposed to think is good, that he has the strong wall compass and he's gonna stand up and he's gonna do the right thing. But I read that a little bit more like it was sort of like, I was sort of like, disgusted by him in some ways, of just like, it's too pathetic, like it's too naive, it's too pure, it's too good, and I'm sorry, but like, you're done, like it just it doesn't work for me. But, yeah, go ahead.
Franklin Leonard 25:54
No, I think that's fair. I think that. I mean, I play that out though I agree. I mean, look, he's sort of guileless. Yeah, he doesn't have tactics. He does end up dead, and Turner ends up broken. And the school continued for years, and the the other dead boys weren't discovered until 50 years later, and and in many ways, the novel was about, is Turner going to say anything? Is he going to go back? Is he going to raise his voice and say, This is what happened 50 years ago? And the question is, I think the question for us all, on some level, is, if we don't want things like the Dozier school for boys to happen, and that's what the nickel Academy is based on, yeah, how do we speak up? How do we? How do we navigate a world that that is like nickel, where the rules are arbitrary, where there's no amount of merit, there's no amount of distance that prevents you from being either murdered by it or flattened by it? How do we? How do we fight back and and I think what's interesting to me about the book is that it doesn't provide easy answers. It says, Look, here are two strategies, and here are the consequences of them. What are you going to do? And I think that's really the thing that is in a moment like the one that we're in now, I think has forced me to have conversations with myself about, who am I going to be in the world? Am I going to take a verbatim sort of journal of what I know about the world and share it with the world that possible great consequences to myself? Am I going to maintain an emotional distance and just try to survive and keep my head under the radar so it doesn't get clipped and to what end any of it? And I don't know that I have the answers, and I don't know that anybody has the answers. And I think on some level, we are all set with the task of making, you know, a series of choices about how we want to live in the world and what those things
Traci Thomas 27:51
mean, yeah. And I think, like, from a literary standpoint, having these two characters that do feel like so polar opposite sort of arguments in this conversation about, how do we show up in the world and how do we invoke change? Like, there's sort of these stand ins, as you said, perhaps for Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, or just like, different ways of agitating and activating. I do think that it's interesting that Colson White had chose to go so so, like, obviously polar opposite, right? Like, he's really using these characters as sort of this stand in for this bigger conversation. And I think, like in the real world, you need some Elwood and you need some Turner, and you need some Chicky Pete. You need, like, you need all of these people because they to to make change, to force change, even though, for these kids, you know, it was a time, a long time coming, right? Which is also part of the problem about changing the world. It's not something you can really do overnight, yeah?
Franklin Leonard 28:55
Well, look, it's not, it's not for nothing. You know, it is Elwood that writes the journal, but ultimately it's Turner who share who shares it?
Traci Thomas 29:06
Why do you think Turner shares it when he knows better? Because
Franklin Leonard 29:10
I think he he knows that Elwood is right.
Traci Thomas 29:13
So you think he's swayed by Elwood argument versus sort of like maybe being a little vindictive because he's annoyed by his friend.
Franklin Leonard 29:20
I don't think so. I don't I find it hard to imagine a scenario where in Turner shares the notebook with with the sort of you know, state authorities who are coming in to investigate JFK. Look
Traci Thomas 29:35
alike. Yeah, exactly.
Franklin Leonard 29:36
I find it very hard to believe that he shares it with the intent to get Elwood murdered, which is exactly which he knows would happen if he did. I think if he wanted to be vindictive, he would just take the journal and destroy it, right and then it's like you better learn. But I think it's ultimately Turner who shares it. I think he is, I think that. And I think again, we all share this tension. We know the truth needs to be. Said. We know the truth. We know that that somebody's got to stand up and say it. We also know that it comes with consequences. And so it's Turner, who's like, All right, well, this is what you're committed to. I'm going to do it. And then when he realizes just that, that his friend is going to die, it's like, we got to get out of here. We get this is, this is the one chance that we have to go. We got to go now. And I may be misread, I may be misreading it, but I think for and again, I think it's I'm so close emotionally to this content that I'm probably imputing my own personal struggle with how to be in the world into some of the their behaviors. But I think that, I mean, Turner knows it's fucked up, you know, yeah. And so he and he most certainly wants to do something with it. Part of doing it his own way probably is standing up. But there are consequences that come with that. So, yeah,
Traci Thomas 30:50
yeah. I mean, I just struggled with why Turner did it. I guess I hadn't really considered that he might have just been swayed by elwood's argument. Of like this, this version of events that turns out good for them.
