Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr are the author/illustrator, husband/wife duo behind Ten Thousand Stories (Chronicle, 2013) and more than 60 illustrated books for children and adults. They run two small publishing companies and a letterpress shop out of their home/barn/studio in Maryland, teach and speak on creativity and collaboration, and have three small-but-obstreperous children. Their picture book Babies Ruin Everything will be published July 19, 2016, and their second picture book, Everywhere, Wonder, is coming in February 2017.
Context: While sitting in bed the other night, Matthew and Robbi recorded this interview on an iPhone and then dutifully transcribed it. Meanwhile, their daughter Alden was creating some art at a table nearby.
On your nightstand now:
Matthew: A pink polka-dotted plush giraffe thing that my kids gave me, a sleep mask, a fitted mouth guard, about 70 used earplugs in various stages of decline, and a malfunctioning oil lamp.
Robbi: Malfunctioning?
M: Well, it doesn't work.
R: I think you'd better take care of that right away. Stop this interview and fix that lamp.
M: I think it can wait until we're done. What do you have on your nightstand?
R: A dead iPhone, a pair of glasses, a pink monkey that matches your giraffe, and a mug of dried-up chia drink.
M: I think maybe this question is asking what books we have on our nightstands.
R: Oh? Probably, yes. Well, here’s the truth. There are no books on my nightstand, because I'm not allowed to read in bed, because Matthew is so delicate that I have to remain perfectly still. The shuffle of pages and the light of my very tiny book lamp distresses him.
M: I cannot write books for you if not well rested.
R: Books on your bedside table?
M: Let's see, I have Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.
R: Which you haven't read in probably five years!
M: But it's there. I have A Hole Is to Dig by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.
R: I'm so mad, because this is making it look like you read and I don't. When, in fact, you almost never read.
M: And I have the instruction manual for the Baby Foot Exfoliant Foot Peel Foot Gel for Removal of Dead Skin Cells. This is a controversial Japanese beauty product that Robbi used and I did not. So I don't know why it's by my bedside.
R: It will change your life. I'm just saying.
Favorite book when you were a child:
R: When I was a little child?
M: The question does not specify.
R: I was going to say The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. But that's not a children's book, is it?
M: Depends on the child. Before I read Hitchhiker's, I fell in love with Laura Ingalls Wilder and her calico-laced adventures as a flinty prairie girl. But I can't choose just one of those books. It was all of them together.
R: I liked Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney.
M: I tried to read that to the kids lately, and the language was so weird.
R: Yes, I think someone must have rewritten it since I was a kid.
Your top five authors:
R: Joshua Ferris is my #1 these days. I find him so funny.
Alden (daughter, overhearing this): I like Roald Dahl.
M: Thanks, Love.
A: Are you going to put down Roald Dahl?
M: Maybe. My top five authors are...
R: Oh, sorry, I should have said, Matthew is my actual top author. Seriously. I love the way you write.
M: Oh, thank you. That is extremely affirming.
R: I actually mean it.
M: As opposed to most of the things you claim to love.
R: Exactly.
M: Well, thank you. My top five authors are Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, Daniel Handler and... let's see.
Alden: Roald Dahl?
M: Let’s say Roald Dahl.
R: You know, I'm going to have to think about that.... Oh, you know whom I like? For the content of his books, maybe that guy who writes the history stuff, John Adams.
M: David McCullough?
R: That guy.
Book you've faked reading:
R: Oh gosh, there's so many.
M: For me, it's Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson. I took a Johnson class, and Boswell's biography is so vast that we were just supposed to keep reading it throughout the semester on the honor system, but I have no honor and so I did not read it.
R: I fake-read Walden but kept referring to Thoreau as Walden in my paper, so the first time that happened, my teacher wrote "???," and the third and fourth times he wrote, "I suspect you didn't do a thorough read." But then I actually read it when I was in college and liked it a lot.
Book you are an evangelist for:
R: Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.
M: Yes, Robbi made me read it, and I was glad she did. Though I'm a little worried that Robbi is going to run off and have a fling with his writing voice.
R: I would run off with that voice in a second.
M: Do I have to worry about you running off with Ferris himself?
R: I think mostly you don't have to worry about him running off with me.
M: I feel comforted. Kind of. The book that I'm an evangelist for? I'd say Lemony Snicket's entire "A Series of Unfortunate of Events." Because what Daniel Handler does with the voice in those books is so smart and delightful and surprising.
Book you've bought for the cover:
R: Then We Came to the End. I judged it by its cover and it totally paid off.
M: Yes, that was nicely designed. For me, it was The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort. I found it in a bookstore when I was 13. The cover was... intriguing... and the insides were even better.
R: But that's not the cover, that's the content!
M: It was all part of the same remarkable experience.
R: What happened when you bought it?
M: The person behind the counter looked at me funny, I think because I was purple.
Book you hid from your parents:
R: At one point I borrowed a Sweet Valley High book, and I read it, and I purposefully did not show my parents.
M: Really? Did you like it?
R: I was fascinated. It was so foreign to me. It felt like they were not talking about actual human beings. What book did you hide?
M: Obviously, The Joy of Sex.
Book that changed your life:
M: Again, it seems appropriate to cite The Joy of Sex.
R: All of your answers are The Joy of Sex and all of mine are Joshua Ferris-related. No, the book that changed my life was A Bully Named Chuck.
M: I guess that makes sense. Tell them what that is, Robbi.
R: That's the first book that Matthew and I worked on together, way back in...
