Shane Hinton and "Other Shane Hintons" - Episode 91

Stories, autobiographical fantasy, a memoir and lies, confessional fictions, these are all according to the back cover of Shane Hinton's newest book, "Plausable Descriptions for the Contents." Other Shane Hinton's out this month from our friends at Burrow Press really stretches the definition of fiction. It's the kind of volume that auto-focus books might publish, and you can see season 8 for a fuller explanation of their ethos and mission. It contains eight pieces connected, with the kind of coherent plot character arc taking us through them. There's also the requisite animal in nature imagery, his work is known for, to me at least. Shane was kind enough to drop in at the clubhouse and discuss his creative process with us. We also talk about what he hopes audiences might get from these stories, and what the emotional toll of artistic creation can be. He tells some stories behind the stories about animals here too, and how fiction can function as a guardrail of sorts against the more bracing honestness. And we're bracing honesty of a memoir or autobiography. I'm Krista Fernanke, and welcome to the Florida Book Club. Let's welcome Shane Hinton back to the clubhouse. We talked to him earlier this year about his upcoming book, Other Shane Hinton's, and now that it's arrived he's been kind enough to return to get into the meat of the work itself. Welcome back, Shane. Hey, thanks a lot for your round of meet. Sure. Now, okay. So to get something out of the way is just in terms of a genre framework, we can put this in the back cover of your newest book. And I am looking right under the burrow press imprint here. It says fiction. But the back cover summary also includes phrases like a memoir in lies, confessional fictions, autobiographical fantasy. You know, it seems like things more akin to like Tim O'Brien's, the things they carried reference for him out there. So I'm curious, how do you view these pieces? How did you approach writing them? And then I would say even more importantly, does it matter or not in terms of how readers approach them? So I would call these stories auto fiction. And I do think of them as a, I think a cohesive kind of narrative arc in the way that maybe I'm a more might be. But they're pretty fictionalized. I, when I guess I would say is. I think that probably it is helpful to consider the structure of the book. So the way that the stories are set out is they start with this character who is really young. And then the last couple of stories are like the characters in middle age. There are eight stories all together. And so they really kind of chart moments in this characters like the characters name, Shanton. And the conceit of the book is that each one of the stories kind of represents an inflection point, you know, where the character becomes somebody that they may not otherwise have been essentially. That's where the title came from, although really the title came from the title story, which was probably the, I guess, the first one that I wrote for the collection. I would, I would say this, you know, I think that when you're writing this kind of a project that absolutely draws heavily on my life and my experiences. You know, I think one of the reasons that a writer might choose to write in this genre or this tradition is to play with the reader's expectations of where is that line and, you know, what's fictional and what isn't. And then I think is a fun space for both the reader and the writer to meet up in. But I also think that it might be tempting to the more kind of like sound minded among us to think about like, OK, let's really try to nail the sound, you know. And I don't know that in this case, I think that is a terribly productive exercise for what I was trying to do. What I would say is there's a lot of stuff in here that is real and that really happened to me. And there is a lot of stuff that I just straight up made up and some of the more fantastical elements are obviously fictionalized. But there's a lot of other stuff that's just not the fantastical. It's like just to make the story work when I was conceiving of these stories, you know, I generally started with something. The premise for the story or my entry point in the story was almost always something that had really happened to me. And I use that essentially as a springboard to tell the story. And to me, the story is so much more important than. Then the reality of like what quote unquote actually happened. I'm not like, up to this point of my writing career anyway, I haven't really concerned myself with trying to represent the truth of events as they really happened or whatever objective truth is in 2025. But, you know, yeah, I would say that for the readers sake, I would say approach them, you know, approach them almost as it's like how I think of myth making right like it's all myth emerges from from somewhere, but along the way it takes on qualities that are more communicative than just the expression of a series of events, you know, we shape them so that we can communicate with them. And we shape them so that we can communicate something that's more important about our understanding of the world and I hope that's, you know, I hope that's what this book does. Yeah, it's again, just approach them as stories, if nothing else, if you don't adorn them any other way, I think it's a reader, you know, that's how I generally try to approach anything unless it's like a self-help book. It's like it's just it's somebody's narrative, it's somebody's story, regardless of whether it's memoir, autobiography, fiction, it's a sounds like this would slot in pretty nicely with autofocus books, a lot of what they do in terms of, yeah, these autobiographical fictions and stuff. I really enjoyed listening to you talk about that. It is