transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] So you're saying with Hilton Honors, I can use points for a free night's stay anywhere? Anywhere. What about fancy places like the Canopy in Paris?

Speaker 2:
[00:08] Yeah, Hilton Honors, baby.

Speaker 1:
[00:10] Or relaxing sanctuaries like the Conrad and Tulum?

Speaker 3:
[00:13] Hilton Honors, baby.

Speaker 1:
[00:15] What about the five-star Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives? Are you gonna do this for all 9,000 properties?

Speaker 4:
[00:22] When you want points that can take you anywhere, anytime, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. Book your spring break now.

Speaker 5:
[00:37] Welcome to The Book Case. I am the Kate part of the duo that hosts the show.

Speaker 3:
[00:42] Well, we're a duet, and I'm Charlie Gibson. And so The Book Case with Kate and Charlie, as we hope, those are the phrases that you give to all your friends. I just heard The Book Case with Kate and Charlie, and it was another wonderful show, and you should be listening. We want you to sell it to all your friends, and we'll send you a lovely parting gift of you two.

Speaker 5:
[01:05] I don't know what parting gift. We'll send you a take home version of our podcast.

Speaker 3:
[01:09] You heard the show, play the game.

Speaker 5:
[01:12] Exactly. We don't do a lot of YA and young people's literature. We don't because honestly, we don't read a ton of it. But there is one great YA author that I have always loved and followed, and his name is Jason Reynolds. And his new book, and we'll explain what we mean by new in a minute, because it's sort of in quotation marks, is called Soundtrack. And when it was sent to me, I tore through it as I tear through a lot of Jason Reynolds. He's most famously known for Ghost and the Track and Running series that he did, which is also incredibly good. He's very talented. And so I was really excited to love this book and to speak with him.

Speaker 3:
[01:52] He's very prolific, as you mentioned. And this book is actually something that he wrote years ago, got out of the dusty archives and is being published now, just now, called Soundtrack, as Kate mentioned, I think. And it is about a group of musicians, buskers, I think is the actual phrase. They're buskers and they play in New York subway stations and people gather around. And it's the story of their lives, told wonderfully, I think. I really liked it. It really starts dramatically, I think. And we asked him just to read the first couple of paragraphs of The Book.

Speaker 6:
[02:31] If there was a movie made about my life, it would start with me, Uncle Lucky, and his friend Spit in the kitchen of our apartment. I'd be six and I'd have on my favorite red socks, the ones my big toes stuck out. Uncle Lucky would be explaining to me for the hundredth time. Nephew, anything happens, you call 9-1-1. Then he'd put one bullet in his pistol and spin the cylinder. Spit would take a long pull on a joint and let the stinky smoke float to the ceiling while Uncle Lucky cocked the gun and lifted it to his head. Then Uncle Lucky with his finger on the trigger would close his eyes and say, Lucky, Lucky, Lucky. And bam, the title of the movie in big bold letters would pop up on the screen, The Story of Stuyvesant Gray.

Speaker 5:
[03:17] If that isn't a first page that grabs you. I mean, when I read it, I called dad and I was like, we're gonna do this book. And I was only on page three. I also think it speaks to his talent that he wrote this more than 10 years ago. So whatever maturity he has developed over the last decade, it already existed when he wrote this.

Speaker 3:
[03:33] It sure did. So this is gonna be a little longer in terms of our talking to Jason. So we want to get right to it. As one of our friends, Richard Cher says, you should get to these interviews earlier. But anyway, let's get right to Jason Reynolds and our chat about soundtrack. Jason Reynolds, it is great, really great to have you in the Book Case. This is a lovely book soundtrack. You write for young adults, which is a really, really important audience. What after they have finished, do you want them to take away from this book? Do you simply write stories or do you want something in there that is a lesson that they take away?

Speaker 6:
[04:14] I don't necessarily think about the lesson when I'm making a book, I don't know if that's a healthy way to make art. I don't want to lead the reader in any particular way. To be honest with you, I'm just trying to bear witness to their lives and trying to be one of the people that they can use the thing that has been made to hide their secrets. That said, I think for this book, having made it, and now that it's lived in the world in a different way, I hope that young people, and this is with all my books, I really, really, really believe that friendship is the most valuable relationship of all the relationships, and I think it's also the most underrated and underappreciated.