M: It was in 2003. And yes, making that book changed my life, too. I discovered all I wanted to do with every minute of my life was make books with you. Along these lines, the book that changed my life was Gramangela Gentlyfierce and Her Monkey Friend Collins, which was a middle-grade book I wrote about six years ago (I didn't even know the term "middle grade" at the time). Because that's when I discovered my true "voice" and that I was interested in writing longer form stories and that I was put on this earth to humorously chronicle the thoughts and feelings of preteen girls. We have such a middle-grade series coming in fall 2017 from Imprint called The Real McCoys.
Though it occurs to me that this question wasn't supposed to about be the book you created that changed your life. I think it was supposed to be somebody else's book. I think, for me, that book was Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme. The language just wowed me and struck a chord with my interior. It excited me in a way that literature never had before. I think that's when I became an adult reader and a writer driven by voice.
Favorite line from a book:
R: I don't remember anything. Seriously, the best book I ever read, I forgot everything about. I can't even remember what it was.
M: I remember that you once liked a caption in a book I wrote: Deep-fried murder.
R: Yes! I love "deep-fried murder." So maybe that's the best line I can remember.
M: I don't remember lines from books either. I'm trying to think of any line from any book. I do love the title A Hole Is to Dig. I love that syntax.
R: You only thought of that because you saw it on your nightstand.
M: I am also tempted to quote the Exfoliant Foot Peel brochure. There is some fantastic language in those instructions.
Five books you'll never part with:
M: Well, for sure I'm holding onto the Exfoliant Foot Peel, The Joy of Sex, A Hole Is to Dig and Understanding Comics (because I'm probably never going to clean off my bedside table), and I'm never going to part with the ravaged copy of Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon that I read five times in an attempt to understand it well enough that I could write my senior thesis about it. It's practically a part of my body, so littered is it with my dead skin cells.
R: Gross.
M: You?
R: I will gladly part with any of my books. I'm sorry. I have no sentimental attachment to books because I know I can go to the library and get another one or I can just buy it again if I need to. Matthew has all these books with notes in the margins! Get rid of that. I don't need to hear what I was thinking when I read it the first time.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
R: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
M: Yes! Douglas Adams! I should have listed him in my list of favorite authors. And Kurt Vonnegut! Yes. I’m putting him in there, too.
M: A book I want to read again for the first time? That Kurt Vonnegut book about things that freeze.
R: Catch-22?
M: No! That's Joseph Heller. I might also have to add him to my list, or at least that book. But no, the one where everything freezes. Ice-Nine... Cat's Cradle! Unless, perhaps, it's The New Joy of Sex. To open those pages for the first time again... I think we’re done here.
R: Is that it? That was all just questions about books.
M: That's it. You thought it was going to move onto something more exciting at some point?
R: Ugh. We’re so not the authority on books.
M: I guess we make books a lot more often than we read them.
R: Ask me a different question.
M: Hmm... what are your bold dreams, Robbi?
R: My bold dreams are to fricking take over the world.
M: Could you please be more specific?
R: Someday, the books that Matthew writes will be made into movies.
M: Oh? Starring?
R: Starring anybody but Channing Tatum.
M: Okay. Poor guy. He's just trying to make a living, Robbi. Why is making movies the goal?
R: Because I’m going to rake in a ton of money and I’m going to--people don’t want to hear about my real dreams.
M: I think they do. That's why I asked.
R: My dream is to open a free Montessori school for all the people in my community who need it.
M: That's a pretty great dream. Do you have a question for me? We can't end on that kind of optimistic note. I can usually count on you to be the darkness in our equation.
R: Your question is: What is it that gets you out of bed in the morning? Mostly because I need to know for my own utilitarian purposes.
M: I think that I am not actually a writer. I'm a lucky bastard who gets to sit still and listen while unseen, swirling forces whisper in my ear. And they whisper most audibly at 4:00 in the morning. If I do not get up and sit at my desk and listen to them in my half-dream stupor, I miss the opportunity to write down what to say.
R: They do say good things.
M: It's the only reason you have something to draw. I get up in the morning to keep you...
R: To keep me busy?
M: To keep you engaged in the universal conversation.
R: To keep me out of trouble.
M: I think it's mostly to keep you from perpetual unconsciousness.
R: Because otherwise, I would never get out of bed.
M: I get up so that you get up... eventually.
R: Thank you for giving my life purpose.
M: You're welcome.
R: I bet they wish we had stuck to books.
M: (Fiddles with phone.)
R: We are in the middle of an interview. Put down your phone!
M: No. This is important! One more question, via live Tweet from our editor Erin Stein: Do babies actually ruin everything?
R: I see what she did there.
M: Do you think she's referring to Babies Ruin Everything, our heartwarming-yet-humorous picture book due out July 19 and available at booksellers everywhere?
R: She's a sly one.
M: Well, do they?
R: What?
M: Ruin everything?
R: Of course! Have you not been paying attention for the past eight years?
M: I challenge the premise. While babies do ruin most things, there are a few things they make slightly better.
R: Such as?
M: We get to board planes earlier.
R: And?
M: Old ladies smile at me knowingly when I'm shopping with all three kids at the grocery store.
R: That's all you've got?
M: Aren't there favorable tax implications?
R: You have failed to challenge the premise.
M: Because we love them.
R: Yes, we do.
M: Quite a lot.
R: More than anything else.
M: Even more than Joshua Ferris's writing voice?
R: Even more than The Joy of Sex.
M: Speak for yourself.