let's go and get started. Welcome to Sacramento. Have you ever been to
northern California before? Northern California. Yeah, I was in san
Francisco for *** year um living at the height of the dot com era. So that was
interesting. And now of course when I go back, you know, the city changes so
much this year to year and it's my second stop in sacramento. I was here
*** couple of years ago talking out of college *** little bit north of here, I
was snowed in, Well the plane was snowed in. So I had to, I got two extra
days here and um, got to walk around the city *** bunch. That's nice to be
back. Yeah, well welcome, We're glad to have you back. So your last two books
that you know, have been so claimed were wonderful. But they also dealt
with like really heavy subjects and systemic racism and really important
topics, but heavy subjects. Your latest book feels like *** total detour in ***
really delicious way. Was it purposeful to go in such *** different direction
and as an author, is that important to do sometimes? Well, I've always
switched around. So, um, it's odd for me to do to serious books back to back.
I usually do *** book that's maybe heavy *** little bit and then something
lighter and switch off maybe *** short book and *** long book before
Underground Railroad. I did *** zombie novel and *** poker memoir and ***
coming of age novel. So so skipping around as sort of my style, I think if
you can do something, why do it again. And I've always tried to um reflect my
interests in my books and I like serious books, I like more comedic
material. And so the great thing about this job is if I keep going, I get to
write about all these different subjects in different ways, anywhere
your imagination chooses to take you. Let's talk *** little bit about the
Harlem shuffle and where the character Ray Carney comes from. Well, I had the,
you know, the genre first I wanted to write *** heist novel and then who's
going to be and I decided to have my main character be offense, someone who
deals in stolen goods. And I was doing some research and I discovered that ***
lot of fences have *** real, you know, front operation, they sell used
furniture or appliances and in the back they have, you know, all the dirty
business and their stolen goods and that spoke to *** divided self. Someone
that have Ray Carney, my main character be someone who, you know, encompasses
those different directions. He's an upstanding citizen, it appears, but has
this dark side, *** part of him that's saying, let's do some crime And he's
juggling the two. There's this this wonderful thing about the heist. I mean,
I love, I'm *** it was *** huge oceans 11 fan, you know, I love the concept of
the heist, as *** as *** trope the thing that's great about *** heist and
somebody like that is you fall in love with the character and you're really
rooting for them the whole time, even though they're kind of flawed. Sure, I
mean there are, there are criminals. Yes, there is that, but but it can go
either way. They can, you know, plot and plan and pull off the heist and
transcend fate their destiny by getting this caper together or another, you
know, genre, Another sub genre of the heist story, Everything goes wrong,
they plot and plan and the safe crackers back on heroin, the wheel
man's fighting with his wife. And so all these little sort of human elements
come in and destroy their attempt to transcend their grubby lives. And what
I like about, you know, Cardi and Harlem shuffle is that he does put the
planning in and you know, sometimes he pulls it off, he does transcend his
origins. The book is set in 19 sixties. Harlem, what drew you to that time? Um
I think, you know, underground railroad was 18 fifties, America uh nickel boys
was florida in the sixties, I just want to be close to home *** little, not as
hard, I don't have to imagine what kind of clothes they are wearing. Um and I
love, I love new york, I love writing about it in different ways. Um I was
not alive in the sixties. Um so imagining my parents new york was fun
and and going to the new york times archive and newspaper archives and uh
figuring out um the language, the political atmosphere of the city and of
course since Carney is *** furniture salesman, what kind of stuff he has in
his showroom, There's all this really fun research. One thing we share in
common is that our parents were in that area at the same time, my my parents
were immigrants from Ireland and ended up in New York in the late 50s and the
early 60s and it is interesting to hear that the stories that they had from
that time about what *** magical place, it was regardless of what your bro, you
were in it was nothing but the hope of opportunity for *** lot of people. No,
sure, I mean in the, in the late 18 hundreds, Harlem was, you know pastor
and starting to become buildings and communities and it was *** revolving
cast of irish Italians, jewish people coming in, trying to make it in the
city and then they move to the suburbs. They do actually climb the economic
ladder and then black americans from the south and the caribbean come in and
so what I love about walking around Harlem is that It will be *** townhouse
from 1870 and so many different types of people have come through this one,
this one piece of property with their dreams moving, in starting *** family
rising in the system and then leaving and and it's still going on, you know,
Harlem is still has that great turn of, of people trying to make it in the city.
I read that your mother had some thoughts on some of the things that you
mentioned in the books. You have to fact check, you're mentioning real. Yes.
Well I didn't, I didn't realize that it was actually her new york and so I
would do this research about the hotel Theresa or this ice cream store that
was around in the sixties and then tell my mother and she's like, oh yeah, I
was there all the time, you know, chock full of nuts. I would go there before I
went to work and I should have just asked her instead of doing the real,
the real work. Isn't it funny to think about the resource that you actually
had their Yes, yes, yes. How important is fact checking. Even if you're
writing about relatively recent history, people love to call people out on you,
miss that one little detail. So yeah, I mean you try to get it right and it's,
you know, it can be anxiety producing. It turns out some of the people who are
alive in the 60s are still around and I have some opinions about different
things. So, um I haven't gotten too many letters, but I'm sure there are
some disgruntled people who are like, no, actually that restaurant was closed
or no, no. One of ***, you know, *** good type of good upstanding black
person would never live on that street. So, um, I'm waiting for the letters to
come in, you've won two Pulitzer prizes, what is that like? And how has that
changed the way you work? And maybe some of the opportunities that come
your way, the main thing is that I'm not teaching, you know, I really can
just write it also means I travel more so I've learned to write in hotel rooms
and on planes as I go to visit foreign publishers in Norway and Finland and
china. So, um, but having the time just to really
think of my kooky ideas, this has been really nice, so that's the main thing,
but it's still, you know, *** difficult job. And so I was trying to figure out
things about my new project today this afternoon And it never gets easier and
you know, if it did get easier, it wouldn't be worth doing. So does that
surprise people that it doesn't get easier? Is there an assumption by some
that I keep telling people normally don't believe me? I mean, and after 25
years of writing, sometimes people get the book and sometimes they don't, and
so I've written books, for no one particularly cared when it came out and
I know that that can always happen. So I just try to do my best with each book
and not take it for granted. What's the greatest thing about writing these days,
um I think there's still the original joy of coming up with *** character or
*** sentence or an image that you didn't know you were going to come up
with that morning. And so there's *** breakthrough in terms of, oh, the
stories should go this way or this, you know, three these three words sum up
this character in *** certain way perfectly. And all that stuff is just
really beautiful surprise. You never know what you're going to discover over
the course of the day or what will click and what will sort of fix the
book. What *** great way to still look at life in general, in books, not life,
but yes, but in books it seems to work. I'm not so sure about the rest of it.
Great, well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to
tonight. It's gonna be fun. Thanks