S1: Welcome in San Diego , it's Jade Hindman today , a preview of the Old Globe's world premiere of huzzah ! But topping our show , an intriguing book that takes us into the underworld. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. Okay , so here's a question for you. How would one find themselves in hell ? Well , many myths , legends and stories of old have explored that very same question. Kind of like Dante's Inferno. Well , now , author Rebecca F Wong adds her own story to the underworld mythos with her latest book , catalysis. In it , two graduate students go to hell to save their professor's soul. You likely know Kuang for her other books , like the Poppy War trilogy , Babble and Yellowface. While Midday Edition producer Juliana Domingo spoke with Kwong about catalysis and her own journey into the underworld , here's that conversation.
S2: So I'd love to start from the very beginning. The title of the book , catalysis , quite literally refers to the story of a hero's descent into the underworld.
S3: I still am doing my PhD. Might never finish. And people were joking all the time. Oh my gosh , academia is hell. Academia is hell. So being me , I took that very literally and I thought , what if academia literally was hell ? How silly would that be ? And it started as this just this cute little satire about the academies and the petty little departmental battles that go on on campus. But as I started writing , I realized there was , um , there were far deeper themes to this book than I had in mind. Because to go to hell , you're essentially killing yourself. And I realized that I had all this buried stuff in my subconscious that I wanted to explore about depression and mental illness and suicide and chronic illness. So the book became my vehicle to talk about all these things that I hadn't really been able to put into my fiction before. So it's a classic story with me. I started out with a fun concept and then it gets very dark. Mhm.
S2: Mhm. And you mentioned kind of this concept of academia and hell. And I mean there's one point in the book where hell literally manifests itself as a university campus.
S3: And we see a lot of this in ancient depictions and myths of hell. There's a lot of Chinese paintings , for instance , where hell is just a regular courtroom. And of course , the Egyptian pharaohs were expecting to die and wake up surrounded by their favorite pets and their favorite servants and all the things they like. So I thought it was really curious that people thought that afterlife was just a mirror image , a continuation of the life they knew. One possible explanation for this is that the punishments in hell would only make sense within a moral universe that was legible to you , a world that you were already familiar in , but were looking at from a different angle. So that's why Peter and Alice are in hell as a campus. But actually , hell is the state of flux that constantly reconstituting itself and presents itself differently the further they trek throughout. So I think the point I'm trying not to get across is not that academia is uniquely hellish , but for these two people who have spent their whole lives mired in academia , the punishments of hell would only make sense in a campus format.
S2: Speaking of. There are a lot of references throughout the book to fame journeys through hell , whether that be Dante or Orpheus. Can you walk me through some of your greatest inspirations for hell as it's depicted in the book ? You've mentioned a few already in which of these stories Tobias is really rooted in.
S3: I think geographically it is just very on the nose. Inspired by Dante's Inferno , the descriptions of desert landscapes , the barren rocks and the suffocating bogs of Roth , for instance , all of that is imagery that I was so taken with when I read it in The Inferno that I put my own riff on them in catalysis , but it's actually T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland that is the most influential text on how hell is described. There is this line in the wasteland that reads , I will show you fear in a handful of dust. And when I read that , I got full body shivers. I thought , this is amazing. So just that line forms the backbone of the alienating , disquieting creep of fear that Alice and Peter feel as they trek further into the deeper courts , and they start realizing that perhaps they're not alone and something is stalking them throughout this desert landscape.
S2: So of course , we have to talk to you about the characters who are at the heart of this story. So let's start with Alice Lau. She is a graduate student who is literally dead set on becoming a tenured magician.
S3: And I think this is a common personality type in academia. People who are constantly believing against the impossible , who are so passionate and obsessive about their research that they're willing to overlook a lot of things. For instance , the joke that every PhD student implicitly understands is the existence of a job market. Most of us doing PhDs know that we probably won't get jobs that just aren't enough positions to go around. The PhD is in this impossible endeavor , but Alice thinks that if you just close your eyes and pretend that there's nothing wrong , that everything's going to be okay. Then these systems of belief are going to keep you going up until the very end. So the key to Alice's character is understanding that she's wrapped herself in all these catechisms , these cages of belief that will ultimately fail her and fall apart. And when that happens , she will have nothing to orient herself. In reality , so much of the book is exploring how she finally comes to terms with the truth and learns to break free of the delusions that she has relied on for her survival. Right.
