Sheltering: Katy Simpson Smith Has More Than a Little Sympathy for the Devil
On this episode of Sheltering, Katy Simpson Smith speaks with Maris Kreizman about her recently released novel, The Everlasting. Smith talks about trying to read all of Proust in quarantine and deeming him “not the man for the moment,” weeding her garden so much that it’s now spotless, and the comfort of viewing our current times through a historical lens. Smith’s favorite local bookstore is Garden District Books; please purchase The Everlasting through their website if possible!
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From the episode:
Maris Kreizman: Tell me a little bit about your novel, The Everlasting.
Katy Simpson Smith: Well it takes place in Rome, one of my all-time favorite cities, and covers 2,000 years of history. It’s the story of four protagonists with interlocking love stories, and stories of faith and sacrifice, and about being a good person in the world. There’s stuff in it about human bodies, their decompositions, their renewals, how they can be seen as holy vessels.
But yes, I think there is something helpful with the book, in just thinking about a longer historical view of the moment. We are so wrapped up in the intense immediacy of… life is different now! Different than we’ve ever known it in our lives. But it’s not that different than 1918, or the Black Plague, when vast swaths of the population were wiped out. In some sense we are joining a long and noble history of human suffering. And on the other side of suffering is always renewal. So I hope that readers coming to this novel might find a little bit of solace in that historical perspective.
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Maris: If you had been able to have your launch event, what question would you have wanted asked by an audience member that I can ask you now?
Katy: Great question. So one of my characters in the novel is the Devil. I think I would have liked to have been asked what my opinion is of the Devil, whether I think he’s a good or a bad character. In terms of how I would have answered that… I’ve just been thinking about the Devil a lot. We turn to faith, we turn to religion in difficult moments, and there’s something about the, at least the Judeo-Christian conception of God as this all-seeing comforter, that to me is not very comforting. That God is this figure that’s like, “it’s okay, everything’s fine”, but I want someone communicating with me who’s a little bit more like, “oh my god! Everything’s horrible! We’re all gonna die! And here are some workarounds—let’s think about our complex emotions together…” and for me I think that’s the role Satan plays.
So in the book I wanted him to be in the trenches with humans, I wanted him to feel what we feel, and so as a result he’s maybe more sympathetic to us than God in his all-seeing wisdom might be. I think my view of the Devil is a more humanistic view; I think he’s the one I want to be chatting with in these times.
