Yeah. Oh, I just had a, a brief question.

Do you ever face, you know, a certain ethical

dilemma in creating characters that were real and, and

putting different thoughts into their heads and creating a

different side of them, than they may have been?

>> Yeah. >>

[LAUGH]

>> Yes, well, and then, and then so here we go back to, you know, what's

historic, and what's real, and what's really fictional,

and I've been trying to keep collapsing these, these things.

But, there is a difference though, in, I mean, I'm being a

little facetious when I collapse them that much, because when you write

something like memoir, and you are, it's clear, you're bas-, you're writing

about someone real, and, in that case, it's, I think it is,

it is wrong to put thoughts in the head, of someone you are

admitting is a real person, even if you give the person a different name.

And so, when you write something like memoir, I think, I think it's wrong, I

think it's ethically wrong, and it's also just false, to put thoughts in the head.

You can only say, this is what I see, this is what I hear, I can only imagine this.

So not putting a thought in the head, but

just reporting behavior, so being more of a journalist.

But you're always controlling, them, what you're

showing, and so you're at, you're trying

to get a reader to see, what might be inside, without actually saying it.

But it's slightly different because you are at least,

working kind of objectively, as objectively possible from the outside.

Now with a character with someone like Ovid, I mean, guy's been gone

[LAUGH]

for a couple thousand years.

So you know, I don't, obviously I didn't have to

feel too many scruples about making him as I made him.

But I also thought, but there are a lot of classical scholars

out there, and there are a lot of people who have read Ovid.

And I know that they all have their own Ovid, they know Ovid.

And so whatever I write about Ovid, I

will be up against this kind of public knowledge.

and that's where you just do your research as well as you can and imagine

something as truthfully as you can. And just say well, here's my vision.

So yes, there are, there are, there are, scruples

[LAUGH].

And then sometimes you. ...

I mean sometimes you.

Like, if you publish something about someone

who is real, you, you're taking a risk.

I mean, you're maybe not being a nice person sometimes.

But, you care about something else, more than

seeming a nice person, as Ovid would tell you

[LAUGH].

>> I noticed there's a really strong

parallel between writing and birth, in this

novel, specifically, you know, the muse and the writer bring to life the progeny.

And I think you said earlier, you have you know,

you feel you are giving birth to characters, in a way.

But there's also this sort of alternate parallel

abortive anti-birth narrative, like, going on in this story.

Is there a parallel for

the writing life for that as well, or is that, connected?

>> Well, I, I've never given birth, so when

I say that it's like that, I'm making it up.

But, I think that it has to be similar.

I mean, when you write a novel, especially, it's something that is

just plain in you, moving around for months, years, a long time.

I mean, this one, for me, a couple

years or longer, than your normal gestation period.

And then when it's gone it's, it is,

it has this other life.

I mean Ovid, when he sent off his little books, he

writes a little thing in the front saying farewell little books.

And it's his property and it's his flesh, but now it's public,

it's the world's and, and so, there are parallels like that I'm sure.

In, in my own case in writing this,

and here's more private information that, so what, I

write memoir, so when I was writing this

and I was, I originally planned to have Xenia

do what Medea did, that was the way I originally had fashioned this.

But I, myself, while I was writing this, was trying to get pregnant

and not succeeding, and so, by the time I'd finished writing it or

I was near the end, I was feeling pretty, pretty distraught about this.

And so I suddenly thought, I don't want her to do that.

I don't want her to do that, I want her to not do that.

And so, there was a really explicit connection between this problem of,

you know, trying to make a child, and, like, making a book.

And that, in that case, what my own actual experience, turneded into

this, you know I, I worked it into, into what happen here.

I also know there was a day I sat at my computer in

Germany and thought, I don't believe in a god but I was talking to

who ever I believed in, I don't know what, and I said, if

I could either publish a book or have a baby, I want the book.

[LAUGH]

another explicit connection, and I got that.

[LAUGH]

But yes, and so here since he's writing and she's going to give a child

you know, the connections had to be made even more, you know even more, more clear.

>> With oh sorry.

>> No no go ahead.

>> Oh with, with the abortion though in particular and you would, does, does

that have a like, is, is that like the books that never make it?

Or like, you know, the things that you have to give up or?

>> That's interesting, yeah.