S2: Right. And in some ways , there's also her foil. So let's talk more about Peter Murdock , who is her academic rival. And in Alice's eyes , also the darling of their department.
S3: He's an academic who's the child of academics , so he knows everybody. He knows the language. He knows the social code. He is totally comfortable in any room. He never gets intimidated. Everybody adores him. And to Alice , who is such an awkward loner who feels deeply intimidated by social gatherings , um , he's living this life of impossible ease , and she's , you know , she's so envious of the grace and the lightness with which he moves through the world. But all of that greatness , grace and lightness is concealing something. And I won't go into spoiler territory , but Peter has secrets of his own and their vulnerabilities that he's refused to let everybody see. So he's really leaning into this easy genius shtick because it's easier to be seen as a genius instead of what he fears would rather stick in everybody's minds. So with the Peter character , I'm trying to emphasize that you really don't ever know what somebody is going through or what they're struggling with , and it can seem like somebody has every privilege in the world , but you don't know what's lying beneath the surface. Mhm.
S2: Mhm. I want to dig a bit more into Alice and Peter's relationship because on the surface their academic rivals with these kind of conflicting expertise. But throughout the story we start to peel back some of those layers and see more of this shared history between them.
S3: There are always so much fun for me because a rivalry is a kind of romance , and there's so many examples in great works of literature where the rivalry feels more intimate and more sensual almost than a romantic relationship , and as academic rivals Alice and Peter have been forced to pay very close attention to one another , they're probably the most careful readers of the other's work. I mean , Alice can recognize every single letter of Peter's handwriting. They understand how the other thinks. They understand the patterns of their minds , the mistakes that they tend to make , or their particular forms of brilliance. Which means that when they're opposed to each other , they can go to nearly deadly warfare. But when they're working on the same team , then they're basically unstoppable. That was a really fun dynamic to write.
S2: I want to talk about the magic system in the book. Personally , it was really compelling to me , especially in all the ways it's rooted in analysis and reasoning and logic. Talk about how magic works in this universe.
S3: So this magic system is based on logic , paradoxes , and essentially it's just premise , premise , conclusion , the basic structure of a syllogism. But the way a paradox works is you go from two seemingly plausible premises , premises that make sense that you can't find any problem with , and you end up at a conclusion that seems unbelievable , that defies the laws of physics , or puts you in a totally surprising situation. So I like the metaphor of the logic paradox , especially paradoxes of rational decision making. To illustrate how we can be so delusional in our beliefs that we make a set of decisions that seem totally rational and will maximize our well-being and find ourselves far worse off than when we'd started.
S2: And the book is also pretty funny , kind of amid all the darkness and the grittiness.
S3: That's just how I talk and how I think. Um , my husband is an academic as well. So that's how we speak at home to each other. We're always mixing registers to be ridiculous. So either we'll be talking in like a formal academic register about some thorny conceptual problems , and then summarize it in a very silly , casual phrase. Or we'll be talking about a casual , everyday situation and then describe it with formal academic register. And I just think that's hilarious. Um , so I wasn't trying very hard at the humor. The way that Peter and Alice talk is just how I talk at home.
S2: That's awesome , I love that. I'd love to talk a bit more to you about how , um , Tabitha stands apart from your previous books like Babel or the Poppy War trilogy.
S3: So I think certainly with this book , I was very careful with every sentence , every word choice I was belaboring , and I wasn't like that earlier in my career when I was writing the Poppy War trilogy , the words just sort of flowed out of me because I wasn't interested in the art of the sentence. I was just interested in getting my ideas of cross. And now I'm learning more about poetry , and I'm thinking more about the rhythm and the musicality of a sentence. So I did a lot more reading out loud of this book than I have with previous books. I think my ear is just becoming sharper and sharper for the sound and shape of language as I get better at writing , and I hope that's reflected in the prose.
S2: And I've seen a lot of people on social media really preparing themselves for catalysis. And by that I mean they're putting together reading lists and other material. So what are your thoughts on , you know , the growing popularity of reading guides in these spaces of social media and the idea of also getting readers into the works that inspired books like yours.
