Gabfest Reads: Life on Europa Looks Too Much Like America

Political Gabfest

Slate Podcasts

Politics, Government, News

4.5 • 8.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Plotz talks with author Mat Johnson about his new novel Invisible Things. Johnson’s novel tells the story of a group of astronauts that land in a bubble colony on Jupiter's biggest moon. They talk about the challenges of writing satire when reality feels fake, how mediocre people rise up by sucking up, and why we need to look at the invisible things in our daily lives. Tweet us your questions @SlateGabfest or email us at [email protected]. (Messages could be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Cheyna Roth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Gap Fest Reads.
0:08.6	For August 2022 it's the Invisible Things Edition I'm David Plot of CityCast.
0:14.3	I'm in Washington DC and I am joined today on Gap Fest Reads by Matt Johnson.
0:20.8	Matt and I are going to talk about his wild, strange and very funny new novel The Disable
0:26.5	Things.
0:27.5	Matt is the night chair of Humanities at the University of Oregon.
0:31.5	He's the author of Books of Nonfiction, graphic novels and novels including him and Loving
0:36.8	Day, Loving Day being an Emily Baslan, favorite Matt Welcome to Gap Fest Reads.
0:42.2	Congratulations on Invisible Things.
0:44.2	Hey, nice to meet you.
0:48.6	So Invisible Things is an allegorical novel about New Rowan Oak, a city inside a bubble
0:54.0	located on a moon of Jupiter.
0:56.8	US Spaceship discovers New Rowan Oak, which turns out to be a pleasant facsimile of an
1:01.9	American city, complete with all the fast food outlets of the home planet, but populated
1:07.7	entirely by people who are inexplicably kidnapped from Earth and woke up on New Rowan Oak.
1:13.0	New Rowan Oak has a governing party, it has a fox-like TV network, it has lots of economic
1:18.0	inequality and is sustained by shipments of goods that appear to come from nowhere.
1:25.0	The story of Invisible Things is about the tumult unleashed when a pair of American spaceships
1:30.9	and their crews arrive at New Rowan Oak and what happens then.
1:35.9	And it's an extremely funny and political and ominous kind of book, more so even than
1:42.5	my brief summary suggests.
1:43.8	So Matt, first of all, it reminded me, as I'm sure more remind everyone who reads it
	...

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