Hernan Diaz on PLY

Poured Over

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hernan Diaz joins host Miwa Messer in Philadelphia to discuss his new novel Ply, exploring its departure from historical fiction and dystopian sci-fi into a speculative future where society

Key takeaways

• Hernan Diaz describes Ply as a punk summer book inspired by Tuva Jansson, set centuries in the future where electricity is scarce and society operates through barter and communes.
• Diaz argues that individuality is fetishized, proposing instead that human voice and identity are polyphonic negotiations between subjective desires and objective language/tradition.

Main topics

• Speculative fiction and worldbuilding
• Subjectivity, identity, and polyphonic voice

Notable quotes

I think we live in an age where individuality is fetishized and glorified to extents that are pernicious.

Conclusion

Listeners gain a deeper appreciation for Diaz's rigorous, sentence-by-sentence craft and his commitment

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) This is Poured Over, a show about stories presented by the booksellers of Barnes & Noble. Speaker 1 (0:11) I'm Miwa Messer and this is Poured Over and Hernan Diaz and I met when Trust was not yet Trust. You had been a finalist for the Pulitzer. I love In the Distance. How many of you have read In the Distance? Okay, right? Like you need a Western. And I'll tell you, I was at a literary festival in Colorado over the weekend and I was rereading In the Distance as I came back and it was really excellent. It was so good. It's been a minute since I read it. And then Trust, you know, I'm not necessarily spoiling anything by saying trust is split up into four pieces, right? And you get sort of that initial Edith Wharton, Henry James moment, and then you got the, oh, no, no, no, let us tell you what the actual story was. And then we get Ida, who I love. Ida was possibly the best thing about the 80s, but okay. And then we get the truth, which blows everything up. And so Ply, I know Ply is coming. Speaker 1 (1:06) And I know Hernan and I are going to do a thing, because obviously we had a really good time when we taped for Trust. But Ply is a very different book in some ways. Speaker 1 (1:17) But it is not. And this is where we have to start. It's not historical fiction, but it's also not a dystopian sci-fi fantasy. Speaker 1 (1:27) Although I'm not thrilled about having bears in Soho, but okay, I'll forgive you for that. But I want to talk about the creation of Ply because it is a very different reading experience in some ways from the earlier books that every, I mean, Trust Wins the Pulitzer in the distance was a finalist for the Pulitzer. And now we've got a punk rock rave New World Order. Speaker 1 (1:52) Told in two separate voices. Yeah. So how did it start? Well, I Speaker 2 (1:59) hope I know. Hi, everyone. Hi. Hi. Thank you for being here. Yeah. Speaker 2 (2:07) I hope I never have a voice. What Speaker 1 (2:11) do you mean? Speaker 2 (2:11) As a writer. I don't want to have an identifiable voice. Okay. I think the... And I think actually this is what the book is about. Okay. Speaker 1 (2:24) In Speaker 2 (2:24) some Speaker 1 (2:25) way. Speaker 2 (2:26) I think we live in an age where individuality is fetishized and glorified to extents that are pernicious. And I think there is this fiction according to which we are all looking for our own voice that defines us as opposed to other voices out there. I see a couple of obstacles toward this goal. The first one... is that this voice is always articulated in something that precedes and exceeds us and over which we have zero control. Speaker 1 (3:03) That Speaker 2 (3:04) is language. So already it's not you. You're relying on something that is objective, that is the opposite of subjective. Second, if you happen to have the misfortune of being a writer, you are working within a literary tradition. And if you're a serious writer, you are reading a ton of books as you go along. For me, I'm not claiming to be a serious writer, but every project begins with reading, right? So inevitably, you are in conversation with this canon. Inevitably. and willingly you are picking up things that you're making some of these things yours that you are reading, right? So I don't think it's excessive to claim that what we think of as our own voice is actually a choral phenomenon. It's a sort of a polyphonic manifestation of many different voices. coexisting, almost as in a cord or a cluster. But I think it would be liberating and freeing to not think of this as our own voice, but just as the way in which we try to... Speaker 2 (4:34) as a negotiation between our intimate desires and impulses and drives that are, yes, very subjective, and the objective matter that is language, form, genre, tradition. Speaker 1 (4:50) Well, in Like Trust, the title obviously is a play. Speaker 1 (4:56) on lots of different ways of plying