Speaker 5:
[04:58] So what was it that first hooked you into writing this? Was it The Voice of Stye? Was it wanting to explore the relationships of found family at that age?

Speaker 6:
[05:07] I was just sitting on the A train and wondering, who are these teenagers that come in this train every single day and annoy all of us with their banning, and singing, and strumming? Where does the Mariachi band go when they get off the train? Where are these young orchestral musicians dressed in hoodies and sneakers who play on the platform? Where do they live? What do they talk about when they go split a dollar slice? There's that guy who just won an Oscar for a short movie, a short film called The Singers, I believe. It's a beautiful, beautiful movie. But that guy, the black man with that beautiful baritone voice, I used to see all the time singing in the subway, all these like doo-wop songs, singing the song he sang in the movie, as a matter of fact, right? We watched him every day sing that song in the subway, right? And it's like, but who is he? What's his story? Where does he come from? What has he been through? What does he sing? How does he feel? Right? I think that was sort of the beginning.

Speaker 3:
[06:20] I want to come back to something you've just said. After they play, they go get a dollar slice. Jason, where do you get a dollar slice of pizza in New York? There. It's $2, $3. And I was at a baseball game the other night, and it was $13 a slice. I'm not going to pay that for pizza.

Speaker 6:
[06:41] I know.

Speaker 3:
[06:41] I'm not.

Speaker 6:
[06:42] You got to remember, this book was written in 2015. So in 2015, you can still slip a dollar slice. Maybe two brothers pizza, you can still kind of get $2 max, right? I remember being on Prince Street getting $2 slices, and that's back in this time, to 2014, 13, 12. You can still find a dollar slice. Now, I know it's over.

Speaker 3:
[07:03] You go to the ball game. There used to be dollar dog nights. They were pretty short and they were not very good, but they were dollar dogs.

Speaker 5:
[07:11] I love that you're getting into the 80-something-year-old argument with a vendor. $13, have you lost your mind? You've talked about music and writing, and I wonder if you wouldn't mind talking about the musicality or the beat of this book. Did you think that having a rhythm to this book was important?

Speaker 6:
[07:28] I think having a few rhythms to this book are important. For this story, I try to parallel the rhythm of the book to the rhythm of New York City. I think typically when I'm writing, I can hear the click track in my head. Everything is pretty metronomic. I like to write that way because it feels propellant. It's my own sort of internal cue that I'm in my own rhythm, that I'm found my own flow. If I can't find the rhythm, then I can't find the rhythm. So I always am writing one like a click, click, click. I can hear that all the time when I'm working. I read my work out loud and it has to kind of line up so that when you're reading it, it feels propellant, it feels catalyzed in a particular way. For this story though, I think it required a couple of rhythms. I think I was trying to figure out, well, what is the rhythm of a busy New York City underground station? What is that like? A New York City underground stop? What does that sound like? What does it feel like? What's the rhythm of it? To me, so much of it is sort of cacophony. It's like a cacophony of sound. Much like jazz where there may be a set meter, there's a lot of other things happening that we could set different meters too. I think that's really what it was.

Speaker 5:
[08:51] You said you read aloud to yourself. Do you read aloud to yourself intermittently? Do you read aloud to yourself when you finish what you think is the end of the rhythm?

Speaker 6:
[08:58] Yeah, I read aloud to myself typically after I hit a wall. I'll keep it moving and I'll let it be what it is. I try to be, these days it takes me a little longer to get in this space where I try to shed my self-consciousness. This is sort of the curse of success is that you become more and more self-conscious about the thing that you're making because you want to make something as good as the last thing you're making instead of making the most honest thing in the moment. But once I find it, I let it flow. I just let it go and it's a lot of, I mean, it's a mess. And then when I hit the wall or the next day when I'm starting over, I'll go through the wall and let and I like to hear it to see really, honestly to test to see if my instincts still work.

