Nerdette Book Club: Danielle Evans On 'The Office Of Historical Corrections'

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4.6 • 924 Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome back to Nerdette Book Club! This month’s pick is ‘The Office of Historical Corrections’ by Danielle Evans. It’s a funny and expertly crafted new collection of short stories from the award winning author of ‘Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.’ Listen to our spoiler-free discussion of the book with Danielle herself! And be sure to come back later this month for a spoiler-filled conversation with our distinguished panel. And don’t forget: we want to hear from you too! Record your thoughts about the collection and send an audio file to [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still
0:06.1	watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,
0:12.7	soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,
0:18.0	Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago. Join me as I share how the genre
0:22.3	began, their social impact, and why these stories endure. Listen, wherever you get your podcast.
0:32.3	From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Greta Johnson, and this is The Nerdette Book Club. It's just like a regular
0:37.7	book club, except you never have to host or leave your house. This month's pick is The Office of
0:42.9	Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans. It's a short story collection with a novella called
0:48.0	The Office of Historical Corrections. It is amazing. I am thrilled to talk to the author about it.
0:53.9	Danielle is here with us now. Hello. Hello, good morning. I am thrilled to talk to the author about it. Danielle is here with us now. Hello. Hello. Good morning. I am just so excited to talk to you about this book. I have to say, I am one of those people who usually doesn't really connect with short stories. I think often because if I don't really enjoy it, I'm sort of like, why did I bother reading this? And if I did really like it, I'm like, why isn't this just a goddamn novel?
1:15.9	But there was something about like the bite-sized bits that you managed to put together in this book that it was just like I was just so happy to be on the ride the entire time.
1:27.7	And I, I don't know how you did it.
1:29.5	I don't know if you can tell me how you did it, but I just want to say it's amazing.
1:34.4	Well, I'm glad to be converting people to the short story form.
1:38.3	I really do, I really do love short stories.
1:40.1	I mean, probably I love a collection because I think often when you're writing,
1:44.3	you're writing about something that you don't have a clear answer on.
1:51.0	And a collection allows you to ask the same question over and over again and answer
1:54.6	at different ways and kind of look at it from different angles.
1:57.5	And so I think you can see a writer with kind of thinking about something and not necessarily figuring it out. But I like that thinking and I like that conversational
2:04.4	space and I like that range of motion. But in an individual short story, I also think
2:09.0	works as well, it just has this density. You know, my favorite, not favorite altogether maybe,
	...

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