Welcome to literary friction.

I'm Carrie Plitt, here as always with my co-host Octavia Bright.

Hello, my dear Octavia. How are you?

Hi, Carrie. I am good. I'm fine. I'm trucking along. Not much to report.

I'm annoyed about the rain, but I'm trucking along. Not much to report. I'm annoyed about the rain,

but I'm not going to bitch about it for too long. How about you? How are you doing?

We're recording this when I still have COVID. So that's what's happening in my life. I've watched a lot of movies from the 90s, 80s and 90s. That's been fun. I watched Working Girl last night.

Amazing movie. That movie. Yeah. Amazing. Have you watched Conair yet? No. That is a great idea.

I watched Conair the other night when I was pissed off about the rain and it made me feel better.

Okay, good. Conair is next. Nicholas Cage's guns in that movie are impossible to

comprehend. Yeah, because I don't think of him as a like a mussely guy. Me neither. Dude must have been

on steroids or something. It's impossible. It's so camp that film also. It's just, he's like a camp,

hunk, Jesus soldier. It's so crazy. Exactly what I want right now. And then maybe I'll

follow it with face off. Definitely, definitely. When he takes camp to a new level.

A completely different, yeah, new plane of existence. Yes.

Anyway, today on the show, we're so excited to be talking to the writer Shalou Guo,

whose latest book, Radical, A Life of My Own,

is both a personal lexicon and a memoir, which thinks deeply about many things, including

what it would mean to truly forge a life of one's own. So we're taking our theme from that

subtitle. We'll be thinking about what it means to live a life of one's own, both as an artist and as a

character in literature, and which works of literature most embody this idea and even inspire us.

As we announced on our last minisode, we're wrapping up literary friction. At the end of this year,

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