DAVID FOLKENFLIK, HOST:
In case there is any doubt, the title of the first chapter of the new comic novel "How To Leave The House" spells it out. Natwest is the hero of the novel. He's young. He's about to head off to university a few years after his peers. The wrinkle - he's missing a package. It was supposed to be delivered the day before he leaves the English town he's known his entire life. The contents - well, they're potentially embarrassing, even mortifying, and so Natwest is determined to find it. "How To Leave The House" is Nathan Newman's debut novel, and they join me now to talk about it. Nathan Newman, welcome.
NATHAN NEWMAN: Hey. How you doing?
FOLKENFLIK: I'm good. I'm good, particularly after reading this book. Let's talk a little bit more about your protagonist, Natwest, the hero. Who is he? Why has it been so difficult for him to launch into adulthood?
NEWMAN: So he's a very anxious, nerdy, extremely art-obsessed 23-year-old. Because of his arrogance, he kind of went into his final exams at high school thinking he could pass them, and he didn't. And so he's been stranded in his small English town for the last four years. Now finally, he's gotten a place at university, and then this calamity arises with the package.
FOLKENFLIK: So Natwest, for American listeners - it's a little bit like calling him City Bank.
NEWMAN: Yes. Yeah. (Laughter) Yeah.
FOLKENFLIK: Tell us about what the name means.
NEWMAN: I mean, it's just funny. You know, I think there's a long history in English novels of characters having very silly names. It's also just a thing - like, you know, who wants to have a character called Sam or John or Bill or whatever? It's just kind of crafting a unique character. I always just thought it was funny. You know, he's named after this bank, which is very ubiquitous if you live in the U.K. It's free advertising as well 'cause if you see that bank, you're going, oh, I remember that book. It's quite a good book.
FOLKENFLIK: Natwest is on a daylong hero's quest to recover that package. It is his journey, his pilgrim's progress. Each chapter focuses on the various people in this town who he comes across, like an elderly neighbor. She's trying to impress a date by microwaving coq au vin, probably - between us - not the best idea. Or the - there's his dentist who's about to go public with a secret. I think we can reveal that to listeners. What's up with the dentist?
NEWMAN: So the dentist - he's a town dentist, but he's an artist in his spare time, and the subject of all of his paintings is the human mouth. He tries to paint other things, but he can only paint mouths. But he's very good at it. The kind of end point for a lot of the characters in the novel is this exhibition in town of all of their mouths as painted by the dentist.
FOLKENFLIK: When I was a kid, for two years, I lived in London. And on the BBC, they used to show Harold Lloyd - these old black-and-white comedic films on the regular. Yes, there are discussions about art. And, yes, there are discussions about, you know, do you like John Lennon or Paul McCartney better?
NEWMAN: Yeah.
FOLKENFLIK: But the whole Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton dichotomy is fiercely, fiercely fought. What is the deal with that in the book? And where do you come down on it?
NEWMAN: So for listeners, there's a big kind of deal made up in this novel around people putting people into categories. Are you a Charlie Chaplin person or a Buster Keaton person? Are you Paul McCartney, or are you John Lennon? For me, if those dichotomies tell you anything, I am a Paul McCartney, a Hagel, a Charlie Chaplin - although, possibly, I would like to be the other one. And obviously, all these binaries are - they're false at their root, which is also what the novel's about.
FOLKENFLIK: And I think anybody who reads this book will have a sense of the instinct to, whichever category you fall in, kind of yearn secretly to be in the other.
NEWMAN: Yeah. For sure.
FOLKENFLIK: There are people who look at Natwest - it seems to me - inside this book, with some degree of pity or dismissiveness. But does Natwest understand more about himself than those around him think he does?
NEWMAN: That's very interesting. I was actually having a discussion with this with someone - one of my friends who've read the book. And I think Natwest's image of himself is just completely off. Part of the reason why he's a comic character is because, you know, the vision which he has of himself is just so far misaligned with kind of who he is or certainly who the other people in the town see him as. If there is a pleasure in the book, it is entering other people's perspectives in these alternating chapters and then kind of getting their take on Natwest. And it's quite different from his interior monologue, which is much more self-absorbed, I think.
FOLKENFLIK: He has a very well-meaning, if awkward, exchange with this teenage girl. Her situation is pretty scary. What's happened to her?
NEWMAN: She has had her nudes leaked online, or someone is threatening to leak her nude pictures online. And her chapter is told all through text messages, forum posts and kind of anonymous online confessionals. And we kind of build up this picture of the internet in a way. It's kind of like, you're trying to tell her story through the voice of the internet, and that includes all of the nastiest parts of it as well as the funniest parts and the strangest parts and the silliest parts as well.
FOLKENFLIK: So what does his reaction to that circumstance, which he stumbled across, show us about him?
NEWMAN: I think with Natwest, it's - part of what he loves about himself is the - his youth and the fact that he's this - he views himself as a bit of a savant. But when he discovers someone who's going through a very similar crisis of exposure, which is - in Natwest's case, the package would expose him as something which he doesn't want to be seen as, and in Lily, who's - the girl's case, it would just be the most nasty exposure possible. It blows open his view about himself as having a important quest. You know, his quest is this kind of comic thing that he's built up in his head to be this massive, colossal, dramatic event in his life when, in actual fact, there are much bigger stories going on around him.
FOLKENFLIK: One thing I can't let go by without asking about is, man, does Natwest just trash the heck out of his mobile phone.
NEWMAN: Yeah (laughter).
FOLKENFLIK: What is the deal with that?
NEWMAN: I think when I set out to write this novel, one of the rules that I set for myself was that in every chapter where Natwest is the point-of-view character, he has to give one analysis of a piece of art, and then he has to drop his phone. Those are the two constants that happen throughout the book. You know, throughout the novel, the book (ph) gets increasingly cracked, increasingly destroyed until, you know, something may or may not happen at the end of the book around the phone.
FOLKENFLIK: It's a great shtick. Is it telling us anything beyond the shtick itself?
NEWMAN: Yeah, I think there is a clear unconscious desire within him to destroy his phone and to destroy everything that means, that particular kind of hyperconnectivity. I mean, I have that every single time I - my phone - if you saw my phone, it is just a spiderweb of cracks. It's crazy. And frequently - glass splinters in my fingers when I'm swiping. And you know what? I still don't get a screen protector. And I'm sure there's something psychological going on through that. And there is a point in the novel where Natwest is offered a phone case. Everyone keeps telling him to get a phone case. He goes into a shop, and they're selling half-price phone cases. And he says, nah, I won't need it today.
FOLKENFLIK: Not today - today, I've only dropped it 17 times.
NEWMAN: Yeah, exactly.
FOLKENFLIK: I don't need it in any way. If Natwest generally believes throughout the story that he's the main character in the story of his life...
NEWMAN: Yes.
FOLKENFLIK: ...And yet that gets tested - right? - over...
NEWMAN: Yeah.
FOLKENFLIK: ...The course of this tale, how should we think about our role in the stories of the people around us?
NEWMAN: I mean, that's just the - that's the goal of life. That's what everyone has to learn in their own unique ways. I don't think this book is - has anything particularly novel to say about it except to just kind of reaffirm it, you know, reaffirm the importance of other people and of understanding other people. If you've had a thought, then someone else has had a thought. There's nothing really unique there. What is unique is the specific interrelation of you with other people, not yourself in particular. That's just the standard life lesson that we need to relearn every single year.
FOLKENFLIK: Nathan Newman - their new novel is "How To Leave The House." Nathan, thanks so much for talking with me about it.
NEWMAN: Thank you so much, Dave. Thank you.
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