Speaker 3:
[09:50] We talked to Tyore Jones a couple of weeks ago, who has just written a wonderful book called Kin. And she said I was writing a book that I was commissioned to write, already had the advance, cash the checks, and I realized as I was writing it, that I was making noise, that I wasn't making music, and that I had to go back and start something totally different. And the result of that was, was Kin. When you read to yourself, when do you know this is just not working? This is just not, there's no rhythm in this, it's wrong. I got to change it. What is it that you hear in your ear that you know is totally discordant?

Speaker 5:
[10:29] And how much of your writing ends up on the floor before you get in to that rhythm?

Speaker 6:
[10:35] Yeah. Well, to answer the first part of the question, I think I know if, like, it's hard to, it's such a good question because it's so hard to put in to words what my own voice sounds like. Right? And so I'm trying, I can't, I don't know how to tell you that I know when I'm lying. To me, I know when I'm lying to myself about what it is I'm making. I know when I'm trying to be Tony Morrison. I think that's why it's always very obvious when I don't, because I'm like, oh, this is terrible, because you're trying to do the Tony Morrison thing, right? Or you're trying to be Jasmyn Ward, or you want to desperately craft sentences like maybe a Jimmy Baldwin or I should call him James Baldwin, which is a respectful way to say his name. James Baldwin or, or Ellison, or any of these people that I love so much or Zora Neale Hurston. When I want my, I want my dialect to feel as rich and as honest as Zora Neale Hurston. And it's like, man, this is all sort of, this is a circus, man. This is all nonsense. And a lot of it does hit the floor. So I can, I can tell because, because I know my voice and I know when I'm not being honest with myself. I wish I was a world writing scholar. I'm not. I wish I had some of the academic lexicon and even some of the processes in which you learn in the Academy, perhaps. And maybe they'd be helpful, but I don't have any of that either. What I have is a gut, right? I just have an instinct. I have intuition. This whole thing over the last 20 years of my career has been rooted in my intuition, which is what my first editor told me all those years ago, which is like, hey man, your intuition will take you farther than your education ever will. And I'm still trusting that same gut.

Speaker 3:
[12:21] Well, you didn't do it poorly. The two of us can attest you didn't do it poorly. No, not at all. I'm interested in the technique, and I apologize. I've read some of your other stuff, but I don't know if you've used this technique otherwise. The technique being there is prose and then there is dialogue intermixed. And I felt it sometimes like I'm reading a script and sometimes like I'm reading a book. But that interposition of dialogue and exposition, I found a really interesting technique. What does it free you to do? Does it restrict you in any way? How do you think of it? And have you used it in other areas?

Speaker 6:
[13:00] I'm more interested in what it does for the reader. I think any chance you get to create space on a page is good. Especially for the population that I work for. A little bit of space goes a long, long, long way when you're dealing with a 14-year-old, right? And so I think first of all, what it does is it gives it some breath. It gives it a little air. You can breathe a bit while reading it. It doesn't feel so daunting or so heavy. A lot of black letters on a white page can be a lot for someone who might be struggling with reading or who might be trying to become a better reader or someone who's trying to do better in class for that matter, right? So that's the first thing. The other thing is I think it gives people an opportunity to be reminded that literature is art. I've been arguing a lot lately in the media about how I think we teach language arts, but really we just teach language. I don't know if we're teaching the art part of it very well. And I think in order to teach the art part of it, one has to then accept the fact that storytelling gets to be creative outside of the topic of the story itself or the plot of the story itself. The actual container, the framework of the story also can be a creative endeavor.

Speaker 5:
[14:16] That's interesting because I think a lot of people look at, when you're talking about literature as art, for instance, we did a show on The Invisible Man, and one of the things we said is, this is a book that requires your participation. You have to pay attention to every sentence. It is work, but it is work that is so unbelievably rewarding. Actually, one of the things I found when you did that with the dialogue was it actually sped it up. It allowed the characters to talk over each other, which made it more true to dialogue for me.

