Zac Smith’s ‘Everything is Totally Fine,’ the book that reopened Tao Lin’s Muumuu House

Bookworm

KCRW

Arts

4.5 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Author Zac Smith speaks about the extreme juxtaposition of the very short, dense, and clipped stories in his new book, “Everything is Totally Fine.” He says that by removing a lot of exposition, he was able to create intense emotions in a small space. His energetic and thoughtful stories of absurdity and minutiae are things that could not be said any other way, and usually don’t get said. Plus, special guest Tao Lin explains why “Everything is Totally Fine” inspired him to reopen his Muumuu House imprint after it was closed for more than ten years.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.
0:04.0	Boots!
0:06.0	Where would we be without boos?
0:12.0	Where would we be without good?
0:15.0	No, Tintuberg.
0:16.0	It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we mean without books?
0:24.0	From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and you're listening to Bookworm.
0:32.8	Today, my two guests are with us.
0:40.5	This is the first of a two-part show.
0:49.2	We are also joined by my dear cohort, Sean Sullivan,
0:53.4	who will be performing an interview with me,
0:58.6	with a, to us, new writer whose name is Zach Smith.
1:07.5	His book is, Everything is Totally Fine. It has caused the publication of this book. Everything is totally fine. The resurrection of a house, a publishing house, run by the writer,
1:15.9	editor Tal Lin. The publishing house is Moomoo House. I adore the title. I don't know if everyone
1:26.1	remembers that a moo-moo is not a cow, but an article of clothing.
1:31.9	And Mo-Mu House existed for some 40 books, and now it's returning with its first book in 10 years,
1:41.8	which is Zach Smith's book. Everything is totally fine. Now, Zach, can you tell me
1:50.3	how you came to write this book? Sure. I tried writing, like I think anyone else, a couple of
1:56.9	novels a few years ago, and both turned out very poorly. So I decided to start writing
2:02.8	shorter fiction and engage with writing that was happening on the internet. And I made
2:09.0	several friends through doing so and through the community and just engaged in a lot of,
2:15.8	I guess I would call them like schemes or projects to write things.
	...

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