Jeannette Walls: Family and Fiction

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  0:02  
The Women of ill repute with your hosts Wendy Mesley. And Maureen Holloway

Maureen Holloway  0:06  
families. Am I right?

Wendy Mesley  0:10  
Yeah. What do you mean families?

Maureen Holloway  0:14  
Just say, right? Well, you can't live with them. You can't you can't keep dark secrets without them.

Wendy Mesley  0:20  
Oh, yeah, maybe I don't know. I mean, a lot of people are there. A lot of people are spilling family secrets. Some of them have even been on the podcast. I mean, look at some of some of the like, Liam McLaren. She wrote about her mom's rather complicated relationship with a guy who was way older than her age. Her

Maureen Holloway  0:37  
her mother was a teenager. I mean, that's that's wild. Jessi Hempel who wrote a family outing about her entire family coming out as gay or trans or or traumatized. Yeah. And

Wendy Mesley  0:47  
then we talked to Lauren Hoff, who was raised in a rather famous sex cult she wrote about that, shamelessly. Yeah,

Maureen Holloway  0:55  
yeah, so today, we're gonna talk to somebody who I think well, I'm not the only one who thinks really opened the door for modern memoir writing. Jeannette walls, was a New York based journalist and gossip columnist when she wrote The Glass Castle, which is an account of her upbringing, homeless for a often dysfunctional but still loving family. And, and, you know, it was one of my favorite, but it is one of my favorite books has changed so much. It's so it's been on the New York Times bestseller list for eight years. And it was also made into a movie, which is gotta be weird for Jeanette, Woody Harrelson played her father, she was played by Brie Larson. That's crazy in itself.

Wendy Mesley  1:36  
I want to ask her about a moment with Woody, who's also the dad kind of even though he's not around anymore. It's gotta be so so so strange.

Maureen Holloway  1:45  
What he's still around before.

Wendy Mesley  1:48  
Is Yeah, I have to google that. No, no, he's still very much around. So Jeanette, she has gone on to write a bunch of novels. All of them are inspired by family, there was half broke horses. That was about her grandmother. And now her latest book, not about her family so much, well, not about her family at all. Really, it tells the story of a young woman who becomes a bootlegger during Prohibition. And it just so happens that she has a rather dysfunctional family as well.

Maureen Holloway  2:21  
So we're very excited to talk to dad who's been sitting by listening to me babble on about her, but about families and secrets, which I guess wants to tell them, they're not secrets anymore. Welcome, Jeanette.

Jeannette Walls  2:34  
Thank you. Great to be here.

Wendy Mesley  2:36  
Lovely to see you. Lovely,

Maureen Holloway  2:38  
are you in West Virginia,

Jeannette Walls  2:40  
I'm in Virginia.

Wendy Mesley  2:41  
So you're like really close to Washington.

Jeannette Walls  2:43  
I'm not that close. I'm a couple of hours away.

Wendy Mesley  2:45  
I really want to talk about Washington and, and the views of people in Virginia compared to those in Washington, which are quite different. But it's a, it's such a different way of looking at life. But all of your books are about family, and your family. I don't know, when I read the latest book, I thought this is kind of weird. This is kind of out there, of course, is based on the tutors, we can get into that sort of, but your family was pretty unusual, shall we say?

Jeannette Walls  3:10  
Not as unusual as I thought one of the things I've been told my story is the number of people who come up and say, you know, the details of our lives are different. But you and I have a lot in common. And we've all stories, and some people might dress their families up prettier than mine, and are a lot less obvious with their stories. But you know, you keep it that facade. And there's there's always something going on. And I guess that's one of the things that really, I was really trying to get out with hang the moon is that, you know, they seem like this perfect, powerful family. But then you get behind it. And wow, everything is complicated.

Maureen Holloway  3:45  
Everybody's got weird families. I mean, I could probably possibly maybe even surprise you with some stories about wine, which had one day we'll write about, but I'm afraid and that's a whole other topic. But I want to talk about the fact that you're such an intrepid person, yourself and your heroines are as a result. And I think that is really coming from where you came from. And then I hate the expression pull yourself up by your bootstraps. But you sure as hell did. You went to Barnard, you've you had a big glamorous job in New York. I mean, nobody, no one knew what kind of background you came from until you wrote the book. And that's such a testament to you.