>> That is interesting. Maybe it is,

maybe it is.

I hadn't thought of it that way, it's possible.

>> The incompletion of Medea or something to that extent,

might be a metaphor for that or something like this.

>> Yeah. Something like that.

[LAUGH]

Yeah Mary? >> Sure.

I was interested in how abortion was working with the novel.

So Julia uses it uses abortion to sort of, take control of her own life and

then, Xenia denies abortion, it seems, also to take control of her situation.

And then Ovid grapples with it too. I'm looking at page 184.

And this

is just so the small portion of a long passage, where he's rolling

it over in his mind, but he says, "they're dispensed with all the time.

Women are constantly poking bitter

dissolving pellets of herbs into themselves,

stabbing their inner parts with nails or soaking themselves in scalding water.

It happens all the time, while things are still soft

inside, so whats a difference in a month or few weeks."

So he sort of, has to deal with it in his own way and he's not sure how he feels,

I don't think about how, how to deal with these

babies that Xenia's having and how they're related to Julia?

I was just wondering, what, how you saw the role of

abortion in the novel, and what it is doing, for your characters?

>> Well, I wanted him to be clearly suffering, I mean,

really trying to rationalize, and when people are rationalizing

that hard you know it's because they're, they're suffering.

And a lot of the, I think some, I mean in certain ways the,

the abortions, you know, it, it was

important that Julia is refusing to take part.

She is not going to give this lineage.

She's, she's going to kind of end the line right there.

Ovid of course, wants to live on in this other way, that is Ariel.

You know, that is not connected to single human bodies.

And then Xenia's the one who suddenly switches.

She goes from one to the other.

She chooses, that she would rather have these babies than be in his book,

as, she's now destroyed his book, in which she would have lived in another way.

So they're all making these different choices about how

they want to live on, how they want to continue.

There's a poem that Ovid wrote in

the "Amores," which is about Corrina, his sort of fabled love on

get, get, aborting and so I, I knew first hand because there's this

pair of

poems of, of her doing it where he's very distraught and

saying, you know, why, you know, look at how you've endangered yourself,

this is, this is terrible, don't, don't do this.

But, but he's so, he's, he, I've seen him.

So I actually had text, where I'd seen him wrestling with the idea.

And I think that was trying to, you know, I was just, I was

trying to draw on that to feed into his actual imagining, of this now happening.

>> Oh I'm sorry, hold on.

[INAUDIBLE]

>> Oh, I just had a general question about writing this book.

The whole book is, can be, very dark, and I

know to like, to write well, to get in that place,

for me at least like, you kind of have to

get into, get into yourself into a kind of dark place.

And I know if I just write a story that's like

a page and it's more like sad I'll be in kind of

like a weird place for like a couple of days, so I was just wondering like

if, after writing for a long time, you can just kind of like chunk out your

time, where like this is where I'm writing, this is

where I'm going to get in touch with those

emotions, and this is where I'm going to like live the

rest of my day, after writing for awhile.

If you can kind of like strike that balance or, if

you know, if writing this took a year or however long it took,

it's just kind of like an emotional roller

coaster, which kind of transcends into your life.

>> Yes, that's what it is

[LAUGH]

and God save whoever might live with you,

[LAUGH]

but yeah, I mean it's true and this

[INAUDIBLE]

I can't remember maybe two or three years

but but, I mean you are doing other things.

You're going grocery shopping, and you're making dinner and

you're maybe going to the beach now and then.

I mean other things happen,

you go to a museum. But no there are extended

periods, where you're in the space, and to be in

the space, you have to be actively making yourself feel

those same emotions, which often translates into kind of like,

I, I've noticed this now, because after writing several books I realize, oh,

I guess I do this and so I actually will

be imagining all kinds of, say, reasons to be jealous.

I'll actually be projecting on whoever is around me a lot of what the

characters are going through, and then I'll

realize later, oh, that's a kind of sickness.

I should probably just be aware that I'm doing that.

[LAUGH]

>> And recognize that it is, kind of, not real, but that

just shows that you get, you just are fully in that space.

But yeah, I mean, then, but then on the

flipside, when you've had a day where you've written

well, however dark it is, you feel so great,

that it cancels out any of the bad stuff.

I mean it's more likely that the worst of writing, is when you don't write well.