interesting. I mean, you mentioned autofocus and this, this, you know, the autofiction, I've been puzzling over this all summer kind of after the book was was finalized and talking to other writers and thinking specifically about autofocus, you know, it's, it's just interesting how autofiction is having this moment in culture, you know, what does that indicate about us and how we perceive our cells and our relationship to other people and literature. I don't know that I have any any answers, but it's definitely something I think worth worth considering. I mean, I tend to be a little bit afraid in my own case that it's a symptom of, you know, self centeredness or something. I've been really thinking consciously like next the next thing I write just has to be focused on the other stuff got to shift shift my gaze or else I'm going to start worrying that I have some real soul sickness that I can't move past. Yeah, I mean, I was saying like I did posit this idea like do you think are you going to continue to write Shane Hinton into your stories as an narrator or do you think that this has been cathartic enough to this process where it's like, okay, I'm done with him as as a narrator. Let me just say this Chris, God, I hope not. I think I would love to be done with it. I really, you know, I like it. It's been fun. It's certainly been really useful as a tool for helping me understand myself and integrate all these pieces of my life into a narrative structure that has allowed me to think about my life more realistically. I definitely thought I was done prior to this book. I mean, I didn't intend I didn't set out to do this. I think I might have talked about this with you last time. I mean, I didn't want to use. I thought I was done. You know, I didn't set out to do this again. It's just that the universe kind of inserted itself into my life and my writing process in a way that I wasn't able to ignore. And so I do it again. And I guess whatever the universe again dictates that I need to do it again. I guess I'll do it again. But I'm actively setting out, you know, for whatever it's worth. I'm trying right now to write stories that are focused on other people, but we'll whatever we'll see. I don't know. I've learned in my writing life to not make pronouncements. And yet you're right. Hey, look, where the mues takes you, you know, I think it's probably just follow that as your guiding light. But it is it's hard not to see these stories as intensely personal. I mean, due to, you know, it be, you know, the narrator has your name and then everything on the back cover summary and everything. And I guess I'll follow up a little bit about just, you know, writing from the point of view of Shane Hinton as these narrators, but was it cathartic any in any way to get these out into the world, you know, as fully as like realize narrative pieces, you know, you alluded to them being based on personal experience, but to to put them into this form and to get them out in this way. I mean, what was that process like? I think I have only started to feel the catharsis. of this really, really recently, like maybe within the last week or two, you know, up until that point, it has been actually a really emotionally terrible experience. I mean, I don't know, maybe publishing is always like this, but it has been for me anyway. It's not to make any comment on the process itself because I'm again working with Ryan Revellis and Bro Press, you know, Ryan, a dear, dear friend, like somebody who I, you know, just truly like loved dearly a great friend of mine, Bro Press, you know, an organization that I deeply believe in and has done me like nothing but right, you know, in our relationship together. So it's not that the process itself has been in any way painful for pragmatic reasons. So it's just that, like you say, you know, this is a, it's the deeply personal book for sure. I mean, I guess that's just the kind of right I only know how to write things that I've been really deeply affected by, I'm really interested in writing them in sure anyways. And so it's been, it's been honestly kind of a tough year coming to terms with this going out into the world, even though, you know, the facade of fiction is a nice guard rail for me to hide behind. You know, nonetheless, I do think this is the most vulnerable work I've ever produced. I also think it's maybe the least, the least conscious of using fiction as that facade. It's like, whatever I, you know, I think I dropped the, dropped my guard a little bit more in terms of where I draw the line between what's fictional and what's not in this work. It's been, so it's been really scary, I guess is what I would say, you know, just there's a lot of stuff in here that I think, afraidably, the stuff in the book that I think is most personal, I kind of doubt that any readers will even make much up, honestly, you know, but gearing up to the publication date, I have, you know, I was, it was a really intense experience. I will say this, the thought process that I have gone through in writing this book and then preparing for publication has been really focused on examining my own motivations for being a writer. And what I have come to is that, you know, this thing that I am engaged in as a, whatever a career, I guess, or just a continued practice in my life is an act of communication, you know, that written language its purpose is to allow us to share experiences with one another. And of course, when you pursue publication as a writer, you introduce all of these other layers onto that communication. And I've always been kind of uncomfortable with those, with the mediation of that communicative experience. And that's one of the reasons why I choose to publish with a small press because, you know, I don't, I'm not very interested in kind of commercial success, that doesn't