Title: Jenny Slate's New Book, Lifeform

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. I'm especially grateful you've already donated to us during our All The Money, Half The Time fundraiser. Get this, we hit our challenge, which means we will get $50,000 match from the Tiger Baron Foundation. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everybody who donated. By the way, big thanks to our local sports teams. The New York Liberty clinched their first ever WNBA championship title last night.

The Yankees won the American League Champions Series and are headed to the World Series. Lucky for us, it begins on Friday. A few days to recharge. On the show today, we'll speak with director Kenny Leon and actor Zoe Deutsch about their new production of Our Town. We'll talk about the public song new album project, and New York Nico, he's here to talk about his new guide for New York. That's the plan, so let's get this started with actor, writer and comedian Jenny Slate.

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Jenny Slate's latest collection of essays reflects on moments throughout her life, and they're partialed into five phases. Phase 1: Single, Phase 2: True Love, Phase 3: Pregnancy, Phase 4: Baby, and Phase 5: Ongoing. In between each phase, she writes letters to a doctor, sharing her thoughts on aging or even party seating. The book is titled Lifeform. A vanity piece said of the collection "it blends Slate's trademark magic with incisive reflections of love, family and legacy, all coming together to create some of her most soul-searching work yet." Lifeforms is out tomorrow. Jenny Slate will be speaking tomorrow night at Town Hall at 08:00 PM but right now she's here with us in studio. Jenny, welcome back.

Jenny: Hi. Thanks for having me back.

Alison Stewart: What was the pitch for this to your editor and your publisher?

Jenny: Luckily, I had written one book before my first collection, Little Weirds. The pitch really was, I would like to write another book similar to the last, but different subject matter. I actually hadn't told them that I was pregnant yet. They had some faith in me. Not a hefty pitch.

Alison Stewart: When did you write these essays?

Jenny: Well, I got the deal, as I say, to write, I just can't believe- I don't know why that really grosses me out to say that into a microphone, in March of 2020, right at the very start of the pandemic when I was newly pregnant. I was just like I need to figure out a destination. How will I work? How can I make sure that I continue to make creative work? Actually, it was really hard to write then.

Then after I had my baby, I felt blocked up, and it took me until she was about two and a half to start to write. I had many, many little emails I had sent myself and journal entries and little notes, hundreds of them, and I just started to use them as writing prompts. Those had accrued over three years or so. Then between June of, I would say, 2022 and the winter there, in five months, I wrote it. I just wrote it.

Alison Stewart: When you were stuck writing, did you want to write? Were you dealing with blocks?

Jenny: Yes, I wanted to. I wanted to be writing, but also part of me obviously did not want to. I just could not do it. Trying to write made me think of being really bored or having to pick up something really heavy and carry it for a while. I just did not have the right energy to do it.

Alison Stewart: You structured the book into five phases. Why did that structure work for you when you had all of this material after you'd written everything?

Jenny: The structure was the last thing. I first just followed the ideas that interested me, and when I would feel a lag or sort of exhausted on a certain piece, I would just stop writing it and hop over to another. I did that every day for four or five months until I felt that the pieces were getting towards completion. I had them in all different types of folders, and I kept naming them different things and moving things around.

There's a part of me that does often want to shake off traditional forms, mostly just because I don't want to really be kept, but I do like to be held. I all of a sudden realized it's not me simplifying myself or trying to be obedient if I actually just use the basic chronology here. I tried to label the phases clinically because the writing inside is pretty visual. I do work in an often-trippy way, so I tried to give them a sturdy container.

Alison Stewart: Where do you write? Do you have a writing room? Do you write anywhere?

Jenny: I first started out writing in a cabin that my husband had made for me by two of his friends.

Alison Stewart: That's the nicest thing I've ever heard.

