It's a funny thing talking to writers about their creative process, the approach, the way they're able to articulate and conceive, of the intangible elements that conspire to allow them to do what they do. It sits somewhere between solid, functional, deliberate craft on the one hand, and something altogether more nebulous, hand wavy mystery. Some writers plan, others make it up as they go along. Some base character an incident on research,
on lived experience, on the historical record. Others follow where the characters take them constantly surprised, swept up by the muse. But one of the biggest devices lies in their approach to their rightly vocation. Most writers I've ever spoken to have the bug, this kind of need and urge to write that fuels their days, But some of them have come to its sideways, almost accidentally. Some writers start late.
I've always taken comfort in people like Annie Prue or Raymond Chandler, who don't even get started until they're in their fifties. But for some writers like Ruman, Alam is there from the very start.
The mythology in my own family, and who knows if it's true. Is that I learned to read when I was four, I was taught a babysitter, and like once that happened, I never supped. So I think that it the kid who is a reader like that as I was. It's not a far walk from there to think like I'm also going to be a writer.
Ruman Alam is the author of four novels. His biggest hit was the twenty twenty New York Times bestselling novel Leave the World Behind. It was one of those irresistibly zeitgeisty books about an apocalyptic event that strands a bunch of affluent New Yorkers in the Hamptons. In his latest novel, Entitlement, Ruman considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege,
philanthropy and generosity. The book follows Brook Or, a single middle class woman who's just landed a job an octagenarian billionaire Asher Jaffey in his quest to give away a vast fortune. Soon, however, Brook finds herself disastrously adopting Ash's lifestyle without the funds to pay for it. An Entitlement becomes a cautionary tale. It's about self delusion and a city that values money above most other things. I'm Michael Williams and this is read this a show about the
books we love and the stories behind them. Class is an element that's a play in all of Ruman's novels, but perhaps most acutely obvious in Entitlement, where the whole idea of social status and wealth becomes an obsession for its main character Brook. I wanted to start by asking you about class in America and about how important class is in the kind of spectrum of idea into the politics, in the spectrum of kind of sense of self in contemporary America.
Well, with the caveat that I'm ill equipped to speak about, you know, the nationen large, it does feel to me that class is a pretty significant factor in American cultural and political life. You see it in the kind of I'm trying to think that sort of performance conducted by someone like Trump, who is of a certain class, a moneyed, urbane class, and is able via language and all of these other signifiers to address and sort of be glorified by a quite different class of Americans. So that kind
of cross class thing I think we've seen. And Trump is hardly the only politician who does this, because the political leader in this country on both sides of the political spectrum tends to be moneyed, highly educated people who have gone to school in Cambridge or New York. But they're able to mobilize these sort of coalitions or camps of voters who are sort of nothing like them by appealing to them with some language that seems to be
very rooted in class. And I think it's discomforting to talk about, as complicated as it is to have a proper conversation in this country, and I'm sure in Australia as well about racial politics, class politics feel even more slippery because you are sort of reducing huge segments of the population to these sort of articulous types based on all of these external factors. And yet I think it's
also something that people understand is present. It's present in what your accent sounds like, it's present in what your name is like, and it determines so much of your experience of contemporary life. I mean, as a middle class person, I guess maybe it's the middle class generally, or the coastal middle class or the New York City middle.
Class has the least reason to talk about it.
Maybe that's more it's less salient to my experience of life because I'm not beginning my life or trying to radically change the circumstances of my life based on what I've inherited from my parents, based on the class into which I was born.
Part of how from outside it appears to play out in an American context, which is something that's very present in all of your work, I think, is around the idea of aspiration. You know. The thing that always staggers me as someone who's not an American is how often the political debate in your country people seem to vote against self interest. There is something about the idea that you might not be a millionaire, you might not be comfortably off, but one day you might get to be.
In the American dream, it's possible that you are going to end up in this position of privilege, and as a consequence, you're going to vote with your aspirational self rather than your real self. That get between what you want and what you're allowed to want seems pretty huge. Is that a reductive way of talking about your country?
I don't think so, but you know I'm not running for office. I think that you said it yourself, the American dream. That sort of phrase is some of the most persuasive myth making we have in the culture.
It's up there with just do it right.
It's like that is the brand of this nation, that you can dream really big.
And the way.
That that has been sort of bent for the electorate by people who I think are ultimately quite cynical, is to appeal to this childish idea that you maybe a million someday and that you should not do anything that might cost your future self in sort of tax consequence or something, which is obviously preposterous, and you know, but it's quite successful. People rail in this country perfectly reasonable.
People rail against the idea of the state providing lunches to school children, you know, which is crazy.
It's crazy.