Franklin Leonard 31:07
I don't think he's fully like hope. I think that's what I mean. I think that there's, yeah, hope is the thing that kills you. I think that, like, ultimately, you know, the story of their relationship is they begin very, very differently. Elwood is ramrod straight back, whatever. And you see Elwood beginning to drift and make these compromises and understand how the world works. And he's able to bite his tongue a little bit. But as things get worse and worse, and then once Griff happens, that's the point that sets it off. And I think the grit the Grif situation is the thing that puts Turner over the top two is that he knows that Griff didn't understand that which which round he was in that explain the
Traci Thomas 31:50
do you want to explain the? I'll give it to you. Okay, so Griff is one of the boys at the school, one of the black boys. They have an annual boxing competition between the black kids and the white kids and all the teachers, like, bet on it or whatever. And the principal, Headmaster, guy, he pulls Griff aside and says, You gotta do what's right. And griff's like, I don't know what that means. And he's like, you gotta swing for the fences and miss. And Griff is like, I'm so sorry, I can't understand. And then the headmaster says, You gotta lose. You gotta throw the match. And griff's like, in the third round, and he says something along the lines of, like, but you'll always know that you could have beaten him, and that's just gonna have to be enough Blackie. And Griff is like, okay, okay. And Griff, as I sort of alluded to, is maybe a little slower. That's how he's presented to us. He's not the smartest, sharpest crayon in the box, Elwood or Turner overhears this communicates it to the other one, though, in the movie, they both hear it. So now I can't remember who heard it. I can't either. Yeah, in the fight, Griff wins by accident. He thought it was still the second round. It is just one of the most heartbreaking moments of the entire book. Just and they kill him. They take him to where they out back, or the White House or whatever, and they kill him, and he's gone. And none of the other kids know about the what happened. They don't know about he was supposed to throw it, but both Elwood and Turner do, and it is really a pivotal moment in in the book, in the story, in their both of their evolutions. And I think kind of to the earlier conversation. I do think maybe it resolves Elwood more that's sort of when Elwood I mean, it doesn't happen exactly then, but Elwood gets the idea that the only one of the the fifth way to leave nickel. Well, we're told there's four ways to leave nickel. You can serve your time. The court can change their mind, you can die, or you can run away. And at some point, Elwood decides, or you you could burn it all down. You could destroy the institution that is the nickel Academy. I think that event sort of seals elwood's thinking about, you know, he's got to do the thing that's going to burn it all down. And I think, to your point, it maybe seals and Turner's mind that he's got to run away like that. He's got to get out of here. This is not a place he can be. Yeah,
Franklin Leonard 34:28
that's that's my take on it. Is that that moment is what makes Turner say, yeah, he's probably wrong, but maybe elwood's Right. Maybe there is some version of a path out here, and when that path fails, the only other path available to them is an attempted escape, right? Yeah, that that's how that's how I read it.
Traci Thomas 34:53
Okay, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Okay, we're. Back. What do you think of the escape plan? Of of Turner's escape plan? He shares it with us earlier in the book. He tells us his plan is to go south, go away from the swamp, because they're going to be looking for you. Going north, near the swamp, change your clothes. Eventually, head back up when no one's looking for you disappear.
Franklin Leonard 35:23
I mean, I feel like Turner has probably thought about it more than most, and he's a smart kid. I think it's the best escape plan available to them.
Traci Thomas 35:33
I mean, it works, yeah, like, for one of them, for
Franklin Leonard 35:36
one of them, and I think, and I think part of the reason why it only worked for one of them is because, you know, Elwood had been so depleted by his imprisonment that it was like, physically, he wasn't as able to escape as Turner was at that point.
Traci Thomas 35:49
Yeah. So what happens for Elwood? So they turn in the papers, the notes about all the we because Elwood and Turner have been working off campus for their little work study, air quotes, their internship, and they've been doing these favors for employees and board members and stuff like painting their deck, and also like taking the food rations from the black kids food court, and like selling them for more money.
