Zibby Publishing author alert! Zibby is joined by New York Times bestselling and Thurber Prize-winning author John Kenney to discuss his razor-sharp, darkly comedic, and emotionally piercing new novel, I SEE YOU’VE CALLED IN DEAD. John delves into the story, which follows an obituary writer who accidentally publishes his own death notice, sparking chaos and unexpected self-discovery. John shares the deeply personal inspiration behind this book, touching on loss, the complexities of grief, and how humor helps us navigate life’s toughest moments. The conversation also delves into male friendship, office culture, and the impact of writing. With wit and warmth, John and Zibby explore what it means to truly live while grappling with loss.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome John. Thank you so much for coming back on now called Totally Booked with Zibby to talk about your latest novel. I See You've Called In Dead. Congratulations. 

John: Thank you so much and thank you for having me. 

Zibby: Of course. Of course.

I am also publishing this book with our company and could not be more proud of this and excited and I will never forget reading your very first draft and just sitting there laughing and crying and wow. So to come full circle and have it about to come out and talking to you on the podcast. Just amazing and sitting in the same place and reading and laughing, crying 'cause it was so funny. Your collected poems. So what a what a wonderful journey with you and your writing. 

John: It's great to be here and I'm so happy to be publishing with Zibby Books and thank you for believing in me and all the wonderful writers who you publish. It's not a small thing.

Zibby: Oh my gosh. I have to say we have gotten so many emails from booksellers being, and I'm hoping someone on my team has sent them to you. If not, I'll copy and paste and send them after about how obsessed they are with this book. Just and.. 

John: They haven't sent them and they I would love to read them. I love,.. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh.

John: I'll send more than reading things about myself okay, good. 

Zibby: I will, I'll do that after this. Okay. Tell listeners about what the premise of the book is. 

John: Sure I'm awful at the elevator pitch, but in a sentence, I think the book is about an obituary writer who doesn't know how to live. The slightly longer elevator pitch is Bud Stanley, the hero, is an obituary writer for whom life has taken some tough turns.

His wife left him as we meet him. His wife has left him two years earlier for another man, a far more interesting man with an English accent. And one evening as one does after a few glasses of scotch, he writes his own obituary. As a joke. Then it accidentally publishes it on his company's website.

He works for a big news agency like the Associated Press, and it wreaks havoc in his life. The company wants to fire him, but because he's dead to the company's computer system, they can't legally fire a dead person. And so he goes to the wakes and funerals of strangers and with his best friend a man who is in a wheelchair and chaos ensues.

Zibby: Oh my gosh. And where did this whole idea come from? What was the germ? 

John: Yeah, the book came from something that happened to me in 2019. I'm from a big Boston Irish family, five brothers, and my brother Tom, a firefighter, had gotten sick and he had pancreatic cancer. He was at ground Zero as a rescue worker, and we think it, it came from the days on the pile breathing in as many first responders have gotten sick. Anyway Tom was sick with pancreatic cancer for about five months, so I would go back and forth as my other brothers would. And the last time I saw him, a few weeks before he passed, I got to his house first and we were chatting, and he's a big, handsome guy, strong as a bull, but he had lost a tremendous amount of weight, but he was still himself and sitting in a lounge chair with a blanket on. And I heard a car come into the driveway and I looked out the window and it was my other four brothers, they had come down together. And I turned to Tom and I said the others are here. And with this sort of Buster Keaton stone face, but with this little smile. Dropped his head and he dropped his arm and he said, tell them they're too late.

And I remember at that moment being so stunned that someone could be that funny, but be that sort of brave in the face of death that I was like. I want that. And the two emotions that fascinate me are laughing and crying. And so I wanted to write a book about that. And so that's what I tried to do.

And in fact, the book is, as dedicated to my brother Tom. So I'm very happy about that. 

Zibby: Oh, and of course as we're talking, you've just lost another brother of yours and I am just so sorry. Your family has had so much loss. I've interviewed another brother of yours who also, who lost his son.

I just feel like your family's just, it's so sad. 