S3: Oh , I think it's amazing. It's I've been shown some of these videos and they make me really , really happy. I think in an era of all these attacks against intellectualism and in general dumbing down of culture , the fact that young people are on TikTok telling each other to read the Aeneid is so , so cool. Um , so I'm happy to have contributed to that in any little way. Um , personally , I don't think that there is a list that you have to read before you read the book. I've tried to make everything very accessible and intelligible , even if you have no background in any of the fields that I'm writing about , because I also don't have an academic background in philosophy or logic or math. So I've had to explain these concepts in terms that were accessible to myself. But what I hope most of all is that readers who pick up on references in catalysis then go on and read those texts as well. So have you read the book and then decide you want to read T.S. Eliot or Jorge Luis Borges , or Nabokov or Dante ? Then all power to you and I hope you have a really good time.
S2: Um , I actually saw TikTok , where you recently talked about diving into , you know , kind of the mathematical part of this , right ? In the book , we talk about hyperbolic space and all these different concepts.
S3: I had also read a lot of Lewis Carroll , who , of course , is the master of articulating really fun math concepts through little stories. And there's multiple Lewis Carroll. References throughout the text. I haven't taken math in almost a decade , but my literary agent was an English math double major , and she's married to a math professor , so they actually sat me down over zoom and taught me hyperbolic geometry and how this would interfere with the geography of hell for several sessions. So if there's anything mathematically accurate in catalysis , it's all thanks to the Bowmans.
S2: Shout out to the Bowmans. Um , so you'll be coming to San Diego very soon. I understand it's the first time you'll be doing a book talk in our city.
S3: I joke around with my friends all the time that I hate the West Coast , and I'm just. I'm a New Englander , so I have very few excuses to get over there. I've heard the food is good , right ? The culture is popping. One of my best friends and Using bridesmaids on her. She grew up in San Diego , and we had actually a vicious email exchange where I kind of brazenly declared that there's nothing good in California. Everything interesting is in Boston. And she wrote like an essay in response about the history of where she grew up. So I'm excited to see that for my own eyes , I've been told that I will be taken out for the parent treatment by her parents. Um , so just. Yeah , I have no idea what to expect. And I'm just really , really happy to have this career where I get to travel to so many cities and meet readers from so many different places. Totally.
S2: Totally. And we're so excited to be having you come in San Diego.
S3: So I hope that anybody who is in a similar place will find some comfort in the book , and also think that the question of life has gotten more interesting.
S1: That was author Rebecca Kwong speaking with Midday Edition producer Juliana Domingo about the book catalysis. Kwong will have a book talk on September 11th at Point Loma Nazarene University's Brown Chapel. More details about the event can be found on kpbs.org. And a quick note of clarification before we go. In this segment , you heard the professor say that wastewater tracking had stopped while it did , in fact stop earlier this year. It has since resumed as of June. Gather ye Lords and Ladies for a brand new musical is premiering this month , and it is set at a Renaissance fair here about the Old Globe's latest musical comedy. Huzzah ! When Midday Edition returns. Welcome back to KPBS midday Edition , I'm Jade Hindman. Next week , the Old Globe Theatre will open the world premiere musical. Huzzah ! The comedy follows two sisters as they try to save their father's Renaissance fair from financial ruin. KPBS arts reporter Beth Accomando went behind the scenes to an early rehearsal to speak with the director and creators. First up are the Tony nominated husband and wife team , Nell Benjamin and Laurence O'Keefe , who created the book , music and lyrics for huzzah ! Take a listen.
S4: So you have a world premiere musical coming up here at the Globe Theatre.
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S5: Huzzah ! And we went to a Renaissance Faire and were inspired by it many years ago.
S6: We were in our 20s. We had just moved out to LA and some of our Hollywood friends who thought they were super cool and smart said , you have to go to this thing called a Renaissance Faire in San Bernardino outside of Pasadena , and you're going to love it. It's so stupid. And we thought , oh , that's great. We'll go and see people. Yeah , we thought , oh , maybe this might make a sitcom where we can be like The Office and make fun of people who hate their jobs. But everybody loved their jobs. We went there and everybody was good at something. They made things. They made swords with their blacksmith practices. They knew how to actually joust on real horses.
S5: And theater acts like put together these acts of their own , and they didn't charge permission for the acts they would pass the hat after if you liked it , which is , again , for a theater person , you know , pretty badass , pretty amazing. And so we thought , no , this is not something to make fun of. This is someplace we want to be every day.