Franklin Leonard 36:21
It's slave labor. It's another metaphor for just sort of how America treats the black community, right? It's like two black kids slave labor. It's plunder sold out to local white businesses for essentially free or heavily discounted labor. That where the financial upside accrues to the the managers of nickel, and they're taking all of the the bounty, the harvest, the food, the the materials that are intended for these kids, and giving it to these, these, these white businesses who are already doing quite well, exactly. Sounds, sounds terribly familiar?
Traci Thomas 36:58
Yes, I believe I've read this one. Yeah. And so Elwood takes notes, every assignment, every loaf of bread he's got it, who it went to, who paid for it? How much he gives it to Turner. Turner gives it to the inspectors who come to the campus, because there's rumblings that maybe something's going on at the campus. They're just checking in, gets back to the school, Elwood ends up being taken to the White House. Well, I guess technically not. He's like, ends
Franklin Leonard 37:27
up, yeah, there's like, there's a, there's essentially an attic, like a hot box, yeah, sort of in the roof, in the roof of the building, and basically just locked in there, no windows. It's incredibly hot, no food, no water. So he's just, he's just physically depleted.
Traci Thomas 37:43
Yeah. And then Turner and the other boys, one of the boys works at the office. He gets word that they're gonna, they're gonna kill him, that they're gonna take him out back, I think is what they call it, yeah. And so Turner's like, well, now got to enact my brilliant plan. Swoops them up, takes them out. They go. They steal bikes from a family that they had done work for. They knew they were out of town. They steal the bikes that are outside. They ride down south. They're going somewhere. The whites come, the nickel people come, they shoot, they kill. Elwood Turner gets away.
Franklin Leonard 38:27
So sad it is. I also think it's notable that Harper is the one who shoots out wood, right? Harper is who they
Traci Thomas 38:33
were working for, who was like their overseer.
Franklin Leonard 38:36
He's their overseer, but, but, but throughout the book and in the movie, he's presented as, like, one of the good ones, right? He's, he's, he's a guy his secret. Yeah, they know his secret. He's, he's, you know, he's driving them around. It's like three, like they're all sitting in the front of the truck together. You know, they're talking about things that young men would talk about, and in many ways, he has acted as their protector on some level, because he's like, Hey, man. Like, look, you could be hanging out here with me. We're gonna go out into the world. You get a little bit of freedom, or you could be back at at the academy, like, doing heavy labor. Surely, this is better. Like, Listen, guys, let's hang out, but at the end, but at the end of the day, he's the one he takes the gun and shoots out with dead, ostensibly, the man who's presented himself as a friend,
Traci Thomas 39:28
right? I mean, and I think I mean, clearly, that's on purpose. Like, the idea is that there is no such thing as, like, good good whiteness, right? Like, it's all in service to to the bigger thing, to the or the you know, that's not to say that they're such thing as good white people, but like, if you work in this system, even if you are nice, you still work in this system. You are still you are this. As Miriam Kaba told us on this show a few years ago, the purpose of a system is what it does. Purpose of nickel Academy is to abuse and harm these children. And if you work in that system, you are part of that system, even if you hang out with the boys and eat a chocolate bar or whatever the fuck Harper was doing,
Franklin Leonard 40:11
yeah. And when push comes to shove and a choice has to be made, he's gonna choose the system. He's gonna choose the preservation in a broader sense of white supremacy,
Traci Thomas 40:22
the power, you know, and also they made him look bad. So I'm sure there's some vengeance on his side too. They put he took notes on all the shit they were doing, and this Harper guy was fooled. He didn't know that they were scheming and scamming. And for all he knows, it was both of them together, because Turner's the one who hands over the paper, yeah, in cahoots.