They rail against things like inheritance tax, not really comprehending that the inheritance tax on one hundred and fifty American families could completely change the way the American economy functions because they imagine that someday, I'm going to leave this money to my child or you know, that that will somehow affect me.
But it's not going to affect you.
It's going to affect the Walton family or Bill Gates, but it has nothing to do with me, you know.
As a novelist, how useful is the idea of desire and want and aspiration as a novelistic engine. It's instally one that you had drawn to. Is characters who hunger for things that are just out of reach or denied them one way or the other.
That schema's efficacy, as like the engine of a novel is ultimately that's that judgment is in the hands of the reader. I would say that as the writer, you can't help returning to your hobby horses, and you just sort of find yourself back in this same territory over and over again. I thought of my third book, Leave the World Behind, as being really distinct from my first two. And while it is formally or in the sort of novelistic strategy, it is distinct thematically, it's not. It's really
the same territory. And I think that that's I think that that is something that happens to I was going to say writers, but I think it's sort of something you see across the board that artists have these particular preoccupations and desire. And in this case, I don't mean a kind of vaunted spiritual or intellectual desire. I mean sort of like want of things or status or money or power. Something is a pretty It's a pretty easy one for me to get my head into.
And maybe that's because I'm American.
That kind of desire is like, that's you're taught that from your I mean, that is inculcated in you from the very beginning. You know, like I think it's not just about American life, it's sort of contemporary life. But contemporary life is about possessions and it's about acquisition. And this is a message that you are hit with constantly. I have two children, and I remember when they first started taking the bus to school, and then they would take the bus to summer camp. It was especially with
my older son. You know, parents often with their first born can be very vigilant about being the intermediary and their experience of reality. But then they slip out of your hands to go off to school, to ride the bus, and they.
Hear things like the radio.
So this was a kid who had never seen the television, but would come home saying to me, I mean, he had said to me, this is like one of those stories that families love to tell. He had said to me, like, what are we doing for Toyota than right? Which is just a sales gimmick that he heard about on the
radio on the way to summer camp. And so that kind of messaging about acquisition and buying is so persuasive, even to a little baby who doesn't know what you're talking about, who isn't going to buy a car, you know.
So I just think that's like part of it's part of the culture. That's what we want.
There's nothing quite like being a parent to get that stuff reflect to back to you as well. And you're right, it's a funny thing as they get all the way. You go from if not controlling, at least being preisent for the entirety of their experience and the entirety of how they understand the world that they're in, to other influences coming in and completely kind of fading in in different ways, which is such a confronting thing I think is apparent.
And you know that said, even if you sort of curate their experience of reality, you know, with which we did, or we tried to do, as I think a lot of parents do here, read these books like you watch fifteen minutes of this show, you play with these organic
wooden blocks. I remember when my older son was quite small, because it was before we had his brother, so he was three or less, and we saw a woman who lived across the street from us unloading sheets of drywall from the back of a van, and this little baby said, ladies can't do that, which is such a startling thing to hear from your kid's mouth, especially when you, you know, my Husban and I are like, oh, we're raising these enlightened, these are going to be like the great young men
of the future. To hear him say this sort of startling thing. And my theory about that is that he was saying something he had seen in the pages of Richard Scary. Yeah, where those books you see the dads with the tool belts or you know, they're the butcher or whatever, and the moms the pigs or cows or whatever they are, are wearing aprons and they're cooking, and so he kids are just trying to make sense of the world, and the world is trying to shape their understanding of that world.
And it happens to you too.
And as you're saying, I think when you when you see it happen to your kids, you realize the extent to which it has happened to you.
I mean Richard Scary as a prime example such kind of rigid gendernomes. But he'll still let a pig be a butcher, right, which seems like a strange job to us for a pig. I don't want to be judgmental, but that's the same time, kind, when did you know you wanted to be a writer, and what was the relationship between that moment and your experience as a rat.
Adults can come to reading at any time, of course, but I think there are certain adults for whom it happens in childhood. It happens sort of like quickly and bindingly. The mythology in my own family, and who knows if it's true, is that I learned to read when I was four. I was taught by a babysitter, and like, once that happened, I never supped. And that is certainly my memory. It's hard to know, you know, how reliable that is. But I remember so clearly reading a book.
I would take a bath, I would read in the bathtub, and I would finish the book, and then I would go back to the first page.
I never it would sort of continue on. For me.
One of the worst tragedies of my young life is when we were on vacation and I finished the two books I had brought, like I finished them like at the airport, and I had to read my father's copy of The Hunt for Road October for the balance of my trip when I was like ten. So I think that it the kid who is a reader like that as I was. It's not a far walk from there to think, like, I'm also going to be a writer.
And I remember having this idea about myself, like pretty young, before I even started school, And it was always the kind of story I told about myself and to myself, and so feels like an inevitability. But of course it's so silly because I was a little kid.