and ply. Speaker 2 (5:01) But I didn't really answer your question, the first one, because I'm long-winded. You kind of Speaker 1 (5:08) did, but we can keep going. I'll Speaker 2 (5:09) try to be pithy. No, because, you know, first I wrote what is kind of a Western, just because it takes place in the West and it's messing with that tradition, but it's not really a Western. And then I thought, I want to write something... And it's very claustrophobic in terms of its extremely narrow point of view and introspective. And then I wanted to write something that was more, that was playing with point of view, that was more polyphonic, to repeat that word, and set in a completely different period and that had to do with society in all the senses of the word. And that was trust. And then so ply is breaking with those two things as well. Speaker 1 (5:55) Okay, so it is and it isn't because that rugged sort of individualism. that gets Hawk because I do not speak Swedish and I cannot get that name correct. So I'm going to let you say it. Speaker 2 (6:08) Håkan. Speaker 1 (6:09) Håkan. Okay, so Håkan. Rugged, rugged individual, right? This is his story. There are echoes of him in Ply. There are echoes of him in The Pinscher and the way she sees the world and the way she engages in the world and how she doesn't really understand. She doesn't have all of the rules of this Speaker 2 (6:28) world, Speaker 1 (6:28) right? Yes. And then trust, of course, is how you build a society out of story and how you build empire out of story and how you build capital out of story. Yes. Speaker 1 (6:40) And you've created an entirely new exchange system. I mean, we're back to bartering in Ply. Speaker 2 (6:46) That's right. I Speaker 1 (6:47) mean, energy is an outrageously expensive resource. Speaker 2 (6:52) Yes. Speaker 1 (6:54) The police is private. Speaker 2 (6:56) Yes. Speaker 1 (6:57) But, I mean, there's a character who has this great, great line. Let's see if I can find it in my wild notes. Oh, right. All the conditions are given for a utopian community. Power and authority have been decentralized. The commodification of life is over. Private property has ceased to be the guiding principle organizing society. People are no longer reduced to means of production. A person isn't a mere bureaucratic anecdote anymore. Social hierarchies and class configurations have, for the most part, dissolved. Speaker 2 (7:25) Yeah. Awesome. Speaker 1 (7:28) Not dystopian. Just an entirely new world. Speaker 2 (7:30) That's why it's not dystopian. Right. Really. Truly. I love that line there. So let me, because I'm assuming... I'm going to do this. Speaker 1 (7:39) I think it's fair to assume that not everyone has read the book. I Speaker 2 (7:41) assume that very few people have read the book, right? Show of hands, probably zero. Yeah. So do you want a little help just to make this, to anchor this a little bit? Okay. But Speaker 1 (7:55) no spoilers. Speaker 2 (7:56) No, here it Speaker 1 (7:56) comes. Speaker 2 (7:56) We can do it without spoilers. Yeah. So super, super quickly. The book takes place a few centuries unknown. I mean, known to me, but I don't want to tell you. Into the future. In a city that looks very much like New York. There are bears in Soho. She's indignant about the bears in Soho. Speaker 1 (8:17) Listen, I do not want to wake up to a bear on my sidewalk, please. Speaker 2 (8:21) You won't be around. Okay, are you sure? We're living longer these days. Speaker 1 (8:26) You're Speaker 2 (8:26) okay. You're just fine. Speaker 1 (8:28) Okay. I'll take your word for it. Speaker 2 (8:32) So... Speaker 2 (8:34) I think the title in a way refers to many things. One of them is a fold in history. So the order that we currently live in, all of us globally, I would dare to say, which is an order that is centered mostly around a few notions. The notion of the institution of the state, which is kind of omnipresent, which can be both oppressive, but also... Boy, will we ever miss it when it's gone, you know, and we see the signs of it cracking now. So the state individualism has also kind of cracked that very notion, the notion of a unique subject and their private property and their little interior flame that is different from all the other people. That is also in crisis. Speaker 2 (9:28) And a lot of the things that we take for granted, such as the welfare state, healthcare, education, have vanished. And this is very painful, and the novel is not romanticizing this. But together with those things, people have also lost things that were totally worth losing, which were in the list that Miwa just read. People are freer and new forms of sociability have emerged. People live in the communes, some of them. Families that follow patterns that don't conform to the patriarchal nuclear family are blossoming everywhere. There are new sub-economies. Art is everywhere. So I wanted to write something, I wanted to dream