Franklin Leonard 40:46
That's That's exactly right. I also think that, like the other sort of implication here, is that Elwood not just taking notes on what the bad people at Nickel Academy are doing, he's taking notes on the system as a whole, who is received, who in town, who's the businessman is receiving that stuff, who's, who is benefiting? You know, it is a, it is a litany of who is, of how the system functions, and how widely the benefits of that system are being distributed. And so, you know, one could imagine a scenario where he was more narrowly tailored in the in what he transcribed, and he pointed the finger at just the person who's running nickel. This is the bad guy. You need to replace him. Where it might not have gotten back to the administrators of nickel. But the the real danger, the real threat, is to to, you know, describe the system as it is, and who benefits from it, and that's the thing that gets that's the thing that is most likely to get you killed, and
Traci Thomas 41:47
that because that is the most dangerous thing. Yeah, any one person could be expendable if he had just fingered one person for one for one beating, or one person for one dealing. You know, even if it was the person at the tip top, you fire them. You someone else gets hired, someone takes over. But when you show the whole system is corrupt, and here's all the ways, there's really no coming back from that, you either deal with it or you kill the child who did it and move on. Like if it gets out, if it has to be dealt with, than it has to be dealt with. But if you can suppress that which nickel could and did and continue to do for another 50 years, I want to talk a little bit about adult Elwood Turner. I find that character really, really compelling. I think, you know, on my first read, that was the person I was the most connected to, the most interested in, the most rooting for. I liked the boys, but I think I was just like, wow, he got out, like, he's got a business, you know, you you can survive and move on. And I think again, I read that the book in 2019 and I was I had not done, or thought a lot about incarceration and punishment, and, like a lot of these things that I think now I have and on this read, you know, my big question ended up being like, Who the fuck is taking care of our kids? Like, what are are we? We're not doing right by our kids. And that the book takes place in 1960 in the 1960s but like it could be now, just as easily and and, you know, I wrote this just hasn't changed as much as as we would like to think, the punishment of black children, the outsized punishment, the Over the top punishment, whether it's, you know, maybe it's not the Dozier school for boys anymore, but I would, I would argue that some juvenile systems are probably pretty bad.
Franklin Leonard 43:51
Yeah, the school, the school to prison pipeline alone, right? The way, the way. Yeah, your average kid in school, black kids are punished more than than white kids. That is true in 2024 even if it's not as extreme as it was in 1962
Traci Thomas 44:06
right? Even if the physical violence isn't as pronounced or as obvious as it is in this story, the way that it happens, the way that the kid who accidentally is hitchhiking with the wrong person ends up in trouble, or the way that even just like a kid who wears a hairstyle or doesn't
Franklin Leonard 44:28
like, we got kids getting kicked out of school for their hair right now, so, like, yeah, 100% totally,
Traci Thomas 44:33
for not putting their phone away, all of these things. I think, like, I just, I don't know, I think I've just become really obsessed with this idea that, like we're just not taking care of the kids, and it's really devastating.
Franklin Leonard 44:47
Yeah? I mean, because we're not, I think, you know, there's probably arguments that we're doing a better job than we were years ago, but certainly they deserve more than what we've been capable of to now. Yeah, one of the other funny. Things that I did really enjoy about the book was how the one Mexican American kid kept
Traci Thomas 45:05
getting Jamie, Jamie, back
Franklin Leonard 45:08
and forth between being like, like, in living, like, living with and socializing with the black kids. And then it got, I think it was literally he's like, and then he got when he was tan, he was with the black kids, and then, like in the winter months, as his as his complexion got lighter, someone was like, Ah, it's not, it's not really appropriate to put the Latino kid with the black kids. We got to move him over to the white kids. And how he gets shuttled back and forth between these two communities was, I thought, just an incredible comic beat that lays bare how the nickel Academy generally is just a metaphor for America,
Traci Thomas 45:44
right? And how race is just completely arbitrary, yeah, right? Like it's like, just, you're Dan, you're not. I also love that. That also Jamie sort of becomes this spy. He's the one who's he's like, Oh yeah, I saw that teacher over there doing this. Now he's over here doing that, and I love that. Like, in a lot of ways, Jamie is one of our sort of unsung heroes of the book, right? Yeah, I
Franklin Leonard 46:09
would have, I would have loved a little bit more insight into his psychology. I mean, I know I thought that's not the intent of the book, and, like, one could always say that about any interesting character, but I would have loved, like, one could write an entire novel, yes, Jamie fanfic, yeah, about, about that character in that context, and I would read it. Yeah, happily,
Traci Thomas 46:30
I would read it too. I would, I would spend a lot of time with Jamie. There's a part towards the end of the book where Elwood comes into language from a Martin Luther King speech about the capacity to suffer, or his writing about the capacity to suffer, yeah, the Cornell College Speech, yeah. And I'm just going to read this section because I thought it was pretty it's pretty good pull pull for this book. So it says, throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children. And as difficult as it is, we will still love you, send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after midnight hours and drag us out onto some Wayside road and beat us and leave us half dead, and we will still love you, but be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. What do you make of that?