So what did I know?
You were a little kid who would lie in the bath and write a book. I mean you had a certain kind of diacad and self knowledge there already.
Yeah, a little a little princeling reading Judy Blum in the bathtub at ten magic. But I do you know, I think that like that stuff. I mean, it just becomes the story you tell yourself, right, sort of makes sense.
Of your own life.
But that is the story that I tell, And I think it's true that that sort of deep passion for reading. It was interconnection with an interest in writing or I desire.
To you know, I just I couldn't believe it.
Like I read as a kid, Judy Blume, I read Harriet the Spy, which is Louise fits you. And then as I got older, I read like I Gota Christine, and I just couldn't believe it. It was like this idea that these people somehow had the ability.
It just felt like magic.
Yeah, And to be honest with you, I mean I'm forty seven now, and I still feel that way.
You know, I still feel that way.
I was reading Coutzilla a couple of weeks ago, and I was like, this is crazy, Like what what am I reading?
What is he doing to me? Like how did this happen?
How did this book that he wrote thirty years ago come to me now?
And you know, pick.
Apart my brain. It's a very strange thing. And so yeah, it's sort of a life who I'm feeling about that.
When we return, Ruman explains why the Genesis of Entitlement feels so singular and reveals how he manages his relationship with readers. We'll be right back. I'm curious about what that first spark when you know there's a new book on the horizon, whether it's more likely to be an idea or whether they come from character from story.
So I have a very clear sense of how to answer this question with retract to my first book, and my second book, and even my third book. How this one entitlement it's genesis is a little hazy to me. A long time ago, my husband said to me about a friend of ours, an acquaintance really He said, you know, she's kind of like a chronically single woman at a
time approaching midlife. And he said, you know, I think at a certain point you should be allowed to marry yourself and throw a big party and everyone has to give you a gift and sort of treat it the same way that they would treat it if you were getting married to another person. A not cruel joke, like kind of like a funny observation, And that really stayed
with me. I remembered that moment, and at some point I think a lot of it is down to the pandemic that this sort of this book was sort of born in this period that I think was hazy for a lot of people. I had this idea about a woman choosing to marry an apartment. We were looking for a home in New York City at the time, so we had we kind of had like real estate on the brain. I do think that part of being a middle class person in your forties in New York City
is that you think about real estate a lot. There was something very arresting in that idea to me, of a woman saying I'm going to marry this apartment instead of this man or this woman entitlement. Ultimately, the shape that it took strays pretty far from that. I remember
at some point. It was also very interested in the not for profit sector in particular these and there are there are quite a few of them, these sort of family operations where somebody who has acquired a fortune or someone who has inherited a fortune works with a lawyer and a couple of other people to disburse this particular fortune.
I know somebody who is involved in this particular business, and the person for whom she works is quite extraordinarily wealthy and has extremely specific priorities in terms of their giving their philanthropy. They're interested in very very specific causes, and the family foundation is an extremely small group of people. I think it's this guy and his attorney and a friend of mine, And that was very interesting.
To me, because you are.
Able to really do something, to really affect something, but you also are just some guy with a checkbook. And for the most part, I think that these sort of investments are going to things that we can all agree are generally good. To micro finance, to researching breast cancer, whatever.
These are good causes.
But there is something very peculiar about the fact that just because this guy who did not make this money he inherited it is able to channel a pretty significant fortune according to his whim. Again, not like a bad thing,
but an interesting thing, very interesting to me. And I think since Empire of Pain and that particular book, that particular set of research into the Sacklers and how they may have, I think it's hard to sort of understand, but that perhaps some desire on the part of people who have acquired fortune are built of fortune in ways that they understand to be slightly less than ethical, that they can use philanthropic giving to kind of burnish the
family reputation or burnish their name. That was also of interest to me. So I think what happens for me is that I have ideas that I'm interested in and
I need something to make them start happening. And I think with this particular book, with Entitlement, it was really situated in the character that I had these two characters who sort of embodied these ideas, the idea of a young contemporary woman who wanted to sort of issue traditional romantic and familial attachments and sort of wanted an apartment, and an older wealthy man who was interested in the kind of ego flux of giving, of generosity.
And I love that you described that philanthropic impulse is interesting but not bad, because I think part of what you do so beautifully and Entitlement is exactly that idea. You know, there is a I think a natural impulse in our culture, even if not in our politics, to assume that an octogenarian billionaire is going to somehow be a dastardly figure or be motivated by things that are
somehow render the philanthropy unworthy or render him suspect. And I think the way you've built the character of Asher Jaffey in this book is really interesting because you got with interesting but not bad, I think could be a mantra.