Speaker 6:
[14:47] It becomes more theatrical in that way. I think maybe even allows us to see the world in which we're supposed to be living on this page. We can see the world differently. It's no different than in the kid space. It's so interesting what's different. I write for adults too. The differences are fascinating because in the kid space, oftentimes when you're writing dialogue, you use tags. So, I went to the store, so and so said, but then you add an adjective, right? So and so said, flustered, or, you know what I mean? Or so and so griped, so and so griped. It's always this kind of like, what is the physical tag to give us some sort of elevated experience as far as how the person is saying the thing. But when you're writing for adults, it's just said. And the reason why is because in the adult space, just saying, he said, she said, they said, we said, allows the dialogue to just kind of fall away. It allows the ease in reading so that the pace can stay the pace, and you don't get hung up on the minutiae of these people who are talking, you're listening to what they're saying. And I think the script format does the same thing for kids.

Speaker 3:
[15:59] When Soundtrack played in a subway station, it was happening, and people would gather, and people would follow them. When I never knew, does Jason Reynolds think their music was any good?

Speaker 6:
[16:12] Oh, yeah. In my mind, these are geniuses. And you know why? Because I've seen so many of them, and I have a little brother who was one of those like musical genius kids who plays instruments and all of that. In my mind, there's nothing more interesting than a 19-year-old musician. Like, there's something so messy about it all, and something so honest about it, and their chops are just good enough, depending upon when they've started playing. I mean, look, we can look at the White Stripes' first three albums, right? And I remember people would criticize Meg White, the drummer, and say that she wasn't a good drummer. And now we listen to it and we say to ourselves, actually, she was perfect for the music they were making. She was a perfect drummer for the two-man band that they had and the music that was raw and unfiltered that they were making, right? And I think that, and they were young. They were young. And the same thing that I, sort of the sort of shedding of self-consciousness, that same thing I was talking about when I wrote Soundtrack, that's what the kids had. They really believe they're geniuses. When you're that age, you just believe you're the best.

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Speaker 3:
[18:58] So more of our conversation with Jason Reynolds, in which he tells a wonderful fish story. It's not about catching one that's bigger than your imagination, it's about a goldfish, but it's a lesson for life.

Speaker 5:
[19:13] Yeah, and then we go to rapid fires, and I just want to say, we left these rapid fires a little long. Jason is not just a great writer, but he's almost a reading and writing philosopher. And we asked some somewhat deep questions in our rapid fires to Jason, and he really is very thoughtful about his answers. And so we wanted him to say what he needed to say about the questions that we asked. So here we are, the second part of our interview with the great Jason Reynolds.

Speaker 3:
[19:43] You write for young adults. Why is that so important?

Speaker 6:
[19:47] I mean, who else is there to write for? I mean, like, when you really, when you really consider it, I love being an adult, but the stakes are much higher. You know, if we're really thinking about what I'm, what myself and my colleagues are trying to do, it's basically ensure the futures of the rest of us by making sure that they have not just stories, right? For me, it isn't even about that. I know there's like all this talk around like, representation and blah, blah, blah. And I'm with it. I like all of that. I think all of that is very important, but I'm thinking about like brain power, right? I'm interested in like, the more language you have, the better your ability to think critically. The more language you have, the better you're able to listen to people who are telling you things that may be true or untrue, and your discernment changes simply based on how you exercise the muscle of the mind, which is often strengthened by the act of reading, and reading anything for that matter. Just the act of it, right? Your ability to be persistent and to concentrate and to be disciplined has so much to do with what you can learn when you are reading anything, right? Like comprehension is reading. Your imagination is stoked by reading. Your ability to hear your own voice is heightened by reading. I'm interested in that, right? I'm interested in that. So that when they become adults like us, and their lives begin to slow down and bore and become much more banal and mundane, they can actually change the world because they have the tools to do so. I think that literacy, other than the actual physical health of the planet, I think literacy is number two globally as a global issue. Truly, I truly believe that.

Speaker 5:
[21:42] And you've done a lot of work for the American Library Association. You were ambassador for Ban Books Week. I mean, given where the YA audience is, both because of this and because of censorship, are you concerned?

Speaker 6:
[21:55] Yes. Full stop. I am concerned. I mean, look, I try not to be concerned. I'm not the kind of person who blows things out of. It takes me a while to get concerned. But I am concerned because I've been around quite a while, but I've never seen it like this. It's a strange thing that's happening, and it's scary. The censorship scares me far more than cell phones.

Speaker 5:
[22:25] Really?

