Welcome to Literary Friction on NTS. I'm Carrie Plitt here as always with my co-host Octavia Bright. Hi, Octavia. Hi, Carrie. How are you doing? I'm great. I'm wearing shoulder pads. Yes, you are.

I like it. Yeah, feeling very powerful, very strident. Well, I hope some of that rubs off on me today.

I could use the power boost. You are such a flirt, Carrie Plitz. You are always a power boost to me.

Anyway, we're really excited for the show today.

And I think it's a topic close to your interests and your heart.

It's in my whale house.

Anyway, we are talking about masculinity in literature.

What makes a man?

Why do men fight?

Is there a crisis of masculinity? These are some of the

questions that authors from Ernest Hemingway to Grayson Perry have asked, and questions that Thomas

Paige McBee addresses head on in his searching beautiful and wise book amateur, the true story of his

quest to become the first trans man to box at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Thomas is joining us today on the show. Octavia, do you want to tell our listeners a little bit more about him?

Absolutely. Thomas Page McBee was a masculinity expert for Vice. His essays and reputage have appeared in the New York Times, Playboy Glamour and Salon.

And his second book, Amateur, has been shortlisted for the 2018 Bailey Gifford Prize. He's also the author of a book called Man Alive. And we're so, so excited that he's come to join us today. Yes, we are. So we will talk to Thomas about amateur, more generally about masculinity and literature. And finally, we will give our book recommendations.

So if you want to learn what it really means to be a man,

stay with us for the next hour on literary friction.

Thomas, thanks so much for coming on literary friction.

So we've asked you to start with a reading.

Would you mind just setting it up and going ahead?

I don't know if it needs set up because it's just the very first pages of the book. So just jump right in. According to the laws

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