Jeannette Walls  4:25  
Well, you know, it's funny, I don't think of myself as a strong person. I just think of myself as doing what has to be done and just kind of making do with what I had. Um, if people say you always worried about strong women, it's like, well, of course, like, why would I write about any other kind of woman? It's, you know, I think we're all stronger than we realized that some of this had been put to the test a lot. When I was working in New York Magazine, this really wealthy woman wanted me to go on vacation with her, and she didn't know anything about my past. I said, Well, what did you have in mind and she wanted to go something called Outward Bound, and I'd never heard of this Outward Bound thing. Before he explains to me how you pay a lot of money, and you go out into the wilderness and forage for food, and I'm thinking, I need to spend 10 years of my life for an outward back. So, you know, we all have blessings and curses in our lives. And one of them, you know, and sometimes it's the same thing. The blessing is the curse if you flip it over. So yeah, I have a lot of struggles. But the upside of that is that I know how to take care of myself. I'm tough. The downside of that is I'm tough. And it took me a long time to understand that you don't always have to be tough. And it was only after the telling of my story. And people understanding that I realized wow, you know, there's a lot of goodness and kindness out there. Once you stop fighting everybody.

Wendy Mesley  5:41  
I was really struck by that just reading back the stories about you writing this book and writing The Glass Castle and so on and, and that you were in New York and you saw your mother jumping into a dumpster I'm hearing you speak of her if she's now buried on your property where you are now you're you you brought your dad and he was an alcoholic. They were like they were they were unusual parents like they basically left you with family, you and your and your siblings. But somehow somehow you You survived. And so I talked about it in the intro when when your book The Glass Castle was made into a movie and Woody Harrelson is still alive. But he somehow channeled Your dad and I just and you burst into tears and and you felt like you had to apologize to him. And yet he was such a crappy dad. Like, why did you?

Jeannette Walls  6:33  
Well, you know, it's funny. I think people said, How could you forgive your parents? I think the person I had to forgive was myself. I think I have a little survivor's guilt. You know, we're all storytellers. And in in memoir, writing you you're really forced to choose the story that you want to tell. And I could have made it a lot more tragic. And I could have made it a lot made myself more heroic. I could have made my parents seem worse than I did. I could have made them seem better. So it's a choice. How I choose to see my dad, I believe he gave me many great gifts. He gave me a lot of garbage and toxic nonsense, but what do you focus on? What do you know? And I personally believe that the love of reading that education they gave us was such an incredible gift. Because it you know, it was access to other ways of thinking, the realization that mom and dad are a little loopy, okay? But there are other perspectives out there, and they're all available to us. So I wasn't trapped in their reality once I discovered books in journalism.

Maureen Holloway  7:37  
When your mother died, Jeanette, you decided to bury her on your land in West Virginia. Sorry, Virginia. And and then you had your father disinterred because he was buried in a military cemetery. And despite the fact that they were on and off together their lives who decided to bury them together on your land? There, tell us about that. I mean, that's not an easy process, either, tangibly, or intangibly

Jeannette Walls  8:06  
that I thought it would be in a moment that you wanted a green burial. And I thought it'd be really difficult. And it wasn't, we got to make a piece of property. And they said, as long as it's 200 feet away from the nearest neighbor. So it's a very pretty spot, but it looks kind of lonely. It's under these trees. So it gets it gets sun in the wintertime and shade in the summertime. But that would be really nice if Dad was there. So we asked the the guy at the funeral home, is it hard to move the bodies? They said usually not so hard, but with COVID. It is difficult now. And so to find anybody my my brother, who's the best guy in the world, so Well, what if I were an employee, and they said we'd be proud to have you as an honorary member of the pretty funeral home. So they signed.