Speaker 6:
[22:27] Yeah. For me, I think because I had to contend with cell phones years ago and could not beat the cell phone, but at least could stand alongside it. I could at least work alongside the cell phone. I could have something to line up with it. I could say, we're going to all get on Instagram and we're going to talk about these books. Or I could say, you can do, the cell phone can actually be a conduit that encourages reading if we know how to use it, but I can't encourage it if there's nothing to read. Right? And the things that they want to read are what's being banned. There has never been a moment in the history of the world where we didn't want to read something dramatic. There needs to be some drama. So what everybody is saying is violent or racist or sexist or blah, blah, blah, blah, I'm like, or Shakespearean. Are you going to ban Shakespeare? Are you going to ban your spiritual text, the Bible? Right? All the violence and sex and complicated tropes and motifs in our spiritual text, are we going to ban, like, when you really think about what they're doing? And this is why I know it's all such nonsense, right? It's all foolishness. Are you going to ban their video games, by the way? Are we going to ban that? Are we going to ban YouTube usage? At what point are we going to ban TikTok?

Speaker 3:
[23:49] Have you been banned?

Speaker 6:
[23:51] Oh, yeah. I was banned from Book 1. I was banned in 2013.

Speaker 3:
[23:56] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[23:57] I'm banned all the time. When am I not banned? You know? It doesn't really, and it's never bothered me. I mean, it insults me, but it's never bothered me like it is now, because now it's more of not just an insult, but an assault on the youth of America by saying they don't have the intellectual or emotional capacity to manage complicated ideas. I mean, they banned When I was the Greatest because of the gun on the cover. They banned All American Boys because they said it was anti-police, which it was not. They banned Long Way Down because they said it was racist. There's no mention of race in the story, by the way. They banned Stamped because they said it was racist, because it spoke about racism. They banned 24 Seconds from Now because of sex, which there is no sex in the book.

Speaker 5:
[24:49] Plus, teenagers aren't having sex, so I don't know what you're talking about. They're not having sex. But I mean, in today's climate, when you're banned, do you feel like, okay, to use your words from an old interview, by being banned in today's climate, are you saving the fish?

Speaker 6:
[25:09] I think by writing the book, I've tried to save the fish. I think that being banned sometimes is symptomatic of that, but I would never ever, ever associate my choices and whether or not I made the right choice for myself by other people's opinions of said choice.

Speaker 3:
[25:26] There are a bunch of people listening thinking to themselves, what the hell is saving the fish mean?

Speaker 6:
[25:31] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[25:32] I think Kate has required you now to tell the story of saving the fish.

Speaker 6:
[25:36] The shortest version is that I had a high school teacher, Mr. Williams, who's still a good friend of mine. He taught a class called Global Studies, which basically is some weird amorphous made up course that he taught. Because he was a tenured teacher who just got to do whatever he wanted to do. We came to class, he bought a fish in an aquarium, this beautiful fish, and he made us name the fish, which we were all very unenthused about because we were 17, we were seniors. You got to be a senior to take his class. And he said that the only rule about the fish was that we couldn't touch it. And he was like, don't put your fingers in the aquarium. Teenagers are teenagers, you know, so he's like, don't, I know how y'all are, don't be funny, don't try to play around with it. Just feed the fish and sit down and we'll have class. But if you put your fingers on that fish at any moment, then I'll have to suspend you. Cool. A month or so, maybe a couple of weeks goes by, and Mr. Williams, we go to class, and Mr. Williams takes the fish up the aquarium, and he sets it on the floor, and the fish begins to suffocate, and it's flapping around, and we all gather around, and we're all freaking out, and then eventually two young ladies pick the fish up and they throw the fish back in the aquarium, and they save the fish's life, and Mr. Williams suspends them. He sends them down to the office and he suspends them, but he tells them not to hold their heads down because they did the right thing. That sometimes doing the right thing has consequences. For the rest of my day and the rest of my life, I'm always considering whether or not this is a moment where I have to save the fish.

Speaker 5:
[27:10] Well, more question before we get to rapid fire. I heard you once say that you write to understand yourself. Still true?

