Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Beth Golay, and this is Marginalia. Larissa Pham's debut novel, Discipline, follows Christine, a writer who has just published a novel that fictionalizes aspects of her relationship with her painting professor in grad school. It's a Me Too-inspired account that eventually attracts the painter's attention, years after the events occur.
I recently spoke with Larissa Pham about Christine's experiences as an author and why she feels this book about revenge is actually a book about compassion. Here's our conversation.
Chapter 2: What is Larissa Pham's novel 'Discipline' about?
Can you give our listeners a description of Discipline? Do you have an elevator pitch for it?
Yes. Discipline is a novel that follows Christine, who is herself a writer on tour for her debut novel. She's written a revenge fantasy inspired by this real life entanglement with her former mentor, which ultimately derailed her promising painting practice. And while she's on the road, the villain of her book, reaches out to let her know he's read it.
And that reconnection ultimately draws Christine to Maine, where she confronts her old mentor and she's forced to consider this question, which I think is really the animating question of the book. What do we do with the people who have harmed us?
So when the book opens, we meet Christine and she's embarking on her own book tour and she has lost her luggage. Why was this the right place to begin our journey with her?
I really wanted to begin the book in a liminal space. I wanted Christine to be embarking on this journey that she couldn't really turn back from. It seemed important to almost like throw her in the deep end. And An acquaintance of mine had gone through a very similar luggage mix-up, which I didn't even think was possible, but it is.
And that just seemed like such a wonderful way to get things going on the page, to give her a problem to solve in the very beginning of the book. And I think it says something about Christine's character, too, that she really just goes for it. She's like, I am going to find this person, and I am going to get my luggage.
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Chapter 3: How does Christine's book reflect on her past experiences?
So in the book, Christine has authored a fictional account of her own experience with an older professor, and she's recounting parts of that experience while on book tour. It felt very meta to me because you're an author, you've been on book tour. You're also embarking on a book tour for this book about a fictional account. How does it feel?
I mean, you're in a similar position that Christine is in. How does that feel as an author?
It's funny. I love a meta narrative. And when I was writing this book, I was really enjoying the act of being a writer, writing about another writer, working on a book. But I will say with book tour, it's almost become like a little too meta. Like I'm like, I didn't anticipate this actually. And I will say that Christine is much more dedicated to her own book tour than I am.
She's really, she's really put it together. She's really putting herself out there. But there are these funny moments of strange mirroring. I did a reading where the sound lagged quite a bit, and there's a similar moment in the text where Christine is like, oh, the sound's lagging. I don't know if it's actually me talking. And as I was reading, I was like, wait a second.
Like, I was reading that line, and I was like, this is the same thing. So there's that funny mirroring that happens, which is completely unintentional.
So one of the themes of discipline is the imbalance of power between Christine and her painting professor. In the novel, Christine says she started thinking about the novel during a season. And this is a quote during a season in which it seemed like every woman on the Internet was coming forward with a story of sexist mistreatment at the hands of a wealthy and powerful man.
So Christine's encounter really changed the entire trajectory of her life, didn't it? I mean, what what did you want to explore here?
Yeah, I. Yes, so that that moment that Christine is referring to is is obviously the Me Too movement and. I remember that very clearly I was working in anti violence at the time, and I was really following the news and following media and so seeing all these narratives was like very, very just moving to me really impactful.
And so, Christine is taking inspiration from this time as well it's kind of what emboldens her to tell her own story, but at the same time, like. you know, I started writing this book in 2022, and a new question that had arisen for me was like, well, what do we do after we tell our stories? Like, what happens when you tell your story? What happens if that story is questioned?
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Chapter 4: What themes of power dynamics are explored in 'Discipline'?
Learning how to look at art and asking certain kinds of questions about it That I think I tend to see the world through the lens of visual art It's kind of just like it's how some people might see the world through like movies Or music like I feel like for better for worse like art history is my lens and so I really enjoyed getting to do a little bit of research and
getting to do that in a way where what I could pull out of the research could somehow enrich the text and kind of relate to something that Christine was thinking about or something that Christine was concerned with. So it felt really fun. It didn't quite feel like school. It felt a little bit more playful or expansive in that way.
I think it was at the beginning of the novel, Christine said you can learn a lot about a person from the way they approach walking through a museum. How do you approach a museum?
I am a speed runner. I do like to get a sense of like what's there. And I think I've been a little burned by like moving too slowly through a museum and being like, oh, man, I didn't get to see everything that I wanted to see. And the way that I've actually kind of negotiated this is I just get museum memberships so that I can go more than once and I can really focus.
If I'm seeing a show for the first time and it's like a biennial or something, something really big, I will try to kind of be brisk and walk through it. But at the same time, I also really love spending time with an individual work and seeing what it yields because I think... A lot of work doesn't always give everything away at first glance. And so it's good to spend time with it.
It's good to see what I might come to like about it or see what it's teaching me to see.
For readers who have not opened your book yet, do you have a word that they should keep in mind for when they're reading it? One word?
Yes. I think it will be... fun to look for examples of the word narrative. And if I'm permitted to add a phrase, I think one of my favorite phrases in the book is, that's not how I remember it.
Do you have a hope for what readers will take away from discipline?
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Chapter 5: How does the Me Too movement influence Christine's narrative?
Well, the novel is Discipline. Larissa Pham, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you so much. This was so fun.
Discipline by Larissa Pham was published by Random House. And now, book critic Suzanne Perez looks at a prize-winning novel that says a lot more than its main character does.
It's the season for catching up on award-winning books, so this week I decided to check out David Soloy's novel Flesh, which is the recipient of this year's Booker Prize. The Canadian-born Hungarian-British writer was shortlisted for the Booker nearly a decade ago for his novel All That Man Is, but Flesh is my first experience with Soloy's writing. And my, what an experience it is!
Flash follows the life of one Hungarian man, IstvƔn, from adolescence to old age. It's told in a sparse, episodic style that booker Judge Roddy Doyle called singular and extraordinary. It's certainly unlike anything I've read before, and I found it off-putting for several chapters, until a dramatic plot twist grabbed my attention and propelled me through the rest of the novel.
The style and subject matter will not be for everyone, but I can understand the critical acclaim. Flesh opens when main character Istvan is 15, and he and his mother move to a new town. Not an easy age to do that, Istvan observes, and that turns out to be the case. We begin the novel with a huge void in Istvan's history. What happened during his early childhood?
Why did his mother bring him here? And those blank spaces set a tone for the story to come. Within just a few pages, Istvan begins doing chores for an older woman neighbor who grooms him into a sexual relationship. To call the teen passive or uncommunicative would be a gross understatement, but minimal is the mood here, as IstvƔn's statements seldom go beyond, yeah, no, or I don't know.
A Wall Street Journal reviewer said the sparse prose leads to an almost comically minimalist dialogue, in which IstvƔn conducts entire conversations, saying little except, okay. It came off as downright annoying to this reader until I realized that Soloy seemed to be establishing the foundation for a character who is detached from his own emotions and desires, and even from his physical body.
The novel follows IstvƔn to London, to war, and into the upper echelons of British society. But the author omits many important events from the narrative and instead chooses to hint at them after the fact. IstvƔn's personality doesn't change much through the course of the novel, but the overall theme seems to be that he is a passive participant in whatever comes his way.
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