Maureen Holloway  8:45  
He's a cop, right? He's a police, your brother, a former cop, a

Jeannette Walls  8:49  
former teacher, an antiques expert, a gardening expert. He's just the best guy in the world. But so he goes and gets his pickup and drives up state fills out all the forms, puts data in the back of his pickup drives back down, he said the only weird part is when he went through the Taco Bell drive, and because it was very, very a task and he was getting like glances. But they're out there together now. And I think it's quite beautiful. They were as loopy as all get out and Lord knows there's no amount of money you could pay me to go back and it lives through all those things. But I believe I got great gifts. And one of those gifts was I got incredible material. I mean, you know if that keeps giving you know and and and a love of storytelling, and I think that it's it's a gift I actually resisted for a long time particularly the fiction part. I didn't want to make things up I you know, I associate with making things up with with lying and insanity, both of which run in my family. And it was a reader who said Ma'am, I feel I think you're afraid of creativity. I think you're afraid of imagination because I come from journalism and i i Hold truth as sacred and you don't mix the two and you know as you mentioned, my My other novels were really based on my own experiences. So this idea of going out and just making things up, it's like navigating. Without a map, you can go in any, you know, there's no cut out road, you can go anywhere in the ocean rather than on dry land. So you can go anywhere. And it's it's a huge test, people say, Oh, it must be so much easier to make things up than to have to tell the truth. Actually, I found it more challenging, because, well, it took you

Wendy Mesley  10:28  
eight years to write this one, right? Because yes, the first one is not just about your grandma, or about your family, or whatever.

Jeannette Walls  10:35  
I returned, I just kept on going back to the comfort, the solidness of fat so I researched the bejesus out of it. It's based 100 years ago, and I just wanted to make sure I got it right. But you know, it's not just the the facts of what people were wearing and what the cars were. It's the psychology of how did people live 100 years ago, and I really believe that the actors on the other side of the glass Castle helped me a lot in understanding. When you make up characters, you're not really making them up out of whole cloth. You're inspired by by real life, you know, if Woody Harrelson had been told, play a drunk from West Virginia, you know, then you resort to stereotypes, but was just fearless as all these actors were about getting inside the heads of these complicated people without judgment, just to understand,

Wendy Mesley  11:30  
but some of the themes are, are very familiar. So if it happened during Prohibition, 100 years or 100, whatever years ago, but it's, it's all about alpha males, it's all about women being screwed over. It's like, some of the themes are very, and the idea of, of women having no power. It's so simple. The themes are very, very familiar to you.

Jeannette Walls  11:53  
Yeah, I hope the themes are not contemporary, they're timeless. And I think that sometimes I'm not knocking anybody else's writing but sometimes when we read this historical novels, the characters feel very two dimensional they don't have these guts I'm gonna sound like I'm bashing other people I just I wanted to make sure that that the characters were complicated and that they were dealing with the same sort of issues that we do but in different language in with a different mindset to be because that's why I read as much as I could get my hands on about women of that age who were facing these issues I was trying to do with these actors did like what what motivated them What were their fears put these dilemmas in the language of the time

Maureen Holloway  12:37  
you okay well let's go back to the tutors and I would like to just at this point tell everyone tutors isn t Udo are not tutors has been people who have gas tutors so smell Sally is inspired by Elizabeth the first Duke, her father Henry, the eighth. And they never too did well, I think he did a lot or should have. And all his various Well, not all of his wives I think only you only get up to you skip when and you go straight to to Katherine. But anyway, I think that's a period of history that I've been fascinated with all my life. So I have to admit, I was a little bit distracted trying to figure out who everybody was based on their counter. And all the times right. How many times are there in the tutor dynasty? I was really curious as to why you chose that period. I mean, I thought it was great. But why did you decide to hang this on on computers? First

Jeannette Walls  13:38  
of all, thank you for forgetting it. Um, I? I don't talk about it a whole lot in the US because people don't understand who the hell I'm talking about. Oh, yeah. So Beth was she was the one beheaded so I just kind of we don't

Maureen Holloway  13:50  
go and all the Mary's Oh, my God,

Jeannette Walls  13:53  
they just I you know, I love my country. But we're not that we're not so good on other countries histories. But I had long been fascinated by Elizabeth, my mother and father used to fight voraciously about her. My father adored her. My mother hated her. She's just like my mom. She was bossy. She always had to have her way. Great to have as bra who did what had to be done, you know, and showed men how to do it. And I just I loved I loved my dad's vision of her. And I was reading a biography one time of her while I was touring on behalf The Glass Castle, we were saying, Oh, I can't believe you love your father after all the horrible things he's done. I mean, look at Elizabeth, look at Elizabeth. Talk about your dysfunctional families talk about your awful dads, and she would still go to portraits of of her father, when she was trying to to solve problems she would try to channel him and I thought how friggin complicated is that so I you know, and I was reading about them like killing each other and Marian cousins and all that and they're just like white trash, aren't they?