mean a lot to me. Furthermore, you know, I don't want, or I only kind of, not particularly attracted to the idea of people wanting to make changes to the work based on how it will be perceived in the marketplace or whatever, you know, I like that Ryan edits books with a really, I mean, he's an outstanding editor, any author that you that has worked with him will tell you that he's a really incredible editor. And one of the key things that he does, you know, is he comes to each work with a totally fresh set of eyes. And he asks, what is this thing trying to be? And how can we make it the best version of that rather than how can we make it suit some other idea that I have about whatever book is or whatever this book should be? So it's a very, very, in my opinion, very like honest artistic process working with with Ryan. So, you know, as I've been getting ready, getting this book ready, I've been just the thing that I keep centering myself on is that, yeah, it's like kind of scary to be this vulnerable with readers. And I could just not do this, you know, it's almost an option or like I could just stop writing or stop writing this vulnerability. But my hope is that if I can go the opposite direction and make myself more honest and more vulnerable that I will, my work will hopefully become more helpful. Whatever that means to do somebody else's, like, I have to completely open question, I don't know, in what ways the work can be helpful. But my feeling about it, my gut intuition tells me that this is the way to make something that is meaningful is to kind of push through that fear of being honest and to just lay it out and say, yeah, look like these are things that I was scared to write down. These are things that I was a little, certainly like a free to publish. But I had no choice. I mean, they were coming out with me and I had to give them down and then, you know, I felt the compulsion to shape them into something artful. And, you know, I was fortunate enough to find a venue for publication. So, if at any point, you know, the universe had said, whatever this is not the right move, I think I would have done my best to try to like listen to that. But everything in the process has kind of been reaffirming that this, you know, this was the book that I needed to write right now. And, yeah, you know, now that people have it in their hands, and I have heard back from a few people, I have felt a little like actually, you know, some of the things that I are in the book that were kind of painful for me to recall and to write about. I have been able to maybe let go of some of that stuff in a way that I had not been able to previously. So, yeah, I would now, as of, you know, 10 days ago, start to say, it's somewhat cathartic. Well, I mean, it's funny you mentioned that about being vulnerable and talking with the process of getting these out of the, so it reminded me in the story, septic at the beginning of that. There's, I mean, it almost seems like reflective of like somebody's worst fears about what, you know, and because it describes not to spoil it for the reader, but it seems like it describes a, an experience within a publisher that is the complete opposite of what you have been through in the borough, or I mean, it seems like this narrator's worst fears about how his work is perceived, you know. So, and it's, I don't know, kind of tragicomic. I have to admit, I chuckled reading it because I couldn't imagine someone actually sending an email like that, but, but I don't know, that particular passage seemed to be the embody a lot of the things you're talking about right now. Yeah, yeah, you know, that story and that character, you know, it's actually funny, so, yeah, there's a character there based on Ryan. I mean, I, whatever I, I don't intend to like delineate whereas the fictional and whereas not, but I have only had one publisher. So, you know, if I'm writing about a publisher, yeah, process of elimination. Yeah. There's a character there based on Ryan, and like you describing, you know, this, this, this narrator basically is reflecting on his literary failures essentially. And when I sent the manuscript to Ryan for the first time, he had marked several comments in the margins saying like, "But wait, this isn't, but this isn't true." Or like, "This isn't, this isn't how it was." You know, in good, you know, good naturedly, I think he used it intuitive, what I was trying to do, but, but yeah, it's, but it seems like it could represent somebody's, you know, fears about like how it's perceived. It's not reality, but it's like you're saying, I mean, it's like being open about your thought, you know, how you fear your perceived, or maybe how you feel like, you know, the whole idea of like imposter syndrome, that kind of thing, you know. So, in that sense, it was, it was, you know, certainly revealing and honest. I think all of us have had moments like that, certainly, you know, when we've reflected on our work and our lives. So, I haven't, I, again, you know, I may have talked about this last time, but I, my last book, Radio Dark, it's kind of a, it's kind of a difficult project for me to revisit emotionally. It was like ridden when I was in a really dark spot. Probably about as bad as my mental health has ever been done. Right. It's, we have nothing else. It's reflected in the subject matter and the book itself. And, you know, it was helpful, I think, to engage with that and put it down on the, you know, on the, forget like something. the good reason for that book comes really stuck with me. And not in a bad way, I think the people's reactions are totally valid, but you know, really revealed to me how it was perceived by readers in a way that I was not considering as I was writing. Probably I should not consider this writer, but you know, in that story, one of the things