Franklin Leonard 47:35
I think it's um, I think it's sort of an ex that's that's a Woods worldview, right? Is like, I we, I will win my dignity. I will win my freedom by being good.
Traci Thomas 47:48
Yeah, I think hate it so much. Yeah,
Franklin Leonard 47:52
I, I, and they killed King for it, and they killed it for it, yeah?
Traci Thomas 47:57
I mean, I think, like, it's hard to even, it's hard to be a person in 2024 who has received have has been granted rights that, you know, we always should have had because of those kinds of conversations, to to think about some of the things that King was saying, like that and and Not like, and it's hard for me, because I'm like, I hate it so much, but also, I guess I'm grateful for it in ways, but it's hard. It's hard to have to, like, hear someone essentially groveling to be like, to be seen as human. It's just like, so,
Franklin Leonard 48:42
Oh, interesting. So I read that differently than as as groveling. I maybe groveling
Traci Thomas 48:48
is not the right word, but I do want to hear how you read it. I
Franklin Leonard 48:52
read it as a threat, right? I read it as so my attitude about this is, and I think about this a lot my my father's grandfather was born enslaved in west central Georgia, right? Like that. Is very proud, yeah, my great grandfather, I it is the arc of the black experience from enslavement to present day for me, just is always felt very present. I think it's because of where I grew up. It's because I think about these things a lot, and I you see the ripple effects of that dynamic in American society and globally. For me, what I read King as saying here is there is not shit you can do to us that we will not be able to endure. Do whatever you want, do whatever you want, threaten our children, send hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after midnight, beat us and leave us half dead. We will continue to be on the moral high ground. We will continue to live our lives as we see fit and in time because we are so strong because we do. Have a capacity to endure that you in your violence, perpetrating, in your fear, our endurance will win the day, right? And I understand that pose. I think that what trips people up is the we will still love you part people still love you, you know. And I read the we will love you as because we are, because our humanity demands that we love other humans, because that is the moral expectation that we have for everyone on this earth. And we have already reached that, and you have failed to that's how I read that. It is, it is from a position of great strength of do whatever you want. You're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna engage in your, you know, your mediocre little violence. You're gonna come at us with enslavement. You're gonna come at us with with Jim Crow. We will still be here. And eventually you're gonna have to get it together. You're gonna have to recognize that we are as human as you are, and have been forever. And when that day comes, we will win. That's how I read it. And again, I will admit I am a pessimist and a cynic by nature and an optimist by practice. And so it is entirely possible that that reading of that falls into the optimist by practice thing, but yeah, my attitude is, yeah, we're better than you, and you can keep doing whatever you want to do, but in time, eventually you're gonna have to get your shit together and you're gonna realize how terrible you've been. And that's, that's how we win. But we're not gonna read. We're not gonna engage in the same nonsense that you guys are engaged in, because frankly, it's beneath us.
Traci Thomas 51:34
I do. I do like your reading. I think you're probably right that that's like the spirit and the intention of the thing. I think for me more what is like difficult is just thinking about that being the approach. Oh, yeah, you know, like that. That's what that's what's really hard for me. It's like thinking about how, not so long ago, that was the only way we could even approach these conversations was like, kill us, harm us like we're we'll still love you, and eventually we will get there. And I know that that, you know, that was the play in the 60s, but it's hard to really like, it's hard for me to hear that and think that, because I think now of like, how, how, I guess much things have changed because of that, but also how much things are the same and that that is still sort of expected of marginalized communities this like we will suffer for what we know is right, because we know that's the only way, instead of just like, Fuck you, burn it down. I don't love you, I hate you. I'm gonna kill you.