Maureen Holloway  14:58  
Yeah, I know. But I think Students are in the right.

Jeannette Walls  15:01  
We're all fighting over our territory. We're all fighting over family. Yeah, that's what it's all about. And it's about power and feeling safe and in who is loved. And you've, you know, in the end in the Duke, as in with Henry, you've got this, this incredible charismatic man who, you know, everybody wants to please Him, and He offers them safety. If they give him power, and I it's a fascinating dynamic, once he disappears, then what happens? And who rises to the occasion? And is it a woman who is deemed to be not capable of that kind of work? Or it's a man, a young man who is not really cut out for that? You know, it's not women who get stuck in roles that they don't want. It's guys as well. And again, I just thought that was a fascinating dynamic. And I don't know if I did it again. I might leave people's names out of it, because I thought it was a cool like, oh, wow, look, these parallels, but it can be a little bit distracting.

Maureen Holloway  16:00  
Yeah, you don't need to know

Wendy Mesley  16:01  
about it. Yeah, but it's only there for people who want to get it right. So it's a I think that's kind of cool.

Jeannette Walls  16:08  
You don't need to know about it. But I didn't I thought it was almost dishonest to say I came up with this all on my own. You know, I I stole it. I stole everything. But I still a lot of the characters not just from the tutors, but also from Virginia. Historically, I wanted to make sure anything that I put in the book could have happened in the 1920s. You know, my editor a couple of times, you got to make her more socially aware. I can't make her sound like she just came. Sally. Like she just came from a Black Lives Matter of meetings. You know, I had to get, I had to get inside the head of what were women thinking like that. So I did like, just probably too much research. And there was a after Prohibition failed in America, there was this investigation to what the heck went wrong. The white Christian report identified this County in Virginia as being the wettest county in the world. And 99 people in Franklin County, were involved in moonshine making in one way or another, the killer, they had these caravans of moonshine going out to various places. And it was a very dangerous job. The fastest most fierce driver of moonshine was a woman, Willie Carter sharp. So Sally can Katie's not really quite as sharp. But I wanted to make sure that anything that I put in the book could have happened in the 1920s. In Virginia. So a lot of the characters, and the events in hay the mood are inspired by or based on actual events in people.

Wendy Mesley  17:31  
I did. And I find it really interesting, just because I mean, you've talked about how you wanted it to relate to today, and I think it does, because you you talk kind of a lot about today how stories get blown out of proportion, and how people believe them how people are obsessed with power, and status and, and how nobody wants to be portrayed as a hillbilly Yoco, which is what you read in a bunch of schools in Washington who think they're smarter than everyone else. I mean, that's like, that's a quote from the from your recent book, which was written say your story about 100 More than 100 years ago. But that's still going on today. It's like, people want to be treated with respect.

Jeannette Walls  18:10  
Absolutely. You know, when it was this field dilemma that I had about whether or not to write things in dialect, I wanted to make sound conversational, and the character says sound like Virginia 100 years ago, but we're just going to die. Like to me, there's something about otherness and the way don't they sound funny. And this is before radio, so people didn't know how people in other parts of the country sounded. And post World War One. We're just starting to like, travel a little bit more and people from other parts of the country and other parts of the world coming to Virginia. And it was a little startling to people that, oh, we speak differently than other people. But to them the outsider sounded funny. They weren't the ones who sounded funny. I want

Maureen Holloway  18:51  
to talk a bit about going home again. And it's interesting that you live. You grew up where you grew up all over the place. We Yeah, yeah. Cisco, you spend time in Welsh. And your back and one of the places where you grew up and you obviously love it?

Jeannette Walls  19:07  
I do. I do. Yeah, I thought like, I thought it could be a city girl and go around and my dress for success outfits. And I loved it. I lived in New York City for you know, a 30 years almost. I thought it was the greatest city in the world in that I'd never leave and what was my husband who wanted to relocate here and I thought like I thought I'd hate it. And and I love it. And when I go back to New York, I still love it, but it feels like an old boyfriend with whom I split amicably. I will always love it. But wow, am I glad I moved on. Just not for me anymore. You know, God bless anybody who lives there, but I know it's just not for me.