S6: So we went back and we loved it , and we met people there , and we got to know the environment there. And I think the the vibe there is different from anywhere else. It's very different from a Knott's Berry Farm or a Disneyland. Wonderful places where you can have wonderful fun , but the particular fun you have at a Ren Faire , you kind of make part of it yourself. You bring it even if you're not dressed in Renaissance garb. You go there to play in a different way , and it's a wonderful respite from the rest of the world. But it's also kind of the best of us. I like to say that it's sort of the most American thing we make , because you go to a place that's like a field or a pasture or a little forest glade , and you build booths and tents and sometimes castles , and you bring live horses and you make things with your hands and you sell them , and it's.
S5: Super American , but everybody has bad British accents , so it's fabulous. We we love it. And also you get to interact , you get to be part of the show , and you interact with other people who are in their own strand. Like , we would go to one and there would be a guy just as Leonardo da Vinci , and he's built his own flying machine. And so you've got to go up to that guy and say , hey , what's the deal here ? And he say , I am Leonardo and this is mine. He's got a terrible accent , but he's wonderful , and he's built a flying machine. And so as nerds , we were enchanted. Yeah.
S6: Yeah. A lot of people think that a Ren Faire is like Disneyland for Lord of the rings geeks. It's really a place where nerds are safe and sexy. And we felt very safe and sexy there. And so we for years have been thinking , we want to make a show that celebrates these people , that does not make fun of them , but actually sort of puts them alongside the audience and blurs the distinction between show and audience. And that's very helpful because of course , if you love Wren fairs , you will dress up yourself and go , they're called patrons because they play , but they also their their patrons. The patrons dress up as ninjas or pirates or Gandalf or Darth Vader in a kilt. They pay admission. They don't work there , but they make part of the magic there. And I just love that. Yeah , I meant we go dressed as various things. Various guards. Yeah. And it's it's just a great thing to do.
S5: It's only polite to to to outside. Yeah. Go in garb. It's I'm not you know , you go and someone is dressed in a Queen Elizabeth outfit. They've made themselves. They've hand sewn it with using only thread that was available at that time. And you're like , I am outmatched. And you know what ? Great.
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S6: The family aspect is is my favorite. Most Ren fairs. The first Ren fairs were invented by families. They were invented by close friends or actual relatives , who pooled their resources and their weird skills to put together a unique entertainment that didn't exist before. and then a year or two later , they made a lot of money. And then the question is , could they hold on to it ? Could they build it in the marketplace ? It can be hard. Some rent fairs survive and some rent fairs to this day , 30 , 40 years later , are still run by families. Others didn't survive and they got bought up by conglomerates. And that's fine too , because some companies , they can run these fairs better than the families could , but the interaction of a family whose main activity is to create this particular kind of dream , that was very interesting to us. And so our show is about a family. It's founded by a visionary , flakey hippie , and he has two daughters who he raised in the fair and of the fair. And now they're taking over and they're trying to figure out how to run it. They have two very different ideas about how they should run their lives , their family and their fair.
S5: Every fair is a place where people of different interests and nerdiness come. So , for instance , somebody is doing purely historical stuff. Somebody's a fairy. Someone's doing Lord of the rings. Someone's doing a Darth Vader. You know , someone's doing all these things , and then they all come to one place with radically different interests and agendas , and they make a day of fun , work together. And this is what's so wonderful. It's a place where everybody's doing their own thing , but they have to do it together as a community , which is kind of America , right ? Like , we all want to do our own thing. We want to be our rugged individualist selves , but ultimately we've got to do this together.
S4: In addition to musical numbers , there are also fight sequences.
S5: Yeah , we have a musical number of fight sequence , which rejoices my heart. I think you're going to see some of it now.
S7: Come series 100. Watch your breath , Hamas.
S8: I need to talk to you.
S5: One of the characters in our show is Sir Roland Proud. He is the perfect knight. He lives every day as a knight of the Tudor court , and consequently , he fights. He is unbeatable by sword or lance and his introductory song , which I think you're going to see some of is The Song of Roland.
S7: That's my name is Roland from Golden Brown.
S5: It is both an incredible sing and an incredible sequence.
S4: Discuss a little bit the choreography of musical numbers kind of blending into the choreography of a fight sequence.