that I was writing about is I have just like boxes and boxes and fewer now because I've gotten rid of so many copies of boxes and boxes of that book. And I'd kind of stuff them a closet and forgot about them. And then we got termites and I had to move everything through, get away from the walls. And so I had to find, I like look, I found all these boxes of the book and I realized, oh my god, I've got so many of these. So I started just leaving the places as I would travel around and leave them, you know, by the gas pump or in a bathroom or on a sundial, I left one or at the top of a tower, you know, and places where frankly I knew that like if it rained or if the tide came in before somebody got it, you know, they're going to get washed away. And I liked that actually. You know, I always tried to put them next like with it in close proximity to a trash can. So I think it's some worker in the gas station, which is like, even books around here, it's easy, live to just chuck it, you know. But it was a kind of a fun project. And you know, for books that I am proud of, you know, we worked really hard on it. And again, great experience with Ryan. But a book, the subject matter for me is tough to revisit personally. I, you know, it did feel like a meaningful, it was kind of a, it was kind of an art project in the zone, right? It was kind of a meaningful way of like shedding the baggage of that book a little bit. And so yeah, I started, yeah, I coordinated that into that story, you know, that this is something I've been wrestled with is that this book, you know, it meant a lot to me, but definitely kind of having a physical artifact of a really rough time in your life is something I didn't necessarily consider as I was writing it and publishing it. And then, you know, I mean, I, I, I, I honestly, I didn't think that I would ever get better at that time. So I guess I wasn't really considering it, but, you know, having kind of come out this, the other side of a lot of that stuff. And now I've been probably the, I don't know, the best, like, mental health I've ever, I've ever been in in my life, looking back on its very stark to see, you know, just how hopeless I felt and how meaningless I felt like the world was and life was. Yeah, I mean, in addition, here's here's something else I've always noticed about your work, but especially in this, in other Shane Hinton's, and in addition to all these, like, really intensely personal reflections and moments, I have always noticed the sheer number of illusions to and depictions of or involvement in the storylines of animals. You always like, and I mean, I did make a list here. I mean, just in these stories alone, you've got grasshoppers, sewer flies, lots of flies in general, iguanas, deer, moths, manatees, frogs, there's a random bird and a car grill, bass. These are all of these fates of these animals seem really sad, actually. The goat who might be Satan, there's chickens, a sickly dog, an animated roasted chicken, there's crabs, cats, a cow heart, goldfish. And you did, there's a story in your first collection, Pinkies. I know that you kind of revisited, I noticed you rift on a story about a cow in there, but I, as I said, you seem to really have this affinity for animal symbolism, and I would say an affinity for nature imagery more generally. There's that great line in the story, and I didn't write down which story it was, but where you said, the wind is neither alive nor dead, but it is always hungry for our disappointment, which is sort of a vague paraphrase there. But I mean, what is these metaphors with animals in nature? I mean, I wondered what you're, well, like, is that a conscious affinity? Is there some intent behind that? Very, I mean, very little, maybe nothing I do as a writer is conscious, honestly. So, the first part of that question, I would say that. Just a subconscious. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a big believer. And this might be a cop out and realizing, even as I say it, but I think that it's very important for me, not for, I don't make pronouncements for other people, but what I come to for myself is that I can't, if I try to start making too many conscious decisions about the work, then it really quickly becomes uninteresting to me. So, as I'm in the creative process, my number one goal is to try to shut down my conscious mind and just wants to interfere, basically. So, whatever emerges in the drafting phase, anyway, ideally is a product of as little active thought as possible. And then editing and rewriting becomes a little bit more intellectual exercise. But all the stuff that you mentioned there, those, all this stuff was in, was in early drafts. That was pretty integral to my understanding of the work. So, it's funny, I have been thinking about this. And I don't know, I don't know where that comes from except to say, I grew up on a farm and around a lot of animals. And man, I loved him dearly. And I just, my favorite picture of me as a kid, as I must have been maybe like four years old. And I just have a little rabbit in my arms. And I'm holding it so tenderly and lovingly. And I remember that moment, just how much I loved this rabbit. And you know, we would have rabbits on the farm or we would have chickens. And there was one of the stories that every count in the book was, I had chickens. And man, I love those chickens. I would go out there in the coop with them and just hang out all afternoon. And I would hold them and pet them. And I just loved those chickens so much. And then one morning before school, I went out to feed them and they were all dead. And there were parts where just everywhere. And it was really gory and gross. And I was probably only, I don't know, six or seven years old. And it was one of those moments in my life that really has informed the way that I