Speaker 6:
[27:18] More than ever. I think that who I am in my 40s has been the most confusing thing ever. And I feel like I'm in puberty all over again. It's so strange. I don't know if you guys have experienced it, but it is the weirdest. I truly feel like I'm in a second puberty where my body feels funny and my brain feels all fuzzy and I have all these new ideas about what I want the next half of my life to be like. And I'm imagining who I'll be when I grow up this time. And I'm having this, so yes, long short, I've never needed it so badly.

Speaker 5:
[28:03] Some rapid fire questions for Jason Reynolds. How do you like to read digital, audio, hardcover, all of the above?

Speaker 6:
[28:10] Softback, paperback.

Speaker 5:
[28:11] Really, why?

Speaker 6:
[28:12] I like to destroy books. I got a bend, I got a dog ear. I like to throw them around, throw them in the bag, squeeze them into my back pocket, fold them in half. Like, I like to break a book all the way down.

Speaker 3:
[28:24] You'll put a book on the table face down?

Speaker 6:
[28:26] Absolutely. Break the spine right open. All of my books have coffee stains, food, grease, salt. I mean, like, I'm not precious. I think that books, look, it's rapid fire. I'll tell you about the rest of it later.

Speaker 3:
[28:37] But yes. When you were a kid, what author spoke to you?

Speaker 6:
[28:44] None. Didn't read much as a kid. I didn't read till I was 17. I didn't really develop the muscle for reading until I was 17. So I was more of a music kid, and I loved to read rap lyrics. And so, you know, all the rappers of that time were the ones who that those were the poets for me.

Speaker 5:
[29:03] Was there a book at 17 that changed you?

Speaker 6:
[29:06] Sure. It was Black Boy by Richard Wright. And it changed me for it, but not for the reason that people would think it changed me because the book was super interesting from page number two. Right? He doesn't have a lot of expository writing. It jumps right in. The fire happens immediately. And that's why my books are written the same way. I really, it changed the way I thought storytelling could be.

Speaker 5:
[29:28] Three writers you will read just because they wrote it.

Speaker 6:
[29:32] Jasmyn Ward, Julie Otsuka, and probably Kiese Laymon.

Speaker 5:
[29:42] I loved The Swimmers. The Swimmers was one of them. That book was, ugh.

Speaker 6:
[29:47] A masterpiece. Like it was like, it felt like a magic trick.

Speaker 5:
[29:50] Yeah, we talked to her. We talked to her, and I literally, like my first question was like, how do you do what you do?

Speaker 6:
[29:56] I don't know. I think that she is criminally underrated. And I think that her hand is so deft that people don't really know how to take the work. Like she's writing with such a deft hand. The Swimmers, I mean, Buddha in the Attic, we can go on her. But Julie Otsuka, I think, is a master at a very particular style that is her own.

Speaker 5:
[30:17] Best piece of advice you've ever received about writing?

Speaker 6:
[30:21] Uh, oof. Um, dang, that's a good one. The best, okay, the best and worst is the same. It's the same piece of advice. Walter Dean Myers told me before he died that he asked me what my schedule was. At the time, I was still working in a clothing store in New York City, it was in my 20s. And I told him I was writing two and a half pages in the morning and two and a half pages at night. And he said, okay, so you're writing five pages a day. He said, if you're doing that five days a week, that's 25 pages a week. And that's 100 pages a month. And he said, so that's a book every three months and four a year. If you keep that schedule, they'll always publish you. Like they won't have a choice but to always publish you. And that's the reason why at the beginning of my career, there was so much work happening so fast, is because that was the way I was taught. Now, it's the worst piece of advice, just because no one should live their lives like that. That's brutal.

Speaker 5:
[31:22] It's like trying to walk in an avalanche.

Speaker 6:
[31:24] Exactly. That's brutal.

Speaker 3:
[31:28] Every writer says it's so hard. Why?

Speaker 6:
[31:31] Why is it hard? Oh, gosh. This segment of the show, I have to say, is a bit of a setup because y'all are like, this is rapid fire. I'm going to ask the deepest, most existential questions, but I want you to answer it very quickly. What's the meaning of life? Go.

Speaker 5:
[31:52] Yeah, exactly. Why are we here on this earth? Ready?