up a world that was pleased, not dystopian. I think we have forgotten how to imagine a better future for ourselves. And that is a shame. But also not like a hippie Eden. I hate hippies. Sorry. So that was a hard note to hit. Something that was sort of in between these two opposites. And I think what helped was was to think of this, again, this historical fold, something that is changing in history. And in this world, and now I'm wrapping up, we follow this young woman who is a pincher. A pincher is someone who steals, siphons electricity from the grid and then sells it on the black market. In her case, instead of selling it, she uses it to power these very weird, kind of avant-garde, punkish... shows in downtown Manhattan. And she's gradually brought into this kind of paranoid, noir-like conspiracy that in turn will lead her to a massive device, an invention, a big scientific invention that could potentially alter the very fabric of space-time and reality itself. But to run this machine, they need a lot of electricity, and it's her job to steal it. And I'll leave you there. That's kind of the book. Good night. Speaker 1 (11:55) but Speaker 1 (11:57) Language is working in so many different ways throughout this novel. I mean, there's the new language of the new world, right? I mean, you've got pinchers and bricks and... Stels. Stels, right, which are essentially phones. Only different. Everything is... It's its own universe. I mean you and I were talking a little bit about Colson Whitehead's Zone One before we came out tonight. And how many of you have read Colson's zombie novel? Okay, so you know what I'm talking about. It's that atmosphere and that you are in a world that's familiar enough. Right? I knew I was in New York. And yeah, may I not be around for this version of New York unless I'm reading it in the page. I'm not sure I want to live to be 300 years old. Speaker 1 (12:48) There's that language. There's the language of science. There is the language of memory and time and community. Speaker 2 (12:56) And Speaker 1 (12:56) then there's the language where community flips into transaction. Speaker 2 (13:00) Yes. Speaker 1 (13:01) Because there's always going to be a system of capital. Speaker 2 (13:05) Yes. Even Speaker 1 (13:05) when money as we know it doesn't exist as it does now, there's always going to be a system of capital. So you've got these touchstones in all of these different pieces of language working on all of these different levels. Speaker 2 (13:19) Yeah. There's so many things to address in your intervention. Again, I think that I am playing with the end of an epoch. and the beginning of a new one, which we don't quite understand. And what we see, and this is, I'm paraphrasing a line from the book, it's the cracks in all the buildings are also the signs of something hatching, right? But I wanted the main character, there's three main characters in the book, and there are three women. three different moments in their lives. And the book, for all the reflections on history, on capital, on science, technology, art, music, all of which are present in the book, it's also a novel about connection and about friendship and about love and about trust. So... But the character that we meet initially, the pincher I was telling you about, this electricity thief, I wanted very deliberately for her to be a little bit a remnant from the old order, you know? She hasn't quite evolved yet Speaker 1 (14:42) into Speaker 2 (14:43) this new society. I mean, life is very precarious in this world, and you have to be ready, and this leads to hoarding resources. for a very good reason, just not to die, which is the best reason of them all. But it's also that there is something in her that has to do with our world, with an obsession with private property and a near bourgeois certain sense of comfort. Speaker 1 (15:12) Memory is harder for her than it is for other characters. Yes. And that's not a function of age. Yeah. There are characters who are older than she is who are just kind of like, oh, no thanks, we're good, let's move on. And then, of course, there are characters who are younger than her that don't know any other world. Speaker 2 (15:27) Yeah. Speaker 1 (15:27) And even her mother, who is a tinkerer, even her mother has a better understanding of sort of the wider patterns of history because she was so well-read that she understood all of the giant patterns but didn't have family stories because she forgot to ask her own mother. Speaker 2 (15:45) Yeah, I Speaker 1 (15:47) mean that's You put a lot on this teenager because I mean she's she's sort of a late adolescent, right? She Speaker 2 (15:55) is not quite Speaker 1 (15:56) in her 20s yet exactly Speaker 2 (15:57) exactly correct. Well, I was also thinking this This book is in a way. It's my very rickety precarious and and You know a little bit Well, we're in a house of worship. It's a very rickety shrine to Charles