Maureen Holloway  19:41  
Are there ghosts for you? And Virginia? I'm

Jeannette Walls  19:45  
not know well, you know, Virginia is very different from West Virginia. And I go back to West Virginia. So it's about about 300 miles away, West Virginia where I grew up, but it's million miles away to I mean, it's just the oxycontin a day Question. And it was it was a coal mining town. They don't mined coal anymore. The degree to which they do is all mechanized. So the unemployment is just through the roof. It's hit that community very, very hard. Whenever there's an article about American poverty, they almost always do. McDowell County, which is where I grew up. So I love the rolling green hills. I love the countryside. But that level of poverty I mean, when I went back to visit last they still weren't getting internet at all. So it's just it's a tough place to live. So in a way, I'm home and way I'm not

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  20:36  
the women of ill repute.

Wendy Mesley  20:39  
You talk about your, your husband, I think you met him in the newsroom. Right back when wasn't that long ago, you were a journalist. But but he kind of thought that, well, he talked you into writing The Glass Castle, which kind of really changed your life. But he like you were kind of seen as a snob. Yeah, but he broke through, he saw that there was a lot more than that. So I just, I just wonder, like, yeah, how that's evolved,

Jeannette Walls  21:04  
what you spend, because, you know, I'd go around my little designer outfits. And you know, I lived on Park Avenue, when I'd gone to Barnard and all these people made all these assumptions about me. And in fact, I had this little head butting went home with a woman. And she was saying, Well, what do you know about you wouldn't know about what it feels like to grow up tough? You parking? Because, you know, I was like, I was so flattered. I passed, I was like, wow, they really think that I've got this bloody dog has. You're kind of shame on me. But I just kind of kept on myself and people, people made these assumptions. And then my husband or you know, at the time, we were just friends. He said, There's something about you that doesn't add up. And when I asked you about your, your past, you change the topic, and why is that? So I changed the topic. And and he said, you know if you're not going to be candid about you, so we can't really be friends any longer, because friendship is all about trust. So I told him about some things about my past. And he's his first reaction was that would make an incredible book. He later confessed to me, he was exaggerating us, it was just so out there and wacky. He said, Then I met your mom

Wendy Mesley  22:10  
in the dumpster.

Jeannette Walls  22:13  
This is really complicated, you know, and mom lived with us for about 10 years before she passed. And he was very close to her. He really loved her. She's so she was so friggin smart. And you could talk to her about anything. She's so well read, I keep on putting on presentations. She was so well read. And she could talk about anything and had a good opinion on anything. And he he and she just got along great. He said, but I never had to turn to her for being a mom, you said it must have been really weird and complicated to have her as a mom. But as just as a human being she was fascinating. He also something I didn't realize about mom when we were growing up is that she's a hoarder. And I didn't realize this because we were always moving our house was always burning down. But we we built a house out. And she just filled it up with junk was just all the time going to, you know, Goodwill or wherever and buying these actually very beautiful little vases and ashtrays, and 27 typewriters, 50 meiomi little cameras, two pianos, and, and John came to understand that she just you should also bring in rocks and dead animals or whatever. And she just found beauty in everything, everything. Just as many artists, a mom would defend herself saying, you know, Warhol was also a porter. And Picasso also was but since they were so rich, and had many mansions, they just, they were collectors, but they see beauty and everything they you know, it's Oh, look at it. It's art in the way that it catches the light and I'll do a painting of it. She just saw value and beauty and everything. And it's it's a lovely quality, but it went a little too far with her. And when you have to live with it. It's maddening. But if you can see the beauty in it, it was very interesting.

Maureen Holloway  23:54  
What have you done with all her paintings? I know she refused to sell them.

Jeannette Walls  24:00  
I have a barn full of them right now. It was over five. Can you sell them? I absolutely I would love to give them a happy home. I would love to you know I maybe I'll have to sell or something I don't know for charity or something. I don't know because I've got two paintings inside. That's all I want. You know when the producer for The Glass Castle movie was trying to buy when she told him you can't afford it.

Wendy Mesley  24:30  
Because she didn't want to say

Jeannette Walls  24:33  
and I wanted to give one to Woody for this amazing before she goes Okay, and this will happen this one because oh no, no, not that one. That's my favorite. How about this one? Oh, no, no, I can't let go. And I love that when she was just emotionally attached to every single one of them.