Speaker 6:
[31:58] Okay. Why is it hard? To me, it is difficult because it is impossible for me to show up to the page without all of my other selves showing up with it. Right? And so, my insecure self, my arrogant self, my lazy self who wants to procrastinate, my goofy self that is immature, like my exhausted self, my concerned and anxious self, all of those selves are with me every time I sit down to do my work. And I have to figure out how to push back the ones that work, that don't work for me in this moment, for this scene. Right? And then I have to push forward the ones that do. And I have to do that dance all day long, every single day. And that's number one. Number two, it's difficult because language is living and therefore is changing. And so the rules to writing aren't actually rules. And because there are no real rules, especially as a creative writer, then you're always, you always feel like you're flailing around in an ocean trying to figure out how to get some sort of grip on something solid so that you can figure out how to make your way every single time. Right? Jasmyn Ward told me that when she was writing Let Us Descend, it almost felt like she'd forgotten about a type and this is a woman who's already a legend in her own right. Right? And so I think that's the other reason it's hard. And then the last thing I'll say is that it's hard because it just is. Writing is a diff- it's like asking why it's running hard. Because it is. Because the wear and tear on the body makes it difficult and uncomfortable. It's no different. As a writer, the wear and tear on my body and my mind and my spirit and my emotions and my insecurities and all those things are inflamed every single time I sit down at the page. It is difficult by nature. It is inherently difficult.

Speaker 5:
[33:44] All right. We're going to ask you one really unfair existential question as a rapid fire question. As opposed to these. Yeah, exactly. But do know that when we asked John Irving this question, he got out of pen and paper and took about 20 minutes to cross. He had drafts. In five words, we stole this question from Stephen Colbert. In five words, what do you want the rest of your life to be?

Speaker 6:
[34:04] Wow. What do I want the rest of my life to be in five words? Honestly, a really, really good time.

Speaker 3:
[34:13] Jason Reynolds, thank you very much.

Speaker 5:
[34:14] Thank you so much.

Speaker 6:
[34:15] My pleasure.

Speaker 3:
[34:15] It is great pleasure to talk to you. So Jason Reynolds, young adult author, but speaks to adults as well as young adults. Actually does some writing for adults as well, but this book soundtrack is solidly in the young adult. But as I say, I left the young adult category a long time ago. I really like the book.

Speaker 5:
[34:39] First of all, if you get a chance, look up some of Jason Reynolds' speeches, his talks, his interviews. I mean, if he was the leader of a movement, I would follow. But I think one of the things that he said when he was asked about being a YA writer is look, to Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye are considered YA books. And they are two books that have sold the most copies in American history. People still read them and discuss them today, and they are still relevant today. So YA books, I think, when they are really good, are prolific to an almost unknown extent. So thank you, Jason Reynolds, for sitting with us.

Speaker 3:
[35:13] We'll tell you again about the people who make this podcast possible. And then our coda from Jason Reynolds.

Speaker 5:
[35:20] The Book Case with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, Ariel Chester at Good Morning America, and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Oh, The Book Case, wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to listen, rate, and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode, we have them linked in the episode description.

Speaker 6:
[35:49] In order to make something real, it has to have a name. And in order to give something a name, the person doing the naming has to have language, right? And that is the way we build culture. That is the way we build our systems, internal and external. It is the most valuable thing we have, right? The ability to name a thing that is unnamed. And I'll leave it there.

Speaker 3:
[36:23] I sold my car in Carvana last night. Well, that's cool.

Speaker 1:
[36:25] No, you don't understand.

Speaker 3:
[36:27] It went perfectly, real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So what's the problem? That is the problem.

Speaker 7:
[36:34] Nothing in my life goes as smoothly.

Speaker 3:
[36:36] I'm waiting for the catch.

Speaker 8:
[36:37] Maybe there's no catch.

Speaker 5:
[36:38] That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.

Speaker 3:
[36:41] Wow, you need to relax.

Speaker 8:
[36:42] I need a knock on wood.

Speaker 2:
[36:43] Do we have wood? Is this table wood?

Speaker 8:
[36:44] I think it's laminate.

Speaker 3:
[36:45] Okay, yeah, that's good.

Speaker 8:
[36:46] That's close enough. Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up these may apply.