Jenny: Super lovely, yes. He found all of these old antique windows on Etsy and eBay and stuff. He bought the windows and then designed the cabins and his buddies made it. I put wallpaper up and just went up there and wrote. Then when it started to get chilly because I live in Massachusetts most of the year, I would just write in bed. My mother-in-law would come over at 6:30 in the morning every morning. I would give my toddler to her and get back in bed, listen to, not to plug it too much, but NPR Up First. I would. I would listen to Up First, then journal for 10 minutes and get going. Just be in my bed writing. Yes, luxurious.

Alison Stewart: Well, a little bit.

Jenny: Oh, yes. Are you kidding? Of course it is, yes.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jenny Slate. The book is called Lifeform. What was difficult to write? What was the hardest part to write about?

Jenny: Let's see. I think the hardest thing is getting started. I don't think there's one subject that was harder than another, but I do think that there's a part of me that wants to write in the abstract. I want to write abstract things, or I want to write things that I feel strongly but might be hard to visualize. I think what can be hard is that I know exactly what I want to do. In those moments of desire to do the thing, I can stop myself via self-criticism. No one's going to want this. This doesn't make sense to other people.

This is embarrassing. This is a part of you that you should grow out of. Usually, that's not right. I'm not being correct, and I should push past it. I think actually, that was the hardest thing. I do think writing about pregnancy can be difficult because sometimes you can feel the world retracting from you. It feels like people don't want to listen or they want to encapsulate a complex experience in cliche. It can just feel like, a lot of pressure.

Alison Stewart: Alongside these essays are these letters to the doctor. How did you come to choose that as a format?

Jenny: The letters?

Alison Stewart: They're funny.

Jenny: I'm glad. I think I'll have experiences that are really impactful or meaningful for me internally and, again, with the self-criticism, I'll say, "Don't share that. Don't let that out," which is, of course, deeply unhealthy and toxic. And so, the letters to the doctor was a way for me to enact this thing in my psyche or these qualities that I think I have sometimes, or even judgments, like I'm too needy, these questions aren't appropriate, but also on the other side I want care, don't I deserve it? I really want to explain myself fully. I started writing these letters to a doctor who, in my opinion, never writes back [laughter] that are inappropriate letters in that they're not really medical questions-

Alison Stewart: No.

Jenny: -and you don't feel that the doctor has time for them. It's a statement of I feel like a professional should take care of this one. I just found that it was a wonderful format because I didn't have to subtract any part of the way that I was characterizing myself. I could just be this crappy person. They still worked, and they were still entertaining and worthy of being in the book.

Alison Stewart: Can I ask you to read a little bit from the book? This is one of the letters you wrote to- it's like letters to the doctor Going Crohn.

Jenny: Yes.

Alison Stewart: This spoke to me. I write here at 176, down at the bottom of 177. This is Jenny Slate reading from her book Lifeform. Do you want to set this up about Going Crohn's a little bit?

Jenny: Yes. This is me asking the doctor if there's any clinical way to skip over the bridge of time between 40 and 80, because people, including people myself, can be really freaked out and negative about that time in a lifespan. Okay, so here we go. This is just a little bit into the letter.

"Doctor, please do advise, because I do not want to waste the next 40 years worrying about skin wrinkles and status, worrying about being cruel toward my physical body the way I was in my 20s. I do not want to be 80 and realize that I spent 40 years being a meanie and a sucker when I could have been kind and victorious on a daily basis if I'd only changed my point of view. I sense it may be rude to life itself to request to skip over this bridge of time. I guess I do admit that if I were to get the clearance to have the treatment to go full crone, it might feel that I was cheating a bit. Actually, I really do believe that if I allowed myself to go slowly and not turn away from anything, I might travel through my experiences feeling wonderfully connected to that which I am currently passing through. Plus, while I was writing this letter, my husband came in and I told him what I was asking you, cand he said, 'Why do you want to be old? Steve has Parkinson's, and it's really bad.' He is right. I do not mean to be flip or glib, but I tried to explain to him that I do not want to be old more than I just do not love how it feels to be in this state. I feel, in many ways, younger than ever, faced with a lot of newness because of the baby, and the newness makes me feel young because I am learning something for the first time, which is something that the young often do. But I am also the most tired in my body that I have ever been, and a part of me that was there before has certainly just stopped. I mourn that which has been disappeared from my identity. It is simultaneous, my youngness and my oldness. It reminds me of how earth is earth, but we all know the living earth is dying, and still, we all just keep living. It is stressful and horrible to really get into the specifics of this dying, but we have to, because this is where we live."