Franklin Leonard 52:39
I Yeah. Look, there's a human part of me that is like, okay, yeah, but fuck that. Like, how dare you right? I, it's funny. I People talk a lot about, like, you know, the arc of history bends towards justice and a long and a long and long enough timeline, we'll get there. And I think the thing that you know, we hear you believe that I mean a long and long enough timeline, yes, but, but here's the catch, right? Is that it does not that calculus that you know, over time there is salvation, it ignores the crushing, debilitating, murderous consequences of the action in the immediate term, not all of us are going to get there, right? Not all of us are going to survive. Not all of us are not going to be broken or killed by the system. And it's funny because I have two, like, sort of quotes that I had pulled from the book. The first one was literally the King quote that you just mentioned. And the second one, I believe, is Turner talking about his interaction with Chicky Pete, the boys could have been many things had they not been ruined by that place doctors who cured disease or performed brain surgery, inventing shit that saved lives run for president. All those lost geniuses, sure, not all of them were geniuses. Chicky Pete, for example, was not solving special relativity, but they had been denied even the simple pleasure of being ordinary, hobbled and handicapped before the race even began, never figuring out how to be normal. And I think that, you know, I That, for me, is sort of at the core of what this book is, is that, yeah, sure, some of us, some of us, survive, many of us who do survive. And I think you and I both fall in that category. Have a profound sense of survivor's guilt, because we know what the consequences of getting into the wrong car on the way to our special, special college could have been. We become Elwood. I know that my father, you know, there are a lot of ways his life could have gone very differently, and he managed to walk on the rock right the walk on the right rocks, you know, across the river. But how much have we lost in the interim? Who have we lost in the interim? And I don't just mean who, as black people, have we lost? What? What diseases could have been cured? I. By by the young men who were killed or maimed or broken during the 60s because they were just trying to speak up for the right to sit at a diner. And that's everybody that's not black people, that's not just white people, that's not just Americans. What has the world lost as a consequence? Yeah, and I think, again, I think that's that's at the central that is the central tension that I think Whitehead is investigating here is, what are the consequences of an America that is as arbitrary and as cruel and as designed and punitive and as does as designed to be so, not just for the individuals who had to suffer through it and maybe survived, but for all of us who are denied the things that were taken from them. Yeah,
Traci Thomas 55:51
I think you're right. I think you're right. You know, thinking about who, who get, who gets a chance to survive, right? Who gets to survive, and that just by virtue of being alive, we have survived, because survivors survived before us, right? Yeah, at least long enough to make it possible for us to be in the world. And I think, I think that is what's so gutting to me and like so what makes me hate that quote so much is like we didn't have to suffer. Yes, we did survive. Yes, we have the capacity to suffer. We didn't have to. Like, this is, I
Franklin Leonard 56:26
don't think, yeah, I don't think that King is saying that. I think he is saying no, no. I
Traci Thomas 56:30
don't think he is either. I guess what, like, I'm saying, like, my reading, what I think makes me, like, hate it so much, is like, Yeah, we love you and we will survive, but like, we will suffer and we will win our freedom, but, like, we didn't have to fucking go through any of this. If you people had just had a spot, you know, like, yeah, to your point. Like, who else could have been here? We're totally running out of time. But I do really quickly want to say, talk about the movie, if we have a second, yeah, what I want to talk about with the movie is, did you feel that the movie pulled off the book? Because one of the things that I think I actually never would have said that this should be a movie, because the thing that Colson Whitehead does so well in the book is show you what you need to see when he shows you what he wants you to see. Sorry, not what you need to see, what he wants you to see when he wants you to see it, yeah, in the movie, the big difficult challenge is that, how do you show that Elwood old is not Elwood because they look different in the movie. And the movie Turner is light skinned, and Elwood is darker, yeah,
Franklin Leonard 57:36
and it's described that way in the book too, as I recall, right? I
Traci Thomas 57:39
see, I see, I don't remember it being described that way, but I wasn't reading for that. When I read, I wasn't thinking about the casting. I think I
Franklin Leonard 57:46
was probably already thinking about the casting when I read the book. Maybe I'm wrong, but for whatever reason, I remember, you know what it is i This may be fictive memory, because I know that when I read the book, I was thinking about those two young actors as Elwood and Turner. And so I might it's very possible that I just like injected them into my visual imagining of the book, and it's not actually on the page,
Traci Thomas 58:05
okay, I don't remember. I didn't see it. I didn't clock it, but it is possible. But so in the movie, you it's visual medium. You have to see things. And so they make a choice where the whole film is filmed through the point of view of the two boys, what they see, literally, the camera is their eyes in the beginning. It's really cool and a little bit jarring. Eventually you settle into it, and it makes a lot more sense. But why couldn't they have just cast two boys that looked more similar to each other, like they didn't have to make it so hard on themselves?