Maureen Holloway  24:48  
Tonight just to go back to the movie. Just it must be interesting. I know that Jennifer Lawrence was first approached to play your character. And then and then it was Brie Larson phenomenal. actors. Yeah,

Jeannette Walls  25:01  
yeah, Jennifer Lawrence approached us and she just like just she just couldn't make up her mind. Then Brie Larson stepped up. Like, if she's not going to do it, I'll do it. Because Okay, great.

Maureen Holloway  25:10  
What is it like to see how other people see your character?

Jeannette Walls  25:15  
Yeah, yeah, lead to funny little story about that, because that's what I do. Um, so the first time I met her, and she's so friggin talented, I think she's got extra nerve endings and sees and hears things that most mortals don't. But we're talking and she's kind of reserved and kind of a little bit quiet. But the longer we talk, the louder she gets, she starts making these kind of weird gestures and is a starts erupting in this weird cackling laugh. And I'm thinking, What the heck is that about? And then I realized, Oh, she's doing me. She just just watching me and listening to me, she picked up my body language, and my verbal patterns. She did tell this speech coach that she was listening to these recordings. I mean, it was driving her crazy, because I've got five different accents from having lived in different places, and I, I don't even hear it, but I lapse in and out of various accents. But if people say it must be weird, having actors play you and play your family. Honestly, it was kind of the opposite of weird, I thought that they were just so respectful to the point of honoring me and my family. They were very passionate about getting it right and so respectful about not being characters or not making fun of us. I thought it was quite amazing. You know, Sarah snooker, of course, is was amazing in succession. She played my older sister, Laurie didn't really want to talk to her. And Laurie was completely supportive of the book and the movie, but she just I, you know, Jen, and I, this is just kind of weird. I don't want to be part of it. But Sarah started standing in a way that only my sister does. Laurie had this weird way of standing and all sudden, Sarah Snuka standing that way. And I just like, What the heck and me and my brother? How did she do that? And we went up to efforts. How did you? How did you get that? Because it wasn't just the standing. It was several things that she said it was all in the book. She just these actors are I have unbridled, not just respect, but all for them, and their capacity for empathy. And I think it's a great lesson for fiction writers, and understanding how they would stand how they would speak what they would do in certain circumstances. Because sometimes, the actress would actually tell the director, I don't think my character would do that. And he was facing directors say, Well, what do you think your character would do? And they will usually write and it just

Wendy Mesley  27:41  
it's funny that you mentioned succession. And Sarah snug, because your book this book is, it's a lot about succession. Actually, it's about a lot about inheritance, which always goes to the oldest son, and less and less and less and less, but it is really interesting. It's about passing the torch and expectations and who's gonna say like, did you watch succession? Did you? Did you make a link between that and your book? Or am I reading too much? And

Jeannette Walls  28:07  
it's really interesting to bring that up. Because when I was trying to figure out when to set this book, I had considered doing it modern and making it about media. Yeah. And I made the decision not to I mean, I didn't start watching succession until I was almost finished writing this book. I was like, Holy crap, I'm so glad I didn't do that. Because people want that I was caught. And people have asked me was this inspired by succession? And I wonder if succession was inspired by Henry the eighth? It it's not, it's not necessarily a modern story. It's just a timeless this, this empire with his charismatic ghetto head and what happens? Who, who is chosen to follow how you know how people kind of suck up to the powerful leader hoping that they'll be smiled upon and will be given a piece of the pie. And then he disappears and what happens? And yeah, I'm fascinated by the story. I was not like, I was not inspired by it, because I guess I didn't start watching it until I was almost finished writing my book. I don't read other. I don't read fiction. And I don't read highly stylized nonfiction while I'm writing because I find that I start,

Wendy Mesley  29:19  
it's too easy to get sucked into somebody else's story. Yeah, totally. Like,

Jeannette Walls  29:22  
oh, I should be doing that. I should be doing that. So though I just, I have to limit what I watch and read. And I was watching that. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is kind of my story. And I don't know if that validates it or undercuts it, but it's, and yet number, a number of people have drawn the parallels. Yeah.