Alison Stewart: That's ginny slate. Reading from Lifeform. Did you have that feeling of wanting to just skip over the 40s, 50s?

Jenny: I think, yes, I think I did, or I used to before I was in it. I'm 42 now, and I just really call BS on the idea that I'm really starting to become disgusting or something. I've been disgusting forever, I'm sure of it. I know everyone else knows that, too. I'm proud of that, I guess, in my own way. I was worried, I think, not to just get on here and have so much attitude or something but I do think that is one of the central things that happens in patriarchy and with misogyny, internalized or external, is that there's just a big threat conditioned in and then silently and also loudly lurking outside, which is, look, your worth becomes less. Get ready and be scared because, of course, when you're scared, then you will become stiff, and if you're all stiffened up and you're rigid, you just won't go as far or do as much. I fundamentally reject that, and I live happily.

Alison Stewart: Hear, hear. One of the things that you write about is motherhood. It was interesting. Most people didn't know you were pregnant. People who know you because you're you, they didn't know you were pregnant. How was it to be pregnant during a time of isolation?

Jenny: I mean, for me, it was actually a good fit. I could just be totally private. I felt no need to perform anything about my pregnancy. I'm not sure that that would have happened to me anyway, because one of the things I experienced while pregnant was I'm me, but I have a lot of new preferences here. It was lovely. It was not necessarily like being in a vacuum, but it was being with only the essential people in my life. It was a good way to be pregnant, except for that I had to go to all my doctor's appointments without my partner and give birth in a mask because there was no vaccine yet and things like that. Not preferable, I would say.

Alison Stewart: When you said new preferences, what were you talking about?

Jenny: I think that continues for me. The things that I wanted for myself, the rewards that I thought were out there in life and in culture were one way. I think when I was like, I'm a stand up and I'm this person in the world and this is my boyfriend and blah, blah. When I was pregnant, also, my husband and I weren't married. Then once I started to be pregnant, I became sensitive in a different way, to the point where I actually needed things to be a lot less stimulating, softer. I needed fewer people around, deeper connections. That continues on for me to the point where I really like performing. I'm very excited for my show tomorrow night at Town Hall. Really excited. I am hungry for a different response.

Alison Stewart: People know you as Marcel Lachelle. They know you as a performer. Your stand up special and Netflix is great, especially your grandma.

Jenny: Thanks.

Alison Stewart: You have a different voice as a writer, a little bit, in my opinion. What's different about your voice as a writer as opposed to as an entertainer, as a performer?

Jenny: I feel the entertainer in me when I'm writing. Not that I write the pieces as an entertainment endpoint. Like, I can't wait to say this out loud. Although a lot of times when I'm writing and it's going really well, I do find myself hoping to read it aloud one day. I think that with stand-up, there are just some things that don't work. You can't be very self-serious. You have to deliver a certain amount of laughs. You've got to keep the ball in the air the whole time, or if it falls, make a big joke about it. I enjoy that. I am a very energetic person, and I need to open that valve and blast out that way.

I'm an Aries Cancer rising, if I can put it that way. I'm also really sensitive, and there are some things that just aren't appropriate for stand-up. I felt that they just didn't fit. The way I work, is that I am an external processor, I think. I think I'm the same person. I think there's, of course, the same artist, whether it's Marcel or stage fighter, or seasoned professional, which is my special that I had out this spring. It's just that I can be as lyrical, as visual, as surreal as I really, really, really am, actually, in my mind, on a daily basis, on the page. It's full permission. I think it's actually the closest to what I'm like as an existing thing.