Franklin Leonard 58:40
It's an interesting question, and it's one that I'd love to actually talk to and Rubel about. And the producers, I think they just got two actors who, like, yeah, and they have those two have a really good rhythm together. I was able to spend some time with them at Telluride. It was funny because I asked them, like, how long have you guys known each other? And like, oh, we met during the chemistry, and you're just like, wow. It literally seems like you two have been friends since you were children and and so I'm sure on some level, it was just like, Oh, my God, these two are amazing. And then they had to solve the problem of the of, sort of the sleight of hand of it all. And I think what's interesting about it for me is at least, I think if you're black, I think you clock it a lot earlier than if you're not watching that movie because of the
Traci Thomas 59:25
spontaneous and you and I both clock you, and I think about color a lot. Yeah,
Franklin Leonard 59:29
I'm look, but I think that I do. I think that there's, I think that there's something in that I don't I think that if you're not being relatively vigilant about it, or not necessarily predisposed to that kind of thinking, you're not necessarily going to clock it as easily. And I talked to a number of people who saw it who didn't clock that that issue, but I also think that the POV issue solves a lot of the problems, because you're not you're not seeing the actor. You're seeing through the actors eyes. And then there is the reveal at the end, which I thought was. Actually very, very beautifully done. You know, I Ramel Ross is a really exciting filmmaker. I think that, you know, when I, when I read the book, knowing that I was seeing the movie, I was like, I don't know how you adapt this. Like, I really this, I I'm worried for him. No, I already had a great deal of admiration, respect for him, but I was like, I don't know how you do this. And this is why I'm probably not a director. But I think that, I think that, I think Ramel is just an incredibly exciting filmmaker, and it's one of those films that you know you you find yourself asking yourself questions about the choices that he made as a storyteller that lead you to understanding better the story that he was trying to tell, which I just think is exciting. Did
Traci Thomas 1:00:36
you talk to people who hadn't read the book, who saw the movie? Yeah, yeah. Did the ending work for them? Because for me, I read the book twice by the time I saw the movie, so I was like, just literally watching the movie to be like, how are they gonna do this? It didn't really have that emotional resonance at all for me. But also I was literally just like, how will this moment unfold, right? Yeah, and I'm really curious to people who have no clue what's coming, if they felt at the end when you see the driver's license and they sort of expose the ruse, if it worked for them?
Franklin Leonard 1:01:11
Yeah, I, you know, I moderated 2q and A's try to tell you ride. And I think in both cases, you know, the audience is just sort of sitting there dumbstruck at the end. It's not, it's not even like, look, this is not a film that you when the film ends, you stand up, you leap to your feet and start applauding, right? This is a film where you are like I said, I was flattened by the book. I was flattened by the movie in the same way. So I yeah, I think it lands. I think it lands pretty effectively. But I also think, again. It's not. It's not one of those things where you're like, standing ovation, etc. It is, yeah, I need to sit with my feelings in a dark room by myself for several hours, kind of thing, by the way, parentheses compliment I want. I don't want people to think they shouldn't see the movie like, this is a movie that will just see the movie like I don't. I don't. People
Traci Thomas 1:02:03
should definitely see the movie, especially people who have listened to us talk about the book and have read the book. I'm so curious to know how people will think, like in this community of intense readers will think of the adaptation, and how they will think about it like to the source material. There
Franklin Leonard 1:02:18
will be those probably, possibly, understandably, depending on the argument they want to make, who will not love this adaptation for whatever reason? Yeah, and it's challenging adaptation. I think Rome did a phenomenal job with it, but it is, it's it's challenging in a way that I want more films to be challenging, but it's not. It's not easy.
Traci Thomas 1:02:37
Yeah, I agree with that. I think there are parts of it that I struggled with, for sure. And again, I was so interested in in what the cinematography was doing, and how, how they were framing the shots, and how they were doing that point of view. I thought that was, like, just so smart and interesting, and it's really beautiful.
Franklin Leonard 1:02:56
Yeah, I'm just actually checking shout out to Jomo Frey.
Traci Thomas 1:02:59
Jomo friend who shot my friend's husband. That's, I
Franklin Leonard 1:03:03
mean, this dude, man. Like, really, there's another. He has another. I mean, yeah, he shot, he shot all roads lead to salt, or all roads, all dirt roads taste of salt. Like, Jomo is a special, special cinematography.
