Keep Being Fascinated
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with writer Russell Nohelty
Welcome to another edition of The Body, Brain, & Books. If you enjoy reading these quick, insightful interviews brimming with wisdom and hope, please subscribe to Beyond!
What are you reading now?
I am obsessed with the Caraval series from Stephanie Garber. I’ve read it so many times, and the new book is about to drop in a week, so I’m rereading the series…again. Right now, I’m on the fourth book, with the sixth one coming very soon. Another one of my favorite authors, Alix Harrow, also dropped a new book this month, and it’s sitting on my nightstand waiting for me to finish reading this series. Normally, nothing would stop me reading an Alix Harrow book, but this series is so good it consumes everything around it.
What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?
The first book I remember loving was The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley in middle school. Then books like Candide, Siddhartha, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead taught me so much about writing and the universe as a whole in high school. I still have a hard time thinking about my teenage years as my youth, but yes, those are the ones that stand out.
What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?
Well, I already talked about Caraval, so I’ll not say that one. The other series I love to reread is The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert. It’s two books about warped fairy tales existing alongside our own reality, and then the third book is a collection of those fairy tales. It’s filled with some of my favorite fairy tales of all time.
With rare exception, almost all my favorite books are some type of portal fantasy with deep mythology and/or fairy tale roots. There is something about traveling to another world and escaping everything that has always been very appealing to me. I know most fantasy readers are all about dragons, but give me a good fairy tale any day of the week. If you steep it in a rich mythology, then you probably have a reader for life in me.
What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?
I have this merino wool jacket that I basically live in every winter. When I have to put it away for the summer it bums me out, but it’s the chilly season again so I’ve been able to brush it off. No matter what else I’m wearing, if I can throw that on I feel a lot better about myself. I’ve moved more toward a capsule wardrobe in the past couple of years, and that is my favorite part of it.
What’s the best piece of wisdom you've encountered recently?
I don’t remember where I heard it, but somebody recently told me to keep being fascinated by things. Often, I get angry at the way the world works, either because it’s cruel or dumb, and when I was in a spiral about it a little while ago, somebody told me that I should look at things with fascination instead of anger and wonder why those things happen that way. It doesn’t make them any better, but it has helped me understand them more and improve my relationship with the world in general.
We recently came out with this new archetyping system called The Author Ecosystems and having that mindset while we continue to dive deep to learn why and how people act the way they do is incredibly satisfying. I’m mostly fascinated with the way that the system holds up even to robust scrutiny.
Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?
I was never a big animal person in my youth. We had a bunch of cats that I never connected with, maybe because I was a bit of an entitled jerk. When my wife and I moved in together, our apartment didn’t allow dogs, but for some reason bunnies were okay, which is a terrible policy because bunnies destroy everything they touch.
I found a bunny on Craigslist and went to pick it up for her. When I got there the owner asked if I wanted this other brown bunny. I wasn’t really interested in a second bunny, but the owner said if I didn’t take it, they would feed it to their snake, so of course I took it and went away from that house with two bunnies, Money Bunny and Bugs, the latter of which never understood that I had just saved him.
Money Bunny used to eat apples out of my hand, but Bugs was always more interested in my wife, even though I saved its life. That was when my cold, dead heart started to thaw, and I began to realize that you don’t control what happens with the good you put out in the world. Sometimes, it will be appreciated. Other times it will be ignored. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. You should keep doing good anyway.
Since then, we’ve had three dogs, and the one I had the biggest hand in adopting after we fostered her is our little long-haired dachshund, who, of course, is tied to my wife at the hip, even though it took a lot of cajoling to get her to a yes. She loved me, too, but she is definitely my wife’s dog first and foremost.
It’s weird. You think you don’t have room in your heart to love another thing, but then your heart opens another chamber and you realize your ability to love is infinite, and you can love everything 100%.
What's one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?
After the whole Harvey Weinstein expose, I’m pretty glad I didn’t get my wish to direct movies at Miramax. I’m also glad I didn’t have success young, because I was able to appreciate it when it came. Being beat up and knocked around made me a better, more appreciative person, that has a more complete understanding of how things get made than if I had an easier time of it. So often people have success early and it blinds them to the way the world actually works. I think I’ve been blessed to both have success and keep myself grounded in what is happening in the heart of the publishing industry. That has kept me nimble and able to keep creating interesting projects throughout the years.
Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?
Definitely singing in the shower and just about everywhere. Every time I walk my dog, I end up singing to him for half the walk, even though I’m very bad at it.
What are your hopes for yourself?
I’d like to be healthy again. I feel like my life has been a cycle of sickness/injury, recovery, and then another wave of sickness smashing into me even worse than the last. I’ve had to fight my way back from three awful places in my life. The last one took a decade to recover from, and now I have long COVID, which is the fourth, and it feels like I’m back at square one again. So, I’d just like to be healthy, and happy.
I have low goals for myself, but they are also everything. Like Kesha said:
if you asked me then where I wanted to be
It'd look somethin' like this, livin' out my wildest of dreams
But life sometimes ain't always what it seems
But if you ask me now, all I've wanted to be
Is happy
What’s a kindness that changed your life?
I have been very blessed with kindness in my life. Yes, I have dealt with a lot of unkind people, but I am constantly amazed at how kind people are in general. I have so many great examples, but I’m just going to be corny and call out my wife. I was not a great human when I met her. I was every bit the entitled, white, millennial, man stereotype and watching her neverending fount of kindness for everyone around her, and the grace she showed to everybody really snapped me out of the way I looked at the world and showed me how to move through the world with more grace.
What’s a guiding force in your life?
The guiding force for myself is to “be kind to future Russell”. I am constantly asking myself if future Russell will be happy with a decision I made or not. Sometimes, of course, future Russell is angry with me because you need to center the present, but I like to be kind to him, even if it means suffering a bit in the moment.
The guiding force for others is that “what I put out into the world is my karma. What others do with it is theirs”. I don’t have the energy to care if somebody abuses my kindness or not. I am going to keep putting good into the world regardless, and if somebody wants to manipulate it then that’s their problem, not mine.
Most people are not out to screw you over, even if it seems that way, or even if that is the end result. They are just self-centered and don’t understand how things affect other people. That is not always the case, but that is my initial gut reaction to people these days. If they slight me, it has nothing to do with me, and it will all work out in the end, or it won’t. Either way, all I can control is what I put out into the world.
I have just added quite a few titles to my want to read list! Thank you so much for sharing this insightful interview. I really appreciated the insights about how little we control, particularly with regards to the affection of others, be they people, or creatures!
Thank you Jane and Russell for this excellent interview.
First of all, I say "Yay to Russell's amazing wife, her ripple effect is wide". Next, I appreciate your desire to be kind to your future self. I have never heard a goal worded like this and yet it's the best goal, and outcome, any of us could wish for. Thank you for sharing it.