116. Claire Messud (writer) – All These Falls From Grace

Think Again - a Big Think Podcast

Big Think / Panoply

Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2017

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Author Claire Messud and host Jason Gots talk about childhood, growing up, and how cultures contain the things that scare them most. Also, how to give and receive good criticism on creative writing in this, Big Think's latest brain-fertilizing podcast. Claire Messud is the author of seven novels, including The Woman Upstairs and The Emperor’s Children. Messud has been awarded an Addison Metcalf award and the Straus Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among many other literary honors. The New Yorker calls her “adept at evoking complex psychological territory”, which is most definitely the case in her latest novel, The Burning Girl, about the tortuous course of a childhood friendship. About Think Again: Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from creative and curious minds. Since 2015, the Think Again podcast has been taking us out of our comfort zone, surprising our guests and Jason Gots, your host, with unexpected conversation starters from Big Think’s interview archives. Surprise clips from our video interview archives in this episode: Russell Simmons on the (then) presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, Alan Alda on communication and connection Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, I'm Jason Gots, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think
0:03.6	podcast.
0:09.6	Started in 2008, Big Think is a kind of online think tank of big ideas from some of the most
0:14.8	creative thinkers on the planet.
0:16.7	On the Think Again podcast, we revisit these ideas in new and unpredictable ways.
0:21.2	Our producers surprise me and my guests with short interview clips from Big Things Archives,
0:25.9	ideas that we didn't necessarily come here expecting to discuss.
0:29.1	I am very, very happy to be here today with novelist Claire Massoud.
0:33.4	She's the author of seven novels, including The Woman Upstairs and the Emperor's Children.
0:38.3	She's been awarded an Addison Metcalf and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts in Letters,
0:44.3	among many other literary honors.
0:46.3	The New Yorker calls her adept at evoking complex psychological territory,
0:51.3	which is most definitely the case in her latest novel, The Burning Girl,
0:55.1	about the tortuous course of a childhood friendship. Welcome to think again, Clay.
0:59.8	Thank you, Jason. It's great to be here. Yeah, I'm so glad to have you here. I'm going to start
1:04.0	by just kind of outing myself and admitting that The Burning Girl is the first novel of yours that I've
1:08.7	read, but I will be reading many more. Like, it's very dear of you, but thank you for reading this one.
1:13.6	I feel I should be up front about that because otherwise I feel like I'm going to be,
1:17.6	I'll be spending time sort of pretending that, you know, I know more than I know.
1:21.6	But no, I thoroughly and deeply enjoyed it.
1:23.6	And there's something that you write that and I'm not going to
1:28.5	quote it exactly but it's basically how the story what the story means depends on
	...

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