Traci Thomas 1:03:19
He's gonna be a star, I think. Yeah, so talented. Okay, we usually talk about the title and the cover. The title is great. Whatever the cover is, a genius cover. That fucking shadow coming together. It's a one person. I'll never forgive the cover artist who is Oliver Monday, a genius in the cover industry. Yeah, cover god. Is there anything else you want to say about the book before we get out of here?
Franklin Leonard 1:03:50
Yeah, I think that the main thing that I just want to flag is that this was inspired by Ben Montgomery's reporting at the Tampa Bay Times. And if you go to official White House boys.com you can learn more about the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, that inspired it. You know, I was also taken with the that Elwood. You know, one of the first, really issues that he has at Nickel is when he's like, this is not a school. Can I get some books here? And I think this idea that you know, that you can you you get punished for acting above your station. Yeah,
Traci Thomas 1:04:30
I think also, Colson so brilliant with some of that stuff, because he knows as reading it now, reading it in 2019 and on that, we're going to see he doesn't have to do a lot of work. He just has to make a sentence or two, and we're gonna get it because we understand the cult, the historical context of the thing. I think in a less talented writer's hands, there would be a lot more. Elwood was so mad they wouldn't give him the books, blah, blah, blah. But all we really need is for Elwood to ask the question, and we already know,
Franklin Leonard 1:04:59
yeah. Yeah, no. I mean, I think there's literally, he's like, you know, in the hospital, Elwood wondered if the business, the viciousness of his beating, owed something to his request for harder classes. Yeah,
Traci Thomas 1:05:10
yeah. Don't get that's all you need. Don't
Franklin Leonard 1:05:12
get too uppity. Don't, don't imply that you are better than than what you have been offered, or that you deserve more than you have been given, especially
Traci Thomas 1:05:20
when you stole a car. Yeah, the truth of it is that you are a car thief. You're not a smart boy. You are a car thief. So don't pretend right to be something better, as when you are the worst, exactly,
Franklin Leonard 1:05:34
as though a car thief can't be smart, which is my favorite part. Yeah, no, it's
Traci Thomas 1:05:40
um, but like, even when he he's driving to the school and with the two white boys, and they're like, oh, and then the guy in the front seats, like, well, you're sitting with a real live car. Like, as if that is, like the thing, even though we know he's clearly not, oh, one
Franklin Leonard 1:05:55
thing that does need to be said on the new Ellis, oh, the performance
Traci Thomas 1:06:00
I
Franklin Leonard 1:06:01
I mean, look, it's oversight Exactly. She does not miss, you know, it's as as Elwood grandmother. It is not a principal role. She's a supporting character here. And it's note perfect. Note perfect. I just would like to see her in as many things as possible and in roles that are as rich with depth and breadth as her frankly ridiculous talent.
Traci Thomas 1:06:33
Okay. Well, on that note, we will end today. Folks, you can listen to the end of today's episode to find out what our November book club pick will be. And Franklin, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for being here. This was such a treat. It's
Franklin Leonard 1:06:47
a real pleasure. I hope it didn't sound too dumb.
Traci Thomas 1:06:49
Did you have fun?
Franklin Leonard 1:06:50
I knew I'd have fun again. It's more just I hope that as people hear this, they're not like, wow, that guy's a dummy.
Traci Thomas 1:06:56
No, never You're smart. Don't worry. I think they hurt, smartness, everyone else, we will see you in the stacks.
All right, y'all that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you again to Franklin Leonard for being our guest. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Eliza Suarez and Randy Winston for helping to make this conversation possible. All right, now what you've been waiting for our November book club pick is the novel luster by Raven Leilani. This novel is about a young black woman who gets involved with a white middle aged married man whose wife is down for an open relationship. It is raw, it is provocative, it is messy and it is darkly funny. Our episode on luster will be out on Wednesday, November 27 Tune in next week to find out who our guest will be. If you love this show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/the stacks and join the stacks pack, and you can check out my sub stack at Traci Thomas, dot sub stack.com. Make sure you're subscribed to the stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you're listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify, 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 Tiktok and at the stacks pod underscore on Twitter, and you can check out our website at the stackspodcast.com this episode of the stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas, with production assistance from Megan Caballero. Our graphic designer is Robin mccright, and our theme music is from teguragis. The stacks is created and produced by me Traci Thomas.