interact with the world, I think, unfortunately, because it was not a good lesson that I took from that. I would say the lesson that I took from that for many years was to kind of like harden my heart essentially and to not let things become so dear to me. And I really spent my whole childhood just kind of wandering around in the woods and the creeks, you know, in the cow pastures. And so I feel deeply connected to nature. You know, the land that I grew up on is now a neighborhood. And that's only been, that's only happened in the last five years or so. And it is, it's kind of amazing how I've driven through it since they've, they've been developed, they've developed it. And I remember, you know, obviously the land is changed, but I remember, oh, here's where the ditch was, where I saw the tadpoles. Here's where the pond was, where the aloea chased my dog and whatever, you know, like I can, I can just see it even, even though it's all changed so much. And it's kind of incredible the, the pull that I feel to that land, even though it's, it's so radically changed now. And, you know, even an adult, I mean, look, if I joke with, with my friends, but my wife and I teach in our gold during the summer is to camp. I mean, we try to camp the whole summer if we can. And my joke is like, I just want to not, my goal is to be inside as few buildings for as little time as I possibly can. That's my goal, you know, you just want to be outside. If I, if I don't have anything to do, I'm trying to be outdoors. And then the many of those animal deaths they recounted actually, boy, like maybe all of them actually were things that I experienced and I, and I guess really burrowed their way into my soul in a way that I wasn't necessarily actively aware of. But, you know, a lot of what you referenced there is from the last story of the book. And I will remember again, I remember a comment that Ryan made when we were working through as he says, because that, that story was kind of a bear like it was, I really didn't know how to handle it. I had a very vague and yet somehow ambitious idea of what that story should be and do. And of course being the last story in the collection, I was putting a lot of weight on how it might serve as a code or something. How successful that ended up being I'll let you guys determine, but on one of the early drafts as we were trying to figure out what the shape of that story should be. What's one of the things that Ryan said, I always remember the wording said an absolute monasury of dead animals in the story. And I had not realized it actually. You know, I mean, I had written in that last story about there are half a dozen or more dead animals. And I really hadn't even charted it. You know, it's just I was kind of thinking about moments in my life that had been meaningful and those emerged. Yeah, you know, I dedicated my last book to snooty and managing who died in captivity in Braidton at the query on their in Braidton. He was the oldest living man in captivity. And I ran him on him again in this book. And yeah, you know, I can't I guess I can't speak to exactly where that comes from, except I do feel a great sense of mourning that accompanies my perception of the loss of the natural world in a living. I think we're living where I live and where I grew up. I mean, I just watched it happen over the course of my life that the pastures and orange grows that I grew up around and been paved over and turned into neighborhoods. And that's like fine too. You know, there's a reason why people want to move where we live, but it is certainly hard for me not to feel some sadness about about the world that I grew up in. You know, the something that didn't make it into this book, but that I think about often is that we used to have a lot of indigo snakes in Florida when I was growing up, which are very rare now and very, very hard to find them, actually, these beautiful, these just gorgeous creatures. They're called indigo snakes because they are so black that in the sunlight, they actually take on kind of a purple sheen and they're huge. They're like six feet long, big, big around, like a not quite a football size, but a big, big around. And they eat venomous snakes. You know, there's amazing things to have on your property and we had one that lived right by our house when I was growing up and it was this gorgeous benevolent creature, you know, laying out in the sun. They don't move, they move really slowly. And I just like, I felt this real kinship with this snake, you know, and furthermore, they don't cluster together. So if you see one, it kind of has a range and that's like it's territory, basically. And then people started to move down to where, you know, near to where the land where I grew up was and I will never forget, you know, I saw an indigo snake dead on the road. And I knew that was the one that I had grown up with. You know, I have obviously no way of knowing, but I know it. And that felt to me like when the landscape shifted, you know, when it was this place where I had known as this very, very rural and isolated place and when it became something that other people have discovered and loved too, you know. So there's like a, I look, that's how I rationalize it to myself is now this place where I have made so many memories as being shared by all these other people, which is a beautiful thing, you know, because it is a special place. But it's never, it's never going to be the place that I knew. - Yeah, look, whether it's unconscious or intentional, I don't know, I feel like reading your work, I always, you get such a sense of place through a lot of the setting imagery and the animals and everything like that. And you're right, the final story in the collection, I don't know, it's a lot different in tone, like you're saying too. I mean, it's got all these, it's