Maureen Holloway  29:41  
You know, some people say too much happen. Some of your critics of the latest book have said, Oh, there's just too much that's gone on. But this is all truth is stranger than fiction, because all of this stuff did go on and at that rate of acceleration, I want to ask you and we're almost running out of time, but you have achieved Something very few people will ever. Everybody says they have a book. And then these days, just about everybody writes a book, whether they

Wendy Mesley  30:08  
should write a book,

Maureen Holloway  30:09  
how about being and I will, and I am. But what is it like to be other York Times bestseller list for eight years? I mean, that's not that in itself is a unique and phenomenal achievement.

Jeannette Walls  30:24  
It's kind of surreal. I mean, it just sort of like, I try not to think about it too much. I mean, I don't accuse somebody comes as one of the big fan of yours. I really, I really like that I like it better. I'm, you know, I'm a reader or my friend or whatever. I just think it's about sharing stories. And I think the fact that so many people are moved by The Glass Castle, is just an indication that they have a story as well. I think it frees up people to think about it to tell their own stories. So many people have told me like, I was, I didn't want to talk about my story until I read yours. And yours is even weirder than mine. So it made me less ashamed of mine. So it's like, great. You know, if, if people would say, you know, I thought I had a screwed up family, hers is even worse, if that makes people feel good. God bless them. You know, it just, it's all good. You know, fear is contagious. And hatred is contagious, but so is honesty. And so is openness. And I think it's about sharing these things we have in common one time, I was doing this reading and this, this young woman, she stopped. She said, you know, Miss walls, she said this, this young African American woman, she said, your book was assigned to me in Moscow, and she said, I'll be honest, I said, I had no interest in reading about some West Virginia hillbillies. She said, But girlfriend, you and I could be sisters. And to me, that's what it's all about. Now breaking down the barriers of these things that we think we don't have in common with she's just the West Virginia Woolf, she just a girl from the ghetto, she just a girl from the suburbs? No, no, no, we're all the same. We have labels, and the labels are accurate, but we're also much more than our labels. And if you get behind that, and again, that's what those actors did, they got behind the stereotypes, and got to like, what really moves us? And I think it's, it's a question of empathy. And that that's something that should be our kind of go to emotion when we're, you know, when we're butting heads over our differences. It's sort of like, well, let me think about what this person is thinking or feeling or needing, and

Wendy Mesley  32:22  
why and your book, your books are so much nicer than speaking of empathy. Your books are just there's so much nicer than say, succession that might be the same story, the same story we tell over and over, but they're very nice.

Maureen Holloway  32:34  
And The Glass Castle is a joyous story. I mean, it's you come away from it feeling uplifted and tough, and you seem like a happy person and joyous person.

Jeannette Walls  32:43  
I'm like, I'm ype if I, if I'm right, happy right now, just take me out to the woodshed and shoot me because I just like I am the luckiest person in the world. I mean, all these great things. Yeah, I'm, I'm extraordinarily lucky. I'm extraordinarily happy. Because I mean, life is good. And yeah, that's one of the reasons I didn't want to do a book about media in the 20/21 century, because, you know, I was part of that world. And I just, it ended up being kind of a satire. It's not my world. I live I had a green card. I lived there for a little while, but they weren't my people. And you know, I don't think I could have written about them with real compassion, it would have been snarky. So I'm happier. With as much. You know, I mean, love is an interesting thing, because it can't be blind. You got it, you got to know, you got to see the good and the bad. And, you know, I like heroes that are flawed, and villains that are sympathetic, because that's the way the world is.

Wendy Mesley  33:41  
Well, Maureen and I are perfect. We're not confessing to any flaws. Although we probably would have been screwed if it was a prohibition. But we're all good. It's been lovely to talk to you. We have to go because it's, we've gone so much longer than we normally go at it. But I think Maureen's go one more question.

Maureen Holloway  34:02  
No, I just want to say the book is called hanging the moon. It's by Jeannette walls. It's out and about, and it's a it's a hell of a read and should be on your summer list. And I just want to say, Jeanette, it's been such a pleasure meeting you You're, you're even more fabulous than I thought you would be. Oh,

Jeannette Walls  34:18  
bless your heart. Thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. And I hope you both write memoirs.