John: We make the Kennedy family look lucky. Yeah. My brother Michael, what a fun podcast for your listeners. My brother Michael. I just got back yesterday from his funeral. A remarkable guy. He had glioblastoma, but as you and I were chatting before we hit the record button, he lived for a year. He was in no pain. And, before we chatted a bit before you hit record, and one of the things I was saying is that I don't really have a vocabulary for death. I've been to a lot of wakes and funerals as you have, as your listeners surely have, but I don't know what to do. I say the cliched things, I'm so sorry. And it's that awkward moment and you wanna hug them, you wanna stand there. It's, maybe it's a Western thing and maybe other cultures do it differently, but I'm terrified of death. I wanna run from it, but I wanna stay in the moment and I wanna help. And I'm egotistical about it, so I put myself in the moment, I think, is that gonna be me one day?

And that thought is too big. And so that's a long way of saying over the past year I got the great privilege of having many conversations with Mike about death, about what he was feeling, and I think death is a great teacher. About how to live and God knows after this call, I'll get in the car and drive to the supermarket and get annoyed at someone cutting me off or someone taking too long 'cause I'm an idiot.

But if we can shorten those little windows where we react that way and think this is it, 9,000 weeks and try to enjoy it. Yeah. It's been a, it's been a fascinating experience trying to write about it. And as I was saying to you, I don't think I know anymore, but I've certainly thought a lot about it.

Zibby: I don't think there are any right answers, and there is no tried and true vocabulary and in truth, there's really nothing anybody can say to somebody who's in pain that will make it any better. It's all it will do is say, okay, this person cares about me, but nothing can take away the pain.

John: No, I think that's absolutely right and I hope this comes out right. I think the pain that no one can take away stays there always as a reminder, and gift is the wrong word, but it is, it informs I think, how we should live. I don't wanna walk around with unbridled joy 'cause I don't think that's, I think real joy comes from having that pain there as the counterweight.

I don't think I'm being particularly eloquent here, but I think the idea of loss of the fleeting nature of life. Can inform the beauty of it. 

Zibby: The good news is I don't think that anyone will accuse you of walking around with unbridled joy. 

John: I think that's..

Zibby: So we're clear. We're good. We're okay? 

John: Yes, absolutely.

Zibby: Yeah, we're okay. The dark humor and this sort of way of thinking about death and the upsides, if you will, and what it can teach you, informs the narrative in this book too. Where, but Stanley is a fill in for you or the reader or whoever and is going about it, trying to find.. Honestly, like the meaning of it all, which is impossible to know, but he has to find a way, and by having bud go through all these phases and him experiencing the wakes and funerals, blah, blah, blah, blah, like all of that.

It's, you're trying to wake up the reader too, right? The book is almost like a service call to be like, "Hey guys" and it's funny and entertaining and like page turning. And there are many characters and the plot is wonderful and the dialogue is hilarious and all of it is great, but I feel like the whole thing could be an alarm clock ringing to say don't miss the plot here.

John: Yeah, I hope so. I certainly didn't start out trying to write anything that would. I would never try to teach anyone anything, but I think Bud's little journey mirrors my own. I think I was an incredibly emotionally immature young guy. I think I was pretty clueless. I think I remain fairly clueless, but one of the beauties of age is you get a little, just a little wiser.

A little bit more life experience, a a little bit more pain, a little bit more wonder Children are the great teacher. And yeah, the dark humor. I think, I grew up in a family in Boston where, you know, that was the currency, the comment that was completely inappropriate and yet perfect for the moment.

My mom passed away when I was 12, and it was, she had six sons and she was the sun on the moon and the stars. And I remember we were in the back of the limousine taking us to the to the cemetery. It was a really cold November day in Boston. And we pull in and we had to wait. There's a long funeral procession because there was, a US mail truck, a postal service truck, and my brother Tom, who was lightning quick with humor said, oh, this must be the dead letter office. And we're all laughing hysterically, but there are people lining the thing. And as the it starts to move. People are looking in and we're all laughing. I don't know.

I abhor the malin and self pity and I like laughing in the face of pain. 

Zibby: There aren't that many choices. We laugh, we cry. 

John: Yeah. 

Zibby: We don't get outta bed. 

John: Yeah, I'll do the crying on my own in my room. But I'd rather make fun of it. 

Zibby: Stay tuned for the next podcast. 

John: Yeah, John Cries, Warhol cries.

Zibby: Remind me, what number are you of the six boys? 

John: I'm the fifth of six. And there's a big age gap. The two oldest boys are Irish twins, 11 months apart, as you do. And, big Irish Catholic family and yeah, so there's a 14 year age gap between oldest and youngest. The older boys were like parents.