Right He's not a bond villain, you know. I mean there is we have and we actually have those billionaires in this country, right, these bond villain billionaires who want to go to space or live forever or whatever preposterous endeavor they have.
I think of Asher. I mean, I'm very fond of Asher.
They'll be more fond of him than any person I've ever made up On the page.
He's like a nice guy.
He feels like someone who's sort of lucked his way into having billions of dollars, and he seems on some level aware of the limits of his own intelligence. But I also think that when you are costeded by great wealth, you begin to think you are great, you know, a little bit immortal, a little bit unfalliable, right, And I think that this sort of gets into your head. But yeah, I think that I didn't want the book to rely on this scheme in which the old white guy is evil.
You know, it doesn't seem that interesting to be. He's not great, I mean he does some his behavior is more complex, and I think that's true of most people, right, Yeah, it's people are more complex than that, you know.
I'm glad you mentioned his degree of self awareness. Because I do think for both him and for Brook, they have a kind of key protagonist in the book that question about how aware they are of their own motivation, of the impact of their own behavior. And thinking back to your earlier books, how fun is it to write characters who are less self aware than you are as the authorial voice.
Well, it's great fun because I get to exercise full control. I think that the challenge then, I mean challenge isn't quite the word, but the particular risk is that then it's a question for the reader. The reader has to have her own perspective on the degree to which these characters are honest or trustworthy, or likable or real, you know whatever. But people, That is how I think how
people are. I think if you're again, if you're writing a story for children or sort of like a you know, then it's or fairy tale or something, it's easy to understand, sort of like black and white, good and evil like, you know, but the truth of reality is like a little more complicated. You know. Asher is a very smart man who made billions of dollars in his lifetime, so he has to possess some sense of what he's doing.
But also I think that when you get to a certain point, or when you are He's of a very specific generation, it's possible to be slightly unaware of what you're doing or unaware of the ways, and you are exerting control over others. And I think the same is true for Brooks. She's not Asture's victim. Certainly, if the book sees her undergo an unraveling, or you know, if if her fate is less than ideal, I also think it's true that she's driven herself to that fate for.
The fourth time. Now, you've written a book that is utterly compelling and kind of a wonderful read that is going to stay with me for some time. I did have a moment reading Entitlement, where I thought, oh, there's no one quite like Ruman for creating in me a sense of slowly ratcheting dread through the course of a book. I'm kind of reading brook and just thinking, oh, no, don't don't do that.
Why the highest, the highest praise.
I will acknowledge my particular debt in this particular instance to Sylvia Plath, because I did reread the Beljar.
Of course, her positume legacy as a poet is really intact.
But I sort of marveled at that novel on rereading it, that it was the product of someone who was so very young, and we only have that book and it's full of dread. That atmosphere is very potent, and my sense of that book is that Plath is using that atmosphere to sort of depict the water in which she was swimming mentally and psychically, but also those were the terms of life for a woman at mid century. And when I reread the book, I was like, God, I
feel like oppressed just reading this book like this. The atmosphere of this book is so powerful, and that was something I really wanted entitlement to hold. And so I'm thrilled that you felt that way. But what I hope is that you are able to walk with that realization to reality itself. What happens to Brooke. Of course, it's a book, it's a novel, it's pretend. But the particular situation in which she finds herself is the situation in which we all kind of exist. Money is the mitigating
factor of all things in contemporary life. And that realization is so unsettling that I think once you have it, you either look away from it or you go crazy.
Rumin Alam's latest novel, Entitlement, is out now before we go. I wanted to pay tribute to someone in the Australian BookWorld who retired just this week. Jason Steger was books editor, first just for The Age and then after that for both The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. You may have come across him on ABCTV's The Book Club, where he sat and talked books with Marie Cardy and Jennifer Bourne week in week out, but he has been a mainstay
of Australian literary criticism for many years now. Basically what Jason has done at those newspapers has said, read this to generations of Australian readers, and he will be missed. A big thank you to Jason, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention, of course, it is Sally Rooney. Week. Booksellers across the English language world went wild putting out the new book that have been strictly embargoed until publication day. It's called Into Metso. Early reviews are raves and I'm
just about to start reading it myself. I can't wait. You can find Into Metso and many other books that aren't into Mezzo, and your favorite independent bookstore. That's it for this week's show. If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends and rate and review. It helps a lot. Next week and read this, I sit down with Melanie Cheng. She's the author of the new novel The Burrow, and she talks about how being practicing GP has helped inform her writing.
I don't live an extraordinarily interesting life, but through my work I get to see into a lot of different lives and different experiences, and yeah, I've always brought that into my writing.
Read This is produced and edited by Clara Ames. The show is mixed by Travis Evans with original compositions by Zulton Fetcher. Thanks for listening, See you next week.