Cosmic Cheeto Podstack 5: Dan Chaon
On shattered masculinities, rotten melons at the farmer's market, and interviewing Dan Chaon while sort of looking like a disaffected teenager in a Dan Chaon novel
Subscriber, I have the pleasure of welcoming bestselling novelist, National Book Award finalist, and all-around mensch Dan Chaon on the podstack this week. Dan is not only a genre polymath as at home in the realm of domestic realism as he is on the mean streets of a pulse-raising psychological thriller, he’s also a writer with whom I happen to share some thematic obsessions. When he described Confidence as exploring “the grey areas between falling in love and being scammed,” I was like hot diggity dog, this dude gets it.
Dan’s getting it was further confirmed by the conversation he and I ended up having yesterday, which was one of my all-time faves of this series so far. I’ve dubbed Dan the Poet Laureate of Shattered Midwestern Masculinity because he writes with a painterly precision about the various ways in which the men of the American Midwest, working and middle class alike, are hobbled by a violent patriarchy that only sees their use value. But Dan’s message extends far beyond the Midwest. As we spoke about the various male malcontents who populate his engrossing novels, he opened my eyes to something that desperately needs more airtime in our national discourse on gender: the way men are both groomed and victimized by systems of competition, brutality and self-loathing, and how that cycle is feeding the violence and misogyny in our current political climate. I hope you’ll enjoy this immensely edifying conversation and pick up a Dan Chaon book soon. (I’d especially recommend Sleepwalk or Ill Will.)
For those who enjoyed this conversation and are looking for a book recommendation from Dan + the Cosmic Cheeto, we hope you’ll pick up Sheila Schwartz’s story collection, Imagine a Great White Light, or her novel Lies Will Take You Somewhere.
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