And then there's nothing

[LAUGH]

that you can do, to make life better until you do write well, you know, the next day.

But no, definitely you inhabit the space and

I end up very kind of imaginatively projecting

whatever it is that's going on around, around

us, or upon those who are around me.

It's, it's not, it is hard I think for other.

Well, other people have to put up with that I guess.

>> Yeah. >> Mm-hm.

>> So the concept of immortality is a major theme throughout the book.

And Ovid and Xenia are both on the pursuit of being

remembered for all eternity, so I just wanted to know how

you yourself as a writer relate to Ovid, as trying to

be remembered, that desire to live on forever through your work.

>> Well, it would be nice. >> This

is going to help, right?

>> This is going to help right here, that's right.

I mean, I, every time I read Ovid again, and since I've just been

translating him, I've been really experiencing him

in the Latin again, which has been wonderful.

And I just think, unbelievable, unbelievable, that you can

that you have done this, sir, you know that you

have written stuff that still seems so real and and

people are still reading and translating and all of that.

I don't have any such hope. I, I get

I have a dark view of the future

of humanity, to say nothing of publishing, but yes, it would be nice,

and it's nice when people read you and, and write to you, and

you realize, oh, I have gone beyond myself, a little bit, because someone

else can read this and then have some kind of reaction to it.

That's, that's really gratifying, but immortality, no.

[LAUGH]

No. >> Start writing on papyrus.

>> Yeah.

[LAUGH]

Start writing on air.

>> I've been really curious about Ovid's vulnerability versus his huge ego.

I found on page 182 at the very

top, a very profound connection between him and Narcissus.

You say, "he shook his head in front of the mirror, he didn't care think, or he didn't

dare think it so because if that was so,

then why not just tell him, that she loved him?

How much could

it possibly cost her to tell?"

So, so, so he's looking at himself in the

mirror like Narcissus, like Narcissus is looking at his reflection.

But he also sees in Xenia, his own reflection, and he

wants her to love him, but it's like he can't grasp it.

So I was just wondering, if it was a conscious effort

of your part to draw a connection between the two characters?

>> Ovid and Narcissus?

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, often. Often throughout here.

I mean, I was trying to use a bunch

of the characters from "The Metamorphoses," Narcissus is one.

Pygmalion is clearly another, Daedalus, again and again.

But Narcissus for sure, because it's, I mean, what

Narcissus is involved with, I think, I mean, instead of

saying, oh, he loves how he looks, I mean, that's

very simple, I think, a simple way of reading it.

It's, he, he becomes preoccupied by this

this two-dimensional or not even two-dimensional, not really.

What's a reflection?

Does it have dimensions? Eek.

[LAUGH]

>> Whatever that fewer dimensional thing is, that is an aspect of himself.

So it's not just loving how he looks, it's this portion

of myself, that is not just the physical me, the thing

that might have some, you know, by, by virtue of its

ephemerality, might actually have greater substance, in a kind of contrary way.

I did, and so when Ovid is thinking

about his immortality, it's something more like that.

It's this, so it's, it's the same as

her quintessentia, really.

It's this, it's this more aerial version

of himself, that will transcend just fleshly life.

And I even, I think that's one of the things behind the Narcissus story.

It's not just that simple story. It's more about what, of how a person

imagines being continued to be, you know, seen or known for, for much much longer.

>> One thing I was kind of thinking about, we

sort of circled around it a few times, with Medea.

I was thinking, Ovid does a lot of really awful

things in "The Love-Artist" to create this poem.

Like, manipulating Xenia and trying to make her do all those awful things.

And another really core aspect of the novel is, the sort

of general feeling of loss that historians and people who love literature,

just everybody feels like if we don't, I mean, we only have

two lines of this incredible poem, or, I assume it's incredible, from two lines.

But I couldn't really decide at the end, whether the poem being lost was a

positive or negative thing, because it's positive for

Xenia, it's the way she gets her agency,

and it saves the lives of her children, but it's a

negative thing for everybody else, it seems, and that sort

of brings up, whether or not art should

have overcome that and whether or not losing

it's positive or negative and also maybe, how

much pain is acceptable for a great art?

I mean, you talked about, like, the sort of things that you sort of do to people

around when you're making memoirs and things, and

how much of that is okay for something immortal?