Alison Stewart: Who's your first reader?

Jenny: My first reader? Usually, it was my editor, Jean.

Alison Stewart: Did she have response for you? Did she want more of this, more of that? I'm curious what it was like.

Jenny: I mean, sometimes it's like, "Here, here's all the stuff. This is crazy. This is crazy." Then she'll be like, "Yes, indeed. This is very abstract. I can't wait to see more specifics." I'm like, "Ugh," and it really hurts. I am very sensitive. I mean, she's not trying to hurt my feelings. I think she's doing her job, which is to edit me and guide me and help me shape things. I am not one of these people that shares it when it's done. I want to share the burgeoning idea, but you have to have a really, really trusting relationship. Also, my friend Rebecca Dinestein Knight, who's an incredible novelist, she knows me so well that she can read my things early on and not just be like, "I think we need to call a psychiatrist for Jenny right now."

Alison Stewart: How do you balance that vulnerability?

Jenny: I don't.

Alison Stewart: You don't?

Jenny: I just rip it. I just go for it. I don't balance it. This is the only way I know how to do my work.

Alison Stewart: How do you handle the, well, this is getting deep-

Jenny: Go for it.

Alison Stewart: -self-doubt? How do you handle self-doubt?

Jenny: I guess sometimes I get really trounced. It's being like, well, how do you go in the ocean? I don't know. Sometimes there's an undertone. It just actually took me a lot farther, and it spun me around, and I got some abrasions, and I got scared, and I didn't know where I was. That's what it feels like. I can only just keep going how I have already been moving along, and I haven't quit yet.

I'm not afraid of if that were to happen. I don't really see myself as someone that has limited resource in terms of deflation and then also inflation. I seem to be on a cycle, and my aim in the end is to feel that I completed what I hoped for. I don't try to have a good experience the whole time because I don't think that's really possible for me. I just try to go through the stuff that's happening.

Alison Stewart: When someone finishes your book, what do you hope they talk about with their friend, with someone close to them?

Jenny: I guess one thing that's important to me is I hope people are reminded about their own simultaneous internal characters that you can be someone like me, for example, who experiences depression and also optimism, and that that they're happening at once that simultaneous thing doesn't mean that one is a lie. I hope that people, in their own way, feel the truth of all the different parts of themselves. There's a lot in there about self-criticism and forgiveness and how to participate in both and get on through. I hope people just feel that however they cope with being alive is legit.

Alison Stewart: I had to start it twice. The first time I started it, I said, wait a minute, I have to think about this. I have to get ahead. Then I started again. It was such-- Then it just flowed. It was interesting to have the two reactions. First, I was like, I'm not so sure. I don't know. I'm like feeling tired, have a cup of coffee. Then I read it the second time, I was like, oh, I get it.

Jenny: I think the book is asking a lot more of myself and of readers. In my first book, the first essay is about Stonehenge, but not at all. It's really about knowing something, a thing that is right deep inside of your young, animal self, and how that knowledge, your first sense of yourself, can be made really separate from you and what it's like to get that back and how empowering it feels. I try to write in the way that I think. I think that there's often a big payoff in the end if you will wander with me on my thoughts.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is Lifeform. Jenny Slate will be speaking tomorrow night at Town Hall at 08:00 PM. We were so glad to have you in studio, Jenny. Nice to talk to you.

Jenny: Thanks for having me. I just became a sustaining member of WNYC while I was sitting in the Green Room. I made my monthly donation and I'm wearing my pin, and I just would encourage everyone to do it. It genuinely took me 20 seconds, and now I feel really good.

Alison Stewart: She took care of--

Jenny: I did it.

Alison Stewart: She did it.

Jenny: Yes, I did it.