They were godlike figures. My oldest brother, Charlie and Mike who just passed away, they were godlike figures to me, larger than life. Really good guys. Old school gentlemen who worshiped my mom and they're the kind of guys who can just walk into any room and talk to anyone, and they have a deep empathy and kindness.

But they're tough as nails, cops and firefighters. And my oldest brother is a writer and a wonderful one, but it's, losing a parent is such a hard thing. The world shifts on its access a bit when you lose a sibling. It, it shifts a bit and it moves you along the escalator a bit.

And it's it's sobering. 

Zibby: I'm so sorry. Back to this book, which of course is about all of this stuff. When you were crafting the narrative, you had so many funny scenes in the workplace. Like I know one thing is this is like the office meets six feet under meets whatever. I can't even remember.

The workplace scenes and the workplace camaraderie and all that is such a nice counterweight to the. Sort of the grief aspect of it. Talk a little bit about how the mundane and the day-to-day stuff contrasts with it's almost like what we have to do to get through every day, right? 

John: Absolutely. The wakes and funerals in the book are intense, but I don't know.

We've all worked office jobs and look, the genius of Ricky Gervais's show was that it took something as mundane as most of us. And I think a lot of us on this listening, the 19 people listening to me are.. 

Zibby: Better, there's more than 19 that you're offending me guys. 

John: 26. We're the lucky ones because we get to do work.

We choose. 

Most of the world doesn't get to do work they choose, it's a job, it's a gig. It's paying the rent. Office jobs are like that. A lot of times. No one falls into, people fall into these things. And what our coworkers, they're not family, but man, we see these people every day. And Bud, the main character has this sort of crazy relationship with his office mate Twan a Vietnamese immigrant who is, I don't know where Twan came from, but I love him.

I hope that doesn't sound strange. He. He just wrote himself. He's this very tender, troubled, traumatized gay man who had a brutal upbringing, but I love the connection between him and Bud and some of the other office people because man, they can make or break a day, right? We rely on these people in small and not so small ways. 

Zibby: Very true. And what about Bud's relationship with Tim? Because a lot of the book also is about male friendship, which 

John: Yeah. 

Zibby: Doesn't often get highlighted enough. 

John: Yeah, it's a funny thing. My wife has, I have 7, 8, 9 really close women friends, and they talk a lot and they talk intensely. And I don't wanna make it too simplistic, but I don't think a lot of men.

Talk that way. In your twenties you have a million acquaintances, right? You're figuring out and go out and there's lots of acquaintances. I think life gets smaller, right? You have your family and your work and stuff. Life gets smaller and in it also gets larger because of the beauty of family and stuff like that.

But I only have a few male friends and I don't see them nearly as much as I would like. And the conversations are sometimes it's like you need subtitles. Or it would be ideal if you could subtitle it 'cause you're saying one thing, but you're meaning another. Whereas my wife's conversations don't need subtitles.

The main character Bud moves into an apartment owned by Tim, who had been in a very bad accident and is now in a wheelchair, but it's not stopped him. He, he's a Renaissance man. He's fully alive in the world, despite his physical challenges. And Bud. Bud isn't, bud is. Bud is pretty wounded and he's he's on hold in a way.

And I think Tim's ability to be fully male, and I guess by that I mean there's this pull in men to be men, but. We also, there is a part of us that isn't maybe sometimes Sure how to show another side tenderness and empathy and care and love. I think each of us have in our selves both male and female tendencies, and children bring out in men their best selves.

I think often and I think what Tim is trying to do for Bud is show him that the only fully formed life worth living is when you're willing to be vulnerable and care about someone else and have the courage to show that and put yourself out there. And Bud loves Tim in a way that is really.

Completely pure and platonic and needs him in a way that the best friendships are. We need that person where a conversation or a phone call or a coffee for an hour. Know, when you have those great conversations with a dear friend and you leave them and you're different. You're full. And you're happier and your whole mood changes 'cause you connected in a way that was really lovely. At least I've heard those things are possible. 

Zibby: And I'm like, when was the last time I did that? 

John: I know. It's it's funny. I have a really dear friend. He's a wonderful writer. His name's Bill Lande.

He wrote Defending Jacob. 

And Bill and I met in high school and he and his wife hosted me the other night. I left the wake, I went back, they had a bottle of wine open. They had made dinner. We sat and talked and it made me whole again. It really made me whole again because he knows me. He knows how to fill in the silences or stay silent.