got this very, you know, kind of biblical aesthetic to it, I think I was telling someone and even into the dialogue. And you are right. Now, looking through it, like a lot of those stories are kind of located in just in that one, in that one piece at the end. I didn't want to say though, but there's another story, the culling, that I did want to draw attention, because that, to me, I think had some of the most striking animal traits, it's about, I mean, it's not just about iguanas, let me be clear about that to our listeners, but I mean, those are the images that really stuck with me. And it really reminded me a lot in so many ways of your story, Pinkies. I thought it was, and amazingly, it's actually more grounded than that story. I noticed this about the culling, the piece in other Shane Hinton's, is that it's the one story, I'm pretty sure that does not have any surreal or supernatural imagery in it. It's like, I realized, this could actually happen. This sounds like something that could conceivably happen or occur. And yet, like I said, it had with the iguanas and the, I don't want to spoil this for the reader either, 'cause it's got a pretty amazing final scene in there. But yeah, I don't know. It's funny to hear you say that, it, you do this maybe subconsciously without realizing or it is just sort of percolated into your process, bringing up, 'cause I don't know. I, my brain immediately goes to all of the, probably, you know, like I said, misplaced intentionality, that I'm seeing in it with the animals and everything. So, now it's one of the reasons, Chris, why I so enjoyed talking here, because, you know, you have revealed a lot of stuff about my own work to me, which is, I mean, man, what a, what an incredible privilege, honestly, you know, to life is hard, you know, life is really hard. And I think so much of the reason why I write is because I am, you know, I'm just really shaken by so much of it and it sticks with me and me and, and, you know, I write to make sense of it. And I think it is in the process of kind of taking a story from its initial inception to, through the revision process and the editorial process and then having conversations with readers that I really come to understand it in a way that allows it to be useful, actually. And I, you know, I hope, I was just kind of going back to what I was saying at the very beginning, right? Like I hope that that use extends just beyond me. That is the goal, you know? I have, I think a lot, as I said earlier, about motivation and what writing is, writing is hard. Life is hard, writing is hard. There's so many other things that it could be doing with my time. Why do I keep coming back to the writing desk? There, when I was young, there was like an audacity about it. It was like, I've got, you know, I'm gonna like, I got something to say. I don't like kick you guys in the nose with it or whatever. But I say, get older, I don't find that as a satisfactory as a motivation as I used to. So what I have located in the last five years probably is this sense that if there is anything good that I can do in the world, it probably has to do with this thing that I have spent my life trying to get better at, you know, for better or worse, like this is where I've allocated my energy. And my goal right now and moving forward is really just to to use that time that I have dedicated to becoming a better writer in the service of hopefully, you know, making somebody else's burdens a little lighter. Like that's the motivation that I keep coming back to and how exactly does what's the mechanism of that? You know, I don't know, right? But I do believe that the reason that we go to art is to help us understand how there is beauty in the moments that feel to us as though they are without redemption. That those parts of our lives are beautiful too. And that story that you're referring to was one of those that was really hard to write. It was, it is in the section of the book where I, that I would call it like the kind of dark, the darkest section. And I do think I hope that this book is kind of a, it's kind of a hopeful project I feel that way about it. I feel that it's trajectory is probably more hopeful than any of my previous work, certainly how I feel now in my line. And I, you know, I just, I'm a little, yeah, I get a little emotionally I've been talking about this, but yeah, I just hope that in kind of going through the things that I've been through and being willing to open that up for examination by other people that I can find some other people out there who just kind of needed it. somebody to say, you know, it may not be that things get better necessarily because that's not guaranteed to us. But it is the case that this life is beautiful, not in spite of all of that stuff, but precisely because of it. You know, that our existence within the frame of our birth and death is precious in each moment, whether or not it is exactly as we would choose it to be, is a granular representation of that overall beauty. Wow, I think you nailed a concluding statement there. I think so. Shane Hinton, thank you for visiting the clubhouse again and we'll see your work out there. Thanks so much Chris. Thank you for attending this meeting at the Florida Book Club. We have links to Burrow Press to purchase other Shane Hinton's on our website with this episode. And if you're out and about at your local bookstores, you might see Shane out there promoting this book over the next couple months. In any case, check out our last conversation with Shane from early 2025 for the story behind the title of the book and you should check out Radio Dark 2, which I discussed in this season one episode. It definitely deserves your attention. Remember to support your local independent bookstores and public libraries. See you in our next meeting. you