She'd read about one recently who showed off on his birthday by eating a baby elephant. (Reading) He'd have to fall into the new rich category as a dictator, she thought, because a dictator didn't act like old money. Will you read from this section of the first story, which is called "Libertines"?
In this one, she imagines that the client she's showing around a house could be the dictator of an African country, and it quickly gets pretty absurd. SHAPIRO: Well, the first story definitely feels comedic, which not all of the stories do. But, yeah, they were sort of written in exactly the order they appear in the book for the most part. So, yeah, (laughter) I started with the first story, and then I decided she was kind of interesting enough to me that I would do more stories about her. MILLET: No, I did begin - you know, I always write in a very plodding, linear way. Did you begin by writing the first story, the one in which we first meet her? Or was she a fully conceived character who you then sprinkled throughout these other stories? SHAPIRO: So these stories are tied together by your main character, who is a realtor in Los Angeles. And it seems to me it would be both exciting and bizarre to have that kind of access to the sort of intimate maps of strangers' lives. Because they have this permission given to them by the culture to enter people's homes, you know, to enter the private lives of people they don't know. I've always sort of suspected that their job has a certain powerful kind of voyeuristic dimension. MILLET: Well, so I've always been sort of fascinated by the working lives of real estate agents. SHAPIRO: Tell us how you built this world. Lydia Millet, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I spoke to Lydia Millet about these stories, which range from tragic to comic to absurdist fantasy. We meet people buying and selling houses, moving in and moving out, and their homes provide a window into their internal lives. "Fight No More" is set in Los Angeles, and the stories take us into people's homes. Her newest book is another collection of interconnected stories. Her short story collection "Love In Infant Monkeys" was a finalist for the Pulitzer.
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