And I love him to death and I feel so lucky to have him as a friend, read defending Jacob and read it before my book. 'cause it's really, but yeah, I do love their friendship. And it's funny, all I would say about the writing is for anyone out there wanting to write there's that wonderful quote from Somerset mom.

He said, there are three rules. For writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are, and I think there's this belief that it's all easily mapped out. Forget who it was, who said writing is a bit like driving on a country road late at night with only one headlight. I mapped out the book, I mapped out what could happen, but the development of characters, I think, at least for me, is surprising.

And I don't know about you, but. I find they it's gonna come out wrong, but I find they they can speak for themselves. They speak through you. I really believe that. And when you think about them a lot, you'll write dialogue and think, huh, where did that come from? The friendship between Tim and Bud wrote itself and perhaps it's a latent thing that I desperately want, but yeah.

Zibby: When you are writing the book and you've mapped it all out, what does it look like when you're writing? Is this like an all day, you go somewhere, you work from nine to five and you're like, this is a writing day. I know you also contribute for the to the New Yorker and you're doing like short things and long things and this and that.

Like how do you organize your time? 

John: Yeah. If you saw me during the day, you'd be like. Does that guy do anything? Aaron Sorkin talked about how 90% of his day looks like he's a guy just watching ESPN. I don't have a writing schedule. I write all the time. I get up and the, we get the kids out and I waste some time on emails and I clean the kitchen and I listen to NPR and quickly turn that off 'cause it's depressing. And I read an old New Yorker piece and it's like you're on a diving board about like cold water and I'm like psyching myself up. 

To have the courage to jump in. 'cause I don't want to, 'cause it's terrifying, but I'm thinking about it all the time.

And then I jump in. I might work for 90 minutes, I might work for two hours, and then I'll come back to it later in the day. But I'm old. I go for a walk later in the day and I'm thinking of things and I write stuff down and I'm always trying to do it. I can't just sit from nine to five and do something.

I often write standing like I am now 'cause of my terrible hips, but I think I tend to write very fast in bursts. I worked in advertising a while back and it was a great gift in a way because you have deadlines. So I try to I try to make unreasonable deadlines for myself. Certain number of pages a week or a month.

And that's so helpful. You have to want to do it. 'cause it's hard. It's, it, there are days where you're like I wish I had a, I wish I was a carpenter. John Fee talks about the great New Yorker writer and teacher at Princeton talks about, when he was writing, he would take he took the terrycloth belt from his bathrobe and tied it through a loop in his pants around the chair.

So every time he got up from the chair, he like couldn't, it's not pleasurable sometimes, but you have to sit there and do the work. And then there are those days that make it all worthwhile where the book speaks to you and you get a scene and you think. Oh, why are there tears running down my face?

Or, oh, why am I laughing at that? Why? Why? Why does that little tingle in your palms happen where you think, oh I think that kind of works. That doesn't suck completely. And so that's a kind of fun thing to chase too. I don't know. I guess being a writer is like being a golfer or being a runner.

It's the thing you do when you have the time. That's how I spend my days. I like you. The way I think about the world is through words, how I experience the world. I, for some people it's like this, I, this is the deal I just did. I did this deal. It's an amazing deal. I built this building.

I fixed this car. I'm a firefighter. I did this shift. I'm not very good at anything. And so what I try to do is put the words down and that's how I experience the world. And I, I hope this doesn't sound ridiculous, but I've been very fortunate and written a few books and stuff, but I've never worked harder on anything in my life than this book. Through with your good help and Kathleen Harris, my editor and our dear friend, it's this, this was it was a joy and, yeah. So we'll see. 

Zibby: It is so good. It is so good. 

John: Thank you. 

Zibby: And you should be just enormously proud of it. So congratulations. 

John: And I feel very lucky that, people have said it, but Zibby, you're, what you're doing is amazing and I feel very lucky that you're. You took this book on, so thank you.

Zibby: It's quite a vote of confidence that you came to us, so it's amazing. I'm sorry again for all of the stuff, but I am also very grateful because the way you take your loss ends up helping everybody else in a way that people can consume and metabolize. And have it change their lives just a little bit.

So thank you so much. 

John: Thank you. I appreciate it. 

Zibby: Okay.