>> Well, I think it's something that most artists struggle with.

I mean, Ian

McEwan

writes about this, in a lot of his novels. And,

ideally, you're not, you're not, you don't do things that will cause pain.

I mean, you don't, nobody wants to do that, but sometimes

sometimes you, yeah, you do, you do believe in this other thing.

I don't know what to say, there is something that, that is, that has a

kind of well, let's just say it's,

you, you're all, I think you're always ambivalent.

You know, is this thing worth it?

I mean, I think that there's certainly a species of

writing that is just sensational and, and, and, and exploitive.

Now that, I mean, that has no value, I think.

But if what you think you are creating is something that

will be, that will take, like I said a minute ago, like that

will take a experience that was painful. Like in the case of writing memoir, you're

not actually making things happen, its like what things did happen that you're

now trying to transform into something that then has some shape and some value.

Ovid, yes, he is manipulating things.

I've never done anything quite like that.

[LAUGH]

But he's also carefully not, you know, he

keeps saying, I haven't actually lied to her.

She keeps doing these things to herself because she

has these, these, these thoughts and these expectations, and

then she'll kind of wind herself into this false

belief, and I am allowing her to do it.

I mean, so he is trying, he is being the artist,

who's trying to kind of stay on the right side of it?

He's not, he's not so much making things happen.

But yeah, he also is, rationalizing, and,

and convincing himself because, yes, because he

believes the thing will be finer than that.

But, then again, so does she and so, she's making

him believe that it will be, because she's seen it.

She knows that it's finer than that. So

that's how they're in this particular, particular bind.

But, but no, creating, doing wicked things intentionally, in order to

have something to write about, I, I can't say I support that.

[LAUGH]

No. >> Yeah, yeah

[INAUDIBLE]

>> I was really interested in the figure of

Augustus, mostly just because he's so peripheral, peripheral a character,

but so important to Ovid's mindset, as well as

Julia's, and Xenia like kind of unwittingly meets him.

At one point I think she made eye contact with him.

And I was just interested in your portrayal of him just because

I study classics as well, so, you know, you always think of Augustus

as that great Roman, you know, emperor, that made Rome a much better place, the

peace of Augustus, everyone, you know, everything

was completely correct, the way Rome should be.

But here, you show him as, like, someone who will die with Rome, and I think on

184 at the very bottom. It goes, "All for the

ruthless ambition of that cold marble man up there, on the palatine," and

just, it's just a really interesting depiction of

him, and I wondered how you came to that.

>> I guess, I, I'm guessing your study of classics has been better than mine.

No seriously because mine is old and I was focusing pretty

much on, on, on, on literature more than on, on history.

But my reading of Augustus, I suppose, has always been filtered through Ovid.

[LAUGH]

No I mean Horace as well, but much more through Ovid. And so, he

has been to me, you know, he was sort of the way Ovid experienced him,

which was that he was cold, and he was, you know, he did have,

I mean, I grew up in the time of the so-called moral majority, remember that?

>> Mm-hmm.

>> And Augustus to me was like that, so

he's enforcing these kind of strict, rigid,

ascetic

moral laws, and Ovid is saying, you know, no to those things.

So, this was the Augustus that I've always experienced,

and so, and also, when you are thinking about how

to create a character, and you are looking at sculptures,

and you're looking at these relics, it's easier then, to

then have him be the marble as well. But I mean one of the details about him of, of,

of refusing to have heat in his room, and in

the winter, and its cold, it can get very cold

up there on the palatine, and and, and looking

down upon those who did, as being of soft moral fiber.

You know that sort of thing is a real

detail of him and I think I might have been

starting from a small detail like that, and then what

we know about how quite cruel he was to Ovid.

I mean, in never allowing him back,

and letting him think, he might be allowed back and then never allowing him back.

So, that, that was my Augustus, as I saw him.

[INAUDIBLE]

>> We should always end with the emperor I think.

[LAUGH]

It's been a really wide-ranging discussion.

Our hour has, has flown by so let's all thank Jane Alison,

for this wonderful book and for, for visiting us for this hour.

>> Thank you.

And thank you for reading so well and asking good questions.

[NOISE]

Some challenges in historical fiction writing

瘟疫，巫婆，和战争：世界历史小说

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