S6: Jacob , our fight choreographer. Katie , our choreographer choreographer. They're working together to make sure that the story gets told because there are story beats , even inside the song , that in the course of the song , we meet this star. So Roland Proud , who's never been to this fair before he's arrived at the fair , he's there for the battle royale. He's taking on all comers and and cracking some skulls and doing a great job. But he's also impressing people in certain major characters , are falling deeply in love with him in different ways , including the daughters who find this guy very compelling.
S5: So you have a story sequence , as we've written it in a song that we've written , and then Annie Tip , our brilliant director , is staging it so that that story comes out while someone is still singing and fighting. So it's really sort of a very it's a group effort , and that's even before the actors get there and they're amazing. So we sort of say that in our own experience , we don't like songs to be breaks from the story. You know ? We don't want to sort of say , this is the story , and I'm feeling this and then sing a song that says , this is what just happened , and I'm feeling this. So we move forward at breakneck speed.
S6: So by the end of the song , story has moved forward irrevocably , and something has changed and people have learned new things. That's that's kind of our favorite. That's our. Trick.
S5: Trick. But I don't think we've ever been in a position where we've thrown this much at a number , so it's incredibly exciting.
S7: No ! Shoot ! High five. Sophie , some glorious fire.
S5: That's why I love action movies. And we think of musicals as sort of being like that because the story doesn't stop for an action sequence , but you put action on top of it. And so likewise with a musical , you don't want the story to stop for your musical number , you want it to continue through while this incredible stuff is happening. And so now we have a number that is the story is continuing while musical numbers and action sequences happen at once.
S6: A lot of musicals. This plot will stop dead for a person to explore a feeling and have a great melody. And that's really great. I'm just not really good at writing that. We get a little impatient and we want the story to keep changing even while people are singing. And so that's what makes us restless. But that's also what makes us children of action movies. The car chases , the kung fu fights. Jackie Chan movies , Hong Kong movies.
S5: Or like a Jerry Bruckheimer action. We didn't grow up with Golden Age musicals. We grew up with action movies. So we , uh , we write accordingly. Yeah.
S4: All right , well , thank you.
S6: Bad boys to the music. Hall.
S7: Hall.
S4:
S9: The challenges of this musical are the utter delights of this musical. I think because the piece takes place at a ren faire. Things seamlessly move between spoken word and dance and fighting because that that is what you would find at a ren faire. So I look at the challenges actually , as like the perfect cohesion of what being at one of those fairs feels like. It's very all encompassing. It's very intoxicating. And at any point a swordsman could be thrown at your feet , which is delicious.
S4: So as a rather nerdy person myself , I feel like Ren fairs are a little bit like Comic-Con in the sense that if people have never gone , their first reaction sometimes is to snicker or make fun of these things.
S9: I'm thinking about it for a second , because I find that to be at the profound heart of the show , I think with any culture that is viewed as niche , a nerd culture , comic culture , ren faire culture , there's definitely an outside eye that can glance down upon it and say , oh you ! You've chosen to live your life and make believe you've chosen some kind of alternative reality to living in this world. And if you spend time in one of these places , I think what you find is people who are really engaged in creating the kind of world they want to live in , a world that is welcoming , that is empathetic , that is wild and free and welcoming to people.
S4: So I did get to see some of the swordplay , which was very exciting. And as a director , what's it like working with fight choreography and getting people comfortable to the point that everything flows effortlessly from dance to song to swordplay , when some people may have never carried a sword before.
S9: I have certainly never carried a sword before , but we're working with a world class fight choreographer , Jacob , so the process is first. What is the story we're trying to tell ? And we talk through the story. We talk through the story beats. And then it's a very slow , calculated process of layering in the fight choreography so that , yes , it's impressive. Yes , it's exciting , but at the very end of the day , each move and each sword hit is a storytelling gesture that gets us from A to B and any.
S4:
S9: So Jacob is looking for the sword hits that clash at the perfect time that the music wants it to clash. And Larry is such a brilliant composer. He's written the song with those hits in mind and written lyrics all around it. So it's , it's it's almost self-evident when you're staging it where the hits want to come and how the fight wants to be crafted , because Larry has written such amazing. Larry and Nel have written such amazing music for it.
S4: All right. Well , thank you very much.
S9: Thank you. I'm excited.
S10: It's all around us on stamps of joy in our family writes my friends who are coming out to write a song.
S1: That was Beth Accomando speaking with director Annie Tipp about the upcoming musical Hussar. Hussar begins performances on September 13th at the Old Globe Theatre and runs through October 19th. That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jayde Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