Maureen Holloway  34:26  
Well, I'm working on

Wendy Mesley  34:28  
yeah, my stories are all out now. But yeah, it's been lovely to talk to you and I'm sure you've got more books in you because this one was this one was great. So yeah, thank you

Maureen Holloway  34:44  
if you are watching this on YouTube, you'll know that we lost video for Jeanette halfway through which is such a shame because she's so animated, and and beautiful. She reminds me of Patricia Neal, the actress she could star in a story about herself feasibly and what a story

Wendy Mesley  35:01  
about the movie Yeah. Which was fascinating because she's so respectful and so empathetic and and it reminded me of she was talking about the actress playing her Brie Larson. Yeah. And how she did this impersonation of her which just sort of came naturally or came from the book or whatever it was, it took me aback to because I don't think any of us really realize what we sound like until somebody does an impersonation of you. Or somebody did have me years ago when I was in Ottawa, and I was like, oh, no,

Maureen Holloway  35:31  
it was Kathy childs from this hours, 22 minutes to an impersonation of you. She nailed you know,

Wendy Mesley  35:38  
somebody else, a producer in our office was like, I have this weird up and down thing. I didn't have the weird laugh. Well, I probably have a weird laugh too. But during the very serious reading of CBC News, I had very up and down and somebody didn't in person, and I thought, Oh, my goodness, yeah. So anyway, I mean, she talks about being being tough, both it making you strive for things and write things and accomplish things, but also, it makes you appear standoffish to people or makes you suffer anyway, I just found her quite, quite compelling.

Maureen Holloway  36:11  
Well, there's that when you said that, that her husband or her boyfriend at the time called that someone had called her a snob. It's all to do with passing right when you come from a weird place, be it you know, a homeless family, which is what her story or you know, look at the people we've mentioned off the top like Liam McLaren, who grew up with a narcissistic mother. Or, or Lauren, half who grew up in a sex cult, you spend most the first part of your life trying to hide that. I mean, my father was an alcoholic, and I thought that was the deepest, darkest secret in the world until now, I realized.

That's not even the Divas, Dark Horse. Not even close to what, but you spent so much of your time growing up trying to hide things because your paint your mother told you, no one should know about this, or what have you, that it alters you forever and then be able to write about it the way she did with The Glass Castle. So cathartic, and probably has been for all the other authors that we've met. Because it's just so exhausting keeping a secret that probably doesn't even need to be a secret. I love

Wendy Mesley  37:23  
the way that the certain themes carried over in all of her books, and one of them, because I'm a feminist, whatever, I was struck by it, but the idea that the wealth of houses, everything has to go through an inheritance line. And, and and women are there to be married off as young as possible to as rich as possible. I mean, that's still I mean, you wrote something, you wrote something on your substack about how you know, you were raised to think that you were supposed to marry somebody who was in the Peter Newman book about the

Maureen Holloway  37:54  
establishment. Yeah, cuz, you know, not that I came from that. But

Wendy Mesley  37:59  
yeah, well, I certainly didn't I don't think there's a chapter on me.

Maureen Holloway  38:02  
No, no, because the book was old and you're, you're you're still current. Yeah.

Wendy Mesley  38:10  
That's because I got so much money. But it's just interesting, the role of the role of women and then she keeps talking about that and, and, and, as as she should I even though now, like, god bless any of our children being able to being able to survive if they're not the sons of billionaires, but

Maureen Holloway  38:30  
yeah, power of writing, man. I mean, and I'd say Jeanette along with Louise pannier, probably our two most financially successful authors, I mean, they literally wrote their way to wealth. So that

Wendy Mesley  38:43  
so her her book, hanging the moon is being made into a TV series The didn't know that. Yeah, so I wanted I wanted to ask her without identifying Louise, but what the hell she's been public about it is that her her book, or her series of books, mystery books were made into a movie or made into a TV series, and she was promised meaningful conversations. And I'm like, oh, as a journalist, I know what meaningful conversations mean Be careful.

Maureen Holloway  39:12  
It's interesting she's gone but Jeanette is only had positive experiences. Very happy with the movie. So she may have a different experience than Louise but yeah, you're right it's a horse of a different color when you start making it into a visual experience. Holy smokes look at the time we gotta go.

Wendy Mesley  39:32  
See you love talking to her by

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  39:36  
women of ill repute was written and produced by Maureen Holloway and Wendy Mesley. With the help from the team at the sound off media company and producer yet Val graver.